Marlon Riggs: The Subjective Position of Documentary Video

Author(s): Phillip Brian Harper

Source: Art Journal, Vol. 54, No. 4, Video Art (Winter, 1995), pp. 69-72
Published by: CAA
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/777698
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 Marion Riggs
The Subjective Position of Documentary Video

Phillip Brian Hlarper

t is probably true that, in the United States at least, the

museum is the cultural institution that has been most
directly challenged by the video art of the last thirty
years. From the early installations of Nam June Paik and
Peter Campus, which disrupted conventional ideas of what
media were suitable for gallery display, to the narrative
pieces of such artists as Cecilia Condit, which have raised
the slightly different question of what representational modes
69
might be featured in exhibition, serious videowork has con-
sistently interrogated the criteria by which the museum de-
fines "art," if only so that it could, paradoxically, itself
accede to that privileged status.1
The work of Marlon Riggs, on the other hand, is less
self-consciously concerned with the parameters of art than FIG. 1 Marion Riggs, Ethnic Notions, 1987, color video, 56 minutes.
with the bounds of video in a more conventional sense. Prior to Distributed by California Newsreel, San Francisco.

the emergence of video as a high-art medium-and before

the term itself became synonymous with MTV's pop-musicwill thus register not primarily as "art," but as an innovation
film shorts-"video" was most widely invoked in its functionin the programming that defines the televisual project. Be-
as the visual component of standard broadcast television, gun as a version of standard television documentary, Riggs's
usually in the context of picture failure: "We have tempo-work can be understood as precisely such an innovation.
rarily lost the video portion of our broadcast," an announcer One reason for this is that most of Riggs's work has
would intone over a test pattern or station-identification actually been presented in national telecast. Three of his four
screen; "please stand by." In this sense video was neither a feature-length productions have been shown by PBS, though
specific artistic medium nor a particular representational the controversy surrounding one of the broadcasts seems to
genre; and while it was always implicitly paired with the have indicated as much about the risks taken by videomakers
audio portion of the television broadcast, the latter was alsoin pursuing PBS distribution as it did about the degree to
clearly subordinated to it because it was, after all, specifi-which Riggs's work itself challenged television's generic
cally the video element that made television what it was. boundaries; at the same time, however, those risks-
Of course, to invoke what television was (or is) is to stemming from PBS's reliance on the government-funded
suggest that broadcast TV, no less than the museum itself, Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the tenuousness of
constitutes a relatively discrete culture characterized not congressional support for the latter since the Reagan-Bush
only by the manifestation of various distinctive features, but,era-suggest the extent to which Riggs troubled broadcast
conversely, by the exclusion of certain elements whose even-convention, seen as implicitly under attack in the presenta-
tual admission to the realm must figure as a significanttion of his work.
intervention. Museum and television cultures, varying as There is very little, if any, indication of such a chal-
they do, will register such interventions in different ways. Aslenge in Riggs's first professional feature documentary, Eth-
the citation of an extensive electronic infrastructure, for nic Notions (fig. 1), which was produced in association with
instance, the video installation jars in the museum contextpublic television station KQED in San Francisco. This work,
precisely because it contrasts with the latter's traditional which examines the caricature of black people in U.S. popu-
investment in an art defined by individualized craft and lar culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu-
signature technique. Broadcast television, on the other hand,ries, presents a standard set of contemporary talking-head
is actually constituted through its extensive range and predi-interviews with "expert" commentators (cultural critic Bar-
cated on installation, and any effective challenge to its norms bara Christian, performance historian and choreographer

