Bisexuality – Page 3 – Bitch Flicks

Exploring Bisexual Tension in ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’

The possibility existed to use season 3 to explore the sexual identity of three very central female characters in this show. Buffy could have been questioning; Faith could have been explicitly bisexual rather than simply implying as much through very sexually-charged dialogue with Buffy; Willow could have started exploring her sexuality earlier to arrive at a more self-aware place, whether that was as a bisexual woman or a lesbian.

This guest post written by Audrey T. Carroll appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

Nearly twenty years have passed since the beginning of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and we’re still having conversations about this TV show. The conversations range from the creepiest monsters to the most empowering moments of feminism the series has to offer. One of the staying discussions regarding Buffy the Vampire Slayer has been the queer identities of its characters. Certainly, the series invites this as it centralizes a same-sex romance in season 4 with Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and Tara (Amber Benson). The couple wasn’t even allowed to kiss until the season 5 episode “The Body.” There’s no doubt that having a same-sex couple was trail-blazing for a television series to tackle.

That said, we now have the benefit of a retrospective view of both the series and the fifteen intervening years of LGBTQ rights progress since “The Body” first aired. Viewers can now easily recognize that bisexuality is never overtly represented in the series, and is in fact never even brought up as a possibility. But the groundwork for bisexual/queer interpretation is present. This especially comes into play when people bring up the idea of bi erasure and Willow. The possibility of bisexuality in season 3 in particular could have enhanced an already tense triangle of Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), Faith (Eliza Dushku), and Willow. In addition to the scrutiny of Willow’s sexuality in recent years, the obvious sexual tension between Buffy and Faith, especially originating from Faith, is never outright articulated in a consequential way. There’s, of course, the platonic friendship aspect to the tension of this triangle where Willow feels like she’s losing her best friend to Faith.

But these women present three angles on potential queerness that many viewers would have connected with:

1) Buffy must be “good” at all times, which includes being virginal (see: Angelus becoming a monster after they have sex). Potentially, this expectation of being the “good” slayer could include heteronormativity. But, in the comics, the slayer is willing to explore her sexuality.

2) Faith, in part, defines herself by using and ditching men as nothing more important than the sex they give her and the sense of power she feels with them.

3) At this stage in her life, Willow is in a committed relationship with Oz (Seth Green), but she clearly possessed an attraction to women that she had yet to discover.

While she’s otherwise dated, Buffy only had sexual experience with one person by season 3: Angel (David Boreanaz). In season 2, they had sex once, Angel turned into a soulless monster, and she eventually had to kill him. He’s resurrected, but they know they can’t fully be together. This sexual tension with Angel runs parallel to Buffy’s sexual tension with Faith. Buffy acknowledges, in season 3 and beyond, that her relationship with Faith can be perceived as more than simple friendship or fellow slayer-hood. In the season 3 episode “Revelations,” Buffy even draws attention to the fact that she “wouldn’t use the word ‘dating,’” for who she has plans with that night and, when Faith shows up as her partner for the evening, goes on to say, “Really, we’re just good friends.” In that same vein, Buffy claims in the season 7 episode “End of Days,” that “I am tired of defensiveness and — and weird mixed signals… I have Faith for that.”

In the comics, Buffy is, to quote creator Joss Whedon, “young and experimenting and… open-minded.” Even if this is a questioning moment of her sexuality, rather than an actual declaration of bisexuality, the possibility of this exploration earlier in the series could have ramped up the tension even further between Buffy and Faith and Willow, making the stakes all the more intense. It could also show that being the “good” slayer didn’t come with the implication of celibacy or heteronormativity as a requirement. If Buffy, the hero, the one who many girls aspired to be, could question her sexuality and explore her sexuality, that could create a connection to her, and a comfort for viewers who are inclined to do the same. It would, of course, have to be handled delicately, but if executed well it could have been a really revolutionary examination of identity and a fascinating aspect for the hero.

On Faith’s end, she infuses a lot of her words and actions with sexual innuendo. Often, her sexuality is tied to extracting from men what she wants — power, physical satisfaction, etc. The season 3 episode “Bad Girls” opens with Faith insisting that Buffy must have had sex with her friend Xander (Nicholas Brendon): “What are friends for? … It’s just, all this sweating nightly, side-by-side action, and you never put in for a little after-hours…” Faith insinuates that slaying together leads to sex, in the midst of her and Buffy slaying vampires together. One look at any number of Faith’s lines of dialogue with Buffy shows possibility for sexual interpretation (“Give us a kiss.”) if not outright mentions of sexual acts (“Bondage looks good on you, B.” or “So let’s have another go at it. See who lands on top.”). And this isn’t even to mention the very provocative dance scene the pair of slayers share at The Bronze during “Bad Girls.”

If Faith’s bisexuality were actively articulated, it could underscore an interesting layer to the eventual deterioration of their relationship. It seems that the path Buffy toys with in “Bad Girls” is not only one of (mostly harmless) rule-breaking. Buffy appears to be entertaining a very flirtatious and charged relationship with Faith. Faith is very lonely and wants acceptance and friendship. If you add to the pot that both of them were pursuing each other in a romantic or sexual sense, then Faith’s feeling of rejection (from the Scoobies in general, but Buffy in particular) feels like a more pointed one. In this framing, there’s even greater motivation for Faith to later hurt Buffy romantically by going after Angel and engaging in a twisted relationship with him merely to taunt the “good” slayer.

As mentioned already, Willow is often brought up in terms of bi erasure. If the possibility of her queerness is brought up in season 3, it lengthens the exploration of her sexuality and allows for her to deepen her understanding of it. By season 3, she’s only been sexually interested in Xander and her boyfriend Oz. If it were introduced that she may be sexually attracted to women, it would allow for a more fully fleshed-out representation of her sexuality over the course of the series. In fact, in the season 3 episode “Doppelgangland,” Willow thinks that the vampire alternate-dimension version of herself is “kinda gay.” Buffy assures her the vampire version of a person is nothing like the real person. Angel starts to correct her, but stops. All of this implies that, from at least season 3, Willow has her “kinda gay” self bubbling under the surface.

One of two things could’ve happened here: 1) Willow could have discovered she was bisexual, and maybe even been afraid this would cause Oz to reject her. That’s a fear that bisexual people in hetero relationships might be able to relate to. 2) Alternatively, Willow could have discovered that she was, in fact, a lesbian. This explicit exploration would have made how she self-identifies feel more genuine. Otherwise, her season five “Triangle” declaration of “gay now” feels like a tight clinging to a label rather than a genuine expression of her sexuality. If that exploration and determination happens earlier and more clearly, then the viewer can feel that conclusion is natural. It gives opportunity to address her sexuality in a more fully realized way.

One potential discrimination against bisexual people is the idea that they can’t be in a long-term committed relationship, rooted in the idea that they’ll pursue the opposite type of relationship than the one that they’re currently in (either same-sex or opposite-sex). If Willow is bisexual, and clearly so in the show, then the fight that she and Tara have in the season 5 episode “Tough Love” has more context. It’s possible, with a lesbian-identifying Willow, that Tara fears Willow may “turn straight” again. But a review of their history makes this implication during their fight feel strange. (Willow, after all, turned down Oz when he returned to town toward the end of season 4, actively choosing Tara over her first boyfriend.) But, with the idea that Willow is bisexual in mind, this fight with Tara could have tapped into an anxiety in the queer community — that bi people are more sexually deviant or less romantically loyal because they’re not monosexual.

This sexual identity questioning would also lend more tension to the whole Buffy/Faith/Willow triangle. In addition to the platonic threads there, Buffy and Faith already have an established, if not candidly articulated, sexual tension. Adding Willow’s sexual identity to the mix, she could have questioned whether her jealousy of the Buffy/Faith dynamic was platonic or romantic on her part. Buffy is her closest friend, except for maybe Xander, the latter of which she had a crush on for years and cheated on Oz with. Willow could reasonably fear that an attraction or possibility of attraction toward Buffy (akin to what she once felt for Xander) could jeopardize their friendship. On the other side, Willow might have been confused or unnerved if she thought she might be attracted to Faith, who was her opposite in many ways and with whom she had a very contentious relationship. She might not have thought about Buffy or Faith that way, but the questioning and anxieties there might have resonated with certain queer viewers and enhanced Willow’s aversion to Faith even further.

Using the context of future seasons, the possibility existed to use season 3 to explore the sexual identity of three very central female characters in this show. Buffy could have been questioning; Faith could have been explicitly bisexual rather than simply implying as much through very sexually-charged dialogue with Buffy; Willow could have started exploring her sexuality earlier to arrive at a more self-aware place, whether that was as a bisexual woman or a lesbian.

This all at least highlights an opportunity for future fiction. Allowing characters to be bisexual or to entertain the idea of not being heterosexual can add innovative layers to otherwise developed and intriguing characters. In the end, whether these characters are bisexual or simply open to questioning their heterosexuality, representation helps people feel less alone in their experiences, and ultimately guides people toward empathy.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Joss Whedon’s Binary Excludes Bisexuality
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Willow Rosenberg: Geek, Interrupted
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Humanization of the Superheroine
Are You Ready to Be Strong? Power and Sisterhood in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Audrey T. Carroll is a Queens, NYC native whose obsessions include kittens, coffee, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the Rooster Teeth community. Her poetry collection, Queen of Pentacles, is available from Choose the Sword Press. She can be found on her site as well as Twitter and Facebook.

Gender, Bisexuality, and ‘Cabaret’: How the Film and Play Deal with LGBTQ Identities

So were bisexual people portrayed positively? Maybe. What we have to consider in the judgment of this question is the context of both the representation of bisexuality in the script, and the way bisexuality was treated at the time the script was adapted to the screen. … After it’s all said and done, Cabaret has aged fairly well in terms of the portrayal of its LGBTQ characters.

This guest post written by Emily Crose appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

I first sat down to watch the movie Cabaret when I was 17 years old. It was possibly a strange choice of movie for a supposedly straight 17-year-old boy to decide to pick up and watch one day in October, but for me it was perfectly in line with the types of movies I have always loved. Based on a Broadway musical? Check. Involves history? Check. Esoteric subject matter?… Yeah, I’d say so. With Liza Minelli playing the female lead and Bob Fosse’s direction and choreography, you’d be hard pressed to find a film more iconic and representative of the LGBTQ community, especially during the 1970s.

