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  • Weighted Expectations upon Jodie Foster’s “[I’m not] Coming Out [to You] Speech”
  • Dustin Bradley Goltz (bio)

“You understand, I can’t carry on these conversations with people I don’t know.”

—Jodie Foster from a transcript of a phone call with John Hinckley

As Jodie Foster took the stage to accept the DeMille Award at the 2013 Golden Globe Awards, she was nervous, uneasy, unpolished, and awkward. Some thought she was drunk, lacking eloquence and refusing accommodation to the audience in a manner that felt “a little off.” It was, in relation to conventions of decorum and expectation, just a little queer. What else would we (should we) expect from Jodie Foster, and why want for otherwise? Like many of the characters she has portrayed on film, Foster embodied heroic confidence and strength interrupted by fragility, uneasiness, and the visibly human seams of doubt. This was not a polished, refined, leap-to-your-feet, crowd-pleaser performance. It was uncomfortable, more worthy of a 1980s film “slow clap”1 that patiently and uneasily coaches the crowd into a trajectory of understanding and support. However, unlike the awkward possibilities opened up in those suspended discomforts (and transformative discoveries) of the cinematic “slow clap,” public coming out speeches have become all too anticipated and routine—products of generic devices, conventional expectation, and established formula. I am interested in exploring the performative and rhetorical expectations that weighed upon Foster’s speech, specifically those she failed to accommodate. In addition, I want to examine the pleasure and power I derive from Foster’s [End Page 180] performance, marking the delightfully queer violations and complications she enacted through her [not] coming out speech.

A weighty expectation has hovered over Foster for years, anticipating, hoping, and, at times, actively coaxing Jodie Foster to publicly declare her sexual identity. Watching the Golden Globes, I experienced giddy pleasure in Foster’s refusal to come out in a manner that is PR tested and Oprah approved. She violates the lukewarm, vanilla, normative decorum that so routinely permeates the televised award show. You know, those pandering moments of tearful testaments of spousal love, Meryl Streep’s ritualized humility and the perpetuated illusion that Jennifer Aniston (or Sandra Bullock or Julia Roberts) and you would be “such great friends” if only you had the chance to hang out. Look at Anne Hathaway. Young, charming, and each moment she navigates is on the mark, screen-tested and publicly endorsed. Her acceptance speech tribute to Sally Field was beautiful. America swooned because, once again, she does everything right. In fact, she was so sweet, kind, and gracious (and that pixie haircut was just so stylish!) that public opinion turned on her by the end of awards season. Her sincerity stopped registering as sincere, feeling overly screen-tested. By the 2013 Oscars, Hathaway was mocked and media were celebrating the seemingly “down to earth” and “go with the flow” playfulness of Jennifer Lawrence. It’s a deeply gendered game of celebrity performance and this has never been Foster’s gig.

Put another way, Jodie Foster is not your friend. She doesn’t want to be your friend. She does not want to be your gay role model (or your sidekick). She does not know you, and pushes against the rhetorical PR branding strategies that work to convince audiences they do know her. She does not owe you an apology, an excuse, access to her personal life, details of who she loves, who she fucks, who she raises, who she is friends with, or how she defines her relationships with others. Ironically, this just makes me love her all the more. Sorry, Jodie.

As she stood in front of a room of her immediate peers, yet was simultaneously broadcast into the homes of millions, Foster explicitly and paradoxically denounced her participation in the ever-encroaching “reality show” that accompanies fame, celebrity, and the Hollywood industry. She chooses to work in cinema, but not work on celebrity. Considering the groans and anger from many gay and lesbian activists expressed following her “[I’m not] coming out [to you]” speech, it is clear that some gay and lesbian activists were engaging with Foster’s speech...

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