Queer Theory and Even Queerer Criticism: Deciphering the Discourse on Bound
by Maria San Filippo

This paper is foregrounded by an interest in the curious breach between journalistic film criticism and academic film theory. This overarching concern shall be more narrowly applied to the relatively recent formulations of queer film theory, and its influence (if any) on contemporary critics. My test case is the 1996 film Bound, written and directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski and produced by Dino De Laurentiis and Spelling Films. By choosing to look at the theoretical and critical response to only one film, I am necessarily limiting any assumptions to be made about the influence of queer theory on film criticism, yet it is my hope that an examination of this singular film will be comprehensive and my findings applicable to the topic at large.

Why Bound? As a Hollywood studio film written and directed by independent filmmakers, distributed by arthouse-oriented Gramercy Pictures and marketed to mainstream audiences, yet simultaneously finding a cult following in the non-mainstream queer community, Bound’s appeal covers virtually every sector of the feature film market. Similarly, Bound has enjoyed an extensive and varied critical reception, covered throughout mainstream publications, enthusiastically touted by the gay press, and seized on by academic scholars. The latter, enticed by its queer discourse on both textual and subtextual levels, has rooted Bound within the pantheon of celluloid lesbianism, along with such films as Maadchen in Uniform, Calamity Jane, and Personal Best. Bound’s release in 1996 coincides with the mid-90’s apex of academia’s formulation of queer film theory, making it a timely test case. Finally, its subject matter and (relative) commercialism allow my meta-critique to span the spectrum of critical publications, from the national mainstream (Roger Ebert, e.g.) to the local journalistic (The Village Voice) to the transatlantic and semi-academic (Sight and Sound) to the gay press (Out magazine).

I. The Theoretical Discourse

Coming to voice is an act of resistance. Speaking becomes...a rite of passage where one moves from being object to being subject. Only as subjects can we speak. -bell hooks

I used to tell myself I wasn’t really there, so it didn’t really matter. Now I know what I want. I want out.

I want a new life. -Violet, Bound

As I hope my meta-critique will make clear, application of queer theory is virtually essential in getting this film. Jean Noble identifies Bound’s in the know audience as being comprised both of queer community members and cinephiles/film academics (Noble, 26). The former can be expected to get the queer references, such as Corky’s labrys tattoo and the cameo by lesbian sex activist and erotica author Susie Bright. The latter, meanwhile, comes equipped with prior knowledge of the signifying tropes of film noir, which Bound meticulously sets up only to knock down in its radical process of queering noir. As both a critical darling of queer film theorists and a lesbian cult favorite, Bound is most notable for unleashing and overturning resoundingly those themes and depictions of queer sexuality long concealed just below the surface of film noir.

Much of the way in which Bound looks back to and comments on classical noir is through tactics similar to, and on par with, those of other self-conscious noir revisionists (John Dahl, Robert Altman, the Coen Brothers). Bound’s skewed temporal and spatial structure of flashbacks and zero-gravity camerawork boosts noir expressionism to new extremes. The violence is brutally sadistic and dwelled on in loving close-up, while a (historically queer) camp aesthetic infuses the highly stylized noir atmosphere of Art Deco apartments and tough-guy dialogue. Joe Pantoliano’s over-the-top portrayal of the high-intensity Caesar and Jennifer Tilly’s heavy borrowing from her Oscar-nominated gun-moll role in Bullets Over Broadway (Woody Allen, 1994), are deliberately reflexive nods to the tradition of gangster noir.

Where Bound leaves off general genre revisionism and charts new territory is in its meticulous process of queering noir, of questioning and revising the assumptions which classical noir makes in its constructions of gender and sexuality. Let us begin with a definition of terms, with queer taken to mean anything deviating from the expected or what is perceived as the normal. The noir genre is the ideal forum for a queer discourse, as noir is principally concerned with captur[ing] and magnif[ying] those moments where hidden foundations, or dominant systems of values and beliefs, are shaken or disrupted (Noble, 40). Queer identity is subliminally intrinsic to the noir world’s position outside of the safe, understood spheres of heterosexual relations, namely, home and courtship (Dyer2, 125).

Mistaken identity has long been a trope of film noir, which abounds with morally ambiguous, fundamentally unknowable characters. In its discourse on lesbian invisibility, Bound makes this central ambiguity one of sexual identity, as Chris Straayer points out: The crucial question is whether Violet is a femme fatale or a lesbian femme...Corky faces the enigma not by scrutinizing Violet’s criminality but rather by doubting her lesbian status (Straayer, 158). Bound is peppered throughout with the flirtatious bantering and heavy innuendo associated with classical noir, another self-referential device although here it refers unabashedly to lesbian sexuality. Their seductive tête-à-tête, in which Violet (Jennifer Tilly) admires Corky’s (Gina Gershon) fix-it abilities and her magic hands, recalls the similarly verbal foreplay bandied by classical (heterosexual) noir couples.

