BISEXUAL ALLURE IN CINEMEDIA

Travis K Svensson

ABSTRACT

Techniques from the field of experimental criticism are deployed in this exploration of the allure that exists between bisexuality and cinemedia.  Cinema has long been fascinated by the screen drama afforded by bisexual stereotypes.  With Hollywood’s active rehabilitation of how homosexuals have been used on the big screen over the last three or more decades, the polluted bisexual remains a viable replacement for the homophobic stereotyped gays and lesbians of cinema’s yesteryear.  While bisexual (in)visibility has been a topic of interest since the dawn of the AIDS crisis for both academia and social justice politicos, new media has taken the opportunity to commodify the specific internet affordance of a digital closet specifically relevant to bisexual users.  These issues are explored in a series of six cinema montages and an case study of bisexual identity development.

About the Author: Travis K Svensson is a psychoanalytically trained psychiatrist and nurse practitioner, a member of the Royal College of General Practitioners (UK) and an early career filmmaker.  He is on the faculty of the Colorado Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Study and the University of the People. He is author of Bioethical Analysis of Sexual Reorientation Interventions: The Ethics of Conversion Therapy (2004), Walker Brown Press. He has graduate degrees from Western Governors University (MSN), Harvard University (MLA), George Washington University (MD, MPH), the University of Wales Swansea (PhD), and currently studies film at San Francisco State University and the University of Exeter. Though originally from Texas, he is a longtime resident of San Francisco and St. Maarten, Dutch West Indies.