Adapted from the 1966 musical written by Joe Masteroff, which was based on Christopher Isherwood’s 1939 novel, Goodbye to Berlin, as well as John Van Druten’s play, I Am a Camera (1951), Cabaret tells the story of a cabaret-show style play house in the Wiemar Republic set in 1931 called the “Kit Kat Club” (no affiliation to the popular candy). It takes place in a time in Germany just before the reign of the Third Reich where sexual freedom wasn’t exactly celebrated per se, but it was tolerated.

The movie opens to a song by one of the primary characters named “Master of Ceremonies” (Joel Grey) or “Emcee” who hosts the show every night. He sings a song titled “Willkommen” as the various members of the show dance around him, the piano and wind band playing raucously nearby. Emcee says to the crowd, “Leave your troubles outside! So life is disappointing? Forget it! In here, life is beautiful, the girls are beautiful, even the orchestra is beautiful!” Indeed, inside the cabaret, everyone is beautiful.

As soon as the opening credits are through, one of the first characters we see on-screen is someone with a non-binary gender presentation. This character, who we never see again in the film, is perfect foreshadowing for the journey that the audience will take as we make our way through the plot. Not 5 minutes into the movie, we get a hint of the sexual tension that is about to unfold as Emcee explains to his audience that every girl in his cabaret is a virgin (And if you don’t believe him, you can “ask [them]!”).

Despite the director’s attention paid to Emcee at the beginning of the movie, the body of the plot revolves around an American living in Germany who works at the cabaret — Sally Bowles (Liza Minelli) as she manages a romantic triangle opposite Brian Roberts (Michael York) and Maximilian von Heune (Helmut Griem).

In one scene, Sally puts on a record and throws herself onto the bed with Brian, asking him if her body “drives [him] wild with desire.” His tepid response leads her to ask him if he even sleeps with girls. Brian recounts his “disastrous” sex life with women claiming ambiguously that his success (or lack thereof) with women has led to his apparent celibacy. The scene ends with Sally and Brian agreeing to be friends, but an odd sexual tension remains.

As the film goes on, the relationship between Sally and Brian continues at a distance until Sally gets a rejection telegram wherein she questions her value. It is there, sobbing and at her lowest point that we’ve seen her so far in the movie, that Brian and Sally finally have sex.

There’s something hanging over the plot though. Sally’s promiscuity hasn’t conspicuously ended Brian’s self-imposed sexual “dry-spell.” There’s much more to the nature of their relationship together and to their sexual peers both male and female, but the full details of both of their sexual preferences is still ambiguous to us.

Enter Maximilian.

The first scene we see with Brian and Maximilian overflows with jealousy as Max boasts about his status as a Baron. It’s clear that Brian does not want Sally involved with Max, but in the very next scene when Max walks into the bedroom where Sally and Brian are sleeping holding three champagne glasses (after what looks like an absolutely exhausting night) we see the first hint of what just might become a polyamorous situation between the three of them.

Max, who clearly has money, continues to flaunt his wealth. He buys fancy presents for both Sally and Brian and takes both of them to expensive dinners. We as an audience are left wondering if Max is exercising some form of dominance over Brian by making him some sort of cuckolded third wheel, or if maybe Max’s intention isn’t to humiliate Brian, but to date both of them instead. It is amidst these questions that the film jumps into my favorite song from the show, “Two Ladies.”

“Two Ladies” is sung by Emcee, who explains how his polyamorous relationship with his two women works. As the song goes, there are two ladies, but Emcee is “the only man (ja!)” The song in the film touches on the nature of what we can easily assume is a bisexual relationship between both women as they all sleep together. There’s even a lyric about them switching partners “daily, to play as [we] please.”

Now at this point in the review, I have to point out an important distinction between the film version of Cabaret and some stage performances of the show.

Throughout the 1972 film version, the gender variant characters were dealt with in the same way that trans people have been for decades — as the butt of cheap jokes. The one named trans woman, “Elka” was used as the target of comic relief in the two scenes that she appears in. In one scene, Brian uses a men’s room urinal at the Kit Kat Club when Elka walks in and stands next to him to his great surprise, and I assume to the amusement of the audience. In a second scene, she acts as a stand-in for Sally as Sally tells an unwanted suitor that she “has the tiniest touch of syphilis.” Then when talking to Brian later adds, “…but wait ‘till he gets a load of what ole’ Elky’s got!” These elements don’t well respect the identities of the characters they are meant to represent, and ultimately stand as the one major criticism I have of the film overall.

While this bit of tired comic relief hasn’t aged well at all, the on-stage versions of Cabaret go a step further in dealing with trans identities. In some versions of the show, one of the aforementioned “two ladies” is through visual and auditory implication, a transgender woman.

In one revival showing in 1994 starring Alan Cumming as Emcee, one of the women adopts a deeper voice implying her background as a trans woman, while another performance starring Michael C. Hall as Emcee shows a man in drag as one of the two ladies. While it’s not a flattering representation of trans women, (read: flat-out awful) it does add an additional level of identity complexity to the relationship of Emcee and his ladies, even if the application of that concept is transphobic under scrutiny. But I digress… back to the film review.

As the film continues, we can see that Brian, Max, and Sally are the poster children for the Bohemian lifestyle. They drink, they smoke, they attend the cabaret, and the more we see Max and Brian together, the more we wonder what’s happening between the two of them. In the beginning, Brian is portrayed as a naive wallflower whose only interaction to the outrageous life in the cabaret is through Sally. Later on though, Sally and Max play the role of ‘the corrupters’ who expose Brian to their concept of free love and excitement. However, it’s not until a party at Max’s estate that we start to get much more direct information to help us understand what Max has in mind for Sally and Brian.

As the Nazis begin to be more visible in the movie, the tension between the three main characters starts to rise with them. Brian’s irritation with Sally’s free-spirited lifestyle piques when she proclaims, “You can’t stand Maximillian because he’s everything that you’re not! He’s rich, and he knows about life!”

“Oh, screw Maximillian!” Brian says angrily, to which Sally responds curtly, “I do.” In a moment of pure bisexual ecstasy Brian glibly retorts, “So do I.” Boom. The mystery is solved. The bisexual love triangle is finally complete, but alas, the revelation of this important detail is short lived. Max leaves Sally and Brian both. He leaves them with 300 Deutsche Marks, a pregnant Sally, and the broken remnants of the love they each had for each other for Brian and Sally to begin to rebuild. We wonder how Brian and Sally will fare with the burgeoning Third Reich approaching, but we can safely assume that the answer to that question is that they probably won’t do great.

So were bisexual people portrayed positively? Maybe.

What we have to consider in the judgment of this question is the context of both the representation of bisexuality in the script, and the way bisexuality was treated at the time the script was adapted to the screen.

Sure, the scene where Brian declares that he is also having sex with Max was handled with a certain amount of requisite gravitas; in retrospect, probably a bit too much gravitas. The face of stunned Sally Bowles after she hears him speak the words works as a gimmick; a cheapened shock value to the audience for dramatic effect that works in the same way that Elka and Brian’s bathroom scene was meant to evoke laughter. It was meant to give the movie an edge. On one hand, Brian’s official coming out to the audience can be construed as a moment without much depth. On the other hand, that edge that his coming out has still exists even in modern screenings of the movie.

We know Brian’s heterosexuality is in question, and we know through early dialogue that Brian is possibly (probably) attracted to men in some way, but the fact that he loved Max in the same way Sally did is a plot twist that would likely be surprising regardless of the gender of Brian’s character.

After it’s all said and done, Cabaret has aged fairly well in terms of the portrayal of its LGBTQ characters. The way the script handles bi/homo/hetero sexuality is respectful, especially for a movie where the concept is so central. Despite my concerns about the script’s treatment of trans identities, I do like Cabaret. I liked it the first time I saw it, and that attraction to the play and movie persists with me today. There’s a good reason why people love Cabaret, but for the faults we see with our modern eyes, an updated version of Cabaret is in order be it on-screen or on-stage.

Emily Crose is a 30-year-old trans woman with a wife and two kids. Her favorite movie is and always will be Ghostbusters (1984). By day she is a Baroness of binary black magic, by night a voracious writer of her own self-important opinions. She loves movies, musicals, baking, and mint tea.

“Don’t You Want Your Girl Hot?”: Bisexual Representation in ‘Rent’

Maureen is worth a second look, particularly at a time in which bisexual women and lesbians are routinely ignored, left out, and killed in television and film. … ‘Rent’ repeatedly comments on Maureen’s apparently untamed sexuality. In “Tango: Maureen,” Joanne wonders if Maureen became involved with other men while dating Mark. Mark confirms these suspicions and Joanne also admits that Maureen cheated on her, suggesting that one person cannot satisfy Maureen’s sexual appetite — a common myth about bisexual people is that they cannot be monogamous.

This guest post written by Olivia Edmunds-Diez appears as part of our theme week on Bisexual Representation.

As an avid musical theatre fan, Rent is certainly in my top ten favorite musicals. I was first exposed to the musical through the 2005 film of the same name. From there, I quickly fell in love with the film’s soundtrack and then progressed to the original Broadway cast recording. The show’s music is infectious through its use of rock and more traditional Broadway stylings. I also adored the show’s diversity and attempts to tackle such controversial topics as HIV/AIDS, sexuality, identity, and poverty. But out of all the characters, I never really cared for Maureen, the show’s singular bisexual. Looking back, I think this is largely because she is not written as sympathetic and, as a straight teenager, I found it hard to relate to her voracious sexual appetite as depicted in the show. But Maureen is worth a second look, particularly at a time in which bisexual women and lesbians are routinely ignored, left out, and killed in television and film.

