Screen Dreams: Fantasising Lesbians in Film

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing Execution of a Promising Subject
Review: After reading Patricia White's "Uninvited" (which focuses on the effect of Production-era cinema on the formation of contemporary lesbian identities), Clare Whatling's "Screen Dreams" seemed a natural evolution in my reading. Ms. Whatling's ostensible topic is how conteomporary lesbians appropriate modern cinema as subjects of fantasy and desire. Rather than being acted upon, as White's work posits, Ms. Whatling contends that the lesbian viewer acts as much as she is acted upon. This intriguing and potentially powerful argument (which owes much to queer theory), however, is lost amid Ms. Whatling's overeagerness to show that she has the intellectual and academic credentials to make her case. "Screen Dreams" reads like an anxious Ph.d candidate's thesis, full of disavowels (such as her repeated assertion that she is only speaking for herself) and rudimentary summarizations of *other* people's work. In fact, I (not an academic by any means) had actually read most of Ms. Whatling's sources, so much of this already-slender volume offered nothing new. Ms. Whatling makes a powerful supposition (one with which I am inclined to agree), I simply regret that her writing was unable to live up to her subject's promise.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing Execution of a Promising Subject
Review: After reading Patricia White's "Uninvited" (which focuses on the effect of Production-era cinema on the formation of contemporary lesbian identities), Clare Whatling's "Screen Dreams" seemed a natural evolution in my reading. Ms. Whatling's ostensible topic is how conteomporary lesbians appropriate modern cinema as subjects of fantasy and desire. Rather than being acted upon, as White's work posits, Ms. Whatling contends that the lesbian viewer acts as much as she is acted upon. This intriguing and potentially powerful argument (which owes much to queer theory), however, is lost amid Ms. Whatling's overeagerness to show that she has the intellectual and academic credentials to make her case. "Screen Dreams" reads like an anxious Ph.d candidate's thesis, full of disavowels (such as her repeated assertion that she is only speaking for herself) and rudimentary summarizations of *other* people's work. In fact, I (not an academic by any means) had actually read most of Ms. Whatling's sources, so much of this already-slender volume offered nothing new. Ms. Whatling makes a powerful supposition (one with which I am inclined to agree), I simply regret that her writing was unable to live up to her subject's promise.