Title

Author(s)

All about sexuality

Lam, Sze-man;

Citation

Issue Date

URL

Rights

2004

http://hdl.handle.net/10722/31287

The author retains all proprietary rights, (such as patent

rights) and the right to use in future works.

I) Introduction

Pedro Almodovar has been coined as a womans director since his

movies are characterized by a strong presence of women and the
discussion of female desire in a post-Franco Spain. However, Almodovar
should not be categorized as a feminist director simply because his
movies seek to speak for womens peril in the patriarchal society. Rather,
it is fair to say that feminism is merely one of the issues of concern to
Almodovar. On top of the feminist agenda, his long lists of productions
are more concerned with criticisms over the seemingly stable and
unproblematic binary structure of sex and gender with the depiction of
gays, lesbians, transvestites, transsexuals, among others. Blessed with
his sense of humor, Almodovars films have called into question the
playfulness, constructedness and artificialness of gender identity with
the portray of numerous sexually deviant characters, which indeed could
be viewed as the embodiment of Judith Butlers concept of gender as
performance in the cinema.

However, the fascination of Almodovars films does not stop at his

emphasis on the falsehood behind sexuality by highlighting the
performative aspect of gender identity. Almodovars work goes one step
further by successfully shedding light on the truth of sexuality, which
is, the undecidedness and in-betweeness of sex and gender identities. In
Almodovars movie world, identity is never fixed nor absolute, let alone
binary. Rather, sex and gender identities always exist in a state of
in-betweenness, trangression and instability that strongly echoes Michel
Bakhtins concept of carnival body a body of becoming rather than
being. Moreover, the free-floating nature of sex and gender identities is
precisely the starting point where people can be liberated from the
restrictive and normative heterosexual framework prevailing in our
society since the Victorian period.

This paper is going to focus on analyzing the undecidability of

sexuality demonstrated in Almodovars thirteenth film All About My

Mother. The following discussion will study the undecidability of sex and
gender identities demonstrated by Lola, the missing father who is a

hybrid of man and woman, from the perspective of the suppressive

Spanish history during the Franco era and Michel Bakhtins concept of a
becoming self as demonstrated by the carnival body. In fact, one will
find it difficult to fit Lola into any sexual categories. Although he has
undergone a breast transplant, the operation does not change him into a
complete woman since he still keeps his penis, a significant masculine
symbol, intact. Although he transvests as a woman with sexy dresses,
heavy makeup, stylish long hair and brightly-painted fingernails, he is
more than a transvestite as he owns a pair of womans breasts. Thus, he
cannot claim back his masculine identity simply by removing his
feminine outfits as what other transvestites do. Although his hybrid
body seems to make him perfect to fit into the category of
hermaphrodites, he cannot be regarded as the same category of
Herculine Barbin, who was a famous case of hermaphrodite in the 19th
century, since Lola is not born with two sets of genital organs according
to the medical definition for hermaphrodites. In this regard, Lola
appears to live not only outside the boundary of binary sexual
identification, but more importantly, he cannot fit into any one of the

established sexual categories. Lolas sexual ambivalence has indeed shed

new light on the seemingly unproblematic understanding toward
binarism behind sex and gender.

II) All About My Mother -- The Story Begins

All About My Mother has been widely appraised as the best movie of
Almodovar. The movie won an Oscar for best foreign film in 2000 and
Almodovar was awarded the best director at Cannes and at the Bafta
awards respectively. The international success of All About My Mother
does not only establish Almodovars status as an auteur director, but also
marks his maturity in discussing stability and disorders in sex and
gender. All About My Mother is special in two ways: First of all, although
it is the second film by Almodovar that talks about love and desire of
male-to-female transsexuals after his production of Law of Desire (1987),
transsexuals featured in this movie are incomplete transsexuals -- men
who have received breast transplants but keep their penis intact. These
half-operated

transsexuals,

namely

Lola

and

Agrado,

are

artificially-made hermaphrodites as opposed to those naturally-born

hermaphrodites like Herculine Barbin. Almodovar has greatly shaken
the binary understanding of sex and gender at an unprecedented level
with the discussion on the sexual incompleteness of Lola and Agrado.

Secondly, the timing of the release of All About My Mother in 2000 is

significant in the sense that it marks a new era for the third space of
sex and gender the undecidability of sexual identity and the inability of
classifying ones sexual identity into established categories.

As the title itself suggests, All About My Mother revolves around the
mother-and-son relationship between Manuela and her son Esteban.
Manuela is a single mother living in Madrid with her son Esteban. On
Estebans seventeenth birthday, Manuela takes him to see the
production of A Streetcar Named Desire starring Huma Rojo as Blanche
DuBois. The drama brings back so many painful memories to Manuela
that she confesses to her son that she was once a professional actress in
a village after the drama performance. Back then, Manuela played the
part of Stella while his husband Esteban played Stanley Kowalski.
Esteban is surprised by his mothers sudden confession as she has been
reluctant to talk about his father ever since he was born. In the face of
repeated begging of his son who desperately wants to know the past of
his father, Manuela promises to tell her son everything about his father

10

after the drama performance. However, Esteban does not live long to
hear his fathers story. On their way home, Esteban is hit to death by a
car while he is running after Humas taxi for a autograph. The grieving
mother keeps her promise to her son by returning to Barcelona to look
for her husband and tell him all about their son.

All About My Mother or All About My Father?

Estebans death marks the real start of the movie as he speaks as

the voiceover after he was killed in the fatal car accident. Estebans
voiceover sets in when the camera shows Manuela is waiting hopelessly
for the news of her son outside the operation room. Estebans voiceover
says, tomorrow I will turn seventeen. Like all the boys living with their
moms, I look more serious than normal. Because I am a writer. When
Esteban watches All About Eve with Manuela at home the night before
the accident, Esteban reveals his plan of writing a story about his mother.
In reality, in All About My Mother, Manuelas life has best demonstrated
that life and acting are inseparable with each other. Like Stella in A

11

Streetcar Named Desire, Manuela leaves her domineering husband with

her son in her womb. As a hospital counselor, one of Manuelas duties is
to

convince

family

members

of

deceased

patients

to

signing

authorization letter for organ donation. As a bizarre birthday gift,

Esteban begs Manuela to allow him to sit in a counseling workshop
where Manuela rehearses how to talk grieving family members into
accepting the death of their beloved relatives and authorizing the organ
donation at the beginning of the movie. However, Manuelas role is
reversed after her son Estebans fatal accident and now she plays the
role of a grieving mother who is being persuaded to donate her sons
organs to other needy patients. Rehearsals suddenly become part of real
life events. More importantly, rehearsals always mean to become reality
at the most unexpected moment. However, despite the repeated
rehearsals, acting does not help ease Manuelas sorrow.

In fact, All About My Mother could be seen as a movie being filmed

from the angle of Esteban as the word mother here directly refers to
Manuela. Ironically, if we take a closer look to the movie, the thrust of

12

the story is not about the mother, but rather, it is a story all about the
father. When Manuela is mourning for her sons death at home,
Estebans voiceover sets in again. Esteban said that he discovered some
photographs in his mothers papers the other day. He wrote in his
notebook and said: All of them were cut in half: my father, I suppose. I
have the impression that my life is missing that same half. I want to
meet him, no matter who he is, nor how he is, nor how he treated my
mother. She cant take that right away from me.

