Orlando – throughly entertaining queerness

It was time for another spot of film catch-up this evening – and back to an effort at being thematic for LGBT+ History Month – with a first viewing of Sally Potter’s 1992 adaptation of Orlando, Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel of the same name.

The film opens in 1600, with aristocratic youth Orlando pondering over his loneliness and his desire to write poetry. When his family is visited by Elizabeth I, the aged monarch takes to him, making him her “mascot” and granting him property and money. There’s one condition: “Do not fade. Do not wither. Do not grow old”, she orders.

In the novel, there is no explanation of how Orlando becomes immortal, but Potter added this to the film to suggest how this occurs, feeling that a cinema audience would need at least a hint.\

As part of the wider court of James I, he becomes utterly besotted with Sasha, a beautiful Cossack, who is visiting with her father. But when she dumps him, he’s left to muse on the “treachery” of women.

Time passes and, in the 18^th century, the eternally unchanging Orlando – nobody ever comments on this, ‘because it’s England’ – is appointed ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. There he enjoys a brotherly friendship with the Khan, before participating in a battle.

Shocked at seeing his first violent death, he flees and falls into a deep sleep for seven days. On waking, he discovers that he has become a she. Heading back to England, Orlando is stripped of her home on the basis of being a woman – and thus effectively “legally dead”.

Somehow, she continues living there until the time of Victoria, where she has an accidental meeting with Shelmerdine, an American revolutionary, with whom she enjoys a passionate fling, before he departs for home. She refuses to join him – and muses on the “treachery” of men – before her life takes her into the 20^th century, through the mud of Flanders and beyond, to 1990s London, where she has a young daughter.

It's not a devastating script, but there is wit – not least in the wonderful to-camera shots of Tilda Swinton as Orlando, where Potter has her break the fourth wall.

It is beautifully shot – cinematography was by Alexsei Rodionov – and beyond Swinton’s fabulous performance, which really grounds the film, it has a wonderful ensemble cast.

Billy Zane posts a nice turn as Shelmerdine, but one of the real joys here is Quentin Crisp as Elizabeth I – “the Queen of Queens”, according to Potter – which also adds to the queerness of the whole thing.

Then there’s Jimmy Sommerville, Kathryn Hunter, Simon Russell Beale and Toby Jones among many other familiar faces, while John Wood provides a delightful cameo as a bumptious, elderly archduke who falls for Orlando.

Potter’s direction moves things at a nice pace – easy to expect an epic, given the century-spanning scale of the story – but it’s just 93 minutes. She also wrote the screenplay and the music (the latter, along with David Motion and, for one song, Sommerville).

It’s thoroughly entertaining – and with the added spice of the gender politics, not least in terms of the differing attitudes toward men and women throughout history.

And as Vogue put it in 2020: “Nearly three decades later, Sally Potter's Orlando is more topical than ever”.

Frank N Furter at 40!

Tim Curry (centre) and Richard O'Brien (right)

Now here’s an astonishing thing: this year marks the 40th anniversary of the first stage performances of The Rocky Horror Show. The film followed in 1975.

As with so many other things in life, I was late to the game with Rocky, not seeing it in any shape or form until 1990, when I was sent to review the first major West End revival at a packed-out and boisterous Piccadilly Theatre.

It starred Adrian Edmondson, Tim McInnerny and Edward Tudor-Pole amongst others, with Jonathan Adams reprising the role he’d created in the original version, as the narrator. He played Dr Scott in the film version and, oddly enough, I had met and chatted with him some years earlier in Leicester, when he was appearing in David Pownalls’s play, Master Class. A very fine actor.

Anyway, I loved Rocky instantly: the sheer glorious naughtiness appealed to me straight away – it was just exactly as had happened some years earlier when I first saw Victor/Victoria. Love at first sight.

And, if possible, it got even better when I finally saw the film version with Tim Curry as Frank N Furter.

