NOW YOU SEE IT Studies in Lesbian and Gay Film Richard Dyer

N O W Y O U SEE IT
Now You See It, Richard Dyer's ground-breaking study of films by and about
lesbians and gay men, has been revised for a second edition, and features an
afterword by Julianne Pidduck outlining developments in lesbian and gay
cinema since 1990. Now You See It examines familiar titles such as Girls in
Uniform, Un Chant d'amour and Word Is Out, in their lesbian/gay context as well
as bringing to light many other forgotten but remarkable films. Each film is
examined in detail in relation to both film type and tradition and the sexual
subculture in which it was made. Now You See It is also a case study in the
dynamics of lesbian/gay cultural production. These films were formed from
the filmic and sub-cultural images, assumptions and styles available to lesbians
and gay men which both made the films possible and delimited the forms they
could take and what they could say. Such processes of formation and deformation
characterize all cultural production, but they carry a special charge for lesbians
and gay men seeking both to break free from and be heard in the languages of
a homophobic society.
Richard Dyer is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Warwick. He

is the author of Culture of Queers (2002), The Matter of Images (1993) and White
(1997).
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NOW YOU SEE IT
Studies in Lesbian
and Gay Film
SECOND EDITION
Richard Dyer
with Julianne Pidduck
London and New York

First published 1990
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX 14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
This edition first published 2003
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
Transferred to Digital Printing 2007
© 1990, 2003 Richard Dyer
Typeset by Keystroke, Jacaranda Lodge, Wolverhampton
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-415-25498-1 (hbk)

ISBN 0-415-2 5499-X (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-136-40737-6 (ebk)
Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this
reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original
may be apparent
to the memory of
DAVE SARGENT
1952-1985
and
MARK FINCH
1961-1995
CONTENTS
Illustrations ix
Introduction to the first edition 1
Introduction to the second edition 5
1 Sweden 1916: taking off 8
2 Weimar: less and more like the others 23
3 Shades of Genet 63
4 Underground and after 109
5 Lesbian/woman: lesbian cultural feminist film 169
6 From and for the movement 201
7 After 1980: margins and mainstreams by Julianne Pidduck 265
Translations of titles 295

Notes 300
References 307
Index of names 328
Index of titles 329
vii
LIST OF
ILLUSTRATIONS
1 Sweden 1916: taking off

1.1 Magnus Enckell: Siivet (Wings) 1923, Turku Art Museum. 9
1.2 Vingarne: Mikael poses for Zoret as the youth in the sculpture
(AB Svensk Film Industri). 10
1.3 Mauritz Stiller. 11
1.4 Vingarne'. Zoret's first meeting with Mikael
1.5 Vingarne: Zoret shows the princess his / Milles' sculpture Vingarne
1.6 Hendrik Christian Andersen: Giacobbe e Vangelo.
(Jacob and the Angel) 1911. (Rome: Museo Andersen). 18
1.7 Anon: Ganymedes, from Der Eigene April 1903. 21
2 Weimar: less and more like the others

2.1 Anders ah die Andern: Kurt weeps over Paul's body — tragic
ending but also the event precipitating Kurt into gay activism. 28
2.2 Conrad Veidt — the star of Anders as pin-up. 31
2.3 Nosferatu — vampire and prey, Tante and Bube? 36
2.4 Paul and Franz in Anders als die Andern: in-between-ist
wrap and posture but male-identified statuary. 36
2.5 Classical beauty, friendship and pedagogic eros in Wege zu
Kraft und Schonheit. 39
2.6 Margarete Melzer and Dorothea Wieck: two versions of
Fraulein von Bernburg. 47
2.7 Der Geiger von Florenz — why is he looking at 'him' so intensely:
why is 'she' looking so doubtful? 50
2.8 'What beautiful legs you have!' — Manuela in Hosenrolle
backstage in Madchen in Uniform. 53
2.9 Madchen in Uniform — von Bernburg gives Manuela one of
her own slips, as a mother to a daughter, a teacher to a pupil
or one friend and lover to another? 57
2.10 Luminous intensity between A nna und Elisabeth. 61
IX
ILLUSTRATIONS
3 Shades of Genet
3.1 A flower passed from mouth to mouth in a chiaroscuro
sequence from Un Chant d'amour. 70
3.2 The straw through the wall in Un Chant d'amour — obvious
yet delicate fellatio symbolism. 70
3.3 Un Chant d'amour. 'the Tunisian' presses his cheek in longing
against the wall. 82
3.4 Orphee: Orphee (Jean Marais) presses his cheek in longing
against the mirror. 83
3.5 A pure homophile kiss in Possession du condamne. 90
3.6 Querelle and the power politics of sex - black, gay-identified
Nono, who has established the rules of the game, gets to screw
white, straight-identified Querelle, who has deliberately
played the game to this end. 103
4 Underground and after

4.1 Downcast eyes and the urban nightscape — elements of the
iconography of the homosexual as sad young man on the cover
of The Gay Year 1949. 114
4.2 The angel as sad young man in Lot in Sodom. 116
4.3 Sailor imagery in early beefcake mail order. 118
4.4 Fireworks', the image of the young man in the sailor's arms . . .
4.5 . . catches fire'. 127
4.6 Some of the Flaming Creatures. 128
4.7 Bobby Kendall in Fink Narcissus — underground, kitsch,
softporn. 161
5 Lesbian/woman: lesbian cultural feminist film

5.1 Vaginal iconography: Suzanne Santoro, from her Towards
New Expression (1974). 176
5.2 A frozen moment from the ever shifting sand animation
of Luna Tune. 179
5.3 One of the 110 shots of touch in Dyketactics. 184
5.4, 5.5, 5.6 Three of the Women Barbara Hammer Loves. 192-3
5.7 Cultural feminist or standard straight porn imagery in
Erotic in Nature? 199
6 From and for the movement

6.1 The COC logo in In dit teken. 203
6.2 Betty raises the issue of her representativeness in Word Is Out. 225
x
L I S T OF ILLUSTRATIONS
6.3 The first slogan of gay liberation on two book covers from
1972. 233
6.4 The lesbian relationship between Anna und Edith forms the
core of solidarity between other women by the end of the film. 240
6.5 Drag queen (Craig Russell as Tallulah Bankhead) and
schizophrenic (Hollis McLaren) - the solidarity of outsiderdom
in Outrageous! 247
6.6 Grainy, off-centre cruising in Nighthawks. 248
6.7 Reading against the grain in Maidens - schoolgirls as women
together . . . before being divided and ruled'. 257
6.8 Madame X's leather outfit. 262
7 After 1980: margins and mainstreams

7.1 Three singing sauna divas in Zero Patience. 271
7.2 Kiss and Tell explore urban lesbian sexual iconography. 273
7.3 Ari's urban alienation is depicted in intense close-ups in
Head On. 282
7.4 Conventional beauty: the lovers of Desert Hearts. 285
7.5 The cathartic power of women's laughter in De Stilte rond
Christine M. 288
7.6 Antonias 'mutant pastoralism'. 289
7.7 The signature image of Todo sobre mi madre. 292
XI
I N T R O D U C T I O N TO
THE FIRST EDITION
There have been hundreds of films with homosexual characters in them 1 and
hundreds of lesbians and gay men have worked before and behind the film
camera,2 but there have been very few films made by lesbians and gay men with
lesbian and gay subject-matter. This book is about some of them.
These are films made, to some significant degree, by people who considered
themselves to be, in whatever the parlance of their day, lesbian or gay and which
openly embrace gay/lesbian subject-matter. Some were produced with a definite
intention of promoting lesbian/gay rights and identities, while others were
made out of the socially constructed but privately realised imperatives of self
and sexual expression. They are not covert or disguised articulations of lesbian/
gay feelings and perceptions, but examples of that rare, and perhaps rather
extraordinary enterprise of the deliberate, overt and owned expression of such
feelings and perceptions in film.
This does not mean that they are the untrammelled embodiment of an
authentic homosexual experience stripped of social contamination. They are
not, as it were, what lesbian/gay film would be if only we did not live in a hetero
obsessed society. They are what could be done within actual social and historical
reality. Like all cultural production, gay/lesbian films exist only in and through
the confluence of ways of making sense, the terms of thought and feeling,
available to them. These limit what can be said but also make saying possible;
they both form and deform all expression. The studies that follow look at two
of the sets of terms most salient to these particular films: lesbian and gay
sub-cultures and filmic traditions.
Even each of these is itself enormously complex and although I have in part
treated the films as a point of entry into an investigation of, especially, the
sub-cultures, I do not pretend to provide a comprehensive guide to the total sub-
cultural and filmic states of play at the time each set of films was made, but only
to look at those particular aspects of both most evidently relevant to the films
under investigation. Neither aspect is unaffected by the other. Lesbians and gay
men working in film helped mould it, either covertly, in a history we still mainly
have to guess at, or else sometimes openly, notably in relation to the shape
of experimental and documentary film as discussed in chapters three, four and
1
N O W Y O U SEE IT
five. Equally, lesbian/gay film has used for its own ends many of the images and
structures of non-lesbian/gay film, discussed here for instance in the practices
of camp or the use of traditional romance and adventure narrative structures.
Yet there is also always a tension, a divergence of interests, between the film
traditions and the deviant position of the sub-cultures, a tension now smoothed
over (as in many of the films of gay/lesbian 'affirmation'), now exploited or
heightened (as in Madchen in Uniform, Un Chant d'amour, Flaming Creatures
or Madame X). It is this interaction, this within and against, of historically
specific lesbian/gay sub-cultures and particular filmic traditions, as worked
through in the texts of the films, that is the focus of this book.
* * *
I confine myself rather arbitrarily to films made before 1980, though I do where
appropriate point to films made later which either build on or radically depart
from those discussed here. This is largely to do with manageability. Since 1980
there has been an enormous growth in the amount of lesbian/gay films, of which
the clearest index are the gay/lesbian film festivals (notably in Amsterdam,
Berlin, Brussels, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco,
Sydney and Turin), all of which draw for the most part on recent product.
I wanted this book to be some kind of record of overt gay/lesbian film making,
but I also wanted to avoid writing a book of lists, which is what going beyond
1980 would have entailed. Drawing the line at 1980 has certain inevitable
consequences, however. It means more films made by and about men than
women, and next to no representation of non-white, non Northern/Western
people. Film, more perhaps than any other art, requires money, time and confi-
dence (to believe that it is even appropriate for one to 'say' something); existing
gender and ethnic relations mean that white men are going to be among the
first and most frequent to have access to the medium. Moreover, the specificity
of the idea of'being' lesbian or gay means that the very different way same-sex
relations are constructed and experienced in Japan or Third World countries
does not come into my purview.
Even so, I am aware of some gaps in coverage before 1980, notably in
European experimental film. I am also aware of the fact that I am a gay man
writing about lesbian film. Gay men — even 'out' gay men — have many of the
privileges and attitudes of straight men; gay men are also the least qualified
to speak about the representation of lesbian sexuality on the basis of libidinal
response. Yet I decided from the outset that I would cover both gay and lesbian
film, partly because I knew I was in a position to do so (with experience of
research, the right connections and time), partly because I have always believed
in the alliance of lesbians and gay men, partly because of the encouragement
I received from many lesbian film-makers and writers on film. In writing the
book, the ways in which lesbian and gay film overlap and diverge have seemed
to me especially illuminating, enabling one to see both more clearly.
2
INTRODUCTION
Some practical points. I have, to save space, used the dubious term 'gay/
lesbian film' at various points, but this is not meant to imply that only films
as deliberate and overt as these count as lesbian/gay films. I have stuck with the
laborious 'lesbian/gay', 'gay/lesbian', even though there is some indication that
'gay' is becoming acceptable to some lesbian women — the book was conceived
and largely written during a period when this was not so. Titles of non-English
language films that are not discussed at length in the text are translated in an
appendix.
* * *
I could not have written this book without the support and help of an
enormous number of people. I'd like to thank especially Mark Finch, Karola
Gramann, Heide Schliipmann, Jackie Stacey and Tom Waugh for their unfailing
help and encouragement as well as the constant inspiration and stimulation of
their example. Many others, some of whom I had or have never met, helped me
in a variety of ways, supplying films, drawing my attention to articles, reading
drafts, lending material, discussing issues and much else besides: my thanks
then to Yann Beauvais, Annette Forster, Barbara Hammer, Ron Magliozzi.
Miles McKane, Paul Verstraeten and Andrea Weiss as well as Gunnar Aimer,
Sandro Avanzo, Rosemary Betterton, Pieter Van Bogaert, Noll Brinckmann,
Charlotte Brunsdon, Elaine Burrows, Jane Caplan, Tom Chomont, Emmanuel
Cooper, Honey Lee Cottrell, Jon Davies, Bernard Devlin, John Foot and Dave
Belton, Sarah Franklin, Sue Friedrich, Michka Gorkis, Donna Gray, Larry
Gross, Linda Flint, Jane Harris and the women at Circles, Miriam Hansen,
Sylvia Harvey, Judith Higginbottom, J . Hoberman, J i m Hubbard, Gertrud
Koch, Eric de Kuyper, Michael Kloss, A1 LaValley, Jukka Lehtonen, Phil van
der Linden, Teresa Caldas and the women at Cinemien, Michael Lumpkin,
Robert Malengreau, Jonas Mekas, Giovanni Minerba, Margaret Moores,
Jeff Nuts, Mark Padnos, Leigh Raymond, Tony Rayns, Ruby Rich, Thomas
Robsahm, Vito Russo, Manfred Salzgeber, Akira Shimuzu, Charles Silver, Rose
Marie Soto, Felicity Sparrow, Ginette Vincendeau, Maggie Warwick, Simon
Watney, Brenda Webb, Claire Whitaker, Janice Winship, Karsten Witte, Debra
Zimmerman and the women at Women Make Movies. Like all film scholars,
I owe an incalculable debt to the British Film Institute library, not only for its
unsurpassed holdings but for the help and kindness of its staff; likewise I should
like to thank Richard Parker, Richard Perkins and above all the staff of the
Inter-Library Loans desk at Warwick University library. Further thanks are due
to the film archives in Amsterdam, Brussels, Koblenz, London, Washington DC
and Wiesbaden, to the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre and the New
Zealand Film Commission, to Circles, Cinema of Women, BFI Distribution,
Peter Darvill Associates, the London Film-makers' Co-op and Harris Films.
Warwick University gave me grants to visit archives and much of the research
presented here was undertaken while working as a visiting professor at the
3
N O W Y O U SEE IT
Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania.

The encouragement of Paul Crane at an early stage in the writing and of Jane
Armstrong, Bill Germano and Helena Reckitt at Routledge have been very
important to me. Finally, I am grateful for the support given to me by my
colleagues in the Film Studies department at Warwick University, especially
Susan Dufft and Victor Perkins, and above all by the friends with whom I live,
Malcolm Gibb and Jo Li.
During the writing of this book, Jack Babuscio, Arthur Bressan, Cal Culver,
Guy Hocquenghem, Roger Jacoby, Curt McDowell and Jack Smith died of
AIDS. They are all discussed in this book, and I honour them all. In 1985 Dave
Sargent, a young American living in Sydney, also died of AIDS. He wrote and
lectured on film, academically and otherwise, and administered the Sydney
Filmmakers' Co-op; he had also edited the Australian gay magazine Campaign,
worked in a gay bookshop, written stories and political essays. All his work
had the openness and flexibility that this range suggests. I first got to know him
through his writings in Gay Information and we corresponded. I finally met
him when I visited Sydney in 1984. I was apprehensive of actually meeting
him - would we get on as well in person as we did in letters? I need not have
worried - he was one of the kindest, most interesting and thoughtful and fun
to giggle with people I have ever known. I have felt few things so bitterly as
his being taken away from me, and the loss to gay and film thought and politics
of such a good person is incalculable.
4
THE SECOND EDITION
This new edition has been revised and expanded throughout, including two
new chapters, one on a 1916 film that had only just been rediscovered when Now
You See It was published and the other, by Julianne Pidduck, bringing the
account up to date from my original cut-off point of 1980.
The revisions to the previously published chapters correct errors and
add new information; the arguments offered are not altered, although I have
included reference to later studies that take things forward, supplementing or
challenging (explicitly or otherwise) my accounts. There has been a huge growth
in lesbian and gay film studies since Now You See It was published, to which
Anneke Smelik and Alexander Doty provide overviews; most of this work
has not addressed the kind of film focused on here but, rather, lesbian/gay
representation, the work of lesbian/gay film-makers not making explicitly
lesbian/gay films, lesbian/gay film audiences and tastes, and how films may
be amenable to lesbian/gay, or Queer, readings. However, in addition to
the articles referenced throughout, there have been a few notable books on
areas that are the subjects of chapters or sections here: Alice Kuzniar's The
Queer German Cinema (including both Weimar and 1970s German cinema),
Jane Giles' The Cinema of Jean Genet, Juan Suarez' Bike Boys, Drag Queens and
Superstars (the 1960s underground) and Thomas Waugh's Hard to Imagine (gay
pornography).
Waugh's book also opens up the question of what is not in Now You See It.
Nothing could be more unequivocally by, for and about gay men than gay
pornography, yet it is touched on here only briefly. While Waugh's magisterial
study makes including porn now redundant, there is no intellectual excuse for
not having included it originally. Also still absent - entirely or virtually - is
address to those directors who were publicly gay and making openly gay films
in the 1970s, such as Chantal Akerman, Lizzie Borden, Lino Brocka, Youssef
Chahine, Michele Citron, Jaime Humberto Hermisillo, Eloy de la Iglesia,
Lothar Lambert, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Yvonne Rainer (for more information
on these see the entries in Raymond Murray's indispensable Images in the Dark1).
Also still unexplored are the European gay and lesbian avant-gardes. I offer no
excuse but ask forgiveness for these continued absences.
5
N O W Y O U SEE IT
The book sticks to its category of films by, for and about lesbians and gay men,
with all its attendant problems. Now You See It was from the outset a gay liber-
ation project. It assumed - and still does - that it matters that lesbians and gay
men speak for themselves (here, in the medium of film), that homosexuality
is openly and directly represented, and that lesbians and gay men have films
that speak both on their behalf and also to them, recognising them as an
audience. This does not imply that only films that do all or most of this are what
homosexual, queer, lesbian, gay, Queer films have been or should be.
In the process of investigation, the by, for and about category frays at the
edges. How open is Vingarne about homosexuality? How gay-made is Anders als
die Anderen and how lesbian-made Madchen in Uniform? How much did these,
or most of the other films in this book, in fact anticipate or count on a lesbian/
gay audience? In what sense is a purely personal cinema (Genet, the US under-
ground) one that speaks for or to gay men or lesbians in general? Such issues
are discussed in the chapters that follow and along with films themselves made
explicitly within or after women's and gay liberation; in Julianne Pidduck's
account of the post-1980 period, the contestation of the category becomes a
defining issue. All these frays in the category register the very historical process
it addresses. That process was, and still is, the attempt to express hitherto largely
unexpressed sexual feelings and practices by means of notions of sexual identity.
This was the form in which it was possible to defend and, lest we forget,
decriminalise, protect, promote and cherish those feelings and practices.
However, any cultural identity, and especially one founded on something as
mercurial as sexuality, is a fragile thing, not necessarily intended, made up
as people went along, never fully realised, always falling short of the complexity
and extensiveness of the reality of and from which it nonetheless seeks to make
sense. It is bound to have frayed edges and even eventually to start to fall apart;
that is an integral part of the account.
* * *
My biggest debt of gratitude for this new edition is to Julianne Pidduck, who
undertook the daunting task of surveying lesbian and gay film since 1980.
Already towards the end of what is now chapter six, I was having to provide lists
and then focus in on representative instances; how much more has Julianne had
to do this with the extraordinary flowering of lesbian and gay film in the past
twenty years. I am grateful to her not only for the splendid job she has done but
also for her support in the revision of the main text.
Many of the people thanked in the first edition must be thanked again, as
well as Jose Arroyo, Jen Haas, Lisa Henderson, Hilary Hinds, Anne Jespersen,
Giorgio Marini, Kobena Mercer, Darrell Moore, Jenni Olson and Anneke Smelik.
In addition, a specific thanks to Pirjo Ahokas, Gunnar Aimer, Anu Koivunen
and Louise Wallenberg for help with materials and suggestions for the new
chapter one.
6
INTRODUCTION
Many people referred to or connected with this book have died since the first
edition, including, of AIDS, the pioneer of gay film history, Vito Russo, and the
German film theorist and critic, Karsten Witte. Tom Waugh's preface to Hard
to Imagine pays tribute to many of them. Fredrik Silverstolpe, one of the founders
of Swedish gay history, who talked with me about Vingarne and supplied
materials on it, and didn't respond to my flirtation, took his life. So did Mark
Finch. I have joined his name to Dave Sargent's in the dedication of this
book. They had much in common. Mark was more glamorous and intellectually
fizzling, more dangerous, but both combined extraordinary intelligence, sparkle
and commitment. Mark was a brilliant scholar and a terrific cultural journalist;
he developed the first gay film season on British (or, I bet, any) television and
did a survey of lesbian and gay representation on TV that was a major factor in
stimulating its increase; he got the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival on
the road before moving to the San Francisco festival. He was a wonderfully
imaginative programmer, who kept his eye on history but was also responsive
to the most experimental film and video, who ensured that the voice of the
most marginalised was heard and that there was equal space for lesbians and gay
men, all the while remembering it was all about enjoyment. I still don't quite
believe he's not around any more.
7
1
SWEDEN 1 9 1 6
Taking off
In 1906 the Russian writer Mikhael Kuzmin published his novel Kryl'ya
(Wings), in which the young protagonist Vanya comes to realise and embrace
his homosexuality, thus acquiring wings of joy. In 1923 the Finnish artist
Magnus Enckell first showed his painting Siivet (Wings) (figure 1.1), in which
a naked young man adjusts the wings of naked boy who yearns upwards to take
off.1 In between, in 1916, the poly-Nordic film director Mauritz Stiller made
in Sweden the film Vingarne (Wings) (figure 1.2), a love story about a painter
and his male model and protege.
In Fredrik Silverstolpe's words, Vingarne is perhaps the first film in history
to deal with homosexual or homoerotic themes' (1999:322). Other films may
yet come to light. So far though, no film before this seems to offer itself as so
remarkably, albeit carefully, gay as Vingarne, not only in its central plot and the
sexuality of its source novelist, scriptwriter, designer, director and at least one
of its stars, but also in its iconography: winged figures of homo-erotic desire.
* * *
Vingarne consists of two parts: a framing story about the making of a film called
'Vingarne' and that film itself. 2
In the framing story (in which all the performers play themselves),
film director Mauritz Stiller catches sight of Carl Milles' sculpture
Vingarne, which gives him the idea of making a film based on Herman
Bang's novel Mikael. He advertises for a 'young, intelligent, good-
looking man' for the central role and an aspirant actor, Nils Asther,
applies for the job. However, in rehearsal Stiller realises Nils is 'far too
young and inexperienced' and casts the more experienced Lars Hanson
in the role alongside the star actress Lili Bech. The film, 'Vingarne', is
made, and after the first screening Nils, who has fallen in love with Lili,
goes to her flat to tell her so; she is unresponsive and he threatens
to kill himself; Egil Eide, the actor who plays Zoret in 'Vingarne',
intervenes and calms him down.
8
SWEDEN 1916: TAKING OFF
Figure 1.1 Magnus Enckell: Siivet (Wings) 1923, Turku Art Museum
'Vingarne' itself begins when Claude Zoret (Eide), out walking one
day, catches sight of an eagle taking off in flight, which gives him the
idea for a sculpture based on the legend of Icarus. He come across
Eugene Mikael 3 (Hanson) painting en plein air and realises that he is
my Icarus in the flesh'. Mikael becomes Zoret's adopted son and model.
Zoret paints a portrait of Princess Lucia de Zamikow (Bech), who
begins an affair with Mikael. Zoret's closest friend, Charles Schwitt
(Albin Laven), tells him that Mikael and the Princess are squandering
9
N O W Y O U SEE IT
all his money, and Mikael even sells the bronze copy of Vingame that
Zoret had given him. Zoret becomes ill and eventually Schwitt sends
for Mikael, but it is too late: in a delirium, Zoret has left his bed and
wandered outside, finally collapsing dead at the foot of the original of
the sculpture. Mikael resists the Princess' attempts to console him and
leaves her.
* * *
Vingame was premiered in Stockholm in 1916 to considerable critical

success (Rossholm 2001:16), although the major Swedish newspaper Dagens
Nyheters noted its 'sensitive subject matter' (Silverstolpe 1999:324). In 1941
a fire in the archives of Svenski Filmindustri destroyed the negatives and other
related material. However there were frame prints on paper and a script in
the Library of Congress in Washington, from which Gosta Werner was able
to reconstruct the shape of the film (Werner 1982, Sopocy 1989), and then in
1987 a copy of the central portion, 'Vingarne', turned up at auction in Norway.
Using the frame prints and script together with this portion of motion picture,
it was possible to produce a version of the film that was premiered at the Swedish
Film Institute in 1987.
Figure 1.2 Vingame'. Mikael poses for Zoret as the youth in the sculpture
(AB Svensk Film Industri)
10
The key personnel involved were all gay. Herman Bangs novel, published
in 1904, was well known and he himself was a notoriously gay figure, a kind of
melancholy version of Oscar Wilde. As Pal Bj0rby notes, 'his theatrical behav-
iour, his hypochondria, his use of make-up and perfume, his outrageous dressing
. . . made him the quintessential homosexual, wide open to a never ending
barrage of ridicule in the Danish daily press' (1986:230—1). The scriptwriter
and designer, Axel Esbensen, was gay (Silverstolpe 1999:322). Mauritz Stiller,
the director, was not only gay but a flamboyant man about town (figure 1.3).
Figure 1.3 Mauritz Stiller
11
N O W Y O U SEE IT
Of Polish (or Russian) origin, he arrived in Stockholm from Finland, pretending

for a time to be German, and proceeded to pass himself off as, and to become,
an important film producer and director. In high and bohemian Stockholm
society, he came to be regarded as the smartest man in town, with dozens of
bespoke suits, four fur coats and fingers awash with diamond rings (Cronowicz
1990:87). As Bengt Idestam-Almquist puts it, he 'had a sure taste and
women loved him. He loved clothes, fabrics, furs' (1967:225). Vingarne was his
twenty-ninth feature film in only five years; he was well established as a director,
although it was only some years later that he had huge success with Herr Ames
pengar (1919), Erotikon (1920) and Gosta Berlings saga (1924), the latter famous
now internationally for being the film that made Garbo a star. One of Stiller's
most important relationships was with Nils Asther, the Danish actor who plays
himself in the framing story in Vingarne, his first film.
While it would be wrong to assume that 'everyone' knew all these to be gay,
certainly there would have been many in the know and, in the cases of Bang and
Stiller, beyond the very narrow confines of Copenhagen and Stockholm. Yet the
fascination of Vingarne is that it manages to be at once blatant and covert. This
might be understood as a conscious strategy: homosexuality was illegal and
morally disapproved of, and state scrutiny of film had been recently (1911)
introduced (Soila et al. 1998:145). Yet it is just as plausible that the film was
simply made out of the habits of gay survival, out of the knowledge of how to
tread the line between openness and evasion. This is what I trace here in three
aspects of the film: the film-within-the film, the framing story and the winged
sculpture common to both.
* * *
Vingarne emphasises the fact that the film within the film is based on Bang's
1904 novel. The credits of'Vingarne' refer to it as 'a drama in four acts from the
famous novel Mikael by Herman Bang' and earlier, when Stiller is discussing
the project with Asther, he takes the novel off the shelf (emphasised in close-
up) and says that his script is 'faithful to the ideas' in it. However, as with other
aspects of Vingarne, 'Vingarne' both plays down the gay dimensions of its
'famous' source and yet replaces them with others of its own.
To some extent the book itself plays a similar game. Bj0rby suggests that
the openly gay Bang nonetheless did not regard homosexuality as fit, morally
or aesthetically, for direct representation, and there is in Mikael neither verbal
declarations of love nor intimations of physical intimacy between Zoret and
Mikael. Yet the book is also full of subcultural signs: much is made of Mikael's
'two faces' and double nature; he presses violets to his cheeks; late at night
in Paris he bumps into a 'flustered' acquaintance in the Tuileries, a well-known
cruising area; he hangs a painting of himself naked over his own bed;
Zoret originally intends to paint him as Alcibiades, who in Plato's Symposium
recounts how he had tried as a youth to use his celebrated beauty to seduce the
12
renownedly promiscuous Socrates; much fuss is made about the discovery in

Sicily of a sculpture of a youth's torso, a talismanic item in the contemporary
gay cultural repertoire. None of this in 'Vingarne', though the very insistence
on the latter's source in Bang might have recalled some of it.
'Vingarne' does however retain some sense of Mikael's masculine beauty. In
the book, one virile character gazes at Mikael 'stunned in manly amazement at
another true masculinity' (Bang n.d.:84). 4 When Zoret suggests that the newly
found, greatly admired torso of a Sicilian youth looks like Mikael, the Princess
laughs and says, 'Is there any beauty at all that doesn't resemble Mikael?' The
film omits such comment by characters, but at the same time makes Mikael
an object of beauty for the camera. When Zoret first sees Mikael, there is what
might be taken as a point-of-view shot: Zoret looks and the film cuts to a shot
of Mikael with a couple of young women. The composition puts Mikael, not
the women, centre frame, where the light falls. When Zoret enters the frame,
his dark cloak and hat contrast to Mikael's white shirt, emphasising Mikael
still more as the centre of attraction (figure 1A). However, we see Mikael before
Zoret does, and with just this disposition of light, and we continue to do so
after Zoret has left. Mikael is lovely for us at least as much as for Zoret. When
he is posing nearly nude for Zoret, he is (naturalistically) placed in the pool of
light coming from the overhead window in the sculptor's studio; Zoret is placed
Figure 1.4 Vingarne: Zoret's first meeting with Mikael (AB Svensk Film Industri)
13
N O W Y O U SEE IT
down left of the screen and his gaze at Mikael prompts our gaze in the same
direction, sharing his point of view alongside him. In the scene where Mikael
first meets the princess, there is a mid shot, of her standing on the stairs in the
light, that is clearly meant to represent the impact of her presence on Mikael.
However, in the subsequent shot, when she has joined him and Zoret, it is
Mikael who is centre frame in the light. The film thus drops the book's explicit,
verbal avowal of male pulchritude while building a sense of it more fully into
the actual presentation of Mikael to the viewer, downplaying the characters'
pleasure in looking at him while facilitating, even inciting ours.
The film also retains from the novel the structure of the central relationship,
in which Mikael is explicitly Zoret's protege, model, adoptive son and sole heir.
By 1916 the master—pupil, artist—model, parent—child configuration consti-
tuted a long established structure of homosexual feeling (cf. the discussion of
pedagogic eros' in chapter 2). The 'great affection of an elder for a younger
man' is a cornerstone of Oscar Wilde's love that dare not speak its name' speech
during his second trial in 1895 (Hyde 1962:201), and the dynamic is present
in both Enckell's Siivet and Kuzmin's Kryl'ya (where its sexual dimension
is unequivocal). It may often appear euphemistic or self-deceiving to us now,
but it was, also, a form in which homosexuality was sincerely idealised, ardently
desired and — we have no warrant to presume otherwise — actually felt and
experienced.
'Vingarne' privileges this relationship morally and emotionally. When
Schwitt tells Zoret that Mikael and the Princess are 'wasting all your money'
('You're the only one who doesn't know it'), Zoret looks off into middle distance
and there is a cut to Mikael and the Princess embracing, in the throws of
what gives Zoret such pain: Mikael's betrayal of their love. As they embrace
screen right, Zoret appears in superimposition on the left; Mikael pulls away
from the Princess and sinks down in the chair, at once the son shamed by his
father and the cheating lover. This sequence underlines the moral and emotional
valencies of the moment, but it also affirms something more important.
Zoret thinks of Mikael and Mikael at once feels Zoret as a presence: here is the
telepathy of transcendent love.
Mikael soon enough recovers from his pang of guilt at this point, indicated
by his scattering petals in a rather determinedly abandoned fashion over the
Princess. At the end of the film however, when Mikael hears that Zoret has
died, his grief and, we may presume, sense of guilt cause him to resist the
Princess' advances and, in the last shot of'Vingarne', to walk out of the frame.
To underline the finality of this, we then have Lars Hanson saying to Lili Bech
at the premiere (in the framing film), 'How could Mikael leave you?' Only with
Zoret's death does Mikael realise that this was his deepest love.
The emphasis on noble love may sound antiquated, but the relationship
is embedded in a distinctly modern world embraced by the film.5 Egil Eide as
Zoret is made to look like Auguste Strindberg in dress and moustache, and thus
carries with him Strindberg's association with progressive ideas on sexuality,
14
including homosexuality, about which he had written sympathetically in the

short story 'Den brottsliga naturen' (Criminal Nature) in his book Giftas
(Married) 1912 (Silverstolpe 1999:324). (There was also contemporary gossip
about Strindberg's gay tendencies (ibid.).) Zoret's (that is, Milles') sculpture is
by no means old fashioned or neo-classical in style but part of a modern Nordic
movement in sculpture. The Princess, a friend of Zoret, who paints her portrait,
lives in chic art nouveau apartments and dresses in the latest fashions, in all of
which the film (and presumably Stiller) takes great pleasure. In short, the homo-
sexuality at the centre of 'Vingarne' is transcendent, but it is also modern love.
* * *
Vingarne s framing story puts all of the above in inverted commas. It seems to
emphasise that the actors in 'Vingarne' are not implicated in its characters'
predilections. Lars Hanson, at the premiere, says he's terrible as Mikael and
can't understand why Mikael leaves the Princess, while Egil Eide (Zoret) says
that he's glad the film is over. In other words, the men who play the lovers in
'Vingarne' seem to want to have nothing to do with it.
This might mean that the film as a whole is distancing itself from the
film within it. However, the obvious precedent for the device, the play within
a play, often turns on the paradox that the inner play may be more truthful than
the outer one: the most famous instance, with, as it happens, Nordic and gay
associations, is Shakespeare's Hamlet, where the performance of 'The Mouse
Trap' flushes out 'the conscience of the king'. By framing its homosexual story
within a desultory heterosexual one, Vingarne can signal homosexuality even as
it apparently withdraws from it.
There are also parallels between the framing and the inner stories. Mauritz
Stiller is looking for a model for the film 'Vingarne', just as Zoret is for the sculp-
ture; Nils becomes infatuated with Lili, just as Mikael does with the Princess
(played of course by Lili); at the end of'Vingarne', Mikael returns emotionally
to Zoret, just as at the end of Vingarne, Nils is, at any rate, available for Mauritz.
There is no direct implication of a liaison between Nils Asther and Mauritz
Stiller in Vingarne (even though there was in real life), yet their manner of meeting
- Stiller puts a small ad in a paper for a 'young, intelligent, good-looking
man' - is far more suggestive of gay contact than, as in 'Vingarne', Zoret
simply coming across Mikael in the countryside. Indeed, what with Stiller in the
film taking his inspiration from Bang and Milles and 'Vingarne' being very much
his project, as well as his off-screen notoriety, one could consider his appearing
as himself in Vingarne a kind of cinematic coming out. Characteristically (of the
film), this outing by means of cultural reference goes along with not playing a
rather more clearly homosexual role in 'Vingarne' (nor allowing his lover to) -
signalling with one hand, pulling the door to with the other.
* * *
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Figure 1.5 Vingarne'. Zoret shows the princess his / Millers' sculpture Vingarne
(AB Svensk Film Industri)
It is though the sculpture (figure 1.5), the image that runs across both framing
and inner film, as well as giving both their title, that is central to the films
strategy of homosexual evasion and declaration. Its creator, Carl Milles, regarded
as one of the most important Swedish artists of the period, may or may not
have been gay: his most recent biographer, Erik Naslund (1991), argues that
he probably was, although earlier biographers and Milles himself denied
it (Soderstrom 1999b:281-4). What seems clear is that the sculpture itself
was an important item in contemporary gay cultural taste. Soderstrom shows
the importance of art, and especially sculpture, in the development of elite
gay male culture in the period, specifically in Stockholm but connected to such
culture across Northern Europe. Initially such work was neo-classical, precise
and finished, most often centring on boys and Mediterranean themes. However,
in the 1850s another mode emerged, 'more masculine and Nordic' (ibid.:278),
rougher hewn, focused on grown men and taking as subject matter both Nordic
history and myth and tall, sinewy Nordic body types. In Mikael, Bang has
Mikael, originally intended to be the Greek Alcibiades, posing for Zoret as a
young 'barbaric' German soldier slaying Roman Caesar, insistently embodying
Nordic not classical beauty. Such works were on public display, notably in the
Djurgard park in Stockholm that was also a gay meeting place. Milles' Vingarne
was originally (1908) displayed on the island of Lidingo, the site of the film
16
studios. This is where Stiller in the film seems to come across it, presumably
by means of old footage, since in 1914 it was moved to a site in central
Stockholm opposite the opera house, on the way to Djurgard.
The sculpture at the heart of Vingarne is then part of a tradition of gay
male cultural production and reception. The fact that it makes Stiller in Vingarne
think of both classical myth and Herman Bang suggests its strong gay reso-
nances. It shows a sinewy youth on his knees with his arms reaching up into
the wings of an eagle. Milles originally called it Gosse medorn (Boy with Eagle),
then Vingarne, and it has been seen as representing the 'artist's longing to spread
his wings'. 6 This however does not catch the extraordinary ambiguity and
sensuality of the sculpture. What is going on? Is the youth being carried off
by the eagle or grabbing hold of it? What does he feel, what does he want? As
Soderstrom notes (ibid.:284), the youth's 'outstretched arms embrace the eagle's
outstretched wings as if caressing its thighs, and his head bent backwards with
his eyes closed presses against the eagle's powerful breast'. The erotic charge is
weird but it seems even more perverse not to note it.
The thrilling ambiguity of Milles' Vingarne relates more generally to
winged figures of homoerotic desire in mainly Nordic and Teutonic art of the
period. Examples are given in table 1.1. The recurrence of this motif has many
implications. First, it may be seen as, in Thomas Waugh's term (1996), an alibi,
an excuse to show naked men under the cloak of classical respectability. Often
these subjects even show two men together in a potentially erotically suggestive
pose: Andersen's angel, supposedly wrestling with Jacob, actually looks as if
he's about to kiss him (figure 1.6). However, other, unwinged figures were
also available for male nudity and congress. In Bang's novel, Zoret abandons one
such, Alcibiades, for another, painting Mikael as a German soldier, a magnifi-
cently naked 'Victor', perhaps evoking another gay favourite, Max Kruse's
1881 sculpture in Berlin of Der Siegesbote von Marathon (The Victor at Marathon)
(Sternweiler 1984:74). In Carl Dreyer's film Michael (Germany 1924),
Zoret paints Michael as a nude representing Der Suchender ('The Seeker').
A hundred and more alibis were available: gods, heroes, athletes, wrestlers, all
unwinged.
Wingedness invokes the sky and, generally, heaven. Taking flight is, mini-
mally, joyous (as is explicit in its metaphorical use in Kuzmin's novel) or a way
of expressing sexual ecstasy, but it also suggests transcendence. In Plato the
soul is imagined as having wings: to fly is to rise above too solid flesh to spiritual
realms. Winged masculinity can thus evoke homosexuality as noble eroticism
or even suggest an experience that rises above sexuality altogether. It lends itself
to both the idealisation of homosexuality and its sublimation, both of which
could be devoutly desired or genuinely felt.
References to specific myths provide inflections to this homo-erotic potential.
Milles' Vingarne in the film Vingarne suggests two of these. The film explicitly
references Icarus, first in a prologue to 'Vingarne' ('This drama is a modern
version of the classic myth of Icarus') and then in Zoret being 'reminded of the
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Table 1.1 Winged homo-erotic imagery
1774 Germany Ganymed Goethe poem; set to music by

