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Identity in Feminist Cinema from the Perspective of Queer 
Theory: Take Blue is the Warmest Color as an Exemplification 

Huanyue Zhang* 

Department of Biology, Nankai University, Tianjin, China 

*Corresponding author: 2010593@mail.nankai.edu.cn 

Abstract. Recently, queer theory has attracted more scholarly attention as an extension of feminist 
theory in terms of deconstructionism and postmodern contexts. Queer theory has been utilized by 
feminists as a significant theoretical framework in art criticism, with cinemas taken as a 
representation system and cultural practice for the manifesto of gender identity and gender equity. 
This research will take the prestigious lesbian cinema Blue is the Warmest Color as an 
exemplification to analyze the embodiment of queer theory, especially gender performativity and 
body writing, with the methodologies of case study and analysis of the representation of screen 
images from the perspective of semiotics. The research findings confirm the association between 
cinematic techniques and representation and the construction of gender identity from the perspective 
of queer theory and representation theory. Meanwhile, the research explores the expansion and 
application of body writing in the cinematic field, clarifying several intentions of the large proportion 
of the explicit and straight representation of women’s bodies in sex scenes. Overall, this research 
analyzes how the employment of various cinematic techniques and representation contributes to the 
construction of the protagonists’ gender identities which destroys the binary regulation of sexuality 
and heterosexual hegemony, as well as acquires the acknowledgment and acceptance of the 
spectatorship in terms of queer position. 

Keywords: Identity, Queer Theory, Representation, Blue is the Warmest Color. 

1. Introduction 

1.1 Queer theory 

The late 20th century witnessed a turn in feminist theory which reconsiders the gender identity as 

a ‘doing’ constituted in the process of constant performativity rather than an essential ‘being’ in 

advance, which indeed denies the existence of so-called ‘female’, impacted significantly by 

deconstructionism and poststructuralism. Consequently, the conception of ‘queer theory’ has formed, 

which distinguishes prominently from feminist theory in the analysis of the separation of gender and 

sexuality. Despite the discrepancy, both two theories articulate the complexities of the traffic between 

gender and sexuality [1].  

Tracing the developing trajectory of queer theory, it was firstly promoted by Teresa de Lauretis at 

a conference in 1990 as a universalizing protocol of lesbian and gay studies neglecting to involve 

homosexuality in gender and race, with their accompanying differences of class or ethnic culture, 

generational, geographical and socio-political contexts, which actually embodies her ambition of 

manifesting the disruptive potential on the privilege of certain talks of homosexuality while ignoring 

other forms of sexuality [2]. Simon Watney subscribes to de Lauretis’s argument in general that the 

most convenient aspect of the current use of the term ‘queer’ lies in the neutrality of gender and race, 

as ‘queer’ expresses a position that welcomes and appreciates all differences in a more inclusive and 

broader picture of sexuality and social diversity [3].  

According to Foucault’s position towards queer theory from the perspective of his power-discourse 

theory, gender identity is constituted by certain specific linguistic representations, existing as the 

production of power attached to mainstream discourses instead of a natural being, which necessarily 

ought to be rejected and denied, while the marginalization of ‘sexual minority discourse’ remains 

deprived of its subjectivity is the result of the positioning and ideological construction of the dominant 

discourses [4].  



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Judith Butler coins the well-known ‘gender performativity’ theory, arguing that gender is the 

production of discursive construction conforming to Foucault’s core, which is culturally established 

as lines of coherence and then restrained repeatedly by the existing structure of power, which denies 

the single, permanent and continuous identity and replaces it with a conception of identity with 

performative, variable, discontinuous and processual attributes, constructed by constant repetition 

and the acts of endowing it with new modality [5]. In light of Butler’s analysis, queer theory serves 

as a theoretical practice of resisting the binary regulation of sexuality and heterosexual hegemony 

suppressing the multiplicity of sexual identification.  

Recently queer theory has come to be used as an umbrella term for an alliance of culturally 

marginalized sexual minorities marked as the refusal of normative identity categories and, at other 

times to describe a nascent theoretical framework that has developed out of more traditional lesbian 

and gay studies [6]. 

