Cloudburst: Queer Film that Challenges the Gay Status Quo.
Cloudburst surprised me with a clap thunder and downpour of queer and oppositional theatre at Fredericton’s Silver Wave Film Festival. The premise of the film, two old dykes from Maine who go to Lunenberg, NS, to get married, read like a quaint tea rose-covered greeting card touting gay marriage and the Maritime bed & breakfast industry. Boy was I wrong. Talk about qulture shock, Olympia Dukakis’ incendiary “Stella” exploded on the screen like a roadside bomb. Stella is an “old school” bulldagger who can blast a rapid-fire spray of rage, foul language and sexually explicit remarks with the slightest tug on a hair trigger. But Stella’s an exaggeration, of course, a mythical stereotype, an overblown caricature dreamed up for stage and screen. Right? Well, not in my book. Where I come from, Stella is not a caricature or an exaggeration: Stella is your typical bulldagger. But then there’s nothing typical about us bulldaggers–we’re an unusual breed to begin with. I say we because I’ve been labeled a bulldagger and even labeled myself that for some time–back in the way queer 90s. I haven’t met any bulldaggers in Atlantic Canada since I’ve been here for the last three years. It’s a rare species of lesbian that seems to be missing here in Canada, except in Thom Fitzgerald’s imaginative world (Canadian author of the original stage play and film script for Cloudburst.) You see, Stella is from Maine, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s no accident that Stella is an American Bulldagger.* But back where I come from, Northampton, Massachusetts, aka “Lesbianville,” American Bulldaggers are real women, and they look and act an awful lot like Stella.
As I watched Stella wreak havoc on the big screen, the first thing that hit me was “Oh my god, this feels so good. Finally, a dyke I can identify with.” That outrageous swagger and militant desire to upend every social convention impinging on queer females is what’s missing from the lesbian scene here in Fredericton. If you met the dykes I knew in Northampton, they were every bit as full of piss and vinegar as Stella was. What’s more, the whole gay community in the US is militant, by comparison, to the quiescent community in Canada. Everybody was always on edge, always challenging everything in mainstream heteronormative culture. Now of course that can go too far, and in the US, it usually does. But here in Canada, they don’t seem to have the American flair–or the stomach–for queer militancy. I missed that queer culture so badly, I almost cried seeing it embodied in the flesh of Olympia Dukakis’ “Stella.”
But after the film was over, another piece of the qultural puzzle snapped into place. What I have experienced in Fredericton’s gay scene, for the last three years, is nothing less than culture shock, the clinical kind that you can diagnose. Stella’s outrageousness and militancy was part of my psychic world as a queer, and to be stuck in a gay culture where that element was missing has been disturbing and disorienting. In fact, it seems that the gay community here makes every effort to repress and erase any queer militancy, flamboyance and outrageousness one might be inclined to express. NOT ALLOWED, no sir, because expressing that kind of rage, militancy, and in-you-face uppity queerness would disturb the tacit agreement that gays and lesbians in Fredericton have made with the straight world. I call it the Canadian Contract of Closetedness. Gays and lesbians in Canada will be polite, quiet, “normal” and virtually invisible, for which, in return, they get to: 1) exist, 2) hold a job, 3) go grocery shopping at Sobey’s without running into trouble with the het-police. Only as a newcomer, you don’t realize that this silent agreement is in effect until you unwittingly violate it. In comes moi, the militant gender queer cum American Bulldagger who never got the memo. Sorry, they don’t hand it out to you at the border with your IMM 1000 Certificate of Landing. But let me tell ya, folks, I got the memo now. And what put that obscure piece of the puzzle into place was that damn film, Cloudburst. It reminded me once again how critical queer culture is for us queers, not just as an art form, but as a means of psychic survival. The film wasn’t just entertaining, it was liberating and redeeming. It said in big, bold Stella terms: “Hold your head up as a proud bulldagger. And fuck ’em all if they don’t like it.”
*See Dagger: On Butch Women by Lily Burana and Roxxie Linnea Due (1994).
FQ 
menescusenescus
November 20, 2011
“Only as a newcomer, you don’t realize that this silent agreement is in effect until you unwittingly violate it.”
Many of us who were born and bred here were unaware of that “silent agreement”… which was less silent when I was in high school and being bullied for not conforming – even before I’d come out to myself – and defending my flamboyantly gay friend who was out.
And yes agreed that culture is necessary.
Dok
November 20, 2011
Well *of course* the author was suffering from some degree of culture shock. Shockingly (hah, bad pun, sorry) enough Canada and the Maritimes are NOT just an America Lite (even in areas where we could possibly stand to gain something) and it is a different society with a different history. A history which, by the way, has set up a context where there is much less militancy and aggressive polemic than in America. Hell, we gained our independance (insofar as we are independant, remaining a Constitutional Monarchy as we do) by negotiating over a period of many decades.
Add in a significantly smaller population, a generally rural setting, and the fact that, as far as I am aware, the identity of “bulldagger” is one of specifically American origin (from Harlem slang, in fact, by the looks of a quick Google) and (surprise!) the American context is not the global one, and of *course* you have a different culture, and a quieter, more reserved one.
Also, I don’t know where in the Maritimes the author has been living, because I hear plenty of foul language and sexual explicitness. Perhaps less rage, yes, but perhaps also we are confronted with less obvious provocation. Queer culture is pretty innately REactive in response to the cis-hetero mainstream.
Sugel
December 7, 2011
Terry McMillan’s followup to “Waiting to Exhale,” “How Stella Got Her Groove Back,” was dismissed by some critics as a fluffy beach romance novel. It definitely had its spunk, but suffered from an overall blah-ness that weighed it down. The movie version has similar problems. Our heroine, played by the fierce talent that is Angela Bassett, is a broker trying to balance her career and being a single mom. She, along with her best friend (Whoopi Goldberg), takes a vacation to Jamaica, where she falls for the striking Winston Shakespeare (Taye Diggs, whose Jamaican accent fades in and out throughout his otherwise solid performance). The problem? She’s 40. And he’s 20. You can pretty much imagine the issues these two have to face, as they decide whether or not to start a “serious” relationship. “How Stella…” is a pleasant movie, despite the often sappy touches that almost mar the film. The love story itself is fairly predictable, although the supporting roles from Suzzane Douglas and the always-dependable Regina King are pretty good. Don’t go looking to get blown away by this movie. Like the novel on which it’s based, it will pass your time nicely without requiring any deep thought.