It is important to acknowledge that Maureen’s race is never specified in the show. Idina Menzel, a white performer, originated the role on Broadway and also played Maureen in the film version. Productions of Rent often replicate the racial casting of the original Broadway production. Maureen’s race is worth acknowledging because, as is often the case, when race is not specified, the default is white. This could certainly be viewed as bisexual erasure, particularly when it comes to bisexual people of color. Additionally, as Maureen is the only named bisexual character in the story, the audience is left wanting for bisexuals of color. And so although Rent gets representation right in many ways, bisexuals of color attending Rent, be it the stage show or the film adaptation, will not see themselves reflected in the show or on-screen.

Rent repeatedly comments on Maureen’s apparently untamed sexuality. In “Tango: Maureen,” Joanne (Tracie Thoms) wonders if Maureen became involved with other men while dating Mark (Anthony Rapp). Mark confirms these suspicions and Joanne also admits that Maureen cheated on her, suggesting that one person cannot satisfy Maureen’s sexual appetite — a common myth about bisexual people is that they cannot be monogamous. Later at their engagement party, Maureen and Joanne begin fighting about Joanne’s insecurities about their relationship, namely that Maureen was “promiscuous.” Naturally, this fight breaks out into song, but not before Joanne protests, “You were flirting with a woman in rubber,” prompting Maureen to shout, “There will always be women in rubber flirting with me!” Maureen reassures Joanne, singing, “You are the one I choose / Folks would kill to fill your shoes.” None of the characters seem to accept Maureen’s testimony, possibly because they assume she is unable to commit to any one person given her penchant for any and all persons. At the conclusion of “Take Me or Leave Me,” both women storm off, suggesting that their relationship is over. It is worth noting that in the film, we never officially learn if Maureen and Joanne reconnect and become a couple again. In the stage show, we see the duo reconnect shortly after in the song “Without You.”

The song “Tango: Maureen” bears further discussion. Maureen has no lines in the song that bears her name, suggesting that she is not allowed or able to discuss her own feelings and/or actions. With lyrics such as, “Feel like going insane? / Got a fire in your brain? / And you’re thinking of drinking gasoline?” referring to being in a relationship with Maureen, it is clear that Maureen is less than wonderful in a relationship. In the film, an elaborate dance sequence is inserted, with dozens of couples performing the tango, dressed in all black. All of the couples are paired heterosexually, which is curious for a film about LGBTQ characters. Additionally, Maureen is the only character dressed in red, quite obviously cuing to the audience that she is sexual, dangerous, and on the prowl. One difference between the stage show and the film is Maureen’s visual sexual relationships with men. The stage show does not show the audience any instances of Maureen and a man being intimate. But during the song “Tango: Maureen” in the film, the audience briefly sees Maureen kiss both a man and a woman before the trio walks off arm-in-arm. Whether this is to more overtly inform the audience that Maureen is bisexual or to affirm her enthusiasm for any kind of sexual activity, the audience will never know.

There are multiple jokes about Maureen’s new partner, Joanne. In the first of the show’s many overheard voicemails, Mark’s mom calls to wish him a Merry Christmas. But she ends with: “Oh, and Mark! We’re sorry to hear that Maureen dumped you. I say, ‘C’est la vie.’ So let her be a lesbian! There are other fishies in the sea. Love, mom!” Later that same day, Mark and Roger catch up with their friend, Benny, whom they haven’t seen in awhile. Benny asks if Mark and Maureen are still dating, and the following exchange occurs: “She’s got a new man?” “Well, no.” “What’s his name?” “Joanne.” Whether onstage or screen, these moments are played for laughs. We’re left feeling sorry for Mark for one of two reasons: either he couldn’t satisfy his woman so she became a lesbian, or Mark was so unaware he didn’t know he was dating a lesbian. Either way, these jokes inform the audience that Maureen is a lesbian, not bisexual.

It is worth emphasizing that Maureen is never labelled as bisexual throughout the show or film. Not only do the characters never refer to Maureen as bisexual, but Maureen herself does not give her sexual orientation a name. And this fact is poignant. Considering that it is only audiences and fans of the show/film that give Maureen this label, what happens when labels are applied to other people? Do the show and film contribute to bi erasure? Would Maureen even choose the bisexual label? Or might she opt for queer, questioning, pansexual, or lesbian? Might she eschew labels altogether? Perhaps we should take Maureen’s own words, and simply “take me for what I am.”

Olivia Edmunds-Diez is a Northwestern graduate, where she studied theatre and gender and sexuality studies. Her current favorite finds are The Two Faces of January, the Little Women cast recording, and The Blind Assassin. You can follow her on Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr.

Directing One’s Own Life (and Sexuality) in ‘Appropriate Behavior’

‘Appropriate Behavior’ is thus a product and a triumph of female authorship and agency in the male-dominated film and entertainment industry. … Just as Desiree Akhavan went to lengths to ensure her agency and authorship as a filmmaker, Shirin engages with her bisexuality frankly and honestly…

This guest post written by Deborah Krieger is an edited version that originally appeared at I on the Arts. It is cross-posted with permission.

In Desiree Akhavan’s 2014 film Appropriate Behavior, Shirin (Akhavan), the protagonist, struggles to find her place in both her traditional Iranian family and as a newly-single bisexual woman in New York City. In addition to starring as the protagonist, Akhavan also wrote and directed this offbeat, independent drama-comedy film, basing several of the elements of the film on her own life and experiences, although the plot is fictional. The film premiered at Sundance, where it was perceived as a “breakout,” received a limited theatrical release, and is currently available through various online streaming sources, including iTunes and Amazon Prime. While the film was not a financial success, grossing only $46,000, it put Akhavan on the map, earning her comparisons to Lena Dunham, a writer/director/actor of similar comedic material, and earned her a guest role on Dunham’s HBO show Girls, although Akhavan shrugs off the comparison.

Appropriate Behavior features not only a female creator, star, and director, but also a female executive producer (Katie Mustard), producer (Cecelia Frugiuele) — indeed, women make up at least half of the crew of the film. It is thus fair to say that Appropriate Behavior is a classic example of women’s cinema, which refers to films that have women in positions of creative control, as well as films that are geared towards a female audience. In an industry where women comprise only 9 percent of film directors, 11 percent of writers and 20 percent of executive producers in the top 250 films, Appropriate Behavior’s crew is quite impressive in terms of giving women control over the production of the film.

Appropriate Behavior is thus a product and a triumph of female authorship and agency in the male-dominated film and entertainment industry. Essentially, Appropriate Behavior addresses female production and agency not only in the background processes of the film, but also in content, as exemplified through Shirin’s trials and travails over the course of the film. Shirin aims to take control of her life post-breakup and establish her identity in relationship to the world around her. She gets a new job teaching filmmaking to five year-olds, moves into a new apartment, and, most importantly, tries to get over her ex-girlfriend Maxine by seeking out and engaging sexually with partners both male and female, including a leader of a feminist discussion group and a hip swinging young couple. In short, Shirin’s desire to create her own new life post-Maxine is analogous to the process of Akhavan’s making her film independently, serving as writer, director, and star, and exemplifies Shirin’s own sexual and personal agency as an active female character. Both Shirin and the film Appropriate Behavior exist outside of the mainstream: Shirin is a bisexual woman of color in an industry where films are usually made about straight white men (whites making up 70 percent of the protagonists in 2014 Hollywood films, men 88 percent, with LGBT characters only accounting for 17.5 percent of all characters), and Appropriate Behavior is an independently financed and distributed film not made to satisfy commercial needs or beckon broad appeal. At the beginning of the film Shirin starts with nothing — she is unhappily single, in need of a home, and looking for a new job — and must start from scratch, just as Akhavan conceived of the fictional story of the film, beginning, one assumes, with a white blank page. Indeed, when it comes to its depiction of sexuality, Appropriate Behavior through its form and content, center the idea of female agency and authorship, whether behind or in front of the camera.

Appropriate Behavior reflects the choices made by Desiree Akhavan throughout her burgeoning career as a filmmaker to maintain her independence, control and agency over her projects. Filmmaker Michelle Citron, in her essay “Women’s Film Production: Going Mainstream,”[1] creates a divide between usage of the terms “film-maker” [sic] versus “director,” arguing that a filmmaker exercises more “control” over her product than does a director, who trades control for increased “power” within the mainstream Hollywood production structure and, one assumes, the ability to direct projects with larger and larger budgets and commercial appeal further down the line. In the interview with Professor Patricia White preceding the screening of Appropriate Behavior at the Penn Humanities Forum at the University of Pennsylvania, Akhavan spoke about the difficulty of getting Appropriate Behavior financed, since, as both she and Citron point out, the kind of projects Hollywood supports are the kind that have been proven to be revenue-generating in the past.[2] Akhavan noted that even within the niche of more mainstream LGBT films she had little luck, since her film was a comedy, not a drama (in the vein of, perhaps, Brokeback Mountain), and thus did not receive any grants, and because her film centers on a bisexual woman of color and not white gay men, it was harder to find support.

Additionally, while Akhavan did not explicitly reference Citron’s filmmaker versus director argument, she did point out that as a woman behind the camera, she had been offered to direct mainstream comedies — for example, something starring Zac Efron — but that she turned those offers down because she wanted to direct her own her projects, even though by this token she was trading a chance at power within the Hollywood mainstream for control over a much smaller film, as per the Citron model.

In terms of the film’s content, the depiction of Shirin’s sexuality also emphasizes her choices and agency in her (attempted) sexual encounters with both men and women. Just as Akhavan went to lengths to ensure her agency and authorship as a filmmaker, Shirin engages with her bisexuality frankly and honestly, seeking out partners whom she believes will make her happy (or at least satisfied), regardless of how society views her sexual orientation. She pursues a male partner for a one-night stand over OkCupid, a female feminist group discussion leader, and a couple, who invites her into their home for a threesome. In one key scene in the film, Shirin attempts to revive her existence as a sexual single woman by going to a lingerie shop and hesitantly requesting to be shown “underwear of a woman in charge of her sexuality and not afraid of change.”

