Girls in the Back Room: Looking at the Lesbian Bar
Date: 2002-01-01 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Performing Arts; General; Social Science; Lesbian Studies; Film
Description: The first in-depth study of how lesbian bars are depicted in popular culture The lesbian bar has long been seen as a mysterious place, steeped in mythologies of clandestine meetings and sexuality that is alluring because it is wayward and sinful. In The Girls in the Back Room, Kelly Hankin focuses on the lesbian bar, looking at how it is portrayed in such films as Foxy Brown, The Killing of Sister George, Basic Instinct, Bound, and Chasing Amy; in television series like The Simpsons, Xena: Warrior Princess, Roseanne, Ellen, and Sex and the City; and in independent, lesbian-produced documentari
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

The Girls in the Back Room

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The Girls in the Back Room

Looking at the Lesbian Bar

Kelly Hankin

University of Minnesota Press

Minneapolis

London

Lyrics are quoted from “I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar” by Jonathan Richman (music and lyrics by Jonathan Richman; Rockin’ Leprechaun Music/Rounder Music ASCAP) and from “Secretly” by Jimmie Rodgers (words and music by Al Hoffman, Dick Manning, and Mark Markwell; Roulette R-4070, Planetary Music ASCAP).

Materials from the Robert Aldrich Collection of the American Film Institute’s Louis B. Mayer Library reprinted with permission of the Directors Guild of America.

A shorter version of chapter 4 was published as “‘Wish We Didn’t Have to Meet Secretly?’ Negotiating Contemporary Space in the Lesbian Bar Documentary,”

camera obscura 15, no. 3 (2001): 35–69; reprinted by permission of Duke University Press. A small portion of chapter 4 appeared in the catalog <hers>: Video as a Female Terrain, ed. Stella Rollig (New York: Springer-Verlag Vienna/NewYork, 2000), 76–81.

Every effort was made to contact copyright holders of material reprinted in this book. If any proper acknowledgment has not been included, we encourage copyright holders to notify the publisher.

Copyright 2002 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290

Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hankin, Kelly.

The girls in the back room : looking at the lesbian bar / Kelly Hankin.

p.

cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8166-3298-0 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-8166-3929-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Lesbian bars in motion pictures.

2. Lesbianism in motion pictures.

3. Lesbians in motion pictures.

I. Title.

PN1995.9.L48 H26 2002

791.43'653—dc21

2001005957

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.

12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Deborah Donnelly, who took me to my first lesbian bar In memory of my brother, Jon (‒), who would be proud

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Contents

Come Here Often?

ix

ONE

Looking at the Lesbian Bar in the Twentieth Century 1

TWO

Lesbians on Location

54

THREE

Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown

81

FOUR

Wish We Didn’t Have to Meet Secretly?

114

Conclusion, or Confessions of a Former Lesbian Barfly 157

Acknowledgments

159

Notes

161

Works Cited

173

Films, Videos, and Television Programs Cited 185

Index

189

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Come Here Often?

Some of the most memorable film scenes of the classical Hollywood era feature “deviant” women in bars. For example, playing a weary and downtrodden prostitute, Greta Garbo utters her first cinematic dialogue to a bartender in Anna Christie (). Her saucy command—“Give me a whiskey, ginger ale on the side, and don’t be stingy, baby”—is now the stuff of legend. Equally legendary is Marlene Dietrich’s turn as Frenchie, a saloon entertainer/prostitute in Destry Rides Again (). In full cow-girl regalia, Frenchie seduces her audience with her by now famous lyrics

“See what the boys in the back room will have.” And who can forget Mercedes McCambridge as the puritanical archnemesis of pants-wearing saloon keeper Joan Crawford in Johnny Guitar ()?

On the one hand, these illustrious cinematic moments demonstrate that, in whatever incarnation, the public drinking establishment is a pervasive, frequent, and often unforgettable locale in the vast landscape of Hollywood film and television. Indeed, a range of bar types is now familiar to most viewers: the neighborhood bar, the professional bar, the singles bar, the jazz club, the biker bar, the cop bar, the piano bar, the karaoke bar, and so on. Audiences also anticipate the presence of bars in certain genres. The saloon is a standard feature of the western’s unruly landscape, playing host to the dramas of prostitutes, outlaws, and sheriffs from the time of such films as Cripple Creek Barroom () and The Great Train Robbery (; see Reep , ). Bar or speakeasy space also regularly appears in what Lea Jacobs () calls the “fallen woman”

genre of the s (e.g., Anna Christie, Baby Face []). Similarly, bars ix
x Come Here Often?

repeatedly surface in the action film, providing the setting for public fights between the action hero and his (and, less often, her) enemies (Tasker , ). Likewise, whether it takes center stage, as in Casablanca () and Gilda (), or is one of many urban settings, the nightclub pervades the landscape of film noir, sharing space with roadhouses and cocktail lounges (Sobchack ). And the presence of futuristic bars in such films as Blade Runner (), Star Wars (), Return of the Jedi (), and Total Recall (), as well as in the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, suggests that contemporary science-fiction screenwriters cannot envision the “final frontier” without this social institution.

On the other hand, the frequent cinematic appearance of “improper”

women in bars demonstrates that bars are not simply a pervasive setting but also one of the central locations through which films tell ideological stories about the relationship of gender and sexuality to space. For example, in Anna Christie, part of what defines Garbo as a prostitute, and hence an immoral woman, is the very fact that she visits a public drinking establishment. Indeed, women’s stigmatization through their presence in bars occurs frequently in the “fallen woman” film. In one of the most notorious films of this genre, Baby Face, it is precisely the female protagonist’s (Barbara Stanwyck’s) presence in a speakeasy that enables us to recognize her as an improper woman. Similarly, in westerns, women who work as entertainers in saloons, such as Frenchie in Destry Rides Again, are almost always simultaneously marked as prostitutes (consider also Miriam Hopkins in Virginia City [] and Mae West in My Little Chickadee

[]). And though the western often makes the saloon woman the heroine, it typically does so through her renunciation of saloon life and her acceptance of her role in domestic space (e.g., Angie Dickinson in Young Billy Young [] and Marilyn Monroe in River of No Return

[]; see Reep , –).

With a nod toward this history, The Girls in the Back Room focuses on the ideological stories revealed about gender, sexuality, and space in one particular kind of cinematic bar, a space likewise populated by “deviant” women: the lesbian bar.1 Combining film history, production history, and textual analysis with queer theory, cultural history, and film theory, it examines the shapes and ideological meanings of the lesbian bar across visual practices (e.g., film, television, video), genres, and historical moments. Specifically, in this book I argue that, as the lesbian bar is

Come Here Often? xi

Anna Christie (Greta Garbo, left) and Marthy Owens (Marie Dressler) share a drink in the “ladies’ bar” in Anna Christie. Courtesy of Photofest, NYC.

a supposedly clandestine space cordoned off for those who identify with or practice nonnormative sexualities, its visual production and representation reveal much about how sexuality and sexual identity inform and naturalize narratives about public identity and space.

The ideological meanings of lesbian bar narratives, I suggest, differ along modes of film production. Depictions and narrative functions of lesbian bars in lesbian alternative media radically differ from those in popular and mainstream film and television. Thus, The Girls in the Back Room is divided in its focus on these two modes of production. The first half of the book focuses on depictions of lesbian bars in popular commercial cinema and television, whereas the second half of the book focuses on lesbian bars as they are imagined in lesbian alternative films and videos. However, in arguing for the distinctness of depictions of lesbian bars across alternative and dominant film practices, I do not mean to reductively claim the superiority of one over the other. Rather, I want to emphasize that lesbian bars in mainstream film and television are limited by the heterosexist logic that governs this arena. Although this heterosexist logic may permit sexual ambiguity among characters
xii Come Here Often?

and within narratives, it rarely permits heterosexuality to capitulate its privilege as the moral and literal center of those narratives. Hence, despite the current trend of “positive” imagery of lesbians and gays in mainstream film and television, we appear only as sidekicks to heterosexual characters or as spicy side dishes that complement heterosexual narratives. This does not mean, of course, that all viewers—lesbian or otherwise—necessarily accept the ideological work of dominant lesbian bar narratives. The chapters on alternative media take up this concern, not only by showing how lesbian media practitioners can reshape and resist the ideological work of popular lesbian bar depictions in their own productions but also by specifically addressing feminist and lesbian debates about spectatorship as they relate to the imagined lesbian bar. Thus, even as I identify a heterosexist ideology working in popular depictions of lesbian bars, I certainly don’t mean to suggest that all viewers accept this ideology in wholesale or equal ways.

As a cinematic and televisual motif, the lesbian bar has yet to be studied by either film scholars or lesbian and queer theorists. This is surprising, given the abundance of critical work produced about this space by writers within and beyond the academy. From their respective disciplines of environmental psychology and geography, Maxine Wolfe () and Gill Valentine () have discussed the internal and external contours of the lesbian bar. Lesbian-feminist scholar Sheila Jeffreys has theorized the contemporary lesbian attraction to “seedy” lesbian bars (, –

). Literature scholars Karla Jay (), Suzanna Danuta Walters (), Diane Hamer (), Katie King (), Michèle Aina Barale (), and Yvonne Keller () have traced the textures of the lesbian bar within popular and literary fiction. Historians Lillian Faderman () and John D’Emilio () have sketched broad histories of the American lesbian bar, tracing its emergence and social functions. Providing more specific accounts of lesbian bars, several scholars have used the methodologies of oral history and ethnography to map lesbian life in cities across the United States and Canada. Rochella Thorpe (, ), Katie Gilmartin (), Janet Kahn and Patricia A. Gozemba (), Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis (), Line Chamberland (), and B. S. Wright () have provided detailed historical accounts of lesbian bars in Detroit, Colorado, Boston, Buffalo, Montreal, and Indiana and Illinois, respectively. Writer and activist Sarah Schulman’s My American History: Lesbian and Gay Life during the Reagan/Bush Years () also

Come Here Often? xiii
offers specific accounts of lesbian bar life, focusing in particular on bars in New York during the s. Using the format of the memoir, Audre Lorde () and Joan Nestle () have produced accounts of their own experiences in lesbian bars in pre-Stonewall Greenwich Village.

Similarly, Deborah P. Armory has deployed the personal voice to theorize contemporary bar life in and beyond San Francisco ().

Much of this work presents either implicit or explicit challenges to earlier work produced by heterosexual sociologists, journalists, and geographers writing about lesbian bar life,2 as well as to some of the reductive and romantic claims about lesbian bars made by fellow lesbian and gay historians and theorists. The numerous insights of these scholars and writers have been invaluable for expanding our understanding of the complexity of lesbian public social life in the past and present. For example, whereas early sociologists, such as Barbara Weightman (), ex-pounded upon the impenetrability of lesbian bars to nonlesbians, Thorpe, Kennedy and Davis, Khan and Gozemba, and Wolfe all point to the common mingling and clashing of heterosexuals and lesbians in lesbian bar space. For example, Thorpe’s research into white lesbian bar space in Detroit () reveals that lesbians and heterosexuals actually shared bar space and were often divided only by a room. Many contemporary studies of pre- and post-Stonewall lesbian bars also reveal the constant presence of heterosexual tourists, male bashers, and police officers within lesbian bar space. Additionally, whereas some bar commentators characterize the pre-Stonewall lesbian bar as a dismal space where the enforcement of butch and femme identities was silently endured (Lorde

, ), others discuss the pleasures and political significance of pre-Stonewall bar life and butch-femme identity (Nestle , –; Kennedy and Davis , –). Likewise, the memoirs and ethnographic research of several writers challenge some of the homogenizing myths promulgated about the pre-Stonewall bar that describe it as an open and inviting space for all women. Lorde (, –), Judith Halberstam (, –), and Thorpe (; , ) discuss the racist structure of pre- and post-Stonewall lesbian bars, and both Gilmartin and Kennedy and Davis describe the pre-Stonewall bar as a heavily class-stratified locale. Finally, scholars of lesbian bar culture and history have recognized the importance of theorizing lesbian bar communities outside of, albeit related to, the framework of gay male bar history and patterns of socialization.

xiv Come Here Often?

This project is heavily indebted to such work. It similarly understands the lesbian bar as a locus of lesbian and heterosexual activity, as well as a site fraught with racial and class divisions. Additionally, it recognizes the lesbian bar as a locale requiring theorization distinct from studies of gay male public life. To be sure, some of the narrative functions of cinematic gay bars are similar to those of cinematic lesbian bars. Both spaces repeatedly serve as sites of covert investigation and activity for seemingly heterosexual protagonists (e.g., the films P. J. [], Cruising [], The Fan [], Advise and Consent [], The Jackal [], and The Detective [], and the television program Witchblade). Each site also repeatedly appears as a place that heterosexuals visit “accidentally” (e.g., Police Academy [], Wayne’s World 2 [], and The Birdcage []).

But several factors demand that these sites initially be analyzed as discrete zones. In the first place, lesbian and gay bars have a separate history within American cinema. The first mainstream representation of an exclusively gay male bar (Advise and Consent) appeared six years prior to the first mainstream lesbian bar depiction: ’s The Killing of Sister George. Moreover, lesbian and gay bars are typically represented as discrete zones. Though a mixed (straight and gay) café appeared in Call Her Savage (), rarely do lesbians and gay men mingle together within mainstream film and television bar space.3 Finally, and most important, the distinct significations of gender mean that lesbian and gay male bars and their patrons are fashioned and perceived differently, necessitating separate analyses.

This project also radically differs from most lesbian bar scholarship in that it is about representations of real spaces, not real spaces themselves. It will not be my goal to fault depictions of lesbian bars for their inaccuracy when compared to actual bars. I am less interested in measuring representations of bars against their real counterparts, which would lead only to a bizarre and hollow call for more positive lesbian bar representation, than in analyzing and critiquing the cultural and narrative forces that produce repeated depictions of this space. I agree with Katie King, who states in her own analysis of lesbian bar representation across gay and lesbian historical discourses, “I too would like to see a more accurate and historically specific account of the gay ‘past,’ [but] I’m also interested in remarking on the resources and materials out of which all our histories are made” (, ). For this reason, The Girls in the Back Room discusses a range of spaces that might not be considered bona

Come Here Often? xv
fide lesbian bars in the real world. In this project, lesbian bars include any barlike space of lesbian congregation, whether it is the nightclub of Basic Instinct (), the seedy tavern of Foxy Brown (), or Ellen’s lesbian café of . In short, The Girls in the Back Room is a history not of the lesbian bar itself but of its cultural invention.

As will become clear in the book, cultural inventions of the lesbian bar typically offer a definition of this space that is much more fixed than real lesbian bar space, particularly with regard to categories of sexuality.

Several historical and ethnographic accounts of bygone lesbian bar life reveal how the boundaries between female heterosexual and lesbian identities were often blurred within real lesbian bar space. For example, Rochella Thorpe’s ethnographic research into lesbian bar life in Detroit from the s to the s demonstrates how the standard practice of heterosexual couples visiting lesbian bars was not solely an act of sexual tourism. Rather, the commonplace presence of heterosexuals in lesbian bars allowed many men and women to act out secret desires. As one of Thorpe’s lesbian interviewees explains, “It was odd to note that on one weekend you would see a man and wife come in together, or boyfriend and girlfriend, and the following week one or the other would be coming in alone!” (, ). Similarly, in Interzones, Kevin J. Mumford’s study of public spaces of socialization in the early twentieth century, the author demonstrates how heterosexuals and homosexuals historically shared speakeasy space. Mumford reveals how, because of the social marginalization of both interracial couples and homosexuality, black and white men and women with varying sexual orientations often built and shared subcultural space together (, –). Certainly, much of this blurring of sexualities within lesbian bar space persists today. Lesbian bars continue to serve not only as sites of heterosexual tourism but also as interim spaces for heterosexuals (particularly women) to work through their sexual desire and identity.

In sharp contrast to the imprecision of sexual categories within actual lesbian bar space, popular representations of lesbian bars work vigorously to keep sexual boundaries intact. As I demonstrate in chapter , although placing heterosexual women within lesbian bars is one of the central modi operandi of dominant lesbian bar representation, the resultant flirtation between straight and gay women in this space is just that: a flirtation. The sexual boundaries, as well as sexual hierarchies, between heterosexuals and lesbians in bar space are consistently and vehe-
xvi Come Here Often?

mently established. Moreover, unlike the shared social spaces of heterosexuals and homosexuals that Mumford identifies, mainstream and other popular representations of lesbian bars foreground the relationship of heterosexuals to lesbian bar space as one not of cohabitation but of co-optation and control. In other words, the complexity of lesbian bar space and its inhabitants is severely flattened, and hence ideologically transformed, in popular representation.

Thus, in chapter , which is a history of lesbian bar depictions in popular film and television since this locale’s first filmic appearance in the late s, my main concern is not historical veracity. Rather, in this chapter I am most concerned with what lesbian bar spaces offer heterosexual narratives and characters, as well as what lesbian bar representations say about sexuality and space. This is also the case in my analysis of lesbian bar depictions produced by lesbians themselves. In chapter , in which I discuss four documentaries about actual lesbian bar spaces, I focus on the documentaries’ historical inaccuracies, not to charge them as failures but to ask what revisionist history means in the current moment for lesbian identity and spatial politics. In other words, I am less concerned with how our own depictions measure up against the “truth”

than with the stories we tell ourselves about lesbian identity and space.

At the same time, just because this project focuses on representations rather than reality, it doesn’t mean that I grant the visual lesbian bar any less cultural force. As Beatriz Colomina argues, “The perception of space is not what space is but one of its representations; in this sense built space has no more authority than drawings, photographs, or descriptions” (, ). I strongly maintain that the representational space of the lesbian bar is every bit as important as the real lesbian bar in shaping ideas about lesbian identity and space. Indeed, unlike many actual locales frequently depicted in film and television (the supermarket, the high school campus, and so on), the lesbian bar is neither a commonly frequented nor a generally accessible real institution, so its representation holds a significant authority in the construction of its public image and purpose.

Thus, central to my project is the claim that, by enriching and naturalizing notions of heterosexual spatial and sexual superiority, lesbian bar depictions in popular commercial film and television play a significant ideological role in maintaining the spatial inequities that exist between homosexuality and heterosexuality in and beyond representation.

Come Here Often? xvii

As geographers David Bell and Gill Valentine argue, “Space is produced, and . . . it has both material and symbolic components” (, ). In chapter , I trace this process of spatial production by identifying transhistorical motifs—what Paul Loukides and Linda K. Fuller call “conventions of locale” (, )—within lesbian bar depictions across fiction, exposé journalism, sociological and scientific studies, and film and television. I contend that chief among representational conventions of the lesbian bar has been its repeated designation as a space that is available for heterosexual pleasure and surveillance. This is true no matter what shape the bar takes—café, nightclub, or tavern. Focusing primarily on a broad range of film and television examples that span the last thirty years, I show how this designation is assigned through the lesbian bar’s positioning and function within heterosexual narratives, as well as through a narrative focus on heterosexuality within lesbian bar space. Through whatever narrative operation, these depictions reach the same ideological conclusion: heterosexuals have an inalienable right to move through all space, even space that is not designated for them. Lesbian bar depictions in film and television might dramatically highlight a heterosexual character’s difference from lesbian bar patrons, foreground a heterosexual character’s sense of discomfort in a lesbian bar, or dramatize lesbian patrons’ misconception of heterosexual protagonists as gay. But heterosexual characters’ right to be in or to usurp narrative centrality within this space is rarely questioned, either by the texts or by the characters themselves.

Heterosexuality’s unfettered and unquestioned movement through representational lesbian space is central to reinforcing its ideological project of maintaining and naturalizing its sexual, social, and spatial dominance. As Sally Munt argues, the use of spatial mobility as a metaphor is fundamental in the assertion and sustenance of identity. In a discussion of the frequent deployment of spatial metaphors in lesbian literature, she states: “A subculture made invisible by its parent culture logically resorts to space-making in its collective imagination. Mobility within that space is essential, because motion continually stamps new ground with a symbol of ownership” (, ). In turn, mainstream film and television’s privileging of heterosexual movement within lesbian representational space reveals a collective ideological project to “stamp” this space with heterosexual ownership. This project is guaranteed through the repetition of lesbian bar narratives. As Bell and Valentine argue,
xviii Come Here Often?

“The heterosexing of space is a performative act naturalised through repetition” (, ). They continue: “Only through the repetition of hegemonic heterosexual scripts . . . does space (become and) remain straight” ().

Indeed, in chapter  I submit that the lesbian bar emerged as representation precisely to uphold heterosexual spatial and social primacy. I locate the emergence of lesbian bar representation at approximately the same time—the s and s—when the scientific and popular notion that the lesbian subject was easily detected by her physical difference was beginning to be questioned. I suggest that the cultural panic about invisible and thus uncontrollable lesbianism spurred a widespread and ongoing cultural project to identify, locate, and contain it. As Munt argues, containment is a central process in the suppression of lesbianism: Lesbian energy, lesbian technologies, infect the spaces we inhabit, and those motions are pebbles in a pool; they produce lesbian effects which echo, reverberate, generate, multiply and magnify our presence, and consequently dislocate heterosexuality. Homophobia deploys strategies of containment which are intended to diminish these effects. (, ) However, the placement of lesbians in bars is not solely a punitive measure enforced to uphold heterosexual dominance. The historical survey of lesbian bar depictions in chapter  also reveals how the lesbian bar has long functioned as a site of fascination, sexual pleasure, and entertainment for heterosexual men and women. Yet, as I will clearly demonstrate, both male and female heterosexual patronage of lesbian bars in representation work toward the maintenance of heterosexuality’s sexual and social supremacy, not the eradication of it.

The political and sexual exigencies motivating popular representations of lesbian bars also suggest why one of the major transhistorical motifs of lesbian bar depictions is authentication. Typically, representations of lesbian bars work hard to authenticate themselves with ethnographic documentary status. I thus also demonstrate in the first chapter how lesbian bar depictions in film and television foreground their realness through the use of actual lesbian space, the inclusion of lesbian actresses or icons in bar scenes, the emphasizing of lesbian stereotypes, or the acknowledged employment of lesbian “consultants.” Coding lesbian bar depictions with ethnographic authenticity, I submit, does more than enable viewers to imagine they are witnessing and vicariously traveling

Come Here Often? xix
through real lesbian space. Drawing on documentary film theory, I argue that lesbian bar authentication also grants the heterosexual spectator a triumphant knowledge of and domination over lesbians and lesbian space.

In chapter , I explore the relationship between lesbian bar authentication and heterosexual spatial mastery even further by focusing on how it functions at the level of film production. I examine the production of the lesbian bar scene in The Killing of Sister George, a film that holds a significant place in both film and lesbian history. Not only is The Killing of Sister George the first film to depict an exclusively lesbian bar scene, it is also the first Hollywood film to shoot “on location” in a real lesbian bar, using real lesbian patrons. In the summer of , director Robert Aldrich gained entrance to London’s Gateways Club, filming its interior and its customers. Despite this scene’s historical significance, it has not yet been the subject of an extended analysis or history.

There are many questions to ask regarding Aldrich’s desire for and use of authentic lesbian space: Why was a lesbian bar added to the film when it was not in the play on which the film is based? Why was genuine lesbian space required? How did the production crew locate the lesbian bar? How and why was consent to film inside the bar granted, particularly given the lesbian bar’s role as a clandestine space? What role did authenticity play in the publicity of the film? What were the consequences of this scene’s authenticity for the bar’s lesbian patrons?

Based on archival research, chapter  addresses these questions by offering a production history and analysis of this scene. Using interoffice memorandums, personal correspondence, consent contracts, press material, script drafts, and location reports from Aldrich’s files for this film, I trace his conception of, search and negotiations for, production within, and publicity strategy for the Gateways scene. The production revealed in this chapter is significant in that it refutes predominant views of this scene within film scholarship, which imply that Aldrich’s production of lesbian space was sympathetic (Russo , ). Instead, I reveal a production that was fraught with homophobia, heterosexism, and deception.

Revisiting a set of privileged examples of lesbian bar depictions discussed in chapter  and reading them alongside the production of The Killing of Sister George, I demonstrate how Aldrich’s desire for and use of a real lesbian bar follows dominant cultural scripts of lesbian bars. Like both earlier and contemporaneous scripts, the lesbian bar in The Killing of
xx Come Here Often?

Sister George is authenticated by and under the jurisdiction of heterosexuals. The latter point is underscored in my investigation of the lesbian bar patrons’ consent in the production of their images. I reveal that the patrons’ authorization for the use of their images is conspicuously absent from production files, whereas the heterosexual bar owners’ consent to film the lesbian patrons is foregrounded. Additionally, I reveal that Aldrich was engaged in deliberate forms of deception regarding the publicity of the scene and had little regard for the consequences that the lesbian extras might face upon their public exposure.

As the concerns and new findings of chapter  demonstrate, it is essential to analyze the heterosexist ideologies behind the production of images. Indeed, this is often an unexplored area in lesbian and queer film scholarship. The production history in chapter  is an attempt to fill in some of these gaps. At the same time, my focus in chapters  and 
on the heterosexual ideologies informing and producing lesbian bar depictions is not meant to suggest that all viewers, lesbian and heterosexual, will accept these visions. Feminist, black, and queer film theories have persuasively demonstrated how our varying social, cultural, and historical positions inform the degree of our complicity with dominant ideologies. Chapter  serves as a rejoinder to these chapters by focusing on how, as both cinema spectators and producers of alternative media, lesbians negotiate the ideological messages of mainstream lesbian bar depictions. I offer a close reading of Etang Inyang’s short video Badass Supermama (), which reappropriates and reframes the lesbian bar scene from the blaxploitation film Foxy Brown (). In Badass Supermama, Inyang uses slow-motion techniques, voice-overs, and optical effects to question and resist the racial and sexual politics of Foxy Brown’s barroom brawl, which features the film’s black heterosexual protagonist battling white lesbians. I situate Inyang’s video within a tradition of lesbian alternative-media production that has manipulated mainstream imagery in order to raise questions about the relationship of identity to film representation and reception.

Given the limited role the lesbian bar played in the lives of pre-Stonewall lesbians of color, as well as the continued racist and segrega-tional dynamics of lesbian bar life, my decision to focus on a black woman’s relationship to lesbian bar representation is quite calculated.

Chapter  emphasizes the fact that the relationship of lesbians to the institution of the lesbian bar surpasses historical veracity. As I demonstrate

Come Here Often? xxi
in chapter , the persistent equation of lesbians with lesbian bars exists for reasons beyond our actual participation in bar life. Although white women are typically at the center of the cultural mappings of lesbian bars, women of color, particularly black women, also shape lesbian bar narratives. Sometimes as central players, but more often as bit players, black women appear throughout the twentieth century in numerous fictional and nonfictional accounts of lesbian bar life.

Indeed, women of color appear in a large number of the cultural representations of lesbian bars covered in this study. For example, one early

“nonfictional” study of lesbianism, Jess Stearn’s The Grapevine (), a salacious, if at times sympathetic, exposé of lesbian life in the United States, instills in its readers the idea that lesbian bars are spaces conducive to culturally unsanctioned interracial romance. In “Bars and Country Clubs,” a chapter devoted to the internal activities of Greenwich Village lesbian bars, Stearn and his heterosexual cohorts meet two “sophisticated-looking [lesbians]” who offer to help them “get [their] bearing a little” (). After pointing out a young “colored girl” sitting alone at the end of the bar, the lesbian guides tell the tourists, “There’s no segregation here . . . she’s just waiting for her special friend—a charming young lady from a good Southern family” (). Similarly, in an even earlier study, Dr. Frank S. Caprio’s Female Homosexuality: A Psychodynamic Study of Lesbianism (), the reader discovers that, unlike many social spaces of the day, lesbian bars were places where whites and blacks commingled.

Caprio tells his readers that in one Hollywood bar he spotted “a tall colored lesbian . . . smoking a pipe and conversing with a group of white girls who were very mannish in their gesticulations and general behavior” (–). Lesbian spaces as interracial dens of iniquity likewise surface in the wildly successful series of urban exposés penned by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer. In a chapter of New York: Confidential! that reveals the locales of and depravities within Greenwich Village’s lesbian bars, Lait and Mortimer inform their readers that in most parts of the Village

“there is no racial discrimination” (, ). In turn, based on their analysis in U.S.A. Confidential! that “homosexualism runs through every race and class of society in California,” it is not hard for readers to imagine interracial fraternizing at the If Club, which the authors reveal to be a

“favorite hangout of . . . Hollywood Lesbians” (, ).

Fictional representations also historically solidify black women’s relationship to lesbian bars. For example, many novels set in Harlem in the
xxii Come Here Often?

s, such as Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem ([] ), Blair Niles’s Strange Brother ([] ), and John Dos Passos’s The Big Money (), feature black lesbians as central to interracial speakeasy life. In Strange Brother, “Negro” lesbians are both the patrons of and entertainment at a bar called the Lobster Pot. In The Big Money, a gay bar serves as the backdrop to a dance between a white female heterosexual “slumming”

in Harlem and a “pale pretty mulatto girl” (–). Black lesbians also appear in the lesbian bar spaces of s pulp fiction (though hardly as often as white women).4 Though pulp novelist Ann Bannon’s lesbian protagonists are mostly white, a central character in Women in the Shadows ([b] ) is Patsy Robinson, a seventeen-year-old African American who passes as an “exotic” Indian from New Delhi and secretly frequents the lesbian bars of Greenwich Village (, ). In the post-Stonewall era, lesbians of color have continued to be represented in fictional bar spaces, often through their own writings. For example, in

“LeRoy’s Birthday” (), Raymina Y. May’s short story about a black lesbian who loses her son over her relationship with another woman, the principal lesbian characters are outed when they are spotted in a

“bar on Forty-second Street, where . . . women in love [hang] out” ().

In Pat Parker’s galvanizing poem “Where Will You Be?” (), in which she implores her readers to speak out against homophobic and heterosexist oppression, she also foregrounds the centrality of bars to lesbian lives. She reprimands her readers:

Everytime we let straights
make out in our bars while
we couldn’t touch because
of laws—

It was an act of perversion. ()

And, as Scott Bravmann convincingly argues (, –), the “salon”

frequented by Gilda, the black vampire protagonist of Jewelle Gomez’s The Gilda Stories (), references the mixed (straight and gay) bars of the pre-Stonewall era, positing them as a central, though troubled, part of black women’s history.

Since the lesbian bar’s earliest depiction in a Hollywood film, The Killing of Sister George, in which viewers catch glimpses of a few nonwhite women dancing among throngs of white lesbians, the lesbian of color has typically been a part, admittedly usually a small part, of the

Come Here Often? xxiii
filmic lesbian bar’s mise-en-scène. For example, in the bar scene in The First Wives Club (), she appears as the Asian girlfriend of the daughter of one of the protagonists. In Boys on the Side () and Living Out Loud (), however, lesbians of color are central rather than marginal to lesbian bar space. Women of color are also present in television’s lesbian bars. For example, in a  joint episode of Homicide and Law and Order, a white lesbian is murdered by a black woman she met at a lesbian bar. And in Ellen’s lesbian coffeehouse scene, the camera pans over two black women enjoying the music of a white lesbian folksinger.

Thus, despite their limited actual bar patronage in the past and present, lesbians of color can remain neither excluded from lesbian bar discourse nor unaffected by its mythology and representation. Inyang’s video suggests as much as she viscerally and intelligently responds to Foxy Brown’s simultaneously disturbing and exhilarating representation of lesbians and lesbian bar space. Nonetheless, the overwhelming whiteness of Foxy Brown’s bar space does present difficulties in Inyang’s negotiation of this film. She explores her own struggle between identifying and aligning herself with lesbian space and its white protagonists, and identifying and aligning herself with the film’s black heterosexual heroine. Inyang’s highlighting of her own difficult negotiations as a spectator of Foxy Brown’s lesbian bar space enables me to ask questions in chapter  about the possibilities and limitations of lesbian resistance to mainstream representation’s tenacious project of devaluing lesbian identity and authority within our own space.

In chapter , I continue my focus on depictions of lesbian bar space by alternative film- and videomakers. I consider the nascent lesbian bar documentary genre by looking at four documentaries on pre- and post-Stonewall lesbian bars: Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (); Last Call at Maud’s (); The Riverview: A Lesbian Place (); and The Boy Mechanic (). By discussing lesbian-produced visions of actual lesbian bars, this chapter (like chapter ) acts as a rejoinder to earlier chapters. In particular, in chapter  I reveal that it was heterosexuals, rather than lesbians, who orchestrated the use and vision of authentic lesbian space and real lesbians in The Killing of Sister George. The lesbian extras were effectively voiceless and nameless in the production and credits of this film. The lesbian bar documentaries discussed in chapter  form an implicit rebuttal to this silencing by focusing on lesbian space as it is imagined by lesbian producers and real lesbian
xxiv Come Here Often?

patrons, whose narrations of lesbian bar life no longer render them anonymous or mute.

However, despite the differences between Hollywood’s versions of lesbian bars and the lesbian-produced bar documentary, they both work to articulate notions about lesbian identity and public space. In other words, through their representations of lesbian bars, mainstream and alternative media both tell stories about what it means to have a sexual identity and to inhabit public spaces. These stories are what interest me in chapter . I suggest that, as a genre, the lesbian bar documentary articulates contemporary lesbian anxieties regarding the continuously vexed relationship of lesbians to public space. Specifically, it reveals anxiety about our access to, comfort in, and claims on public space, particularly as this anxiety is connected to the current waning of lesbian bars and lesbian bar culture. Currently, lesbian bars are no longer fundamental for lesbian public existence. Rather, they are one of many public venues for lesbians, which include bookstores, music festivals, sports teams, college courses, and so on.

Central to my thesis is that both the bar documentary’s emergence and the various strategies through which it represents the bygone bar are consequences of and reflect lesbian dissatisfaction with the contemporary structure of lesbian public life. Reading the bar documentaries individually, I show how each uses unique strategies to articulate concern about the present era’s less fettered style of lesbian public life. In Forbidden Love, the use of irony foregrounds the contemporary desire to gather in the clandestine fashion of the bar. In The Riverview, a dramatic re-creation implies that contemporary lesbians have no refuge from the violence that plagues public spaces. In The Boy Mechanic, the juxtaposition of past bar life with its thriving present incarnation highlights the fragility, rather than stability, of the latter. And in Last Call at Maud’s, narrators lament the loss of a utopian, though historically inac-curate, lesbian bar culture in which various races, classes, gender identities, and political philosophies easily commingled.

Saturated throughout the documentaries, then, is a sense of loss for the lesbian bar, which is posited as a solution to current problems: a lack of clandestine space for lesbians to congregate; perpetual violence within the public realm; and a lack of community in contemporary lesbian social life. Insofar as lesbian historians, anthropologists, and cultural critics have described the historical lesbian bar as neither wholly

Come Here Often? xxv
clandestine and free from violence nor inclusive or accepting of all races, classes, and identities, the documentaries arguably envision the bygone bar through the lens of nostalgia. However, rather than cite the documentaries’ various uses of nostalgia as reactionary failures, as nostalgic modes of historicizing are often labeled, I follow the lead of José Esteban Muñoz (), who articulates the productivity and necessity of nostalgic visions for the sustenance and health of queer communities. I read the bar documentaries’ collective mode of historicizing not only as a symptom of the current state of lesbian public life but, more importantly, as a declaration of its future possibilities.

For, as I hope to emphasize in this project, the lesbian bar is more than simply an innocuous cinematic setting. As Steve Pile and Michael Keith state, “Space is not an innocent backdrop to position, it is itself filled with politics and ideology” (qtd. in Bell and Valentine , ). As The Girls in the Back Room demonstrates, the representational lesbian bar plays a central role in ideological productions of space that are both oppressive and nourishing to lesbian identities and cultures. The visual lesbian bar is deployed not only to articulate and confirm lesbian visions of public life and identity but to confirm heterosexist visions as well. In this project I desire to maintain the tension between these two poles, recognizing that, as Munt eloquently states, “In an instant, a freeze-frame, a lesbian is occupying space as it occupies her” (, ).

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C H A P T E R O N E

Looking at the Lesbian Bar in the

Twentieth Century

In the last decade of the twentieth century, the lesbian bar was a frequently depicted site in film and television. Appearing in the controversial thriller Basic Instinct, the Dolph Lundgren action film The Shooter (also known as Hidden Assassin and Desafío final), and three female-centered Hollywood narratives— Boys on the Side, The First Wives Club, and Living Out Loud—lesbian bars also surfaced in the art-house films By Design, Henry and June, Bound, French Twist, and Chasing Amy. 1 On both network and cable television, lesbian bars were featured in such diverse programs as The Simpsons, Xena: Warrior Princess, Relativity, Law and Order, Homicide: Life on the Street, NYPD Blue, Roseanne, Ellen, Sex and the City, If These Walls Could Talk 2, A Girl Thing, and The Truth about Jane. Concomitant with the surge in popular interest in lesbian lifestyles that began in the early s, a phenomenon that some dub

“lesbian chic,” the recent visual explosion of lesbian bars is certainly connected to this cultural development.2 However, in this chapter I argue that the rash of lesbian bars in film and television in the s cannot be explained solely by the contemporary vogue for stories and images of lesbianism. This spate of lesbian bars in film and television is also part of a broad cultural project working to maintain heterosexual spatial supremacy, what geographers David Bell and Gill Valentine call “the hegemony of heterosexual social relations in everyday environments”

(, ).

In “(Re)Negotiating the ‘Heterosexual Street,’” Valentine argues that

“the street . . . is not an asexual space. Rather, it is commonly assumed to 1

2 Looking at the Lesbian Bar be ‘naturally’ or ‘authentically’ heterosexual” (, ). Valentine suggests that this common assumption about public space is secured and naturalized through the repetition of a wide range of heterosexual acts and representations. These include
heterosexual couples kissing and holding hands as they make their way down the street, . . . advertisements and window displays which present images of contented “nuclear” families . . . heterosexualized conversations that permeate queues at bus stops and banks . . . [and] piped music articulating heterosexual desires that fills shops, bars and restaurants. () In addition to the repetition of heterosexual expressions, Valentine also argues that the heterosexing of public space is maintained through a variety of regulations that work to curtail public expressions of homosexuality (). Some of the most significant regulatory tactics used to suppress expressions of gay and lesbian identity and sexuality within public space are outlined by Gordon Brent Ingram. These include “homophobic and misogynist violence, police repression, de facto privatization of public open space, site design and landscape management to discourage contact and queer placemaking, and censorships of relevant cultural representations” (, ). Subtler forms of regulation are equally effective for maintaining public space as heterosexual. Valentine notes that

“heterosexual looks of disapproval, whispers and stares are used to spread discomfort and make lesbians feel ‘out of place’ in everyday spaces. These in turn pressurize many women into policing their own desires and hence reinforce the appearance that ‘normal’ space is straight space” (,

). Thus, through the repetition of heterosexual acts and representations within public space, on the one hand, and the regulation of lesbian and gay acts and representations, on the other, heterosexuality produces and maintains its spatial supremacy.

In this chapter, I suggest that lesbian bar representation has been at the center of the long-standing ideological project of heterosexing space.

I argue that both the repetition and the regulation of the imagined lesbian bar have contributed to the historical production of real and imagined space as heterosexual. Looking at depictions of lesbian bars in a range of media from the s to the present, I identify certain transhistorical conventions that guarantee not only the heterosexual surveillance and consumption of lesbian space but also heterosexuality’s symbolic ownership of lesbian space. These conventions include the sexual

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 3
availability of lesbian bar patrons for men, male and female heterosexual tourism of lesbian bar space, the criminality of lesbian bars, the deployment of “authentic” lesbian bar representation, and the centrality of heterosexuality within lesbian bar space and narratives. With an emphasis on contemporary film and television, I locate these transhistorical conventions by examining the various incarnations of the imagined lesbian bar, paying attention to their textures, shapes, inhabitants, visitors, and narrative functions.

Although my analysis of lesbian bar representation is attentive to historical and contextual differences, I am ultimately interested in exposing the stubborn persistence of its conventions, not only across genres and historical moments but also across radically disparate ideological frameworks of lesbian representation. Consequently, although I acknowledge from the outset of this chapter that there are strong differences between contemporary representations of lesbians—which increasingly depict lesbianism through a lens of tolerance—and representations of lesbians from earlier eras—which often depict lesbianism through a lens of pathology—I nonetheless maintain that there is remarkable transhistorical continuity in lesbian representation with respect to the space of the bar. Moreover, although I recognize that there are gradations of as-tuteness across lesbian bar representations—from the somewhat savvy to the wholly unself-conscious—I nonetheless reveal an inability on the part of most visual cultural texts to move outside the limited parameters of lesbian bar conventions. As a consequence, most popular depictions of lesbian bars, even those whose politics seem to lie elsewhere, nonetheless uphold the heterocentrality of space. Indeed, as Sharon Willis rightly reminds us, “Even those representations which try to respect social specificities, oppositional identities, and contentious positions [can]

reproduce the cultural dominance they seek to overturn” (a, ).

In exposing these transhistorical lesbian bar conventions, I work to redress the lack of scholarship in film studies on what Paul Loukides and Linda K. Fuller call “conventions of locale.” According to Loukides and Fuller,

In film, as in our everyday world, conventions of locales typically have quite fixed, and even rigid conventional parameters which have scarcely been studied by popular culturists. With the possible exception of those locales traditionally linked to particular film genres like the town and landscape of the classical Western, or the nightclubs, apartments and city

4 Looking at the Lesbian Bar streets of the gangster film, surprisingly little has been written about the conventions of locales and their importance as part of the cultural matrix of popular film. (, )

I also demonstrate how the repetition of lesbian bars and of their narrative and aesthetic conventions throughout the twentieth century is intimately tied to heterosexist ideologies of sexuality and space. As Loukides argues elsewhere, “Plot conventions are, in themselves, indexes of cultural assumptions about the physical and social world and how it should or must function” (, ). In this chapter, then, I am interested in the cultural assumptions that depictions of lesbian bars enact and legitimize.

By way of introduction to the topic, I offer in the first section a con-densed history of lesbian bars. In the second section, I begin my analysis of lesbian bar representation by charting the various mobilizations of lesbian bar space within popular and scientific discourses from the

s to the s. Focusing on lesbian bar depictions in popular psychology, sociological studies, exposé journalism, and pulp fiction, this section lays the groundwork for later sections by outlining the prototypes of lesbian bar conventions within representation. In the remaining four sections of the chapter, I focus on these scripts as they play out in contemporary film and television and ask what they reveal about ideologies of sexuality and space in the current era.

What’s a Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?

A Brief History of Lesbian Bars

If a woman were coming to an awareness of her desire for other women in s and s America, she could find, in a number of seemingly disparate locations, evidence of women like herself congregating in the public realm. In particular, the curious woman would find lesbians assembling at public taverns (or, during Prohibition, speakeasies), nightclubs, parties, and balls. For example, a New Yorker might stumble upon

“Greenwich Village Sin Dives Lay Traps for Innocent Girls,” a scathing

 editorial in the New York Evening Graphic about the Bungalow, a Village bar catering to “lisping boys and deep-voiced girls.” Or she might catch wind of a Broadway gossip sheet from the period announcing a drag ball where “queer men and women dance.” Similarly, a Chicagoan might learn of public lesbian life through a s newspaper article about police raids of two lesbian establishments, the Roselle and the Twelve-Thirty Club (see Faderman , , , ). The novice might also

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 5
learn of the possible existence of such places through her literary adventures, experiencing fictional lesbian spaces in Diana Frederics’s autobi-ography Diana: A Strange Autobiography (), Radclyffe Hall’s notorious opus The Well of Loneliness ([] ), Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem ([] ), and Blair Niles’s Strange Brother ([] ). Or a student might discover the existence of a vibrant life of female bohemian experimentation in Chicago’s Latin Quarter in Harvey Warren Zorbaugh’s sociological study The Gold Coast and the Slum: A Sociological Study of Chicago’s Near North Side (, –).3 Finally, if she had her mind set on further horizons, the lesbian traveler might learn of cross-dressing entertainment and clientele at two San Francisco clubs, Mona’s and Finocchio’s, from the tourist guidebooks Where to Sin in San Francisco (, , , ) and San Francisco Life (; see Boyd , –).4

If the reader were to use these varied sources as guides, as many women did, she might find and experience for herself public lesbian life. Indeed, the s and s mark the decades in which women, whether as self-described homosexuals or as women experimenting with same-sex desire, first entered and congregated within the public realm for purposes of relaxation, socialization, and erotic contact (Faderman , –; Wolfe , ; Kennedy and Davis , ).5 As several scholars have argued, the transformation at this time of the cultural perception of lesbianism from an individual pathology to a social pathology not only encouraged the formation of lesbian identities but also promulgated the growth of public communities to sustain them (D’Emilio , –; Faderman , ).6 Women who up until this time had been led to understand their same-sex desires as abnormal and unique now understood these desires to be shared by an untold number of other women. This notion of shared or collective sexual identity worked together with a number of turn-of-the-century historical and cultural forces to catapult many lesbians from domestic isolation into public social action. According to Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis, the development at the beginning of the twentieth century of large cities hospitable to migrant populations and anonymity, of women’s gradual financial and intellectual autonomy, of eroticized commercial leisure cultures, and of a new ethos of sexual expression made the climate ripe for public lesbian life (, ).

That the bar, in whatever incarnation, emerged from this climate to become the central locale of lesbian public life is the result of a number

6 Looking at the Lesbian Bar of cultural factors. On the one hand, women interested in sexually pursuing other women most likely could not meet in their parents’ homes, and entertaining in their own furnished rooms or apartments limited the scope of social interaction by inhibiting chance encounters with new faces. On the other hand, the public realm was not entirely hospitable to women. In the beginning of the twentieth century, unsheltered urban spaces of leisure, such as parks, beaches, and street corners, were colo-nized by primarily working-class men, both heterosexual and homosexual (Peiss , ; Chauncey , –). Without male or family escorts, women’s entry into and navigation of these spaces was orchestrated by male desires and compromised by the threat of male violence. Though the bar was a traditionally male domain (save for the presence of prostitutes), it was newly penetrated by, if not welcoming of, women (Murdock , –; Peiss , ; Kennedy and Davis , ; Faderman

, –). Its sheltered interior no doubt offered women a less risky environment for socialization than exposed urban areas. Indeed, in their groundbreaking history of pre-Stonewall lesbian bar culture in Buffalo, New York, Kennedy and Davis point to male control of urban space as a key factor in the development of bars as central locales of lesbian social life: “The concentration of lesbian social life in bars derives from the danger lesbians faced as women in a patriarchal culture based on the sexual availability of women for men” (, ).

The bar offered additional benefits for emerging lesbian subcultures.

Many of the early-twentieth-century forms of commercial leisure, such as the dance hall, were constructed around and encouraged heterosocial relations (Murdock , ; Peiss , –). Even the streets, though safest for and dominated by men, were important for women, because they functioned as newly available spaces in which to make heterosexual contacts. As George Chauncey says of turn-of-the-century New York,

“Many young women depended on being picked up by men to finance their excursions to music halls and amusement parks. . . . It was common on the streets for men to approach women with whom they were unacquainted to make a date” (, ). Unlike these spaces, the bar’s central activity of drinking, eating, and talking might have offered lesbians the possibility of and conditions for same-sex public socialization that street life and dance halls did not. Additionally, whereas women’s entry into traditionally all-male public drinking spaces transformed these spaces into heterosocial sites, the preservation of male homosocial drink-

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 7
ing spaces and the introduction of similar spaces for women no doubt encouraged the formation of public lesbian communities. For example, in a mimicry of the men-only bar, New York City’s Café des Beaux Arts opened in  as a “ladies’ bar,”“serv[ing] men only when they were accompanied by a female escort” (Murdock , ). Finally, the bar’s seemingly paradoxical ability to grant “privacy in public” was attractive for lesbians, as it enabled them to cultivate a public identity that might bring them romance and community while ostensibly shielding this romance and community from the public eye.7

Throughout the s and s, then, lesbians were beginning to take advantage of the unique character and possibilities of this space, as bar (or speakeasy) life began to blossom, albeit unevenly, across the country. In Greenwich Village, lesbians were a well-known, if not always appreciated, presence, socializing with gay men at drag balls and owning their own speakeasies (Chauncey , –). Like gay men, lesbians were drawn to the Village from  to  by its abundance of cheap furnished rooms for singles (). More importantly, like San Francisco, whose reputation as a sexually licentious, “wide-open town” made it a mecca for lesbians and gay men (Boyd ), Greenwich Village, with the reputation as a locale of bohemian unconventionality, made it an attractive space for same-sex experimentation and romance (Chauncey

, ; Faderman , –). Similarly, for reasons specific to its character and locale, Harlem emerged as a lesbian and gay haven. Because New York City officials did little during Prohibition (–) about Harlem’s illegal drinking establishments and essentially allowed a white-controlled city of vice to flourish, Harlem was able to offer lesbians and gay men a range of possibilities for public congregation (Chauncey

, ). Throughout the s, black and white lesbians and gay men tentatively socialized both with each other and with heterosexuals in Harlem’s plethora of speakeasies, nightclubs, buffet flats (house parties featuring live sex shows, alcohol, and gambling), and rent parties (house parties designed to raise money for the host’s rent) (Chauncey , ; Garber , –; Faderman , –).

However, as Kennedy and Davis’s study of lesbian bar cultures in Buffalo suggests, the growth of lesbian bar culture was not dependent on wide-open towns accustomed to vice. Though Buffalo was home to entertainment clubs that, like those in Harlem, created a precarious space for white and black gamblers, prostitutes, and homosexuals, Buffalo’s

8 Looking at the Lesbian Bar lesbians found each other in bars during the s without living in a city rife with illicit behavior (, –). Likewise, many of the lesbian bar cultures that Kennedy and Davis suggest were most likely forming in midsize cities at this time, such as Minneapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Cleveland, did so without the benefit of a wide-open city to sustain them ().

To be sure, the differences between emerging lesbian bar life in Greenwich Village and in cities such as Buffalo were vast, particularly with respect to race and class. As several historians of lesbian bar life have revealed, because of racism and the need for discretion respectively, women of color and white middle-class women formed lesbian bar subcultures neither as soon nor as easily as white working-class women.

Social histories and memoirs of pre-Stonewall lesbian life in Buffalo, Detroit, and Greenwich Village suggest that some individual black lesbians patronized lesbian bars outside of Harlem. But the overt discrimination of owners and bouncers, the racism of patrons, and the de facto segregation of leisure kept a majority of black women out of lesbian bars until the mid-s and s engendered both the possibility of all-black lesbian bars and a move toward desegregation in previously white spaces. Prior to this time, black lesbians interested in socializing and sexually connecting with other women often turned toward all-black rent parties.8

Also turning to the domestic realm for lesbian socialization were middle-class lesbians. According to Faderman (, –) and Kennedy and Davis (, ), white middle-class lesbians in professional positions were less likely to attend bars for fear of public exposure and its possible financial and personal repercussions. Similarly, Thorpe’s interviews with middle-class black women in Detroit reveal that, even when bars were open to them, the violent atmosphere of the bars (whether real or perceived) made them less attractive social options than house parties (, ). Middle-class women’s infrequent attendance at bars was also motivated by their repudiation of the butch-femme aesthetics and the flagrant visibility of working-class bar lesbians that predominated in the s (Faderman , –). Indeed, in her research on lesbian identity in pre-Stonewall Colorado, Katie Gilmartin concludes that, although they sporadically took advantage of bar space for socialization, a number of white, black, and Latina middle-class women or-

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 9
ganized their lesbian identities around a disavowal of bar culture and its inhabitants ().9

Nonetheless, the appearance of lesbians in bars throughout the country at relatively the same period in history suggests that, despite real differences and limitations, bars functioned as the primary place within the public realm for lesbians to find each other, pursue romance, and build networks.10 Because of its unique ability to grant “privacy in public,” the lesbian bar would continue in its role as the central public meeting place for lesbians until the feminist and gay movements of the late

s and early s dramatically expanded lesbians’ opportunities and mobility within the public realm.

What’s a Bar like You Doing in a Place like This?

