ABSTRACT
In 1982 Hollywood companies produced and distributed a number of films whose narratives self-consciously drew on aspects of gay and lesbian identity. Lianna, Personal Best, Cruising, Partners, and Making Love incited much comment from within and outside the gay community, not as separate texts but as part of a self-contained thematic group — at worst, a cynical fashion; at best an apposite trend. 1 Yet more recently films like Parting Glances, Kiss of the Spiderwoman, My Beautiful Launderette, Prick Up Your Ears and Maurice — all distributed in the UK and North America between late 1985 and mid 1987 — have not been discussed in the same way and have successfully asserted themselves as different products, discrete and unrelated. Largely their difference has been asserted by marketing, which in all but one instance avoids mention of their investment in gay themes and images. When the gay press has given space to talk about these films it is in the same way as the publicists; gay people are as much consumers as any other group and could reasonably want to believe that each new product is different from the last. After the novelty of 1982’s titles, there is no sense of continuity or criticism between cultural texts. The gay press has inherited its criteria from traditional journalism, with the fillip of critical interest devoted to whether each discrete text trades in ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ images of gay life; 2 consequently there is a sense that in the last half of the 1980s we are overwhelmed by an ever-expanding constellation of rich, diverse gay images.