Despite her attempts to prove otherwise to herself, Shirin’s sexual identity and agency is anything but assured, as the audience learns over the course of the film, and is a source of both happiness and pain for her. In her article “Pleasure and Danger: Towards a Politics of Sexuality,” which addresses conceptions of female sexuality through a feminist lens, Carole S. Vance cites a “powerful tension”[3] between pleasure and danger. While Appropriate Behavior does not explicitly define itself as feminist or anti-feminist, its take on female sexuality, especially Shirin’s bisexuality, is indicative of the divide between pleasure and danger that Vance addresses. In the film, Shirin’s bisexuality within both straight and lesbian contexts is treated as dangerous and “other”; her straight brother doubts that bisexuality is real and calls her “sexually confused,” while her ex-girlfriend Maxine, in a particularly harsh moment, wonders aloud if their relationship was just a “phase” for Shirin — particularly damning for a bisexual woman, since they are often perceived as experimenting or, indeed, “confused.” Additionally, Shirin’s sexuality is a source of stress — and, indeed, danger — in the film, because Shirin worries about alienating her traditional Persian family if she comes out to them, which is one of the causes of the breakdown of Shirin’s and Maxine’s relationship.

Furthermore, during the discussion with Akhavan, when the topic of filming sex scenes came up, she spoke of her enthusiasm for participating and directing these kinds of scenes, adding that she felt “empowered” by this type of material. However, what was interesting in the interview, vis-à-vis Vance’s discussion of pornography being demonized by certain feminists, is that one of the sex scenes (likely the threesome) worried Akhavan because she thought it was too close to pornography, rather than an honest depiction of sex, and had to be reassured by her producer that it would turn out to be acceptable. In the scene in question, Shirin engages sexually with the couple, then watches awkwardly as they engage with one another, leaving her out. Where the scene becomes “dangerous,” in a sense, for Shirin is the strange connection she makes with the female half of the couple — a connection that so unnerves as disturbs her that she feels obligated to leave the couple’s apartment. Through Akhavan’s intervention, a scene that could have been aimed at the male gaze and meant to titillate like pornography becomes more emotional and meaningful, with the nudity serving to advance the sentiment of the scene as well as the plot of the film. What is emphasized both in the film and in Akhavan’s commentary is the sense of female power and agency in that both Shirin and Akhavan have, and had, the opportunity and luxury of pursuing and expressing their sexuality in or through the making of the film, even if the outcome for Shirin is not what she expected.

Thus, with regards to both the behind-the-scenes processes as well as the narrative of the film, Appropriate Behavior exemplifies and addresses issues of female authorship and agency. Desiree Akhavan asserted herself not only by writing, directing, and starring in her own film, as well as hiring many women to serve on the production team, but also refusing to take on projects that would diminish her agency and control over the process and end result, preferring to be an author and filmmaker rather than a director-for-hire. Similarly, Shirin alternately asserts (and questions) her identity over the course of the film through her displays of sexuality and the choices she makes, ultimately reaching a place where she is feeling hopeful about her own life and ready to move forward, as emphasized by her finally throwing away the strap-on Maxine insisted Shirin take as part of their break-up. In Akhavan’s career as well as the content she creates, it would seem, women’s ability and agency to be sexual, to be oneself and make one’s own choices, to direct one’s own life, as it were, are paramount. Ultimately, Appropriate Behavior succeeds as a feminist film, in my view, insomuch as we can tie female agency and authorship to feminism, because it keenly addresses these concepts both behind and in front of the camera.

Notes:

[1]: Michelle Citron, “Women’s Film Production: Going Mainstream,” in The Gender and Media Reader, ed. Mary Celeste Kearney (New York: Routledge, 2012), 177.

[2]: Desiree Akhavan, interview by Patricia White at the Penn Humanities Forum, September 25, 2015.

[3]: Carole S. Vance, “Pleasure and Danger: Towards a Politics of Sexuality,” in Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, ed. Carole S. Vance (Boston: Routledge, 1984), 1.

Deborah Krieger is a senior at Swarthmore College, studying art history, film and media studies, and German. She has written for Hyperallergic, Hooligan Magazine, the Northwestern Art Review, The Stake, and Title Magazine. She also runs her own art blog, I On the Arts, and curates her life in pictures @Debonthearts on Instagram.

How the CW’s ‘The 100’ Is Getting Sex Positivity Right

In fact, it’s the aspect of love and intimacy, rather than lust and sexuality, which makes Clarke’s part in Finn’s demise so difficult–the show plays with the idea that human connection, whether it’s through friendship, family, alliance or romance, is painful because it matters, not because it is fundamentally wrong.

This guest post by Rowan Ellis appears as part of our theme week on Sex Positivity.

This article contains spoilers for the first two seasons of The 100 … be warned!

On the surface, it might seem like we live in a sex positive society already, I mean, I just wrote an article about Channing Tatum’s intimidatingly chilled torso for this very website. We hear things like “sex sells” all the time, meaning it’s clearly viewed as positive for our economy if nothing else. But the tiniest scratch below that oiled up muscly surface shows something more complex and gendered. Women’s sexualities and sex lives are viewed in turn as both precious fortresses and exploitable commodities, by a world which can’t quite make up its mind whether it wants to protect us or fuck us. But then men and boys are being taught not to respect either a “weak” woman who needs protecting, or a “slutty” woman who wants to be fucked. So it came as a ridiculously pleasant surprise to see the portrayal of sex and sexuality in the CW’s teen dystopian show The 100.

The 100 is one of those shows that snuck up on me; I watched the pilot when it first came out, and promptly dismissed it as an OK series that I might try again if I got bored and it ended up on Netflix. It’s the story of obligatory-CW-beautiful Clarke (Eliza Taylor) and 99 other teenage prisoners who lived on “The Ark,” a collection of space stations which houses all that is left of the human race, floating above the Earth. I say “lived,” past tense, because pretty much as soon as the show opens all 100 of them are blasted down onto the surface of our messed up planet to see if it’s survivable. One-hundred delinquent teenagers alone on a potentially deadly planet. What could go wrong? Honestly, I only gave the show a real chance after Tumblr excitedly informed me that the lead character wasn’t entirely straight, and it came under the radar as a show with increasingly great representation. So I gave it another chance, and by the time half a season had gone by, it was clear they were building a series that wasn’t afraid to give the middle finger to easy outs and happy endings. And yet, none of those difficult choices or moral and physical suffering were linked to the characters’ sex lives.

Although we like to talk about characters as if they were independent entities, it is the writers who choose character’s choices and the consequences of their actions; traditionally morality plays and novels had marriages to reward the good and death to reward the bad. Sometimes the only way to tell that an otherwise progressive woman was meant to be perceived as good was the fact she was allowed to marry at the end (Jane Eyre, anyone?). And so it is the consequences of sex on screen, not just the having of sex itself, which can truly show an audience how sex positive a show is. Meta-fictional films like Scream and Cabin in the Woods draw attention to this idea when they comment on the absurdity and sexism inherent in the horror trope “The Final Girl” and the importance placed on virginity, where “pure” women are allowed to survive, and having sex carries a death sentence on screen. Although in a show like The 100 the Venn diagram of “characters who have had sex” and “characters who suffer” has a lot of overlap, this is vitally not a causal relationship; the death of Finn and the horrific struggles that Clarke faces as a leader, are not because of their sexual relationship. In fact, it’s the aspect of love and intimacy, rather than lust and sexuality, which makes Clarke’s part in Finn’s demise so difficult–the show plays with the idea that human connection, whether it’s through friendship, family, alliance or romance, is painful because it matters, not because it is fundamentally wrong.

Teen shows have in the past been guilty of using sex to drive melodrama, or of using it only sparingly in “very special episodes” to give a warning. But The 100 uses its post-apocalyptic future setting to frame a version of the sexual worldview as a non-issue, suggesting that we as a collective species get the fuck over it when we have stuff to worry about like the end of the world. Is this realistic? Meh, who cares, I don’t watch sci-fi for realism, I apparently watch it for bisexual lead characters and complex moral decision-making with psychological consequences… but we’ll get on to that in a second. This lack of realism, I think, also extends into what makes the show an enjoyable watch for all its tragedy; there are some things that are safe, namely the sex. As a teenage girl being abandoned on an inhospitable planet with a number of teenage guys who all seem pretty invested in violence, gaining control, and hedonism, rape would be an immediate threat in my mind. Yet the CW set up of the show, and the storylines so far, seem to be completely removed from this fear, which gives me as a viewer a sense of security in a lot of ways. Similarly, the way the show pushes back against stereotypical or soap-like storylines, means as a viewer I am also not that concerned with the seeming lack of condoms or birth control going on, because I feel pretty secure that they won’t include “warning” storylines around safe sex with pregnancy and disease based on the tone of the show. At first, I was worried that the relative sexual freedom which the teenagers had found on the Earth’s surface would become a problem once the parents were reintroduced, with apologies and stern looks. But, again, they had more pressing matters to deal with.

A negativity around women and sex is not just doled out from those in positions of power, the “I’m not like other girls” phenomenon between female peers is rooted in ideas around sexual promiscuity and femininity being lesser. This negativity towards sex is a tool used to pit women, and girls, against each other, rather than being a tool for raising up fellow men or boys because of their perceived sexual prowess. The double standard is hardly new and can be seen in real life as well as being played out on screen in films like Gone Girl, where Flynn criticises the idea of the “cool girl” aesthetic as creating a personality and way or acting based on your desirability to men. This is why it was so refreshing to see the treatment of Clarke and Raven’s relationship, as two women who were interested in the same guy, be secondary to their other connections. There is no passive aggressive MeanGirl-esque in fighting fraught with jealousy; Clarke can’t turn off her feelings for Finn, but immediately understands she can’t be with him, and gets on with what needs to be done. This decision is completely in line with her nature as someone who sees things as they are as far as she can, who is practically minded, who corrects Finn even as he is trying to be romantic when seeing that Raven falling to Earth isn’t a shooting star at all. Clarke is the first person to see Raven on Earth and witnesses her essential rebirth on the planet, they share an interesting relationship in their different ties to Abby, Clarke’s mother, and their friendship is of vital importance based on their respect for each other. The show ultimately rejects the jealous ex paradigm which it seemed to be setting up, and identifies itself as unexpectedly progressive in its portrayal of female friendship.

