Review: Rebel Dykes (Harri Shanahan & Siân A. Williams, 2021)
Fig. 1 - Rebel Dykes (Harri Shanahana and Siân A. Williams, 2021). The main title is white blocky text on a black background.
Reading through the LGBT+ History Month blog posts on Fantasy/Animation, I was struck by the fact that of the few depictions and readings of queer women in animation, all of them feature in films or television series targeted primarily towards younger audiences, e.g. Princess Bubblegum and Marceline in Adventure Time (Pendleton Ward, 2010-18), She-Ra in She-Ra: Princesses of Power (Noelle Stevenson, 2018-20), and Elsa in Frozen (Chris Buck & Jennifer Lee, 2013). Whilst I am the last to complain about queer representation for family viewing, I was left pondering: where are all the dykes? Where are the queer women whose actions are not rated PG and that constitute more than a chaste kiss, if anything? The only other example of animated sapphic expression I had encountered was the stop-motion short film B (Kai Stanicke, 2015), but even in that, everyone is rendered as a Barbie-style doll, and — intentionally — all the women look the same.
Fig. 2 - A young Black stud, based on Debbie Smith, walks across the frame, traversing live-action London.
My interest was piqued, however, when I heard that this year’s BFI Flare Festival was headlining a partially-animated documentary. Delving further, I quickly learned that Rebel Dykes (Harri Shanahan and Siân A. Williams, 2021) (Fig. 1) focuses on the stories of a community of young queer women who not only shook up straight 1980s London, but also thoroughly aggravated a sex-negative and trans-exclusive radical feminist movement, too. Initially shifting chronologically through the experiences of the group, the temporality of the film frequently jumps around as differing perspectives arise, and 2D animated figures hop in and amongst the archival footage and photographs used (Fig. 2). Newcomers both to animated and live-action filmmaking, directors Shanahan and Williams did not disappoint with this feisty and fun insight into a snippet of British queer and feminist history.
Fig 3 - A suitcase full of sex toys flies across the Atlantic.
A work-in-progress teaser of Rebel Dykes was presented at the Flare in 2016, but the final production has had its premiere with 2021’s solely online line-up for the LGBTIQ+ film fest. In their Q and A for the festival with programmers Jay Bernard and Tara Brown, Shanahan identified how the film was entirely community funded, and that in the interim between the initial screening and the final product, they and Williams had been gathering archival footage, photographs, posters and interviews from the real “rebel dykes” themselves (BFI, 2021). Originally planned as an oral history project due in part to the lack of artefacts, Shanahan had the idea of animating the memories of the participants to “fill the gaps” and even went to animation school to achieve this goal (ibid.). The animation featured here acts as “non-mimetic substitution” (Honess Roe 2011, 226), wherein it takes the place of information for which there is no other footage, but does so in a way which does not intend to emulate directly its source material (Fig. 3). Whilst several of the animated “rebel dykes” who appear in the film are evidently based on the appearance of the interviewees, their stories do not correspond consistently, and the animated figures clearly have their own adventures beyond those had by the contributors.
Shanahan describes their motivation for using animation as stemming in part from a desire to acknowledge the mediation inherent to documentary filmmaking: “There’s always a fabrication in some sense…sometimes the most honest thing is to say ‘this is fake!’” (BFI, 2021). Shanahan’s 2D computer animation achieves this from the get-go, with the opening shot of the film being filled by the slamming downwards of a highly-cartoonised Dr. Marten boot overlaid on top of footage of a London street. Whilst Terry Gilliam used cut-out animation rather than cel (or 2D cel-like computer animation) for his work, both the layering of fields and the comedic timing of the animation in Rebel Dykes are somewhat reminiscent of the Monty Python’s Flying Circus (1969-1974) animated sequences and, likewise, are equally chaotic and enjoyable. The “non-mimetic substitution” format of these animated segments is also a constant reminder to the viewer of the constructed nature of the feature.
“Wonky and amateur” (ibid.) are the words the animator uses to describe their creations, but this lends to the aesthetics – and charm – of the film. The thick black marker-like lines around the characters make them stand apart from the live-action footage and photographs they are placed over. This layering of images and textures gives the whole film the feel of the zines and posters referenced throughout. The film is awash with colour; however, a large proportion of the animated bodies are rendered in black and white as if they, like the zines they visually reference, likewise have been photocopied, ready to be shared with the community (and pinned up against a wall).
