THE REPRESENTATION OF GENDER PERFORMATIVITY IN ALICE WU'S THE HALF OF IT (2020) MOVIE

Abstract

The Half of It is a movie directed by Alice Wu. The story follows the story of Ellie Chu. She has a homosexual interest in a girl named Aster Flores, but instead of pursuing her feelings, she helps a boy woo Aster through letters and text messages. The purpose of this study is to analyze gender performativity represented in Ellie character in The Half of It movie and to find out how society treats Ellie when she performed gender performativity. This research used the qualitative method.  The research is done by finding the correlation between data that represents the correlation of fact as explained in the Theory. The theory used in this research is Gender Performativity Theory by Judith Butler. The researcher used The Gender Performativity Theory as it applied to the situation that happens to the main character throughout the movie. The result of this research can be described as follows. First, Ellie has several gender performativity according to body construction, color coding, and dressing, her act against the division of gender traits, her gender traits, gender nature, homosexual desire, and the act of questioning the construction of gender. Second, there are different treatments by society when the main character, Ellie Chu represents her gender performativity. It can be summed up as negative treatments and positive treatments. The negative treatments are persecution, gender stereotype, and stigma. The positive treatments are understanding, supporting, and affirming.

Keywords: Gender, Gender Performatity, Gender Traits, Homosexual, Society Treatment