Queen Victoria famously didn't believe in lesbians, didn't think they were possible, let alone desirable, certainly nothing to codify in law with punishment for their fantastic habits. Today we know better, or do we? Have we been tricked into thinking that lesbians exist, and from there been led into the error of accepting as "lesbian" anyone who says they are, until the category stretches to absurd dimensions, and lesbians once more disappear into a mist of wannabes, pretenders, and social-media constructs indistinguishable even to those who ought to know better? These questions arise in contemplating the film A Gay Girl in Damascus: The Amina Profile, opening July 24 at the Roxie Theater.
The mystery that lesbians represent to people who are not lesbians is equaled only by the mystery the Middle East represents to the Western mind, but nothing beats the mystery of our own foreign policy, unless it's the geography or geopolitics underlying that policy. In my Francophile naivete, I expect French people to be savvier: they understand history, geography, and the downside of imperial rule. I'm sad to say the French film in question fails to render a comprehensive analysis of the subterfuge practiced by Tom MacMaster, who as "Amina" created a "Gay Girl in Damascus" blog self-described as "an out Syrian lesbian's thoughts on life," on February 19, 2011.
Raise your hand if on a world map you can point to Syria without searching. Raise your other hand if you can explain what the U.S. is trying to do to that country, how long it's been trying to do it, and who among the players has received taxpayers' dollars to achieve deniable ends. For the record, Syria sits beneath Turkey, to the west of Iraq, to the east of Lebanon and Israel, above Jordan. I know because I looked at a map, because I'm one of the ignorant Americans this film, with its odd bifurcate title simultaneously appealing to gay, spy, wonk, and geek demographics, is designed and marketed for. The film will leave you as ignorant as you enter, unless you believe people you meet online are who they say they are.
For 101 minutes, director Sophie Deraspe floods the screen with fictitious reenactments, machine-gun fire, atmospheric riffs on Arabic instruments, fuzzy shots of clashes in unidentified streets, indecipherable images, eerie music, a shadowy figure wandering narrow alleyways, gratuitous shots of "Assad regime" bullies and torture, and lonely "lesbian" flesh, along with the expected talking-heads in San Francisco, Chicago, D.C., Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Beirut, and possibly Syria itself. The narrative thrust, if you will, is also bifurcate, torn between a lovelorn leading lady who foolishly falls in love with Amina, and what exactly MacMaster's machinations signify about the nasty Western habit of mucking about in the Middle East. Of the two, unsurprisingly, only the foolish lesbian attains closure.
Of those 101 minutes, you might find the first 40 slow-going, depending on your tolerance for backstory evoked via tedious typing of chat-room cliches between a lesbian seeking same and her mystery woman, interspliced with process shots of the disrobing silhouette of a lithe young stand-in in a characterless room. Although MacMaster's provenance and personality are later superficially exposed, Sandra Bagaria remains a mystery. Which is odd, considering she's the director's friend. The pertinent points that Bagaria's mother is from Morocco, grandmother from Egypt, and great-grandmother from Syria, aren't mentioned. Her intriguing ancestry, not uncommon in France, suggests Bagaria's motive in seeking out a virtual Syrian lesbian to fall in love with. When I interviewed her in the Castro last month, she said people who are "only white" bore her. Imagine her disgust when after innumerable texts, sexts, and 135 blog posts, Amina was outed not only as male, but American and white.
At about minute 40, the film picks up speed and relevance, suddenly deconstructing Amina's mediatized spycraft, cramming in tasty tidbits like the five-word comment from Anonymous, "You've been trolled by Mossad." The tip flashes onscreen and disappears. So did an American agent for the Israeli secret service invent a virtual Syrian lesbian to attract and distract Westerners from actual Syrian political realities during the ballyhooed "Arab Spring" of 2011? The answer to that question depends not on what we wish to believe, but on access to accurate information. Where is such information to be found? Not in corporate media, not in A Gay Girl in Damascus . The film does warn Westerners that your otherwise blameless exotic foray into erotic tourism might be a CIA plot.