burning like matchsticks in the face of the darkness

PEAFOWL
Saturday Apr 13 @ 7:30 pm
ArtsEmerson Paramount Center

Myung is a transgender [woman] who cut ties with her family and hometown because of who she is. Now, all she needs is the surgery but the only way to earn money, by winning the Waacking dance competition, didn’t go well. One day, she receives a call that her father passed away and Myung finds out that her father left a will that he will give her the legacy if she performs Drum Dance during his 49th memorial ritual. With no choice left, Myung goes back to her hometown to perform according to her father’s will.

This film is presented in Korean with English subtitles.

(idk why the blurb just says "a transgender")

WQ says: "This Korean film explores queerness in many ways, but one of the coolest ways is how Myung, our trans lead, explores her queerness with dance, specifically waack. Also this film has a story line about queer elders being there for the next generation and that always gets us teary eyed."

The lead actress is IRL a trans woman waack dancer (whose film debut was in this writer-director's 2020 short film "God's Daughter Dances").

About a week before this film, I saw a Tumblr post about literal peafowl that are arguably FTM ("Because this transition only occurs when the hen’s working ovary (they only have 1, the left one) stops working (or fails to start), thus ceasing production of the hormones which suppress male plumage, they are not fertile. They also do not change sex organs, just their plumage.") or intersex ("These peafowl grow in and retain sex characteristics of both hens and cocks, for their entire lives. They do not lay eggs or court, the way the other sexes do. Unlike a hen in henopause, they do not transition into or out of this state- they are born to it and remain in it their entire lives.")

Alas, this did not come up in the film.  Though I did read a review that said, "[Writer-director] Byun [Sung-bin] has previously stated that the title Peafowl was deliberately chosen over the term Peacock or Peahen. The gender-neutral term describes the story’s fierce heroine perfectly, as she has no need to fit into the boxes that society tries to put her in."

There are a couple moments where Myung basically says, "I just wanna be how I am -- and calling myself a 'woman' is what makes that make the most sense to other people."

Myung is hella high femme in pretty much every outfit (complete with killer eye makeup, etc.) -- but she also goes for runs in pretty standard athletic wear and light makeup (possibly the movie version of "no makeup," since she submerges her face in water one time). This is the second film in the festival where I've made this sort of note, and I appreciate that we're at a place where trans women get to just be women.

I went to this film on my own because Abby didn't wanna deal with the transphobia/misgendering aspect (Myung's family refuses to acknowledge that she's a woman).  There was less of that than I was maybe expecting?  Which I say not as a criticism of my partner's choices, just as an informational note.  (There's also some bonus homophobia, fyi.) It's very much a driving force behind a lot of the plot stuff (and also a very present background for some of our characters), but in most of the moment-to-moment, Myung's focus gets to be on other things.

I wasn't entirely sold on some of Myung's character arc (it's maybe a little rushed?), but I overall enjoyed the film.