While the central love story in the novel never labels Idgie and Ruth as lesbians, the pair are accepted by their community as life partners. “Don’t ruin it.”īut Flagg, who had relationships with women throughout her life, wrote a very gay book- Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe- in which Idgie and Ruth’s relationship is unambiguously queer. When Alex’s mother saw the movie, she argued with her that it represented a friendship: “The movie’s not gay,” she told Alex. Rockler says a straight world understands lesbianism as a sexual behavior, rather than an emotional one, giving the viewer an option to bypass the queerness of their relationship.
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Naomi Rockler, a women’s studies scholar, writes that the movie uses “strategic ambiguity,” allowing most viewers to watch the movie through the lens of our culture’s dominant ideology-heterosexuality. Back in 1991, film critic John Anderson of Newsday, told audiences “‘ Tomatoes ’ isn’t trying to sell us a lesbian romance.” Director Jon Avnet said that he had “no interest in going into the bedroom.” Even Fannie Flagg, author of the original novel and of the Oscar-nominated screenplay, said the story was about “love and friendship” and “the sexuality is unimportant.” Since the film’s release in 1991, fans and film critics alike have packaged the romance as a funny film on the power of female friendship, citing the way Ruth and Idgie’s empowering relationship is mirrored in the camaraderie between Evelyn, a dissatisfied housewife, and Ninny, a free-wheeling nursing home resident. Their story is told in flashbacks by Idgie's sister-in-law, Ninny Threadgoode (Jessica Tandy), who recounts the women's escapades to Evelyn Couch (Kathy Bates) decades later, long after the Whistle Stop has been abandoned. Together, they share a home, raise a son, and become community leaders.
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In the book and the movie, Ruth, the devout beauty, and Idgie, the free spirit, run the Whistle Stop Cafe, famous for its fried green tomatoes, in a railroad town outside Depression-era Birmingham. I romanticized this part of the movie because I saw myself and Alex in Ruth and Idgie: two queer women in love. I brushed off Alex’s blonde hair from her own tan neck, and kissed her. I’ve just never seen it done before today.” With my arm wrapped around the ribs of my girlfriend, I felt her exhale, and she quoted Ruth, her own Southern accent deepening into a syrupy timbre: “You’re just a bee charmer, Idgie Threadgoode,” said Alex and Ruth in harmony.
Her golden arms held the gift aloft to Ruth, who, awestruck but composed, speaking in the spacious, long-limbed vowels of a Deep South drawl, tells Idgie, “I’ve heard there were people who could charm bees. While the trunk swarms with thousands of humming bees, Idgie, straw bale hair frizzed out in Southern humidity, reaches in and pulls out a whole chunk of amber-hued honeycomb. On the screen, Imogene, or Idgie, Threadgoode (Mary Stuart Masterson) tells Ruth Jamison (Mary-Louise Parker) to stay under a wide oak while she walks across a clearing to a broken, dead tree housing a wild beehive. It was a Friday evening, and we spooned on the gray couch in her front room, the DVD player ticking and the window open to Kentucky’s late summer. I had never read the 1987 novel, nor seen the movie, though Alex was known to quote both like scripture.
I saw Fried Green Tomatoes when I was twenty-nine and dating Alex, the first woman who was not a secret to my family and friends.