The portrayal of bisexual women in society at large, is one of “greedy” girls showing off for the attention of men. They are often viewed as more likely to be unfaithful or “slutty,” and both the straight majority and gay community seem to be wracked with worry that their bisexual partners are secretly monosexual. The portrayal of Clarke (the clear lead of the show) being attracted to and forming relationships with, both men and women, plays away from these shallow stereotypes, while not denying her an active sex life. The tragedy in the storylines with both her partners is not caused by her sexuality, although her very real feelings for them heighten the pain for both her and us as an audience. Killing Finn and having to watch as Lexa betrayed their political alliance, took a huge psychological toll on the teen, but ultimately her hardest decision- to kill the population of Mount Weather- was connected to familial and friendship based bonds that created the community of the 100. However, historically the b-word has been conspicuously missing from the screen, even in forcefully progressive shows like Orange is the New Black, and so it is too for The 100. This can be explained away with the idea that the future is as liberated about sexual orientation as it is about sex, and that labels are no longer used or required. But that reduces the real need for bisexual viewers right now to have representation on screen and arguably contributes to the bi-erasure which it could so easily be combatting.

Ultimately, this is a show that features some really beautiful humans having sex, and in that way it isn’t unusual. What The 100 is getting right is creating a narrative where the usual toxic cliches are subverted, and the characters are all the better for it, rather than ignoring sex and praising characters for that instead. There are of course ways to improve: I hope that next season we have Clarke voice her sexuality specifically, because that explicit labeling would be a pioneering act in representation. I would also like to see more diversity, particularly in body type, having an active sex life on the show, which is often missing or played for lazy and crude laughs on screen more widely. How likely is that to happen? My experience with shows in the past tells me, not very. But at the start of The 100 I’d never have guessed they would make any characters queer, and look what they did with their lead. So, if you’re reading this writers of The 100, I’d really love for you to prove me wrong again.

Rowan Ellis is a British geek using her YouTube videos to critique films, TV, and books from a queer and feminist lens.

Murder Spouses and Field Kabuki: The Female Gaze in NBC’s ‘Hannibal’

The show treats the bodies of living women with the same respect that it treats those of dead ones.

This guest post by Lisa Anderson appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.

In discussing the female gaze in media, there’s one television show worth considering that may come as a surprise: NBC’s Hannibal. This plucky little drama has toiled away in bad time slots for three seasons now, winning critical accolades and devoted followers that never translated into ratings. In a landscape littered with crime procedurals that exploit women, Hannibal stands out, and not just for its searing visuals or plot twists. There are three ways that the “gaze” in Hannibal is feminine: the way the show depicts women, the way it depicts men, and the way it depicts sex.

You only need start with the pilot to see that Hannibal is a different sort of show. Not only does it cast two characters who were men in the original novels by Thomas Harris as women – Freddy (Freddie) Lounds and Alan (Alana) Bloom, to be specific – but it gives beefed-up rolls to three characters who weren’t central to the novels’ plots. Those are Jack Crawford’s wife Phyllis, forensic investigator Beverly Katz, and Abigail Hobbes, the daughter of serial killer Garrett Jacob Hobbs. Yet another female character, Hannibal Lecter’s psychiatrist Bedelia DuMaurier, is created from whole cloth. Showrunner Bryan Fuller has been quoted as saying he balanced the cast this way in part because writing a show with only men would have been boring.

As remarkable as the living women in the cast, however, is the way that the show treats dead women, right from the start. Much ink has been spilled about how many law enforcement procedurals fetishize the torture and suffering of women, or depict female murder victims in a titillating way. By contrast, in the opening moments of Hannibal, the protagonist, Will Graham, invites his students (and the viewers) to empathize with a dying murder victim, not with her killer–in spite of his own unfortunate gift for doing the opposite. As he is drawn into the FBI’s investigations of Hobbs’s murders, the first victim is found tucked respectfully into bed, fully clothed. The second crime scene he visits turns out to be one of Hannibal Lecter’s infamous murder tableaus, and while the dead woman there is naked –impaled on antlers – her body is angled in such a way her gender isn’t obvious and the image is fit for network TV.

Hannibal continues its gender-neutral approach to serial murder throughout its run. As many men are murdered as women (if not more), and whenever corpses are found without clothes on, they are shot such a way that they register as human rather than male or female. (The victims of the Muralist in Season 2 are perhaps the best example of this.) Even when a bare breast is shown straight on (such as with one critical character death in Season 2), it goes by quickly and is soft-focused and the nipple is not shown. Most importantly, the murders on Hannibal aren’t driven by misogyny or some twisted sexual motivation. This is not reflective of real of serial killers at all, but the show is more interesting for it. The one exception is Frances Dolarhyde, who comes on the scene in the back half of Season 3, and whose sexual pathology is impossible to get around. Even there, though, his female victims aren’t depicted in a titillating way.

Surely just having lots of good female characters and not depicting crime in a creepy way doesn’t qualify a show has having the female gaze, though, right? No, and in the case of Hannibal, there’s more to it than that. The show makes the most of the attractive male actors in its cast (and their avid fans), and also centers female pleasure in its sex scenes without exploiting the actresses.

The first (and very unsettling) instance of the female gaze that I noticed in Hannibal centers around the above-mentioned Mr. Graham, played by the amazing Hugh Dancy. Early in Season 1, Graham uses his talent for empathy to imagine himself in the place of a mental hospital inmate played by Eddie Izzard. As he mentally reconstructs a murder committed in the hospital by Izzard’s character, we see him with his shirt unbuttoned, smirking at the victim with a mix of smolder and menace before attacking her. In that moment, Dancy seems to be channeling Eddie Izzrard’s own sex appeal. Nor was that the only time the show has made the most of Dancy’s looks: it’s not common for him to be seen shirtless, but it’s not unusual either, and fans on tumblr have gleefully traded stills of the show that feature his rear end. In terms of Will the character, there is, of course, a perennial appeal to a cute man in glasses and cold-weather clothes scritching a dog… but maybe that’s just me. (I doubt it.)

In terms of the female gaze in Hannibal, however, no character is more important than the titular serial killer, played by Mads Mikkelsen. Sex appeal is part of the “Person Suit” that Lecter puts on, whether it’s the dapper, cultured professional that he puts forward in seasons 1 and 2, or the leather-clad, globe-trotting bad boy that begins Season 3. It’s not to lure his victims, though; it’s to conceal his crimes from society. Nor do clothes always make the man–in Season 2, the audience is treated to a slow pan up Mikkelson’s body as he is clad in only swim trunks. (In another example of the show’s twisted vision, Lecter is actually in dire straights at that moment.) In Season 3, there is a brief-but-langorous sequence of Lecter showing off blood. He emerges from the bathroom to have a tense confrontation with another character, rendered decent only by prop placement that would make Austin Powers proud.

The staff of Hannibal make the most of both their talented and attractive lead and the fans’ appreciation for him. The show’s official tumblr literally teased fans for weeks with the prospect of their favorite cannibal in a swimsuit. Even the show’s hilarious and inimitable food stylist, Janice Poon, has described Mikkelson as the “man o’ dreams,” as she jokingly (?) lamented missing the opportunity to brush glaze onto him.

The show’s eye candy doesn’t end with Mikkelson and Dancy, either. Richard Armitage, of Hobbit and North and South fame, joined the cast in Season 3 as Francis Dolarhyde, the Great Red Dragon. Right from his first, dialogue-free scene, he meets the high bar for acting set by Dancy and Mikkelson. But he also got into fighting shape to play the body-building villain of Harris’ novel, and for the most part, if Dolarhyde is in private, he is either wearing only small shorts or implied to be naked.

The way Dolaryhyde is filmed for Hannibal points to the difference between how depicts men and women. His nudity is not necessarily supposed to be titillating – it’s mainly to show off his formidable form and the vivid tattoo on his back, although it certainly won’t be unappealing to those who go in for muscular men. What it is, though, is gendered. By contrast, in the pilot, we see Freddie Lounds sitting at her computer, with her back turned and no shirt on. The mood is casual (especially in comparison to Dolarhyde’s workouts), and there is no posing for a camera that shouldn’t be there, no implication that she might turn. She’s treated as a naked human, not a naked woman. The same comparison can be made between Lecter’s Season 3 shower and the baths taken Dr. DuMaurier, played by Gillian Anderson. The show treats the bodies of living women with the same respect that it treats those of dead ones.

So, what happens when the men and women of Hannibal get together? Speaking strictly in terms of what’s been confirmed onscreen, we’ve had a couple of opportunities to find out. Women are seduced by (and seduce) serial killers, a lesbian character sleeps with a man to get pregnant but later finds a female partner, and there’s even a hallucinatory “five-way” that involves people hooking up with people while thinking of other people (and also… a wendigo. It’s hard to explain). If it all sounds sensational and potentially problematic, only the first part of that is true.

The sex scenes in Hannibal have a few things in common. First, neither female nor male bodies are really exploited. This could be written off as owing to network TV, the networks manage the male gaze just fine in their sex scenes most of the time. Instead, there’s a dream-like, almost art-house quality to the editing and camerawork. Second, they’re always between central, full-drawn characters, who are both acting out of their agency even if there is information that they don’t have. Third, they all have strategic or plot importance – the feelings of the characters and the dynamics between them are as important as what happens physically.

Most importantly, though, the sex scenes in Hannibal always imply that the woman (or women) involved are satisfied. This is usually done with a tasteful shot of an arched back or ecstatic facial expression. Remarkably, in a show where interpersonal relationships of all kinds prove to be fraught and painful, there’s never been a sex scene where it wasn’t clear that a woman was having a good time. This focus on female pleasure, as much as anything else, qualifies Hannibal as a show with a female gaze.

While Hannibal’s female gaze obviously includes the straight female gaze, it’s not strictly heteronormative. Dr. Alana Bloom, played by Caroline Dhavernas, is attracted to both Will and Hannibal, but ultimately ends up in a long-term relationship with a woman. Will and Hannibal both get involved with women, but in a Episode 10 of Season 3, Bedelia DuMaurier – perhaps the person most in Hannibal’s confidence – heavily and repeatedly implies that they’ve been sexual with each other as well. Many viewers were surprised only by the confirmation, based on the homoerotic subtext between the two from the start. While Hannibal still has never had a gay man as one of the central characters, it acknowledges both male and female bisexuality, which is unfortunately a rarity on TV today. Needless to say, this wins the show points in today’s fandom environment, with it’s overlapping interest in social justice and same-sex pairings.

