what is it about women named sally and the art they make

amarah lists things she enjoyed about sally potter's 1992 film orlando

Full disclosure: I have not read the Virginia Woolf novel. I am normally a book-first kind of person, but Sally Potter’s Orlando kind of just happened. I had been meaning to watch it for a while (after reading the book, of course), but then it was assigned in Mitchell’s film class, and I figured, no time like the present!

Also, “spoiler warning.” I feel like it’s not *really* that kind of movie, but, you know, you’ve been warned.

Anyway, it was great, guys. It was really great. And I’m just going to tell you some things I liked about it. This will not be deep. There will be no sociocultural analysis. I will just be gushing.

Brief Synopsis

Orlando lives for 400 years and gender-bends.

(There’s lots of other silly stuff that goes on too)

Depiction of Queen Elizabeth I

Ruling for forty-five years,¹ Queen Elizabeth I, sometimes called the Virgin Queen, never married and did not produce an heir to the throne.² Because she was neither a wife nor a mother in a time when those were the two things a woman could be, she had to get creative with her branding. Often, Queen Elizabeth would describe herself as the mother of the nation, positioning her subjects as her children.³ This helped her appear caring and empathetic, as well as more socially acceptable. At the same time, Queen Elizabeth had to put forward a sort of masculine energy; femininity was not associated with leadership, after all. In a 1588 speech, Queen Elizabeth I said, “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king.”⁴ In this one sentence, Elizabeth moves herself across the gender binary for her audience.

To be clear, this is not me calling Queen Elizabeth a protofeminist gender nonconforming icon, an inspiring girlboss queen, etc. The gendered language she used to make herself appeal both sufficiently feminine and sufficiently masculine is simply interesting. And it is interesting in the context of Orlando because Queen Elizabeth I is played by a male-presenting actor.⁵ By keeping the character of Queen Elizabeth female while casting a male-presenting actor, Potter was able to communicate the sort of hybrid-gender lens through which British subjects in 1600 might have understood their queen.

Again, not a monarchy apologist. Just think it’s interesting.

(Shoutout to Mitchell on this one, because we had a conversation about the depiction of Queen Elizabeth I after the movie, and I don’t remember how much of this idea was his vs mine. I did come in strong with the Queen Elizabeth I background knowledge though, so I feel like I’m allowed partial credit. Still, everyone say thank you Mitchell!)

Gender Bending

The gendered depiction of Queen Elizabeth I is obviously fascinating, but she is not the most obvious or prominent example of interesting gender bending in the movie. Orlando themselves is on a fascinating journey, and Tilda Swinton rises to the challenge of this demanding role!

A little more explicit context: Orlando starts the movie in the year 1600, with an anatomically male-presenting body. Shortly before death, Queen Elizabeth I gifts Orlando with what seems to be immortality. Orlando spends the next 400 or so years gallivanting, trying to make literature, falling in love, getting over love, and falling in love again (and what else is there to do with your time, really?). In the year 1750, after Orlando spends some time in the Ottoman Empire (a section of this movie that I’d need another post to properly unpack; it was unfortunately hard for me to tell, sometimes, how much it was critiquing Orientalism vs straight up engaging in it – made harder by the fact that ✨it was the nineties✨), Orlando wakes up one day in an anatomically female-presenting body.

One key thing to note in Orlando’s journey with gender is that they find themselves unable to meet the rigid gender expectations of their time, even as they move through time and gender. As a man and as a woman, in 1600 and in 1850, Orlando is suffocated by convention. Orlando itches for change.

When we meet Orlando in 1600, his depiction by Tilda Swinton clues us into the fact that he may not feel entirely at ease in his male body. By casting a female-presenting actor to play Orlando, Potter wants us to notice the ways that he is outcasted or marginalized by maleness at the time. We see this in Orlando’s early resentment towards women as well, especially after he is rejected by the Russian princess. Tilda Swinton’s portrayal allows us to understand Orlando’s negative feelings towards women as a thinly veiled struggle to understand where gender roles end and human beings begin.

Costumes

CAN WE TALK about Tilda Swinton in her 1750s fits. If you haven’t seen the movie, do yourself a favour and Google “Tilda Swinton Orlando 1750s” right now. Ornately decorated dresses with massive floor-length skirts. She was serving. Absolutely serving.

More than that, I loved how the costuming interacted with the movie’s themes. After Orlando’s sex transition in 1750, she is depicted, for the first time, in a stiff, heavy dress with a large skirt. Beautiful as she looks, Orlando suddenly finds herself having to twist and turn to maneuver herself through rooms and hallways. As a woman, Orlando is suddenly highly visible, taking up more space than she wants or intends.

Additional Things (no context)

• Often the movie feels like it’s showing you the world through Orlando’s eyes. The charming fourth wall breaks work with this effect to create almost an unreliable narrator feeling, which is neat in a film context.

• Orlando is literally an eternally youthful being, and yet they still struggle with endings, beginnings, and inherent temporariness. Watching Orlando discover the pain in joy and the joy in pain is beautiful.

• On that last point, there’s totally an About Time factor to this (shoutout Tess!). Just like time travel through your own life, a 400 year romp through space, time, and the gender binary gives you loads of perspective. In the early part of this movie, Orlando is overcome by melancholy regarding the fact that good things do end. And, hey, I know a lot of us are feeling that right now. By the end, however, Orlando has learned to locate the beauty in that and to really feel it. If anyone knows how to do this in under 400 years and without time travel, DM.

• I love how much Orlando loves poetry and literature in this movie. End sentence.

So that’s about it! This probably isn’t interesting if you haven’t seen Sally Potter’s Orlando, and–you know what?–that’s okay. I am simply writing my silly blog posts! Stay tuned for more coherent content next time, and thanks for reading :)

1. trust me bro

2. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elizabeth-I/Accession#ref59200

3. https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/portraits-queen-elizabeth-i#:~:text=Over%20time%2C%20Elizabeth's%20virginity%20became,portraits%20of%20Queen%20Elizabeth%20increased.

4. https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/queen-elizabeth-speech-troops-tilbury

5. The role of Queen Elizabeth I was played by queer actor, writer, and activist Quentin Crisp. Crisp lived from 1908 to 1999 and saw great advances in the LGBTQ+ rights movement. For the majority of their life, Crisp identified as a gay man. However, in Crisp’s posthumously published work The Last Word, they express identifying as a transgender woman towards the very end of life, despite continuing to relate to and identify with gay men (https://www.wussymag.com/all/quentin-crisp-remembering-the-actor-author-and-queer-pioneer).