Schubert in 1817
1791 France Le Sommeil Anne-Louis painting; a fairy boy
d'Endymion Girodet-Trioson smiles at a naked youth
asleep
1804 Denmark Ganymede Bertel sculpture 8
Thorwaldsen
1869 GB Dedalus and Icarus Frederic Leighton painting
1870 GB A Vision of Love Simeon Solomon book with illustrations:
Revealed in Sleep 'Loves' represented as
winged male figures
1889 GB Superest Invictus Amor Elihu Vedder painting; Love as
winged youth on a
pedestal
1892 Germany Lucifer Fidus drawing, published in
Der Eigene9 1903
1895 Finland Hartaus (Devotions) Hugo Simberg painting; one dark
haired, naked male
angel looks at another
fair haired one at
prayer
1903? Germany Ganymedes anon drawing published in
Der Eigene
1903? Germany Der verlorene Sohn Fidus drawing published in
(The Lost Son) Der Eigene; portrayed as
naked youth with
wings
1903? Italy? Icarus Canova? sculpture; photo
published in Der Eigene
as a work in the
possession of Magnus
Hirschfeld
1904 Germany Um eine seele Sascha Schneider illustration for book
(About a Soul) Silberlow by Karl May;
naked winged youth
standing over another
prone at his feet.
1906 Russia Kryl'ya Mikhail Kuzmin novel
1906 Germany Ganymede Otto Greiner drawing
1906-7 Finland Enkell Mikael Torsten painting; St Michael
lohikaameen Wasastjerna and the Defeated
voittaneena Dragon
1908 Sweden Vingarne Carl Milles sculpture
1911 Norway 10 Jacob and the Angel Hendrik Christian sculpture
Andersen
1916 Sweden Vingarne Mauritz Stiller film
1923 Finland Siivet Magnus Enckell painting
18
Figure 1.6 Hendrik Christian Andersen: Giacobbe e I'angelo (Jacob and the Angel) 1911.
(Rome: Museo Andersen)
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legend' and getting the idea for a sculpture' of it by the sight of an eagle taking
flight. Icarus is not necessarily or traditionally a gay reference point. However,
the fact that Stiller, in the framing narrative, is inspired by the sight of the
sculpture itself to make a film based on the notoriously homosexual Bang's
homosexual novel indicates that the Icarus legend can also be taken homo-
sexually. Enckell's painting (figure 1.1) suggests the eroticism of one man fixing
wings to another, while Mark Finch points out that there is a parallel between
the story of'Vingarne' and the Icarus legend: 'Michael fails to follow the Platonic
master/student archetype and disobeys his teacher'7 (1987:30; the parallel is
strengthened by the fact that Mikael is Zoret's adopted son just as Icarus was
the master Daedalus' actual son). The sculpture gives its name to 'Vingarne'
and is the token of love given by Zoret to Mikael, a love that Mikael betrays
by selling it. It can be taken as emblematising and embodying their relationship
in all its spiritual yearning ecstasy. Both men may be Icarus. Mikael is the
evident model and briefly takes up the pose of the youth in the sculpture
while posing for Zoret. However, at the end of the film, just before Zoret
collapses at the foot of the sculpture, he too takes up the youth's pose of
upstretched arms. Perhaps both Mikael and Zoret have aimed too high in their
homo-erotic liaison - but, suggests the sculpture as Icarus, how deliriously
sensual the yearning.
In the legend, as the prologue to 'Vingarne' reminds us, Icarus' father,
Daedalus, made wings for him. While hitching a ride from an eagle, as in Milles'
statue, might still refer to Icarus' ambitions, it is stretching a point. A much
more obvious reference is Ganymede, the youth who was carried off to be Zeus'
cup bearer in heaven, either by Zeus himself disguised as an eagle or by an eagle
sent by Zeus to do the deed. This is a much more explicitly homo-erotic theme,
with a rich artistic pedigree (Barkan 2000), and was used by Strindberg as a
reference point in the 'Den brottsliga naturen' (Silverstolpe 1999:324). The
particular ambiguity of the Ganymede myth is well suggested by the sculpture:
is the youth being ravished by the eagle or is he straining up for contact
with it? The implication of rape allows for representations suggesting that it
is happening against his will or, and this is especially likely in a homosexual
context, that desire is stronger than will ('I want it but I don't want to want it;
I can't help it'); however, the 1903 version in the explicitly gay magazine Der
Eigene leaves no doubt that the youth wants it (figure 1.7).
Ganymede is a more urgent and troubling representation of homoeroticism
than Icarus, but also one less amenable to hetero or non sexual interpretation
(though there is a long, tortuous tradition of trying so to interpret it (Tutivillus
1990)). In the last pages of Kryl'ya, Kuzmin makes the comparison direct and
telling. The composer Ugo speaks of his vision for a new composition:
Icarus falls, and Phaethon after him; Ganymede speaks: 'My poor
brothers, of all who sought to fly up to the heavens, only I have
remained, for it was pride and childish curiosity which lured you toward
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the sun, while I was lifted up in the beating wings of a love beyond
mortal ken.'(1972:109).
The Icarus legend tends towards the failure of transcendent aspiration, whereas
Ganymede affirms its ravishing fulfilment. For Silverstolpe, the sculpture in
Vingarne is not named as Ganymede just because it would have mobilised ideas
of homoeroticism too explicit and (I want to add) intense and incendiary to be
tolerated in Sweden in 1916. I think this is right, yet in forcing the reading
back on to Icarus, the film, as I've suggested, also sets in motion the albeit more
tragic homoerotic possibilities of that myth too. As throughout, the film takes
with one hand (not saying it's Ganymede) but gives with the other (queering
Icarus anyway).
* * *
A film director, well known as being gay, virtually outs himself by putting
himself in a film playing a director inspired by a gay sculpture to make a film
based on a famous gay novel by a notoriously gay writer, but does not put
himself or his lover into that film; the gay sculpture is by someone who was not
well known to be gay, the novel depicts a relationship that could be read as
chaste, the film of it makes its central character look like someone sympathetic
to homosexuals though himself almost infamously heterosexual; the film within
the film is both disowned on screen by its actors and yet feels more intense and
truthful than the lives of those actors; the winged embodiment of homoerotic
desire in the film strains for an ecstatic physical union that can also be taken to
be, or may even be, a flight from physicality. Vingarne exists only in fragmentary
form and it was almost certainly made quickly, without excessive deliberation;
both of these may account for some of these apparent shifts and paradoxes. They
are also though characteristic of a culture of passing and idealisation.
In part, they reproduce the strategies of those gay men who managed to
tread the line between flamboyance and discretion, such that 'everyone' knew,
yet what it was they knew was kept out of sight. There might be any amount
of sub-cultural signalling but nothing declaring and owning passionate physical
attachment between men. If the latter was in some sense shown it was also
idealised, as something that transcended the urgencies of sexual impulse, that
reached up for erotic apotheosis. Both the habits and chutzpah of flamboyant
passing and the idealisation of homosexuality made the making of this gay film
possible. It spread wings for all to see and so hid gay love in plain sight.
22
2
WEIMAR
Less and more like the others
In Germany at more or less the beginning and end of the Weimar republic, two
remarkable films appeared: Anders als die Andern (.Different from the Others) 1919
and Madchen in Uniform {Girls in Uniform) 1931. Both deal with homosexuality
centrally, unambiguously and positively.
In the German film context they do not stand quite so alone. Though often
quite negative, there were other films depicting homosexuality. Michael 1924,
was a rather less homosexually committed remake of Vingame. Der Fall des
Generalstabs-Oberst Redl 1931 dealt directly with the Colonel Redl scandal later
used by John Osborne in A Patriot for Me 1966 and Istvan Szabo in Redl ezredes
1985. At least one of the several films dealing with Frederick the Great
(Fridericus-Rex-Zyklus 1922) pointed to his homosexuality, although all the
films dealing with Ludwig II of Bavaria managed to keep quiet about his (Theis
1984b: 104—6). A lesbian and a gay man are central to the plots of, respectively,
Die Biichse der Pandora 1928 and Geschlecht in Fesseln 1928, the latter notable,
despite the fact that it ends unhappily for all concerned, for the tender phys-
icality shown between the two men in prison (Kuzniar 2000:40-1). Gays
are part of the general ambience of decadence in two of the films about the
master-criminal Dr Mabuse (Dr Mabuse der Spieler 1921 /2 and Das Testament des
DrMabuse 1933) and in films, of which there were apparently many, like Nachte
der Weltstadt, in which lesbians dancing together were shown as characteristic
of cosmopolitan nightlife (Moreck 1926). Other films kept the gay references
more ambiguous: Aus eines Mannes Madchenjahren 1919 is about a gay? hermaph-
rodite; La Gargonne 1925, based on an explicitly lesbian book, toned down the
sexuality of its career woman protagonist though it was there for those in
the know; Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray 1917 was, like Wilde's novel, open to
gay interpretations.
In addition to these more or less explicit images, there were many films of
lesbian/gay appeal. There was a string of'Hosenrolle' films, in which the female
star spent a great deal of her time disguised as a man and entangled with a
woman — titles include Exzellenz Unterrock 1920, Dona Juana 1927, Der Geiger
von Florenz 1927, and the original version of Viktor und Viktoria 1933. This
extends back to Jugend undTollheit in 1912 and well into the Nazi period with
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Capriccio in 1938 (Gramann and Schlupmann 1981:80-8). Acht Madels im Boot

1932 and Ich fiir Dich, Du fur Mich 1934 both dealt with female groups
(a sporting club and Nazi land girls), evoking the intensity and strength of
female bonding. The male physique was celebrated in an all-male context in the
first ten minutes of Wege zu Kraft und Schonheit 1925, the whole of which had
numerous shots of half-naked athletes of both sexes. There are other films too
that can be read as gay, notably those directed by F. W. Murnau (Wood 1976)
and in particular Der Knabe in Blau 1919, based on Gainsborough's painting -
not only was the latter a favourite in gay circles in the period, but a scene in
which the boy in blue steps out of the painting and leads the hero Thomas to a
secret hiding place to find a jewel perhaps had a gay feel to it (Eisner 1973:
122-3, Theis 1984b:106-8, Waugh 1979). Beyond all this, there was ageneral
openness about sexuality in German cinema. There were the Aufklarungsfilme
(enlightenment films) dealing with social, mainly sexual, problems', of which
Anders is an example. Two of the most famous films of the period, Die Biichse der
Pandora and Der blaue Engel 1930, dealt with the power of heterosexual female
sexuality, embodied in the incandescence of Louise Brooks and Marlene
Dietrich. And there was a flourishing heterosexual pornography (Koch 1989,
Stark 1982).
All this is of a piece with Weimar Germany's sexual reputation, crystallised
for English-speaking people in Christopher Isherwood's Berlin novels and their
adaptation as the musical Cabaret. Liza Minnelli belting her hopes out at the
end of a Hollywood movie may not be historical authenticity, but general
notions of the 'divine decadence' of pre-Nazi Germany are not pure myth either:
Berlin, at any rate, probably deserved its reputation as the sex capital of the
world.
Certainly that was how it was widely perceived at the time. Isherwood
only moved to Berlin because, as he later put it, 'Berlin meant boys' (1977:10).
Hostile foreign observers were no less convinced that Germany was characterised
by sexual depravity. Ambroise Got, a French attache in Berlin, saw Germany's
demoralised post-war condition expressed in a febrile hedonism, of which
homosexual pleasures were major specimens. He gives a vivid account of wan-
dering out one Sunday morning in October 1923 for a cup of coffee and coming
upon the Konditorei Karlsbad. It turns out the Karlsbad has a floorshow, a
young man, eyes widened by morphine, with ripped shirt and bare legs, dancing
wildly and indefatigably to a rhythm that is 'at once muted and savage'. To
make matters worse, groups of young men, who have been partying all night,
stream in and one of them 'meeting up with his friend, throws himself on him
and frenziedly, without caring who sees — and why need he? — kisses him full
on the mouth'. As he leaves in haste, Got muses 'Will the debauchery last the
whole of Sunday right up to Monday morning?' (1923:674-5).
No doubt people like Isherwood and Got were responsible for making
Berlin's sex life seem, according to view, more infernal or more glamorous, more
wretched or more fun than it really was, but there does seem to have been a great
24
WEIMAR
deal of it, and I speak now only of lesbian/gay matters. Adele Meyer's book Lila
Ndchte (1981) details the lesbian scene in Berlin in the period and in both
quantity and variety it makes even New York in the 1970s look inadequate. You
could buy gay guides, in some cases aimed at heterosexual tourists, detailing
the extensive lesbian and gay nightlife of Berlin. There were gay and lesbian
meeting places, magazines, novels, even a theatre (Theater des Eros 1921-4)
(Theis and Sternweiler 1984, von Lengerke 1984) and there was a gay move-
ment, large enough to have different organisations and overlapping in part with
the women's movement (Adam 1987:17-25, Baumgardt 1984, Pieper 1984,
Steakley 1975). The lesbian/gay organisations, like so much else in Weimar's
sexual culture, had their roots in the late nineteenth century, and had links with
other movements of the time, not only feminism but the 'life-style' movements
(Lebensreformbewegungen) such as vegetarianism, nudism, pacifism, fitness, as
well as more traditional politics, socialism especially but even at times Nazism.
To all of this one might add the general sense of experimentation - or crisis
and instability — in Weimar Germany's political, economic and artistic culture, 1
conditions in which new ideas and styles of sexuality could also flourish. Yet the
uncertainty and riskiness of the times may also account for the fact that, given
the development of sexual culture in the period, there are all the same only two
lesbian/gay films. Both were made possible but also blocked and deformed by
the conditions of Weimar culture.
Anders als die Andern

The title Anders als die Andern is generally translated as Different from the Others,
but this misses the play on words in the German. According to Paul Werner
(1990:95), it derives from a popular phrase among gays of the period: "We,
thank God, are other than other people". This is very upbeat, but the film must
also have echoed the novel with the same title by Bill Forster, published in
1904. Here the main character, Herbert, falls in love with another boy at school,
Ernst.2 They go on a hiking holiday together, and for Herbert there are moments
of troubling rapture: seeing Ernst strip off for a swim, cuddling him in bed
when he is crying. But Ernst is straight and as they grow older rejects Herbert.
The latter goes into decline but nonetheless decides that he will no longer keep
silent about 'the feelings that are the kernel of his being'. He reads out a poem
about Ernst at a soiree and as a result loses his job. Brutally rebuffed again by
Ernst, he kills himself in front of a train. The film Anders als die Andern does not
share this story line, yet it does have some of the same ingredients: an adolescent
gay love insistently presented as wholly lacking in coarseness, a recognition
of the importance of what we would now call coming out, an unhappy ending.
The film is situated somewhere between the novel's purity and fatality and the
upbeat defiance of thanking God for one's otherness.
The version of Anders that is most easily seen today lasts about twenty
minutes. The print quality is poor and it has inter-titles in cyrillic script. Most
25
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histories of the German cinema mention or footnote the film only as a curiosity
and yet it was not a little film', produced and shown on the margins of the
cinema of the day. It was a full feature-length film with three rising stars in
it, Conrad Veidt, Reinhold Schiinzel and Anita Berber, as well as an appearance
by Magnus Hirschfeld, the leader of the most prominent gay organisation of
the time. It opened in one of the major Berlin cinemas, the Apollo-Theater, and
was fully reviewed in the press, where it was recognised as another of the highly
successful run of Aufklarungsfilme. It was also straightaway news. The police
banned it in Vienna, Munich and Stuttgart; there was uproar at many screen-
ings, with walk-outs in Berlin led, to the accompaniment of boos and hisses,
by soldiers in uniform. (A fascinating detail this: the military still represented
a major conservative force in Germany but all the major homosexual scandals
of the past had centred on soldiers.) It was widely debated (Wolff 1986:191—3,
Belach and Jacobsen 1990:25—36), and such was the controversy that a public
forum of doctors, scientists and writers was held at the PrinzeB-Theater in
Berlin to defend the film against its vociferous detractors. As Wolfgang Theis
observes, 'despite, or perhaps precisely because of, these expressions of dis-
pleasure, the film was an out-and-out box office success' (1984a:28). Why then
are there now only fragments of a supposedly obscure film?
The critical reception of the film was for the most part favourable and it was
a commercial success, yet in August 1920, just over a year after the premiere, it
was banned (Steakley 1987:152-5). Though there had been a liberalisation of
expression with the establishment of the republic, the constitution still allowed
for film censorship. The Aufklarungsfilme, and the pornography confused with
them (doubtless correctly in some cases), caused concern: Anders was not the
only film whose screenings occasioned rioting in the cinemas and protests outside
(Kracauer 1947:44-7, Monaco 1976:52-4). However, the censor board's main
brief was less to rid cinemas of filth than to protect youth and ban films that gave
a bad image of Germany. Anders was presumably guilty on both counts.
The ban was not total. The film could still be shown 'to doctors and those
concerned with medicine, in places of learning and scientific institutions', which
suggests that the court perceived it as an educational work rather than pornog-
raphy (Lamprecht 1968:11), but the ruling had the effect of marginalising it.
In 1927 it was re-released in a shortened version as part of Hirschfeld's wider
ranging Gesetze derLiebe, which was also censored to ribbons (Theis 1984a:30).
Some time in the late twenties or early thirties Gesetze was shown in the Soviet
Union, where there had been a temporary liberalisation in the situation of
homosexual people, and this accounts for the cyrillic inter-titles in the copy
that survives. Perhaps its truncated state is due to its being shortened to fit into
a film covering various aspects of sexuality; or perhaps it was cut in the USSR
with the reintroduction of anti-gay legislation and repression in 1934; or
perhaps just this bit was saved by a gay man who could not risk hiding more.
Whatever the explanation, even this fragment is precious, for in May 1933 the
Nazis stormed and destroyed the holdings of Hirschfeld's organisation. Since
26
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most screenings accompanied Hirschfeld's lectures, it is likely that all the

German copies of the film were destroyed then or soon after.
Even in its present fragmented and murky form Anders is a film that audiences
can still find moving and stirring. There are essentially two elements: a love
story and a lecture. The account that follows is based on a detailed synopsis
published in the year of its release by theJahrbuch fiir sexuelle Zwischenstufen\ the
sections not in brackets are what remain in the extant prints.
Famous violinist Paul Korner (Veidt) reads in the paper of the

apparently inexplicable suicides of three young men; he thinks he can
guess the reason. (In his mind's eye he sees an unending line of women
and men processing beneath a sword of Damocles with §175 marked
on it. He takes on as his pupil, and falls in love with, a young man, Kurt
Sivers (Fritz Schulz)). In a park, Paul and Kurt encounter Franz Bollek
(Schiinzel), a youth whom Paul had known fleetingly. (After some
misgivings, Kurt's parents allow him to stay with Paul, and Paul's
parents, who have tried to persuade him to marry, learn from a doctor
that nothing can be done to change his proclivities. Paul and Kurt
appear in a concert together during which) Franz breaks into Paul's flat.
He is discovered by Kurt on his return who struggles with him until
Paul arrives, at which point Franz says to Kurt, 'Don't be so grand,
you're only his paid boy'. Paul and Franz struggle, till the latter is sent
packing. (Kurt is so distraught that he leaves Paul, goes to work in a
bar, tells his sister Else (Berber) no-one is to look for him.) Paul thinks
back over his life: (his love for a fellow pupil, Max, at school, leading
to his dismissal; his visit when a student to a brothel, where he was
overcome with revulsion); his visits to a sex researcher (Hirschfeld),
who assured him he can serve humanity as a homosexual, and to a
hypnotist who tried unsuccessfully to cure him; and meeting Franz
at a gay dance, taking him home and finding he was a blackmailer.
Roused from his memories, he tears up one of Franz's blackmail letters.
(He goes with Else, who has fallen in love with him, to a lecture
given by Hirschfeld and she realises and accepts the truth about him.
Meanwhile, Franz has been to the police and) both he and Paul are sent
to jail, the former for blackmail, the latter for homosexuality. When
Paul comes out of jail, he has lost all former friends and cannot get
work; he finally poisons himself. (Kurt hears the news and at Paul's
death-bed [figure 2.1} threatens to kill himself, but a doctor persuades
him he should put his energies into fighting for the repeal of §175. The
film ends with a shot of the statute book and a hand magically wiping
away §175.)
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Figure 2.1 Anders als die Andern: Kurt weeps over Paul's body — a tragic ending but also
the event precipitating Kurt into gay activism. (National Film Archive)
What often strikes audiences today about the film is what seems a discrepancy
between the tragic, down-beat story part of the film — yet another gay film with
an unhappy ending — and the unambiguously affirmative character of the lecture
elements. This has partly to do with what is missing, notably the more up-beat
ending of Kurt's vow to fight for homosexual freedom which could mobilise
spectator identification for the film's cause. Yet the tone of the story part of
the film is ambivalent, partly because it is much more fully rooted in the
conventions of German cinema of the time and partly because it is founded
on a disquieting tension between competing contemporary definitions of gay
identity.
The film context

The story in Anders is more caught up in the norms of contemporary film
conventions than the lecture, due in part to the director, Richard Oswald,
who had the idea for the film (Wolff 1986:190) and was not, so far as we
know, gay. Hirschfeld was not only the 'medical advisor' but co-scriptwriter
with Oswald, and there is no reason to suppose he did not fully participate in
the writing, but he may not have given much attention to the built-in impli-
cations of genre, cast and film style and it is in these that some of the film's
ambiguities lie.
28
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The Aufklarungsfilme were a series of films using a melodramatic format

to deal with social problems (Hagener 2000), a genre with which Oswald was
particularly associated, possibly even being its inventor. Among the 'problems'
dealt with in his films were pacifism (Das eiserne Kreuz 1915), alcoholism {Das
Laster 1915), venereal disease {Es iverde Licht! 1916/17, with sequels in 1917
and 1918) and prostitution {Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen 1918 and Prostitution
1921, in which Magnus Hirschfeld again participated as specialist advisor)
(Kaul and Scheuer 1970, Belach and Jacobsen 1990). Afklarungsfilme are some-
times described as social reform tracts and sometimes as pornography, and it is
clear that, though developed originally as a label for films with a high liberal
moral purpose, it was an umbrella term under which films with titles like Hyenas
of Lust and The Road to Damnation could find shelter. What unites them all are
the use of the story form to deal with social issues, the way they recognize
personal and especially sexual issues as social matters, the combination of a
declaration of moral purpose (however hypocritical or opportunistic in some
cases) with the depiction of social ills, and the general orientation to treat the
subject matter, whatever it might be, as a 'problem'. It was a widely used
and recognized label in the publicity and discussion of the films, and as such
established expectations and interpretative possibilities for Anders s first
audiences.
On the one hand, the genre's more salacious reputation may have made
some scenes seem more titillating to contemporary audiences than to us. A
conga line of androgynous-looking women and men at the ball where Paul
picks up Franz; the way Paul stands behind Franz when he takes him home and
momentarily caresses his (fully clothed) chest — such images may have carried
more of a frisson because people expected to see something thrilling, as well as
because they were genuinely taboo-breaking. The reaction of shocked titillation
(all those soldiers walking out) may well have been responding to a prurience
which did characterise many Aufklarungsfilme (though not Oswald's). On the
other hand, their tendency to construct the issues covered as 'problems' also
meant that audiences were used to seeing such subjects as matters that needed
dealing with, curing, even eradicating. The plot of Anders makes it absolutely
clear that the 'problem' is social attitudes towards homosexuality, as legitimated
by §175 of the penal code (outlawing homosexual relations between men).
These attitudes make blackmail possible, cause Paul to be thrown in prison, to
be refused work, to kill himself — the downward trajectory of the narrative is at
every point, bar one, set in motion by hostile social attitudes. That one exception
is however significant: it is Pauls act of picking up Franz. Up to this point his
life, especially his relationship with Kurt, has been basically happy; it is an act
of lust, of gay desire, that brings about his downfall. Thus although the overall
intention of the plot is to stress the problems caused by social attitudes and
the law, an intention spelt out in Hirschfeld's lecture, it would be as easy to
take the film as showing that it is gay lust itself that causes, or simply is, the
problem.
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
Anders is, like other Aufklarungsfilme, basically realist in approach, yet there
is another dimension to it, closer to the fantastic cinema of the period. Oswald
was equally at home with this tradition, with credits including Der Hund
von Baskerville 1914, Hoffmanns Erzahlungen 1916. Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray
1917, PeerGynt 1918 and UnheimlicheGeschichten (based on Poe) 1919- Schiinzel
and Veidt, the stars of Anders, were two of the actors Oswald used most regularly
in these and other films. Schiinzel's mischievous, malevolent, rather crude
quality is well-suited to the role of Franz, but the casting of Veidt as Paul is a
major factor in the 'negative' quality one feels in the story part of the film.
Veidt was not yet a major international star when he made Anders but was
already establishing a distinctive screen image. On the one hand, he was hand-
some, quite a heart-throb. In Unheimliche Geschichten (Strange Tales), made and
released within months of Anders, he plays the hero figure in each of the tales,
and in the first two ('The Apparition' and 'The Black Cat') he is the handsome
stranger who seduces the heroine. He was frequently cast as the love interest
in films and was a popular pin-up in the magazines of the time (figure 2.2).
It is important to remember this when seeing Anders'. Paul is being played by
someone considered at the time to be attractive and seductive.
Yet even in the films where he is the lover, there is always an ambivalence.
The tales in Unheimliche Geschichten are framed by a scene in a bookshop where
symbolic figures, played by the three stars who also appear in each tale, read each
other the tales we see; in this framing device, Veidt plays Death, thus casting
a disconcerting pall over his roles in the tales. In Der Gang in derNacht (Journey
in the Night, 1920), he plays the lover of the heroine Lily; he is a painter who
has gone blind, is cured but, because of the urgency of his feelings for Lily,
goes blind again. He is the handsome true love but is doomed, and his love
is in part what draws him on to his tragic fate. Even as a lover, Veidt's image
has disturbing overtones which clearly inform his melancholy role in Anders.
His roles as lover are in any case not what made Veidt most famous. He was
handsome, but his tall, gaunt figure, drawn, pallid, even skeletal face and dark,
brooding eyes meant that he could seem tragic or sinister, and often the two
together. He would have made a good Dracula, in one interpretation of the role:
the man doomed to live by performing despicable deeds of seduction, thus
attractive because seductive, sinister for the deeds, and tragic because he is in
the grip of a compulsion. Although he never did play a vampire, many of his
roles have this quality, most obviously his most famous of the time, Cesare in
Das Kabinett des Dr. Caligari, 1920, the somnambulist who murders and rapes
under the spell of Dr. Caligari, a film not without queer implications (Kuzniar
2000:30-2).
The duality of the vampire, of Veidt - attractive yet repulsive, sinister yet
tragic — is realized not only in his cadaverous appearances but in the structure
of the films. He played the classic dual role of Jekyll and Hyde in Der Januskopf
1920; in Orlacs Hande 1924 he is a pianist who has the hands of a murderer
grafted onto his after an accident and comes to believe he has murdered his own
30
WEIMAR
Figure 2.2 Conrad Veidt - the star of Anders as pin-up. (National Film Archive)
31
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father; in Der Student von Prag 1926 he sells his mirror image to a devil figure,
only to find the image taking on a life of its own, killing his beloved's father
and eventually hounding him to his own death. As has often been noted by
film historians (Kracaner 1947:23, Schliipmann 1984, Kiss 2000), such roles
are characteristic of silent German cinema, and Veidt is perhaps its quintes-
sential star. What is interesting here is how much these roles and this image
coincide with characteristic ways of depicting homosexuality. Das Bildnis des
Dorian Gray, even if its homosexual reference is not crystal clear, is paradig-
matic: the man about town with the guilty secret, the sexual secret, that leads
to tragedy and death, of those around him and ultimately himself. The vampire
image, common in much of the gay writing of the time, is easily taken as a gay
image, notably in the 1922 Nosferatu (see below).
Veidt's vampire qualities and the repetition in his films of the duality motif
have an impact on his role in Anders. The film does not develop these elements
at length, but they are there in the way Paul steals up behind Franz when he
first takes him home and caresses his chest with his long, white hand, in the
strong contrast of Paul's deathly white face against a plain black backdrop in
his suicide scene, in the clash of Paul's secret sex life (where he picks up Franz)
and his life with Kurt, and in the fact, reinforced by the sequence in which Paul
reads of friends' 'inexplicable' suicides, that blackmail works on the homo-
sexual's terror of exposure, his secret life revealed.
Despite these overtones of Fate and Tragedy, Anders is still an Aufklarungsfilm,
essentially social in perspective, something achieved especially by the way the
camera is used. This remains, as was still usual in German cinema, at ninety
degrees to the action, but positioned anywhere from an extreme close-up to a long
shot. Scenes start not with an establishing shot but with a close-up and only
then is there a cut back to show where the particular character stands in relation
to others. This is sometimes effected by the use of an iris: the face of the character
is seen centre of the frame but everything else is blacked out around it; then the
circle containing the face widens, the black recedes, to reveal the space around
the character. This technique, and the rigour with which it is used in Anders, is
very effective for the social treatment of issues that are lived as personal problems.
It presents first the intensity of personal feeling and then shows how this makes
sense in a wider, social setting.
Two examples are the scenes where Paul picks up Franz and where Kurt
catches Franz in Paul's flat. The former begins on an iris close-up of Franz,
with a malevolent expression on his face, followed by one of Paul, looking with
an expression of troubled desire to his right, and then cutting back to Franz, still
in iris close-up, turned to his left and making a clear sexual come-on. Only now
does the film cut back to a mid shot without iris, showing them in relation to
each other and standing in front of groups of lesbians and gay men dancing
together, in couples and later in a conga line. The feelings of the two men -
Franz's malignancy, Paul's troubled lust - are clearly shown to us, intensified by
close-up, but that is then put into its social context, a gay dance. This is not just
32
WEIMAR
a particular encounter, but a typical one. Franz turns and walks in amongst the
dancers; Paul gestures for a glass of champagne and then follows Franz. There
is no return to close-up. Paul is drawn into the world represented by Franz and
the dancers, drawn into the dangerous gay milieu that will bring about his
downfall. This is not just a personal tragedy, but a consequence of a certain form
of social organisation, the gay underworld, breeding ground of blackmail.
The second example is also the turning point of the film. As Kurt and Franz
struggle, Paul rushes in, separates them and starts fighting with Franz. Rather
than stay with this, however, the film cuts to a head and shoulders shot of Kurt,
his hand to his throat, an expression of profound shock in his face. This is a
sufficiently distant shot for us still to be able to see Paul and Franz fighting
behind him; the shot lasts a long time, so that Kurt's intense feelings of shock
are counterposed to the struggle, between homosexual and blackmailer, that
continues behind him. The struggle articulates and situates the dimensions of
Kurt's horror at the revelation of Paul's involvement with the gay underworld.
The close-up gives us the intensity of Kurt's feeling, but the camera position
allows us to see what that feeling is about, its wider implications beyond Kurt's
reactions.
The ambivalence in the story part of Anders, the pull of positive and
negative elements, derives in part then from ambivalences built right into
the Aufklarungsfilm genre, Veidt's image and contemporary film style. All of
these made possible a serious social study in film of a personal, sexual matter, in
the form of a story centred upon an attractive hero; but genre, star and conven-
tions also made it easy to read the subject-matter, homosexuality, as itself
the problem, inextricably tied to a way of life at once sinister and tragic. Yet the
ambivalence is not only explicable in these terms; to it we must add the way
different ways of thinking and feeling about homosexuality occur in the film.
Kurt's shock, so powerfully rendered in the shot described above, is the shock
of the loved one realising his lover has been untrue to him, but there is more
to it than that: Kurt and Franz represent two different conceptions of homo-
sexuality prevalent in the period, that may be characterised as in-betweenism
and male-identification.
Male in-betweenism
In-between-ist conceptions of homosexuality saw lesbians and gay men as a
kind of third sex. As is common in nineteenth- and twentieth-century thought
about sexuality, notions of gender identity were conflated with notions of sexual
identity. Thus a man was a heterosexual man, a woman a heterosexual woman,
and it followed that people who were not heterosexual were therefore neither
one thing nor the other, neither a real man nor a real woman but something
in-between.
The most insistent proponents of this view were the founders of the German
gay movement, going back to 1864 when Karl Heinrich Ulrichs published his
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
first book on the 'riddle of love between men' and continuing in 1869 in the work
of Carl von Westphal on 'contrary sexual feeling' and that of Karoly Benkert, the
first to use the term 'homosexuality' (Steakley 1975:3-17). Though there were
different emphases in their work, all shared a view of gayness as natural, '"inborn"
and ineradicable' (Silverstolpe 1987:213) and as in some sense androgynous, and
their ideas inspired Magnus Hirschfeld and others in founding the sexual
emancipation movement, the Wissenschaftlich-humanitare Komi tee (WhK -
Scientific-Humanitarian Committee) in 1897.
Hirschfeld initially believed that lesbians and gay men were literally a third
sex. The WhK's journal, Jahrbuch fiir sexuelle Zwischenstuferi, even published
in 1903 a sequence of three photographs demonstrating this: a very muscular
youth holding a large fig leaf over his genitals represents the heterosexual male
body type; a woman standing so as to accentuate the generous curve of her hips,
with her pubic hairs either shaved or whited out, represents the heterosexual
female body type; while the 'uranian' or third sex body is represented by a flat-
chested figure wearing a scarf over its head and a veil across its face, standing
so that its hip is less curved than the female type but still more pronounced
than the male type, and with the genital area obscure, probably blacked out.
Hirschfeld and the WhK officially abandoned this kind of literalism about
gayness in 1910, but it persists in a relatively sophisticated form in his lecture
in Anders. He shows some slides of'men with the bodily and spiritual character-
istics of a woman and women with every kind of masculine characteristic',
admits that 'there are feminine men who are not homosexual, and homosexuals
who give hardly any or even no impression of womanliness' but nonetheless
avers that, following the research on gonad transplants in animals, it is certain
that 'apparently merely spiritual intermediacy is bodily caused'.
The point of clinging to some version of these theories was to demonstrate
that homosexuality was a fact of biology. If you could show it to be a part of
nature, rather than an activity going against nature, then you could argue that
society had no business trying to suppress it. Moreover, if it was part of nature
it was not a sickness and therefore was not to be thought of in terms of cure —
as the doctor in Anders tells Paul's parents, 'It is neither a vice nor a crime, nor
even a sickness, but a variation, one of the borderline cases in which nature is
so rich'.
If scientific theory and the WhK abandoned third sex ideas in their most
literal form, they were too deeply rooted culturally simply to go away. There
had been a fascination with the figure of the androgyne throughout the
nineteenth century, in literature, painting and sculpture (Busst 1967). The
androgyne might be an actual hermaphrodite, or a mythical or new kind of
being, and was frequently seen as homosexual. S/he often represented a dream
ideal, providing a wealth of celebratory in-between-ist imagery in which
lesbians and gay men might recognise themselves. Even more important was
the actual life-style of many people on the gay scene. Indeed, the third sex idea
may well have been developed as a means of accounting for a predominant gay
34
WEIMAR
sub-cultural style, the Tante (literally, auntie). This could often take the form
of full drag, as in the first love recounted by the anonymous author of Wir vom
dritten Geschlecht, published in Leipzig in 1907:
His figure was opulently slender (if that seems an oxymoron, it is never-
theless exactly right), and he was wearing a crimson morning-frock,
and under the discreet outline of the bust the lustre of his skin was like
alabaster. His blonde wig, tied in a Greek knot at the neck, was drawn
in easy waves about his temple.
(1985:25)
The oxymoronic opulent slenderness suggests the 'uranian' body type in the
WhK photo sequence, and often the style was far less straightforwardly female
impersonation:
He received his guests in an indeterminate garment made by himself,

