Drag Queens Vs. Tom Ripley

I honestly was super excited to see Professor Lukin's connection of Paris is Burning to Tom Ripley. I did read Linden's post and do agree that in the case of transgenders it is not the same. As Linden said, transgendered folks do identify as the opposite sex. Tom Ripley was not identifying as another person he was choosing to impersonate them.
In that sense,  I think that drag is very similar. I think for many of the queens in Paris is Burning drag is an escape from their reality. The reality of their lives can be extremely difficult. As said by Dorian Corey, they do not have the opportunity to be an executive in real life, so they choose to do so at the balls. I think this is similar to Tom because in his real life he cannot be the charismatic, exciting person that Dickie is. He is unable to change who he is to fit this ideal. By impersonating Dickie, he is able to get the thrill of being someone everyone loves.
A big difference I see between the drag culture and Tom is that the imitation stops after the queens go home. They have their own lives that they go back to after the balls. Tom is living the life of someone else. There is no stopping it until he has to go back to being Tom Ripley. 

"Identity Shopping" article/Strangers on a Train AND Talented Mr.Ripley

Although I haven't read Strangers on a Train, it's clear there's some obvious connections and similarities with the two books that allow critique on one to applied to the other. So, while reading Lukin's article, I tried to think of ways I could connect The Talented Mr. Ripley with what he says about Highsmith's other novel.

A couple things popped out:
How Guy is "kept from being satisfied in the 'neither here nor there' position" (32); that reminded me of how Tom is kinda in the "neither here nor there" position of identity. He isn't Tom anymore, but he isn't Dickie either. Although he truly is Tom, he doesn't recognize/accept that- but at the same time when he takes on Dickie's identity, he'll never fully be Dickie because that's just impossible. He's stuck in an place void of identity, 'Neither Tom nor Dickie'.

 Bruno seems to have homosexual thoughts; "'If he could strangle Anne, too, then Guy and he could really be together'" (Lukin 34).
That drew me back to Tom, and how he wanted to get Marge out of the picture so that he and Dickie could be together. He does try to keep Dickie to himself and cut Marge out of plans, so I feel like Bruno and Tom have similar feelings regarding this.

"'The patient wants, by knowing and looking, to conquer and merge with the partner into an all powerful, autarchic union, and thus to incorporate the other person's strength and value'. Bruno, bring a suppurating mass of narcissistic wounds, needs that strength and virtue to compensate for his own felt emptiness. He craves the loss of ego through drinking, the focused activity or arranging murders or the introjection of someone whom he believes to be authentic" (Lukin 34).
-This seemed like he was describing Tom. I feel like Tom wants to merge his qualities with Dickie's qualities. It's pretty self-explanatory.

Those are just a few that I noticed right away while scanning over the article again. What other things did people find in Lukin's article that can be applied to both of the novels?

Minghella's "The Talented Mr. Ripley"

Out of curiosity, I decided to watch Anthony Minghella's adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley. I think Professor Lukin's assessment of it was quite spot on.  Visually it was wonderful and the acting was superb, however it was definitely lacking the depth of of the novel.  Minghella changed the characters in ways that took away the ambiguity of the novel.

 More specifically, he took the psychopath out of Tom Ripley.  For example, when he killed Dickie, I didn't care at all.  In the novel, I was rather affected by the murder of Dickie because of Tom's sort of nihilistic attitude toward it.  However in the film, Minghella made Dickie such a mean, unlikable character, I was happy to see him die.  I mean this guy was simply an asshole (pardon my crudeness).  He was so mean to Marge, cheated on her, got another woman pregnant who then killed herself, and then insulted Tom to his core.  I couldn't blame Tom for whacking him with that oar.  However, in Highsmith's novel, I didn't see Tom having a reason for killing Dickie other than his own insanity, which made the murder much more powerful.  Same goes with Freddie.  Philip Seymour Hoffman was brilliant in the role, but Freddie was similar to Dickie in his un-likability, I thought "good for you" when Tom smashed him in the back of the head.

Minghella made a valiant effort in adapting this classic, however I do think he missed the key components that made the novel so great.  Like I said, he took the psychopath out of Tom, in my opinion, that takes the life out of the story.  As a stand alone movie, however, I would say it is pretty solid.

Is Tom's Portrayal of Dickie Accurate?

Our discussion today about impersonation made me think about what exactly drives Tom to kill Dickie and assume his identity. I was trying to decide whether I thought that Tom killed Dickie in order to achieve Dickie’s social status, or because Tom is gay and lashes out against Dickie because he is in love with him. Initially, I had assumed that Tom killed Dickie simply because he is gay, and Dickie dies as a result of the shame Tom feels due to his homosexuality, but after today’s class, I think that Tom killed Dickie in order to assume Dickie’s status.

Tom assumes Dickie’s identity for the purpose of convincing others that he is Dickie Greenleaf. He wears Dickie’s clothes, Dickie’s rings, and even has his luggage marked with Dickie’s initials. Just as we saw in the clip of Paris is Burning, success in a portrayal comes when the individual is able to convince others on the street that he or she is a man, woman, businessman, or in this case, Dickie Greenleaf. Tom is able to convince many people that he is, in fact, Dickie Greenleaf due to the careful attention he places on the details of Dickie’s style, clothes and mannerisms.