1.2 Cinema and representation theory 

Cinema is adopted by feminists as cultural practice when it comes to the conception of feminist 

film criticism as a crucial branch of feminist theory while seeing cinema no longer as a reproduction 

of reality but as a representation of the construction of cultural identity, for ‘cinema’ is not a 

transparent medium of communication, but an artificial cinematic representation system which 

mediates reality with its own signifying practice from the perspective of semiotics and linguistics [7].  

As one of the most important cinema genres in the 1990s, queer cinema is the latest development 

of feminist cinema that destroys binary gender narratives. It explores the complex relationship 

between sexuality, sex and gender, simultaneously taking its interaction with different contexts of 

class, ethnicity, social environment and personal background into account, in which identity 

dominates the narrative storyline and serves as the prominent conflict in queer cinemas as an 

important narrative parenthetical theme. In queer cinemas, the protagonists often encounter identity 

crises and dilemmas when they struggle to acknowledge and accept their fluid sexual orientation with 

their position in sexual minority groups. With the aforementioned representation theory, the 

intersection of cinematic representation and the construction of subjectivity and identity can be 

discussed by analyzing the screen images and other visual codes in cinemas. 

1.3 Body issue  

The body is an important issue in the discussion on identity, which also has a complicated 

relationship with gender performativity in the postmodern context. In ‘Modernity and self-identity: 

Self and society in the late modern age’, Gidden claims that the body in modernity is more often 

treated as an object that can be shaped, decorated and trained to express individual identity, while in 

pre-modern society, the body is traditionally marked in ritualized context [8]. Gail Salamon 

demonstrates in ‘Assuming a Body’ that gender production can depend on the body’s sensation and 

material contours by examining the relationship between materiality and the illusion of corporeality 

and devotes herself to eliminating any certainty in gender [9]. From the perspective of feminist 

criticisms, Cixous employs the motif of Medusa as a metaphor in ‘The laugh of the Medusa’ for 

women’s multiplicity and plurality that oppose patriarchal constraints on women’s bodies, 

formulating a new form of writing through her essay known as ‘ecriture feminine’ or ‘feminine 

writing’ concentrating on the subjectivities of women’s bodies, in defiance of female repression by 

phallocentric languages and patriarchal conventions [10]. Cixous emphasizes that women must write 

with their instinct, using their bodies as texts. The impenetrable feminine text will break down 

hierarchies and puritanical rules as well as destroy barriers and rhetoric [10]. 

1.4 Blue is the Warmest Color 

Blue is the Warmest Color, also known as The Life of Adele, adapted from a graphic novel written 

by Julie Maroh, is a lesbian romantic cinema directed by the French filmmaker Abdellatif Kechiche 

and published in 2013, winning the Palme d’Or and the Prix Fébési at the 66th Cannes International 



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Film Festival. The cinema revolves around the lesbian romantic relationship between Adele, starring 

Adele Exarchopoulos, and a blue-haired girl named Emma, played by Lea Seydoux. After screening, 

the cinema comes across multiple contradictions and criticism, attracting remarks ranging from 

various aspects such as lesbian desire, class division, a portrayal of female sex scenes to the male 

gaze and more. However, there remains very little research on the heroines’ identities from the 

perspective of queer theory and representation studies, even though some have touched upon this 

topic with few words. 

1.5 The structure of this thesis  

This thesis will take Blue is the Warmest Color as an exemplification to investigate the two female 

protagonists’ identities through the theoretical framework of queer theory and representation theory, 

with tools of semiotics, psychoanalysis and ideology employed in cinematography, focusing on the 

issue of the presentation of women’s bodies and gender identities. The overall structure of this thesis 

takes the form of four chapters. Chapter 1 will begin by laying out the research background, including 

the theoretical dimensions of the research and look at the utilization and expansion in cinematography. 

Chapter 2 reviews the existing literature concerned with theoretical frameworks and important issues 

employed in this research. Chapter 3 analyses how the camera looks at sex scenes and the 

accentuation of female bodies contributes to the spectatorship of acceptance of queer identity. The 

fourth chapter gives the conclusion and critique of this research and recommendations for future 

directions. 