a cross between a ball gown and a dressing gown.
(Hirschfeld quoted in Theis and Sternweiler 1984:57)
Most characteristic perhaps was an effeminisation of male styles based on movie

stars like Valentino:
resemblance to the opposite sex is achieved through powder puffs and

lipstick. They are somewhat profligate with perfume and coquettish in
their pretty coloured silks. They have plucked eyebrows and crimped,
sleek, shiny hair in soft quiffs. They look at you yearningly, dreamily,
out of Belladonna eyes.
(Curt Moreck quoted in ibid:70)
This Belladonna look was described by another observer as 'the febrile sparkle
of eyes darkened by kohl' (Got 1923:673), a distinctive Tante fashion in the bars.
Both older and younger men might conform to this style, but there was also
a liking for another, more butch type, the Bube or Bursch, the large, handsome,
open-faced working-class lad, not a million miles away from the heterosexual
male type in the WhK photo sequence. He figured with increasing frequency
in the pin-ups in the gay magazine Der Eigene where by the early twenties
he had displaced the idealised adolescent of earlier issues. In The Scorpion 1919,
Anna Weirauch describes an obvious Bube: 'a broad-shouldered, bull-neck
soldier, with a good-looking honest peasant's face, grinning, . . . but uncompre-
hending'(1975:227).
Quite apart from the aptness of the vampire as a metaphor for homosexuality
(Dyer 2002), it is the contrast of Count Orlok and Thomas Hutter (figure 2.3)
that so suggests Nosferatu 1922 as a film eminently readable as gay. They are a
Tante and a Bube. Max Schreck plays Orlok with his shoulders permanently
35
N O W Y O U SEE IT
Figure 2.4 Paul and Franz in Anders als die Andern: in-between-ist wrap and posture but
male-identified statuary. (National Film Archive)
36
WEIMAR
hunched and pinched, as compared to Thomas's shoulders broadened by a

large cape. Schreck is thin, his face whitened with powder, his eyes heavy with
kohl, a grotesque exaggeration of the effeminised male look. Thomas, played
by Gustav von Wangenheim, is big, broad, with face only made up to the usual
film conventions of the time. Orlok walks with mincing steps; Thomas strides
about. And although Orlok is the sexual predator, it is Thomas, the sex object,
whose genitals are on display in trousers that are loose everywhere but at the
crotch. When Orlok goes down on Thomas as he sleeps, he is not just making
do with male 'blood'. 3
Paul in Anders is not exactly a Tante, yet he has something of it. For most of
the time he is dressed in sober suits, yet at the gay dance he wears a sort of loose,
satin robe with a hood, perhaps the kind of'indeterminate garment' described
by Hirschfeld. When he takes Franz home, he drapes the robe over his shoulder
and slinks up behind him, his right hand hanging limp from his wrist (figure
2.4). Like the men in the bars, he has heavy kohl round his eyes, more than other
characters in the film. And the casting of Veidt, with his cadaverous quality,
is of a piece with the image of the Tante, present in much of the writing and in
Nosferatu. Franz is his Bube, with broad, crude features, much less handsome
than the pinups in Der Eigene and with a definite touch of lipstick round his
mouth, but still recognisable as the working-class lad.
The in-between-ist idea of homosexuality is suggested in Paul, but it is only
fully present in the androgynous dancers glimpsed behind him and Franz at the
ball. The milieu of the third sex exists more as a possibility or temptation for
Paul. He strays into it and in so doing not only lays himself open to blackmail
but destroys his relationship with Kurt, who represents a different, male-
identified way of being gay.
Male-identified
If in-between-ism sees gay men as not real men, as somewhere between the
sexes, male-identified gayness sees them as, on the contrary, the most manly of
men. This too has its roots in the nineteenth century, perhaps earlier still than
in-between-ism. Although the gay connection is not explicit, the most distin-
guished German art historian Winckelmann consistently celebrated the beauty
of the male form in his work (1755-86) on classical art (Leppmann 1986) and
much of the imagery and vocabulary of male-identification draws on and invokes
classical example. Many writers and artists through the nineteenth century
worked with a conception of 'Greek love', but it was not until the turn of the
century that it was consolidated into a loose movement.
Although there were differences between them, male-identified gayness
can be seen in three main groupings. First, there was the organization, the
Gemeinschaft der Eigenen (Community of the Special), founded in 1902, one of
whose founding members, Adolf Brand, published the journal Der Eigene
(Hohmann 1981:309-344). The latter, which ran from 1896 to 1931 (with
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
occasional interruptions), contained drawings, photographs, stories, and articles,

with titles such as 'On the Education of the Homosexually Inclined Boy', 'The
Women's Movement and Manly Culture', and 'Nudity in Art and Life'. There
were advertisements for sets of drawings or photographs with titles such as
'Studies of the Nude for Artists and Lovers of Art' or 'Race and Beauty'. Stefan
George was at the centre of another group; his circle consisted of young men
devoted to the life of the spirit and its highest embodiment in poetry, to the
beauty of (male) youth, and to friendship between men. George instituted in the
circle a cult, based on that of the Emperor Hadrian for Antinous, around a boy,
Maximin, whom he had loved and who had died at an early age. To the public at
large, George was probably known as much for such cults, parties in Roman
costume, and ways of dressing and relating, as for his poetry itself (Aarts 1983,
Bithell 1959:123-43). Finally, there were the ideas of Gustav Wyneken, Hans
Bliiher, and others on the homo-erotic dimension of male adolescent develop-
ment, and in particular the importance of the erotic bond between pupil and
teacher, boy and man (Herzer 1983). Wyneken, who liked to quote George's line,
'Das neue Heil kommt nur aus neuer Liebe' ('The new holiness will come only
from new love'), put many of his ideas into practice in independent, experimental
schools (Dougherty 1978). Bliiher's book on Die deutsche Wandervogelbewegung als
erotisches Phanomen (The German Youth Movement as an Erotic Phenomenon),
published in 1912, argued that the heart of the Wandervogel movement was the
erotic attachment of the boys to their leaders. Hotly rejected by most of the
Wandervogel establishment, Bliiher expanded this idea to a study of all-male
groups throughout world history (Die Rolle der Erotik in der mannlichen Gesellschaft
(The Role of the Erotic in Masculine Society, 1917)).
The attitudes and feelings that hold these groupings together are suggested
in the first sequence of Wege zu Kraft und Schonheit (The Road to Strength and
Beauty). Set in a re-creation of a Greek arena, its gay appeal lay not only in the
sight of multitudes of muscular young men clad in thongs and jock-straps, but
in its whole ambience, encapsulated in the opening shot (figure 2.5). There are
no women present - this is men together with men. The near naked men against
the pillars on left and right stand in classic Greek poses, weight on one leg, the
other slightly bent, one hand on the hip. One of the two young men standing
together just inside the arena puts his arm round his friend's shoulder. The
older man with a group of younger men at his feet listening is a clear reference
to Socrates and his pupils. The framing of the scene not only creates a tableau
effect, invoking the perfection of art (as opposed to a more documentary style),
but also gives the display of the male body male-identified gay inflections: the
single figures suggest the ideals of classical beauty, the two young men are in
an attitude of friendship, the Socratic grouping points to the notion of 'peda-
gogic eros'. Each of these informs the imagery of Anders.
Taking its cue from how classical antiquity had been construed by nineteenth-
century arbiters of taste (Haskell and Penny 1981), gay culture distinguished
two Greek ideals of male beauty: the ephebe, the boy poised on the brink of
38
WEIMAR
Figure 2.5 Classical beauty, friendship and pedagogic eros in Wege zu Kraft und Schonheit
adolescence, and the older athlete. The former does not figure in Anders, but a
statuette of an athlete, based on a classical original, features prominently in the
furnishing of Pauls flat (see figure 2.4). It is sometimes argued that the cult of
the athlete was just a cover for the desire to look at naked men. No doubt in some
cases this was so, but the athlete was also the actual form that desire took. People
were not pretending to be turned on by athletic features — they were the turn-
on. The presence of the statue signals something of Paul's erotic imagination.
There is a high idealism in the rhetoric, both verbal and visual, depicting the
athlete, and this is true too of the attitude towards friendship, which is seen as
an essential means to personal growth in adolescence:
The Community of the Special counsels the young man to have no

contact with women before marriage, but rather to seek his highest
social pleasure, his moral strength, his physical release, his spiritual
calm, and his inner peace in the intimate company of a (male] friend.
(Adolf Brand 1930; quoted in Hohmann 1981:324)
Such youthful friendship is often depicted in stories between an older and

younger boy at school. The passionate friendship but unrequited love between
Herbert and Ernst in the novel Anders als die Andern is between, respectively, a
seventh and fourth year pupil at school.
Through such friendship, boys learnt to be men, as they did through their
relations with their male teachers. Wyneken argued that true education depends
on 'eros', the bond of love between an adolescent and his or her teacher or leader.
(Although at heart only interested in boys, Wyneken did take girls at his schools
39
N O W Y O U SEE IT
and Sappho as well as Socrates was held up as an inspiration.) Joy in each other's
beauty and wisdom makes this eros intense and enriching, a joy expressed in
much gay fiction of the time. In 'Es schienen so golden die Sterne' by Walter
Nitsche, published in Der Eigene in 1920, Heinz, following the death of his
beloved schoolfriend Hannibal, becomes a teacher but is dismissed:
The strict Headmaster had found out about his inclinations. About
his secret, silent love for his friends [ie. his pupils]. About his great joy
in their beauty and the dear masculine freshness of their youth, the
very thing that had been the dream that had made him want to become
a teacher.
(1983:249)
The ideal male homo-erotic master—pupil relationship is, as discussed in chapter

one, central to Vingarne and Michael.
The ideals of friendship and pedagogic eros' structure the good' relationships
in Paul's life. His friendship with Max at school is a 'spiritual unity', his relation-
ship with Kurt a classic master—pupil one. Kurt has never missed one of Paul's
recitals and comes to him begging him to take him as a pupil: 'If only you'd
agree to teach me, then my dearest wish would come true'. Kurt's parents are
uneasy about the relationship but recognise that his musical talent is being
nurtured through love. Both relationships are presented as the highest expres-
sions of Paul's personality. It is the Tante side of him that brings about the
tragedy.
There is no physical expression of feeling shown between Paul and either
Max or Kurt. The idealism of male-identified imagery meant that it was often
ambivalent about sex. Much of the writing seems to advocate spiritual friend-
ship between men of great erotic intensity yet without genital expression, as
if sex, being material, is impure, coarse, even dirty. By contrast there is physical
expression between Paul and Franz, Franz puckering his lips when he makes
a play for Paul at the dance, Paul caressing him back at home. The 'good' sexu-
ality in Anders, represented by Max and Kurt, as opposed to the 'bad' sexuality
embodied in Franz, may on inspection not involve sex at all.
* * *
The fact that Anders does not take place wholly in either the in-between-ist
nor the male-identified milieu in part relates to the fact that they were not as
separate as may have so far appeared. The bar scene was the largest network of
meeting places for gay men, whatever form their sexual desires took, and some-
times the ambience made a deliberate appeal to the male-identified:
scantily clad boys doing Greek dances based on the pictures on

excavated vases could meet the aesthetic needs of the 'pure' lovers of
40
WEIMAR
beauty, while it realised the sinful wishes of those clients who desired
them.
(Theis and Sternweiler 1984:57)
Even when no such concessions were made, it was still to the scene that the male-
identified were obliged to go. Count Kuno, in Isherwood's Good-bye to Berlin,
with his gymnasium re-creating attic ideals, has to trail round the bars looking
for youths to use it. In John Henry Mackay's novel Der Puppenjunge, remarkable
for its evocation of a love that is at once 'pure' and sexual, the older man
Hermann, who falls selflessly in love with the street boy Gunther, sits day after
day hoping to catch sight of him among the Tanten and Buben of the Adonis
Lounge, a place utterly alien to him. With both Kuno and Hermann, what is
stressed is the contrast — now comic, now tragic - between their ideals of love
and the sordid reality of the gay scene.
The intermingling of the two homosexual worlds in Anders is characteristic,
as is the implicit downgrading of the one (in-betweenist) at the expense of
the other (male-identified). Perhaps this is not surprising. Male-identified
notions were closer to many of the ideas of mainstream thought in the period
than were those of Hirschfeld et al. Where he sought to establish the rights
of homosexuals on medical and legal grounds, the male-identified worked on
the terrain of'respectability'. As George Mosse (1982) has argued, one of the
ways that a bourgeois ideology of nationalism established itself in nineteenth-
century Germany was through an imagery of the body beautiful. Greek models
represented the ideal over against the materialism of the working classes and
socialism; the cult of nature represented a rejection of the restless, febrile city,
where the dangers of revolution and discontent fermented. In Wege zu Kraft und
Schonheit, a stunning montage sequence of city life is intended to convey the
pressure and restlessness of urban life as compared to the calm and health of
country life. In a sequence in a museum, a group of people are shown gathered
round a classical statue of a naked woman; the camera pans along them,
revealing them as grotesques, deformed, sick-looking, looking lasciviously at
the statue, in other words, corrupt modern people, unable to respond to the
higher ideals of beauty.
The visual culture as well as the argumentation of male-identified gayness
is astonishingly close to this main line of respectable bourgeois thought, whereas
Hirschfeld's ideas disrupted bourgeois certitudes about gender and sexuality,
about human nature (Hull 1982). Thus despite Hirschfeld's involvement and
Oswald's undoubtable liberalism, Anders comes down on the side of male-
identified homosexuality, where there was a fit between the claims of pedagogic
eros and the aims of respectability.
The last words of the film are nonetheless Hirschfeld's: 'We must all ensure
that a time will soon come when such tragedies [as Paul's} are impossible,
for knowledge will overcome prejudice, truth will overcome lies and love
will conquer hatred.' But who could not agree on that? Not only are these
41
N O W Y O U SEE IT
broad sentiments, but the cause of the tragedy, as Hirschfeld sees it, is black-
mail, a real enough threat to all gay men of whatever style as long as §175 was
law (Theis and Sternweiler 1984). As far back as 1870, it was observed that
blackmail of their clients was something of a cottage industry among male
prostitutes; a 1922 book by Hans von Tresckow on Princes and Other Mortals
recounted many incidents of rich or high-born men ruined by blackmail at
the hands of their sexual partners. Evidence of the justified fear of blackmail
is plentiful throughout the period (Theis and Sternweiler 1984:48, 57-8).
This reality gave the film its immediacy for gay audiences of the time, its
campaigning edge. However contradictory and ambivalent its representation
of how gay life was lived in the Weimar republic, Anders als die Andern was
forcibly directed at some of the elements that determined the shape of that life.
Forcibly enough to be banned.
Madchen i n u n i f o r m
To turn from Anders to Madchen, is to turn from archaeology to history. Madchen
exists in complete, at their best luminously beautiful, prints. Since its 're-
discovery' by the contemporary women's movement, it has been widely shown
in cinemas and on television, is available on video and has been the subject of
major pieces of critical writing (Gramann and Schliipmann 1983b, Ohm 1993,
Rich 1984, Scholar 1979). It had, in any case, never been an obscure film. It
was both a critical and a commercial success at the time, in Germany and abroad,
and all standard histories of German cinema mention it. The two classic studies
of the films of the period, Siegfried Kracauer's Prom Caligari to Hitler and Lotte
Eisner's The Haunted Screen, both single it out for praise. It was never a film that
had dropped from view.
Yet as a lesbian film, it did need to be re-discovered. While praising its
artistry, historians, including Kracauer and Eisner, managed to downplay the
film's lesbianism. For Kracauer it is a study of authoritarianism, whilst for
Eisner it is both that and an admirably 'feminine' work. There is justice in both
views, but the lesbianism is not incidental to the film's anti-authoritarianism
and femininity: in many ways, it is what makes them possible.
Madchen centres on the relationship between Manuela von Meinhardis

and Fraulein von Bernburg, pupil and teacher respectively at a private
school for the daughters of army officers. Manuela's mother has just
died. Like most of the girls at the school, Manuela adores von Bernburg,
the only one among the teachers who does not believe in the Principal's
approach of ruling with a rod of iron. For Manuela and von Bernburg,
however, the relationship goes beyond a crush, though the latter tries
to deny it. Manuela takes the lead in a school production of Schiller's
play, Don Carlos\ it is a great success and at the party afterwards, when
all the girls get a little tipsy, Manuela makes a speech declaring her
42
WEIMAR
love for von Bernburg. The Principal comes in on the end of it and,
scandalised, has Manuela shut away in the school sick-bay and forbids
von Bernburg to have contact with her. Von Bernburg confronts the
Principal, but even as they speak Manuela has rushed from the sick-
bay and climbed to the top of the deep stairwell in the centre of the
school. She climbs on to the parapet at the top, preparing to throw
herself off, but the other girls have realised what she is going to do and,
together with von Bernburg, rescue her. The Principal walks off into
the shadows of a corridor, defeated.
As is evident from this synopsis, lesbianism is pivotal to Madcheris plot,

and the treatment both intensifies its romantic-erotic quality and suggests
its subversive power. There are some shots of girls lying together bathed in
a dappled light suggesting romance, but the greatest intensity is centred
on Manuela and von Bernburg. The first time von Bernburg sees Manuela, the
latter is standing above her on the stairs; she has on her new school uniform,
with its large, white starch collar, and the light streams in from her right,
so that the collar sparkles and she herself seems to glow; it is a shot from von
Bernburg's point of view and the reaction shot of her indicates that she has
caught her breath at the sight of Manuela, just as we are clearly intended to. In
the scene in the dormitory, where von Bernburg kisses each of the girls good-
night, Manuela, unlike the other girls, throws her arms round von Bernburg's
neck. Von Bernburg removes them but then, in extreme close-up and with
softly suffused light, kisses her, not on the forehead as with the other girls, but
full on the mouth. For all the girls, von Bernburg's kiss is an erotic experience:
a close-up shows one very pretty girl grinning in expectation, while the girl in
the next bed to Manuela, Ilse, throws her head back in an ecstasy of anticipation.
What is clear about both the first meeting and the dormitory scene however
is that the feeling is as strong for von Bernburg as for Manuela, and that, in its
use of lighting and camera position, it is to be seen as both romantic and erotic
— it is not just a crush, and it is not only on the schoolgirl's side.
Lesbianism's power of subversion is suggested by the impact of Manuela's
public declaration of her love for von Bernburg. Not only does she declare her
own love, but she defies the Principal and hints at the place of von Bernburg in
all the girls' affections:
She gave me a present, a petticoat. I've got it on. I'm so happy because
now I know for sure. She cares for me! Fraulein von Bernburg! Nothing
else matters. She is there. I'm not afraid of anything. Nor {as the Principal
walks towards her} anyone. Our beloved Fraulein von Bernburg lives!
Long may she live!
The speech transforms the romantic-erotic intensity of Manuela's individual

feeling into a shared, collective experience, uniting the girls; and it makes that
43
N O W Y O U SEE IT
experience public. It is a coming out. Equally, the excitement of the last few
minutes is invested not only in the will-she, won't-she of Manuela poised on
the parapet, but in the collective actions of the girls and von Bernburg to
save her. Just prior to this von Bernburg pronounces the film's clearest defence
of lesbianism: 'What you call sins I call the great spirit of love which has a
thousand forms.' Up to this point she has still been working in the interests of
the system, using niceness rather than rigid discipline to control the girls (Rich
1984:104—7) and repressing her response to Manuela. Now, as she becomes
aware of the girls' actions, she at last identifies with them, against the Principal,
in the name of love.
Madchen $> lesbianism is so obvious that it is hard to believe anyone could
downplay it. Nor was it lost on contemporaries. For many viewers, it was a
turn-on. Carl Froelich, who supervised the production, in part invited this by
rejecting the title of the play the film is based on, Gestern und Heute, because,
he said, '[w]e want to get back the money we're investing, we'll call it Girls
in Uniform - then they'll think, there'll be girls in uniform playing about
and showing their legs' (Schlupmann and Gramann 1981:41). Hertha Thiele,
who plays Manuela, became a popular star, receiving love letters from male
and female fans. There were also more hostile reactions. In the USA, the film
was only granted a certificate after the excision of shots showing the depth of
Manuela's lesbian emotions and von Bernburg's defence of lesbianism to the
Principal. Thereafter, homophobic critics were free to argue that only perverts
would see lesbianism in the film at all (Russo 1981:57—8).
The makers 0/Madchen

In content and treatment, Madchen seems obviously a lesbian film, but this
is not such an easy label to apply once you start looking at the circumstances of
its production. Only one of those centrally involved do we know to have been
lesbian: Christa Winsloe, who supplied the source material. Even this is not
straightforward.
Manuela's story went through four different versions in Winsloe's hands: two
plays (Ritter Nerestan, produced in Leipzig in 1930, and Gestern und Heute, Berlin
1931), the film (co-scripted with F. D. Andam) and a novel, also called Madchen
in Uniform, published in 1933. There are significant variations: in Ritter Nerestan
lesbianism is almost absent, whereas in all the other versions it is centrally
present; in all but the film, however, Manuela does kill herself. Winsloe produced
these four versions during a period of transition in her life. In 1930 she was still
married to Count Ludwig Hatvany and well known about cafe society. It was not
until the early thirties that she began to live openly as a lesbian and not until
her short story 'Life begins' 1935 that she wrote a work exploring lesbian life
directly and affirmatively (Reinig 1983:241-8). The absence of lesbianism in the
first version and the 'negative' ending to all but the film seem to be accounted
for in part by Winsloe's as yet unresolved feelings about her own sexuality.
44
WEIMAR
What Winsloe provided was a story with the potential for being treated as
more or less lesbian-identified. Was it then the director, Leontine Sagan, who
was responsible for bringing this out? She was not so far as we know lesbian4
and on certain matters, notably title, casting and script, had less control than
Carl Froelich, a well-established director who had set up the collective that
made the film (Gramann and Schliipmann 1981:32—41).
The fact that Froelich had set the picture up may however also suggest
a limit to his interference. He was after all hoping to make money from a play
that was a proven success and had hired three of the people most responsible
for that success: Winsloe, Thiele, and Sagan. It is unlikely that he would have
sought to undo all they had done to such evident effect in the theatre. It seems
however that he did want to tone down the lesbianism. The title change,
his idea, was meant to imply girls showing their legs rather than making
love to each other; he cast Wieck in preference to Melzer and this substituted
a more 'feminine' actress for a rather mannish, and thus lesbian-identifiable,
one; he gave the film a happy ending chiefly on the grounds of good taste, since
the suicide of a young woman in the cinema would be 'grotesque'. The irony is
that each of these decisions turn out to benefit the lesbian theme: the title
emphasizes the confinement of the girls, the change of cast brings out a different
understanding of lesbianism, the happy ending feels like an affirmation of
lesbianism.
It also seems plausible to credit Sagan with turning these decisions to good
effect. Hertha Thiele suggested that the Berlin stage production under Sagan
was the one which most brought out the lesbian aspect. Much of the feeling and
the meaning of the film come from the handling of performance, mise-en-scene,
lighting, and sound, and these are part of the stock-in-trade of theatre directors
(unlike specifically filmic elements such as camera positioning and editing).
The consummate use of lighting in the film, in the treatment of the central
relationship, for instance, or in the symbolic use of striated light to indicate
imprisonment, derives from developments in lighting in the theatre in the
twenties. Eisner's Haunted Screen traces the influence of theatre on film, especially
in the work of Max Reinhardt, with whom Sagan had trained. In relation to
performance and costume, it is interesting to consider the derogatory portrayal
of the principal in Madchen, which through the use of a familiar iconography of
cane, medallion, and bearing evokes Frederick the Great, the embodiment
of authoritarian rule. In 1933, two years after Madchen, Froelich made Der
Chroral von Leuthen, one of the many films which in contrast celebrated
Frederick's authority. Through those aspects of the film which it is reasonable
to suppose Sagan controlled, Madchen expresses the glow of a love between
women and a negative view of authority that runs counter to the view that
Froelich would most likely have aimed for.
The quality that Sagan is most often credited with having brought to the film
is that of femininity (cf. notably Lotte Eisner (1969:325-6)). This is something
notoriously difficult to define in relation to art. Two of the things it may mean
45
N O W Y O U SEE IT
are having a particular inwardness with the situation and experience of women
that only women can have and having many of the qualities traditionally
considered feminine: delicacy, softness, feeling for detail and, in some theories,
a preference for the rounded, centred and blurred over the angular, outwardly-
directed and hard-edged. 5 Both can be argued to apply to Madchen.
Many women feel that you can tell it was directed by a woman from the
way the girls interact, the humour, the atmosphere. The lesbian magazine Die
Freundin began its review in 1932: 'A woman (Leontine Sagan) is the director
and there are only women acting under her sensitive direction' (quoted in
Kreische 1984:195) and this is a common starting point in reviews. The fact
that we know the film was directed by a woman with an all-female cast places
us in a different relationship to the images on the screen and may make us feel
very differently about such scenes as the girls getting ready for bed or Manuela
and von Bernburg together.
On the other hand, the look of Madchen may not at first glance appear partic-
ularly feminine, especially compared to Olivia 1950, another film about
lesbian feeling in a girls' school also directed by a woman, Jacqueline Audry
(Burrows 1981, Tarr 1993). In the latter everything is based on the curve: the
spiralling hall staircase, the silhouettes of the head teachers' costumes, circling
camera movements and a central visual symbolism of the oval window (Burrows
1981); whereas virtually the opposite is true of Madchen: stairwell, costumes,
lighting emphasise straight lines. But this is the difference between the schools:
in Olivia, an intensely, self-consciously feminine world, nurturing values of
grace and elegance, but in Madchen an institution designed to subjugate the
girls to the values of masculinity, discipline, rigidity. If the film has a feminine
eye it must then be in the way it uses visual values — above all, straight lines
- to suggest how inimical they are to feminine sensibilities. In this context,
the extreme softness in the presentation of von Bernburg, lighting often
softening the edges of her costume (even in her case quite severe) and blurring
the contours of her face and body, could be seen as an especially meaningful
celebration of the alternative feminine principle to the masculine one that rules
the school.
If Madchen is a 'feminine' film then, it is not because women will necessarily
make a certain kind of film but because the known fact of a woman director
informs our reading and because it can be related to features of traditional
women's cultures. This femininity is part and parcel of the way Madchen can be
termed a lesbian film, for it asserts that lesbianism is nothing if not womanly.
Before examining that however we need first to look at the way a less feminine
definition of lesbianism also has a place in the film.
Female in-betweenism
In the Berlin production of Gestern und Heute von Bernburg was played by
Margarete Melzer, in Hertha Thiele's words, 'a real butch type' (Schliipmann and
46
WEIMAR
Figure 2.6 Margarete Melzer (left) and Dorothea Wieck (right): two versions of Fraulein
von Bernburg. (Frauen und Film)
Gramann 1981:32). Melzer was a large woman with a broad, square face; for
Gestern, she wore a collar and tie, a tailored suit which flattened her chest, and
her hair cropped and combed with a parting. Dorothea Wieck, von Bernburg
in the film, is by contrast (figure 2.6) exceedingly feminine: she has small,
delicate features, wears dresses throughout the film which modestly outline her
bosom and has her hair crimped in waves and decorated with a frilly cap.
This change of cast, Froelich's decision, is a rejection of a certain style of
lesbianism. It was a style clearly related to 'third sex' ideas (Lhomond 1985) and
familiar on the lesbian scene: 'Seated at the bar there were women in dinner
jackets, sipping cocktails, smoking an impressive number of cigarettes and
carrying on like men' (from a memoir quoted in Vermij 1983:109). This is
the style of the lesbian Countess Geschwitz in Die Biichse der "Pandora (Weiss
1992:21—22). Jeanne Mammen's pictures of the milieu present many portraits
of this 'Bubi' type, 'wearing ties, men's haircut, small "moustache"' and suggest
that 'the ideal of the boyish woman obviously must have been as popular as the
radiant appearances of the "femmes"' (Sykora 1983:541-2).
Discussion in the lesbian press, such as Die Freundin 1924—33 and Die
Gargonne 1930-2, was divided as to the value of this style (Schlierkamp 1984,
Vogel 1984). Those who spoke in favour of it in part based their arguments on
47
N O W Y O U SEE IT
Hirschfeld's third sex theory, and this was Anna Ruling's view in her address
to the Annual Conference of the WhK in 1904:
The homosexual women possesses many qualities, inclinations, and

capacities which we ordinarily consider masculine. . . . She is, like
the average man, more objective, energetic, and goal-oriented than the
feminine woman; her thoughts and feelings are those of a man; she
does not imitate man, she is inherently similar to him. . . .
(1980:82-3)
Freud too, in his essay on a case of female homosexuality published in 1920,

though not using a third sex model, nonetheless characterized active sexual
desire — and therefore that of a woman for a woman — as essentially 'masculine.'
However, while many women accepted this idea of masculine lesbian person-
ality, others saw the issue in terms of women's social situation. What was at stake
was not so much a claim to be like men as the desire to have the same freedom
as men. In her 1903 novel Sind es FrauenP (Are these Women?), Aimee Due's
characters debate many of these questions, and Due is clearly sympathetic to
third sex explanations, but equally insistent is the sense that her characters are
above all women of intelligence who can only express that by adopting aspects
of the male role:
. . . aren't we perhaps only strong intelligences whose sex has been put
to sleep and maybe killed off and who therefore don't recognise man
as such?
"How I hate, hate, hate these men, who think they are superior to
us, who want us without individuality, without our own spirit. . . . "
(1980:10)
It is the claim to individuality and spirit that could make this form of lesbian
identification appear threatening, especially when it went hand in hand with a
critique of marriage, as it does in Sind es FrauenP:
As a doctor I want to tell you that most of the hysterical, neurotic, so-
called misunderstood women are married women who have almost
without exception become victims of psychic disorders because the
lack of productive, satisfying activity, of intellectual enlightenment,
of mental training is taking its revenge. Strengthening of the will
and education of the mind are the best prophylactic for avoiding
hysteria.
(1980:16-17)
Such strengthening and education had real consequences for relationships

between women and men: the divorce rate rose in Germany throughout the
48
WEIMAR
twenties and there was a huge increase in the numbers of women competing
with men for work, especially the newer, white collar jobs (Schenk 1980:63—7).
This threat to male prerogatives was of a piece with the involvement of lesbians
in radical politics, though both the socialist and women's movements tried
to play this down. The latter responded to accusations that there were many
lesbians in their ranks by denial rather than proud affirmation. In 1904 Anna
Ruling complained in her WhK address that, considering
the contributions made to the women's movement by homosexual

women for decades, it is amazing that the large and influential organi-
sations of the movement have never lifted a finger to improve the civil
rights and social standing of their numerous Uranian members.
(1980:88)
Still in 1931, even in the context of lauding the independent woman who
has no need of men, a feminist could write: 'But it would be completely wrong,
to suspect anything inverted or homosexual here'. 6 The appeal of the lesbian's
financial and emotional independence was both threatening and yet had little
political support, even amongst progressives. No wonder then that Melzer was
not used as von Bernburg.
Yet, even with Wieck instead of Melzer, the Bubi does not go away; she
comes back in, with special force, through the use of the Hosenrolle, the girl
dressed as a boy. This motif was popular in German cinema from the teens to
the thirties in vehicles for major stars like Elisabeth Bergner, Lilian Harvey,
Renate Miiller and Asta Nielsen. Although usually light and comic, the films
they made do not have the hysterical, farcical quality of most Hollywood cross-
dressing films and nor, as with male to female cross-dressing, do the narratives
involve humiliation for the protagonist. They presented images of women
having adventures, going out into the world, being creative and along the
way setting off complex plays of emotion and desire, that many women found
attractive (Gramann and Schliipmann 1981, Kuzniar 2000:33-50).
Der Geiger von Florenz (The Violinist from Florence) (figure 2.7), for instance,
allows for all manner of sexual feeling. Bergner plays Renee, a discontented
adolescent who feels rejected by her father and stepmother and runs away from
her school in Switzerland; she swaps clothes with a boy she meets so as to be
able to cross the frontier into Italy; a brother and sister passing in a car take a
fancy to 'him' and take 'him' home with them, on the pretext of wishing 'him'
to model for the bother, a painter. 'He' stays with them and after various scenes
of ambiguous emotion, the truth comes out and the film ends with Renee and
the painter about to marry. Renee is established from the start of the film as a
bit of a tomboy: her clothes, her naughtiness at school, her rather 'masculine'
mongrel dog (as explicitly compared to her stepmother's 'feminine' pekinese
with a ribbon around its middle). The boy with whom she changes clothes (in
itself a purely expedient act) is himself rather androgynous, and looks no more
49
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Figure 2.7 Der Geiger von Florenz — why is he looking at 'him' so intensely: why is 'she'
looking so doubtful? (National Film Archive)
50
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or less feminine when wearing her coat than he did before in the long shorts and
stockings she is now wearing.
This tomboyish character in androgynous clothes evokes complex responses
in both brother and sister. There are alibis for some of what happens: as an artist,
he is bound to spend much of his time gazing at his model, male or female (but
need he spend so much time gazing at the young man when he is not painting
him?); as a man he need feel no inhibition about showering in front of him
(but need the camera dwell so admiringly on his body in the shower as he shows
off before the young man?). In fact the brother himself realizes he is strangely
attracted to Renee (figure 2.7), to the point that he says to him:'. . . sometimes
I think you are a girl — and often I wish you were'. Moments later he realizes
that she is, and there follows an extraordinary reaction shot of him, not at all
overjoyed but deeply troubled, perhaps by guilt ('I'd been fancying a boy'),
perhaps disappointment ( 1 wish she were a boy after all'), perhaps anxiety
('It was her maleness I liked'). Though all this is explicable by the narrative,
Renee never gets back into women's clothes — the final shot is of the brother
passionately kissing this person in boy's clothes.
Equally fascinating is the sister's response to Rene(e). There is a deliberate
parallel established between the triangle of Rene(e), the brother and sister, and
Rene(e), her father and stepmother at the beginning of the film, with scenes
at the siblings' home repeating earlier scenes at the parents'. In both cases it is
two women in rivalry for the attention of a man. Rivalry between a daughter
and a stepmother is easy enough to understand in conventional terms, but what
is the rivalry at the siblings' home about? Either both women fancy the brother,
which introduces on the sister's part the possibility of incest; or else the sister
is jealous of her brother's closeness to Rene, which might look hetero enough
were Rene not so androgynous. Near the end of the film, Rene(e) comes to the
sister in her bedroom to tell her that she is a woman; she (the sister) puts her
hand on Rene(e)'s chest and holds it there, cupping her bosom. Renee bursts
into tears, and the sister comforts her by putting her head against hers, and
now Renee does not, as she has before, draw back; when Renee goes, the sister
gives her a full, hard kiss on the lips, not a sisterly peck on the cheek. This is
the only physically intimate scene, between anyone, in the whole film, and it
takes place between two women when both of them know that they are women.
The sister is not seen again in the film. The narrative grinds on to reconcile
Renee with her father and her future husband, with her place in patriarchal
society, but the most vivid, intense, and conscious moment of eroticism in the
film has been between the two women.
In addition to stirring up such a range of ambiguous feelings, Hosenrolle
films also provided inspiring images of women having adventures, going out
into the world, being creative, and making their own way, and the fact that this
also often entailed lesbian feelings might not feel like a coincidence to lesbians
who felt as Due or Ruling did. The double danger that the Hosenrolle films
flirted with — social and sexual independence from men — is resisted in the texts
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of the films. Most end with the woman restored to her right place in patriarchal
society, and, as Annette Kuhn has argued in the context of Hollywood cinema,
much of the film's pleasure plays on the spectator's knowledge of who is really
what, reassuring us that the body beneath the clothes is indeed the ultimate site
of sexual difference, and the difference is after all absolute (1985:73). Gramann
and Schliipmann (1981:80-l) point out that the most polymorphous perverse'
of all Hosenrolle stars, Asta Nielsen, was also the first and that over time the
androgyny was played down, so that by the early thirties a more voluptuous
female figure was always clearly visible beneath the male clothes. All the more
remarkable then that Hertha Thiele in her Hosenrolle as Manuela should look
so ambiguous.
The Hosenrolle image, its splendid spirit, its delicious ambiguities, resonate
in Manuela when she plays the lead in Don Carlos. Even before being dressed as
a man, she looks boyish by having her hair cropped and combed with a parting
in the 'gargonne' style that had become quite fashionable in the twenties.
Dressed as Don Carlos, one girl strokes her stockinged legs and breathes, 'How
handsome you are!' (figure 2.8); shots of the audience at the performance
centre von Bernburg, reconfirming her pleasure in Manuela, just as on the first
time she saw her, with the light streaming on her hair newly pulled back to
look boyish. The play is a classic, well known to contemporary audiences as
a play of protest from the Sturm und Drang period of German romanticism,
suggesting both youthful revolt and a critique of authoritarianism. The scene
from the play actually shown is one in which Don Carlos declares his love
for the Queen, who is in fact his father's new wife, and thus forbidden by, in
Schiller's words, 'the world and nature and the laws of Rome'. As B. Ruby Rich
(1984:109) argues, Madchen
clearly annexes this sentiment by choosing the scene in which Don