In some ways, the role has been a mixed blessing for Curry – a far more talented actor than he has, in effect, been allowed to be since simply blowing the world away with his seminal stage and screen performances.

I’ve long been rather amused that Curry’s father was a Methodist Navy chaplain.

Some years ago, I sang at St Mary’s, Henley, as the female relief in a concert given by a local male voice choir.

My father, who had decided I was doing it (an act of self-promotion for himself, rather than of me, I tend to believe), was deeply disappointed that I didn’t sing hymns.

Robert Preston and Julie Andrews in Victor/Victoria.

Mind, both my parents were always disappointed that I wouldn’t sing hymns whenever I was in any sort of festival – although songs like Cherry Ripe (which played a role in Victor/Victoria) would have been considered acceptable. My mother approved of such ditties, many of which were contained in a large, leather-clad collection of English songs that fell to me when I was teaching myself to play the piano.

I opted, on that Henley occasion however, for show songs, culminating in the absolutely wonderful Cole Porter classic, Everytime We Say Goodbye. A masterpiece of popular songwriting, which I’d only discovered shortly before and which, though I say so myself, I executed rather well.

But that's as may be. The relevant point here was that both my practice and concert accompanists were clergy children themselves. Which made three of us. And each of us, spanning a generation or three, regarded ourselves as “reprobates”, with our background as the cause of that.

So I allow myself to feel a little affinity with Curry, the son of a Methodist chaplain.

I also love the idea of him being a “mixture of Joan Crawford and Burt Lancaster”, as one critic apparently put it: it’s not only deliciously camp, but it equally suggests something delightfully subversive.

And Rocky is subversive – even now: a ribald anthem for anyone who feels that they don’t quite fit into the confines of sex and gender that our society expects and is most comfortable with.

All of which meant that it was hardly a major surprise to read, a short while ago, an interview in which Rocky creator Richard O’Brien threw open the door on the subject of sex and gender, and blew it clean off its hinges and into the middle of next week.

In it, O’Brien described himself as 70% male and 30% female.

“It’s my belief that we are on a continuum between male and female,” he told the BBC.

“There are people who are hardwired male and there are people who are hardwired female, but most of us are on that continuum and I believe myself probably to be about 70% male, 30% female.”

This is sex as a spectrum – just as sexuality is a spectrum.

This is not gender dysphoria, but something quite different.

Some people use the phrase ‘third sex’ to categorise the experience that O’Brien was discussing.

But even that somehow doesn’t quite seem to grasp what I think O’Brien was trying to explain. It almost seems to defy the idea of a spectrum by being something rather more concrete.

Marlene – and you didn't think girls do drag?

However we define sex, though, O’Brien’s comments and his openness were exhilarating.

For so many people, life is just that bit more complex than feeling strictly one thing or the other. And with culturally-determined gender roles thrown into the mix, it can be even more difficult.

I remember, back in the 1970s, in Mossley, praying to be changed into a boy – mostly because I wanted to play football. And indeed, quite specifically, for Manchester City.

And boy, we’ve come a long way since then – girls and women playing football is no longer viewed as ‘wrong’, while the possibilities to actually do so now exist. Perhaps that may also explain why I am delighted to sponsor Manchester City's ladies' team these days ...

I’ve long been aware that I am a ‘masculine’ woman – if we really have to slap labels on the matter.

When I showed my mother the self portrait that os my avatar – and which I personally see as very much reflecting how I am to myself – she was slightly shocked. "It's very masculine," she observed. Had she really not noticed before?

Anyway, I’m a woman – all the right bits in the right places – but I seem to have a huge range of attitudes and even interests that are more characteristically ‘male’.

I have always struggled to dress and feel comfortable in what might be seen as conventionally ‘female’ attire. Only this last week, in a dire panic about my upcoming trip to the Baltic and taking account of the weather, I realised that I needed additional warm gear.

