#jackhalberstam

   Jack Halberstam’s book, Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal, proposes a new form of feminism based on the obscure and the outrageous, finding wisdom in children and spontaneity versus adults and predictability. This new feminism, based primarily on the artist, Lady Gaga, who rose to fame in 2008 through her music and controversial, yet powerful and deeply meaningful, performance…

Imagine Me & You (2005): The Romantic Comedy Film That Embraces Gaga Feminism

   Jack Halberstam’s book, Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal, proposes a new form of feminism based on the obscure and the outrageous, finding wisdom in children and spontaneity versus adults and predictability. This new feminism, based primarily on the artist, Lady Gaga, who rose to fame in 2008 through her music and controversial, yet powerful and deeply meaningful, performance art, embraces creativity, artistic rebellion, people who resist traditions and patriarchal norms. The author, too, makes a claim that films of the romantic comedy genre are the antithesis of Gaga feminism in their trivial, predictable relationship dynamics and their emphasis of weddings and marriages as the necessary plot ending. However, there is a film in this genre that actually embraces the author’s concepts of Gaga feminism – a film that was produced before Lady Gaga rose to fame herself. It will be proven that this film, Imagine Me & You (2005), utilizing the film’s brilliant dialogues, scenes, characters, and themes, indeed captures and embraces Gaga feminism in this rare gem of romantic comedy film. 

   According to the author, Gaga feminism is just as political a concept as it is a naïve one. It disguises its actual critique of society behind a mask of nonsensical outrageousness:

Gaga feminism, I will demonstrate, is a form of political expression that masquerades as naïve nonsense but that actually participates in big and meaningful forms of critique. It finds inspiration in the silly and the marginal, the childish and the outlandish. Gaga feminism grapples with what cannot yet be pronounced and what still takes the form of gibberish, as we wait for new social forms of gaga, staying gaga, and promoting gaga. It will provoke. It will be a fun, user-friendly, and quasi-academic handbook for a new feminism that offers the untrained insights of children alongside deep-seated critiques of contemporary gender and sexuality politics. (Halberstam xxv)

   It has five principles at its core. The first emphasizes finding sources of wisdom in the unexpected moments in life: “Wisdom lies in the unexpected and the unanticipated – to recognize new forms of politics, social structures, and personhood, we really have to take some big leaps into the unknown. Going gaga means letting go of many of your most basic assumptions about people, bodies, and desires” (Halberstam 27). The second states that change is inevitable, but states that proof of that change will reside not in the obvious, but in the often hidden margins – on the edge of the world: “Transformation is inevitable, but don’t look for the evidence of change in the everyday; look around, look on the peripheries, the margins, and there you will see its impact” (Halberstam 27). The third argues that there is no real meaning to the phrase and ideal, “common sense,” that it is imperative for individuals to embrace and act against the “norm,” based on the simple fact that life is not commonplace at all: “Think counterintuitively, act accordingly. A lot of what we learn as ‘common sense’ actually makes no sense, especially as change does happen in complex societies such as the ones we inhabit…Nothing lasts forever, and common sense needs to twist and turn in the winds of change” (Halberstam 27-28). The fourth emphasizes secularity – a need to separate the often restrictive interpretations of religion from the way we lead our lives, and instead base ideals on emotion, and the human experience: “Practice creative nonbelieving. I know it is not fashionable nowadays to be antireligious. We have reached a kind of ‘live and let live’ sensibility when it comes to religiosity and spirituality and all that stuff. But when it comes to gender norms and sexual mores, religion really is the root of all evil, and that cuts across many religions…gaga feminism will not be your salvation, it will not save you or redeem you, it will not forgive you for your sins, but instead it encourages you to be a nonbeliever, and to keep your spiritual beliefs to yourself” (Halberstam 28). The fifth and final principle fully embraces the outrageous aspects in life and the misfits of all generations of life: “Finally, gaga feminism is outrageous. This is not a feminism for the faint of heart nor for the weak of knees…this is a feminism that has no truck with shame or embarrassment, it is for the freaks and geeks, the losers and failures, the kids who were left out at school, the adults who still don’t fit in. This is not a new social networking tool, nor a way to win friends and influence people. Gaga feminism is impolite, abrupt, abrasive, and bold. To be a feminist, you have to go gaga” (Halberstam 28-29). 

