Chewing the Scenery: ‘Bad Acting’ as Empowerment in Classic Queer Cinema
When female leads in cinema are accused of vulgar, overblown or sometimes just plain bad acting, queer audiences have a history of adopting these films as their own. Here, I explore the possible social and political motivations for the prevalence of ‘chewing the scenery’ in classic queer cinema, and how overacting has become an empowering stylistic choice for the queer community.
“Dunaway does not chew scenery. Dunaway starts neatly at each corner of the set in every scene and swallows it whole, co-stars and all.” This was how Variety magazine described Faye Dunaway’s performance of Joan Crawford in the bona fide camp classic biopic Mommie Dearest. As far as reviews go, this was certainly one of the most kind. The 1980 biopic, based on the eponymous memoir by Crawford’s daughter Cristina, cannot be criticised for lack of effort — in recounting the life of the legendary actress Joan Crawford, it aims to be a biting and honest exposé, and it very nearly works. There was one problem — Faye Dunaway’s turn as Crawford has gone down as one of the most vulgar examples of ‘over acting’ in film history. Between the commitment to Crawford’s already near-caricature image (shoulder padded bathrobes and those famous door-hinge eyebrows) and Dunaway’s truly pantomime villain style of delivery, the film was dragged into Razzie territory, the reviews were universally scathing, and the actress herself refused to speak about the film for over two decades.
But not all reaction to Mommie Dearest was so negative. In fact, the film retained a core fan base who not only overlooked the films questionable acting, but revelled in it. In finding a queer audience, Mommie Dearest, like so many films before it, has been afforded a new lease of life that has led to a critical reappraisal nearly 40 years later — and all because of a few drag queens, slathering their faces in soap and wielding wire hangers (in deference to the film’s most notable scene, in which Joan Crawford beats her daughter Cristina with said wire hanger). It’s a classic story that is shared by so many films — female lead is accused of gross overacting, mainstream audiences reject it, yet a queer audience picks it up and runs with it. I had my own experience of this recently, when my stepdad came in halfway through me watching the Meryl Streep/Goldie Hawn horror-comedy Death Becomes Her, a film which received similarly muted reception upon its release, but has since become a camp classic. My stepdad was very far from impressed — “I just don’t get it, the acting is ridiculous!” It raises an interesting discussion as to why queer audiences adopt films that mainstream critics slam on charges of ‘over’, or sometimes just plain ‘bad’, acting.
Now, I understand that ‘overacting’ is a contested term — and truly, a film critic’s understanding of overacting will be very different to an average movie goer’s understanding, and indeed an actor’s one. I also understand that many of the films I would classify as belonging to this trend use ‘overacting’ as a stylistic choice, albeit with wildly varied results — for comedic value (Death Becomes Her) for childlike appeal (The Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz) or most commonly to denote a character is unbalanced and volatile (Mommie Dearest, Sunset Boulevard, Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, amongst others). It’s therefore crucial to consider that acting is a complex discipline, one that is reflective of its social and cultural context, and one that is similarly received based on a variety of social constructs. This is why I think it is worthwhile dissecting how these performances resonate with queer audiences on a social and political level, as well as on the level of pure enjoyment. I think that there is a certain through line with all of the films, a certain artistic choice that means that queer audiences relate to and deify these films whilst mainstream audiences tend to be put off.
It’s crucial to establish a key similarity between all of these films — they all have female leads. The deification of women in queer culture (especially gay male culture) is extremely well documented and discussed. The image of the powerful woman, simultaneously in control of her emotions and yet unafraid to speak her mind, has been used historically by queer men as a sort of stand in for powerful representations of femininity in lieu of explicitly queer characters. Gay men have idolised women as queer icons for their portrayals of simultaneous power and femininity, and similarly we recognise and empathise with the struggles they come up against from boorish male characters, who belittle and exploit these women at every turn. A powerful example of this can be found in Mommie Dearest, when the all-male board of Pepsi (which Joan Crawford, legendarily, owned ‘51% of’), try to coerce Crawford into resigning from her position. Crawford’s clap back, and Dunaway’s delivery (“DON’T FUCK WITH ME FELLAS!”) is admittedly high octane and quite ridiculous, but to see her push back against the misogynistic, condescending attitude of the men under her charge is empowering for a sexual or gender minority audience to vicariously experience.
