Muddy Waters: Bisexuality in the Cinema

Abstract

As a review of the literature, this article analyzes how self-identified bisexual critics and theorists have written about bisexuality in the cinema. With the emergence of a bisexual discourse on film in the past 20 years has come a substantial bibliography as well as a set of methods, which have been shaped by the dominant strategies for representing bisexuality. The author's interest here, as bi film scholar, lies less with the content of the articles that make up this body of work than with the kinds of approaches this critical discourse has taken. So far, not enough attention has been paid to these methods of study or, for that matter, to the nature of the medium. The author argues that the meanings we have ascribed to films are inextricably tied to the ways we have chosen to frame our observations. What is more important, however, is that our analyses have not taken into account how the cinema works to make meaning, an oversight that becomes apparent when the limitations of these methods are exposed. Our critical work is less likely to reinscribe the often pejorative social beliefs about bisexuals, the better we understand how images of bisexuality get constructed in and circulated through a medium that trades in an ideology of the visible.

KEYWORDS:

• bisexuality
• representation
• cinema
• formal properties
• critical methods
• stereotypes and myths
• tropes
• narratives
• cinematic materialism
• ideology of the visible

Acknowledgments

A substantially different version of this article was presented at the Second Bisexual Research Conference (BiReCon) held at the University of East London in August 2010. The author would like to thank Meg Barker and Christina Richards, the organizers, for the opportunity to share her work with an international audience. The author is also indebted to Wayne Bryant, for his no-nonsense feedback, and to Ken Windrum, for his keen critical eye. Finally, this article would not have found its final form without the careful attention of Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio. Your responses would be very much appreciated.

B. C. Roberts is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University, where she is completing a dissertation on the imaging of bisexuality in film. Her essay, “The Many Faces of Bisexuality: The 4th International Bisexual Symposium,” was published in the Journal of Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Identity (January 1997).

Notes

1. Since submitting this article for publication, I have come across two examples of bi film criticism that epitomize what I would call a medium-centric approach: Maria Pramaggiore's (2001) exegesis of three films directed by Maya Deren and Justin Vicari's (2011) review of recent movies depicting male bisexuality.

In retrospect, I would have to say that Jo Eadie's (1997a) analysis of Savage Night is also a fine example of this approach, particularly his reading of the sunset/sunrise sequence at the end of the film. Whether the director's use of reversed footage was by design or for expediency, its inclusion in the final cut renders it a choice to be reckoned with, and Eadie does so with aplomb.

The critical work of Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio (2006, 2009a, 2009b) could be described as medium-centric as well.

2. The phenomenon of “persistence of vision,” as well as the mechanics of the cinema and its ideological function, are discussed in detail in apparatus theory and film semiotics: see, for instance, Baudry (1985, 1986), Comolli (1986), Metz (1974, 1977). For an analysis of representational systems and signifying practices within a social framework, see Hall (1980, 1985).

3. I would mark its emergence with the publication of six anthologies in the space of seven years: Bisexuality: A Reader and Sourcebook (Geller, 1990), Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out (Hutchins & Kaahumanu, 1991), Closer to Home: Bisexuality & Feminism (Weise, 1992), Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries, & Visions (Tucker, 1995), Plural Desires: Writing Women's Realities (Bisexual Anthology Collective, 1995), Bisexual Horizons: Politics, Histories, Lives (Rose, Stevens et al., 1996).

4. “A bisexual perspective is a way of looking, rather than a thing to be looked for” (Hemmings, 1997, p. 14). So, in terms of films, the central question is not whether bisexuals are misrepresented in or excised from a text, but how does bisexuality function within this specific context and what kinds of meaning does it accumulate as a consequence?

To be fair, the analytical work produced in feminist film theory (Erens, 1990; Penley, 1988) and in queer film criticism (Bad Object Choices, 1991; Fuss, 1991) does address the medium itself, although neither has provided—for specific, but different reasons—a useful analytic for reading bisexuality in film. The difficulties with these fields of knowledge, however, lie beyond the purview of the present discussion and will have to wait for another essay.

5. Arguably, bisexual film criticism that attends to tropes and narratives comes out of, cannot escape from, this tradition. Analyzing tropes typically reinstantiates myths (male bisexuals spread AIDS → bisexuality as contamination), just as dissecting narratives often reinforces stereotypes (the erotic triangle = bisexuals need same- and opposite-sex partners).

6. The prevalence of this problem in the literature does not mean that researchers have not begun to address it. The alternatives put forward (so far) include theorizing bisexuality as an aesthetic (Dean, 2005; Hart, 2003, 2007), developing a bisexual reading position (Pramaggiore, 1996), and moving from queer theories to a “social semiotics,” defined as “a theory of meaning concerned with the circulation of signs, rather than with what particular signifiers denote” (Namaste, 1996, p. 88). It is to this theory of social semiotics that the present essay is much indebted.

7. While there are different ways that bodies can be sexed and genders can be performed, I would have to agree with Vicari (2011, p. 3) that films said to depict bisexuality typically stress “the more traditional aspects of gender,” as a way to heighten the presumed dilemma bisexuals face: to be with a Woman or with a Man. With that in mind, I have chosen to use these terms, in spite of their well-known limitations (see Pramaggiore, 1996, p. 293, n. 1).

8. Unfortunately, her critical method is compromised by its circular logic: If the essence of bisexuality is fluidity, and if fluidity is the nature of sexuality, then the essence of sexuality is bisexuality. In the name of “bi-eroticism,” she writes a cultural history that lays claim to any historical figure, contemporary celebrity or fictional character whose sexual proclivities (or gender performance, problematically) exhibit shifts over time. The trouble is, when everything is bi-erotic, bisexuality as a meaningful term disappears.

9. As I suggested in an earlier essay (Roberts, 1994), this coding became salient with the release (in 1971) of Sunday Bloody Sunday, which depicts two interlocking love affairs: Alex, a divorced employment agent in her thirties, is in a relationship with Bob, a pop artist in his twenties, who is romantically involved with Daniel, a gay Jewish doctor in his forties. In contemporaneous movie reviews, Bob was universally read as bisexual, unlike characters from John Schlesinger's previous films, Darling and Midnight Cowboy.

10. From my (bi) perspective, what he is describing are the coming-out narratives of lesbians and gay men, which trace a trajectory from false consciousness to authenticity. Significantly, his interpretation of fluidity and his explication of the film depend on a “teleological model of time,” one that privileges transformation and progress.