   More importantly, Gaga feminism, at its heart, demands that individuals rethink and recreate their lives. It encourages the tearing down of patriarchy’s walls, reimagining and rebuilding the foundations of society into a more inclusive, more randomized, more liberating, way of life: 

…this version of feminism looks into the shadows of history for its heroes and finds them loudly refusing the categories that have been assigned to them: these feminists are not “becoming women” in the sense of coming to consciousness, they are unbecoming women in every sense – they undo the category rather than rounding it out, they dress it up and down, take it apart like a car engine and then rebuild it so that it is louder and faster. This feminism is about improvisation, customization, and innovation. The gaga feminist, in other words, cannot settle into the house that the culture has built for her. S/he has to tear it down, reimagine the very meaning of house in form and function and only then can s/he rebuild. This pheminist takes it upon herself to “occupy gender,” as the new terminology of our political moment might phrase it. (Halberstam xiv)

   Imagine Me & You (2005), ironically, begins on the wedding day of the bride, Rachel (Piper Perabo), where she is shown getting ready for the ceremony to marry the groom, Heck (Matthew Goode). On her way to the wedding, her father, Ned (Anthony Head), describes his thirty-year marriage to his wife, Tessa (Celia Irmie), as a dreadful thing and his wish to be a “free man.” He goes on to explain the dread he felt on the way to his own wedding, emphasizing his thought of wanting to say to his driver: ‘Stop the car! This is a horrible mistake!’ Yet, even though he was fearful, he kept that fear silent, and stated that you cannot say those words. Then, Rachel states those forbidden words – “Stop the car” – clarifying – “I forgot to pee” – and the car parks in front of a McDonald’s restaurant, where she is shown running in her wedding gown towards the bathroom. (Imagine Me & You)

   The film continues with H (Boo Jackson), Rachel’s eight-year-old sister, inquiring Heck with the question, “What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?” Heck is left speechless, but the florist of the wedding, Luce (Lena Headey), provides H with the ingenious answer: “It never happens. If there’s a thing that can’t be stopped, it’s not possible for there to be something else which can’t be moved. And vice versa. They can’t both exist. You see? It’s a trick question is the answer.” As Tessa leads H to the church to their seats for the wedding ceremony, H inquires of her mother, “Can she sit with me?” (Imagine Me & You)

   The onset of the film interestingly features one of the bridesmaids, Beth (Sharon Horgan), and the best man, Cooper (Darren Boyd), as self-absorbed and unconcerned with the individuals whom they are supposed to be comforting – the bride, Rachel, and the groom, Heck. The bridesmaid, for example, before leaving the car, says to Rachel, “Wish me luck,” emphasizing the point, “It’s a wedding. Bridesmaids always blow weddings.” Rachel wishes her luck, but is left in the car without any comfort or support. Similarly, while Heck and Cooper are waiting by the altar with their backs turned, with Heck anxiously continuing to look over his shoulder, Cooper states, “I fancy that flower girl,” stating, “I got a vibe that she likes me.” Heck, annoyed, bluntly retorts back to Cooper, “Coop, it’s my wedding day. Can we talk about me?” Cooper replies, “Sure, yes,” then whispers back, “Did you get the vibe that she likes me?” The scene ends with both of them looking towards each other, Heck with a forced smile on his face as Cooper gets the last word. (Imagine Me & You)

   This shift in power and attention from the bride and the groom to the people around them instead – and the lack of confidence that Ned emulated through his words in the car, Beth’s nervousness, and Cooper’s insecurity – all implies exactly what Gaga feminism is trying to criticize. Marriage, and the celebrations of those marriages – weddings – is Gaga feminism’s antithesis. Life’s unpredictability and spontaneity often turns marriage and its ideal promises of stability and happiness on its head. And right from the very beginning, the film refuses to hide the fact that marriage is indeed a frail concept, one that does not solve the problems of newlyweds, but instead exacerbates them. 

