Applying The Curve Test To Alex Hedison’s Acclaimed Film, ALOK

Writer, performance artist, and activist Alok Vaid-Menon (they/them) identifies as transfeminine, non-binary, and uses they/them pronouns.

As mentioned in our From the Archives piece in this issue, Vaid-Menon is related to Urvashi Vaid, the late “powerful lesbian activist” and immigrant woman of color who died from breast cancer in 2022. Vaid was known for her un-apologetic pursuit of LGBTQ+ justice and Vaid-Menon has said they miss their aunt “with every fiber of my being.”

“My aunt was my precedent,” Vaid-Menon says in this tribute at the 2023 National LGBTQ Task Force’s Creating Change conference. “No, my aunt is my precedent because she lives on and through me still.”

It is precisely this continuum between lesbian activism, which emerged from civil rights and feminist activism and today’s gender activism, which emerged from gay and lesbian activism, that I want to explore through the film ALOK.

The bond between Vaid-Menon and their aunt is so strong that they were an honored guest at the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) Champions for Justice Gala on May 18, 2024, and spoke about the National LGBTQ Women’s Survey, of which Vaid was a chief architect. That survey, Vaid told me in the last months of her life, was the world’s first comprehensive data collection of information about the lives and (lack of) rights of queer and non-binary women.

For this piece, it is my assumption that Vaid-Menon, 33, is carrying forward the lesbian justice of Urvashi, who was 63 when she passed, and that there is an indelible symbiosis between lesbian activism and the freedom of all orientations and genders.

Alex Hedison (she/they) is an American fine art photographer, director, and actress and is married to Jodie Foster (she/her). They are what could be described as lesbian icons—Hedison through her breakout role in The L Word, and Foster through her film career, which to many more people than just myself carried a queer subtext, from her 1970s tomboy child actor presence to her official coming out at the 2013 Golden Globes. Hedison and Foster are friends with Vaid-Menon, who the visually-inclined Hedison discovered on Instagram and made the subject of their first film ALOK, which Foster executive produced.

I was invited to a New York screening of ALOK and a reception with director Hedison, and she spoke briefly before the film, but was insistent that the film speak for itself. It did. Afterward, she shared that she did not premeditate how the film’s message would be a perfect response to the transphobia we are seeing now.

Here, we are going to apply The Curve Test to this acclaimed short documentary—a film ostensibly made by two lesbians as a response to a politically sanctioned wave of transphobia.

ABOUT MORE THAN COMING OUT
While Vaid-Menon’s work does not fixate on coming out, it references the fact of being out as an act of resistance. They grew up in College Station, Texas, where they didn’t have safe spaces to express themselves. Many of their standup comedy routines and spoken word monologues (their first solo tour was in 2012) mention trauma and the creation of identity as more than biological fact or socialization. Identity itself can be inherent, and it can also be a trauma response.

For Vaid-Menon, performance art is a way to express themselves, create space, and survive in a hostile environment. Their writing investigates how to escape false dichotomies and dualisms-the greatest being the gender binary.

But the main subject of ALOK is not, ironically, Alok Vaid-Menon. What do I mean by that? The thesis of ALOK is not how to fight transphobia as an increasingly virulent form of bigotry and persecution of trans individuals but how to turn the tables on transphobes and show them their own misidentification.

While Vaid-Menon does address the 400 pieces of anti-trans legislation that have been introduced across America, they also disarm this epidemic of hate by saying: “In an escalating climate of people who want me to die, I’m trying to look in their face and say, ‘I want you to live.”

The film tracks Vaid-Menon and their work as a comic, poet, performer and philosopher in 2022-2023, and draws in other subjects, such as trans media personality Dylan Mulvaney. It’s probably one of the most insightful recent narratives about transphobia, in part because it does not center trans folks as victims, and it anticipates a world in which transphobia doesn’t even exist—a world in which this type of bigotry is anathema to our very species. It dares to posit an inclusive utopia whose most radical pro- noun is “we.”

And its continuity with lesbian-feminist justice work is clear. Urvashi Vaid was a lesbian activist and founded LPAC, the first and only organization whose mission is to elect lesbians, queer women, and nonbinary people. But she also believed that LGBTQ equality would occur only when the structures of society and family are transformed to be more inclusive of race, gender, and class.

This is a platform Vaid-Menon builds upon. Footage shows them addressing an audience: “There’s a conversation in this country that you and I have a different definition of what it means to be a woman. I don’t think that’s it. I think we have a different definition of love.”

Vaid-Menon moves the discussion beyond themselves as a marker of sexual orientation, gender identity, and racial difference and onto the culture itself as the thing that needs to change.

CHARACTERS ARE NOT STEREOTYPES
The titular focus of ALOK is Vaid-Menon, but that focus is not singular.