Estebans memory

and sense of lack originates from his absent father. It is appropriate to

say that Estebans existence is the continuation and discontinuation of
his father. On the one hand, Estebans birth continues the presence of
the first Esteban, the unbearably domineering husband, in Manuelas
life. On the other hand, Estebans life is constructed by the absence of
the father. In fact, Estebans desperateness in obtaining an autography
could be understood as his desire for gaining access to the mysterious
past of his father which has all along been covered up by his mother. It
turns out that Estebans writing career is an unfulfilled dream and he

1 Courtesy to All About My Mothers Official Website.

http://www.sonyclassics.com/allaboutmymother/longsynposis.html

13

leaves this unfinished project on the shoulders of his mother. That

explains why Manuela returns to Madrid in search for her husband, also
named Esteban, in an attempt to fulfill Estebans final wish.

What are the Mysteries Behind All About My Mother/Father?

In an interview, Pedro Almodovar once said that the idea of

motherhood is very important in Spain. The father was frequently
absent in Spain. It is as if the mother represents the law, the police. 2
Almodovar is widely known as a womans director since his films have a
very strong women presence while male characters, especially the
fathers, are always absent and invisible. In Law of Desire (1987), which
was widely regarded as the autobiography of Almodovar as the
protagonist Pablo is a gay director, Pablo and his sister Tina grow up in a
broken family deprived of fatherly love. In High Heels (1991), Rebecca
has no idea of how her father looks like and she kills her overbearing
stepfather in order to release her mother from his control and go on

2 Marsha Kinder. Pleasure and the New Spanish Mentality: A Conversation with
Pedro Almodovar, Film Quarterly 41.1 (Fall 1987), p 43.

14

stage again. The opening of Dark Habits (1983) shows two nuns visiting
the backstage and seeking an autograph from singer Yolanda, who later
on seeks refuge in the catholic convent after her drug-addicted boyfriend,
who barely shows his face in the movie, dies of overdosing and she is
pursued by drug dealers. It is interesting to note that Yolanda cuts out
her boyfriend from the photograph and signs her own image for the
Mother Superior. The half-torn picture makes a comeback in All About

My Mother (1999) when Esteban finds out some half-torn pictures

featuring his mother Manuela and his mysteriously dead father who is
forever absent in the photos and in his memory. Why are the intentions
behind Almodovars tendency to erase the presence of men in his
production? What is the absent father stands for in his movies?

Truth Behind Lolas Past: History of Franco-Era

In Marxism and Literary Criticism, Terry Eagleton commented on

Machereys argument that literary work is neither a unified whole, nor

15

the unchallengable message of the author. Eagleton pointed out that a

text is ideologically forbidden to say certain things.3 In this regard, it is
the silence, gaps and absences that speak, communicate and fill in the
vacuum left by the incomplete text. What is the silence and gap in All

About My Mother? In my opinion, the missing father Lola and reason(s)

behind his decision to receive breast transplant and lead a life as a
half-operated transsexual is the biggest mystery in the movie. Given
that reasons behind Lolas sexual change remain unknown, does this
mysterious gap reveal any truth to us?

Almodovar once claimed that his film production should be viewed

as post-Franco products which tell stories as if the dictator had never
existed. 4 However, the notion of a post-Franco era is problematic in the
sense that it cannot be simply understood as a new era totally
independent of the dictatorial Franco period. Instead, one can only
establish a post-Franco era based on a strong desire to highlight the
differences from the preceding period. In other words, even though it
3 Terry Eagleton. Marxism and Literary Criticism. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1976, p 34.
4 Kathleen M. Vernon and Barbara Morris (ed.) Post-Franco, Postmodern: The Films of
Pedro Almodovar. London: Greenwood Press, 1995, p 2.

16

may go against Almodovars wish, all of his film productions are

nostalgic of the bygone dictatorship period because the history and
influence of Franco dictatorship will always hover in the memory of
Spanish people and it is impossible for anyone to brush it aside. In

Culture and Politics of Disapperance, Ackbar Abbas argued that

disappearance does not imply nonappearance, absence or lack of
presence.Disappearance is not a matter of effacement but of
replacement and substitution.

In this regard, disappearance always

points to a nostalgic presence whose reappearance tends to make a

comeback in a grotesque manner. In fact, under most circumstances,
history makes its way back in a different form. By the same token, the
first Esteban, as the central fatherly figure in All About My Mother,
vanishes from Manuela and his sons life for 17 years. But finally he
comes back as Lola, a semi-transsexual who dresses like a woman and
her femininity is further bolstered by his artificial breasts, but at the
same time, with his penis keeping intact.

5 Ackbar Abbas. Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance. Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University Press, 1997, p 8.

17

Under the Franco era of dictatorship, Spanish cinema suffered strict

censorship over four decades since the end of the Civil War in 1936. The
Franco government took absolute control over the film industry by
means of protective and repressive measures. All scripts must be
approved by a jury comprising of priests and bureaucrats before shooting,
while post-production editing was not an uncommon practice. More
importantly, films must either serve the national interests or help
promote fascist values. The most notorious movie under the era of
dictatorship was Raza (1941), well-known as a semi-autobiographical
novel-cum-script by Franco himself.

However, after Franco death in

1975 and the subsequent abolition of film censorship in 1977, Spain

witnessed a rapid transition from Francoism to liberation and democracy.
Spanish filmmakers heralded a brave new world where they could
finally enjoy the freedom of producing what they wanted without fear.
Spain entered an era of movida where young people celebrated both
European and American pop culture forbidden in the Franco era and
indulged in punk rock, the hippie movement, drug culture and womens

Rob Stone. Spanish Cinema. Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 2002, p 37-38.
18

and gay liberation.7 It was against this background that Almodovar

wanted to present the new mentality that appears in Spain after Franco
diesin my films they [audience] see how Spain has changed. 8

Lolas sexual change could be understood as a response to Spanish

historical transition from dictatorship to democracy. Lola, whose name
was Esteban before the cosmetic surgery and the husband of Manuela,
has undergone breast transplant in Paris and comes back as a drag
queen with artificial breasts. Lolas bodily changes have actually
embodied Spains transition from a phallocentric and patriarchal society
to a liberated era.

Lolas breasts have indeed feminized the masculine

past of Spain where the state, the Catholic church and Franco himself
were regarded as pillars of the society and the rule of law.

Patriarchal Society in the Franco Era

In 1978, Spain adopted a new constitution which officially put an

Vernon, Post-Franco, Postmodern: The Films of Pedro Almodovar, p 5.
Marsha Kinder. Spain After Franco in The Oxford History of World Cinema. Ed.
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, p 600-601.
9 Stone, Spanish Cinema, p 116.
7
8

19

end to four decades of dictatorship under the rule of Franco. Two years
later, Almodovars first movie Pepi, Luci and Bom was released after
spending four years of producing short films with his Super-8 camera.
Spains new democracy gave rise to a new wave of movida characterized
by the explosion of music, pop culture, films, fashion design in the years
of 1977-84 after Francos death. Back then, the younger generation tried
every means to break away with the repressive social norms and
regulations.