Setting the Conventions of Lesbian Bar Representation, 1941–1971

Given the constraints posed by Hollywood’s Motion Picture Production Code, the ideological project of heterosexing space vis-à-vis the imagined lesbian bar was not the province of film for approximately the first three-quarters of the century. Instituted in the early s and officially lasting until the implementation of the movie rating system in , the Production Code forbade representations of homosexuality (under the rubric “sex perversion”) for most of its reign. Though representations of homosexuality were hardly absent from Hollywood cinema during the era of the Production Code, the roughly thirty-five-year institutional ban on them meant that homosexuality transpired mostly through “well-worn innuendo” (Russo , ) and “stereotypical associations” (Lugowski , ).11 It was thus not until  that the first lesbian bar appeared in a Hollywood film—Robert Aldrich’s The Killing of Sister George.

Yet, despite its early absence within Hollywood cinema, the lesbian bar as a source of heterosexual consumption and a site of heterosexual surveillance was already in place by the time the Production Code was eradicated. From the moment lesbians first began congregating in bars, representations of those spaces helped shape and map lesbianism. This was not only the case from the perspective of lesbians, who, as I discuss in chapter , often learned of the lesbian bar through its cultural representation; representations also helped shape and map lesbianism for a heterosexual audience both curious about lesbian identity and desire

10 Looking at the Lesbian Bar and increasingly anxious about its own ability to detect it. According to Jennifer Terry (), the notion that homosexuals possessed distinct and easily discernible bodies and characteristics, which was the conceptual bedrock of late-nineteenth-century sexology discourse, had lost scientific hegemony by the s. As a result, anxieties about the so-called potential hazards of concealed homosexuality swelled. These hazards ranged from a s eugenic understanding of homosexuality’s ability to infect the healthy heterosexual body (Terry , –), to a postwar notion of its ability to corrupt “innocent” youth (Terry , –), to a cold-war notion of its ability to threaten national security (D’Emilio

, –; Terry , –).

At the same time that homosexuality could no longer easily be identified by physical markers, it began to be identified by geographical ones. By being contained in a single locale—both physically and representationally—lesbians, who might otherwise evade detection, were easily identified and surveyed. Terry’s historical research confirms this theory.

Detailing the increase in surveillance of homosexuality during the s, she claims that “bar raids were an effective way of identifying gay men and lesbians. Those who were arrested often had vice squad files which were then made available to the FBI and employers” (, ). This policing of bars suggests that lesbian bars not only made lesbianism visible but also allowed for its social control. Indeed, a disciplinary motivation for lesbians’ containment in bars is explicitly stated in New York: Confidential!, one of four best-selling urban exposés published in the late s and s. After informing their readers that the police do not bother women in Greenwich Village’s lesbian bars, authors Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer suggest that this is based on the “the theory that [as long as] you can’t do away with [lesbians], and as long as they’re with us, it’s better to segregate them in one section, where an eye can be kept on them” (, ).

But, more importantly, confining the lesbian’s public activities to the space of the bar enabled the tenacious ideological project of excluding homosexuality from the definitional center of the public/private divide, thereby ensuring heterosexual spatial privilege and dominance. As Maxine Wolfe argues, ideologies of heterosexual superiority and heteronormativity, which produce the spatial segregation of sexual deviance and both real and imagined violence against public displays of same-sex desire, simultaneously enforce and motivate lesbian bars into geographical

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 11
and physical concealment (, ). These ideologies guarantee that lesbian congregation and sexual expression in the public realm are allowed only on the condition that they are hidden. At the same time, while this ideological project demands of the public lesbian bar the paradoxical position of remaining private within public space, it also demands that this private space remain open to its purview. This bewildering situation, in which lesbian privacy can occur only in public and public lesbian identity can take place only in private, guarantees that lesbian spatial autonomy is an impossibility. This contradictory set of circumstances secures and safeguards the cultural supremacy of heterosexuality, on the one hand, and the cultural illegitimacy of homosexuality, on the other.

Thus, we find that, in the first half of the twentieth century, cultural and scientific representations of the lesbian often geographically restrict her to the space of the bar (or a similar urban haunt). For example, in fictional accounts of lesbianism, the lesbian is often framed as a patron of a lesbian bar. This is most prevalent in lesbian pulp fiction of the

s and s, whose narratives were typically set in the lesbian and gay bars of Greenwich Village and Hollywood.12 Similarly, even so-called scientific texts that work to identify a distinct lesbian typology are compelled to locate her spatially. For example, what is striking about Dr.

George Henry’s mammoth  study, Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns, is that, despite its strident research into the specificities of the homosexual body, its interviews with lesbians equally function to map this body spatially. In the lesbian case studies in Sex Variants, several women reveal that they frequent bars and cafés in Greenwich Village, Capri, and Berlin (–). According to Terry, these case studies function as “ethnographic interview[s] revealing unique cultural practices of what researchers assumed was a nascent urban demimonde”

(, ). The imperative to identify lesbians through the location of the lesbian bar is likewise prevalent in Dr. Frank S. Caprio’s  study, Female Homosexuality: A Psychodynamic Study of Lesbianism. Somewhat curious for a “psychodynamic study” concerned with, among other matters, lesbians’ dream lives, Female Homosexuality includes a section titled “Places Noted for Attracting Male and Female Inverts” ().

Central in the desire to pinpoint lesbian space outlined in these and other sources is the notion that heterosexual researchers and authors have cracked the code of a secret world. For example, in Female Homosexuality,

12 Looking at the Lesbian Bar Caprio not only details the locales and customs of lesbian nightlife but also instructs heterosexuals how to locate “authentic” sites and identify

“authentic” lesbians (, –). After informing his readers that New York City taxi drivers often take curious heterosexuals to lesbian night-spots, Caprio reveals that many of these spaces are fraudulent. He details how the would-be lesbian patrons are actually B-girls employed by the bar owner to attract drinking customers. Caprio then schools his readers on how to discern “real” versus “imitation” bar dynamics: One can generally tell the difference between those who are genuinely inverted and those who are simply “acting.” The latter have a tendency to betray themselves by overemphasizing their overt masculine behavior.

Their speech and actions emanate signs of fictitiousness. They cater to the customers more and try to persuade them to buy more drinks. One senses the commercial motivation behind the atmosphere.

By contrast, there are places where the authentic lesbians meet. There is less frivolity, the atmosphere is a more serious one and the lesbians and their “dates” when dancing together are preoccupied and engrossed with each other. (–)

Similarly, in “A Study of a Public Lesbian Community,” Ethel Sawyer’s

 master’s thesis, written for the Department of Sociology-Anthropology at Washington University, Sawyer boasts about the ease with which she penetrated a working-class black lesbian bar (–). Challenging and disproving what she understands as the sociologist’s “perceived difficulty of entree” into homosexual communities, Sawyer gains access to lesbian bar life through participant observation, interviews, and informant information. She reveals the sexual customs of “studs”

(butches) and “fishes” (femmes), details the predominance of bar fights, and exposes the “stud” quest to turn straight women into “fishes” (–).

Much more smug about the ability to penetrate what he calls the

“strange, forbidden world” of lesbianism is Jess Stearn’s “nonfiction”

journalistic exposé The Grapevine, published in  (). Although Stearn admits that lesbians are part of a “sprawling grapevine, with a secret code of their own” (), he professes to cracking its code (). As a result, Stearn is able to offer such insider information as an apparent national lesbian color conspiracy: “On Thursdays, for instance, multitudes of lesbians throughout the country [wear] a special color dress to identify themselves to other secret lesbians. In New York, Los Angeles, and San

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 13

Francisco, the cognoscenti [wear] green; in Chicago, they [choose] yel-low; in Connecticut, it [is] pink” ().

Exposure of lesbian public space works not simply for the purpose of social control through a distanced surveillance but also as a guarantee that heterosexuals can consume and appropriate lesbian space for their own leisure and sexual pleasure. Indeed, lesbian bar representations read as quintessential “slumming” texts. According to Kevin J. Mumford, the phenomenon of slumming, which began in the early twentieth century as both a form of social reform and a type of bohemian cultural exchange, quickly developed into a mainstream practice of cultural appropriation (, –). Slumming, Mumford argues, evolved into the practice of “social superiors temporarily exploiting people and institutions on the margins, usually for pleasure, leisure, or sexual adventure” (). For example, focusing on white slumming in black neighborhoods, he suggests that “for the less affluent, spending a night on the town in Harlem might represent the cultural equivalent of taking a Cu-nard cruise to Africa, an exciting excursion into another social world”

(). Key to the development of slumming was its cultural representation in the slumming text, which took any number of shapes, from reform tracts and sociological studies to travel guidebooks and literature.

In addition to the slumming text’s central feature, “the sexualization of the space or geography that it explores” (), another defining feature was its more or less detailed description of the urban landscape it depicted for a presumably unfamiliar reader.

Lesbian bar representations often take the shape of slumming texts.

For example, in his so-called scientific study of sexual depravity across America, Sexual Rebellion in the Sixties (), W. D. Sprague, also the author of such indispensable studies as Sex and the Secretary and Sexual Behavior of American Nurses, does everything but chauffeur his readers to the lesbian bar. After detailing the activities that take place within lesbian and gay bar space, he informs his readers that establishments catering to homosexuals are most likely to be found in certain specific areas of a city. In Paris, they are located mainly in Montmartre and along the Left Bank. London’s homosexual clubs and cabarets exist chiefly in the arty Chelsea or the sleazy Soho quarters. In New York City, they operate in Greenwich Village or along Lexington Avenue. ()

14 Looking at the Lesbian Bar Some of the readers of this book surely were lesbians, who no doubt benefited from Sprague’s publicity of bar locales. However, because Sprague imagined readers of Sexual Rebellion in the Sixties to be “normal” citizens who might find some of the situations “shocking and revolting”

(), this text no doubt also provided curious heterosexuals with a map of and an invitation to lesbian bar life.

Such detailing of lesbian bar locations for assumed heterosexual readers also occurs in much lesbian pulp fiction. According to Diane Hamer, lesbian pulp fiction not only details the textures of lesbian bar life but also “read[s] like travelogue[s] or tourist guide[s] to lesbian bars” (,

). Similarly, Suzanna Danuta Walters notes that lesbian pulp novels read like ethnographies of lesbian bar life (, ). Though, as I will discuss in chapter , many lesbians turned to these books precisely for this reason, lesbian pulp was initially meant to serve the interests of heterosexual men, the target audience of the pulp industry (Barale ,

; Keller , ). Similarly, newspaper accounts of police raids of lesbian bars, complete with their addresses and names, provided heterosexuals with both an urban directory and an unencumbered view of deviant nightlife. Indeed, historically, media publicity of bar raids often surfaced at the precise moment when heterosexual surveillance and consumption of lesbian culture subsided. For example, according to Nan Alamilla Boyd, as soon as the entertainment of San Francisco’s heterosexual tourists, who were lured to the city in the s by such “exoticisms” as cross-dressed lesbian waitresses, was no longer the raison d’être of homosexual bars, gay and lesbian socialization became subject to repressive state forces and their consequent public scrutiny (, –).

In other words, as soon as lesbians and gays began to remove themselves from the purview of heterosexual surveillance and the potential heterosexual usurpation of homosexual space, state and media apparatuses mobilized to keep these spaces within heterosexual reach.

Representation, then, was central to the project of harnessing lesbian bars for heterosexual use. Indeed, for the curious tourist who either would not or could not venture to the space of the lesbian bar, textual representation offered itself as a surrogate. Lait and Mortimer suggest as much in New York: Confidential!. In their introduction to New York City’s seedy underworld of prostitutes, “homos,” “Lesbians,” gamblers, pimps, and mobsters, the authors suggest that their primary audience is not the first-time venturer to, the frequent visitor of, nor the permanent

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 15
resident of New York City. Rather, they aim to give “the vicarious traveler who does his New York sightseeing at home, in his easy chair, a series of close-ups that he never ogled off a screen or Sunday supplement”

(, viii–ix). From the comfort of their heterosexual domestic space, readers could visit lesbian bars, which, as they learned from Lait and Mortimer’s four-part series, were spreading rampantly throughout the country.13

The armchair traveler also learns from lesbian bar depictions that they are crime-ridden places. For example, Stearn’s salacious compendium of lesbian life states that “many gay bars [are] often fronts for more sinister activities. One lesbian bar in Los Angeles . . . [is] a well-known gathering spot for pimps, procurers, and drug addicts” (1964, 204). Discussing the prevalence of homosexuality and homosexual converts in women’s prisons and detention centers, Stearn reveals that once these women are released, “many [find] their way to the Greenwich Village bars” (). Similarly, in Lait and Mortimer’s exposé of Chicago, Chicago: Confidential! (), they describe a sex club patronized by lesbians on the same page that they describe a notorious haven for gangsters and black marketeers (–). Describing lesbian life in New York, Lait and Mortimer suggest that “drugs and depravities are prevalent” (, ).

But the lesbian’s historical equation with prostitution is probably her most common link to criminality (Nestle , –; Hart , –

). In Female Homosexuality, Caprio describes a lesbian bar/brothel in Paris with “private rooms in an upper floor . . . devoted to sexual liaisons”

(, ). In Sexuality and Homosexuality: A New View, author Arno Karlen interviews a lesbian patron of Boston bars who discusses her violent relationship with a prostitute and details how bar dykes often hook young girls on drugs (, ). The relationship of bar patrons to prostitutes is also detailed in Hunter Davies’s The New London Spy, a guidebook to London’s underworld. The anonymous author of the lesbian section informs us that in London “there are . . . one or two [lesbian] after hours drinking and coffee clubs . . . mostly patronized by prostitutes and their girlfriends who live on the fringes of the criminal world and are therefore more likely to be involved in fights and drug-taking” (, ).

But if lesbian bars are represented as crime-ridden spaces, their relationship to prostitution also foregrounds their value to heterosexual men.

Indeed, armchair travelers and potential slummers discover that lesbian bars are readily available for male sexual gratification. For example, in

16 Looking at the Lesbian Bar Henry’s Sex Variants, one lesbian interviewee legitimizes the heterosexual consumption of lesbian bars and their patrons, stating, “Men go [to midtown lesbian clubs] too, mostly for queer women” (, ). Likewise, when Stearn describes lesbian bars, he paints them as places open to men. He unfolds a world of the most “startling beauties” and the

“plainest Janes” that is at once difficult to penetrate and sexually wide-open. In some lesbian bars, he explains, “Men [can]not enter unescorted by women” (, ). However, he also describes lesbian bars as “teem-ing with male curiosity-seekers, sailors and Johns” (). Later, when Stearn refers to the availability of lesbians for male sexual consumption, he offers the location:

Many of the younger, prettier lesbians—the baby butches and femmes—
who often [don’t] seem to know which way to turn sexually, [are] the magnet for many males. In one bar along Key West’s sin-struck Duval Street, I saw sailors with tallow hair and corn-fed faces posturing amorously with lesbians—barmaids and customers—on both sides of the mahogany bar.

As a barmaid served a bottle of beer, one sailor impulsively threw his arm around her and then reached up and kissed her lips. She smiled brightly and said, “Seventy-five cents, please.” () Lesbian bars are also revealed to be perfectly acceptable and open entertainment for the touring heterosexual couple. In Female Homosexuality, Caprio describes lesbian bars as places where “upper social circle” heterosexuals go slumming (, ). Stearn’s account of lesbian bars confirms Caprio’s description. During one of his numerous tours of lesbian bars, Stearn meets up with Virginia, “a lovely young society girl,” and her boyfriend, both taking in the exotic sights and mixing with bar patrons (, –).

Lesbian bars as sites of heterosexual tourism are also prevalent within the narratives of lesbian pulp fiction. This is true of both “virile adventures” and “pro-lesbian pulp,” two genres of lesbian pulp identified by Yvonne Keller: “Most lesbian pulps were virile adventures aimed at a male readership, but there were also, beginning in the late s, a sub-set of pro-lesbian pulps, the set of books most often written by lesbians and characterized by the most positive lesbian representation” (,

). However, as Keller also notes, these authors were limited in their attempts to create positive representations of lesbians by the industry’s strict parameters for pulp narrative conventions (–). One such con-

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 17
vention was male passage through and command of lesbian bar space:

“Representations of the lesbian bar . . . [are] standard in lesbian pulps.

In most lesbian pulp novels, heterosexual looks control [this] space, which is typically figured as one of heterosexual tourism” (). Although Keller convincingly outlines how some pro-lesbian pulp authors subverted this convention, it nonetheless surfaces in both forms of pulp. Thus, even in the novels of pro-lesbian pulp writer Ann Bannon, lesbian bars are replete with male pimps, tourists, and voyeurs, and their consumption of bar space is often narratively sanctioned. This is exemplified in Bannon’s I Am a Woman ([a] ). In this novel, Burr, a heterosexual man, takes his girlfriend and Laura, a closeted lesbian unfamiliar with lesbian public space, on a tour of Greenwich Village lesbian bars. At one point along the tour, Burr confidently offers an indignant Laura his theories about lesbians: “All . . . [lesbians] need is a real man”; “A man who knows the first thing about women could lay any one of these dames—even a butch—and make her like it”; and “Any girl who doesn’t like men is either a virgin or else some bastard scared the hell out of her” (–).

Despite the fact that Bannon’s novels are unique among lesbian pulp fiction for not heterosexualizing her characters at the narratives’ closure, I Am a Woman nonetheless confirms Burr’s heterosexual male viewpoint of lesbianism by suggesting that Laura’s lesbianism is the result of her sexually and physically abusive father.

It is not just heterosexual men whom lesbians supposedly desire, but also heterosexual women. Later in I Am a Woman, when Burr’s girlfriend tells Laura that a butch lesbian was staring at Laura, she barely conceals her own desire for lesbian affection, categorically stating, “Yes, but she stared at me too. That’s the awful thing about Lesbians, they have no discrimination” (). Indeed, in Bannon’s novels, lesbians are often falling in love with women they presume to be straight. Similarly, in his Sexual Rebellion in the Sixties, Sprague reveals how lesbians are particularly attracted to married women. In a chapter on spurned wives who go to lesbian bars as an act of revenge against their husbands, Sprague notes,

“Hardened lesbians are quite familiar with this type of vengeance-seeking wife. They call such women ‘Vengeful Vaginas’ and consider them highly desirable partners for, the confirmed Lesbians declare, these women are avid to engage in the wildest and most uninhibited sexual acts” (, ).

Interestingly, in these varied sources, the invasiveness of heterosexual tourism in lesbian bars is typically masked by narratives of lesbian

18 Looking at the Lesbian Bar hospitality. For example, in a passage from the pulp novel Journey to a Woman ([] ), Bannon opens up a comfort zone for men who may desire to visit lesbian space. After touring the Greenwich Village bar scene for the first time, Beth, a budding lesbian, remarks on the plethora of men she discovers spending time within lesbian bars: At the last bar there were other men, but they never seemed to join the girls at the tables. They rather intrigued Beth, who wondered why they spent all their free time sitting quietly on bar stools watching the flirtations, the loves, the dancing and socializing of these women they could never touch. Some of them seemed to know the girls and were greeted affectionately with a nickname or a slap on the back. But they never presumed to follow a girl or to talk before they were spoken to.

It was their solitary pleasure simply to watch, and now and then to be permitted a few words, a little sharing of this odd way of life. () Journey to a Woman, then, not only reveals how lesbians sanction male use of lesbian space but also offers its male readers protocol for proper behavior within that space.14

This narrative of lesbian hospitality similarly appears in Stearn’s The Grapevine. In his introduction, Stearn reveals that it was only upon his invitation to a lesbian convention that he decided to write about lesbianism in America, stating, “I found many doors opening that had been previously closed to the independent researcher. . . . I was now encouraged by many lesbians to embark on my new project” (, ). Lesbian generosity toward interested heterosexuals, particularly that of women in lesbian bars, appears throughout the exposé. “Without female guides . . .”

Stearn notes, “I would have been unable to get into many of the bars”

(). This generosity is also extended toward heterosexual couples who tour bars. According to Stearn, when society slummer Virginia (accompanied by her boyfriend) becomes intrigued by the implausibility of a pretty blond caressing a “dumpy-looking girl with horn-rimmed glasses,”

a “sophisticated” lesbian couple “help [the] tourists get [their] bearings a little” (). These lesbians reveal that their bartender is a “fag,” point out a woman with a “Joan of Arc complex,” and explain what fly-front pants are to Virginia (–). Similarly, Caprio, who details bar life in Greenwich Village, Hollywood, and Italy’s isle of Capri, informs his readers in the preface to Female Homosexuality that “much of the data included in this book was obtained from lesbians themselves via the direct interview method” (, ix).

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 19

But if lesbian bars are represented as acceptable and congenial forms of entertainment for heterosexual couples, such entertainment is also shown to have consequences. Thus, operating alongside narratives of the bar as an exotic tourist locale is the demonization of lesbian bar space. Typically, this demonization is undergirded by paranoia about heterosexual women’s entry into lesbian bars. For example, Stearn’s depiction of Virginia’s excited interest in touring the bars, her glee at being the object of lesbian desire, and her boyfriend’s impotence in the face of his resultant anxiety bespeak an underlying concern about the consequences of heterosexual women entering lesbian bars (, –).

Similarly, although Karlen refers, in Sexuality and Homosexuality, to the lesbian bar as a haven for outcasts, he also cites it as a den of misery and abnormality. On the one hand, Karlen states: “Clubs and bars offer [lesbians] . . . advantages; they can meet partners, drop their heterosexual or asexual masks, flirt without offending the straight, gossip, and have a sense of belonging” (, ). A few lines later, on the other hand, Karlen counters what might be considered a too-harmonious description of lesbian public life by sketching a less appealing picture: There is a tendency to close ranks against . . . curious straights—
especially male ones. . . . Lesbian gathering places have the same air of hysteria and obsessive sexuality as male gay spots, but there is an added edge of hostility. A man who walks in may meet anything from silent bristling to physical threats from the bulldykes. (–) Yet, rather than ward off curious straights, this description implicitly warns men that negotiation of lesbian space must be done carefully. At the same time, it implicitly diverts visits from heterosexual women, whose association with such “hysterical,” man-hating women might be costly.

Likewise, the lesbian barflies featured in lesbian pulp novels are usually set within the context of lesbian lust, secrecy, and shame. Most pulp fiction represents its lesbian characters as a pathological lot doomed to a life of misery. This is true even of pro-lesbian pulp fiction, whose authors were often hamstrung by the dictates of their publishers. As Keller notes, pro-lesbian pulp authors were “compelled to conform to generic imperatives such as homophobia, sexism, frequent and gratuitous sex, voyeurism, male-centeredness, and sad endings—typically, ones in which the lesbians do not end up happily together” (, ).

Thus, even the characters of Ann Bannon, one of the few authors whose

20 Looking at the Lesbian Bar publisher did not force her to include final retribution for her characters’ lesbianism, are still plagued by neuroses, alcoholism, dead-end relationships, abusive fathers, suicidal tendencies, and murderous impulses.

From approximately the s to the s, then, we find that depictions of lesbian bars in a range of different media share similar motifs and modi operandi. Whether they appear in scientific and sociological studies, pop psychology, journalistic exposés, or pulp fiction, lesbian bars emerge as clandestine (and often criminalized) sites of lesbian congregation that are easily penetrated by and sexually available for heterosexuals, both male and female. Together, these themes generate and uphold notions of heterosexual spatial and social superiority by guaranteeing the centrality of heterosexuality within all space and by altering the meanings of public and private for lesbian citizens. The tenacity of this ideological project is confirmed by the astonishing persistence of these themes in the contemporary era of film and television, to which I now turn.

You Look Familiar. . . . Don’t I Know You from Somewhere?

Authenticity in Contemporary Lesbian Bar Narratives, 1968 to the Present

Given that one of the ideological exigencies historically motivating representations of lesbian bars is the containment of lesbians, it is no accident that at approximately the same historical moment when lesbian characters cinematically moved from the realm of connotation to deno-tation, the first solely lesbian bar appeared in a Hollywood film—Robert Aldrich’s The Killing of Sister George. Ever since the dismantling of the Production Code afforded lesbians greater latitude of movement as lesbians within the representational landscape, the cinematic lesbian bar has been mobilized to recontain them spatially.15 Though lesbian characters in the post–Production Code era have increasingly appeared in numerous mainstream film and television scenarios outside the space of the bar, their visual representation in bars is nonetheless conspicuous, sharing numerous narrative and ideological continuities with earlier scripts.

Like earlier written accounts of the lesbian bar that emphasized and provided tips on how to ensure its authenticity, most popular film and television depictions of lesbian bar space work hard to highlight the authenticity of their representations. This is done mostly by the foregrounding of what Dirk Eitzen calls “situational cues”: elements of a

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 21
film that signal for its viewers a scene’s framing as documentary (,

). According to Eitzen, these cues might be explicit verbal labels, like explanatory title sequences and program notes in TV Guide . . . [or] a host of things in or around a text that trigger viewers’ “knowledge” about the real world and about discourses aimed at illuminating it, like recognizably “authentic” film footage of a historic figure like John F. Kennedy and the wobbly camera that says, “This is cinema verité.” ()

In lesbian bar representations, these situational cues manifest themselves through locations, actresses, or film style. In a large number of film and television bar representations, from the earliest depiction to the present, the use of lesbian actresses or icons, the use of real lesbian bar space, or the use of particular editing and stylistic choices grant bar scenes documentary status. In addition to shooting much of The Killing of Sister George’s lesbian bar scene with a handheld camera to evoke a cinema-verité feel, Robert Aldrich also boasts in the film’s press kit about being the first film director ever to enter London’s infamous Gateways Club.

Similarly, Ellen’s lesbian café scene was shot on location at a real lesbian coffeehouse, Little Frida’s, in Los Angeles. Bound features popular lesbian sexologist Susie Bright (aka Susie Sexpert) in its bar scene, while also including her in the credits under the dubious title “technical consultant.”

In turn, famous lesbian musicians signal lesbian realness in Boys on the Side: members of a lesbian bar band are played by the Indigo Girls, and a poster of k. d. lang adorns the wall. Masquerading as a lesbian-feminist songstress, lang also signals lesbian space in Ellen’s lesbian café scene, as does the actress Jorja Fox, who for several seasons played the lesbian doctor Maggie Doyle on ER. Roseanne’s bar scene is authenticated by its use of the actress Mariel Hemingway, whose role as a lesbian athlete in Personal Best () is iconic. Also authenticating this scene is comedienne Sandra Bernhard, whose lesbianism was made more visible in 
after she and Madonna detailed hanging out at a New York City lesbian club, the Cubby Hole, on Late Night with David Letterman. Similarly, another lesbian funny girl, Lea DeLaria, is used to credentialize the bar scene in The First Wives Club, in which she appears as a tough bar dyke.

And Kevin Smith, director of Chasing Amy, cites his collaborative friendship with lesbian writer and actress Guinevere Turner as validation of the film’s lesbian authenticity. In press interviews, Smith foregrounds the fact that Turner gave her stamp of approval to the script (qtd. in Pride

22 Looking at the Lesbian Bar

Guinevere Turner plays a lesbian nightclub entertainer in Chasing Amy.

, –). Smith also tries to communicate this authenticity in the film’s bar scene by shooting on location at New York City’s infamous Meow Mix and providing Turner with a cameo role as a nightclub songstress.16

Similarly, though it does not use famous lesbians, Living Out Loud’s lesbian bar scene is a perfect example of the unremitting compulsion to authenticate lesbian space. Like many stock places in the visual landscape, the lesbian bar depends on iconic images to establish itself as real. As Loukides and Fuller argue, the recognition of locales in film depends upon “visual (and sometimes auditory) clues as simple (or complex) as a familiar landmark . . . or a film title, or a combination of cues that helps differentiate potentially confusing sites from one another” (,

–). For example, they point out that “a desert with tanks, peopled with characters dressed in khaki, places us differently than the same desert with horses and cowboys” (). Similarly, “characters in Medieval garb on a modern urban street are either actors, party-goers, or time travellers; the same crew in a dark forest is in a th century forest” ().

Aware of the cultural codes that signify lesbianism, even as it also pro-

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 23
duces those codes, Living Out Loud recognizes that the high-femme women who populate its lesbian bar make up a “potentially confusing site” and might not signify “real” lesbian space. Hence, the film establishes its lesbian club’s authenticity through an establishing shot of two women heavily coded as dykes, only to erase them from the scene once the location has been authentically established.

This deployment of lesbian bar authenticity is curious for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that most repeated locales in the landscape of fiction film and television rarely work to authenticate themselves with the same compulsion. Though we see church scenes all the time in films and on television, they are not necessarily shot on location in real churches and they usually don’t feature real priests; likewise, hospitals are regularly featured in fictional spaces, but they usually don’t emphasize cameo appearances by real doctors. In turn, when the

“situational cues” of authenticity are used in fictional films or television, they often work to achieve aesthetic verisimilitude. When medical dramas such as ER strive to authenticate their depictions of surgery, they do so in an effort to make those depictions look as “real” as possible. In contrast, aesthetic realism is not necessarily the primary concern of lesbian bar depictions, if it is a concern at all. Finally, though the blurring of documentary and fiction is a staple of contemporary media, the authentication of representational lesbian bar space is not a new phenomenon but reaches back half a century or more.

Exactly what, then, does lesbian bar authentication serve? What do so-called authentic representations of lesbian bars offer viewers? Certainly, if we accept the basic notion that “documentaries are presumed to be truthful” (Eitzen , ), the framing of lesbian bars in documentary fashion also enables their narratives to be naturalized. In other words, the authentication of lesbian bar space and lesbian patrons allows viewers to read lesbian bar narratives (and therefore spaces) as truthful representatives of the conditions and dynamics of real bar life.

Because, as I will show, most lesbian bar narratives foreground the centrality of heterosexuality within lesbian bar space, the significance of the use of documentary tropes is clear. If lesbian bar narratives are framed as documentaries, their presentation of heterosexual centrality within lesbian space is naturalized as well.

But so-called authentic lesbian bar representations do more than just naturalize lesbian bar dynamics for heterosexual audiences. By focusing

24 Looking at the Lesbian Bar on “how cultural activity occurs, where it happens, who it happens with, what its participants look like, how they speak, and what meanings we can make of what we see” (Nichols , ), these representations also function ethnographically. This means that the documentary framing of lesbian bars guarantees viewers not only the “truth” about lesbian bar culture but also intimate knowledge of and access to this “real” culture.

In traditional ethnographies, members of dominant cultures (typically white and Western) travel to “exotic” foreign cultures not only to discover and record the customs of “primitive” people but also to experience those cultures under the guise of scientific objectivity. According to Bill Nichols, traditional ethnography is born from both “the desire to know or possess” and “the desire for the experience of strangeness itself ”

(, ). That representations of lesbian bars function in this traditional ethnographic sense is clearly marked by their strong emphasis on the classic “arrival scene,” what Vincent Crapanzano calls “a genre or subgenre of ethnography” (, ). In written ethnography, arrival scenes often take the form of the ethnographer’s “tale of entry” into the foreign culture (). In visual ethnography, arrival scenes are often marked literally by the physical entrance of the filmmakers into a cultural space that is foreign to them (Nichols , ). In both cases, the arrival scene highlights the difference that is at the center of ethnography, “the separation of Us from Them” (Nichols , ). Yet even as the arrival scene foregrounds the difference between the ethnographer and the exotic culture he or she has gained access to, it simultaneously marks the possibilities, pleasures, and (varying degrees of) ease of cultural penetration by underscoring the ethnographer’s successful entrance into otherwise clandestine and unfamiliar cultural space.17

This simultaneous function of the traditional ethnographic arrival scene is revealed in the “arrival scenes” in lesbian bar representations.

On the one hand, difference is constantly underscored by the strong emphasis on heterosexual characters’ entrances into lesbian bars. These entrances are often announced through establishing shots or scenes of the presumed-to-be-heterosexual characters standing in front of a lesbian bar’s exterior. These shots or scenes typically depict the heterosexual characters in some way that references their dissimilarity from the bar’s lesbian patrons. For example, in The First Wives Club, before the three heterosexual protagonists enter a lesbian club to find one woman’s daughter, each reconfirms her heterosexuality to the audience. One

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 25
states her disinterest in entering the bar, another reveals that this is her first time in a lesbian bar, and the third justifies her visit by stating that she is entering the bar only to support her daughter. In French Twist, a heterosexual man is initially barred from entering a lesbian bar by butch-looking bouncers. And in Living Out Loud, we see two heterosexual women giggling with excitement before entering a bar called the Confessional.

Additionally, lesbian bar arrival scenes are often presented through the sustained focus on a heterosexual character’s actual entrance into the bar space. Here again, these scenes stress the character’s difference from lesbian bar patrons. For example, in Henry and June, we watch a pre-lesbian Anaïs Nin (Maria de Medeiros) slowly and furtively enter a Parisian lesbian bar with Henry Miller’s wife, June (Uma Thurman). As the feminine duo moves through the bar’s interior space, androgynous-looking women in men’s attire glance curiously at them. In Foxy Brown, both Claudia (Juanita Brown), a drug-addicted prostitute, and Foxy Brown (Pam Grier), the film’s protagonist, cross the length of the lesbian bar. In each of these films, the characters are sharply contrasted to the bars’ lesbian patrons by their attire and their receipt of the lesbians’

lascivious and hostile stares. (In the case of Foxy Brown, they are contrasted with the lesbians by their race as well.) Similarly, as heterosexual San Francisco detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) slowly moves through a polysexual nightclub in Basic Instinct, his decidedly unhip clothing style marks his difference from the club’s patrons. And in The Killing of Sister George, the seemingly heterosexual Mrs. Croft’s (Coral Browne’s) difference from the lesbian members of London’s Gateways Club is highlighted by her difficult and cautious descent into lesbian space, which is dramatically captured in a low-angle shot.

On the other hand, as in traditional ethnography, even as the arrival scenes of heterosexuals into lesbian bar space foreground their difference from bar patrons, they simultaneously underscore the ability of heterosexuals to penetrate even the most challenging lesbian bar space.

Though heterosexual characters often have difficult entrances, face aggressive bouncers, or are the recipients of hostile lesbian gazes, their admission into lesbian bar space is always triumphant. The repetition of these arrival scenes is significant, then, because it both produces and upholds heterosexuality’s spatial hegemony by continually emphasizing the accessibility of lesbian bars to heterosexuals.

26 Looking at the Lesbian Bar

The difficult descent of Mrs. Croft (Coral Browne) into the lesbian bar in The Killing of Sister George is captured by a dramatic low-angle shot.

You’re Sure I Don’t Know You from Somewhere?

Crime in Contemporary Lesbian Bar Narratives Just as the convention of authenticity is embedded within contemporary depictions of lesbian bars, so too are narratives of illegality. As in earlier publicity of bar raids and the police scrutiny of lesbian life outlined in journalistic exposés such as Stearn’s The Grapevine and Lait and Mortimer’s Confidential! city series, lesbian bar space in film and television is often the backdrop to narratives revolving around criminality. This continuity was established in one of the earliest filmic lesbian bar representations, Foxy Brown, in which the patrons of a lesbian bar are shown to be in cahoots with a prostitution and drug syndicate.

This convention is well marked in the contemporary moment. In The Shooter, the chief criminal suspect (Maruschka Detmers) is the owner of a lesbian nightclub, whereas the butch-femme duo in Bound emerge in the context of a Mafia-driven film noir. In Basic Instinct, Detective Nick Curran’s investigation of a high-profile homicide brings him to a nightclub where women snort coke and make out in bathroom stalls,

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 27
and bisexual suspect Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) slithers on the dance floor with her doppelgänger girlfriend, Roxy (Leilani Sarelle).

Similarly, in the film Mercy (), a homicide brings heterosexual detective Catherine Palmer (Ellen Barkin) to a lesbian bar where a secret society of lesbians congregate. The space of the lesbian bar is also invoked in the crime drama Jaded (), in which a woman meets her rapists at a seemingly heterosexual bar where bisexual women seduce female bar patrons and gyrate against one another on the dance floor.

The lesbian bar is also the backdrop to a crime narrative in Boys on the Side: after the accidental murder of an abusive drug dealer in Pittsburgh, three women temporarily evade the law by hanging out in a multiracial, multicultural lesbian bar in Tucson, Arizona. In The First Wives Club, three spurned, middle-aged divorcées out to avenge their ex-husbands begin their work with a visit to a lesbian club in order to recruit the services of one of the women’s lesbian daughter. Although the lesbian bar in Henry and June does not emerge in the context of a crime narrative, its link to criminality is apparent by its relationship to the film’s other lesbian space: a lesbian brothel/café similar to the Parisian bar/brothel that Caprio describes in Female Homosexuality.

The relationship of lesbian bar space to crime narratives also surfaces in television. In an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess, an adventure program notorious for its lesbian (sub)plots and fandom, Xena’s (Lucy Lawless’s) perky sidekick, Gabrielle (Reneé O’Connor), stumbles upon a medieval version of a lesbian nightclub during an investigation of the evil god Bacchus. Surrounded by women sporting shaved heads and belly shirts, Gabrielle gyrates to a combination, oddly enough for the sword-and-sorcery genre, of house and rap music. Likewise, television’s other popular female action drama, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, invokes the lesbian bar. After a particularly grueling week of slaying vampires, Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her fellow slayer Faith (Eliza Dushku) energize for an evening of slaying at the local teen dance club with fre-netic body rubs.

Perhaps most noteworthy is the conspicuous appearance of lesbian bars in contemporary television’s police dramas NYPD Blue, Law and Order, and the recently canceled Homicide. On NYPD Blue, a lesbian murder suspect is sought out at Lula’s, a lesbian bar. Likewise, on a joint episode of Law and Order and Homicide, the discovery of a murder victim’s lesbian identity immediately motivates four detectives to search

28 Looking at the Lesbian Bar Baltimore’s lesbian bars. Given that in both cases lesbian bars are not the most obvious lead, the detectives’ immediate search of these spaces is indicative of both the cultural equation of lesbians with bar space and the heterosexual desire to see it. This equation is naked, for example, in Law and Order/Homicide. After a young, attractive white woman is murdered, Detectives Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) and Munch (Richard Belzer) begin their search at her home. Though they search for evidence of a possible crime of passion, the lack of “male” paraphernalia offers few clues. Even later, after they discover the victim was a lesbian, their continued assumption that the killer was her lover leads them not to reinvestigate her home for clues of lesbian relationships—the most obvious course of action—but rather to interrogate women at the local lesbian bar.

Munch and Briscoe’s turn to the lesbian bar rather than back to square one with fresh eyes makes sense when we consider that, within lesbian bar conventions, not only is the lesbian bar the backdrop to crime narratives but its inhabitants are often criminalized as well. Indeed, in all three television crime dramas I have mentioned, the murders of lesbians are committed by lesbian or bisexual women. In the joint episode of Law and Order and Homicide, the lesbian victim is murdered by a bar pickup, a black woman with a record of criminal activity who “runs with men and women.” In NYPD Blue, a jealous ex-girlfriend and lesbian barfly murders a female detective’s girlfriend. Similarly, the string of lesbian murders in Mercy are perpetrated by a bisexual woman with a penchant for sleeping with her victims, and the rapists of a young woman in Jaded are two bisexual women. Moreover, it is through the framework of danger that Xena: Warrior Princess fashions its medieval lesbian bar. In particular, it uses the lesbian vampire genre to create its version of the bar space, which is populated by caped and fanged women working in the service of an evil male creature. Interestingly, it is also through the innuendo of lesbianism and lesbian bar space that Buffy the Vampire Slayer reveals Faith, Buffy’s fellow vampire slayer, to be a corrupt figure. Previously a devoted, if a bit capricious and overly combative, slayer dedicated to ridding Sunnydale of vampires, Faith undergoes a sinister transformation, marked by her heightened sexual prowess, much of it directed toward Buffy. After Faith steals Buffy away from an exam, they are shown next at a teen dance club, gyrating together in a shot evocative of Catherine and Roxy’s nightclub pulsations in Basic Instinct.

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 29

Of course, Catherine and Roxy are also criminalized. Catherine is suspected of killing her parents and her male lover, whereas Roxy, already having been convicted at age sixteen for the murder of her brothers, attempts to run over Nick with her car. A criminalized lesbian couple also appears in Bound. In this film noir, Corky (Gina Gershon), an ex-con who served time for money laundering, assists femme fatale Violet (Jennifer Tilly) in murdering Violet’s mobster boyfriend and pilfer-ing $ million from the Mafia. But significantly, Corky and Violet are not the only lesbians criminalized in Bound. In a scene reminiscent of Foxy Brown’s bar scene, in which a crooked female bartender converses with a bar patron about criminal activities, the lesbian bartender in Bound tries to persuade Corky to return to a life of vice.

Though hardly the duplicitous femmes fatales or crooked characters of Basic Instinct, Bound, and Foxy Brown, the women of Boys on the Side and The First Wives Club are equally criminalized. In Boys on the Side, three women are plucked from the safety of their Arizona home and lesbian bar hangout to Pittsburgh, where one of them must defend herself against murder charges. Their discovery by a “friendly” policeman who passes through lesbian bar space is suggestive of this space’s historic surveillance by the police. Significantly, though the unquestionably straight woman of the film, Holly (Drew Barrymore), later serves a reduced sentence for murder, only Jane (Whoopi Goldberg), a black lesbian, and Robin (Mary-Louise Parker), a heretofore straight, white HIV-positive woman who finally confesses her love for Jane, are interrogated on the witness stand. Moreover, during his interrogation of the women, the lawyer reveals and uses their sexual identities and emotional attachments as evidence of their complicity in the crime, a notion that the film simultaneously rejects and implicitly advances. Finally, it is at a lesbian bar in The First Wives Club that the daughter of one of the women gleefully accepts her mother’s invitation to undermine her father’s control of his advertising agency by masquerading as his intern. Significantly, at the moment precisely before the woman (Diane Keaton) reveals the news of her hostile takeover to her ex-husband (Stephen Collins), her daughter (Jennifer Dundas) flippantly reveals to her stunned father that she is “a lesbian—a big one,” making lesbianism central to the duplicitous acts of the “first wives.”

That the trope of criminality continues to frame popular depictions of lesbian bars despite vast differences between contemporary and

30 Looking at the Lesbian Bar historical understandings of lesbian sexuality suggests that the repeated deployment of crime in lesbian bar narratives is more than coinciden-tal. Indeed, as Lynda Hart’s work on the cultural construction of violent women reveals, the equation of lesbianism and criminality has persisted in scientific and cultural representations since the nineteenth century (, –). But, more importantly, like the repeated deployment of authenticity in lesbian bar depictions, lesbian bar criminality also must be understood as part of a broader historical project working to uphold heterosexual spatial supremacy. For one thing, as something to be investigated, crime legitimizes surveillance. As the earlier example of police raids on San Francisco’s gay bars attests, the criminalization of homosexuality has historically worked not only for disciplinary purposes but also to enable heterosexual scrutiny of and passage through gay space.

This dual purpose is well marked in the contemporary era in governmental attempts to shut down gay bathhouses and theaters. For example, the New York City Department of Health’s  citation of the Hollywood Twin Theater for its inattention to the state’s sanitary codes was accompanied by not only a list of sex acts between men of various races but also a detailed description of this space: The Hollywood Twin is located at the corner of Eighth Avenue and th Street in Manhattan. The entrance is on Eighth Avenue. There is a glass booth, in which the cashier sits and collects an entrance fee from each patron who, after paying, passes through a turnstile into the lobby of the theater. . . . To the right of the lobby are stairs which lead down to a very small area off of which is the men’s room. It contains two toilet stalls, three urinals and a sink. (Qtd. in Elovitz and Edwards , ) For another thing, the criminalization of lesbian bar space (and its inhabitants) offers heterosexuality an alibi for its very presence in such a space. Without the pretense of lesbian bar criminality, heterosexuality would have to acknowledge its own fascination with and desire for lesbian bars. The criminalization of lesbian bars thus not only guarantees heterosexual scrutiny of lesbian bar space but also covers up what such scrutiny means by masking heterosexuality’s enthrallment with and usurpation of lesbian bars under the pretext of investigation. The detectives in Basic Instinct, NYPD Blue, Homicide, and Law and Order and the women of The First Wives Club can all pass through lesbian bar space and take pleasure in its spectacle under the justifiable guise of detection.

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 31

It becomes even clearer that the criminalization of lesbian bars enables heterosexual access to lesbian space by serving as its cover story when we look at real instances of crimes against lesbian bar spaces and their inhabitants. Notably, despite a readiness to frame lesbian bars and lesbian bar patrons within fictional narratives of crime, this space and its inhabitants are often disregarded in real cases of crime. Most suggestive of this erasure is the press coverage of the bombing of a gay and lesbian nightclub in Atlanta that occurred, along with the bombing of the Olympic Park and an abortion clinic, during the  Summer Olympics.

Despite the fact that these bombings have yet to be solved and still generate a significant amount of media coverage, as well as the cultural currency of stories about domestic terrorism, the violent act of aggression against lesbians and gays has been downplayed in, if not evacuated from, press coverage of the bombing. For example, in his discussion of the multiple bombings in Atlanta on The News with Brian Williams, MSNBC
anchor Brian Williams failed to identify the bar as a gay and lesbian space. Instead, he referred to it simply as a “nightclub.” Clearly, given the current debates over the passage of hate-crime legislation inclusive of sexual orientation, the public erasure of violence against lesbians and gay men in real spaces is a strategic move to suppress evidence of violence against lesbian and gay citizens. But coupled with the abundance of fictionalized criminal lesbian spaces, this erasure of the nonfictional bar bombing not only confirms the importance of this space within the fictional landscape but also reveals that its surfacing is contingent upon its ideological slant in relation to dominant discourses of sexuality.

Your Place or Mine? Heterosexuality in Contemporary Lesbian Bar Narratives

Just as the motifs of authentication and crime persist in lesbian bar narratives, the centrality of heterosexuality continues to be a main device in depictions of lesbian bars. In the s, heterosexuals were staples of lesbian bar space. Heterosexual men and women move through lesbian bars with various degrees of comfort in such films as The First Wives Club, Chasing Amy, French Twist, Boys on the Side, and Living Out Loud, and in the television programs Roseanne, Ellen, The Simpsons, Sex and the City, and Relativity. As in earlier lesbian bar narratives, heterosexual characters in contemporary film and television freely move through

32 Looking at the Lesbian Bar lesbian space at the request and with the blessing of the lesbian bar’s inhabitants. For example, Roseanne’s recurring lesbian character Nancy (Sandra Bernhard) brings Roseanne (Roseanne) and her sister, Jackie (Laurie Metcalf), to an evening out at a gay bar. In an episode of the short-lived drama Relativity, Rhonda (Lisa Edelstein) drags her heterosexual brother to a lesbian bar to spy on her ex-girlfriend. In Basic Instinct, Catherine Tramell invites Detective Nick Curran to a polysexual nightclub quite unlike his own hangout, a police tavern. In both Chasing Amy and Boys on the Side, lesbians are happy and willing to share space with heterosexuals, who, in the latter film, are just as thrilled with those nightlife arrangements. And, in the coming-out episode of Ellen, instead of Ellen (Ellen DeGeneres) inviting her straight friends to join her at a lesbian coffeehouse, it is Ellen’s friends who invite the newly out character to the lesbian café—a place she herself was unaware of.

On the one hand, the current prevalence and seeming utopian acceptance of heterosexuals in lesbian or otherwise queer spaces in film and television correlate to the relatively new position lesbians and gays hold in film and television as the sidekicks of heterosexuals.18 Arguably, the persistence of the ubiquitous gay best friend in the supporting-character role bespeaks contemporary negotiations of gay and lesbian sexualities and identities in an era in which the framework of tolerance and acceptance is regarded by many as much better than an increasingly illogical and absurd far-right position.19 Congenial heterosexual attendance at and acceptance within lesbian bar space in contemporary film and television is thus a product of this historical shift in heterosexual-homosexual relations and representation.

On the other hand, Patricia White’s work on the ideological functions of the supporting character in Hollywood cinema reminds us that there is, no doubt, more to these gay-straight trips to the lesbian bar than a contemporary framework of tolerance and acceptance can account for.

As White argues, the supporting character typically works to “‘support’. . .

the imbricated ideologies of heterosexual romance and white American hegemony permeating Hollywood cinema” (, ). Indeed, though the cinematic gay best friend certainly does signify tolerance and acceptance, he or she does so from a position that doesn’t threaten the heterosexual narrative and indeed usually propels it to its closure. For example, gay characters are instrumental in aiding and abetting heterosexual romance in As Good as It Gets (), Frankie and Johnny (),

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 33

The Object of My Affection (), My Best Friend’s Wedding (), Four Weddings and a Funeral (), and The Other Sister ().

Moreover, the historical longevity and magnitude of the theme of heterosexual passage through lesbian bar space suggests that we need to contextualize contemporary lesbian bar depictions not solely by appealing to current shifts in gay-straight relations but also by placing them along a continuum of lesbian bar representation. By doing so, it becomes clear that contemporary lesbian bar depictions serve an ongoing ideological project of guaranteeing heterosexual spatial and sexual dominance.

Indeed, heterosexual characters in contemporary film and television not only share space with lesbians; as in earlier depictions of lesbian bars, heterosexual characters also confirm and reinvigorate their heterosexuality through the space of the lesbian bar.

Notably, in Boys on the Side, The First Wives Club, Living Out Loud, Sex and the City, and French Twist, either the appropriation of or a visit to a lesbian bar temporarily or permanently sutures narratives of heterosexual failure and loss. In Boys on the Side, this failure is the contam-ination of heterosexual sex by AIDS, and the film’s lesbian bar, Teatro Carmen, offers a utopian alternative to and way out of this crisis. Located in a quaint, imaginary part of Tucson, Arizona, surprisingly devoid of senior citizens, golf courses, and Republicans, Teatro Carmen is indeed a work of utopian fiction. The bar is owned and operated by a Latina woman, tended by a white heterosexual man, and populated by a multicultural cast of lesbians and heterosexuals. A wholly welcoming environment free from racial conflict and homophobia, Teatro Carmen becomes in three short months the three protagonists’ (Holly, Robin, and Jane’s) very own Cheers. Indeed, like the line from the beloved television show’s theme song, everybody does know their names in the bar.

This includes even the owner’s teenage children, who, with the obvious blessing of their mother, happily mix with the lesbian clientele.20 In one scene, they join the lesbians and the bar staff in offering birthday wishes—
in Spanish, no less—to their new black lesbian friend Jane.

Indeed, Boys on the Side’s lesbians are presented through a loving gaze.

Inside the bar, the film lingers over romantic lesbian pairings, capturing two lesbian couples in intimate embraces. Sharply contrasted to these portrayals is the film’s depiction of heterosexuality, which is presented in alternately comic and dystopian fashions. Unlike the idyllic lesbian bar couples, the straight bar couples, depicted in the first scene of the

34 Looking at the Lesbian Bar

Jane (Whoopi Goldberg, left) and Robin (Mary-Louise Parker) enjoy a moment in a multicultural lesbian bar in Boys on the Side.

film, are obnoxious and vulgar. Equally flawed is the heterosexual pairing of Holly and her abusive ex-boyfriend, the former impregnated by another man, the latter a drug dealer. Additionally, Robin’s mother is portrayed as a controlling woman whose second husband barely mut-ters a word. The film’s ultimate heterosexual crisis, however, is that which is understood to be wrought by AIDS, crystallizing around the figure of Robin. It is her struggle against HIV that is the driving narrative of the film. Robin’s otherwise flawless status as the consummate poster girl of white middle-class heterosexual womanhood—she drives a minivan, is perfectly groomed in conservative attire, and desires a husband, two kids, and a “soapbox colonial”—is marred by her HIV status. Indeed, the film suggests that it was her failure at heterosexual relations that caused her illness: she contracted the disease by sleeping with a bartender in New York, the only guy she could pick up at happy hour.

Significantly, it is at the lesbian bar where the crisis of heterosexual sex is first articulated, spoken by the straight male bartender, who acts as a surrogate for the bartender in New York who infected Robin. During the film’s lesbian bar scene, the discrepancy between lesbianism and heterosexuality, reflected by the camera, is articulated by the bartender to Jane. During a slow song, the film shows two lesbian couples affection-

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 35
ately enjoying the music. The camera slowly pans past Robin, sitting alone and looking wistfully in the direction of the lesbian couples, and rests on Jane and the bartender, both gazing at Robin. As they stare at her, the bartender resolutely asserts to Jane: “Looks like gay people are the only ones getting laid anymore.” When Jane tells him he “ought to try it,” he jokingly replies that he thinks heterosexuality is going to make a comeback. That a real anxiety undergirds this joke about the waning of heterosexuality is clarified for the viewer when, later, as he tries to have sex with Robin, he dismisses her desire to discuss AIDS
with a nostalgic mourning for the loss of casual, worry-free sex: “I just want things the way they used to be. . . . I want to meet someone, someone I like, get drunk, have a good time and fuck my brains out. Why can’t we do that anymore?” Robin’s reply, “You can’t,” is confirmed by the trajectory of the film, which culminates in her death.

