SOURCE: "The Politics of Denial," in Film Comment, Vol. 29, No. 3, May-June, 1993, pp. 84-86.

In the following essay, Place discusses how the veiling phenomenon, difference, and uniformity are at work in The Bodyguard and The Crying Game.

The good thing about middlebrow art is that it nicely reflects society's dull edge. Unlike the avant garde, it makes no particular pretense toward advancement; unlike absolute schlock, it doesn't wallow in the retrograde. Middlebrow art is feel-good art: the world may not be this pleasant yet, but we can spend a lot of money creating an accessible façade. And our current middlebrow ideal is a quiet, placid, Coke-commercial kind of world where race is irrelevant, gender immaterial, and sexuality beside the point.

But these fantasies are dangerous. We are awash in our own whitewash. Popular culture cuddles around the notion of love as the great leveler, promoting a false sense...