I’m not saying that Hannibal is a perfect show. Feminists have taken issue with it before. I’ve agreed with some of those criticisms and either disagreed with or eventually softened my position on others. With two more episodes left in Season 3 as of this writing, I can imagine ways in which it could still disappoint me. At the end of the day, though, it explodes many of the misogynist tropes of the TV crime procedural and even the texts where it finds its roots, and makes something truly unique and darkly beautiful with the shards.

Sadly, Hannibal has been canceled by NBC, and has not yet found another financial backer. I hope that it finds one, because I’d love for Bryan Fuller to be able to complete his vision. Until then, I’ll probably revisit it on DVD, and encourage those who I think would enjoy it to check it out. I’ll also look forward to his next project: a mini-series of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. I’m sure he’ll bring his singular style to it, and hopefully continued nods to the female gaze as well.

Lisa Anderson is a social services professional and part-time writer living in Nashville Tennessee. Her favorite things include reading, good chocolate, and feminist pop culture deconstruction.

Mo’Nique Returns to the Spotlight in ‘Bessie’

The film also focuses on the relationship between Smith and Ma Rainey, who mentored Smith and gave her guidance on developing her stagecraft. Mo’Nique portrays Ma Rainey, known as the “Mother of the Blues,” in a rich and layered performance and has so much charisma she steals every scene she’s in.

This is a guest post by Paula Schwartz.

Queen Latifah was born to play the Empress of the Blues. Queen Latifah stars in Bessie, the new biopic about the early life of legendary blues singer Bessie Smith. The film will premiere Saturday on HBO. Mo’Nique, who has her first stand out role since Precious, reminds us why she won the Oscar in 2010.

Directed by Dee Rees (Pariah) from a screenplay by Rees, Christopher Cleveland, and Bettina Gilois, the story is by Rees and acclaimed playwright Horton Foote, who died in 2009. The film focuses on Smith’s early years as she struggled as a young singer to eventually become one of the most successful recording artists of the 1920’s. She earned $2,000 a week – an unheard of sum – at the height of her career.

Both Queen Latifah and Mo’Nique received Critics Choice nominations the other day and the Golden Globes and other accolades are sure to follow.

The cast includes Michael Kenneth Williams (Boardwalk Empire, 12 Years a Slave) as Bessie’s husband; Khandi Alexander (Scandal) as Bessie’s abusive older sister, Viola; Mike Epps (The Hangover) as the singer’s bootlegger romantic interest; Tory Kittles (True Detective) as Bessie’s older brother Clarence; Tika Sumpter as Lucille, Bessie’s longtime lover.

At the recent premiere at the Museum of Modern Art, nobody worked the red carpet harder than Mo’Nique, who talked to all the journalists clamoring for her attention.

Bessie has many explicit sex scenes and Queen Latifah’s character has a nude scene that’s integral to the story but sure to get audiences talking. Ma Rainey was gay and Bessie Smith was bisexual, and the film doesn’t shy away from showing scenes of their characters having sex with both men and women. A standout is a scene early in the film where Mo’Nique and Queen Latifah dress up in drag, smoke cigars and do a song together to a boisterous audience.

Here’s a red carpet interview with Mo’Nique, who looked terrific in a blue lace gown, and was warm and thoughtful in her replies to all the journalists:

Were gay women who performed on stage more open about their sexuality in the time of Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith? (Of course they didn’t have to contend with social media.):

Mo’Nique: I think back then there was a strength that said I’m unwavering about who I was born to be. Don’t we still fight with it today? But figure what she had to walk through then? It was illegal. They got locked up. If you were seen with the same sex so to have that kind of strength back then is absolutely beautiful.

What was the key to finding her character?

Mo’Nique: Her music, (I found it) through her music. If you listen to Ma Rainey you’ll really understand Ma Rainey because she sang from her soul. She sung her truth and that’s how I really got to understand who that woman was because there’s really very little written information about this woman. She’s so hidden and now history, you have to dig really deep to get that little bit…. And she told the truth. And even back then, she was fighting for wage equality, so we’re still having that fight today but definitely she kicked open the doors so we can even go to the meetings to have those discussions.

They were friends. And she was Bessie Smith’s mentor and she was very motherly but she was that type of mother that knew when she had to let go and let that baby fly and go see it for herself. And when the bird flew back home she was right there waiting for her. That’s what that relationship what. And what I so appreciate about her, we don’t often times see those relationships anymore, you don’t see it where two friends go through it, they fall out, but they’re still willing to love each other through it and come back together.

What does she see as Ma Rainey’s influence on A&R and jazz?

Mo’Nique: It’s truthful. It’s very honest. It’s very from the soul. When you listen to those singers back then, they couldn’t pretend. They couldn’t fake it because the people would know it and they were those singers that when you sat there, you know how they say music moves you? That was that type of music that moved you and made you make a decision, may it be the right, wrong or indifferent, but when you listen to that music it was like you know what? OK, “I’m gonna finish this darn liquor and I’m gonna make a change.” That’s what that music was back then. Absolutely beautiful!

What were the key factors that made her want to take on the role of Ma Rainey?

Mo’Nique: It was Ma Rainey’s strength. Her integrity. You know when you read that script and you understand that the sacrifices that woman made for little girls like us, and she had no idea that she was doing it, it was just the right thing to do. So when you read those lines, and you understand that that woman is talking to me for me, off the pages, and she’s saying Monique keep pushing. Keep going in the right direction and don’t waver from what you know is right. Look at my story and when you look at that woman’s story it’s not like most of our stories, where we die broke, alone, miserable. When you look at her story she had a very full life.

Before she made her way into the theater, I asked Mo’Nique if she actually sang.

Mo’Nique: All day long!

Later at the after party I asked the 36-year-old director about how she discovered Bessie Smith’s music, she told me it was through her grandmother: “She played Bessie Smith’s records all the time.”

Paula Schwartz is a veteran journalist who worked at the New York Times for three decades. For five years she was the Baguette for the New York Times movie awards blog Carpetbaggers. Before that she worked on the New York Times night life column, Boldface, where she covered the celebrity beat. She endured a poke in the ribs by Elijah Wood’s publicist, was ejected from a party by Michael Douglas’s flak after he didn’t appreciate what she wrote, and endured numerous other indignities to get a story. More happily she interviewed major actors and directors–all of whom were good company and extremely kind–including Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman, Clint Eastwood, Christopher Plummer, Dustin Hoffman and the hammy pooch “Uggie” from “The Artist.” Her idea of heaven is watching at least three movies in a row with an appreciative audience that’s not texting. Her work has appeared in Moviemaker, more.com, showbiz411 and reelifewithjane.com.

Why ‘The 100’ Is a BFD

Bisexual protagonists, scenes that pass the Bechdel Test, women making choices that drive the action of the story – I’m still the only person who watches ‘The 100,’ but, boy, do I enjoy it when I do.

Written by Katherine Murray.

Bisexual protagonists, scenes that pass the Bechdel Test, women making choices that drive the action of the story – I’m still the only person who watches The 100, but, boy, do I enjoy it when I do.

Last year, I wrote about the first season of The 100, a dystopian YA science fiction series on The CW, based on a dystopian YA science fiction novel of the same name. While the first few episodes were laughably terrible, the series later took a sharp (and dark) turn toward being kind of good. The second season of The 100, which airs the first half of its two-part finale this week, is also laughably terrible in places, but also kind of surprisingly good.

One of the good surprises happened last week, when the series hero, Clarke, turned out to be bisexual in a low-key, fairly believable way, that didn’t involve any hand-wringing about her sexual identity. The major story line this season has been that Clarke’s group, the Sky People, are trying to forge an alliance with the Grounders – a group of clans native to the planet the Sky People have landed on. The Grounders’ leader, Lexa, is a girl Clarke’s age who’s also been pushed into a position of responsibility, and the two of them grow closer as the season progresses, because no one else understands the pressure of making life and death decisions for thousands of people, or of sacrificing those you love for the sake of the greater good. There’s tension between them, because they have different ideas about what it means to be a leader, and Clarke’s character arc this season is partly about whether she’s going to end up as cold as Lexa.

That’s already unusual for a network TV show, in that the story is about a serious philosophical difference between two female characters who talk to each other about it, and make life and death decisions based on their discussion, but it’s also unusual because the showrunners decided to let them kiss, and didn’t make a whole big deal about it.

It turns out that Lexa doesn’t make Clarke a cold, hard-hearted leader after all – the opposite happens, and Clarke gets Lexa to warm up a little – at least enough to admit that there’s a place in her hard heart for Clarke. And, rather than having her push Lexa away, or say, “I’m not gay – god, what if I’m gay?!” it turns out that Clarke’s been quietly bisexual all along, and it never came up before because it’s not all that noteworthy a thing. It’s exactly the same as if she were kissing a guy.

In other words, the fact that it’s not a big deal is what makes it a really big deal.

As Allyson Johnson writes in The Mary Sue: “It’s not pandering, or queer-baiting; it’s simply a part of [Clarke’s] characterization that’s played as if it’s totally and beautifully normal.” Series creator and executive producer, Jason Rothenberg, also went on Twitter to explain that people don’t get freaked out about bisexuals in the future world of The 100 and that “if Clarke’s attracted to someone, gender isn’t a factor. Some things improve post-apocalypse.”

We’ve already had bisexual characters on science fiction shows – Torchwood is notable for making bisexuality as part of its mission statement – but there’s still something surprising and refreshing about the easy-going way that The 100 made this happen. It’s a step forward in the portrayal of LGBT people in general, but of Bi people especially. That Clarke’s comfortable with who she is – that she already knew this about herself, and the only thing that’s new is that we’re learning it about her; that she doesn’t turn into a lesbian as soon as she kisses a girl – that’s a big deal.

