Being someone or defining who to be can be a tremendous task that can take years to accomplish. Some of us are lucky enough to be born into what we want to be and fit it correctly; others have a hard time searching and adapting to an ever changing definition of what the world would like them to be. This is the main themes of Butch Mystique by Debra A. Wilson and Rehearsing a Dream by Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon. Through this essay I will show how gender representation is a significant issue often negated in the African-American lesbian community and how being artsy can be a difficult task for young people. I will compare and contrast both documentaries based on their main themes and their ability to present the issue.
Firstly, Butch Mystique by Debra A. Wilson is a documentary targeting the ethnic butch lesbian community, their history and their struggle, by chronicling the life experiences of different women who identify themselves as butch in the GLBT movement.
Butch Femme Society
Mikhail Baryshnikov in New York, 1984.
Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear, January 1889 Oil ...By the same token, Rehearsing a Dream by Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon chronicle the lives of several talented high school students who spend a week immersed in the world of art trying to define who they are and trying to perfect their craft. Both documentary center heavily in finding the real definition of people: the persons portrayed challenge the definition that society has given them and instead the documentaries show their understanding of who they want to be to the world.
More to the point, this idea is exemplified in Butch Mystique in where the camera asks each one of the interviewees what it means for them to be butch. The responses are varied, many are contradictory but they do all coincide in the fact that being butch is...