Mae Martin, Gonzo the Muppet, and Me
It started with Bill Murray.
On September 2nd, 2002, my mother and father rushed to the hospital to deliver their first child: me! Mounted on the wall of the delivery room was a small television and on a continuous loop, the TV screened the classic 90s rom-com Groundhog Day. This would be nothing more than an interesting anecdote if it weren’t for the fact that my infant self was determined to constitute the most theatrical entrance to the world possible. After a trying twenty-six hours of labour (I am so sorry mom), I was born, and for the entirety of those twenty-six hours Bill Murray’s voice echoed throughout the hospital room. Though I am sure after twenty-six hours it grew to be excruciating to my parents, the comic’s voice must have worked its way to my new-born ears because from then on, I was hooked. Movies, comedy, musical theatre, and all things 1980’s would become my life.
Flash-forward to 2010 when some supernatural power beyond my control further solidified my fate when I bought my first pair of high-top Converse and the members of One Direction auditioned for the X-Factor U.K. in the same year. To some, this correlation may be unclear, but this coincidence set me on the course to fulfill my destiny to be a queer, movie-loving, Harry Styles-obsessed, theatre-loving kid, who would confidently and consistently sport bright red Chuck Taylor’s to every function. Given this information, my parents should have known to hide their collection of John Hughes-directed 1980’s rom-coms, because from the moment my pre-teen self placed the disc in the DVD player, I was in love. Cheesy classics like The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Pretty In Pink quickly took over my life and in an instant, I had become obsessed with movies and television.
This admiration for cinema emerged from a deep-seated yearning to express myself. As my love for film grew, I became consumed by this desperate wish to be seen and heard as filmmakers and their characters were. This infatuation became complicated when, like anyone else, I struggled with my identity in many different ways as I got older. I was so deeply in love with film but growing up gender-queer I never saw myself represented on the screen.
Admittedly, Gonzo the Muppet was the only character to come close to representing the (at the time) indescribable way my little gender-queer self felt. I will always have a very distinct attachment to The Muppet Show's resident thrill-seeking stunt man. The awkward, hilarious, avant-garde performance artist blew my little mind. They took enormous pride in every bizarre thing they did and wholeheartedly embraced their uniqueness. Though Gonzo was surely meant to be understood as male, I never perceived the Muppet to exist within the confines of any gender binary. To me, Gonzo wasn’t male or female, the iconic Jim Henson character just was.
After Gonzo, it wasn’t until 2020, when I was 18 years old, that Mae Martin, the brilliant Canadian comedian born in Toronto, co-created, co-wrote and starred in the genius, semi-autobiographical, comedy-drama series Feel Good. The authentic, poignant story beautifully captures navigating fluid gender and sexuality. There is a raw honesty that drives the series, as the character Mae Martin and real life Mae Martin contemplate gender at the same time. As such, viewers are invited to witness the biting, sharp, yet warm, human experience authentically unravel in real time.
My desperate wish to feel seen had been fulfilled; I was visible, I was represented, I was valued, and I was loved. It felt as though my lifelong battle to be seen had come to an end and now I could finally just be.
I will never forget the way I felt the day I began watching the Netflix show. It was a profound happiness like nothing I had ever experienced before. My first thoughts were, “They get it, they see me,” and in that moment my body was met with the most immeasurable calmness. It was as though the buzzing, anxious frequency I had been operating at for so long was replaced with something of a peaceful, validating resonance. My desperate wish to feel seen had been fulfilled; I was visible, I was represented, I was valued, and I was loved. It felt as though my lifelong battle to be seen had come to an end and now I could finally just be.
The right to look, to gaze, to see and be seen is something so often discussed in film theory. To gaze is a form of agency and resistance. Understanding the power behind the gaze provides us with the tools to critique and deconstruct mainstream representations. This is where queer theory comes in to undermine dominant, exclusionary cinematic narratives that consistently give prominence to cisgender viewpoints.
In relation to film, the goal of queer theory is to undo gender and sex-based, binary hierarchies and inequities perpetuated in filmic text. Used as a lens to both identify and confront the ways in which texts bolster heteronormativity, queer theory applies intersectionality as it seeks to appeal to a spectator beyond that of the colonial compulsory white, middle-class, able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual, individual. Queer film challenges heteronormative-film aestetics by accurately representing 2SLGBTQ+ bodies in effort to achieve queer visibility. This ‘queering’ has functioned since the era of Classical Hollywood.
Under the Hollywood Production Code, which was in place for much of the 20th century, ‘deviant’ acts, such as queerness, were prohibited from being depicted upon the silver screen. Queer images still remain part of history despite this heavy censorship and deviation from traditional images of gender, identity, and sexuality existed despite this extreme repression. The confines that The Code had sanctioned forced filmmakers to get creative with innuendos and imagery suggestive of sexuality, ambiguity, and fluidity. With this, ‘queer coding’ was devised in order to deeply code and cleverly disguise queerness in film, and as such, cloaked in allusion, queerness sneaked into motion pictures.
Presently, in 2022, there is no such restrictive production code in place, and yet canonically non-binary characters remain scarce. The coloniality of the gender binary maintains a firm grip on the industry and as such there exists an intense need for film that functions as queer cinema; that which illustrates queer theory as it works to confront the all-to prevailing routine of films that only appeal to the white, middle-class, able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual, individual.
Myself and those who identify under the umbrella of non-binary deserve visibility in the same way as anyone else, and positive representation in film and television is a necessary step towards achieving such. It is incredibly important for film and television to now devote space for all individuals to be represented just as they are, so that we may all simply be. To highlight the experience of non-binary characters in the impactful, visible medium of film is to celebrate us.
With this being said, I would like to take this opportunity to formally thank Gonzo the Muppet for demonstrating a feeling that I could not articulate as a kid. And also Mae Martin, the parasocial love of my life, for allowing me to feel seen. I am eternally grateful to both immensely talented comics for bringing non-binary characters to the screen. Seeing them on screen was confirmation that I am enough, just as I am, in my infinite queerness.
Illustration by: Valerie Letts