The Wachowski’s are not above heavy-handed symbolism, as demonstrated by a quick cut between scenes showing Corky listening in on Violet’s lovemaking, then vigorously snaking the bathtub drain. Just before the two women consummate their passion, an extreme close-up shot shows Corky, on her back beneath Violet’s sink, twisting a pipe to emit a trickling stream of water. Straayer notes that in what seems a parodic homage to the wet streets of film noir, fluidity inundates Bound (Straayer, 159). Corky cruises a butch/femme bar called The Watering Hole and performs handiwork on pipes and drains, and a significant portion of the film takes place in the bathroom. Water, as an archetypal feminine signifier, and the gender/sexuality connotations of fluidity pervade the filmic text.

The film noir genre retains a constant formal and historical preoccupation with the construction/deconstruction of masculinities, female masculinities included (Noble, 31). In the classical era of noir, this theme reflected a society-wide anxiety that was, to a significant degree, a result of women entering the wartime workplace. The rash of fatalist 1970’s neo-noirs, which sprung from a similarly anxiety-ridden socio-political climate of Vietnam, second-wave feminism and government conspiracy, took up again this issue of male paranoia and machismo. A noir for the 90’s, Bound’s queer twist examines masculinity in light of deconstructed and reconstructed gender roles for an increasingly fluid vision of sexuality.

As Bound’s central male character, Caesar is noir’s archetypal husband/boyfriend prefigured by the possessive, hyper-violent Vince Stone (Lee Marvin) in The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953). As an upper-level Chicago Mafioso, Caesar’s masculine authority is challenged not only by the mob boss’s hotheaded son, Johnnie Marzzone (Christopher Meloni), but also by tough butch Corky’s superior abilities in both operating power tools and satisfying Caesar’s voluptuous moll Violet. What did she do to you? Caesar demands of Violet, who answers, Everything you couldn’t. Inept at both his jobs (laundering mob money and satisfying his woman), Caesar is a parody of masculinity (Straayer, 156). We wrote Caesar as the most hysterical character -- the most feminine, Larry Wachowski reveals, in that he’s always crying, spitting everything out, up and down, emotional (Lippy, 93). Anxiety over emasculation and the threat of castration are most grippingly depicted during a scene in which a mob underling discovered to have been laundering money loses a finger to a hedge trimmer. When Caesar later threatens Corky with the same torture device, he is attempting to re-assert his masculinity by dismembering her of her’s. That he ultimately fails to prevent Corky from making off with the money and the girl determines Bound’s departure from classical heteronormative noir.

Bound transforms the heterosexual triangle of classical noir to include the transgressive sexual identities of Corky and Violet, established in the early elevator scene which positions the film’s three central characters in triangular formation. The two women’s exchange of curious gazes mirrors the film audience’s own, as we are given meticulous visual coding of two lesbian types, ‘butch’ and ‘femme’. Appropriately, this coding is located predominantly on the site of the body: Violet’s exaggerated femininity is conveyed through her curvy figure and costuming (clingy, revealing dresses, makeup and jewelry) while Corky’s butch-ness is marked by her lanky, muscular frame and masculinized wardrobe (men’s underwear, combat boots, motorcycle jacket) and by her scopophilic gaze (which includes her appreciative eavesdropping on Violet’s bedroom activities.) This painstaking use of costuming, in addition to signaling noir characterizations, also hints at the performative nature of sexual identity.

Bound’s coupling of Violet and Corky appropriates while simultaneously releasing from its traditional gender constraints the prototypical duo of classical noir: the femme fatale and her lustful partner-in-crime. Violet’s femme fatale remains a scheming, heavily fetishized seductress trapped in a suffocating relationship, but is given a newfound lesbian appetite that cleverly revises the femme fatale’s traditional representation as an image of frustration, alive with sexual desire that cannot be satisfied (Dyer1, 68). Beginning with her quintessentially femme name, Violet’s characterization adheres to Kate Stables’ assertion that the postmodern fatal woman is a creature of excess and spectacle, like the films she decorates (Stables, 167). A slow-motion shot, from Corky’s point of view, which pans up and over Violet’s shapely figure and black widow accouterments (stiletto heels, dark stockings, short skirt and plunging neckline) recalls the similar fetishizing gazes with which such classical femme fatales as Phyllis Dietrichson (Double Indemnity, Billy Wilder, 1944) and Cora Smith (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Tay Garnett, 1946) were introduced. Yet Violet’s overdetermined characterization as femme fatale ultimately emerges (aided by narrative development) as a no less exaggerated or threatening incarnation as ‘femme’. Jennifer Tilly, whose high voice and voluptuousness evoke a live-flesh Betty Boop, embodies perfectly this caricatured femme. Like lesbian sexologist Susie Bright, who is reflexively cast as Corky’s bar-room pick-up, Violet is marked as femme through her manipulation of feminine sexual iconography (Noble, 40).

