Abstract

In her film, Desperately Seeking Susan, Susan Seidelman continues her inquiry into the relations between the “center” and the “margin” in contemporary culture. The ideology of the film represents the center — the status quo — as the site for mature negotiations of communal values, whereas it constructs the margin — the locus of opposition — as an instance of self-indulgence, transgression, and extremity. This is the same theme in her first film, Smithereens. This fascination with the tension between the center and the margin is interesting in that it enacts the “politics of reluctance” of fairly successful upper bourgeois who in their youth learned a political language and a set of attitudes now being tested in their middle years by new political “realities.”