Shadows and dresses and hair oh my!

After reading "(Not) queering “white vision” in Far from Heaven and Transamerica", I really wanted to watch Transamerica, and finally managed to do so last night (thanks, iTunes). I won't talk about it, as that's not what this blog post is supposed to be about, but it was at the very least interesting.

My first observation with Far from Heaven, which I had seen previously (in an American Studies class), was that the scenes with Frank and Cathy are all dark. Even a shot of them and then a shot of different people in the same room, the former shot is much darker/dimmer. Some literal foreshadowing there. I also noticed something the BFI review picked up on:

Long shots transform the Whitakers' living room into a prison, confining Frank within the set design, plunging him into the shadows

In other words, Frank is kept in shadow and at a distance from us, and presumably from Cathy. And perhaps from himself; being gay (if he would even use that label; I won't assign it to him) in that era was extremely difficult. It wasn't legal, for one thing. Anti-miscegenation laws would be overturned well before anti-gay laws, and gay marriage still isn't legal. While Cathy's relationship with Raymond was taboo, it was not illegal, and would really have fewer repercussions than Frank being openly a man who has sex with men (MSM). He could lose his job for that (still can in most states), could have his children taken away, could be committed. Frank does not want to be like this; he wants to be normal, is willing to do anything to achieve that. He keeps his identity in the shadows and at arm's length from himself, too. Which is not unusual, of course; even today many, many people try to be or pretend to be straight before coming out, sometimes for years.

One of the things I found really fascinating about Cathy, and I mentioned this in class, is how very feminine she was. Her friends wore shorter, tighter outfits, even pants(!), but Cathy remained in the crinolined skirts and girdles that were on their way out of style. Was this just her personal preference? Was she trying to look more stereotypically womanly and thus sexy, hoping that pushing her breasts into tight bras would attract Frank?

And one more thing: the kids, or at least Janice, had red hair. Like their mother. Except Cathy didn't have red hair; she didn't have the same haircolor as Janice, and she certainly didn't have Julianne Moore's usual gorgeous, deep, flowing red. It was a more subdued strawberry blonde. Our attention is drawn to the fact that Janice looks like her mother. Are we to assume that her hair lightened as she grew older (which of course happens), or that she dyes it, or is this signaling something, perhaps a fading of her spirit (women do, we are told, define ourselves through our hair)? Ponder!