I think it’s interesting that Tom is never fully able to embody Dickie’s real identity since he must remove his created persona of Dickie away from Rome so that Tom will not be recognized and found out as an imposter. Since Tom removes “Dickie” from his life in Rome and takes him away from Marge and the rest of Dickie’s friends, Tom is only able to become a caricature of how he would like Dickie to be perceived by others. Tom is never able to fully become Dickie since he removes certain elements from Dickie’s life, and Dickie becomes Tom’s own creation. 

Authenticity in Ball Culture

To use the ideas of Authenticity-and its importance to social and emotion health-as a critique on Ball Culture is a bit of a mistake. I agree whole-heartily that remaining true to your authentic self is paramount to your psychological well being. When you try to hide your true identity by taking on the attributes of a specific person or society you deny your own wants and needs, and create self-esteem and identity issues (as you may realize that you are unable to really conform to this ideal). You see this often in Middle and High School when kids are trying desperately to fit in, and to figure who they are.

For the transgender individuals found in drag culture, the female impersonation IS their true identity. They are making their outward appearance match the gender identity they experience on the inside, and not denying their identity in the least. What is damaging to these individuals isn't the time they spend at the Ball, its in Normative-Straight society when they play at "being a man." You must ask yourself, what defines who a person truly is? Is it their outward appearance or their heart and minds? If you (like me) define a person by what's inside, you must not deny a transgender person his/her true identity.

As for the men that identify as a drag queen, the female impersonation also doesn't compromise their authenticity, as they still feel like a man. Drag for them is an art, and even while they may look incredibly "real," if you would ask, they still feel like a man in a dress. It would be like questioning the authenticity of an actor because they enjoy portraying people different from their own personality. They make no claim of "becoming" a woman, they simply enjoy playing like one.

This is why I believe these critiques aren't really applicable to Ball culture, while they are quite relevant to the social-emotional issues faced by Tom Ripley.

Self-awareness in "In A Lonely Place"

One aspect I really enjoyed with In a Lonely Place was it's self-awareness as a film.  It was sort of like a meta film, much like the Scream franchise.  Employing Dix Steele as a screenwriter gave him the ability to make comments on how the film works and even comments on the film industry at the time.  For example, there was one scene where Mildred said she always thought actors made up their own lines and Dix responds, "When they get to be big stars, usually they do."  This line could be read as a stab at the stars of the time and how difficult they could be to the actual creators of a film. Or when Mildred comments on how wonderful it must be to be a writer and Dix responds with sarcasm.  

But this self-awareness could be a comment on how the average Hollywood film was structured at the time and how the noir style wants to break it.  One of the great meta-instances of the film is when Dix and Laurel are discussing the love scene in the new script he is writing.  Dix says, "Well that's because they're not always telling each other how much in love they are. A good love scene should be about something else besides love. For instance, this one. Me fixing grapefruit. You sitting over there, dopey, half-asleep. Anyone looking at us could tell we're in love."  Dix is describing exactly what is occurring in the film by talking about how this his script works, a very meta moment.  He is taking the common scene structure of films and twisting it in a fresh, new way.

That all being said, I'm not quite sure if the use of self-awareness is common in all film noir.  I suppose the argument could be made that a highly stylized film is always a self-aware film.  This applies to noir in the way that the lighting always looks as if its a painting and the dialogue is so snappy it seems impossible anyone would speak that way in reality, therefore it is aware that it is a film.  I don't know if that holds much water, but when watching In a Lonely Place I was struck by how aware it was.  Any thoughts?

NoirCon Article and Its Connection to Tom Ripley

Hey everyone,

There was an article about NoirCon on philly.com today. The article discusses how the noir style has expanded from movies like Out of the Past or Double Indemnity, and still currently exists in art, TV shows and music. It further explains that because of the current pessimism in society due to the disillusionment brought about by 9/11 and other contributing factors, the noir style will probably continue to exist in pop culture.

One particular quote in the article caught my attention as a way to understand the fate of Tom in The Talented Mr. Ripley. In discussing noir, the author of the article, Tirdad Derakhshani, interviews Otto Penzler, a noir author. Penzler says noir characters, “may not die in the end … but they sentence themselves to a life of imprisonment or abject sadness." This quote helped me categorize exactly how to feel about Tom Ripley. Although Tom doesn't die or get caught by the police, he becomes imprisoned as Tom Ripley at the end of the novel. In the novel, there is an underlying sense that Tom wishes to be Dickie because he does not like himself. Since Tom’s wish to become Dickie is rooted in his desire to take on a new identity to achieve the social and financial status of Dickie, his “life of imprisonment"  comes when he must stop being Dickie and become Tom again. Although Tom does not get arrested, he actually does get his comeuppance for his misdeeds since he must give up pretending to be Dickie.