10

Almodovars first two movies, Pepi, Luci and Bom (1980)

and Labyrinth of Passions (1982), each depicted a rock band that

represented one of the most trendy things revered by young people in the
era of movida.

During the Franco period, the state and the Catholic church were
the two most powerful authorities in the country. Although Almodovar
claimed that he wanted to make movies as if the Franco era never
existed, his productions are obviously aimed at destabilizing the rigid
gender norm and heterosexual normality in the Franco era. It is thus

10 Mark Allinston. A Spanish Labyrinth: The Films of Pedro Almodovar. London: L.B.
Tauris, 2001, p13-14.

20

clear that Almodovars films could not be made possible without Franco.
In fact, all Almodovars movies are nostalgic of the Franco era, but
history usually comes back as grotesque image rather than a glorious
past.

In the opening scene of Live Flesh (1997), the film just before All

About My Mother, the Spainish government declared a state of exception

where all freedom of speech, association and personal liberties were
suspended in January 1970. It was the very night that a young
prostitute (played by actress Penelope Cruz who also starred as Sister
Rosa in Almodovars next movie All About My Mother) gave birth to a
baby boy Victor on a bus. After the bus labor incident hit the headline
of the newspapers, the Madrid mayor, accompanied by several long-faced
nuns, visited the mother and son in the hospital as part of the state
propaganda for rewarding outstanding citizens. Here we can see that the
influence of the surrogating Franco influence was everywhere.
Twenty-six years later, history repeats itself as Victor was stuck in the
traffic while taking his pregnant wife to the hospital for labor. Victor told

21

his unborn son when I was born there wasnt a soul on the streets.
Everyone was in their houses, scared to death. Luckily for you, my son,
we stopped being afraid a long time ago in Spain.

Ever since the founding of the Franco regime, the state was
desperate in reviving the Spanish national identity and stability that
were badly destroyed during the Civil War through the restoration of
Catholic spirits and values. Since the family concept was regarded as the
bedrock of Catholicism, preparing women to be mothers and educating
them to preserve feminine values formed a fundamental part of womans
education. The 1945 decree of the Spanish Institute for Womens
Professional Training stated that the female sex is entrusted with the
task of defending traditional family values and preserving the domestic
arts, essential to maintain happiness in the home. 11 In other words, the
cultural identity of women is defined by her roles as mothers and wives
and the biggest achievement for women is to fulfill the social obligation
of preserving motherhood. This partly explains why there is a strong
11 Aurora Morcillo Gomez. Shaping True Catholic Womanhood: Francoist Educational
Discourse on Women in Constructing Spanish Womanhood: Female Identity in
Modern Spain. Edited by Victoria Loree Enders and Pamela Beth Radcliff. Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1999, p 55.

22

presence of women in Almodovars films.

However, Almodovar repeatedly satirizes the authoritative position

of the Catholic church in his movies. Among which, the most hilarious
irony comes from Dark Habit which narrates a story about a group of
eccentric nuns in a Catholic convent located in Madrid. All the sisters,
blessed with eccentric names, have their own uniquely grotesque
obsessions: Sister Rat is a successful author of sentimental novels who
publishes her work under a pseudo-name; Sister Damned keeps a pet
tiger in the backyard garden among various types of birds and animals,
which is reminiscent of the biblical story Noahs ark; Sister Manure,
despite her disgusting name, is the chef of the convent who indulges in
drug-assisted hallucination; Mother Superior is a heroin addict and
lesbian who is obsessively in love with Yolanda, a sexy singer and drug
addict. When Mother Superior gives shelter to Yolanda and protects her
from police pursuit, she explains that she loves sinners because it is in
imperfect creatures that Gods greatness is to be found.

12

Mother

12 Paul Julian Smith. Laws of Desire: Questions of Homosexuality in Spanish Writing

and Film 1960-1990. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, p 185.

23

Superior predicts that the convent will be full of assassins, drug addicts
and prostitutes after giving shelter to Yolanda. Her prophecy comes true
in All About My Mother when Sister Rosa, who is a young, attractive and
angel-like nun who could be viewed as the embodiment of Gods
perfection, devotes her life to help poor and disadvantaged people,
especially prostitutes and drug addicts. It is in the community center she
works that she meets Lola, and subsequently loses her virginity and
pays a heavy price for redeeming sinners.

Presence of Women Does Not Imply Absence of Men

Nonetheless, we should bear in mind that the notion of father has

not been wiped out in Almodovars films. On the contrary, father or male
protagonists always constitute a center role in his series of film despite
the strong presence of women. In Women on the Verge of a Nervous

Breakdown (1988), Pepa is forced to hysteria and craziness after she is

deserted by his boyfriend who continues to appear and haunts the
movie with his voice messages. In Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down (1990), the

24

domineering Ricky exaggerates masculine domination and control over

women by kidnapping a sexy porn star and forcing her to fall in love and
marry him. Live Flesh revolves around hateful and revengeful
relationship between a young man and a police cop as they both hunt for
the love of an attractive and reformed drug addict.

In All About My

Mother, Manuela, who was so shocked by the dramatic body change of

her husband, abandoned Esteban and fled to Madrid. However, Manuela
does not know that she is pregnant the time when she abandons Esteban.
Nonetheless, the influence of Esteban will always be there with Manuela
and it is true as Manuela named her son after his father. In fact,
Manuelas life revolves around three Esteban her semi-transsexual
husband, her deceased son and Lolas son with Sister Rosa. Manuela
runs away from the first Esteban as she finds it unbearable to live with a
drag queen husband whose breasts are bigger than hers. However, on
the Barcelona-Madrid train, Manuela does not know that she has indeed
carried another Esteban inside her womb. After 17-years self-exile,
Manuela sets foot in Barcelona again with her deceased sons photo and
notebook. Her mission is to find the missing father and tell him about his

25

sons death. However, it turns out that the search for her transsexual
husband eventually makes her become mother again -- the third Esteban
by Sister Rosa.

