I hate this movie so much.
JUST A COUPLE OF GAL PALS PALLING IT UP AMIRITE [Image: Roxy and Catherine kiss in the foreground in front of Nick, who is befuddled by the concept of bisexuality]
Director Paul Verhoeven desperately wants Basic Instinct to be an updated Hitchcock classic (not that Hitchcock was so great on the “evil queer” angle either), taking the psychosexual element to the MPAA limit for 1991, but he clearly forgot that biphobia and “edgy” sex scenes make for a terrible thriller. The film is extremely biphobic and includes many of the most negative stereotypes about bisexuality, particularly in terms of bisexual women: that bisexuality is fake, particularly in the sense of heteronormativity and sapphophobia; conflating bisexuality with mental illness; that queer women exist for the male gaze; and the idea that queer women “recruit” straight women. All this, and the word “bisexual” is never even uttered once.
Check out the full article on Bitch Flicks.
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