Janna King

May 2008

Contemporary British Literature and Film

“Women are Trouble”: Feminism in The Crying Game

The Crying Game expresses a desire for humanity to overcome socially constructed binary stereotypes and encourages men to embrace traditionally feminine ideas, but problematically discourages women from taking on masculine roles. Fergus, Jody, and Dil embrace feminine characteristics of nurture, self-sacrifice, and open-mindedness, which let them transcend racial and sexual borders. Maguire does not embrace these values and is punished for it with his death. The only female character in the film, Jude, is portrayed stereotypically as a femme fatale: violent, seductive, powerful, and dangerous. She is punished by being killed by Dil, so that the real woman is destroyed by the man taking on a female identity. In the 1980’s, many British films were rebelling against the conservative Thatcher government, dealing with topics of race, sex, and gender, as well as a dissatisfaction with the current state of Britain. These themes continued into the early nineties, with The Crying Game being produced in 1992. British literature of the eighties and nineties also primarily focused on these topics, particularly issues of post-feminism. While the film successfully questions our ideas of binary identities of Irish/British, white/black, and gay/straight, its portrayal of women is more problematic.

Britain had a Conservative government with Margaret Thatcher’s election as prime minister in 1979 until her resignation in 1990. British cinema during this time period was mostly in opposition to the Thatcher government’s ideas and values (Hill xii.) Under Thatcher, there was a widening of economic inequalities and social divisions. There was also an increased intolerance of sexual difference caused by Section 28 of the 1988 Local Government Act which prohibited local authorities from “intentionally promoting homosexuality” (Office of Public Sector Information). The introduction of this policy backfired on the government because “rather than silencing and marginalizing lesbians and gays, the introduction of Section 28 set in motion an unprecedented proliferation of activities which put homosexuality firmly on the agenda in Britain” (Stacey 302). The government also cut back on welfare and limited immigration. All of these factors contributed to the films and literature of that time focusing on identity issues of class, race, gender, and sexuality (Hill xii).

Although realism in film was popular during the 1980s, it was often mixed with other styles like European “art cinema,” the “woman’s film,” and the thriller (Hill 136). It could be argued that The Crying Game has elements of all these film genres. The film is concerned with present social issues as in realism (including women’s issues), has the plot of a thriller, and can be classified as an independent art film. The Crying Game can also be seen as one of the movies of the “new queer cinema” that emerged in response to the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s (Murphy 125), although it differs in that it is not a “coming out” story or other more traditional queer storyline. The protagonist, Fergus, does not identify as homosexual, although he is forced to grapple with his sexuality and masculinity after meeting Jody and Dil.

In fact, at this time, there emerged the theme of men and masculinity, often portrayed as being in crisis. In the late eighties and into the nineties, there was the depiction of the “‘new man’—characterized in a frenzy of media discussion as supportive, in touch with his emotions, keen to share equally in the predominantly female burdens of childcare and housework and open to spending money on his appearance” (Murphy 158). Some, like The Crying Game, went as far as to explore the fluidity of gender and sexual relations. However, “when the fallout of post-industrialism and Thatcherism collided with the gains of feminism, [it] produced a strand of male-focused films whose gender politics were more masculinist than feminist” (Murphy 157). For example, despite writer/director Neil Jordan’s pro-femininity message, he is not promoting feminism due to his reinforcing the bonds between men and leaving women out of that discussion.

“Third-wave feminism” is a term from the 1990s to describe a backlash against the second-wave feminism, which was a movement during the sixties and seventies. While first-wave feminism focused on overturning legal obstacles to equality like suffrage, the second-wave also addressed unofficial inequalities like equal opportunity in the workforce and sex discrimination. Third-wave feminism does not have a specific agenda, but deals with issues that are viewed as limiting or oppressing women. This usually encompasses queer theory, transgender politics, issues of social class, sexuality, and race, and a rejection of the gender binary. The Crying Game addresses all of these issues, but not actually within the context of women and feminism. One of the problems with the film is that while Jordan might consider the movie to be in support of women, he still is unable to fully extricate his ideas from patriarchal society. A problem with men in the feminist movement in general, particularly in the second-wave, is that “no matter how well-meaning pro-feminist men appeared to be, at the level of sexuality and relationships they were all implicated as having a vested interest in status quo” (Whelehan 178). Despite Jordan’s attempts as at subverting the status quo, he ultimately still utilizes the 1940’s film noir stereotype of the dangerous woman.

Jude is the only female character in the film apart from Dil, who identifies as a woman, but is, biologically, a man. The first time we see Jude, her dirty blonde hair is up and she is dressed in a lower-class outfit of a glittery denim jacket, miniskirt, large hoop earrings, and white high heels in order to seduce Jody. Later she is seen with her hair down, dressing modestly in bulky oatmeal-colored sweaters and no make-up. Her position in the Irish Republican Army (IRA) is subordinate to her male peers. Maguire tells her to “shut up” whenever she voices her opinion. She is also the only one to serve tea to Jody. Although certainly not a feminist role model, her depiction seems realistic and she is still a believable person at this point.