Carlos proclaims his love for Elizabeth, the name of both the Queen
Mother and of Fraulein von Bernburg. With Manuela cross-dressed as
the passionate suitor (in a performance heralded by all for its remark-
able sincerity!), the sequence represents the central theme of forbidden
love encoded within the sanctity of German high culture.
It is while still dressed as Don Carlos that Manuela delivers her coming out
speech, quoted above. This is the most direct statement of lesbian desire in the
film and it is spoken by Manuela, not only dressed as a man, one associated with
revolt moreover, but occupying a male space: it is a public act, it is proposing
a toast (a male prerogative), it is under the influence of alcohol (ladies, as we
see at the concurrent gathering with the Principal, sip coffee). It is also linked
to the idea of modernity: the girls abandon waltzes for ragtime which also frees
them to dance with each other and Manuela to make her speech. Modernity is
associated with the 'new woman' and she in turn with lesbianism. This speech,
this spirit of modernity, is seen and heard by both the Principal and von
52
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Figure 2.8 'What beautiful legs you have!' — Manuela in Hosenrolle backstage in
Madchen in Uniform. (National Film Archive)
Bernburg. Through the one it calls down the wrath of the patriarchy but it
inspires the other to have the courage of her feelings. It is explicit and effective
— as, of course, was the Bubi style. This was the form that the public, visible
declaration of lesbian identity took. Perhaps the, as Rich (ibid.: 110) puts it,
'naming' of lesbianism in Madchen could only be put into the mouth of someone
who looked something like an 'out' lesbian.
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Female-iden tified
Madchen does not eliminate altogether the Bubi style, but does confine it to a
short part of the film and in its least threatening form, the Hosenrolle gargonne,
with connotations of the temporary, immature or merely fashionable. Yet it is
not the limit of the films lesbianism. The relationship between Manuela and
von Bernburg may be stripped of in-betweenism, but this only heightens
its female-identified elements, and these are the core of the film, in the central
relationship and in the whole atmosphere between the girls.
The female-identified lesbianism of Weimar (and earlier) should not be con-
fused with the later women-identified-women lesbianism discussed in chapter
five. Though there are similarities, especially in the sense of connection between
lesbians and all women, there are also differences. In particular, female-identified
lesbians were not separatist. Partly because of the less than whole-hearted
support given lesbians by the women's movement, many preferred to work
within the W h K and other mixed-sex homosexual organisations (Kokula
1984:149-50), which perhaps accounts for the presence of both in-between-ist
and female-identified lesbianism in Madchen without any sense of conflict
between them.
Female-identified lesbianism did not celebrate new ideals of female strength,
but rather stressed notions of femininity: lesbianism was not different from
traditional ways of being female but on the contrary the most womanly form
of womanhood. The focus of its imagery was adolescence and school days. The
environment and ambience of the girls' school distinguishes the emotions
shown from the two other predominant images of lesbianism. On the one hand,
the schoolgirl, by virtue of her youth, could not be seen as an 'independent'
woman, whose sexuality expresses or emanates from her independence from
men; and, on the other hand, by virtue of her undoubtable innocence, she could
not be seen in the terms of sickness and decadence found in much contemporary
writing (Faderman 1981:254-94) or in the character of the Countess in Die
Biichse der Pandora. The school story could express a lesbianism seen as natural,
pure and intrinsically female.
The school story also relates to the importance of Sappho as a reference
point. At least as far back as Johannes Flach's Sappho: Griechische Novelle 1886,
Sappho had been used as a respectable image of female homo-eroticism (Foster
1985:218) and many women writers had taken possession of it subsequently
(ibid.: 176-7). 'Sapphic' became a widely used synonym for lesbian and the
fashion may have offered women 'their only possibility for a positive historical
and cultural identity' (Sanders 1983:493). In particular her work provided what
Elaine Marks calls 'the preferred locus for most fictions about women loving
women', namely, 'the gynaecum, ruled by the seductive or seducing teacher'
(1979:357) and Marks' account of the conventions of the gynaecum story
(ibid.:357-8) is astonishingly close to Madchen'.
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The younger woman [Manuela] . . . is always passionate and innocent

{the intensity of her embrace of von Bernburg compared to the other
girls, the spontaneity and directness of her feelings}. I f . . . it is the
younger woman who falls in love, the narrative is structured so as to
insist on this love as an awakening [the contrast between Manuela's
withdrawn state at the start and her blossoming of confidence as
her love for von Bernburg grows}. The older woman as object of the
younger woman's desire is restrained and admirable, beautiful and
cultivated [almost a description of Wieck's von Bernburg}.
. . . the exchanges between the older and younger woman are
reminiscent of a mother-daughter relationship [discussed below}.
The mother of the younger woman is either dead or in some explicit
way inadequate [Manuela's has just died at the start of the film}. Her
absence is implied by the young woman's insistent need for a good-
night kiss [the dormitory scene}.
The denouement . . . is often brought about by a public event during
which private passions explode [Manuela's speech after the play}.
The gynaecum tale provided a literary model and at the same time there
was an interest in the phenomenon of the Schwarmerei, the schoolgirl crush,
among contemporary commentators, including sexologists such as Havelock
Ellis who published his 'The school-friendships of girls' in 1897. The growth
of large boarding schools signalled a shift in the education of middle-class girls,
making such intensities possible and even common (Vicinus 1985), and girls'
Wandervogel groups, though less developed than boys' (Steakley 1975:55),
may also have fostered such experiences. Kathe K., a woman in her eighties,
recalled in 1984 joining the Jugendbund fur Madchen (Girls' Youth Group) in
1918 when she was fourteen and there, like many others, meeting her first great
love, a young woman five years older (Tonbandprotokolle 1984:211).
There is often an implication in writings of the period that nothing that
follows schoolgirl romance ever quite matches up to it. Marianne Weber, in a
basically heterosexual study of Die Frauen und die Liebe, quotes Charlotte Biihler
on the subject of Schwarmerei: 'Love rapt in wonderment and freely given
obedience, such as is never again in later life experienced so delicately and so
deeply' (1936:27). Elisabeth Dauthendy, in a study of the 'New Woman' and
love, published in 1900, sees intense friendships between older and younger
women now as a glimpse of what love will be between men and women in the
distant future: 'The blooming young woman in the fullness of her beauty and
the mature woman in the fullness of her experience and her immortal hope for
the coming life . . . united in that devotion with which only women can love.'
The 'new woman . . . cannot tolerate the love of man as he is' and so for the time
being she 'must look for friendship with woman' (Faderman and Eriksson
1980:4 l ^ t ) . Dauthendy is at pains to deny there is anything unsavourily Sapphic
about this friendship, but this may be because there is nothing in-between-ist
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about her idea of it — there is no doubting the erotic quality of the way she depicts
it (Faderman 1981:156).
Schoolgirl lesbianism relates to the experience of all women, both by acting
as a touchstone of feeling for later life and also by pointing backwards to the
primary mother—daughter relationship. One ofJeanne Mammen's watercolours
depicting an older and younger woman in a lesbian bar is entitled 'Mother
and Daughter'; in her autobiographical novel Worn Kinde zum Menschen
(From Childhood to Maturity, 1921), Gabriele Reuter describes the object of
her adolescent adoration as 'a madonna'. Even when the mother—daughter
connection is not driven home, it is common to represent lesbian relationships
as between an older and a younger woman. All the significant relationships in
Anna Weirauch's three-part novel sequence Der Skorpion (1919-31) are so
structured.
Freud's essays on female sexuality and homosexuality (1920, 1931) posited
women's essential bisexuality and stressed the fact that the adolescent female
had to learn to transfer her affections from her first love object, her mother, to
its 'normal' object, a man. His ideas on lesbianism echoed those in contemporary
women's writings (eg. Reuter 1895, 1921, Weirauch 1948 (1919-31)), not
only the stress on the importance of the mother-daughter bond as the founding
form of lesbianism, but also the patriarchally disturbing implication that, if
lesbianism is always potential in women and if transference of affections to
a man is so traumatic, why on earth do women bother? Why aren't all women
lesbians? Although never so baldly expressed as this, Freudian theory combined
with current imagery to suggest that lesbianism was a typical and profound
experience for women.
It is sometimes argued that Madchen is not 'really' about lesbianism, but
about a young girl who is missing her mother: Manuela sees in von Bernburg
a substitute for her recently deceased mother. There is no doubt that this further
intensifies Manuela's need for von Bernburg, but, in the context of the gynaecum
tale and contemporary ideas about Schwarmerei and lesbianism, the mother-
daughter quality of the relationship only makes it more lesbian, not less. The
film in fact heightens it in a number of ways. As Gramann and Schlupmann
point out, Manuela's first feelings for von Bernburg occur when the latter
interrupts Manuela telling Edelgard about her mother; when Edelgard leaves,
lighting and performance combine to suggest that von Bernburg is to replace
that mother in Manuela's affections:
The camera observes on Manuela's face the shift from the silent bearing
of grief to the upsurge of desire. The eyes begin to shine, the mouth
opens slightly and twists, a flare of the nostrils signals that her features
are getting out of control — she smiles and in a flash passion breaks
forth. The lighting works to let the whole face appear to be suffused
with this feeling.
(1983b:30)
56
WEIMAR
Figure 2.9 Madchen in Uniform — von Bernburg gives Manuela one of her own slips, as a
mother to a daughter, a teacher to a pupil or one friend and lover to another?
(Taurus Film)
The good-night kiss, a maternal ritual, is portrayed with the cinema's

conventions for the representation of erotic love: 'halo' lighting of the loved one,
soft shadows to create romantic atmosphere, the isolation (even, as here, in a
dormitory) of the participants through editing and lighting, the extreme close-
up on the kiss, itself the supreme signifier of love. When von Bernburg gives
Manuela her own clothes (figure 2.9), this is both the act of a mother's care
for her child's need and an erotically charged exchange ('She gave me a present,
a petticoat! I've got it on!'). The scene from Don Carlos has Manuela/Don Carlos
declaring his/her love on bended knee to his/her step-mother/queen/beloved;
when the latter says, 'Do you realise that it is the Queen, your mother, to whom
these forbidden words are addressed?', she exactly expresses the frisson of the
film's construction of lesbian desire.
The focus of Madchen s female-identified lesbianism is the central relationship
but it extends beyond this. There is an attempt near the beginning of the film
to assure the viewer that the girls are 'really' heterosexual, giggling over pictures
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of musclemen and male film stars, but this is put aside for the rest of the film:
there is no talk of boys, no sense of being anything less than satisfied with each
other's company. What is strongly suggested is the sense of solidarity between
them.
Other films around this time also extolled such solidarity, and one of
them, Acht Madels tm Boot, is especially close to Madchen, not only in the slight
similarity of their titles, but also in its sense of what binds the girls together:
solidarity against patriarchy and erotic feelings for one another. 'Patriarchy'
is not a term that had feminist currency in the period, and yet it is striking how
both Madchen and Madels clearly evoke a world of men and male power that
confines its female protagonists. Madels concerns a women's rowing team
that meets and most of the time lives together in its own clubhouse by a river.
One of the girls, Christa, discovers she is pregnant and, when the others realize
it, they say she should stay with them and have the baby, which they will bring
up together. Only at the end of the film does Christa leave the team, as her
father and fiance want. The sense of contrast - and conflict - between the world
of women and the world of men is emphasized in the film by cross-cutting
between the two. When Christa steals out of the club at night to discuss
the baby with its father, Hans, their anguished discussions are interrupted by
cutting back to the club, the girls happily swimming and playing about. Scenes
with Hans tend to be shot in semi-darkness, whereas there is always sparkling
light, in interiors or exteriors, at the club. The leader of the club, Hanna, is
clearly seen as a rival to Hans: in addition to the similarity in name, there
are visual rhymes, as for instance when Hanna, wearing a vest like Hans's,
picks Christa up when she faints, just as Hans had earlier. Away from the club,
Christa has to submit to a chain of male authority, from her father, to Hans,
to the doctor (a friend of both) who will perform an abortion on her. (She is not
consulted about this, and the film links abortion, of which it clearly does
not approve, with the world of men as opposed to the collectively nurturing
world of women.) The film's critique becomes explicit with Hanna's visit to
Christa's father, where the latter threatens to call in the police to get Christa
away from the club. Back at the club, Hanna says to Christa, 'I nearly forgot
what fathers are like. They want to be tyrants. They are all the same, yours and
mine' - a condemnation of a literal patriarchy. When Hans comes to the club
to get Christa, he is met by the women en masse. 'Don't think you have to
protect Christa from me,' he says, to which the women chorus, 'But we do!' The
men get Christa back, but it feels like a defeat, and the last shot is of Hanna
and the others diving into the water in the brilliant sunshine.
Madchen does not show the world of men, but its presence is signalled
throughout the film. The Principal spells out the school's function of servicing
men early on: 'We are teaching the daughters of soldiers and by God we shall
produce the mothers of soldiers'. The opening montage, to the sound of bugle
calls, of pillars, a church tower and statues of men in uniform or fighting naked,
links the values of order and discipline to the male regimes of the military and
58
WEIMAR
the church. A similar montage occurs immediately after the dormitory scene,
suggesting the world whose rules Manuela is transgressing with her effusive
embrace of von Bernburg. As Rich notes,
[bJarred shadows cross the women's paths, a sternly overbearing

staircase encloses their every movement, a frantic montage marshals
their steps into a militaristic gait, and even the school songs reinforce
the authority of a demanding fatherland with a handful of schoolgirls
in its grasp.
(1984:104)
The sound of bugle calls from the outside world are heard at various points
in the film, most notably at the end, as the Principal walks away from Manuela
and the group. Nancy Scholar argues that these suggest either 'the political
realities outside the school' or 'a rallying call for anti-authoritarian forces in
Germany and elsewhere' (1979:223). Others have been less sanguine. Siegfried
Kracauer argues that the final resumption of the bugle motif 'unmistakably
reveals that the principle of authority has not been shaken' (1947:229).
Similarly, Lisa Ohm argues that when the Principal banishes Manuela to the
sick room, she mobilises a 'clinical interpretation of lesbianism that allows her
to label others as sexually abnormal'; this gives her power, so that at the end
she 'is not defeated but merely beats a temporary retreat down the hallway'
(1993:104). Ohm cannot really know this (the film only shows the Principal
walking away), but it is instructive to compare Madchen with another film
involving rebellion in, this time, a girls' reformatory: G W Pabst's 1929 version
of a book also filmed by Richard Oswald, Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen. Here
too, though much less centrally and overtly, there is lesbianism: at dinner
one girl winks at and plays footsie with the heroine, Thymian (Louise Brooks),
two girls cuddle in a bunk together, and there is a rebellion against the
repressiveness of the institution. However, when Thymian, now a rich woman,
returns to the reformatory, she finds it unchanged. Here clearly revolt has not
lead to revolution. The major difference between Madchen and Tagebuch is the
centrality of lesbianism in the former, the fact that it is the spur to revolt,
whereas it has nothing to do with it in Tagebuch. The bugle calls at the end of
Madchen may be a reminder that the wider society that produces homophobic
repression is still in place, but it does not necessarily undercut the vitality of
the rebellion.
Lesbianism is central to the anti-patriarchal feeling of Madels as it is to
Madchen. Hanna is the charismatic leader figure, with her broad shoulders and
athletic prowess; as she emerges glistening from the river in one shot, one
of the women strokes her arms, commenting on how beautiful they are. Her
gestures with the other women, particularly it seems the prettiest, are those
of a lover — holding their chin in her hand, rubbing her cheek against theirs.
But Madels does not go so far as Madchen — directed by a man, Erich Waschneck,
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
there is something voyeuristic about the frequent shots of women taking

showers or getting undressed for bed and it draws back from making the erotic
intensity of the women's relationships too glowingly explicit. With Madchen the
lesbianism is explicit and its link with the struggle against authoritarianism
clearly indicated. The moment of explicit declaration, of speaking for love
against its silencing, has strong in-between-ist resonances, but the wider revolt
against the law of the father is achieved through structures of feeling in which
female bonding, mother-daughter relationships and lesbian love are indistin-
guishable from one another.
After Madchen
Madchen was not banned or censored in Germany until the Nazi period, but
there is an indication of the damage that it might have been felt to have done
in a follow-up film, Anna undElisabeth 1933. Using the same stars and making
their relationship the selling point of the film, it nonetheless aims to show how
sick and twisted such relationships are.
Wieck plays a crippled lady of the manor, Elisabeth von Salis. She hears that
a village girl, Anna (Hertha Thiele), can work miracles and has her brought to
her. In Anna's presence, Elisabeth does start to walk and persuades her to stay
with her, keeping her from her fiance Martin, an Aryan-looking youth dressed
in Lederhosen. When Anna later leaves her, she throws herself from a cliff; as
she dies, she says to Anna, 'I am free. I am happy. You will be happy too' - by
her death, they are both delivered from lesbianism.
The reference back to Madchen is clear not only in the casting but in other
details. The sick character who dies is Elisabeth, von Bernburg's name, but the
young woman who escapes her power is called Anna, a sound German name,
unlike the exotic, Latinate Manuela. The final sequence cuts back and forth
between Elisabeth climbing the cliff to throw herself off and Anna talking with
Martin, during which there is a sudden close-up of Anna as it comes to her that
Elisabeth is about to destroy herself. This is exactly the same as during the
climax of Madchen, where von Bernburg breaks off her confrontation with
the Principal in a purely intuitive, telepathic realisation of Manuela's intentions.
The difference is that Manuela is saved from self-destruction, a triumph of
personal and collective lesbianism, whereas Elisabeth does succeed in killing
herself and freeing Anna from lesbianism.
Much of the symbolism of the film associates its homophobia with ideas that
were becoming by now annexed to Nazi ideology (just as Madchen links anti-
authoritarianism and lesbian liberation). Anna's Germanic name is part of her
construction as a representative of the healthiness of good peasant stock, and
this is reinforced by her relationship with Aryan Martin, with whom she will
settle down at the end of the film. These good volkisch qualities are contrasted
with not only the crippled lady of the manor but also the representatives of
the city: Elizabeth's friend Testa, referred to as 'the sick man from the city',
60
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who dies of what is made to seem like boredom and enervation (well-known city
diseases in contemporary demonology and often linked with homosexuality),
and the mannishly dressed woman reporter who comes to try to exploit the
story as 'news'. In this perspective, Elisabeth's suicide becomes an enactment
of the eugenic idea canvassed by the Nazis: that disabled people should remove
themselves from society (or, as was enacted subsequently, be removed).7
Anna und Elisabeth's fetid atmosphere and hysterical conclusion feel like
an attempt to batten down the hatches on the emotions unleashed by Madchen.
Yet those feelings do still come through, with if anything greater intensity and
ardour. Elisabeth is able to walk through her belief in Anna, they do have a
transcendent communion as suggested by Anna's intuitive sense of Elisabeth's
suicide - even at plot level, the strength of lesbian feelings is not denied, and
the filmic treatment enhances it. In one sequence the two are together on the
night before Anna is to be interrogated about her powers by a group of priests.
In an extreme close-up of them, their faces glow against a chiaroscuro night sky;
Anna's face is on the left, lower than Elisabeth, looking up at her as she breathes
out an ecstatic 'Tomorrow!'. This dissolves to another extreme close-up of them
(figure 2.10), but this time with positions reversed - Elisabeth lifts her face up
to Anna's and whispers 'Today!'. The night has passed as the lovers dissolve
into one another. As Schltipmann and Gramann (1981:46) put it,
Figure 2.10 Luminous intensity between Anna und Elisabeth. (National Film Archive)
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At this point the film is completely unrestrained and builds up an

erotic tension, completely forgetting the plot context for a moment.
. . . In such images the film expresses a relationship of unconditional
devotion, which elsewhere in the narrative it denounces as enslavement.
Anna undElisabeth is clearly in some sense an 'answer' to Madchen in Uniform.

The pull in the former between the delirious evocation of lesbian desire and the
simultaneous condemnation of it suggests the presence and force of the latter,
so much so indeed that the film was banned within a fortnight of its release.
Madchen $ lesbianism was something that needed to be negated, yet to give it
expression at all was to set its powerful emotions in motion. Anna und Elisabeth
suggests just how powerful, inspiring and intoxicating a film Madchen in
Uniform was, and is. Many of the principal figures involved in both Anders and
Madchen — Hirschfeld, Oswald, Sagan, Schunzel, Thiele, Winsloe, Veidt — had
to leave Germany when Hitler came fully to power, their lives endangered
by, among other things, their association with such boldly gay/lesbian films. Yet
for most viewers now, Anders als die Andern is a museum piece, touching, moving
and testimony to the role of film in gay struggle, but needing an act of imag-
ination to see beyond its fragments. But Madchen in Uniform still stirs audiences
with its sensual, moving, exciting and defiant assertion of lesbian love.
62
3
SHADES OF GENET
One of the standard items in any listing, season or festival of gay films is Un
Chant d'amour (A Song of Love), a twenty-odd minutes long, silent, black and
white film made in 1950 by Jean Genet.1 It survived in poor, scrappy copies
and was not given a commercial release. In many places it was confiscated,
banned or simply not shown, on grounds of taste or simple heterosexism. Even
now it is not widely shown outside of the gay season context. On the one hand,
it is easily perceived as sordid: much of the footage shows men masturbating
in grotty prison cells; there are scenes of whipping and of a gun being forced
down a man's mouth; there are penises, armpits, toe-nails and other body parts
in closeup. On the other hand, many of the sequences — two men frolicking in
a sylvan landscape; men making love in careful poses, with idealising lighting,
their genitals shielded from view - are lyrical, beautiful, artistic'. In marketing
terms it is too arty to be porn and too pornographic to be arthouse.
Chant would be even more obscure were it not for Genet's fame. It is perhaps
his fame more than his work itself that has been so influential - there is, as it were,
Genet and 'Genet'. Genet is the person who wrote poems, novels, plays and essays;
'Genet' is the idea we have of what that man and his work are like, an idea cobbled
together as much from blurbs, critiques and other artists' homages to him as from
the works themselves. One can say this of any writer - we don't come innocent
to Racine or de Beauvoir, Agatha Christie or Alice Walker, we read them through
what we have picked up about them — but it seems especially true of Genet. His
name evokes a flavour, a set of images, a world — you don't have to have read
his works to know what sort of thing you're going to get when someone says
such-and-such is Genet-esque, nor to be able to catch the allusions to him in so
many novels, films and theatre pieces or to grasp the significance of the frequent
references to him in the major intellectual trends of the post-war years. Equally
'Genet' is central to the construction of a major strain in gay culture. He is both
a known set of symbols for a homosexual existence and a reference point for
argument about what homosexual existence is or should be. Un Chant d'amour can
be, and has been, read and reread in relation to all this, and equally these readings
have themselves produced (or even been accomplished by) a number of Genet-
esque films, embodying the shifts in what the gay 'Genet' has been taken to be.
63
N O W Y O U SEE IT
This chapter looks at all of the above. I begin with Chant in itself, its structure
and imagery, and in its historical context. Part of that context is the presence
of Jean Cocteau (at the filming of Chant, in Genet's life at that time, in French
gay artistic culture), and his work, important in its own right to an account of
gay film, also provides a first set of interpretive frameworks through which
to read 'Genet' and Chant. I then move on to subsequent frameworks provided
by the shifts in the construction of homosexuality, through homophilia to
liberation and beyond. Throughout I am equally interested in relating these
frameworks to rereadings of Chant and to later 'Genet' films.
Un Chant d'amour
Un Chant d'amour consists of four interweaving elements. In order of intro-
duction, there are first the prison sequences, which form a rudimentary narrative
— a guard comes to the prison and spies in on the prisoners' cells; he sees men
masturbating and two prisoners communicating with each other through the
walls (these may be identified as 'the murderer', from a sign over the cell door,
and 'the Tunisian', since this was the nationality of the anonymous actor (Mekas
1972:165)); he goes into the Tunisian's cell, takes off his belt and whips him,
but the Tunisian laughs when the guard goes while the murderer smiles as
he listens; towards the end, the guard goes back into the Tunisian's cell and puts
his gun in the man's mouth, but leaves without pulling the trigger; the guard
walks away from the prison. Secondly, there are shots of a garland of flowers
being swung from a cell window and eventually caught by a hand coming from
the next cell window. Although part of the prison sequence, the way they
are repeated gives them a presence of their own separate from the narrative
of the guard and the prisoners. Thirdly there are sequences shot in chiaroscuro
lighting of men (including the guard in some shots) making love. Fourth, there
are sequences between the Tunisian and the murderer, away from the prison,
chasing and playing with each other in a woodland before beginning to make
love.
Structure
Chant has settings, characters and incidents and most people find themselves
approaching the film as if its basic structure is narrative. Each of the four
elements has a narrative dimension. The prison sequences are the story of the
guard's voyeurism and frustration; the chiaroscuro sequences may be seen to
follow, albeit inexplicitly, a classic pornographic narrative from kissing through
fellatio to coition; the woodland sequences are a playful chase and capture; even
the garland sequences are narrative in that there is the suspense of the hand
repeatedly missing the garland swung its way before finally, satisfactorily,
catching it. What is less certain is the narrative connection between the
elements.
64
S H A D E S OF G E N E T
Some see the whole thing centred on the guard — his view of the garland
and the prisoners masturbating, his fantasy of having sex with men in the
chiaroscuro sequences, his imaginings of the relationship between the Tunisian
and the murderer. Others see the chiaroscuro as his fantasy, but the woodlands
as the Tunisian's fantasy, or perhaps memory. The editing does not give definite
warrant to either of these. As the accompanying chart shows, the non-prison
sequences do not consistently follow shots of the guard (which would by
cinematic convention make them clearly in his mind), nor do the woodland
sequences only follow shots of the Tunisian. The non-prison sequences are
several times preceded by a fade, further cutting them off from the narrative/
character flow of the prison sequence. Point-of-view is fascinatingly manipu-
lated by the film, as will be discussed later, but it is not organised entirely and
consistently through the guard's gaze. There is a constant, highly controlled
shifting across elements and points of view that suggests narratives but never
insists on them.
A different way of approaching the film is suggested by its title: a song of love.
Its organisation is as much like a melody, with repetitions and refrains, as it is
like a narrative. As the chart shows, there is an almost classical formality about
the film's structure, such that laid out a kind of pyramid shape can be discerned.
The guard/prison narrative never disappears, but there is a gradual introduction
of the other elements towards and then away from a central apex formed by the
interweaved chiaroscuro and woodland sequences. The symmetry is not rigid,
but the sense of the pyramid is reinforced by placing near the beginning and
end the only two sequences showing the prisoners independently of the guard's
seeing them. The balance and poise of this structure is only seriously disrupted
by the very last shot — but this then gives that shot all the more force. Strict
symmetry would require that the last shot be the guard walking away but in
fact it is the garland being at last caught and drawn in. This links it with those
few shots of the prisoners unseen by the guard, where they try to communicate
with each other as well as dancing (alone) and caressing themselves. Equally the
last shot draws the threads of the film together: the garland of flowers occurs in
the prison, chiaroscuro and woodland sequences and is highly charged symboli-
cally, as will be discussed below. Ending on a shot of the garland, and of one
prisoner finally catching it from another, means ending on a shot of the prisoners
and one clearly linked with gay sexuality.
This kind of formalism is characteristic of Genet's early poetry ('Le condamne
a mort' 1942, 'Marche funebre' 1945, 'Un Chant d'amour' 1948 - the latter has
no direct connection with the film2). As Jean-Marie Magnan (1966:153) puts
it, 'On the subject matter of his song — crime, pederasty — Genet imposes the
most conventional system of weights and measures. . . . The structure is rigid,
the metre strict and impersonal, formalism predominates.' Such classical form
is traditionally associated with elevated subject-matter in moral, class and sexual
terms: the ethical precepts and concerns of the ruling class and their heterosexual
arrangements. Genet, as orphan, criminal and pervert, is beneath or without
65
Table 3.1 Un Chant d'amour: shot breakdown
SHOT* GUARD GARLAND PRISONERS** CHIAROSCURO WOODLAND
1 (credit)
2-3 guard outside
4 garland 1
5 guard outside
6-28 communicating
through wall
29-84 guard spying on prisoners
FADE
85 garland 2
86-7 chiaroscuro 1
88-104 guard whips Tunisian

FADE
105-21 woodland 1
122-3 Tunisian (122)

and guard (123)
124-7 chiaroscuro 2
128-30 Tunisian and guard
131-47 woodland 2
148-51 Tunisian and guard

FADE
152 garland 3
153-60 chiaroscuro 3
161 guard
162 woodland 3
163-5 guard puts gun in

Tunisian's mouth
166 corridor
167 guard outside prison
168 garland 4
169 Tunisian
pacing cell
FADE
170 guard walking away
171 garland 5 (garland drawn

into next cell)
172-(credits)
SHOT* GUARD GARLAND PRISONERS** CHIAROSCURO WOODLAND

1 guard's p.o.v. 1 follows fade 1 follows shot
+ shot of of prisoner
garland + fade
2 follows shot 2 follows shot 2 follows shot
of guard + of guard of guard +
fade fade
3 as2 3 follows shot 3 follows shot
4 guard's p.o.v. of guard + of guard
5 follows shot fade + shot
of guard walking of garland
away.
* given the state of prints of the film, this numbering should be taken as indicative rather than definitive.
** i.e. the murderer and Tunisian in prison when unseen by guard.
N O W Y O U SEE IT
class, morality or the heterosexual imperative. The effects of this use of extreme
formality and the canons of beauty in the evocation of degradation and
perversity will be discussed in a moment.
Imagery
Two things characteristic of Genet's use of objects as symbols, in all his work,
are the way any one object may symbolise many different, often seemingly
incompatible things, and the way that they generally symbolise the opposite
of what they do elsewhere, in poetry or everyday life.
Both these qualities are exemplified in Chant by the use of flowers, a favourite
symbol in his work (cf. Giles 1991:61—3). Formed into a garland, they are a
rosary - flowers as religious symbols are suggested by the titles of two of Genet's
novels, Notre-Dame des fleurs 1944 and Miracle de la rose 1945. Also as a garland,
they are the chains of imprisonment. This more unexpected symbolism also
runs through Genet's work, as in this passage from Miracle de la rose, where the
transmutation of one symbol into another, and its religiosity, is spelt out in
the description of the condemned prisoner Harcamone:
the fervour of our admiration together with the burden of saintliness

which weighed on the chain that squeezed his wrists — his hair had had
time to grow, its curls were tangled over his forehead with the knowing
cruelty of the crown of thorns - made this chain transform itself before
our not really surprised eyes into a garland of white roses. The trans-
formation began at the left wrist which it encircled with a bracelet of
flowers and continued along the length of the chain, from link to link,
until it reached the right wrist.
(1951:233-4)
Flowers in Chant may also symbolise the criminals themselves, as they do in The
Thiefs Journal', 'there is a close relationship between flowers and convicts.
The fragility and delicacy of the former are of the same nature as the brutal
insensitivity of the latter' (1949:9). Finally, they symbolise masculinity and
the male genitals.
Unlike flowers as rosary, but like flowers as chains and criminals, flowers
as masculinity run exactly counter to what we expect flowers to mean, yet
the association is perfectly explicit in Chant. In the first woodland sequence, the
murderer has a garland of flowers attached to his waist, hanging down over his
crotch. As his lover looks on, he caresses the blooms gently. A little later in the
sequence, he takes the garland off and gives the Tunisian a flower; in close-up,
the latter presses it to his nose. The placing of the flowers on the murderer's body
suggests that the flowers symbolise the genitals. Yet this is hardly a phallic
symbol' as conventionally understood: phallic symbols are hard, thrusting,
usually connoting power. Flowers on the other hand are soft, delicate, powerless.
68
Genet's flower as penis imagery goes against the grain of how male genitalia
are 'normally' described. As Jean-Paul Sartre (1952:82) puts it, in a passage
full of regrettable assumptions, 'that same turgescence that the male experiences
as the violent stiffening of a muscle, Genet feels as the unfolding of a flower'.
Hence in Chant the come-on gesture of stroking the penis becomes a thumb
playing lightly over flower blossoms and the beginnings of fellatio are holding
a flower to one's nose. The flower as penis in fellatio recurs in the chiaroscuro
sequence, where one man takes into his mouth a flower held in the other's mouth
(figure 3.1).
This kind of representation of the delicacy of masculinity goes beyond the
use of flower imagery. Fellatio in the film is also represented in the sequence
where the Tunisian blows smoke through a straw in the wall into the mouth of
the murderer in the next cell (figure 3.2). The fragile straw (penis) and billowing
smoke (semen) are both rather blatant sexual symbols and yet surprising ones
within the usual representation of male sexuality. Again the imagery is taken
up in the chiaroscuro sequences where one man transfers a lighted cigarette
from another's mouth into his own.
The men in the film are to be seen as beautiful. As in Genet's writings, they
conform to certain notions of machismo that have long functioned as a turn-
on: they are muscled, short-haired, often hirsute, often unshaven or bearded,
often uniformed. Yet although it was common enough to find such men
exciting, it was not common to find them beautiful. Beautiful men in French
cinema might be the 'classical' athletic type (Jean Marais, Henri Vidal) or the
clean-groomed, regular-featured type (Jean-Pierre Aumont, Louis Jourdan) or
the delicate, romantic type (Michel Auclair, Gerard Philipe) but the perception
of beauty in men did not usually stretch to rough, criminal types. In Genet
however the rhetoric of beauty is applied to just such types, as in this description
from Miracle de la rose, where aristocratic and classical references are used, as well
as words like 'delicate', 'elegance' and 'beauty', to describe a man who is also
heavily muscled, dirty and dangerous:
Bulkaen was leaning his elbow against the wall, so that his arm was
over his head and looked like it was crowning him. This arm-cum-
crown was naked, for his jacket, as always, was simply thrown over his
shoulders, and that enormous bunching of muscle, his baron's coronet
. . . , was the visible sign of the ten years of banishment — ten years
of beatings — that weighed on his delicate brow. . . . At the same
time I saw his neck whose skin was a little bit shaded with grime.
. . . His right ankle was crossed over his left, in the way Mercury is
always shown, and on him the heavy frieze trousers had an infinite
elegance . . . his waist was slim, his shoulders broad and his voice was
strong with a confidence that came from his awareness of his invincible
beauty.
(1951:237-8)
69
N O W Y O U SEE IT
Figure 3.1 A flower passed from mouth to mouth in a chiaroscuro sequence from Un
Chant d'amour. (British Film Institute)
Figure 3.2 The straw through the wall in Un Chant d'amour — obvious yet delicate fellatio
symbolism. (British Film Institute)
70
Chant does not use classical or noble allusions, but it does nonetheless present
a similar beautification of a rough masculinity. In part this is achieved through
the film's structure. Flowers link the men together, as has already been discussed,
and the woodland sequences draw very directly on Romantic imagery of love.
The chiaroscuro sequences in their studied use of lighting suggest a notion of
the 'artistic': although sexually unambiguous, they do not show genitals or sex
acts but a series of formal poses which stress, almost to the point of abstraction,
line, shape, texture and surface.
Close-ups also allow us to dwell on the beauty of the men: the smoothness
of the murderer's throat or the soft folds of another's trousers at the crotch. Some
examples are more surprising still. There is for instance an extreme close-up
of the murderer picking dirt out of his big toe-nail, which is poking through
a hole in his sock. This is hardly the stuff that erotic dreams are made of, yet in
Genet's writings such 'sordid' details are perceived as part of a man's beauty.
In Querelle de Brest 1947, for instance, Querelle thinks over one by one Mario's
'diverse peculiarities', one of which is one of his thumb-nails: 'completely black,
a very beautiful black, as if lacquered. There is no black flower and yet, at the
tip of his crushed thumb, this black nail did make one think of a flower'
(1953:195).
There are different views of how one should interpret this use of imagery
and the structural formalism discussed above. One is that Genet borrows the
conventions of what is beautiful and sacred in order to make the criminal and
male beautiful and sacred too. Tony Rayns (1973:236) argues in similar terms
when he writes of Chant having
Genet's customary spirituality . . . the more remarkable in that the

