Notes of a Signifyin' Snap!

Queen
Author(s): Marlon T. Riggs
Source: Art Journal, Vol. 50, No. 3, Censorship I (Autumn, 1991), pp. 60-64
Published by: College Art Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/777218 .
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 Notes of a Signifyin'
Snap! Queen
MARLON T. RIGGS
he Soviet Empire is in a shambles. Pick up any
newspaper today; watch the morning, midday, eve-
ning, late-night news-the announcements are
inescapable-and you will witness, up close and personal,
reports of a society profoundly dysfunctional, teetering on the
edge of chaos. Gorby wins the Nobel prize! But can he
salvage his political economy? Will he last? Will the nation?
Most of us have been captivated by such news, by the
sights and sounds of walls ripped apart and flooded over by
60 an angry, impatient humanity, unwilling to live by dissem-
bling myths of the past, to live with the worsening perils of
the moment.
The Eastern Bloc crumbles, and millions of Americans
watch, at once riveted and, reassuringly, cocooned by their
belief that the Soviets have finally arrived at an inexorable
fate, while we, the victors, stand tall and intact, the armor
of American might-and ideology-gleaming radiantly
throughout the world for others, at best, to emulate, and at
least, to defer to.
Few Americans have noticed-in part because our
popular media have scarcely bothered to inform them-that
here at home, our walls, too, are profoundly fractured and
crumbling, that just as the Second Worldis on the verge of an
overdue collapse, so is the First.
The mythology of America, the myth of what it means to
be an American, is facing, at last, its own inexorable fate. For
what this myth required for too long, for too many of us, was
the soul-crushing negation of our lives and our struggles, the
silencing of our most intimate, deepest, life-sustaining
truths. The mythology of America always demanded of its
devotees and its victims more than mere assimilation: it
forced us to view the best within ourselves as the worst. The
most precious within us, that which shaped and nurtured our
distinctive character, our visions of the world, our identities,
we jettisoned. For the sake of cultural and political
conversion-or better still, conformity-to the status quo,
we've paid a price, and are paying it still, with currencies of
self-abuse, self-hatred, alienation, violence, isolation, si-
lence, and brutal death. The price of America's mythology is
measured in our spiritual devastation and-too often, too
literally-in blood. And the reason America's mythic walls
are finally crumbling is simply this: we are no longer willing
to bleed, and hence, to pay.
As I gleefully survey the falling wreckage around me, I
FALL 1991
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am moved to recite a familiar, though slightly revised, nurs-
ery rhyme:
Joseph McCarthy sat on the wall
TrickyDick 'n Joe had a great fall
And all of Reagan's horsemen
And all Jesses kin
Will neverput the old hegemony
Back together again.
As a Black Gay Signifyin' Butch-Queen devoted to the fine
and sometimes martial "arts" of the Wicked Read and the
Subversive Snap, I cannot help but jump with jubilation over
the quickening disintegration of the American myth, the
implosion of America's cultural center. For the myth and the
dominant culture have been my prison: each time another
pillar of the myth crumbles, I inhale-taste-freedom, gain
new vistas on the world and my life. The Old American
Empire-the old, imposed American identity-is cracking
up. Our mythic center will not hold. Of course, I bless this
destruction. With it, you see, arrives the opportunity for my
too-long-delayed, my truest Emancipation.
Fifteen years ago, the vista before me was decidedly
different, was, in fact, quite bleak. As an undergraduate at
Harvard, I was as much a prisoner as a student. Like most
others, I had gone there to learn, but above all I had gone in
search of community, of people like myself-the young,
gifted, and black; Nina Simone's song was my anthem then-
who shared my values and concerns, my intellectual and
political commitments. I had gone to Harvard, naively, in
search of my own black reflection. I awakened, after I ar-
rived, to the realization that I was also gay. And the reflection
of myself that this new me suggested I found nowhere. Worse,
I believed it existed . . . nowhere.
There were no programs in lesbian/gay studies, then.
There were no lesbian/gay/bisexual students associations.
There were no "out" faculty, to my knowledge, nor confer-
ences or seminars that addressed, in even the remotest way,
the turmoil or the raging questions within me. There was no
In the Life, or Other Countries, or Lookingfor Langston, or
Tongues United (fig. 1), or Gay Men of African Descent.
