Archive

Back in the Day: “Personal Best” Broke Bisexual Ground

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

Back in the Day is a column that takes a look back at key moments in the history of lesbians and bisexual women in entertainment.

Before the 1980s, bisexual women were rarely depicted in Hollywood films as three-dimensional people with ordinary human concerns; instead, they were often defined solely by their sexuality, which was generally portrayed as highly promiscuous. Though a number of dykesploitation flicks in the 1970s featured women who were “bisexual,” their love for women was always temporary and largely done for the titillation of men – to whom they always returned at the end of the movie.

But a brief fling with a woman before going back to men was the more positive side of bisexuality in films; the alternative typically involved unnatural death. The 1968 Canadian film The Fox, which won an Oscar for Best English-Language Foreign Film, told the story of two women, Ellen and Jill, living together at an isolated farmhouse.

When Ellen falls in love with a man, Paul, events spiral into psychological thriller mode and Paul ends up murdering Jill.

Thus, the theatrical debut of Personal Best in 1982 was a watershed moment in the history of representations of bisexual women in film. Directed by Oscar-winning screenwriter Robert Towne (Chinatown), Personal Best was a sports movie about two Olympic track-and-field athletes, Chris Cahill (Mariel Hemingway) and Tory Skinner (Patrice Donnelly), who fall in love with each other while they are competing to be on the U.S. Olympic team.

Though Chris eventually leaves Tory and falls for a man, swimmer Denny Stites (Kenny Moore), Chris and Tory’s relationship is never rejected as unnatural and in fact comes second to the more pressing concerns of Olympic competition. Personal Best was one of the first films to depict bisexuality as relatively normal, and given the inclusion of an unusually positive love scene – for 1982 – between the two women, the film has become one of the most memorable lesbian films of all time.

Twenty years after the film’s debut, actress Mariel Hemingway told The Advocate that her role in Personal Best had been a particularly significant one for her. “

There was so much about the movie that colored my life,” she said. “But what I’ve loved about it is that over the many years that have gone by since then, there’s not a few months that go by that someone doesn’t say to me, ‘I just have to tell you that that movie helped me. It made me feel OK that I was a girl and that I was gay.'”

But although the film was highly popular among lesbian viewers because it was one of the very few positive portrayals of lesbian sexuality available, reactions from critics were more mixed, with some reviewers noting director Robert Towne’s lingering shots of nude bodies.

Vincent Canby of the New York Times wrote, “Mr. Towne treats the story of the lesbian love affair with something that passes so far beyond understanding that it begins to look like undisguised voyeurism. Personal Best is nonjudgmental in the way that a porn film is nonjudgmental about the activities of its performers.”

But Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times was more positive and declared, “The characters in Personal Best seem to be free to have real feelings. It is filled with the uncertainties, risks, cares, and rewards of real life, and it considers its characters’ hearts and minds, and sees their sexuality as an expression of their true feelings for each other.”

The year 1982, which was known at the box office for successes such as E.T., Rocky III, and An Officer and a Gentleman, was a particularly notable year for films with queer themes.

Men also had their bisexual big screen splash in the film Making Love, starring Kate Jackson (television’s Charlie’s Angels) and Harry Hamlin (L.A. Law) as the gay man who falls in love with Jackson’s husband.

In addition, two critically acclaimed films about cross-dressing were released that year: In Tootsie, Dustin Hoffman disguised himself as a woman to get an acting job (and was nominated for an Oscar for his role); and in Victor/Victoria Julie Andrews played a male impersonator (and was also nominated for an Oscar).

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

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button