People who identify as bisexual are part of an often maligned group. Both straight and queer community members frequently express discomfort with the concept of bisexuality, feeling threatened by bisexuality’s refusal to fit cleanly into an either/or binary system of sexuality.
Our theme week for September 2016 will be Bisexual Erasure and Representation.
People who identify as bisexual are part of an often maligned group. Both straight people and queer community members frequently express discomfort with the concept of bisexuality, feeling threatened by bisexuality’s refusal to fit cleanly into an either/or binary system of sexuality. As a result, bisexuality is often depicted as voracious (Lost Girl), respecting no boundaries, and having no limits (Basic Instinct).
Conversely, many mythologize bisexuality, claiming it doesn’t truly exist. They stubbornly label bisexual people as gay, lesbian, or straight based on their current partner, effectively erasing the sexual identity of an entire group of people (The Kids Are All Right, Chasing Amy).
However, some representations of bisexuality accept it as a normal iteration of human sexuality (The 100). These examples allow for exploration and fluidity without judging or demonizing their bisexual characters (The Fall, How to Get Away with Murder). We need to see more bi characters on-screen, especially bisexual women of color (Frida, Appropriate Behavior).
Show us the best of bisexual representation and the worst of bisexual erasure. Show us the bisexual characters who break the stereotypical mold and those who define it.
We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so please get your proposals in early if you know which topic you would like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.
Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.
If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.
Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).
The final due date for these submissions is Friday, September 23, 2016 by midnight Eastern Time.
‘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
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 McNeil: The Worst
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.
Gif of Alyssa by Film Fatale
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.
Holden and Banky (Jason Lee)
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
Joey Lauren Adams as 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.
Quick – you’re all settled down in front of the TV with Cheetos and soda when you start to have an uncomfortable feeling. The characters are being really hateful, and you can’t quite tell if the writer supports them. Do you: a) keep watching the movie to see how this ends; b) stop watching the movie and do something else; or c) read spoilers for the ending, to find out if you’re wasting your time? If you answered a, b, or c to that question, congratulations! You win. There’s no single Right Way to respond when it seems like a movie might hate you.
Quick – you’re all settled down in front of the TV with Cheetos and soda when you start to have an uncomfortable feeling. The characters are being really hateful, and you can’t quite tell if the writer supports them. Do you: a) keep watching the movie to see how this ends; b) stop watching the movie and do something else; or c) read spoilers for the ending, to find out if you’re wasting your time? If you answered a, b, or c to that question, congratulations! You win. There’s no single Right Way to respond when it seems like a movie might hate you.
Chasing Amy
I watched Chasing Amy for the first time last weekend, and it was a pretty intense experience. I can totally see why this film was such a boost to Kevin Smith’s career – it’s a great movie with a strong voice and an unusually forthright message about how women are actually people. What’s weird is that watching it still felt like walking through a minefield, and not in an exciting way. In a way where I was kind of scared and uncomfortable, thinking I might get blown up.
Check it out.
Chasing Amy is about a real-life experience Kevin Smith had, where he judged his girlfriend for her sexual history and then realized that he was acting like a jerk. The movie takes the situation further and fictionalizes it, giving us a story about a comic book writer named Holden who falls in love with a lesbian, Alyssa, convinces her to start dating him anyway, flips out when he hears that she’s had sex with other dudes in the past, and then alienates her completely and ends up alone. His best friend, Banky, stands on the sidelines making misogynist, homophobic jokes, before it’s revealed that the real root of his anger is his unacknowledged homosexual attraction to Holden.
The movie essentially pulls a bait and switch. The first half of the story looks like it’s going to be about a straight guy who only hangs out with a lesbian because he wants to sleep with her, and then turns her straight with his dick, but then the second half of the story is about that guy learning that he’s acting like an asshole. That, instead of treating Alyssa like a person with the right to her own sexual history and choices, he’s labouring under the belief that she’s obliged to be the Perfect Woman as created by his imagination. She calls him out on it in a pretty straightforward way – first when he assumes that his being attracted to her should mean that she’s attracted to him, and later when he tries to shame her for a three-way she had back in high school – and I can’t quite express how relieved I was when that happened.