Nothing ostensibly "gay" seemed to embrace the totality of
me; nothing "black" did either.
Most days, at lunch and dinner, over the course of my
freshman year, I self-consciously surveyed the dining hall,

FIG. 1 StillfromMarlonRiggs'svideo TonguesUntied,1989, showingRiggsat left and EssexHemphillat right.
steereda course beyondthe anonymousrowsof young,white,
animated faces, among whom I clearly did not belong; moved
furtherstill beyond the cluster of "black tables," where I
knew, deep down, that no matterhow much I masqueraded,
my trueself wouldshowandwouldbe shunned;and sat, often
alone,eating quickly, hurryingmy exit froma roomwhereall
eyes, I felt, condemnedme with unspokencontempt:misfit,
freak, faggot.
Beneath such judgment I did as millions have done
beforeme and since: I withdrewinto the shadowsof my soul;
chainedmy tongue;attemptedas best as I could, to snuffout
the flame of my sexuality; assumed the impassive face and
stiff pose of Silent Black Macho. I wore the mask. I was
serving time; for what crime I didn't know. But I wore the
mask, howeverstiff, confining, suffocating:I served,in rage,
pain, and bitter,needless solitude, for three and one-halfof
my undergraduateyears, ignorantthat there could be any
otherway.
What time was it?
Certainlynot NationTime, not for this young, gifted,
black-and queer!-student. No nation, howeverrevolu-
tionary,had dared claim me. No revisionist history, black,
Marxist,or otherwise, dared to mentionmy name.
Whosetime was it?
Certainly not my time! Despite Douglass, Tubman,
Sojourner,DuBois, Garvey, Langston, Rustin, Ella, El-
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61
dridge, Angela, Martin, Malcolm, Stokeley,and Jesse, my
time, back then, had decidedly not arrived. No prophets of
revolutionspoke to me, spoke of me. The Last Poets did not
mentionmy name. The New Nationalists, on the rare occa-
sions when they acknowledgedmy existence at all, spoke of
me with utter contempt, spat and twisted my name like the
vilest obscenity.
Dutifully,nevertheless,I attendedclasses, in search of
somethingmorethan knowledgeor scholarship-in search
of a history, a culture that spoke to my life. A history and
culture that, simply, talked to me.
Because of this search I began a lesson that, in truth,
I'veneverstoppedlearning:when nobodyspeaks yourname,
oreven knowsit, you, knowingit, mustbe the firstto speak it.
When the existing history and culture do not acknowledge
andaddressyou-do notsee ortalk to you-you mustwritea
new history, shape a new culture, that will.
By the winterof my senioryear in college, I learnedto
speak my name. At first it was just a whisper.Yet it was not
the wordsI utteredthat were most important,but the will to
utter them: I am young, black, gifted-and gay: from this
knowledge, this quiet certainty, I shall not, must not, be
moved.
Intenton knowingmore about what being gay meant,
notso muchin the presenttense but (typicallyforme then)in
the past, I petitionedmy departmentfor a special indepen-
ARTJOURNAL
 dent course of study. I asked foran in-personinterviewwith
the chair. I did not explain beforehandhow "special" my
studywouldbe. I did notdeeplyweigh whatI was doing. Nor
did I considerwhatthis revealedof me. I did notknowif what
I was asking had been asked before. And in an unconscious
way, I didn't care. I went before the head of my history
department, and asked, with a naive matter-of-factness,
whetherhe could advise me in my special study. He congrat-
ulated my initiative professorially,then asked, in an appro-
priatelyprofessional,academic tone, what the nature of my
subject was. I, twenty years old, answered quietly: "The
evolutionof the depictionof male homosexualityin American
fiction and poetry."
His jaw did not drop. But the look in his eyes was an
equivalent."Iam notan expert,"he announced,aftera long,
long pause, "in that subject." The chair declined to advise
me, but grantedthat I could pursue the course of study if I
found someone who would. I'm sure he knew, as I soon
learned, that this was far easier said then done. Fromone
62 eminentprofessorto the next I went in search of an advisor.
One after anotherpolitely but curtly declined me. "Notmy
expertise,"said one; "notfamiliarwith the subject matter,"
explainedanother;"neverexploredthat particulartheme."I
foundit odd that none of the eminentscholarswouldsay the
word"gay,"or even "homosexual."Forthe first time in my
Harvardexperience, indirectionand ignorance, it seemed,
were passed off as virtues.