As Violet’s object of seduction, Corky’s characterization retains traits typical of the male noir protagonist -- a troubling past, a restless ambition, a dangerous passion. Yet Corky is defiantly constructed as both female and masculine, thereby re-orient[ing] female masculinity as a productive contradiction between a female inscribed body and a masculine gender performance, but also as the privileged site of masculinity in the film (Noble, 36). In Bound’s highly stylized first shot, the camera swoops down from the upper recesses of Violet’s closet (highlighting various feminine accouterments -- hatboxes, dresses, stilettos) and slides languorously up Corky’s captive body, lingering on her own decidedly butch lesbian markings -- combat boots, masculine dress, labrys tattoo. That we’re shown muscles and piercings where we’re accustomed to cleavage and curves does not hinder comparison to the similarly appreciative toe-to-head glances with which we’re first shown Phyllis, Cora and Violet -- instead it reinforces Violet’s later remark to Corky, We’re not that different. Throughout Bound, as Chris Straayer notices, Corky’s body is repeatedly put on erotic display, citing the overhead shot of her lying in bed wearing jockey shorts and the lovemaking scene in which, surprisingly, Corky’s rather than Violet’s breasts are shown (Straayer, 159). That Gina Gershon, whose showgirl status never quite escapes us, plays Bound’s butch exemplifies the contradictory star codes which must inform a literal structural analysis of plot...infus[ing] an important level of self-parody into the film (Pidduck, 67).

Yet there is a defining difference: the traditional femme fatales (Violet included) are given the once-over by their lustful suitors in a classic appropriation of the directed ‘male’ gaze (Corky’s butch-ness allowing her access to this gaze). Corky, however, is glimpsed from the point of view of the unseen, implied filmic author, and while lying bound-and-gagged in a highly symbolic closet. One possible reading of this is that Corky, despite her defiantly ‘out’ lesbianism, remains a captive of what Laura Mulvey terms to-be-looked-at-ness. Yet this also establishes the film’s implied author to be non-heteronormative, for Bound constructs a woman who desires women as both the subject and the object of the gaze. Thus, the Wachowski’s immediately locate Bound’s perspective as one outside the heterosexual imperative, by allowing for (though also, perhaps inevitably, exploiting) transgressive sexuality. When Corky triumphantly proclaims, I can see again!, it’s as much from satisfaction at having wrested control of the gaze as from her fulfilling tryst with Violet. Throughout the film, Corky retains an almost omniscient authority over the gaze, watching and listening (through spyholes, walls, pipes, phone extensions) as events in the next apartment build to a denouement. Like the film spectator, Corky can see but cannot be seen -- and it is she who directs Bound’s gaze away from heterocentrism to her own queer perspective as a lesbian spectator.

Just as film noir is best defined as a construction and performance of certain thematic tropes and visual mise en scene, its habitual ‘butch’ and ‘femme’ role-playing are also constructed and performative. As a highly self-conscious, revisionist noir, Bound simultaneously reinforces and challenges the stereotyping of both classical noir characterizations and the supposed butch/femme roles. Numerous times within its text, Bound appears to reinforce queer stereotyping, as when Violet guesses that Corky takes her coffee straight black and drives an old car. Violet, the femme, speaks in a breathy Marilyn Monroe whisper and has a rose tattooed on her breast, while butch Corky is deep-voiced and sports the proto-lesbian labrys marking on her bicep. In an interesting conjunction of noir types, Corky is both the ex-con ‘handyman’ and the lesbian working woman whom Richard Dyer notes always carries strong elements of tyranny and violence (Dyer1, 63).

Yet these broad generalizations are undercut by an awareness of their fictitiousness, as Corky and Violet repeatedly contradict their assigned ‘roles’ as butch and femme, respectively. Bound departs queer stereotyping by marking Corky as femme (by the labrys [tattoo] and by the camera when she’s fucked by Violet, Noble notes) and by re-figuring Violet as a powerful, pro-active femme who initiates sexual relations with Corky and who ultimately pulls the trigger on Caesar (Noble, 36). In this way, Violet can be seen as a 1990s incarnation of classic noir’s femme fatale, which Julianne Pidduck terms the ‘fatal femme’: Sharing her predecessor’s smart mouth and sexual savvy, the fatal femme ups the ante of earlier, more muted cinematic codes of sexuality and graphic violence (Pidduck, 65).

As Chris Straayer discusses in her essay, Femme Fatale or Lesbian Femme: Bound in Sexual Differance, the film collapses the butch/femme binary that persists within lesbian representation. As constructed in the mise en scene, Corky and Violet are marked by a certain difference but are fundamentally alike. On their first meeting in the elevator, the two are positioned similarly, each wearing leather jackets and exchanging knowing glances -- in sharp contrast to Caesar, who stands apart and unawares. While this arrangement serves to establish the erotic camaraderie between the two women, it also supports Violet’s later remark to Corky, I think we’re more alike that you’d care to admit. Both women are associated with similar fetishized objects -- clothing, tattoos, and the earrings vested with an ulterior purpose, for Violet in luring Corky into her apartment and later for Corky in picking the locks. Two subsequent shots display Violet and Corky as virtual mirror images, sharing the frame as they have a pre-coital drink and later, pressed up against opposite sides of their shared bedroom wall. Bound concludes with Corky asking Violet, Do you know what the difference is between you and me?, to which Violet answers, No, and Corky responds, Me neither.