ART JOURNAL

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 Leni Sloan, historian George Fredrickson, among others) quality amid the classic instances of talking-head reportage
intercut with historical stills and film footage documenting that imbue the form with its authoritative significance-its
the cultural stereotyping under consideration. In both its most productive figuration would seem to be one that ques-
format and its fairly conventional liberal-pluralist critique, tioned, rather than depended upon, traditional modes for the
Ethnic Notions largely exemplifies the mode of documentary assertion of cultural authority.
exploration long familiar to PBS audiences. Still, its subject This point becomes clearer, perhaps, when we con-
matter is striking, incorporating materials whose blatant sider another standard element of documentary television that
racism is so alien in the late twentieth century as to startle Ethnic Notions incorporates-the narrative voice-over. This
greatly most viewers. Ranging from product names and mas- feature-provided by African American actor Esther Rolle,
cots like Aunt Jemima, Uncle Remus, and Nigger Head; and running almost without interruption throughout the
through such household items as caricature cookie jars, production-enhances the authoritative effect of the piece in
"pickaninny" joke cards, and Parker Brothers' Ten Little a way similar to that of the "experts"' pronouncements: seem-
Niggers game; to entertainments like vaudevillian min- ingly emanating from the experience of overarching surveil-
strelsy, the films Birth of a Nation and The Jazz Singer, and a lance that it imaginatively conjures up, the voice-over for-
cartoon featuring Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd performing in mally bespeaks an apparently omniscient perspective from
blackface, the objects of Ethnic Notions' immediate critique which the work can make proclamations that are conse-
are many and varied, indicating the depth and pervasiveness quently registered as general and universal. This generality
of U. S. cultural racism. The point of Riggs's piece, however, and universality are quickly problematized, however, within
is not merely to expose the widespread invocation of offensive the first few minutes of the piece, when the narrator-whose
70 stereotype, but, beyond this, to suggest such invocation's voice easily registers as "black" even if it isn't recognized as
detrimental consequences. In a strikingly didactic conclud- that of Rolle-invokes the meaning in "our" lives of the
ing sequence, boldface intertitles declare that the artifacts various racist caricatures collected in "our" homes during
examined in the video confirm popular ideas of blacks as the period under examination. These invocations, which
ugly, savage, and happy in servitude. Christian sums up the occur amid claims as to the onetime currency of such carica-
effect of racist caricature in household knickknacks in the tures throughout the country, seem meant to connote a gener-
statement that gives the piece its name, asserting that stereo- icized "American" citizenry; but the narrator's discernible
typing "notions in the home" lead to derogatory "notions in theblackness, coupled with the fact that it is specifically carica-
mind." tures of blacks that are under consideration, render such a
The forthrightness of this proclamation comprises areference problematic at best, and this in a way that
critical element of Riggs's larger videographic project. Spe- confuses-rather than productively complicating-the sub-
cifically, in presenting such unabashed judgment as to thejective position of the work.
social effect of racist artifacts, the piece veers from the By the time of his follow-up to Ethnic Notions-the
putative norms of cultural documentary to which it otherwise1991 piece Color Adjustment, which focuses specifically on
adheres in its formal structure. At the same time, the authori-images of blacks in U.S. television from the mid-1940s
tative significances of that structure-derived largely from through the 1980s-Riggs seemed to have become much
the dual factors of the talking-head interview format and themore certain of exactly how the subjectivities informing the
unenhanced visual presentation of the historical materials-work could best be formally engaged. While the two videos
work to dissemble the questionable character of the judgment share basic elements of structure and format, they differ
itself; for, even granting that racist representations can fostersignificantly in the ways they use those elements to establish
racist sentiment, the complexities of representation are suchcritical perspective; two points in particular are noteworthy.
that it is altogether unclear exactly how they might do so. First of all, though Color Adjustment maintains the
It is not at all necessary that such videowork as this, focus on individual authorities that characterizes Ethnic No-
with its evident documentary function, present, for the sake oftions, its interviewees represent many more types of authority
that function, a fully substantiated cultural analysis, asthan are admitted in the earlier work. Indeed, not only does
opposed to Ethnic Notions's properly hypothetical proposi- ColorAdjustment temper the credentialed academicism that it
tion. There is, however, a formal tension in the piece thatreprises from Ethnic Notions with the different (yet equally
raises the question of whether it best represents the type ofprofessionalized) considerations of television actors, direc-
sociocultural interrogation that the medium can sustain. It istors, and producers, but it also supplements the professional
the tension between the generalized seat of authority-assessments of all the interviewees with theirpersonal reflec-
represented by the interview sequences in Ethnic Notions-tions on blacks' televisual depictions. Thus, not only do the
and such necessary and powerful speculative judgment as star and the producer of the 1960s sitcom Julia-Diahann
that which the piece asserts regarding the effects of racist Carroll and Hal Kanter-discuss the import of the show in its
caricature. Precisely because the strength of such judgmenthistorical moment, but Rolle (an interviewee in this video,
lies substantially in its speculative character-so alien a rather than the narrator) recounts her own reaction to the

