Let me tell you what this whole thing is going to be about.
It’s really hard to find a good list of movies with bisexual representation. It’s not that they aren’t out there, but they are sequestered off into Reddit threads or academic books. The few magazine lists that exist do their best but lack the space to go into much depth about what each movie offers, how it came to be, and how it fits into a wider bi canon. Bi representation itself is often very hidden within films, with a combination of bi erasure and a reluctance to even say the word ‘bisexual’ making representation hard to tease out.
I wanted an accessible, accepting space to show me what is out there, what isn’t, and why that might be.
So I am making one.
Here at Trial Bi Media I will be watching as many films with bi representation as I can to catalogue the landscape for you. From the promiscuous bi villain stereotype to the bi-curious coming-of-age story, from the out and proud bi to the subtly bi-coded, we are going to cover it all one movie at a time.
You can read the about section of this substack for the basic game plan and more about me, but here is a little more on my approach…
I want to be nice
I am not a film critic, I am a film celebrant. There is plenty of content out there that can tell you what is technically ‘good’ or ‘bad’. That content has it’s place, but it’s not here. You don’t need to have ‘guilty pleasure’ films or use the ‘so good it’s bad’ excuse. You can like what you like here, free of judgement. This goes not only for the quality of the film but the representation itself.
There is a great bit in The Celluloid Closet (Epstein and Friedman, 1995) where, after a litany of talking heads denounce the homophobic stereotype of the ‘sissy’1 in early cinema, actor and writer Harvey Fierstein confidently claims, “I liked the sissy”. This was often the only gay representation he saw in film growing up. “I would rather have negative than nothing”.
Seeking representation of bi experiences in media is currently a fight over scraps, and there often isn’t much nutritional value in what we can scrape together. The scraps are likely even more measly the more minoritised identities we hold within us and are seeking to see reflected on screen. Though, even if we build a whole buffet of bi cinema over time (and I hope we do), no single film will be a complete meal. That is why it is important we give grace to those who find something that sustains them. This doesn’t mean not reckoning with parts that might be harmful or discrediting those that aren’t sustained (or are even poisoned) by what you find nourishment in. We can hold all the complexity together to come to a better, less binary understanding of film.
So I am going to do my best to be nice, or at least fair. There are very few films that have nothing to like or learn from. This doesn’t mean they get a free pass to do whatever they like; it just means we are going to take the good with the bad and acknowledge those are often very subjective criteria.
No sexuality policing
There will be no policing or investigating any creator or actor’s sexuality. While I will absolutely honour content made by those who are publicly bi, I won’t perpetuate rumours or critique anyone’s sexuality credentials. The main reason for this is that doing so is just an asshole move, but there are a couple more:
Bi people are the least likely people to be ‘out’. In Stonewall’s 2020 survey of 5,000 LGBT people in England and Wales, they found bi respondents less likely to be out “in every aspect of everyday life, whether that’s at home, in education, at work, or as part of a faith community”. And that’s just the people who identify as bi. You can’t be ‘out’ as bi if you don’t label your experiences that way. So coupled with this…
‘Bi’ is a broad as hell umbrella. It covers lots of different experiences and feelings that can make it very hard to pin down. Some people don’t want to be pinned down, some people change how they identify over their life, and some people explore this part of themselves privately for many valid reasons. I don’t want to require someone to publicly announce they fit a certain definition of experiences to have a valid take. You shouldn’t have to know exactly who you are to make something about it, because art is one of the ways you find that out.
So while we will celebrate the out and proud where we can, I won’t patrol the sexuality of creators. Because, in all likelihood, there are many more of them than we—or even they—realise.
Movies exist across time, not at one fixed point
You might hear people tell you to not judge old art by current values and to see it for the time it was made in. To me, that is often just trading one fixed point of reference for another. The starting point is the beginning of the journey, not that whole map.
It’s not enough to say it’s acceptable for all those Hitchcock films to feature a man slapping an ‘hysterical’ woman because that was ‘okay at the time’. We need to understand who said that was okay, at what point people stopped thinking that was okay, and who was maybe saying it wasn’t okay the whole time and just wasn’t being listened to.
What I will try and do here is understand how movies exist across time. What did it mean when it was made? What does it mean now? What did it mean at different times in between those two points to different people? How has it been received and re-received and re-received?
So with all that being said….
Let this be your Bi Blockbuster.
It might take a while to stock our shelves, but I endeavour to document as much bi cinema as possible so you can find what you want to take home and watch.
To help your selection, we have:
Film essays on specific bi titles (published on the second Monday of the month)
Bi-te size bits focusing on film history and theory (published ad-hoc)
Extra fun movie stuff, personal insights and ramblings (published ad-hoc)
Let’s do this together
I would love to get your comments and insights on my work so we can grow this place together. Please like and share and comment and all that other stuff. It’s much appreciated.
References:
The Celluloid Closet (1995). HBO.
Melville, Sophie, et al. LGBT in Britain - Bi Report. Stonewall, 2020, https://www.stonewall.org.uk/resources/lgbt-britain-bi-report-2020.
Shaw, J. (2023) Bi: the hidden culture, history and science of bisexuality. Edinburgh: Canongate Books Ltd
The ‘sissy’ stereotype is an overly effeminate male character, often depicted as a villain or in a comedic role.