Straayer notes the way in which Bound combine[s] difference and sameness to spark sexual attraction and secure romantic coupling. Equality between partners eventually enhances rather than destroys sexuality (Straayer, 159). Not only does this secure the narrative’s revisionist outcome, in which the couple escapes punishment and achieves romantic bliss, but it negates fixing binaries in favor of fluidity. In this way, the tension created by binary oppositions (butch/femme, sameness/difference) combines dialectically to create a revised synthesis -- one in which gender and sexual differentiation can exist. Bound complicates the binary of sameness versus difference, writes Straayer, wrapping them around each other until there is only constantly varying relation (Straayer, 160). By film’s end, Violet (originally marked as femme) is wearing a man’s tattered leather jacket much like Corky’s, while Corky has exchanged her battered ‘63 Chevy for a brand-new truck lacquered in shiny red.

Ultimately, Bound dispenses with the traditional noir pattern by allowing the lesbian duo to make a clean getaway rather than being undone by typical noir double-cross and amour fou. The radical departure from classic noir narrative marks Bound’s conclusion as irreconcilable with Janey Place’s theory of noir myth-making, which continues to govern the ideologies of most contemporary noirs in increasingly violent containment of the femme fatale:

The ideological operation of the myth (the absolute necessity of controlling the strong, sexual woman) is thus achieved by first demonstrating her dangerous power and its frightening results, then destroying it. (Place, 56)

Neither Violet nor Corky conform to the hyperbolic female violence that pervades characterizations of the fatal woman in neo-noir’s close cousin, the erotic thriller. As befits the queer tradition in classical noir, both women exercise brains over brawn. Corky defies the presupposition of lesbians as historically inscribed both as ‘not-woman’ and as violent, while Violet’s aversion to violence is emphasized despite her final act of aggression against Caesar (Hart, x). In this way, Bound is as much a revision of the hyper-violent fatal femme cycle of the 1980s (Fatal Attraction, Single White Female, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle) as it is of classic noir. Neither victims nor predators, Violet and Corky obliterate yet another binary by refusing relegation to either of noir’s female archetypes, spider woman or nurturer. Even the so-called dyke figure (Corky), whom noir customarily punishes brutally for her threat to the male protagonist, is resurrected by the femme’s (Violet’s) desire for and rescue of her, thus turning noir’s traditional oppression of assertive, undomesticated femininity into a celebration of fluid, unconstrained female sexuality.

Bound constructs two lesbian heroines who do not require subversive readings, for an appropriation of the lesbian gaze can make the desire between the women ‘normal’ and ‘inevitable’ (Smyth, 142). Unlike the many noir representations of lesbians which came before, Bound conducts its queer discourse in plain sight, thus opening and emptying the epistemological closet (as a final scene in the film shows.) While Corky and Violet succeed in smoothly duping the mob out of $2 million, their (and the film’s) more significant accomplishment is in tinkering with and fixing lesbian representation in film noir and traditional Hollywood cinema at large.

II. The Critical Discourse

In a 1992 essay in Sight and Sound, self-described lesbian cultural critic B. Ruby Rich hailed the beginnings of a new queer cinema. Attending several film festivals worldwide, Rich spanned the breadth of queer filmmaking, from the relatively mainstream offerings of the Sundance Festival to the more experimental fare at the Amsterdam Gay and Lesbian Festival. Specifically, Rich noted an emerging trend of contemporary lesbian sensibility among new lesbian film and video, which she described:

Their style is unlike almost anything that’s come before. I would call it lesbian camp, but the species is, after all, better known for camping. And historical revisionism is not a catchy term. So just borrow from Hollywood, and think of it as the Great Dyke Rewrite (Rich, 33).

Though coming four years before Bound, Rich’s is an apt assessment of the Wachowski film, which poses the question of how much strategizing went into shaping Bound to appeal to this queer trend. While Bound’s critics stumble over one another to say that the film is derivative and calculated to a T, they are referring primarily to its heavy borrowing stylistically from pulp auteurs and crime fetishists like Tarantino and the Coen Brothers. But was Bound’s sapphic angle merely a ploy to differentiate it from the trendy crop of neo-noirs (The Last Seduction, Red Rock West, U-Turn)? There is much dissension among critics on this point, for lesbianism is introduced so seamlessly and unapologetically into the film that it hardly seems to be trying to cause a splash. The attraction between Violet and Corky is essentially a plot device, writes critic John Hartl, and consider the reaction of Time Out critic Mike D’Angelo:

