There’s a scene in Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine in which Arthur (Christian Bale), a young and repressed teen in England, stares longingly at the TV set and then spontaneously points and shouts to his parents: “That’s me! That’s me!” He’s just been confronted with the unabashed queerness of Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a fictional glam rock star, openly admitting his own bisexuality in a press conference. This daring act of liberation deeply resonates with Arthur, and like anyone who has ever felt themselves to be what society might deem the “other,” he latches on to the idea that he might one day be as free as the celebrity on screen. Yet, Haynes only grants the audience a fleeting moment to revel in Arthur’s hopeful declaration before revealing that it was simply a figment of his imagination. An action he could’ve taken if he lived in a world that was more tolerant, a world that encouraged self-expression instead of thriving on facade. This very act, of longing for freedom in a society that poisons its own by championing falsehood is a throughline across Haynes’ body of work. He interrogates what it means to conceal oneself for the sake of societal conformity, and to withstand both physical and emotional punishments simply for the chance to be like everyone else. Yet, Haynes also understands that this is not all without hope, showing the ways in which we find solace in those who present as more free, and communicating that the pain in separating yourself from normative society is ultimately worthwhile. In a career spanning decades, Haynes crafts a deeply personal canon that understands not only what it means to hide, but the painful reward of truly being free.
Haynes’ first widely noticed short, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story is a medium mixing biopic of singer Karen Carpenter, in which Carpenter herself is played by a Barbie doll. In his non-traditional depiction, Haynes comments on the societal pressure to achieve manufactured perfection, a craving that has eaten people alive in their own perceived imperfection. Carpenter, while being an adored singer, was anorexic, a facet of her life she developed due to the societal belief in an ideal female body. She was then forced into shame rather than help by the very same ideal that believes women should hide the parts of their life that are deemed the most uncomfortable. Using a Barbie doll, Haynes comments on Carpenter’s mental illness, as her warped perception causes her to lose sight of how unattainable perfection is, clinging on to an ideal akin to a plastic toy. Haynes satirizes and empathizes with Carpenter’s pain, commenting on the split between her beloved exterior persona and her self-hating interior. It is this dichotomy, the one between the inner self and the self presented to the world that is threaded throughout Haynes’ work. It is a strikingly queer experience, that of hiding in order to evade societal scorn, that also lends itself to a larger feeling of being an outsider. Haynes, a gay man himself, infuses all of his work with an inherent queering, while also capturing deeply personal and more universal experiences. Karen, while struggling with her own self-hatred, served as an idol and inspiration for so many of her fans, who viewed her as a perfect girl next door incapable of hurting anyone, much less herself. But it is in our own longing to be like the celebrities we admire, that we disregard their internal processing, forcing them to conform to an image created by our love for them without knowing the ways in which perception poisons them.
While Carpenter resorted to starving herself to become what she thought those around her wanted, Haynes’s fascination lies also in more physical acts of punishment craved by those who believe their abnormal existence is worthy of pain to stop it. In both his debut feature Poison and his short Dottie Gets Spanked, Haynes depicts a longing to be “normal,” to conform away the, in this case, both implicitly and explicitly queer aspects of one’s life. Both films capture the story of a young boy, implied to be queer, and his fascination with spanking. This act of physical punishment, an act that had a normal place in society as a way to reprimand children, takes on a psychological role in both boys’ development. In Poison, young boy Richie Beacon would have his older schoolmate spank him in private, asking to play family in which Richie took on the role of the disobedient son. While perhaps also carrying a sexual connotation, in Richie’s development, spanking takes on the subconscious role of reprimanding his own abnormal, queer, thoughts.
Steven (J. Evan Bonifant), the protagonist of Dottie Gets Spanked, similarly longs for a punishment for his own obsession with Lucille Ball-like sitcom star, Dottie Frank (Julie Halston). His prepubescent idolization of Dottie renders him weird in the eyes of both his peers and his patriarchal father. Steven, who finds solace in Dottie’s freedom of expression, also develops a morbid fascination with spanking, a punishment many of his schoolmates experience but his parents refuse to do to him. Like with Richie before him, Haynes captures Steven’s fascination with spanking as a consequence of his own hatred for his internal oddities and queerness. In tandem with Karen Carpenter’s anorexia, Haynes comments on the human urge to punish ourselves for simply existing in an abnormal way. In his depictions of punishment, Haynes renders normative society as villain to those who wish to be unabashedly themselves. He understands and conveys these feelings of longing for societal acceptance with a deep empathy, showing ultimately the sacrifices outsiders must make in order to fit in with what the world around them has molded.
