in media res

This article discusses my reading of ‘Victim’ (1961) directed by Dierden and Relph and writen by Janet Green but in relation to Richard Dyer’s essay ‘Victim: hegemonic project’ in Dyer, R. (1993) The Matter of Images, Routledge. Though the film is part of a tradition in British cinema between 1956-1963 that deals with social problems, it is the very first movie where male homosexuality and the law that criminalized it are explicitly addressed.

It is strange how, after a thorough analysis and decoding, Dyer concludes that ‘Victim’ (1961) makes gays think of themselves is self-oppressive ways. Farr’s role is not that of passivity or sickness, he stands opposite to the ones who submissively pay the blackmailers because ‘there’s nothing to do about it’ and fights for what is fair. He admits that he is a homosexual and homosexuality is defined as desire, not the sexual act or the ‘practise’ of homosexuality.

Dyer is correct to say that Farr is at the same time the victim and the law. But this is the tragic irony, the fact that even though he practises the law and not homosexuality, and though he is not the victim of blackmail but the prosecutor, he is the ultimate victim of the social reality he lives in. His energetic role is self-destructive, for his carrier and his erotic relationships.

What I want to discuss however, is the three women of the film, Laura, Sylvie and Miss Benham. All of them are part of a dyad, they are hetero-defined, parts of a system that will fail without them. Miss Benham is laconic, she talks when ‘Boy’ Barrett comes in the bookshop and when she is arrested at the end of the film. At this introductory scene she is a loyal employee that only cares about her job. At the final scene she is the crime associate and the ‘brains’ of the two. She is dominating, she hates gay men and, thus, deviancy and is not scared of the police. She is not exactly a spinster but neither queer because she lacks eroticism. She is the woman with glasses, the most frightening of them all, the one that inverses the gaze. she’s arrested, she goes to prison un-married, child-less and without a future. However, the impression is that the production of this mainstream film does not really punish her because she leaves the room in an upright stance, with her shoes and glasses on. Is this a feminist moment in the film? After all, her other part, the male blond blackmailer whose straight maleness can be said to be signified by posture and leather jacket, can be read at the same time as a self-repressed gay. The David poster on his wall can be read not, in Dyer’s way, as a heterosexual assumption about athleticism and gayness, but as the character’s fetishistic desire for other males that has turned into vengeance.

Sylvie is Frank’s wife, the gatekeeper of a socially approved relationship in 1961. This is how it should be. Man, woman, see-through baby-doll, romance. She first sends ‘Boy’ Barrett away, a character for whom I have built compassion so far. Then she asks why he has become this way. This is not the way to do it. If the film wants Sylvie to have a normative function, that this is what a good wife should do, then she would not ask for Barrett afterwards. The only reason for her to do that question is for the audience to get the answer : ‘he doesn’t have what we do’. And what they have is each other, their love, their home but they have this because they defend it so vigorously, they will not let any element threaten that and this is obvious by the fear in Sylvie’s expression when she sends ‘Boy’ away. What they have, after all is not that stable, it has to be safeguarded at all times or it will fall apart. This sequence then does not, like Dyer says, show that an Heterosexual relationship is above all, but that it is a construction, an idea for two people to invest on.

The idea that heterosexuality is not the natural way of things and that a relationship is constructed and not given for granted is further supported by Laura and her decision to support Farr. And what a strange person Laura is. She works with these ‘difficult’ children even though she does not need to. But she does not take care of her brothers child as a socially correct film would have it. She does not just work with children, she works with children that are different, a point that Dyer never notices. She is in love with Farr and nothing in their most dramatic dialogues proves that she is hurt because he is a homosexual but because she is not the only one. She decides to stay with him after all, not to honour marriage, but because their bond is that of a human being to another, not just a social role. For Dyer, it is that she is expected to suppress her sexuality and to stay in a non-sexual role. But she knew about his past relationships with men and there is nothing to imply that they have been having a non-sexual relationship while married. After all, we see them kissing passionately at the stairs before the thunder. Bisexuality perhaps is a theme too deviant to address in a mainstream film that tackles the issue of the criminalization of homosexuality in 1961. To me however, the central issue addressed in the film is, love as an emotional involvement and sexuality as the troubling factor in desire. Laura knew before she was married, she talks rationally during a conversation that others would have a nervous breakdown and actively decides not to tolerate but to support. That is why she is the most deviant of them all, the queerest of the queer.

Aristea F. 08