#bisexual representation
“The season’s most provocative lesbian sequence was in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross (1932). The film, adapted from an 1895 British stage play, depicts the conflict between a Christian community and the powerful Roman state, headed by Nero (Charles Laughton). Nero’s right-hand man, Marcus Superbus (Fredric March), falls in love with a young Christian woman, Mercia (Elissa Landi). Though he tries to bring her around to the Roman way of life, her faith eventually inspires him to face the lions with her. Despite the film’s Christian message, it was packed with eroticized, violent spectacle, including gorillas and alligators attacking nearly nude women in chains, a battle between Amazons and Little People, and packs of lions attacking and eating Christians. Reprising the bacchanalia in Manslaughter (1930), female same-sex desire is embedded in the sexual excess of ancient Rome. There are no female inverts, although some of the men are sissyish, particularly Nero. The first potentially lesbian moment occurs when Nero’s wife, Empress Poppaea (Claudette Colbert), bathes in a pool of asse’s milk. After slipping off her robe and lowering herself into the milk, Poppaea invites a female slave to join her. The camera modestly looks away, panning to two cats lapping milk from the edge of the pool. This look away suggests that a sexual encounter might occur; the lapping cats intimate oral sex.”-FromGirls Will Be Boys Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908-1934 by Laura Horak
Post link
the best thing about kit connor is how much he brings up the underrepresentation of bisexual characters in the media (especially male ones) he makes such a point of bringing it up and then discussing how proud playing nick makes him and it means so much to me. he doesn’t have to do it and yet time and time again without fail he’s mentioned both the importance of bisexual rep and how rare it is and it’s SO important and heartwarming to see an actor be so passionate about his character and their sexuality
Against ‘Good’ Bisexual Representation, Towards Bisexual Cinematic Pleasure | by Jacob Engelberg | Nov, 2020 | Medium
Against ‘Good’ Bisexual Representation, Towards Bisexual Cinematic Pleasure
This is great!
“By dismissing the image of the promiscuous bisexual, the assumption is that we’re actually monogamous; rejecting the image of the confused bisexual, the assumption is that we’re all secure in our sexualities; decrying the image of the duplicitous bisexual, the assumption is that we’re morally upstanding subjects. By rejecting the representations of bisexuality that transgress social norms, like David Cronenberg’s Crash (1996), these critiques actually work to cement social norms further. This position is fated to an assimilationist conclusion: “We can be just as normal as you.””