The potential for empowerment in these kinds of performances is twofold — on a surface level, these characters are loud and abrasive, undermining the notion that women in film should be quiet and subservient. But on a more meta-theatrical level, these kinds of performances fly in the face of classical theatrical training. Most approaches to acting in the 20th Century were influenced by Konstantin Stanislavski's style of Naturalism, which put simply suggests actors should infer emotion rather than perform it, as opposed to the more well established method of characters saying and showing how they feel (think Shakespeare, Greek tragedy or even pantomime). Clearly, actresses such as Dunaway do not follow the Stanislavski method, at least in these specific examples. It is a double-hitter of rejecting both feminine stereotypes on the screen, and the notions of classical training behind it. One could even push this idea further and claim that the acting style of Naturalism reflects hegemonic ideas of gender and sexuality, which is both entirely performative, yet also centred around ideas of suppression and internalisation. It’s unlikely queer audiences were consciously aware of this discrepancy, but I would argue that for queer audiences who are used to seeing actors in film try and hide their emotions, there is a real possibility for liberation in seeing actresses choose to portray characters who do not adhere to those social rules.
This links into another common trope across queer female idols, which is the tendency for a queer audience to idolise women who embody feminine sexuality, with the reverence even more strong when women are portrayed as using sexuality as a weapon or means of coercion. The social relevance of sexually liberated women can be found in contrasting the portrayals of women who embrace their sexuality, and how queer identities are represented in the press. Much as how queer people are vilified for what may be deemed as ‘immoral’ sexual proclivities, women in film are often cast as sexualised to denote immorality or villainy. The 1965 exploitation cult classic Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, in which a group of criminal go-go dancers go on a murder spree in the California desert, is a perfect example of female characters who are coded as both ‘dangerous’ and ‘available’ due to their sexuality. Such a stylistic choice should, by rights, reek of misogyny coming from a male director. Yet the delightfully camp portrayal of head honcho Varla (portrayed by Tura Satana) helps the film transcend its ‘soft-core porn’ aesthetic to become wholly empowering for a queer audience, who empathise with rather than demonise her for using her sexuality to lure and kill the men who objectify her. Satana’s obvious delight in emphasising every quip Varla says (along with her eyes, which are only either half closed and suggestive or bulging with rage throughout the entire film) tips her delivery from sexy into irreverent, and though her sexiness may still be intended to appeal to a straight male audience, her exaggerated sexuality and rage proves that you can be sexy, feminine and yet not someone any straight man would ever want to mess with.
This is an important distinction to draw — queer audiences don’t necessarily relate to these characters because they’re nice people. In fact, they’re normally the opposite — hungry for power, blinded by vanity, or otherwise ‘corrupt’. But even this is slyly subversive, in a world where women are expected to be agreeable and subservient to the opinions of men. Drag performer Jinkx Monsoon perhaps sums it up best in her dissection of the movie Death Becomes Her: ‘It’s fun to watch two beautiful women beat each other down with shovels’. In a world where anyone outside of being a white, cishet man is expected to be quiet, subservient and adhere to their repression, it is undeniably enjoyable to see women to refuse to be quiet and meek — to be abrasive, horny, violent and ruthless. It stands to reason that the louder and more overblown they are, the more the feeling of empowerment is increased.
What has been described above could be seen as Camp 101 — extremity of emotion and ridiculousness of expression are pivotal aspects of camp. But I would also refer to a quote from The Simpsons (of all places), where a character voiced by the legendary queer filmmaker John Waters defines camp as ‘the tragically ludicrous, the ludicrously tragic’. Certainly, it is important to observe how tragedy and visibility work in tandem not only in camp as a stylistic device, but in the history of queer liberation. I would argue that queer people relate to these examples of emotional hyperbole because of the way queer identities have been contextualised in Western cultures (and continue to be around the world). Queer identities have long been established in law as something that happens within the private sphere — amendments to the Sexual Offences Act in the UK in 1967 (which in essence decriminalised homosexuality for the first time in the UK) specifically legalised homosexual relations within a private setting — this aspect of the law would not be truly overturned until 2003. There was also, in the UK, damaging legislation implemented that further cemented the notion that queer identities were something not fit for public consideration, such as Section 28, brought in under Thatcher in 1988. The categorisation of homosexuality in law as something that is private in essence blockaded the fight for queer liberation at many points in our recent history, despite a concerted push for all queer identities to be seen as a political identity rather than medical concern in the early 1970’s. This ‘oppression through suppression’ has led to queer communities expressing their frustration through extremely public displays of identity as a political act — i.e., pride parades, protests and riots. It is only through forcing our way into public discourse that queer people have been able to rebuke a wider societal effort to silence our voices.
