The B Word: Bisexuality in Contemporary Film and Television

by Maria San Filippo

Often disguised in public discourse by terms like "gay," "homoerotic," "homosocial," or "queer," bisexuality is strangely absent from queer studies and virtually untreated in film and media criticism. Maria San Filippo aims to explore the central role bisexuality plays in contemporary screen culture, establishing its importance in representation, marketing, and spectatorship. By examining a variety of media genres including art cinema, sexploitation cinema and vampire films, "bromances," and series television, San Filippo discovers "missed moments" where bisexual readings of these texts reveal a more malleable notion of subjectivity and eroticism. San Filippo's work moves beyond the subject of heteronormativity and responds to "compulsory monosexuality," where it's not necessarily a couple's gender that is at issue, but rather that an individual chooses one or the other. The B Word transcends dominant relational formation (gay, straight, or otherwise) and brings a discursive voice to the field of queer and film studies.

Genres: Nonfiction, LGBT, Queer, Bisexual, Feminism, Film, History

294 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Maria San Filippo is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland.

Reviews

[Hesper · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly compelling deconstruction of the discourse around bisexuality in contemporary American media, with an emphasis on female bisexuality, although the chapter on Brokeback Mountain & The Wedding Crashers takes an excellent detour into conceptualizations of male bisexual expression. As expected, there's no escape from the hoary ol' binary (bisexuality is just indecision, amirite), or from certain tropes like the promiscuous and/or duplicitous bisexual, and San Filippo's analyses of their framing and implications is clear and stimulating.

Two caveats. One, it was published in 2013, and the quality and articulation of bisexuality on TV has improved since then, even if the issues San Filippo identifies have yet to be completely resolved. And two, especially in the early theory-establishing part, it is dense. As in not-intended-for-a-popular-audience dense, which is too bad, because the information it contains is both fascinating and valuable.

[Joanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amaaaaaaazing. I am dying for some bisexual representation in like... anything? Even the last book I read that had a "bisexual" in it was like, did not mention bi or pan or queer. Only "gay" so... AND the FREAKING show I was watching that I THOUGHT had a nicely developed bisexual character KILLED him the FUCK OFF and he was depressed and suicidal and it was so poorly written, I cannot stress this enough. But this book wrote about bisexuality and biraciality (both ME) and i was like, OMG. Love it. Trains of thought that I have had that I was like, who the hell do I talk to about this? was like, written in words. So amazing.

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each chapter starts off with an overview of the three main subjects discussed (art cinema, mainstream bromance, serialized television) but then goes primarily into deep dives on specific examples. So you will get a lot more out of this if you're familiar with the works discussed, since reading a plot summary followed by in-depth analysis of a movie/show you haven't seen is rarely fulfilling.

Suggested pre-read viewings include Chasing Amy, Mulholland Drive and David Lynch at large, A Shot At Love, Rescue Me, Basic Instinct, Brokeback Mountain, Dodgeball/Old School, and House MD, among others.

[Mateo Dk]

DNF 51%

I just don't watch enough movies so like most of this was me forcing myself to read through passages that didn't make much sense because I didn't know the referenced movie. I'm interested in this subject a LOT but not knowing many case studies made it not worth the read for me.