We all know you can’t really rely on Hollywood to portray lesbians in the right way. But a lot of times, they not only feature lesbian movie characters wrong, they show them in a bad light.
After all, who needs gay stereotyping when the portrayal is bad?
Here are a number of lesbian movie characters who were just terrible on screen. It makes you think they shouldn’t even have tried to include lesbian movie characters if that’s the way they were going to be depicted.
1. Basic Instinct (1992)
This movie is so controversial in so many areas. First, it was essentially a movie intended for sleaze. What exactly was the point of the leg-crossing-without-undies scene?
Second, its lesbian characters– from Sharon Stone’s Catherine Tramell to her girlfriend, Roxy (played by Leilani Sarelle), to Jeanne Tripplehorn’s Dr. Beth Garner– were all murderous psychopaths.
The portrayal of the lesbian characters was so negative, it had the LGBT community up in arms.
2. Chasing Amy (1997)
This may be a Kevin Smith cult favorite. However, it’s also the kind of movie that give lesbians a bad rap, i.e. lesbians are women who need the right man to turn them straight.
In this movie, Ben Affleck’s character Holden McNeil falls in love with a female comic book artist, Alyssa Jones (starring Joey Lauren Adams), who happens to be a lesbian. And because this is Hollywood, she falls in love with him in return.
Seriously folks, this is the connotation about lesbians that we’ve been trying to correct for the longest time.
(And let’s not talk about another Affleck-movie that deals with the same idea: Gigli.)
3. Diabolique (1996)
Sharon Stone (again) seems to be attracted to murderous lesbians. But while Basic Instinct was very frank about the lesbian sexuality of their characters, Diabolique was more subtle.
This is because of the supposedly lesbian undertones in the relationship between the wife (Isabelle Adjani) and the mistress (Stone) of a schoolmaster (Chazz Palminteri). The two women connive together to kill the husband.
Can we have other options here, please?
here?
4. Manhattan (1979)
Meryl Streep’s supporting role in this film didn’t exactly sit well with a lot of lesbians. In this movie, Woody Allen’s Isaac Davis was once married to Streep’s Jill, who became a lesbian after their marriage.
Streep’s character was supposed to be comic relief– a situation like Friends’ Ross discovering his ex-wife had become a lesbian.
5. Black Swan (2010)
The supposed lesbian sex scene between Natalie Portman’s Nina Sayers and Mila Kunis’ Lily was considered as one of the hottest sex scenes in movies. There’s just one minor problem: it wasn’t real.
This scene was a dream sequence, part of the process in which a ballet dancer loses her marbles. Ironically, it wasn’t even a fundamental part of the movie as Portman said the only reason that the two-minute sex scene was included was to get people to see the movie.
Thanks to this movie, our options now for lesbian movie characters are: killers or a sexy reason to get guys to watch a movie. Riiiight.