At the beginning of the 90s, lesbians were a punchline for a male-gaze-oriented media, an easy target for expressing the anxiety that women might not need men after all. By the middle of the decade, women-loving-women had become the heroes of a number of neo-noir crime films, but the culture at large still rejected lesbianism when not intended to arouse men. While The Matrix has widely been reappraised as a trans allegory after the transitions of its directors the Wachowski sisters, their previous feature Bound was transparently queer, but its reception was complicated by the media’s perception of its makers. Bound was released just a few months after the burial of an extremely similar film called Wild Side. Barely seen on its initial release amidst studio recutting and the suicide of its director, today Wild Side plays as a heartbreaking and troubling example of what could have been for its star Anne Heche, who would soon after become one-half of the most famous lesbian couple in Hollywood – and suffer the career consequences.
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Clara Bow (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 11)
Rudolph Valentino (Fake News: Fact-Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 10)
Thomas Ince and the Hearst "Coverup" (Fake News: Fact-Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 9)
Peggy Hopkins Joyce and Charlie Chaplin (Fake News: Fact-Checking Hollywood Babylon, Episode 8)
Will Hays and "Pre-Code" Hollywood (Fake News: Fact-Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 7)
Wallace Reid (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 6)
Mabel Normand (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 5)
William Desmond Taylor (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 4)
Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Virginia Rappe (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 3)
Olive Thomas (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 2)
D.W. Griffith, the Gish Sisters and the origin of "Hollywood Babylon" (Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon Episode 1)
120: Boris and Roger Corman (Bela & Boris Part 6)
119: Bela and Ed Wood (Bela & Boris Part 5)
118: Bela vs. Boris (Bela & Boris Part 4)
117: Boris and the Monsters (Bela & Boris Part 3)
116: Bela and the Vampires (Bela & Boris Part 2)
115: Where the Monsters Came From (Bela & Boris Part 1)
114: The Last of Jean/Jane Works Out (Jean & Jane Part 9)
113: Coming Home (Jean & Jane Part 8)
112: Hanoi Jane & The FBI vs. Jean Seberg’s Baby (Jean & Jane Part 7)
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