Still, I continuedto look, and eventuallyI foundhim.
Notan eminentprofessor,but a teachingassistant,an inveter-
ate graduatestudentwith a long-overdue,unfinisheddisser-
tationon WaltWhitman-a teacher,by Harvardstandards,
farbeneaththe first rank. Yethe was the best that institution
everofferedme, forone simplereason:the historyandculture
he soughtto sharewithme, at last, spoke to my life. Talkedto
me! And to my youthful amazement,what I heard in the
resonances of this new, living history gave strength and
clarityto my own maturingvoice. Now,notonly could I read
andsee and hearthe past, discoveringnew relevance,signif-
icance unimagined, but I could also, in turn, speak to this
past, and thus reanimateand reshapeit, define it anew.I had
begun learning, withoutconsciousintent, the fine andpower-
ful art of Signifyin'.
Paul Alan Marx, advisor, mentor,friend, shaped my
life in ways that I'm sure he never imagined. Paul Marxis
dead. Last year. AIDS. I consecrate this momentto his
irrepressiblespirit, which even now animates my own, and
alwayswill until I somedayjoin him.
WhenI considerPaul'slife, his death, I perforcereflect
on what time it was when I first began to speak, and how
muchI had to unlearn, to jettison, beforeembarkingon the
search for my voice and identity.
Bewitchedby the so-called "inestimablepowerof the
broadcastmedia"to "reachmillions"and, more important,
remedy injustice, past and present, I applied and was ac-
FALL 1991
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cepted forgraduatestudyin journalismat Berkeleyin 1979. I
was promptlyinitiated into the ritual of wearingyet another
mask-the countenance and costume of the Professional,
ObjectiveJournalist-the maskof the neutralyet fully com-
prehending and, ideally, fully detached Nonparticipant
Observer.
I fixed this maskon topof one thatI'dalreadydonnedto
distract attentionfrom my color-the mask of middle-class
respectability-to softenthe rough-edgedperceptionsof my
race, so thatI mightmoreeasily assimilate intothe dominant
media culture. And on top of this second mask I wore yet
another,to disguise, to camouflage,my emergingsexuality.
Needless to say, I was suffocating,thoughat the time I
simplyfelt constrained,withoutfully understandingwhy. As
a graduatestudentin journalism, I sought, naively, to model
myself after the best the mass media seemed to offer;I went
about the painful and (as is now clear) highly improbable
business of recasting, yet again, my self-image. In voice and
tone, in minute, subtle tosses and dips of the head, in the
vocal punching of key phrases and syllables, in overly re-
hearsed lines in my deepest baritone-"Back to you,
Wendy!""That'sit forEyewitnessNews!"-I soughtto mimic
the media models my instructorsheld up as the ultimate
embodimentof the electronic press: Edward R. Murrow,
grave, noble knight of a mythic Golden Age in Broadcast
Journalism;Mike Wallace, the citizens' surrogate,bravely,
brazenly, confronting politico-economic institutions, high
and low, in orderto make thembehave in the public interest;
WalterCronkite,granddaddyof the mightiestTV news insti-
tution in the world (I tried not to notice, mind you, that
"granddaddy" lookedand soundedlike nobodyin my family);
and the then heir apparent, Dan Rather,a Texas homeboy
whoseregionalvocal inflectionsmisled me to believe thathis
acceptance into the media tribe might facilitate my own.
Such was the pantheon offered me, then. No women. No
blacks. No otherpeople of color. No street activists or grass-
rootsorganizers.No one who seemed to display the slightest
personalor emotionalinvestmentbeyondgetting and telling
"thefacts," "the story,"seldomthe truth. Notone amongthe
media divinities seemed to embody or bear witness, even
remotely,to the deep political and ideologicalimpulses that
had led me to the mediaarts in the first place. I had come, not
just to enlightenthe public because of some hollowabstrac-
tionaboutthe "rightto know,"but to use and wieldthe media
as a tool-or better yet, a weapon-in reclaiming and
expanding the lives, histories, and futures of America's
politically, economically,and culturally disfranchised.
