John Ellis (1982) tells us:

Hence, processes of identification are complex, allowing multifarious subjectivities and positions of viewing and reading. Part of this might involve the confrontation of personal desires and dreams, at the same time suspending personal subjectivities. For the relationship between the straight girl and the queer male, although I am suggesting an obvious representational interaction, as evident in Chapter 1, where covert readings may be possible in defining and working through this relationship, I want to consider the potential of narcissistic identification, where seemingly explicit representations clearly frame queer desire, offering a sense of fulfilment. This desire, however, may not be subliminal, suggesting some kind of repression: I want to consider expression and evocation that are more easily consumed.

Although we might consider that expressive and evocative texts that frame queer desire only followed the emergence of New Queer Cinema in the 1990s (see Aaron 2004; Benshoff and Griffin 2004; Ritch 2013), I would like to argue that earlier texts foregrounded this ‘narcissistic’ pleasure. Hence, following John Ellis's notion of the narcissistic gaze, in terms of spectatorship, and the likely engagement with heterosexual female identification, I would like not only to explore the emergence of explicit queer desire, as evident in New Queer Cinema, but also to consider prototypical cinematic texts demonstrating queer desire, which, while they may seem subliminal, involve complex formations of the queer gaze.

As part of this I explore the significance of Rope (Alfred Hitchcock 1948, US) and Suddenly Last Summer (Joseph L. Mankiewicz 1959, US), as prototypes of queer desire, relating the construction of the queer gaze. While both of these texts seemingly have no explicit homosexual characters, I argue that, through diverse forms of representation and character construction, these films are powerful queer texts, though they are seemingly inhibited through processes of adaptation for a mainstream audience.