It’s a sad commentary on the culture we live in that, as much as I like and respect Kevin Smith as a writer, I honestly wasn’t sure at first if I was supposed to think Holden was cool. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to think that what he was doing was OK, or that Banky was funny when he told jokes about man-hating dykes – I wasn’t sure if this was going to end with Holden and Alyssa getting married and living happily ever after. And I actually stopped the movie halfway through and looked on Wikipedia to see how it ended, because I didn’t think I could stand to watch it if it was really about Holden and the Bankster being awesome bros together.
It surprised me to have such a strong reaction – I mean, I will seriously sit through almost anything, no matter how annoying it is; I love sitting that much – but it also put me in mind of something Kendra James said about watching Django Unchained – “I advise seeing it in the company of people you trust.”
What makes Chasing Amy an important movie is that it taps into something that’s real in our culture – it puts its metaphorical finger right on a raw, exposed nerve. The things that these guys are saying, the things that they’re doing – these are things that some guys really do and say, without recognizing that there’s anything all that wrong with it. In fact, some guys have found it appropriate to say these things to me, for real, in my life. The fear that the movie might not have my back on that was not an abstract, intellectual concern. It was a visceral reaction. I didn’t want to let my guard down just to feel betrayed.
It isn’t just me, either.
Dollhouse
Back when Dollhouse premiered in 2009, a lot of women I knew (and knew of, through the internet) swore off watching it. If you don’t remember the show, that’s OK – I’m pretty sure only five people actually saw it. It was made by Joss Whedon and the story was about a bunch of people (mostly women) who sell their bodies to a futuristic whorehouse where scientists have the technology to wipe someone’s mind and download a new personality into her brain. Clients could request exactly what they wanted, and the Dollhouse would give it to them by programming a human being to act like a fantasy.
Because it was an action-adventure show (sort of), the client of the week usually wanted something beyond whoring – they might need a spy, or a thief, or an expert psychologist or something to go on a mission – but it was clear that sex work was the company’s bread and butter.
As the story ultimately unfolds, it becomes clear that the Dollhouse is fundamentally evil – the first step toward the total collapse of civilization, heralded by the disregard for human life that displays itself in treating people as disposable, programmable shells. The inhabitants of the Dollhouse fight to escape and regain their identities, and find themselves at ground zero of a massive civil war. The dark desire to make women into whatever one wants or needs them to be – here expressed a little more literally than in Chasing Amy – is presented as a form of misguided entitlement, feeding into other situations where the powerful take what they want at somebody else’s expense.
Unfortunately, during the first few episodes of the series, it’s unclear whether we’re supposed to be bothered by what’s going on in the Dollhouse, or to casually accept it as a sexy, cool recipe for adventure. Just like with Chasing Amy, the attitudes expressed in the first half are attitudes expressed in real life, usually by people who don’t see any problem with what they believe – and watching the characters accept these ideas as normal raised the possibility that maybe the writers were just blind to it. The power and relevance of both of these stories comes from the fact that objectifying women is a popular pastime in real life, and not everyone sees the problem with that – the discomfort and uncertainty of these stories comes from the fact that objectifying women is a popular pastime in real life, and not everyone sees the problem with that. It’s hard to know, at first, whose side the story is on.
It doesn’t help that both of these stories also seem to be aimed at dudes. They’re both structured in such a way that the skeeviness of these attitudes toward women is something that’s “revealed” rather than taken as given. I have a hard time imagining a female audience that would begin from the position that all of this stuff is okay and need to hear an explanation of why it’s not. It’s a lot of dudes telling other dudes that women are people, and that’s encouraging, but it also reminds you that you’re not considered a person right from the start.
So, what do you do when you feel uneasy, and fear that the movie might hate you?
I think it just depends on how much you trust the people telling the story, and how much you’re willing to risk. I don’t think anyone is obligated to sit still and be insulted for two hours, so, if you feel like that’s what might be happening, you’re well within your rights to bail. I also don’t think you’re obligated to avoid watching something just because it’s problematic, so, if you want to stick it out and see the whole thing, that’s a totally awesome choice, too.
Either way, I think Kendra James has it right; when the topic is your relative equality, you need the company of people you trust–in the audience, behind the camera, on a Facebook chat after the show. People who think you’re a person right from frame one.
Katherine Murray is a Toronto-based writer who yells about movies and TV on her blog.