If you’ve heard anything at all about Bound, you’ve probably heard that it involves lesbians. And if you’re anything like me, that fact immediately makes you leery -- not because of homophobia or narrow-minded disinterest, but because the vast majority of recent gay-themed movies have been downright awful, concerned first and foremost -- and to the detriment of whatever narrative there might be -- with making an ideological statement (Gays are people too, usually. Yes, I know; can I have my $8.50 back?). Bound, therefore, was a great relief to me: the protagonists are lesbians, but that doesn’t matter at all. You could replace Gina Gershon with Gary Sinise, and it would require the alteration of maybe half a dozen lines of dialogue. No big deal is made of the fact that these two women want each other, and that’s a major step forward

D’Angelo is quite accurate about the ingratiating spate of recent gay films, and his last point -- that the Wachowski’s do not approach their subject matter cap in hand -- is a good one. Yet here is a place where queer theory would be a helpful agent in the critical assessment of a film -- for if the above theoretical interpretation holds any water, then it does matter fundamentally that this film stars Gina Gershon and not Gary Sinise. While D’Angelo’s equalizing is admirable, it is not the point of the film to show how identically things can look if you substitute a woman in a man’s place. It’s not identical at all, as Bound’s atypical resolution proves. Although his comments were made in retrospect, Larry Wachowski offers the following explanation for the origins of Bound’s lesbians leads:

The core idea of the screenplay is based on Violet. The idea of a woman you see on the street and make a host of assumptions about that were all dead wrong. We wanted to play with what you see on the surface and the truth that lies beneath. We tried to do that with all the characters...The idea of butch/femme struck us as being another form of dualism...they’re just reflections of each other and a part of a whole (Lippy, 93).

Moreover, as Ruby Rich asserts, new queer cinema is politically motivated in its depiction of gay characters:

These films [are] great precisely because of the ways in which they are gay. Their queerness is no more arbitrary than their aesthetics, no more than their individual preoccupations with interrogating history. The queer present negotiates with the past, knowing full well that the future is at stake (Rich, 34).

An initial methodological strategy aimed at examining the criticism on Bound written by journalists whose background or training was in academia. Unfortunately, the bulk of prominent critic-academics (J. Hoberman, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Amy Taubin, Manohla Dargis, David Sterritt, Emanuel Levy) have not published reviews of Bound, and this route was regrettably abandoned. Overall, though, Bound garnered many journalistic critiques, and these played a notable role in the commercial reception of the film. The first major review to appear, by Todd McCarthy of Variety, was exceedingly negative and cast a pall over Bound’s premiere screening at the Sundance Film Festival that very day (February 4, 1996). But the Sundance audience countered McCarthy by treating Bound to a warm reception, and the film was swiftly picked up for distribution by Gramercy Pictures. A fresh look at McCarthy’s scathing review reveals a highly moralistic tone and a curious unwillingness to acknowledge the film’s empowerment of its lesbian protagonists:

All characters in the story, including the two women, are willing criminals who exist on the same bankrupt moral level. All are scum, and just because Violet and Corky fall for each other doesn’t mean they somehow fall into a privileged state of grace in which vile behavior can be forgiven. So fundamentally unbelievable and unsympathetic is their romantic and criminal collaboration that one’s sympathy eventually swings back toward the temperamental Caesar simply because he proves himself to be the smartest person onscreen (McCarthy, 60).

Most baffling within this critique is McCarthy’s assessment that Caesar’s wits prevail, as the narrative repeatedly shows the lesbian duo out-foxing and out-thinking their dupe (Violet’s quick maneuvering saves Caesar from the mobsters’ detection, after all), with the coup de grace being Caesar’s fatal misjudgment of Violet’s capabilities as lesbian and killer. McCarthy’s less surprising skepticism over the believability of the two women’s illicit (erotic and professional) escapades is a sentiment echoed by several of the critics who proceeded to review Bound. Peter Matthews seemed most cognizant of the film’s over-the-top reliance on caricatures when he commented, ...[N]either of the women characters here is plausible as a dyke. But then, neither is conceivable as a human being (Matthews, 42).

To return briefly to the theoretical realm, it is useful to apply queer theory when assessing the numerous (and perhaps inevitable) allegations by critics (of both the gay and mainstream press) appalled by what they deemed the film’s voyeuristic exploitation of lesbian sexuality. As Ellis Hanson, who treats Bound to a special mention in the introduction of his Out Takes anthology, notes:

Much of [Bound’s] plot hinges on lesbian invisibility, and yet the film uses the whole gamut of classic scopophilic lures -- carefully staged sex scenes, fetishistic costumes, killer cosmetics, shadowy lighting, voyeuristic point-of-view shots, and so on -- to help us to recognize the sexual intensity of the relationship between the two female leads (Hanson, 1).

