A possible explanation for the less graphic sex scene in Yossi and Jagger compared to that in

Gotta Have Heart, made five years earlier, is Fox’s growing desire to reach wider non-gay

positions serve as stereotypes fashioned by hetero-social norms, debasing the efforts to expand the concept of “gayness” and sexuality in general.

By playing the role o f the masculine, heterosexual soldier, Yossi reflects the national discourse. His masculine traits are even encapsulated in his typical Israeli name. In comparison, Lior’s nickname, Jagger, a non-Israeli name, refers to Mick Jagger’s ambiguous sexual persona. On the surface, the character of Yossi is the manifestation o f the ideal muscular Jew, envisioned by Zionist Max Nordau (see Chapter 1), and, cinematically, a link in a long chain of characters that convey, in the words o f Yosefa Loshitzky, “a powerful eroticized counter­ image to the diasporic Jew” {Identity Politics 1). His character embodies the eternal connection of the warrior, muscle and heterosexual Jew to his ancient land.

By contrast, Jagger is represented as an irrational and impulsive character who, in insisting on coming out and therefore on putting his own needs and ambitions before the interests of the state, violates the normative, heterosexist power balance. Jagger’s gestures and good looks (one o f the soldiers tells him “you are beautiful like a girl”) suggest that he is more stereotypically gay than Yossi, and contribute to the reading o f his body as feminine, an outcome of an ideology that, in the words o f Lee Edelman, “throughout the twentieth century, has insisted on the necessity o f ‘reading’ the body as a signifier o f sexual orientation” {Homographesis 4). The marking o f Jagger’s body as “different” is a result o f “the homophobic insistence_upon the social importance o f codifying and registering sexual identities” (Edelman, Homographesis 4). Even though not necessarily suspected of being gay (he is not humiliated by his fellow soldiers, but it might be his higher position that prevents the others from questioning his sexuality in public), Jagger is perceived as the “other” from the beginning, and his otherness will eventually lead to his death.

Yossi manages to avoid being marked. He masks his homosexuality and becomes his own self-oppressor. This is illustrated in the scene where he blackens his face, camouflaging himself, before setting out on the ambush. As he examines his reflection in a broken mirror, a symbol of his fragmented, homosexual self, he adds even more camouflaging paint, although his face is completely blackened already. The uniform and rituals that create the ethos o f the military as the ultimate melting pot experience by blurring any racial, socio-economic or educational differences between soldiers are also a device to blur his

homosexuality and to produce “a flawless surface o f conventional masculinity” (Dyer, The Culture o f Queers 163).

Dressed in his uniform, putting on an act as straight commander, Yossi is “safe” in as much as he reveals the undisputable connection between performativity and masculinity. He passes for straight, that is, only because o f his clothes and acquired gestures. This performativity is emphasized at one point in the film, in which Jagger - angry with Yossi after the latter refuses to come out with him and blames him for not caring about their militaristic, nationalist cause - mocks Yossi, declaiming dramatically archaic macho phrases like “yes sir, let’s kill some Charlies, sir!”

The fear of being marked leads Yossi to play down his homosexuality to the extent of total non-visibility and even absurdity: Yossi, whose secret is known only to his lover, is threatened even by the presence o f a rabbit that is watching him and Jagger. The rabbit symbolizes both cowardice (the Hebrew word for “rabbit”, shafan, means also “coward”) and unbridled sexuality at the same time, implying Yossi’s internal conflict between his gay sexual drive and his fear of fully accepting it.

Yossi’s masculine traits, as opposed to Jagger’s “femininity”, are manifested mainly when the latter insists that they come out together. This option is unacceptable for Yossi, who wishes to pursue a career in the military. His determined refusal suggests that gay love is an irresponsible act that may jeopardize his career. By demanding that they come out together and then celebrate in a hotel room with one “queen-size bed”, Jagger establishes the domestic-familial space, stereotypically related to femininity and therefore, gayness, that stands in contrast to the militaristic-masculine space Yossi occupies, a space that cannot accommodate his non-normative sexuality. Thus Yossi tells Jagger they can either keep going on his terms, discreetly, that is, or break up: “I am sorry I don’t surprise you with a ring, it is not an American movie”, he says. His gayness is a dream or a fantasy, and just like a Hollywood film it differs from reality.