Fig. 4 - The Black Widows motor bike gang.
As mentioned, multiple animated dykes appear throughout the course of the film, interspersed into the oral recollections of the individuals of whom they are evidently caricatures. Musician Debbie Smith, for example, is clearly the basis for the confident “Black stud” who stomps her way across the opening titles, passed as she does so by a swarm of the leather-clad Black Widow bikers led by Karen Fisch, who smirks at the viewer from under her helmet visor. These animated dykes connect us to the storytellers they are based on, but they also make very clear how, whilst they are all called “rebel dykes” by the filmmakers, they are by no means a homogenous group (Fig. 4). Few of the animated dykes cross directly into each other’s paths, and when they do appear simultaneously on screen, they are on different layers of the image.
The animation lends itself well to identifying the fact that memories and recollection can be fickle, and that whilst the stories told by the “rebel dykes” are important, each of them have varying perspectives on events which occurred, and thus no single story is the ultimate truth. A particularly illustrative example of this appears when various members of the lesbian leather club, Chain Reactions, recall a night when they were physically assaulted by a political group. The camera cuts between the live-action interview footage of the Chain Reactions members trying to remember the name of their attackers, and an animated sequence of a group of women unfurling a banner. As each member speaks, the words on the banner change, until a scan of a newspaper reveals the true name of the group: Lesbians Against Sadomasochism. Images like this play with a serious moment in their history, adding a tongue-in-cheek element and inserting humour into an otherwise quite dark point in the film.
Fig. 5 - Hand-holding positions as featured in the Hot Vanilla Times.
A comedic note runs throughout, and I found myself cackling out loud at various points. The film’s humorous moments primarily are sparked from some of the wilder concepts and ideas being made real – ironically – through animation. A great example appears when Roz, another patron of Chain Reactions (and a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front) jokes about a sex-negative attitude towards lesbian relationships which developed in certain feminist circles. Cut to an animated pair of disembodied hands turning the pages of a copy of the fictional Hot Vanilla Times with a spread of various hand-holding positions one could take with a sapphic lover (Fig. 5).
Fig. 6 - Mother, mother and baby bond in Batik-style shot.
Whilst the film’s overall tone leans towards the playful and nostalgic, the directors do not shy away from the difficulties and prejudices experienced by their contributors. Intense emotions are expressed throughout Shanahan’s animation, and at certain points the aesthetic dramatically changes to express this. A particularly mournful moment features a Black Widow’s member, “Fisch”, remembering when she and her partner lost custody of their child because of their status as “inappropriate” lesbian mothers. Her interview audio is heard over simple, Batik-style animation, where the wax lines connecting the two women and their baby are wrenched apart across the fabric of the screen (Fig. 6). There is nothing of the brash and confident attitude present in the rest of the film, and subsequently, this is one of the most effecting sequences precisely because of its aesthetic separation.
This film really has it all: biker dykes, leather daddies and femmes, punks, and more, all rendered gorgeously in a manner which certainly sated my desire for a more mature representation of animated queer women. On that note, however, this phenomenally detailed documentary probably isn’t appropriate queer history education for underage eyes. I don’t think I had quite prepared myself to witness some of the rebel dykes’ antics, both animated and archival, but I don’t regret it in the slightest — not even the spaghetti wrestling. Referring to the path beaten for future queer women and activists by the “rebel dykes”, Debbie Smith notes towards the end of the film that “We did that; be thankful.” I certainly am thankful to the community members who came before me, and equally grateful to Shanahan and Williams for accessibly passing on this history in such a creative and collaborative manner.
**Article published: April 2, 2021**
References
British Film Institution. 2021. “REBEL DYKES: A conversation | BFI Flare 2021”. Premiered 21 March 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcnF-n1qF1o&t=150s&ab_channel=BFI.
Honess Roe, Annabelle. 2011. “Absence, Excess and Epistemological Expansion: Towards a Framework for the Study of Animated Documentary.” animation: an interdisciplinary journal 6 (3): 215-230.
Biography
Sarah Wingrove (she/they) is an independent researcher and children’s bookseller based in Guildford. A graduate of King’s College London’s Film Studies MA degree, Sarah’s research has engaged with British and French queer history on screen, sapphic romantic comedies, and stop-motion animation. She is collaborating currently with video editor Harry Adams on a short narrative film about queer family-making practices and death. You can find Sarah on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/saz_wingrove/ and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/saz_wingrove.