Many viewers might not immediately consider these films in terms of their lesbian representation, either. The argument is interesting, and Corber threads it through a rereading of several beloved Hollywood classics that we might not have considered under the rubric of "Cold War movies," although they subscribe to Cold War ideologies pertaining to gender and sexuality. In the cultural hysteria of that era, the femme was considered the more dangerous figure because, similar to the Communist, she could pass as "normal." This enabled her to seduce other women and convert them to "the life," destroy the institution of marriage, subvert all-American values, and threaten to undermine the national fabric, all without arousing suspicion.
Corber's study draws on and synthesizes the growing body of work in lesbian and gay film studies, extending that work in one significant way: by arguing that the homophobic discourse around female homosexuality in the United States shifted during the Cold War to focus on the slippery image of the femme lesbian rather than the more easily identified gender-transgressive butch.
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