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Priscilla


It is quite apparent that throughout the course of the film Bernadette, Felicia, and Miztie are traveling along with the entrapment of the male gaze. This journey that they are taking shows an attempt to question the heteronormality of the road and to put into question the hierarchy of power that is present. The suppression that these individuals face is a result of the road being presented to them as a structured place in which there is a marking of male normative dominance. We, the audience are able to see proof of Mr.Webster’s ideas on queer suggesting an idea of worthlessness, suspicion and the ability to be questioned by those that they encounter on the road. After Bernadette, Felicia, and Mitize reach their first destination they are immediately rejected until they are capable of proving their normative masculinity. When Bernadette is attacked by another female at the bar she challenges her to a drinking match in which she is the successor. This provides her along with her other travel mates the freedom to be free of the dangers of homophobia at the particular moment in time. The fixity and stasis of normality is continuously dependent on place. When the women are stuck out in the desert we are able to see the difference in treatment of those that are living outside of the walls of society and those that have allowed themselves to become an active component in reinforcing social norms of heteronormality.

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