    Unlike most of the romantic comedies cited in Halberstam’s book, Imagine Me & You (2005) does not end in a wedding, but rather, begins with one. And what happens next, and for the rest of the film, is indeed what Halberstam refers to in this statement: “Marriage, the supposedly ‘big’ event in life of a young person, is, as so many feminists have pointed out, as much of an ending as a beginning (as Jane Eyre states quietly at the end of the famed eponymous novel about looking for love in all the wrong places: ‘Reader, I married him.’). And for too many people, especially young women, alternative life paths are shut down, by themselves and society, almost before they have even been considered” (Halberstam 112). It is the moment when Rachel is about to be married, on her way to the altar, where her life is changed forever by one glance to the left. She locks eyes with the florist, Luce, and it is apparent that something magical, rare, and unexpected happened – love at first sight. Instantaneously, Rachel’s life is turned upside down – her heart no longer belongs to Heck, who she proceeds to marry – but to Luce, who is revealed later in the film to be a lesbian who, up until the wedding day, had accepted that her life would be one spent alone. (Imagine Me & You)

   This moment between Luce and Rachel represented the core theme of the film – that love at first sight not only existed, but indeed happened between them. This love is described very accurately by Luce in one scene in the film: “I think you know immediately. You know, as soon as your eyes…Then everything that happens from then on just proves that you had been right in that first moment. When you suddenly realized that you have been incomplete, and now you are whole.” (Imagine Me & You)

   The very fact that this film was inspired by the experience the writer and director, Ol Parker, had when he first met his wife – love at first sight – and his emphasis of love as spontaneous, something that cannot nor should not be fully understood, but embraced nevertheless, encompasses Halberstam’s concepts of Gaga feminism. Parker’s description of love at first sight as not a phenomenon, but a true, human experience that he does not truly understand to this day – maybe that is why he made the film, to explore these questions and these experiences, and share it with others – captures Gaga feminism’s purpose of destroying foundations and rebuilding societal understandings, in this case, of love. (Cook)

But still, the moment itself had to be beautiful, had to be life-changing, as it was for me, even if my understanding of what really happened in that instant is no greater. Did her apocrine glands give off the requisite pheromones to suit my olfactory? Did my brain submerge itself in phenylethylamine? Or did I look into her eyes and see her soul? And in the end, does it matter? What is important is that something happened, everything happened. TS Eliot said that we should not over-examine love, not seek to place it “fixed and sprawling on a pin” – the study of it only devalues the object. It just is. And thank God for that. (Cook)

   Something symbolic also happens with Luce and Rachel during their first personal encounter with each other – which occurs during the wedding after-party. After brief introductions, Luce proceeds to reach for the punch bowl, but Rachel blocks her from doing so. Luce offers to help, and then Rachel reveals the problem: her wedding ring fell off – into the punch bowl. The ingenious Luce responds, “Only one thing to do,” and rolls up her sleeves as she says, “Cover me – use the dress. I’m going in,” sticking her arm into the punch bowl to fish for the wedding ring. She succeeds, and during Rachel’s conversation with Heck’s boss, reaches from behind for Rachel’s hand, and returns the ring to Rachel’s ring finger. (Imagine Me & You)

   The fact that Rachel’s ring actually fell off represents how her marriage to Heck was indeed premature, and lacked the true love that would have bound them together. The marriage did not solidify her love, but perpetuated problems for her in following her heart, and going after her true love, Luce. The fact that Luce was the one who put her arm in the punch bowl to retrieve the ring, and put the ring back on Rachel’s hand, was in fact a precursor to her eventual future with Rachel, however subtle a gesture it was. Luce saves Rachel from the embarrassment of making it known to others that she lost her wedding ring, which symbolizes a seemingly unbreakable union between two people, in a bowl of punch. And Luce, in her silly and brazen, yet necessary, gesture, solidifies their connection to each other in that moment. She helps begin their relationship, and every encounter since that day between them would prove that they were meant for each other. Their relationship is built upon spontaneity, on life’s unexpected moments, something that Gaga feminism advocates for. 

