Opengender

The very strategy of breaking down the smoothness of cinematic illusion often made avant garde films difficult to read, since decoding non- or anti-narrative techniques relied on a working knowledge of 'high' cultural codes which are, by definition, restricted to a privileged class. In any case, even within privileged cultural contexts, these codes are not longer widely disseminated. Many, on the other hand, found the prioritisation of politics over pleasure merely boring.

But one problem with such anti-cinematic strategies is that they can also deny pleasure. (This way, according to Mulvey, was an aim of radical feminist cinema.) They may result in the denial of all desire, including the female. (Florence, 1993: 141)

De Lauretis (1990) and Florence (1993) argued that, as the 1980s progressed, the distinction between 'alternative' or avant-garde film-practice and the mainstream was, in any case, breaking down. Increasingly, lesbian film was seen as marginal, rather than oppositional or alternative (de Lauretis, 1990: 10; Florence, 1993: 134).

The terms of this debate were set up about 15 years ago, and they are closely linked with the kind of theorising that followed Laura Mulvey's article (1975) [...] The practices (lesbian, feminist, and cinematic) from which they are inseparable are no longer so clear, and while this has entailed losses, it need not be read as the appropriation of the alternative by the mainstream, or not only. Rather it can be seen as the kind of breakdown of oppositional structures that is consistent with a feminist dispersal of binary thinking, and from a lesbian viewpoint there are powerful reasons for ceasing to prioritise one over the other. (Florence, 1993: 134-5)

By the 1980s, re-appropriative attitudes towards popular cinema among lesbians were beginning to be explored. It was often through analysis of the lesbian-romance genre that the specificity of lesbian spectatorship of popular film began to be theorised, and it was this same genre which spawned a mini-wave of mainstream lesbian features in the 1980s. The lesbian romance takes its narrative form from the popular lesbian literary genre which had already generated a body of theoretical definitions of the specificity of lesbian texts or readers. In terms of feminist film-theory, however, the lesbian romance was a form which, it was frequently argued, could only signify lesbian desire in heterosexualising terms.

In mainstream films such as Personal Best (1982), women "do not define for themselves the challenge their relationship poses to patriarchy. This allows the film to recuperate their (unnamed) sensual pleasure into its own regime of voyeurism" (Williams, 1986: 153). DiCaprio (1984) also saw Lianna (1983) as written very much from the outsider's viewpoint, "presenting lesbian relationships in such a way as to preclude a radical presentation of the issues" (DiCaprio, 1984: 45). But if subversion of the processes of spectatorship was possible in feminist film form, could similar techniques not be brought to bear on popular film?

Attitudes began to shift with the deployment of anecdotal and crudely quantitative approaches. The anecdotal approach initially owed much to pioneers of gay male film criticism such as Russo (1981) and Babuscio (1984) and articulated in a different register from that of feminist film theory. Becker et al (1985) called for the development of a specifically lesbian film criticism, applicable also to popular film, which feminism at that time more characteristically dismissed as entirely male-centred and negative towards women. Becker et al nevertheless argued that a specifically lesbian approach to popular film was crucial to combating the negative stereotyping of lesbians in the dominant culture as well as for the benefit and consumption of an increasingly visible lesbian subculture:

The intellectual and political groundwork has been established, within the lesbian movement, and we can now draw upon this for its application to film [...] The creation of a lesbian film criticism is particularly urgent, given the intensified use of the lesbian as a negative sign in Hollywood movies [...] (Becker et al, 1985: 296)

Rather than focusing solely on representation of lesbians within the dominant, or feminist, film text, this article began to acknowledge and define a lesbian film spectator:

The notion of lesbian subtext depends on the knowledge, suspicion or hope that some participants in the film [...] were themselves lesbians, and that their perspective can be discerned in the film even though disguised. Subtexting, then, depends for its cues on gossip [...] not to know details of lesbian participation in film production is a problem in constructing any solid lesbian history. (Becker et al, 1985: 301)

In order for a sub-textual reading to be possible in the terms outlined, lesbians had to be materially present (or at least to be hoped or suspected to be!) in the production of the text. That is, the text must embody lesbian authority in some way. In the absence of such authorisation, "the burden of proof for a lesbian analysis frequently depends upon the interpretation of style" (301). A lesbian analysis thus still needed to be 'authorised' by the inference of the actual presence of a lesbian in the film's production through examining the text for aesthetic clues to a lesbian sensibility at work in it.