2. Literature Review 

2.1 Research of identity 

With the advent of deconstructionism and the fall of grand narratives, postmodernity carries the 

problematic issue of an identity crisis as an objective socio-historical condition, attracting 

concentrated scholarly attention to the attributes of identity in the postmodern context. The fluid, 

changeable and transformative attributes of identity in postmodernity render itself a central issue in 

culture study, which explores the quest for one’s own sense of subjectivity and focuses on the 

construction of identity of marginalized groups. In culture study, identity is acknowledged as common 

attributes and characteristics shared by individuals in a particular community in cultural and historical 

contexts based on certainly given scales as well as frames and references [11]. 

2.1.1 Research of identity of marginalized groups 

‘Marginalized group’ is a concept that stands opposite to the majority and mainstream group, 

which are antagonistic to, distant from, or outside of mainstream society and dominant groups, 

existing in the position of the other that lacks attention and respect [12]. In his prestigious article 

‘Power/knowledge, Michel Foucault argues that in the perspective of linguistics, identity is 

constituted by certain particular linguistic representations existing as the production of specific 

discourses [4]. The marginalization of “minority discourse” is the result of being positioned by 

dominant discourses as well as the ideological construction of dominant discourses, so it is possible 

to eliminate the distinction between the center and the marginalized group [4]. Reinterpreting and re-

establishing the status of minority discourse as subjectivity is of great essence in recovering one’s 

subjectivity and reclaiming one’s identity [4]. 

2.1.2 Research of gender identity in queer theory 

In ‘Gender Trouble’, written by Judith Butler argues that there is no gender identity behind the 

expressions of gender, while actually, it is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that 

are misrecognized as its results [5]. Butler asserts that gender is the production of discourses, which 

is culturally established and then restrained repeatedly by the existing structure of power [5]. 

Meanwhile, the queer theory proposes “gender freedom,” hoping to achieve a broader and more 

inclusive picture of social diversity through gender liberation [5].  



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In ‘Foucault and Queer Theory’, the author summarizes that the legal ‘sexual orientation’ between 

heterosexuals is compulsorily constructed by the mechanism of social discourses, and only perverse 

sexual orientation which refuses the normality can devastate the gender label and escape from the 

prison of gender regardless of all the stereotypes and legal morality [13]. In Foucault’s opinion, 

sexuality is an effect of power discourses rather than an essential being, so any defined category of 

gender and identity should be rejected [13]. 

2.1 Research of representation theory 

In ‘The work of presentation’, Stuart Hall establishes the theory of representation, demonstrating 

how the representation system is constructed and the way it works in the position of structuralism 

semiotics. According to Hall, representation is a process of selecting and combining certain signs and 

symbols marked by historical, cultural and social contexts to produce textual connotations, which can 

be seen as a fundamentally cognitive process with subjective intentions and perceptions of the 

producer of signs and symbols [14]. Consequently, representation is not simply a copy or 

reproduction of reality but essentially a subjective process of selection and construction [14]. From 

the perspective of Hall’s theory of representation, cinema can be seen as a form of representation 

system that has the function of molding subjectivity and constructing cultural identity, rather than 

merely a mirror reflecting what already exists, which is similar to the argument in ‘Women’s Cinema 

as Counter Cinema’ by Johnston that cinema is an artificial constitution rather than a transparent 

medium of communication which mediates reality with its own signifying practices, requiring the 

spectators decoding the images with the help of semiotics and psychoanalysis, while deriving the 

statement that spectators also participate in the production of a cinema’s meaning and simultaneously 

be constructed by the cinema [7,15]. 

In ‘Cultural identity and cinema representation’, Stuart Hall defines ‘cultural identity in terms of 

the condition which reflects common historical experiences and shares cultural codes with stable, 

unchanging and continuous frames of reference, while simultaneously acknowledging the 

constitution of difference and discontinuity in the process of cultural identification [15]. Stuart Hall 

thinks of identity as a production that is never complete; however, always in process, not an already 

accomplished historical fact [15]. Identity is always constituted within rather than outside 

representation and constructed by the practice of representation in specific cultural contexts [15]. 

