Abstract
Gus Van Sant’s biographical movie Milk raises several questions that are typical of the biopic genre itself, the issue of truthfulness, respect, representation, legacy, and bias. But it also fueled controversy as to the treatment of the queer issue which was considered as far too mainstream by some critics. The mixed feelings come indeed from the tension between exploring a popular genre and representing the queer issue in a transgressive creation both in form and content. This article therefore focuses on Milk’s compliance with the generic frame of the biopic. It also explores the political and poetical Real of the movie Milk and the difficult process of sublimation of history and legacy in a creative process.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The Lacanian concepts of real, imaginary, and symbolic are the structures of the psyche that control our desires and constitute the three orders of the intersubjective world, as theorized by Lacan. The concept of the imaginary indicates both the capacity to form images and the alienating effect of identification with them, as in the mirror stage. The symbolic is primarily the order of culture and language; this is the order into which the subject is inserted or inscribed thanks to the Oedipus complex and submission to the name of the father. It is the social world of linguistic communication, intersubjective relations, knowledge of ideological conventions, and the acceptance of the law (also called the “Big Other”). The real is not synonymous with external or empirical reality, but refers to that which lies outside the symbolic and that which returns to haunt the subject in disorders like psychosis (Lacan 1986: 71).
Works Cited
Adorno, Theodor. Aesthetic Theory, trans. C. Lenhardt. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984.
Als, Hilton. “Revolutionary Road.” The New York Times, N.p., March 12, 2009. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/mar/12/revolutionary-road/. Accessed on June 18, 2017.
Anderson, C. and J. Lupo. “Hollywood Lives: The State of the Biopic at the Turn of the Century.” In S. Neale (ed.), Genre and Contemporary Hollywood. London: British Film Institute, 2002, 99–104.
Anderson, C. and J. Lupo. “Off-Hollywood Lives: Irony and Its Discontents in the Contemporary Biopic.” Journal of Popular Film and Television, vol. 36, no. 2 (2008): 102–111.
Benshoff, Harry M. “Milk and Gay Political History.” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, vol. 51 (2009). http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc51.2009/Milk/index.html. Accessed on June 19, 2017.
Bingham, Denis. Whose Lives Are They Anyway? The Biopic as Contemporary Film Genre. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010.
Bowen, Peter. “Mighty Real: Gus Van Sant on Milk.” Filminfocus.com, November 12, 2008. http://www.focusfeatures.com/article/mighty_real_gus_van_sant_on_milk?film=milk. Accessed on June 17, 2017.
Bruzzi, Stella. Undressing Cinema: Clothing and Identity in the Movies. London: Routledge, 1997.
Custen, George Frederick. Bio/Pics: How Hollywood Constructed Public History. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992.
Farr, Hannah Mary. Mapping Contemporary Cinema. Queen Mary: University of London, 2011. http://www.mcc.sllf.qmul.ac.uk/?p=1396. Accessed on June 18, 2017.
Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire XX—Encore. Paris: Seuil, 1975.
Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire. Livre VII. L’éthique de la psychanalyse. Paris: Seuil, 1986.
Lacan, Jacques. (1959–1960) The Seminar of Jacques Lacan—Book 7, Ethics of Psychoanalysis, trans. and ed. J.-A. Miller. London: Routledge, 1992.
Lacan, Jacques. Séminaire XVI—D’un Autre à l’autre. Paris: Seuil, 2006.
Miller, J.-A. “Dossier Suture: Suture (Elements of the Logic of the Signifier).” Screen, vol. 18, no. 4 (1977): 24–34.
Miller, Jacques-Alain. “Extimité.” In Mark Bracher, M.W. Alcorn, R.J. Corthell, and F. Massardier-Kenney (eds.), Lacanian Theory of Discourse: Subject, Structure, and Society. New York: New York University Press, 1994, 74–87.
Nicoletta, Danny. “Milk.” Set Decor, Winter, 2008/2009. http://dannynicoletta.com/pdfs/nicoletta_setdecor_milk.pdf, accessed on June 10, 2017.
Rose, Jennie. “The Last Refuge of Democracy: A Talk with B. Ruby Rich.” GreenCine.com, May 7, 2004. http://www.greencine.com/article?action=view&articleID=119. Accessed on June 12, 2017.
Setoodeh, Ramin. “The Death of the Biopic.” Newsweek, N.p., February 2, 2010. http://www.newsweek.com/death-biopic-75249. Accessed on June 10, 2017.
Simpson, Mark. “There’s Just One Problem with Milk: It Castrates Its Hero.” The Guardian, N.p., January 28, 2008. http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2009/jan/28/milk-gus-van-sant-sean-penn. Accessed on June 15, 2017.
Tarkovsky, Andrei. Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987.
Virilio, Paul. War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception. London and New York: Verso, 1989.
Wood, Michael. “At the Movies.” London Review of Books, June 2008. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/michael-wood/at-the-movies. Accessed on June 15, 2017.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Van Peteghem-Tréard, I. (2018). Queering the Biopic? Milk (2008) and the Biographic Real. In: Letort, D., Lebdai, B. (eds) Women Activists and Civil Rights Leaders in Auto/Biographical Literature and Films. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77081-9_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77081-9_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77080-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77081-9
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)