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misscammiedawn · 2 months

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Bit (2019) - Queer Reclamation of Stolen Youth

CW: Blood

Bit is a 2019 movie written and directed by Brad Michael Elmore and starring transgender actress Nicole Maines. The story follows a young transgender woman named Laurel visiting her brother in California and being recruited to join a women's only gang of queer vampires.

A group that is ruled strictly by a rigid rule set.

The very first scene makes this clear, introducing the leader of the gang, "full blown fucking dyke" Duke, as she kills a freshly turned male vampire and sentences one of her gang's members to a year in "the hole" for attempting to add a boy to their ranks.

They must all adhere to their 3 rules of operation. The final and most important being:

"No fucking boys." That is to say no boys are allowed to be included in their group... but the literal read is also true. Lesbians only.

The story begins in earnest with the introduction of a main character having just graduated high school in a rural town and about to travel down to spend the summer in LA with her older brother.

During her first scene at a graduation party a drunk classmate approaches her to tell her how brave she is and she retreats to spend a moment with Andy, her sole friend, who implies an attraction to her brother and admonishes her for abandoning him, saying that she is never going to return and that when she finds her people she will likely forget about him.

The movie knows it is queer media for a queer audience. For how much the entire movie is about LGBT themes it often is kind enough to leave things implied. Andy is Laurel's gay best friend in high school and the two of them rely on one another as the only source of queer community in their environment. Andy sees Laurel escaping as abandonment because he knows all too well that she will get a taste of the progressive lifestyle in LA and will never return to their pacific northwest town to go back to masking and hiding. He knows their friendship is over, even if Laurel doesn't yet.

All too often it happens. People never expect it at first but when someone finds their community, their people it becomes impossible to remain in the ponds and pools they were once in. T4T relationships work so effortlessly because there's an entire rich inner language that we have from common experiences that are so difficult to translate to cis friends and yet are inherently understood by others who have lived it. It's not just safety in community it is understanding.

All of this is communicated through vibes. All Andy directly says is "you're going to meet interesting people and you're going to forget about me" and his homosexuality is revealed through a flirtatious comment about Laurel's brother.

Laurel's gender identity itself is only addressed through implications (like hiding her larynx with a shoelace choker that gets mentioned in dialogue a few times) or roundabout statements. The word "trans" is never uttered once in the film.

"Men can't handle power. They have it already and look at what they've done with it." "What about me. [I'm transgender]" "Never even crossed my mind."

"I just wanna say-- what you've done [coming out as transgender] is just so cool."

"People aren't going to be patronizing [about me being transgender], are they?" "People aren't like that here. As much."

"I never stood in the way of you becoming who you are [transgender] but it turns out who you are is a selfish bitch."

I have watched this movie with people who did not realize that either Laurel or her actress Nicole Maines were transgender. I cannot understand how they couldn't see it but they couldn't.

On her first night in LA she goes out to a club to see a rock concert. The movie shows Laurel is defensive, getting violent with someone who invades her personal space and she spots someone (a vampire hunter who suspects her of being in the coven) starring her down. The movie is putting us in the mindspace of a young transgender woman in a new space unable to detect threats. She feels like she is being clocked and targeted by everyone around her.

It's not until one of the vampire gang approaches her that she is able to lighten up. In dialogue they imply recognizing her as queer with "you're not from around here, I can just tell" style dialogue. Laurel is quick to allow herself to be taken away to the vampire's hideout where she gets to be with her people for the first time.

To avoid this being one of those "I just sum up the movie with no analysis" posts I'll trust that those who are intrigued will watch the film and get to the point.

Laurel is fed upon by one of the lesbian vampires and before the kill can happen Duke, the leader, stops it and allows Laurel to complete the transformation into a vampire because she "reminds me of someone I used to know"

She is referring to herself.

A time when she, a 15 year old lesbian, ran away from her midwest home to NYC to find queer community. She notes that even homeless and performing sex work opposed to her preferences, she was happier because she was living free and as herself. She learned how to thrive.

Duke sees in Laurel the same thing she herself lived in the 1970s, directly tying the socio-political landscape of gay youth of the time with trans youth of the modern era. Watching over their shoulder, fearing being targeted, unable to exist comfortably without the safety and understanding of community.

