Outed: A painful Reality: The Trickster Mode as a Strategy of Claiming Space for Difference

Abstract

This paper interrogates how the film Outed: A painful Reality by Ugandan filmmaker Hassan Kamoga either consciously or unconsciously plays with the trickster mode to advocate for sexualized identity perceived as aberrant and despicable in Ugandan society and which have to face discrimination, stigmatization, torture, imprisonment and murder from their immediate communities, the state and beyond. Consequently, the filmic text that is scrutinized in this paper has taken a particular trajectory, which could be referred to as acting as the voice(s) of the perceived marginalized others, participating overtly in the advocating for their rights by privileging the torture and brutalization of their bodies without bringing into the frame of the film their alternative acts of sexuality to solicit for sympathy from the viewers. This paper is interested in the advocacy project of the film Outed: A Painful Reality, more particularly, in the manner in which the filmmaker employs explicitly the filmic mode to communicate his message. The paper as such scrutinizes how this film grapples with the complex issues of sexual identity and how it is negotiated in spaces that already define and frame themselves as alienating, marginalizing and othering differences.