film is among the most intensely physical ever made, consisting largely
of close-ups - faces, shoulders, crotches, phalluses, soiled clothing - all
lent an almost Pauline purity by their isolation and the film's silence.
Others argue the opposite, that Genet negates the higher, holier values of
conventional symbols by associating them with criminals, machismo and
perversion. Richard Coe, for instance, suggests that Genet hates flowers, that
his use of them requires us to see them and the value system they stand for
as ugly, obscene, brutal (1968:75-81). In this reading, it is not a question of
transforming criminals and queers into good and respectable guys, but of seeing
the straight world as itself criminal and queer. A third view is that there is no
fixed moral valuation in Genet, just as there is no fixed point of view on the
events in Chant and no fixed fictional world and story to be followed.
All three of these approaches can be applied to the structure and imagery of
Chant, yet in many ways the first seems to come nearest to the feeling of the film.
This is not necessarily because the other approaches are wrong about Genet's work
in general, but because Chant, though undoubtedly very much a Genet work, is
also touched by other gay cultural traditions, not least the figure ofJean Cocteau.
71
N O W Y O U SEE IT
The immediate context
There was no publicly prominent gay scene, much less a gay movement, in France
in the forties, the period in which Genet began writing. There was a memory of
a highly developed scene in Paris from the turn of the century to the end of the
twenties, with balls, cabarets and nightclubs, and celebrities such as the drag
trapeze artist Barbette, the flamboyant aristocrat Robert de Montesquiou, and
the writer and sometime actress Colette (Barbedette and Carassou 1981).
Particularly famous was the grouping of well-to-do lesbians, many of them exiles,
centred on the salons of Natalie Barney. It is characteristic of the French situation
that figures such as Barney, Radclyffe Hall, Marguerite Yourcenar, Gertrude
Stein, Renee Vivien, Djuna Barnes and Romaine Brooks should be celebrities,
as well as — and because they were — highly esteemed writers and artists (Casselaer
1986: Benstock 1987; Jay 1988). The supreme example of the poet-as-celebrity
is Jean Cocteau, who not only wrote poetry' in many media (writing, drawing,
theatre, film, music) but was also involved in organising much of the enter-
tainment and fashion of these 'annees folles' (crazy years).
There was also an element of gay campaigning in the twenties, in the
short-lived newspaper Inversions (four issues, from November 1924 to March
1925), the one issue of LAmitie (April 1925) and Andre Gide's book Cory don
1925. The latter took the form of four dialogues in defence of homosexuality,
arguing mainly from nature, though in terms of the fact of homosexual activity
in the animal kingdom rather than third sex biologism. The title of the book
(the name of one of the shepherds in the Pastorals of Virgil), its structure
(recalling Plato's Socratic dialogues), and various references also invoke classical
precedent for the acceptance of homosexual love. The use of nature and antiquity
purify the subject of homosexuality, as does Gide's limpid prose style. This set
the tone for the defence of homosexuality, up to and after the period in which
Un Chant d'amour was made. Michel du Coglay in Chez les mauvais gargons, a book
that protests its author's heterosexuality at many points, states the Gidean line
as if it is obvious and common sense:
Homosexuality, that attraction towards people of the same sex, has

existed at all times. There's no point in making a great fuss about it,
it will always exist. It is in nature, among animals just as much as
among vegetables. Man cannot escape it. Those are the brutal facts.
(1937:118)
The same position, with some other reasonable arguments, was taken by Paul
Reboux in Sens interdits 1951 and this was to be the tone of the 'homophile'
organisation, Arcadie, founded in Paris in 1954.
These voices were however quite isolated in the mid-century, with none of
the glitter and display of the annees folles to give their defence of homosexuality
a wider public presence. This does not mean that there was no gay life. The
72
writings of Maurice Sachs, Marcel Jouhandeau and Maxence van der Meersch,
to say nothing of Genet and Cocteau, indicate the existence of a widespread, but
now quite underground, gay scene, and not only in Paris. The second half of
Chez les mauvais gargons is a rich catalogue of the cafes, restaurants, clubs, toilets,
cruising areas and other meeting places of gay men in Paris in the thirties.
Significantly, the first half details the lives of young male petty thieves and
criminals. It establishes a link in terms of social status and perceived disposition
between the criminal and the sexual underworld, not only by juxtaposing
accounts of the two, but by dwelling on the sexual relations between the boys
in the first half and pointing to male prostitution and stealing from clients as
a major source of their income. As in the more literary work, there is an insistent
linking of homosexuality with criminality.
In addition to the memory of the annees folles, the isolated tracts and the
continuing gay underworld, there was also an extremely prominent tradition
within French literature of writing about homosexuality. In their study of gay
and lesbian life in Paris in the twenties, Gilles Barbedette and Michel Carassou
argue that
as opposed to the German homosexual movement which was the

creation of 'men of science', it is incontestably the case that homo-
sexuals in France experienced their first taste of freedom when men
and women of letters began to write on the subject.
(1981:102)
There was a lesbian and gay literature in Germany, as we have seen in the
previous chapter, but it was less influential there than the legalistic and scientific
lesbian/gay movement. The German gay literary tradition differed from
the French in at least three significant ways, which also in part account for the
decisive influence of the latter in French life. Firstly, the German tradition was,
from a literary point of view, for the most part very traditional, even conser-
vative, whereas French gay writers were often at the forefront of changes and
experiments in literary form: varieties of symbolism in Verlaine, Rimbaud,
Huysmans and Lautreamont at the turn of the century, explorations of the role
of the narrator in the novels of Gide and Proust, the involvement of Cocteau
and Crevel in surrealism. Secondly, much twentieth- and late nineteenth-
century gay writing belongs to a longer and not uniquely gay tradition of French
literature, so that the imagery of Genet, Verlaine and Lautreamont can be linked
to that of Baudelaire, de Sade, Villon and others, writers, many of whom were
themselves criminals, with a facility for making poetry out of low life, degrada-
tion and social damnation. Equally Proust can be linked to novelists like Balzac
and Zola, who, like him, used homosexuality as a telling part of their panoramic
account of contemporary society. The role of gay writing in general literary
innovation and its connection with more deeply rooted French literary traditions
together point to the third difference from gay writing in Germany, simply
73
N O W Y O U SEE IT
that many gay authors were considered also to be 'great' authors, good and
important figures on the literary scene. In other words, gay writing had a general
cultural prestige in France that it did not in Germany, and that in a society
which anyway traditionally accords particular prestige to literature and the
arts. The best example of this last observation is Genet himself: it is hard to
think of another country where literary genius would be a sufficient argument
to waive a sentence to life imprisonment.
Genet's work in general belongs to that tradition mentioned above that
includes de Sade, Baudelaire, Lautreamont, Huysmans, Rimbaud, Verlaine and
others and was dubbed by Verlaine in 1884 'poetes maudits' ('accursed poets').
Three things place Genet here. There is a fascination with evil, seen for instance
as a source of beauty (as in Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal 1857) or something
for abandoned, delirious worship (as in Lautreamont's Les Chants de Maldoror
1869). This fascination depended for its intensity on a strong consciousness of
Christianity and, really, a belief in it: evil only retains its frisson if you actually
believe in a metaphysics of good and evil, otherwise it is merely doing what
other people consider evil and is little more than a desire to shock. If one does
not grant them a strong belief in Christianity, the poetes maudits are merely a
string of adolescent minded young men who wished to upset bourgeois and,
often, feminine sensibilities. Secondly, there is an interest in criminality. De Sade
wrote from prison, Isidore Ducasse (Lautreamont's real name) wrote as if he
were a convict, Verlaine's imprisonment in 1873 (for shooting Rimbaud)
was a cause celebre. Even when there is not this direct or fake identification
with the criminal, he or she symbolises in this tradition the outcast, a type of
being beyond the pale of normal society, who throws the values and nature
of that society into relief. Thirdly, homosexuality runs throughout all of this
writing, even in writers with no indubitably gay identification. Lautreamont,
for instance, who writes of'you incomprehensible pederasts' with your 'shameful
and almost incurable illnesses' (1966:286-7) also, as he writes, begins to be
turned on by the excitement of that incomprehensibility and shamefulness:
I have always experienced a wicked fancy for pale college youths and
emaciated factory kids! . . . I even murdered (not so long ago!) a queer
who didn't surrender himself sufficiently to my passion. . . . Why are
you trembling with fear, you adolescent who's reading me? Do you
think I'd want to do the same to you? You are absolutely right: beware
of me, especially if you are beautiful.
(ibid.:290-l)
The elements of evil, criminality and homosexuality are inextricably entwined

in this tradition, and Gerald Storzer argues that this goes beyond the poetes
maudits, so that even writers as apparently different as Balzac, Gide and Genet
are similar in 'their obsessive preoccupation with the relationship between
homosexuality and criminality' (1979:186).
74
Genet's work as a whole belongs in this tradition, but with a special intensity.
The myth of his life emphasises his outcast state from the start by virtue of his
being an orphan. He could have featured as one of du Coglay's mauvais gargons:
he lived by crime, both theft and prostitution; he had spent years in prison.
Christian imagery saturates his writings, and many critics argue, like Georges
Bataille, that it is Genet's acceptance of the truth of the Christian moral order
that gives his work its special intensity: 'He wants [abjection] because of
a vertiginous propensity towards an abjection in which he loses himself as
completely as the ecstatic mystic loses himself in God' (1973:150). Genet,
in public perception, in what his writings claim about his life, is not playing
at being the outcast, is not slumming — he is outcast, criminal, accursed, queer.
Not just in his personal circumstances but also by virtue of the period, Genet
was even more the homosexual-as-criminal than any of the preceding poetes
maudits: in 1942 homosexuality was made illegal in France for the first time
since 1791 and remained so until 1982. Moreover, the various facets of gay
existence mentioned above (the annees folles, the tracts, the underworld,
the literary tradition) should not lead one to think that the general climate
for gays was easy and tolerant (cf. Lacombe 1988). Jouhandeau's De lJabjection
1939 and van der Meersch's Masque de chair 1958, roughly equidistant on
either side of the making of Chant, indicate what social attitudes were and
how deeply their authority could penetrate the soul. Jouhandeau ends with a
'eulogy' of the abjection to which his homosexual leanings have brought him
because such abjection has in turn led to his seeking salvation in God. Masque
de chair is a first person confession of the 'ignominy', 'evil' and 'defilement' of
the narrator's homosexuality. When he writes of his outcast state, it is not in
defiance or celebration, but in recognition of his worthlessness and his need for
forgiveness:
Who would still want this charred ruin, this thief, this drunkard, this
adulterer, this committer of incest, this degenerate, this pederast,
this invert, this monster, irremediably except for some miracle of grace
caught in the toils of his vice?. . . . Rotten to the marrow, like a corpse,
an object of disgust to others and to myself, there was no one left but
God to save me from losing courage.
(1960:158)
In various ways the writings of the poetes maudits are a rejection or an inver-
sion of such attitudes, all the more intense for being produced in the context of
them. Most write in a delirious style, words and images streaming across the
page, heady, intoxicated. Genet is not like this. His writing, like Chant, has
'the beauty of a piece of jewellery' (Bataille 1973:165). The nearest one gets
to the feel of the film in the poetes maudits tradition is perhaps Rimbaud and
Verlaine's 'Sonnet du trou du cul'. This does not flinch from referring to excre-
ment, wind, semen, all the while using the rhetoric of beauty. The very use of
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
the sonnet form invokes an elevated tradition of love poetry stretching back
through the great French sixteenth-century poet Ronsard to the Italian poet
Petrarch:
Dark, puckered hole: a purple carnation

That trembles, nestled among the moss (still wet
With love) covering the gentle curvation
Of the white ass, just to the royal eyelet.
Threads resembling milky tears there are spun;
Spray forced back by the south wind's cruel threat
Across the small balls of brown shit has run,
To drip from the crack, which craves for it yet.
(1983:235)
This is comparable to Chant, even if the latter does not, beyond a very brief close-
up of an erect penis, dwell on such conventionally 'obscene' details. Still we may
relate it to the dirt in the toe-nail, or the close-ups of one prisoner's armpit,
another's hairy chest, or another outlining with his hand the shape of his erection
through his trousers, all the while associated with the visual poetry of garlands,
woodlands and chiaroscuro lighting and held within a highly disciplined formal
structure.
One of the books Genet was on trial for stealing in 1943 was a rare edition
of Verlaine's poetry. Perhaps it was Hombres, in which 'Sonnet du trou du cul'
was published and which was not only rare but clandestine. Among those who
attended the trial was Jean Cocteau who referred to Genet as Rimbaud (another
link back to the sonnet), arguing that 'One cannot condemn Rimbaud'. As
Milorad (1981—2:39) wryly observes, the judge 'who had just given a maximum
sentence to a man who had stolen a bag of flour but who was not Rimbaud,
acquitted Genet'.
Cocteau
Cocteau's intervention at Genet's trial saved the latter from life imprisonment
(for persistent thieving) and brought him into the former's gay literary ambit.
They had a brief affair and Cocteau got his publishers to publish Notre-Dame
des Fleurs 1946 and did the illustrations for Querelle de Brest 1947. Genet
wrote a play (Heliogabale, never published) in 1943 for Jean Marais, Cocteau's
lover; Les Bonnes was produced by Cocteau's collaborator Louis Jouvet in 1946
and closely inspired by Cocteau's 'spoken song' Anna la bonne\ his scenario for
the Roland Petit ballet,'adame Miroir, makes a Cocteau-like use of mirrors; and
he wrote an unsparing eulogy of Cocteau in the Belgian magazine Empreintes in
1950, the year of Un Chant d'amour.
Genet had never made a film. Cocteau on the other hand was well established
as a film-maker and just at the end of his most fruitful period of film-making.
He had made he Sang d'unpoete in 1930, to great acclaim, but did not move back
76
into films until the forties, writing scripts for several films including an
adaptation of his play Les Enfants terribles 1950 and directing four films,
including his most successful, La Belle et la bete 1946 and Orphee 1950. Although
the producer, Nicos Papatakis, told Jonas Mekas that Cocteau had no influence
on Chant, he was there 'almost every day' (Mekas 1972:164) throughout the
shooting, much of it at his country home at Milly-la-Foret; given his charisma
as well as his cinematic know-how, it seems likely that it would bear some of
the marks of his work.
This does also seem to be a period in Cocteau's life where he was prepared to
take more risks in the expression of homosexuality in his work than previously.
That he was gay was an open secret, but most of his work presents homosexuality
in a symbolic form that it is easy enough to miss. In the late forties however,
several of his works are more explicitly gay. His illustrations for Querelle de Brest
are frankly sexy, with exaggerations of nipples, body hair and genitals that are
only slightly less extreme than in the gay porn images of Tom of Finland and
others. Le Livre blanc, which had been published anonymously in 1928 but
with a preface by Cocteau, was republished in 1949, and although Cocteau still
did not explicitly claim authorship, the preface, and more sexy illustrations,
clearly allied it to his work. The film Orphee is more homosexual than Cocteau's
play, originally produced in 1926; as A1 LaValley has argued, the heterosexuality
of the Orpheus and Eurydice story is displaced in the film into a relationship
between Eurydice and the angel Heurtebise, while Orpheus' passion is reserved
for Death and the poet Cegeste, whom he has seen die in an accident. Although
Death is played by a woman (Maria Casares), it is a motif often associated with
gay sex in Cocteau's work (as will be discussed below) and this is strengthened
by the fact that the object of Orpheus' passion, Cegeste, is also dead. Further
piquancy is added by the fact that Orphee was played by Jean Marais, Cocteau's
lover of thirteen years, and Cegeste by Edouard Dermit, his new lover of two
years - gossip that was fairly widespread at the time.
Whether as direct or indirect influence, or because both men shared at the
time the same gay culture (given its most extended expression in film by
Cocteau), it is worth taking a look at Cocteau's film work, for its own sake and
for the different take it offers on Un Chant d'amour.
Cocteau's work centres on the notion of'poetry', the creation of beauty in
works of art, regardless of medium. The question is, how to take this commit-
ment to beauty. Cocteau often presented poetry as a sacred mission, the
production of beauty out of the poet's imagination, a beauty that represents a
higher truth than everyday reality. He drew on both myth and the unconscious
(as conceived within psychoanalysis and surrealism) as sources of imagery
unsullied by contemporary, contingent and conscious reality, enabling him, the
poet, to create beauty. Yet Cocteau was also an entertainer and celebrity; much
of his work, notably in film, draws attention to its own artifice and playfulness.
So for many people Cocteau's views on the spirituality of poetry are themselves
merely part of an elaborate and knowing charade, the conscious cultivation of
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
the beautiful, of a glittering surface of manners, wit, style and form that is fully
acknowledged as artificial and literally superficial.
Much of Cocteau's work uses the mythic figure of Orpheus as the embod-
iment of the poet and, as Arthur Evans (1977:68-9) points out, there is a strong
tradition in classical literature linking Orpheus and homosexuality. The link
between poetry and gayness in Cocteau is not however unique to him. The
cult(ivation) of beauty has often been linked with male homosexuality. Marcel
Eck, in his aspirantly objective psychological study of homosexuality, Sodome,
averred that aestheticism is 'the great temptation for the homosexual' (1966:164)
and took Genet as the exemplar: since homosexuals by their nature live in a false
world, they end up exalting the false as beautiful. There may however be other
ways of understanding the link between aestheticism and homosexuality.
The link conflates different ideas and practices of sexuality and gender:
manners became seen in the nineteenth century as the province of women and
gay men are thought to be feminine; certain kinds of employment concerned
with beautification (modelling, hairdressing, interior design) have been more
congenial for openly gay men than have others; the widespread view of the
aetiology of homosexuality in narcissism (discussed below) emphasises a concern
with personal beauty. Aestheticism may also be a resistance to the social place
of homosexuality. Absorption in beauty is one strategy against, in Oscar Wilde's
words, 'the sordid perils of actual existence' (which might include the dangers
of outlawed gay existence); as an attention to surface and appearance, to getting
these things right, aestheticism is related to the need for gay people to pass for
straight, to be adept at getting the appearances of normality right. Normality
passes itself off as naturalness; the gay perception of the literal superficiality
of normality has the effect of denaturalising the normal. At the same time, gay
aestheticism doubts that there is any such thing as a natural way of being and
thus the honest way of proceeding is to acknowledge the artificiality of reality.
In this perspective the reality of appearance is always to be valued over the
appearance of reality.
The ambivalence about Cocteau — transcendence or display? — is characteristic
of Wilde and Genet too, and is perhaps itself a quality of that troublesome
notion, the gay sensibility. It may well be that the ability to hold together a
passionate belief in something with a concomitant recognition of its artificiality
is a defining feature of much gay culture (Dyer 1986:154—5). Thus 'poetry' is
both cult and cultivation.
The most obviously aestheticised parts of Un Chant d'amour are the chiaroscuro
love-making sequences. They are in no way realistic and are strikingly different
from the 'sordid' realism of the prison sequences. In the perspective of Cocteau's
aestheticism, the chiaroscuro sequences are the 'truest' parts of the film. The
prison merely shows the appearances of actual existence; the chiaroscuro presents
the reality of poetry, the consciously chosen and constructed realm of the
transcendent and the beautiful, not the unconsciously imposed constructions
and restrictions of normality. This reading puts a different inflection to Eck's
78
observation, made from within the citadel of unproblematic straight reality,

that what is false and imaginary is for Genet richer than what is true, because
the true transcends him whereas it is he who creates the false and imaginary'
(1966:164).
Aestheticism in Cocteau is often realised through the image of the mirror.
Mirrors aestheticise because they frame sections of reality and render them
on a shimmering, one-dimensional surface: they make reality into beautiful
pictures. The poet characters in Cocteau's films look at themselves in mirrors
and then actually step into and behind the mirror into another world - they
enter themselves and the magic of their imagination. In the second episode of
Le Sang d'un poete (Blood of a Poet), the poet throws himself into a mirror through
to another realm, represented as a corridor in a hotel, giving on to rooms in
which a variety of strange and forbidden sights 3 may be spied through the
keyholes; he is expelled from the mirror back into his room. Similarly Orphee
steps through mirrors in pursuit of the beautiful emissary of Death and hence
into the greatly to be desired realm of Death.
Mirrors also suggest narcissism, and this has been associated with homosex-
uality throughout the twentieth century. There are two logics to this association.
Gay men fancy people like themselves (men) rather than unlike (women),
therefore their sexuality must be an extension of their love of themselves. Or -
women are naturally more narcissistic than men, and gay men are more feminine
than straight men, therefore gay men are narcissistic. Guy Hocquenghem
(1978:65-7) discusses the manifestation of the homosexuality-narcissism
equation in psychoanalytic theories of the period. Freud, in his essay 'On
Narcissism: an Introduction' had observed:
We have discovered, especially clearly in people whose libidinal

development has suffered some disturbance, such as perverts and
homosexuals, that in their later choice of love objects they have taken
as a model not their mother but their own selves.
(1957:88)
In mid-century such ideas were common sense to the point of being thought
self-evident. Reboux's Sens interdits, quite a sympathetic study of homosexuality,
has a section on 'Their funny little ways', the first of which is narcissism
(1951:153-6); similarly, Eck observes that homosexuals, 'when they are honest
about it, are the first to recognise their narcissism, and even to boast of it'
(1966:197). Milorad, discussing Genet's Cocteau-like ballet scenario 'adame
Miroir, describes the way the dancer (dressed as a US sailor) dances in front of
mirrors, his reflection being danced by identically attired dancers until one
of the reflections takes on a life of his own and 'leaves the mirror and dances
an amorous pas de deux with the other, the whole thing forming a wonderful
allegory of the relationship between narcissism and homosexuality, of the
way in which homosexuality is born of narcissism' (1981-2:41). The equation
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
of mirrors, narcissism and homosexuality can be traced in all Cocteau's works,

even the least 'obviously' homo-erotic (cf. Susan Hayward's discussion (1989)
of La Belle et la bete).
In the first sequence of Sang the poet is seen finishing a drawing of himself.
When he looks at it, its mouth comes alive. He tries to wipe it off the canvas with
his hand but instead it sticks to his palm. He presses it to his mouth - that is,
he presses the mouth on his own self-portrait (his painting, his face) to his own
mouth. Then his hand caresses his naked torso, before sliding down out of view
of the camera; there is then a cut to his head thrown back, with eyes painted on
his closed eyelids. The caressing hand with his own mouth in it disappearing
below the waist, followed by a shot of his head thrown back, knocked-out but
still wide-eyed, clearly suggests masturbation. As it stands, there is no particular
reason to see it as specifically homosexual masturbation, but the context suggests
it: not only that Cocteau was known to be gay but the dominant cultural
perception of homosexuality as narcissism and narcissism as homosexuality.
Chant is narcissistic in the crudest sense: there are many images of mastur-
bation in it. As the guard moves from spy-hole to spy-hole, he sees a series of
men making love to themselves: the murderer does a little dance and caresses
a tattoo on his right bicep; the Tunisian runs his hand inside his open-necked
sweater over his hairy chest; a young white prisoner is first seen from behind,
his body glistening with water, and then turns, simultaneously soaping his hair
with one hand and his penis with the other; a black prisoner (in a sequence
discussed below) caresses his penis hanging out of his trousers as he dances until
he throws himself on to his bed.
Such imagery does not of itself make the prisoners' masturbation homosexual,
and in fact the tattoo on the murderer's arm is of a woman. What makes the
imagery homosexual first of all is the guard. We see what he sees, and see him
playing with his penis beneath his trousers as he moves from door to door. In
other words, what is homosexual about the sequence is its voyeurism, the fact
that we are placed as a man being turned on by looking at men. At moments
the prisoners play to this (the man washing turning round to the guard/us and
displaying his soapy erection) or refuse it (the murderer stops masturbating
and shields the bulge in his trousers from view). This voyeuristic structure is
reminiscent of the corridor sequence in the second section of Sang. The poet spies
through the keyholes into each room and sees a sequence of disquieting images
suggesting clandestine activity, with sado-masochistic, lesbian and androgynous
overtones. The possible gay dimension of such imagery is explicit in he Livre
blanc, where the narrator describes visiting a bath-house in Toulon in which it
was possible to spy unobserved, though a two-way mirror, on 'young working-
class men' bathing and masturbating. The description of them could be of the
prisoner who is washing himself in Chant'.
Standing up in the bath, they would look at themselves (and me) and
begin by a Parisian grimace that bares the gums. Then they would rub
80
one shoulder, pick up the soap and make it lather. The soaping turned
into a caress.
(1983:65)
In Le Livre blanc, the man presents himself to himself in the mirror; it is

only also to the narrator because it is a two-way mirror. In Chant there is no
mirror so the prisoner appears to present himself consciously to the guard/the
camera/us. Perhaps the point in both cases is the playful ambivalence, blurring
distinctions between narcissism, exhibitionism and voyeurism — do the men
in the bath house really not know they are observed?; is the prisoner teasing the
guard? In any case, the masturbating actor in Chant knows he is being watched,
by the camera crew and potential audience, but he also knows that we, the
audience, can never actually have him.
Part of the frisson of the film is that the guard — but, of course, not we - does
cross the barrier (the mirror in the bath-house, the doors in the prison) and
enter the masturbator's space. Yet once inside, he is unable to do anything
sexually. He shoves his gun in the prisoner's mouth, which you could read
literally as a substitute for his penis which he is too inhibited to put in the
man's mouth, or symbolically as him putting his penis in the man's mouth but
then unable to pull the trigger, suggesting that he cannot have an orgasm. One
could relate this back to the timidity of the narrator of he Livre blanc or more
generally to the idea that the pleasure of voyeurism resides precisely in not
making contact, in preserving the separation.
The masturbation in Chant only itself becomes homosexual when the
Tunisian and the murderer are linked as lovers, through the straw in the wall
and the woodland sequences. Details of this again recall other of Cocteau's
works, situating it within the construction of homosexuality as narcissism. In
particular there is a shot of the Tunisian, in the sequence near the beginning
showing the two men unseen by the guard, in which he presses the side of his
face against the wall, rubs it gently against the wall, kissing it (figure 3.3).
The positioning recalls a shot of Jean Marais in Orphee pressing his cheek
against a mirror (figure 3.4) (cf. Harvey 1984:198, Lange 1983:292); it also
recalls a particular incident with the two-way mirror in the bath-house at
Toulon:
Once, a Narcissus who was pleasuring himself, brought his mouth

up to the mirror, glued it to the glass and completed the adventure
with himself. Invisible as a Greek god, I pressed my lips against his
and imitated his gestures. He never knew that the mirror, instead of
reflecting, was participating, that it was alive and loved him.
(1983:65)
This man does not know (the narrator is sure) that there is someone on the other
side of the mirror with whom he all but makes contact. The Tunisian on the
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
other hand does know that there is someone behind the wall but does not make
any sort of contact with him by this particular narcissistic act. It is only by
breaching the wall, blowing smoke through the straw, that he is able to make
contact. This sequence, moving enough without any contextual gloss, is all the
more so when one sees it as an inversion of the voyeuristic consummation in
the Toulon bath-house.
The other breaching of the walls, already mentioned, is the guard entering
the Tunisian's cell. This has a further resonance with Cocteau's work in the
association of sexuality with violence and death. Rene Galand (1979) argues that
there is a sexual equation in Cocteau, whereby poetry = sex = death. The poetic
experience is an erotic one involving a loss of self; the erotic apprehension of
sexual beauty is poetic but also, in ecstasy (including orgasm), involves a loss
of consciousness; thus both poetry and sex involve death, the loss of self and
consciousness (albeit only temporarily). Galand traces this theme in Cocteau's
work, showing how frequently love and death are associated for the poet figures
and discussing such images as the hermaphrodite in the hotel room in Sang
who lifts up its loin cloth to reveal a sign saying 'Danger of death'. Although
Cocteau thus speaks of sex as 'fatal', this need not be read negatively: death is
to be seen as a kind of transcendence, and the link of poetry and sex to death
means that they too are avenues of transcendence.
Figure 3-3 Un Chant d'amour, 'the Tunisian' presses his cheek in longing against the wall.
(British Film Institute)
82
Figure 3.4 Orphee: Orphee (Jean Marais) presses his cheek in longing against the mirror.
(National Film Archive)
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
A1 LaValley suggests that the linking of sex with violence and death in
Cocteau's work may be understood as a covert
discourse of ritual sex, sado-masochism and taboo sexuality — the sleazy

hotel corridor of Blood of a Poet, the labyrinthine world of male brothels
and sleazy hotels in The White Book, Paul and Lisa's famous disordered
room in Les Enfants terribles . . . the image of Dargelos subduing the
young poet with the snowball, killing him, causing him to bleed
profusely from the mouth in a shot held for a long time, with a horrible
gurgling sound, in Blood of a Poet.
(n.d.:12)
He argues that the slow pace of the latter may be understood as 'a kind of
sado-masochistic ritual, probing into the self with religious and sexually
taboo overtones that yield a peculiar form of erotic intensity in its very
rhythms' (ibid.: 15-16). Part of the eroticism of the female figure of death
in Orphee resides in her bodyguards, a gang of motor-bike boys, helmeted
and dressed in leather. They carry the beautiful Dermit (Cegeste) prostrate
between them, his arms spread wide in the ecstasy of death. Such a view of
sadomasochism is perhaps an example of that aspect of the gay sensibility'
discussed above, whereby cult and cultivation happily coexist. Here surrender
to a heightened eroticism, believed in enough to be a turn-on, goes hand in hand
with a full consciousness of the artifices of the role playing and ritual style
involved.
Chant is also open to such a reading. Its rhythms are slow and deliberate,
perhaps trance-like; the garland-as-rosary evokes religious observance. The
guard beating the prisoner and later forcing a gun down his mouth can be
seen as moments of pleasure. Will Aitken suggests that our identification
with the guard may allow us to enter into 'the satisfaction that the guard finds
in dominating'. He takes the woodland sequences as the Tunisian's fantasy
and argues that their occurrence during the scenes of the guard's domination
of him 'suggests that submission has its own secret powers' (1980:11). Our
assumption that all the actors were gay (or, at the least, willing) might heighten
the sense that these scenes of domination/submission are being played out for
pleasure, the performers' and ours.
LaValley stresses that the taboo sexuality element in Cocteau is 'not fully
articulated'. Certainly reading the guard's treatment of the prisoner as pleasur-
able sado-masochism goes beyond anything in Cocteau's work — even he Livre
blanc, the most sexually explicit of his writings, contains nothing like this. It
is true that the narrator faints at the sight of the 'dark patches' on 'a young
farm-boy' playing naked in a stream (1983:28) and is in awe of Dargelos, a boy
at school, 'possessed [of} a virility far in advance of his age' (ibid.: 32), but none
of this amounts to sado-masochistic sex. Indeed, a sado-masochistic reading of
Chant is far more Genet than Cocteau.
84
One of the most poignant episodes in Le Livre blanc concerns a sailor the
narrator calls Pas de Chance, from a tattoo on his chest. He looks like a double
of Dargelos and is described Genet-like as 'beautiful enough to move a flower'
(ibid.:58). The narrator lets him wear his gold chain, which earlier he had
recovered from his previous lover, Alfred. In the night, unaware that the narrator
observes him, Pas de Chance takes the chain, 'kisse[s} it and rub[s] it on his
tattoo'. The next morning the narrator leaves, but returns, realising he has left
his gloves behind. Before entering, however,
I couldn't resist putting my eye to the keyhole . . . PAS D E C H A N C E had

buried his face in my gloves and was weeping bitterly.
I hesitated outside that door for ten minutes. I was about to open
it when the face of Alfred superimposed itself with great precision on
that of PAS D E C H A N C E .
(ibid.:57-8)
This feels very close to Chant. There is the imagery of a masculine-looking man
caressing himself, including his tattoo, fantasising about the loved one, thinking
he is unobserved (or at any rate acting as if that is what he thinks); a chain as
a token of love; and the figure of the man spying through a hole on to a sexual
scene. The poignancy in the novella resides in the narrator's exclusion from
this, an exclusion deriving in part from the nature of voyeurism itself, in part
from timidity (he feels that it would have 'minted}' his life to fall for such a man,
though falling he was), in part because there is another man (who is, bitterest
of ironies, his own previous lover). One could read a similar poignancy of exclu-
sion in Chant', the guard observes the romance of others, albeit inferior others,
a romance he cannot share in. His tragedy is that he is unable to express his
desire except through violence (and even this is unconsummated) and has to
walk away, leaving behind the final erotic consummation evoked by the garland
at last caught and drawn slowly back into a cell. This is of course the most
sentimental reading of the film, at the other extreme from the sado-masochistic
reading. It makes the film far more Cocteau than Genet, or rather, far more
Cocteau than 'Genet', the figure that emerged after Genet had disassociated
himself from Cocteau and after the social and cultural construction of gayness
had altered considerably from Cocteau's discreet, transcendent and playful
homosexuality.
Homophile Genet
For the developing homophile movement of the fifties, Genet posed something
of a problem. His growing fame meant that he could not be ignored, but the
image of same sex relations in his work did not accord easily with that promoted
by homophilia. He had either to be seen as a symptom of repression or else
cleansed of his sordidness.
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
The term homophile was invented by Arent Van Sunthorst in Holland in

1949 and first used in France in the journal Arcadte, founded by Andre Baudry
in Paris in January 1954. Just over a year earlier, in October 1952, the journal
Futur had been founded, arguing for the acceptance of homosexuality on
grounds of naturalness derived in equal measure from Gide and Kinsey, and
identifying religious hypocrisy as homosexuals' main enemy (Girard 1981:
31—8). Arcadte shared this perspective, but especially promoted the notion of
homophilia rather than homosexuality. As Baudry put it in issue 71 of the
journal:
The word 'homosexual' describes sexual relations between partners

of the same sex, while 'homophile' describes people who can only find
erotic fulfilment (understood in the widest sense of the term: physical,
psychological, emotional and mental) with someone of their own sex.
(Quoted in ibid.:49)
As with earlier third sex notions, the idea of homophilia was that it was natural
and constitutive of personality. The problem with it, though, as Jacques Girard
points out, was that it seemed to concede that sexuality is essentially sinful.
Despite its recognition of church hostility, its tone savoured of the religious,
as if it sought to cleanse gayness of sexuality, to stress instead the spiritual
fulfilment of those people (homophiles) drawn to members of the same sex
as themselves. Tactically it counselled discretion and non-confrontation and
condemned effeminates; it made a virtue out of the necessity of concealment,
proclaiming that gay people should be invisible to the rest of the world, pro-
moting a 'dignified and virile secrecy' (ibid.:51). Cocteau, who contributed a
drawing and message of support to the first issue of Arcadte, was, with his charm,
covertness and literary standing, the model homophile, not Genet.
The homophile perspective on film is suggested by an article by Raymond
de Becker in Arcadte, in which he argued for the need for 'un cinema homophile'.
This would consist of good films (not requiring the audiences indulgence),
accessible to heterosexuals and not just dealing with Tamour des gargons'. He
saw the latter as insufficient as a theme for a film, because
homophilia cannot be reduced to love between men, and still less to

sexual adventures of men with each other, it implies a general disposi-
tion, a particular view of life, an attitude towards the world which
colours all thoughts and actions.
(1960:98)
Chant is mentioned respectfully in passing, but it is too single-mindedly about

'l'amour des gargons' to count as a harbinger for homophile cinema. Orphee,
rather, is the exemplary homophile film because it 'unveils an inner world to
which homophilia is one of the doors' (ibid.:99).
86
In a later book L'Erotisme en face 1964, de Becker was again respectful of