She says it very directly in her pitch to Laurel while inviting her to join the "V-Club"

"We're politically, socially and mythologically fucked. Our roles are secondary. Our body's suspect, alien, other. We're made to be monstrous so let's be monsters. [...] What we offer is not the chance to join a group but to truly be an individual."

The issue of course is, when Duke tells her backstory, she suffered and gained her identity through pain and hardship. She fought to survive and eventually learned how to thrive and then... against her wishes, against her consent... she was slammed back into the closet.

A powerful vampire, Vlad, singled her out and circumvented her agency and made her one of his brides. For decades Duke was stuck living a heteronormative life, having accessed her truth and her community and then been kept away from it.

"It was like I was trapped in my own body. I was aware of who I was, who I used to be, but I could do nothing about it."

After managing to escape from this life Duke seals Vlad's heart and begins to consume it bit by bit.

There is 100% a valid reading of this movie where Duke is a repressed transmasc lesbian. She fears consuming all of Vlad's heart because she fears it will make her "like him" but she is addicted to the power and agency that she feels from consuming him. We later learn that she has been doing to her gang what Vlad did to her.

Duke is terrified of becoming a man and rejects those aspects of herself while continually indulging them. Moralizing on how evil the version of masculinity she perceives in the world is while engaging in those acts herself.

Someone with better media literacy than I would be able to do a fuller read of that.

But the read I focus on is this one:

Duke's youth was stolen from her as she was forced to live a closeted life of abuse by a domineering man and she projects her wishes for those stolen years into how she lives and how she views others. She directly controls the minds of her gang in order to maintain a safe life buffered by stolen power and lashing out at men who remind her in any way of her abuser.

In robbing her group of their agency and pushing them to agree with her, the pain and hatred that she feels becomes that of the entire group. Their sympathies to men are overruled and the space remains closed off and combative. Insular.

She wishes to continue living the highs of her first taste of agency in her life while robbing those around her of theirs. Through fear and a certainty of being right she has effectively become the very thing she despises.

Meanwhile, Laurel, finally living with her community, abandons her roots and neglects the portions of her life that do not relate to her new community which causes her gay best friend to attempt suicide (I do not condone the movie's attempt to make Laurel responsible for this, mind, we have severe issues with any attempt to frame suicide attempts as the responsibility of anyone but the person attempting) and directly nearly kills her brother.

The movie is very much about the vulnerability of solitary queer individuals and the power and comfort that we gain from banding together and finding community but also about how we must not emulate the abusive power structures that we escape from in our quest to find safety in our identities.

It's important that Duke is a hypocrite. The three rules are:

Never glamour another vampire.

Always kill what you eat.

No fucking boys

It's no coincidence that the first rule is not to glamour another vampire. It's how Vlad controlled Duke for decades. She should never wish that fate on anyone else and yet she is so terrified of losing that which she has earned but also because she was terrified of others losing that which they had earned "I did it to make it easier to help you." she says. Her insecurities are projected onto the group and become their dogma.

Duke isn't wrong for her hatred or her fear. She is wrong for not trusting her allies, she's wrong for forcing her beliefs, she is wrong for being the sole arbiter of who is an acceptable member of their community and who is not.

The movie ends with Laurel noting that she pictures a world where everyone is a vampire because then they could all figure their shit out. That people who have power tend to jealousy guard it for themselves but power can and should be shared.

The final scene involves the new vampire group collectively taking portions of Vlad's heart and consuming his power.

Single points of failure are rampant within any community. When a single figure is held up as the entire basis of a group then removing them or discrediting them will always destroy the safety of the space. This is true in every community but it's heartbreaking when it's true in queer spaces.

One person should never be calling all the shots, making their biases become collective prejudice or their traumas become the realities of all within the safety. We all have stories. We all have truths. We all have realities which we need to share and receive acknowledgement and comfort for.

Vulnerable groups should band together and insular thinking will destroy us if we let it.

The movie isn't the best by anyone's standards.

But damn if the movie isn't a rare piece of queer media that isn't made for a cis audience. I'll always hype up something like that and make sure it reaches more eyes.

#dawn posting #bit (2019)#vampires #queer media #trans media #this is my gender and I am proud of it #cammie likes vampires #lesbian vampires #trans vampires #just vampires in general really #media essays #not my best work if I'm being honest #this movie doesn't have a lot to sink one's teeth into #but I felt like typing and the movie was on my mind

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