The lesson that I learned in school my teachersnever
intended.Indeed, I learnedthis lesson despite my ownintent
and ambition.ForthoughI desperatelytried to measureup to
the media models held before me, I failed, ultimately, to
assimilate the worldview that might have allowed me some
small measureof theirsuccess. I failed because no amountof
educationor training or makeup would make me look like,
 sound like, or-more importantly-think like Peter
Jennings, Barbara Walters, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw,or
Cronkite.This last man was notmy granddaddyand notonly
did I know it, so did everybody else. Despite my best
performance,the truthof my bastardstatus, it seemed, would
alwaysbreakthrough:the masksuponmaskswouldeverslip,
unhinge, betrayinga less congenial-indeed quite brutal-
reality beneath.
A small incident precipitatedmy decision to abandon
commercialmedia. It was the spring of 1980 and I was still
naive enough to harborsome hope that somewhereI might
"makeit." A news executive froma Salt Lake City television
stationwas visiting the school to interviewstudentsfor pro-
spective internships.I showedhim my sample tape, some of
my most difficult, and best, studentwork.After viewing the
tape, the newsdirectorturnedto me, frowning,anddeclared:
"Youdon'thavethe right kind of voice. If youdon'tspeak with
the kind of broadcastvoice that people are familiarwith, the
audience will turn you off. People are used to commercials.
You have to communicate authority like the voices in
commercials."
His response chilled and angered me, less because of
his flagrant disinterest in the subjects I'd selected or the
qualityof my reporting,of which he had said nothing,thanin
his implied definitionof authorityas the ProperVoice.
I was black, he had said in no uncertainterms, and my
blacknesswas revealed-or shouldI say, betrayed?-by my
voice. Not simply my blackness as skin color, but as a
specific cultural, even political, identity, which, when no-
ticed, became in his mind a source of discomfortand worse,
of doubt.Tobecome a proper,trustworthyVoiceof AuthorityI
would have to further shed my vocal color: this was no
metaphor.Torise in his ranks, I wouldhaveto masqueradein
cultural and ideologicalwhiteface.
It was nota newlesson: I'dseen andheardit throughout
my classes, indeed throughoutmy life: on television, in
films, from newspapers, magazines, and books. But now,
after having it so bluntly put, the lesson finally stuck. My
attitudetowardthe dominantmedia started to change; I was
no longerso willing to stay the course. I sawwherethe course
led, and the picture of my unmaskedself thatI foresawat the
end of the journeywas, decidedly, not a prettyone.
Moreover,the pictures of society I had hopedto project
fromwithin this mainstreammedia world, it was now clear,
mightbe factual, mighttell a good story,but wouldseldom,if
ever,approacha morecomplicated,multilayeredtruth. I had
mistakenlybelieved in the mythologyof the mass media as
the fourthestate, the Constitution'simplicit, thoughnonethe-
less essential, agent of progessive reform, the check on
abusive corporateand political powerand the balance to the
excessive authorityof the state. But the mass media, it was
dawningon me, was achievingfar less than designed and, at
the same time, far more.
The media systematically balances and checks, all
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right-or more accurately, squelches and negates-voices
and visions like mine that threaten society's established
voices of authority-those smooth, polished, broadcast-
qualityvoices in media, law, government,science, business,
advertising, that privilege, without the slightest twinge of
self-consciousnessor self-interrogation,a constructof Amer-
ica, of Americanpowerand authority,that is rigidly mono-
lithically, unquestioninglywhite, male, and heterosexual.
Andwhile misfitslike me are balancedand checkedrightout
of the dominant media discourse, the media performsa
kinder, gentler service for business and the state: all three
intimately embrace in an ideological union that routinely
engendersa social consciousness that, even when seeming
self-critical, affirms the majorityconsensus, the essential,
beneath-the-surface,political and cultural status quo.
Almost needless to say, my discovery of and disillu-
sionmentwith the controllingmechanisms of the dominant
media were not unique; my insights had been arrived at
before, and have been repeatedly corroboratedsince. In-
deed, multiply this experience not by the hundredsbut the 63
thousands,across generationsfromthe sixties on, and what
youbear witness to is the persistentand, I believe, intensify-
ing struggle to break free of the ideological shackles with
which America'smedia culture persistentlybinds us.
