Introduction
A work in which a version of me was represented with problematic elements is the film Rent. In Rent, there is a female bisexual character named Maureen who consists mostly of bisexual woman stereotypes. Being a bisexual woman, I have experienced the stigma against us firsthand and am all too familiar with the ideas of what bisexual women are supposedly like. Films that spread stigma, especially a film so widely known as progressive for tackling queer issues, are incredibly harmful. The argument that it is simply a movie and has no harm is extremely misguided, and it is essential that we turn the gaze on bisexual women in Rent back on the film and address the issue of stereotyped bisexual women. Maureen’s character is a fragmented portrayal of what it means to be a bisexual woman. The main pieces of her character that are known to the audience are that of her promiscuous sexuality, while the other characters are developed much more thoroughly as having emotional pain, struggles with disease and addiction, and experiences with impoverishment. Maureen’s character reflects the stereotypes of bisexual women that have been constructed within U.S. society, and it is essential to address the stereotypical portrayals of marginalized groups in order to end those stereotypes.
Maureen
In the film Rent, the first time Maureen is mentioned is when her ex-boyfriend Mark confesses to his ex-friend Benny that she left him for a woman. Mark’s friend Roger and Benny proceed to tease Mark, because his ex-girlfriend now dating a woman somehow implies that Mark is de-masculinated. This teasing implies that lesbian relationships are inferior to heterosexual relationships and invalidates the relationships of bisexual women that are prior to their current relationship, as if our sexuality flips with each partners sex. Shortly after that, Mark gets a call from Maureen where she asks him to come help her fix the audio equipment for her show. Mark eagerly agrees and his friend Collins implies that Maureen has him whipped. Maureen is shown as Mark’s ex who is using him and he is her defenseless victim. This portrayal of Maureen demonstrates the stereotype that bisexual women are manipulative. This scene portrays Maureen as a predator to the poor, helpless, straight Mark. When Mark goes to help Maureen, he meets her girlfriend Joann and they proceed to sing a song called “The Tango Maureen” about how promiscuous she is and how she has the tendency to cheat, but they are unable to leave because of how much they are entranced by her. This portrays bisexual women as predators to heterosexual and homosexual partners. During the song, Maureen is shown tangoing in a tight, red dress with a bunch of people and at the end she kisses and leaves with two of them. This shows her as promiscuous and manipulative of her partners. This depiction objectifies bisexual women and portrays them as seductive antagonists that the protagonists cannot overcome. During the song “Take me or Leave me,” Maureen expresses to Joann at their engagement party that Joann can either accept her as promiscuous or leave because it is who she is. This depicts bisexual women as driven by and unable to control their promiscuity so much so that they will dispose of their partners.
It’s just a film, right?
It is a common argument against feminist film studies that films are for entertainment and should not be criticized so harshly as the negative aspects of them were not intended. On the contrary, media greatly impacts society’s perceptions and films are very intentional. In Smith’s “It’s just a movie,” he asserts that films are “one of the most highly scrutinized, carefully constructed, least random works imaginable,” (Smith, 128) as they are quite expensive to produce and there are many people involved in the production of every film. Some argue that accidents are made during filming and that results in some of the problematic content. Smith reminds his readers that “even if something occurred on film without their planning for it, they make a conscious choice whether to include that chance occurrence. What was chance in the filming becomes choice in editing,” (Smith, 128) which emphasizes how many times during the production process intentional acts are taken to edit the content and remove anything that the film makers did not intend. Thus, Maureen’s very stereotyped character was intentional and needs to be addressed so that film makers are held to higher standards in the future when attempting to depict marginalized identities.
Oppositional Gaze
An oppositional gaze is when the group that has been gazed upon (i.e. black women for their sexuality) looks back on the gazers. hooks in her piece “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators” explains that those being gazed upon are “afraid to look, but fascinated by the gaze. There is power in looking,” (hooks, 247) which expresses the urge to look when you know you are not supposed to. In order to provoke change, groups that are gazed upon need to turn that gaze around and confront the ways they are portrayed. hooks asserts that “even in the worse circumstances of domination, the ability to manipulate one’s gaze in the face of structures of domination that would contain it, opens up the possibility of agency,” (hooks, 248) which emphasizes the choice that altering gaze provides. Thus, in order to break away from misconceptions about bisexual women, we need to address the stereotyped ways we are portrayed in film.
Visuals in Film
The way things look in film are very impactful in audience perceptions. Mulvey in her piece “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema” explains that “film reflects, reveals, and even plays on the straight, socially established interpretation of sexual difference which controls images, erotic ways of looking, and spectacle,” (Mulvey, 28) which emphasizes the way pre-existing norms impact the way films look and what is eroticized and made into a spectacle. The majority of the stress put on Maureen is about her sexuality and how attractive and ‘sexy’ she is. The things that audiences enjoy looking at are impacted by what society claims is attractive or exotified. Mulvey argues this in saying “as an advanced representation system, the cinema poses questions of the ways the unconscious (formed by the dominant order) structures ways of seeing and pleasure in looking” (Mulvey, 29). As bisexual women are largely believed to be promiscuous and hyper-sexual, that is how Maureen was portrayed to resonate with the audience’s preconceptions of bisexual women.
Conclusion
In the film Rent, Maureen’s character is portrayed as hyper-sexual and unable to control her promiscuity. Maureen falls into stereotypes of bisexual women as being overly sexual and cheating, as well as treating their partners as disposable. Maureen’s visual pleasure in the film is largely associated with her sexual orientation, which contributes to the sexualization of bisexual women in society. The way films are made is very intentional and film makers need to be held to higher standards of non-stereotyped portrayals of identities. In order to gain the choice in changing the stereotyped perceptions of bisexual women, we have to confront film makers by putting the gaze back on them as media largely impacts the perpetuation of societal perceptions.
Works Cited
hooks, bell. (2002). “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,” in Black Looks: Race and Representation, 115-131.
Mulvey, Laura. (1975). “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16(3), 6-18.
Smith, Greg. (2001). “’It’s Just a Movie”: A Teaching Essay for Introductory Media Classes.” Cinema Journal 41(1), 127)134.
Feminist Film Studies Fall 2018 