Vocal Opposition

Some years ago, I saw a performance art piece by genderqueer theorist Kate Bornstein in which she recounted her experience with vocal therapy for transsexuals. The therapist she had gone to kept urging her to raise her voice: "Like this?" "Higher!" "Like THIS?" "Higher!" "Well, I don't want to talk like that." The "like that" was what you might call the squeaky toy voice. Bornstein eventually developed a voice based on listening to Laurie Anderson albums, and that seems a more laudable and realistic a goal. Thinking of all the great female voices, I gravitate to people like Lauren Bacall, Joan Greenwood, Sally Kellerman, and Kathleen Turner. No squeaky toys. This and more was all rattling around my brain as I walked to my car after seeing In A World... (2013, directed by Lake Bell). Writer/director/star Lake Bell doesn't like the squeaky toy voice either, and her movie underlines--gently--the disturbing assumptions behind its currency in our culture. In A World...is a comedy--a good one, I think--but it's also an excursion into feminist sociology.

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