All About My Mother: A Tribute to All About Eve

The title All About My Mother is a homage to the classic Hollywood

movie All About Eve (1950) by director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, whose
story mainly focused on womans, in particular actresses like the
cunning and calculated Eve Harrington, superb ability in acting and
pretending both on stage and in real life. Not surprisingly, Almodovar
also dedicates All About My Mother to all actresses who have played
actresses on the stage or in films. However, Almodovar also makes use of
this movie to pay tribute to womans acting ability in general. When
Almodovar talked about his intention of making this movie, he said, my
initial idea was to make a film about peoples (not actors) acting abilities.
I remember finding that ability in the women in my family. They
pretended more and better than men did, by lying they managed to avoid

26

more than one tragedy. 13

In All About Eve, Eve Harringtons acting ability is destructive as

she climbs the ladder to success in the movie world by betraying and
upstaging her mentor-cum-best friend Margo Channing and stealing
Margos reverend status as the best actress. Coincidentally, it is the time
when Manuela and her son Esteban are watching the television re-run of

All About Eve that Manuela reveals her acting career in her green days.
History repeats itself as Manuela subsequently work as personal
assistant to an actress as what Eve did to Margo. All About My Mother
seems to become a copy of All About Eve at this point. Nonetheless,
instead of making calculated move to steal a role on stage like what Eve
did, Manuela coincidentally fills in for the role of Stella in the play A

Streetcar Named Desire, the role she played 20 years ago with her
husband Esteban as the chauvinistic Stanley Kowalski. Manuela was an
actress before she gives birth to her son and she played the role of the
submissive Stella in the play. Her husband on stage eventually becomes
her real husband who later on transformed into the transsexual Lola. In
13

http://www.clubcultura.com/clubcine/clubcineastas/almodovar/eng
27

fact, the play marks Manuelas life in two-fold: she met her husband in a
production of the play and fled from his control many years ago; she goes
all out in search of her lost husband to fulfill the will of his deceased son
after watching the very same drama performance 16 years later. 14

The name Eve deserves an interesting reading since it is not only

the name of a character who is an actress, but of the archetypal first
woman who is the mother of us all. 15

According to the biblical legend,

Eve is the one who is tempted to eat the forbidden fruit and
subsequently leads to the degeneration of human beings. Eve
Harrington inherits the seductive and cunning nature of the original
Eve and gains fame and fortune.

Manuela in All About My Mother is

not another Eve since she tries to make good use of her acting talents in
a positive way. Manuela works as a hospital counselor (who always
needs to practice her persuasion skill in simulation workshop) and acts
as a loving and responsible mother to make up for her sons fatherless
childhood. Nonetheless, the destructive power of acting is still there

Allinston. A Spanish Labyrinth: The Films of Pedro Almodovar, p 213.

Michael Sofair. All About My Mother (Reviews) in Film Quarterly, Vol 55 Issue 2,
Winter, 2001, p 42.

14
15

28

since the more Manuela covers up the past of her husband from her son
Esteban, the more eager Esteban to know all about his father. The
strong sense of eagerness and desire for the missing father eventually
gives rise to the tragic death of Esteban.

Gender as Performance: The Power of Acting

Almodovar stresses that one of the major themes of All About My

Mother is womans ability to pretend and wounded motherhood. Lola

does not simply pretend to be a woman by dressing as a drag queen but
he takes a step further to receive breast transplant. However, his
womanhood is an incomplete one since he still keeps his masculine
symbol the penis. Agrado, an old friend of Manuela and ex-lover of Lola,
gives us more insight of womens pretence and gender as performance.
Agrado takes over the job of Manuela as assistant to actress Huma Rojo
after Manuela devotes herself to taking care of the pregnant,
HIV-positive Sister Rosa. One afternoon, Agrado gets the calls from
Huma and her partner saying that they will not show up for the evening

29

performance. Agrado, who always dreams of standing on a real stage,

informs the audience that the drama performance has been canceled.
She grasps this valuable chance to take the stage on her own and
promises to give the audience a good entertainment if they stay on.
Agrado makes a confession of her genuine sexuality by making fun of
numerous cosmetic surgeries she had taken over the years in order to
turn her into a true woman. In her final line, Agrado said it is not easy
being genuine. But we must not be cheap with anything relating our
image. Because the more a woman resembles what she has dreamed for
herself, the more genuine she is.

16

Agrados idea of being a woman

indeed draws us to the discussion of gender as performance by Judith

Butler.

In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler asserted that we all have a desire

for seeking coherence in terms of sex and gender identification. However,
gender is constructed through a stylized repetition of acts, gestures and
enactments that try to create a tableau of identity ready to be identified
and categorized. Therefore, the essence and identity presented by this
16

http://www.clubcutura.com/clubcine/clubcineastas/almodovar/eng
30

gendered body is merely fabrication and a fantasy. Does a genuine

woman

exist

at

all?

Agrados

hilarious

speech

on

her

artificially-constructed eyes, noses, lips and breasts could be seen as a

confession of his quest for impersonating and simulating a genuine
woman. Such a confession shows that a genuine woman is merely an
imaginary figure who is culturally and socially constructed.

Acts, gestures, and desire produce the body, through

the play of signifying absences that suggest, but
never reveal, the organizing principle of identity as a
cause. Such acts, gestures, enactments, generally
construed, are performative in the sense that the
essence or identity that they otherwise purport to
express are fabrications manufactured and sustained
through

corporeal

means.reality

is

signs

and

fabricated

other
as

an

discursive
interior

essence 17

17 Judith Butler. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York:
Routledge, c1990, 1999, p 173.

31

However, imitation and acting presupposes the existence of a true

identity that awaits to be unveiled and unmasked. When one
impersonates, imitates and cross-dresses, one assumes that there is a
real or original for them to copy. Nonetheless, as far as Jean Baudrillard
was concerned, the question is no longer gender as performance or
imitation, but rather it concerns with the blurring boundary between the
real and simulation. 18 If we take the argument one step further,
Baudrillard actually pointed out that the truth about sexuality is that
there is no truth behind the mask. Replica is not the copy of the original,
but rather the original itself. By this token, Baudrillards concept of
simulacrum has revealed the truth that there is no true sex in the world.
One can never tell the distinctions and difference between the real and
the imaginary.

For one thing, Eve Harrington is not Eve Harrington. Her real name
was Gertrude Slescynski who run away from her family after she was

18 Jean Baudrillard. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans by Sheila Faria Glaster,

Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1994, p 1-43.

32

forced to leave her hometown after her scandalous affair with her boss
was exposed. Eve lied about marrying to a pilot husband and war hero
but the truth was that she was never married. We could understand
Eves lies in an allegorical way. The myth of Eve as the first, original
woman in the world is nothing but a falsehood. When all women and
men are making fervent efforts to look or act like an original woman, the
truth is that there exists no such person. Like what Baudrillard
suggested, simulacra is the copy without the original. By the same token,
each and every woman is a simulation of Eve with the acting ability
running in their blood. However, the original Eve simply does not exist.

Sense of Dj Vu and Uncanny

Although Lola does not appear until Sister Rosas funeral toward the
end of the

movie, the cross-dressed father with big breasts does not

shock us at all since we have seen him somewhere else in the movie.
Agrados recount of his decade-long friendship with Lola at the time they
underwent breast transplant operations together in Paris has actually

33

prepared us that Lola belongs to the same species of Agrado. Therefore,

when Lola finally appears, the audience is psychologically prepared for
the appearance for the father who does not look like one.

The first time Lola appears in the movie it is easy for the audience to
identity her as a woman with her feminine dressing, big breasts, heavy
make-up and long hair. Everything about Lola reminds us so much of
physical features and characteristics unique to women. However, at the
same time, such kind of familiar female image arouses a sense of
strangeness in our minds when we take a closer look. As far as both
Agrado and Lola are concerned, one will not say that they are perfect
simulation or replica of women as the audience can still tell the
difference or strangeness of their femininity from the rough contour of
their face and masculine facial features. Nonetheless, one will find it
equally difficult to determine whether they are men or women right
away since they have everything a woman is supposed to have and
display full-grown breasts, heavy make-up, feminine outfits,
brightly-painted fingernails, eye-catching earrings. However, one finds it

34

hard to believe that they are one hundred percent women at the same
time. The meticulously-prepared masquerade has intensified the
undecidability and confusion of their sexuality. But the point here is that
Agrado does act and look like a woman. She looks so familiar and at the
same time so unfamiliar. Her feminine performance reminds us of
women we have seen on magazines, on the streets, in our neighborhood,
or even in our own families. However, the audience can never fully
identify ourselves with Lola as a woman since her femininity is so
different and unfamiliar.