Another pleasant surprise in the second season is how willing The 100 is to cast women in roles where they just need some generic person. Almost every time – if not every time – groups of random, redshirt, background characters convene, some of them – and some of the ones with speaking parts – are women. The show also fills a lot of secondary roles with women – the generically menacing doctor who works for this season’s enemy, the Mountain Men, is a woman; the super hard core Grounder who distrusts the Sky People and causes tension is a woman – but I was most impressed by Major Byrne.

Major Byrne is a cookie-cutter character who exists just to create conflict among the Sky People now that the conflict-creators from last year have been rehabilitated. The Major is the hard-ass, shoot first and ask questions later, “they are the enemy,” letter of the law, peace-hating, harsh justice head of security who keeps telling the other characters that they’re screwing up by being too lenient and soft-hearted. It’s the kind of role that casting directors usually fill with a male actor, because that’s the person we all picture in our heads when we think of this archetype. The reason I’m impressed that Major Byrne turned out to be a woman is that it shows that someone, somewhere along the line, thought past their knee-jerk reactions and made a deliberate choice about casting the role – and I think that’s indicative of the deliberate choices that The 100 makes in casting female actors in general.

That doesn’t mean that Major Byrne was more than a military stereotype, or that the doctor mentioned above was more than generically evil, or that female redshirts are any more useful than male redshirts as characters – it just means that rather than defaulting to “male unless otherwise specified” it seems like The 100 makes a conscious effort to present a world where both men and women are present and involved in what’s happening.

The third good surprise, and the last one I’ll talk about – although I could mention the show’s humour, and its interesting grimdark twists – is that the writers seem to understand that there was a problem with Octavia in season one. They haven’t figured out the right way to fix it yet, but they’re trying, and I appreciate that.

If you recall, Octavia is the character who began the first season as a sassy, hypersexualized rebel, and then was rebooted as The Kindest Girl Who Ever Lived. In both incarnations, the main point of Octavia was how other people felt about her, and she constantly fell into danger and had to be rescued by other characters.

Season two reboots Octavia again as kind and rebellious, resourceful, independent, and brave. Her character arc this season is that she spends less time with her Grounder boyfriend, and more time training to be a warrior in the Grounder army, after proving herself to the really hard core Grounder, Indra.

There are some ooky colonial elements to Octavia 3.0’s story, and I don’t at all buy that she’s now an honorary Grounder because she started braiding her hair and lost a fist fight in a really spectacular way. She also looks hilarious when she tries to join them in a tribal yell, and she uses literally the worst strategy ever when she tries to take hostages during an early episode. Like, it’s really so bad that I have to believe Indra let her walk away with a hostage because she just didn’t like the guy Octavia was holding hostage very much.

That said, I appreciate that the show is trying to turn Octavia into a person rather than a chess piece in a game that other characters are playing. Right now, the character’s exhibiting a pretty superficial, and unrealistic form of girl power (“Let’s just make her awesome at everything!”), but it’s an improvement over the days when she used to trip over her feet and get knocked unconscious in the woods. If the producers were going to learn any lessons from season one, and latch onto anything as being the core of their show, I think trying to build strong female characters is a fine thing to latch onto – even if they haven’t quite got it right with Octavia.

The 100, like Battlestar Galactica before it, is still remarkable for having women make so many choices that drive the story, and I think that, once they find a way for Octavia’s choices to matter, things will finally slide into place.

And I haven’t even told you about the episode where the A-plot is that the characters go to the zoo and get chased by a monkey!

If you live in the United States, The CW airs The 100 on Wednesday nights. If you live in Canada, you can catch it on Netflix the following morning. Please watch it – I think it deserves to exist.

Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.

Remake A Better, Bi-er ‘Chasing Amy’

‘Chasing Amy’ is a complicated movie for a feminist fan. There’s the initial terror that it’s an “air-quotes ‘lesbian’ just needed to find the right guy” romcom. This fear is dissuades despite the film’s obtuse refusal to use the word “bisexual,” as we get to know more about would-be erstwhile lesbian Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams). And there’s some really poignant criticism of straight men’s fear of and failure to understand women’s sexuality, as we see that Ben Affleck’s Holden prizes Alyssa’s lesbianism because he conflates it with sexual purity. And while this is a fascinating, under-explored facet of sexual politics, it does mean the movie ends up being about Holden’s hurt fee fees more than Alyssa’s actual sexual identity and choices.

When a movie has so much promise but such big problems, especially a movie so dated by the ebbing flannel tide of the late 1990s, there’s only one reasonable option: A REMAKE.

Ben Affleck as Holden and Joey Lauren Adams as Alyssa in 'Chasing Amy' — Ben Affleck as Holden and Joey Lauren Adams as Alyssa in *Chasing Amy*

Chasing Amy is a complicated movie for a feminist fan. There’s the initial terror that it’s an “air-quotes ‘lesbian’ just needed to find the right guy” rom com (see Katherine Murray’s piece for BF: “When It Seems Like the Movie You Are Watching Might Hate You”). This fear is dissuades despite the film’s obtuse refusal to use the word “bisexual,” as we get to know more about would-be erstwhile lesbian Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams), and see that even though no one ever uses the word in the film, she is bisexual. And Chasing Amy levels some really poignant criticism of straight men’s fear of and failure to understand women’s sexuality, as we see that Ben Affleck’s Holden prizes Alyssa’s lesbianism not because of a fetish or the pride of a challenge, but because he conflates it with sexual purity. And while this is a fascinating, under-explored facet of sexual politics, the movie ends up seeming to be more about Holden’s hurt fee fees more than Alyssa’s actual sexual identity and choices.

When a movie has so much promise but such big problems, especially a movie so dated by the ebbing flannel tide of the late 1990s, there’s only one reasonable option: A REMAKE.

And in this remake, I humbly submit the following suggested improvements upon the original:

1. Make Holden less (or more) horrible (preferably less)

Holden is one of those movie protagonists who is so abjectly hate-able I really doubt you’re supposed to like him. I mean, his name is Holden. He’s played by Ben Affleck at the height of his smug uselessness. He’s too cool for his own improbable success as a comic book writer and artist, refusing to sell out to producers who want to adapt his title into an animated series. He rolls his eyes at his friends more than he listens to them. He assumes Alyssa wants his D because she talks to him. He wears oversized cardigans over ratty white undershirts in public. (Plead 90s all you want, ‘Fleck. I won’t hear that defense in my court.) And he breaks up with his girlfriend because she’s encountered other penises before his, and absurdly insists the only way for her to make this up to him is to have a threesome with him and his best friend (more on that later).

Holden’s awfulness makes it harder to feel sorry for him when his total failures as a human being bite him in the ass, which takes up a lot of the third act. The remake could get around this problem by owning Holden’s The Worstness and framing the outcome as just deserts. But Holden’s awfulness also calls into question Alyssa’s character judgment. When she says she didn’t want her gender preference to stop her from being with someone who “complements [her] so completely”, you have to wonder what kind of person would feel that way about this knob. So if Holden is more likeable, so will be Alyssa, and the entire movie.

I would start by giving him a name other than Holden.

2. Explicitly address bisexuality.

Alyssa is certainly within her rights to identify as lesbian despite having had sex with men and dating a man. But the total absence of the word “bisexual” makes the viewer worry that the concept isn’t in the filmmaker’s worldview. And given media’s track record with bi-erasure, that’s very troubling. Chasing Amy actually has interesting things to say about biphobia, shown in both the hetero- and homosexual sides of Alyssa’s social circles. But it is impossible to really appreciate them in a movie that may itself be so biphobic as to deny its central bisexual character that label.

Especially because Alyssa is probably not the only bisexual character in the film! Which leads me to…

3. Deal with male sexuality beyond male ignorance of female sexuality.

The weakest part of Chasing Amy is the subplot about Banky’s alleged repressed attraction to Holden, mostly because the actors are so uncomfortable with it there might as well be a flashing “no homo” chyron. That palpable discomfort really muddles what the film was trying to say about the potential for homoerotic tension in close male friendships. I honestly don’t know if we’re supposed to think Banky is really gay or bi or just in love with Holden, and to what extent Holden returns those feelings (for what it’s worth, he’s the one who kisses Banky and proposes they have group sex with Alyssa).

So the remake has got to clear all this up, and cast some actors who can handle the material.

And because our culture is currently obsessed with “bromances,” this kind of deconstruction will be all the more topical.

And speaking of topical, it’s 2014. The fluidity of female sexuality is not particularly fresh subject matter, and male sexuality is rarely depicted as anything less than concrete. Digging deeper into Holden and Banky’s relationship has a lot of potential. It would be even better to see trans and/or nonbinary characters in this mix so it’s not a lot of “men are from monosexual Mars women are from bisexual Venus” hooey.

4. Centralize Alyssa

Even if the male characters are made more likable and interested as outlined above, Chasing Amy would still have the problem of making Alyssa the object and not the subject of the story. Why does Alyssa obscure her history with men to Holden? How does Alyssa feel about her gay friends feeling betrayed when she dates a man? What does Alyssa think about the potential sexual layer of Banky and Holden’s relationship? Chasing Amy hardly deals with any of this because it is really only about Holden’s wants, needs, and feelings. Which is silly, because who’s having the more interesting story here: “I thought I was a lesbian but I fell in love with a guy?” or “I thought I was straight and I fell in love with a girl.”? Obviously those are gross over-simplifications of Alyssa and Holden’s arcs, and would hopefully be even moreso in this new-and-improved remake. But seriously, it seems pretty clear the only reason Holden is the main character here is that he’s the white dude.

You’re welcome, Hollywood. With these four easier-said-than-done steps you can remake a problematic minor classic into a perfectly awesome MEGA CLASSIC. Or at least another staple of queer media studies syllabi.

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town.

An Authentic Portrayal of a Transgender Sex Worker in ‘Wild Side’

Like much of Lifshitz’ previous work, ‘Wild Side’ explores sexuality and emotional intimacy. Thankfully, Stéphanie’s gender identity or Mikhail and Djamel’s bisexuality are not the sole focus, but rather appropriately important facets of their characters.

Written by Andé Morgan.

