I Don't Know, Penelope Spheeris
Recycled content from the Letterboxd, movie recycled for the Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing, a masterpiece in death-driven, anti-relational curating
Jimmie dismissing Linda asking if he attended the first WeHo pride parade with “What for? I’m already liberated.”
His reply, rather than reading as a trite comment (how early this film is!) or naive dismissal of queer radicalism, delivers a cold shock to the object of liberation itself & reminds us how seeing transness implicates us in playing with the impossibility of imaging the negative, internal. In its surprisingly glamorous treatment of suburban LA, the film is unable to offer telos as a stable object or easy conclusion, even when Jimmie leaves to New York. He continues to get his nose broken, and in Linda’s speculations, continues to “like” it, as much as everyone around him wonders if Jimmie relishes the anticipation of not “knowing” what gender he is. All the play of Kevin McCarty’s photos of curtained stages on the verge of a performance beginning, except Jimmie’s gender play suggests to us the performative dimension itself of lying in wait. In other words, a horizon appears, but unlike telos it is notably indeterminate. If the film makes us feel belated, still incipient in our reckonings with gender fixity, we must not forget it never meant to. A gentle rejoinder to retreat inwards, drop off telos’ slippery slide.