The camera’s constantly roving, omniscient viewpoint -- it glides through walls and toilet bowls, peeks out from beneath a kitchen sink and peers through a tumbler of Scotch -- elevates film noir voyeurism to an all-time high. Hanson is not alone among those scholars who, in writing on Bound, feel the need to defend their affection for such obviously calculated ‘les-ploitation’. Jean Noble begins her essay on Bound with this disclaimer:

Let me state my biases right at the outset: I confess an intense and mildly embarrassing attachment to this film. My own response surprised me and like most scholarly work, this paper represents a desire to interrogate that response and answer that persistent question ‘Why?’. Thus, the writing of this text is conditioned by a persistent, but entirely necessary, vacillation between the also triangulated subjectivities of ‘fan,’ ‘critic,’ and ‘scholar’ (Noble, 31).

Turning to the realm of journalistic criticism, one can see parallels to this scholarly reluctance to take Bound seriously. It is fair to argue that, in giving us two attractive lesbian protagonists, the Wachowski’s are simply doubling our scopophilic pleasure -- a high-concept lure along the lines of Sharon Stone’s notorious money shot in Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1992). Yet, as Cherry Smyth writes, the accusation of exploitation is too often used as an excuse not to explore/foreground explicit lesbian sexual subject matter (Smyth, 132). Feminist and queer film criticism has undeniably made us suspicious of anything hinting at exploitative pleasure, at the cost of visually and sexually literate depictions of queer sexuality (Hanson, 2). Barry Walters applauds Bound for departing from traditional mainstream Hollywood in its frank acknowledgment of gay sexuality:

Unlike The Birdcage, a film that leaves most straight moviegoers tickled pink and many gay men embarrassed, Bound may become the first lesbian/gay crossover hit where characters of the same gender have active sex lives that the camera actually captures, rather than turning away from at the first suggestion of a kiss (Walters, 2).

Throughout, the movie manages to be as sexy as hell without coming across as tawdry male fantasy -- a neat trick indeed, was Total Film’s appraisal of Bound. Through a certain thematic and aesthetic distancing, Bound is able to operate simultaneously as an affirmation of lesbian sexuality as well as a send-up of more troubling portrayals of screen lesbians in films like Basic Instinct (in which reassuringly femme lesbians perform their ‘exotic’ sex acts seemingly for the sole benefit of the male protagonist’s viewing pleasure.) As Sight and Sound remarked on Bound’s highly stylized representation of lesbian carnality:

It’s arguable whether this sort of preposterous swank isn’t ultimately more affirmative than drab, limited realism. The erotic scenes are cartoons of heaving passion, which the brothers linger over with unabashed heterosexual glee. Their porno fantasy treatment is, however, at once so transparent and so hilariously outré that it may be time to admit that voyeurism isn’t always such a bad thing (Matthews, 43).

Matthews is not alone in the number of mainstream and journalistic critics who use pornography as a reference when describing Bound’s depiction of sexuality, no doubt because the bulk of what has come before in screen portrayals of lesbians is concentrated in pornography made largely by and for males. Jack Mathews begins his Newsday review with a thinly-veiled reference to pornography:

Psst! Hey, mister, want to look at some dirty pictures? In the mood for something flashy and trashy, torrid and taboo, a little sleaze, if you please? Come right over here, to your local multiplex, and check out Larry and Andy Wachowski’s ‘Bound,’ a darkly comic genre hybrid about lesbian lovers who, between fits of lust, decide to rob the mob. The rest of you may want to shop around (Mathews, B9).

Without denying the pornographic slant of Bound’s sex scene (or nearly any graphic sex scene from a mainstream Hollywood movie), critic-academic Barry Walters acknowledges that the Wachowski’s stop short of giving Bound the les-ploitation treatment:

Straight male directors and screenwriters sometimes have this thing about lesbians. Take Paul Verhoeven and Joe Eszterhas, for example. They are obsessed. Not more than a minute or two of Showgirls went by without the scantily clad, cat-fighting intensive dancing gals insinuating or acting out lesbian lust. Of course, nearly all of it came across as so totally fake that it became utterly hilarious. Bound could have been similarly absurd...Instead, Bound is a fascinating hybrid -- Playboy Channel thriller meets feminist lesbian love story. Without pandering, it attempts to get just about everybody off (Walters, 1997).

Of course, some of the mainstream criticism proved to be as les-ploitative as the kinds of films that Bound is reacting against. Self-described men’s magazine Maxim pandered to its own audience with this review:

If you need evidence that lesbianism is the hottest cinematic sexual preference around, Bound proves it in spades with two hot babe dyke leads that will have straight male audiences panting in the back row (Pilgrim, 1997).

Of course, it was these types of assumptions which the Wachowski’s wished to subvert -- even in the film’s steamiest scenes. [W]e didn’t want one of those Penthouse moments -- you know, pearls, lingerie, and discreetly placed sheets, relates Tilly. We wanted it to be hard and driving, just like real sex (Alber, 23). And the same hypocrisy with which ratings-board censors slap an NC-17 on such mildly titillating fare as Henry & June (Philip Kaufman, 1990) while far more graphic heterosexual depictions abscond with R-ratings trickles into critical discussions of Bound’s so-called scandalous displays. Consider Jack Mathews’ remarks:

The sex scenes max out on the film’s R rating, with hungry kisses, fevered groping, some artfully graphic nude shots, titillating allusions to glandular activity, plus an orgasm that has Corky exclaiming, with no uncertainty on our part, I’m alive again! (Mathews, B9).

