[Pride 2020] Bisexuality in Genre: How Catherine Tramell Warped Sexuality Forever

Film often deals in archetypes, none more so than genre films. Moustaches are often a signifier of someone to distrust, traditionally masculine attributes in men are seen as heroic, scars signify villains and so on. In recent times there have been attempts to move away from such ideas, and moreover, to become more inclusive.

While Hollywood is still in the “I guess they mean well” phase of the big blockbusters putting a token gay reference into a film that can be edited out for that all important Chinese market (we see it, and we don’t like it), there’s something to be said for how they are trying to show lesbian and homosexual relationships in films, as well as trans stories. But, there is one leg to that LGBT chair that is not well served by genre film.

Bisexuality.

This might seem like a strange thing to say, but think about it. How often is bisexuality reduced to nothing more than either a joke or a way of quickly and cheaply showing a character is “modern”. Perhaps the most famous example would be Sharon Stone’s Golden Globe nominated turn in Basic Instinct as the villainous Catherine Tramell.

For anyone who doesn’t know the basic set up of Basic Instinct, Michael Douglas (it was the ‘90s, he had to be in your sexy thriller) is a cop who investigates a novelist called Catherine Trammell who may have murdered her boyfriend. What follows is a sexy game of cat-and-mouse that explores the hidden sexual threat that women feel men hold, and that men fear women hold.

Paul Verhoeven’s famously overwrought erotic thriller ushered in the theme of bisexuality into mainstream consciousness but in doing so made the concept of the villain being bisexual as a cool signifier that the (usually) female femme fatale is one to be wary of. Tramell is perhaps not as hailed as a villain as say Hannibal Lecter, but the underlying question of “did she do it” or is she just a flirty woman who enjoys playing games is undermined at every turn by this implication that being bisexual is just another game.

It becomes increasingly apparent that genre films also go to pains to explain that one of two things is true - either, you’re binary and a gay person stuck in a society that won’t accept it so you enter into heterosexual relationships, or you’re part of some counter-culture movement to “stick it to the man” so to speak. For example, prestige dramas like Disobedience or Brokeback Mountain skirt about the idea that people have to be one or the other, either you’re straight or you’re gay and society is pushing you in different directions based on when and where the film is set.

Perhaps because of the success of Tramell as a femme fatale it became the role of women characters to fly the flag of bisexuality. Blake Lively’s suspicious but oh-so-cool Emily in Paul Feig’s A Simple Favour casually drops into conversation that she has had sex with a woman along with her husband, and makes reference to her sexuality as if it is part of what Anna Kendrick’s Stephanie finds so alluring.

Even protagonists that are bisexual like Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or badass agent Lorraine Broughton in David Leitch’s breakneck Atomic Blonde as played by Charlize Theron are both played as emotionally distant and hard nosed. It also falls into the camp that they appear more caring for their female sexual partners than male. This idea that only cynical people who want cheap and meaningless sex while working to a bigger cause can be stemmed from Tramell and her mind games she plays with Douglas’ Nick Curran.

There is also in the Tramell character another insidious implication that has persisted in narratives for a while, that bisexual people (read: women, bisexual men don’t exist in cinema) are damaged in some way, that their fractured minds cause them to need to explore both genders. In reality, bisexuality is no more different than heterosexuality.

But the story that Tramell tells Nick about a lesbian relationship going awry, as well as callously letting her lover Roxy get obsessed with her to the point of psychosis, calls to mind something like say Black Swan. As the virginal Nina (Natalie Portman) becomes more and more broken mentally by her obsession, her sexuality becomes more clear, she engages in sexual scenes with men and with Mila Kunis, her fragile mind giving way to sexual freedom. Which stacks for Lisbeth Salander also, her traumatic abusive childhood, and the excessive abuse men levy on her during the narrative are shown as why she craves the intimacy of women while also being attracted to men.

Tramell’s character lingers in cinema much more than people realise, as her bisexual, sexually promiscuous and borderline psychopathic personality became the easy way to explain that someone was dangerous or sexually free. The continual thing that comes into play thanks to Tramell is that you don’t see genre films that explore the mundane nature of bisexuality…that bisexuality isn’t a personality trait, it’s much more boring than that. But, in reducing it to narrative ideas of “it’s a game” or “make a choice” people who see these films will continue to think their attraction to both men and women isn’t natural or real.

As progressive as it was for people of colour, one shot in Jordan Peele’s Get Out that implies psycho Rose Armitage has seduced black women as well as men so that she can harvest their bodies once again plays into the image that bisexuality is a bad thing. That women’s sexuality is cause for constant alarm is damaging.

All of which is to say that women are portrayed negatively in the world of bisexuality media, genre has pretty much nothing to say for male bisexuality. The homoerotic undertone of Fight Club is a matter of psychosis also, that the Narrator’s sexual attraction to Tyler Durden is not in fact two men that would probably be better off just getting into bed but actually one man’s obsession with his own ego.

The closest you might find is in the form of The Rocky Horror Picture Show but even there Tim Curry’s Frank is very clearly an antagonist and a sexual deviant and even the burgeoning sexuality of Brad is shown to be something that can only come from an extreme circumstance and mental anguish. Which raises the question - why?

Well, Tramell proved that if you have an attractive woman in the role of a bisexual she can sleep with her leading male and a plethora of attractive women for titilation of straight males. There is, generally, not much appeal to a straight man in seeing two men have sex, and that’s why both homosexual and bisexual males are hard to come by, but the bisexual male remains impossible to find. It remains the hard worn trope of the gay man trapped in a loveless straight-looking marriage.

That’s not to say there isn’t fun to be had watching a hokey erotic thriller, there absolutely is, and as over-the-top as Basic Instinct is, you can still enjoy it, perhaps even as a monument to what people thought of non-straight sexuality in the ‘90s. The problem comes when we do not move on from that. After all, the narrative idea that you’re “gay but covering” isn’t healthy. It’s wrong for gay people, and it’s wrong for bisexual people. Both are valid, both are worthy of respect.

Cinema just doesn’t agree… yet.

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