Genet, but saw his cult of evil and degradation as an expression of the oppressive
situation of gay people in a Judaeo-Christian culture. Moreover, while Genet's
cult may have a kind of purity, still 'it does not make any less sterile the hope
all homosexuals have for seeing their particular characteristic admitted into
society'(1967:129).
The homophile wariness of Genet is understandable enough. On many occa-
sions his work has been a gift to homophobia, easily appropriated as the living
proof of how sick, neurotic and degraded homosexuals are. One of the earliest
pieces of writing on Genet, in the influential Catholic journal Esprit, refers to
Notre-Dame des fleurs as 'a vile thing . . . on the edges of pornography', though
it does have the grace to see Genet as symptomatic of society at large — if it is
'to the shame of our civilisation that it has suppurated someone like Jean Genet,
among others' (Rabi 1951:74l), still 'the shame we feel on reading these works
is our own shame' (ibid.:745). Later writers have lacked even this perspective.
Philip Thody (1969) argued that Genet's work is a systematic denial of the
defence of homosexuality put forward by the Homosexual Law Reform move-
ment (the British equivalent of the French homophile movement), to the point
that:
If this is what it is like to be homosexual and a rebel against society,

one is tempted to say, then I'm jolly glad I'm normal. . . . Not only does
[Genet] encourage the ordinary person to congratulate himself on his
normality. He also provides valuable ammunition to those who would
impose their own heterosexual norm upon society, and refuse to tolerate
any deviations whatsoever.
(72)
Thody manages to hang on to a notion of tolerance or pity; a more recent

example illustrates how readily Genet is to hand to support still nastier twists
in the homophobic litany. In the journal Salmagundi, Larry David Nachman
(1983) focuses on Genet's supposedly relentless and anonymous promiscuity.
He drags in C. A. Tripp's dubious study The Homosexual Matrix to provide
empirical evidence of the typicality of this amongst homosexuals and then
excitedly adds a postscript about the recent discovery (this is 1982) that all this
promiscuity may have 'bombarded and undermined' gay men's immunological
system' (372). Genet thus becomes the apostle of A I D S .
In LErotisme en face, de Becker traces the internalisation of such homophobia
in homosexual cinema. He refers to Chant (which he grants 'a prevailing poetic
quality') in the context of discussing another film, Couronne d} or, made by Gilles
Velon (c. 1935) and presumably lost (cf. Limbacher 1983:523):
It is full of magnificent imagery frequently spoilt by an overemphatic

sound track. The film presents the love of two boys who go to the
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extent of celebrating their wedding in a church. Death strikes down

one lover whilst the other sees his face decompose and his body fade
away as he lies in his arms.
(1967:134)
De Becker sees it as very much a Christian work. Despite the intentions of its
director, 'it makes death triumph over life, solitude over love, the sense of guilt
over the positive act of will' (ibid.). In this way both Couronne d'or and Chant
are seen as works scarred by the 'Judaeo-Christian scourge' (ibid.: 135). It is not
surprising that gay films, like other gay art, should produce such images of
'guilt, of disgust with life and society, the attractions of death, even perhaps
the delight of criminality' (ibid.: 134) in this society, but it is nothing to be
enthusiastic about. Later gay films are open to similar interpretations, such as
the 1980 Curagaon 8mm film Apocalypse — K—Distranjo, with its guiltily ecstatic
or ecstatically guilty images of a young man making love with Christ on the
cross or the 1982 Greek film Angelos with its concatenation of the 'Genet'
mix of sailors, drag, sado-masochism, prostitution, death, gifts of flowers, and
Christianity.
Three of the earliest 'Genet' films, however, Last Spring, Le Prisonnier (The
Prisoner) and Possession du condamneiThe Condemned Man's Possession), suggest that
it was possible to take much of the imagery of Chant and cleanse it of guilt and
disgust, even endowing it with the spirituality that Girard detects in the
writing in Arcadie. They emphasise different aspects of homophilia: coupledom,
camaraderie, transcendence.
Last Spring, discovered by Tom Waugh in the Kinsey Institute archives,
was made in 1954 by Francois Reichenbach, a Frenchman living at the time in
the USA (Waugh 1996: 159—160). It shows first a gay couple in their twenties
'leading a life of bucolic domesticity' on their farm. One goes off to New York;
the other, disconsolate not to get any mail, has a dream of 'an urban social
landscape . . . rich with subterranean erotic promise', disturbed by images
that raise 'doubts about the ephemerality of sexual fulfilment', such as the
lover's crotch ever receding from a hand that reaches for it and a reflection of the
lover 'that disappears a la Beauty and the Beast when the dreamer ripples its surface'.
At the end however the lovers are reunited, 'mediated by a blossom tossed by one
lover to the other'. This is the most obvious echo of Chant (which Reichenbach
showed to friends in Paris (Giles 1991:23)), though the contrast (as it seems from
Waugh's account) between a pastoral erotic paradise and a more threatening and
drivingly sexual alternative also suggests a homophile take on Genet.
Perhaps neither Le Prisonnier nor Possession du condamneh, by a strict definition,
a gay film. The sexuality of their makers is unknown, perhaps discoverable
through gossip or interviewing, but definitely not marked by the film text;
equally, sexuality as subject-matter is either probably absent (Prisonnier) or in
Possession inexplicit, unspecific, spiritual not genital. Yet these qualities are
in part what suggest their closeness to a homophile perspective. The fact
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that they do not declare their makers' sexuality and are unclear about their
subject-matter accords with the clandestine, equivocally erotic character of the
homophile project, makes them more, not less, homophile.
Le Prisonnier is a film that was never produced. In 1949 Genet worked with
Roger Vaillard on a script for it, to be made by Pierre Chenal (already a well-
respected director); however, the chief backer withdrew, possibly because Genet
had not yet become an acceptable name in artistic circles (and Vaillard had
communist connections). Based on a novel by Hans Fallada, it told of a man who
leaves prison but commits another murder and returns to prison and 'la chaude
amitie qui y regne' ('the warm friendship which prevails there'). It was to open
and close with the image of a piece of string with a screwed-up piece of paper
on the end of it being swung back and forth from out of a prison cell window;
in the opening sequence a hand catches it and draws it in; in the final section,
the same happens, but this time the film cuts back to inside the cell and the
man (the film's hero, Julien) unfolding the paper, finding a cigarette, match and
the message, 'Les copains te souhaitent la bienvenue' ('Your mates say hello');
he begins to smoke the cigarette and '[s]on visage reflete enfin la serenite qu'il
n'avait plus connue depuis son depart de la prison' ('his face shows at last the
serenity he had not felt since he left prison') (Virmaux 1986). This clearly recalls
the swinging garland in Chant, here linked to a general sense of the camaraderie
of prisoners, with the sexual symbolism possible but less insistent.
Possession du condamne was made in 1967 in Belgium, directed by Albert-
Andre Lheureux, an avant-garde theatre director in Brussels, and produced
by Robert Malengreau, who went on much later to make several short gay films
and help run the Brussels gay 8mm film festival. It is inspired by (rather than
being a direct version of) Genet's poem 'Le Condamne a mort', and has a clear
structure, strongly reminiscent of Chant.
In the opening section the camera moves along rough stone walls,
showing a series of men (about seven in all) alone or in pairs; for the
most part they sit or stand still but occasionally interact, one giving
another a piece of stone, one running his hand into another's hair
above his brow. Suddenly the film cuts to an exterior location in a forest
suffused with light, with two of the men from the previous section
running after one another, ending on a brief close-up of one kissing the
other's naked waist (figure 3.5). The film now cuts back to the earlier
prison-like setting.
The men move about and the camera at one point tracks around the
whole group who look back at it. They begin to move forward, with
one of the men featured in the forest sequence in the middle. They
move in formation, suggesting a march to the scaffold and as they move
the film cuts, so that they appear to move magically outside to a ruined
church. When they stop, the two men from the forest sequence make
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love - one inhales smoke from the other's cigarette; one kisses the
other's neck and rubs his cheek against his shoulder; framed by a shaft
of light in the shape of a vaulted church window, they lie naked on
top of one another in a series of poses, almost still but for slight
caressing movements of the hands. Then there are a series of shorter
shots, with one man throwing his head back in langourous ecstasy, and
a succession of close-ups cross cutting between one shaking his head
ecstatically and the other looking up to the sky. This ends on a shot
of one of the men laid out on the floor with blood trickling from his
mouth. There is now a cut to him running through woods, out across
cracked mud flats and finally off into a dazzlingly light horizon behind
which he disappears.
The elements recall Chant', prison interiors, sylvan exteriors and the chiaroscuro
sequences here suggested by the formally posed love-making towards the end.
Yet their combination and treatment creates a very different atmosphere, and
not only because there is no guard figure.
Chant is tightly structured with only the last shot of the garland disturbing
its rigorous symmetry; the different sequences are organised as refrains, with
the overall structure and pace of the film determining their ordering rather
than one sequence calling forth the next. Possession on the other hand is organised
as a progression from the confinement of the prison sequences to the release
of total open space in the final shot. At the centre of this progression is the
moment when the men appear to move out of the prison and into the church,
as if miraculously freed of their confinement. The earlier, slight expressions of
affection are now full-blown expressions of love. The woods appear twice: before
the movement to the church they figure (as in Chant) as an idealised, romantic
image of love and freedom which is striking in its utter difference from the
prison world; after the church sequence they are a realm that can be entered on
the way to the final release of the horizon in the final shot.
The ordering of the sequences creates a progression out of confinement
and this is given a further elan by the transitions between sequences, which are
always placed at moments of physical expression between men, each emphasised
by the filmic treatment: repeated shots from different angles of one man running
his hand in another's hair at the end of the first sequence; a sudden extreme close-
up (following a series of fast-moving mid shots of men running) of a naked waist
being kissed at the end of the second (the woods); and at the end of the church
sequence, fast cross cutting between yearning gestures (one head shaking
ecstatically, the other looking up to the sky) and a sudden cut to an overhead angle
(never used before in the film) showing a man with blood trickling out of his
mouth, suggesting orgasm or death or at any rate extreme physical experience.
Each such moment calls forth the sequence that follows, each of which is a step
closer to release: the woods, the movement out of the prison into the church, the
release through the woods to the infinite horizon. There is no return to prison.
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Not only the overall organisation of the elements but also the way they are
treated are very different in the two films. The prison in Possession is from the
start less rigidly laid out, less strictly like a prison, with the men not kept ago-
nisingly apart. The camera movement (virtually absent in the prison sequences
in Chant) and fluid editing create a loose space, with cells and corridors opening
out into each other, while the vague, rather inexpressive relations between the
men suggest at the least a sense of connection and identity between them. The
space and relations make possible the 'magic' moment when the men all walk
out of the prison into the church; nor does it come as a surprise when the men
appear to act as a congregation for the lovers, undressing them, surrounding
them. It is love and freedom that grow out of - and away from - the prison
ambience.
Even more different from Chant is the use of light. Possession is a progress
towards the light, with full religious overtones. The wood sequences in both
films are brightly lit, but in Chant always shot at ground level, often slightly
tilted down, whereas in Possession the camera often points to the sky, culminating
in the final, horizon filled shot of the film. The love-making sequences in Chant
are shot in studied chiaroscuro lighting, moulding the flesh; in Possession the
couple is flooded with light almost to the point of being rendered translucent.
The effect of a transcendent image of love is further heightened by the vaulted
window shape formed by the shaft of light in which they lie, reminding us
of the church setting. Here Christian imagery enhances a sense of the beauty of
same-sex love.
The clarity of its structure, its rhythms of release, the emphasis on light, as
well as the spareness of the artistic means employed, all also distinguish Possession
from the poem by which it is inspired. 'Le Condamne a mort' uses rich, poetic'
imagery and explicit sexual description; it expresses the yearning of a young
murderer, his desire to make love, to be punished and forgiven, before his
execution; there is a sense of delirium, with the poem ending on the realisation
that today is not after all the day of his execution. The film by contrast has the
men make love (not just yearn to do so), albeit without the genital celebrations
of the poem, and they are released from confinement, not stuck with it.
Possession suggests the homophile perspective in its undersexualised, religiose
representation of same-sex relations and also in two ways in which it seems
to disown the homo-erotic images it presents. It opens with a quotation from
the Marquis de Sade (becoming an acceptable name in avant-garde circles in the
sixties), asking when governments will come to prefer 'the science of under-
standing man to that of imprisoning him and taking his life'. The tone is at once
set for a humanitarian protest. Perhaps this can be interpreted specifically in
relation to imprisoning rather than understanding homosexuals (the latter a
homophile demand, of course), but equally it allows the homosexuality to come
across as merely a metaphor for the inhumanity of imprisonment. Secondly, the
film is almost entirely lacking in point-of-view shots so that there is little sense
of the camera/us entering the desires and emotions of the characters. Chant plays
92
with this to implicate the film-maker and the spectator in its desires; by contrast
Possession seems to hold back, as if making a point about imprisonment and,
maybe, homosexuals, but not really quite owning homosexual desire as its own.
Sexual political Genet

Tout le monde y trouve son compte, du militant a la macho-queen.
(There's something for everyone in it, from the militant to the macho-
queen)
(Yann Beauvais in Gai Pied, on the occasion
of a screening of Chant in December 1980.)
Other Genets emerged out of the gay and women's movements from the early
seventies onwards. These Genets themselves depended on radical shifts in the
general perception of Genet, marked by the appearance of two books, Jean-
Paul Sartre's massive biography Saint Genet, comedien et martyr in 1952 and Kate
Millett's chapters on Genet in Sexual Politics 1969.
Sartre's Genet is an existentialist hero. In Sartre's philosophy the great enemy
of human freedom and happiness is 'bad faith'. We are socially determined, that
is, a product of our society and times; we are made by society. The existentialist
issue is what we make of what we have been made. Bad faith consists in either
denying the reality of what one has been made or, even worse, not taking posses-
sion of it, not owning it. Freedom consists in choosing to be, and living to the
full, what society has made of one. Genet is an existentialist hero because he is
what he is, because he is — fully inhabits and lives out — what he is - the position
that social attitudes have accorded him. In the words of one of the chapter
headings in Saint Genet, 'J'ai decide d'etre ce que le crime a fait de moi' ('I have
decided to be what crime has made of me') (1952:64): crime is the social system
that designates certain acts wrong and certain people 'criminals'; the existen-
tialist hero, Genet, is the one who fully accepts this social designation and
lives it out defiantly. This is not the contrite acceptance of what one is, nor
yet pathologised ('I can't help it') apologetics for it; it is saying, 'You say that
is what I am, OK, that is what I am, and I am going to be it to the hilt'. Hence
Genet turns everything designated criminal - murder, theft, homosexuality
- into things to be sought, desired, pursued and venerated, not to be avoided
or disavowed. Even punishment and degradation are to be welcomed, the more
extreme the better, because they allow one to taste to the full the reality of what
one is and what one has therefore decided to be.
Millett's Sexual Politics was one of the books that seemed to relaunch feminism
at the end of the sixties. Acknowledging Sartre's work, Millett sees Genet as
the male writer who tells the truth about sexism4. The gay characters in his work
are a metaphor for the state of relations between men and women in society
because of'the perfection with which they ape and exaggerate the "masculine"
and "feminine" of heterosexual society' (1969:17); his work is an analysis and
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
expose of society's View of sex as a caste structure ratified by nature' (19).

Precisely because everyone in Genet's work is male, the fact that they are playing
out roles, and the exaggerated form that this takes, make one see the roles, and
the notions of masculine and feminine nature they embody, as just roles, just
notions. Moreover, while Genet may worship macho men, he also exposes them
for what they are, shows that to be male 'is to be master, hero, brute and pimp.
Which is also to be irremediably stupid and cowardly' (17). And while he asserts
that '[mjasculine is superior strength, feminine is inferior weakness', still there
is one exception: 'Genet has jealously reserved intelligence and moral courage
for his queens' (340). Thus Genet both exposes the vicious reality of sexual
oppression while at the same time indicating the strategies of survival and
resistance in the feminine principle, exemplified in his work by the queens.
Neither Sartre nor Millett discuss Genet's film work, but what they discern
in him - the sense of a defiant homosexuality in the former, an anatomy of
sexual oppression in the latter - is the foundation of the gay and feminist
appropriations of his imagery and tone, beginning with new and much extended
readings of Un Chant d'amour.
Many of the themes of gay liberation as they apply to Chant are clear in Vito
Russo's account of the film in The Celluloid Closet:
{In the film] the need for fantasy grows from the cravings of men
trapped in prison cells and driven to furtive homoerotic liaisons that
desperately attempt to approximate tenderness and affection. Plaintive
images of hands reaching through cell windows for symbolic union
clash furiously with sadomasochistic visions of guards using domi-
nance, submission, masturbatory fantasy and sex as power to get a little
contact. [It is an] unforgettable reaction to the restrictions placed on
the male role in society, told in almost pleading terms, on behalf of a
subculture filled with unrequited passion and social despair.
(1981:98)
Like the homophile de Becker, the gay liberationist Russo sees in the film
evidence of the oppression of gay men ('trapped', 'driven', 'social despair').
Borrowing from Millett, however, this oppression is related to the oppressive-
ness of sex roles and, drawing on gay liberationist conventional wisdom, those
who enforce gay oppression are seen as repressed gays (a point also made by
Sartre), hence the guard acts as violently as he does to get the 'little contact' his
role denies him. Within this situation of oppression, gayness remains an essen-
tially benign sexual-emotional impulse ('homoerotic', 'tenderness', 'affection',
passion'). It is the wider social analysis and the perception of a positive and
alternative sexual identity within a context of oppression that makes this gay
liberationist reading different from a homophile one.
Millett identified in Genet a process of denaturalisation and demystification
of sexual oppression. This basic perception lies behind some still later analyses
94
of Chant, influenced by developments in feminist film theory. The latter had

initially concentrated on the way women were represented in film, but some
theorists felt this was inadequate. The problem was not so much what was
shown as how it was seen: it was how men looked at women, and how cinema
reproduced that way of looking, that was significant. Looking and being-looked -
at were part of the dynamics of sexual domination: in the act of looking at
women, men put women in their place of subordination. Using ideas taken
from psychoanalysis, mainstream cinema was argued to organise everything as
if from a male point of view and, by playing on various psychic mechanisms,
to massage the male spectator's ego, making him feel that he is in control of
the image, calming his subconscious anxieties, seeming to subdue the threat
that woman poses him. Women figured in this process merely as images in
the drama of the (temporary) satisfaction of the male psyche. In these ways, the
organisation of looking in film is a kind of sadism, exulting in male control over
women and disregarding the reality of women in the process.5
In this context Chant becomes a fascinating film, because it is so much about
looking. The prison sections are organised around the guard. He looks into the
cells and we see what he sees: not only does the film use the standard organisation
of editing to establish a male point of view, but it draws attention to this as
voyeurism by emphasising the peephole and by the fact that we are seeing
intimate and private sexual acts. It is an act of looking that already goes against
the grain of mainstream cinema by the fact that this is a man (who is supposed
to do the looking) looking at other men (who are not supposed to have to
be looked at, especially by other men). On top of this the film complicates the
patterns of looking. At several points the prisoners look back at the guard/us,
breaking the spell of pure voyeurism. We get shots of what they see, the
guard's eye through the peephole, the instrument of gazing isolated and
abstracted. Some of these shot/reverse-shot sequences are mis-matched, which
Laura Oswald argues draws attention to their construction.6 Finally the guard,
the person doing the looking, is also in the erotic chiaroscuro sequences,
whose posing and lighting most obviously offer him to us as also a person to be
looked at.
Several critics have observed these aspects of the way the film organises point-
of-view, looking and being-looked-at, but their interpretations of how this
works are significantly different. The theory had developed within feminism out
of a desire to subvert and destroy the pleasures of male voyeurism. This clearly
informs Oswald's article in the journal Enclitic, which argues that Chant's
shifts of viewpoint are threats to 'the hegemony of the male look as the organizer
of erotic discourse' (1983:106). We are invited to share the guard's voyeurism,
but are then forcibly reminded of what we are doing and of the fact that this
is a cinematic construction - we are denied the pleasures of untrammelled
voyeurism. Further the film links the implicit sadism of voyeurism to the
explicit sadism of whipping and rape (the guard forcing his gun down the
Tunisian's mouth). The manipulations of point-of-view mean that we both share
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but then are distanced from these pleasures, so that the film becomes 'an ironic
reflection on the spectator's perverseness, on the dubious sexuality of the look
and on the sadistic origins of scopic pleasure' (112). Jane Giles makes a similar
point when she argues that the film 'both recognises the powerful attractions
of voyeurism and subverts its structures', but she also acknowledges that the
film shows us, in the lovers who cannot see one another, 'the pain inherent in
being unable to see' (1988:105). Oswald's account seems to suggest that all
looking is perverse, whereas Giles suggests that much depends on the power
relations between people: the guard looks at the murderer differently from
the way the Tunisian would look at him. Both however suggest that the film
enforces a reflection upon, and disturbance of, the pleasures of looking. Gay
critics have seen it rather differently.
Will Aitken in an article in Gay News observes the same play with point-of-
view. The longish sequence of the prisoners unseen by the guard draws us
into their lives and feelings, making the move to the guard's consciousness
all the more wrenching. We peep in on the prisoners with the guard, until one
of the prisoners sees him/us looking and turns away:
The guard backs away from the peephole, ruefully rubbing his own
hardened cock. We in the audience have surely been similarly aroused
long before this - the incessant concupiscence of the prisoners is
calculated to produce that effect.
(1980-1:11)
We, like the guard, have been turned on and then cheated because we haven't
been allowed to go on looking at the prisoner masturbating. As a result, says
Aitken, we share the guard's frustration and so at 'some level we even understand
when he barges into the cell of [the Tunisian} . . . and beats him with his belt,
then pushes his gun down his throat' (ibid.). It is not however to teach us a sexual
political lesson that the film operates like this; on the contrary the film's teasing
form is a sophisticated kind of sexual pleasure. The sadism and the distancing
are all part of the turn-on. 'The gun probing the throat' is 'the most disturbing'
and 'the most fascinating' image in the film:
it satisfies the anger we share with the guard at being deprived of the
tattooed prisoner's orgasm and makes us fully aware of the satisfaction
that the guard finds in dominating, while [the Tunisian's] response
. . . suggests that submission has its own secret powers.
(ibid.)
The shift in point-of-view, in this account, is at the heart of the film's eroticism:
we are aroused by identifying with the prisoners, then by being a voyeur on
them, so that when we (with the guard) come to punish them the film takes
on a delirious erotic flavour:
96
This dual identification with oppressor and oppressed, with the looming
guard and the kneeling convict, makes for discomfort and confusion.
. . . Neither role feels right on a moral or political plane . . . although
Genet shows us that, at least in terms of arousal, they fit together just
fine, like some libidinous dream of complete self-sufficiency: auto-erotic
S-M.
(ibid.:11-12)
What is perverse in Oswald is pleasure in Aitken, and what cuts across arousal
in her is what heightens it in him. He acknowledges the challenge this poses
to reason, but does not see it posing any problem to pleasure. This difference is
not surprising — Oswald writes out of a tradition that is both normative and
homophobic and which analyses pleasure in order to combat it, whereas Aitken
writes out of a gay liberationism that embraces the exploration of all forms of
sexual expression.
There is a similar feeling in Richard Kwietniowski's piece on the film,
published alongside a shortened version of Giles' article in the lesbian/gay
magazine Square Peg in 1988. He too sees it as breaking with mainstream
cinematic conventions (though here those of pornography), in its treatment
of the penis. Where in porn the penis '(the "star of the story") must always be
doing something , in Chant it figures in isolation: the phallus, bald and wanting,
becomes a sign for men aroused by themselves' (37). Yet this break with the
pleasures of porn is clearly itself a source of pleasure, not the kind of reprimand
that Oswald sees Genet administering.
'Gen ex! I Chant figures as a revealing reference point for the debates
about politics and pleasure that characterised feminist and lesbian/gay politics,
in fact since their inception and with increasing clarity through the eighties.
The impulse to be critical of pleasure (since its forms are the constructs of a
patriarchal, homophobic society) meets head-on with the impulse to assert the
rights of pleasure (sometimes seen as the return of the repressed, sometimes
as turning back on society the objects, and persons, it has deemed 'bad'). I want
to trace here two of the ('Genet' relevant) directions developing out of this -
ethnicity and racism, sado-masochism and radical perversity.
If one moves beyond simply noting the fact of racial difference in Chant
in passing (as I have been doing), a whole new issue of the film's politics and
pleasures emerges. There are two non-white men in the film: the Tunisian
and one of the other prisoners spied on by the guard, a man of Southern African
descent whom I will refer to as the Negro (an apparently descriptive term with
an appropriately problematic weight of historical connotation). The presence
of these performers would make a difference, even if the film did not treat them
textually any differently from the white characters. Ethnic difference is always
already signifying. As regards the relation between the guard and the prisoners,
for instance, it might seem that the latter are all in the same boat, equally
subject to the guard regardless of race, and that he treats them all in much the
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same way. Yet the moment one acknowledges the history of black subjection
to white, any merely textual equality of treatment (were it there) evaporates. A
white man subjugating a black man always gives off a different odour, intended
or otherwise, from the reverse or two men of the same colour.
In any case, there are textual differences. It is the Tunisian that the guard
selects to punish; there are no non-white men in the chiaroscuro sequences; the
Tunisian is older, hairier and rougher than the murderer, perhaps calling up
the stereotype of the black man as more virile. Perhaps these are accidents
of casting, not 'meant' racially though still nonetheless inevitably bearing racial
meaning. With the treatment of the Negro, one can go further. He is the last
of the series of men on whom the guard spies (shots 29-84). Unlike the others,
though he plays with his penis, it is not hard; and he dances his masturbation,
rocking back and forth from the hips while still holding his penis, then flinging
both arms in the air and moving in a more frenzied style until subsiding
back to the rocking movement and finally throwing himself face down on the
bed, gently grinding his hips into it. Clearly this is informed by an 'all blacks
got rhythm' notion as well as 'the whole white European curiosity about black
sexuality, black male sexuality in particular' (Mercer et al. 1988:30). Yet in a
published discussion of the film between Kobena Mercer, Gayatri Spivak and
others, this difference of treatment is not necessarily seen as negative. If for
Mercer any 'image of identity [is} denied and excluded' by the film (ibid.:20),
for Spivak and an unnamed speaker from the floor, the image of the Negro
is the only one suggesting 'self-sufficiency', sexuality 'outside of the fantasy
of coupling', with no participation in the 'power scenario at all' (ibid.:28).
Presumably because Negro (outside 'society'), and despite the 'extraordinary
objectification of the black male body within the pre-liberation gay community'
(Spivak ibid.), this prisoner can represent something beyond the dependent
relations obtaining for everyone else in the film. Either reading implies that
ethnic difference (and indeed other social differences) always makes a difference
— there is no pure realm of'the sexual' which exists apart from social realities.
Some of the politicised interest since the seventies in perverse sexualities
(pornography, paedophilia, fetishism, sadomasochism) did seem to yearn for
that pure realm. When a white man advertised in the pages of the gay Canadian
paper The Body Politic for a black slave, some of those who defended him against
the charge that his desire was racist, spoke of the inviolability of desire, the
sense of its existing untutored by social division. This position might be a
logical development from earlier gay liberationist views, which on the subject
of perverse sexualities were at least liberal ('it's up to you what you do as long
as it doesn't hurt anyone else') and generally permissive and libertarian ('if
it feels good, do it'). Sado-masochism, a litmus test of sexual attitudes, was not
only to be defended as a supremely consensual, not coercive, form of sexuality,
but also seen as a celebration of human sexual diversity. There were also positions
beyond such liberal libertarianism, positions close to some of the ideas about
Genet I have been discussing. Just as Sartre's Genet wrested fulfilment in the
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teeth of degradation, so sado-masochism could be seen as the transformation of

straight perceptions of sexuality: we select the most frightening, disgusting
or unacceptable activities and transmute them into pleasure' (Pat Califia, The
Advocate, December 1979; quoted in Weeks 1985:237). Genet is for Sartre a
hero in his implacable hatred of bourgeois society, and similarly sado-masochism
can be seen as an assault on the repressive restrictiveness of conventional
morality. Again, just as Millett's Genet reveals the roles of sexuality, so sado-
masochism can be seen as providing 'unique insights into the nature of sexual
power, therapeutic and cathartic sex revealing the nature of sex as ritual and play'
(Weeks 1986:85).
There is thus a shift from a merely permissive, tolerant attitude towards
sado-masochism and other taboo sexual practices to a celebration and even
advocacy of them, and then a further shift from a view that sees sado-masochism
as a given potential of human sexual nature to one seeing it as an exploration
of the social relations of power that constitute sexuality. In the first view, pain
and the dynamics of domination and submission are of the essence of sexuality
— getting into sado-masochism is simply getting into human nature. In the
second view however, influenced by the writings of Michel Foucault, sexuality
is seen as a form of power that has been socially and historically constructed
- sado-masochism allows one to explore and confront the realities of power
which lay hidden behind more romantic, idealised or sanitised views of sex.
Ideas like this inform films such as Querelle 1982 and Verfllhrung — die grausame
Frau 1985.
Querelle
Querelle, adapted in 1982 by Rainer Werner Fassbinder from Genet's 1947 novel,
is at the opposite end of the scale from Chant. It is full feature length and in
colour, with, for a movie of its kind, a large budget and a cast of international
stars including Brad Davis, Franco Nero and Jeanne Moreau. It was an imme-
diate critical success, shown to acclaim at several film festivals, widely distributed
on the international arthouse circuit and almost immediately available on video.
Querelle takes place in the port of Brest, where the favoured bar among
sailors is the Feria, run by husband and wife Nono and Lysiane. One
of the rules of the Feria is that the (exclusively male) clientele have to
play dice with Nono - if they win, they have the pick of the whores;
if they lose, Nono fucks them. Lysiane brings together Querelle, a sailor
docked at Brest, with his own brother, Robert, with whom she is
having an affair. Querelle has opium to sell and Robert introduces
him to Nono and Mario, the cop who hangs out at the Feria. Querelle
smuggles the opium ashore with the help of another sailor, Vic, whom
he then kills. He goes and plays dice with Nono, loses by cheating
(as Nono in fact sees) and thus gets fucked. This is the first time he has
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had sex with a man. When Robert next meets Querelle, he fights with
him for being a 'filthy queer letting that man touch you'. When later
they start to fight again, Mario stops them and takes Querelle aside,
questions him and then fucks him. Two of Querelle's ship-mates, Gil
and Theo, quarrel when Theo sees Gil in conversation with a young
man, Roger, at the Feria, and Gil kills Theo. Gil goes into hiding and
Roger takes Querelle, at his request, to meet Gil. Querelle persuades
Gil to disguise himself (such that as a result Gil looks like Querelle's
brother Robert) and to steal money for his get-away from Seblon, the
ship's captain. Gil is to cruise Seblon in a toilet and then rob him,
which he does. Querelle, who has fallen in love with Gil, arranges his
get-away and kisses him passionately good-bye. He then tells Mario
(the cop) where Gil is. Querelle discovers that Seblon has been in love
with him all this time, knew that he'd murdered Vic but did not betray
him to the police. Querelle and Lysiane become lovers. Captain Seblon
intervenes when Querelle gets involved in a drunken brawl and they
make love. Lysiane discovers, from the tarot cards, that Robert has no
brother and the film ends with a voice over saying that Querelle feels
that his death is not far off.
It is possible to treat Querelle as an abstraction of the erotics of power. It is

shot entirely in the studio and there is no attempt to make it look like a slice
of reality. The few sets look like sets, vividly lit in acid yellow with either red
or blue. It is, literally but also in the way it feels, studio-bound, an hermetically
sealed world, airless and listless, characters and scenes posed as tableaux or
set-pieces. The play of power and desire between the characters seems to take
place in isolation, divorced from any of the reference to social relations that a
more naturalistic style would bring in. Yet Querelle is also a post-Millett, post-
gay liberation production: its apparent abstraction and separation is less total
than might appear.
Fassbinder's work is in any event always marked by an awareness of the way
social structures impinge upon private worlds and experiences. His two earlier
films centring on homosexual relationships, Die bitteren Trdnen der Petra von
Kant 197 2 and Faustrecht der Freiheit 1975, display the operation of power within
gay relationships, the power, in these cases, of class. This is perhaps clearest
in Faustrecht, where the working-class protagonist, Fox, is taken up as a lover
by a middle-class man, Eugen, on the strength of the former just having won
a lottery, only to be dropped again when the money runs out because Eugen and
his family have spent it all. There are implications that what Eugen and Fox
find attractive in each other is class based - the former is piss-elegant, the
latter is rough trade, gay subcultural modes with clear class connotations - but
this examination of the class structuring of desire is less prominent than the
unfolding of the way class power operates in the destruction of relationships.
Querelle is different. Unlike Petra von Kant and Faustrecht, it examines the way
100
power structures desire itself rather than the progress of relationships and it does
not focus on class power but social sex power.
The direct embodiment of this in the film is fucking: the person who fucks
is powerful and the person who is fucked is powerless. Fucking and being fucked
are the means by which power is asserted or relinquished. Both may provide
pleasure, but the pleasure of being fucked is the pleasure of humiliation. It is
in fucking that the social realities of sex power - of gender, of heterosexual
status — enter into gay desire.
To take gender first. Though there are no queens in Querelle (the feminine
principle in Millett's reading of Genet), there is a marking of the characters in
terms of masculinity/femininity, above all through the equation fucker=male,
fuckee=female. Mario and Nono fuck, and they are also the most heavily marked
in terms of stereotypical masculinity, both with short hair and moustaches,
Mario in leather cap and vest, Nono in black singlet showing enormous arms
and pectorals, with wide leather wristbands. The casting of a black actor
(Gunther Kaufman) to play Nono links up with a thread of fascination with the
exotic foreign, super-virile male in Fassbinder's work, and besides it is a common
complaint among black gay men that white men want them to play the black
stud or topman.
The question of Querelle's place in this schema is at the centre of the film's
drama. He is signalled as macho as compared to Seblon: in the first scene on
board ship his singlet shows off his oiled muscles and the hairiness of his chest,
while Seblon gazes at him from afar; later Seblon comes across him as he emerges
from the boiler room, glistening with sweat and covered with dirt, and tells
him how beautiful he is. Muscles, hairiness, sweat, dirt are conventional signs
of masculinity and this is heightened by the contrast with Seblon, always neat
and clean in his white captain's uniform, showing nothing of his body. Yet
for all that, Querelle is not macho as Nono and Mario are. He is clean shaven,
with a young, pretty face; he wears throughout his sailor's cap with its nice
pink pompon; he doesn't wear leather, chains or any of the accoutrements of
the macho gay sex scene. So he is available as both a masculine and a feminine
figure, as both fucker and fuckee. Part of his humiliation is that he winds up
the latter, in the feminine position.
Querelle's gender status is further developed through the notion of narcis-
sism. Part of Querelle's sexuality is seen in terms of his desire for himself
and for his like. He is first shown sitting on board ship, stripped to the waist,
while Seblon, who has been looking at pictures of classic male nudes (that is,
men not like himself), tells us in voice over, 'Querelle's great passion is his own
body in repose. As he says, he is reflecting himself in his own image'. The first
time Querelle kisses a man (Mario), a title tells us that he found it 'like kissing
himself'. This self-love can be transferred to those like himself: Robert (like
him by virtue of being his brother) and Gil (like him because they are both
murderers). These two likenesses are heightened when Querelle gets the one
(Gil) to dress so that he looks like the other (Robert). (They are, of course, played
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by the same actor, Hanno Poschl.) Sexuality figures differently in the two cases,
but in both Lysiane is important. As a woman, virtually the only one in the film,
she is the figure of difference that makes clear the sameness of narcissism.
In the case of Robert, Lysiane affects the two moments when one brother is
sexually aroused by the other. In a scene with Robert, Lysiane complains of how
similar he and Querelle are: 'All you look at is yourselves. I don't exist for you'.
As she speaks of their alike ness, Robert masturbates. Later she and Querelle are
together and she talks to him about Robert, comparing their penises, and he
plays with his own penis as he listens to her describing his brother's (his like's)
penis. In both cases, masturbation at the narcissistic thought of resemblance is
mobilised through the figure of difference, a woman. In the case of Gil, this
is less direct, but it seems significant that Lysiane is part of the way Querelle
betrays Gil, the man he actually loves. The act of betrayal enacts Oscar Wilde's
words that Lysiane sings repeatedly throughout the film, 'Each man kills
the thing he loves'; it is after betraying Gil that Querelle becomes her lover; the
poignancy of his betrayal of Gil, his other like, is heightened by the presence
of Lysiane, the figure of difference.
Still more important than gender in Querelle is heterosexuality. Homosexual
desire in Querelle is mobilised by means of heterosexuality. Not always — many
of the characters in Querelle could be described as gay-identified, thinking of
themselves as gay without reference to heterosexual norms: Seblon, Nono,
Roger (who resembles the younger of the two main prisoners in Chant) and
Mario (who is dressed out of the pages of a seventies US gay porn magazine).
Yet for two of the main characters, Gil and Querelle, awareness of hetero-
sexuality, as norm and as status, structures their homosexual desire.
Both deny that they are gay. Gil says to Roger, just before he starts kissing
him, 'I'm not a queer'. Later, when Gil is in hiding, he cannot stop talking
about Roger's sister, Paulette, much to Roger's sadness; but still Gil kisses him,
assuring him that he is 'as pretty as a girl'. Gil's desire for Roger is established
from the first scene of them together, as Gil talks of what he would do sexually
with Paulette while all the time caressing Roger. Thus, Gil always manifests
homosexual desire when verbally asserting heterosexuality. Part of the irony of
this is that Gil dresses as a construction worker, another type found in seventies
gay porn, even to the extent of men wearing construction worker's helmets
to discos and one of the singers in the gay group Village People being dressed
as a construction worker. This image connoted masculinity and straightness,
but by 1982 it was also an established gay icon. Thus Gil's insistence on his
straightness is all the more gestural, for a gay audience anyway, because he so
embodies a gay fantasy of straight masculinity.
In Gil, straightness is a mask to gay desire. For Querelle, on the other hand,
it is the means by which he experiences such desire. In his case, this desire is
masochistic, its pleasure resides in humiliation.
When Querelle loses at dice to Nono, he insists that there be no kisses: 'All I
give is my arse' (figure 3.6). In much gay male culture, kisses signify feeling and
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Figure 3.6 Querelle and the power politics of sex — black, gay-identified Nono, who has
established the rules of the game gets to screw white, straight-identified
Querelle, who has deliberately played the game to this end. (National Film
Archive)
emotional response, but the penis and anus are mere instruments of pleasure:
the hustler does not feel his masculinity is compromised, a partner in a gay
couple does not feel he is being unfaithful, as long as feelings - kisses, embraces
— do not enter into casual or paid-for sexual encounters. Here Querelle's refusal
of kisses signifies that he is not to be thought of as gay. The irony is that he has
cheated in order to lose and therefore be fucked, and Nono knows that he
has cheated. Thus the act retains the appearance of a straight man being fucked
by a gay man, with the humiliation that that implies, and yet is signalled as a
humiliation that the straight man in fact desires (since he cheated to get it).
The same pattern holds for Querelle and Mario. When the latter questions
him about having sex with Nono, Querelle insists T m no fairy', and imme-
diately, as if involuntarily, turns round to be fucked by Mario. As with Nono,
the humiliation involved can only be experienced as humiliation if, instead of
simply desiring to feel a penis in his anus, Querelle firsts asserts his hetero-
sexuality, someone for whom anal penetration would be humiliation. Anal
penetration is only humiliation if it signifies a loss of status and that can only
be achieved if one has status, the status of being heterosexual, in the first place.
Heterosexuality structures Querelle's homosexual desire right to the end of
the film, when he gives himself to Seblon. He has throughout despised Seblon.
When he sees him gazing at him adoringly early on in the film, he simply looks
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back insolently; later, after Gil's arrest, he listens to the tape recorder into which
Seblon has confessed his love for him. This establishes Seblon as 'weak', because
he is in love, and accords with Querelle's perception of him, expressed in his
encouragement to Gil to attack Seblon for money because 'he won't fight back
— he's a queer'. Unlike Querelle, who betrays Gil to the police, Seblon does not
betray Querelle (whom he knows to have murdered Vic), an act of love which
is also further confirmation of his weakness. Surrendering to such a man makes
Querelle feel, a voice over informs us, 'serene'. This serenity is not the discovery
of true love but rather that of the final humiliation, the straight man possessed
not by macho gays like Nono and Mario but by the queer, Seblon.
Querelle s drama of humiliation is decked out with many of the trappings of
s/m - leather wristbands, peaked caps, bondage ropes, belts - and may readily
be interpreted in the light of pro s/m arguments. By ritualising power and
violence, it confronts and examines the generally unacknowledged dynamic
of power present in all relationships. The fact that Querelle engineers his
being fucked suggests that the humiliation involved is consensual as it is in
s/m sex.
Particularly interesting here is the use of religious imagery. In his contribu-
tions to a forum on s/m, Ian Young stresses the importance of humiliation play
as 'a way of stripping away the ego and its defenses and pretensions — becoming
aware of different levels — . . . another way to achieve what religion or drugs
attempt' (1979:91). Querelle's search for such humiliation is accompanied at
points by Christian imagery. When he goes ashore with the opium (an act which
leads to his murdering Vic), the voice over tells us this is 'comparable to the
Visitation' (the revelation of his destiny); his fight with his brother, who accuses
him of being a queer, is accompanied by a Calvary procession (Querelle, like
Christ, humiliated in the name of redemption); when Querelle gives himself
to Seblon he says that he'll never find peace until Seblon has taken him and
'after, I'll lie across your thighs like a Pieta (his apotheosis accomplished by
his sacrifice of himself to Seblon). In addition to these direct Christian references,
the general trance-like tone of the characters' movements, the almost intoned
quality of their speech, the use of a male chorus for background music that is
a cross between plainsong and the Carmina Bur ana, all give a quasi-religious
tone to the film. Querelle's attainment of humiliation could thus be read as
transcendence, s/m as the means to achieve nirvana, that loss of self that is the
mystic's aim.
The problem is that the Christian moments in the film have a perfunctory,
postmodern feel to them, there because they are in the original, but not meant
and believed in as they are in Genet. Moreover, as I have tried to show, Querelle's
pleasure/humiliation depends upon the real power relations of society, beyond
the asocial space of a theatre of sex. His pleasure/humiliation can only be that
if homosexual acts are accepted as indeed inferior and degrading in comparison
to heterosexual ones. Querelle's transcendence affirms the hetero/homo hierarchy
— only this can ensure that being fucked is indeed to be humiliated. If in gay
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s/m a loss of self is sought in mutual, consensual sex acts, in Querelle, the self is
annihilated through the internalisation of heterosexual norms.
Verfuhrung: die grausame Frau

