SOURCE: "Sexing The Crying Game: Difference, Identity, Ethics," in Film Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 3, Spring, 1994, pp. 31-42.

In the following essay, Handler argues that "because it takes inadequate account of the way difference has been and is always available as an occasion and an excuse for the inscription of power, the film [The Crying Game ends up displacing the hierarchical relations that obtain between men and reinscribing them in the realm of sexual difference."]

To what did Jordan's film The Crying Game owe its extraordinary success? Evidently the sheer fact of the film's vigorously promoted and initially well-kept secret drew crowds of the merely curious, but how were audiences affected once they were let in on it? Why did the film "work"—and get rewarded for its efforts by good box-office attendance, an Oscar, and general critical approval? Appending the missing part of Jordan's censored description (from an early...