The Scriptwriting Boys & I Crown Myself by Zoë Barnard
The Scriptwriting Boys
Transcript: The Scriptwriting Boys
Are there no men?
The scriptwriting boys
ask me, in scriptwriting
class where there are
boys/men and me.
Is there a reason for no men?
The boys are getting more
anxious now. I wonder how
they run their worlds, how
they run the world, and fear
my world, which is their world
too, though they don’t realise.
Are all males dead?
In my script, that
the boys have read
and read as they do
in the wrong direction.
Was there an accident
that killed all the men?
The boy’s fixation
reminds me why there
are so few womxn
directors, screenwriters;
womxn whose womxn-
stories get pulled away
till they go away.
How will you balance
the story, minus men?
The boys look up to
the tutor for an answer
and he says: which of
you has a script with
more than one woman?
My hand is lonely
in the air.
Would so many lesbians
really exist in one place?
The scriptwriting boys
find the next-most-
unrealistic story element.
The ‘place’ is a city, but
the boys don’t see
any real cities, so they do
not know their variety of
non-cis-male occupants.
I want to tell the
stories I see, filled
with queer and
womxn, and diversity.
I defend
for so long, I don’t
get the chance
to critique the boys
in return.
Their world continues.
I Crown Myself
Transcript: I Crown Myself
Queen is a
presentation and
performance of
femininity in a
celebration,
an exploration,
an examination.
Queen is a title
taken in spite,
and worn with
Pride. Queen
is not assigned
it is discovered.
King is a
presentation and
performance of
masculinity in a
celebration,
an exploration,
an examination.
King is a title
taken in spite,
and worn with
Pride. King
is not assigned
it is discovered.
In our space
these terms are
reclaimed in power;
freed from binary;
fluid in identity.
Drag walks tall.
Drag is day, night,
twilight, dawn. Drag
is indoors, outdoors,
is doors, and in
doorways. Drag is
a gift to the self
and a gift to
community.
The cisgendered-heterosexual gentrification of Queer spaces has permeated into appropriation and morphed into misuse of our own terms upon us. Online and on the street: Queen showered on only female-presenting persons; King showered on only male-presenting persons. Terms trapped in a binary, absent of fluidity, taken from Queer and Drag culture. Gentrified! Taken and remade from generations of Queer work, sweat, tears, blood, protest, and death. Queer terms erased of history and made palatable for the cisgender-heterosexuals who spent all those years exterminating Queer expression of self.
No. I
will not be
palatable.
I am
a Queer
King.
And you
will not coronate
me wrongly.
I CROWN MYSELF
Executive Producers
Sue White
Daniel Henson
