Reading Bisexuality in Late 20th and Early 21st Century Western Popular Culture
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Course
HUM004 - Independent Project (HUM004)
Institution
Plymouth University (UOP)
An essay discussing how bisexuality has been portrayed through three different case studies: the film "My Own Private Idaho", the television show "The Bold Type", and the book "Call Me By Your Name", as well as contextualising bisexuality in a more modern setting.
Reading Bisexuality in Late 20th and Early 21st Century Western Popular Culture
Although bisexuality may seem like it is a recent invention by millennials, it has been around
for many centuries, dating back even to the days of Sappho, who wrote about females in an
erotic manner, at a time when only male erotica was being written (Lester M.D., 2002, p.
170). Popular media culture in its current form, like television shows and motion pictures for
example, is a recent innovation which grew in popularity in the early 20th century. Because of
this, portrayal of the LGBT+ community within the Westernized world has also increased in
recent years, due to changing stigmas around the community, which is especially seen in the
move into the 21st Century as gay marriage was legalised in 16 of the 50 American States in
2014, as well as being legalised in England, Scotland and Wales within the same year. One
thing to note is that while there is a growing popularity in LGBT+ portrayals within modern
media, the main portrayals seen on screen are of Lesbian or Gay characters – however,
fantasy characters like Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie from the Marvel Cinematic Universe
(2017 – 2019) and Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman (2017) are known to be bisexual within their
comic book backgrounds and deleted scenes in the films. A recent documentary on BBC
showed how many people are less likely to date someone who does identify as bisexual due
to worries of cheating with either sex (‘Battling to be Bi’, 2019). Within this essay, three
media texts will be analysed for their portrayals of bisexuality and the shift from the late 20th
century to the early 21st, and how bisexuality is framed within the characters themselves.
It is important to first establish a short history of bisexuality, to discuss it with regards to
popular culture, along with any of its shortcomings, and the way it is currently viewed in
society by men and women in both the heterosexual community and the LGBT+ community.
To quote Firestein on the definition of the term, firstly, it is known as “the capacity,
regardless of the sexual identity label one chooses, to love and sexually desire both same- and
other-gendered individuals.” (1996, p. xx). The idea of bisexuality itself has been around for
, many years before the first official definitions of it within the 20th Century, with origins in the
era of the Ancient Greeks, noted by Catherine Chevalley as not synonymous with the idea of
“the flesh” (or “le chair”), but more for pleasure itself – le plaisir sexuel (2002, p. 27).
However, there are different ways to look at it within the 20th Century, as Lachlan
MacDowall notes in his 2009 essay Historicising Contemporary Bisexuality: firstly being
used to describe life forms exhibiting characteristics of both sexes, it then progresses to
describe masculine and feminine behaviours in individuals before finally moving to the
definition previously quoted from Firestein within the 1980s and 1990s. The 20th Century
also brought Albert Kinsey’s definitions of homosexuality and bisexuality, in relation to
heterosexuality, to the forefront of psychological research into sexuality. After conducting
hundreds of interviews from 1947 to 1953, Kinsey created what was known as the Kinsey
scale, a scale from 0 to 6 which showed a spectrum of human sexuality – 0 being completely
heterosexual, and 6 being completely homosexual. With this research, there was a higher
level of bisexuality revealed than people had initially expected, leading to widespread
scandal. Moving later into the 20th Century, and to the 1980s, homosexual and bisexual
characters first start to be seen more often on screens – the late 1970s and leading into the
1980s saw TV show Soap with its first openly gay character, Jodie Dallas, portrayed by Billy
Crystal. The concept of bisexuality does have drawbacks, however – the documentary
‘Battling to be Bi’ also portrayed a group of bisexual activists in their attempt to organise a
“Bisexual Pride” parade earlier this year which was unsuccessful, as well giving insight into
an area of sexuality that is often dismissed by many due to the idea of either being one or
other, not both (‘Battling to be Bi’, 2019), an idea perpetuated through the sources analysed
within the essay.
The first analysis of bisexuality on screen comes from the late 20th Century, in the form of
My Own Private Idaho, directed by Gus Van Sant and starring River Phoenix and Keanu
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