By the conclusion we know that Catherine was the murderer in the first scene, but the only explanation we get of why she stabbed her lover during the sex act is that this action provides a conclusion to her story about him as the object of her sexual and violent impulses. If one were to insist upon retrospectively reconstructing the plot in order to give each murder a motive, one might come up with something like this: At college Catherine has one sexual encounter with [Beth Garner] and becomes obsessed with her. (Beth tells this version of their relationship to [Nick Curran].) Catherine then kills her advisor, a psychology professor, because he realizes that her feelings about Beth are abnormal and dangerous. Catherine continues to pursue Beth and, when Beth marries, Catherine kills her husband. Then, several years later, when Catherine and Nick become lovers, Catherine gets Nick's attention by murdering [Johnny Boz], first detailing the murder in a book and then seducing Boz. Although by the time Catherine's book is published, Nick has already lost interest in Beth, Catherine buys information from [Nilsen] that enables her to seduce Nick. She then kills Nilsen and frames Nick for the crime. She lures [Gus] and Beth to a setup so that she can kill him, making it look as if Beth is responsible and thus causing Nick to kill her. This version of the murders does reflect a somewhat warped sense of poetic justice. However, it seems completely improbable not only because it has gaps (like the omission of any explanation of Catherine's parents' deaths), but also because the number of murders is absurdly excessive if the aim is simply to punish Beth. It is most strikingly unlikely because Catherine never shows any emotion about Beth at all, whereas she clearly mourns the deaths of other characters, like Roxy. Ultimately, the only reason we are given for Catherine's elaborate machinations to get Nick at icepick's point is that she has written the story that way. Linda Williams has pointed out that pornography, women's romance and horror films are all scorned for being what she calls body genres, that is, genres that stimulate physical responses.(15) Romance and pornography are also very often criticized for offering unrealistic wish fulfillment. If we recognize that so-called romantic love is radically incompatible with art that has pretensions to either realism or seriousness, then we can see why horror and suspense films with a central love story so frequently attempt to redeem themselves as art with the sort of surprisingly open conclusion (The End...Or is it?) that Basic Instinct presents in exaggerated fashion. Basic Instinct's conclusion follows a full fade to black from Catherine's tender embrace of Nick after his suggestion that they "live [together] happily ever after." After the black out, the picture returns suddenly and, as ominous music on the sound track wells up more and more floridly, the camera tracks down from the entwined couple on the bed to an extreme close up of the icepick under it. This disclaimer of romance is placed in a world where "pussies" talk and women write, where homosexuality has been spoken aloud and so must be recognized even by those who wish it did not exist.Catherine's combination of bisexuality and murderousness has been read by many critics as a negative depiction of lesbianism harkening back to fifties' film stigmatizations of lesbians as deranged and violent.(16) That Catherine's lover Roxy killed her two younger brothers and that Catherine's friend (and possibly lover) [Hazel V. Carby] killed her husband and three children are seen as further indications that the plot crudely equates rejection of the traditional feminine role with viciousness. However, one might keep in mind that whereas all three women have killed their way out of the family, Catherine, unlike Roxy and Hazel, has not completely rejected heterosexuality. She is represented as not just a bisexual, but as that special creature, the San Francisco bisexual. The film makes emphatic reference to its location in nearly every scene and frequently informs, or more accurately reminds, viewers that homosexuality and bisexuality are neither illegal nor socially stigmatized in the San Francisco Bay Area. We might therefore read Catherine as a contemporary figure, as one who could not have existed openly in many other times or places. Unlike the seeming bisexuals of fifties' cinema who we are invited to see as sneaky homosexuals whose "bisexuality" is itself alternately a disguise and the revelation of hidden evil, Catherine is not one-within-the-other but both/and.