Gigli, the abomination masquerading as a film, is generally regarded as a pretty dang terrible movie. Plot? Action? Character development? Pathos? Entertainment? Nah, Gigli does away with those archaic devices and goes straight for the…boredom, offensiveness, unlikeable characters, and bad, bad, badness. How Christopher Walken and Al Pacino were coerced into cameos must’ve involved black magic or scandalous photo documentation. We won’t even get into the fact that two supposedly trained “contractors” (contractors for what exactly? poorly delivered dialogue?) are hired to watch Brian, a hostage who is differently abled, apparently suffering from “brain damage,” and Larry Gigli (Ben Slimeball-Face Affleck) constantly ridicules, yells at, and name-calls Brian due to his condition. Instead let’s focus on the hallowed converted-lesbian trope that Hollywood loves so well.
Celebrate by NOT watching this atrocity.
Yes, Hollywood loves to take lesbian characters, introduce them to men who are just so irresistible that aforementioned lesbian sees the penis…er…light, and changes her lesbionic ways. A few examples of this are Chasing Amy (starring Ben Affleck yet again, what a shocker) and the inexplicably critically acclaimed The Kids Are All Right, Puccini for Beginners, and Prey for Rock & Roll starring Gina Gershon of Boundfame. We get into some murky territory with many of these films because sexuality is fluid, and I am certainly not in the business of defining anyone’s sexuality for them. However, Gigli is a cut-and-dry case of the hetero disbelief that sex and, in particular, female sexuality can exist without the involvement of a penis.
Only he isn’t a “sissy gangster’; he’s a fuck-up with very few legitimate feelings in need of expression.
Jennifer Lopez’s Ricki is a sexay lesbian “contractor” on a job with the devoid-of-redeeming-qualities Larry Gigli. They mostly hang out in his dumb apartment (budget constraints perhaps) and share his bed at night. Ricki consistently baits Gigli with her unattainable sexuality, leaving him in a frenzy of sexual frustration. With much eloquence, he says:
“I got this fucking beautiful-sexy-gorgeous-hearthrob-o-rama-fucking-smart-amazing-bombshell-17-on a fucking 10 scale-girl sleeping in a bed right next to me and you know what? She’s a stone cold dyke. A fucking untouchable, unhave-able, unattainable brick wall fucking dyke-a-saurus rexi. So it’s sad.”
Can you believe her panties didn’t catch on fire at those Cyrano words of wooing? I guess we’re supposed be like, “Yeah, buddy, that’s rough…it sucks when a woman wants to not give her vagina to you.” Not only that, but Gigli attempts to seduce Ricki by flexing and showing off his bad tattoos after yelling at her that he’s the bull in their relationship and she’s the cow. A real charmer, eh?
A long sexay yoga scene replete with a monologue about the vagina.
We also meet Ricki’s insecure, paranoid, stalker girlfriend, Robin, who proceeds to slit her wrists for effect when Ricki breaks up with her. After a trip to the emergency room, maybe the uncouth Gigli is looking a little more appealing? It’s hard to see this over-the-top interaction as anything other than hyperbolic stereotyping implying that lesbian relationships are nothing but drama.Inevitably (why it is inevitable I don’t know), Ricki and Gigli do the nasty, and boy is it nasty. It’s hard to imagine they dated in real life because their sex scene is awkward at best and more accurately described as “just plain gross.”
I never, ever want to see Ben Affleck mounting anyone ever, ever again.
Ricki initiates the foreplay and asks Gigli to perform cunnilingus on her by saying, “It’s turkey time. Gobble, gobble.” More alluring words were never spoken on the silver screen. He hems and haws and never actually gives her what she asks for, which is the film’s way of subverting female desire and reasserting the supremacy of not only male desire but of the penis-vagina interface as the only true form of sexual fulfillment.
What Gigli is trying to say as a film eludes me. However, what the film is actually saying is blatantly obvious. Ben Affleck is so unlikeable that the movie only serves to show that lesbians will be turned straight by being in the company of any man, no matter what a piece of shit he may be. This is conservative heteronormative dogma (Dogma– yet another Ben Affleck flick). Luckily, Gigli is universally thought to suck, and hopefully some measure of that perceived suckitude has to do with the inane, unrealistic, chemistry-free romance between a hot lesbian and the King of the Jackasses.
Bitch Flicks writer and editor Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.
