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re: jajasoon's posting of yesterday about the film Heavenly Creatures, which
I agree was one of the best films I've seen in a *long* while!! (can you
tell I liked it?!) Anyhow, wasn't it on this list a couple of months ago
that there was a discussion about this film, stating that Juliet now lives
in Scotland and writes under the name Ann Perry? (or maybe it was on the
queer studies list--qstudy-l...?) And that it wasn't Peter Jackson who went
looking for her--in fact he very carefully did not search out these two
women in the present--but rather some 'enterprising' (??) person? Also, I
have to disagree with those posts that have maintained these girls weren't
lesbians, and that this wasn't a representation of lesbian sexuality, but of
two girls' very active imagination. While I would agree that their 'love'
for each other was heterosexualized, especially via their elaborate and
wonderfully caught fantasies, to maintain that this makes the 'sex' not
lesbian is, IMHO, to argue for stable and coherent sexual identities, and to
discount the amount of really good work in queer theory that argues for a
more fluid understanding of sexuality. Neither of these women may
self-identify today as lesbians, but this doesn't take away from the
representation of sexuality within this film.... I found it all incredibly
powerful stuff myself.
 
Ann Braithwaite
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