Nonetheless, Boys on the Side still tells us that successful heterosexual identity and sexuality can “make a comeback,” exemplified by the remasculinization of Robin’s stepfather, who finally tells his wife to “shut up”; the engagement of Holly and her policeman boyfriend; and the birth of Holly’s child.21 Heterosexuality’s redemption also signals the evacuation of lesbianism, which, by the end of the film, has been completely erased. This is clearly demonstrated in the penultimate scene of the film, a party scene in which Holly brings home her new baby. Although most of the Teatro Carmen family are present—the owner, the bartender, solitary band members—the affectionate lesbian clientele we saw earlier are absent. And though the Indigo Girls appear in this scene, their un-marked status as lesbians and their isolation from lesbian space evacuate their identities as lesbians within the narrative. Moreover, though Robin has confessed her romantic love for Jane, the film denies this moment by having Jane call Robin her “best friend” in this space. But it is the setting of the domestic space for the party rather than the lesbian bar that fully exposes the film’s use of lesbians and their space. The lesbian bar is a liminal space that, after heterosexuality has been negoti-ated and rejuvenated, can be discarded.

The lesbian bars in The First Wives Club, Living Out Loud, and Sex and the City likewise function as liminal spaces that offer solutions to the heterosexual problems that plague these female-driven narratives: abandonment by men for younger women and the frustrations of single life. In The First Wives Club, three former college roommates, recently

36 Looking at the Lesbian Bar dumped by their husbands, band together as “the first wives club” after their fourth roommate, also abandoned by her husband, commits suicide. Though the women have not seen each other since college and their vast differences provide the basis for a merely tenuous friendship in the tradition of Valley of the Dolls (), they nonetheless join together in order to ruin their ex-husbands professionally and personally. By the film’s end, however, this vengeful goal is replaced by a more altruistic one: they build and make their ex-husbands financially support a public crisis center for women, whose grand opening includes cameo appearances by feminist icon Gloria Steinem and conservative icon Kathie Lee Gifford. The film’s inclusion of Steinem, appearing as herself, signals its understanding of the women’s trajectory in the film as a form of coming to feminism. Not only do Annie (Diane Keaton), Elise (Goldie Hawn), and Brenda (Bette Midler) change self-destructive habits, such as enabling men, heavy drinking, and overeating, they also learn to help and lean on each other rather than men. Of course, most representative of their developing feminist consciousness is their building of the crisis center for women, which allows women to meet within the public realm, without men, and for the common interest of women.

As a result, it is not difficult to identify the crisis center and its grand-opening soiree as an appropriation of the film’s other public space for women, also a space theoretically uninhabited by men and devoted to the interests of women: the lesbian bar. It is in this other female space, in fact, where the three ex-wives first express, in various ways and however tentatively, the potential of female solidarity and the possibility of, if not the desire for, self-fulfillment through other women. Indeed, the film actually equates the crisis center with the lesbian bar. Though they visit the lesbian bar to locate Annie’s lesbian daughter, each protagonist finds something in this space to identify with and momentarily takes on a lesbian persona. At first, Brenda is uncomfortable entering the lesbian bar (despite the fact that the film highlights her devoted friendship with an interior designer heavily coded as gay). But her discomfort is momentarily dispelled when she meets a middle-aged, similarly styled woman whose female lover also left her after eighteen years for a younger, skin-nier woman. When Brenda commiserates with this woman by showing her a picture of her ex-husband, the lesbian assumes he is a woman, responding, “She’s butch.” Meanwhile, Elise is surrounded by a bevy of dancing dykes and revels in the attention. When Brenda and Annie try

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 37
to pull her away to carry on with their work, a butch-looking woman, played by comedienne Lea DeLaria, claims, “She’s staying.” To this, Brenda replies, “She’s with me, babe.” Moreover, Annie equates the mission of the lesbian bar to the mission of the crisis center. When she is questioned by her flustered daughter as to whether or not she realizes she is in a lesbian bar, she states, “That’s what’s so great, it’s very women-identified.”

Thus, both the lesbian and her space function to repair wounded heterosexuality, a goal the film succeeds at its end. As Elise, Brenda, and Annie dance together in their all-female space while belting out the song lyric “You don’t own me,” they are identified as new and improved women and healthier heterosexuals. Indeed, a similar female heterosexual trajectory is offered in Living Out Loud, which also uses a lesbian bar along the way. Like The First Wives Club, the narrative turns on the story of a white woman in her forties, Judith (Holly Hunter), who is left by her wealthy husband of sixteen years for a younger woman. Consumed by anger and fear of being alone, Judith experiences a turning point, not surprisingly, in a lesbian nightclub. Prior to her epiphany in this space, the film, using flashbacks and fantasy sequences, concentrates on her self-pity and her desire for vengeance. In one scene, Judith, lonely and depressed as she eats alone at a restaurant, visualizes herself being asked to join a table of women. Earlier, we see her fantasize a scenario in which, after throwing herself out her window, she lands on her ex-husband and his new wife. We also discover, through a series of flashback sequences, Judith’s regrets at giving up her own desires and identity for her husband’s. We learn that she relinquished her own desire to have children, terminated her career as a nurse to be a cardiologist’s wife, and discarded her working-class history and friends so as not to embar-rass her upper-class husband.

If Judith has lost sight of her own desires and identity in the last sixteen years, she both metaphorically and literally “finds herself” at a lesbian bar. Liz (Queen Latifah), a black jazz singer plagued by her unrequited love for a gay man, invites her newfound friend Judith to an after-hours club, the Confessional, which Liz identifies as a “pretty wild” place rather than as a lesbian bar. At the bar, Judith watches the spectacle of high-femme women (mostly nonwhite) gyrating against one another with a look of exhilaration and readiness. Moments after gazing at the dance floor, she walks through the crowd to its center, where beautiful women of all races surround and caress her body.

38 Looking at the Lesbian Bar

A heterosexual white woman (Holly Hunter) dances among throngs of adoring women of color in the lesbian bar scene in Living Out Loud. Courtesy of Photofest, NYC.

That this is a transformative event there is no doubt. As Judith is shown watching the spectacle of lesbians, dramatic changes in the club’s lighting and music mark her readiness for change, which is also indicated by her facial expressions. Prior to her descent to the dance floor, she closes her eyes for several seconds, as if she is undergoing an internal metamorphosis. But most representative of the lesbian bar’s transformative effect is the simultaneous dance-floor appearance of the contemporary Judith and Judith as a younger woman, who surfaced in an earlier flashback passionately kissing a young man. Facing the younger version of herself, Judith shares a tender moment of recognition with her. They caress each other’s face and embrace as the camera zooms out to reveal them in the middle of the jam-packed dance floor. Physically embracing the working-class, passion-filled young woman who she was before the lie of her marriage began, Judith finds herself and begins to change her life. Following this experience, she moves from her Upper West Side apartment to a less posh apartment, begins working in a neona-tal AIDS ward, stops wasting her energy hating her husband, and, most importantly, stops depending on men to define her existence. The last shot of Judith, which depicts her confidently strolling down a street, reveals her to be, like her fellow Manhattanites from The First Wives Club, a stronger, healthier heterosexual woman.

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 39

And though the episodic structure of Sex and the City, an HBO television series that revolves around the single life of four women in Manhattan, precludes the lesbian bar from producing such finality with respect to female heterosexuality, this space does temporarily assuage one female protagonist’s frustrations about cheating men. After discovering that her date for the evening is cheating on her, Charlotte (Kristin Davis), the show’s “hopeless romantic,” agrees to go out with a group of “power lesbians” whom she meets at her art gallery. Over a montage sequence of an exhilarated Charlotte drinking and dancing in lesbian bar space, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), the show’s narrator, informs the audience exactly how much of a euphoric event it proves to be: “One drink at G-Spot, the hottest new girl bar in town, followed by dinner and scintillat-ing conversation at Luke’s, a hot new French fusion restaurant with an even hotter sapphic chef, followed by late-night dancing at the Love Tunnel, left Charlotte as exhilarated and as happy as she had been in ages. There was something relaxing and liberating in traveling through an alternate universe that contained no thought of men.” Charlotte herself later confirms this at a lesbian brunch when, asked by a lesbian if she is gay, she states: “No, no I’m not. But I do so enjoy the company of all these women. Everyone is so smart and funny, and I’ve just been spending way too much time and attention on men. It feels like such a safe, warm environment. And while sexually I feel that I’m straight, there’s a very powerful part of me that connects to the female spirit.” Although the show critiques this statement by having her interlocutor retort, “Sweet-heart, that’s all very nice, but if you’re not going to eat pussy, you’re not a dyke,” its critique is leveled not toward her appropriation of the lesbian bar but toward her desexualization of lesbianism. In fact, despite this somewhat savvy representation of the relationship between straight women and lesbians, the lesbian bar nonetheless appears as the perfect antidote for straight women in need of a respite from men. Indeed, like the final shot of the lesbian bar in Living Out Loud, in which a raptur-ous Judith is flanked by dancing lesbians, the final shot of Sex and the City’s lesbian bar depicts an ecstatic Charlotte amid throngs of gyrating women.

On the one hand, the appearance of lesbian bars in these visual texts is not surprising, because, as Yvonne Tasker notes, the suggestion of lesbianism permeates the female-friendship genre. She argues that “one

40 Looking at the Lesbian Bar result of the sexless eroticism through which lesbianism is portrayed in (non-pornographic) popular film is a blurring between a repertoire of images signalling female friendship and those signalling lesbian. There is a sense then in which all female friendship occupies an ambiguous, eroticised territory” (, ). On the other hand, the prevalence and narrative use of lesbian bars in these popular female-friendship depictions also clearly remind us that the heterosexing of space is the ideological province of both men and women.

This point is true despite women’s own precarious relationship to public space. As many scholars have argued, women’s mobility within public space is hardly unencumbered. As Gill Valentine asserts, “Unlike men, women find that when in public space their personal space is frequently invaded by whistles, comments or actual physical assault from strange men” (, ). At the same time, women are taught early on that their relationship to public space is different from men’s. Valentine notes that “girls are socialised into a restricted use of public space through observing both their parents’ differential fears for them and the control of the spatial range of their activities in relation to boys” (). The combination of these factors creates what Valentine calls women’s “geography of fear,” in which women limit their own mobility within the public realm based on the notion that open space is fundamentally not female terrain. It is not surprising, then, that, as a popular version of feminism, the female-friendship film often equates women’s mobility with power and freedom. For example, in the vein of Thelma and Louise (), Boys on the Side uses the historically male genre of the road movie to frame its narrative. Traveling on the open road signifies the protagonists’ escape from abusive men and dead-end jobs and their movement toward self-fulfillment and friendship. Similarly, Living Out Loud closes with its female protagonist confidently yet leisurely strolling down the street of a New York City neighborhood at night.22

Certainly, as women, lesbians experience public space in much the same way that straight women do, limiting their movements based on the particularities of female gender. As Elspeth Probyn argues, “Obviously, the gendering and the sexing of space do not proceed in totally independent and isolated ways. Rather, the two constantly touch as the lesbian subject is always a doubled subject caught up in the doubling of being a woman and a lesbian” (, ). However, as Probyn also argues,

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 41
because lesbians experience public space in ways that at times are less specific to gender than to sexuality, their experiences in the public realm can neither be subsumed under nor analyzed solely based on the category of gender (). As the feminist geographer Gillian Rose argues, “Social space can no longer be imagined simply in terms of a territory of gender” (, ).

Indeed, heterosexual women and lesbians can and do experience space differently. For example, although random violence and whistles daily remind women that no space is entirely safe, some public spaces offer heterosexual women an assumed safety that they might not offer lesbians, which is arguably why some lesbians find “passing” a more effortless way to negotiate the public realm. Certainly, parks and playgrounds welcoming to mothers (or female nannies) and their children are not necessarily welcoming to recognizable lesbians—mothers or otherwise.

And within these and other spaces, gestures of affection such as linking arms or cheek kissing between two women marked as lesbian (regardless of their actual identity) are policed in ways that the same gestures between two heterosexual-coded women (e.g., mother and daughter, friends lunching) are not. Moreover, other public or semipublic commercial spaces—restaurants, airports, bathrooms, sidewalk cafés, malls—
can offer heterosexual women anonymity in ways that are not available for recognizable lesbians, who are more often than not subjected to curious or hostile gazes in these kinds of locales.23

Thus, though lesbian bar representations featuring heterosexual women certainly function and resonate differently than lesbian bar representations featuring men, heterosexual women’s easy passage through and rejuvenation within lesbian bar space highlights a crucial point. Despite women’s own restrictions (both real and imagined) within public space, the heterosexing of space is not exclusively a heteromasculine project.

Of course, this is not to say that the lesbian bar does not currently offer heterosexual men phantasmatic, utopian, or appropriative possibilities.

Certainly, for heterosexual men, lesbian bar patrons are often framed through the lens of male-marketed lesbian pornography. For example, when Roseanne’s eponymous main character reveals to her husband (John Goodman) that she was kissed by a woman in a lesbian bar, his look of titillation both belies and impels his seemingly concerned demand to know every detail, revealing men’s historical fascination with scenes of

42 Looking at the Lesbian Bar lesbian desire. As Chasing Amy’s Banky (Jason Lee) says after his friend Holden (Ben Affleck) scolds him for staring at lesbians kissing during their unintentional visit to a lesbian bar, “When am I ever going to get the chance to see this shit live without paying for it?” This rhetorical question is echoed in Jaded. While inside the film’s seemingly heterosexual bar, men are allowed to watch bisexual women slither together on the dance floor for free; outside the space of the bar, they must pay a hefty fee to watch video of lesbian rapes. This fascination with lesbian sexuality is also echoed by Homicide’s Detective Munch and Law and Order’s Detective Briscoe, who also reveal heterosexuality’s vision of the lesbian bar as a sexual utopia. During their investigation of a homicide in a Baltimore lesbian bar, Munch (Richard Belzer), flabbergasted and transfixed by his surroundings, turns to an equally bewildered and transfixed Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) and says, “There’s gotta be ten women for every woman in this place.” Brisco replies, “And all gorgeous,” to which detective Munch adds, “And happy.” Set against the context of the two men’s own miserable histories with women, which both series constantly underscore, this conversation reveals the fascination that scenes of lesbian desire, albeit when staged by feminine women, hold for men.

Moreover, it also foregrounds heterosexuality’s vision of lesbian bars as utopian denizens of sexual plenitude and satiation that lie both within and outside the range of its reach. But if Detectives Munch and Briscoe can only remain flabbergasted by, rather than benefit from, such female plenitude and satiation, Chasing Amy’s Banky offers an example of how men might become sated by this plenitude by appropriating lesbian identity and desire. After fervently watching Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams), a fellow comic-book cartoonist, kiss her girlfriend in a lesbian bar, Banky begins trading humorous stories with Alyssa about his “permanent in-juries” from performing cunnilingus.

This moment in Chasing Amy demonstrates how the lesbian bar can also function for men as a site of heterosexual appropriation. Moreover, that Banky is somewhat uncomfortable with and threatened by his lesbian surroundings until this moment suggests how appropriation of lesbian bar space and sexuality can be as curative for heterosexual men’s crises as it is for heterosexual women’s. Indeed, alternative rocker Jonathan Richman suggests that, like heterosexual women, heterosexual men can find heterosexual plenitude in lesbian bars. His song “I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar” is worth quoting at length:

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 43

Well, I was dancing in a nightclub one Friday night.

And that nightclub bar was a little uptight.

I was dancing all alone a little self-conscious When some kids came up and said, “For dancing come with us.”

(Chorus:) And soon, I was dancing in the lesbian bar! Oooh!

I was dancing in the lesbian bar! Oooh! Oooh! Oooh!

Well, they took me to the lesbian bar in the industrial zone.

They took me to dance with them or to dance alone.

In the first bar, things were all right.

But in this bar, things were “Friday Night.”

In the first bar things were just all right.

But in this bar things were “Friday Night!”

They took me to the lesbian bar, way downtown.

They took me to check the scene or to hang around.

In the first bar, things were stop and stare.

But in this bar, things were laissez-faire.

In the first bar things were stop and stare.

But in this bar things were laissez-faire.

(Chorus repeats)

Well, in the first bar, things were self-control.

But in this bar, things were rock and roll.

In the first bar things were self-control.

But in this bar things were rock and roll.

(Chorus repeats)

Well, in the first bar, folks were drinking sips.

But in this bar, they could shake their hips.

In the first bar folks were drinking sips.

But in this bar they could shake their hips.

(Chorus repeats)

Well, in the first bar, things were OK.

But in this bar things were done my way.

(Chorus repeats)

Like the narratives of The First Wives Club, Boys on the Side, and Living Out Loud, the narrative of Richman’s song paints the lesbian bar as a wholly welcoming place for heterosexual men. As in these female-led films, the lesbian bar in Richman’s song stands in sharp contrast to dreary heterosexual lives and/or spaces. More importantly, however, like the lesbian bar narrative in the female-friendship film, Richman’s bar narrative posits the recuperative possibilities of the lesbian bar for a shaken heterosexuality. Certainly, the song’s appreciation of lesbian space—“in this bar things were done my way”—is dependent precisely upon that space’s ability to enhance male heterosexuality.24

44 Looking at the Lesbian Bar Though the lesbian bar in the French comedy French Twist is hardly receptive to men, it nonetheless is directly responsible for the reparation of the marriage of a troubled heterosexual couple residing in the French countryside. Unhappy with her inattentive husband, Laurent (Alain Chabat), who, unbeknownst to her, is a persistent philanderer, Loli (Victoria Abril) begins an affair with Marijo (Josiane Balasko), a butch lesbian who stops at Loli’s house after, quite appropriately, her car engine over-heats. From the outset, Marijo’s identity is connected to the space of the lesbian bar. When she meets Loli, she tells her she has recently fled Paris and her job as a deejay in a “muff bar” because of a failed affair with her boss. When Loli discovers the extent of her husband’s sexual dalliances, she invites Marijo to live with them, where the threesome form an unconventional household; much to homophobic Laurent’s chagrin, Loli sleeps with Marijo three days per week. The pressure of this situation mounts when Marijo’s former lover comes to visit and a jealous Loli decides to kick Marijo out. Marijo agrees to leave only on the condition that Laurent give her a child, which he does without Loli’s knowledge.

Months later, when Loli is on a train to Paris to visit her brother, she runs into Marijo’s ex-lover, who informs her of Marijo’s pregnancy.

Outraged at her husband’s indiscretion with her former lover and at his indifference to this child, Loli calls her husband to join her in Paris.

They seek out Marijo at her old workplace, a lesbian bar whose fat, mannish bouncer initially refuses to let Laurent inside. However, once they are reunited in the lesbian bar, Marijo moves back in with Loli and Laurent, the former happily sleeping with both Loli and her husband, the latter now comfortable with this scenario and embracing his role as daddy.

Arguably, the absurdity of the plots in Boys on the Side, The First Wives Club, Living Out Loud, and French Twist suggests that we understand the lesbian bar’s function in heterosexual narratives in metaphoric terms.

As Diane Hamer and Belinda Budge suggest, “So little is now forbidden within a heterosexual landscape that new metaphors must constantly be sought out. Homosexuality serves as a new and (still) shocking arena for the reworking of stories of sex and love, romance and desire” (,

–). Indeed, the curative role that Hamer and Budge suggest lesbianism plays for hackneyed heterosexual narratives is mirrored in these films, which offer the lesbian bar as a curative for heterosexual failure.

Yet to posit the lesbian and her space in purely metaphoric terms, that

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 45
is, as only a substitution for heterosexuality, fails to address the fantasies, and their curative effects, that these popular texts work hard to foreground: heterosexuality’s uninhibited access to, centrality within, and usurpation of lesbian space.

In a persuasive essay on the locales that populate film noir—nightclubs, motels, bars, boardinghouses, and roadside cafés—Vivian Sobchack argues against using metaphor as the primary lens through which to evaluate the genre’s landscape. Locating these frequently depicted spaces in their specific historical and social context, she argues instead that their particular frequency in film noir directly corresponds to their predominance in wartime and postwar America, when the domestic realm was “shattered [and] dispersed” and substituted by “rented social spaces”

(, ). However, Sobchack suggests that, rather than surfacing through the conventions of realism, these spaces emerge through what she calls “hyperbolic textual exaggeration,” in which “the baroque qual-ities of noir’s visual style, the particularities of its narrative thematics and structure, emerge as an intensified form of selection, foregrounding, and consequent exaggeration of actual cultural spaces charged with contingent temporal experience” ().

Sobchack’s suggestion that film noir’s repeated locales directly correspond to “actual common-places” of the genre’s era () offers a way to think about the contemporary character of filmic lesbian bars, which posit heterosexuals and heterosexual sustenance at the center of their activities. Seemingly absurd and fantastic, contemporary lesbian bar narratives, I argue, actually surface through a hyperbolization of real lesbian bar conditions in which lesbian (and gay) space is increasingly frequented, enjoyed, and transformed by heterosexuals, turning lesbian bars into what Kevin J. Mumford calls “zone[s] of asymmetrical cultural appropriation” (, ). For Mumford, such zones occur when slummers gain dominance in a subcultural space. Writing specifically about Harlem in the early twentieth century, Mumford details how, as a result of white slumming and the slumming narrative, Harlem’s formerly interracial spaces of leisure—what he calls “interzones”—became often all-white spaces of cultural appropriation. In these transformed spaces, whites experienced blackness not through sexual and cultural exchange but rather as a form of entertainment. Indeed, save black entertainers, black people were often barred entrance to the kinds of spaces they had once created (, –).

46 Looking at the Lesbian Bar Significantly, then, in “zones of asymmetrical cultural appropriation,”

slumming is not simply about tourism of another’s space but about seizure of it. As I argue in the beginning of this chapter, one historical feature of lesbian bar life has been heterosexual tourism, yet some recent trends and events reveal the current prevalence of heterosexual appropriation and seizure, rather than simply tourism, of lesbian (and gay) spaces. For example, in an article on the rise of the lesbian “circuit party,” Sarah Friesema () details how the annual Dinah Shore Weekend in Palm Springs, California, a historically all-lesbian event, is currently being promoted to and is drawing in mixed audiences. Friesema’s depiction of a lesbian space that is at once coveted and potentially erased by heterosexual attendance is mirrored in the situation at Club Marcella’s in Rochester, New York. Without any change of ownership or drag-queen entertainment, Marcella’s patrons have shifted from mostly gay men to heterosexuals (McCoy ).25 Given that in both spaces heterosexuals continue to be entertained in queer fashion (e.g., via drag shows or through “lesbian” events), it is clear that the heterosexual desire to be in queer space is paradoxically contingent on the ability to make this space heterosexual. Measured against these real-life narratives, then, the narratives of heterosexual solidarity, discovery, and redemption in The First Wives Club, Boys on the Side, Living Out Loud, and French Twist seem outlandish, yes, but only in degree.

And You’re/They’re Always Glad You Came?

Heterosexual Negotiations of the Lesbian Bar If The First Wives Club, Living Out Loud, Boys on the Side, French Twist, and Sex and the City suggest that lesbian bars are utopian spaces available for heterosexual appropriation, they also remind us that heterosexuals’ entering, consuming, and usurping of lesbian bar space is not a risk-free endeavor. As in earlier depictions of lesbian bars in popular culture, women’s enjoyment of this space within contemporary film and television is attended by the risk of their being identified as lesbians. Thus, each visual text works overtime to deflect allegations of its protagonist’s (or protagonists’) lesbianism. The possibility that the “first wives” enjoy the idea of being mistaken for lesbians in The First Wives Club can be displayed in the film’s lesbian bar scene only through the framework of comedy (a mode that also enables Roseanne and her sister to pretend they are a couple in Roseanne’s lesbian bar scene). The

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 47
possibility that Brenda really could be romantically partnered with a butch woman, that hyperfeminine Elise might really be thrilled to dance nightly in the midst of adoring women, or that Lea DeLaria’s bar butch and Elise may indeed be a couple can be played only as a joke. Elise’s satisfaction must be understood within the framework of her selfish narcissism, whereas Brenda, whose lesbianism in the original Olivia Goldsmith novel () is displaced onto Annie’s daughter in the film, must continue to show discomfort in the lesbian bar through her farcically pained facial expressions. Likewise, Annie must appear comically hesitant when proclaiming the bar as a women-identified haven, an emotive position confirmed by corresponding camera pans over a host of butch-looking women.

Similarly, despite depicting Judith dancing sensually with women in a lesbian bar, Living Out Loud works to negate the sexual force of this moment. In the first place, Judith’s actions in the lesbian bar are recognized to be the result of drugs. Before leaving for the bar, Judith swal-lows several pills that Liz assures her will “make [her] feel free . . . want to touch everybody. . . [and] forget all the ex-husbands and gay boyfriends

[she] could think of.”26 In the second place, Judith does touch everybody, but rather than framing her provocative dancing with women as a sexual awakening, the film frames it as a personal awakening. Most instrumental in this portrayal is the inclusion of Judith as a younger woman in this scene. Although the scene ends with Judith dancing closely with and caressing this figure, the sexual component of the moment is eradicated in favor of something more akin to personal growth. Judith does not learn to love women in a lesbian bar, she learns to love herself. Likewise, the romantic component to Jane and Robin’s relationship in Boys on the Side is nullified by the film’s insistence that they are “best friends.”

And, in case the audience does not believe Charlotte’s self-proclaimed heterosexuality in Sex and the City’s lesbian bar episode, the show offers a simultaneous plot line that solidifies it: asked by her friend Carrie to help in the removal of her unfortunately lodged diaphragm, Charlotte squeamishly objects.

But the consumption of lesbian space is risky not just for women. As in earlier narratives, contemporary lesbian bar narratives demonstrate that men’s consumption of lesbian bar space can be compromised by their irrelevance to and hostility from lesbian bar patrons. Contemporary film and television suggest that outside the realm of the male

48 Looking at the Lesbian Bar heterosexualized or heteropornographic gaze, lesbian bars and their inhabitants are often understood as threatening to narratives of male heterosexuality and masculinity as they pivot around notions of sexual centrality, control, and privilege. Given that, as many feminist film theorists have persuasively argued, the gaze is one of the dominant signifiers of male cinematic sexual privilege and control,27 it should come as no surprise that much of lesbianism’s threat is played out on the terrain of the sexual look. And the bar often functions as the primary site where this conflict is first articulated.

Indeed, the sexual gaze of the lesbian is typically emphasized in lesbian bar scenes. In some films, such as Foxy Brown, this gaze emphasizes lesbian lasciviousness. In this film, white butches’ looks are foregrounded as a violation of an already violated black prostitute. In other films, the look is emphasized as a sign of sexual awakening. In The Killing of Sister George, the camera adopts a seemingly heterosexual woman’s point of view as she surveys the gaggle of dykes at the Gateways Club, a precursor to her inaugural seduction of a woman. The bar in Lianna () is the place where the newly out protagonist, Lianna (Linda Griffiths), first learns how to look sexually at other women; the film also foregrounds women’s gazes through extreme close-ups of lesbians’

eyes (Fischer , –; Merck ). Likewise, in Living Out Loud, Judith begins her evening at the lesbian bar from a position of surveillance, as she looms above the crowd on the balcony, studying the lesbian scene below her. In turn, we observe Judith’s look of fascination with and desire for the hip and beautiful lesbians as she slowly descends and moves through the dance floor. In Chasing Amy, Alyssa’s lesbian desire is also first presented through her sexual gaze at another woman in a lesbian bar.

Chasing Amy’s lesbian bar scene also demonstrates how the lesbian’s sexualized look can be understood as a threat to men. While Alyssa se-ductively sings a love song on the bar’s stage, Holden, who accepted Alyssa’s invitation to the lesbian bar under the false assumption that both she and it were heterosexual, stands by the stage and smiles bash-fully, also falsely assuming her passionate gaze is directed toward him.

As Holden is lost in his own masculine prowess, the woman to whom Alyssa is actually singing pushes past him, returning Alyssa’s gaze.

Nonetheless, Holden remains clueless. His own inability to see the lesbianism that surrounds him is matched by that of his best friend, Banky,

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 49

Lianna (Linda Griffiths, right) learns to gaze sexually at other women in a lesbian bar in Lianna. Courtesy of Photofest, NYC.

who can only state, “There’s a lot of chicks here.” It is only when Alyssa completes her song and begins kissing her female lover that Holden and Banky finally comprehend their surroundings. But, unlike Banky, who can relate to this scene only through a pornographic lens, Holden, who romantically desires Alyssa, perceives lesbianism as a disempowering and threatening force.

Similarly, the bar in Basic Instinct becomes the backdrop for a battle between the lesbian and the heterosexual gaze, what Renée C. Hoogland calls, in her analysis of this scene, “a visually rendered combat” (,

). We first encounter this combat at Catherine’s home. Trying to seduce Catherine, Nick is interrupted by the presence and intimidating gaze of her girlfriend, Roxy. This contest to control Catherine through the look returns and intensifies when Nick enters lesbian space at Catherine’s request. Despite the fact that his attire marks him as categorically out of place—his V-necked sweater stands in sharp contrast to the club’s urban fashions—he walks into the club with a stride that bespeaks his heterosexual male spatial privilege.28 But though it is through his gaze that we first see the bar’s lesbian sights—Roxy sensually dancing with another woman—and though he continues to hold Roxy in his gaze as he follows her throughout the club, the security of the heterosexual male

50 Looking at the Lesbian Bar

Lost in his own masculine prowess, Holden (Ben Affleck), the male protagonist of Chasing Amy, is unaware that the woman next to him is actually the object of Alyssa’s affection.

gaze is quickly threatened. Following Roxy into the men’s bathroom, an orgiastic space whose deviance is marked by an establishing shot of two women kissing, he stops in front of a stall Roxy has entered. Looming above the stall, Nick watches her straddle Catherine, who is seated on the toilet, snorting a line of coke. Cautiously taking in the scene, Nick’s unobstructed view of lesbian desire is quickly brought to a halt by Catherine. After she looks up and meets Nick’s eyes, she slams the stall door in his face as he is about to enter. The competition between the lesbian and the heterosexual gaze continues on the dance floor. Once again, it is through Nick’s gaze that we see Catherine and Roxy sensually dance and kiss. Aware of his scrutiny, Catherine moves toward him, while a frustrated Roxy walks away. But it is clear here that Catherine is challenging him, as she continues to turn to Roxy, who looks toward Nick and Catherine with contempt as she dances close by. To the backdrop of fre-netic club music, the three continue this competition, which is a game for Catherine but a real struggle for Roxy and Nick, the latter acutely aware of Roxy’s presence and piercing looks.

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 51

Rogue detective Nick Curran (Michael Douglas) watches Basic Instinct’s bad girls Catherine (Sharon Stone, right) and Roxy (Leilani Sarelle) gyrate on the dance floor. Courtesy of Photofest, NYC.

Despite the bar’s lesbian energy, it is Nick rather than Roxy who dominates Catherine’s attention in this space. Heterosexual sex is the night’s culmination, as the next scene begins with Catherine and Nick in bed.

But despite Nick’s cocksureness, revealed in the bar and in bed, one of the film’s most significant contributions is in revealing how such heterosexual certainty can be attained only by the eradication of the lesbian gaze, which the film also posits as a relentless force. Once again Roxy interrupts the heterosexual sex scene, confronting and threatening Nick in the bathroom. But, satisfied by what he tells Roxy was “the fuck of the century” with Catherine, Nick refuses to take this lesbian intrusion seriously. Not only does he mock what he regards as Roxy’s sexual lack by asking her if he can speak with her “man to man,” but the derogatory tone of his accusation to Roxy about her liking to watch Catherine have sex also reveals his disregard for the potency and efficacy such watching may have. It is only when Roxy says that Catherine likes her to watch, confirmed later by a nonchalant Catherine, that Nick begins to take the lesbian threat seriously, a threat which belies the film’s suggestion that Nick later kills Roxy and Beth (Jeanne Tripplehorn), the film’s other lesbian character, in self-defense.

Because they feature unapologetic bisexual and lesbian characters, it

52 Looking at the Lesbian Bar is not surprising that both Chasing Amy and Basic Instinct foreground metaphoric battles between the male and the lesbian gaze within lesbian bar space. According to Chris Straayer, lesbian films featuring seasoned lesbians do not as easily invite a heterosexual gaze as do films with less experienced lesbians, such as “coming-out” narratives: By adopting the perspective of a protagonist engaged in the coming-out process rather than that of a mature lesbian—that is, by choosing a “first time” point of view—the coming-out film substantially reinforces a voyeuristic heterosexual gaze at lesbianism. Content and construction thus collaborate to ensure a relevancy to heterosexuality. (, ) And indeed, the few representations of lesbian bars that do not rely on the conventions outlined in this chapter— Lianna, Lifetime Television’s The Truth about Jane, and Showtime’s A Girl Thing—are coming-out narratives, in which lesbian bars are discovered through inexperienced eyes. In other words, because the coming-out narrative’s relevance to heterosexuality is already secured through its subject matter and “first-time” point of view, its bar scenes need not rely on the conventions that other bar scenes require to guarantee heterosexual control of lesbian space.

Conversely, not only do films like Chasing Amy and Basic Instinct, in which the threat of heterosexuality’s irrelevance to lesbianism is underscored, rely on certain tropes (authenticity and criminality, respectively) to guarantee heterosexual centrality within bar space, they also highlight the vigilance with which heterosexuality will assert its centrality when lesbianism refuses to grant it this position. Indeed, in both films, heterosexual men succeed (if only temporarily and somewhat precariously) in eradicating lesbianism; two lesbians perish by the end of Basic Instinct, and Chasing Amy revolves around Alyssa’s renouncing her un-abashedly candid lesbian desire by falling in love with Holden. Not insignificantly, it is the space of the lesbian bar—where Basic Instinct’s Nick trumps Roxy for Catherine’s affection and Chasing Amy’s Holden discovers his passion for Alyssa—that sets these events into motion.

Conclusion

A scene from the defunct series Ellen offers a humorous conclusion to this chapter. In the celebrated coming-out episode, Ellen and her two gay male friends meet their close-knit group of straight friends at a Los

Looking at the Lesbian Bar 53

Angeles lesbian café. In what is framed as Ellen’s wacky but well-meaning friend Audrey’s acceptance of Ellen’s sexuality, Audrey (Clea Lewis) confidently asserts to Ellen (Ellen DeGeneres), “You’ve been living in our world, now we want to experience your world!” But, rather than wholeheartedly embracing Audrey’s objective, Ellen, barely out of the closet, confusedly replies, “Since when did my world become a lesbian coffeehouse?” Later, when her more glamorous heterosexual friend Paige is hit on by a lesbian in the café, Ellen again responds with irony, retort-ing, “Good to see some things never change.”

This chapter offers an answer to Ellen’s perhaps only partially rhetorical question, demonstrating how, for most of the twentieth (and now the twenty-first) century, the lesbian world has been perpetually spatial-ized in the particular locale of the bar—whatever its incarnation. But more importantly, this chapter demonstrates that, indeed, some things do “never change”; more often than not, it is the heterosexual, not the lesbian, who is at the center of the imagined lesbian bar.

C H A P T E R T W O

Lesbians on Location

A friend of mine who lives in New York City often expresses irritation at living in a location riddled with film shoots. She notes how film productions’ numerous sidewalk blockades can make simply getting to work on time an exercise in futility. Describing the real consequences location shooting can have on people’s lives, my friend points to what C. S.

Tashiro identifies as the “antagonistic relationship between mainstream filmmakers and the environments they seek to control.” According to Tashiro, this antagonism is the result of an ethic in which the “look” of the film supersedes all concern for the humans and architecture that enable it (, ). Of little matter to filmmakers wanting the perfect mise-en-scène is the stability of my friend’s professional life and income, potentially jeopardized by her tardiness. Nor do filmmakers desiring the “right look” have much concern for either a community’s cultural values or, much more catastrophic, the possibility of causing ecological destruction. The former is demonstrated by Peter Weir’s decision to film Witness () in Pennsylvania’s Amish country despite protests by the Amish (Hostetler and Kraybill ), and the latter is revealed in Oliver Stone’s negligent use of Philippine land for the re-creation of Vietnamese jungles in Platoon (; Tashiro , ).1 However, despite a film crew’s lavish attempts, their ability to harness nonsoundstage locations for the “right look” is never guaranteed. As Tashiro notes, “A location exists before the film, with all the inconveniences of preexisting space”

(). These inconveniences can range from the intrusion of inclement weather or traffic noise to the more perverse scenario in which, after 54

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surveying real locations, filmmakers deem them inauthentic. Indeed, MGM producer Arthur Freed rejected shooting the Scottish-village musical Brigadoon () on location in Scotland on the grounds that the country didn’t look Scottish enough (Nowell-Smith , ).

Of course, first and foremost is finding the right location, whether it be authentic or fabricated. What would best represent Woody Allen’s New York? In what kind of Southern house would a man like Forrest Gump live? What city’s urban landscape would provide the best architectural backdrop for the next Gotham city? What happens, then, when the desired location is one defined by its public obscurity, such as a lesbian bar? How is this space located? What are the implications of filming it? And why would real rather than fabricated lesbian bar space be desirable to use? In this chapter I attempt to answer these questions. Based on archival material, it offers a production history of Robert Aldrich’s search for and use of a real lesbian bar in The Killing of Sister George.

Not only is The Killing of Sister George the first Hollywood film to depict solely lesbian bar space, it is also the first Hollywood production to shoot on location in a lesbian bar. As this chapter will reveal, Aldrich’s career files concerning the bar unveil a production both steered by dominant cultural scripts of lesbian bars and fraught with anxiety, sexual intrigue, deception, homophobia, and heterosexism.2

Served with a Twist

In , Robert Aldrich purchased the rights to the  British play The Killing of Sister George, a successful comedy written by playwright Frank Marcus.3 The play tells the story of a middle-aged woman, June Buck-ridge, whose spiteful and scandalous behavior results in the downfall of both her personal relationship with another woman and her professional career at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Portraying Sister George, a gentle and benevolent village nurse on England’s beloved radio serial Applehurst, June in real life is an alcoholic lesbian who dominates and verbally abuses her girlfriend, Alice. Alice is a much younger woman at thirty-four, whose nickname, Childie, reflects her puerile relationship to her doll collection, her penchant for baby-doll nightgowns, and her subservient relationship to June, whom she and others call by her screen moniker, George. The play turns on the destructiveness of their relationship as well as its ultimate demise, which occurs simultaneously with the fictional death of Applehurst’s Sister George.

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The play’s purchase by Aldrich is not surprising, given its narrative focus on George’s destructive behavior toward herself and Childie and the hypocrisy and callousness of the BBC. Prior to his filming The Killing of Sister George, Aldrich directed a number of films dealing with the film industry and women’s seemingly pathological relationships to one another, both themes often converging in the same film. In The Big Knife (), an actor (Jack Palance) blackmailed by his studio boss (Rod Steiger) commits suicide. In What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (), a former child star (Bette Davis) jealous of her sister’s (Joan Crawford’s) success as an actress maims and sequesters her sister in her home. In Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte (), Bette Davis is a Southern woman whose false belief that she was a child murderess is abetted by her money-hungry cousin (Olivia de Havilland), who is eager to take over her estate.

And in The Legend of Lylah Clare (), a producer fashions a young woman (Kim Novak) into the likeness of a dead actress. Aldrich would also return to these themes following the release of The Killing of Sister George, first as the producer of What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (), a film about a woman (Geraldine Page) who murders lonely, wealthly widows for their money, and, in the same year, as director of The Greatest Mother of ’Em All, an uncompleted film about an obsessive stage mother and her nubile daughter.4

But more than a fascination with these themes motivated Aldrich to purchase Marcus’s play. As the first film he would direct for Aldrich Studios, the studio he formed after his contract with MGM expired in

, The Killing of Sister George was selected based on its ability to demonstrate the viability and merit of the studio’s soundstage. According to Edwin T. Arnold and Eugene L. Miller, Aldrich “was proud of the fact that, although the film was set in present-day London, he was able to do much of the work in the studio, on his own turf ” (, ). In an article in Action, Aldrich confirms this: Instead of shooting the works in Britain, we merely filmed exteriors in and near London, and only those interiors—a nightclub, for instance—
that couldn’t be duplicated anywhere, regardless of cost. For the rest, we transported chunks of an English pub, pieces of an English Ford truck and BBC-TV cameras and control panels . . . to Hollywood. (Qtd. in Combs , )

Because Aldrich purchased the rights to The Killing of Sister George explicitly for its ability to shoot well on a studio set, it is worth noting

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that the nightclub “that couldn’t be duplicated anywhere” was added to the film. In the play, which takes place entirely in the living room of a West End flat, Childie and George, dressed as Laurel and Hardy, are on their way to celebrate George’s job security at a “fancy dress ball.” As George and Childie are about to leave, Mrs. Mercy Croft, a BBC executive, brings them news of the decision to kill off the character of Sister George (Marcus , –). Maintaining the spirit of this scene, save the film’s modification from BBC Radio to BBC-TV, screenwriter Lukas Heller, who penned six of the nine films Aldrich directed between 
and , nonetheless expanded the play’s restricted setting. Instead of having Mrs. Croft (Coral Browne) break the tragic news of Sister George’s demise at George and Childie’s home, Heller has her break the news at the fancy dress party, which he situated in a bustling lesbian bar. Given that the location requirements of this bar scene did not fit Aldrich’s location agenda of studio shooting, it is worth questioning the lesbian bar’s addition to the screenplay. Based on the bar’s narrative function, the probability that Aldrich added this location to the film in order to acknowledge the joys of lesbian love and community seems highly unlikely. Admittedly, the bar’s cheerful atmosphere and breezy visual style are unique among the film’s sets. Indeed, from the opening credit sequence, in which we are introduced to George’s volatile temperament as she vigorously marches home through a series of enclosed and increasingly narrow alleyways, to the overcrowded and unpleasant atmosphere of Applehurst’s soundstage, cramped and oppressive spaces dominate the film’s mise-en-scènes. This is particularly the case with the film’s primary setting, George and Childie’s London flat, which is portrayed as an emotionally and physically confining space. Up until George (Beryl Reid) and Childie (Susannah York) visit the lesbian bar, and for a major portion of the film thereafter, their interactions with one another are restricted to their overstuffed and drably colored living room, which leaves little room for movement. Moreover, within this congested space, George and Childie’s relationship is mostly combative. Fearful of losing her beloved role on Applehurst, George continually unleashes her anger on Childie by accusing her of infidelity with men. Childie responds to George’s insecurity and jealousy by minimizing George’s concerns about her job and goading her into believing she is the object of male affection.

The narrative turns on the eruptions and vicious quality of their domestic battles, which wax and wane according to George’s fears about her job.

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In contrast to the film’s physically and emotionally stifling spaces, the lesbian bar is depicted as a physically and emotionally liberating place. Though its space is also crowded, its density of dancing bodies, rather than painting an oppressive picture, offers an energetic and invigorating setting. As an all-female band plays romantic ballads and

s-flavored pop, the film captures, through a combination of over-head shots and close-ups with a handheld camera, throngs of affectionate and jovial women. As Judith Halberstam argues, The bar scene at the London dyke club . . . is far from a representation of abject loneliness. . . . The whole scene is a lively display of lesbian community. Few other lesbian bar scenes in film history depict the lesbian club as a place of pleasure, and such scenes are usually used to show the pathos of lesbian life. (, ) Nonetheless, though this scene does depict the lesbian bar as a place of pleasure for women, it also abets the narrative by continuing to show

“the pathos of lesbian life.” Indeed, the pleasures of the lesbian bar are short-lived for George and Childie. The bar actually sets into motion a chain of events that culminates in the collapse of George and Childie’s relationship as well as George’s emotional breakdown and professional downfall. This chain of events begins when, as a result of George’s inju-dicious and brazen invitation, austere Mrs. Croft appears at the lesbian bar. At the lesbian bar, not only does Mrs. Croft inform George that Sister George will soon be written off Applehurst in a motorbike accident, but also the seemingly prudish and widowed Mrs. Croft, titillated rather than shocked by her lesbian surroundings, begins in earnest her triumphant seduction of Childie. Following Childie and Mrs. Croft’s exchange inside the lesbian bar, Childie truly begins to deceive George by secretly meeting with Mrs. Croft, for whom she finally leaves George at the film’s closure.

If the lesbian bar was not added to the film for levity, then, it is plausible that Aldrich thought putting George and Childie in a recognizably lesbian environment was necessary for audiences who might not otherwise grasp the sexual dimension of their relationship. This was certainly his reasoning for adding to the film a sexually explicit seduction scene between Mrs. Croft and Childie. On the addition of this sex scene, which would result in the film’s X rating by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA); censorship of the film by national exhibitors; and

Lesbians on Location 59
censorship of its print, television, and radio advertisements by national and local media, including the Los Angeles Times, 5 Aldrich had this to offer: “Unlike the stage version, the picture had to play out the betrayal, and the story itself is so genteel, it’s possible you could be sitting in She-boygan and the film could be so ‘well done’ that nobody would know what the hell you were talking about” (qtd. in Russo , ). However, Aldrich’s own notes on this scene reveal a concern less for the audience’s comprehension of George and Childie’s lesbianism, which both the play and the script in fact do render easily recognizable, than for the scene’s ability to sell the film. In an undated transcribed discussion between Aldrich, Browne, and York titled “The Shooting of Scene ,” Aldrich categorically acknowledges the scene’s exploitative possibilities: “What gets people into the theater . . . ? This scene. . . . So it’s an unavoidable must.” Aldrich also reveals his desire to take advantage of the cinematic freedoms afforded by the recent disintegration of the Production Code, telling Browne and York, “What has to happen is that we have to bring off the most erotic, provocative, English-language sex-scene that anyone has photographed” (Special Collection no. ).6

It is likely, then, that the inclusion of the lesbian bar scene was motivated by prurient interests. Indeed, as I argue in chapter , the lesbian bar historically has functioned as a site of both surveillance and pleasure for heterosexuals. Heterosexuals came to rely on lesbian bar space to identify and define a figure both newly public and increasingly pronounced by popular science to be indiscernible to the heterosexual eye. Through numerous depictions of lesbian bars in both nonfictional and fictional sources, lesbians, who might otherwise evade detection, were easily located and contained. But, as contemporary historians Nan Alamilla Boyd and Rochella Thorpe have documented and as sensational journalism reveals, heterosexual interest in lesbian bars grew not solely for purposes of discipline but also for pleasure and fantasy. Boyd () paints San Francisco of the early twentieth century as a city brimming with heterosexuals seeking entertainment by and through the city’s developing homosexual and gender-transgressive subcultures. Thorpe’s study of Detroit’s white lesbian bar culture from the late s to the mid-s offers scenarios in which heterosexual women touring the bars with their boyfriends would often return the next weekend alone (, ).

Indeed, as I detail in chapter , primary accounts of lesbian life often offer up the lesbian bar and its inhabitants as sources of heterosexual

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titillation. For example, Frank S. Caprio tells us in Female Homosexuality: A Psychodynamic Study that “there are many people who visit New York City and are curious enough to inquire from taxi drivers as to where they can go see the ‘female queers,’” and that, once inside, “the customers sit at tables, order more drinks and seem to enjoy this atmosphere of subdued lights, heavy smoke and girls dancing together” (, ). Likewise describing the bar as a source of heterosexual fascination is Jess Stearn’s The Grapevine, which also paints the lesbian bar as a site of male sexual conquest and satisfaction. After revealing lesbian bars to be “show-cases for some of the most startling beauties” (, ), Stearn informs his readers that in one lesbian bar he “saw sailors . . . posturing amorously with lesbians” ().

But if the cultural need for and fascination with lesbian bars explains why a lesbian bar was added to The Killing of Sister George despite its complicating Aldrich’s desired strategy of studio filming, a vexing question remains: Why, when Aldrich was able to simulate an English pub on a U.S. soundstage, was it necessary for him to shoot the lesbian bar on location? In the first place, the decision to shoot on location likely was spurred by several technological developments in the s that enabled filmmakers to shoot outside studios with unprecedented ease.

These included cameras and sound recorders “ten times smaller and lighter” than standard equipment and the Cinemobile, a truck designed and equipped specifically for location shooting (Maier , –). In the second place, location shooting is employed by filmmakers also because of its ideological import of “authenticity.” This is exemplified by two film movements in which location shooting was central: Italian neorealism of the s and “direct cinema” of the s. After the constraints imposed by Italy’s wartime film industry were lifted at the end of WWII, many Italian filmmakers set out to make films that recorded the authentic lives and struggles of real people living in Fascist Italy. For the major Italian neorealist thinkers, shooting on location with nonprofessional actors allowed filmmakers “to establish direct contact with contemporary social reality” (Cook , ). Approximately twenty years later, documentary filmmakers of the “direct-cinema” movement in America would employ a combination of location shooting and supposedly non-interventionist observation and editing in order to provide audiences visual documents of “unvarnished truth” (Sherman , ).

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Similarly, then, Aldrich’s decision to shoot the lesbian bar on location should be understood as a desire for authenticity. As I demonstrate in chapter , this desire is not unique to Aldrich but rather is historically characteristic of popular and mainstream representations of lesbian bar space. The history of such projects reveals that a guarantee of lesbian authenticity is often required in depictions of lesbian bars. From sensa-tionalist journalism to academic scholarship to pulp fiction, exposés of the lesbian bar invariably offer either evidence of its genuineness or advice on how to distinguish the real lesbians from the frauds. A few examples from chapter  are worth briefly repeating here. In Female Homosexuality, Caprio offers advice on how to differentiate lesbians from B-girls, women masquerading as lesbians who are employed by bar owners to attract drinking customers (, –). Authenticity also undergirds sociologist Ethel Sawyer’s boast, in her  master’s thesis, “A Study of a Public Lesbian Community,” of her ability to gain access to a real lesbian bar community (–). Even fictional accounts often used as their models the real lesbian bar milieus of Greenwich Village and Hollywood, so that part of the attraction of lesbian pulp fiction was that it offered insider information about the real locales of lesbian life (Hamer

, ; Walters , ). Thus, Aldrich’s shooting plan for the lesbian bar scene, though inconsistent with his overall shooting agenda, can be read as a response to the tacit cultural desire for authentic lesbian space.

But first he would have to find it.

Barhopping

In the film and television industry, the person typically responsible for finding the right location is the location scout, who may also double as the location manager. Often a laborious task to accomplish in a short period of time, finding the perfect location is made less daunting by a number of municipal and regional resources. Location scouts can turn to location companies, which, for a fee, offer photographs of preapproved and prepriced area locations available for commercial shoots (Maier

, ). Area guides and books, which may highlight a location’s historical sites, architectural marvels, and recreational facilities, are also invaluable tools for scouts (). And encouraging their use for advice and assistance with locations and film permits are local offices of tourism, chambers of commerce, and government-sponsored film commissions,

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the latter having sprouted nationally in the s. These organizations hope to lure in film crews to help stimulate the local economy and to highlight the region’s potential for tourism and relocation (–).7

Typically not featured in most mainstream area guidebooks are the local lesbian bars, which do not figure in commercial promotions of tourism.8 On the contrary, because of the social forces of homophobia and heteronormativity that vigilantly and sometimes violently work to produce and maintain public space as heterosexual, lesbian (and gay) space both is coerced into and desires geographical and/or physical concealment.9 As Maxine Wolfe points out:

Most lesbian bars have no windows or cover up their windows. The lights are generally very dim to protect their users from recognition should unwanted people enter purposely or unknowingly. Lesbian bars generally don’t have signs or names or other distinguishing outside physical features that might give them away to nonlesbian citizens.

(, )

Although contemporary lesbians have a number of resources—local and national magazines, community centers, hot lines—that alert them to these otherwise clandestine spaces, at the time that The Killing of Sister George was produced, these resources were rare. In that era, lesbian discovery of and entrance into lesbian space was, no doubt, tricky business.

