Both/Neither, the Bisexual Gaze

Bisexuality sits uneasily in our social ontology – it is queer in the original sense of the word, out of place, subverting. Bisexuals can be assimilated to neither hetero- nor homonormativity, with their mirror-image tropes of masculinity and femininity, and promiscuity and prudishness. As Frank Ocean sang, bisexuals “see both sides like Chanel,” but elide existing categories. They are both and neither.

This resistance to categorization explains why bisexuals, especially bisexual women, have been portrayed as fascinating, but always perversely so. In Blue Velvet Frank Booth is magnetic to Jeffrey, a lure to the dangerous underbelly of suburbia. And Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct is both dangerous and sexy – dangerous because she’s sexy – just like her previous girlfriends (also bisexuals), who murdered their heteronormative families on whims. (Subtle…) The threat of bisexual women to the status of straight men explains the perennial appeal of straight girls “just having fun”: just as sexy, not as threatening.

And yet bisexuality is both represented – in homoerotic undercurrents between straight men and more explicitly in women – more often than the films let on. Action films are particularly rife with homoerotic subtext, from both within the film’s narrative and from the attention of the camera, but almost universally fail to acknowledge or outright reject these readings. In Michael Bay’s Bad Boyz II, for example, police partners Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, while being filmed and, unbeknownst to them, broadcast into a nearby store, discuss the growing tension in their partnership after Smith shot Lawrence in the butt. The scene excavates the homoerotic subtext of the buddy cop genre – “When you popped me from behind, I think you damaged some nerves,” Lawrence says, as mothers in the store hustle their children away and two gay men chide Smith for his callous response – only so it can be mocked and dismissed.

But Bay’s camera betrays him; the latent bisexual readings of his films go deeper than just plot. Though he objectifies men and women alike with its gaze, it is the male body that traditionally defines the action genre. Action scenes are vehicles for the glorification of the male form. In Bad Boyz, Bay films Smith run in luxurious slow-motion, his muscles bouncing as he goes to – nowhere in particular. Bay knows what we’re here to see. His body subsumes plot. Action heroes track our ideals of masculinity: the 80s and 90s were the height of muscle-men like Arnold Schwarzenegger, today it is slimmer men like Chadwick Boseman and Tom Holland who dominate action movies (though we still have our fair share of muscly guys going around – I see you, Michael B. Jordan).

Still, bisexual women frequent the screen more often, or at least more explicitly, than bisexual men. The tone was set in the first mainstream movie to center on bisexuality, 1997’s Chasing Amy. Ready to answer all of your local creep’s lingering questions on the vagaries of lesbian sex, Chasing Amy awkwardly works its way through the homophobic reactions of comic-book artists Holden (Ben Affleck) and Banky (Jason Lee) to finding out their friend Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams) is gay. As Holden and Alyssa’s friendship develops, Alyssa finds that she has romantic feelings for Holden, and eventually determines that she is bisexual.

Despite its forced dialogue and liberal use of slurs, Chasing Amy is surprisingly sophisticated in its depiction of bisexuality. In an early scene, Alyssa makes out with her then-girlfriend in a bar in front of Holden and Banky.

Rather than indulge the straight-male fantasy, or turn away in disgust or prudishness, the shot widens to include a leering Banky and uncomfortable Holden, forcing the viewer to reckon with the conflicting desire and revulsion towards lesbians of the straight world of the mid-90s. And it also recognizes the harmful attitudes of the wider gay and lesbian community at the time: “another one bites the dust” says Alyssa’s lesbian friend when she comes out as bi.

The story takes place at the boundary of Holden and Banky’s straight suburbia and Alyssa’s queer New York City. In the city, Alyssa hides Holden from her gay friends; and in the suburbs, Holden and Banky hide their feelings for one another. Like the buddy cop genre, the childhood-friend-who’s-threatened-by-his-friend’s-girlfriend genre is saturated with homoerotic implications. Jonah Hill is both jealous of Michael Cera in Superbad when he starts talking to a girl, and threatened by her monopoly on Cera’s attention.

In the same way Banky is threatened by Holden’s relationship with Alyssa, and masks it behind homophobic objections to dating her. This subtext, unlike in Bad Boyz II, is foregrounded in Chasing Amy for the purpose of affirming rather than mocking it. Holden, realizing his mutual feelings for Banky, proposes a threesome to him and Alyssa. But Alyssa breaks up with him over it, and he and Banky can no longer remain friends now that they have acknowledged their desire.

Chasing Amy, however, despite the sensitivity of its narrative to both the bisexual experience of the mid-90s and the tropes of its genre, remains only about bisexuality, not for bisexuals. Its audience, it makes clear – through positioning the homophobic Banky as the voice of reason, through its pedantic dialogue, through its morality-tale ending – is straight. Like Philadelphia, Chasing Amy had to sacrifice some complexity and center itself as a response to bigotry in order to appeal to mainstream audiences.

Can bisexuality escape its status as both/neither? Can it be defined as something other than difference – a state queer theorists tend to assign to it – but rather something positive, something of its own? Writing “difference” can entomb those represented; as Hilton Als notes, white audiences “support writers of color who do not challenge their privilege by writing against it. These writers are limited to becoming those one or two words – other and different.” And if these writers are so other, so different, they cannot make claims on some us, “normal” people.

I have only sketches to offer here. Though she is more often read as a transgender character, Mulan can also be seen as bisexual. She begins the story comfortable in neither the feminine world of the Matchmaker nor the masculine world of the army. Despite her eventual success in the army, when she is found out as a woman her company leaves her behind – she is exiled from the world of men to the world of women. But when she realizes Shan Yu plans to kidnap the Emperor, Mulan returns to the capital city and defeats him with her fan, which had earlier in the film symbolized femininity.

It is only by retaining the pieces of femininity (as her society defined it) which she wanted to keep that Mulan was able to succeed in what was the world of men. She transcends her society’s visions of masculinity and femininity. She is no longer both/neither: she has defined herself. Even the Emperor bows down for that feat.