This of course begs the question of delineating a lesbian aesthetic in the first place. Becker et al defined it (following Babuscio, 1984) as a practice of reading subtext, providing a means by which lesbians can re-appropriate dominant representations to their own ends:

While gossip transpires at the private level of conversation, subtexting is the route by which dominant cultural products can be used to serve subcultural needs, by annexing a mass product (movies) alien to lesbian identity. (Becker et al, 1985: 302)

But this practice is here limited to an identificatory mode because it is tied to the presence of lesbian authors or stars. Once gain, the theorist is referred to the problem of defining lesbian identity. Becker et al do not wish, however, to authorise just any old lesbian reading. Some lesbian subtextual readings are repositioned as "fantasy projections," but there is no discussion of what actually does anchor 'realistic' lesbian meanings.

Straayer's (1984) broadly quantitative evaluation of lesbian reception of Personal Best revealed a less textually engaged lesbian response than that of Williams or DiCaprio, challenging the Mulveyan conceptualisation of spectators carried along remorselessly by the structuration of the text. At the same time, it moved beyond the mimetic approach of Becker et al. About 70% of her lesbian, bisexual, and feminist respondents "loved" or "liked" the film (Straayer, 1984: 41). But when asked whether they thought the film was "about lesbians," only 10% thought that it was. 93% liked the image of the female athletes' "strength, beauty, naturalness and internal determination" (41). Whilst respondents indicated discomfort with the presence of males in the audience who might read the film in a 'sexist" way, they indicated that they could watch in a way which was "psychologically disengaged" from the presence of males (41). "Viewing pleasure coexisted with displeasure" mobilising simultaneously "both a lesbian/feminist reading and a lesbian/feminist critique." Effectively, "similar images can be used for grossly different purposes both by the image makers and the viewers" (41). Straayer noted, for example, that heterosexist humour was used to foster a sense of inclusion in the diegesis for heterosexual audiences. It might be indicative of lesbian ability to 'bracket off" unwelcome narrative codings that, whilst many lesbians reported disliking the humour, 48% answered that they did not "'remember' any jokes at all" (44).

Lesbians thus may not necessarily rely solely, or even mainly, on evidence of lesbian involvement in the production of a text. In order to 'read as a lesbian,' lesbians might deploy a knowledge of the competing discursive 'fields" which reveal a lesbian discursive formation. Ellsworth (1986) also argued for a more lesbian-centred and contextualised reading approach, but used a more discursive method which recognised the importance of intertextuality. Lesbian spectators of the realist film may use a technique of reading a 'lesbian verisimilitude' into certain texts, ignoring heterosexualising endings or the insertion of a heterosexual romance. Lesbian reading always takes place as a negotiation of conflicting discourses of lesbianism. Lesbian readings of Personal Best were linked to conflicts surrounding "issues of lesbianism, representation of women's bodies and feminist sexualities" (Ellsworth, 1986: 48).

After an initial euphoria of mass demonstrations against pornography in 1979 that reaffirmed solidarity reminiscent of the early Seventies, alternative interpretations of pornography emerged and gained legitimacy within some communities (primarily academic communities) [...] The dissent around pornography contributed to a continuing controversy over feminist sexualities that added to the interpretative strategies available to feminist reviewers [...] Feminist reviewers actively gave it the status of event by using it in ongoing debates within feminist communities themselves. (Ellsworth, 1986: 48-9 – emphasis hers).

Ellsworth further suggested that:

[Personal Best] gave feminist communities the chance to apply their already constructed interpretative strategies to Hollywood mainstream films and a new instance of filmic representation of women and women's issues like lesbianism. (Ellsworth, 1986: 49)

In other words, (these) lesbians appeared to be able to re-deploy the same discursive framework to this male-authored text as they had applied to lesbian-authored films exhibited in a feminist context. In a mixed exhibition space, they had managed to 'bracket off' the male presence and simply re-refer a lesbian mode of spectatorship to a woman-identified discursive context external to the film-text. Furthermore, the film itself became an 'event' in the politicised struggles over meaning which are constitutive of lesbian discourse itself.