The
Eyes of Tammy Faye
PG-13
Cinema
21
616 NW
21st Ave., 223-4515
7, 8:45
and
10:20 pm Friday-Thursday, plus 1:30, 3:15 and
5 pm Saturday-Sunday,
Aug. 11-17
$6
Jessica Hahn,
the wench who lured poor innocent Jim Bakker into bed and
then blackmailed him, appeared in her own Playboy
video about the events.
Tammy Faye lives
in North Carolina with her second husband.
Jerry Falwell
accused Jim Bakker of homosexuality when taking over his
empire.
Baby Jane Hudson looks like an overgrown doll dragged from
underneath a backyard porch by a nosy dog. Her curls are
unraveled and her white little-girl dress gives her the
look of a model in a very naughty Japanese fetish magazine.
She looks to the sky and sings, "I've written a letter to
Daddy. His address is heaven above."
This scene from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
is inscribed in the camp yearbook. The wantonness of Jane's
lust for fame and the pathetically creepy time trap our
"heroine" is stuck in only add to the allure for many a
man light in his loafers. Could someone ever be so lost
in her own mind that she doesn't see reality? Or are we
more like Baby Jane than we'd ever dream?
This dark 1962 classic struck a chord with the American
viewing public, but it took on a life of its own among gay
men. The film is like a torch (song) passed from generation
to generation, and Baby Jane's flippant taunt to her sister--"But
cha are, Blanche, cha are"--is almost a password to enter
the homo world. To queers everywhere, Baby Jane--insane,
dramatic, driven, imprisoned and wrongly accused--became
the star she always wanted to be. For a group of men often
stuck in their own mansions of segregation, Baby Jane came
to symbolize the she-beast inside, just waiting to get her
chance to feed rats to the straight world. But the most
important thing to note about Baby Jane is that she was
chosen by the boys in pink; she didn't choose them.
Now, in the documentary film The Eyes of Tammy Faye
by gay directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, Tammy
Faye Bakker Messner is being positioned as the next queer
icon. Bailey and Barbato have a history of creating films
for the gay market, including a movie about an HIV-positive
comedian and The Real Ellen Story, which documented
Ellen DeGeneres' coming out; the duo won an award from GLAAD
in 1998 for their contributions to gay and lesbian programming.
The intended audience for Eyes is never a secret,
and the "cast" is stacked with homos: RuPaul does the narration,
gay minister Mel White gives insight to Tammy's importance
in televangelism, and queer comedian Jim J. Bullock, who
shared a short-lived TV talk show with Mrs. Mascara, tells
us that when the world ends all that will be left is cockroaches,
Cher and Tammy Faye.
Tammy Faye's story, like that of the besieged queer icon
Judy Garland and her tormented offspring Liza, is filled
with drama, eyelashes and the slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune. There are many reasons to expect that Tammy Faye
too could become a gay superhero like Judy and Liza. It
would seem to be a sure bet that the rainbow troupe would
rally behind yet another messy, gushing woman that no one
can keep down (or quiet).
The story is enticing. Twelve years after the downfall
of her husband and career, the false-eyelashed former televangelist
is presented here as a salt-of-the-earth everywoman doomed
by the evils of greedy, sneaky Christians and the greedy,
sneaky media. The unsinkable Tammy Faye fights illness,
drug addiction, loneliness and rejection, with one eye always
on getting back in the spotlight while the other eye is
being gunked with mascara.
Eyes does a good job of giving us more than we've
ever known about Tammy Faye and her rise to fame and infamy.
The filmmakers try to flip our perception of what took place
when the scandal hit in the 1980s. The general theme is
that Tammy Faye and Jim were naïve do-gooders who were
snookered out of their hard work many times by conniving
Christians and feasted on by a hungry media looking to find
a symbol of the decade's greed and shallowness. We see Tammy
and Jim when they started out doing Christian puppetry for
children. Puppets are also used by the filmmakers to break
up the different chapters of the film, and certainly there's
a not-so-subtle nod to the idea that Jim and Tammy were
marionettes controlled by others.
This is an intriguing documentary, but even more so when
viewed with jaded eyes. If you're a media hound, watching
filmmakers try to manufacture an icon specifically for the
gay community is in itself entertaining. Still, the film
takes a provocative stand in presenting the flip side of
someone we already think we know and allows us to question
the past.
Should we adore Tammy Faye? What we see is a genuinely
sweet woman who amuses herself and others with her off-kilter
faith: she seems to have been touched and even fondled by
an angel. Her TV appearances were unscripted, and audiences
connected with the realness that flowed forth. Early on,
she embraced AIDS patients on Christian TV (by far a first)
and made a plea to her viewing public to help them. Her
faith is strong, as is her attraction to people of all stripes.
Tammy Faye seems to be an open book; indeed, that may have
led to her downfall. But a scene in the film where she tries
to persuade the president of the USA cable network to give
her a television show where she uses puppets to talk to
children is sad and slightly frightening. Does she really
believe she can jet back to her early beginnings when she
innocently got her first taste of fame with her twisted
Lambchops for Christ? Images of the grotesque Baby Jane
in her stunted attempt to rekindle her fame flashed back.
Whatever happened to Tammy Faye? So much and nothing at
all.
The Eyes of Tammy Faye might seem like the perfect
recipe for creating the next great camp goddess, but there's
one problem the directors failed to notice: These important
icons can't be planted--they have to grow on their own.
The film seems to be shaking you by the shoulders and shouting
in your ear: Take Tammy Faye, love her, buy the kitchen
magnets and funny bumper stickers. But it's not that easy.
Since the beginning of time, our gay godfathers haven't
liked anyone to tell them what to do, who to like and how
to decorate their caves--and they're not going to start
now.
|
