How Seeing Nonbinary Representation on Screen Allowed Me to See Myself
By Anita Markoff
Looking around the cinema, I could see faces of the cinematically underrepresented in the audience- people with mustaches wearing dresses and others with long hair, boxy trousers, and lipstick. I was able to attend the world premiere of ‘Ashley’, hosted by Glasgow Film Festival and it was about to be my first viewing of a film by a non-binary director.
As we settled into our seats and a hush fell over the crowd, we were able to hear the director, Jamie Crewe, self-described as “a beautiful bronze figure with a polished cocotte’s head, currently a them” speak about their experiences creating ‘Ashley’. They began describing ‘Ashley’ as a rural horror about the main character, Ashley, seeking refuge from the struggles and stares of their everyday life.
Jamie continued on with detailing the excitement of the crew when working on such a personal project, despite the physical difficulty posed by operating equipment in frigid Scottish temperatures and receiving welts on their legs wading around in rivers. This introduction was just a peak at all of the extensive work, challenges, and heart that went into the creation of this beautiful film. Jamie’s gratitude for having been selected as the tenth awardee of the Margaret Tait prize, which enabled them to create their first feature-length film, was clear.
As I excitedly researched the film prior to viewing, I had seen that the central character, Ashley, had been referred to by the pronouns in the synopsis of the film. I’m a person currently coming to terms with my own fluid gender identity and to read they/them pronouns, see Jamie on stage, and even be there at all for the premiere of this film that is so proudly out of the binary- is incredible to me.
As the story unfolded it became clear this was more of a transition narrative, but still, one that spoke to the experience of living outside clear binary categories of gender identity. The filmmaking style of ‘Ashley’ presents a mind-body dualism. The images are overlaid with a non-diegetic monologue, which instantly introduces a separation between thoughts and physical reality. The idea that what you feel like maybe at odds with what you look like is prevalent throughout the film, and one that resonated with me.
I look like a woman. This means most of the time, in public situations, I get treated like a woman. I am harassed like a woman, told someone else can do the heavy lifting in the workplace, talked over in a classroom, and not expected to ask for seconds at a meal because I am not ‘a growing boy’. Like Ashley, I have often felt keenly the difference between how I appear and how I feel inside, and that my mind and body are separate things.
The environment starts out simple and domestic, but there are uncomfortable lingering close-ups on Ashley’s troubled face. We enter Ashley’s perspective as the camera tracks them through the liminal space of the cabin and their expansive nature walks, experiencing the growing disquiet they feel. They are centered in every shot, but their body is deconstructed by the camera, which I thought spoke powerfully to how the heteronormative gaze in society formulates our identities through a visual dissection of physical parts. It’s funny that people create an idea of who I am through my long hair, my sometimes-painted nails, and the glitter on my eyelids. Small parts of my body are added up to form an assumption of who I am and what I am like when the reality is you can only know that by interacting with me. I saw this in Ashley as well. A shared experience of humans discovering who they are and forming themselves beyond the expectations of society.
The importance of vision plays is explored further in a disturbing episode in the woods where Ashley’s vision becomes fractured and kaleidoscopic. They can barely find their way back home. I saw this as an example of how the scrutiny society turns on people who do not fit neatly into a gender binary can alter our own sense of self, and the way we see the world. Once back in the cabin, Ashley closes the curtains to shut out the possibility of being looked at. However, the tracking shots give the impression that something is spying on and following them, an invisible menace it is impossible to fully escape. In my own experiences, I receive strange looks if I cut my hair short, or buy clothes from the men’s section. I get asked if I’m sick when I don’t wear make-up to work. Sometimes it feels easier to shut myself away from the world and the fear of its expectations of me, this path that Ashley is on is so familiar. Whether this something is a real person, a monster, or a figment of Ashley’s imagination is never clarified. But I believe it stands for the threatening gaze of a society that others cannot categorize into the neat box of a binary.
Ashley expresses their struggle with feeling at peace in their own body through dialogue when looking in the mirror saying “From certain angles I looked correct, from certain angles I looked like I used to look.” Framed in this way, I was made aware acutely of how I, as an audience member, was complicit in the gaze upon Ashley that they find so harmful. In some ways, I was the monster they were afraid of, participating in watching them being presented through different angles and trying to determine their identity from that display.
The camera has a particular focus on elements of Ashley that traditionally indicate femininity. There are close ups of their green nail polish, longingly hanging up a dress they are afraid to wear, and an unexpected trickle of blood on their thigh reminiscent of a first period. This exposes the horror of being a woman and the horror of not quite being one. Their desire to be seen as one is clear, but yet they are disgusted by womanhood- associating it with abandonment and illness, and are frightened by menstruation. Although my situation is different, I understood the fear of having my real gender-fluid identity recognized, alongside the fear that it won’t be. I want to present my masculine side without the toxic qualities it’s associated with, such as being overpowering or selfish. I also want my feminine side to be acknowledged without being over-sexualized or controlled.
I thought ‘Ashley’ was a sensitive and carefully shot examination of the challenges faced by people who operate outside of traditional ideas of gender. I viewed this film but felt like I was slowly dissecting, analyzing, matching, or comparing portions of their experience to my own experience. This is not something I’d been able to do in the past, but Jamie’s work was opening a new portal of understanding in my life. This production did a great job of bringing to light this multitude of issues people like me face daily, and how they intersect. The way the outside world sees me influences my mental health, which can cause physical ailments and paranoia. Although categorized as a horror film, I didn’t feel scared by it, because the fears it presents to the audience are ones I encounter frequently in my own life.
I got a chance to speak to Jamie Crewe briefly after the screening and discussed where the sense of dread stems from in the film. They said: “Is it mental illness, or the outside world, or a physical ailment, or an imaginary monster? It’s all of them.” The work of nonbinary directors is needed on-screen in order to enhance the recognition of these difficulties on screen. Art is a way for all of us to learn and understand each other and hopefully after this film and more like it - others will approach people like me with more compassion and understanding in real life.
Anita Markoff is a freelance journalist and published poet, who is currently doing a Creative Writing MA in the frosty north of Scotland. Any fragments of free time are spent watching lesbian films or horror films or even better, a mix of both. Their favourite films all seem to include a club sequence with blue or red lighting where people are dancing and laughing to indescribably sad music (Victoria, Water Lilies, Nina, Thelma).