Werfiihrung (Seduction: the Cruel Woman), made in 1985, is an obvious point of
comparison with Querelle'. it even opens with a very Querelle-ish shot of a figure
in a sailor suit leaning over a ship's rail. Already there are two important differ-
ences, however. The figure looks somewhat androgynous and is in fact a woman,
and the predominant colour is clear, cold blue, as opposed to Querelle s acidic
combinations. From the start the difference from Querelle is evident even while
it is being recalled: Werfiihrung is a lesbian film and is as cold as ice.
Verfilhrung centres on the character of Wanda, who runs a gallery in Hamburg
specialising in s/m performance art. Apart from the shows, people also come
to her to enact their desired sexual scenes; one man, Herr Mahrsch, poses as a
journalist to get an interview with her but reveals that what he really wants is
'to be her toilet'. Wanda has three lovers: her ex-husband Gregor; a live-in lover
Caren, a shoe fetishist who runs a small, chic shoe boutique; and Justine, a
woman visiting from the US. The film consists of a series of encounters, perfor-
mances, fantasies involving these characters and others, which are organised
not according to strict narrative connnections but rather as they illustrate the
film's concern with illusion and reality in (s/m) relationships.
Throughout the film Wanda maintains an attitude of cool, ironic detachment.
As the impresario for the s/m gallery performances, as the paid dominatrix,
she treats all encounters as theatre. When Mahrsch, in his initial interview with
her, starts talking about s/m as a need and as therapy, she ridicules him — to her
it is performance. Even when taking a bath by herself, she theatricalises the
scene, decorating the room with candles in clam shells and posing in the bath
like some sea goddess. The problem for the other characters is that they want
things to be for real; their problem is Wanda's insistence that all is role. Justine
has come from the States to have a relationship with Wanda, not just to take
part in s/m scenes with her. Caren thinks that she is the special lover, yet Wanda
tells her, 'Your talk of freedom and love sickens me'. Gregor too wants to be the
special one, but Wanda excludes him, putting her lesbian encounters before
him and finally dismissing him for ever. All three want to push their relationship
with Wanda beyond acting to something 'real', which Wanda resolutely resists.
Much of the play and humour of the film turns on this.
In one scene Justine complains to Wanda that she hates all this role playing
and then roundly slaps Wanda on the face. 'Wunderbar!', exclaims Wanda.
Justine does not wish to role play yet Wanda perceives that the slap is not really
a spontaneous, involuntary act but is really itself a bit of role playing perfor-
mance. So she thrills to it, albeit ironically: her 'Wunderbar!' indicates to Justine
how the latter has been caught in the very theatricality she claims to want to
eschew. There is even greater irony in the treatment of Gregor. When he comes
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cringingly to Wanda, after backing away from watching her make love with
Justine, she tells him she hates him because he is always play acting. This sounds
like a reversal of what has been said before, but it relates to Wanda's perception
of Justine's slap. Gregor thinks what he is doing is for real, he cannot see
that he is play acting, that all is performance - it is his inability to see this that
Wanda despises. In revenge he tries first to shoot himself and then, during a
performance, to shoot her. When he merely succeeds in grazing her, she bursts
out laughing, as do all the audience. There is no escape from performance for
Gregor (or anyone). Whatever we do is caught in the realities of roles and con-
ventions and theatre. Wanda's strength is her ironic recognition of this; her s/m
performances consciously embrace artifice, while the others still seek for the
illusion of authenticity.
As I have already noted, there is a contradiction in much thinking about
s/m, on the one hand arguing that it explores 'the political construction of sex'
(Ardill and Neumark 1982:8) while on the other putting forward 'an essential -
isation of sex, power and pleasure' (Weeks 1985:239), a celebration of the vital
force of sexual desire. My reading of Verfiihrung stresses the theme of the
constructedness of sex, but Jayne Melville's review of it in Square Peg (and her
contribution to a panel discussion at the Piccadilly Film Festival in June 1986)
focuses on the way the film celebrates power, and especially in women. It is
one of the few films that actually shows/celebrates active female desire: 'Female,
and particularly lesbian, sexuality in the film is at once aggressive, animal-like,
powerful and seductive. The women are capable of acting out fantasies and
shaping their own sexualities' (1986:33).
We have moved a long way from Genet, if only because women, lesbian or
otherwise, are for the most part absent from his work (even Les Bonnes, an all-
female cast, was intended to be performed by men). Yet many of those lesbians
defending or advocating an embrace of perverse sexuality have acknowledged
the inspiration of gay male sexual culture. As Peg Byron observes in a review
of some lesbian s/m and porn magazines 'Gay men also get credit for this
explosion of lesbian bravado. Lesbians looked to gay men's porn for material
taboo in their own circles — sex sans romance in its endless variations' (1985:48).
And the terms of the debate, theatre versus essence, condemned to perversity
or choosing it, have been central to the fortunes of'Genet', if not Genet.
* * *
Genet's work has provided a storehouse of imagery and tone for gay and even
lesbian cinema. There is a Genet iconography —flowers,prisons, drag queens,
dirt, melancholy unshaven criminals and sailors, crucifixes, crotches, tattoos
and scars — and a Genet flavour — guilt and defiance, crime and Catholicism, the
sordid and the sublime, all at once. The simultaneous presence of these elements
is of the essence, especially in understanding the constant gay return to Genet.
In 'Genet' constructions of gayness, it is not possible to think of spiritual union
106
between men without thinking of cock-sucking, nor to think of fucking

without thinking of true love. The difference between the films discussed in this
chapter, including the various readings of Un Chant d'amour, lies in what they
make of the juxtaposition. The presence of spiritual imagery may promote, as
in Possession du condamne, a feeling of transcendence through physical love, or may
be something like a nostalgia for a belief in the transcendent, as in Querelle. The
persistent image of the desirable virile man may just be a turn-on in some
readings of Chant1 or a reflection of such a turn-on in others. Yoking together
desire and confinement (in a literal prison or the prison of masculinity and taboo
sexuality) may be seen to make a point about the repression of homosexuality
or else to make confinement one of the conditions making homosexual pleasure
possible — Possession is clearly the former, but does the intensity of Chant or
Querelle (or, probably, Le Prisonnier) derive from the triumph of love against
repression or the masochistic pleasures of repression itself?; is such intensity
only possible now, as Querelle, Verfiihrung and perverse' readings of Chant may
suggest, in games, role play and substitutes for oppression?
Though 'Genet' is not to every lesbian and gay person's liking, the fruitfulness
of his distinctive mix of imagery is not a marginal or specialised taste. The
constant return to Genet has a little to do with his literary quality or prestige
and the way he has figured so prominently in political-intellectual life in the
post-war era, but for gay people it also has to do with the fact that lesbian'/'gay'
is a sexual identity in a culture in which even heterosexuality is at best an
unfortunate drive and at worst a kind of bestiality. The proclamation of gay/
lesbian identity is thus always troubled by the fact that this ineluctably entails
sex — no matter how hard one tries (homophile, feminist, liberated), one cannot
escape from the way the whole of society has constructed sexuality. The return
to Genet is a constant reworking of this trouble, a return to a point where
homosexuality is always affirmed but never without an insistent acknowledge-
ment of the degradation of (homo)sexuality for us. Part of the endless fascination
is whether that degradation is to be thought of as inherent or socially enforced,
whether it is to be rejected or welcomed. 'Genet' makes it possible to say any
of these, to mull them over, or even to assert them all at once.
Appendix: Genet and film

In addition to the films discussed in the chapter, Genet himself had some other
involvements in film-making and his work has been a source or inspiration for
many other films (Giles 1991:7-16, 86-89, Murray 1994:285-286).
Genet contributed a scenario (little more it seems than a story and brief
treatment (Billard 1966)) based on an earlier (c.1952) script, Les Reves interdits,
ou Uautre versant du reve (Giles 1991:9) for Mademoiselle GB 1966, directed
by Tony Richardson, but all the other films he worked on were either unmade
or unshown. In addition to Le Prisonnier, described above, he was involved in
a projected film on his childhood La Revolte des anges noirs in 1947 (Webb
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1982:516), worked on a scenario called Le Bagne in 1955 (which included the

image of a guard having his eye put out by a needle as he spies on prisoners
(ibid.:518; Giles 1981:80)) and in 1977 wrote a treatment for a film about a
young Moroccan in Europe called La Nuit venue (Genet 1983, Webb 1982:540).
He appeared in a 1948 film, Ulysse ou les mauvaises rencontres, directed by
Alexandre Astruc, which was never released (ibid.:529), and sometime in the
forties in a film with Violette Leduc, playing her baby (ibid.:535). He is in
the documentary footage of Prologue Canada 1969, a film about revolution
directed by Robin Spry, and was interviewed in Saint Genet 1985 in the BBC
TV Arena series.
In terms of adaptations, there have been versions of the plays (The Balcony
USA 1963; Deathwatch USA 1966; The Maids GB 1975), the second of which
was probably 'the first film whose advertising was directed specifically at a gay
audience' when it ran at the Bleecker Street Cinema in New York in 1967
(Russo 1981:150). There was talk of a film of Miracle de la rose in 1951 (Rabi
1951:744) and a film inspired by it in 1987 {Miracle of the Rose GB), and in
1962 a never-released version of Pompes funebres, called Le Tireur des toits, from
the credits of which Genet had his name removed (Webb 1982:529). Guy
Gilles' television film Jean Genet: Saint, poete, martyr France 1975 used elements
of 'Le condamne a mort \ Journal du voleur; Notre-Dame des fleurs and Miracle de
la rose. A projected film version of the theatre piece based on Genet, Flowers, by
Lindsay Kemp, Celestino Coronado and David Haughton, was never made.
Other films not mentioned above that have the Genet flavour include Flowers
of Asphalt France 1951 Gregory Markopoulos, LAmour a la mer France 1965 Guy
Gilles, Bara no soretsu Japan 1970 Matsumoto Toshio (set in a gay bar in Tokyo
called the Genet), L'Homme de desir France 1970 Dominique Delouche, Le Carnet
rose d'un homosexuel France 1971 Anthony Smalto, Fortune and Men's Eyes Canada
1971 Harvey Hart, Pink Narcissus USA 1971 anon., Amen Belgium 1974
Roland Mahauden, Sept Images impossibles Belgium 1979 Robert Malengreau
(producer of Possession du condamne), Casta Diva Netherlands 1982 Eric de
Kuyper, Das Gerausch rascher Erlosung BRD 1982 Wieland Speck, Blauer Dunst
BRD 1983 Klaus Keske, HalteroflicFrance 1983 Philippe Valois,LHommeblesse
France 1983 Patrice Chereau, Stadt der verlorenen Seelen BRD 1983 Rosa von
Praunheim, De Vierde Man Netherlands 1983 Paul Verhoeven, Le Sphinx France
1985 Thierry Knauss, 'Un Chant de safe amour' in The ADS Crisis John Greyson
1987, 8 Jean Genet is Dead GB 1988 Constantine Giannaris, Ecce Homo USA 1989
Jerry Tartaglia, Poison USA 1990 Todd Haynes, LEquilibriste France 1991 Nico
Papatakis and many more. One might also note that the Genet repertoire of
imagery even gets into Hollywood movies, as for instance in the treatment
of the gay prisoner who helps the heroes escape from prison in Papillon 1973
(Dyer 1980-1).
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3
UNDERGROUND
A N D AFTER
Underground films were short, low budget films, made outside the mainstream
film industry in the USA from the late forties to the late sixties. 1 They range
from films full of obscure symbolism, hectic cutting and vivid colours to others
shot in grainy black and white with next to no cuts and not much going on
beyond random, banal conversation. Their 'undergroundness' was partly their
refusal of Hollywoodian qualities of finish and clarity, and partly their breaking
of (mainly sexual) taboos, so that production and screenings were socially,
economically and sometimes legally marginal and questionable.
Underground films were always recognised as a very gay tradition. Jonas
Mekas, one of the first to perceive their existence at all, characterised them
disparagingly in 1955 in terms of an etherealised image of women, sado-
masochism, homosexuality and adolescent frustration. Eleven years later, when
the underground was in full swing, Andrew Sarris, one of the most eminent film
critics in the USA, observed during a public discussion at the New York Film
Festival:
When you get some of these films that deal quite frankly with things
like homosexuality I think the majority of the people are very violently
opposed . . . and I think this is one of the issues that keeps coming up
all the time, of subject matter.
(quoted in Wellington 1967:44-5)
People could hardly be blamed. By far the most newsworthy stories con-
cerning the underground were the raids on screenings and subsequent trials of
Flaming Creatures in New York and Scorpio Rising in Los Angeles (together with
Un Chant d'amour in both New York and San Francisco), all within months of
each other in 1964, all overtly gay films. Many of the best known underground
film-makers were gay and gay subject-matter suffused not only their work but
that of many others who did not identify themselves as gay. Even forerunners
of the underground indicated the possibility of a gay cinema, and it has had an
extraordinary impact on a wide variety of subsequent films, including art cinema,
midnight movies and pornography. All of this is the subject of this chapter.
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Underground films, even if one just takes the gay ones, do not constitute a
unified, homogeneous body of work. Fireworks (Kenneth Anger 1947) is a tightly
organised film, every cut highly disciplined, with a coherent, decipherable
symbolic structure. It plays with space and time, but rigorously and in a manner
that is only possible on the basis of understanding the rules of mainstream film-
making. Flaming Creatures (Jack Smith 1963) is loose and languorous, with only
the vaguest of underlying structures, and without esoteric symbolism. Its use
of dissolves and superimpositions does not so much organise as dispense with
co-ordinated time and space. Couch (Andy Warhol 1964) uses a series of long
takes and in a sense respects real time and space: the camera is in one place for
a set length of time and records what goes on in front of it. The action is a series
of listlessly sexual encounters of one kind or another, with no apparent connec-
tion or development. Though there are common elements to these films — the
use of camp, of gay sexualities — and they are more like each other than they are
like conventional movies, still the similarities hardly convey what any one of
these films is actually like.
These three films are characteristic of different phases of underground
film-making (though the approach of the earlier phase persists well into the
eighties, just as the later phases were already anticipated in films as far back as
the thirties). The shifts in style — from rigorous construction through dissolving
sensuousness to minimalism — parallel shifts in attitude and subject-matter,
especially towards the self The films from the late forties take the film-maker
as subject-matter, her or his inner life, revealed by dreams, released by ritual,
universalised by myth. The later films on the other hand are utterly impersonal
as far as the film-maker is concerned — Warhol is said on occasion to have walked
away from the camera once he had set it rolling and simply allowed to happen
whatever took place in front of it. In between, films like Flaming Creatures show
not the film-maker as inner personality but the performer's outer persona. While
Flaming Creatures may have the stamp of Smith's personality on it, it is not
an exploration of his psyche; but nor does it attempt to reveal the inner selves
of its drag queen performers, they are literally a show. There is a shift then from
the personality of the film-maker to the personality of the performer which is
also a shift from personality as an inner reality to be explored to personality as
an outer surface to be observed.
These shifts are not unique to the gay underground, but it is no accident
that gays were so central to the development and definition of the tradition
as a whole. Underground cinema provided a space and an opportunity for gay
men and, as is discussed in the next chapter, lesbians to represent themselves
in films in a way that mainstream film-making (where many covert lesbians
and gay men worked) did not. There had always been links and overlaps between
the gay scenes and the artistic avant-gardes in the USA, and homosexuality was
perceived at various times as a form of instinctual rejection of the narrowness
and repressiveness of mainstream US life in general. The concerns of the under-
ground — with personal identity, with self disclosure, with gender roles, with
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U N D E R G R O U N D AND AFTER
subvers iveness — have a particular urgency in a lesbian and gay context, and even
more so in the context of the development of newly assertive gay identities in
the period. What makes underground cinema even more fascinating, however,
is the way it also seems to problematise those identities. This chapter then is
about the emergence of a gay cinema tradition, at this time and in this form,
and its relation to the construction, and dissolution, of contemporary homo-
sexual identities.
The first gay underground films were made on the West Coast, mainly Los
Angeles, in the late forties; then there was a break until the early sixties in New
York. In between, and despite (or in reaction to) the restrictiveness of the fifties,
homosexuality had come to a new and vivid visibility in US cultural life and a
vigorous US avant-garde in the arts was fully established. The next two sections
look in turn at these two moments, in each case tracing first the mix of elements,
cinematic and sub-cultural, that came together to provide possibilities for gay
underground cinema and then discussing the film-makers and their key (gay)
work. A third section considers the continuance and influence of this cinema
into the seventies.
From the West Coast

The first phase related to older elements within gay culture, particularly the
overlap with artistic milieux, as well as to earlier examples within European
and US avant-garde film gay imagery. The time and the place of its emergence
also seem propitious — the Second World War had had a general impact on the
situation of homosexual people in the USA, and strengthened deeper rooted gay
traditions; equally the particular mix in LA of developed gay and film (in and
outside Hollywood) cultures made gay film a possibility and in part determined
the shapes it took. These are the two sets of elements dealt with here: the artistic
context and the time and the place.
Gays and the arts

The social spaces that allowed art in the USA and that allowed homosexuality
have long overlapped. Emmanuel Cooper points to various specific instances of
this in his history of homosexuality and art 2 and it is vividly evoked in The Young
and the Evil, a novel published in Paris in 1933 but set in Greenwich Village,
New York, and written by Charles Ford and Parker Tyler. Ford, a poet and artist,
made a late underground film, Johnny Minotaur in 1971, and Tyler worked as a
film critic, celebrating, in very undergroundish ways, the subconscious appeals
of Hollywood, writing criticism of underground films and, in 1972, the first
book on gays and film, Screening the Sexes. The Young and the Evil concerns, in a
very free-wheeling style, a group of young men who lead free-floating lives,
writing poems, hustling, hanging out, sleeping with women but mainly with
each other. Not only are they half-in, half-out of art circles themselves, it is clear
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that they are accepted, glamour star eyebrows and all, by the straight art scene
and also by those on the left, who share their social marginality.
A particular view of the art/gay nexus was offered by the poet Robert Duncan
in his article 'The Homosexual in Society', published in the left-liberal journal
Politics in August 1944. The article, basically an argument for homosexual
rights, takes it as a given fact known to all that the arts and intellectual life
are full of gay men. This fact, he argues, is used against homosexuals 'in private
conversation, at every table, at every editorial board' - 'modern art' is seen
to have been 'cheated by what almost amounts to a homosexual cult' (209).
However, Duncan goes on, the equally deplorable fact is that many homosexuals
do participate in 'a cult of homosexual superiority to the human race', culti-
vating 'a secret language, the camp, a tone and a vocabulary that is loaded
with contempt for the human' (210). Two of the specific inflections of this
'homosexual cult' are startlingly evocative of aspects of underground films.
One inflection is witchcraft. Duncan refers to
new cult leaders whose special divinity, whose supernatural and

visionary claim is no other than this mystery of sex. . . . Like early
witches, the homosexual propagandists have rejected any struggle
toward recognition in social equality and, far from seeking to undermine
the popular superstition, have accepted the charge of Demonism.
(ibid.)
It is hard to know how literally Duncan means this, but the general sense of an
affinity between homosexuality and the occult is widely attested, not least
by the films of Kenneth Anger. There is a long historical association of homo-
sexuality and witchcraft (Evans 1978, Grahn 1984), and fringe or outlawed
cults may often provide a space for marginal or forbidden sexualities. The occult
not only provides a space for the expression of sexual identities that are repressed
or despised elsewhere in society but may also exalt them (cf. Fry 1986).
A second aspect of the cult is the idea of there being 'special worth in
suffering, sensitivity', in 'isolate sufferings that [have] been converted into the
poet's intangible "nobility"' (Duncan 1944:209). Even if not explicitly claiming
specialness, early underground films do dwell on the isolated, suffering figure,
whose sensitivity is contrasted to the cheerfully playing athletes or crowds at
whom he gazes. Sensitivity may be a curse but it is also a sign of greater aesthetic
and moral refinement.
The idea of gay men being sensitive may also be a case of'accepting a charge'
levelled against us. The term 'sensitive' was often used as a code word for homo-
sexuals in popular novels, plays and films in the period, no doubt deriving from
the idea that gay men are more like women who are of course more sensitive.
Often the term was spoken sarcastically, especially by male characters, whereas
women characters were more likely to indicate a feeling of affinity with the
man in question - see, for instance, the opposed attitudes of Spencer Tracy and
112
Katharine Hepburn to the character of Kip, played by David Wayne, in Adam's

Rib 1949 (Russo 1981:67-8). It is then not surprising that some gay art should
not only accept but affirm that homosexuality is a condition of sensitivity.
To this general notion of homosexual sensitivity needs to be added the
influence of Freudian ideas, widely spread in various forms among artists and
intellectuals in the USA since the twenties (Hale 1971). The twin planks of
popularised notions of homosexuality were homosexuality as a form of narcis-
sism and homosexuality as a result of maternal domination, motifs that recur
throughout underground films and, even more, straight critical accounts of
them. Homosexuals in this psychoanalytical discourse are 'inevitably' unhappy
and guilt-ridden: narcissism is immature and therefore unfulfilling, to desire
one's mother violates the incest taboo and anyway they know it's unnatural.
The whole feeling — mother fixation, guilt, homo-eroticism, inevitable unhappi-
ness — is suggested by this description of an East Coast underground film,
Willard Maas's Images in the Snow 1948:
The hero . . . is haunted by dream images of youths in muscular

poses, dashes his worn-out mother's lovingly proffered breakfast-egg
to the floor, and rushes out through grimy New York streets, until
in the cemetery, he identifies his mother with the Virgin and his own
suffering with Christ's, wallowing in the snow, between the graves, as
if life were burial alive in some numb cold pain.
(Durgnat 1972:252)
A similar Freudo-religious guilt informs the image of homosexuality in such

later films as The Voices (John Smitz 1953) and Line of Apogee (Lloyd Michael
Williams 1968).
Freudian ideas not only provided aetiologies of homosexuality, but formal
qualities as well. The importance of the Oedipal phase accorded well with a
society in which the notion of'adolescence' as a distinctive life phase was already
being emphasised (Springhall 1983—4) and it provided the central dramatic
motif of the young man passing through a tormented rite of passage, issuing
in both a formal structure, the journey in search of the self, and a character
type, 'the sad young man' (figure 4.1) (Dyer 2002a). More important still were
the Freudian notions of the structures of the unconscious. Early underground
films are often constructed along lines similar to the way that Freudian analysis
construes dreams: unconscious thought processes seen as reworking elements
from conscious perception; objects and incidents becoming highly charged
emotionally and, especially, sexually; things being substituted for other things,
places suddenly becoming other places; unexpected juxtapositions of images.
Such a vocabulary for the cinematic rendering of dreams had already been
developed in the European avant-garde of the twenties and thirties. These had
been made available through the touring film programmes put out by the
Museum of Modern Art starting in 1937 and the 'Art in Cinema' series put on
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Figure 4.1 Downcast eyes and the urban nightscape - elements of the iconography of the
homosexual as sad young man on the cover of The Gay Year 1949- (Castle Books)
at the San Francisco Museum of Art from 1947 on. Two of the most widely
seen were Un Chien Andalou 1928 and Le Sang d'un poete 1930, both of which
have homosexuality as part of their cinematic vocabulary. Sang in particular
seems to be a model for many of the West Coast films: its title suggests the
114
stance of taking oneself as subject, one's subjectivity as subject-matter; its

structure is a series of journeys into the self; the sequence in the hotel corridor
is evoked again and again in the corridors, stairways, doors and rooms of the
houses through which underground film protagonists wander in search of
themselves; and the film welds personal and oneiric concerns to mythology,
invoking notions of eternal and universal archetypes in human (unconscious-
ness. This last may have been particularly appealing for gay film-makers
in the period — in part it argues for the (always everywhere) naturalness of
homosexuality; it elevates its cultural significance; it swallows up self-doubt and
self-hate in higher realms of perception. More generally, myth brings a healing
unification to the fragmented self presented in underground films, a general
feature of these films but, like the journey structure, one with special resonance
for gay people.
Lot in Sodom
Another film shown in the museum series was Lot in Sodom, from an earlier,
isolated moment of avant-gardism in the US itself, and I want to end this section
by considering it in some detail. It was made in Rochester (New York State)
in 1930 by Melville Webber and James Sibley Watson, university lecturers
who had already made another film together in 1928, an adaptation of The Vail
of the House of Usher. Whether either or both of them were gay is not known,
but it is hard not to assume one at least of them was on the evidence of Lot in
Sodom. It shows Sodom destroyed for its gayness and thus may appear morally
conventional, but it feels like a celebration of gayness (cf. Fischer 1987—8:44).
Lot in Sodom contrasts the life of Lot and his family with that of the exclusively
male townsfolk of Sodom, a contrast of frenzy and stillness. The townsfolk
are luridly painted queens and handsome young men shot in soft chiaroscuro
lighting; all leap and writhe about and are presented as if in permanent sexual
play, without specific narrative incidents and with extremely rapid editing. Lot
and his family, on the other hand, are plainly dressed and made up; they stand
still or make slow and deliberate movements; it is through them that the story
of God sending an angel to destroy Sodom is told, edited to a slow, deliberate
pace. This could be a contrast between the confusion, chaos and disorientation
of the gay sequences and the calm, order and piety of the Lot sequences - that
the gay sequences seem colourful and fun and the Lot sequences dull and dreary
might be just a personal response. Yet there are other ways in which the film
seems to encourage this response.
There is a contrast between the way the gay men are presented in the film
and the way Lot's daughter is. The film gives us the men's bodies, often half
naked, caressingly lit, but the daughter's beauty is presented in symbolic, non-
sexual terms. The chief sequence concerning her beauty is her giving birth.
She opens her dress, but we do not see her body and the film cuts away to a title
telling us that 'Mulier Templum est' ('Woman is a temple'), followed by a
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
Figure 4.2 The angel as sad young man in Lot in Sodom.
shot of her with a temple superimposed over her hips, then shots of doves and
of flowers opening, symbolising birth. One would not expect to see the birth
directly, but you might expect, from a heterosexual film, some celebration of
the daughter's bodily beauty. As it is, the image of woman in the film is ethereal,
conveyed without the erotic conviction with which the men are shown. It feels
as if the film is consciously presenting woman, and therefore heterosexuality,
as morally and aesthetically superior, but unconsciously betraying the excite-
ment and sensuality of men, and therefore homosexuality.
This ambivalence is heightened by the appearance of the angel (figure 4.2),
a handsome young man, with large, sad eyes and sensual mouth, lit in the same
soft chiaroscuro as the gay young men of the city. He is an archetypal 'sad young
man', beautiful but melancholy. At the end he does destroy Sodom, yet the
affinity between him and the gay men is striking. If the film morally condemns
what it is nonetheless attracted to, then perhaps the angel represents the gay
116
believer's destruction of his sexual self in the name of the morality to which he
subscribes.
This is necessarily speculative, but certainly Lot in Sodom anticipates the
gay underground not just by its direct use of gay subject-matter and imagery
(itself virtually unheard of in the USA up to this time and until the mid-forties)
but by its use of expressionistic lighting and non-narrative editing to evoke
experience, its ambivalent attitude towards women, its use of the sad young man
type and the way that one can discern elements of splitting and fragmentation
in its presentation of psychic and sexual states.
The fortieslLos Angeles

Historians of homosexuality in the US are agreed on the absolute importance
of the Second World War in the widespread emergence of gay and lesbian
identities (D'Emilio 1983:23-39, Costello 1985:153-74, Berube 1990).
The war involved mass mobilisation, throwing men together with men in
the military, and women together with women in both the military and on the
home front. It created conditions in which homosexual experience became
almost commonplace and in which people might easily realise they were gay
and be well known to be so. Thus despite the uproar that greeted the publication
in 1948 of Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (which gave figures to
show that 37 per cent of men had had some homosexual experience and 4 per
cent were exclusively homosexual) and the public harassment and denigration
of homosexuality focused by McCarthy's witch hunts (D'Emilio 1983:41—53),
personal experience of homosexuality and acquaintance with gay people were
widespread, perhaps accounting for why the fifties was to be a period of both
increasing tolerance of gays and growing gay communities as well as a period
of vicious anti-gay propaganda and repression.
The war also associated gay eroticism with the military. Tom Waugh notes in
his study of imagery in gay pornographic photos 'a huge proliferation of military-
themed erotic photos' in the forties (1984:31; cf. Sokolowski 1983:13-14). As
he observes,
Sailors and khaki had always been part of gay iconography — think of
Walt Whitman's Civil War experiences or of Paul Cadmus's ribald
paintings of sailors from the Thirties - but during the War, a previously
marginal cultural tendency centred in seaports and bohemian under-
grounds took the shape of a mass cultural phenomenon.
(1984:31)
Soldiers and sailors were no longer straight-identified men seen from afar by
gay-identified men, they were gay — or at any rate sometimes queer or homo-
sexual — themselves. Perhaps here began the process which culminated in the
seventies' gay macho clone look, whereby gay men no longer saw themselves as
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Figure 4.3 Sailor imagery in early beefcake mail order. (Thomas Waugh Collection)
intrinsically different from their objects of desire but made themselves into
those objects of desire.
Sailors have especially figured in gay erotic tradition (figure 4.3), for a number
of possible reasons: longer enforced periods spent in enclosed single-sex environ-
ments suggests they may have greater homosexual experience; their rootlessness
accords with the anonymity and fleetingness of much gay sexual contact and
means they are not 'tied down' to marriage, family and conformity; their knowl-
edge of the world makes them seem either exotic or broad-minded; the rigours
of sailing produce well-developed physiques. Even their clothing, perhaps
by association, seems more erotic — open-necked tops suggesting broad chests;
trousers worn tight at the crotch and made of moulding serge; the flap fly; bell-
bottoms which emphasise, by their oddity, naval costume as costume.
Whether as a result of the war experience or not, the post-war period saw
what Roger Austen calls a 'burst of novels with gay themes . . . by the end of
the decade a New York Times reviewer complained that [gay fiction} was getting
to be a "groaning shelf" (1977:93-4). Among those to make an impact at the
time were The Fall of Valor (Charles Jackson 1945), The Sling and the Arrow
(Stuart Engstrand 1947), The Gallery (John Home Burns 1947), The City and
the Pillar (Gore Vidal 1948), Other Voices, Other Rooms (Truman Capote 1948),
The Gay Year (M. de F. 1949) (figure 4.1), but Austen's list is much longer than
these few. Most depict homosexuality as a disturbing eruption of 'different'
desires in otherwise ordinary men, something the war had made widespread and
known about.
In The City and the Pillar one of the characters remarks, 'I'll bet they got more
pretty girls and crazy people and queers in LA than any other town' (Vidal
1965:36), a view that subsequent chapters confirm. Certainly Los Angeles was
very gay (Hooven 2000), enough to have well-established gay places. Henry
Hay, one of the founders of the Mattachine Society, refers to the 'notorious'
Pershing Square (1976:407; also documented by Donald Vining in his diary
118
(D'Emilio 1983:27)) and to the 'Gay beach in Los Angeles, in Santa Monica'
(Hay 1976:411). Even before the founding of the Mattachine in 1950, there were
the beginnings of activism in Los Angeles in the form of the gay inter-racial
group, The Knights of the Clock (founded in 1949) and Lisa Ben's lesbian
magazine Vice Versa (June 1947-February 1948) (D'Emilio 1983:32), suggesting
that Los Angeles had an atmosphere more congenial than most to gay initiatives.
Hay refers to going to 'a beer bust at the University of Southern California,
run by some Gay guys I knew' (1976:408), where the idea of a gay group was
drunkenly mooted; USC was where the gay underground film-makers of the
late forties, Curtis Harrington, Kenneth Anger and Gregory Markopoulos met.
Further evidence of LA's gayness of particular importance here is the growth
of gay porn film and photography in the city. Two of the first regular photo-
graphic studios producing male physique studies and running a mail order
service supplying them were Bruce of Los Angeles and the Athletic Model
Guild (AMG), both of which started in the early forties. AMG was set up by
Bob Mizer, who had no difficulty getting models in a city characterised by film-
making, body culture and rootlessness:
Bob did all his initial recruiting personally, visiting local gymnasiums
and muscle beaches, setting up his tripod in the athletes' sporting
hang-outs. . . . [The models were} dedicated bodybuilders . . . husky
men muscled by hard labor, movie star hopefuls, drifters and an assort-
ment of boy-next-door types.
(Lewis 1983:5)
The earliest example of regular gay erotic film-making (though probably not
intended for commercial release) is the work of'AT', who produced eighteen
(extant) 16mm films between the mid-thirties and the mid-fifties, if not specifi-
cally in Los Angeles then at any rate in Southern California (Waugh 1983:31-2).
The region seems thus, by the standards of the time, to have been quite a
concentration of gay photo arts production.
Los Angeles is also Hollywood. Quite apart from the presence of gay men
behind and in front of the cameras, Hollywood was a purveyor of potentially
gay images — glamorous men, camp costumes, excessive fantasy worlds. As
Charles Boultenhouse observed in 1963 of his fellow film-makers:
In a sense, we all grew up on Hollywood, and, for many of us, our first
experiences of the Marvellous is enshrined in the tacky trappings of
Hollywood glamor. But, at the same time that these films aroused,
they also failed to satisfy. Hollywood is the tease of all time.
(1970:137)
The use of the word 'marvellous', complete with capital letter, suggests an
awareness of the French surrealists' view of popular cinema, namely, that it in
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some way tapped the 'convulsive beauty' of the unconscious. Consciously,