However, her character changes when she shows up in London. Her hair is now short with blunt bangs and dyed dark brown, her lips deep red. She wears sexy dresses, heels, and leather gloves. She tells Fergus, “I was sick of being blond. Needed a tougher look, if you know what I mean.” Adding even more to her new femme fatale look, when she is leaving Fergus’ room after giving him a surprise visit, she is pointing a gun at him and walking backwards out of the light, disappearing into the shadows, as if she is in a film noir. She becomes a stereotype in the film once she arrives in London. She is now the dangerous, seductive woman, rather than just playing to be seductive in the first scene with Jody. Her finals words of the movie are addressed to Dil: “You sick bitch,” which could easily be used to describe Jude herself.

Even Jude’s role in the IRA is more powerful after she arrives in London. In this new setting, she appears more like Maguire’s equal. However, Jude never discusses the politics behind her actions like Maguire does and she uses violence unnecessarily. Maguire is more invested in his beliefs, risking his life in order to kill the judge. When Fergus asks the identity of the man whom he must kill, Maguire says, “Doesn’t matter who he is.” Fergus replies, “Thank God for that” and Maguire says, “You being cynical, Hennessey?” Although he acts cruelly without hesitation, for Maguire, there is no question that the IRA’s violence is justified. For Jude, it seems that her main reason for being in the IRA is the pleasure she gets from the power that violence provides her, as well as a rage that fuels her. Violence, emotions, and sex are connected in her view. The femme fatale has been called the “phallic woman” (Handler 37) and this fits in well with Jude’s role in the film. When she comes to Fergus’ room to threaten him into helping the IRA again, she also grabs his crotch and says, “Fuck me, Fergus.” To love violence and sex is typically considered masculine, and so Jude is the villain for taking on these characteristics. When Dil shoots Jude, she asks her, “You was there, wasn’t you? You used those tits and that ass to get him, didn’t you?” Jude using her sexuality to capture her victims is seen as heinous, but there is never any blame placed on Jody for being willing to cheat on Dil with Jude.

If Jude is hyper-masculine, Dil embodies all the traditionally feminine personality traits. She is loving, self-sacrificing, compassionate, and sexy, but not explicitly sexual like Jude. She can also be overly emotional, irrational, and in need of protection. Besides her personality, she has a traditionally female occupation in being a hairdresser. Jude, in contrast, appears to be cold and controlled. However, it seems that underneath her outer appearance, she is fueled by anger and jealousy, unlike her male peers in the IRA, who do not let their emotions get the better of them. They are more “dispassionate about their involvement with violence” (Ayers 333). Jude, on the other hand, uses people’s emotions against them, vindictively blackmailing her former lover Fergus and threatening to hurt his new lover Dil if he does not do what she wants him to do. In this particular aspect, Jude and Dil are both victims of their emotions, in a way that is stereotypical.

Of course, the problem is that Dil is not biologically female. She says, “I was always best at looking after someone. Must be in the genes.” If Dil is naturally more compassionate, loving, and emotional, then it must mean that these are not inherently feminine traits. Jordan is arguing that anyone can be, and should be, “feminine” in this sense. Our gender identities are unfixed. This would be perfectly acceptable as a message except for the problematic “real woman,” Jude. The Crying Game is still ultimately about the bonds between men during warfare and life in general. Since the sole woman character is not allowed to be anything other than a stereotypically unsympathetic villain, the film “celebrates femininity but not women” (Ayers 334). Looking at Jordan’s other films, this theme continues. Breakfast on Pluto (2005) is about a man-to-woman transgendered person, but has no female leads; “in Angel (1982) the only good woman is dead, the other one is involved with terrorists; and in Mona Lisa (1986), the lead female character is a lesbian that [the lead male character] cannot attain” (Ayers 334). Jordan himself said of the destruction of Jude, “Yeah, of course she gets killed… I wrote her consciously as a monster, a monstrous part, because all the men who survive make female choices and the women make male choices. It’s very consciously done” (Burke 18).

The film encourages men to take on feminine traits like generosity and compassion, but when Jude tries to gain power in traditionally masculine ways, she is seen as a cold-hearted “bitch,” to quote Jody. In fact, Jody refers to Jude as a bitch four times in the film, while Dil’s ex-boyfriend Dave calls her a bitch twice. Dave is portrayed as the ultimate sleazy jerk, so what does it say about Jody that he calls Jude a derogatory term so often? Is it acceptable because the audience is supposed to see Jude as a purely evil villain? The problem with this is that when Jody is calling her a bitch, she has not transformed into her femme fatale identity yet. At this point, she is no worse than any of the other IRA members, except that she used her sexuality to trick Jody into capture. Jude using her sexuality for evil is made out to be worse than the IRA men using terrorism and violence to trap their captives.