Again, the tone of such reviews is one of moralistic outrage, and such extended commentary on the requisite Hollywood sex scene would presumably not be found in reviews of most films featuring straight couples. It is interesting to note that Mathews mistakenly identifies Corky’s revelatory exclamation, I can see again!, which as mentioned in the theoretical portion of this essay, refers insightfully to problems of representing lesbian visibility and desire in conventional Hollywood narratives. Indeed, the Wachowski’s were forced to grapple with the MPAA to avoid the dreaded NC-17 that guarantees a film will be box-office poison. Cleverly, the brothers had shot the film’s one sex scene in a single take, making a studio-sanctioned hack-job impossible without cutting the scene in its entirety. Yet the scene which the censors primarily objected to occurs earlier, when Violet huskily tells Corky that You might not believe what you see, but you can believe what you feel. I’ve been thinking about you all day.

Richard Schickel, writing in Time, makes a radical departure from other critics’ discourse when he comments that Bound’s lesbian relationship is more verbal than physical (with their sexual encounters very discreetly managed) (Schickel, 94). While the film’s steamy 360-degree romp-fest seems to be anything but ‘discreet’, Schickel cleverly intuits the Wachowski’s strategy within the scene: by portraying its explicit material candidly and within the first thirty minutes, the film confronts its taboo sexual subject matter head-on and is then free to focus on the more significant emotional and professional relationship between Corky and Violet. In doing so, the Wachowski’s refuse the cinematic (and critical) convention of restricting lesbianism to the sexual realm.

Considering its subject matter, Bound’s coverage within the gay press was extensive and brings up the complex issue of the relationship between criticism and marketing. Distributor Gramercy Pictures, whose roster tended towards genteel European arthouse fare, seemed an odd choice to release Bound, and its marketing strategy aimed in the more lucrative direction of mainstream audiences. Thus much of Bound’s advance publicity stemmed from its coverage in gay-oriented publications, its success on the gay film festival circuit (it was awarded a prize at the Los Angeles OutFest prior to its release) and through positive word-of-mouth following such exalted advance screenings as the one which had 1,500 dykes at San Francisco’s Castro Theatre on their feet applauding (Rich, 68). Yet many of the pieces which purported to review Bound were not so concerned with aesthetic judgment or theoretical interpretation as they were with hailing the film as a much-needed positive representation of screen lesbians. Ellis Hanson warns of the dangers of such restrictive criticism:

For purely ideological reasons, such criticism has sought to alienate spectators from Hollywood’s fetishism and voyeurism and from the stereotypes of queer sexuality as inherently perverse or monstrous. In so doing, however, we have come to subordinate every discussion of the aesthetic or the erotic to surprisingly simplistic conceptions of the political, and this practice promotes a certain blindness of its own. The lesbian and gay seal of approval is often stamped on films that are politically impeccable, but visually and sexually illiterate (Hanson, 2).

Queer theory seeks to revise the Vito Russo school of gay film criticism, which promotes positive (however unrealistic or stereotypical) images of gays in cinema. Under this rubric, a film’s aesthetic value is less important that its affirming portrayal of gay characters -- as a result, mediocre films such as Desert Hearts (Donna Deitch, 1985) and The Bird Cage (Mike Nichols, 1996) are endorsed wholeheartedly for their warm, fuzzy portrayals of gays overcoming adversity and adhering to stereotypes.

Much of what appeared in the gay press concerning Bound constituted the type of puffy star profile spewed out by a publicity machine working overtime just prior to the film’s release. The Wachowski’s have documented that it was enormously difficult finding Hollywood actresses who were willing to portray lesbians, no matter how good the roles (unsurprisingly, film studios too were leery of the material.) While casting the film, the Wachowski’s became accustomed to over 20 cancellations per day (Crocket, 29). We’d be sitting there waiting for [actresses] to arrive and they’d never show up, recounts Andy Wachowski. We could imagine [them] reading the script on the way over, getting to the sex scene and pitching the script out the sunroof (Lippy, 95).

Without discounting the validity of such career concerns, Bound did seem to prompt those involved with the film into broadcasting unusually candid explanations of their sexuality. Many publicity pieces seem overwhelmingly concerned with discovering the real-life sexual orientation of Tilly and Gershon, and the two actresses were only too eager to reply. A profile of Jennifer Tilly in Diva notes that she attended a women’s college but had never had a lesbian experience outside of her acting work and was happily married (Elliott, 18). This same type of reverse-outing occurred in the mainstream press, where profiles of Tilly and Gershon emphasized their femininity and straight lifestyles. Premiere quotes Gershon commenting that the only difference in doing a love scene with a woman is talk[ing] about the sale at Barney’s before we start (O’Neill, 31). A similar strategy hovered over another recent gender-bending film, Boys Don’t Cry (Kimberly Peirce, 1999), as press reports repeatedly found reason to mention star Hilary Swank’s straight lifestyle and the difficult transition into her role.

