Movies & TV

I think the issue here is that there's an enormous qualitative difference between the male gaze and the lesbian gaze. I'm not equipped to really break it down super well because I'm only 1 straight guy and haven't really ever discussed this with queer women enough to understand their side of it, but I'll do my best.

Is it a problem that anyone is titillated by it, or only a problem if men are titillated since they are implicitly uninvited to lesbian sexual encounters?

Neither is a problem. It's totally cool for people to be titillated by the movie, and as you said what people do with the movie in their private consumption is not a problem. The issue is with how the movie comes to be that way, and whether the movie's depiction of lesbians is reductive and fetishistic, or authentic and cathartic.

If your suggestion of a queer production cast includes lesbians, then aren’t they equally at risk of letting their own excitement cloud their judgment?

Nope, the opposite. It's an erotic story! I'd hope that their excitement leads them to make creative decisions that would make the movie authentically their own, and aligns the final product with how they really feel. That's ultimately the source of any authenticity in art, that the artist is expressing what they truly feel and what they truly desire rather than what they think the audience will enjoy.

Lastly, isn’t it possible to be an ally who understands real life context while simultaneously allowing yourself to be aroused by a movie?

Yeah, it is, but only if you ignore how you fit into that context. The sum of the outcomes of 50,000 allies watching movies with one hand full is the same as 50,000 creeps doing the same: you're providing a demand for more movies to be made to appeal to your sensibilities, and depending on the conversations you go on to have it may have a social effect of normalizing (to the extent that it's not already normalized) fetishization.

Maybe I came across a little too critical above, or I only implied a bunch of caveats that I should've stated explicitly. You are allowed to watch and enjoy the movie regardless of your identity lol; I'm a straight dude that watched and enjoyed the movie. I'm just questioning how it fits into the landscape of fetishization and how these kinds of movies are made for the male gaze. Not to mention, for all I know I completely missed the point of why kristina thought it just read like fetish fanfic, because sometimes us straight dudes just get it wrong and we assume a bunch of things.