Gigli, the abomination masquerading as a film, is generally regarded as a pretty dang terrible movie. Plot? Action? Character development? Pathos? Entertainment? Nah, Gigli does away with those archaic devices and goes straight for the…boredom, offensiveness, unlikeable characters, and bad, bad, badness. How Christopher Walken and Al Pacino were coerced into cameos must’ve involved black magic or scandalous photo documentation. We won’t even get into the fact that two supposedly trained “contractors” (contractors for what exactly? poorly delivered dialogue?) are hired to watch Brian, a hostage who is differently abled, apparently suffering from “brain damage,” and Larry Gigli (Ben Slimeball-Face Affleck) constantly ridicules, yells at, and name-calls Brian due to his condition. Instead let’s focus on the hallowed converted-lesbian trope that Hollywood loves so well.
Celebrate by NOT watching this atrocity.
Yes, Hollywood loves to take lesbian characters, introduce them to men who are just so irresistible that aforementioned lesbian sees the penis…er…light, and changes her lesbionic ways. A few examples of this are Chasing Amy (starring Ben Affleck yet again, what a shocker) and the inexplicably critically acclaimed The Kids Are All Right, Puccini for Beginners, and Prey for Rock & Roll starring Gina Gershon of Boundfame. We get into some murky territory with many of these films because sexuality is fluid, and I am certainly not in the business of defining anyone’s sexuality for them. However, Gigli is a cut-and-dry case of the hetero disbelief that sex and, in particular, female sexuality can exist without the involvement of a penis.
Only he isn’t a “sissy gangster’; he’s a fuck-up with very few legitimate feelings in need of expression.
Jennifer Lopez’s Ricki is a sexay lesbian “contractor” on a job with the devoid-of-redeeming-qualities Larry Gigli. They mostly hang out in his dumb apartment (budget constraints perhaps) and share his bed at night. Ricki consistently baits Gigli with her unattainable sexuality, leaving him in a frenzy of sexual frustration. With much eloquence, he says:
“I got this fucking beautiful-sexy-gorgeous-hearthrob-o-rama-fucking-smart-amazing-bombshell-17-on a fucking 10 scale-girl sleeping in a bed right next to me and you know what? She’s a stone cold dyke. A fucking untouchable, unhave-able, unattainable brick wall fucking dyke-a-saurus rexi. So it’s sad.”
Can you believe her panties didn’t catch on fire at those Cyrano words of wooing? I guess we’re supposed be like, “Yeah, buddy, that’s rough…it sucks when a woman wants to not give her vagina to you.” Not only that, but Gigli attempts to seduce Ricki by flexing and showing off his bad tattoos after yelling at her that he’s the bull in their relationship and she’s the cow. A real charmer, eh?
A long sexay yoga scene replete with a monologue about the vagina.
We also meet Ricki’s insecure, paranoid, stalker girlfriend, Robin, who proceeds to slit her wrists for effect when Ricki breaks up with her. After a trip to the emergency room, maybe the uncouth Gigli is looking a little more appealing? It’s hard to see this over-the-top interaction as anything other than hyperbolic stereotyping implying that lesbian relationships are nothing but drama.
Inevitably (why it is inevitable I don’t know), Ricki and Gigli do the nasty, and boy is it nasty. It’s hard to imagine they dated in real life because their sex scene is awkward at best and more accurately described as “just plain gross.”
I never, ever want to see Ben Affleck mounting anyone ever, ever again.
Ricki initiates the foreplay and asks Gigli to perform cunnilingus on her by saying, “It’s turkey time. Gobble, gobble.” More alluring words were never spoken on the silver screen. He hems and haws and never actually gives her what she asks for, which is the film’s way of subverting female desire and reasserting the supremacy of not only male desire but of the penis-vagina interface as the only true form of sexual fulfillment.
What Gigli is trying to say as a film eludes me. However, what the film is actually saying is blatantly obvious. Ben Affleck is so unlikeable that the movie only serves to show that lesbians will be turned straight by being in the company of any man, no matter what a piece of shit he may be. This is conservative heteronormative dogma (Dogma– yet another Ben Affleck flick). Luckily, Gigli is universally thought to suck, and hopefully some measure of that perceived suckitude has to do with the inane, unrealistic, chemistry-free romance between a hot lesbian and the King of the Jackasses.