2.2 Research on Blue is the Warmest Color 

O’Donoghue writes comments in Blue is the Warmest Color on Cineaste that Kechiche places 

Maroh’s love story in a western cultural tradition controlling and distorting female experience from 

a straight, male perspective, especially when it comes to the long period and eye-catching lesbian sex 

scene [16]. Meanwhile, the author interprets the underlying implication behind the portrayal of food 

which suggests sexual behaviors [16]. Moreover, the author claims that the class distinction, which 

is the fundamental cause of the tragic ending for Adele and Emma, is also marked by the food and 

meals presented when each of the girls welcomes the other to their parents at home [16]. 

In ‘Blue is the Warmest Color: or the after-life of ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’’, Linda 

Williams selects the cinema as an exemplification to discuss whether or not the graphic sex scenes 

should be condemned as pornography in the angle of phallic voyeuristic and fetishism catering to 

male pleasure which is put forward by Laura Mulvey in her prestigious work ‘Visual Pleasure and 

Narrative Cinema’ [17]. The author comes to the conclusion that the answer is more complex than 

simply giving yes or no, because without presenting female genitalia, the sex scenes may merely 

intend to emphasize the intense love relationship between two girls, and it is Emma and her social 

circle freeze Adele into the position of ‘Muse’ as objectivity [17]. Moreover, the author questions the 

practicability of the construction of lesbian identity and the equity of compliance with so-called 

‘moral standard’ when rules of lesbian desire and fidelity remain unset and obscure because the theory 

of Mulvey is partially passed and more phenomena in cinema should be interpreted by new 



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approaches, which demonstrates queer theory can be employed as the supplement of female theory 

for more sexual complexity [17].  

Qian Chen analyzes Adele’s postmodern self-identifications in the context of space in her thesis, 

dividing Adele’s living environment into several different spaces, such as school, patriarchal home, 

lesbian home, streets space, sea space, the third blue space and the gallery space [18]. The author 

discusses Adele’s continuous shifting of her sexual identity and her struggling recognition and 

acceptance of her desire in each space, drawing the conclusion that the inherent stability of the third 

space grants itself the potential for the fluid and transformative attributes of postmodern identity [18].  

Previous research has explored the cinema’s narrative structure and main conflicts, metaphors of 

food for sex, as well as Adele’s self-identification in various spacial contexts. However, the existing 

literature on this cinema fails to clarify the relationship between cinematic representation and the 

construction of gender identity. Additionally, there is a notable paucity of studies specifically seeing 

Adele as an individual in sexual minority groups and the construction of her gender identity from the 

perspective of queer theory and representation theory, as well as concentrating on the interpretation 

of portrayals of women’s bodies in sex scenes. 

3. Identity and construction of queer 

3.1 Fluid sexual orientation and continuous shifting of gender identity 

Blue is the Warmest Color, also named Adele’s Life, is a movie telling the story of the romantic 

lesbian relationship between an ordinary high school student Adele and an artist named Emma from 

the upper middle class. The movie utilizes various cinematic techniques to centralize the perspective 

of Adele to express queer sexuality, using Adele’s sensory system to observe and experience as a way 

to challenge heterosexual hegemony and the binary regulation of sexuality, which embodies the trait 

of the queer identities of the protagonists. Adele comes from an ordinary French working-class family, 

significantly impacted by traditional Arab values dominated by the heterosexual social orientation. 

She is persuaded by her classmates to keep in a relationship with a boy though she feels uncomfortable 

oftentimes and fails to discover her sexuality until she meets Emma in the street occasionally. During 

this initial period, Adele shows her gender identity as heterosexual and tries to identify her sexual 

desire through repeated performances according to Bulter’s performativity theory. 