The strangeness behind Lolas femininity indeed leads us to

Sigmund Freuds concept of uncanny. The German word unheimlich or
uncanny can be translated as unhomely and strange, which is in
opposition to heimlich which means homely and familiar. According to
Freud, uncanny is the name for everything that ought to have
remained secret and hidden but has come to light. 19 Something could
be regarded as uncanny when they arouse frightening feelings in us by
19 Freud, Sigmund. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of
Sigmund Freud Volume XVII (1917-1919): An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works.

Trans by James Strachey in collaboration with Anna Freud, London: Hogarth Press,
1955, p 224.
35

leading us back to some old and familiar environments or memories in a

strange way. Lola gives us the uncanny feeling not only because he
reminds us of feminine figures in a strange way, but also because he
represents the revival of the past Spanish history in a grotesque way.

Under the Franco era, Spain was a dictatorial state which held high
the importance of patriarchal power of the Catholic church and the state
in the society. To make things simple, men grasped all the power in social,
economic, political and other aspects at the expense of womens rights
and freedom. Later on, the downfall of the Franco regime in late 1950s
brought forth the liberation of Spain with the mushrooming of film
production, music industry and the rise of cultural diversity that were
suppressed during the fascist regime. Despite the fact that the Franco
era was over, memory of the repressive regime always stays in the minds
of both the old and new generations of Spanish people. According to
Jacques Derrida, identity is built on the concept of difference. The idea of
difference can be understood by linguists and structuralists who stressed
that meaning is produced through binary opposition. For example, the

36

word masculine will be meaningless without the direct opposite

feminine.

20

Self-identification can only be built up when one can tell

the difference between himself or herself and the outside world. By the
same token, a post-Franco identity can only be built up in comparison
with the repressive dictatorial regime. In this sense, the memory of the
repressive history always haunts the Spanish society and forms an
essential part in the construction of the Spanish national identity and
collective memory. What is the relationship between Lola and the
repressive and uncanny history? As a decade-long missing father, Lola
could be viewed as the return of the Franco history. Lola, who appeared
as a black ghost in Sister Rosas funeral, could be interpreted as the
resuscitation of Franco from the graveyard and the comeback of the
repressive era.

Lolas Death End of Franco Era?

Lolas ghostly appearance and his death are interesting in two-fold

20 Toril Moi. Sexual/Texual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. London: Routledge, 1985,
c1988, p 105-106.

37

ways. First of all, his grotesque reappearance at Sister Rosas funeral

can be read as the comeback of the Franco era. Lola represents the
repressive history of the Franco period where the dictatorial regime
played a dominant role in the Spanish society in every aspects. The
passing away of Franco in 1978 was reminiscent of the erasure of Lolas
masculinity in France twenty years ago as suggested by Manuela.
(Though it is unclear which year the movie was set, the film strongly
suggests that it is one year after Francos death when Lola received
breast transplant given that it was released in 1999.) The repressive
history returns in a strange form and continues to haunt Spain, which
echoes Abbas theory of disappearance of history in the form of
reappearance. Secondly, Lolas infection with HIV virus is allegorical to
the death of the Franco era. When Manuela has spotted the appearance
of Lola at Sister Rosas funeral, she bitterly accuses him as an
epidemic. In the same breath, Lola represents the repression
overshadowing the Spanish history for more than four decades since the
Civil War.

38

All About My Mother is the only movie by Almodovar that talks

about the AIDS problem up till now. Transsexual Lola is a drug addict
who is dying of AIDS and his lover Sister Rosa is also infected with HIV
virus and subsequently gives birth to a baby with AIDS. Shortly after
Sister Rosa has been taken to the hospital for giving birth, the camera
switches to a graveyard with dozens of mourners standing around Rosas
grave. It is at the time when Manuela is attending the funeral ceremony
that she spots the appearance of a figure dressed in black the
long-awaited, missing Lola. Leaning on a crane, Lolas black dress and
her dark sunglasses can be taken as symbols of death. Almodovars
discussion of AIDS issue is of two-fold importance. On one hand, given
that Lola is infected with HIV virus from his drug use, Almodovar
appears to argue that it is drugs rather than promiscuity that gives rise
to the deadly disease. In fact, this argument is substantiated by a survey
which shows that drug use is the prime cause of AIDS in Spain, the
country which has the highest infection rate in the European Union.

21

As a homosexual himself, it seems that Almodovar wants to make use of

21 Sandra Truscott and Maria Garcia. A Dictionary of Contemporary Spain. London:

Hodder and Stoughton, 1998, p 266.

39

the movie to argue that sexual deviants, including gay men, lesbians,
transvestites, transsexuals, should not be blamed as the culprit of
spreading AIDS, nor are they the source of disease, abnormalities and
disgrace to the society.

If we analyze the AIDS issue in All About My Mother allegorically,

we can interpret AIDS as a borderline separating people into two
different categories, namely, the HIV-positive patients and AIDS-free
people. Such a demarcation is reminiscent of the binary structure
designed for consolidating the domination of normative heterosexuality.
In other words, AIDS performs the similar violence that the norm of
compulsory heterosexuality does by creating a binary world inhibited by
two groups of people men versus women, AIDS-free people versus
HIV-positive patients. By depicting the full recovery of the third Esteban,
who is infected by his HIV-positive mother, from the deadly disease,
Almodovar appears to suggest that the blurring boundary of the binary
structure and the inside/outside framework. The triumph of the third
Esteban over AIDS threats in the end of the movie could be regarded as a

40

successful attempt to cross the imaginary line separating the two worlds
which

seem

to

be

totally

different

but

actually

are

closely

interdependent.

Foucaults Interpretation of Sex, Gender and Identity

After all, what is so unique about Lolas sexuality? Before probing

into the question whether Lola has multiple identities or none at all, we
should first of all understand the debates over the stability and
unchangeableness of sex and gender. Generally speaking, sex often
refers to physical attributes and is anatomically and physiologically
determined while gender could be understood as a culturally constructed
representation of sex.

22

Proceeding from this viewpoint, human beings

are categorized into a binary structure drawing a line between men and
women, masculine and feminine. It is universally acknowledged that
ones gender is developed on the basis of the sex they are born into.
Following this logic, a baby boy will naturally grow up as a man. This

22 Anne Fausto-Sterling. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of
Sexuality. New York: Basic Books, 2000, p 3.

41

holds true for girls who are reared up as ladies and wives. At first glance,
it is an undeniable rule for the development of man and womans
sexuality. However, is sex really as natural as what it seems? Are there
any grey areas outside such a binary structure? Why do we limit
ourselves in the binary structure after all?