Now, I’m entirely capable of thinking in terms of self image, so I was absolutely considering what image I wanted to create – and, hey presto, although I didn’t sit down going: ‘what would be ‘masculine’ here?’ the styling is pretty 'masculine'.

We're talking cords and sweaters and cravats, which – I think – will work well with my leather jacket and my DMs and whatever hats I don.

But most importantly, it’s stuff that I’ll feel comfortable in – that I’ll feel like me in.

Which is ultimately the only thing that matters – isn’t it?

Much as my mother might have hoped, I really am not a frilly person. I may be a woman – and I’ve never felt any serious desire to undergo treatment – but I was never cast from some ‘feminine’ template.

Now I don’t mind that, but there are still moments when I see people’s surprise at my ‘male’ interests and it is disconcerting.

But to take a different note, a few days ago, we heard the sad news that author Iain Banks has terminal cancer. Although most highly acclaimed for his literary fiction, as Iain M Banks he has created a series of top notch sci-fi novels, most of which feature a civilisation known as The Culture.

Highly advanced and egalitarian, with wage slavery a thing of the past and medical technology meaning great longevity and, in effect, an end to traditional ageing, The Culture’s citizens even have the time and opportunity to change sex once or twice in their lifetimes.

It could be a sci-fi version of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, where the eponymous heroine/hero changes sex down the centuries.

It seems quite extraordinary that, in the 21st century, we can go – and look – into space, and yet we are still so locked into limiting ideas of sex and gender.

Both men and women face societal pressure to conform to what are still viewed as ‘natural’ behaviours that are defined purely on the basis of gender roles – something that many people don’t really seem to understand is a construct but appear to believe is a direct consequence of nature.

There is no rational reason that a boy should not wear pink and a girl blue.

The ideas of sex and gender in The Culture, in Orlando and in Rocky have the potential to be unsettling, but offer not simply so much more variety, but also so much more potential for individual growth and productivity.

And aren’t there just a few of us who just love the idea of doing the Time Warp – and more – with Frank and co? Go on – be honest!

So, on this 40th anniversary, thank you Richard O’Brien: not just for The Rocky Horror Show – but for your remarkable openness about your experience of being human. It helps many of us.

• The full BBC interview with Richard O'Brien is here.

Farewell Ratzi and thanks for all the bigotry

Thomas Mann – damned by the Pope.

Isn’t identity a funny thing? Okay, let me try to be clearer: isn’t how we choose to identify ourselves a funny thing – what labels we decide fit us; what tribes we decide we belong to?

To be honest, I’m not personally a big fan of identity politics – or, indeed, of labels in general. So often it seems simply to point up what divides us rather than what unites us.

So it was not uppermost in my mind to consider penning something around February being LGBT History Month.

But then something happened that made me change my mind.

The Pope decided to retire.

That’s right: because Joseph Ratzinger has called it a day, I decided to pick up the LGBT baton for a post.

Many of us might prefer that no religious leader have any meaningful power in the 21^st century world, but whether we like it or not, that is not the case, and the office of pope still commands a great deal of clout and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Before his own elevation, Ratzinger had previously been grand inquisitor for John Paul II: when Karol Wojtyła was getting a tad past it, it was undoubtedly Ratzi who was really pulling the strings, so he’s had power for rather longer than simply his ascension to the top job in 2005.

Now, number one point to make: beating Ratzinger up because he was a member of the Hitler Youth is just plain daft. You don’t have a to be a fascist sympathiser to comprehend that children, at that time, would have had little safe choice in the matter.

So that isn’t going to be this blog’s complaint.

The problem with Ratzinger is that he has used his office to push lines that are sexist and homophobic.

Clare Balding – damned by the Pope.

His rhetoric about how those dodgy gays will essentially kill off civilisation cannot simply be taken as the rantings of an elderly person – not least because he/the office has the authority mentioned earlier.

