An Unrequited Desire for the Sublime

In recent years, issues of lesbian representation and of the lesbian spectator have become nagging questions posed to feminist theories of film, which have become codified around semiotic and psychoanalytic discourses and, to a lesser extent, the study and critique of traditional narrative film. In many instances, this has represented a closed system, one open neither to new lines of analysis nor to works which don’t fit the predominant theoretical models. ¹ Now, however, both the rapid production of lesbian and gay media in the community, and the recent legitimation of lesbian and gay studies within the academy, have begun to shift these agendas for feminist film theory, as have, on other levels, the emergence of postcolonial cultural criticisms and Third World feminisms. ²