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Since new queer cinema of the 90s, resistant films have favoured temporal paradigms and mobility, over spatiality and emplacement. Problematically, however, the temporal mobility of queer could be seen to reinforce, rather than contest, the position of a fixed, singular heterosexuality. Furthermore, considering what Luce Irigaray identifies as the historical and cultural hierarchy of masculinised time over feminised space, it risks reaffirmmg a heterocentric logic where woman's relation to space is passive rather than active. This thesis challenges the above implications.

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This thesis considers the ways in which the dominated, marked and suffering body (the controlled body) has been represented and employed in recent mainstream cinema. Noting a shift from narratives that depict escape and the alleviation of torment to ones that highlight subjection and endurance, it probes the influences and implications of the change. The project employs an interdisciplinary approach that utilizes discourses from anthropology, art history and cultural studies in conjunction with textual analysis, and consequently attempts to rethink a pleasure in pain outside psychoanalytically informed theories. The thesis argues that diverse images of pain can be usefully understood by examining them as part of a collective negotiation of the relationship we have with our bodies in Western culture, especially in respect of agency and corporeality. Identifying a fascination for activities that fuse concepts of pain and pleasure, in particular sadomasochism, body modification, artwork and extreme sports, the study argues that the controlled body borrows heavily from these sources for its imagery but typically understates the social motivations of masochistic pleasure and assertion of autonomy. The research uncovers a range of narrative strategies that justify depictions of masochism (especially in men) that deflect the implication of pleasurable pain whilst simultaneously formulating it as part of personal identity. It investigates how pain and the closeness to death are used to convey a vitality of existence, and also, through an analysis of the spectacle and the narrative patterns in recent films, offers an appreciation of how the spectator engages with the texts. Furthermore, the iconography of pain and control is shown to be important in our conceptualization of beauty, whilst the personal appropriation of suffering can be interpreted as an affirmative choice. The thesis therefore reveals that, with varying degrees of explicitness, mainstream cinema has broached contemporary anxieties regarding self determination and identity through the representation of the controlled body.

This thesis explores the intersection of age, gender and sexuality in representations of older lesbian characters in contemporary narrative film. Taking the 1990s as a benchmark of lesbian visibility, I explore the turn of the century representability by focusing on British and American film (1995 to 2009). I identify a hypervisibility paradox during this period of cinematic production where the presence of a multitude of young lesbian and bisexual characters can be seen to be in complete contrast with the invisibility of the older lesbian. Mainstream postfeminist culture censors the ageing female body, except in its ‘successfully aged’, youthful, heterosexualised form. Older lesbian characters are excluded from this frame of visibility and, instead, are represented through paradigms associated with the concept of ‘ageing as decline.’ There is little in existing age studies or lesbian film studies to articulate an understanding of the intersection of age, gender and sexuality in cinematic representation. I adopt an interdisciplinary cultural studies approach to make my contribution in what is an under-researched area and present a multifaceted approach to a complex cultural image. I investigate the continuity of the concept of the lesbian as ghostly (Castle, 1993) through narratives of illness, death and mourning. I argue that the narrative of ‘ageing as decline’ stands in for the process of ‘killing off’ lesbian characters (identified in 1960s and 1970s cinema). The intersection of the identity old with lesbian thus results in a double ghosting and ‘disappearance’ of the older lesbian character. Regarding Notes on a Scandal (Eyre, 2006), I pursue two particular readings. One emphasises the return of the lesbian as monstrous based on the construction of ageing and lesbian desire as abject (Kristeva, 1982). A second reading moves beyond the monstrous lesbian as a ‘negative’ stereotype and identifies the protagonist as a queer character who subverts heteronormativity. Finally, I turn to oppositional reading practices in order to optimise the possibilities of identifications across mainstream film texts. Based on Judi Dench’s various transgressive film roles, her role as M in the Bond franchise in particular, I explore this actress’ subversive potential to represent the older lesbian. I conclude that despite mainstream cinema’s hypervisibility paradox, characters who transgress age, gender and sexuality norms can provide opportunities for lesbian identification.