Deeply attracted by the blue-hair young girl Emma, Adele falls in love with her immediately and 

cannot help masturbating at night; however, accompanied by fears and self-accusation when Adele 

suddenly wakes up, which demonstrates her inner conflict of accepting her gender identity and rooted 

homophobia from her living environment. Adele meets Emma in a lesbian bar and introduces each 

other, gradually forming a relationship with Emma but firmly denies her homosexual identity when 

questioned by her classmates. Spectators can discover that Adele tries to escape from the fact that her 

body is predominated by heterosexual desire, which is completely contrasting to Emma, who 

recognizes and accepts herself easily with the theory of Sartre’s existentialism as a member of the 

lesbian sexual minority group.  

When two girls invite each other to their homes for dinner, spectators can see the enormous 

difference between the two families’ attitudes towards ideals and life, as well as sexual orientation. 

In Emma’s family, her parents pay respect to their daughter’s gender identity as a lesbian, treating 

Adele as their daughter’s partner and caring for the girls’ emotional conditions, while in Adele’s 

family, her parents automatically locate Emma in the position of Adele’s tutor, stressing the 

importance of settling down when Emma talks about her career as an artist, which makes Emma 

reluctantly pretend to have a business boyfriend who can support her ideals. The discrepancy in family 

background and living environment makes the two protagonists take different behaviors when facing 

the dilemma of gender identity, which simultaneously suggests the tragic ending of their relationship. 

During the second period, Adele presents her gender identity as a lesbian through her relationship 

with Emma. 



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The time when Emma and her friends are celebrating the success of a large-scale art exhibition 

with Adele’s naked paintings on display, they completely freeze Adele in the position of ‘Muse’ who 

inspires Emma to create those paintings, arranging Adele to organize the dinner but rejecting to 

communicate with her about in-depth thoughts of art, which obliterates her personality and 

subjectivity, putting her in the position of the other even though they indeed share the same identity 

as a homosexual marginalized group. Adele has difficulty fitting into Emma’s social circle due to the 

fact that she knows little about art and has different opinions on her future career with Emma. At the 

celebration party, Emma has vague behaviors with her old friend Lisa several times. One day when 

Adele comes home from work, she receives a message from Emma, saying that she has left with Lisa 

to arrange the art gallery and will return late. All of these make Adele lack security in this relationship 

and struggle with the hardship of gender identity, so she has some unimportant sexual behaviors with 

her male dancing partner to fill the blankness caused by Emma’s ignorance and absence but cannot 

express herself articulately when questioned by Emma. It can be deduced that Adele steps into the 

period of bisexuality in relationships with both female and male partners.  

Adele feels miserable when she oscillates in her shifting sexual orientation for the reason of failing 

to accommodate the fluid, processual and transitive attributes of gender identity. She restrains herself 

in the binary opposition of heterosexual and homosexual, virtually serving the same function as that 

of male and female, which conceals the power structure of inequity, obliterating the third space and 

potential possibility of obtaining multiplex gender identity as queer. Compared to Adele, Emma 

expresses herself smoothly when she admits the experience of having relationships with both males 

and females, but she finds the fact that she prefers females, so she determines to identify herself as a 

lesbian. Additionally, Adele’s queer desire is integrated into the complexity of gender in contexts of 

historical background, class division, cultural difference and ethnicity, rather than operating in 

isolation, which conspicuously testifies the intersection of multiple influential factors in queer identity. 

3.2 Presentation of sex scenes and female bodies 

3.2.1 Female bodies portrayed in sex scenes 

In this chapter, representation theory will be employed to discuss the interaction between screen 

images and the construction of heroines’ subjectivities and identifications.  

Criticisms and condemns of feminists on the sex scenes in this cinema lie to the negative depiction 

of pornography which is suspected of standing in the straight perspective of the male gaze [16]. 

Notwithstanding, opposite reviews are left as defenses that sex scenes serve as resistance and 

subversion of patriarchal conventions and heterosexual hegemony aesthetically through woman’s 

body writing which can be seen as the expansion of Cixous’s feminine writing in cinemas.  