Haynes captures not only the ways in which normative society attacks our mental well-being and urges outsiders to punish themselves, but also the ways in which ignoring the terror of normality may inadvertently cause a sort of self-poisoning. While the protagonists of some of his earliest works understand that they are different from society’s mold, hence their desire for punishment, Haynes is also interested in the ways in which the oblivious unknowingly hurt themselves by doing what they think is right. In 1995’s Safe, Haynes depicts a housewife, Carol (Julianne Moore), who begins to fall ill to an unknown ailment called environmental illness, caused simply by existing in our normative world. Throughout the film, Carol begins to grow more and more sick, from what she claims to be reactions to chemicals, until she is sent to a medical recovery commune. It is there that a commune leader urges Carol to accept herself, not as an attachment to her husband or to society, but as a human being with her own needs. It is this self-acceptance that will cure her pain. Haynes uses Carol’s physical poisoning to call attention to the mental poisoning of conforming to a life decided by society, a life not lived for herself but for other people.
Where Safe uses physical and environmental metaphors to indict society’s pressure to conform, 2002’s Far From Heaven uses melodrama to emphasize and stylize the gravity of accepting what society encourages. Cathy (Julianne Moore), the film’s protagonist, is a loving 1950’s housewife forced to confront her husband’s homosexuality. In this revelation, she initially encourages him to seek treatment in order to retain their picture perfect life. Yet, as she embarks on a flirtation with her Black gardener that makes her feel more passion than she ever has, Cathy becomes less content with merely conforming and longs to truly live. In his overt heightening of both homophobic and racial violence (both physical and verbal), Haynes dramatizes what is still pervasive in our current world. In the act of melodramatic stylization, he intentionally calls attention to what comfortably rests under the surface of our normative society. In her initial attempt to quiet the truth of what looms beneath a curated suburban surface, Cathy realizes that to quiet is to effectively silence and to be silenced is to not live. Similarly to Carol in Safe, Cathy’s plight stems from her inability to live a life that is her own.
This very same plight is repeated in perhaps Haynes’ most well known film, Carol, as he further captures the same crushing suburban ideals through a romance between two women. Therese (Rooney Mara), the film’s doe eyed protagonist is forced to question her own happiness in her life and relationship after embarking on a tension-heavy friendship with an older woman, Carol (Cate Blanchett.) As what begins as platonic develops into a tacit and beautiful romance, Therese finds her perception of her life’s trajectory permanently altered. When the two have to break up to protect Carol’s custody of her daughter, Therese finds that she cannot simply return to the life she inhabited before. In the act of uprooting her belief in conformity, she learns to accept her own wants and needs as an individual, an outsider. Like both Cathy in Safe and Carol in Far From Heaven before her, Thereses’ fate of simply conforming and existing is a byproduct of a world that would rather pretend things that challenge normality don’t exist than to make any move to accept them. It is their resistance to conformity that allows all three women to truly be free.
This very same societal urge to silence is perhaps most ardently captured in Haynes’ Dark Waters. The film, a biopic of Robert Billott (Mark Ruffalo), follows his journey from being a corporate defense lawyer towards his eventual uncovering of a DuPont chemical company conspiracy. DuPont had been knowingly poisoning thousands of people through their water in order to cut costs and evade regulation. This act of a corporate, capitalist incitement of a physical poisoning fits exactly in line with Haynes constant commentary on the pain of conformity. While not a poisoning of the mind, the chemicals in Dark Waters act as a physical metaphor for what those in power knowingly do to their constituents in order to keep a normative society intact. Hence, Haynes follows Robert, the disrupter of this facade, someone who is able to decide to see beyond what is easy and break free from the way society naturally operates. This is reflected within both Safe, Far From Heaven, and Carol as well, as all four protagonists must confront the choice to remain the same or deal with the side effects of living in truth. Urging the audience to make the same bold choice as the protagonists, Haynes is reaching out to the outsider, not just the queer one, but those who feel as though they have become disillusioned with the world around them and long for a space of acceptance, of freedom, and one where their decisions are consequential.
Yet, as the outsider longs for a world of freedom, Haynes also understands the value in finding solace in others to stay afloat, specifically in the idolatry of the liberated celebrity. Many of us outsiders, who have felt intermittently unwanted, and un-accepted, have clung to a world that feels more glamorous, more free than ours, the world of the celebrity, a world of fiction. Haynes is fascinated by this act of making idols out of the people brave enough to exist authentically. With his documentary The Velvet Underground, it is clear that Haynes is first and foremost a fan, an outsider who felt his experience lighten with the presence of someone, some band, to look up to. Hence, the experience of the celebrity, as not only an idol but as an outsider, someone who has used the system to exist outside of it, is of particular interest to Haynes. Beginning with Karen Carpenter, Haynes examines both sides of fame, a depiction of the pain in maintaining a public persona, and the fact that the persona can be something that resonates deeply with those who simply need someone to look up to.