Interestingly, while Jude represents the “phallic woman,” Dil really is one. That is to say, she appears to be and identifies as a woman, but possesses a penis. Peter Lehman talks about the emergence of the “melodramatic penis” in the films of the 1990s, starting with The Crying Game: “Although these films avoid the conventional polarity of either trying to make the penis an impressive phallic spectacle or an object of pathetic or comic collapse, they still imply that showing the penis has to be of great importance” (3). Despite Jody laughing at Fergus for not wanting to help Jody relieve himself by saying, “It’s only a piece of meat,” the revealing of the full-frontal view of Dil’s genitals acts as the plot twist that shocks audiences, demonstrating the importance of the penis. However, the symbolic phallus as possessed by Jude is more powerful because “the privileged signifier of the phallus most easily retains its awe and mystique when the penis is hidden. The sight of the actual organ threatens to deflate and make ludicrous the symbolic phallus” (Lehman 27). The sight of Dil’s penis does not actually confirm masculinity, but is seen as repulsive in the way that the scene is then filmed as a melodrama. Fergus slaps Dil’s hand away. As Fergus runs to the bathroom, Dil grabs his feet and he kicks her. He vomits into the bathtub as she crouches on the floor. A few minutes later, as Fergus leaves to go, Dil pleads with him not to and grabs him to stop. He pulls away from her and she falls to the floor, saying “Jesus.” All of these images of bodies being knocked around, plus the soundtrack and way the camera is off balance as Fergus leaves the apartment, creates the sense of classic melodrama, traditionally seen as being associated with women (Lehman 25). In this way, Jordan leaves Jude as the phallic woman empowered, but only with the power of violence and seduction, while Dil’s phallic woman is disempowered by her masculinity for a moment. Later Fergus decides to look past Dil’s gender, perhaps reminded of Jody’s words: “It’s only a piece of meat.”

The Crying Game is about breaking down binaries of identity. The unimportance of these binaries is first shown through the bond between IRA man Fergus and his captive, the black British soldier, Jody. Even though Fergus knows he will have to kill Jody, the two of them connect by talking and laughing about sports, women, and being soldiers. Despite their differences of being white/ black and Irish/ British, they share common experiences as men. Maguire cannot participate in this bond because he is focused strictly on the task at hand. After Maguire stays up watching Jody, Fergus asks him, “Did he talk?” Maguire shakes his head. “Didn’t make you laugh?” Maguire purposely does not want to connect with the captive because he knows they will have to kill him. Even if he tried, he probably would not have the sense of humor that Jody and Fergus are able to maintain despite the situation.

The second time Fergus must deal with the breaking down of binaries is when he meets Dil. Dil is also black and British, and assumed by Fergus to be female. Before a sexual encounter between them, Fergus realizes that Dil is actually a man, and is literally sick, vomiting in her bathtub. Besides having to decide what this means about his feelings for Dil, Fergus also has to reevaluate his idea of Jody. He had been having dreams of Jody in his cricket uniform and was obsessed with wondering how Jody would have felt about him being with Dil. Ultimately, Fergus decides that Dil’s gender does not matter and continues to love and protect her. In the movie, though, he never has to deal with the issue of having sex with Dil because he goes to jail and is unable to consummate their relationship. In this way, despite promoting femininity and sexual fluidity, Fergus still is able to maintain his masculinity, sacrificing himself by taking the blame for Jude’s death, thereby protecting his “girl.”

The idea of binaries is best shown in the story of the scorpion and the frog that Jody tells to Fergus. The scorpion cannot help stinging the frog, even though it will lead to his own destruction, because it is in his nature. The film’s message is that identities like race, nationality, and gender are socially constructed and need to be broken down. However, it reinforces the binary between kind and destructive, or maybe more simply good and evil, with the frog and the scorpion story. More problematic is who in the movie represents the scorpion. Jody tells Fergus the fable to illustrate how Fergus is the frog, that even under the circumstances of holding someone captive, he is unable to act cruelly. In contrast, after Jude hits Jody, the following conversation takes place:

 JODY
 Women are trouble, you know
   that, Fergus?
 
 FERGUS
 I didn't.
 
 JODY
 Some kinds of women are...
 
 FERGUS
 She can't help it.
 
 JODY
 Dil wasn't trouble. No trouble at all.
 