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program during its run. Similarly, Carroll and producer Steve
Bochco speak of the impact on them, as viewers, of Nat
"King" Cole's short-lived variety show of the late 1950s. By
the same token, cultural commentators Henry Louis Gates,
Jr., and Patricia Turner not only analyze the significances of
such programs as Good Times and The Cosby Show, but they
also recall their personal responses to television appearances
by blacks during the relatively recent period when these were
still rare. In other words, the judgments made in Color
Adjustment, rather than seeming to issue from a putative
neutral zone conjured in the relation between expert testi-
mony and omniscient narration, are clearly grounded in the
subjective experiences and the considered deliberations of
those chosen by Riggs to undertake the cultural criticism
implicated in the piece.
Second, Riggs does not shy away in Color Adjustment
from positing the video itself as representing a subjective
viewpoint-a specifically African American perspective.
Most pointedly, while Ethnic Notions deploys a voice-over
narrative whose conjuration of generalized "universality"
runs athwart the evidently interested character of the produc-
ing subject, the narration for Color Adjustment, supplied by
Ruby Dee, unequivocally references its invocations of a
collective "we" to a specifically African American constitu-
ency from which the guiding subjectivity of the video itself
clearly emerges. Color Adjustment differs significantly, then,
from its forerunner. Like the earlier work, it oversimplifies
the relation between representation and social fact, suggest-
ing, for instance, that The Cosby Show of the 1980s and early
1990s affirmed the ideology of the Reagan-Bush era without
considering how it might also have challenged Reaganist
thinking. This aside, however, the later piece represents a
much more confident and sophisticated engagement with
issues of critical subjectivity than is evident in the earlier
one, which suggests that the five years separating the two
works was a period of profound development in Riggs's theory
of video production.
What happened during that period, of course, is that
Riggs produced Tongues Untied (fig. 2), the piece for which
he is probably most widely known, and as a result of which he
became pegged as a controversial figure. Representing the
complete abandonment of the conventional documentary
technique in which he was trained and that he adapted in
Ethnic Notions, Tongues Untied can be considered specifi-
cally a meditation on the life experiences of gay-identified
African American men at the time of the work's production.
Insofar as it depicts those lived experiences, Tongues Untied
is no less "documentary," in the broad sense of the term, than
Riggs's more conventional early piece. The modes of that
figuration, however, are very different from the ways that
Ethnic Notions registers the import of the material that it
engages.
For instance, there are no conventional interview
sive modes and of individual and collective voices is Tongues
scenes in Tongues Untied. Rather, the work presents an Untied's
array
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FIG. 2 Marlon Riggs and Essex Hemphill, from Marlon Riggs, Tongues
Untied, 1989, color and black-and-white video, 55 minutes. Distributed by
Frameline, San Francisco.
of short ensemble performances, monologues, poetry read-
71
ings, and musical presentations interwoven with footage doc-
umenting various moments in the lives of black gay men.
There is no unitary thesis in the work, but several interrelated
thematic lines run throughout, addressing black gay men's
alienation from much of African American society ("I cannot
go home as who I am," one refrain line declares), the need for
black gay men to break silence regarding their sexuality
(referenced in the title of the piece), and the urgency of black
men's loving support for one another (signaled in the video's
effective slogan: "Black men loving black men is the revolu-
tionary act"). Further-and most significantly-Tongues
Untied incorporates two fundamental revisions in documen-
tary subjectivity, which it posits together in such a way as to
confer that subjectivity with a potency rarely found in the
genre. On the one hand, Riggs himself appears in the piece
as a full participant in (and often the guiding consciousness
behind) the performances presented on tape; on the other
hand, those same performances are profoundly collective, not
only being executed by an ensemble of black gay men, as I
have already indicated, but incorporating the creative work
(music, prose reflections, verse poetry) of such men, in
addition to that of Riggs, as primary materials. Thus Tongues
Untied, insofar as it admits of Riggs's own meditative reflec-
tions (on, among other things, his childhood sexuality, his
experience of racism from white gay men, his HIV-positive
status), veers from conventional documentary into creative
expression. At the same time, by incorporating the imagina-
tive contributions of men other than Riggs, the work extends
beyond narrowly personal individualism. Finally, inasmuch
as all the contributions are based on the reality of lived
experience, the piece remains as "factual" as traditional
documentary itself.
This expansive amalgam of documentary and expres-
most notable achievement, in light of which the
ART JOURNAL