Knowledge of lesbian bars was often dependent upon word of mouth or on an exposé of lesbian and gay life, such as Hunter Davies’s The New London Spy: A Discreet Guide to the City’s Pleasures (), and entry and acceptance into lesbian space often required the stamp of approval of a trusted patron. Indeed, as the anonymous author of the section titled “Lesbian London” in The New London Spy says of Gateways, the lesbian bar where Aldrich would later film, “Admission is strictly controlled, for members and guests only, and madame scrutinises you as you enter” (qtd. in Davies , ).10

Similarly, as I discuss in chapter , while often boasting about their own successful entry into lesbian bars, heterosexuals who navigated this space during this time warned their presumed heterosexual readers of the difficulty they might have gaining access to and traveling through lesbian bars. They also signaled the importance of having lesbian guides.

Some of these rhetorical moves include those of Arno Karlen and Jess Stearn. In Karlen’s  study, Sexuality and Homosexuality: A New View,

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the author warns his readers that at lesbian bars, “there is a tendency to close ranks against . . . curious straights—especially male ones” (–).

In Stearn’s The Grapevine (), the author explains to his bar-curious readers that “men [can]not enter unescorted by women” ().

Whether or not Aldrich was familiar with such material is unclear.

But a letter dated March , , to his production manager, David Bennett, suggests that he was aware of the difficulty his presumed-to-be-heterosexual location crew might have in both locating and gaining access to lesbian bars in England, specifically London and Brighton. In a postscript at the bottom of the letter, Aldrich notes: Some of the Lesbian Clubs I would like to see (for research only) may be a little difficult to gain “friendly” admittance to. . . . May I suggest that you contact [screenwriter] Lukas Heller’s secretary, Mrs. Bobby Holmes . . . on how best to go about visiting these establishments.

(Special Collection no. )

Aldrich’s postscript is revealing for a number of reasons, the first being its status as postscript, an afterthought that highlights a subject’s difference from material in the body of a document. Given that the body of Aldrich’s letter specifically concerns location shooting in London, particularly his advice on what locations might best work for George and Childie’s flat and George’s local pub, the relegation of issues pertaining to the lesbian bar shoot to a postscript emphasizes this shoot’s particularity among all location matters. Indeed, the perceived uniqueness of finding the lesbian bar location is demonstrated by Aldrich’s understanding that the location manager and crew would not be able to manage this task alone; an insider would be necessary.

Why Mrs. Bobby (also spelled Bobbie) Holmes, the secretary of scriptwriter Lukas Heller, was chosen as this insider remains a mystery. In the first place, her marital status certainly would have rendered her lesbian credentials dubious. A letter dated March , , from Heller to Aldrich, in which he informs Aldrich that Holmes has “found the necessary contacts” and will soon purchase Arena Three, a lesbian magazine with bar listings, also suggests that she was an outsider to lesbian culture (Special Collection no. ).11 Of course, as a woman, she had considerably less outsider status than the mostly male crew that made up The Killing of Sister George’s production team, and her position as the production’s lesbian liaison may have been based solely on this fact.

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However, another female crew member’s concerns about the possibility of having to share the same office with Holmes suggest something else. In a letter to Aldrich dated May , , production secretary Geraldine Hersey resolutely states that she “[does not] want Bobbie what’sher-name around [her] office” (Special Collection no. ). Though her reasons are unstated (they were presumably already known to Aldrich), a paper trail of anxious letters, conversations, and memos between Hersey and Aldrich concerning lesbianism suggest that Hersey’s dislike of Holmes potentially revolved around her sexuality. Moreover, the paper trail also reveals the stakes that a lesbian-themed production might have had for women crew members of that time. On the one hand, it is possible that the issue of the film’s lesbian bar location may have provided the married, widowed, or divorced Mrs. Holmes with a pleasurable excuse to seek out London’s lesbian life. Indeed, this is a scenario echoed in the film when widowed BBC executive Mrs. Croft first displays lesbian desire in the lesbian bar she has unwittingly visited. On the other hand, Hersey’s anxious response to the film reminds us that women’s association with lesbian space, even as heterosexuals passing through it, was (and is) not risk-free. Although the journalistic and fictional exposés of lesbian life of the day encouraged heterosexual tourism in lesbian bars, as I demonstrate in chapter , they always came with an implicit warning to both men and women that women might easily be tainted by the space.12 Even the most exotic depictions of lesbian bars characterized them and their inhabitants as mannish and man-hating, revealing the way lesbianism historically has been used as a threat to heterosexual women. For example, though Stearn’s exposé The Grapevine describes lesbian bars as homes to the “most startling beauties” (, ), it also characterizes them as places filled with the “plainest Janes” () and women who look like men ().

A letter dated January , , from Hersey to Aldrich regarding Heller’s script reveals the force of this pervasive cultural threat. This three-page correspondence, in which Hersey conveys her dissatisfaction with Heller’s script for its inability to invoke sympathy for its lesbian characters, begins with the following caveat: Lesbianism is not my subject as well you know—I recall some rather emotional outbursts one lunch time at MGM . . . which I will never live down—I recall also that you told us that it was probably due to latent

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lesbian tendencies I may have or had—I hope the years that followed proved you wrong—and you have bitten dust! However, seven years later and a lot of men under my belt, perhaps I can be much more constructive. (Special Collection no. )

Both Hersey’s perceived need to vigorously assert her heterosexuality and Aldrich’s prior equation of Hersey’s emotional outburst with lesbianism reveal much about the use of lesbianism to threaten heterosexual women. Here, simply commenting on Heller’s fictional account of lesbianism compelled Hersey to quell suspicions of her own lesbian identity. Throughout the production, Hersey would continue to assert her heterosexuality to Aldrich, often in the form of ridiculous jokes typed on interoffice memorandums (e.g., “Did you know that Hermoine [sic]

Gingold and Tallulah Bankhead are getting together to do a show entitled The Dyke van Dick Show?”).13 In a letter dated March , , Hersey also asserts to Aldrich the displeasure she would feel if asked to be the lesbian bar liaison: “I get the strangest feeling that I’m going to be lumbered with the task of gaining entrance to them—and if that’s the case I’ll never speak to you again!” (Special Collection no. ).

Despite Hersey’s concerns, production papers reveal that finding and deciding on lesbian space was neither Holmes’s nor Hersey’s job but rather the task of Bennett and his location scout, A. T. Morgan. That the hired location crew took on this task is logical. Crew members are trained to weigh a location’s desirability against a number of other considerations, such as its parking and door access, any potential noise distractions, its lighting capabilities, and the availability of extra rooms for dressing, waiting to be called to the set, and eating (Maier , –).

Indeed, in his report on fourteen lesbian bars, written sometime in the spring of , Morgan listed several that were inadequate based on traffic interference, door inaccessibility, parking unsuitability, decor, and floor size (Special Collection no. ). But, as the second round of location scouting occurred on two consecutive Friday evenings (May  and May , ), when the bars presumably would have been busy, the absence of female location scouts in the bars is telling. Not only was the enjoyment of these spaces reserved for men, but the male gaze also decided what space best defined the film’s vision of lesbianism. Indeed, Morgan’s initial location notes suggest that, in addition to reporting on a club’s physical advantages and disadvantages, he was also to report on

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the authenticity of its clientele. For example, a club called Robin Hood was rejected because it gave “the impression more of a general mixed club,” and the Subway “[could not] be regarded seriously” because it drew only “a sprinkling of lesbians.” The two clubs that worked well for Morgan—Bell Haven and Gateways—are both described in terms of their authenticity. He describes Bell Haven as a “genuine atmosphere with a good selection of types of Lesbians” and Gateways as having, despite its

“rather ‘seedy’ atmosphere,”“some genuine Lesbian types” (Special Collection no. ).

Choosing the latter location, Aldrich was now ready to shoot his authentic lesbian bar, using its genuine lesbian patrons. But were they ready for him?

Potent Shots

In his handbook for location scouts and managers, industry practitioner Robert G. Maier dispenses the following advice: It is important for scouts to remember that the majority of people are flattered when asked whether they would participate in a production.

Unless they have been taken advantage of in the past, more often than not they will listen rather than turn scouts away immediately with a flat refusal. Scouts should be optimistic and suggest that it is indeed a privilege to be selected to appear in a motion picture production or a commercial photo. (, )

The history of the closet as a defining feature of lesbian and gay life demonstrates the heterosexist paradigm on which such a formulation rests. Lesbians and gay men know all too well the risks attendant upon public exposure, whether or not such an act is by their own or another’s accord; the potential losses of children, families, income, and certainly lives are real and grave consequences of such an undertaking. As Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick rightly notes, “There can be few gay people, however courageous and forthright by habit, however fortunate in the support of their immediate communities, in whose lives the closet is not still a shaping presence” (, ). Thus, Maier’s assertion regarding the so-called privilege of public exposure is highly erroneous, particularly as it might apply to lesbians living prior to Stonewall, lesbian and gay civil rights, and second-wave feminism.

Or so we might assume. Evidence suggests that Aldrich’s crew was welcomed in a number of lesbian clubs. Bennett’s notes on the Robin

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Hood Club state that his relationship with the owners was “very good”

and they were “eager to help,” and Morgan’s “report on Lesbian Clubs”

reveals that members of the lesbian “committee” that controlled Bell Haven were “in favour of the film company’s interest.” As for Gateways, the bar they settled on, Morgan notes that his initial contact “appears enthusiastic” (Special Collection no. ).

Production documents suggest that the initial enthusiasm toward Aldrich’s request to film Gateways and its members forecast a seemingly congenial four-day shoot, which took place from June  to June ,

. Location papers reveal that attention was paid to making the Gateways production as smooth and professional as possible. Good relations with the neighbors—a detail Maier calls the “linchpin on which all location shoots turn” (, )—were a priority, as a comprehensive list of surrounding neighbors, detailing their mostly positive response to the shoot, attests (Special Collection no. ).14 A bill for damages to the club’s interior also suggests Aldrich amicably restored the space to its original condition. But the most exemplary evidence of the shoot’s harmonious nature comes in the form of a letter, dated September , , from Gina Ware, co-owner, with her husband, of Gateways. Written prior to the film’s release, to associate producer Walter Blake, this letter thanks him for a wonderful experience and passes along greetings from Ware’s lesbian patrons, in particular from her lesbian bartender Smitty, who also appears in the film:

Dear Walter, how nice to hear from you! We sincerely hope that the film is a smash and of course we are all longing to see it. . . . The Girls are still talking about the Aldrich Company, and Bob [Aldrich] is their Pin up.

They all said he was a gentleman. . . . Smitty sends regards to you and all the Company and joins me in wishing you all a very successful New Year.

Regards, Gina Ware. (Special Collection no. )15

However, Ware’s articulation of her clientele’s enthusiasm is rendered suspect by their own silence in regard to the film’s use of their images and space. Noticeably absent from the production files and press material are lesbians’ responses to and negotiations regarding their on-camera appearance. Instead, the most formalized authorization of consent appears in the nonlegal format of the film’s press releases, which point solely to the permission that the Wares, not the bar’s lesbian patrons, granted to Aldrich to film inside the club. Additionally, the press releases emphasize the Wares’ trust in Aldrich, rather than that of the lesbian

68 Lesbians on Location
patrons he filmed. After revealing the fact that the Gateways Club “is probably the most publicity-shy club in the world,” one release explains that “the club’s owner, Mr. Ted Ware, gave Aldrich permission to film because he was impressed by his outstanding international reputation for integrity, honesty and independence in film-making” (Special Collection no. ). Another press release underscores the Wares’ confidence in Aldrich by stating that they gave him and his crew full freedom while shooting their scenes [at Gateways] and unpreceden-tally [sic] allowed them to use the proper name of the establishment in the script. As an even greater mark of trust and confidence in Aldrich’s taste and discretion, many of the women who frequent the Gateways appeared as themselves in some of the scenes. (Special Collection no. ) The hyperbole that shapes these press releases renders questionable both the reasons offered explaining the Wares’ motives for allowing Aldrich unprecedented entry into the club and the notion of Aldrich’s

“integrity” and “honesty” vis-à-vis its members. Indeed, in the more private venue of her personal correspondence to the film’s associate producer, Gina Ware’s motives take on a different shape, revealing a fiscal character. Along with sending Blake her gratitude and the bartender’s regards, she also tells him that “ will be the year of the Lesbian. The phone rings constantly from various companies wishing to film the [club].

We have just completed one documentary for an Italian film company. . . .

It was quite profitable” (Special Collection no. ).16 Though the press releases imply that the club’s lesbian patrons willingly consented to be filmed based on Aldrich’s sensitivity toward them, a production paper trail raises doubts about both Aldrich’s integrity toward the film’s bar participants and their willingness to expose themselves publicly.

In their discussion on the rights of documentary subjects, Carolyn Anderson and Thomas W. Benson point to three criteria necessary for the assurance of “informed consent”: “conditions free of coercion and deception”; “full knowledge of procedures and anticipated effects”; and

“individual competence to consent” (, ). But, as Larry Gross, John Stuart Katz, and Jay Ruby argue, informed consent “is not always a mean-ingful concept in practice” (, ). Not only is a filmmaker’s disclosure of a film’s “anticipated effects” an educated guess at best, but also, as many scholars argue, consent is always more beneficial to the filmmaker than the documentary subject. This bias constitutes what Thomas Waugh

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calls the “traditional consent ripoff,” whereby participants surrender the agency of their own image to the designs of the filmmaker (, ).

Consequently, “informed consent” is really a matter of acknowledging trust in a filmmaker’s judgment, rather than having total knowledge of a film’s outcome (Anderson and Benson , ). “Subjects who say yes to the film in a camera,” Anderson and Benson argue, “sometimes say no to the film on the screen” (). Indeed, it is the cognizance of this possibility, not concern for the documentary subjects themselves, that motivates the formalization of consent in legal contracts. As Lisa Henderson argues, consent contracts “are a way of ‘covering yourself,’ not a means of ensuring that the rights and concerns of subjects are respected”

(, ).

Evaluating lesbian participation in The Killing of Sister George on the basis of whether or not the lesbians were operating under informed consent is complicated. In the first place, because they appear in a fiction film, the lesbian participants were officially “extras,” not documentary subjects. Though hardly free from the ethical issues that surround notions of consent, extras in a fictional setting are not subject to the same concerns as people who appear in a film as themselves.17 Moreover, employing the notion of informed consent to an analysis of this scene’s production is somewhat anachronistic. As Alan Rosenthal argues, the ethical issues that concern the production of documentaries were not addressed by scholars and filmmakers until the mid-s (, ).

However, several factors suggest that the insights of contemporary scholars regarding notions of documentary ethics and informed consent are worth applying to Aldrich’s production of the lesbian bar scene.

First, Aldrich’s foregrounding of the lesbian extras as genuine lesbians in the film’s various press releases suggests that they not only were framed by the film crew as documentary subjects but were meant to be publicly consumed as such as well. Second, Aldrich’s deployment of camera techniques newly popularized by the “direct-cinema” documentary movement, particularly his use of a shaky handheld camera to film the dancing lesbians, suggests that he made a conscious effort to film this scene—and this scene alone—within a documentary framework. Finally, Aldrich’s efforts to secure the permission of the heterosexual owners of Gateways to film in their club and his foregrounding in the press releases of both the owners’ and their clientele’s permission reveal Aldrich’s concern about and manipulation of matters of consent.

70 Lesbians on Location

Aldrich’s self-interested motives in gaining lesbian consent are certain. In a section of a progress report on the “Lesbian Sequence,” written sometime during its four days of production in the summer of , production manager David Bennett reports that he put in a request to the appropriate person to find out “whether our standard forms for payment . . . covers us on clearance ie, no recourse when they see themselves on the screen later portrayed as Lesbians” (Special Collection no.

). Critically, Bennett’s, and therefore presumably Aldrich’s, anticipa-tion of the lesbian extras’ antagonistic responses to the film suggests that the filmmakers were aware of the consequences attendant to lesbian public exposure. This suggestion reveals not only the potential specious-ness of, but also the biases inherent in, the lesbian patrons’ consent. As a media producer, particularly one whose films impart a fascination with the film industry’s ability to destroy lives (e.g., The Big Knife, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, and The Legend of Lylah Clare), Aldrich un-doubtedly was aware of the consequences of lesbian ethnographic exposure. Indeed, his knowledge of these consequences was potentially greater than that of the lesbian participants. As John David Viera writes, people who consent to the public use of their image have “probably not

[considered] the full implications of [its] release. . . . A media-naive person all too often releases his privacy for a nominal amount, unaware of the potential, perpetual media-life the image might have” (, ). To be sure, claiming wholesale ignorance on the part of the lesbian extras is pure conjecture. It is also derelict, given the range of convincing arguments made by a number of film scholars about lesbians’ (and gay men’s) unique relationship to the cinema, in which we are posited as anything but “media-naive.”18 Nonetheless, as these arguments often rest solely on the subversive processes of lesbian spectatorship, rather than on the processes and machinations of film production, we might also convincingly argue that the Gateways extras possessed a certain amount of ignorance about Aldrich’s plans for editing and publicizing their images.

Aldrich’s desire for a precaution against potentially aggrieved lesbians suggests he may have been less than forthcoming about his designs for the lesbian bar scene. Exactly what the lesbian extras expected and desired by appearing in the film as lesbians is uncertain, but their consent, like most who willingly agree to appear in front of the camera, was, no doubt, motivated by some goal. On the one hand, as a large, if not overwhelming, constituency of lesbian bars at this time was working-class,

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this goal may have been monetary.19 Though evidence of payment is no-ticeably absent from the files of The Killing of Sister George, a contemporaneous article about the lesbian bar scene in The New York Times states that the lesbian extras were paid $. (U.S.) per day (Lee ).

On the other hand, as the film was produced just prior to second-wave feminism, the Stonewall riots, and the gay liberation movement (it opened in limited release in December ), lesbian participation in The Killing of Sister George was perhaps not fiscally motivated. According to Mark Blasius and Shane Phelan, the gay liberation movement that began in the United States in the late s spread to Great Britain from  to

 (, ); thus, as Emily Hamer notes, by the late s, many British lesbians were beginning to articulate concerns about lesbian and gay civil rights. Looking at the discourse of Arena Three, the lesbian magazine Mrs. Bobby Holmes used to locate Gateways, Hamer observes that “discussions about coming out and lesbian pride had . . . taken up increasing space . . . from the late s” (, ). Possibly driven by the politics of the era, Gateways lesbians may have consented to appear as themselves in the film to promote the public acceptance and recognition of lesbianism. Indeed, as Howard S. Becker notes, this is often the primary motive behind officials’ granting consent for public institutions to be filmed. Those, he says, “who need not participate in having films of themselves made, generally think there is something in it for them: perhaps a chance at reform, perhaps some public relations benefit” (, xv). Although not an institution in the proper sense, British lesbians in the late s were a recognizable group of people beginning to campaign for their civil rights.

Whether or not Aldrich shared and conveyed these same goals is unclear, but production papers show that he was less than forthright with the lesbian participants about how the bar scene and its inhabitants would be rendered on film. Comments by a range of crew members reveal that the agenda for lesbian representation itself was equivocal, informed by a befuddled mixture of stereotyping, sympathy, and assumptions about pathology. Indeed, in the same letter to Aldrich in which she boasts about her unassailable heterosexuality, Hersey accuses both Aldrich and scriptwriter Heller of creating an unsympathetic, and therefore uninteresting, portrait of lesbians. Hersey argues that Heller’s “masculinity is threatened by lesbians” and his resentment toward them is

“there on every page.” Certainly, Hersey’s analysis of Heller’s troubled

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masculinity and her assertion of the film’s lack of sympathy toward lesbianism are open to interpretation. On the one hand, she compares Heller’s poor treatment of lesbians with what she thinks of as their sympathetic treatment in The Children’s Hour (), a film that ends with the suicide of a lesbian. On the other hand, Heller’s unfavorable and stereotypical perception of lesbians is revealed by several of his additions to the screenplay, including his change of George’s neighbor and intimate confidante, Betty (Patricia Medina), from a fortune-teller to a prostitute. In a press release offering and also justifying Heller’s reasoning for this addition of the classic “hooker with a heart of gold,” Heller is said to have “created warm-hearted Betty as a counterweight to her Lesbian-oriented neighbors” (Special Collection no. ). Betty is a gentle woman whose sensuous curves and luxurious hair stand in stark contrast to both George’s hefty body and masculinized tweed suits and Childie’s lanky figure and puerile persona, and the implications of this contrast are unequivocal.20

But though Hersey faulted Heller (and Aldrich) for his lack of sympathy for lesbians, playwright Frank Marcus, who otherwise criticized Heller’s script for having too much pathos, condemned Heller’s rendering of the bar scene for being too upbeat. In a letter to Aldrich dated April

, , Marcus says the following about the screenplay’s lesbian bar scene: “I confess to ignorance here, but [isn’t] . . . depravity . . . best suggested by in activity? A sort of desultory defeated passivity, nothing fran-tic?” (Special Collection no. ). Indeed, as I note at the beginning of this chapter, this scene is noteworthy for its air of festivity and its hith-erto unseen glimpse of lesbians enjoying themselves and being affectionate. Unlike George and Childie, whose relationship has thus far been portrayed as destructive, Gateways lesbians are portrayed as loving and cheerful. The bar is depicted as a lively, bustling club, and rapidly edited shots of throngs of women vigorously dancing to the quick tempo of an all-girl band suggest an upbeat lesbian social existence. In turn, close-up shots of faces as women embrace during slow songs suggest the tenderness of lesbian love.

However, the questionable politics of labor, lesbian or otherwise, surrounding the production of this scene suggests that its documentary frankness and clarity may have been a surprise to those lesbian extras who enabled its production. Though they raise the issue of the lesbian extras’ consent, Aldrich’s files contain no evidence of this consent ever

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being formalized on paper. This is all the more significant, given that his files do include “authorization to reproduce physical likeness” forms signed by other cast members (Special Collection no. ). What this suggests is that Aldrich may have found it more advantageous to obtain a less formalized consent from the lesbian bar patrons, whereby he would be required to provide less information about the production and post-production procedure and exhibition policy.

Indeed, at least one woman, Eileen Page, who plays George’s bar rival, Leslie, appears to have suffered from this lack of written contract. She apparently was misled or confused about how the film would acknowledge her in the screen credits. On February , , following the film’s release, Page’s lawyer, Hazel Mayhew, wrote Aldrich’s lawyer, Ronald B.

Sunderland, asking him to fix what Page believed to be an error in the credits, in which her first name mistakenly appears as Maggie. Responding to this request seven days later, Sunderland notified Mayhew that her client’s name deliberately did not appear in the credits. Additionally, he informed her that the part of the prostitute’s maid was played by an actress named Maggie Page and that the filmmakers “did not give credit to anyone who appears in the Gateways Club scene other than the principals” (Special Collection no. ).

Although it is not unusual for extras to be absent from film credits, and we might guess that this was also a stipulation of the lesbian extras’

consent, Page’s absence in the credits is curious. Described in the script as “a handsomely masculine WOMAN with close-cropped blond hair”

(Special Collections no. ), the part of Leslie is a speaking role whose several lines of dialogue with her femme girlfriend, with George, and with Childie equal the number of lines spoken by Maggie Page, who is credited. What this suggests, then, is not only that Aldrich may have been less than forthright with his lesbian bar participants but also that his noted “integrity” toward those extras was anything but secure. The evacuation of Page’s film identity as a lesbian and a butch woman reveals much about the film’s lesbian politics, in which lesbian labor and identity are at once called upon and disregarded.21 The similar absence in the credits of another speaking role in the lesbian bar, performed by an actress who may or may not be a lesbian but who in all production documents is described solely as the “butch,” also suggests the film’s simultaneous need for and dismissal of lesbians’ labor.22 But Aldrich’s forthrightness and integrity toward the lesbian extras who appear in his film

74 Lesbians on Location

Although Leslie (Eileen Page, second from right) and her girlfriend (far right) share a drink with Childie (Susannah York, far left), George (Beryl Reid, second from left), and Mrs. Croft (Coral Browne, center), they do not receive screen credit. Courtesy of Photofest, NYC.

are challenged nowhere more than in his publicity of the film, to which I now turn.

Open Bar

Briefly commenting in The Celluloid Closet on the Gateways bar scene, Vito Russo offers a bit of extratextual information. “In spite of a strict ban on the set,” he tells us, “the scene was photographed by a still photographer and pictures appeared in a London daily and then in newspapers around the world” (, ). Russo based this information on an interview he conducted with Aldrich for the book. He also learned from the director that, because of the unfortunate consequence of a poorly guarded set, a bar patron lost her job as a physician’s receptionist after she was recognized in a photograph (). Though Aldrich described to Russo an account of a closed shoot gone awry, his own files reveal this tale to be complete fabrication. Production papers prove that press acquisition of Gateways publicity photographs was anything but an unfortunate accident. Rather, memos and letters between Aldrich and the film’s publicists identify these photographs of the lesbian bar and the

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bar shoot itself as central players in the film’s advertising and publicity campaign.

In a letter to Aldrich and two other publicity operatives dated May

, , Jerry Pam, the film’s public-relations specialist, emphasizes the lesbian bar’s importance to the film’s publicity: I don’t want to appear dramatic, but if the plans we have are not carried out during the London location shooting, we can never recover this facet of the campaign later in the picture. . . . We are going to make everybody available to the press on every single day of shooting. . . . Number one on the list has to be, of necessity, the New York Times story by either Stephen Watts or whomever is based in London. . . . It is suggested that we have him to the first or second day of shooting . . . at [Gateways] (this is the lesbian club where I feel we should get great photo and news coverage). (Special Collection no. ; my emphasis) In addition, an undated memo sent to Aldrich and Pam from one of the film’s publicists in London suggests that Pam’s plans for optimum photo and news coverage of the Gateways shoot were vigorously addressed.

According to the memo, thirteen media outlets, including Life, Time, Newsweek, Look, and Up, were notified that Aldrich would shortly begin filming The Killing of Sister George “at a famed nightclub haunt of London’s sapphic subculture” (Special Collection no. ).

These documents outlining the film’s publicity strategy reveal that Aldrich was perhaps less than honest with his lesbian participants and certainly less than honest with Russo. But the urgent tenor of Pam’s letter also highlights the centrality of the lesbian bar to the overall publicity of the film. Although his letter acknowledges the overall importance of the British locations to the film, stressing the irreparable losses to the publicity campaign without his crew’s immediate action, it is the lesbian bar location alone that Pam underscores.

The lesbian bar’s unique value to the film’s publicity agenda is further proven by the location’s conspicuous appearance within various press releases. Though the film’s complete production notes state that British location shooting was performed at “ major locations and numerous run-throughs in and near London,” the Gateways Club is the only location that is given special emphasis in the film’s press notices.

Publicity of the Gateways shoot consistently appears alongside standard press material, such as distribution and exhibition information and data about the actresses, the director, and the screenwriter. Most conspicuous,

76 Lesbians on Location
however, is that, like the film’s principal players, whose bio- and filmo-graphical data are packaged in their own press releases, the lesbian bar is given its own press release. It appears as a two-page notice provocatively titled “The Gateways—For Women Only” (Special Collection no. ).

The bar’s “star” press packaging bears interrogation. Since their emergence in the early twentieth century, Hollywood stars have been central marketing tools, and the potency or potential of their star image has been regarded as a guarantee or an effective marker of the economic viability of a film. For The Killing of Sister George, Aldrich employed two British actresses, Beryl Reid and Susannah York, whose names did not carry much notoriety in the United States, and he appears to have been aware of their limited market potential. Pam’s letter to his London publicity crew, dated May , , stresses these marketing limitations and outlines a different publicity strategy:

It is felt that Bob Aldrich and the property are the stars of this picture because we do not have blockbuster names to deal with. . . . The property has a built-in audience based on the theatrical success and as far as Bob is concerned, he has reached the stage where his name on a marquee means as much as a Hitchcock. (Special Collection no. ) The box-office and critical failure of his previous film, The Legend of Lylah Clare, should have made Aldrich think twice about his marketability, which would soon be disproved again by The Killing of Sister George’s mediocrity at the box office (Silver and Ursini , , ). However, in

, at the time of production, Aldrich was at the top of his game.

Only one year earlier he had directed the fifteenth-highest-grossing film in Hollywood’s history: The Dirty Dozen (Silver and Ursini , ).

The matter of the star power of the film “property” is a bit more complicated. Although the play had been successful, its success onstage in no way guaranteed it the kind of stardom necessary for a “built-in [film]

audience.” In fact, press tactics and material indicate that it was not the film itself that Aldrich and his publicists understood to have a “built-in audience,” but lesbianism. When Pam states in his strategy letter that his publicists should “[allow] for the obvious controversy” (Special Collection no. ), he clearly is not referring to the film’s BBC story line. Descriptive press phrases such as “one of the most unconventional films ever made” and “shocking drama” articulate neither the uniqueness of a film about, nor the alarming milieu of, the BBC, but the supposed aber-

Lesbians on Location 77
rance and scandalousness of lesbianism. Moreover, frequently used phrases such as “frank treatment” and “uncompromising film” articulate neither the prevalence of BBC hypocrisy as a social issue necessitat-ing elucidation nor Aldrich’s unwillingness to temper his representation of British television, but refer directly to the film’s lesbian subject matter.

Furthermore, the emphasis on the film’s portrayal and use of a real lesbian bar, both in general press material and in the single-topic format, indicates that it was not simply lesbianism but lesbian space that Aldrich and his publicists imagined possessed a “built-in audience.” This reveals their own awareness of the heterosexual fascination with lesbian bars and their spectacles of same-sex desire. Indeed, press rhetoric detailing the Gateways shoot and its filmic representation is strikingly similar to earlier and contemporaneous discourses on the lesbian bar found in sociological and psychological studies, pulp fiction, and sensational journalistic accounts. As in these sources, The Killing of Sister George’s publicity material foregrounds the authenticity of the Gateways scene.

Phrases describing Gateways as a “famed nightclub haunt” and the “best known haunt of London’s sapphic demi-monde,” though no doubt exaggerating the eminence of the bar, identify it as a factual locale. Moreover, rather than simply citing that the scene was shot on location with Gateways Club patrons, press material also evaluates the production itself, claiming that the scene has a feeling of “naturalness and a sense of stark reality” (Special Collection no. ).

Additionally, like earlier and contemporaneous discussions of the lesbian bar that frame it in terms of its simultaneous obscurity to and accessibility for heterosexuals, the film’s press material stresses Aldrich’s success at not only effortlessly penetrating but also being welcomed into the historically guarded secret space of Gateways. Press releases informed journalists that Gateways had “avoided all publicity for years” and that Aldrich’s filming inside the club was “unprecedented,” marking a “couple of firsts” for the production (Special Collection no. ). Moreover, just as the availability of lesbian bars for heterosexual male consumption is framed in earlier discourses as a difficult but feasible challenge, Aldrich’s entrance into and acceptance within Gateways is implicitly framed in terms of his masculine prowess. Indeed, though the press release for Gateways is subtitled “For Women Only” and begins by informing recipients that “[the club’s] membership is open only to women,” its ensuing emphasis both on Aldrich’s admission to the club and on the

78 Lesbians on Location

Robert Aldrich directs the lesbian bar scene in The Killing of Sister George.

Courtesy of Photofest, NYC.

fact that his permission for entry had been granted by a male owner paradoxically works to mark Gateways as a place easily conquered and controlled by men. The notion of male discipline of lesbian space is also expressed in a letter, dated June , , from one of the film’s publicists, Michael Maelansky, to Henry Ehrlich, presumably a member of the press. Hoping to attract Ehrlich to the first day of the Gateways shoot, the publicist tells him that he, Maelansky, “was struck by [Aldrich’s]

mastery the other day at rehearsal in the club” (Special Collection no.

). This statement underscores the significance gender and sexuality played in the publicist’s own understanding of Aldrich’s acquisition of and experience in the lesbian bar.

The Killing of Sister George’s public and private press material offers us, then, two certainties about the lesbian bar’s role in the film’s publicity.

Despite Aldrich’s assertion to Russo that he ordered a ban on the press and photojournalists during the filming at Gateways, the emphasis on the bar in letters outlining publicity strategy and the bar’s appearance in official publicity documents expose its centrality in the written and visual marketing of the film. Moreover, the rhetorical maneuvers and locutions that shape its appearance in these documents reveal that view-

Lesbians on Location 79
ers’ invitation and entry into Gateways was framed, as in the film’s scientific, journalistic, and literary predecessors, in terms of heterosexual penetration of, acceptance within, and mastery of otherwise clandestine lesbian space.

Coda: Hangovers

Like that of his nonfilmic predecessors whose representations of lesbian bars foregrounded the “realness” of those bars, Aldrich’s unexplained need to both film in and depict “authentic” lesbian space set its own cinematic precedent. As I reveal in chapter , a number of recent film and television representations of lesbian bars stress the bars’ status as bona fide lesbian space, often deploying cameo appearances by celebrity lesbians to connote their authenticity. Moreover, as I also demonstrate in chapter , such media attempts at lesbian bar veracity are part of a historical continuum of lesbian bar representations working to produce and uphold heterosexual spatial supremacy. The obvious attempts of cinema and television to authenticate their own representations of lesbian bars reveal the continued exigency of using “real” lesbian space to locate, experience, and govern lesbians in an era that, one could argue, is no less anxious about public and undetectable homosexuality than earlier decades, no less interested in sexual tourism, and certainly no less invested in maintaining the heterosexism of public space.

But in closing, I would suggest something further about the desperate need for lesbian bar authentication. C. S. Tashiro states that the en-gineers behind the fabrication of film space are expected “to have a thorough knowledge of a film’s setting, from basics of architectural style to the shape of a cufflink” (, ). Given this requirement, I suggest that the widespread efforts at lesbian bar authentication within television and film also bespeak an underlying anxiety about the ability to master this space precisely and adequately on one’s own. Indeed, despite the assertion Maelansky made regarding Aldrich’s “mastery” over the lesbian bar subjects, evidence suggests that Aldrich was less than confident about his ability to adequately render their space. Like the Wachowski Brothers, who would direct Bound with the help of a lesbian

“technical consultant” some thirty years later, Aldrich played with the idea of hiring a lesbian specialist. A location “progress report” dated March , , briefly mentions the “possibility of finding a Lesbian

80 Lesbians on Location

Technical director” (Special Collections no. ). Whether or not Aldrich found or used a “Lesbian Technical director” is uncertain. But the fact that this reference appeared in the same memo as the query about in-surance against potentially disgruntled lesbians suggests that Aldrich anticipated something less than his own mastery at Gateways. However, one thing is for certain: it was not for his lack of trying.

C H A P T E R T H R E E

Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown

To remake is to want to reread—to believe in an explicit . . . way that the past reading was wrong or outdated and that a new one must be done.

—Leo Braudy, afterword to Play It Again, Sam, edited by Andrew Horton and Stuart Y. McDougal One of the most frequent strategies lesbian alternative media uses to challenge mainstream representations and erasures of lesbian identity is the practice of what Chris Holmlund calls “celluloid surgery” ().

For Holmlund, this feminist practice involves “chopping up earlier cinematic sources, then stitching them together with . . . other material” in order to “[create] films that jeopardize ‘natural’ or ‘essential’ definitions of gender, sexual preference, or race” ().1 For example, two of the most widely discussed lesbian alternative videos reassemble scenes from Hollywood films—what Holmlund calls cinema’s “spare parts” ()—
in order to render visible the lesbian (sub)texts, viewers, and alternative reading practices that Hollywood cinema simultaneously beckons and conceals.2 In Meeting of Two Queens () director Cecilia Barriga skill-fully juxtaposes spare parts from a range of classical Hollywood films to depict a romance between Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. Through Barriga’s manipulation of eye-line matches, the romantic gazes Garbo and Dietrich aim at male protagonists in their films of the s and

s become sensual gazes at each another. Similarly, in Dry Kisses Only (), directors Kaucyila Brooke and Jane Cottis use a variety of 81

82 Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown techniques to manipulate “amputated” footage (Holmlund , ) from classical Hollywood films in order to underscore classical cinema’s lesbian subtexts. In one segment of the video, Brooke is edited into a scene from All about Eve (), ironically usurping the role of Eve Har-rington, cinema’s most infamous and duplicitous understudy. In the original film, Eve (Anne Baxter) strategically maneuvers her way into theater actress Margo Channing’s (Bette Davis’s) dressing room and captivates the seasoned actress with a harrowing personal story of lost heterosexual love. In Brooke and Cottis’s version, Brooke, wearing Eve’s signature raincoat and hat, tells Margo an equally sad personal story, but this time it is about lesbian love and loss, military persecution of homosexuals after World War II, homophobic parents, and her obses-sion with the actress Bette Davis.

In both works, the lesbian spectator of mainstream cinema is either implied or explicitly foregrounded. Indeed, as Patricia White notes in her own analysis of this cut-and-paste genre, which she terms “lesbian cinephilia,” “some of the most interesting lesbian spectatorial practices are attested to, explored, codified, and reproduced in very material ways in video works that appropriate images of Hollywood stars” (, ).

This is hardly surprising, given the fact that, along with the practice of celluloid surgery, the emphasis on the dynamics of lesbian spectatorship is widespread in lesbian film and video.3 Judith Mayne notes that many lesbian artists have made lesbian spectatorship a central dynamic of their work, not just because they address lesbian viewers, but also because they examine the ways in which lesbians have been imagined and imaged in the past, and how those images change when redefined and reappropriated by contemporary lesbian subjects. (, ) Mayne goes on to argue that, in its emphasis on lesbian spectatorship and cinematic representation, lesbian alternative media is actively engaged in the production of the theoretical work that undergirds the bur-geoning discipline of lesbian film studies (). Indeed, Meeting of Two Queens offers more than just a romance between two lesbian icons. Similarly, Dry Kisses Only is not simply a cheeky attempt to remake “heterosexual” films into lesbian dramas. Rather, both works draw on lesbian subtexts and extratextual gossip to at once “out” the lesbian connotation of classical Hollywood films, render visible the lesbian viewer of classi-

Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown 83
cal Hollywood cinema, and reveal the existence and endurance of alternative spectatorial practices.4

Similarly working in this tradition is Etang Inyang’s  video Badass Supermama, which offers its own theoretical perspective on lesbian spectatorship and representation by performing celluloid surgery on two blaxploitation films, Foxy Brown () and Sheba, Baby ().5 Inyang amputates and restitches spare parts from these films in order to explore her frustrated identification with and desire for blaxploitation heroine Pam Grier, as well as to examine the glaring sexism and homophobia of the blaxploitation genre. These themes are simultaneously addressed in one particularly interesting scene in the video, which remakes the lesbian bar scene from Foxy Brown. In the original scene, a barroom brawl takes place between white, masculinized working-class lesbians and the film’s voluptuous black heroine, Foxy Brown (Pam Grier). Depicting this scene almost in its entirety, Badass Supermama uses optical effects, slow-motion techniques, and voice-over to question the scene’s meaning—not only for Inyang, a black female spectator and a Pam Grier fan, but also in the cultural production of black and lesbian identities.

Badass Supermama’s extraction and remaking of Foxy Brown’s lesbian bar scene and the video’s thematic and theoretical concerns of cinematic representation, identification, and desire enable me to focus in this chapter on three important questions relevant to my larger project.

First, if identities are constructed in part through cinematic representation, what role does dominant lesbian bar representation play in the cultural construction and personal formation of lesbian identity? Second, what are the possibilities and strategies of resistance to heteronormative visions of lesbian sexuality and space? Finally, what is the relationship of women of color to the representational lesbian bar and its revisions?

Badass Supermama’s focus on the lesbian bar as it emerges in the context of the blaxploitation genre allows me to think through these questions with a certain degree of specificity. It is with a focus on black lesbian and black feminist identity, and their relationship to the black action films of Pam Grier in particular, that I will address these questions. In the first section of the chapter, I look at how Inyang uses various strategies of celluloid surgery to denaturalize the racially divisive and homophobic bar scene in Foxy Brown from a position Valerie Smith calls “black

84 Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown feminist theorizing” (, xix). Rather than a “biologically grounded positionality,” this is a de-essentializing reading strategy that “mak[es]

explicit the contingencies, differences, and discontinuities upon which identities . . . depend” (xvii). Inyang’s refusal to accept Foxy Brown’s vision of racially divided lesbian bar space, as well as Badass Supermama’s insertion of Inyang within that space, foregrounds the figure of the representational and spectatorial black lesbian, whose existence Foxy Brown disavows. Through an extended analysis of blaxploitation’s representational politics, I expand upon Inyang’s black feminist theorizing of Foxy Brown’s bar scene to show how its identity politics is constructed from a confluence of historical and cultural factors engendered by a bedrock belief in the discreteness of racial, gender, and sexual categories.

But if Inyang’s black feminist theorizing of the blaxploitation genre, and of Foxy Brown’s bar scene in particular, suggests her clear recognition of the inadequacies and repercussions of this genre’s production of identity, she is less certain about how to alter it. In the second section, then, I focus on the techniques Inyang uses to foreground her ambivalence about the ability of black and white lesbians, as well as black and heterosexual feminists, to wholly challenge and recreate blaxploitation’s images of women. I expand upon both Inyang’s skepticism about such theoretically cherished notions as spectatorial resistance and subversion and her hesitation about the efficacy of well-worn debates over positive and negative imagery. I read her engagement with these issues as an explicit contribution to, as well as a complicating of, feminist, queer, and black theories of spectatorship and identity production.

“Now Tell Me, Foxy, Whose Fantasy Is This?”

Denaturalizing the Blaxploitation Lesbian Bar In Foxy Brown, the lesbian bar appears within the story of Foxy Brown (Pam Grier), a woman who works undercover as a prostitute in order to avenge the deaths of her boyfriend and her brother. A narcotics agent and a small-time hustler respectively, each man was killed by the henchmen of Katherine Wall (Katheryn Loder), the white leader of a drug and prostitution syndicate. Working incognito for Katherine, Foxy kidnaps Claudia (Juanita Brown), the only other black prostitute under Katherine’s control. Until this time, Katherine has isolated Claudia from her husband and child by keeping her doped up through a daily supply of

Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown 85
drugs. After enlisting Claudia to help her sabotage one of Katherine’s drug deals, Foxy intends to return Claudia to her husband. However, Foxy’s plans are temporarily thwarted when, in an act for which the narrative motivation is left unclear, Claudia flees to a lesbian bar.

Inside the lesbian bar, Claudia is marked as an outcast by her blackness, her hyperfemininity, and her status as an outlaw. In cahoots with Katherine’s drug and prostitution syndicate, the robust bartender immediately recognizes Claudia as Katherine’s “property.” She quickly informs Bobbie, a tough-looking blond butch, that “[the] word on the street is [to] keep her here.” Having lasciviously eyed Claudia since she entered the bar, Bobbie readily obliges. But just as Bobbie corners a hardly unreceptive Claudia, Foxy enters the bar and demands that Claudia go to the airport, where her husband is waiting. Interrupting, Bobbie angrily calls Foxy a bitch and tells her to “go find one of [her] own,”

prompting a fight between the two. The lesbian bar patrons, who all appear to be white, quickly join the fight. Claudia and Foxy narrowly escape the bar, leaving the white lesbians in violent chaos as they battle one another.

As part of her manipulation of this scene in Badass Supermama, Inyang dramatically reduces its speed as she addresses both her audience and the character Foxy in a voice-over. As the violence between the black and white women escalates, Inyang speaks about the feelings this scene evoked in her the first time she watched Foxy Brown. In a simultaneously confident and sorrowful tone that is characteristic of her voice-overs, Inyang states: “This chaos didn’t make sense to me at sixteen. I grew up surrounded by women loving women. Women who created a family. A sisterhood all their own. It was hard to watch women fighting women. Black fighting white. Gay fighting straight. Now tell me, Foxy, whose fantasy is this? All the lines are drawn. There is no sisterhood in your world.” Because Inyang uses the voice-over technique as a major strategy in her manipulation of Foxy Brown, and therefore in the reframing of its meaning for her audience, it is worth spending some time thinking about the question she puts not only to Foxy but also to us: Just exactly whose fantasy does this scene fulfill?

The question of what and whose desires the blaxploitation film caters to has been addressed by several film historians. As several of them have demonstrated, interracial conflict is a central feature of the blaxploitation

86 Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown

“Wait a minute, bitch, go find one of your own!” yells a white bar butch, Bobbie (Jeannie Epper, left), at blaxploitation heroine Foxy (Pam Grier) in Foxy Brown.

narrative. According to Ed Guerrero, the blaxploitation film of the early

s typically presents a black male (or, less often, a black female) protagonist “violently acting out a revenge or retribution motif against corrupt whites in the romanticized confines of the ghetto or inner city”

(, ). As Guerrero notes, this narrative staple is “fortified with liberal doses of gratuitous sex and drugs and the representation of whites as the very inscription of evil” (). This formula, which was first introduced in Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song () and which Foxy Brown precisely follows, provided the model for more than half of the films comprising this short-lived genre.6 Of the ninety-one blaxploitation films produced between  and , Guerrero argues that “forty-seven can be considered models of the Blaxploitation formula” (). Indeed, with only slight variations, this formula provides the framework for the majority of Grier’s blaxploitation work, including Sheba, Baby; Bucktown (); Coffy (); and Friday Foster ().

Blaxploitation’s fantasies of black retribution against white corruption are embedded in the historical conditions of the genre’s emer-

Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown 87

Lesbian bar patrons defend their turf against the blaxploitation heroine in Foxy Brown. Courtesy of Etang Inyang.

gence. According to Guerrero, blaxploitation films emerged from a confluence of three conditions: the rising black-nationalist ethos of the era; the public critique of black representation in Hollywood; and economic transformations in the film industry (, –). The first two factors were interrelated and directly contributed to blaxploitation’s formulaic narratives and characters. As Guerrero notes, concomitant with social unrest, the decline of the civil rights movement, and the move toward cultural nationalism in the late s, black audiences and critics became discontent with the era’s “integrationist film narrative” and its desexualized and assimilationist main star, Sidney Poitier (–). Blaxploitation’s representations of sexually potent men, ghetto life, interracial sex, black triumph over white corruption, and socially endemic racism offered representations of black life that were more suited to the politicized era than the previous decade’s diet of docile black characters.

Still, even as blaxploitation images were born from black-nationalist desires, the blaxploitation focus on interracial conflict was the out-growth of white desires as well. Although blaxploitation began as an

88 Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown

Foxy (Pam Grier) kicks butt in Foxy Brown’s lesbian bar brawl. Courtesy of Etang Inyang.

independent-film movement with Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, the success of this film and the acknowledgment of the market potential of the black audience presented the film industry with a way to pull itself out of an economic crisis that it experienced in the late s (Guerrero

, –).7 The black action film soon became a staple of Hollywood production and distribution, albeit one that was short-lived. According to Jesse Algeron Rhines, fewer than one-fifth of blaxploitation films produced were under African American control (, ). Rhines’s statistics speak to more than simply financial control. Both he and Guerrero argue that, despite its politicized origin, blaxploitation ultimately worked against the symbolic and material advancement of blacks. Rhines notes that although these films surfaced during the rising tide of black nationalism and liberation, “their subject matter of sex, violence, and

‘super-cool’ individualism was the antithesis of what contemporaneous black political organizations, like SNCC, the NAACP, or SCLC supported for Black people” (–). Similarly, Guerrero suggests that Hollywood was an “implicit contribu[tor] to a destructive shift in the black com-

Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown 89
munity away from collective political struggle of the s and toward such individualistic, self-indulgent activities as drug consumption and the single-minded pursuit of material gain” (, ).

The answer to Inyang’s probing question about the source of the fantasy that produces Foxy Brown’s lesbian bar brawl, then, is clearly multiple. Foxy Brown’s depiction of a black heroine singularly battling white lesbians satisfied, albeit temporarily, white Hollywood’s coffers, dominant ideologies of race, and black audiences’ shifting political and cultural sensibilities. However, Inyang’s question refers not solely to its interracial component; she also questions the desire that motivates the scene’s presentation of conflict between women and across sexuality.

Again, the source of this fantasy can be located in the generic formulas of blaxploitation. Like racial conflict, discord between women is pivotal to the female-led blaxploitation film. In their roles as blaxploitation heroines, both Grier and Tamara Dobson, the genre’s other successful lead actress, engage in fights with women along their various courses of retribution. Within the blaxploitation narrative, women are sources of black oppression every bit as much as men are. For example, in Cleopatra Jones (), Dobson is a federal narcotics agent who battles Mommy (Shelley Winters), a white lesbian drug lord. In the sequel, Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold (), Dobson returns (now paired with a female Asian sidekick) to fight the Dragon Lady, also a white lesbian drug lord (Stella Stevens).8

Grier’s and Dobson’s battles with female drug lords are not surprising for this violent action genre. After all, their characters wage the same battles as many of their male counterparts, eliminating various oppres-sors of the black underclass. Guerrero notes that the black superheroine was “configured along the macho lines of the black action-fantasy heroes,” and their films “on almost every count replicated the values, visual style, and exaggerated sex and violence of their male-focused counterparts” (, ). Still, inasmuch as they operate within formulaic confines, Grier and Dobson do not signify in the same fashion as their male counterparts. First, the difference of female representation as signification within cinema precludes this possibility. As Yvonne Tasker argues in her study of the female action heroine, the casting of women as action-film protagonists “shifts and inflects” the traditional coding of the male hero (, ). For Tasker, traditional narrative conventions

90 Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown of the action film, such as the climactic fight between the hero and his opponent, are “saturated with a different kind of coding . . . with a heroine and the (almost always) already sexualised female body on the screen”

(). Second, the specific position of women in the blaxploitation genre is clearly distinguished from that of men. The inaugural blaxploitation film, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, laid the groundwork for the genre’s representation of women. In that film, Sweetback (Melvin Van Peebles), a young boy raised in a brothel, is suddenly catapulted into political consciousness after witnessing the police beating of a local black revolutionary. Sweetback attacks the police, and the movie revolves around both his escape from the law and his growing revolutionary consciousness. Significantly, it is Sweetback’s sexual prowess with and conquering of women that enables both of these processes. On his journey, he hides from the police by having sex with a random white woman and by raping a black woman at knifepoint. The theme of male sexual prowess and female sexual availability established in this film persists throughout the genre, including in the films of Pam Grier.

Despite her configuration along the formulaic lines of blaxploitation, the female blaxploitation heroine as defined by Grier was also equal parts sexploitation heroine. It is notable that Grier was also doing a cycle of women’s prison films at the same time as her blaxploitation work (e.g., The Big Doll House [], Women in Cages [], The Big Bird Cage [], and Black Mama, White Mama []). According to Guerrero, the blaxploitation heroine was fashioned in large part for the sexual consumption of “predominantly black, inner-city adolescent male[s]”

(, ). Indeed, the demands of Grier’s various roles suggest that they were targeted to heterosexual men. Her films put her in constant states of undress and in violent rape scenarios. In Foxy Brown, Foxy’s heroic battles are typically concomitant with her disrobing. For example, in the first scene of the film, Foxy is conveniently shown in bed; when her brother calls for her help, it is necessary for her to change into street clothes, which she does on-screen. In a later scene featuring Foxy and Claudia, despite the fact that they have no intention of sleeping with a male john, they are shown stripping down to their bras and underwear.

And when Foxy is later kidnapped and raped by Katherine’s henchmen, the viewer is placed in the position of Foxy’s abductors, who loom above her bound and vulnerable body as they stare at her undulating breasts.

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According to Mark A. Reid, the female-led blaxploitation film “appeal[ed] to a male ego that ha[d] been threatened by the rise of the women’s liberation movement” (, ). Jennifer Devere Brody rejects this claim, arguing that the screen personae of Tamara Dobson and Pam Grier are too dissimilar to make any overarching claims about the blaxploitation heroine’s antifeminist resonance (, –). Still, some of the standard conventions of the female-led blaxploitation film, such as the heroine’s pivotal role in the restoration of the heterosexual couple, the marketing of her sexuality for male characters and audiences, and her frequent battles with women, were antithetical to the era’s explicit liberal-feminist agendas and the ethos of the decade’s newly emergent cinematic heroine. As feminist film historians and critics have discussed, in the s Hollywood began to respond to the women’s liberation movement by producing “independent heroine” films.9 According to Tasker, “These films [were] . . . primarily concerned with detailing the problems faced by the independent woman in achieving her independence” (, ). For example, in Klute (), Julia (), An Unmarried Woman (), and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (), the independent heroine deals with such themes as sexual independence, female friendship, divorce, and motherhood.

