Male anxiety and lusty lesbians : contemporary lesbian viewership of 1970s lesbian vampire films

This paper will explore filmic elements that allow contemporary lesbian viewers to potentially find pleasurable in 1970s lesbian vampire films. Since the genre is most often considered misogynist, I will be parsing filmic elements such as ellipses following lesbian seduction that allow for oppositional readings based in fantasy. I will argue these subversive readings derive from what I will be calling a ???fantasy of lesbianism??? in which the contemporary viewer highlights the subversive elements of the filmic text by expanding that section of the narrative. This fantasy of lesbianism is a helpful framework to understand other instances where misogynist texts are appropriated and reinscribed as lesbian