The 1990s, claims Ciasullo (2001, p. 578), saw the emergence of a new form of sexual identity or style – “lesbian chic”. Lesbians were being displayed across the media, on magazine covers, on television shows, in cinema, not as the knife-wielding mad woman of films such as Basic Instinct (1992), but rather, as a ‘normal’, feminine woman who posed no viable threat to heteronormativity. This portrayal was not of the “short-haired ‘bulldyke’” identity, which Kasindorf (Ciasullo 2001, p. 584) argues is firm in the minds of most Americans as the real look of the lesbian. According to Ciasullo (2001, p. 585), the media uses “the feminine to sanitize the popular conception of the lesbian”. The lesbian, though seemingly ‘out’ in the mainstream, remains invisible by being feminised, and as such, by being heterosexualised. The media use stereotypes, not in support or expression of sexual identity, but to cloud it. Like the dog hiding under a bed during a thunderstorm – ‘what you can’t see can’t hurt you’.

Bound (1996), a film which Woods and O’Brien (2005, p. 9-5) propose “frustrates simplistic categories of heterosexual, and lesbian, as well as butch and femme”, turns lesbian invisibility into a subversive and conspiratorial asset which ultimately wins against heterosexual ‘blindness’. This film, through its various representations of femininity, both supports and challenges stereotypes regarding lesbian identity. In doing so, it is able, as Kessler (2003, p. 15) claims, to avoid “a formal exclusion” of either heterosexual or homosexual audiences. From “within a cinematic tradition”, as Hanson (1999, p. 2) contends, “where lesbianism has usually been coded as pathology, betrayal, invisibility”, Bound, though narratively quite dissimilar to Thelma & Louise (1991), in a similar sense encourages viewers to barrack for a female couple who dare to challenge the heterosexist patriarchy. We are invited to identify, through support, with that which we are told at the same time does not exist. The invisible is made visible only to then be hidden behind those same stereotypes which had kept it covered in the first place. In this way, though seeming to be a non-conformist text, Bound inevitably returns the situation to a normative state.

The possibility of the subversive challenge which emerges in Bound is indicated in an opening scene of the film, where Corky (Gina Gershon), Violet (Jennifer Tilly) and Caesar (Joe Pantoliano) ride together in the elevator of the building where Caesar and Violet live and Corky has just been hired to do maintenance. Though Caesar and Violet are a ‘couple’, Violet stands behind Caesar, aligning herself with Corky. Corky, through her attire and body language, is immediately coded as ‘butch-dyke’. Violet, on the other hand, though also dressed in black leather, is coded as feminine by her heavy make-up, tight, short skirt and high-heeled stilettos. But Violet removes her sunglasses, giving Corky a look which indicates all is not as it might appear. There is a very obvious attempt within the mise en scène of this scene to create an air of sexual tension between these two women who have not as yet actually met. Expression of this tension is displayed through piercing eye contact, pouting and parting lips, the tilt of the head and swing of the hips.

Indeed, the two women do, quite rapidly, develop a lesbian relationship. But going against what might be expected, that is, butch/masculine/active and feminine/passive, it is the femme Violet who instigates their sexual liaisons and operates as the active participant. This inversion could be read as a compromise to placate heterosexual sensitivities. If Corky, already exhibiting masculine proclivities, as tattooed, truck-driving, handy’man’, was to be the sexual aggressor, she might be seen as too threatening. As Roof (Ciasullo 2001, p. 604) argues, “perceiving lesbians as masculine reveals the threat to masculine supremacy”. Positioning Violet as the aggressor reduces that threat. Violet, though engaging in lesbian activity, is not such a threat because, as Wallace (2000, p. 372) points out, her “allegiance to the sartorial codes of femininity makes her sexual registration more dubious”. This could indeed reduce their ‘acting out’ of sex to the somewhat perverse, though generally accepted realm of male heterosexual fantasy. As Woods and O’Brien (2005, p. 9-5) assert, because lesbian sex bears an “assumed lack of … penile penetration … [it] … is rendered a ‘non sex act’” on the part, at least, of the participants. It lends itself, therefore, to the voyeuristic pleasuring of the heterosexual male.

This consideration of lesbian sex as not really sex is ultimately what leads to the demise of Caesar and enables Corky and Violet to successfully rob Caesar’s Mafia bosses of their money. The overt heterosexuality associated with gangsters, in particular, the Mafioso with their ‘moles’, blinds these men to the possibility that two women could form an enduring relationship which might threaten to undermine their masculine power base. Just as most of the men in Thelma & Louise are portrayed as arrogant, ignorant and misogynistic, so too the men of Bound are presented as stereotypical mobsters – rude, violent, not particularly intelligent, and somewhat obsessed with their own genitalia. The audience is given little choice but to identify with Corky and Violet, or at least, to identify with their desire and ability to overcome these ‘baddies’ of the Underground who exist on the trades of drugs, prostitution and corruption.

The people who lose in the end are, as Kessler (2003, p. 18) points out, “even more ideologically problematic than lesbians”. In this way, by pitting lesbian against mobster, the stereotypes presented in Bound are able, as Kessler (2003, p. 17) claims, to

satisfy the needs of lesbians looking for images of empowerment, heterosexuals accepting of positive images of lesbians, and those simply looking to marginalize, trivialize, or exoticize lesbians.

Though the film does, to some extent, break the bounds of typical Hollywood representations of the lesbian, its use of stereotypical representations of lesbian identity as either butch or femme reduces any threat that lesbianism may have otherwise posed to the dominant hegemony of the heterosexual patriarchy. Again, just as Thelma and Louise drove off into an uncertain future, so too do Corky and Violet, particularly as they admit in their closing dialogue, there really is no difference between them. Just as Thelma and Louise, they both must now become invisible.

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