The text of Dorothy Arzner's signature comprises a variety
of interconnecting factors—a foregrounding of female friendship and references
to marginal women in her films, and the assumption of a style that suggests both
"masculinity" and lesbianism. Arzner's importance in contemporary feminist
film theory may seem to lie exclusively at the level of a textual practice isolated
from the woman's life and style. But the fact that Arzner has also functioned so
consistently as an image for feminist film theorists suggests the significance of
the difference embodied in that image. The fact that this image has been largely
untheorized suggests a set of questions insufficiently addressed. The ironic
lesbian signature finds a contemporary echo in two films which, while more
explicit in their representation of lesbianism, also elaborate on the strategies
present in the simultaneous and ironic evocation of female friendship and lesbian
marginality in Arzner's films.

Writing about the complex ways in which the lesbian styles of butch and fern
have appropriated heterosexual culture, Joan Nestle notes that "it is easy to
confuse an innovative or resisting style with a mere replica of the prevailing
custom." The confusion of which Nestle speaks has been one of the most
challenging areas of feminist analysis, since contradiction is far more difficult to

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