ABSTRACT
The most memorable feature of Pillow Talk is the way the film situates the sexuality of its male lead, bachelor songwriter Brad Allen, against the theatrical backdrop of his apartment, a fantasy playpen where domestic technology serves a single purpose—seduction. The plot of Pillow Talk theatricalizes the characteristics of straight masculinity most effectively through Brad’s impersonation of Rex Stetson, a wealthy Texan whose identity Brad assumes to prevent Jan from discovering his real identity as the playboy with whom she shares a party line. The opening voiceover narration of the theatrical trailer for Pillow Talk unwittingly discloses the film’s subtext; it is imprecise as a summary of its plot because it refers to two masquerades on the part of the bachelor. The bachelor apartment in Pillow Talk repeats the spatial dualism of “active” and “quiet zones” but produces the opposite effect; its multi-level layout amounts to a spatial recognition of a divided subjectivity.