Hayne’s glittery Velvet Goldmine perhaps captures the crux of this in its double narrative centering on the rise and fall of a glam rock icon, Brian Slade, and the former fan turned journalist, Arthur, assigned to write a piece on uncovering the truth behind Slade’s downfall. Throughout the film we see how the beauty and freedom of glam rock draw Slade in and build him up, until a life of excess and an indifference to genuine connection slowly tear him apart leading him to stage his own death. While excess freedom tears Slade apart, his uninhibited image gives the young Arthur a reason to believe that one day he himself can be just as daring and as openly queer. In depicting both sides to this, Haynes acknowledges that it is the mirage of fame (and of the total freedom it promises) that entices so many. Yet it is the very distance between fame and the fan that allows the mirage to exist, and the attainable chase of its perfection that causes the celebrity to break. Velvet Goldmine builds upon Dottie Gets Spanked in the way in which celebrities are depicted as human on par to their fans, not as someone above or beyond them. The final images of Velvet Goldmine show Arthur and Curt Wild (Haynes’ Lou Reed stand-in, Ewan McGregor) having sex and simply enjoying each other’s presence and humanity. It is in the happy, domestic imagery that both the fan and idol are on the same level, acknowledging that it is human connection via shared interest, emotion, and experience that truly allows for a freedom and a happiness. While fame and idolatry can help those who need it, it is embracing yourself that allows one to transcend it.
While the making of an idol in the eyes of a fan usually pertains to those who only know celebrities in their public persona, Haynes captures the making of a personal celebrity as a means of coping with familial distance in Wonderstruck. Rose (Millicent Simmonds), a young deaf girl, is depicted as a dedicated fan of a famous silent film actress, until it is revealed to us that she is actually the actress’ daughter. In the reveal that her idol is actually her distant mother, Rose’s solace in the celebrity becomes one of an intentional distance; it’s easier to accept that her mother is a completely detached film star than a woman who abandoned her child. The distance between fame and the fan can be a mirage used both to ignite and calm the pain of solitude. Perhaps the amalgam of his understanding of the multifaceted nature of celebrity is presented in I’m Not There, his deeply unconventional Bob Dylan biopic. In this film, Haynes captures Dylan’s impact by having six actors play the singer, or rather, representations of the singer’s many eras and personalities. This storytelling strategy captures the myriad of ways and moments in time in which people have found solace within Dylan. Perhaps it is his scrappy lyrics from his youth, or his daring decision to go electric. The varying depictions of Dylan’s spirit captures his persevering celebrity, and forms of connection to his audience. I’m Not There values feeling over fact, never insisting upon Dylan’s notoriety, instead using the ways in which his persona has evolved to connect with so many as a way of garnering meaning. Like Haynes’ other films both before and after it, I’m Not There understands both facets to fame, the personal and the public, and both critiques and embraces them. In a society eager to control those who break the mold, Haynes understands fame as both a way out and a way in, in that the painfully controlled persona a celebrity must uphold for fame may be the very same persona that allows an outsider to break apart and live for themself.
What perhaps sets Haynes most apart from his peers is that despite his depiction of the pain of being different, his films are resoundingly hopeful, with endings that lend themselves to an uplifting journey beyond the runtime. Queerness, in its marginalized presence, is often tied to unhappiness, with painful endings for beautiful love stories. Haynes instead reaches out to the outsiders who have found themselves in these tragic stories and offers them a cinematic representation in which self-acceptance and freedom win out. At the end of Wonderstruck, protagonist Ben (Oakes Fegley) is joined by his grandmother, Rose (the deaf girl introduced to the audience when she was only a child, Julianne Moore), after having searched for a family to fill his pain of losing his mother and going deaf, and they peer over a model of New York City. United in their mutual otherness, the two look at the world they inhabit, in its now miniscule form, and it looks inviting and accepting, as if in their connection they gain control over a society eager to make them feel different for their disabilities. Haynes offers this same solace to his viewers, forming a connection with the audience that is similar to the newfound kinship at the end of Wonderstruck. Haynes offers the idea that one doesn’t need to have all the answers, all the companions, and all the romance to find self-acceptance and a world, albeit a cinematic one, that embraces all aspects of who they are. In Todd Haynes’ eclectic filmography, he cries out to the outsiders in his audience and says “Come here!” welcoming them with open arms into a world where self-acceptance and the finding of a community are as easy as staring at the Lou Reed poster on your bedroom wall.
