Page
1 / 2 - Home
In effect, Personal Best was among the first of a rising tide of gay and lesbian films
with relatively positive messages. For the first time, gays and lesbians began
to find love in the movies, and though they still struggled
with coming-out issues and homophobia, happy endings began to
be seen. Lianna
was released in 1983, and Desert
Hearts in 1986, marking a high point in independent
lesbian filmmaking and setting the stage for more diverse representations
of lesbianism, as in Go Fish
(1994) and The Incredibly True Adventures of
Two Girls in Love (1995).
But
while lesbians began seeing themselves in a more positive light
on the big screen, representations of bisexuality remained problematic
and varied. In Basic Instinct (1992), Sharon Stone played a vicious, psychopathic
and bisexual murderer—a role that dismayed many in the lesbian
and bisexual community. In Chasing
Amy (1994), Joey Lauren Adams played a lesbian who fell
for a man, then returned to a lesbian relationship without ever
acknowledging the idea of bisexuality. In Bound
(1996), Jennifer Tilly’s character left her man for Gina Gershon,
but while the movie was undeniably positive in its representation
of lesbian sexuality, it once again never mentioned the concept
of bisexuality.
More
recent films have continued to be uneven in their engagement
with bisexuality. Though Frida
(2002) made the artist’s bisexuality a matter-of-fact part of
the film, it focused more on Kahlo’s heterosexual relationships. Meanwhile, in the box-office bomb Gigli
(2003), Jennifer Lopez’s lesbian character slept with a man
(Ben Affleck), but again did not acknowledge the possibility
of bisexuality.
Despite
the lack of consistent progress in representations of bisexual
women in film, Hollywood
has certainly changed since 1982 with regard to its representation
of lesbians. Nowhere
is this more apparent than in the career of Mariel Hemingway
herself, who was only 19 when Personal Best was released.
Since
then she kissed Roseanne Barr on Roseanne
in 1994, thus firmly cementing her status as a lesbian icon,
and she has recently signed on to play a lesbian secret service
agent in the upcoming movie Her Line of Fire for here! TV. The
film, which is slated to air in early 2006, is an action movie
that follows a U.S.
president whose plane is shot down on a remote island populated
by anti-American guerillas.
Hemingway
plays Secret Service Agent Lynn Delaney, who in the midst of
the action falls for the president’s press secretary, Sharon
Serano, played by out lesbian actress Jill
Bennett.
When
announcing the film, Meredith Kadlec, vice president of here!
TV’s original programming, noted, “A lesbian action hero who
kicks ass, saves the day and gets the girl is not only empowering,
but an image our audience is starved to see.”
The
fact that the secret service agent is played by Mariel Hemingway,
who has long been known for her work in Personal Best, is both exciting for her
longtime lesbian fans and supremely satisfying—because this
time, her character isn’t going to end up with a man.
Read
our review
of Personal Best
Page
1 / 2 - Home
