In current Hollywood cinema, sexuality and eroticism have been blurred and skewed by trendy feminism. In the average popcorn film written for the average movie-goer, it is no longer acceptable to have a damsel-in-distress; instead, there must be an action heroine, a woman who acts (often out of character) in intelligent, bold and physically demanding ways and who "shows up" her male rescuers by not needing their rescue. This shifts against what I perceive as film's natural masochistic quality and alters the sexual dynamic of the characters to open mainstream cinema to blatant homoeroticism.

In nearly all films short of action flicks with seemingly indestructible heroes, masochism plays a large part in the overall span of the story and the enjoyment of the audience. Moviegoers enter a theatre wanting to see their hero suffer and then triumph; I believe whether the hero is male or female is largely inconsequential, so long as he or she triumphs over obstacles that are painful physically, mentally or emotionally. With few exceptions, without masochism, without the moment of reveling in a character's pain wondering if he or she will prevail, there is no story and no drama. The existence of the "do-it-herself" damsel-in-distress therefore changes the scope of a film dramatically.

The film in which this trend has been most evident recently is the current box office smash, Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean. Initially, the heroine Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightly) fulfills the role laid out for the damsel in countless other films: she is beautiful and all of the male characters have their moment to look. When she is kidnapped by pirates, she behaves, as Laura Mulvey mentions in her article "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," as only the catalyst for the hero's actions (indeed, for much of the film she is equated with an even more highly prized piece of gold which she conveniently wears hidden in her cleavage); she is his motivation to change, his call to action to begin his character arc.

While the film's hero is the blacksmith Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), its stand-out character is undoubtedly the flamboyant pirate Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp). With the woman out of the way and fending for herself, it is these two men who embark on a journey together and it is their relationship that becomes the central theme of the film. (It is interesting that countering Elizabeth's role of the "looked-at" are two actors who are noted heartthrobs, thereby inviting the female audience to not simply be passive spectators of women-as-objects; they are permitted to objectify as well.) Through Depp's portrayal, Jack Sparrow flounces, minces, swaggers, and also fences, swings from ship's rigging like Tarzan, and finds a clever way out of every sticky situation � I would not be surprised if future film theorists declare him to be the first gay action hero; even critics at CNN noted the character was "sexually ambiguous."

However, that just-this-side-of-revolutionary portrayal aside, it is Elizabeth's nature that opens the doors to the homoerotic undercurrents. There are moments in the film where Jack stands too close to Will or touches him unnecessarily (were it a less experienced actor playing Jack, they could be dismissed as inadvertent, but I doubt an actor of Johnny Depp's skill and style would allow a gesture to be filmed unless he knew the internal workings behind it, so much of the homoeroticism was likely deliberate), but because Will was earlier verbally chastised by Elizabeth, the homoerotic underpinnings rise to the surface. Will becomes the castrated male being dominated yet again: Despite Jack's flamboyance, Will becomes the woman in the relationship.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth becomes more strident and self-reliant. As Mary Ann Doane discusses in her text "Film and the Masquerade," Elizabeth, like heroines before her, becomes defined by her masculine qualities of charging into danger, defying rules and norms, attacking her enemies physically and aggressively, and by the time her role of action female is established, her feminine dress costume has been replaced by a pair of men's breeches and a military coat; her transformation is complete: she has become a man.

In their scenes together, Elizabeth intellectually dominates both Will and Jack, further throwing them in league with one another and exalting herself out of their reach. Intriguingly, at the end of the film, Will's declaration of love to Elizabeth is secondary to his character's true emotional revelation, his devotion to Jack, and this is likely because he has no control over Elizabeth and what she will do with the knowledge of his affections while the less capable Jack needs him.

Elizabeth is sexualized, but less fully than her attractive male counterparts and by being self-sufficient and becoming nothing short of an action hero, she extracts herself from the usual masochism of film. In my mind, this is not true feminism, though it is a step in the right direction; Elizabeth is still not a fully fleshed-out character, but at least she's one- dimensionally strong, rather than weak. However, by attempting to create a bold female role model for their audience, Disney has made a film with homosexual subtext too apparent for even the most conservative of critics to ignore; they have brought flagrant homoeroticism to the mainstream.