Some topics to avoid at a holiday dinner (aside from the fact that Columbus was an awful, awful man or that Jesus probably wasn’t born on December 25): politics, religion, and, if several generations of feminists are sitting around your table, sex work. I can’t bridge that chasm here, but I can tell you that I support the recognition of the human rights of both sex workers and transgender people (big of me, I know). Consequently, I appreciate stories that portray sex workers and transgender people as real people.

Unfortunately, I wince reflexively whenever I hear about a transgender character in a new movie or TV show. The notable exception of Laverne Cox in Orange is the New Black not withstanding, transfolk on screen are usually one-dimensional, and typically function to fill in a story or to be a catalyst for another (cis)character’s development. We’re familiar with the transgender character as a caricature: the “tranny” who is deceptive, immoral, dirty, ugly, and undesirable. These characters don’t develop. They’re either cheap punchlines, or they provide an opportunity for the main (cis)character to develop tolerance or sensitivity. Continue reading “An Authentic Portrayal of a Transgender Sex Worker in ‘Wild Side’”

Bisexuality in ‘Orange is the New Black’

Written by Robin Hitchcock

Orange is the New Black

Orange is the New Black has more buzz than an apiary this summer, and with good reason: it’s funny, emotionally affecting, intensely watchable, and as a Netflix original series, suited to an immensely satisfying weekend binge-watch. But on top of all that, OitNB offers a lot to talk about beyond “Did you watch Orange is the New Black yet? It’s so great!”

It’s actually kind of a shame that Orange is the New Black is so revolutionary and fresh. The show has gotten a lot of attention and praise for the character Sophia, a black trans woman, portrayed by black trans woman Laverne Cox (and her twin bother M. Lamar in flashbacks, in some truly fortuitous casting). I wish that kind of representation didn’t seem so revolutionary and fresh, but honestly, it is still revolutionary and fresh merely for there to be a show mostly about women, much less one like OitNB that does its best to reflect womanhood as anything but monolithic and directly addresses race, class and sexuality.

Laverne Cox as Sophia

Of course, the central and point-of-view character, Piper Chapman, is a privileged white woman–a Smith graduate whose mother is telling everyone she’s volunteering in Africa as an alibi for her 15 months in Federal Prison. Orange is the New Black does its best to address, challenge, and sometimes mock Piper’s privilege (she compares her prison-issue shoes to TOMS), but it can be frustrating that she is the focus while the audience has to wait many episodes for the serious treatment and backstories of some of the most compelling characters of color.

And it is fitting that the most interesting thing about Piper is her bisexuality, which is the one dimension she isn’t at the top of the hierarchy. Again, it shouldn’t be so fresh and unusual to have a bisexual main character, but it is. And Orange is the New Black doesn’t just use Piper’s sexuality as a representation token or an opportunity for hot girl-on-girl prison action, but as an actual platform to explore the complexities of sexual identity.

Larry (Jason Biggs) and Piper (Taylor Schilling)

Piper enters prison engaged to a man, who had previously known nothing of Piper’s same-sex relationship with a drug trafficker ten years prior. Piper, her fiance Larry, and her future in-laws are all too happy to brush off that history as a long-passed phase. Larry only becomes nervous about Piper cheating on him in prison when he learns her ex-girlfriend Alex is also incarcerated there. She has to lecture him on the Kinsey Scale to point out that the presence of Alex isn’t going to “turn her gay.” When Piper (spoiler alert) does have sex with and fall for Alex again, it doesn’t make her fall out of love with Larry, defying the common portrayal of bisexuality involving some kind of toggle switch.

Piper and Alex (Laura Prepon)

Orange is the New Black also side-steps the trope of Piper only being “gay for” one person. In a flashback sequence Piper tells her best friend Polly, “I like hot girls. I like hot boys. What can I say? I’m shallow.” [That’s also an absurdly simplistic representation of bisexuality, but absurd simplicity is fairly honest to Piper’s character.]

Piper’s sexuality is as hard for Alex to accept as it is for Larry, though. When their relationship hits the rocks, Alex angrily says she broke her rule number one: “never fall in love with a straight girl.” Alex bonds with Nicky, another lesbian inmate who had been having sex with another “straight” girl engaged to a man. Seeing these characters express frustration with bisexual characters’ ability to “opt-out” and enjoy heterosexual privileges puts Orange is the New Black‘s simple “Kinsey scale”/”I like hot people” depiction of bisexuality back into a realistically complicated and often painful context of negotiating sexualities.

Discussing Piper’s rekindled affair with Alex, Larry says to her brother Cal, “Is she gay now?” Cal says, “I’m going to go ahead and guess that one of the issues here is your need to say that a person is exactly anything.”

His issue and everyone else’s, Cal.

Robin Hitchcock is an American writer living in Cape Town, and that is not a WASP-y cover story for a prison stint.

Trill Gender and Sexuality Metaphors in ‘Star Trek’

Written by Amanda Rodriguez

In many ways, science fiction is the perfect medium for the exploration of social, cultural, political, gender, racial, class, etc. issues. Because it takes place in the distant future and/or because all the commentary is veiled in metaphor through the use of aliens or monsters, the often questioning and even progressive messages slip beneath the radar. I am sometimes critical of the use of aliens/monsters to represent racial Others, as it often magnifies racist stereotyping as demonstrated by the violent, war-like Black Klingons or the greedy, sniveling (read: Jewish) Ferengi. It’s an oft denied luxury, however, to say what we mean when we say it, and while metaphor and allegory may seem somewhat indirect and occasionally cowardly, it’s a much more artistically pleasing approach that allows a freedom of thematic inquiry often denied other genres.

In the case of the Trill race from the Star Trek universe, gender, gender identity, and sexuality are the primary tropes being examined. The Trill are a symbiotic alien race who bond with various host bodies, allowing the “symbiont” to live multiple lifetimes and accumulate a wealth of experiences. The first Trill appearance is in The Next Generation episode “The Host” wherein Dr. Beverly Crusher falls in love with Trill ambassador Odan.

Even Dr. Crushers honeymoon stage it up.

Odan’s host body dies as a result of an attack on his peace mission shuttle craft, and the symbiont is temporarily transferred to the ever ridiculous Lieutenant Commander William Riker. Dr. Crusher struggles with the transition for a time, feeling betrayed, deceived, and questioning what exactly she loved about Odan. Was it his physicality, which has changed so much, or something more? Eventually, she gets over it, embracing her transcendent love for Odan (she even does the nasty with Riker…gag). However, all bets are off when Odan’s permanent host body arrives.

Odan’s new host body is a woman.

Odan’s transition from male to female proves too much for Beverly. Despite Odan’s insistence that her love for the doctor hasn’t changed nor has her personality, Dr. Crusher rejects her, saying, “Perhaps it is a human failing; but we are not accustomed to these kinds of changes.” This is a very apparent exploration of transgender issues. Beverly accepts her lover’s physical changes until Odan’s gender transition. Though Dr. Crusher blames it on her humanity, it is her personal inability to see beyond the gender binary. Not only that, but Beverly’s discomfort with engaging in a bisexual or lesbian relationship robs her of a love that had made her so very happy before.

Does TNG itself agree with Dr. Crusher’s choice? I think it does. It presupposes that the demands of loving someone while they go through gender transition are unaskable, unthinkable. Not only that, but the show appears to support her ultimate incapacity to stomach lesbianism.

The Deep Space Nine take on Trill love, replete with its sexuality/gender fluidity, evolves beyond that of its predecessor. In the episode “Rejoined,” science officer Lieutenant Commander Jadzia Dax, a Trill, must work with Lenara Kahn, another Trill, on creating the first artificial wormhole. However, Dax and Kahn were a heterosexual married couple in previous host bodies. It is forbidden for Trill symbionts to reconnect with people from their former hosts’ lives. During the course of working closely on their project, Dax and Kahn rediscover their passionate love for one another.

“When you’re not around, it’s like a part of me is missing. I want to be with you more than anything.” – Lenara Kahn

They engage in a lesbian romance that remains unjudged by DS9 friends and crew members. We’ve evolved beyond the thinking of TNG in that the validity of the relationship is not in question. However, the episode focuses on the Trill “taboo” surrounding symbionts reforming bonds with people from past lives. Dr. Julian Bashir says, “The Trill feel very strongly that it’s unnatural.” Major Kira Nerys responds incredulously, “Unnatural? I don’t understand how two people who’ve fallen in love and made a life together can be forced to just walk away from each other because of a taboo.” This so-called taboo is a metaphor for the stigma surrounding homosexuality (and even gay marriage).

The punishment for transgression is banishment from the Trill homeworld. This is tantamount to a death sentence because the offending symbiont will not be given access to any other host bodies and will permanently die within its current host. Captain Benjamin Sisko is one of Dax’s oldest and best friends. He gives her the advice, “It didn’t matter whether [you] agreed with the taboo or not because the price for violating it was too high.” Though pretty much all the characters view this punishment as absurdly excessive, none of them attempt to appeal, ratify, or circumnavigate it.

One of the 1st ever on-screen lesbian kisses.

While DS9 goes a step or two further than TNG, it doesn’t go far enough. While Dax throws caution to the wind to be with the love of her lives (plural intended), Kahn is unwilling to sacrifice her career and her future lives. Their tragic parting is inevitable. On the one hand, this injustice highlights the cruelty of the stigma, laws, and mores surrounding homosexuality while showing no other, better model. On the other hand, this shit takes place in the future. The United Federation of Planets claims to be beyond consumerism, sexism, racism, and speciesism, where diplomatic missions of peace, science, and exploration have supplanted warlike agendas of aggression, fear, and resource appropriation. Then why the hell can’t two chicks get married?

Imagine instead an ending that featured the two women taking their case to the Trill ruling body. They would insist that it’s a crime to limit such long-lived symbiont beings to relationships and experiences that are as short as a human lifespan. The couple would demand that Trill culture re-evaluate the way in which it values multiple, short experiences over the unknown potential of a love that transcends many lifetimes. Being wise and humane, the Trill governing body would realize the error of its ways and undergo a paradigm shift. That’s the kind of enlightened future I’d like to watch on a show and dream might one day come to pass.