In the film Married to the Eiffel Tower, the sexual identities of the main subjects are represented in an interesting and sometimes troubling way. One thing the film did was view the sexuality of the subjects in a way that was in conversation with the more heteronormative ideas of love and how it was different. I think it could have been a better approach if it had been shown less in comparison to other sexualities and more as its own individual sexuality. These individuals were made to seem as an “other” in comparison to what is deemed “normal” by society. This made me think of Cohen’s article, “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens”, in this article Cohen says “the inability of queer politics to effectively challenge heteronormativity rests, in part, on the fact that despite a surrounding discourse which highlights the destabilization and even deconstruction of sexual categories, queer politics has often been built around a simple dichotomy between those deemed queer and those deemed heterosexual” (Cohen 440). I struggle to determine whether or not objectsexuals would fall into the category of queer, just because it is a sexuality that is not often brought up when discussing the queer community, but I do think that there are similarities with how the women in the film were presented and how other queer subjects have been presented in media. By deeming these individuals as different from the heterosexual norm, it takes away from the films ability to challenge heteronormativity. Also, the ways in which the film put a lot of focus on the mental health and troubled pasts of the objectsexuals made it feel like they were trying to delegitimize what those people were feeling. If presented in a different way, the film may have had a larger impact on deconstructing heteronormative ideas.