In the groundbreaking thesis ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Laura Mulvey claims that 

cinema is constructed for the male gaze, which relies on voyeurism and fetishism of taking the female 

bodies as spectacles [19]. While in this cinema, the presentation of female bodies in sex scenes 

emphasizes the freedom of opting for sexual partners and enjoying sexual desire as queers. In light 

of Merleau-Ponty’s theories of the phenomenology of perception, the body epitomizes the foundation 

of the formation of subjectivity while simultaneously connecting individual consciousness with 

existence as an agent of experiencing the outer world [20]. Moreover, the body exists as the initial 

‘other’ that one can manipulate initiatively [21]. In cameras of sex scenes, filmmakers utilize 

numerous close-up shots and extreme close-up shots of the girls’ naked bodies to accentuate their 

initiative subjectivities of dominating their own bodies and satisfying themselves through intensive 

and positive sexual behaviors instead of sacrificing their own bodies for spectators as sexual bearers 

and erotic objects. Nevertheless, without presenting the cameras of genitals explicitly, the cameras of 

sex scenes make the audience isolated from the scopophilia of the male gaze but immersed in 

recognizing and enjoying romantic love between the two protagonists [17]. Through the ‘feeling-

seeing’ cinematic technique, which endows sensational feelings into visual codes, the audience is 

encouraged to develop acceptance of the heroines’ queer desires as well as form recognition and 

identification of two girls’ gender identities positively.  



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Meanwhile, the large proportion of women’s bodies portrayed in sex scenes in this cinema 

perpetuates the masquerade that flaunts their femininity in a surplus way of highlighting the women’s 

nakedness in the cameras in the position of ‘masculinity’ as defiance of phallocentric conventions 

[22]. The cinematography of masquerade serves as an artificiality of feminine that verifies the 

argument of gender as performance while simultaneously detaching the female spectators and women 

as images on the screen, which prevents the female spectators from putting the heroines as their own 

narcissistic objects of sexual desire and invites them to create recognition and acceptance of the 

subjectivities of the heroines as lesbians [23]. Without visually concealing or decorating, the explicit 

and straightforward portrayal of women’s bodies rather than utilizing cameras of erotic implications 

for spectators also can be detected as an approach to demystifying women’s bodies which remain 

inhibited and distorted under patriarchy as something dangerous, virginal and taboo that is forbidden 

to be discussed overtly. Furthermore, the portrayal of women’s bodies can be seen as reclaiming 

female subjectivity, which is disparaged into the subordinative and peripheral position contrasting to 

the male in dominant artistic works [24]. Additionally, the portrayal of lesbian sex scenes possesses 

the potential to transcend limited sexual desires, which are constrained in feelings categorized binarily 

into masculinity or femininity, providing a multiplicity and plurality of choices and possibilities for 

gender identity. 

3.2.2 Transformative color of Emma’s hairstyle 

Despite the female bodies depicted in sex scenes, the presentation of the transformation of the 

color of Emma’s hairstyle plays a significant role in implying the narrative storyline. According to 

the title, Blue is the Warmest Color, the changing color of Emma’s hair has attached significance to 

the portrayal of female bodies. As an essential fragmented part of the body, the hair functions as a 

manifesto of demonstrating individual identity, which can be decorated, molded and sculpted to 

satisfy the subjectivity rather than a passive objection that one should adapt to[8]. In this cinema, the 

initial presence of Emma is characterized by her short, blue-colored hairstyle, which is taken for 

granted by the public as a lesbian identity, serving as the subversion of patriarchal society through 

her body as a manifesto. The color of Emma’s hair remains blue until the celebration party of her 

artworks of naked images of Adele, which suggests the emergence of a breakup in their relationship. 

Instead of the warmest color, blue, Emma’s hair turns brown, which appears normal as others when 

Adele fails to integrate into her social circle or exchange thoughts with her on a mental level. 

According to Foucault’s arguments in ‘Discipline and Punish’, changes and any shaping approaches 

against one’s body are ways of uncovering individual identity as well as a sense of subjectivity due 

to the fact that the control over one’s own body is more accessible manipulation [25]. For this reason, 

the process of Emma changing her hairstyle from blue to brown demonstrates the repositioning of 

Emma’s gender identity. Additionally, after their relationship collapses, Adele goes to the beach and 

immerses herself in the seawater, making her hair appears to turn blue in the blue water. The transient 

transformation of the color of Adele’s hair suggests the erasing of the definiteness of her gender 

identity of either homosexuality or heterosexuality, endowing her with more opportunities and 

possibilities as a queer [18]. 

