Representations of Bisexuality in Australian Film

Abstract

This article examines representations of bisexuality in three Australian films: The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Sirens, and Dallas Doll. Given the relative absence of bisexual characters or themes in mainstream Australian cinema, the author has chosen films that portray bisexuality in markedly different ways. The flamboyant excesses of male drag and camp behavior that dominate Priscilla overshadow bisexual themes, which the author argues implicitly permeate narrative and character construction. In Sirens bisexual desire is enacted through fantasy and daydream in an aesthetically erotic narrative that interweaves nature, culture, and sexual repression. Finally, Dallas Doll articulates an overt bisexual character whose predatory behavior is depicted in a comically grotesque manner. Rather than reading these films in terms of stereotypes or negative representations, the author argues that these filmic portraits of bisexuality are constrained by the dominant heterosexual–homosexual schema that informs common perceptions about sexuality. Hence, bisexuality is vulnerable to being read as gay or dismissed as sexual curiosity. Through critically exposing the pervasiveness of such thinking, the author contends that expressions of bisexuality in film operate to destabilize and subvert conventional notions about sexuality and gender. This article demonstrates how the narrative and visual strategies of Priscilla, Sirens, and Dallas Doll undermine binary assumptions of male/female, heterosexual/homosexual and thus question the coherence of sexual identity. These ideas are explored through and informed by a framework comprising psychoanalytic, bisexual, and queer theory.

Keywords:

• Bisexuality
• heterosexual–homosexual
• Australian film
• queer theory
• psychoanalysis
• Priscilla Queen of the Desert
• Sirens
• Dallas Doll