Similarly, these overblown performances hinge upon an extreme portrayal of tragedy hidden beneath a veneer of supposed evil, and the parallel between these women’s motivations and the extremity of their actions is similarly seen in queer political activism. All of these women have experienced tragedy — even the Wicked Witch of the West becomes a more sympathetic character when one remembers that Dorothy (accidentally) killed her sister, and stole her shoes just to rub it in. I would argue that a non-queer audience fails to connect to these characters because you need to have an intrinsic understanding of being portrayed as immoral without the opportunity to speak from your own experience. There is power, and liberation, in being loud. Often these female leads land upon an extreme performance to try and highlight that these are women who have been pushed to the edge, and as queer audiences we understand that when you have faced discrimination and oppression, you often don’t feel like being calm, mild and reasonable.
In the 1970’s, we see a shift from ‘queer cinema’ being made by non-queer creators, and towards films that are more explicitly queer in their content. I would argue that this is in direct correlation with the shifting political attitudes towards queer people at this time. So many of what we now consider to be queer classic films fall either pre-Stonewall era, or post 1980. This is because these were times when queer representation was at its most precarious, either due to legally enforced oppression or, as in the 80’s, growing far-right political sentiment, exacerbated in part by the AID’s epidemic. Therefore queer audiences at this time were more willing to adopt films made by non-explicitly queer artists in lieu of art created by queer film makers. However, in the 1970’s, in the immediate cultural boom following the start of the queer liberation movement either side of the pond, there was suddenly a slew of queer artists creating work that was both explicitly queer in its attitude, and yet somehow also finding a committed audience. During this time, camp and ‘bad acting’ was truly established as a stylistic choice that queer artists revelled in — consider the delightfully ramshackle acting ability seen in any early John Waters film, or the coy wink-wink, nudge-nudge found in films by the German director Renier Fassbinder. For these film makers, ‘overacting’ surpasses the notion of being either simple camp enjoyment or an empowering representation of oppressed people putting their foot down, and moves into the realm of broader parody, highlighting the ridiculousness of everyone involved. A clear example of this is The Rocky Horror Picture Show, where Brad and Janet’s overbearing blandness casts them as being equally ridiculous to the madness that surrounds them. This over the top style of acting faces less derision from film critics who, presumably, recognise that it is being used by these film makers to highlight more complex social and political issues. However, few film critics make the small leap in logic to note that these portrayals are grounded entirely in the broad performances found in films such as Sunset Boulevard and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
For queer audiences, to recognise these films as being examples of ‘chewing the scenery’ is not synonymous with rejecting them as ‘bad’ films. That is certainly the more commonly held belief amongst film critics, though some, like Sunset Boulevard, get a free pass. It is true that often these portrayals betray the very underpinnings of what is considered to be ‘good acting’ — these characters say how they feel (and display it at all times), they are loud, overly intense and disregard notions of subtlety and inference. But again, acting is a fluxional and interpretive discipline, as dependent on the audience’s perception as it is on the whims and ideals of the academy or the theatre. Just because acting is technically ‘poor’ does not mean that it can’t carry a wealth of social and political connotations that may endear it to specific audiences. The ideals of vocational acting courses, which prioritise the ability to infer emotion rather than perform it, in many ways mirror the historically hegemonic ideas surrounding queer identities — where queer people are expected to perform the ideals of gender and sexual expression within a public sphere, and to never express their own true feelings and opinions. In ‘chewing the scenery’, these actresses commit one of the most politically empowering actions of all — they fight back against their discipline, stick two fingers up at gender roles and expectations, and give voice to our innermost desires and impulses. And sometimes, that is more moving than any Oscar-winning performance.