My personalEmancipationwas thus, on the most fun-
damentallevel, an interiorone:finally freed frompsychologi-
cal bondageto a mythologythat has historicallydisclaimed
notjust my humanitybut my existence, I began to explorethe
unchartedterrainof my self. My penultimateliberating act
was thereforean utterlysimple one: I unchainedmy tongue.I
spoke. I learned yet again (aren'tall difficult lessons like
that?)the inestimablevirtueof my own distinctivevoice, my
native tongue. Released from silence, from a world of
shadows and unspeakable shame, I reclaimed the radiant
nobilityof my life, and what is more, a living historythatthe
dominantculture had denied me. The self I in time discov-
eredwas morethan individual:it was communal(fig. 2). The
truth I thus articulated was more than personal: it was
political. Words were power. With the sweet and simple
utterance "I am black, gay, gifted, and proud," I had
breached a once-formidablefortress of social and cultural
control.Throughsuch powerof voice, millions like me have
experiencedthis axiomatichuman lesson: wheneverwe, the
collective, marginalized, dehumanized Other, speak the
truths of our lives, we engage in the most radical-as in
fundamental-form of self-affirmation.As communitieshis-
torically oppressed through silence, through the power of
voice we continually find our freedom, realize our fullest
humanity.It is throughthis on-going political, social, and
psychologicaldynamic that we have fundamentallytroped
Descartes'sprinciple of self-cognition:
I speak, thereforeI am.
We speak, creating a worldthat speaks, and listens, to us.
ARTJOURNAL
64
. 2 Stil fromMaron Riggs'svideo EthnicNotions,1987.
FIG. 2 StillfromMarlon Riggs'svideo EthnicNotions,1987.
Thus we affirmour right and our fight to live.
Weare on the brink, I believe, of a newwaveof media-
arts activism, catalyzed in part by the explosionof low-cost,
high-qualityvideo, and, ironically, by the repressive mea-
sures of the conservative and fundamentalistright. This
activism will most likely not gather its strongestforce until
the twenty-firstcentury, when notions of identity, whether
gender-,race-, sexuality-, or nationality-based,will explic-
itly embracemultiplesubjectivities of humanexperienceand
points of view.
Whatmedia artists are nowchallengedwith, it seems,
is not just combating the ideological right, whose "con-
sensus" is crumbling, and whose days are numbered, no
matterhow much they posture, pray, bash, and sue. Our
greatest challenge rests in finding a language, a way of
communicatingacross our subjectivities, across difference,
a way of negotiating the political and cultural bordersbe-
tween and within us so that we do not replicatethe chauvin-
ism and the reductivepolitical agendas of the past.
This is no easy task.
An all-too-frequent, unfortunatepattern among peo-
ples achievingsocial empowermentis their predispositionto
reformulatesocial hierarchies, so that they become privi-
leged while others are oppressed. The system of hierarchy
remains intact; only the relative placement of the groups
changes. The burden of today's historical moment, when
identitiesworldwideare radically reformulating,is for us to
speak to and with each other,across the bordersof identity,
FALL1991
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i ~~~~~~
I~ %:i M k I0~~ 1
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"~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~w g
across our multiple oppressions and strategies of self-
empowerment,in ways that build a truly radical multi-
culturalcoalition, perhapseven community.Wemust create
a cultural language, a notion of identity that appreciates
difference yet escapes the tragic pitfalls of outsiderversus
insider and the resultant tendency toward an exclusivist,
privileging subjectivity.
Again, this will be no easy task.
Thus far we have chosen, for the most part, an easy
multiculturalism,a polite, deferentialappreciationand re-
spect forpoliticaland culturalpluralism, withoutdeveloping
a rigorous discourse that analyzes how multiple subjec-
tivities intersect, compete, and collide.
Perhapswe have failed to do this because the media
arts are still very young and many of us, having only just
learned to speak, are addressing primarilyour own subjec-
tive selves. Butas we contemplatethis time in ourhistoryand
the promiseof the time to come, recall the greaterworkwe
have to do. Forwhatwe do in this dialogue and otherslike it
will decide whetherthis age is rememberedas the adventof a
moreprogressive,inclusive, dynamic constructof humanity
and culture or yet anotherhistorical promisedeferred. ,
MARLON T. RIGGS is a film director and producer,media
activist, and lobbyistfor independent,point-of-view
programming in public broadcasting. He lectures at the
Universityof California, Berkeley.