FIG. 3 The Cosmic Store, Inglewood, Calif., from Marlon Riggs, Black Is...
Black Ain't, 1995, color video, 86 minutes. Distributed by California Newsreel,
San Francisco.
FIG . 4 Marlon Riggs and Bill T. Jones, from Marlon Riggs, Black Is... Black
sense
Ain't, 1995, color video, 86 minutes. Distributed by California Newsreel, San
Francisco.
debate over the video's celebration of homoeroticism (cited by
numerous PBS affiliates across the country as sufficient
reason not to air the show) appears as the grossest Philisti-
1. For documentation of the work of Nam June Paik, see Toni Stooss and Thomas
nism.2 It is Riggs's expert realization of such polyvalent
Kellein, eds., Nam June Paik: Video Time-Video Space (New York: Harry N.
Abrams, 1993); for Peter Campus, see his Video-lnstallationen, Foto-lnstallationen,
subjectivity, moreover, that carries over from Tongues Untied
back to the more recognizable documentary format of Color
Condit, see Patricia Mellencamp, "Uncanny Feminism," in Indiscretions: Avant-
Adjustment in 1991.
Not that Riggs did not continue to work in the more
2. For
about
expansive mode that Tongues Untied exemplifies. The short
1990 piece Affirmations combines three sections in a whole
Attacks
that achieves the same type of complexity as the longer 1989
work. Segueing from a monologic coming-out story by black
PH I LLIP BR I A N H A R PER, associate professor of English at
gay writer Reginald T. Jackson, to footage of the group Gay
New York University, is author of Are We Not Men? Masculin
Men of African Descent marching in a Harlem African
Anxiety and the Problem of African-American Identity
American Freedom Day parade, to various black gay men's
(Oxford,forthcoming).
recitations-over reprised march footage and a freedom-
song sound track-of their "wishes" for the future, Affirma-
tions recapitulates the synthesizing effect of Tongues Untied
in such a way as to become its effective coda-brief, elo-
quent, eminently moving.
The 1995 release Black Is . . . Black Ain't (figs. 3 and
4)-left unfinished by Riggs at the time of his AIDS-related
death in April 1994 and completed by his colleagues Nicole
Atkinson and Christiane Badgley-takes on the overwhelm-
ing topic of black identity itself, which, with its myriad
contradictions and overdeterminations, is in many ways per-
fectly suited for the expansive mode Riggs developed in
Tongues Untied. Perhaps because the question of what consti-
tutes "blackness" is so big, however (the video zips at break-
neck speed through considerations of religion, skin color
politics, sexuality, gender difference, and class stratifica-
tion, to name just a few of the issues it tackles), Black Is ...
Black Ain't is less successful than Tongues Untied, as a
videographic piece. Based loosely on a metaphorical concep-
tualization of African American life as a type of gumbo, the
work closes by considering what constitutes the roux that
binds together the disparate ingredients of blackness. It
settles on no answer to this question, and the video itself
similarly lacks a unifying element. This could have been
provided by the leitmotif footage-much of it intensely
moving-of Riggs in his hospital bed during one of his final
illnesses, reflecting on his life, his work, his coming death,
his blackness. This personal experience of AIDS is never
collectivized, however, in the way that the individual histo-
ries presented in Tongues Untied are, resulting in a less fully
realized work than one imagines Riggs envisioned when he
first conceived the piece.
It is a testament to the level of Riggs's accomplishment
that his own work provides the best standard against which
this last project can be measured. His interventions in the
definition of documentary video have altered not only our
of what constitutes viable television broadcast, but the
terms of what counts as "creative development" in that tradi-
tional realm of video production.
Notes
Fotos, Videobanden, exh. cat. (Cologne: Kilnischer Kunstverein, 1979). On Cecilia
Garde Film, Video, and Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990),
126-39.
a contemporaneous account of the controversy, see Frank J. Prial, "TV Film
Gay Black Men Is under Attack," New York Times, June 25, 1991, C13.
commentary about it, see John J. O'Connor, "Critic's Notebook: Counting Casualties
on PBS," New York Times, August 6, 1991, Cll.

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