Chutney Popcorn. 18 June 2016. 2:30 pm.

CHUTNEY POPCORN (Nisha Ganatra, 1999)

English

Nisha Ganatra, Jill Hennessy

After the ‘lesbian Baby Boom’ of the last ten years or so, many of us have been forced to add to our vocabulary the words “GOO-GOO GA-GA”.

As you know, the most famous lesbian joke (created by and for lesbians), goes like this:

-“What does a lesbian bring to her second date?” “A removal van”.

You have probably heard the updated version:

-“What does a lesbian bring to her second date?” “A turkey-baster”.

[for the benefit of the more insular guys, we should perhaps clarify that this is the commonest and cheapest DIY impregnation technique/implement by known-donor sperm]

And so it is, that the next step in the evolution of the Domestic Lesbians, with their infamous instant life-long attachments, has been the addition of children to the household.

Chutney Popcorn was one of the first films to document the ‘maternity turn’ in modern lesbian history. It is a comedy, but it shows the very real challenges posed by all these “immaculate conceptions” (as Emma Donoghue has called them) to the traditional understanding of lesbianism, of womanhood, of reproduction, and, last but not least, of the almighty family unit.

Film Qlub

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