It's going to be tough to catch up with everyone after my long hiatus, but here goes. 

Bi The Way, an  indie film about budding bisexuality for the younger generation finally came into town.  Chicago always seems to be the last stop for tours like these.  After a year of waiting for it to arrive, I missed it because my hard drive crashed and burned.  I waited hours for my IT rescue dude to show up and missed the Chicago premier entirely.

The reviews were not promising.  Again, I haven't seen it, but according to some, its primary focus is the phenomenon of young women making out in front of men.  The new slang for this in Canada is "barsexuality", while in other spots south of that border "showmosexual" is gaining popularity.  I love these terms because they allow me to distance myself from the youthful shenanigans which can be used to trivialize and discredit fluid sexuality and bi/pansexual identification.  I'm not like these shallow drunken bitches.  I'm a real bisexual.  Not that that kind of desperate differentiating ever seems to help.

But, one is so starved for any media representation, one puts up with any vapid offering that comes down the pike.  It at least affords an opportunity to meet other bi/pan folks--and, lord knows, you need all the opportunities you can get for a population like this, so expert at hiding in the gay or straight woodwork.

So, having missed that opportunity, I compensated by seeing The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which follows the worn story line of a young upper class dude who has a (supposedly) strange, brief adventure with strange (queer) characters and walks away, sadder but wiser, maybe.  I will happily see anything with Peter Sarsgaard, whether he is naked or not, but the film is forgettable.

Forgettable but for the bi/pansexual stereotypes.  For those who wish to avoid spoilers, this is your time to bail.  

Director Rawson Marshall Thurber says that he struggled for 10 years to make this film.  The script certainly feels like something written in the 90s.  Had Michael Chabon, author of the novel it is based on, gotten the green light for this project a decade earlier, this story could have trumped Three of Hearts, Threesome, and Relax--It's Just Sex; maybe even given Chasing Amy a run for its money.  

As it is, its greatest setback is the replay of the dangerous, amoral, less-than-zero bisexual male who commits suicide at the end of the movie.  All the actors bear the burden of putting flesh and blood on the limited material and uncompelling dialogue, but the strain is particularly telling for Sarsgaard, whose Cleveland is supposed to be the dark and vibrant heart at the center of the film, drawing all fascination toward himself. 

Plus, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (the movie, since I haven't read the novel) reminds me of those gay pulp novels of the 50s and 60s, where the gay character either goes straight or kills himself in the end.  Given that the gay and lesbian community is more organized with its media watchdogs, straight media now turns to characters with fluid sexuality to portray out-of-bounds, out-of-control, dubious personalities.

It's not like we need all portrayals of bi guys to be lily-white.  The sad thing is that Mysteries of Pittsburgh wants to be dangerous, but constantly pulls its punches.  For real edginess, why not have the dangerous bi guy survive, regardless of his real or imagined transgressions, and live dangerously another day--or another sequel?  Savage Nights, a 1992 French film about an HIV+ bisexual man, exulted in that kind of risk.  It humanely examines his dilemmas with male and female lovers and his HIV status.  In the end, he survives, empowered to face his HIV positivity.   

Survival and empowerment--that's what makes for a dangerous bisexual, not how many people or genders we fuck or get fucked by.  

As for the nice, upper class bi guy who does survive, Art Bechstein (Jon Foster) comes across more like an accidental tourist in the land of fluid sexuality.  He has his summer after-college, before-real-life adventure. He pretty much walks off without a scratch.  Okay, he breaks from his gangster daddy.  He "learns something" from the experience, although just what that is remains as nebulous to the audience as his chosen career or sexual future.  

But, hey, at least he isn't walking off at the end with the girlfriend (Sienna Miller), happily heterosexual ever after.  And we get to see him have sex with the guy, not just sex with the girl, and we get to see Peter Sarsgaard naked.  We get to see another bi story limp its way toward liberation.