Furthermore, the Wachowski’s themselves made a point of announcing that they were married, heterosexual brothers from the Midwest (Maslin, C22). Queer-oriented website Popcorn Q points out that even after a San Francisco Festival screening of Bound had the girls screaming ecstatically at Gina Gershon’s every gesture, there were reservations over a wholehearted embrace because after all, it was made by men (Olson, 1). Should the fact that Bound’s lesbian protagonists were crafted by heterosexual men be considered in assessing its merit? The film depicts mobsters alongside dykes, but insider knowledge of the Mafia doesn’t seem to be a prerequisite for a successful depiction. And the Wachowski’s did their homework, reading up on queer literature and consulting lesbian sexpert Susie Bright for technical advice -- Bound proves that if filmmakers wanted to know how to represent lesbians, all they had to do was ask (Halberstam, 14).

Yet present within certain gay press reviews of Bound is a theoretical agenda which seeks to re-claim scopophilic pleasure for the much-ignored lesbian spectator and thus refuses to take too seriously the Wachowski’s obviously caricatured approach to presenting its lesbian duo. It would be easy to dismiss this film by saying that this is merely straight men’s view of what lesbians are and do and is for their titillation, writes Victoria Elliot in the British gay-oriented magazine Diva, But why should they have all the fun? (Elliot, 1-2). Moreover, Elliot notes, Bound revises the film noir genre by centering on a strong emotional relationship, for [f]ew interactions in this violent milieu are about love or loyalty (Elliot, 1). Similarly, Judith Halbertam lauds Bound for what is very possibly the first -- and we hope not the last -- speech in mainstream cinema on the politics of femme invisibility (Halberstam, 14). Finally, Kevin Harley’s review in Pink Paper demonstrates an understanding of queer theory discourse (and credits the Wachowski’s with the same):

The two women initially occupy archetypal butch-femme roles, but proof that the Wachowskis are clued into the subtleties beneath noir’s surface conventions comes from the rate at which Violet and Corky are soon flitting between their roles with duplicitous, febrile ease (Harley, 1).

The failure to realize or acknowledge Bound’s digressions from butch-femme binaries prompts critics to attribute failure to the film, specifically in their appraisal of the Corky role. Georgia Brown, who dismisses the film as kinky chic for guys (after mis-identifying Jennifer Tilly as her actress sister Meg), also fails to recognize the binary breakdown that concludes the film, missing the point when she condemns Gershon’s Corky as all look and idea, and when the chips are down the movie immobilizes her (she’s totally impotent in a fight) (Brown, 72). A somewhat softer Premiere review comes slightly closer to questioning what’s afoot:

...Corky is bound and gagged in a closet for too many vital moments of the action, an odd decision considering she is so butch she embodies every dyke stereotype around. All that strutting sinew and she can’t get but a couple of swings in? (Lauro, 1).

Ruby Rich’s proclamation a decade ago that a new queer cinema had arrived has been slow to take effect. The initial brigade of revelatory, genuinely transgressive works such as Swoon (Tom Kalin, 1991) and Poison (Todd Haynes, 1990) slowed to a trickle, threatened extinction, and now seems possibly revived by the Boys Don’t Cry triumph. Yet that film teeters among the deluge of earnest but harmless teen coming-out pics (The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love), high-minded but humorless ‘thought-pieces’ (Female Perversions), and the offensive trash aimed at the Look, honey, aren’t gay people funny? audience (The Bird Cage).

Sadly, the critical discourse on Bound largely constituted a missed opportunity, for the little melding of queer theory and journalistic criticism which did take place was shoddy at best -- and often unintended. For example, Total Film’s critic spends the bulk of his review lauding Bound’s queer role-reversals and noir revisions, but concludes his review with the baffling remission that the film does not say anything too meaningful about lesbianism and gender politics (thank God) (Bielby, 2). The gay press must rethink positive representation, no matter how supportive to the queer cause -- because quantity does not equal quality in portraying queer images on screen. Similarly, a more extensive effort is needed for mainstream critics to move beyond plot summary and clever bon mots, to tell their reading audience what films are really about.

Laura Mulvey warns that analyzing pleasure necessarily destroys it. This was surely not the Wachowski’s intention, as witnessed by the film’s bevy of scopophilic delights. Yet beneath Bound’s mouth-watering array of eroticism and fantasy lies a potent transgressive message, coiled to strike at cinematic conventions. Bound is one of those all-too-infrequent films which is both insightful and entertaining. As the Brothers Double-U say, If people walked out of a theatre talking about the roles of men and women in genre fiction, that would be cool. But we’d settle for, ‘That movie kicked butt, let’s go see it again.’

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