And whether the Pope realised or intended it or not, his pronouncements have lent a veneer of legitimacy to those who would discriminate against LGBT people – and even do violence toward them.

His stand against contraception in general – and, in particular, the use of condoms as a method of safe sex – has been detrimental to the fights against poverty and against HIV/Aids.

He would rather a married couple produce far more brats than they can care for than that they use contraception. He wants every act of sexual intimacy to be heterosexual, monogamous, married and with getting the bird up the duff in mind.

He would rather that people died of Aids-related conditions than that they use condoms.

This is also an individual who has played a role in the protection of child abusers by his organisation.

Jodie Foster – damned by the Pope.

But then again, this he has also headed an organisation that believes that the victim of rape, even if a nine-year-old child, should not be allowed an abortion if made pregnant by her abuser.

It is an organisation that does not value women, but would rather a woman die than have the abortion that could save her life. The realised human being is worth less, in Catholic orthodoxy, than the potential of her producing a (male) child.

These are the attitudes that Herr Ratzinger has chosen to uphold in the name of a belief in something for which there is not a solitary shred of evidence.

Thus his faith cannot be viewed as somehow ‘cute’ or ‘quirky’, but for what it is: a stick with which to beat many, many other human beings whose lives and whose intrinsic being is different to what he wants it to be.

Let's also be quite clear: there really is not much difference between the likes of Ratzinger and the likes of the Taliban: and yet we (rightly) condemn one, but allow the other great respect and clout.

There’s something very wrong with that; very wrong indeed.

Oscar Wilde – damned by the Pope.

And it is worth noting that it is far from certain that the cardinals will elect a new pontiff with more 'liberal' credentials. Ratzinger is not the first 'traditionalist' to occupy the role of pope, and he is highly unlikely to be the last. In other words, his reactionary attitudes are far from unique.

I hope that Ratzinger has a peaceful retirement. There would be something rather pointless and sad about wishing him, as an individual, ill. But he is most certainly NOT some sort of saint. And the organisation that he has spent a lifetime promoting and defending is, frankly, immoral and corrupt and well past its sell-by date.

Now, since I have mentioned LGBT History Month, let's be a little more positive. Here are a few of my own household gods – who just happen to be or have been part of the community of which I myself am also a member. They're not my only "household gods", and they are not "household gods" because of their sexuality, although it is not hindered by the sense of connection that flows from that.

And perhaps, in that, I have just countered my own arguments against identity politics.

Remember: every one of these extraordinary people would be damned by the man who is just about to retire, and by his organisation. And yet he and it would almost certainly applaud Tony Blair.

Alan Turning – damned by the Pope.

Alan Turing – massively instrumental in the defeat of fascism and in the development of modern computer science, but effectively driven to his death afterwards simply because he was gay.

Thomas Mann – one of the greatest authors ever; a principled and humane giant.

Virginia Woolf – wonderful, wonderful writer, and hugely innovative. If you haven't done so already, do read Mrs Dalloway.

Quentin Crisp – England’s real queen.

Oscar Wilde – greatest wit ever? And yet one of my favourite quotes of all time is more poignant than Wilde’s reputation would lead one to expect: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”.

Stephen Sondheim – what a god of the musical theatre. Forget Andrew Lloyd Whatever He's Called.

The Pope.

Clare Balding – breaks down barriers all over the place, not least by being a ‘posh bird’ introducing Rugby League for the BBC. In line for national treasure status – and it will be utterly deserved.

Alan Bennett – just a wonderful writer; such a great ability to understand human beings and the smallnesses of their lives.

Nigel Slater – quite simply the best food writer that this country has produced since Elizabeth David. Nobody else, currently writing, has anything close to his sense of food and time and place and memory.

Jodie Foster – a wonderful screen actor, and has managed an amazing career without getting caught into all the crass celeb gossip etc.

Gore Vidal – oh how we miss him; an intellectual giant and iconoclast.