The Queer Performance of Tilda Swinton in Derek Jarman’s Edward II: Gay Male Misogyny Reconsidered

Gay male misogyny has become a cliché. From the novels of Alan Hollinghurst and David Leavitt to recent gay themed films such as Trick and Broadway Damage, woman’s abject presence is used as a defining other for the gay male bodies. Myopic critics have cited Jarman’s films in the same league. This article will argue that Jarman does not represent his favourite actor - Tilda Swinton - as an abject sponge. Instead, Swinton’s performance evokes an interrogation of the assumed stable continuum of the sexed body and gender. Through a camp performance, Queen Isabella (Swinton) offers the Butlerian potential of exposing the performativity of gender. The film continually stresses a Brechtian distanciation between Swinton’s gender performance and her famously androgynous body.