The two lovers are aware o f the role division between them, and they refer to it throughout the film. As they lie in the snow, Jagger starts singing along to his favourite song, which happens to be playing on a small portable radio he has brought. The song “Your Soul” is sung by Rita, whose dramatic pop music and

ultra-feminine appearance made her one o f the most successful female singers in Israel and a gay icon. As the viewer expects, Yossi does not share his partner’s love for Rita: “your musical taste is so gay”, he tells him. Jagger then accuses him o f preferring Meir Ariel to Rita. Ariel, the late Israeli singer, was an archetype of the Sabra, who made derogatory comments about homosexuals in an interview in September 1998 (Walzer 35).

The connection between Yossi and homophobic Ariel stresses his self- hatred. In this sense, the lyrics o f Rita’s song - which bear an even more explicit gay connotation because Hebrew, as opposed to English, for instance, marks gender explicitly - and which are sung loudly by Jagger and addressed to Yossi, are the essence of how Jagger sees his lover. The lyrics describe a life o f lies as a dark and lonely experience, encouraging the addressee in the song to come to terms with his own “true” self:

Let’s dispel the foggy curtain

Let’s stand in the light, not in the shadow Until when will you keep on running? To games o f power.

You can cry sometimes, When you break inside.

Tell me about your moments o f fear; It is much easier to be afraid together. When cold winds will storm outside, I will send hot fire through you. One day you may stop running Between the shadows

In your soul.

It is no wonder that two versions o f the song - the original and a cover version recorded by Ivri Lider, a popular and openly gay Israeli singer - are played several times, in addition to the twice it is sung by Jagger. The latter alters the lyrics, changing them into “it is much easier to stick it up the rear”, and by doing so, emphasizes the original lyrics’ covert gay meaning.

It is important to note that in all o f Fox’s films the use of music in the soundtrack is paramount. Female singers’ voices, Eurovision pop music and Israeli folk songs all carry a special meaning in Fox’s cinema. For Fox, music is the “excess” that the lush Technicolor and mise-en-scene o f the melodrama were for Douglas Sirk, namely a tool to imply that the film is reaching beyond

dominant narrative structures. Although the majority o f Fox’s films present lucid gay themes, they often correspond with dominant, heteronormative ideologies. The use o f music is an act o f subversion that allows him to hint at a different reality.

In his analysis o f Time Off, Raz Yosef explores the way in which the gay experience, namely the relationship between the soldier and his commander, is denied at a visual level, but then surfaces and is reconfirmed at an aural level.69 According to Yosef, music in Time O ff“becomes an instrument through which the two men, distanced by ranks and Zionist ideals o f proud Sabra heterosexual masculinity, subvert the oppressive military phallic laws and express queer identification” {Beyond Flesh 160). In a place where the visual image o f the “other” is distorted, the voice serves as a potential alternative. According to Yosef, Fox’s understanding o f the limitations o f the cinematic frame for establishing a gay subject within the patriarchal ideology of popular cinema, led him to make use of the aural dimension. I would argue that Fox’s use of soundtrack often offers a compromise o f a sort between his wish to appeal to a wide non-gay audience and the desire to construct a gay subjectivity on the screen.

The Death Scene

The first and last time Yossi softens is when he realizes that Jagger has been injured, and is dying. Jagger’s death, the emotional climax o f the film, enables Yossi to come to terms with his own sexual identity, implying a possible fissure in the wall o f silence. In these moments, while waiting for rescue, he tells Jagger things he never dared say before. He declares his unconditional love, not the least bothered by the presence o f another officer, who, for the first time, realizes the two officers are lovers.

