In ‘Orlando: My Political Biography’ Queerness Storms into the Mainstream

In Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando: A Biography (1928), the titular character magically transforms into a woman after a week of deep slumber. The magic continues as the character lives for centuries without growing old. The novel has been a lodestar for many gender-fluid and queer personalities over the years; Spanish philosopher Paul B. Preciado, a transgender male, among them. For Woolf, Orlando was a vehicle with which to make sense of her personal experiences, particularly her relationship with fellow novelist Vita Sackville-West. For Preciado, Orlando is synonymous with every human who identifies as non-binary. Perhaps that’s why his recent documentary Orlando: My Political Biography (2023) connects the character to over two dozen fellow transgender or queer individuals, expanding the scope of Woolf’s text and giving it an overtly political spin. In comparison, previous film and theatre adaptations of the book, the most popular being Sally Potter’s Orlando (1992), starring Tilda Swinton, have been more straightforward and truer to the source material.

Preciado, who narrates the documentary in French, structures his monologue as an address to Woolf, telling her about the lives of contemporary ‘Orlandos’. ‘If you could write my biography much before I was born,’ he reasons, ‘then why can’t I write to you after you’re dead.’ Preciado reimagines Orlando’s life, casting multiple non-binary people to play the protagonist at different stages. These re-enactments give way to the actors talking about their own life stories and experiences. The fictional Orlando is transformed – through the documentary form, rather than by a deep sleep – into a living entity. 

Preciado’s film therefore is no mere replication of a fictional story: Woolf’s Orlando is a foil for the stories of contemporary queer culture which the actors bring to life, their on screen introductions breaking the fourth wall. Their testimonies oscillate between the joy of physical transformation and the challenges of refusing to conform to normative ways of living. Violence, discrimination and social ostracization have become unavoidable for transgender people. Preciado makes pointed reference to this pressing global issue. He reminds Woolf of the repeated sexual abuses she experienced as a young girl at the hands of her two older half-brothers, proclaiming: ‘it is necessary to survive violence in order to tell our history.’

Preciado takes the liberty of imagining parts of Orlando’s life that Woolf didn’t include in her novel; particularly the imposing strictures of psychiatrists and medical professionals on people identifying as non-binary or trans. With a dash of playfulness, he depicts a group of transgender people playing Orlando waiting at a doctor’s clinic to receive hormonal pills. One, a trans woman called Liz Kristin, is asked by the doctor if she hates her penis and would like to undergo a physical transformation into a woman. ‘No,’ she sardonically counters, ‘I have a female penis. I’m a living body trapped in a normative regime.’ The appointment is followed by a surrealistic scene in which the patients dance in the clinic to a disco number, the lyrics to which are imbued with defiance: ‘You are not the doctor’s bitch. Their categories are pathetic. You are much more poetic’.

The experimentation spills over to the visuals. Preciado juxtaposes archival footage of Christine Jorgensen and Coccinelle – actresses who underwent gender reassignment surgery – with interviews with contemporary trans women who express joy and comfort with their identities. A strong sense of community and solidarity, built on the work of many brave activists, has made it possible for more trans individuals to live in the open now, their experiences starkly different to those of Woolf whose life as a queer person was much more difficult. Preciado’s work, one hopes, will support their further strides – the dream of every Orlando.

Orlando: My Political Biography will be released in selected cinemas in the USA 10 November

_{Main image: Paul B. Preciado, Orlando: My Political Biography, 2023, film still. Courtesy: © 2023 Les Films du Poisson}