Bi film-video world : high and low: bisexual women and aesthetics in Chasing Amy and High Art

M. Pramaggiore

This essay examines two recent U.S. films that explicitly connect art and women's bisexuality: Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy (1997) and Lisa Cholodenko's High Art (1998). The affiliation between bisexuality and art reflects a paradox: an erotics of refusing distinctions, bisexuality acts as a metaphor for both the breakdown of sexual categories and the blending of high art and low entertainment. Yet bisexuals are subjects presumed to know; experimental, and, therefore, experienced, they are better equipped to make distinctions. In these films, one important aesthetic and sexual distinction revolves around the nation of the "real."[Copies are available from: Haworth Document Delivery Center. The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580, USA]