Moreover, despite the fact that the women-in-prison film, blaxploitation’s compatriot in s exploitation cinema, not only shared Grier as an actress but also had a similar penchant for sexploitative representations of women, the positions of these genres vis-à-vis feminism—
conscious or otherwise—sharply differed. In her rereading of the women-in-prison genre, Judith Mayne demonstrates how, alongside its less progressive elements of female victimization, rape, and torture, it also created a space to explore women’s relationships with one another:

“The women-in-prison film does not just portray the ‘objectification’ of the female body . . . the genre is also predicated on the possibility that women observe other women” (, ). And often, these looks are sexualized:

The women-in-prison genre is one of the few established genres where lesbianism is not an afterthought or an anomaly. There is almost always a lesbian character . . . and lesbian desire is represented across a wide range of activities, from longing looks between female characters, to special friendships . . . to sexual activity, to sexual coercion. ()

92 Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown Moreover, as Mayne details, sexuality between women in these films crosses racial lines. She argues that race and lesbianism constantly intersect and enable one another in the women-in-prison film (). Notably, in The Big Doll House and Women in Cages, Grier plays a lesbian.

Unlike this exploitative genre, blaxploitation does not highlight female communities. Save the black and Asian female crime-fighting duo in Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold, the blaxploitation heroine typically fights rather than bonds with other women. Moreover, unlike the story of the “independent heroine,” the blaxploitation heroine’s narrative never revolves around her experiences of and struggles against sexism. Rather, she is more aligned with another s figure, which Julie D’Acci argues coincided with the era’s backlash against the women’s movement: the sexy television action heroine presented in the series Charlie’s Angels, Police Woman, Get Christie Love, and Wonder Woman. 10

Produced from the mid-s to the early s in what is known as the

“jiggle era” of television, these shows featured highly sexualized female protagonists who “were either rescued by male colleagues or used superhuman capabilities to resolve their predicaments” (, ). Though Foxy Brown is notable for presenting a heroine who battles most of her fights alone, the combination of Foxy’s sexploitative framing with her superhuman strength and endurance aligns her with the conflicting ideologies of the “jiggle women” of s television.

On the one hand, the absence of an overt gesture toward women’s liberation in the female-led blaxploitation film, such as the kind being contemporaneously articulated in the independent-heroine narrative, speaks of the whiteness of the second-wave feminist movement both in the public imagination and in the film industry. As an industry that is, at its core, essentialist in its conceptions of audience demographics, Hollywood mobilized the independent-heroine film to both appease and profit from white female audiences. Black women were conceived neither as feminists nor as film consumers, a problem that has only recently, and slowly, begun to change.11 At the time, the market potential of the black audience was assumed to be attended to by the blaxploitation film alone.

On the other hand, the rarity of either any overt feminist sentiments or any depictions of female bonding—sexual or otherwise—in the blaxploitation film is a result of the genre’s emergence from a context of black-nationalist ideology and popular consumption. The blaxploita-

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tion heroine’s role as a figure readily available for male heterosexual consumption was concomitant with the popular ethos of black nationalism. According to Alice Echols,

Black power, as it was articulated by men, involved laying claim to masculine privileges denied them by white supremacist society. Within the black liberation movement black women were expected to “step back into a domestic, submissive role” so that black men could freely exercise their masculine prerogatives. (, )12

Although Angela Davis () instructs us not to eradicate the progressive historical moments of s black nationalism in our efforts to retell this period of history, it is fair to say that the blaxploitation genre, in its own marketing of nationalist fever, partly did just that. Significantly, though Grier and Dobson in their various roles address the problems facing urban black communities, specifically drugs, neither of them is allowed to address the problems specific to women that were being articulated by popular white feminist discourses of that era, such as rape and male control of women’s sexuality. This point is all the more notable given that the blaxploitation genre is rife with these themes.

Inyang speaks directly of this in her appropriation of Foxy Brown’s rape scene, portions of which she edits into Badass Supermama. In the original film, as punishment for her duplicity against syndicate boss Katherine Wall, Foxy is kidnapped by two of Katherine’s white male minions. Tied to a bed in a remote drug-manufacturing warehouse, Foxy is forcefully injected with heroin and then raped by two white men.

Though heavily drugged and physically abused, Foxy rises up against her tormentors, setting them and their drug compound on fire before she escapes. Of Foxy’s ability to fight and escape her kidnappers immediately following being raped, Inyang says in a voice-over: “I am a sur-vivor too, Foxy. You were not allowed to experience the trauma of rape.

Where did this vision come from? It demeans and belittles all women.

What does it mean that black superwomen don’t feel pain?” Though Foxy retaliates against her rapists by burning their drug compound, it is unclear whether this act is motivated by the rape or by the desire to obliterate the drug warehouse—the source of black oppression. Indeed, in a later scene, Foxy articulates that her revenge against Katherine is not personal. Though Foxy enlists a group of black male militants to castrate Katherine’s boyfriend, a violent act that surely raises the specter

94 Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown of her rape, she tells the men that her cause is justice for black people everywhere.13 As the contemporaneous women’s movement was bringing the issue of rape to the public fore (Echols , ), Foxy’s inability to acknowledge overtly her sexual violation as a primary motivation for her vengeance is notable.

Within this context, it is not surprising that the blaxploitation heroine battles white lesbians. As Brody notes, “At the end of the civil rights era, feminism was coded as white, and the slide between feminists and lesbians was evoked continually in a range of discourses—hegemonic and counterhegemonic alike” (, ). During the late s and early s, mainstream representations of lesbians were antithetical to the blaxploitation heroine’s femininity, heterosexual availability, and dedication to family and community. In mainstream films of this era, lesbians are represented as depressed and decidedly unglamorous alcoholics ( The Killing of Sister George), spinsters ( The Night of the Iguana []

and Rachel, Rachel []), destroyers of the heterosexual couple (in a spate of vampire films), and neurotics ( The Fox []). Notably, in these films lesbians are always set in sharp relief against “normal” heterosexual femininity.

Similarly, Foxy Brown’s lesbian bar scene sets up a sharp contrast between blaxploitation women and white lesbians. The clothing and hairstyle that Claudia wears code her in traditionally feminine terms. Foxy’s clothing similarly emphasizes her femininity, particularly her large breasts. Conversely, compared to Claudia and Foxy, the white lesbians are strikingly unfeminine. The bartender’s heftiness and authority evoke the lesbian-coded prison matron, exemplified by Hope Emerson in Caged (). Many of the patrons are recognizable butch types, marked by their male-coded clothes, short hair, and hardened faces. And though a few women wear dresses and are feminine in appearance, in comparison to Claudia’s hyperfemininity their short hairstyles and conservative clothing styles conjure up stereotypes of the femme lesbian as being in-ferior to heterosexual women’s feminine appeal.

The scene also sets up a contrast between the black women and the white bar patrons in terms of labor that speaks to the “deviance” of the lesbian and the “naturalness” of the blaxploitation heroine. As Claudia sashays across the bar floor, the film focuses on a butch woman com-plaining about her factory job. Because this masculinized woman works in a male-coded job, particularly for this era, her job is wholly unlike

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Foxy’s and Claudia’s professions. Though Foxy assumes the role of a prostitute only in order to avenge the deaths of her boyfriend and brother (roughly the same reason for her undercover work as a prostitute in Coffy), it is notable that this is the only job, real or assumed, that we see her and the film’s other black woman perform. Certainly, this scene’s foregrounding of different kinds of labor for white women and black women can be read as a commentary on the labor inequities for women across racial lines. At the same time, given the genre’s notorious glorifi-cation of black pimps and hustlers (Guerrero , ), this scene also arguably posits the deviance of the factory-working woman against the naturalness of the prostitute, who is similarly part of the glorified black underworld. Certainly, the blaxploitation genre argues that a woman’s body is for the sexual pleasure of men.

The violence that erupts between these women, then, is both an extension of their antithetical positions as women and a product of the genre’s and the larger culture’s sexist visions of women. Thus, like its vision of interracial conflict, Foxy Brown’s vision of intergender violence played out in its lesbian bar scene is the result of a range of cultural forces: black and white sexism, antifeminism, and homophobia. At the same time, further investigation into the forces that produced Foxy Brown’s lesbian bar brawl is warranted. Inyang’s question about the cause of such a representation is not wholly answered by pointing toward Hollywood homophobia and sexism. Her question also demands that we reconsider the relationship between white and black women in lesbian bars. For it is not solely a fantasy of the blaxploitation genre that lesbian bars were contentious sites for black women.

Although lesbian bars historically may have offered black lesbians a temporary refuge from compulsory and hostile heterosexuality, they did not necessarily offer black lesbians a retreat from racism. As Rochella Thorpe states, “To declare the bars as a safe space for all would be to ignore the very real experiences of African-American lesbians” (, ).

As I point out in chapter , recent writing has challenged the notion that lesbian bars historically functioned as havens for all lesbians desiring contact and relationships with women in the public realm. Audre Lorde’s memories of lesbian bar life in Greenwich Village (), Rochella Thorpe’s work on lesbian bar life in Detroit (), and Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis’s oral history of lesbian bar culture in Buffalo, New York (), all demonstrate how lesbian bars in

96 Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown both the pre- and post-Stonewall period were marked by racial and class divisiveness. For example, Thorpe’s research on African American lesbian life in Detroit between  and  reveals that African American lesbians socialized mostly in house parties in the pre-Stonewall years.

This was not only because of the long tradition of house parties in African American nightlife but also because most lesbian bars refused either to admit or to graciously accept black women. Thorpe notes that some African American lesbians did venture into white lesbian bars in the s and s. Still, in these places socialization with white women was informed by racist ideology, if interaction was possible at all. One interviewee reveals that women of color were barred from lesbian bar space by a double standard at the door. She recounts how bouncers would ask African American women for extra I.D. (), an overtly racist act also experienced by Audre Lorde in Greenwich Village during the

s (, ). Additionally, when women of color were accepted into Detroit’s lesbian bars, their presence was tolerated on the implicit condition that they did not date white women (Thorpe , –).

As I will discuss in more detail in the next chapter, despite vast differences between the politics of interracial socialization in the past and present for both lesbian and heterosexual cultures, lesbian bars continue to be beset by both subtle and overt forms of racism. Sarah Schulman documents the practice of “quota systems” at New York city lesbian bars in the s and argues that little has changed in terms of lesbian bar racial dynamics (, –). And both Deborah P. Armory (,

) and Judith Halberstam (, ) argue that contemporary lesbian bars implicitly segregrate black and white women through music selection.

Rather than skirt this critical factor in lesbian bar dynamics, Badass Supermama’s reappropriation of Foxy Brown’s lesbian bar scene foregrounds black women’s tenuous relationship to lesbian bars. Working alongside Etang Inyang’s critical voice-over is the insertion of her own image into the bar brawl. As we witness women’s bodies flying over the bar counter and tumbling onto the floor, Inyang’s face slowly becomes mapped onto the scene, filling the frame in a close-up. As she surveys the scene that is played out across her face, she exhibits growing discomfort. As the barroom brawl escalates, Inyang’s looming position diminishes in scale. Now framed in a medium-long shot, Inyang appears as a

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bar patron who must defend herself from the bar’s chaos. To avoid physical confrontation, she crouches low to the ground, but her rolling on the floor suggests that she cannot avoid being a casualty of this altercation.

By casting herself as a bar patron and a casualty of its racial politics, Inyang reminds us of the black lesbian that this scene in Foxy Brown at once evokes and evacuates. On the one hand, Foxy Brown uses Claudia’s presence in the lesbian bar to invoke the black lesbian. As I stated earlier, Claudia’s presence in the bar is never explained through the film’s narrative. Though she explains to Foxy that she “was thirsty,” it is unclear why she chose this particular locale to quench her thirst. The film seems implicitly to acknowledge the historical equation of lesbians with prostitutes (see Nestle , –; Hart , –; and chapter  of this book). Indeed, Claudia in no way rejects the attention she receives from Bobbie. The black lesbian is also invoked by a woman who defends Foxy prior to the brawl. As Foxy tries to flee the bar with Claudia, she is threatened by a stocky white woman in a baseball cap. Coming to Foxy’s defense is a lesbian bar patron who informs the woman threatening Foxy that Foxy is her friend. Though it is unclear how they know one another, the film tentatively advances a racial connection. Though her attire is similar to that of the other lesbians, this woman appears as a less feminized and lighter version of Claudia, whose features, light skin, and silky long hair appear anglicized in comparison to Foxy’s skin tone and Afro-styled hair. Finally, the specter of the black lesbian is referenced by the appearance of an abstract painting of a nude black woman that adorns the wall.

On the other hand, even as it raises the possibility of such a category, Foxy Brown works harder to eradicate the notion of the black lesbian.

The potential blackness of the lesbian “friend” is too ambiguously rendered in the scene to register as such, and Claudia’s heterosexuality is reasserted by Foxy’s demand that she return to her husband. Most importantly, the depiction of the lesbian bar as an all-white space negates the possibility of black lesbianism. Although the painting of a nude black women opens up a space for the black lesbian, she appears only as an exotic commodity for white lesbians. Thus, Inyang’s insertion of herself into this scene foregrounds a lesbian identity that the film, its black heroine, and the diegetic lesbians do not want to allow for. Recasting the black lesbian in the film’s lesbian bar fantasy, Inyang thus foregrounds

98 Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown what Foxy Brown must negate in order to advance its implicit claims about race, gender, and sexuality.

“Can I Still Reinvent Myself?”

Resisting Lesbian Bar Representation

As Foxy and Claudia flee the lesbian bar in Badass Supermama, Inyang states in a voice-over her desperate need to reconstruct the scene’s narrative. Still visibly caught within Foxy Brown’s diegesis, she directs her words to Foxy: “I struggled to find your connections to women. I need to reinvent what I see. You are sisters. Lovers. Its easier to watch when I remake the story.” In this reinvention, we can imagine that there is no husband for Claudia to be “returned to” and no alliance between the white women and the drug syndicate. We can also reconceptualize the barroom brawl into a lovers’ quarrel between Foxy, Claudia, and Bobbie.

Maybe Claudia fled Foxy after an argument. Maybe she temporarily fell into the arms of Bobbie. Maybe Bobbie’s demand that Foxy “go find one of [her] own” is a reference neither to Foxy’s race nor to her sexuality but is Bobbie’s way of telling Foxy that her identity as a power femme might be complemented by a butch.

Whatever way Inyang might recast this drama, her refusal to accept Foxy Brown’s lesbian bar depiction, her questioning of the ideology that produced it, and her desire to reinvent it by recasting Foxy and Claudia as sisters or lovers refers to what Judith Mayne calls the “paradoxes of spectatorship” (, ). According to Mayne, although a film may expect a particular response from its spectators, this response is never guaranteed: “It is one thing to assume that cinema is determined in ideological ways . . . to assume, that is, that the various institutions of the cinema do project an ideal viewer, and another thing to assume that these projections work” ().

In this passage, Mayne references an issue that has energized feminist film theorists since the mid-s: female spectatorship. Ever since Laura Mulvey’s seminal essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” () simultaneously foregrounded and delimited the role of the female spectator of Hollywood narrative film, feminist film scholars have been preoccupied with advancing new arguments about the dynamics and agency of female spectatorship. Briefly, working within Freudian and Lacanian models of psychoanalysis, Mulvey argues that the conventions and pleasures of popular narrative cinema are structured by a patriar-

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chal unconscious in which women can occupy only passive spectatorial positions as objects of the “male gaze.” In order to move beyond what many considered to be the theoretical impasse of this argument, feminist film scholars (including Mulvey herself in a  follow-up essay) have since challenged Mulvey’s narrow conception of female spectatorship with a range of arguments.

One of the most significant contributions to the debate about female spectatorship has been the emergence of theoretical work about real social spectators. As Jackie Stacey notes, though work in television and cultural studies in the early s readily engaged in studies of actual audiences, real cinema spectators have been of little importance to film studies (, ). Mayne confirms Stacey’s summation: It has been an observation of long standing in film studies that the cinematic subject refers not to real people who attend movies and who may respond in a number of complex and compelling ways to the spectacle on screen, but rather to positions constructed by the various and inter-connecting institutions in the cinema. . . . Film theorists have insisted that the subject should not be confused with the individual. (, ) Indeed, Mulvey’s groundbreaking argument about the female spectator, as well as rebuttals to it from feminist film scholars working within a psychoanalytic framework, did not refer to the woman in the audience, who brings with her a range of experiences and social factors that influence her film comprehension. Rather, as Stacey argues, feminist film scholars in the s typically theorized the female spectator as a construct of the film apparatus instead of a real person (, ).

Several important studies have altered feminist film theory’s omission of the social and historical spectator. The work of Miriam Hansen (), Jacqueline Bobo (), Helen Taylor (), Andrea Weiss (), and Stacey has significantly influenced our understanding of female spectatorship by demonstrating how historical context, racial and sexual identity, extratextual considerations, and conscious forms of identification and desire dramatically inform women’s relationship to the cinema.

Through this work, women’s relationship to cinematic looking, desire, identification, pleasure, and consumption has been reconceptualized as heterogeneous, with women themselves reconfigured as agents in these processes.

Inyang’s desire to restage Foxy Brown’s narrative invokes one of the most frequently cited challenges to earlier models of spectatorship: the

100 Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown resistant spectator. Variously invoked by phrases such as the “oppositional gaze,” the “resisting spectator,” “reading against the grain,” “negotiated or oppositional reading,” “active [versus passive] spectatorship,”

“critical spectatorship,”“radical and contestatory viewing,” and “counter-readings,” the resistant spectator is theorized as a real viewer who is conscious of and rejects either all or some of a film’s dominant ideology. As Mayne points out, because contemporary film theory has been built on the implicit (or explicit, in the case of Mulvey) claim that the ideal spectator is positioned by Hollywood film as not only male but also white, heterosexual, and middle-class, challenges to this monolithic concept of the spectator typically have focused on the real resistant viewing practices and responses of groups outside this narrow category (, ).

Mayne notes that studies of resistant audiences tend to concentrate on the “‘marginal’ or ‘subcultural’ audience” (). For example, the particular spectatorial processes of white women (Stacey ), working-class audiences (Hansen ), teenagers (McRobbie ), black women (Bobo ), lesbians (Weiss , –; Whatling ), and queers (Doty ) have greatly enriched the theoretical discussions of film spectatorship.

Many of the claims made on behalf of the resistant spectator empower this person (or group) with a remarkable ability to wholly resist the psychic effects of cinema. Additionally, the resistant spectator is also empowered in some theoretical formulations with the ability to transform narrative content. As Mayne writes,

If apparatus theorists were overly zealous in defining all meanings as assigned ones, there has been considerable zeal at the other end of the spectrum as well, by virtually disavowing any power of institutions and conceptualizing readers/viewers as completely free and autonomous agents. (, )

For example, in my own earlier analysis of the femme spectator of Hollywood cinema (Hankin ), I suggest that femme spectators can transform male characters into butches and heterosexual stories into butch-femme narratives. Of the black female spectator who has cultivated an

“oppositional gaze,” bell hooks argues that she can evade cinematic identification with whiteness along and across gender lines: “Looking at films with an oppositional gaze, black women [are] able to critically assess the cinema’s construction of white womanhood as object of phal-

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locentric gaze and choose not to identify with either the victim or the perpetrator” (, ). Similarly empowering the social spectator is Alexander Doty. In his important contribution to queer theory, Doty challenges the notion that heterosexual meanings are ever assigned by texts, arguing instead that meaning resides in reception: I’ve got news for straight culture: your readings of texts are usually

“alternative” ones for me, and they often seem like desperate attempts to deny the queerness that is so clearly a part of mass culture. The day someone can establish without a doubt that images and other representations of men and women getting married, with their children, or even having sex, undeniably depict “straightness,” is the day someone can say no lesbian or gay has ever been married, had children from heterosexual intercourse, or had sex with someone of the other gender for any reason. (, xii)

Critically, then, my own earlier essay, hooks, and Doty maintain that, respectively, femme lesbians, black female, and queer spectators see through a different lens. For hooks, this difference transpires through a willful rejection of a text’s preferred meaning. For Doty, the notion that there is any preferred meaning to any text is eliminated. In doing so, each grants more agency to the viewer than to the text itself.

In her reevaluation of spectatorship theory, Mayne is wary of this kind of spectatorial empowerment, and she calls for less totalizing models:

To define texts as only offering the positions that viewers create for them, and thereby to mediate any notion of the cinematic institution out of existence, substitutes one monolithic political notion for another.

The challenge, then, is to understand the complicated ways in which meanings are both assigned and created. (, ) One of the strengths of Badass Supermama is its balancing between these two modes Mayne identifies. Even as she offers the video as a denaturalization of blaxploitation representation, Inyang refuses to articulate herself as wholly resistant to either Foxy Brown’s constructions of race, gender, and sexuality or their implications for the viewer—whether black female or other.

It is Inyang’s appropriation of Foxy Brown’s lesbian bar scene— Badass Supermama’s penultimate scene—that most clearly articulates this position. Notably, though Inyang’s voice-over invokes her resistance to Foxy Brown’s lesbian bar scene by questioning the ideology on which it rests,

102 Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown she also foregrounds her inability to resist this scene’s ideological force.

On the one hand, Inyang pits her strong identification with Foxy Brown against her ability to resist the film’s homophobia. On the other hand, Inyang implies that resistance is not possible for her, because she is not afforded a position even as a spectator.

Inyang mobilizes this first argument through her reappropriation of the lesbian bar scene. In directing her voice-over and her gaze toward Foxy and Claudia at the end of this scene, Inyang advances, albeit tentatively, her alignment with the blaxploitation heroine over the white lesbians. The alignment with Foxy that Inyang displays in this scene is consistent with her overall identification with and desire for Foxy Brown.

Through voice-over and filmic manipulation of Foxy Brown, Inyang reveals the significant role Foxy played in the shaping of her own identity as a black, overweight young woman. The pretitle sequence sets up Inyang’s identification with Foxy. To the backdrop of artifacts and sounds of children’s culture—a spinning carousel, circus music, a photograph of Inyang as a young girl—followed by the intrusion of blaxploitation music and an adult Inyang riding the carousel, the director begins her first of a series of voice-overs about her identification with the blaxploitation heroine:

“Like so many girl children I grew up faced with images of feminine beauty that I couldn’t relate to. My own sense of my beauty was shaped by what I saw in the movies. I was searching for a mirror. A true reflection of myself. The few black women I discovered looked nothing like me. Who were these women and where did they come from?

“When I was sixteen, I withdrew into myself. In my dream world I experimented with talkin’ trash, fighting, and kickin’ butt. You wouldn’t want to mess with me. I was powerful in those dreams.

“I wanted to be the world’s first black girl movie star. Can I still reinvent myself?”

This narration is immediately followed by the video’s title sequence, in which a screen displaying the title Badass Supermama is followed by the video’s first appropriated clip: the title sequence from Foxy Brown.

To the backdrop of a scantily clad Pam Grier posing for the camera, Inyang continues to explain her early identification with and desire for Grier’s character, Foxy Brown.

In the opening sequence, then, Inyang clearly sets up for the viewer her strong identification with Foxy. Inyang’s trajectory from identification with the blaxploitation heroine at the level of fantasy, to her desire

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to be a movie star herself, to the implication that she may have fulfilled this wish by becoming the “badass supermama” referenced in the title of her video, outlines her identification with the blaxploitation heroine at both extracinematic and cinematic levels. Throughout the video, she continues to foreground these different modes of identification. In particular, she highlights her engagement in what Stacey refers to as the identificatory practice of “transcendence” (, –). Though Stacey articulates this identificatory practice within the framework of a study of female audiences in post–World War II Britain, the schematic modes of identification she outlines have important insights for contemporary analyses of spectatorship.

Briefly, transcendence is identified by Stacey as a conscious form of cinematic identification that women in her study felt with female stars of the post–World War II era. Transcendence reveals the process by which women imagine themselves in the role of female characters as they watch them on the screen. For example, of Jennifer Jones in Duel in the Sun (), one woman in Stacey’s study wrote, “I’ll never forget [her] last crawl toward Gregory Peck over the rocks. I was with her every inch of the way and my heart was bursting to reach him” (). Similarly, another woman wrote, “Joan Crawford could evoke such pathos, and suffer such martyrdom . . . making you live each part” ().

Inyang’s identification with Foxy Brown along the lines of transcendence is foregrounded through her literal positioning of herself as a spectator of Foxy Brown. In Badass Supermama, we watch appropriated clips from Foxy Brown from the perspective of Inyang, who is seated alone in a darkened theater. At the beginning of Badass Supermama’s appropriation of Foxy Brown’s rape scene, we see Inyang’s face caught in a close-up and peppered by the play of projected lights. As Foxy successfully battles her rapists, Badass Supermama shows Inyang flailing her arms in the air as if she herself were fighting the men. Similarly, in an earlier appropriated scene from Foxy Brown, Foxy has come to the house of syndicate leader Katherine Wall to offer her the remnants of Foxy’s final act of vengeance: Katherine’s boyfriend’s penis in a pickle jar. As Foxy engages in her triumphant battle against Katherine and her henchmen, Inyang gleefully voices her alignment with Foxy, shouting, “Uh oh, look out Foxy!” “Get her!” and “Go on with your bad self!”

If Inyang’s “transcendent” identification with Foxy is clear in this scene, it bears mentioning that this scene also foregrounds Inyang’s alignment

104 Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown with homophobia, foreshadowing her later difficulty in aligning herself with the white bar lesbians. In this scene, racial epithets are hurled at Foxy, who in turn hurls homophobic remarks at Katherine. When Foxy enters Katherine’s home, she is called a “spook” by Katherine’s henchmen. A few moments later, when Foxy hands Katherine the castrated penis, Foxy refers to it as Katherine’s “faggot boyfriend.” Despite this homophobic gesture, Inyang’s identificatory transcendence with Foxy in this scene is clear. It is marked not only by her cheers for Foxy but also by the following scene in Badass Supermama, in which Inyang copies Foxy’s actions in Foxy Brown’s revenge scene. When Foxy enters Katherine’s home, she evades the bullets of Katherine’s minions by nonchalantly pulling a gun from behind her Afro. In a comic mimicry of this act, Inyang follows this scene by appearing in a close-up, pulling items out of her own Afro as a male promotional voice-over describes Grier:

“She’s bad, she’s beautiful, and she’s back. She’s Pam Grier, and when a woman is this hot you can never get enough. . . . She turns into a one-woman hit squad on a trail of vengeance lined with prostitutes, hitmen, thugs. She’s Pam Grier and she’s all yours.” Though Inyang presents this imitation parodically, registering humorous confusion as she pulls such items as a cocktail umbrella, a flower, and plastic handcuffs out of her Afro, her mobilization of parody works here not to reject her identification with the blaxploitation heroine but to foreground the fact that, as Stacey suggests, “contradictions of similarity and difference, recognition and separateness . . . characterise the relationship of female spectators and their star ideals” (, –). Inyang plays with this concept of similarity and difference throughout Badass Supermama.

Within the context of Inyang’s identification with Foxy, then, her alignment with Foxy during the lesbian bar scene is certainly expected. But it also raises her alignment with Foxy Brown’s homophobic reading, even as her voice-over works to reject it. Paula Graham’s somewhat speculative essay about lesbian cinematic identification offers a possible explanation for Inyang’s identification with Foxy in this scene. In “Girl’s Camp?

The Politics of Parody” (), Graham argues that lesbians often identify with amazons, warrior maids, and girlish cross-dressers despite these characters’ customary restoration of the heterosexual order and their frequent battles with lesbian-coded characters. Discussing films that pit amazons and feminized tomboys against lesbian-coded witches

Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown 105

Etang Inyang becomes a blaxploitation heroine in Badass Supermama. Courtesy of Etang Inyang.

and spinsters, such as Red Sonja (), Johnny Guitar (), Seven Women (), and Anne of the Indies (), Graham suggests that the amazons’ and tomboys’ attributes of power, confidence, and sexual as-sertiveness are more pleasing to lesbians than either the repressed or the excessive “feminine” sexuality of lesbian characters. Sally Munt confirms the lesbian affinity for the amazon figure. She demonstrates how, from the lesbian-feminist journal Amazon Quarterly of the s to the direct-action activist work of the Lesbian Avengers in the s, lesbians have drawn upon the figure of the amazon warrior or avenger for more than a quarter century (, –). Although Foxy’s sexuality is certainly coded as excessive, her strength and stature mark her as the classic amazon figure. Indeed, despite Grier’s notorious battles with lesbians in Foxy Brown, an image of Pam Grier wielding a machine gun appeared on one of the earliest flyers used to promote New York City’s Lesbian Avengers, a direct-action lesbian activist group dedicated to promoting lesbian visibility (Munt , ). In turn, Grier is no doubt referenced in Diane DiMassa’s lesbian comic strip Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian

106 Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown Terrorist. Like Foxy, Hothead Paisan is a woman who “pickles her dicks in a jar” (Munt , ).

But just as films may position us in ways that we may not be able or may not desire to reject, they also may refuse to grant us positions at all.

As my earlier discussion of blaxploitation ideology makes clear, one of its fictions is its negation of the black lesbian as either a representational figure or a spectator. Thus, even as Inyang advances an identificatory alignment with Foxy in her appropriation of Foxy Brown’s lesbian bar scene, she also foregrounds in her reinterpretation of that scene, the absence of a position for herself as a spectator. Indeed, Inyang’s framing of this scene is unique. Unlike other moments in the video, in which Inyang literally foregrounds herself as a spectator of Foxy Brown, we do not watch her appropriation of Foxy Brown’s bar scene from her point of view. Unlike her appropriations of Foxy Brown’s rape and penis-delivery scenes, in which she literally acts out her identificatory transcendence by verbally cheering for Foxy or physically taking on her characteristics, Inyang appears as neither a resistant nor a complicit spectator of the lesbian bar scene.

Similarly, just as Inyang posits this scene’s evacuation of herself as a spectator, she also uses optical effects to posit the lack of space or agency that this scene grants her as a representational figure. Inyang foregrounds this by showing the black lesbian’s liminality within the lesbian bar. Scaled down to fit visually within the diegesis, Inyang is literally immobilized by the fight, unable to do anything but duck the blows from both black and white women. As Foxy and Claudia run from the bar, Inyang, now caught in a close-up, sadly watches them but does not leave herself. Yet, her new framing in a close-up visually renders her on a different scale than the lesbians, pushing her outside of the diegesis. It is this position that Inyang closes the scene on, one in which she is caught within a liminal space between the lesbian bar and a space outside its narrative world. Significantly, she functions now like the exotic black woman who adorns the wall: a black lesbian who is marginal to the activity of the bar but still subject to its white gazes. In other words, Inyang simply doesn’t fit within Foxy Brown’s lesbian bar space, either as a spectator or as a subject of its representation.

What, then, are the implications of this penultimate scene? What does it mean that, in a video devoted to reassessing and challenging blaxploitation’s reductive constructions of race, gender, and sexuality, Inyang

Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown 107
eradicates space for herself both as a black lesbian spectator and as a representational figure? What does this conflicting strategy, which at once opens up the possibility of cinematic revision and closes it down, suggest about the politics and possibilities of “celluloid surgery”? What does it suggest about the relationship of identity to representation?

What does it say about black women and lesbian bar representation?

What it strongly suggests, I argue, is a notion that is often ignored in theories of spectatorial agency: the ideological force of images continues to matter. There are moments, Inyang seems to be suggesting, when the troubling aspects of identification and desire are put into sharp relief, when identification and desire seem not only impossible but undesirable. Now, I want to be very clear that this is not the same thing as arguing that Foxy Brown’s lesbian bar scene is simply a negative image wholly unavailable for female pleasure. For many cultural critics, lesbian and gay criticism often naively engages in simplistic notions of

“positive” versus “negative” imagery and is thus guilty not only of denying the progressive elements of so-called negative images but also of negating gay and lesbian pleasure from otherwise sexist and homophobic narratives. As a counterpoint to so-called positive-images scholarship, many scholars are beginning to reevaluate images previously condemned as sexist and/or homophobic. In addition to Mayne’s rereading of the women-in-prison genre, two figures recently reexamined include the lesbian vampire and the lesbian killer. Rather than arguing that the lesbian vampire genre invites a solely male pornographic gaze, which is how it has typically been defined within much feminist criticism, Ellis Hanson suggests that the genre actually foregrounds the potency of the lesbian gaze and destablizes the force of heternormative narratives (,

–). Clare Whatling also reclaims the potency of the lesbian vampire genre, arguing that “it is precisely in her ambiguity, her on-the-edgeness, that the lesbian vampire operates as an interesting, and productive, trope”

(, ). Whatling also recoups what she calls the “lesbian pyscho killer”

from critiques that would condemn her, and she highlights () the lesbian pleasure to be gained from films that feature lesbian murderers, such as Heavenly Creatures () and Butterfly Kiss ().

Central to both Hanson’s and Whatling’s reclamation of these figures is their highlighting of the figures’ strong lesbian fan base. Both authors make clear that, despite the academic condemnation and/or suspicion of these tropes, they have historically been popular among lesbian

108 Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown audiences. Additionally, they point out that criticism that faults these images as “negative” simply doesn’t account for the pleasure that they continue to afford lesbian (and gay) spectators.

In a similar vein, the heretofore suspect genre of blaxploitation has been the subject of critical reevaluation. In particular, new scholarly work is redefining earlier arguments that cast women’s relationship to the genre in negative terms. For example, though Mark Reid and Ed Guerrero both suggest that there is little in the black action genre for (black) women to identify with or to champion, both Z. Isiling Nataf and Jennifer Devere Brody argue that the genre can offer strong pleasures for women, and, in particular, black lesbians. In an article titled

“Black Lesbian Spectatorship and Pleasure in Popular Cinema” (), Nataf offers an analysis of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song that actually reverses the party line about the film’s relationship to women. She advances her argument through a reading of the film’s opening scene.

In this scene, after having sex with a black woman, a cross-dressed, dildo-wearing black lesbian is magically turned (to the delight of her sex partner) into the film’s male protagonist, complete with a “real”

penis. Though Nataf recognizes the heterosexist myths circulating in this scene, she also suggests that it offers the black lesbian pleasure, because the scene’s origin as a lesbian moment leaves a “lesbian residue”

in the male protagonist that can be read as central to his subsequent

“mythical power” (). Similarly, Brody finds a lesbian residue in the blaxploitation heroine Cleopatra Jones that makes her ripe for female and lesbian spectatorial pleasure. In her analysis of Cleopatra Jones and Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold, Brody takes earlier scholars of the genre (e.g., Guerrero, Reid, and Donald Bogle) to task both for negating the possibility of female identification with and pleasure from blaxploitation heroines and for delimiting the meaning of the blaxploitation heroine’s image. In contrast, she performs a careful reading of Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold to show how the film can actually “signify black queer desire” (, ). Through a detailed analysis of the film, she shows how, even though a white lesbian is the film’s antagonist, her lesbianism pervades the text, thereby sexualizing the playful banter and crime-fighting collaboration between Cleopatra Jones and her Asian sidekick, Mi Ling Fong (Tanny).

Like Hanson’s and Whatling’s reclamatory readings of heretofore suspect genres, Nataf ’s and Brody’s feminist and queer interventions into

Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown 109
extant blaxploitation scholarship (though the latter is still scant) are valuable for identifying not only blaxploitation’s contemporary female fan base but also the complexities of the genre itself. Indeed, they demonstrate how even the most disconcerting elements of blaxploitation—
sexism and homophobia—can produce moments of lesbian identification, desire, and pleasure. Certainly, though Nataf and Brody don’t address it, there are strong possibilities for reclamatory readings of Foxy Brown’s lesbian bar scene. From a contemporary vantage point, this scene positively reeks with campiness; its spectacularly silly dialogue, the characters’ exaggerated posturing, the downright seediness of the bar, and its presentation of the classic “catfight” between women can add up to a whole lot of cinematic fun. Moreover, though they, surprisingly, do not appear in Judith Halberstam’s filmography of cinematic butches, Bobbie and her bar cohorts in Foxy Brown certainly contribute to what Halberstam identifies as a rich tradition of female masculinity on film (,

–).

At the same time, however, it would be foolhardy to relegate contemporary understandings of this scene solely to the realm of camp or subversive pleasure. In other words, even as we may reclaim these images, it would be irresponsible to close down readings that highlight the force of their ideological work. Indeed, even as she finds much in the women-in-prison genre to praise from a feminist perspective, Mayne also recognizes that this appreciation comes with some price: There is much to love, and much to hate, about the women-in-prison film. Much to love in the sense that these films offer spectacles of female bonding, female rage, and female communities, with strong doses of camp and irony. Much to hate in the sense that scenes of rape and torture are staples of the genre, and no matter how campy the films are, they still play on the helplessness and victimization of women. (, ) Highlighting the ideological multiplicity of recuperated images is critical, given that, in some attempts to reclaim once-suspect genres or figures, any work that foregrounds the agency of images over that of spectators is wholly cast aside as retrograde. For example, Hanson’s otherwise excellent essay on the pleasures of the lesbian vampire genre is quite vitriolic toward earlier feminist critiques of this genre, and he accuses those lesbian scholars who have displayed ambivalence over the lesbian vampire of being either “repressed” or “dour feminist critic[s]”

(, ).14 Although I am sympathetic to Hanson’s argument and also

110 Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown find much pleasure in the vampire genre and his careful reading of it, I reject his implicit notion that ambivalence about images is symptomatic of prim feminist political correctness, repressed lesbian sexuality, or simplistic positive/negative criticism. Instead, it is precisely because of our new claims about spectatorial agency and “complicated” genres that we need to continue interrogating the power of images as well as our ambivalent responses to them.

Indeed, it is precisely Badass Supermama’s attention to both the agency of the spectator and the force of the image that makes it such an important contribution to discussions of spectatorship. This dynamic is cemented in the video’s closing sequence. Following Badass Supermama’s appropriation of Foxy Brown’s lesbian bar scene, Inyang turns to her final appropriated clip: a scene from Sheba, Baby. In this film, Grier plays Sheba Shayne, a detective whose murdered father sets her on the blaxploitation heroine’s requisite course of revenge and justice. In one scene, Sheba is caught in a situation where she must swim toward the boat of the white gangsters who killed her father. Poaching this clip for Badass Supermama’s finale, Inyang inserts herself into it through optical effects. As Sheba swims to the left of the frame, Inyang slowly swims toward her from the right as she addresses the character Foxy in her final voice-over: “Do I have to resist you, Foxy? Can I take what I see and make you my own? You were not created for my eyes. Now I can see that you exist in a vacuum. Your physical strength is like something out of a cartoon. Your life on-screen is defined only in relation to men. But all this didn’t matter to me. I claim you. You are mine. Where are you, Foxy Brown? I’m still looking for you. . . .

“I wanted you to star in the B movie called my life. The playful girl-hood world of masquerade and make-believe that I was growing out of. . . . I was desperate to be heard and noticed. . . . I thought you could help me find my voice again. The voice I lost somewhere between girl child and young woman.

“I say, scream, sister, scream, Foxy. I can hear you. Can you hear me too? Fighting to be real. Really ourselves. In control of our own images.

Beyond the spectacle.”

As Inyang and Sheba swim toward one another and orchestral music swells in a crescendo, the viewer expects the two to meet midway in a passionate embrace. However, despite this expectation encouraged by the mise-en-scène and cinematic conventions, Inyang swims past Sheba

Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown 111
and disappears out of the right frame. Badass Supermama’s final image is Sheba swimming alone in the water.

Significantly, then, Inyang ends Badass Supermama on both a utopian and a somber note. On the one hand, instructing Foxy to be in control of her own image and to move “beyond the spectacle,” Inyang demonstrates this possibility by successfully escaping the confines of the image—the frame of Sheba, Baby. On the other hand, Inyang leaves Sheba captured within the image. Rather than gesturing toward the possibility of the viewer’s, and particularly her own, total spectatorial resistance to this image, what Inyang points to here is the inability of any spectator to wholly escape the images that we are all constructed by and caught within. Inyang may have escaped, but Sheba, and therefore Grier, is unable to.

It is not insignificant that Inyang chose a clip from Sheba, Baby to cement this point, because its place in blaxploitation history and in Grier’s filmography demonstrates the limits of genre for black women.

Produced in , at the end of the blaxploitation era, Sheba, Baby reflects the growing public dissatisfaction with blaxploitation violence and ghetto glamorization.15 In order to placate these concerns, Sheba, Baby’s violence is much less sensational than Grier’s previous hits, Coffy and Foxy Brown. Instead of being a lone vigilante, as in Foxy Brown, Grier’s character in Sheba, Baby works on the side of the law as a former policewoman turned private investigator. As James Robert Parish and George H. Hill discuss, these changes worked against making this film a box-office success. They argue that black audiences were “baffled by the tentativeness of this new entry” (, ). Similar to Sheba, Baby’s failed attempt to repackage the blaxploitation formula, Pam Grier’s attempt to repackage her persona at this time was unproductive as well. Following her appearance in Sheba, Baby, Grier publicly articulated her desire to work outside the blaxploitation genre in movies in which she could play more serious, less stereotypical roles (Guerrero , ; Parish and Hill , ). However, Grier’s persona was not able to transcend the blaxploitation genre. As Ed Guerrero notes of Grier, as well as Tamara Dobson, “Both women’s talents were pretty much confined to articulat-ing the sex-violence-action scenarios of cheap Blaxploitation vehicles, and when the studios unplugged the genre, both were unceremoniously dumped” (, ). As Parish and Hill state, after Sheba, Baby “the black Queen of the B movies was dethroned” (, ).

112 Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown Grier’s work in film since the heyday of the blaxploitation film has been relegated to bit parts, and many of these roles reveal her inability to wholly escape the blaxploitation image she partly created. Thus, it is hardly surprising that the film that would give Grier her first starring role in twenty years would be one that clearly draws upon (and pays homage to) her blaxploitation image—Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown ().16 Nonetheless, given the continued lack of starring roles for black actresses, even Tarantino and his flair for revitalizing overlooked

s talent could not help her transcend this genre. Unlike John Travolta’s career, which was revived after starring in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (), Grier’s star has not risen since receiving accolades for her work in Jackie Brown. Her talent continues to be relegated to minor roles that often do not move outside cinema’s hackneyed caricatures of black women; in not-so-ironic fashion, Grier was recently seen singing spiri-tuals to a white woman in Jane Campion’s Holy Smoke ().

Thus, it is not surprising that Inyang closes Badass Supermama with a manipulation of Sheba, Baby. Both the history of Sheba, Baby and Inyang’s particular manipulation of its water scene clearly articulate Badass Supermama’s agenda concerning the relationship between representation, resistance, and identity construction. Given that Badass Supermama is about Inyang’s ardent identification with Grier, particularly as Foxy Brown, the video’s trapping of Grier within the film suggests that, just as Grier cannot escape the blaxploitation image defined for and by her, Inyang cannot wholly escape being caught within and defined by images of black women.

Does this also mean that Inyang is bound by Foxy Brown’s lesbian bar depiction, in which the black lesbian is at once absent and exoticized?

This problematic positioning of the black lesbian within bar space neither begins nor ends with Foxy Brown. As I argue in the introduction to this book, lesbian bar representations in the twentieth century depict bars as primarily white spaces. Save for a few nonwhite women, the women who populate the lesbian bars in such films and television shows as The Killing of Sister George, Mercy, Ellen, and Henry and June are white. At the same time, exoticized black lesbian bar patrons repeatedly appear in pulp fiction, journalistic exposés, and scientific studies.

This exoticization of women of color persists in contemporary depictions of lesbian bars. Most notable are the bar scenes in Living Out Loud and Boys on the Side. As I suggest in chapter , the white heterosexual

Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown 113
protagonist in Living Out Loud “finds herself ” after being caressed and ogled at by scantily clad women of color in a lesbian club.17 In Boys on the Side, the multicultural depiction of the lesbian bar contributes to the film’s overall fetish of the Southwest’s Hispanic culture.

Badass Supermama points to the tenuous relationship between black women and lesbian bars, and the history of these two representations is likewise inscribed in its project. Certainly, the video’s positioning of Inyang in a liminal space at once within and outside of Foxy Brown’s lesbian bar also references the history of women of color within lesbian bar representation. Thus, even as Inyang succeeds in denaturalizing this history through “celluloid surgery,” the video also intimates that she continues to be framed by and caught within this history.

Conclusion: “She’s Pam Grier and She’s All Yours”

But although Badass Supermama’s analysis of spectatorial resistance is somewhat ambivalent, the video hardly suggests Inyang has no agency.

Though the video’s various strategies suggest that we cannot totally resist the ideological constructs of cinema, they also suggest that, as fictions, these ideological constructs are always open to new interpretations. Indeed, through her celluloid surgery of key scenes in Foxy Brown, Inyang offers not simply an analysis of these scenes but new versions of them, presenting Badass Supermama as a remake of Foxy Brown. Not only does Badass Supermama invest Foxy’s rape with a seriousness that is denied by the original film, it also invests the lesbian bar’s racial divisiveness with far more complexity than Foxy Brown does, while also adding a new character that the blaxploitation version suppresses: the black lesbian. And although Inyang may not be able to resist identification with Foxy Brown’s Foxy, she is not content to let Foxy remain within that narrative. Instead, she works under the assumption that, as Chris Holmlund argues, cinema is made up of reusable “spare parts”

(, ). So, when an advertisement for Foxy Brown instructs Inyang that “she’s Pam Grier and she’s all yours,” Inyang takes this statement at face value. As an act of unwavering lesbian cinephilia, she recasts Foxy, her friends, and her foes in “the B movie called [her] life,” otherwise known as Badass Supermama.

C H A P T E R F O U R

Wish We Didn’t Have to Meet Secretly?

In the introductory essay of “Lesbians and Film,” a special section of Jump Cut published in , editors Edith Becker, Michelle Citron, Julia Lesage, and B. Ruby Rich suggest that the growth, diversity, and success of the nascent practice of lesbian independent cinema is contingent upon, among other key factors, its inclusion of lesbian history. In particular, the editors note that, “despite a network of lesbian and gay history projects,” they “have yet to see any film about that venerable main-stay of lesbian culture, the bars” ().1 At the time of their writing, lesbian filmmaking projects certainly were scant, and historical projects virtually nonexistent.2 By the mid-s, however, the lesbian historical film began to flourish, and in the s a small but significant number of documentaries centering on the lesbian bar emerged, constituting, as documentary theorist and historian Thomas Waugh suggests, their own genre (, ).3 This chapter focuses on this new genre by looking at four documentaries: Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (); The Riverview: A Lesbian Place (); The Boy Mechanic (); and Last Call at Maud’s ().4

Several identifiable factors help explain the growth of the lesbian bar documentary. Since the late s, lesbian artists have been working within a political and cultural economy that has enabled a thriving lesbian alternative film and video culture (albeit one that is still marginalized by dominant independent-film networks). Recent developments contributing to the rise of the lesbian bar documentary include the rapid growth of national and international lesbian and gay film and video 114

Wish We Didn’t Have to Meet Secretly? 115
festivals, the proliferation of distribution networks for lesbian artists, the creation of on-line virtual communities and resources for lesbian film- and videomakers, and the growing use and acceptance of video for public screenings. Along with the availability of material resources provided by archives and organizations such as the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives in Los Angeles, the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn, and the Astraea Lesbian Action Foundation in New York, these developments have worked to encourage and sustain the production, distribution, and exhibition of lesbian history projects such as the bar documentary.

Coupled with the changing landscape of lesbian alternative media has been a historiographic impulse born from a late-s mix of lesbian and gay civil rights work, queer politics, lesbian visibility, and AIDS
activism. For lesbians, this newly politicized climate mobilized, as Martha Gever suggests, “a decentralized, grassroots social history project of impressive dimensions” and an “activist-archivist impulse to locate and document lesbian resistance to oppression” (, –). In this common project, the lesbian bar documentary has been instrumental. Along with a spate of lesbian bar ethnographies and memoirs emerging at approximately the same time, the lesbian bar documentary presents a historiography of lesbians’ entry into and unique relationship to public space. (For a list of contemporary lesbian bar ethnographies and memoirs, see the introduction to this book.)

The lesbian bar documentary’s foregrounding of lesbians’ historically restricted relationship to public space leads me to suggest, without denying the significance of either the cultural economy or the historiographic impulse of lesbian film- and videomaking, that the rise and success of the genre indicate more than either of these factors can wholly explain.

I argue that the lesbian bar documentary, both in its emergence and in its various emphases, articulates contemporary lesbian anxieties regarding the continuously vexed relationship of lesbians to the public spatial realm. In particular, I suggest that the bar documentary is a register of lesbian anxiety regarding our access to and claims on public space in the contemporary moment, especially as this anxiety crystallizes around the current waning and transformation of lesbian bar space.

Motivating this claim is certainly the fact that the lesbian bar documentary revolves around closed or closing bars: Forbidden Love documents the lesbian bars of the pre-Stonewall urban centers of Canada; The

116 Wish We Didn’t Have to Meet Secretly?

Riverview documents a bar of the same name, which thrived in Rochester, New York, during the s and early s; The Boy Mechanic documents both the former and the contemporary lesbian bar scene of San Diego; and Last Call at Maud’s documents the history of pre-Stonewall California bars and the last days of the San Francisco bar Maud’s. As the closing of public institutions is always consequential for those whose lives thrive because of them, it is necessary to give more than a passing nod to this unifying feature of the lesbian bar documentary, especially given the centrality of the bar within lesbian culture and history. It is also necessary to pay critical attention to the bar documentary’s collective emphasis on the bygone bar, as it is simply the most acute manifestation of a larger trend in lesbian alternative media. Indeed, in a number of documentaries, the lesbian bar appears only in its past incarnation. This is the case even when contemporary lesbian life is either all or some of the documentary’s subject, as in Some Ground to Stand On (), Stolen Moments: A Century of Lesbian Culture and Identity (), The Body of a Poet (), and B.D. Women (). Even Bar Girls (), a popular fiction film revolving around lesbian barflies in Los Angeles, situates its fluffy story of dating drama in the context of a closing lesbian bar.

Further motivating my claim about the bar documentary is its collective use of nostalgia to fashion the bygone lesbian bar, thus registering a profound sense of loss. Although the loss that characterizes nostalgia is usually regarded as ersatz, “what is lost,” as David R. Shumway argues of this emotion, “need not be entirely fictional” (, ). Indeed, suffering from serial ephemerality, lesbian bars are historically marked by their status as bygone locales. Rochella Thorpe’s discussion of white lesbian bars in Detroit () suggests their precarious public status. Thorpe cites Detroit as accommodating at least twenty lesbian bars between  and ; yet the fact that only a handful remained in business for more than a few years points to the transient status of such spaces within the public realm. As each refers to lesbian bar life in so-called gay ghettos, both Audre Lorde’s remembrances of the short life span of the lesbian bars in Greenwich Village of the s (, ) and Deborah P. Armory’s remembrances of San Francisco’s short-lived Club Q during the late s () also exemplify the persistent evanes-cence of lesbian bar space.

Still, the bar documentaries under discussion are not devoid of the utopian complexion that is so characteristic of nostalgic visions of the

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past. Each documentary shirks crucial elements of lesbian bar history, such as its violent atmosphere, its racial complexity, and its chronic ephemerality, for a different, less historically accurate vision. However, if we agree with Lynn Spigel, who argues that “popular memory . . . is bound up with its use value in the present” (, ), then nostalgic visions of the past may be less a product of a culture’s historical erasures than a product of its contemporary needs and desires. For a lesbian subculture consistently plagued by violence in the public realm, troubled by internal dissension over race, class, and the politics of gender and sexual expression, and perpetually marked by its inability to maintain social space, visions of safe, racially harmonious, and durable spaces offered in the lesbian bar documentary function as a fantasy, certainly, but a fantasy that articulates a necessity still.