In The History of Sexuality Volume I, Foucault opined that all

identities are created in a network of power and relations. Anatomical
sex, which has all along been regarded as a given essence to human
beings, is taken as the starting point for developing ones identity. Sexual
categorization provides the fundamental basis for constructing ones
identity. Thus, human beings always feel the need to categorize people
into different categorizes -- man and woman, western and non-western,
and so forth. The notion of sex made it possible to group together, in
an artificial unity, anatomical elements, biological functions, conducts,
sensations, and pleasures, and it enabled one to make use of this
fictitious unity as a causal principle. 23

23 Michel Foucault. The History of Sexuality Volume I: An Introduction. Trans by

Robert Hurley, New York: Vintage Books, 1990, p 154.

42

However, Foucault pointed out that the establishment of ones

identity could only be made possible by exclusionary practices. Naming,
labeling and representation is a means to obtain power of existence and
strive for visibility and recognition from the society. The creation of
identity and representation is especially important for socially oppressed
groups, including gay and lesbians, ethic minorities, bisexuals,
transsexuals and all other groups who are excluded from the dominant
heterosexual community. Nonetheless, such an exclusionary mechanism
can only be made possible at the expense of silencing and depriving the
voice of the other. Who are those outlaws being expelled from the
normative binary structure?

Hermaphrodites and Herculine Barbin

Foucault had little regard for consistency of identity with his famous

43

saying that to be the same is really boring.

24

As far as Foucault was

concerned, a fixed and stable identity is merely the result of regulatory

practices that prevent people from crossing the borderline demarcating
the binary system. As far as sex is concerned, if ninety-nine percent of
human beings were born so perfect that they can easily fit into the
man/woman categories, how about the fate for those whose birth was
cursed by imperfection and defects that cast them out of the binary
structure? What if a baby is naturally born with the genital organs of
boys and girls at the same time? Here Foucault offers us an alternative
way of seeing through the seemingly unproblematic binary division of
sex and gender with Herculine Barbins memoir. Foucault shed light on
the diversity behind sexuality by challenging the very notion of true
sex the oneness and totality behind sex and gender in the
introduction of a memoir written by Herculine Barbin, a sensational and
well-known case of hermaphrodite in the 19th century.

The origin of hermaphrodites should trace back to the Greek

24 Michel Foucault. Sex, Power and the Politics of Identity in The Essential Works of
Foucault: Vol 1: Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth. Edited by Paul Rabinbow. New York:

New Press, 1997, p 166.

44

mythology where humans had four arms and legs, two faces and two sets
of privates. Zeus regarded these humans as too powerful and
threatening and he split each human down the middle, leaving them
yearning for the other half forever. 25 The native Amercian Navajo people
recognize that there are three physical categories: male, female and
hermaphrodite, or nadle. Far from being discriminated or isolated from
the mainstream society, nadles occupy a special social status as they are
believed to possess special skills and wisdom.

26

Scientists in the 20th

century echoe the hermaphrodite nature of human beings by asserting

that there is no one hundred percent man or woman in the world since
human beings are blessed with the bisexual nature. The theory of
universal bisexuality that emerged in the twentieth century, which
asserts that all males have female features and vice versa, posed a direct
challenge against the notion of true sex in the previous century.

27

Thanks to the evolutionary theory by Charles Darwin, bisexual theory

gained ground since Darwin opined that there were secondary

Venessa Baird. The No-Nonsense Guide to Sexual Diversity. London: Verso, 2001, p
39.
26 Baird, The No-Nonsense Guide to Sexual Diversity, p 121.
27 Joanne Meyerowitz. How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United
States. London: Harvard University Press, 2002, p 5.
25

45

characteristics of each sex that lie dormant in the opposite sex. Although
these secondary traces will eventually disappear in the course of
evolution, certain sexually retrograded features, such as mens nipples
and breasts, were still evident.

28

In fact, the number of the birth of

hermaphrodites are higher than one expected, with four per cent of
births in the United States being confirmed as born with two sets of
genitals.

29

However, the existence of hermaphrodites is under

tremendous threat from the medical field and the heterosexual society
where only the presence of man and woman is acknowledged. In most
cases, hermaphrodites are deprived of the rights to keep their bisexual
organs by being assigned to one sex.

Foucaults Argument Over True Sex

Cultural and situational factors are vital to shape ones gender

identity. It is especially true in the case of Herculine Barbin who was
raised as a girl and trained as a schoolmistress before his imperfect

28
29

Ibid., p 22-23.
Baird, The No-Nonsense Guide to Sexual Diversity, p 117.
46

penis and sexually indeterminable nature was discovered. Barbins

true identity as a man was then rectified and he wrote in his memoir
that he entered the masculine sex or the stronger sex in human race
after leading a girl life for twenty-one years. 30 However, Barbin was not
comfortable with his masculine identity, which was best seen by the way
he wrote his memoir as a girl and his nostalgia of living a happy girls life.
Moreover, Barbins self-identification as a woman was so strong that he
cut off her lesbian affair with his lover Sara, a young lady in the school
she used to teach, after his true identity came into light. For Barbin,
changing into a man did not promise a happy life with Sara because he
still felt himself as a woman and lesbian love was socially unacceptable
at that time.

Michel Foucault pointed out that sex and identity both exist in the
discourse of power. Sex is placed by power in a binary system. 31 People
are forced to fit themselves into the categories of men or women. This
partly explains the tragedy behind Herculine Barbins suicide since she

30 Michel Foucault. Herculine Barbin. Trans by. Richard McDougall. Sussex: The
Harvester Press, 1980, p 89.
31 Foucault, The History of Sexuality Volume I: An Introduction, p 83.

47

was forced to enter the masculine sex that did not belong to her.
Foucault wanted to highlight the happy limbo of a non-identity and the
multiplicity of sexualities embodied by Herculine Barbin.

32Similarly,

it

is clear that Almodovar does not buy into such a binary, restrictive and
suffocating view on sex and gender. He tries to make use of his movies to
twist around and shaken the so-called stable, normative and
heterosexual way of human existence.

Discussions on Transsexualism and Transvestism

As if the discussion is not complicated enough, to what extent is

gender a stable entity? Is masculinity an exclusive essence to men only?
Does masculinity stand as the only legitimate representation of men?
Does a male sex necessarily give rise to a male gender? What if a man
feels like a woman in his heart but finds himself trapped in a male body?
The mismatch of ones physical and psychological sense of being, either a
mans soul trapped in a female body or vice versa, is indeed the starting
for the discussion of transsexualism. Transsexualism was made possible
in the nineteenth century with technological advancement in the
32

Foucault, Herculine Barbin, xiii.

48

medical

field.