   Rachel, although her life is now changed, struggles with her newfound sexuality throughout the film, feeling trapped in the bond she committed herself to with Heck. Luce, in turn, wants to follow her passion for Rachel, but realizes that their love is impossible with Rachel’s marriage to Heck still existent. Later, Rachel finally reveals to Heck that she is in love with someone else, not mentioning Luce’s name. Heck pretends to be asleep, but is revealed to have called Cooper with his devastation soon after. Cooper confronts Luce with the news, suspecting that the person Rachel spoke of was indeed her. Luce, out of guilt, decides to go away – but not until Rachel and Heck experience their relationship’s fallout – which happens to be on Rachel’s birthday. Heck makes the decision to leave, ending his last conversation with Rachel on this point: “I wanted you to be happy. More than anything else, I wanted to be the cause of happiness in you. But if I’m not, then, I can’t stand in the way. Do you see? Because what you’re feeling now, Rachel, is the unstoppable force – which means that I’ve got to move.” (Imagine Me & You)

   The very fact that Heck left on the notion that love is the unstoppable force that Luce described at the onset of the film, sparked by H’s spontaneous questioning, reveals the film’s willingness to embrace the intuition and wisdom of children and outcasts. 

   Indeed, one of the striking things about this film is in the character, H (Boo Jackson), Rachel’s eight-year-old sister. Her witty yet poignantly-true statements – namely her questions – carry the film to the height of embodying Gaga feminism at its origins – children. Halberstam elaborates by explaining the origin of the term, “gaga,” as in itself a “child word,” one that represents whatever a child cannot pronounce (Halberstam xxv). Halberstam describes Gaga feminism even further by emphasizing the importance of accepting the intuition of children as something that should not be ignored by adults, but rather, be considered by adults as true wisdom: “Children are different from adults in all kinds of meaningful ways. They inhabit different understandings of time, and experience the passing of time differently. They also seamlessly transition between topics that adults would ordinarily not connect in polite conversation (turtles and sex, for example); and often, they place the emphasis differently than adults might by making questions about sex and gender as important or as inconsequential as questions about animals, vegetables, and minerals” (Halberstam xxiii). While asking questions that are seemingly nonsensical and unimportant – for example, “Why is the alphabet in that order?” and “Do penguins have knees?” – it is her question at the onset of the film, “What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?” that shapes the film. It is the question that sparks Luce to offer her ingenious insights, that gets Luce to sit with H right before the bride arrives, that puts Luce in the same room at the moment Rachel is walking toward Heck at the altar. H’s question made it possible for Luce to share that life-changing moment with Rachel. And the fact that Heck took H’s initial question and Luce’s wisdom to heart, and made the decision to leave on that notion, truly reveals just how much this film truly captures the essence of Gaga feminism at its core. 

   The film, Imagine Me & You (2005), therefore, is the exception to Halberstam’s critique of romantic comedy films. Rather than following the familiar plot devices and character caricatures, the film bases its storyline on actual experience, showcases all its characters with realism and heart. It begins rather than ends with a wedding, never failing to point out the weaknesses and problems that marriages can actually create, rather than solve, between people. The majority of the wisdom in the film is carried by a child. In addition, the film features at its core a homosexual relationship, rather than a heterosexual relationship, exploring sexuality in subtle, unexpected ways. This is a film that truly embraces Jack Halberstam’s concepts of Gaga feminism, and defies what the typical film of the romantic comedy genre may provide. Love, according to Imagine Me & You (2005), is something that just happens in the unexpected moments that represent the complexity called life. Love is uncontrollable, and unexplainable, and people should accept love, in all its forms, as such. And that is, in itself, a beautiful message.

Works Cited

Cook, Cameron. “From the Mind Of… Ol Parker.” Fox Searchlight Pictures Blog. Twentieth Century Fox, 29 Nov. 2006. Web. 12 March 2014. <http://www.foxsearchlight.com/post/669/from-the-mind-of-ol-parker/>;.

Halberstam, Jack. Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal. Boston: Beacon Press, 2012. Print.

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