“In 2020, I encountered Alok, a brilliant visionary, during a time of transformative reflection and cultural reckoning,” explains Hedison in her director’s statement. “I was tracking their work on social media, which quickly revealed them to be a leader in a paradigm shift. This shift resonated with me deeply, prompting me to explore the areas in my own life where I had chosen self-abandonment over self-advocacy, judgment over curiosity, and fear over love.”

A paradigm shift is inherently not singular, as it refers to a fundamental change in a widely held perspective or belief system, impacting a group of people rather than just one individual.

Soon, Hedison who had some years ago moved away from the collaborative field of acting into the more solitary craft as a visual artist, met Alok through a mutual friend and began filming them over eighteen months and two hemispheres. She found herself back in a plural context.

“I delved into their universe, encountering a collective of artists, activists, and thinkers whose narratives unveil a transformation from detachment to alignment,” said Hedison.

“My aim with this film is to present a world of possibility that they demonstrate while asking the questions: How do we wake up? How do we mirror compassion for ourselves to compassion for those around us? How can we move beyond the binaries and embrace the simultaneity of everything existing and changing at once?”

ALOK is not about a trans person coming out, facing persecution, and gaining acceptance. It’s about freedom. For all of us, especially cisgender folks.

Hedison told Deadline at Sundance Film Festival, “This film is all about being as much of yourself as possible; bringing as much of yourself into the world; and how we can all do it together.”

Vaid-Menon told Deadline that Hedison’s directorial approach overturned an entire subclass of films that have fetishized and objectified transgender subjects. “The method was not about: You are my object; I am theorizing you. It was more collaborative.”

The lesbian-feminist gaze—if we can call it that-was freeing to the gender-expansive nature of the subject. Vaid-Memon praised Hedison’s eye as “unique” and said that feminist filmmaking should not be marginalized but is rather “the future of art.”

“We need to break out of this idea that I’m just a canvas for someone else’s projection,” they said. “It really felt collaborative to me.”

Vaid-Memon is inspired by queer Black feminist author, activist, and scholar bell hooks. “What feminism is about for me is a reclarification. Equality isn’t just about getting access to what men have; it’s about redefining what power actually is,” they said.

The film “redefines transness not as something tragic and sad, but as something really beautiful and ebullient for the entire world.”

Vaid-Memon hopes the film addresses the “intergenerational resentment” over “different words” and reveals the same goal: to be free.

ALOK began as a portrait of one individual with an import- ant message, but it became a portrait of all of us. We all have the opportunity to represent ourselves as we.

CAST AND CREW ARE LGBTQ+
Alex Hedison first landed on the radar of Curve readers as the breakout star in season three of the hit Showtime series The L Word, and we found out more about her in a Curve cover story in September 2006. Almost 20 years later, the things the article shared about Hedison (she’s more comfortable behind the camera; she likes wearing jeans; she’s attracted to blondes) are all still true!

The internationally acclaimed photographer was born in Los Angeles, and her photographic work has been exhibited in galleries across Europe, the US, and Asia and is in some prestigious collections worldwide. Hedison has been featured in The New Yorker and Art Forum, among others.

ALOK is the first film she has made and screened publicly, premiering at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, winning best short documentary film at the Sarasota Film Festival, and the audience award at the Newfest Film Festival. She was ably supported by three women producers who she describes as “incredible, incredible women, filmmakers, and thinkers… they were like the fire behind this”.

And the executive producer is her wife. In a career spanning over 55 years, Jodie Foster is considered to be one of the most critically acclaimed actresses of her generation, winning two Academy Awards for Best Actress. Lately, though, Foster’s performance as Bonnie, the ex-lover and supporter of lesbian open swimmer Diana Nyad in the 2023 Netflix feature NYAD, was a critical triumph. It was her first time playing an openly lesbian character. Production on NYAD began in 2022 and on ALOK in 2023. What each film has in common with the other is themes of endurance, freedom, and self-truth.

“Jodie saw some of the footage and got excited about it,” said Hedison about how her wife got onboard with ALOK.

“I learned so much,” said Foster. “For me, that’s a great joy to be part of something where I get to learn a lot and change and transform. And I think that’s what this movie’s about.”

Although it was an open secret in Hollywood that Foster was gay, she only came out in 2013 when she used her Golden Globes speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award to address her sexuality for the first time. “I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago, back in the Stone Age,” she said. “I’ve come out to everyone I’ve met, but I regret that a public declaration in the media was required,” she said.

Ten years later, her venture with Hedison and Vaid-Menon is very public, and the project charts an arc that we applaud—and gender justice work that we share and will do, long into the future.

“I had my time,” said Foster about turning 60. “Now it’s my time to help other people have their time.”

Watch the trailer for ALOK here.

Find out more about The Curve Test here.