At

first,

transsexualism

mainly

focused

on

hermaphrodites people who were born with the co-existence of

testicular and ovarian gonadal tissue. Scientists believed that sexual
reassignment operation could help hermaphrodite patients fit into a
normal and socially accepted sex and granted them the right to lead a
normal life. However, when medical science had the power to assign a
definite sex to hermaphrodites, it came to the question that how can
doctors determine patients sexual orientation. In this regard, there
arised the notion of a true sex, in other words, patients sense of self as
men or women. Scientists believed that it was their responsibilities to
investigate the true sex trapped in a sexually ambiguous body and
redress such kind of natural disorders through medical operations.
Doctors duties were to make sure peoples anatomical sex corresponding
to their psychological sex. Hermaphrodites, who suffer from gender
disorder, are now permitted to live as a normal person on condition
that their sexual disorders, together with the social stigma entailed, are
erased in the sex change operation. Nonetheless, sexual reassignment
operations are hegemonic in the sense that it helps further consolidate

49

the binary system and renders sexual deviants invisible.

Sexually ambiguous bodies are threatening to the society where

ones sex should be either male or female. Transvestites intentionally
shock peoples deep-rooted concept of men and women by reversing the
dress code specially designed for man and woman.

The term

transvestite was coined by German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld in

early twentieth century.

33

According to Hirschfelds research work, the

act of cross-dressing has more to do with psychical or psychological

gender sign. Another gender research John Money further explained
that transvestism is a manifestation of the act of cross-dressing and a
highly specific act of gender cross-coding that poses challenge to the
rigid gender-coded dressing norm. 34 When we talk about cross dressing,
the word cross makes an interesting reading since it presupposes the
existence of boundaries and lines that separate men and women. Any
attempt to cross the established lines will be regarded as a deviant or
perverse act. In fact, the history of dress coding should date back to the

33 Marjorie Garber. Vested Interest: Cross-Dressing & Cultural Anxiety. New York:
Routledge, 1992, p 131.
34 Ibid., p 132.

50

medieval Europe, during which the sumptuary law that strictly

governed dress codes of different social classes was an important coding
system for classifying people into different sexes, social classes and
status with a closet of designated clothes. 35 Back then, everybody had to
follow the rigid dress code that classified people into different ranks,
with actors as the exception. Indeed, it is fair to say that the connection
between cross dressing and acting begins at the Shakespeare period
where the stage is a male-dominated site and that actors were allowed to
violate the sumptuary law by wearing any clothes their roles required,
including womens clothes and lingerie. In this regard, the stage could be
seen as a privileged site of transgression.

People always confuse transsexuals with transvestites since both

groups of people are sexual deviants who transgress and destabilize the
binary demarcation between men and women. However, if one takes a
closer look into the issue at stake, one will notice that the desire of
transsexuals and transvestites are totally different. Transsexuals, no
matter they are female-to-male or male-to-female, always have the
35

Ibid., p 23.
51

feeling of being trapped in the wrong bodies that contradict with their
sense of real gender they belong to. Therefore, the dream of
transsexuals is to make the sex of their bodies match with their sense of
self through sex reassignment operations. In other words, doctors are
there to help transsexuals to bring their psychological sex, their sense of
being a man or woman, to match with their biological sex.

36

Transsexuals have desperate desires for finding comfort from the other
side through bodily changes. Such a quest for a place of belonging has
not only reaffirmed gender stability, but also consolidated the either/or
binarism of sex and gender and fortified the seemingly irreversible
one-wayness behind gender.

Law of Desire (1987) was the first movie by Almodovar that talks
about transsexualism. The protagonist Pablo Quintero, a homosexual
film director, has a trasnssexual sister Tina. Tina, who was born a boy
biologically, has undergone sex-change operation in Morocco out of
passionate love for his father. All the men in the movie who encounter

Meyerowit, How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States, p

112.

36

52

Tina marvel at her extremely feminine appearance and manner and they
could not believe her original identity as a man. In fact, Tinas big
breasts, tight red dresses, heavy make-up, feminine gestures are so
overwhelmingly feminine that audience will not suspect Tinas female
identity even under tight scrutiny. Even after the audience are told of
Tinas original sex, we still have a hard time to believe in his masculine
past. It is interesting to note that Tinas lover, an female actress, is
played by Bibi Andersen who is a well-known male-to-female
transsexual in real life.

However, although Tinas extremely feminine

persona, together with her continued performance of femininity, has

highlighted womanliness and gender is nothing but masquerade, it
demonstrates another side of the argument, which is, transsexualism is
a marker of gender conservatism. Instead of destabilizing the rigid
sexual binarism, transsexualism actually affirms the hegemonic concept
that separates the two sexes with a seemingly clear-cut boundary and
suffocates numerous possibility and variances of sex and gender.

For transvestites, cross-dressing is a playful way to deconstruct

53

gender naturalness without violating their bodies. The most interesting

thing about most transvestites is that they tend not to opt for undergoing
sex change operations since they enjoy the playfulness and liberty in
cross-dressing and imitation. Like actors, transvestites enjoy numerous
possibilities in sex and gender roles since they are not confined to play
either male or female roles, but both. Marjorie Garber argues that
transvestites are not concerned with the so-called core gender identity,
or the sincerity of showing ones real and identifiable gender identity. In
Garbers opinion, transvestism deals with the complex interplay,
slippage, and parodic recontextualization of gender markers and gender
categories that characterize transvestic fantasy . the transvestite
keeps the fantasy in play by deploying a rhetoric of clothing, naming
and performance or acting out 37 Transvestism succeeds in highlighting
anxiety about fixed identities and calls into question the inviolability of
gender codes.

37

Multiple Identities: One Size Does Not Fit All

Garber, Vested Interest: Cross-Dressing & Cultural Anxiety, p 134.

54

Back to the discussion on All About My Mother, should we

categorize Lola as a transsexual, transvestite or a hermaphrodite? It is
indeed a difficult question as Lola is a little bit of each of the
above-mentioned categories. Then here comes the question: what is the
truth behind Lolas ambiguous bodies? Why does he not fit into any one
of the established categories?

It is fair to say that we are born with imperfect and incomplete sex.
What we are doing is to use perform our gender as a means to make our
imperfect sex complete. However, such attempts are nothing but fantasy.
Sex and gender is not one, but many. Nonetheless, the patriarchal
society forces people to desire only one sex within a binary system and
wipes out all other possibilities of desires out there. Transvestite creates
a third space, a place outside the binary heterosexual structure, that
destabilizes and denaturalizes the binary system.

Michel Bakhtins Carnival Body

55

Lolas sexual undecidedness and free-floating characteristics could

actually be understood in Mikhail Bakhtins notion of a carnival body.
In Rabelais and His World, Bakhtin carried an in-depth discussion on
popular folk culture and festivals celebrated in the Middle Age up to the
Renaissance in the 16th century. According to Bakhtin, carnival is the
peoples second life

38

since it is where it is the time when ordinary

people can be freed from the hierarchical restrictions, act out of ones
character, rank, and defy established order without being punished.
From the historical perspectives, Bakhtins notion of carnival did not
appear as a coincidence since it was widely regarded as an
anti-authoritarian force against the Orthodox Church and the Stalinist
state.

39

Bakhtin pointed out that the culture of folk carnival humor is

actually a boundless world of humorous forms and manifestations

opposed the official and serious tone of medieval ecclesiastical and feudal
culture.