This self-realization follows a prevalent universal pattern in gay narratives, in which, in the words o f David M. Halperin, “the weaker or less favored friend dies [...] Death is the climax o f the friendship [...] and it weds them forever [...]

death is to friendship what marriage is to romance” (78-79). Thomas Waugh reinforces Halperin’s claim by arguing that death is a narrative device used to make sure the gay romance will not last:

the same-sex imaginary preserves and even heightens the structures of sexual difference inherent in Western (hetero) patriarchal culture but usually stops short of those structures’ customary dissolution in narrative closure. In other words, the protagonists o f this alternative gay rendering of the conjugal drive, unlike their hetero counterparts, seldom end up coming together. We don’t establish families - we just wander off looking homy, solitary, sad, or dead [...] gay closures are seldom happy endings. (“The Third Body” 145)

This pattern is especially prominent in Israeli films that deal with homosexuality. According to Raz Yosef, the disposal of the homosexual body is inevitable, in order to keep Israeli heterosexual hegemony intact (“The Military Body” 26).

Jagger’s death is the first time Yossi adopts some of Jagger’s “reckless” behaviour, as he breaks the barrier between the public and the private, the domestic and the military, while rushing to Jagger not as the latter’s commander but as his grieving partner. This gesture could be read as an irrational and emotional, and therefore feminine, reaction, at odds with what the spectator has leamt to expect from Yossi. Unfortunately, this moment of self-realization can only be experienced at Jagger’s death.

However, it is important to note that the film defines a gay identity, not so much by portraying homosexuality as natural and neutral, but rather by denouncing heterosexual courtship and relationships as hollow and abusive, employing the same arguments usually made against gay men. The two gay lovers in the film are ironically shown to be more committed than their fellow soldiers. The latter either replace intimacy with abusive sex, as is shown in the power- oriented sexual relationship between Goldie (Hani Furstenberg), one o f the female soldiers, and the married colonel (her declared refusal to commit herself to a relationship - “I am here to have fun, not to get married” - is probably more a protection against hurt than a sign o f liberation); or else they cannot reach their love objects: Yaeli (Aya Steinovitz), the other female soldier in the film, who is desperately in love with Jagger, remains blind to the fact that he is gay. Like the others, she can read the signifiers, describing him as “gentle” and “different from

Fig. 4.5 Yossi examines his reflection in a broken mirror. DVD capture.

Fig. 4.7 Yaeli (Aya Steinovitz, left) and Goldie (Hani Furstenberg), the female protagonists o f Yossi and Jagger. DVD capture.

Fig. 4.8 The colonel (Sharon Raginiano) refers to the news about the upcoming ambush as good news. DVD capture.

all the other men”, but fails to interpret them. As a gay couple, Yossi and Jagger adjust themselves to the heteronormative model, and they succeed in doing so more than their heterosexual counterparts. The latter are conventionally stereotyped: the colonel abuses his power and the female soldiers are either whores or virgins. Thus, they become a grotesque representation of chauvinistic norms.

Reversing the norm in Hollywood films, it is the straight characters in

Yossi and Jagger who illuminate the gay protagonists and are used as a critical

reflection o f heterosexual, militaristic morals.70 Being the primary target, the colonel not only cheats on his wife with one o f his soldiers, but also abuses his power in order to do so. At one point in the film he orders his sex partner to move her “fat ass to the car”. The colonel refers to the news about the upcoming ambush as good news, stressing how much he likes “the action and the smell of burnt flesh in the morning” although he is not there with the soldiers to smell the burnt flesh the following morning.71 When Yossi tries to change the colonel’s decision, the latter accuses him o f becoming a “homo” and a “sissy” and of worrying about his soldiers as if he was their mother (thus, stereotypically connecting homosexuality with cowardice and motherhood, hence femininity). In his reaction to what will prove to be justified concerns, the colonel reveals not only his unenlightened opinions regarding women and homosexuals but also his erroneous judgment.

The character o f the colonel and the longing o f the other soldiers for love that is not within their reach reflect the shortcomings o f straight relationships compared to the stability and warmth that are to be found in the relationship of Yossi and Jagger. Furthermore, Yossi’s judgment is proven to be better than the colonel’s, suggesting that although Yossi is the misfit in a heterosexist system he can surpass those who are supposed to be superior to him in the military hierarchy. The film, therefore, inverts the balance of power between

70 Describing almost every Hollywood (i.e., commercial) film, Harry Benshoff and Sean Griffin