As Jude is the only female character in the movie, it could be interpreted that she cannot help her cruelty because it is in her nature as a woman. Because Dil is not really a woman, she does not cause trouble for men. However, she still repeats the scorpion’s words, telling Fergus after he makes her look like a man in order to disguise herself: “Can’t help what I am.” The script says at this point, there is “something incredibly attractive about her” (“The Crying Game Script”). Fergus kisses her even though she no longer looks like a woman, and Dil says, “Knew you had a heart.” Again, Fergus as represented by the frog is reinforced. Dil could then either be seen as a scorpion herself, or maybe a type of subversion of the idea of the binary scorpion and frog.

Ultimately, when Fergus relays the fable to Dil from in jail, he “brings [Dil] into the ‘brotherhood’ by the telling of universalizing myths, stories, and truths” (Edge 184). Jordan states the problematic issue with the movie when he says, “I think that what women find threatening about this movie is that men make choices that exclude them” (Burke 19). It is not unjustified that women would feel threatened. Women have a history of being excluded from politics, including the Troubles in Northern Ireland that is the backdrop of the movie. Jordan’s film, while promoting acceptance and unity of people, leaves out women, so that it really is only promoting a coming together of men.

The Crying Game promotes the destruction of binary identities of sexuality and encourages feminization in men. However, women are not granted the same right to take on traditionally masculine traits without dire consequences. It is not that Jude should be celebrated for her cruelty; rather that Maguire is as involved in terrorism as she is, but yet he is not the villain of the film. Jordan relies too heavily on the femme fatale stereotype in forming Jude’s character. Fergus is the only character to truly evolve and change, which is mirrored in his reexamination of the fluidity of sexuality and gender, but he ultimately still preserves his masculinity. He becomes the hero at the end, saving the “girl” by making a sacrifice and taking the fall for her. The Crying Game can be seen as a love story that transcends gender, race, and nationality. It also celebrates “feminine” ideals of compassion, self-sacrifice, and open-mindedness. The problem is that because the movie promotes this message so strongly, the absence of women stands out even more. If there were just one sympathetic female character, the film’s message could be seen very differently. As it is, The Crying Game does not promote a feminist message in its portrayal of women.

Works Cited

Ayers, Kathryn M. “The Only Good Woman Isn’t a Woman At All: The Crying Game and the Politics of Misogyny.” Women’s Studies International Forum 20.2 (1997): 328-335.

"The Crying Game Script by Neil Jordan." Daily Script. 20 Apr. 2008 <http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/cg.html>.

Dutta Ahmed, Shantanu. “‘I Thought You Knew!’: Performing the Penis, the Phallus, and Otherness in Neil Jordan's The Crying Game.” Film Criticism 23.1 (1998).

Edge, Sarah. “‘Women Are Trouble, Did You Know That, Fergus?’: Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game.” Feminist Review 50 (1995): 173-186.

Friedman, Lester D., ed. Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992.

Grist, Leighton. “‘It’s Only a Piece of Meat’: Gender Ambiguity, Sexuality, and Politics in The Crying Game and M. Butterfly.” Cinema Journal 42.4 (2003): 3-28.

Handler, Kristen. “Sexing The Crying Game: Difference, Identity, Ethics.” Film Quarterly 47.3 (1994): 31-42.

Head, Dominic. The Cambridge Introduction to Modern British Fiction, 1950-2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Hill, John. British Cinema in the 1980s. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Jardine, Alice, and Paul Smith. Men in Feminism. New York: Routledge, 1987.

Jordan, Neil. Interview with Marina Burke. Film Ireland Apr.-May 1993.

Jordan, Neil, screenplay. The Crying Game (Collector’s Edition). Dir. Neil Jordan. Perfs. Stephen Rea, Jaye Davidson, Miranda Richardson, Forest Whitaker, Jim Broadbent, Adrian Dunbar. 1992. DVD. Lion’s Gate, 2005.

Lehman, Peter. "Crying Over the Melodramatic Penis: Melodrama and Male Nudity in Films of the 90s." Masculinity: Bodies, Movies, Culture. Ed. Peter Lehman. New York: Routledge, 2001.

"Local Government Act 1988 (C. 9)." The National Archives. Office of Public Sector Information. 26 Apr. 2008 <http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1988/Ukpga_19880009_en_5.htm#mdiv28>.

Lurie, Susan. “Performativity in Disguise: Ideology and the Denaturalization of Identity in Theory and The Crying Game.” The Velvet Light Trap: A Critical Journal of Film and Television 43: 51-62

Murphy, Robert, ed. British Cinema of the 90s. London: British Film Institute Publishing, 2000.

Stacey, Jackie. “Promoting Normality: Section 28 and the Regulation of Sexuality.” Off-Centre: Feminism and Cultural Studies. Eds. Sarah Franklin, Celia Lury, Jackie Stacey. New York: Routledge, 1991.

Whelehan, Imelda. Modern Feminist Thought: From the Second Wave to “Post-Feminism”. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995.