Subversion

Patrick’s potentially subversive identity begins with his choice of name. He chooses his nickname after St Kitten, otherwise known as St Cettin, who was an acolyte of St Patrick (BOP). According to Patrick, St Kitten has been referred to at different times as both he and she. She also claims that both St Kitten and St Patrick wore dresses. As no one questions St Patrick’s gender, Kitten does not see why she should not be allowed to wear a dress. An important difference between Transamerica and Breakfast on Pluto is that Kitten’s male identity is not made invisible the way Bree’s is. Bree hides her masculinity and avoids the type of gender ambiguity that Kitten enjoys. Kitten’s story begins as Patrick and even when she has transformed into a woman, she refrains from being “all” woman.

She deliberately makes her masculinity visible in certain situations in order to rid herself of unwanted male attention. Bree refrains from revealing her male identity at all cost. As a result Transamerica appears less subversive than Breakfast on Pluto, which allows queerer representations of gender.

According to Butler (1993: 231), drag “serves a subversive function to the extent that it reflects the mundane impersonations by which heterosexually ideal genders are performed and naturalized and undermines their power by virtue of affecting that

exposure”. Although neither protagonist classifies as drag, some of their apparel suggests high femininity that is very characteristic of drag, such as Bree’s insistence on wearing pink and Kitten’s preference of lace and fur coats. The characters can denaturalise gender originality and stability but they can also serve the re-idealisation of heterosexual binary gender norms. The effect of Bree’s all-pink clothing creates a feeling of artificiality even though she is a transsexual woman played by a female actor. Butler (1993: 231) states that exposing the naturalised status of the heterosexual binary might not lead to its subversion.

Bree’s appearance is like an impersonation of what a feminine woman should be. If the audience sees Bree’s femininity as a result of her feminine identity then her denaturalising performance does not call heterosexual norms into question but rather reinforces them.

This seems to be the encouraged reading of the film.

However, another reading is possible. Following from the claim that Bree’s femininity is perceived by the audience as artificial, this “unnaturalness” might not derive from the fact that she is not a “real” woman but rather that what she believes constitutes a

“real” woman is strange and outdated. Her hyper-femininity could be read not as an imitation of an original gender but as revealing the unnaturalness of the demand of femininity; although, this is certainly not Bree’s intention. Bree actually seems not to perceive herself as out of the ordinary. In a situation where her sister offers her a pink feather jacket to wear, Bree states, “I’m a transsexual not a transvestite” (TA), which means she thinks transvestites “overdo it” when it comes to clothes. But her own

“overdoing” femininity is what makes Bree somehow less feminine than a woman-born-woman – a “real” woman-born-woman need not make that much effort. Bree’s failure to seem “natural”

coincides with Butler’s (1993: 125) claim that the idealised gender performance that the norm demands cannot be fully achieved, thus revealing the problematic of heterosexual performativity.

In appearance Kitten represents a similar femininity as Bree, but unlike Transamerica the emphasis of Breakfast on Pluto is not so much on this outward appearance. Jordan has stated that “the emotional heart of the character” is much more important to him than “all the accessories” (Future Movies 2005). Actually, Kitten does not try to look like any woman; she most identifies with and tries to look like a famous actress named Mitzi Gaynor, who people have told her strongly resembles her biological mother (BOP). As a result, her desire for femininity, especially high-class femininity, might not result from an internal female identity at all but rather a desire to be like her mother, something considered usual for young girls. The similarity between mother and

‘daughter’ is also represented through Bree whose traditionally feminine behaviour, correcting people’s grammar and a dislike of swearing are traits that she shares with her mother, who is otherwise represented as an opposite to Bree (TA). As Bree’s behaviour is represented in the film as performative, her mother’s femininity is, through analogy, revealed as equally constructed. Reading Bree’s and Kitten’s femininity not as a naturalistic result of an internal female identity but as something that they have adopted from their mothers results in the possibility of subverting the idea of stable gender identity.

Kitten, who is actually played by a male actor, leaves a more “natural” impression on screen than Bree. Kitten’s male and female identities do not seem to contradict and exclude each other. While Bree’s in-between state is something that needs to be overcome (TA), Kitten is able to present the in-betweenness as a possible and viable option of living (BOP). The film includes the representation of trans people who exist within their ambiguity. One of the examples of Kitten’s ambiguousness is her clothing. Due to the era in which the film is set, the 1970s, it is not easy to differentiate between every outfit as either male or female. Firstly, the fashion of the time is more androgynous than contemporary clothing. Secondly, it is not easy for a contemporary viewer to distinguish

between male and female clothing: what appears as feminine today may have been a fashionable male outfit back then. Kitten wears dresses and skirts but also trousers, although seeming to become more feminine and ladylike as the film progresses. This is probably linked to her moving from her small Irish town to London where she is freer to visibly perform her femininity. The move to London is also necessary because she can blend in better in an urban community and avoid confrontations that are more likely to occur within her Catholic hometown.