El armario de McLaren: expresión y ocultación del deseo homosexual en la filmografía de Norman McLaren, a través de la reinvención del cuerpo y el espacio

Abstract

[EN] Norman McLaren’s homosexuality has not been taken into account in readings of his work, which is often characterized as abstract and highlighted for its technical value. We propose to bring his sexual orientation to the foreground, outing his work from the episthe-mological closet where it remains cornered. We will use the surreal Love on the Wing as an entry to that hidden and codified in order to thus interpret the birds that appear in his films as representations of the author’s homosexual desire, as well as all the flying and mutating ele-ments, which participate in a dialogue among his surreal, abstract, and even realist works. We shall see how after the censorship of Love on the Wing, McLaren could have wanted to make this sexual code more difficult to read and how this tension and ambivalence created a fluid, frag-mented, very queer body and space as far as the meaning that the new phenomenologies and theories of space and body are giving us. McLaren’s intention was gradually to make the corridor disappear, so that the viewer’s initial imprisonment would give way to the freedom of the infinity of space. McLaren once said his fascination with space came from being accidentally locked in a cupboard when he was about 7 years old.

[ES] La homosexualidad de Norman McLaren no ha sido tenida en cuenta en las lecturas de su obra, que suele resaltarse como abstracta y por sus valores técnicos. Proponemos traer su orientación sexual a primer plano, sacando su obra del armario epistemológico en el que sigue esquinada, usando la surreal Love on the Wing como entrada a lo oculto y codificado, para así interpretar las aves que aparecen en sus películas como representantes del deseo homosexual del autor, igual que todo aquello volador y mutable que dialoga entre lo surreal, lo gráfico, abstracto, e incluso realista. Veremos cómo después de la censura de Love on the Wing McLaren pudo haber querido hacer las representaciones sexuales más difíciles de leer, y cómo esta tensión y ambivalencia crearon un cuerpo y un espacio fluidos, fragmentados, muy queer en los sentidos que las nuevas fenomenologías y teorías del espacio y los cuerpos están proporcionándonos.