Finally, most notably marking the bar documentary’s symptomatic anxiety about public space is the timing of its emergence. It is not an accident that the bar documentary surfaces at a time when the character and meaning of lesbian bars within lesbian culture and life are undergoing significant transformation. Lesbian bars have lost much of their notoriety and singularity as shapers of lesbian identities and politics and as indispensable institutions in the public realm. Since Stonewall and second-wave feminism, nonbar space for lesbians within the public sphere has dramatically increased. As Gordon Brent Ingram, Anne-Marie Bouthillette, and Yolanda Retter contend, space “used for refuge, habitation, and play, has expanded and diversified” (, ). Indeed, Arlene Stein points out that
in the early s, in major urban centers across the nation one could find lesbian parenting groups, support groups for women with cancer and other life-threatening diseases, lesbian sex magazines, organizations for lesbian “career women” and lesbians-of-color, and mixed organizations in which out lesbians played visible roles. Gay/lesbian newspapers contained notices advertising hiking clubs for lesbians and their dogs, support groups for adult children of alcoholics, “leather and lace”

motorcycle clubs, groups for lesbian-identified transsexuals, and many others. (, )

The limited role of the lesbian bar in this newly expanded and diversified landscape is clearly marked by the difference from earlier incarnations in its current physicality and temporality. Although lesbian bars have historically been migratory and makeshift spaces, this status was never

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wholly desired; rather, it was usually the result of displacement or attempts to evade public detection. Conversely, contemporary lesbian bars often manifest themselves in the shape of irregularly scheduled, roving dance clubs rather than fixed, seven-day-a-week enterprises. Thus, the emergence of the neighborhood lesbian bar as a nostalgic documentary subject during this time of change may express dissatisfaction with the contemporary moment in bar history and lesbian sociality.

Using varying strategies, the bar documentaries speak directly and implicitly of this dissatisfaction: Forbidden Love, through its ironic fictional return to the world of lesbian pulp fiction and bar mythology; The Riverview, through its dramatic title sequence; The Boy Mechanic, through its juxtaposition of a lesbian ghost town against a thriving contemporary lesbian bar scene; and Last Call at Maud’s, through its highly revisionist rendering of the historical lesbian bar. They invite the lesbian viewer not only to think about what role(s) this public institution might still play for lesbians in the contemporary public realm but, more importantly, to speculate on what access to and place within public space we indeed have. For the remainder of this chapter, I turn to the different strategies of the lesbian bar documentary, paying sharp attention to how the various articulations of the social and spatial arrangements of the past not only reveal contemporary lesbian anxieties about our current mobility within the public realm but also express concern for the future of lesbian public space.

“She Heard These Places Could Be Dangerous, But . . .”

As an oral-history documentary, Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives uses the interview format to document the history of lesbian existence in pre-Stonewall Canada. Testimonials of nine lesbians, ranging from approximately forty to eighty years old, are juxtaposed with archival film footage and photography that corroborate participant recollections. Archival images accompany such participant topics as lesbian youth, butch-femme identities, homophobia, heterosexual marriage, and, for a good portion of the documentary, the relationship of these topics to lesbian bar life. Women’s experiences in pre-Stonewall lesbian bars in Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto are central to the documentary’s agenda; a postscript summarizes the film’s project as being a presentation of “the stories of lesbians whose desire for community led

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them on a dangerous search for the few public beer parlours that would tolerate openly ‘queer’ women in the s and ’s.”

Like earlier groundbreaking historical documentaries that reinscribe women and the particularities of gender into history from a feminist perspective, such as The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (), With Babies and Banners: The Story of the Women’s Emergency Brigade (), and Union Maids (), Forbidden Love reinscribes lesbians and the particularities of lesbian existence into twentieth-century history from a lesbian perspective.5 In doing so, Forbidden Love challenges and refashions the prevailing histories and notions of twentieth-century lesbian sexuality and sociality by calling forth and dismantling many of the stereotypes promulgated by scientific, popular, and journalistic sources.

At the same time, even as Forbidden Love works to redress the historical stereotypes of lesbians as tragic and isolated figures, the documentary also ironically constructs itself out of this stereotypical material, returning to and reconstructing the view of lesbian identity, life, and sexuality offered by the pulp-fiction industry of the s and s. Rather than rely solely on participant interviews and archival footage, Forbidden Love also supports its documentary agenda with an episodic re-creation of a classic lesbian pulp-fiction scenario. Opening with the first “chapter” of this scenario and punctuating the documentary with the remaining three

“chapters,” Forbidden Love places the seedy and tragic world of fictional lesbian pulp squarely in the center of its nonfictional documentary agenda. Indeed, despite the fact that the documentary’s participants cover a range of topics relevant to lesbian identity, the film’s repeated return to pulp through its presentation of an episodic narrative grants pulp primacy in the documentary’s meaning.

As I discuss in chapter , pulp fiction of the s and s worked alongside scientific studies, popular psychology, and sensational journalism in exposing the lesbian’s clandestine haunts to heterosexual audiences. But though lesbian pulp was marketed to heterosexual men, as several scholars and the narrators in Forbidden Love reveal, it also attracted a wide readership of lesbians (see Keller  and Walters ).

Not surprisingly, lesbians’ relationship to pulp was paradoxical. On the one hand, most pulp fiction represented its lesbian characters as a pathological lot doomed to a life of misery. Consequently, as many interview subjects in Forbidden Love attest, even though they savored pulp novels,

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lesbians were also all too aware of the dismal and dangerous portrait that pulp painted of their sexuality and their lives. As one participant, Keeley Moll, suggests, as far as dangerous misrepresentation of lesbian sexuality was concerned, pulp was second only to the Kinsey report on women.6

On the other hand, like pulp’s heterosexual readers, lesbian readers of pulp were instructed in the customs and locales of lesbian life. As Suzanna Danuta Walters says,

One could even see these books as a sort of “how-to” of lesbian lust. . . .

These books are travel guides to the seamy side of Village life, inviting the reader to venture into the bars and coffeeshops and test her skills with the ladies. From these books, one could learn the terminology, dress codes, and etiquette necessary to negotiate the lesbian subculture. (, ) Reva Hutkin, an elderly white woman interviewed in Forbidden Love, confirms the centrality of pulp ethnographies for the realities of lesbian lives. Describing how lesbian pulp novels provided her with the impe-tus to leave her husband for another woman (also a heretofore heterosexual who had given her the novels) and to seek out other lesbians in New York, Hutkin jokingly remembers: “We thought [that] all the lesbians obviously live[d] in New York, in Greenwich Village, at least the books said that’s where they all lived. We decided we had to go and find the lesbians. So I put on what I thought was my best butch clothing,

’cause we thought they were all butch and femme. And I put on my red blazer and tie and a shirt and dark pants, and my lover wore a dress, and off we went to Greenwich Village to look for the lesbians.”

Clearly, then, pulp fiction was important to lesbians in the s and

s, not only because it allowed them to realize there were indeed other women like themselves but also because it enabled them to imagine, seek out, and find a place for themselves within the public realm.

Pulp fiction was inextricably tied to the promotion and success of lesbian bars: reading pulp helped lesbians find, or at least begin to seek out, as in the case of Hutkin, the only space within the public realm available for them. Indeed, Joan Nestle may not be overstating the case when she says that purchasing lesbian pulp in the mid-twentieth century was “tan-tamount to coming out yourself ” (qtd. in Hamer , ).

As an industry born in part to titillate heterosexual readers with tales and pathologies of deviant sexuality, yet one that simultaneously found

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its way to lesbians and motivated them to seek out bars and to forge identities in the public realm, pulp fiction’s centrality in a lesbian-produced bar documentary is at once warranted and ironic. In irony, the rhetorical mode of saying or representing something not actually meant with the expectation that people will understand both what is meant and the intended attitude toward that meaning (Hutcheon , ), Forbidden Love uses the very representational codes and formulas of traditional pulp fiction that once guaranteed lesbians a life of misery—rejection and banishment from home, the flight to dangerous urban lesbian bars, the seduction by an aggressive, trouser-clad barfly, and the unhappy acknowledgment of lesbian identity—but tacitly reframes their meaning.

Indeed, Forbidden Love’s pulp sequence is strikingly similar to the journeys of Ann Bannon’s anti-heroine Laura Landon in Bannon’s novels Odd Girl Out ([] ) and I Am a Woman ([a] ).7 In Odd Girl Out, Laura, a shy, white college freshman is pursued by Beth, an older, attractive sorority sister, until Beth complicates matters by turning her affections toward a male student, Charlie. Torn between two lovers, Beth decides to quit college and run away with Laura to New York City.

However, on their planned departure day, Charlie convinces Beth of the spuriousness of her lesbian love. He drives Beth to the train station, where she informs a distraught but wiser Laura that she will not be leaving with her. Odd Girl Out ends with their dramatic, tearful good-bye at the train station and the knowledge that Laura will begin her journey toward a lesbian life alone. This life commences in Bannon’s next novel, I Am a Woman.

Forbidden Love’s pulp scenario begins roughly where Odd Girl Out ends, with a tearful good-bye between two young white women, who are also named Laura and Beth, at a rural train station. Beth (Marie-Jo Therio) and her boyfriend Bill (George Thomas) drive along a country road toward a train station, where Laura (Stephanie Morgenstern) waits.

At the station, the young man implores Beth to stay in the car, judging, somewhat disingenuously, that it might be better for Laura if she does not see Beth. Rejecting his judgment, Beth tenderly tells him that she needs to see Laura, and then meets a hopeful-looking Laura on the station platform. When Laura realizes that Beth has come not to leave with her but to say good-bye, Laura begs her to change her mind, but her desperate pleas are in vain. Beth flees into her boyfriend’s arms, leaving Laura as shocked and dejected as her literary predecessor.

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But it is at this moment of precise attention to the literary pulp formula that Forbidden Love gives way to its first moment of reflexivity, turning away from rules of narrative seamlessness to highlight this scenario’s function and construction as fiction, as pulp.8 As Laura listlessly waves good-bye to Beth, orchestral music crescendoes, and Laura’s train-side image—a petite blond carrying a suitcase, surrounded by engine smoke, and caught in a medium-long shot that emphasizes her impotence and isolation—is caught in a freeze-frame and slowly dissolves into an illustrated version of the same image. Marked with the provocative title Forbidden Love and a lurid copy blurb promising to expose “the unashamed stories of lesbian lives,” this image is quickly identified as the cover of a mid-twentieth-century lesbian pulp novel when the camera pans over a host of equally provocatively titled novels from this former cottage industry: Man Hater, Lesbians in Black Lace, Women’s Barracks, Girls’ Dormitory. Solidifying its reflexive relationship to this fictional world, Forbidden Love follows this opening with a series of interviews with lesbians about their relationship to pulp. The entire documentary remains in this reflexive mode. Each new episode of Laura’s journey is introduced by a creamy white hand with painted red nails opening a new “chapter” of the pulp paperback. Each transition back into the world of traditional documentary is marked by a similar freeze-frame–dissolve technique that turns filmic image into pulp excess: limp hair swells buoyantly, slender bodies dissolve into curvaceous Varga-esque figures, and the mise-en-scène blushes effulgent hues.

If, as Linda Hutcheon suggests, irony operates “as a form of guerrilla warfare,” working “to change how people interpret” (, ), Forbidden Love begs us to read its pulp narrative in this rhetorical mode. Though the mise-en-scène, dialogue, and narrative trajectory of Laura’s journey from rural normativity to urban deviance render Forbidden Love’s pulp saga every bit as formulaic as its literary predecessor, the documentary’s attention to the history, artifice, and lesbian consumption of pulp undercuts both its own sobriety toward its book-within-a-film and our engagement with this drama on its formulaic terms and expectations. If, in the prereflexive beginning of the film, Forbidden Love instructs us to engage with Laura’s saga on its own tragic terms, in the postreflexive moments we are no longer expected to interpret her story as its tragic conventions demand. Once the ideological imperatives of lesbian pulp are rendered transparent, the “tragedy” of Laura’s confirmation of her

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lesbian identity and her banishment from rural heteronormativity quickly take on an ironic glow.

Thus, irony is the rhetorical mode that colors all of Laura’s journeys, including her travels to the “dangerous” underworld of public lesbian life. Following Laura’s formulaic exile in “chapter ,” “chapter ” continues in pulp tradition with the requisite novice’s pilgrimage to a lesbian bar, beginning with a hesitant Laura captured outside the bar in a close-up, musing over her predicament. As the film cuts from the bar’s dark, quiet exterior to its dimly lit, bustling interior, a female voice-over drenched in excessive pathos reveals Laura’s thoughts: “Laura’s heart was pounding. She heard these places could be dangerous, but her need to be with other women who were like her—like that—was stronger than her fear.” As she timidly enters the bar, her strange and reticent presence intrigues Mitch (Lynne Adams), an attractive, trouser-clad brunet hover-ing over the jukebox. With Jimmie Rodgers’s tune “Secretly” playing on the jukebox, Mitch swaggers to Laura’s table as Rodgers croons: Why must I meet you in a secret rendezvous?

Why must we steal away to steal a kiss or two?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Why, oh, why, oh why, oh, why, oh why?

Wish we didn’t have to meet secretly

Wish we didn’t have to kiss secretly . . .

Asked to dance, Laura, though tempted, is gripped with fear. Rising to leave, she is arrested by Mitch’s grasp and remains immobilized until they dissolve into brighter, illustrated versions of themselves. Mitch and Laura’s potential romance thus presents a cliff-hanger at the end of

“chapter ,” leaving both Laura and Forbidden Love’s “readers” fervently wondering along with the histrionic narrator, “If she leaves, will there be a next time?”

Laura doesn’t take that chance. “Chapter ” finds her in Mitch’s apartment, where they passionately dance until they consummate their desire in the final chapter of Laura’s journey, which also serves as the penultimate scene of the documentary. Rising after a night of passionate sex, Laura wakes up to the now familiar tune “Secretly,” sated and filled with a newfound clarity about her identity. The narrator, still dripping with emotion, reveals the conclusive truth as Laura and Mitch now predictably dissolve into cover art: “Laura thought she’d be caught in a hideous trap

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of warped desire. Instead she found her wildest dreams come true. Now she knew what she was for sure: A lesbian!” From banishment to bar to bedroom, Laura’s journey ends triumphantly—without trauma, without retribution, and without an identity crisis.

Insofar as Laura’s visit to a lesbian bar leads to the confirmation of her sexual identity, it corroborates academic and autobiographical writing on the centrality of the lesbian bar in the formation and sustenance of pre-Stonewall, twentieth-century white lesbian identity. The findings of this work are in turn confirmed by the statements of a number of documentary participants, not only in Forbidden Love but also in Last Call at Maud’s, The Riverview, and The Boy Mechanic. In each documentary, the bar is articulated as a primary site in which women first discovered and/or confirmed their individual identities as lesbians. Echoing throughout the entire genre are variations of such statements as, “I experienced a lot of firsts here,” “[The bar] is the foundation of my history,” “After a couple of hours, I decided [the bar] was where I wanted to be,” and “The first lesbian bar I went to really made me feel like a queer. That’s, I think, how I wanted to feel.”

Based both on Laura’s narrative and on interviewee proclamations, then, the bar is revealed to be a fundamental institution in lesbian life and for lesbian survival. However, as it is framed within the context of a lesbian oral-history documentary, the lesbian bar is encased within the documentary’s pre-Stonewall historical scope. Thus, Forbidden Love’s assertions regarding the relationship of lesbians to bars are relegated to the past; the documentary regards the bar as a necessity of and in a prior time and not, therefore, a necessity of and in the present. Certainly, the documentary—in both its fictional and its documentary incarnations—bears out this dichotomized framework of past juxtaposed to present. Though the pulp strategically deployed in Forbidden Love counters its morose literary prototype, the use of pulp also can be understood to speak of some of the particular conditions of lesbian existence in prior eras. That Laura has only the “dangerous” and “secret” urban bar to flee to after being banished from her home speaks of an era prior to the gains born of second-wave feminism and lesbian and gay civil rights work. Testimonials and archival footage of this historical period that speak of not only the joys but also the difficulties of lesbian life at this time keep our attention directed to this bygone era.

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In turn, the past is set against the present by the use of middle-aged and elderly interview subjects, whose stories of endurance, exemplified by their mere presence (particularly of the elderly women) and speaking positions in the contemporary moment as lesbians, suggest a clear line demarcating the travails of the past from those of the present. Indeed, Forbidden Love’s interview participants are presented as warriors and heroines whose difficult battles in the past guarantee them a more liberated existence in the present. On example is Lois M. Stuart, who speaks of the erstwhile necessity of carrying a knife to bars for protection and is then shown marching in an unidentified contemporary parade holding a pro-choice banner. Stuart is clearly positioned here as a woman no longer relegated to a life of bars and secrecy. Benefiting from second-wave feminism and lesbian visibility, she is able to walk the streets as a feminist and as a lesbian. This is a position the presumably lesbian audience, equally implicated in this historical framework, will identify with. Setting our contemporary positions against those of past generations, we watch Forbidden Love at film festivals or in our homes understanding that, unlike Rodgers’s disheartened and pessimistic ditty, we no longer have to wish we didn’t have to meet secretly.

However, two factors trouble this neat conceptualization of Forbidden Love’s agenda and meanings. First, despite the fact that testimonials quickly turn away from the topic of lesbian pulp and toward a range of other topics relevant to lesbian identity, the film’s repeated return to pulp through its episodic narrative grants pulp primacy in its documentary meaning. It is pulp that captures both the filmmakers’ and the viewers’ attention. Indeed, as Amy Villarejo notes in her analysis of the film, Forbidden Love’s visual incorporation of lesbian pulp, particularly its lurid covers, in both promotional materials and the film itself, mimics the historical function of pulp cover art by acting as the “point of sale”

between the filmmakers and the viewers (, ). What drives both the historic reader to pulp fiction and the contemporary lesbian viewer to Forbidden Love is, Villarejo argues, the visual rendering of pulp. Although Villarejo draws a different conclusion than I do regarding the meaning generated by the film’s deployment of lesbian pulp, what I want to emphasize here is that it is the pulp fantasy, rather than the contemporary lives of the narrators, that is central to the meanings and concerns of the film. It is indeed the point of sale, in more ways than one.9

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Additionally, the film’s mobilization of irony limits accepting the notion, advanced by the documentary’s historical framework, that lesbians have moved from secrecy to liberation. If irony is the rhetorical mode through which Forbidden Love’s pulp scenario is deployed by its filmmakers and also the lens through which it is understood by its audiences, the film’s lesbian bar also must be understood according to this rhetorical mode and within this framework. In this light, Laura’s journey to the single place within the public realm that will accept her—the “dangerous” bar—does not support Forbidden Love’s historical framework, which juxtaposes the adverse conditions of the past to the more amen-able conditions of the present. Rather, through the film’s mobilization of irony, particularly the ironic production and reception of its voice-over and sound track, Laura’s journeys and adventures in the bar reference the liberatory powers of the pre-Stonewall bar and the uncertainty of lesbian security within the contemporary public realm. Likewise, Rodgers’s repetitious and strategically placed battle cry for lesbian space,

“Wish we didn’t have to meet secretly,” is incongruous with Forbidden Love’s pulp narrative, which advances nothing undesirable about seeking out and entering the lesbian bar. Rather, entering the lesbian bar is the catalyst for Laura’s identity and sexual formation and liberation.

These lyrics work similarly to the ironic use of sound track in Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game (). In the context of a love story between a male transvestite and two presumably straight men, the heterosexual meanings of the popular songs “When a Man Loves a Woman” and

“Stand by Your Man” are rendered inoperative and rerouted to reflect this queer love. Similarly, in light of the rewards granted to Mitch and Laura by seeking out lesbian bar space, the sobriety of Rodgers’s plea is an-nulled.

But if “Wish we didn’t have to meet secretly” is indeed deployed ironically, its unstated yet preferred meaning presumably might be some version of: “Wish we were meeting secretly,” arguably not a progressive plea for lesbian civil rights and visibility. Yet this desire to maintain the secret space of the bar is quite evident not only in Forbidden Love but in the entire bar documentary genre. This desire is revealed from the perspectives of a young urban San Franciscan, Last Call at Maud’s participant Mary Wings, and Lois Stuart, one of the older participants in Forbidden Love. In the beginning of Last Call at Maud’s, Wings romantically claims, “Lesbians are outlaws. We have always been outlaws and I hope

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we always stay outlaws. And lesbian bars are our secret hiding places.”

Her assertion is matched with equal fervor in Stuart’s animated desire for the outlaw status of the bar at the end of Forbidden Love. After the credits have rolled, in the final scene of the documentary, the viewer is privy to a conversation between Stuart and Jeanne Healy, both elderly white women living in Toronto. Half joking, Healy taunts Stuart: “Lois, with our luck this movie will be a hit and [there will] be people lined up outside with baseball bats to get us,” to which Stuart gleefully responds:

“Won’t be anything new for me. It’ll be like the old days outside one of the gay bars. They were great stuff!”

Just as Rodgers’s melodic plea for lesbians does not ring true in a narrative that foregrounds the joys of “meeting secretly,” Laura’s concern for her safety before entering the lesbian bar similarly rings false.

Because Laura enters not a world of danger but a secluded world of identification and romance, her pre-entry concern that “these places could be dangerous” works ironically to suggest that it is not the public space of the lesbian bar that is dangerous but spaces elsewhere in the public realm. Indeed, the dangers lesbians face within the public realm is a real concern for several interviewees. Stephanie Ozard, now a minister of a gay church, discusses several recent church burnings and violent hate crimes against gay and lesbian clergy. Ruth Christine, the youngest interviewee, categorically states, “I trust all women. If there were only women in the world, I would never lock my doors.” It would be foolish not to take seriously, as well, Healy’s half-joking concerns for her and Stuart’s safety following Forbidden Love’s screening.

I neither want to equate these fears to one another nor find it necessary to challenge what so clearly seems like Christine’s intentionally hyperbolic statement, but I do want to suggest that these statements trouble the documentary’s historical framework. Coupled with Forbidden Love’s irony about the “dangerous” and “secret” lesbian bar and the documentary’s concluding word being Stuart’s romanticization of bar life, Ozard’s and Christine’s fears of public life for lesbians in the present day suggest that rather than presenting a neat progression from dangerous past to liberated present, Forbidden Love actually undercuts this agenda by implicitly foregrounding the vulnerability of lesbian publicity within the contemporary moment. The documentary implicitly suggests that the lesbian bar might have offered something to women in the face of this fear and danger that the contemporary moment of less

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fettered public mobility might not. This is a suggestion that The Riverview, to which I now turn, is much bolder in making.

“In a Time When There Wasn’t a Lot of Places for Lesbians to Go . . .”

Like the interviewees telling of bar life in Forbidden Love and Last Call at Maud’s, the participants in The Riverview: A Lesbian Place point to the Riverview, of Rochester, New York, fondly called “the Riv” by its un-named regulars, as a multipurpose sanctuary. Many women regard the bar as a place to relax and socialize with other women; others see it as a daily or weekend respite from the straight world. More than one narrator defines the bar as home away from, or in lieu of, straight home life.

Moreover, as a bar that emerged in the early s, during the post-Stonewall era of second-wave feminism and gay liberation, and which operated until the early s, the Riv is also remembered as a location for political organization. One narrator, a founding member of the University of Rochester’s first gay and lesbian student group, which met at the Riv, recalls the integration of what she calls the Riv’s “street dykes”

and “old-style role-playing women” into this student organization. Thus, the bar space offered a common meeting ground for young college lesbians and bar dykes. And, as a home for newly politicized lesbian feminists, the Riv is also remembered as a rendezvous point following dangerous political actions in the public realm. One woman recalls that the Riv served as a meeting place for members of the organization Women against Violence against Women. After wheat-pasting flyers about bat-tered women in public spaces, lesbian activists would congregate at the Riv to find out whether any members had been arrested during the course of the evening. Of course, the Riv is also remembered as a general safe house for lesbians. One narrator remembers the owner’s vigilance at turning away people whom she thought might be uncomfortable at the Riv or threatening to its customers, even to the point of assuming that the narrator herself was heterosexual on her first visit and denying her entrance.

An amateur production, The Riverview uses few documentary techniques.10 Save for a reenactment-based title sequence, the video relies solely on the talking-head format to deliver its documentary voice, that function “which conveys to us a sense of a text’s social point of view, of how it is speaking to us and how it is organizing the materials it is pre-

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senting to us” (Nichols , ). Except for one photograph of the now deceased bar owner, no archival footage or reenactments are used to support or contradict participants’ claims. Likewise, the video does not deploy any editing technique that might draw attention to conflicts or contradictions between testimonial memories, as one might find in more sophisticated documentary work. Outside of the participants’ ten-year-old memories, it might be argued that The Riverview lacks what Bill Nichols deems crucial for the oral-history documentary: an “independent consciousness, a voice of its own” (, ).

Yet even a documentary that lacks authorial voice posits a point of view. As a tribute to the bar’s female owner, Lou, there is arguably a general feeling of respect put forth by participants for both the social space of the Riv and the woman whose desire and willingness to protect and shelter local lesbians terminated only at her death. Apart from one participant’s claim that, as a woman slightly older than many bar goers—
forty-one at the time—she was not always comfortable at the Riv, reverence remains the overall participant position on the Riv. The documentary also advances a general sense of loss for the Riv, summed up close to the end of the video as one participant sadly but assuredly affirms that there will never again be a place like it.

Still, despite revealing a sense of loss for this space, The Riverview also advances the notion that the Riv was a product of its era. As one participant asserts, “In a time when there wasn’t a lot of places for lesbians to go, the Riverview was there.” Another narrator supports this assertion by pointing to the Lesbian Resource Center as the only other space apart from the Riv where lesbians could meet publicly as lesbians.

She also notes that the bar was the only public space where lesbians could relax and turn off politics if they so desired. Thus, in a historical framework similar to that of Forbidden Love, The Riverview juxtaposes the current conditions of lesbian public space against those of the past by specifically positing the Riv as a necessary institution in the decade following Stonewall. Although the video offers no comparative commentary on the status of lesbian bars in the present, similar to Forbidden Love, the participants’ presence as lesbians in a publicly circulated documentary about lesbian life bespeaks greater spatial mobility for lesbians in the contemporary moment. The juxtaposition of past and present is nowhere near as striking in The Riverview as it is in Forbidden Love, in which several women in their seventies discuss the radically different

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conditions for public lesbian life in the much bygone past, but The Riverview participants’ discussion in the early s of bar life in the s and early s nevertheless likewise speaks of a bygone era for lesbians.

The Riverview particularly signifies this bygone era through its use of

“women’s music,” which, as Karin Quimby argues, typically evokes an earlier period in lesbian culture and history. “Women’s music,” she suggests, “provides, for many lesbians who came out in the s, and even for some who came out in the eighties and nineties, a ‘common sense’

of a lesbian past” (, ). Framing the documentary with the music of Cris Williamson, a popular singer of women’s music whose songs are firmly associated with the women-only spaces and lesbian culture of the s, The Riverview thus sets the Riv within the context of a lesbian yesteryear.

At the same time, though The Riverview juxtaposes the s to the

s, its lack of voice beyond the recall of its participants limits its ability to cast an overarching social point of view about the Riv. It is unclear, beyond its memorializing status, what the documentary ultimately wants to say about the Riv. Do the women who appear in the documentary wish the Riv were still open? If the bar still existed, would they frequent it? Has another institution filled the void created by the Riv’s dissolution? Likewise, it is also unclear beyond the video’s historical juxtaposition what current conditions are like for lesbians in the public realm. Is a public institution such as the Riv—the neighborhood tavern operating seven days a week—still necessary for lesbians in midsize cities? Are lesbians beyond needing the space of the bar for relaxation, political mobilization, and a respite from a hostile world?

If the bulk of The Riverview—its documentary testimonials—is wanting in social commentary, its narrative-based opening credit sequence is overburdened with an assessment of precisely these questions and concerns. The body of the documentary serves as a tribute to Lou and the Riv of the past, and the title sequence, I argue, presents both a rumina-tion on and a lament for public lesbian space in the present. In an un-polished manner that bears the markings of its amateur status, The Riverview opens with a point-of-view shot from the backseat of a van, focusing on the female driver and two female passengers as they ride on a dimly lit, desolate road late at night. The van makes a short stop, and two women rush out. As if on a covert operation, the women begin wheat-pasting flyers to a graffiti-ridden wall. In the next shot, the flyers

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Posting credits of a lesbian video is risky business in The Riverview: A Lesbian Place.

appear in a close-up, providing the title and directorial information of the video. Following this act, the women furtively run back to the van, which quickly speeds away. The next shot, now in the daytime, is again from the interior of the van, but this time its focus is an extended stay on the exterior of a building, later shown in the video to be the former site of the Riv.

This opening scene of a “covert operation” invites several readings.

Clearly, in the context of the testimonials citing the Riv as a home to political activists, particularly the Women against Violence against Women organization, this scene begs to be read as a dramatic reenactment of that history. The dramatic reenactment is one commonly used form of documentary evidence. As Bill Nichols argues, it is often deployed in nonfiction works to “reconstruct the mise-en-scène of presumed truth”

advanced by authorial perspective, witness testimonials, or archival footage. Additionally, as Nichols outlines, reenactments can be used to challenge or expand the agenda of presumed truth put forth by these evidentiary modes (, ). In The Riverview, the mininarrative of lesbians entering nocturnal urban space to perform the illegal activity of public

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defacement (marked as such by its alignment with and proximity to graffiti) works in the former mode. It operates as evidentiary support by visually reconstructing, confirming, and narratively expanding on witness testimonials of the Riverview patrons’ feminist activist work.

But if The Riverview’s title sequence is mobilized to reconstruct the mise-en-scène alluded to by its participants, its illustration ultimately fails to match participants’ memories. In the interview portion of the video, urban activism is remembered not in and of itself but in relation to the Riv. In the discussion of public activism, the Riv plays a central role. It is understood not only as a place that spawned political consciousness but, more importantly, as a place that provided asylum for feminist activists. Thus, in The Riverview we see a clear connection between political activism and the lesbian bar, the former functioning because of, not in spite of, the latter. Returning to the reenactment, however, we find that the Riv is not reconstructed as the safe house it is described to have been, as the video opts not to dramatize post-urban activist life at the Riv. Rather, instead of depicting the Riv within the framework of reenaction that would portray it as it was ten or more years ago, the Riv is portrayed in the title sequence within the framework of documentary realism. A protracted video image of the building that was the Riv’s former site completes the opening credit sequence.

What this sequence offers, then, is quite the opposite of an illustrative documentary reenactment, which would visually reconstruct participants’ memories about the Riv as a safe space for political activists.

Rather, within this reconstruction, the Riv is erased, absent and unavailable for refuge. Thus, unlike its testimonial of origin, this reconstruction finds its political activists free-floating in urban space, neither coming from nor returning to the space of the lesbian bar. But there is still more to suggest that this sequence is less illustrative and more allegorical.

Though the title sequence is clearly identifiable as illustrating the Riv’s relationship to political urban activism, as the opening sequence of the video it precedes not only its own testimonial origin but all participant testimonial. Opening the documentary, it is a reenactment without a referent, a free-floating dramatic reconstruction not yet employed to signify and support video testimonial.

But, temporarily freed from its service as a buttress to historical veracity, this title sequence is not devoid of meaning. Its meaning is still generated through its representation as covert and dangerous activity in

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The building that once housed the Riv, in The Riverview: A Lesbian Place.

the urban realm. But, rather than the danger coming from activist wheat-pasting in the public realm, I suggest that it is lesbianism itself that this independently functioning sequence regards as the real dangerous and risk-taking public activity. It is public lesbianism, not activist work, that this sequence implicitly suggests must be surreptitiously executed with a prudent eye and plenty of backup. More significantly, as this sequence is meant to signify the current moment by performing double duty as the video’s title credits, it positions the risks of public lesbianism not in some mythical past but in the contemporary moment. In other words, by depicting the precariousness of lesbian video work, this dramatic title sequence works not to isolate the insecurity of past public lesbianism but, rather, to foreground the precariousness of lesbian identity in contemporary public space.

As I argue in chapter , through a number of official and subtle mech-anisms space is vigilantly constructed as heterosexual. In order for public space not to be heterosexual, it has to be either seized by gays and lesbians or sanctioned for gay and lesbian use by heteronormative ruling bodies. The former is exemplified by Queer Nation’s same-sex “kiss-ins”

at malls and restaurants or by the Lesbian Avengers’ marching in front of elementary schools to promote lesbian visibility. The municipal

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monitoring of lesbian and gay pride parades across the country or official “gay days” at theme parks exemplifies the latter. In both cases, queer space is transitory and usually subject, as Phillip Brian Harper argues, to “intense regulatory scrutiny” (, x).11

Of course, there are locations, as many can attest, where queer sexuality is less transitory and less monitored. For theorist Sally Munt, her eight-year residence in Britain’s coastal town of Brighton, “the location of the dirty weekend,” offered her the kind of lesbian mobility that her new home in Nottingham, the mythic land of Robin Hood and its rugged, romantic, populist heterosexual masculinity, does not: Promenading on a Sunday afternoon on the pier, loitering in the Lanes, or taking a long coffee on the seafront . . . the gaze is gay. Brighton introduced me to the dyke stare, it gave me permission to stare. It made me feel I was worth staring at, and I learned to dress for the occasion. . . .

It’s colder in Nottingham. . . . When the gaze turns, its intent is hostile: visual and verbal harassment make me avert my eyes. I don’t loiter, ever, the surveillance is turned upon myself, as the panopticon imposes self-vigilance. . . . The humiliation comes in acknowledging that my butch drag is not black enough, not leather enough, to hide my fear. (, ) Yet, even in so-called queer spaces, such as Brighton, Provincetown, San Francisco, and Greenwich Village, queer mobility and freedom are granted only a temporary visa. Lauren Berlant and Elizabeth Freeman are certainly correct in pointing out that “the existence of [gay and lesbian] subcultural spaces is contingent upon the goodwill of straights”

(, ). Indeed, unsympathetic heterosexual tourism is frequent in lesbian and gay subcultural spaces, and certainly most gays and lesbians can attest to having been monitored by “intense regulatory scrutiny”

within these spaces at one time or another. And too often this scrutiny can turn violent. As Maxine Wolfe asserts,

Today, even in New York and San Francisco, places supposedly “free” for lesbians and gay men . . . two women holding hands, hugging, dancing, or kissing in public . . . with a clear or even suspected erotic component . . .

are at best tolerated as “flaunting their lifestyle”. . . and in most cases are putting their lives at risk. (, ) Indeed, in her study of Park Slope, a Brooklyn neighborhood that functions as a lesbian ghetto, Tamar Rothenberg’s reference to an attack against a lesbian in  confirms that lesbian safety is not guaranteed even in the public realm of de facto gay space (, ).

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Through its opening sequence, The Riverview addresses the viewer in precisely these terms. Whether to wheat-paste activist posters or to wheat-paste credits to a lesbian video, navigating urban space as a lesbian is put forth as risky business. In addition, by using a point-of-view shot that places the spectator in the van with these women, the film reminds the viewer of her own significant risks in the public realm. And, by immediately following this sequence with an image of the Riv’s former location, The Riverview tacitly links these risks together with the loss or absence of the bar. The documentary implicitly argues, then, that, without the space of the bar, lesbians are both public outlaws and publicly endangered.

At the same time as the video serves as a tribute to the Riv’s untimely dissolution, it also suggests the precariousness of the lesbian bar as a public institution. As in many cities throughout the country, lesbian bars in Rochester operating since the closing of the Riv have been intermittent and short-lived, a point that is not raised in The Riverview but that indubitably serves as its contextual backdrop.12 It is this backdrop that I suggest informs both The Boy Mechanic and Last Call at Maud’s, the former haunting the viewer with its tour of a lesbian ghost town, the latter depicting lesbian space’s gradual decay.

“Oh, God, You Know What? I Don’t Know Where It Was. . . .

I Don’t Even Think There Is a Trace of It”

Unlike that of Forbidden Love and The Riverview, The Boy Mechanic’s historical framework does not juxtapose the bar scene of the past against its present absence. Though the video opens by revisiting the bygone haunts of lesbian life, the latter half of the documentary turns its lens toward the thriving lesbian bar scene of the present, foregrounding its prosperity by documenting the success of two seven-days-a-week bars in San Diego: the Flame and Club Bombay. But though the video’s chronological framework, which moves from former to current bars, might suggest a clean bill of health for public lesbian life, signaling the historical tenacity of lesbian public space, I suggest that, like its documentary cohorts, The Boy Mechanic voices something less optimistic.

Indeed, The Boy Mechanic points to a more sober reading early on, with a metaphoric moment that I argue is key to understanding the documentary’s position on lesbians, bars, and public space. Driving along a road in what appears to be an urban industrial location, a woman

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searching for the site of a former lesbian bar frustratedly laments to her passenger: “Oh, God, you know what? I don’t know where it was. [Everything has] been so built up here. . . . It’s gone. Not even a trace. I think they must have torn down the building, because it was something else before it was a lesbian bar. I don’t even think there is a trace of it.” As she speaks, the camera captures through the driver’s window an expanse of parking lots, both empty and full, and, significantly, several moving and storage companies.

As symbols of mobility—here urban mobility—but also instability, homelessness, the absence of sustained social life, and, above all, transience, these public commercial institutions also work here as metaphors for the conditions that the video suggests characterize public lesbian institutions, particularly the bar: chronic ephemerality, irregularity, and replacement in the public realm. At the same time that these public urban sites physically mark the material location of former lesbian social life, they also stand as ghosts that, contrary to the testimony of our bewildered tour guide, haunt the viewer and the city with their lesbian trace.

The Boy Mechanic offers a map of this trace. Acting as our tour guide, the video reveals the topography of the city to be a lesbian graveyard.

The urban structures and sites that used to, but today no longer, beckon and harbor lesbians—architecture, highways, hills, enclaves, parking lots—litter and haunt the city. Touring San Diego via car and foot, The Boy Mechanic spends a good portion of time capturing various sections of the city, covering the invisible tracks and footprints of past public lesbian life. Early in the video, with the camera following along a hilly road, we trace the route to the “gay Denny’s” that many lesbians took on the morning after a night at Diablos, a mixed gay and lesbian club of San Diego’s yesteryear. Later, as a woman fondly recounts stories of a gaggle of intoxicated lesbians marching en masse to the top of a different hill, the camera follows the incline as though it were capturing the ghostly mob, tracing their route.

One of the more striking ways that the video reveals the city to be a lesbian ghost town is through its foregrounding of the facades of defunct lesbian bars, focusing in particular on their entryways. Much of the tour consists of returning to various sites of bygone lesbian bars, the camera lingering on their doors as an often unseen narrator details the bar’s lesbian history and its present nonlesbian function. As the camera remains

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The site of a former lesbian bar in San Diego. From The Boy Mechanic; courtesy of Kaucyila Brooke.

arrested on individual bar doors, often well after the narrator’s conversation has changed focus, The Boy Mechanic draws our attention to the significance of these structures. Doors are infused with symbolic weight as physical and social structures that literally represent the separation between public and private spaces and signify either “admission to” or

“denial from,” as in, “My door is always open” or “No shirt, no shoes, no service.” Of course, bars—straight and gay—have their own particular relationship to this symbolic economy. Bars, from the local tavern to the nightclub, are often policed by bouncers. The role of bouncers ranges from checking proper credentials for entrance to deciding willy-nilly who will be allowed to enter, Manhattan’s Studio  being the most infamous, though not singular, example of this latter practice.

The lesbian bar has historically depended on this symbolic economy.

Though the lesbian bar is a public establishment, its simultaneously desired and enforced spatial concealment has granted it the paradoxical position of being a semiprivate space within the public realm. Indeed, as I note in chapter , lesbian bars often augment this already semipublic locational status by manipulating and/or playing down their facades.13

But, of course, semipublic is still public, so the lesbian bar relies on its passageways not only as places to check proper identification but, more importantly, to act as barriers to hostile or misinformed heterosexual patrons. This is exemplified in both Lou’s rejection of a wrongly presumed

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The site of a former lesbian bar in San Diego. From The Boy Mechanic; courtesy of Kaucyila Brooke.

heterosexual in The Riverview and the outright acknowledgment of discrimination against presumably heterosexual men announced by a bartender in Last Call at Maud’s.

But if lesbian bar doors work—literally, symbolically, and not always successfully—as barriers to straights, in The Boy Mechanic doors are foregrounded as barriers to lesbians. Although they no longer function as entrances to lesbian space, they still mark for the viewer and are re-minders of the present absence of lesbian space. Moreover, as we—the viewer and our tour guide—are repeatedly confronted with closed doors, the video also foregrounds not just the absence of lesbian space but also the inaccessibility of extant public space to lesbians. Though its repetition of architecturally diverse doors maps a city replete with and marked by lesbianism, as it presents doors that are both figuratively and literally closed to lesbians this map presents a lesbian city that no longer exists and a contemporary urban realm that is unavailable for public lesbian congregation.

But if The Boy Mechanic presents a map of a lesbian ghost town, as it tracks a historically unstable object—lesbian bars—the video’s tour is without certitude, riddled with doubt. The video has neither the cocksureness of the heterosexual male urban theorist, whose mappings of

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the city are performed with absolute certainty, nor the detachment of the male flaneur, whose underlyingly anxious travels throughout the city appear on the surface to be nonchalant. Nor does The Boy Mechanic demonstrate either the fortitude of the “lesbian flaneur” (Munt ), whose marauding under the heterosexual male urban gaze is spectacularly self-assured, or the tracking power of gay male cruisers, whose ability to find and create urban social space is notoriously adept.14 Rather, The Boy Mechanic finds itself unsure of its environment at every turn.

Indeed, the video’s tour guides, local lesbians, are constantly frustrated by their inability to locate or even to remember the bygone spaces that they once frequented or heard of. Early in The Boy Mechanic’s tour of former bars, the camera rests on a building, capturing its mostly empty parking lot. As the camera lingers over this site, a female voice asks an unseen woman if she remembers a particular bar called the Box Office, presumably once housed in this location. It takes the woman some time to remember the bar, and then she recalls that it has closed. Later in the video, the camera follows a middle-aged woman as she searches for Lili’s, a bar she remembers having lasted only a year. Approaching what she thinks used to be Lili’s, a building now called Velvet whose contemporary function is not revealed, the woman is not altogether certain of her memory. She tells the videomaker, “I might have to check with some other people who went there, but I think this is it.” But lest we think, on the one hand, that our tour guides’ incompetence is accidental or inci-dental, or on the other, that it is simply a sign of the instability of oral-history testimonials and memories, The Boy Mechanic foregrounds this uncertainty as part and parcel of its tour. Indeed, this is highlighted early in the video in a juxtaposition of an old map of San Diego’s gay and lesbian bars with a scene of videomaker Kaucyila Brooke and her lesbian tour guide driving and getting lost. Here, even a subcultural map, a seemingly thorough guide to the city, is unable to alleviate the lack of certainty—of locations and of memories—that lesbians have in the city.

Part of this insufficient memory and dislocation, The Boy Mechanic argues, stems from the transitory character of lesbian public space. The video’s roaming from one former lesbian bar to another not only maps a lesbian ghost town but also suggests how such a ghost town develops.

Though The Boy Mechanic does not overtly examine the social circumstances surrounding and producing the ephemerality of lesbian public

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space, participants’ disclosure about the present functions of several of the sites, and the extended takes of these sites highlight some of the reasons behind the lesbian bar’s perpetual transient status. In particular, by revealing the current function of two former lesbian bars to be a heterosexual bar adjacent to San Diego’s gay ghetto and a gay male bar, the participants allude to two areas germane to the closure of lesbian bars: the monopolization and usurpation of lesbian and gay space by heterosexuals and the expansion of gay male space at the expense of lesbian space.

As I detail in chapter , since the early part of the twentieth century, heterosexuals and homosexuals have socialized together within bar space.

This socialization, I point out, occurred for a number of reasons. Historically, heterosexual women have come to lesbian bars for sexual experimentation, and, as a result of their own marginalization within the public realm, nonwhite heterosexuals often shared bar space with gay men and lesbians in the early and mid-twentieth century. Still, heterosexual congregation in lesbian bars cannot be divorced from heterosexuality’s desire to stamp its symbolic ownership of lesbian space. One of The Boy Mechanic’s stops on its lesbian bar tour suggests as much. As Brooke and one of her guides drive around San Diego, the video stops to focus on yet another site of a former lesbian bar. Brooke’s tour guide recounts its history as home to several short-lived gay bars and its function today as a heterosexual bar, the Casbah. Though it is framed no differently than other sites on the tour, this bar carries significant weight in the economy of lesbian bar closures. Situated adjacent to Hillcrest, San Diego’s lesbian and gay ghetto, the Casbah is symbolic of the ease with which heterosexual zones of leisure and desire exist within and monopolize public space, including those realms unofficially marked off for non-heterosexual activity. It is in these latter zones that heterosexuality uses its privilege not only to monitor deviance and engage in temporary acts of nonheteronormativity but also to mark out its own territory and thus claim symbolic ownership of all space. Such is the function of the Casbah. Staking out its own place alongside San Diego’s gay enclave, the Casbah is a site that allows its customers to be a part of and to gain knowledge of the ghetto’s “difference” but also to remain separate, to remain straight. Indeed, for its San Diego audience, Brooke’s focus on this formerly lesbian, now straight bar in the gay ghetto is symbolic of the increase in heterosexual tourism in and figurative ownership of Hillcrest

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over the last several years, a process exacerbated in  by the intense media scrutiny of “gay serial killer” and Hillcrest resident Andrew Cunanan’s favorite nighttime haunts.15 What’s more, one lesbian guide glumly and without any explanation tells Brooke as they pass San Diego’s

“gay Denny’s,” “I don’t know if it is so gay anymore.”

But, even as it is fair to say that lesbian and gay access to public space (and to all spaces of so-called deviant sexuality) continues to be under siege, it is also fair to say that public spaces for socialization and access to them have been even less available for lesbians.16 Historically, women’s access to public spaces of leisure has been compromised by the inequities of gender. According to Lillian Faderman, for example, “In the nineteenth century it would have been unthinkable for women other than prostitutes to frequent saloons” (, ). Indeed, it wasn’t until the s that it became acceptable for women to enter bars alone or in numbers (Faderman , ; Wolfe , ).17 Still, as Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis note, women’s congregation within bars was suspect at this time:

In New York City before the First World War, working women increasingly entered saloons particularly to avail themselves of the reasonably priced good food available to men, but their presence was still controversial. Often saloon owners would not allow women, single or escorted, at the bar, but would serve them in a room in the back. The fragile relation of women to bars continued through World War II, when several cities, including Chicago, passed laws prohibiting women’s entrance into bars, in an attempt to limit the spread of venereal disease. (, )18

Though lesbians, particularly working-class lesbians, who were already stigmatized and thus outside of the concerns of heterosexual propriety, were able to create exclusively lesbian bar space at a relatively early point in U.S. history—the s—their access to and sustenance of this space historically has been limited because of gender. Indeed, for much of the twentieth century, women in certain areas (e.g., San Francisco until ) could work only as cocktail waitresses and not as bartenders. This means that even when lesbians managed to create public space for themselves, they were nonetheless under the watchful eye of male authority, even if it was a sympathetic gay man, as was the case at Maud’s in San Francisco.

Even now, gender inequity is most apparent with regard to the differences between lesbians’ and gay men’s access to and territorialization of space. As Esther Newton says,

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Holding race and class constant, gay men have more power and money than lesbians do. Their history as a distinct social entity is longer, their institutions are more numerous and developed, and they take up much more symbolic and actual public space, both in relation to the dominant society and within most, if not all institutions termed “gay and lesbian.”

(, )

As any tour of San Francisco’s Castro district or New York’s Greenwich Village or Cherry Grove will demonstrate, gay capitals most clearly articulate themselves as male spaces. This is as much the case presently as it was historically. For example, the revelation of a bartender in Last Call at Maud’s that at one point in the s, gay men in San Francisco had  bars whereas lesbians had only  is not so radically different than s San Francisco. In , for example, two years after the closing of the longest-running lesbian bar in the city, Maud’s, lesbians witnessed the closure of Amelia’s, San Francisco’s only lesbian bar at the time. Significantly, as a columnist in the San Francisco Examiner pointed out, Amelia’s closure was not the result of a decrease of lesbians living in San Francisco. “More lesbians than ever live in San Francisco,” Rob Morse wrote at the time, “but the last lesbian bar is set to close” (qtd. in Stein

, ). The dearth of lesbian bars continues in this so-called haven for lesbians. Currently, San Francisco is home to a wide range of bars for men but only one seven-days-a-week bar for lesbians, the Lexington.19

Gay male monopolization of space has been a long-standing source of contention between lesbians and gay men, and its causes have generated much consideration.20 Much of the early work on sexuality and urban space, including Manuel Castells’s The City and the Grassroots () and Deborah Wolf ’s The Lesbian Community (), posits essentialist theories about lesbians’ lack of territorialization. For example, Castells states, “Men have sought to dominate, and one expression of this domination has been spatial. . . . Women have rarely had these aspi-rations: their world attaches more importance to relationships and their networks are ones of solidarity and affection” (qtd. in Rothenberg ,

). Other writers have used less essentialist arguments. For example, Mickey Lauria and Larry Knopp suggest that, because it is not culturally permissible for men to be sexual with one another, gay men have found it more necessary than lesbians to create their own territories (cited in Rothenberg , ). More recently, scholars have argued that lesbians do indeed territorialize space, though not in the same manner as gay

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men. Tamar Rothenberg regards lesbians as central to the gentrification of the Park Slope area of Brooklyn, qualifying it as a “semi-lesbian or lesbian congenial space” (). Writing about lesbian space in Los Angeles from  to , Yolanda Retter argues that though lesbians have not territorialized space in a physical sense, they have created space in and outside Los Angeles through music events, parades, conferences, health and service centers, and political actions ().

Yet both Rothenberg and Retter point out that contemporary spaces of lesbian territorialization, whether the lesbian homes of Park Slope or the networks of Los Angeles, are seriously lacking in physical public institutions, particularly social and political institutions. Rothenberg’s study of the lesbian neighborhood of Park Slope, an area she suggests has “perhaps the heaviest concentration of lesbians in the US” (,

),21 points to its notoriety as a lesbian space despite its lack of “any lesbian cafés, bookstores, bars or other centres that could function as a community unifier” ().22 Likewise, Retter suggests that, aside from a few bars, there is only one permanent public space in Los Angeles that caters exclusively to lesbians: the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives. As she argues, “Lesbian public spaces are now more often signified by events and networks that represent a wide(r) variety of interests” (, ).

This new s form of territorialization, marked by what Retter calls a “trend toward multiplicity and a nomadic style” (, ), has dramatically affected and informed the production and consumption of lesbian bar space. Currently, lesbian bars often function as weekly, biweekly, or monthly events rather than as daily operations. Seven-days-a-week lesbian bars remain scarce. Instead, as Wolfe rightly asserts, “Many lesbian bars are not ‘places’ in the sense of a consistent physical location that one could design or decorate permanently. Often they are ‘women’s nights’ at other bars” (, ). In major urban centers, such as Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco, these new bar formations, what Last Call at Maud’s participant Mary Wings dolefully calls “fly-by-night affairs,” are huge traveling events that usually target a certain sec-tor and style of women.23 In smaller cities or nonurban locations, lesbian bars often exist solely by being granted a night—usually not a weekend night—at one of usually several gay male bars.24

By returning to and lingering on the site of a former lesbian bar, affectionately called Menopause Meadows, which now functions as a men’s bar, The Boy Mechanic highlights this thorny relationship between

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lesbians and gay men over public space. As a gay bar is shown to have supplanted lesbian space in the public realm, this scene points to the vast differences that exist between extant lesbian and gay public space. Moreover, as this site is located outside of San Diego’s gay and lesbian ghetto and in the heart of one of its most hyperheterosexual locations—the Mission Beach area—the ability of gay men to create and sustain space in otherwise nongay territory and, in turn, the inability of lesbians to create and sustain space in the same manner, are foregrounded.25

It is this tour of a lesbian-bar ghost town that precedes The Boy Mechanic’s other documentary focus: a tour of the Flame and Club Bombay, two extant seven-days-a-week lesbian bars in San Diego. Just as Brooke introduces former bars through their doors, she also presents the Flame and Club Bombay through their entryways. Here, though, the doors are neither literally nor figuratively closed to us, as we are greeted and welcomed at each door by a woman—presumably the bar owner—
whom we then follow inside. Certainly, this depiction of two lesbian bars that not only are open and accessible for us but also welcome us stands in stark contrast to earlier scenes. After being bombarded with a barrage of closed and inaccessible doors, two open and welcoming bars symbolically represent a certain victory for lesbians in the public realm. Though lesbian bars have closed in the past, The Boy Mechanic seems to argue that lesbians continue to triumph and persevere in the public realm.

