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116 FE/MALE IMPERSONATION
This metaphor of dust blinding the audience to the “truth” about Barbette
suggests that it is not only what Barbette himself does to enact the gender role of
the “other,” but that the mystifications of the entire theatrical apparatus support
the illusion as well. It is also clear from Cocteau’s description of his own
spectatorial response that the duplicitous nature of this “illusion of woman,” this
absent presence, is the source of his fascination. He writes:
Barbette moves in silence. In spite of the orchestra which accompanies his
act, his graceful poses and perilous exploits, his turn seems to be far away,
taking place in the streets of dream, in a place where sounds cannot be
heard, it seems to be summoned by the telescope or by sleep.
(in Crosland 224)
Here Cocteau describes his spectatorial intervention in terms of fantasy, a fantasy
evoked by the distance between himself and Barbette whom he describes as
being far away, unreachable, dreamlike, unavailable to consciousness. Fantasy is
also evoked by the condition of absence constitutive of the experience of
watching film. Indeed, Cocteau relates the effect of Barbette’s turn to film:
The cinema has supplanted realistic sculpture. Its marble figures, its large
pallid heads, its shapes and shadows with splendid lighting replace what
the eye previously demanded from statues. Barbette derives from these
moving statues. Even when one knows him, he cannot lose his mystery.
(in Crosland 224)
Cocteau is not so much blinded by the dust Barbette throws in his eyes as he is
transfixed by it, suspended by the duplicity of the image Barbette constructs.
Cocteau contends that Barbette retains his status as enigma even for spectators
who have already witnessed his turn and know he will pull off his wig at the
finish of his act to reveal his masculine self. Cocteau would attribute Barbette’s
mystery to his ability to send mixed, incongruous signals of masculine and
feminine in the guise of a single gender, seducing even those spectators who
know better into, once again, believing he is a woman.
But I think it also has to do with the ways in which the image of woman
circulates in the representational economies of dominant culture, especially since
Cocteau identifies the experience of watching film as the source from which
Barbette’s sense of mystery is derived. The absence of live objects and bodies
constitutive of film resonates profoundly with the absence of woman as speaking
subject in the construction of woman as presence, as body. The appropriation of
this construction by male performers marks a kind of cultural neologism in the
form of an image that resists definition and at the same time generates an excess
of meanings. The strict polarization of man/ woman in heterogendering
precludes the possibility of reading men in drag “wholistically.” Female
impersonation provides, in short, a seemingly endless source of fascination