40

Almodovar picks up the subversive force underlying the

carnival body and demonstrates the grotesque image on Lola and

38 Mikhail Bakhtin. Rabelais and His World. Trans by Helene Iswolsky, Indiana:
Indiana University Press, 1984, p 8.
39 Simon Dentith. Bakhtinian Thought: An Introductory Reader. London: Routledge,
1995, p 65-72.
40 Mikhail Bakhtin. Rabelais and His World, p 4

56

Agrado.

Both Lola and Agrado have transgressed the boundary that

separates men and women with their hybrid bodies marked by womens
breasts and male penis. Nonetheless, one finds it difficult to pin them
down into established forms of sexual deviants. They cannot fit into the
transsexual category as they are one step short of castration and
receiving the implant of an artificial vagina. They are more than
transvestites since they have been implanted with breasts, though a fake
ones. They are not hermaphrodites since they are not born with two sets
of genital organs. All in all, Lola and Agrado are a little bit of everything
and their sexuality so unstable and varied that they are in a perpetual
stage of in-betweenness. Bakhtin points out that the grotesque body is
unfinished, outgrows itself, transgresses its own limits.

41

More

importantly, carnival body expresses its inner self through the ongoing
process of passing from one form to another and it is satisfied with its
incomplete character of being.

41
42

42

Carnival body is a body of becoming,

Ibid, p 26.
Ibid,, p 32.
57

changing and transforming and it is satisfied with its nature of

incompleteness. Therefore, sexuality should be understood as a process
of becoming rather than trapped in a static state of completeness. The
fluidity of Lola and Agrado as mixed combinations of various categories
of sexually deviants make them stand out as the perfect representation
of the richness and versatility of sexualities.

Life and Death in Carnival Body -- Sister Rosas Death

Death and renewal are central themes to Bakhtins carnivalesque

since the crowning and decrowning of a carnival king could be seen as
two sides of a coin -- life entails death and vice versa. 43 Almodovar has a
strong fascination with hospitals and All About My Mother begins by
showing a patient who is supported a breathing machine has been
certified as brain death. However, this scene is not completed until
Esteban has been certified as brain death after being severely injured in
a car accident.

Hospital is the life-and-death site where death always

Mikhail Bakhtin. Problems of Dostoevskys Poetics. Trans by Caryl Emerson,

Minnesota: University of Minnesota, 1984, p 124.

43

58

signals the beginning of a new life. As a hospital counselor, Manuela does

not only stand on the border line separating life and death, but more
importantly, she shoulders the mission of giving new life to patients
while taking away organs from doomed patients.

Bakhtin further maintained that the fundamental tendencies of the

grotesque image of the body is to show two bodies in one: the one giving
birth and dying, the other conceived, generated and born.

44

This

life-and-death concept on body could be clearly seen in Sister Rosas

pregnancy and her subsequent death in difficult labor. Sister Rosa dies
soon after giving birth to her son with Lola an HIV-positive baby boy.
Her death indeed marks a moment of rejuvenation and new birth. Sister
Rosas degradation and falling prey to the seduction of Lola could be
seen as an act of defiance against patriarchal rule. Bakhtin defined
degradation as acts of defecation and copulation, conception, pregnancy,
and birth. Degradation digs a bodily grave for a new birth.

45

Sister

Rosas death could be viewed as a mockery to the dominant position of

44
45

Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, p 26.

Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, p 24.
59

normative heterosexuality. Carnival degradation is both regenerative

and destructive. It is the birth-giving which kills the mother and delivers
the baby to the world. The third Esteban finally shakes off the HIV virus
that threatens to take away his life ever since he was born is significant
as it shows that death never means the end of life.

According to Bakhtin, death does not mean the end of individual life.
On the contrary, death is a moment of jubilation which is necessary for
rejuvenation and completion or folk life and humankind.

46

Actually, the

death of the second Esteban marks the rejuvenation of the first and third
Esteban. It could be said that the death of the second Esteban does not
mean the discontinuity of the story. On the contrary, it is precisely his
death which unfolds the stories of the first and third Esteban.

46 Sue Vice. Introducing Bakhtin. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997, p

153.

60

III) Conclusion

From Almodovar to Foucault and Bakhtin, their works all

demonstrate that the notion of a true sex is nothing but a culturally
and historically constructed fabrication and fantasy. Applying Bakhtins
concept on the carnival body, sexuality is indeed the eternal incomplete
unfinished nature of being.

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The point here is that there is no true

sex which is always there for us to discover. In reality, there exists no

stable I behind ones existence as a man or woman. Rather, we have to
squarely face who we are and dare see through ourselves beyond the
established suffocating and restrictive binary framework. We must
liberate ourselves from the haunting stereotypes defining male and
female. We should just pick up the courage to embrace the fluid and
multiple nature of sexuality and shake off all performative acts of gender
that the patriarchal society pressures us to follow. Will it not be
wonderful if we can be totally freed from the code of sexual marks that
are restrictive and discriminatory in nature?

47

Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, p 52.

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I would like to conclude with Jacques Derridas appeal for a utopian

world in regard to sexuality.
Beyond the binary difference that governs the decorum
of all codes, beyond the opposition feminine/ masculine,
beyond homosexuality and heterosexuality which come
to the same thing. As I dream of saving the chance that
this question offers, I would like to believe in the
multiplicity of sexually marked voices. I would like to
believe in the masses, this indeterminable number of
blended voices, this mobile of non-identified sexual
marks each individual, whether he be classfied as man
or woman according to the criteria of usage. 48

Is there a way to achieve Derridas utopian dream for free-floating

sexuality? The mobility and free-floating utopia depicted by Derrida is
reminiscent of Herculine Barbins happy limbo of non-identity, the
situation where one is freed from the pressure of being assigned a true

Jacques Derrida. Choreographies. Interview with Christie V. McDonald. In Bodies of

the Text: Dance as Theory, Literature as Dance. Edited by Ellen W. Goellner and

48

Jacqueline Shea Murphy. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1995, p 154.

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sex and true gender.

However, so long as we are living within the

restrictive norm of compulsory heterosexuality, there seems no chance to

free ourselves from the cage and enjoy the happiness of free-floating
sexuality.
In reality, Almodovars movies show both sides of the arguments. On
one hand, his films are generally regarded as subversion against
normative heterosexuality with his bold descriptions of social outcasts
including transvestites, transsexuals, gays and lesbians. On the other
hand, Almodovars films demonstrate the fact that undecidability and
instability is precisely the truth and norm behind sexuality. Thus, it is
the heterosexual desire which is the subversive power that always
attempt to challenge the originally unstable sex and gender and turn it
into a stable entity.

If sex and gender are inseparable within the matrices of power as

suggested by Foucault, is there a way to subvert the whole system from
within? If the truth of sexuality is the undeciability and the forever
process of free-floating resignification, the energy of change and

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transformation will always be there. The power of normative

heterosexuality and the desire of unity between sex and gender can only
put a halt to such an energy flow temporarily. In this regard, we should
bear in mind that the subversive power is always there, and more
importantly, the subversion will always come from within. If gender and
sex are merely an act as suggested by Butler in Gender Trouble, are we
not free to throw away the script and play whatever roles in the endless
course of resignification and reconfiguration?

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