Indeed, The Boy Mechanic’s title, which is taken from an early-twentieth-century how-to book, also suggests such a reading. Like Forbidden Love’s manicured hand opening new “chapters” of a pulp novel at precise intervals of the documentary, The Boy Mechanic punctuates its documentary with shots of a hand flipping through the pages of the how-to book. Opening the documentary with this book and returning to it several times throughout the piece, the camera lingers over its pages long enough for viewers to read its contents. These contents include advice for the conundrums posed for or presented by the following titles:

“Feminine Motorists,” “Enlarging Maps and Drawing Quickly,” “Adjust-ing a Seesaw,” “Driving on Dark Roads,” and “Tepees Covered with Vines.” As the book’s title intimates by its reference to a nonprofessional problem solver, it offers unique ways to handle life’s obstacles. For example, for the “feminine driver” who is unable to keep her skirt or dress from blowing in the wind while driving with both hands, the how-to book reveals the solution of a “clever girl [who] conceived the idea of

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The exterior of the Flame, a lesbian bar still open for business in San Diego. From The Boy Mechanic; courtesy of Kaucyila Brooke.

taking an ordinary paper clip and fastening the front and back hems of her skirt together after she had seated herself in the car.”

Titling itself after and continually referring to a book devoted to over-coming life’s obstacles, the film of The Boy Mechanic points to the unique and productive problem-solving techniques of lesbians. Faced with limited access to an often hostile public realm, lesbians not only have historically created ways to publicly meet but also have reorganized space to meet their own needs. The owner of Club Bombay reveals how, even though the bar was formerly a gay men’s bar, it was necessary for her to change its interior architecture to meet the demands of lesbian socialization. According to the owner, because her lesbian customers prefer to socialize while sitting in big groups, it was necessary to replace empty

“cruising” space with tables. Likewise, as her bar patrons also desire to sit close to one another, she replaced the bar’s bolted swivel chairs with movable ones.26 Even outside of bar space, the video suggests that lesbians are as ingenious as “boy mechanics.” As one woman victoriously says, “When lesbians used to go out to some little place for coffee . . .

there’d be like ten of us and we’d all come in at once and look around

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and we’d [say] all the tables need to be moved together. So we’d be moving tables together . . . and all the waiters would say, ‘Who are these women?’ [We’d] just come in and take over the space and make it [our]

own. And of course, that was one of our favorite things to say. We can go somewhere and make our space. . . . Public space—we’d make it our space.” And yet, given that a discussion of the way men’s bars have not always been accommodating to lesbians precedes this commentary on lesbian spatial command, this woman’s remarks on lesbians constructing lesbian space begs to be read less enthusiastically. Indeed, even though The Boy Mechanic presents the success of two thriving contemporary bars, its visual strategies ultimately undercut such a positive reading. In particular, its use of similar door shots for its tour of both closed and open lesbian bars highlights the doors’ significance. At the Flame and Club Bombay, the doors function less as symbolic welcome mats and more as omens of what could and indeed will likely be: both bars’ eventual inclusion among the landmarks of the lesbian ghost town.

Indeed, The Boy Mechanic is replete with such omens predicting the imminent disappearance of lesbian space. Most significant of these is the documentary’s lean toward invisible, faceless narrators. Though the invisible women who act as our tour guides of former lesbian haunts are clearly marked as a presence, their lack of discernible corporeality makes them, like the bars, ghostlike—an absent presence. In addition, by including only some faces and not others, the video supports Terry Castle’s argument that lesbians function in Western culture as appari-tions () by foregrounding the perpetual dematerialization of lesbians and lesbian space. Whereas Castle, as well as film scholars Patricia White () and Rhona J. Berenstein (), has persuasively shown how the lesbian ghost as a literary and filmic figure functions within heterosexual narratives as a threatening and challenging force, The Boy Mechanic’s trajectory suggests that, when it comes to public space, the ghostly trace of the lesbian is not enough to infringe upon heterosexuality’s massive territorial reach. In this realm, embodiment is what matters. It is not insignificant, then, that as they wait at a light during the course of their travels, Brooke and her guide occupy the same frame as a man who appears to be homeless. Acting both as a symbolic representation of the placeless, present/absent figure who haunts the city and as a sign of instability within the public realm, the homeless person, like some ghost of Christmas future, functions along with the invisible women to

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foreshadow the disappearance of lesbian space. This prediction seems nowhere more acute than in the final documentary under discussion, Last Call at Maud’s.

“Maud’s, Maud’s, the Gang’s All Here!”

As it documents the last days of the San Francisco lesbian bar Maud’s, which closed after twenty-three years of successful operation in a location assumed to be a mecca for lesbian and gay public life, Last Call at Maud’s actualizes The Boy Mechanic’s fatal prognosis for lesbian public space. Like The Boy Mechanic’s presentation of the Flame and Club Bombay, whose open doors welcome the viewer into their interiors, Last Call at Maud’s uses the bar’s facade to invite the viewer into its space.

Opening onto an exterior shot of the bar and what appears to be a nuclear family strolling past its unassuming facade, the video gradually moves, in a series of static and handheld shots, through a labyrinthine entryway and into the bar’s densely populated interior. But, here, what The Boy Mechanic predicts for the Flame’s and Club Bombay’s future lies in the immediate present for Maud’s; though Maud’s freely invites us into its internal space, we soon realize it does so for the last time, as both viewer and patrons visit the bar during its final hours. Hence, the viewer witnesses in Last Call at Maud’s more than just the remnants of closed lesbian bars, as presented in The Boy Mechanic. Last Call at Maud’s formally and symbolically marks the transition of Maud’s from lesbian social space to lesbian historical remnant. Cutting, close to the documentary’s end, from the densely populated space of Maud’s, captured in its bustling state by handheld shots reminiscent of direct cinema, to the same space now empty, captured in a quiet, static gaze, Last Call at Maud’s visually and symbolically presents the disappearance of lesbians and lesbian space. In this way it captures a moment midway between lesbian public life and its disappearance.

Positioned in this in-between space, the narrators of Last Call at Maud’s—longtime patrons; bartenders; now deceased owner Rikki Streicher; and lesbian “celebrity” patrons such as JoAnn Loulan, Del Martin, Phyllis Lyon, Sally Gearhart, Mary Wings, and Judy Grahn—
gather with other patrons to celebrate the longtime success of Maud’s, to display their shock at its closure, and to ponder the reasons for its demise. Peppered throughout the documentary are speculations regarding the circumstances surrounding Maud’s closure. Several, including

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Gearhart and Loulan, point to the onslaught of AIDS as profoundly affecting the bar scene. Loulan suggests that though lesbians have not been as physically affected by the disease as gay men, lesbians have been as psychically affected by its rhetoric and devastation. Consequently, she argues that lesbians have made a similar sexual transition toward monogamy as many gay men. Last Call at Maud’s reinforces Gearhart and Loulan’s viewpoint, as the documentary precedes their comments with a montage sequence that moves from early newspaper reports of a

“gay disease” in  to gay men at an AIDS candlelight vigil to an interior shot of an empty bar. Loulan also joins Streicher, Grahn, and longtime patron Hydie Downard in pointing to a shift in drinking patterns and the lesbian turn to “clean and sober” living as a factor in the demise of Maud’s. Similarly, Streicher, who surprisingly shows no resentment toward her clean and sober patrons even though she is financially dependent upon their alcohol consumption, suggests that the clean-and-sober era has made the neighborhood bar a thing of the past. This notion is supported by Wings, who points out that the local bar has been replaced by intermittent lesbian dance clubs. In turn, Streicher’s and Wing’s commentary is supported by the documentary. Following their discussion of the predominance of dance clubs in the contemporary era, the video displays evidence of this phenomenon—a host of club flyers for such venues.

The roles played by AIDS and “clean and sober” living certainly should not be dismissed in any discussion of lesbian bar closure. Though public and medical discourse surrounding AIDS has mostly ignored lesbian sexuality,27 as a disease whose primary metonymic association has been homosexuality, AIDS has had a significant impact on lesbian cultures.

As Shane Phelan points out, this was particularly the case in the early

s. She notes that “while gay men were dying of AIDS, the sexism of popular discourse discussed ‘gays’ without reference to sex, thereby leaving many heterosexuals equally afraid of lesbians and gay men” (,

). Within this climate, it is not implausible that the popular confla-tion of AIDS and homosexuality made institutions that have erotic interaction and indulgence at their center less attractive for lesbians.

More traceable than the psychic responses that may have contributed to the decrease in lesbians’ bar attendance are the significant changes in lesbian consumption and perception of alcohol that have occurred over the last several decades. As Sue-Ellen Case points out, in the late s,

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Rikki Streicher (right), now-deceased owner of Maud’s, hams it up with a bartender. From Last Call at Maud’s; courtesy of the Maud’s Project.

many alcohol-addicted women turned away from the space of the bar and toward newly opened feminist coffeehouses (, –). Lesbians’

relationship to alcohol would continue to change in the next decade. In the s, institutions of sobriety offered lesbians a number of different spaces for socializing heretofore unavailable to them as lesbians. For example, according to Faderman, “Boston alone had eighty weekly AA meetings for lesbians in the late ’s. San Francisco had ninety such weekly meetings. . . . The Living Sober contingents were the biggest in the Gay Pride parades at the end of the decade” (, –). Indeed, Faderman’s findings lead her to argue that “a whole culture of sobriety developed to replace the bar culture that had been so pivotal to the lives of many lesbians in the past” ().

Yet, in that Last Call at Maud’s does not offer its own analysis of the bar’s termination and supports only the suppositions of the narrators, its analysis of the relationship of AIDS and alcoholism to the bar’s closure resounds like a speculative sound bite. Indeed, many of the narrators’ analyses are astonishingly speculative. For example, bartender Susan Fahey is simply unsure why people stopped coming to Maud’s, tentatively advancing the shaky argument that lesbians are possibly too busy focusing on their careers to come to bars. Another narrator presents the unsupported theory that a seven-days-a-week bar is just not needed

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anymore, whereas Grahn reductively and ambiguously boils it down to the notion that “women have moved on.” Even Streicher, who as the longtime owner of Maud’s has a certain leverage in this debate, offers no conclusive reason for the bar’s termination. She simultaneously offers financial reasons, the change in drinking patterns, and the dubious statement, “Maybe twenty-three years is the answer,” as possibilities.

I agree with Martha Gever, who argues that Last Call at Maud’s offers an “inadequate analysis” of the circumstances driving Maud’s termination. For Gever, this inadequate analysis is the result of the documentary’s construction of Maud’s lesbian history through anecdote alone (, ). Indeed, as in Forbidden Love and The Riverview, most of what we learn about bar history in Last Call at Maud’s is based on narrator testimonial. Various historical elements are often elided, equal-ized, or overvalued, depending upon the memories of the narrators, who in turn are a carefully selected group chosen to represent history by the documentary makers.

In Last Call at Maud’s, the anecdotal method of historiography is particularly troublesome as it leads to a history of the bar’s racial, class, and sexual politics—certainly three of the bar’s most significant defining features—that is quite revisionist. Like the song lyrics crooned by bar patrons at yearly celebrations, “Maud’s, Maud’s, the gang’s all here,”

Last Call at Maud’s paints a picture of the bar as a harmonious, color-blind community. Because lesbian bars historically have been marked by racial divisiveness, particularly related to de facto segregation and implicit prohibitions against interracial dating (Thorpe , –), this lack of attention to race is troubling. Yet glossing over this vexed history is not unique to Last Call at Maud’s. Of all the bar documentaries under discussion, only The Boy Mechanic deals with the relationship of lesbians of color to bar life in an adequate way. Lesbians of color, either as narrators or as topics of discussion, are notably absent from The Riverview, which makes none of the overtures toward multiracial and ethnic inclusion that are now standard in lesbian documentary.

Underpinning this exclusion may be an authorial desire to remain faithful to the Riv’s patrons, who, according to one of the directors, were mostly white.28 In addition, as amateur videomakers, the members of a Gang of Lesbians were not schooled in the discourse and protocols of a larger lesbian art scene. Yet this lack of reflection about race in a documentary whose voices—both narrative and authorial—claim the cen-

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trality of the Riv for Rochester’s lesbian community of the s and early s does a major disservice to the women of color in that community. Their probable alienation from the Riv demands a more complex and faithful rendering of the centrality and accessibility of lesbian bar life at this time. And though Forbidden Love and Last Call at Maud’s both include lesbians of color and interrogate the racial politics of the lesbian bar, they do so in insufficient ways. Only one white woman in Forbidden Love speaks of racism within the pre-Stonewall bars in Canada.

Racism remains a personal issue briefly discussed by the documentary’s two women of color. But the (in)attention to race in Last Call at Maud’s is perhaps the most troubling, as its anecdotal strategy refuses to contradict or supplement its narrators of color, who either speak of the Maud’s community in glowing terms or disavow any experience of racial discrimination in the bar. Although sharp attention is paid to the sexism that lesbians faced within San Francisco’s gay male scene, the narrators of color and supporting documentary archival material—footage of birthday parties and anniversary celebrations—posit the bar as a wholly welcoming and harmonious familial and community environment.

Though it is imperative that the voices of lesbians of color are included and that their evaluations are not dismissed, it is equally imperative that these personal viewpoints are not cast as representing the full experience of racism and bar life, as Last Call at Maud’s and Forbidden Love suggest.

Even in the minimal and insufficient way that it is addressed in Forbidden Love and Last Call at Maud’s, bar racism is implicitly understood as a product of the past. According to Judith Halberstam, this relegation of racism to the past is standard practice for lesbian histories of public space:

Much lesbian history tries to locate the racial segregation of public lesbian space as a thing of the past; this, however, would suggest that fully integrated queer spaces are representative of the present. While some clubs . . . do tend to attract a wide range of women-of-color . . . a split between clubs that attract white lesbians and those which draw lesbians-of-color does linger on. (, ) Only The Boy Mechanic sidesteps this approach to lesbian bar history.

Rather than solely rely on the unchallenged memories of older lesbians, whether white or nonwhite, Brooke foregrounds the instability of such memories and focuses on current racial dynamics of the bar. Following

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a white woman waxing nostalgic about the familial and community environment of the early bar scene, Brooke hones in on a conversation between an interracial couple. Prompted by the questioning of her black partner, the white woman reveals that she never noticed whether or not the bars were integrated, to which the black woman confidently replies,

“You probably wouldn’t.” Following this narrator’s dismissal of the “racial impartiality” of memory, Brooke turns to the dynamics of the contemporary moment. On her tour of Club Bombay, when a voice-over tells Brooke that Bombay appeals mostly to a white crowd, another voice suggests somewhat frustratedly that Bombay’s music does not appeal as much to women of color. This reveals how, as Deborah P. Armory suggests, “in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, racism structures the types of people who walk through club doors” (, ). Turning next to the dynamics of the Flame, Brooke interviews several young, contemporary Latina barflies, who, instead of revealing a “color-blind” space, speak frankly about the bar’s less-than-harmonious current racial climate. One woman boldly states, “Caucasian people kind of stay to their side. And some Mexican people are in the middle. And there’s, like, the black people over here on the left. We call it the dark side and the sunny side.” This internal spatial division is confirmed by another narrator, who states:

“The black people are on the dance floor—because they fucking know how to dance. The Latinos are all over the place. The white dykes are playing pool.” Yet, rather than let these narrators dictate the racial politics of the bar and speak for all lesbians of color, Brooke immediate follows this analysis with a contradictory statement by a black woman, who says that she always sits by the pool table because it is well lit. Thus, varying interpretations of the internal racial politics of the bar manifest themselves in The Boy Mechanic, which not only offers a more complex understanding of the contemporary bar’s racial climate but also questions the definitiveness of participant testimonials and memories.

Equally problematic as the framing of the racial politics at Maud’s is the framing of the bar’s gender politics in Last Call at Maud’s. Most striking, indeed astonishing and singular to the video, is its inclusion of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon as central participants and narrators of lesbian bar life. The best-known founders of Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first lesbian organization in the United States, Martin and Lyon created DOB in the mid-s in order “to give middle-class lesbians an alternative to the gay bar scene” (Faderman , ). As an anonymous

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author writes in “The Philosophy of DOB: The Evolution of an Idea,”

published in  in the organization’s magazine, The Ladder, “The original idea came into being in the fall of  when eight women got together to organize a social club which was to provide a means for Lesbians to meet one another without resorting to the gay bar” (qtd. in Blasius and Phelan , ). DOB’s distinction from the bar scene is exemplified even further by the name given to its meetings, Gab ’n Javas, named as such to reflect the large quantities of coffee consumed at each meeting ().

DOB’s rejection of the bar scene also reflected its repudiation of the lesbian bar’s butch-femme constituents. Initially a social club, DOB
quickly politicized itself around the question of lesbian civil rights. Because DOB regarded itself as a “women’s organization for the purpose of promoting the integration of the Homosexual into Society,” one which

“[advocated] a mode of behavior and dress acceptable to society” (“Philosophy of DOB,” qtd. in Blasius and Phelan , ), the working-class butch and femme identities formed around bar culture were incongruous with their project. Thus, though Martin and Lyon are highly important figures in lesbian history, their place in and contribution to lesbian history must be situated—and, indeed, usually is situated—within the context of their lesbian bar and butch-femme politics. Yet Last Call at Maud’s provides no such contextualization to Martin and Lyon’s inclusion as bar historians. Not only do the two appear in the documentary as longtime barflies, they are also ironically granted the position of articulating the most sustained commentary of butch-femme identity for the video, though, significantly, they are not named until the closing credits.

Not surprisingly, Martin and Lyon discuss their early rejection of butch-femme identities and dynamics. Yet their dismissal is expressed as a personal choice rather than as part of the philosophy of DOB and middle-class lesbian politics. In this way, the complicated history of the lesbian bar vis-à-vis gender expression is concealed. The class-based political reasons for some middle-class women’s rejection of butch-femme styles, such as Martin and Lyon’s, do not surface in the historiography of Last Call at Maud’s. Nor is there any understanding of lesbians’ varying reactions to the era’s mandate of butch-femme roles, which, as the participants of Forbidden Love reveal, ranged from happy acceptance to begrudging capitulation. Instead, what viewers of Last Call at Maud’s learn is a history of the lesbian bar as a place where women had total

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freedom and acceptance in their gender and sexual choices. As contemporary lesbian bar dynamics as well as the current debates about the inclusion of transgender lesbians in women-only spaces clearly reveal, this is a space not yet realized even in the current moment.29

The bar history portrayed in Last Call at Maud’s is, thus, highly nostalgic, because it imagines a “way we never were,” as Stephanie Coontz characterizes this frequently mobilized emotion ().30 Last Call at Maud’s, more than any other bar documentary, imagines, speaks on behalf of, and desires a return to a community that never existed. Indeed, as longtime Maud’s patron Sue-Ellen Case argues in her own critique of Last Call at Maud’s, “The film [is] about another Maud’s. . . . It depict[s]

a Maud’s that did not exist” (, ). Yet Forbidden Love, The Riverview, and The Boy Mechanic also wax nostalgic about the lesbian bar. The Riverview grants the lesbian bar the status of a wholly welcoming place and an impenetrable fortress. Forbidden Love’s pulp scenario imagines the s bar as a space free from violence, heterosexual tourists, and belligerent alcoholics. And, in its chronological framework that moves from past to present bars, The Boy Mechanic’s trajectory seems to disavow the very nihilism it presents, ignoring its own depiction of an unstable lesbian bar past in its presentation of the stability of the current lesbian bar scene.

Thus, the entire bar-documentary genre imagines the lesbian bar past through the lens of nostalgia, an emotive form whose cultural and popular usage many regard with outright suspicion. For many critics working in cultural and gender studies, cultural deployments of nostalgia are wholly understood to be marked by conservative and reactionary underpinnings and driven by historically fallacious notions of the past.

In turn, chroniclers of the postmodern condition, most notably Fredric Jameson (, ; , ; , –), often view the cultural use of nostalgia as a symptom of the present’s waning historicity—the ability to see ourselves as historical subjects and agents. Outside academia, nostalgia likewise remains suspect; though its cultural forms are highly commodifiable, as an emotion it is often devalued as quixotic and regarded as less genuine and less reliable than other emotional forms. In other words, critics and noncritics alike are generally united in regarding nostalgia negatively; they see it as an emotion manipulated for duplicitous political means, a substitution for some “real thing,” or a spurious feeling at best.

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Instead of following any of these paths, I want to unmoor nostalgia from its seemingly inherent negative anchor in order to think seriously about the historical, social, and psychic conditions that surround and motivate its cultural use. Neither the object of nostalgia, the reasons for its presence, nor the interpretation of its forms necessarily need be politically reactionary, historically superficial, or emotionally ersatz. More important, if the central feature of nostalgia is a contemporary sense of loss for something in the past, it seems worth asking—in a manner that does not fix nostalgia’s signification a priori—why this present condition exists.

For lesbians, it is clear that the relationship to the bar is bound together with a sense of loss, not because the lesbian bar was once, and no longer is, a stable space, but because the lesbian bar, in all its various incarnations, is historically marked by its own ephemerality. The lesbian bar documentary’s romanticization of this space and its possibilities seems less a politically reactionary or ersatz desire than a legitimate response to the spatial inequities that lesbians continually face in the public realm. If, as Rosalyn Deutsche suggests, “stories about the beginning of public space are not really about the past; they tell us about the concerns and anxieties inhabiting our present social arrangements” (,

), then I would suggest in closing that we think of the lesbian bar documentary’s romanticization of the lesbian bar as a form of “queer utopian memory,” as it is articulated by José Esteban Muñoz. For Muñoz, queer culture and politics are in desperate need of utopian imaginings. Utopia, he argues, “lets us imagine a space outside of heteronormativity. . . . [It] offers us a critique of the present, of what is, by casting a picture of what can and perhaps will be” (, ). Indeed, for Muñoz, queer memories of and longings for utopias are potentially transformative, as they “help us reimagine the social” (). In this formulation, then, nostalgic visions of the past need not serve a reactionary end; they may also offer new possibilities for reshaping the future.

Thus, although I am suspicious of their various revisions and erasures, I am inclined to think of bar documentaries less as nostalgic longings for a place we’ve never been than as utopian desires for a place we hope to have, a place that “can and perhaps will be”; a space free from violence; a space where, treasured rather than maligned for their differences, women of varying races, ethnicities, economic statuses, identities, and ages can interact passionately, intellectually, and culturally; and, finally,

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a place where sex and politics commingle and unite, where “respectabil-ity” does not cancel out desire. But most importantly, let this be a place that is open for business, because, as Kaucyila Brooke replies at the end of The Boy Mechanic when questioned why she is making her video,

“I’m ready to become a barfly again, or for the first time.”

Conclusion, or Confessions of a Former Lesbian Barfly

When I first began writing this book, a heterosexual friend told me she found it surprising that I was writing a book on bars, because, as far as she could tell, I was “not a bar person.” Indeed, as I write this conclusion, I haven’t been to a lesbian bar in quite some time. In the seven years that I lived in Rochester, New York, the few lesbian bars in operation were short-lived. Today there is no lesbian bar there at all.

Of course, when my friend invoked my slender bar credentials, she wasn’t, I believe, referring to lesbian bars. She simply meant bars—cocktail lounges, sports bars, nightclubs, and so on. Certainly, according to this definition, she would be right: I’m not a bar person. But it’s not because I don’t like to sample the latest hip drink, to share a pint and/or conversation with friends after work, or to dance the night away. No, the reason I am not a bar person is that most bars, at least in my corner of the world, are de facto heterosexual spaces. And I must confess that, instead of leaving me relaxed, heterosexual bar spaces leave me feeling alienated and uptight.

Which is why, of course, I am a lesbian bar person. For all their historical and contemporary offenses and imperfections, from their divisiveness around race to their false guarantee of security, lesbian bars offer lesbians so much more than just au courant drinks, pints of beer, and dancing. Lesbian bars afford many women a rare opportunity to be demonstrative toward other women—to flirt, to hold hands, to dance passionately—with the feeling that this behavior is both exhilarating and utterly run-of-the-mill. Lesbian bars serve as rare places where two 157

158 Conclusion
women can touch and kiss, not in an act of political defiance or calculated physical risk but simply in an unremarkable but oh-so-necessary gesture of human affection.

Save for straight interracial couples, whose public displays of affection are also heavily scrutinized, I don’t think many heterosexuals can understand the gravity of what it means to have only a few spaces to show human affection—even as they themselves produce the conditions that engender this circumstance. Of course, some readers might find this a self-fulfilling prophecy or an outmoded mentality. Why not just hold hands in the street? Why not simply kiss in every bar? To be sure, I agree that public displays of lesbian and gay sexuality are necessary to dismantle the heterosexism of everyday spaces. I deeply value the kind of public activism performed in the early s by Queer Nation, whose

“kiss-ins” and other missions in “straight spaces” have been described as

“visibly queer flash cards . . . aimed at exposing the range and variety of bounded spaces upon which heterosexual supremacy depends” (Berlant and Freeman , ). But, as complicated as human affection is, should it always be complicated by political calculations? I am not ready to give up on the lesbian bar just yet. Nor would I necessarily want to. For, as this book’s tour through various lesbian bar spaces reveals, though the lesbian bar may be engendered by oppression, it is also often one hell of a fun place.

It is my profound need for lesbian bar space—its pleasures and its possibilities—that motivates my annoyance at many popular lesbian bar representations, particularly those that work so vigilantly to posit lesbians’

marginal status in bar space. Although lesbian bar representations are just that—representations—I have also tried to demonstrate in this book how representations are intimately connected to the production and transformation of space, for better or for worse.

It is with this knowledge, then, that I add this book to the chorus of lesbian bar representations, with the hopes that, in its challenges to customary stories about lesbian bar space, it will produce new stories in which lesbians are, at the very least, central players. Like I said, I am not quite ready to give up on the lesbian bar. The lesbian bar remains, for me and for the lesbian bar documentary, a place of hopeful nostalgia, a place my brain tells me was never as good as I make it, but what I wouldn’t give to have it back—both on- and offscreen.

Acknowledgments

This book began as my dissertation at the University of Rochester. There, as both a graduate student and later a visiting assistant professor, I had the privilege to work with many incredibly talented scholars (Lisa Cart-wright, Douglas Crimp, Randall Halle, John Michael, David Rodowick, and Sharon Willis), all of whom contributed to this project with insightful commentary and sage advice. I am especially indebted to Sharon Willis, whose mentoring always came at the perfect moments and whose humor, razor-sharp intellect, and political acumen I hold in the highest esteem. I also thank the English department (particularly Bette London) and the film studies program, for giving me a place to hang my hat while I revised the manuscript, and the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Women and Gender Studies, for supporting this project at various stages.

Several important people helped bring this book to fruition. My new colleagues at Old Dominion University have provided me with a friendly and intellectually stimulating environment in which to complete the book.

I am also extremely grateful to Judith Halberstam and Judith Mayne, authors whose own scholarship I deeply respect, for reading the early manuscript. Their probing questions and incisive comments helped me to refine and clarify my arguments. As my editor at camera obscura, Patricia White had a hand—a very gracious one—in helping me shape chapter . The generosity of Kaucyila Brooke, Karen Kiss, Etang Inyang, and Sue Cowell made the often complicated task of writing on independent media easier; I thank them for providing me with videos and 159

160 Acknowledgments
photographs. I also thank Lisa Soccio for helping me out with some last-minute fact-finding.

Several people at the University of Minnesota Press had a direct hand in the publication process. I thank Douglas Armato, Pieter Martin, Mike Stoffel, Laura Westlund, and Amy Unger, as well as my copy editor, Tammy Zambo, for working hard to bring the book to its present state. Of course, I am also indebted to my editor, Richard Morrison, for his unwavering enthusiasm for the project.

Marcelle Heath and Mark Berrettini have been my finest interlocutors, my most challenging therapists, my pop-culture gurus, and my arch supporters; but it is for their enduring and inimitable friendship and their love of the telephone that I thank them most. I have also had wonderful support from Corinne Arraez, who is the greatest fan a friend could ask for, and my film partner Christine Russo, with whom I learned the delights of collaboration. And Erin Sumwalt’s longtime friendship and madcap stories offered the perfect distractions.

I also thank the women at the Slice of Life Café in Rochester, New York. In the absence of a lesbian bar, Slice of Life was the next-best space where I could truly relax, hold hands with my partner, and peel off a day’s worth of heterosexism. Though the amazing food was not great for my waistline, I am forever indebted to the café for its commitment to a politics of space.

My parents have been supremely encouraging of this project. Not only is the fact that I know they will incessantly brag about their daughter’s book on lesbian bars endlessly amusing, but their parental pride for such an endeavor also warms my heart amply. Finally, this book would not exist without Deborah Donnelly, who, after eight years, still remains my number one bar girl.

Notes

Come Here Often?

1. Of course, it can hardly go unnoticed by contemporary lesbian viewers that many of the “deviant” bar women from the classical Hollywood era are some of our most notorious lesbian icons. For the contemporary viewer aware of the rumored lesbianism of Garbo, Dietrich, McCambridge, and Stanwyck, as well as their ongoing status as lesbian icons, their roles as immoral women in bars are cinematic gems, ones that beg to be read ironically. For example, even as Anna Christie’s particular historical moment demands that Anna drink in a gender-segregated space, which she is forced to enter through the “ladies’ entrance,” contemporary audiences can imagine that walking through the ladies’ entrance was precisely what Garbo liked to do, and perhaps did on more than one occasion. Similarly, watching Dietrich’s cabaret act in Destry Rides Again, the knowing viewer may chuckle, reminding herself that it wasn’t only the “boys’ room” that Dietrich was interested in.

2. On the early mappings of lesbian and gay social space, see Bell and Valentine (, –).

3. On Call Her Savage, see Russo (, ).

4. For a discussion of one black-centered pulp narrative, Della Martin’s Twilight Girl (), see Gomez (). For an interesting discussion of the racial politics of lesbian bars in pulp novels, see Keller (, –).

1. Looking at the Lesbian Bar in the Twentieth Century 1. I use the term art-house to refer to those films, regardless of country of origin, which initially exhibited outside mainstream theater venues. Thus, for the purpose of this chapter, the term encompasses not only the American independent films Chasing Amy and Bound but also the French-produced French Twist.

2. “Lesbian chic” can be described as a series of ongoing media events beginning in the early s that altered the dominant public image of lesbians from that 161

162 Notes
of uncomely feminists to glamorous, fashion-conscious women. The most notorious of these events were the August  cover of Vanity Fair, which featured a lin-gerie-clad Cindy Crawford shaving the face of lesbian singer k. d. lang, and the June

 “lesbian issue” of Newsweek.

3. Indeed, Zorbaugh’s text is only one of many studies of homosexuality in the city to come out of the University of Chicago’s Department of Sociology during this era. See Johnson ().

4. Although we cannot know for certain exactly what forces motivated lesbians to seek out these early lesbian bars, many scholars have persuasively suggested the central role these and later emerging sources, such as pulp fiction and exposé journalism, played in alerting lesbians to bar life. See Beemyn (), Boyd (), Hamer (), and Walters ().

5. Jonathan Ned Katz (, –) and George Chauncey (, ) provide evidence of lesbians publicly socializing in the late s, but there is not yet enough evidence to suggest that lesbian use of public space as lesbians was widespread before the s. This may be, in part, because of women’s lack of financial self-sufficiency, familial independence, and geographic mobility at the end of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century, as Chauncey notes ().

6. According to Lillian Faderman (, –) and Sherrie A. Inness (,

–), the transformation of lesbianism from an individual pathology to a social one was spurred by the debut of sexology’s lesbian subject in popular medical and self-help texts, journalism, and fiction. However, even while acknowledging the centrality of sexology to the formation of lesbian and gay identity, Martha Vicinus (,

) and George Chauncey (, –) warn against granting medical discourse the position of sole catalyst for lesbian and gay identity formation. Chauncey’s groundbreaking work suggests that popular discourse helped to create gay male identity prior to medicine’s isolation of it. And though no work as of yet has unearthed a similar process for lesbians, Vicinus suggests that women most likely were also affected by a range of competing turn-of-the century discourses outside of sexology, such as

“social Darwinism, eugenics, criminology, and anthropology” ().

7. The phrase “privacy in public” is used by Laud Humphreys to describe the dynamic of men’s public restrooms for gay men (qtd. in Chauncey , ).

8. Despite being in the domestic realm, black all-lesbian rent parties functioned similarly to the lesbian bar. House parties lured in people from miles away by word of mouth, they were governed by a bouncer, and they offered food, music, and dancing. Additionally, like the public lesbian bar, rent parties were subject to police harassment. On rent parties and black lesbian socialization, see Kennedy and Davis (, –) and Thorpe (). On the racial dynamics of bar life, see Kennedy and Davis (, –), Lorde (, –), and Thorpe ().

9. At the same time, as Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy’s research into the life of a middle-class lesbian residing in South Dakota in the s and s reveals, middle-class women’s rejection of bar life may have occurred neither out of fear of exposure nor because of prejudices based on class status. Instead, her research demonstrates that, although sexually intimate with other women, many women in the early twentieth century may not yet have construed sexuality as a public matter ().

10. Other public spaces offering varying degrees of socialization for pre-Stonewall lesbians included the New York beach area of Riis Park (Nestle , –) and the New York resort town of Cherry Grove (Newton ). Softball games also provided

Notes 163
public spaces for lesbians to gather, though it is not insignificant that they were often sponsored by and dependent upon lesbian bars for their existence (Faderman

, –). Additionally, lesbians were openly involved in some public feminist organizations of the s (–), and the lenient policy toward female homosexuality during periods of WWII enabled all-female spaces to serve as public sites for lesbian congregation (–).

11. On homosexuality in film during the era of the Production Code, see Russo (); Lugowski (); and White (, –).

12. Certainly, prior to the appearance of these cheaply produced paperbacks, many readers of literature already had been exposed to the lesbian bar. In addition to the fictionalized nightclubs depicted in Harlem Renaissance novels, as well as in Radclyffe Hall’s and Diana Frederics’s novels of lesbian life, lesbian barlike spaces appear in Guy de Maupassant’s short story “Paul’s Mistress” ([] ) and Émile Zola’s Nana ([] ). The latter two French writings are credited by Kennedy and Davis with being the first literary representations of lesbian bars (, ).

13. Though this chapter focuses on heterosexual consumption and heterosexist imaginings of lesbian bars, a note inscribed in the front jacket of the copy of New York: Confidential! that I checked out from the University of Rochester’s Rush Rhees Library reminds me that such vicarious traveling is also available for homosexual readers. Dated , the inscription says, “Dear ‘Judge’: I am sure that you and I know ‘ more’ about N.Y. than most. However . . . maybe if you study this you can take us to some new frontiers. Warmly, ‘Bob.’” As “Judge” is ambiguously gendered, though certainly male-coded for the time, we can speculate about the homoeroti-cism that undergirds this writer’s desire to seek out “new frontiers.”

14. It is certainly a possibility that, as a “pro-lesbian pulp” author, Bannon may have outlined proper etiquette for men in these specific terms as a way to simultaneously appease the industry and manage potentially threatening male behavior within lesbian bars. In other words, although this passage from Journey to a Woman works within the formulaic confines of lesbian pulp by sanctioning and inviting male use of lesbian bars, it also delimits this use by implying, “Look but don’t touch.”

15. This is not to say that connotative representations of homosexuality necessarily work to contain homosexuality. As D. A. Miller argues in his insightful analysis of Rope (), “If connotation, as the dominant signifying practice of homophobia, has the advantage of constructing an essentially insubstantial homosexuality, it has the corresponding inconvenience of tending to raise this ghost all over the place”

(, ).

16. Meow Mix was also publicized to a nonlesbian audience after it became, in

, the central New York location for Xena: Warrior Princess fandom. Attracting both lesbian and heterosexual fans of the show, Meow Mix’s weekly Xena nights were, for a short time, the source of media scrutiny. See Cassetta ().

17. In her discussion of Bound, Jean Noble suggests that the film functions ethnographically because of Susie Bright’s role both in the production of the film, as a technical advisor, and in the cast, as a lesbian bar patron. However, drawing on the work of James Clifford, Noble suggests that Bound’s ethnographic turn is “characteristic of a new ethnography which draws attention not to the interpretation of cultural ‘texts’ but to their relations of production instead” (, ). Indeed, Noble suggests that Bound’s ethnography not only is a “collaborative” one, made with the help of the lesbian community, but also privileges that community in its address

164 Notes

(–). This citation of Bound as a collaborative ethnography is compelling, particularly given its uniqueness among mainstream films as a narrative with lesbian protagonists. At the same time, the repeated use of lesbian authenticity within bar scenes suggests that Bright’s inclusion in the production and narrative of the film is both cinematic and cultural business as usual. Less a sign of a “new ethnography,” in which the power relations between filmmaker and ethnographic subject are balanced, Bright’s inclusion more accurately signifies the historical tenacity of documentary realness as a representational trope by which to frame depictions of lesbian bars.

18. In addition to the lesbian confidantes in Roseanne, Boys on the Side, The First Wives Club, Ellen, Chasing Amy, and NYPD Blue, witness the following list, admittedly partial, of recent lesbian and gay playmates: Karen Silkwood’s devoted friend Dolly Pelliker (Cher) in Silkwood (); the gay mayoral employee Carter (Michael Boatman) on ABC’s Spin City; the gay neighbor and confidant Simon (Greg Kin-near) in As Good as It Gets (); the trio of drag queens in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (); the devoted best friend and heterosexual beard George (Rupert Everett) in My Best Friend’s Wedding (); the gay friend Matthew (John Hannah) who loses his lover to AIDS in Four Weddings and a Funeral (); the gay roommate and love interest George (Paul Rudd) in The Object of My Affection (); the lovable but annoying boss, Leon Carp (Martin Mull), on Roseanne; the gay best friend and neighbor Tim (Nathan Lane) in Frankie and Johnny (); the loser at lesbian love Connie (Kelly Lynch), who hires a male gigolo to win back her girlfriend in Three of Hearts (); Raymond’s (Andy Garcia’s) lesbian partner, Amy (Laurie Metcalf), in the cop thriller Internal Affairs (); and a developmen-tally disabled woman’s favorite sibling in The Other Sister ().

19. For example, witness the deluge of ridicule hurled at Jerry Falwell after his right-wing publication the National Liberty Journal outed the Teletubbies character Tinky Winky in , and after he identified the “pagan” roots of the Lilith Fair, a mainstream summer concert featuring women artists, later that same year.

20. An exception to this peaceful coexistence takes place when the bar owner’s son displays anger over Jane’s moving in with his mother after Robin temporarily kicks her out of their home. However, whatever the film wants to suggest by this episode is abandoned in favor of its narrative of utopian acceptance.

21. That this baby surprisingly turns out to be biracial is not insignificant, as racial difference, along with lesbianism, also works in a curative fashion for the film’s white protagonists. See Willis (b).

22. That this neighborhood is populated mostly by people of color is neither insignificant nor unproblematic. Indeed, I would argue that what implicitly underscores the white woman’s physical liberation in this scene is the very fact that she can walk through and survive nonwhite public territory, which is almost always associated with danger in dominant representation.

23. Indeed, in Female Masculinity, Judith Halberstam details how the women’s public restroom often functions as “an arena for the enforcement of gender conformity” (, ).

24. The song’s cheeky and silly tone might lead one to ask whether “I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar” is meant to be ironic. However, a colleague of mine, Matt Reynolds, suggests that because Richman “positions himself outside of mainstream rock and roll and all of the trappings of hyper-masculinity that are associated with

Notes 165
it . . . this song [is more likely] about his identification with [both] a group (lesbians) who, often, also position themselves as outsiders, and the kinds of freedoms, however momentary or illusionary, they may experience on a dance floor in a lesbian bar. The fact that he is a white hetero[sexual] guy singing this [song] is not without its problems. But I think the song is meant lovingly and appreciatively of that world and his temporary place in it” (e-mail to the author, February , ). Although I don’t disagree with Reynolds’s speculation about Richman’s motives, the purpose of this chapter is, of course, to analyze what these sorts of heterosexual identifications with lesbian bars are also symptomatic of. I thank Matt Reynolds for bringing this song to my attention and for helping me work through my analysis of it.

25. Opening in , Club Marcella’s catered to a mostly gay male and drag-queen clientele, offering performances by drag queens as well. According to the owners (a straight married couple and a gay man), by , eighty percent of the club’s clientele was heterosexual. Interestingly, the owners offer no clear reason for the bar’s change in clientele. Instead, gay club owner Joseph Guargliardo suggests that Marcella’s straightening “was part of a natural evolution” (qtd. in McCoy

, ).

26. Liz’s and Judith’s drug taking before going to a lesbian bar is not insignificant, as it mirrors the public statements many straight-identified actresses have made about the necessity of drinking alcohol before filming lesbian sex scenes. For example, in , Denise Richards revealed to a titillated Jay Leno on The Tonight Show that she and actress Neve Campbell had to get drunk prior to kissing one another in Wild Things ().

27. Though the power of the male cinematic gaze, first articulated by Laura Mulvey in her seminal essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” has been challenged since the essay’s first publication in , the presence of such a gaze within contemporary cinema certainly remains significant.

28. Though both Hoogland and I regard Basic Instinct’s bar scene as a battle between lesbianism and heterosexuality, Hoogland’s reading of Nick’s movements through the bar space is different from my own. Rather than reading his actions as a sign of his sense of spatial entitlement, she reads Nick’s clothing and stride as a sign of his insecurity about being in territory that is decidedly not his own (, ).

2. Lesbians on Location

1. The indifference to the people whose homes, neighborhoods, parks, businesses, and streets provide the settings for movies is revealed in William A. Gordon’s Shot on This Site: A Traveler’s Guide to the Places and Locations Used to Film Famous Movies and Television Shows. Though he justifies his publishing of the addresses of the private residences featured in E.T. the Extra-terrestrial (), Mrs. Doubtfire (), and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle () by cautioning his readers “not to disturb the occupants of these homes,” he also tells them there is “nothing wrong with driving by and gawking” (, viii).

2. Research for this chapter was conducted in the spring of  at the Louis B.

Mayer Library of the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, California, which houses Robert Aldrich’s career files under the title Special Collection no.  DGA/

Robert Aldrich Collection, hereafter referred to as Special Collection no. . All

166 Notes
references to letters, memos, contracts, publicity notes, etc., in this chapter refer to documents found in files pertaining to the production of The Killing of Sister George. When referring to material from these files, I try, when documents permit, to be as specific as possible, citing a document’s title, date, subject matter, author, and recipient(s). I thank librarian Caroline Sisneros for her patience and generosity toward me as I sifted through these files.

3. The title page of the play reads, The Killing of Sister George: A Comedy.

4. For a complete filmography of Aldrich’s work, which also serves as a biography of his film career, consult Combs (), Arnold and Miller (), and Silver and Ursini ().

5. On this controversy, see Silver and Ursini (, ) and Arnold and Miller (, –). Special Collection no.  also contains a wealth of material related to this topic, including news clippings, letters between Aldrich and MPAA president Jack Valenti, letters to Aldrich from various media outlets on their censorship policies, and court files from Aldrich’s lawsuit against the Los Angeles Times.

6. On the addition of this sex scene to the film, see Hussey ().

7. Because film commissions are institutions working to stimulate regional economic growth, their goals may be antithetical to the goals of the communities that they represent. A prime example is the solicitation of Paramount Pictures by Pennsylvania’s Bureau of Motion Pictures to film the Amish romance–action film Witness in Lancaster County despite protests by the local Amish community about the intrusion that the production and the film’s release would have on their lives. According to the county commissioner, Robert Boyer, the increase to the already fiscally profitable Amish-generated tourist industry was supreme in the state’s decision to lure the film to the region (Hostetler and Kraybill , ).

8. This is not true of all area guidebooks. In any case, it is more and more likely that cities do not even have a lesbian bar. On the waning and transformation of lesbian bar culture, see chapters  and  of this book.

9. For example, in the city in which I reside as I write—Rochester, New York—
a now-defunct lesbian bar that moved into the space of a formally heterosexual restaurant changed none of the restaurant’s exterior, presumably so that passersby could not identify it as a lesbian bar. The owners of the bar also had an unstated policy against hanging any flyers in the windows that might associate the bar with lesbianism.

10. As her name appears in the list of contributing authors to The New London Spy, the author of this section, “Lesbian London,” is most likely the lesbian writer Maureen Duffy, author of The Microcosm (), a novel loosely set at Gateways. If so, the circumspect tenor of the section, which details the difficulty of entry, the barring of troublemakers, and the frequent attendance of women on the rebound from men can be read less as a welcoming guide and more of a warning to heterosexual gawkers (Davies , –).

11. First published in , Arena Three was the publication of the Minorities Research Group, the “first explicitly and dedicatedly lesbian social and political organization in Britain” (Hamer , ).

12. Exemplifying the need to ward off women from lesbianism is a letter written to Aldrich on December , , about the film’s love scene. The contents of the letter belie the jocularity of its tone: “Dear Robert Aldrich: As a good cock member of the Heterosexual Society I am furious with you. You have made the lesbian love

Notes 167
scene in ‘The Killing of Sister George’ so fascinating and enjoyable that I am afraid that women are going to leave us for other women—and I don’t know whether to blame them! You’re just making my job harder. So, if you would, when the picture is in general release, I would appreciate it if you drop that scene. Sincerely, Wilbur Stark” (Special Collection no. ).

13. Although Alain Silver and James Ursini note, “In The Killing of Sister George there are no jokes about or mockery of the lesbians who are the film’s protagonists”

(, ), the inclusion in Aldrich’s files of not only Hersey’s lesbian jokes but also a litany of jokes from a photographer, Jack Albin, suggests that, behind the scenes, respect toward the film’s lesbian subjects was less than secure. In a letter to Aldrich dated January , , Albin offers several witless jokes that he suggests the publicists should circulate “in every bar in the country,” including these: “If ‘Sister George’ were your sister, you would wish you were an only child” and “Sister George vacations by flying to Holland so she can ride a bike on a dike” (Special Collection no. ).

14. Next to most neighbors’ names and addresses on this list appears a brief note on their reaction to the filming, which usually takes the form of a simple “OK.” Of note, however, is the bizarre prejudicial assessment of one Mrs. Liebrecht: “German but OK.”

15. In Britannia’s Glory: A History of Twentieth-Century Lesbians, Emily Hamer incorrectly identifies Smitty and Gina Ware as lovers (, ).

16. A protest of Gateways in  by Britain’s newly formed Gay Liberation Front suggests that many lesbians and gay men were aware that the club’s owners used lesbian publicity for personal profit. A leaflet handed out at the protest states: “The Gateways has made thousands of pounds out of women who come to the club (precisely how much money and publicity was gained from The Killing of Sister George? ). . . . We are not sick and don’t like people who condescendingly treat us as such—especially when they are making a living off us” (qtd. in ibid., ).

17. For example, according to the Screen Actors Guild Extras Digest, an extra must be notified in advance if the role requires nudity, a haircut, wet work, or smoking (see Chambers , –).

18. This scholarship includes, though is by no means limited to, the work of Alexander Doty (), Judith Mayne (, ), Z. Isiling Nataf (), Andrea Weiss (), and Clare Whatling (, ). On the relationship of lesbian spectatorship to representations of lesbian bars, see chapter .

19. Indeed, a passage in the lesbian section of The New London Spy reveals the Gateways clientele to be primarily working-class, while it also bespeaks the class politics that has historically informed lesbian bar life: “It [Gateways] has been in existence since the thirties and acquired its present exclusive flavour during the war. A war which affected a class revolution in lesbianism. . . . The equality of uniform khaki or blue lowered the barriers, letting in the other ranks who refused to return to anonymity when the war was over. They wanted to dance; they were willing to spend. The juke-box ousted the piano and afternoon tea.

“The older members regret it, remembering the panache of white flannels and blazers. . . . ‘They knew how to spend too,’ one of them said. ‘. . . I’ve seen money flow like water. Now it’s just teddy-boys and typists’” (qtd. in Davies , ).

20. Though tweed fabric, which Richard Dyer says traditionally connotes a rural masculinity (, ), was, no doubt, chosen for George’s suit to reflect and aug-

168 Notes
ment her butchness, a humorous passage from the production notes disavows any association of Harris tweed suits with lesbianism. Costume designer Renie Conley asserts in a press release, “These suits are the hallmark of a certain class of English gentlewoman. . . . Such tweeds are a national institution and have nothing whatever to do with lesbianism, being favored principally by ‘country’ matrons in more or less stately homes” (Special Collections no. ).

21. This is also the case in Gordon Douglas’s  film, Tony Rome. In this film, starring Frank Sinatra, the roles of a lesbian stripper and her girlfriend do not get screen credit.

22. The absence of this speaking role from the credits is even more fraught, given the fact that daily production reports indicate that the relevant scene was actually shot at Aldrich’s studio in California, with an actress playing the “butch” character, who tries to console an upset Childie in the bathroom.

3. Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown

1. Holmlund specifically discusses the practice of “celluloid surgery” in relation to Damned if You Don’t (), Su Friedrich’s remake of Black Narcissus (); and Invisible Adversaries (), Valie Export’s version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers ().

2. Judith Mayne calls Hollywood’s simultaneous move of beckoning and concealing lesbians the “paradox of lesbian visibility (i.e., there and not there at the same time)” (, ).

3. Alternative lesbian media that addresses lesbian spectatorship, either in the cut-and-paste fashion of “celluloid surgery” or through conventional documentary or narrative forms, includes Stunt Double: Meditations on My Life with Buffy (), in which a woman contemplates her infatuation with Sarah Michelle Gellar, the lead actress in Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Fascinating () and Alien Kisses (), two works that explore lesbians’ relationships to the Star Trek franchise; L Is for the Way You Look (), Jodie: An Icon (), We’ve Been Framed (), and Freebird (), which all address lesbian fandom and lesbian film subtexts; The Watermelon Woman (), which explores a black lesbian’s relationship to the cinematic figure of the

“mammy”; and Emporte-Moi (), which dramatizes a thirteen-year-old girl’s infatuation with the actress Anna Karina in Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie ().

4. On the relationship of gossip to lesbian spectators of classical Hollywood cinema, see Weiss (). On the relationship of gossip to lesbian spectatorship in the contemporary era, see Crimp () and Whatling ().

5. Arguably, Badass Supermama is also situated within the tradition of black independent filmmaking and its project of exposing and altering dominant conventions of black representation. On black independent film and video, see Bobo (,

), Diawara (), Reid (, –), Smith (, –), and Snead (,

–).

6. According to Ed Guerrero, the blaxploitation genre spanned approximately five years, from  to  (, ).

7. According to Guerrero, this economic crisis was the result of both the television industry’s halt on leasing films from Hollywood studios for television play and the failure of expensive blockbusters to turn a profit (, ).

Notes 169

8. According to James Robert Parish and George H. Hill, the motivation for pairing Dobson with an Asian sidekick was an attempt on the part of the film industry to rejuvenate the hackneyed blaxploitation genre (, ). Similarly, Guerrero argues that the pairing indicates the industry’s awareness of the blaxploitation audiences’ shift to kung-fu action movies (, ).

9. On Hollywood’s appeasement of second-wave feminism, see Kuhn ().

10. According to D’Acci, television’s new representations of women emerged not solely as a reaction to the rise of feminism but also within the context of censorship.

D’Acci argues that in order to compensate for a mandated decrease in television violence, the industry increased the sexualization of women (, ).

11. The distribution history of Daughters of the Dust (), Julie Dash’s film about four generations of black women, clearly exemplifies the industry’s lack of acknowledgment of black women as film consumers. According to Jacqueline Bobo,

“Potential distributors who saw the film at festivals and preview screenings expressed doubt that the film would appeal to a sufficient number of people” (, ).

12. Echols quotes the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC),

“Black Women’s Liberation,” Women: A Journal of Liberation, , no.  (winter ).

13. Whether the blaxploitation heroine’s, particularly Pam Grier’s, revenge and course of justice was personal or political is a point of debate in blaxploitation scholarship. According to Charles Kronengold, the blaxploitation heroine’s requisite course of revenge can be linked to a feminist consciousness. He argues that the blaxploitation heroine, and especially Grier, “come[s] on so hard as to make [her]

film’s revenge plots seem like the revenge is taken against patriarchy itself” (,

). Alternately, Jennifer Devere Brody argues that “Pam Grier’s vehicles work as women’s revenge films in which an individual motivated by emotional tragedy (loss of a family member) kills her opponents. The individual nature of Grier’s films marks her crimes as specific and makes them into mere personal vendetta—private matters, and not necessarily attacks on systemic oppression” (, ).