3.2.3 Metaphor of food 

As one of the modalities of the representation system, cinema adopts coded visual screen images 

that invite the audience to decode and interpret the connotations behind the obvious and literal 

information with tools of psychoanalysis, semiotics and other concerning theories [22]. In Blue is the 

Warmest Color, food is utilized as a metaphor for sexual desires and behaviors [26]. Take Adele’s 

descriptions of her eating habits as an exemplification. She tells Emma that she has a good appetite 

and devours everything all day long, even including her scabs, which implies her desperate sexual 

desire is hard to fulfill and the fact that she chooses to sacrifice her own body for being the spectacle 

presented in Emma’s paintings in front of her friends. Moreover, when Emma invites Adele to dinner 

in her home, Emma’s family expands Adele’s horizon by introducing her to oysters, an expensive 

delicacy Adele thought she would dislike and that Emma compared to oral sex, which implicates the 



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inclusiveness and spacious acceptance of sexuality of Emma’s family members [16]. Additionally, 

sex scenes of two girls are oftentimes displayed after the scenes of having food or drink, which 

demolishes the mystery imposed intentionally by patriarchal discourses on sexuality to deprive of 

female sexual pleasure. Furthermore, this cinematography disenchants sex into something that 

happens naturally as daily activities and is worthy of being appreciated, thankfully. Consequently, 

the utilization of food as a metaphor for sex in this movie contributes to easy and widely-accepted 

recognition by the audience of queer desires and queer identities, which concurrently embodies the 

function of constructing queer identities in the viewpoint of subjectivities. 

4. Conclusions 

In Blue is the Warmest Color, a variety of cinematic techniques are utilized to construct the gender 

identity of the protagonists as marginalized minorities from the perspective of queer theory and 

representation theory. The representation of sex and women’s bodies also contributes to the 

construction of gender identity through adopting cinema as a cultural practice to manifest gender 

diversity and gender equity, as well as resist the binary regulation of sexuality and heterosexual 

hegemony.  

This thesis tries to analyze the portrayal of women’s bodies in sex scenes from the viewpoint of 

body issues in a postmodern context and a way of feminine writing as well as masquerade. In this 

cinema, identity crisis and dilemma of gender dominate the major part of the storyline and serve as 

the main conflicts in the narrative structure. The cinema reinforces the romantic lesbian relationship 

between Adele and Emma while simultaneously demonstrating the queer attributes of Adele by 

presenting her fluid sexual orientation and continuously shifting gender identities, which subverts the 

patriarchal structure and phallocentric conventions. In light of Judith Butler’s theory of gender 

performativity, this research argues that the stereotype of gender identity from Adele is constituted 

by her constant repetition of sexual behaviors, which exists as the illusion of coherence that should 

be rejected and demolished. The representation of lesbian desire and queer desire blurs the boundary 

between heterosexual and homosexual, transcending the limitation of homosexuality and extending 

to the potential and possibility of more inclusive and diverse options and alternatives for sexuality 

from the position of queer identity.  

The findings from this research may contribute to the improvement and extension of examining 

gender identity by the theoretical framework of queer theory as well as the perspective of employing 

cinema as a representation system and an approach to obtaining comprehensive acceptance and 

acknowledgment from spectatorship. Additionally, this study clarifies several intentions of the large 

proportion of portrayals of sex scenes and women’s bodies in the cinema. Notwithstanding, another 

source of uncertainty is the obscure moral standard and practicality of queer relationships in terms of 

the position of an individual. Consequently, future research could also be conducted to establish the 

feasibility of queer practices in the condition of the deconstruction of gender in the social context and 

further explore the fluid, negotiable and creative options of multiple subjectivities for the queers, 

which provides an innovative strategy of dispelling the oppressively and manipulatively constructed 

structure in the conception of gender, as a result, subverts gender discrimination and gender inequity. 

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