14. Interestingly, though Hanson opens his essay by outlining his own earlier ambivalent interpretation of the lesbian vampire genre, he doesn’t cast himself as a

“repressed” or “dour” feminist (, –).

15. On the public outcry against blaxploitation images, see Guerrero (, –).

16. Prior to Tarantino’s homage to Grier’s blaxploitation image in Jackie Brown, Grier starred in Original Gangsters (), a film that much more directly referenced blaxploitation and also starred blaxploitation icons Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, and Richard Roundtree.

17. This is consistent with the film’s overall fetishization of blackness. Indeed, after the female protagonist’s husband leaves her for an Asian woman, she repeatedly visits a black jazz club situated in a predominately black neighborhood. It is in this bar where she becomes captivated by a black jazz singer, played by Queen Latifah.

4. Wish We Didn’t Have to Meet Secretly?

1. An exception to the Jump Cut editors’ critique is We All Have Our Reasons (). In this documentary about lesbian alcoholics, women speak about their relationship to alcohol in faux bar settings. I thank Thomas Waugh for reminding me of this documentary.

170 Notes

2. For lesbian film- and videographies of this early period, see Weiss (), Dyer (, –), and Waugh ().

3. For a partial list of lesbian alternative films and videos produced in the s and s that focus on lesbian history, see the film- and videographies in Olson (), Straayer (, –), Holmlund and Fuchs (, –), and Weiss (,

–).

4. The Boy Mechanic is an ongoing multimedia project. The work that I discuss in this chapter is a thirty-minute video that was included in the exhibition “Re: Public: Listening to San Diego” at the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts, May –August , . In its larger multimedia format, The Boy Mechanic was recently included in the Austrian exhibition “⬍hers⬎: Video as a Female Terrain,”

October –December , .

5. On the first wave of women’s historical documentary, see Lesage (), Michel (), Welsch (), Erens (), and Juhasz ().

6. The Kinsey reports on white male and female sexuality— Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female—were published in

 and  respectively. Although the reports pointed to a widespread prevalence of homosexual and bisexual behaviors among males and females of varying socio-economic status and were central in altering lingering Victorian prohibitions against public sexual discourse, they also created a frenzy over the dangers of rampant homosexuality. As John D’Emilio says, “[The Kinsey statistics] served not to amelio-rate hostility toward gay men and women, but to magnify suddenly the proportions of the danger they allegedly posed” (, ).

7. Laura Landon also appears in Bannon’s subsequent two novels, Women in the Shadows ([b] ) and Journey to a Woman ([] ).

8. This is not to suggest that lesbian pulp novels aren’t self-reflexive. Indeed, in Journey to a Woman, Bannon comments in a wonderfully reflexive fashion on pulp’s ethnographic power. Searching New York City for her lost lesbian lover, Beth, now married, contacts Nina Spicer, a sexy, albeit repugnant, lesbian pulp writer, and asks to be shown the ins and outs of Village bar life (–). Nina takes Beth to three bars whose clientele of pimps, male voyeurs, and lesbians recalls, for Beth, “scenes from Nina’s novels” ().

9. In Amy Villarejo’s rigorous analysis of the historical circulation and present recirculation of pulp (), she critiques its incorporation in Forbidden Love for supporting a mode of historicizing that finds continuity, rather than complexity, in past and present lesbian identity.

10. I use the term amateur to describe The Riverview’s production not only to designate its rough formal quality (e.g., poor lighting and sound, rudimentary editing and style) but also to designate the nonprofessional, non-art-school-based status of the collective that produced it. A Gang of Lesbians is a group of six women based in Rochester, New York—Robin Brooks, Susan Cowell, Susan David, Marta Maletzke, Tammy Reynolds, and Barbara Schanzer—who learned to shoot and edit video specifically for this one-time project.

11. According to Harper, such regulatory scrutiny is operative for any person who “diverges from social norms—this person who engages in same-sex eroticism, the individual who immigrates from another country, the nonwhite citizen” (, x).

12. Since , several lesbian bars in Rochester have successively opened and closed. There is currently no exclusively lesbian bar there.

Notes 171

13. Of course, many straight commercial establishments also purposely conceal themselves by downplaying their entrances (e.g., trendy restaurants) or by occupying desolate industrial locations (e.g., raves). However, aside from possible economic motives, the reasons a straight establishment chooses public obscurity are quite different from those of the lesbian bar. The latter often relies on concealment for safety, whereas the former uses obscurity to bring its establishment cultural cachet.

14. On the omnipotent point of view held by male spatial theorists, see Deutsche (). On the underlying anxieties of the flaneur, see Wilson (). On the urban bravery of the lesbian flaneur, see Munt (). On gay male cruising, see Retzloff ().

15. Andrew Cunanan murdered fashion designer Gianni Versace on July , .

16. Indeed, lesbian bar closure is arguably part of the historic policing of all public spaces of sexual nonconformity, currently under a microscope since the 

“Disneyfication” of Times Square in New York City. See Dangerous Bedfellows () and Delaney ().

17. On the relationship of women to drinking establishments, see Lupton () and Murdock ().

18. This legacy certainly remains, as women going to bars—alone or in numbers—are still perceived to be seeking male sexual companionship.

19. This word-of-mouth information is corroborated by Damron Women’s Traveller, 2001. Of the numerous bars and clubs in San Francisco listed in this comprehensive guide to lesbian space worldwide, only one is listed as a seven-days-a-week neighborhood lesbian bar. All other bars there are mixed lesbian and gay bars or clubs, gay bars or clubs where women are “welcome,” or monthly or weekly (and sometimes roving) dance clubs (, –).

20. For a discussion of this tension, see Newton () and the documentary Pride Divide ().

21. Rothenberg’s claim rests partly on data culled in  from mailing lists and marketing data mobilized by gay political organizations interested in “gay-winnable”

city-council districts. In , this data revealed that “Park Slope has one of the highest proportions of gay residents in New York City outside of Greenwich Village” (, ). Rothenberg also bases her claims on both her own and her interview subjects’ experiential knowledge of Park Slope.

22. The lack of lesbian institutions in Park Slope might also be the result of the high cost of real estate in this borough.

23. For a discussion of the benefits of one such space, the Clit Club in New York City, which cofounder Jocelyn Taylor calls a club night or event rather than a “bona fide bar,” see Thomas ().

24. The lesbian bars in the city in which I resided at the time of writing this book—

Rochester, New York—offer a perfect example. In a style similar to the roving lesbian dance clubs in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, a weekly lesbian dance club opened in the summer of  in Rochester. Initially held on a Saturday night at a location functioning as a heterosexual sports bar and restaurant by day, the roving lesbian dance club lasted three weeks. A gay male bar also briefly hosted a lesbian night on the first Thursday of every month.

25. We might think of cruising as another way gay men create space outside of the confines of the gay ghetto. At the same time, however, it would be foolish of me

172 Notes
to suggest that gay men have unencumbered access to public space. One bar in a nongay area hardly signifies uninhibited access, and the high number of hate crimes against gay men in and beyond gay ghettos highlights gay men’s own precariousness within public space. However, I do want to emphasize that lesbians are limited in ways that gay men are not in the public realm, whether for reasons pertaining specifically to gender or economics or a combination of both.

26. For a discussion of the ways architectural design affects social spaces, see Lindell ().

27. As Amber Hollibaugh details (), this erasure of lesbian sexuality in public discussions of AIDS abruptly ended in  when the Reverend Louis Sheldon, director of the Family Values Coalition, discovered the Safer Sex Handbook for Lesbians, which was produced by the Lesbian AIDS project of Gay Men’s Health Crisis.

Shocked by its discussion of safety precautions for lesbian vaginal fisting, Sheldon delivered copies of the pamphlet to members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Hollibaugh argues that it was at this historic moment when, instead of being invisible, lesbian sexuality became “virtually dangerous.”

28. Sue Cowell, interview by author, phone conversation, Rochester, New York, January , .

29. For an interesting discussion of the contemporary disdain for femme identity in lesbian bars, see Rugg ().

30. Both Patricia Leonardi and Martha Gever charge Last Call at Maud’s with nostalgia as well. According to Leonardi, “The film’s balance between the personal and the social, between memory and history, between revision and nostalgia, is at best precarious” (, ). For Gever, the video’s social history “borders on romantic nostalgia . . . [and] mythologizes a lost community in order to grant lesbian culture legitimacy . . . abdicat[ing] any critical approach to history in the effort” (,

).

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Films, Videos, and Television Programs Cited Advise and Consent (Otto Preminger, ) Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Martin Scorsese, ) Alien Kisses (Dara Gellman, )

All about Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, ) Anna Christie (Clarence Brown, ) Anne of the Indies (Jacques Tourneur, ) As Good as It Gets (James Brooks, ) Baby Face (Alfred E. Green, )

Badass Supermama (Etang Inyang, ) Bar Girls (Marita Giovanni, )

Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, ) B.D. Women (Inge Blackman, )

Big Bird Cage, The (Jack Hill, ) Big Doll House, The (Jack Hill, ) Big Knife, The (Robert Aldrich, ) Birdcage, The (Mike Nichols, )

Black Mama, White Mama (Eddie Romero, ) Black Narcissus (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, ) Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, )

Body of a Poet, The (Sonali Fernando, ) Bound (Wachowski Brothers, )

Boy Mechanic, The (Kaucyila Brooke, ) Boys on the Side (Herbert Ross, ) Brigadoon (Vincente Minnelli, )

Bucktown (Arthur Marks, )

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (“Bad Girls,” WB, February , ) Butterfly Kiss (Michael Winterbottom, ) By Design (Claude Jutra, )

Caged (John Cromwell, )

Call Her Savage (John Francis Dillon, ) Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, )

185

186 Films, Videos, and Television Programs Charlie’s Angels (ABC, –)

Chasing Amy (Kevin Smith, )

Children’s Hour, The (William Wyler, ) Cleopatra Jones (Jack Starrett, ) Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold (Chuck Bail, ) Coffy (Jack Hill, )

Cripple Creek Barroom (W. K. L. Dickson, ) Cruising (William Friedkin, )

Crying Game, The (Neil Jordan, ) Damned if You Don’t (Su Friedrich, ) Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash, ) Destry Rides Again (George Marshall, ) Detective, The (Gordon Douglas, ) Dirty Dozen, The (Robert Aldrich, ) Dry Kisses Only (Kaucyila Brooke and Jane Cottis, ) Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, )

Ellen (“The Puppy Episode,” ABC, April , ) Emporte-Moi (Lea Pool, )

ER (NBC, –)

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, ) Fan, The (Edward Bianchi, )

Fascinating (Amanda Taylor, )

First Wives Club, The (Hugh Wilson, ) Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (Aerlyn Weissman and Lynne Fernie, )

Four Weddings and a Funeral (Mike Newell, ) Fox, The (Mark Rydell, )

Foxy Brown (Jack Hill, )

Frankie and Johnny (Garry Marshall, ) Freebird (Suzie Silver, )

French Twist (Josiane Balasko, ) Friday Foster (Arthur Marks, )

Get Christie Love (ABC, –)

Gilda (Charles Vidor, )

Girl Thing, A (Lee Rose, Showtime, January  and , ) Greatest Mother of ’Em All, The (Robert Aldrich, , unfinished) Great Train Robbery, The (Edwin S. Porter, ) Hand That Rocks the Cradle, The (Curtis Hanson, ) Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, ) Henry and June (Philip Kaufman, ) Holy Smoke (Jane Campion, )

Homicide: Life on the Street (“Sideshow,” NBC, February , ) Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Robert Aldrich, ) If These Walls Could Talk 2 (episode , Martha Coolidge, HBO, March , ) Internal Affairs (Mike Figgis, ) Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegal, ) Invisible Adversaries (Valie Export, ) Jackal, The (Michael Caton-Jones, )

Films, Videos, and Television Programs 187

Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino, ) Jaded (Caryn Krooth, )

Jodie: An Icon (Pratibha Parmar, ) Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, )

Julia (Fred Zinnemann, )

Killing of Sister George, The (Robert Aldrich, ) Klute (Alan J. Pakula, )

Last Call at Maud’s (Paris Poirier, ) Late Night with David Letterman (NBC, July , ) Law and Order (“Sideshow,” NBC, February , ) Legend of Lylah Clare, The (Robert Aldrich, ) Lianna (John Sayles, )

Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter, The (Connie Field, ) L Is for the Way You Look (Jean Carlomusto, ) Living Out Loud (Richard LaGravenese, ) Meeting of Two Queens (Cecilia Barriga, ) Mercy (Damian Harris, )

Mrs. Doubtfire (Chris Columbus, ) My Best Friend’s Wedding (P. J. Hogan, ) My Little Chickadee (Edward Cline, ) The News with Brian Williams (MSNBC, July , ) Night of the Iguana, The (John Huston, ) NYPD Blue (“Three Girls and a Baby,” ABC, October , ) Object of My Affection, The (Nicholas Hytner, ) Original Gangsters (Larry Cohen, ) Other Sister, The (Garry Marshall, ) Personal Best (Robert Towne, )

P. J. (John Guillermin, )

Platoon (Oliver Stone, )

Police Academy (Hugh Wilson, )

Police Woman (NBC, –)

Pride Divide (Paris Poirer, )

Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, ) Rachel, Rachel (Paul Newman, )

Red Sonja (Richard Fleischer, )

Relativity (“Just One More Thing,” ABC, September , ) Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand, ) River of No Return (Otto Preminger, ) Riverview, The: A Lesbian Place (A Gang of Lesbians, ) Rope (Alfred Hitchcock, )

Roseanne (“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” ABC, March , ) Seven Women (John Ford, )

Sex and the City (“The Cheating Curve,” HBO Signature, February , ) Sheba, Baby (William Girdler, )

Shooter, The (Ted Kotcheff, ; also known as Hidden Assassin and Desafío final) Silkwood (Mike Nichols, )

Simpsons, The (“Fear of Flying,” FOX, December , ) Some Ground to Stand On (Joyce Warshow, )

188 Films, Videos, and Television Programs Spin City (ABC, –)

Star Trek: The Next Generation (FOX, –) Star Wars (George Lucas, )

Stolen Moments: A Century of Lesbian Culture and Identity (Margaret Wescott,

)

Stunt Double: Meditations on My Life with Buffy (Julie Wyman, ) Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (Melvin Van Peebles, ) Teletubbies (PBS, –)

Thelma and Louise (Ridley Scott, ) Three of Hearts (Yurek Bogayevicz, ) The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (NBC, March , ) Tony Rome (Gordon Douglas, )

Total Recall (Paul Verhoeven, )

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (Beeban Kidron, ) Truth about Jane, The (Lee Rose, Lifetime Television, August , ) Union Maids (Jim Klein, Miles Mogulescu, and Julia Reichert, ) Unmarried Woman, An (Paul Mazursky, ) Valley of the Dolls (Mark Robson, ) Virginia City (Michael Curtiz, ) Vivre Sa Vie (Jean-Luc Godard, ) Watermelon Woman, The (Cheryl Dunye, ) Wayne’s World 2 (Stephen Surjik, ) We All Have Our Reasons (Frances Reid and Elizabeth Stevens, ) We’ve Been Framed (Cheryl Farthing, ) What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (Lee H. Katzin, ) What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, ) Wild Things (John McNaughton, )

Witchblade (“Diplopia,” TNT, June , ) With Babies and Banners: The Story of the Women’s Emergency Brigade (Lorraine Gray, )

Witness (Peter Weir, )

Women in Cages (Gerardo de Leon, ) Wonder Woman (ABC, ; CBS, –) Xena: Warrior Princess (“Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” WGN syndication, October

, )

Young Billy Young (Burt Kennedy, )

Index

Abril, Victoria, 

All about Eve (), 
action heroine, sexy television, 
alternative media, lesbian, xi–xii, xx–

Adams, Lynne, 
xxiv, –, n.. See also Badass

Advise and Consent (), xiv

Supermama ()

affection: need for spaces to show
amazon figure: lesbian affinity for,
human, –; policing of gestures

–
of, 

Amazon Quarterly, 

Affleck, Ben, , 

Amish community: protests over

African American lesbians. See black filming of Witness, , n.
lesbians

Anderson, Carolyn, 

AIDS, , n.

Anna Christie (), ix, x, xi, n.

Albin, Jack, n.

Anne of the Indies (), 
alcohol: changes in lesbian
antagonism between mainstream
consumption and perception of,
filmmakers and environments, 

–
anxiety: lesbian, about access to and

Aldrich, Robert, xix, , , , –;
claims on public space, xxiv, –,
awareness of consequences of lesbian

; about potential hazards of
ethnographic exposure, ; desire for
concealed homosexuality, 
authenticity, , ; entrance into

Arena Three (magazine), , , n.
and acceptance within Gateways,

Armory, Deborah P., xiii, , , 
publicity about, –; marketability

Arnold, Edwin T., 
of, ; purchase of rights to Killing of arrival scenes, lesbian bar, –, 

Sister George, –; sensitivity
art-house films, , n.
toward Gateway’s lesbian patrons,

As Good as It Gets (), 

–; studio filming strategy of, .

Astraea Lesbian Action Foundation

See also Killing of Sister George () (New York), 

Aldrich Studios, 
asymmetrical cultural appropriation:

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (), zones of, –



Atlanta: bombing of gay and lesbian

Alien Kisses (), n.
nightclub in (), 

189

190 Index
authenticity, xviii–xx; in contemporary

Big Doll House, The, 
narratives ( to present), –;

Big Knife, The (), 
as ethnographic “arrival scene,” –

Big Money, The (Dos Passos), xxii

, ; of Gateways scene in Killing of

Birdcage, The (), xiv

Sister George, ; of lesbian pulp
black lesbians: emerging lesbian bar
fiction, ; lesbian “technical consul-
life in s and s and, ;
tant” for, –; location shooting
negation of, as either representa-
for, xix–xx, –; for naturalized
tional figure or spectator, –,
lesbian bar dynamics, ; situational

–; relationship to lesbian bars,
cues of, –, ; unremitting
xx–xxiii, –, , ; rent parties
compulsion for, –, 
of, , n.

“Black Lesbian Spectatorship and

Baby Face, x

Pleasure in Popular Cinema”

Badass Supermama (), xx, –; (Nataf), 
clip from Sheba, Baby in, –;
black-nationalist ideology, , –
extraction and restaging of Foxy
black women: contrast between white

Brown’s lesbian bar scene, , , –
lesbians and, in blaxploitation genre,

; insertion of Inyang’s image into

–; as resistant spectators, –
bar brawl, –; Inyang as resistant

. See also Badass Supermama
spectator and, –; Inyang in Foxy

(); Foxy Brown ()

Brown’s revenge scene, ; rape

Blake, Walter, 
scene, –, –; similarity and

Blasius, Mark, 
difference throughout, ; voice-
blaxploitation genre, ; black feminist
over technique in, 
theorizing of, ; contemporary

Balasko, Josiane, 
female fan base of, –; contrast

Bannon, Ann, xxii, , , –, ,
between black women and white

n., n.
lesbians in, –; critical reevalu-

Barale, Michèle Aina, xii
ation of, –; emergence from

Barkin, Ellen, 
context of black-nationalist ideology
bar raids, ; media publicity of, 
and popular consumption, –;

Barriga, Cecilia, 
end of era for, ; interracial conflict

Barrymore, Drew, 
as central feature of, –; lesbian
bar types, ix–x
bar of, denaturalizing, –; specific

Basic Instinct (), xv, , , –, ; position of women in, –. See also
heterosexuality in, ; lesbian vs.

Badass Supermama ()

heterosexual gaze in, –, n.
blaxploitation heroine, , , –:

Baxter, Anne, 
battling white lesbians, ; Inyang’s

B. D. Women (), 
identification with, –; requisite

Becker, Edith, 
course of revenge in, n.

Becker, Howard S., 
blurring of sexualities within lesbian

Bell, David, xvii–xviii, 
bar space, xv

Bell Haven (club), –

Bobo, Jacqueline, , n.

Belzer, Richard, , 

Body of a Poet, The (), 

Bennett, David, , , –, 

Bogle, Donald, 

Benson, Thomas W., 
bouncers: role of, 

Berenstein, Rhona J., 

Bound, , , , , , n.

Berlant, Lauren, 

Bouthillette, Anne-Marie, 

Bernhard, Sandra, , 

Boyd, Nan Alamilla, , 

Index 191

Boy Mechanic, The (), xxiii, xxiv, Caprio, Frank S., xxi, –, –, ,

, , , –, , n.; doubt

, 
and uncertainty underlying, –;

Casbah, the (bar), 
focus on bar doors, symbolic weight

Case, Sue-Ellen, , 
of, –; focus on current racial

Castells, Manuel, 
dynamics of bar in, , –;

Castle, Terry, 
nostalgia in, ; omens predicting

Celluloid Closet, The, 
imminent disappearance of lesbian

“celluloid surgery,” –, . See also space in, –; productive

Badass Supermama ()

problem-solving techniques of

Chabat, Alain, 
lesbians in, –; San Diego as

Chamberland, Line, xii
lesbian ghost town in, –; thorny

Chasing Amy, , ; heterosexuality in, relationship between lesbians and

, –; sexual gaze of lesbian in,
gay men over public space in, –;

–, , 
two extant seven-days-a-week

Chauncey, George, , n., n.
lesbian bars in, –

Cherry Grove (New York resort town),

Boys on the Side (), xxiii, , , ,

n.

, , ; exoticization of women of

Chicago: Confidential! (Lait and
color in, ; heterosexuality in, ,

Mortimer), 

–; heterosexual negotiation of

Children’s Hour, The (), 
lesbian bar in, 

Christine, Ruth, 

Braudy, Leo, 

Cinemobile, 

Bravmann, Scott, xxii

“circuit party,” lesbian, 

Brigadoon (), 

Citron, Michelle, 

Bright, Susie, 

City and the Grassroots, The (Castells), Brody, Jennifer Devere, , , –,



n.
class stratification, xiii, , , n.; Brooke, Kaucyila, –, , , ,
middle-class lesbians, –, n.

, , 

“clean and sober” living: lesbian turn

Brown, Juanita, , 
to, 

Browne, Coral, , , 

Cleopatra Jones (), , 

Budge, Belinda, 

Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold

Buffalo: pre-Stonewall lesbian bar

(), , , 
culture in, , –
closet: as defining feature of lesbian
buffet flats, 
and gay life, 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), , 

Club Bombay (bar), , –, 

Bungalow (Village bar), 

Club Marcella’s (Rochester, N.Y.), ,
butch-femme identity, 

n.

Butterfly Kiss (), 

Club Q (San Francisco), 

By Design, 

Collins, Stephen, 

Colomina, Beatriz, xvi

Café des Beaux Arts (New York City), 
color conspiracy, national lesbian, –

Caged (), 

“coming-out” narratives, –

Call Her Savage (), xiv

Conley, Renie, n.

Campbell, Neve, n.
consent of extras for location shooting,

Campion, Jane, 

–

Canada: lesbian existence in pre-
containment as central process in

Stonewall, –
suppression of lesbianism, xviii

192 Index

“conventions of locale,” –

Diana: A Strange Autobiography
conventions of representation, setting

(Frederics), 

(–), –, –

Dickinson, Angie, x

Coontz, Stephanie, 

Dietrich, Marlene, ix, , n.

Cottis, Jane, –

DiMassa, Diane, 

Crawford, Cindy, n.

Dinah Shore Weekend (Palm Springs,

Crawford, Joan, ix, 

Calif.), 
crime(s), –; hate crimes, ;

“direct cinema” of s, , 
lesbian bars depicted as crime-

Dirty Dozen, The (), 
ridden places, –, –; against

Dobson, Tamara, , , , 
lesbian bar spaces, disregard of, 
documentaries, lesbian bar, xxiii–xxv,

Cripple Creek Barroom (), ix

–; The Boy Mechanic (),

Cruising (), xiv
xxiii, xxiv, , , , –, ,

Crying Game, The (), 

–, , , n.; collective use

Cubby Hole (club), 
of nostalgia and sense of loss, –,
cues in film and TV, situational, –,

, n.; desire to maintain secret


space of bar in, –; “direct
cultural appropriation, zones of
cinema” movement of s, , ;
asymmetrical, –
dissatisfaction with contemporary
cultural inventions of lesbian bar, xv
moment in, ; ethics and informed
cultural perception of lesbianism:

consent in, ; Forbidden Love: The
transformation in s of, ,

Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives

n.

(), xxiii, xxiv, , , –, ,

Cunanan, Andrew, 

, ; framing of lesbian bar
curative for heterosexual failure,
narrative as, –; growth of, factors
lesbian bar as, , , , –
explaining, –; Last Call at Maud’s

(), xxiii, xxiv, , , , –,

D’Acci, Julie, 

, , –, n.; lesbians of
dance clubs, intermittent lesbian, 
color in, –; reenactments in,

Dash, Julie, n.

–; as register of lesbian anxiety

Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), –
about access to and claims on public

Daughters of the Dust (), n.
space, –, ; The Riverview: A

Davies, Hunter, –, 

Lesbian Place (), , , , –

Davis, Angela, 

, –, n.; timing of

Davis, Bette, , 
emergence of, ; unifying feature

Davis, Kristin, 
of, –. See also authenticity

Davis, Madeline D., xii, , , –, ,

Dos Passos, John, xxii



Doty, Alexander, 

DeGeneres, Ellen, , 

Douglas, Michael, , 
de Havilland, Olivia, 

Downard, Hydie, 

DeLaria, Lea, , 

Dressler, Marie, xi

D’Emilio, John, xii
drinking patterns: shift in, –
demonization of lesbian bar space, 
drugs, –

Destry Rides Again (), ix, x, n.

Dry Kisses Only (), –

Detective, The (), xiv

Duel in the Sun (), 

Detmers, Maruschka, 

Duffy, Maureen, n.

Detroit: lesbian bar space in, xiii, 

Dundas, Jennifer, 

Deutsche, Rosalyn, 

Dushku, Eliza, 

Index 193

Echols, Alice, 
narratives in, –, –;

Edelstein, Lisa, 
heterosexuality in contemporary

Ehrlich, Henry, 
lesbian bar narratives in, –. See

Eitzen, Dirk, –
also documentaries, lesbian bar;

Ellen (TV), xv, xxiii, , , –
specific films

Emerson, Hope, 
film noir: locales populating, 

Emporte-Moi (), n.
film production: ideological meanings
entertainment: lesbian bar as site of
of lesbian bar narratives by modes
heterosexual, xviii
of, xi–xii; on location. See also Killing ephemerality of lesbian public space,
of Sister George, The ()

, –, 

Finocchio’s (San Francisco club), 

Epper, Jeannie, 

First Wives Club, The (), xxiii, , , ethics and informed consent:

, , , ; “arrival scene” in, –
documentary, 

; heterosexuality in, –;
ethnography: “arrival scenes,” –,
heterosexual negotiation of lesbian

; traditional, . See also
bar in, –
authenticity

Flame, the (bar), , , , 
events, lesbian bars functioning as

Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories
weekly, biweekly, or monthly, 
of Lesbian Lives (), xxiii, xxiv, , exoticization of women of color, 

, –, ; episodic re-creation
extras: lesbian participation in Killing of lesbian pulp fiction in, –;
of Sister George as, –
interview format of, –;
interview participants presented as

Faderman, Lillian, xii, , , n.
warriors and heroines, ; irony as

Fahey, Susan, 
rhetorical mode in, –, , ;

“fallen woman” genre, ix, x
nostalgia in, ; racism minimally

Falwell, Jerry, n.
discussed in, ; reflexivity in, 

Fan, The (), xiv

Four Weddings and a Funeral (), 

Fascinating (), n.

Fox, Jorja, 
fascination with lesbian bar,

Fox, The (), 
heterosexual, xviii. See also

Foxy Brown (), xv, xx, xxiii, , , heterosexual tourism

, ; campiness of, ; lesbian bar
fears of public life for lesbians, 
scene, –, –; rape scene, –
female-friendship genre, –

; revenge scene, ; sexual gaze

Female Homosexuality: A
of lesbian in, ; vision of inter-

Psychodynamic Study of Lesbianism
gender violence, cultural forces

(Caprio), xxi, –, –, , , ,
influencing, 



Frankie and Johnny (), 
female spectatorship. See spectatorship, Frederics, Diana, , n.
female

Freebird (), n.
feminism, second-wave, , 

Freed, Arthur, 
fictional accounts of lesbianism, ;

Freeman, Elizabeth, 
black women’s relationship to

French Twist, , , , 
lesbian bars in, xxi–xxii. See also

Friesema, Sarah, 
pulp fiction, lesbian

Fuller, Linda K., xvii, –, 
film(s): authenticity in contemporary
lesbian bar narratives in, –;

Gang of Lesbians, , n.
crime in contemporary lesbian bar

Garbo, Greta, ix, x, xi, , n.

194 Index

Gateways Club (London), xix, , ,

Great Train Robbery, The (), ix

–; class of clientele, n.; Gay

Greenwich Village bars, , , 

Liberation Front protest of, in ,

Grier, Pam, , , , n.; as

n.; initial enthusiasm toward
amazon figure, –; desire to work

Aldrich’s request to film, ; lesbian
outside blaxploitation genre, –;
extras’ consent for shooting in, –
in Foxy Brown, , , , , , ,

; publicity photos of, –; “star”

, ; in Sheba, Baby, –; in
press packaging of, 
women-in-prison films, 
gay bars, cinematic, xiv

Griffiths, Linda, 
gay liberation movement, 

Gross, Larry, 
gay male space: expansion at expense of

Guargliardo, Joseph, n.
lesbian space, ; monopolization

Guerrero, Ed, –, , , 
by, –
gaze of lesbian, sexual, –

Halberstam, Judith, xiii, , , , 

Gearhart, Sally, , 

Hall, Radclyffe, , n.

Gellar, Sarah Michelle, 

Hamer, Diane, xii, , 
gender inequity, 

Hamer, Emily, 
gender politics, –

Hansen, Miriam, 
generosity toward interested

Hanson, Ellis, , –
heterosexuals, lesbian, 

Harlem: all-white spaces of cultural
geographical markers of
appropriation in, ; novels set in,
homosexuality, –
xxi–xxii; during Prohibition (–

“geography of fear,” women’s, 

) era, 

Gershon, Gina, 

Harper, Phillip Brian, 
gestures of affection: policing of, 

Hart, Lynda, 

Gever, Martha, , 
hate crimes, 

Gifford, Kathie Lee, 

Hawn, Goldie, 

Gilda Stories, The (Gomez), xxii

Healy, Jeanne, 

Gilmartin, Katie, xii, 

Heavenly Creatures (), 

“Girl’s Camp? The Politics of Parody”

Heller, Lukas, , , , , –

(Graham), 

Hemingway, Mariel, 

Girl Thing, A (TV), 

Henderson, Lisa, 

Goldberg, Whoopi, , 

Henry, George, , 

Gold Coast and the Slum: A Sociological

Henry and June, , , 

Study of Chicago’s Near North Side

Hersey, Geraldine, –, –, n.

(Zorbaugh), 
heterosexist logic, xi–xii

Goldsmith, Olivia, 
heterosexuals/heterosexuality, xv;

Gomez, Jewelle, xxii
armchair traveling to lesbian bars,

Goodman, John, 

–; arrival scenes of, into lesbian

Gordon, William A., n.
bar space, , ; in contemporary

Gozemba, Patricia A., xii
lesbian bar narratives, –;

Graham, Paula, –
negotiations of lesbian bar by, –;

Grahn, Judy, , , 

“slumming” and, –, , –

Grapevine, The (Stearn), xxi, –, , heterosexual spatial and sexual

, , 
dominance, xvii–xx, ; availability

Greatest Mother of ’Em All, The (), of lesbian bars for heterosexual male


consumption, –; confinement of

Index 195
lesbian’s public activities to bar and,
identificatory transcendence, –,

–; etiquette for male behavior


within lesbian bars, , n.;
identity as lesbian: bar as primary site
heterosexual pleasure in lesbian bar,
of discovery and/or confirmation of,
xviii, –; historical project

; butch-femme, ; representa-
working to uphold, xvii–xviii, xix, –
tional space of lesbian bar as in-

, –, –; lesbian bar as site of
fluence on, xvi–xvii; shared or
heterosexual appropriation, –;
collective sexual identity, notion
lesbian bar authentication and,
of, 
xviii–xx, –; monopolization of
ideological force of images, –
lesbian and gay space, –
ideological productions of space: role
heterosexual tourism, xv, –, , ,
of representational lesbian bar in,

–
xiv–xv

Hill, George H., , n.
illegality, narratives of. See crime(s) historical film, lesbian, . See also
images: iconic, ; ideological force of,
documentaries, lesbian bar

–; ideological multiplicity of

Hollywood: blaxploitation films and,
recuperated, –

–; Motion Picture Production
independent-heroine film, , 

Code, ; response to women’s

Indigo Girls, 
liberation movement, , . See also
inequity, gender, 

Killing of Sister George, ()

informed consent: benefits to

Hollywood Twin Theater, 
filmmaker vs. documentary subject,

Holmes, Bobby (Bobbie), , 

–; documentary ethics and, ;

Holmlund, Chris, , 
three criteria necessary for assurance

Holy Smoke (), 
of, 

Home to Harlem (McKay), xxii, 

Ingram, Gordon Brent, , 

Homicide (TV), xxiii, –, , 
interracial romance, xxi
homophobia: reevaluating images

Interzones (Mumford), xv
previously condemned for, –

Inyang, Etang, xx, xxiii, –, ;
homosexuality: anxiety about potential
appropriation of Foxy Brown’s rape
hazards of concealed, ;
scene, –, –; appropriation
geographical markers of, –
of scene from Sheba, Baby, –;

Hoogland, Renée C., , n.
identification with blaxploitation
hooks, bell, , 
heroine, –; insertion of her

Hopkins, Miriam, x
own image into bar brawl, –;
hospitality, lesbian, 
questions about source of fantasy

Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian
producing Foxy Brown’s lesbian bar

Terrorist (comic strip), –
brawl, ; remaking of Foxy Brown’s
house parties, 
lesbian bar scene, , , –; as

Hunter, Holly, , 
resistant spectator, –; voice-over

Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte (), technique of, 



Italian neorealism of s, 

Hutcheon, Linda, 

“I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar”

Hutkin, Reva, 

(Richman), –, n.

I Am a Woman (Bannon), , 

Jackal, The (), xiv
iconic images, 

Jackie Brown (), 

196 Index

Jacobs, Lea, ix

Klute (), 

Jaded (), , , 

Knopp, Larry, 

Jameson, Fredric, 

Kronengold, Charles, n.

Jay, Karla, xii

Jeffreys, Sheila, xii
labor, contrast between black women

Jodie: An Icon (), n.
and white bar patrons in terms of,

Johnny Guitar (), ix, 

–

Jones, Jennifer, 

Ladder, The (magazine), 

Jordan, Neil, 

Lait, Jack, xxi, , –
journalistic exposés, –, . See also lang, k. d., , n.

Chicago: Confidential! (Lait and

Last Call at Maud’s (), xxiii, xxiv, Mortimer); The Grapevine, (Stearn);

, , , , , –;

New York: Confidential! (Lait and
anecdotal method of historiography

Mortimer)

in, ; desire to maintain secret

Journey to a Woman (Bannon), ,
space of bar in, –; framing of

n.
bar’s gender politics in, –;

Julia (), 
nostalgia of, , n.; racism

Jump Cut: “Lesbians and Film” section minimally discussed in, ;
of, 
speculations surrounding Maud’s

June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives (Los
closure, –; transition from

Angeles), , 
lesbian social space to lesbian
historical remnant in, 

Kahn, Janet, xii

Lauris, Mickey, 

Karlen, Arno, –, , –

Law and Order (TV), xxiii, –, , 

Katz, John Stuart, 

Lawless, Lucy, 

Katz, Jonathan Ned, n.

Lee, Jason, 

Keaton, Diane, , 

Legend of Lylah Clare, The (), , Keith, Michael, xxv



Keller, Yvonne, xii, –, 
leisure: early-twentieth-century forms

Kennedy, Elizabeth Lapovsky, xii, , ,
of commercial, 

–, , , n.

“LeRoy’s Birthday” (May), xxii
killer genre, lesbian psycho, 

Lesage, Julia, 

Killing of Sister George, The (), xiv, lesbian alternative media, xi–xii, xx–
xix–xx, xxiii, , , , –, ;
xxiv, –, n.. See also Badass
absence of credits for lesbian extras,

Supermama ()

–; addition of lesbian bar to, –

Lesbian Avengers, , 

; “arrival scene” in, , ; expan-
lesbian bar(s): authenticity in
sion of play’s restricted setting, –
contemporary narratives ( to

; finding location for, –;
present), –; brief history of, –;
nonwhite women in, xxii; press
conventions of representation,
releases for, –, ; publicity for,
setting (–), –, –; crime

–; sexual gaze of lesbian in, ;
in contemporary narratives, –;
shooting in lesbian bar, –; story
first Hollywood film to shoot “on
of, , –; studio shooting of, ;
location” in real, xix–xx ( see also

X rating of, –
heterosexuality in contemporary

King, Katie, xii, xiv
narratives, –; heterosexual

Kinsey, Alfred C., n.
negotiations of, –; Killing of

Index 197

Sister George, []); recent spate Loukides, Paul, xvii, –, 
of, in film and TV, ; spaces included

Loulan, JoAnn, , 
as, xv

Lyon, Phyllis, , –

“lesbian chic,” , n.

Lesbian Community, The (Wolf), 

Maelansky, Michael, , 
lesbian desire: male fascination with

Maier, Robert G., , 
scenes of, –
male behavior within lesbian bars:

Lesbian Herstory Archives (Brooklyn),
proper etiquette for, , n.


male control of urban space, 
lesbian historical film, . See also
male discipline of lesbian space: notion
documentaries, lesbian bar
of, 
lesbian participants in Killing of Sister Marcus, Frank, , 

George, –; consent of, –;

Martin, Del, , –
goals of, –; lack of credits for,

Maupassant, Guy de, n.

–; lack of written contract, 

May, Raymina Y., xxii
lesbian psycho killer genre, 

Mayhew, Hazel, 
lesbians of color, xx–xxiii; in

Mayne, Judith, , –, , , ,
documentaries, –

, , n.
lesbian spectatorship, –, n.. See McCambridge, Mercedes, ix, n.
also Badass Supermama ();

McKay, Claude, xxii, 
spectatorship, female

Medeiros, Maria de, 
lesbian vampire genre, , –
media publicity of bar raids, 

Lewis, Clea, 

Medina, Patricia, 

Lianna, , , 

Meeting of Two Queens (), , 

L Is for the Way You Look (),

Menopause Meadows (bar), 

n.

Meow Mix, , n.

Living out Loud (), xxiii, , , , Mercy, , 

, ; exoticization of women of

Metcalf, Laurie, 
color in, ; heterosexuality in, –
middle-class lesbians: lesbian bar cul-

; heterosexual negotiation of
ture and, –, n.. See also class lesbian bar in, ; sexual gaze of
stratification
lesbian in, ; unremitting compul-

Midler, Bette, 
sion for authenticity in, –

Miller, D. A., n.
location, shooting on, –;

Miller, Eugene L., 
antagonism between filmmaker and,

Moll, Keeley, 

; authenticity and, xix–xx, –;

Mona’s (San Francisco club), 
inconveniences of preexisting space,

Monroe, Marilyn, x

–; for Killing of Sister George, –

Morgan, A. T., –, 

; technological developments for

Morgenstern, Stephanie, 
shooting on, . See also Gateways

Mortimer, Lee, xxi, , –

Club (London)

Motion Picture Production Code, 
location companies, 
movie rating system, 
location scouts, –, 

Mulvey, Laura, –

Loder, Katheryn, 

Mumford, Kevin J., xv, xvi, , 

Lorde, Audre, xiii, , , 

Muñoz, José Esteban, xxv, 

Los Angeles: lesbian space in, 

Munt, Sally, xvii, xviii, , 
loss: sense of, xxiv–xxv, –, , 
music, women’s, 

198 Index

My American History: Lesbian and Gay

“Paul’s Mistress” (Maupassant),

Life during the Reagan/Bush Years

n.

(Schulman), xii–xiii

Personal Best (), 

My Best Friend’s Wedding (), 

Phelan, Shane, , 

My Little Chickadee (), x

Pile, Steve, xxv

P. J. (), xiv

Nana (Zola), n.

Platoon (), 

Nataf, Z. Isiling, –

Poitier, Sidney, 

Nestle, Joan, xiii, 

Police Academy (), xiv

New London Spy: A Discreet Guide to
police bar raids, , 
the City’s Pleasures, The (Davies), –
political activism: lesbian bar and, 

, 
popular commercial representation of

News with Brian Williams, The, 
lesbian bars, xi–xii; ideological role

Newton, Esther, –
in maintaining spatial inequities

New York City Department of Health,
between homosexuals and hetero-


sexuals, xvi–xx; setting conventions

New York: Confidential! (Lait and
for (–), –, –; sexual

Mortimer), xxi, , –, n.
boundaries in, xv–xvi. See also

Nichols, Bill, , , 
specific films and television
nightclubs, x
positive-images scholarship, 

Night of the Iguana, The (), 
press releases for Killing of Sister

Niles, Blair, xxii, 

George, –, 

Noble, Jean, n.
pre-Stonewall lesbian bars, xiii, , –,
nostalgia, –, , , n.;

–
cultural use of, –; hopeful, –

Probyn, Elspeth, –

, 

Prohibition (–) era, 

Novak, Kim, 
prostitution, –, 

NYPD Blue (TV), –, 
public activism, 
public exposure: consequences

Object of My Affection, The (), 
attendant to lesbian, 

O’Connor, Reneé, 
publicity for Killing of Sister George, –

Odd Girl Out (Bannon), 

; centrality of lesbian bar to, –,

Orbach, Jerry, , 

, ; press releases, –, 

Other Sister, The (), 
public lesbian life: dissatisfaction with

Ozard, Stephanie, 
contemporary structure of, xxiv–
xxv; emergence of bar as central

Page, Eileen, , 
locale of, –; experience of, in s

Page, Geraldine, 
and s, –

Page, Maggie, 
public space: ephemerality of lesbian,

Palance, Jack, 

, –, ; gay male, expansion

Pam, Jerry, , 
at expense of lesbian space, ; gay

“paradoxes of spectatorship,” 
male monopolization of, –;

Parish, James Robert, , n.
heterosexing of, –; historiography

Parker, Mary-Louise, , 
of lesbians’ entry into ( see docu-

Parker, Pat, xxii
mentaries, lesbian bar); of leisure,

Parker, Sarah Jessica, 
women’s access historically to, ;

Park Slope, Brooklyn, , , n.
lesbian anxiety about access to and

Index 199
claims on, xxiv, –, ; lesbian vs.

representation: setting conventions of
heterosexual woman’s experience of,

(–), –, –

; limited role of lesbian bar in
representational space of lesbian bar:

newly expanded and diversified, –
influence on ideas about lesbian

; sanctioned for gay and lesbian
identity and space, xvi–xvii
use by heteronormative ruling
resistant spectator, –;
bodies, –; seized by gays and
empowerment of, –; Inyang as,
lesbians, ; women’s mobility

–
within, –

Retter, Yolanda, , 

Pulp Fiction (), 

Reynolds, Matt, n.
pulp fiction, lesbian, , ; authenticity

Rhines, Jesse Algeron, 
as attraction of, ; black lesbians in,

Rich, B. Ruby, 
xxii; episodic re-creation of, in

Richards, Denise, n.

Forbidden Love, –; lesbian

Richman, Jonathan, –
characters as pathological in, –;

Riis Park: New York beach area of,
lesbians’ paradoxical relationship to,

n.

–; “pro-lesbian pulp,” –, –

River of No Return (), x

; “virile adventures,” 

Riverview: A Lesbian Place, The (), xxiii, xxiv, , , , –; as

Queen Latifah, 
amateur production, –, n.;

Queer Nation, , 
connection between political
queer spaces, 
activism and lesbian bar in, ;
queer utopian memory, 
functions of “the Riv,” ; s

Quimby, Karin, 
juxtaposed to s in, ; nostalgia

“quota systems,” 
in, ; opening credit sequence of,

–; precariousness of lesbian bar

Rachel, Rachel (), 
as public institution, ; race in, lack
racism, xiii; discussed in
of reflection about, –; risk of
documentaries, –; emerging
navigating urban space as lesbian in,
lesbian bar life in s and s

–; as tribute to bar’s female
and, ; as product of past, ;
owner, ; “women’s music” evoking
relationship between white and black
bygone era in, 
women in lesbian bars, –; subtle

Robin Hood (club), –
and overt forms of, 

Rochester (N.Y.): lesbian bars in, –
rape scene from Foxy Brown: Inyang’s Rodgers, Jimmie, , , , 
appropriation of, –, –

Rope (), n.

Red Sonja (), 

Rose, Gillian, 
reenactments in documentary genre,

Roseanne, 

–

Roseanne (TV), , , , 
regulation of public space as

Roselle (bar), 
heterosexual, 

Rosenthal, Alan, 

Reid, Beryl, , , 

Rothenberg, Tamar, , 

Reid, Mark A., , 

Ruby, Jay, 

Relativity (TV), 

Russo, Vito, , 

“(Re)Negotiating the ‘Heterosexual

Street’“ (Valentine), –
safety concerns, , 
rent parties, , , n.
saloon, ix, x

200 Index

San Diego: lesbian bars in, –
situational cues in film and TV, –,

San Francisco: lesbian bars in, , –





“slumming,” –, , –

San Francisco Life, 

Smith, Kevin, 

Sarelle, Leilani, , 

Smith, Valerie, –

Sawyer, Ethel, , 

Sobchack, Vivian, 

Schulman, Sarah, xii–xiii, 
sobriety, culture of, 
scientific text: lesbian typology in, –
social control, police bar raids for, 
second-wave feminism, , 
softball games, n.

“Secretly” (Rodgers), 

Some Ground to Stand on (), 

Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 
speakeasy, x, xv
semipublic status of lesbian bars, –
spectatorship, female, –; lesbian,

Seven Women (), 

–, n.; “paradoxes” of, ;

Sex and the City (TV), , , 
resistant spectator, –. See also

Sex and the Secretary (Sprague), 

Badass Supermama ()

sexism, ; reevaluating images

Spigel, Lynn, 
previously condemned for, –

Sprague, W. D., –, 
sexology’s lesbian subject: debut of,

Stacey, Jackie, , , 

n.

Stanwyck, Barbara, x, n.
sexploitation heroine: blaxploitation

Stearn, Jess, xxi, –, , , , , , heroine as, –

, 

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male/

Steiger, Rod, 

Sexual Behavior in the Human

Stein, Arlene, 

Female (Kinsey), n.

Steinem, Gloria, 

Sexual Behavior of American Nurses

Stevens, Stella, 

(Sprague), 

Stolen Moments: A Century of Lesbian
sexual boundaries in popular

Culture and Identity (), 
representation of lesbian bars,

Stone, Oliver, 
xv–xvi

Stone, Sharon, , 
sexual gaze of lesbian, –

Straayer, Chris, 
sexual identity, shared or collective, 

Strange Brother (Niles), xxii, 

Sexuality and Homosexuality: A New

Streicher, Rikki, , , , 

View (Karlen), –, , –

Stuart, Lois M., , , 
sexual pleasure: lesbian bar as site of

“Study of a Public Lesbian
heterosexual, xviii, –

Community, A” (Sawyer), , 

Sexual Rebellion in the Sixties

Stunt Double: Meditations on My Life

(Sprague), –, 
with Buffy (), n.

Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual

Subway (club), –

Patterns (Henry), , 

Sunderland, Ronald B., 
sexy television action heroine, 
supporting character: ideological
shared or collective sexual identity:

functions of, –; list of films/TV
notion of, 
with, n.

Sheba, Baby (), , –
suppression of lesbianism:

Sheldon, Louis, n.
containment as central process in,

Shooter, The, , 
xviii

Shot on This Site (Gordon), n.

Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song

Shumway, David R., 

(), , , , 

Index 201

Tarantino, Quentin, 

Van Peebles, Melvin, 

Tashiro, C. S., , 

Vicinus, Martha, n.

Tasker, Yvonne, , –

Viera, John David, 

Taylor, Helen, 

Villarejo, Amy, 
technological developments for
violence: intergender, in Foxy Brown, ; shooting on location, 
against lesbians and gay men, , 
television, contemporary lesbian bar

Virginia City (), x
narratives on: authenticity in, –;

“Visual Pleasure and Narrative
crime in, –; heterosexuality in,

Cinema” (Mulvey), –

–, , , , ; sexy television
voice-over technique in Badass
action heroine, . See also specific Supermama, 
television shows
territorialization: lesbians’ lack of, –

Wachowski Brothers, 

; trend toward multiplicity and

Walters, Suzanna Danuta, xii, , 
nomadic style, 

Ware, Gina, , 

Terry, Jennifer, , 

Ware, Ted, 

Thelma and Louise, 

Watermelon Woman, The (),

Therio, Marie-Jo, 

n.

Thomas, George, 

Waugh, Thomas, –

Thorpe, Rochella, xii, xiii, xv, , , , Wayne’s World 2 (), xiv



We All Have Our Reasons (),
threat: of heterosexuality’s irrelevance

n.
to lesbianism, ; sexualized look

Weightman, Barbara, xiii
understood as, –, 

Weir, Peter, 

Thurman, Uma, 

Well of Loneliness, The (Hall), 

Tilly, Jennifer, 

West, Mae, x
tourism, heterosexual, xv, –, , ,

We’ve Been Framed (), n.

–

What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?

transcendence: identificatory practice

(), 
of, –, 

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

transhistorical conventions, xvii–xx, –

(), 

, –

Whatling, Clare, 

Travolta, John, 

Where to Sin in San Francisco, 

Tripplehorn, Jeanne, 

“Where Will You Be?” (Parker), xxii

Truth about Jane, The (TV), 

White, Patricia, , , 

Turner, Guinevere, –
white spaces: lesbian bar
tweed fabric: use in Killing of Sister
representations as primarily, 

George, n.

Wild Things (), n.

Twelve-Thirty Club, 

Williams, Brian, 

Williamson, Cris, 

U.S.A. Confidential (Lait and

Willis, Sharon, 

Mortimer), xxi

Wings, Mary, –, , , 

Unmarried Woman, An (), 

Winters, Shelley, 
urban space: male control of, 

Witchblade (TV), xiv
utopian memory, queer, 

Witness (), , n.

Valentine, Gill, xii, xvii–xviii, –, 

Wolf, Deborah, 
vampire genre, lesbian, , –

Wolfe, Maxine, xii, , , 

202 Index
women: as action-film protagonists, –
women’s music, 

; in blaxploitation genre, specific

Wright, B. S., xii
position of, –; “geography of
fear” of, ; lesbianism used as threat

Xena: Warrior Princess (TV), , , to heterosexual, –

n.

Women against Violence against

Women, , 

York, Susannah, , , 

Women in Cages, 

Young Billy Young (), x
women-in-prison films, –, 

Women in the Shadows (Bannon), xxii

Zola, Émile, n.
women of color, xx–xxiii; exoticization
zones of asymmetrical cultural
of, . See also black lesbians; black appropriation, –
women

Zorbaugh, Harvey Warren, 

Kelly Hankin is assistant professor of English at Old Dominion University. Her essays on film and lesbian culture have appeared in camera obscura, The Velvet Light Trap, and Cinema Journal. She is codirector of the award-winning documentary Straight down the Aisle: Confessions of Lesbian Bridesmaids.

Document Outline

- Contents

- Come Here Often?

- ONE: Looking at the Lesbian Bar in the Twentieth Century

- TWO: Lesbians on Location
- THREE: Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown
- FOUR: Wish We Didn’t Have to Meet Secretly?

- Conclusion, or Confessions of a Former Lesbian Barfly

- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Works Cited

- Films, Videos, and Television Programs Cited

- Index

- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- Q
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- W
- X
- Y
- Z

Table of Contents

- Contents

- Come Here Often?

- ONE: Looking at the Lesbian Bar in the Twentieth Century

- TWO: Lesbians on Location
- THREE: Badass Supermama Meets Foxy Brown
- FOUR: Wish We Didn’t Have to Meet Secretly?

- Conclusion, or Confessions of a Former Lesbian Barfly

- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Works Cited

- Films, Videos, and Television Programs Cited

- Index

- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- Q
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- W
- X
- Y
- Z