Hollywood, as popular cinema par excellence might try to control and tame the
libidinal forces its imagery set in motion, but none the less it did let them loose
on to the world.
A surrealist approach to film was to go randomly to the cinema, not knowing
what was showing, never seeing the complete film, and thus releasing the
imagery from the shackles of narrative (Breton 1978:42-3). The possibility
of doing this within a film itself was suggested by Rose Hobart, made in 1937
by the sculptor Joseph Cornell. This takes a 1931 film starring Hobart, East of
Borneo, and cuts it up and reassembles it so that what we get are
those random moments of dramatic affectivity that impress the viewer

on a non-narrative level (e.g. the stance of the figure, the flair of a gesture,
the texture of the light) but that are swallowed up in a conventional
context by story sense.
(Ehrenstein 1984:38).
The effect both heightens the visual beauty of many of the kitschy images and
emphasises the fake orientalism of the whole thing. As with many underground
films, there is a knife-edge between Hollywood as repository of the popular
unconscious and Hollywood as camp. Both uses are to be found in Kenneth
Anger, but it was not until the New York gay underground of the sixties, so
much further removed from the presence of Hollywood as industry, that they
became a defining feature.
Quite apart from its unconscious marvellousness, Hollywood also had
its own underground in the late forties, the film noir. Not a term in use in
Hollywood at the time, films noirs were convoluted pessimistic thrillers centred
on jaded male protagonists drawn into seedy or decadent worlds characterised
by sadistic criminals and femmes fatales. Many made use of 'expressionist'
techniques - chiaroscuro lighting, unbalanced compositions, dislocating
cuts - and of dream sequences that draw on the Freudo-surrealist conventions
for the representation of dreams. It is in film noir that homosexuality, usually
on the margins in the form of decadent queens and predatory dykes, reappeared
in Hollywood films for the first time since the early thirties (Dyer 2002b).
Hollywood thus associated homosexuality with quasi expressionist/surreal styles
just as Harrington, Anger and Markopoulos did more concentratedly in their
work. Film noir and the forties gay underground alike sought to convey inner,
often conflictual or disruptive, experiences, which can be taken as symptomatic
of anomie and malaise or, alternatively, as a kind of revolt against the bland
conformities of mainstream US life. Underground films go much further than
film noir in eliminating depiction of the everyday, 'normal' world (usually still
present as a reference point in film noir), in attenuating narrative to the point
of incomprehensibility, in submerging in unconscious, subjective and dream
states, in dislocation of both space and time.
120
Though the forties and LA were a more likely time for the emergence of new
gay expression than earlier, still in a Hollywood dominated city (and society)
even to imagine the possibility of another kind of film-making in the USA was
remarkable. It was Maya Deren, who made her first film, Meshes of the Afternoon,
with Alexander Hammid in 1943 in Los Angeles, who pointed the way. Deren
is often referred to as the 'Mother of the Underground Film', because she
was the film-maker who both through her own films suggested what was
aesthetically possible and who also set up many of the conditions that made
underground film-making practically viable. Her films were the first to be made
directly in 16mm, indicating what could be achieved in this cheaper, lighter
medium, and they took the film-maker herself, her own preoccupations and
anxieties, as their subject-matter. She realised the potential of colleges, univer-
sities, schools and museums as places to show noncommercial film and found
theatres and cinemas ready to put on screenings of them. In 1954 she established
the Creative Film Foundation to help other film-makers with problems of
obtaining grants and raising money (Cornwell 1979:186—7). It was at her
funeral (at the age of 44) in 1961, that several of the film-makers she had helped
and inspired discussed and eventually, under the aegis of Jonas Mekas, set up
the Film-makers' Co-operative, a mutual support organisation for the distri-
bution of underground films. Gay film-makers' debt to Deren is in these general
terms much the same as everyone else's, but, as is discussed in the next chapter,
although Deren was not lesbian, her films also suggest aspects of what a lesbian
underground might be.
The elements discussed in this and the previous sub-section made a gay
cinema possible and provided approaches and motifs out of which it could be
fashioned. Three film-makers — Curtis Harrington, Kenneth Anger and Gregory
Markopoulos — seized the opportunity. Although they produced most of their
work away from Los Angeles and in subsequent years, they made key gay films
there in the late forties before going on to produce work still marked by and
developing out of the nexus of features sketched above. It is to them that I
now turn.
The films
Kenneth Anger and Curtis Harrington were born and brought up in Los
Angeles; Harrington and Gregory Markopoulos studied film there, at the
University of Southern California, one of the few universities offering it;
Anger, slightly younger, sat in on classes. Anger and Harrington were friends
and, according to the latter, 'started making films pretty much about the
same time in 16mm' (Gow 1971:16); Harrington and Markopoulos lived
in the same university residence as well as being in the same department and
working on each other's films. All three had had a go at making films before
they met but the work which has survived and for which they are known was
produced after.
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It is not clear that Harrington belongs in this book, but his best-known film,
Fragment of Seeking 1946—7, has often been interpreted as a gay one. In it, a
young man wanders corridors, aware of young women, one of whom he embraces
only to have her turn into a skeleton; he runs into a room 'where, seeing himself,
he is made to face the realization of his own nature' (Jacobs 1968:568). Given
the cultural perception of male homosexuality as a combination of narcissism
and the repulsed rejection of woman, a gay reading is possible. Again, given the
widespread notion of gay men as mothers' boys, you could, as Michael Wade
does, read On the Edge 1949, 'showing himself physically roped to his mother'
(1982:31), as a pessimistic view of homosexuality. His later films do not appear
to offer such possibilities, though some of the features, after he formally
renounced underground film-making in the pages of Film Culture in 1963, are
pretty campy (e.g. What's the Matter with Helen? 1971) and one may feel that
his graduation to director of episodes of Dynasty on television pretty well
clinches the argument.
Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger's films are organised according to 'Magick', the esoteric system
of pagan belief and ritual elaborated in the life and work of Aleister Crowley.
Magick rituals invoke vital forces, sometimes symbolised, sometimes embodied
in gods and goddesses, the ultimate purpose being to put the ritualist in touch
with 'the Holy Guardian Angel (the aspirant's higher self)' (Rowe 1982:75). The
forces invoked are often forces of chaos and disruption, joyously celebrated but
also in the course of the ritual mastered or used by the ritualist, Magick being,
in Crowley's words, the 'science and art of causing change to occur in conformity
with the Will' (quoted in Rayns 1969:27). The films are structured according
to Magick ritual: characters or the film itself invoke the Magick spirits by
various means (drugs, dressing up, the use of occult objects and words and so
on) and master them in transcendence (symbolised by gestures or images signi-
fying wholeness and completion). This transcendence is also the realisation of
the 'higher self.
Magick is not an exclusively or specifically gay system, but it has strong
gay connections, in addition to those generally true of witchcraft discussed
above. According to Rictor Norton (1977:20), Crowley is best considered as
'ambisexual', open to all sexual practices and objects, though Colin Wilson
suggests that Crowley practised homosexuality more out of conviction than
inclination. Whatever the case, Magick lays great stress on sexuality as one
form of access to the spirits of chaos, and the more perverse the sexuality, the
more it strays from the norms of a hidebound society, then the more potent it
is liable to be, the more disruptive of thought patterns inhibiting the release
of vital forces. The idea of dressing up as the assumption of an identity may be
related to Jack Babuscio's discussion (1977) of the 'gay sensibility' which stresses
the absolute importance of mastering appearances and assuming identities in
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a gay life where passing for straight (assuming a straight appearance) is so

critical. Finally, the fact that the purpose of the ritual is the realisation of the
'higher self' may be especially significant for persons whose sense of self is so
battered and assailed by the realities of sexual oppression.
Anger had made several films before Fireworks 1947, the earliest of his films
in distribution and the most directly gay (see below). It was one of the first gay
films to be internationally acclaimed (at the Festival du Film Maudit in Biarritz
in 1949) and one of the first to be seized by the police (at a public screening in
San Francisco in I960). He followed it with Puce Moment, part of a projected
longer film, in which a woman gets dressed up in an extravagant outfit and
strolls about with a pair of long-haired dogs in a homage at once real and ironic
to the Great Ladies of Hollywood.
The Biarritz festival had been organised by Cocteau, who greatly admired
Fireworks, and in 1950 Anger moved to Europe. His first work there made
explicit links with Cocteau and the poetes maudits whom the title of the Biarritz
festival so evidently invoked. Thus in 1951 he made a film of Cocteau and
Roland Petit's ballet he Jeune homme et la mort, whose title suggests Fireworks'
own imagery, and in the same year he prepared, but never made, a version of
Lautreamont's Les Chants de Maldoror.
His next finished and released film was Faux d'artifice 1953. Using parts of
Vivaldi's The Four Seasons as soundtrack, it shows a dwarf dressed in an extrava-
gant eighteenth-century frock and elaborate feather headdress, moving about
a baroque water garden. In Magick terms, the dwarf is pursuing a vital force,
water, which she3 finally becomes: at the end, through editing, she is turned
into a fountain. In a Magick, but also Freudian and/or gay context, water is also
a sign of sexuality. Semen is an obvious symbolic possibility, though, given
the overall pee-green colour of the film, it could be water sports'. The film is
full of shots of stone mouths spewing fluid and near the end there is a long
held close-up of a (stone) male face with water running continuously over it,
which ends on a cut to the dwarf covering her face coyly with a fan. The coyness
suggests the previous shot is a 'naughty' one, but this is also the moment of
transubstantiation: the fan is hand tinted a brilliant chartreuse (the apotheosis
of pee-green?) and it is now that she becomes a fountain. The campy coyness at
male fluids is also the fulfilment of the Magick ritual.
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome was begun on a visit to Los Angeles in
1954 and has existed in at least four different versions (see Sitney 1979:104—5).
It is a film of jewel-like richness, with a sybaritic, not to say queeny, central
Magus figure, a fair bit of camp imagery and one of the participants a blond
Pan, 'gorgeous beyond words' (Rayns 1969:29) with a bunch of grapes at
his hips. At one point Pan passes the Magus lying on a bed, holding a bunch
of grapes to his mouth, which recall those at Pan's hips. The Magus's tunic is
pulled back so that one can just see his testicles peeping out, creating a visual
rhyme with the grapes, a characteristically witty solvent of the seriousness of
desire.
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Scorpio Rising, Anger's next completed film and undoubtedly his best known
(see below), was made in 1962—3 on his return to the USA to live in New York.
He followed it with Kustom Kar Kommandoes 1965—6 (in fact a mere fragment
of a project), which is much like a sequence from Scorpio Rising: a young man
in jeans and T-shirt caressingly polishes a custom car with a giant white
powder puff, to the accompaniment of 'Dream Lover' sung by the Parris
Sisters. Characteristically, butch imagery is sent up yet still sensuously filmed
in gorgeous pastels. Invocation of My Demon Brother 1969 is Anger's most satanic
film, with shots of US soldiers disembarking in Vietnam disconcertingly played
over shots of naked boys, one black, one white, watching and wrestling. Since
then, apart from revising earlier films, Anger has worked on various versions
of Lucifer Rising (Rayns 1982).
Apart from their relation to traditions of witchcraft, the main gay interest
of Anger's films lies in their treatment of sexual desire. They use much of the
iconography of twentieth-century US gay eroticism (sailors, bike boys, muscle
men) and symbolise gay sexual pleasure, acts and orgasms, vividly and intensely.
At the same time they have a humorous view of sexuality, so that images
are sent up even while they remain keenly desired. This mix of intensity and
irony in the treatment of gay desire is most fully illustrated by Fireworks and
Scorpio Rising.
Fireworks
Fireworks has a narrative of sorts. A young man fondles himself in his room
before going out cruising; he picks up a sailor; later, a group of sailors appears,
chases him and beats him up; the first sailor reappears and masturbates over the
young man; he too has an orgasm and the film ends with a shot of him and a
man lying in bed together. This simple narrative structure is however overlaid
with elements of Magick, dream and humour. These really organise the film,
and I use them now in turn as the basis for this discussion.
Gayness is inseparable from Fireworks Magick purpose of invoking the vital
force of'fire'. When the young man goes cruising, he asks the sailor for a light
and gets it in the form of a bundle of burning sticks; the sailor's orgasm is
symbolised by his lighting a roman candle sticking out of his flies and the young
man's by a burning candle on the tip of a Christmas tree. Thus gay sexuality is
the invocation of fire: cruising is asking for a light (fire), coming is the ejacu-
lation of fire. (A close-up on the young man doing up his button-fly jeans is
similarly both a gay and a Magick dressing up ritual.) This network of ritual
symbolism is suggested by the voice over at the beginning: 'Inflammable desires
dampened by day under the cold water of consciousness are ignited at night by
the libertarian matches of sleep and burst forth in showers of shimmering
incandescence.'
This also suggests dream, which in Magick gives access to occult forces and
in psycho-analysis to the unconscious. Fireworks is not a literal rendition of a
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dream, 4 but it is, in its use of sexual symbolism and handling of space and time,
dream-like.
The first sexual symbol in the film is an African statuette. The young man
lies in bed with, apparently, a huge erection pushing the sheet up like a tent
pole, but he removes a statuette from beneath the sheet which falls back flat.
This is an obvious gag, which also deflates any expectation that there will be
preoccupations with penis size in the film. On the other hand there is massive
exaggeration in the symbolisation of ejaculation: the light the sailor gives the
young man is from a huge bundle of sticks (a flaming faggot, a visual pun?); a
stream of milk is poured over the young man's chest after the group of sailors
have beaten him up; the sailor's orgasm is a spectacular roman candle, the young
man's a Christmas tree candle. Though not in any usual legal sense pornographic
(we see no actual penis or semen), this resembles gay pornography in two
regards: the emphasis on the male orgasm as something seen, as spectacle, and
the exaggeration of how much fluid it produces and how long it lasts. In actual
pornography this is achieved by such devices as repeating the same shot of the
ejaculation, or editing together different, coterminous shots of the same ejacula-
tion, or slow motion, or intercutting shots of the ejaculator's face in orgasmic
ecstasy, all devices making something more and longer of something less
and shorter. The endless stream of milk, the lengthy roman candle display, the
slow-burning Christmas tree give the same message.
In pornography the imperative to show orgasm (nearly always involving
withdrawal) is often interpreted in terms of Value for money' — the spectator
needs to know that he has really seen an orgasm, it wasn't just faked — but this
is clearly not the case here where the question of actual orgasms does not
arise. What Fireworks suggests is the importance within gay sexuality of the
orgasm as something to be seen, an importance that may be accounted for in a
number of ways: as a sign that the other is excited by one's presence, as a present
(a giving of a part of oneself), as part of the importance of the visible in the
construction of male sexual desire and so on. (These might also be important
in understanding why the imperative to show orgasm also characterises hetero-
sexual pornography.) Equally the exaggeration of ejaculation may express the
great psychic importance of so slight a physical reality or also be an example of
erotic utopianism, lengthening and heightening the moment of (visual) pleasure
so regrettably brief in reality. (Interestingly the longest, most delirious symbolic
ejaculation on film is that of the bull in The Old and the New 1929 whose semen
floods the land in a wild, ecstatic montage. It was directed by Sergei Eisenstein,
with whom Anger has often been compared, and who was also homosexual
(LaValley 2001).)
In addition to its use of sexual symbolism, Fireworks is also dream-like in its
handling of time and space. As Sitney (1979:100) observes, its 'repeated sudden
changes of locale . . . are standard in the cinematic vocabulary of the dream'. The
young man leaves his bedroom via a door marked Gents; cut to him in the street
cruising, suggesting he walks through the toilet door (into it or out of it?) to
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the street; standing outside in the street he looks off camera left and there is a
cut to what, by editing convention, he sees, namely, the interior of a bar; asking
for a light from the sailor in the bar he is roughly repulsed, but then there is an
immediate cut to the two of them back in the young man's room with the sailor
lighting the cigarette; moments later, the young man is back in the streets and
after he has been beaten up there are shots of urinals and him lying on the floor
in front of them - behind him the door marked Gents (the same one as in the
bedroom) swings open and there is a cut to the sailor, so that it looks like
the door swings open to reveal him; the sailor lights the roman candle sticking
through his flies, and then, via an almost subliminally brief shot of a lighted
paper floating on water, the film moves to the young man in his room holding
the Christmas tree over his head; finally it cuts to him asleep in his room next
to another man. Details emphasise the non-realist feeling of all this. The bar is
obviously a painted backdrop, as in a theatre; the side of the door marked Gents
(which should mean we are seeing it from outside the toilet) is on the inside of
both the bedroom and the toilet. This last case suggests that bedroom and toilet
are the same space, and the fluid, illogical transitions also suggest that one space
is simply being substituted for another throughout the film, that all spaces are
equal and equally sexually charged.
This is especially suggestive in gay terms. One of the commonest ways of
thinking about gay men's lives is in terms of a public (nonsexual) face and
a private (sexual) face. Yet this public:private dichotomy is in many ways mis-
leading when one considers gay sexuality. On the one hand, much gay male
sex is had in public spaces — street corners, public conveniences; and on the
other, gay fantasy life is full of imagery (such as sailors) from the 'straight' public
world. Fireworks reworks these structures of gay sexual reality in its shifting
spatial transitions. It also indicates the dangers — the delicious dangers — of
this reality. Gay men are beaten up and/or arrested in these sexual spaces but
Fireworks neither documents nor protests this. Rather, it turns it into a part of
sexual pleasure. Orgasms in the film take place after the young man has been
beaten up and many have ascribed a masochistic feeling to the film (notably
Howard 1961). 3
Fireworks complex imagery is further held together by a repeated image of
the sailor holding the young man prostrate in his arms. A track-in on this opens
the film (figure 4.4), but it is next seen as a photograph in multiple copies lying
on the floor of the young man's room; he gathers them up and throws them on
the (unlit) grate before going out cruising. After the candle orgasms he sets fire
to the pictures in the grate and the camera dwells on them slowly consumed by
fire (figure 4.5). The image itself combines two elements with gay resonances:
the erotic iconography of sailors (figure 4.3) and Christianity. The latter is
suggested by the young man's Pieta-like position. Christ is the supreme instance
of a ritually significant sad young man in Western tradition. The shot-become -
photo thus condenses various of the Magick and erotic strands of the film and
is centrally involved in the invocation of fire/desire. It also emphasises film
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Figure 4.4 Fireworks: the image of the young man in the sailor's arms
itself, this film, as Magick eroticism - it is a photographic image that sets every-
thing in train, that is gathered together and later lit in a final consummation.
All this suggests masturbation to porn (photo images 'catch fire'), intensified
not only by its Magick purpose but also by the highly charged significance of
gay images when gay practices are taboo, the (then) recent availability of gay
beefcake and the special force of photographic erotica, its elusive, tantalising
relation to the real.
Amid all this talk of Magick and dream-like constructions of sexuality, it
is easy to lose sight of the film's humour. This too is both specifically gay
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Figure 4.5 . . catches fire'. (National Film Archive)
and specifically Magick. Some gags have already been noted — the statuette,
the flaming faggot, the sailor flexing on a stage set of a bar. Then there is the
moment when the sailors tear open the young man to reveal his heart as a meter,
a 'ticker', and the absurd exaggerations of the milk and firework orgasms. This
humour does not undermine the ritual import of the film — humour also unlocks
the unconscious (as in Freudian theory) and releases spiritual forces, through its
sudden associations (in gags and puns) of what the rational mind keeps separate
and through its wild, anarchic, nothing sacredness, not even the sacredness of
one's own desires.
The ability to hold together intense devotion to something with a simul-
taneous irony or even derision towards it is characteristic of much gay culture.
Thus the muscle display is both keenly desired and lightly mocked, the
masochistic ecstasy of death is revealed as a put-on in the 'ticker' gag. This
is at its most delirious in the Christmas tree image. The tree is a symbol of
Christianity, a spiritual force that has 'caught fire'; the young man, in the
shot-photo a Christ figure, wears the tree as a headdress (dressing up, assuming
a Magick identity); the lit candle at its tip suggests orgasm; perhaps too there
is a joke, in that the tip of Christmas trees is traditionally occupied by a fairy,
and here is a fairy who has caught fire; and the tinsel and tat of the tree's dressing
is a campy, queeny look. The tree thus condenses all the symbolic meanings in
the film, with a wealth of gay connotations and as if with a shriek of laughter.
It is both meant and sent up, and the irreverence of the latter, like the wild
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laughter of screaming queens, has a vitality and bezzazz that gives a further
anarchic force to the film's magickal gay ecstasy.
Scorpio Rising
Like all Anger's films, Scorpio Rising6 is extraordinarily dense and complex
yet rigorously structured. Thirteen more or less self-contained sequences are
fitted to rock tracks and organised into a four-part ritual progression (see table
4.1). It is intensely homo-erotic but, apart from some lewd horse-play in Tarty
Lights', this is not so much in the form of sex acts as in the way the film invites
us to look at these boys, as desirable and unknowingly homosexual, the two
dimensions discussed here.
Much of the imagery of men in the film is that of the gay porn magazines of
the period, notably Physique Pictorial. The camera dwells on both physiques
(huge back muscles, tautened abdomens and hard flesh) and fetishistic clothing
(leather jackets, jeans, studs, belts). The songs direct us to see them with desire.
Tools Rush In' enjoins us to fall in love with the biker we see cleaning and
preparing his bike; when he walks towards the camera with his leather jacket
open to reveal his torso, Rick Nelson sings, 'Open up your heart and let/This
fool rush in'. The fact that this is the love of a 'fool' does not undermine it -
Magick is about releasing the craziness to be found in such love, to which only
those the world deems 'fools' are open. 'Blue Velvet' celebrates in words the sexy
glamour of blue velvet while showing us one biker zipping up his jeans, another
pulling on a T-shirt, another putting on chains and another just lying on a bed
showing the smooth skin of his chest. The camera glides up or over the bodies,
smooth as the hard, unhairy, probably lightly oiled flesh itself, smooth as velvet.
'Devil in Disguise' opens with Elvis singing 'You look like an angel' to the
biker lying on his bed — he is gorgeous but also 'the devil in disguise', perhaps
because the response his beauty elicits unleashes (welcome) satanic spirits. In
'He's a Rebel', a sensuously lit head and (bare) shoulders shot of a man in a bike
cap smoking a cigarette (still sexy in the early sixties) is accompanied by the
words 'Just because he doesn't do what/Everybody else does,/That's no reason
that/I can't give him all my love', suggesting, as Ed Lowry puts it, the 'surrender
of self to an attractive figure of rebellion' (1983:44).
Most of the singers are men ostensibly singing to women, but the film has
them appear to sing to other men. Montage further suggests the homo-erotic
dimension of the images. In 'The Devil in Disguise' many seemingly hetero-
sexual images are rendered gay (and devilish). Dean and Brando were already
gay pin-ups (and the subject of gay gossip), but comics were thought innocent.
Lowry (ibid.:43) details the way selection here brings out their latent gay
potential:
The pederastic undercurrent of 'Dondi' . . . [is} overt in this context:

Dondi invites an attractive older man to share his room with him. The
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Table 4.1 Scorpio Rising
BOYS AND BOLTS*: physical preparations
'Fools Rush In' Rick Nelson uncovering, cleaning, assembling

bike; biker posing in jacket
'Wind-Up Doll' The Ron-Dells watching toy bike revolve
'My Boyfriend's Back' The Angels skeleton hanging over biker
polishing bike
'Blue Velvet' Bobby Vinton biker dressing up
IMAGE MAKER: psychic preparations
'Devil in Disguise' Elvis Presley biker lying in room, reading comics,

stroking cat, Brando on TV, pictures
of James Dean on wall; lights
cigarette
'Hit the Road Jack' Ray Charles biker gets up; boy rides round
fairground on bike
'Heat Wave' Martha and the taking cocaine; images of Dracula,
Vandellas Westerns, skull and crossbones, etc.;
kissing a scorpion in glass
'He's a Rebel' The Crystals biker walking along, Christ and
disciples ministering
WALPURGIS NIGHT: releasing powers
'Party Lights' Claudine Clark party, sex play

'Torture' Kris Jensen party, pouring mustard over boy;
church, images of Christ, Nazis,
Brando
REBEL ROUSER, THE GATHERING OF THE DARK LEGIONS:

final rites of destruction
'Point of No Return' Gene McDaniels climbing on altar; starting off bike

race, Christ enters Jerusalem on
donkey
T W i l l Follow Him' Little Peggy March Christ on donkey, Puck; standing on
altar, peeing into Nazi helmet and
offering it up; Nazis; skull
'Wipe Out' The Surfaris bike race, ending in crash, death,
police lights.
* titles in capitals are from Anger's published notes (Sitney 1979:116).
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cartoon of the two boys with their arms around one another from
the T i l Abner' comic strip may clearly be read as homosexual; and the
title of the strip, The Sons Also Rise', suggests the boys' arousal to
erection.
The use of cut-ins of an old film of the life of Christ, The Road to Jerusalem,
draws Christ into the gay erotic circle. When he restores the blind man's sight,
the latter goes down on his knees before him and there is an almost subliminal
cut-in close-up of an erect penis, suggesting the man fellates Christ. At the
party, there is a shot from the Bible film showing a man laying out jewels on a
table before Christ, followed by a shot of the man at the party baring his arse,
his jewels, to the crowd. In the same sequence, there is a cut from Christ looking
off camera to what he sees, namely, the bikers' orgiastic party, suggesting that
he is, as Anger puts it, a wallflower at [the} cyclers' party' (Sitney 1979:116).
Christ may have homo-erotic possibilities but his religion is repressive and, in
Magick terms, a spent force, so that, though in the previous song 'he's a rebel',
he cannot participate in the Magick sexual rite.
Scorpio Rising invites us both to look at the bike boys with desire and to
consider the homo-erotic undercurrents of their rites and relationships. These
in turn are linked to the desirability of death — 'My Boyfriend's Back' opens with
those words over a close-up of a skull; 'Heat Wave' starts with the biker putting
on a skull-and-crossbones ring; s/m pleasure is linked in 'Torture' with shots of
Christ and his crown of thorns. The reference to Christ is not mere irreverence
but a reference to the central feature of the Christ story, namely that he died and
was born again. In 'Wipe Out' this is brought together in an image of a skull
wearing a blonde wig and smoking a cigarette marked 'Youth'; in the eye sockets
appear identical pictures of Christ pointing the way for an adolescent boy. The
obvious interpretation is that death is the way forward for the boy, his youth
is running out (burning away) and his death will be, like Christ's, a moment of
renewal. As Lowry (1983:45) suggests, it is also 'bursting with implications
of pederasty'. The cigarette, associated with butchness in 'The Devil in
Disguise', 'clinched between the teeth of the skull becomes overtly sexual'.
Youth as Death is enjoying a fag. Thus when the biker dies, the effect of swirling
lights, rapid cuts, sudden changes of perspective and a welter of imagery is
'orgasmic; the orgasm is death' and this 'ritual death signals . . . ascension'.
The forces invoked by Scorpio Rising — sadism, male sexuality, immaturity
(Puck, the bikers as boys), Nazism — are not ones widely approved of, but it is
not at all clear that the film disapproves of them. They are not offered, as Lowry
in a rather Freudian move seems to claim, as the malignant results of repression,
but rather as the wild, transcendent forces that convention represses. The
point is that most people disapprove of them (just as conventional morality
disapproves of homosexuality, and probably sexuality, in general); their dis-
approvableness is a sign of their fitness for Magick invocation. If they were not
conventionally wrong they could not be Magickally right.
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Such wilfulness is at the heart of the difficulty of coming to terms with

Anger's work. If I'm in the right mood, the intensity and brilliance of his films
convey a feeling for gay desire as part of an elemental system of powers that defies
and disrupts strait-laced conventional views of the world. At other times, it
just seems like a lot of silly people getting dressed up in silly clothes and playing
at evil, with little grasp of what cruelty and wickedness really are. But then
perhaps this is the point — the 'silly', giggly, naughty quality of Anger's films
is a spirit which at times feels irritating, unhelpful to the cause of gay rights,
but at others is a tonic refusal to grow up into the drab oppressiveness of normal
straightness.
Gregory Markopoulos
The films of Gregory Markopoulos (Ehrenstein 1993) suggest narratives that
are never quite grasped. Titles often invoke Greek myth, many of the films are
based (very loosely) on literary works, mainly French, and even without these
pointers, the films do have characters and events, filmed with enough of the
conventions of mainstream cinema to make you feel that there is a narrative
in there somewhere. This is reinforced by the use of sequences consisting of
brief shots from earlier in a film, very rapidly edited together and functioning
as a kind of recapitulation of what has gone before. Sometimes these sequences
replay the shots in the order in which they have already occurred in the film, at
other times the order is different and seemingly jumbled. Such sequences
suggest that there has been a narrative, a sequence of connected events that can
be referred to and repeated, but the rapidity of the sequences and the jumbling
of narrative order make it hard to pin down just what that narrative is. This
elusiveness is heightened by lip movements on screen whose speech we don't
hear, speech on the soundtrack that is often fragmented and only in a poetic'
sense related to the images it accompanies, striking but obscure imagery and
vivid visual textures, the fascinations and pleasures of which distract you from
the business of 'following' a narrative. This multi-layered, open, ambiguous
and confusing feel of the films is important in understanding their approach to
homosexuality.
Markopoulos's first three films (aside from those he made as a boy) form a
trilogy called Du sang, de la volupteet de la mort. The first part, Psyche, was made
in 1947-8, the second and third, Lysis and Charmides, in 1948. Psyche has been
interpreted (Mitry 1974:29, sometimes Markopoulos (Sitney 1974:142)) as
representing lesbianism; Lysis and Charmides are more evidently homosexual.
(They appear cryptic on this point today, but an editorial in Films in Review
2(7):2-3 tut-tutted of a screening at New York University in May 1951 that
'there were quite a few suggestions that abnormal perceptions and moods are
desirable', reminding us of the scandalousness of even these esoteric films.)
Lysis, the title deriving from Plato's dialogue on friendship of that name,
cross cuts between two young men, one dark, shot outside in industrial
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landscapes, parks and a graveyard, the other fair, lolling about a bedroom or
hanging from his wrists in some possibly sadomasochistic scene. The two
men could be embodiments of different facets of homosexual existence in the
period. The dark man is the troubled, 'sensitive' young man: opening sequences
associate him, first as a child, then as an adult, with a welter of feminine imagery
(lace, candles, porcelain figurines, flowers); thereafter his moody wanderings in
bleak settings cast him in the mould of the homosexual as outsider, the epitome
of alienation. The fair man on the other hand could be termed 'gay-identified':
in the bedroom his feet play lazily with streamers, his languorous movements
perhaps suggest queeniness; the s/m sequence, if that is what it is, indicates
particular sexual practices and is followed soon after by shots of him wandering
about a Greek-looking temple dressed in a toga, suggesting the association of
homosexuality with classical antiquity.
The two men never appear together, yet the drive of the cutting suggests
they should, setting up an expectation of coming together which never happens.
Between shots of the dark man wandering in a graveyard (the isolated homo-
sexual) and the perhaps s/m sequence (the practising homosexual) the screen is
blank and a voice refers to a 'we' who are 'retranches du nombre des hommes'
('cut off from the mass of men'). Towards the end there is a sequence of the dark
man sprawled by the sea beneath the moon, symbols of change and renewal,
into which are cut two brief shots - one of the fair man, the representative
of homosexuality, and the other a book illustration of a man chained to a rock
with a male figure coming to his rescue. The press of the editing towards union,
the reference to a collective identity, the image of someone coming to the rescue
of a man in chains all suggest need and desire for change in the situation of the
homosexual.
The title Charmides refers to another Platonic dialogue, this one a
discussion of the attractions of the youth who gives it its name. Again there
is cross cutting between two men with an even stronger sense of connection,
even identity, between them. They are brought together in one shot, where
the camera moves from one man across and down a tree to the other: both stand
bare chested in the same pose with their arms held up in the air. The camera
movement displays their separation, but the similar pose and their being in the
one take suggest a close affinity. Many of the camera angles and set-ups in
the cross-cut shots of the two men likewise imply their similarity, including
at one point shots suggesting martyrdom, one of them pinned to the ground
by a network of wires, the other staked by the branches of trees. They are also
shown to be objects of desire for one another. In one sequence one of them walks
through a wood and joins a group of youths by a stream; there is a cut from
him looking to what he is looking at, the youths and, downstream from them,
the other man; the precise eyeline matches mean that it is clear that the first
man is looking at the second. The youths, as with groups of young men earlier
in the film, may represent a kind of male bonding not available to the first
man, but the other man is someone who could be. Thus far the possibility of
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connection and consummation between two men seems stronger than in Lysis,
but the final sections have a more turbulent quality. The setting is a kind of pit,
the music is agitated, most of the imagery connotes doom, and the film ends
with the virtual obliteration of the scene by the use of superimposition. If the
possibility of gay association seems closer in Charmides, so does the anxiety and
trauma that may be attendant on it.
Several of Markopoulos's next films or projects refer to famous works of
gay French literature: he planned a film of Gide's Les Faux-monnayeurs, dedicated
The Dead Ones 1949 to Cocteau, named Flowers of Asphalt 1951 after Genet.
His 1950 film Swain is organised around a flight which is generally taken to
represent 'a subconscious rejection of the stereotyped masculine role that society
and women insist upon' (Weinstein 1974:28), its wild quality embodying the
'"insanity" to which society condemns those who do not bend to its sexual
norms' (Noguez 1985:101).
His next completed and extant film is Twice a Man 1962—3. This centres
on the tension between a central character, Paul, and both his lover and his
mother, the latter incarnated in both a younger and an older woman. This
tension animates the narrative: Paul and the lover take, separately, the ferry
from Manhattan to Staten Island; Paul wanders about his mother's house, cross
cut with him walking in the park with his lover and visiting the latter's house;
finally in a ballroom, Paul dances but in a final shot seems to disintegrate. This
structure is complicated by interpolated sequences: in the ferry section, there
are shots of Paul climbing on to a roof and seeming to be about to commit
suicide until his lover puts his hand on his shoulder and stops him; within the
house section there are several other sequences showing Paul, cutting off a lock
of his hair and posting it in a post-box in the street, caressing a tree trunk,
being 'born' in the heavens, stretched out naked over his mother's lap on a rock
by the sea. There are also two instances of the kind of recapitulation sequence
described above.
Gay icons are briefly shown — Paul and his lover visit the Greek sculpture
room of a museum, Paul walks before a painting of a sailor — and Paul is aston-
ishingly handsome in a neat, square-jawed kind of way. The lover is slightly
older than Paul, perhaps evoking the classical ideal of male lovers. The film's
feelings about homosexuality are however uncertain: the relationship between
Paul and his lover is evoked with a luminously calm intensity, but there remains
a strong sense of torment in the film.
Throughout the film there is a contrast between the imagery of Paul with
his mother and with his lover. The former often has a wild, hysterical edge to
it, down to the very splitting of her into older and younger versions of herself,
suggesting unresolved feelings of desire for the mother (standard in the sub-
Freudian aetiology of homosexuality in the period). The scenes with the lover
on the other hand are much straighter. Particularly powerful are simple close-
ups, held for some time, which contrast in their visual simplicity, stillness and
length with the fast movement and rapid editing characterising most of the film.
134
The first of these close-ups occurs in the 'suicide' sequence - Paul's right
shoulder fills most of the screen, with just part of his chin and neck showing
in shadow; the lover's hand is posed on his shoulder, just the fingers visible. The
intensity derives not only from the contrast with the rest of the film and from
the shot's narrative significance (the lover has just stopped Paul from commit-
ting suicide), but also from qualities of the shot itself. The hand does not grip
the shoulder but simply rests there; there is a slight turn of the jaw towards the
hand, suggesting the momentousness of the touch. The long take allows us
to dwell on the image, the texture of the cord jacket, the brilliance of the light
on the hand, the dark redness of Paul's jaw and neck. It is a beautifully balanced
composition — Paul's jaw, neck and jacket take up all of the right side of the
frame but this is balanced by the luminosity of the hand on the left of the frame.
A similar shot towards the end of the film, of the lover taking Paul's hand, again
suggests intensity through qualities of stillness, balance and simplicity, the
virtues of classicism. The camera holds on it, though there are repeated cut-in
shots of the mother's house and her voice is heard on the soundtrack. The film
seems to contrast the serenity of homosexual relations with the torment of
mother-son ones.
Yet from the start the representation of Paul and his lover also draws on the
'sad young man' image. The first shot of the lover shows him seated on board
the ferry, his gaze cast downwards, half his face in shadow. When Paul enters
his mother's house, there are shots of a group of young men crying on the stairs;
a close-up of one shows a tear rolling down his cheek and his lips appear
moistened or lipsticked, a dwelling on and sensualising of a handsome young
man in sorrow. Many of the shots of Paul in his mother's house show him wistful,
sad, lying with his chin to his hand, turning disconsolately on a bed and so on.
At the end of the film he seems to be destroyed. First he is shown both collapsing
and rising in the same setting, as if no clear resolution is possible; then in the
final ballroom sequence, before Paul's face cracks and disintegrates, there are
shots of him fast cut with shots of the two mothers in bed with him, his lover
kissing him and a coloured drawing of a bird, not shown complete but broken
down into wings, beak, claws and so on. The bird in pieces and the subsequent
disintegration of Paul's face suggest that his personality fragments and dis-
appears under the pressure of the tension in the film.
Markopoulos's next film was The llliac Passion 1964—6, in which a young
man crosses the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan and there encounters various
figures who represent both his many selves and the gods and goddesses of Greek
mythology, played by many of the stars of the by then established underground
cinema, Taylor Mead, Jack Smith, Clara Hoover, Gregory Battcock, Andy
Warhol and others, the gods and goddesses of this Manhattan scene. As with
others of Markopoulos's films, the homosexual elements remain unresolved, the
conflict remaining within the central character. The same appears true of Himself
as Herself1966, described by Tony Rayns as exploring 'the bisexuality of a young
man, by intercutting shots of his male and female personae and symbolising the
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fragile barrier between the two with close-ups of fluttering fans' (Rayns 1968:9).
Eros 0 Basileus 1966 consists of a series of tableaux of a naked young man in a
variety of poses, the man played by Robert Beavers, himself a film-maker, who
lived with Markopoulos. With Ming Green 1966, Bliss 1967 and Gammelion
1968, Markopoulos moved away from films with such homo-erotic content
towards a more purely formal or abstract kind of film, in this following
developments within avant-garde film-making in the period.
Through the fifties to the sixties

The burst of gay film-making activity in the late forties did not continue
through into the fifties. Anger and Markopoulos made few films and most of
them in Europe. It was not until the early sixties that they returned to film-
making in the States to join a new wave of gay film-making, such as Flaming
Creatures and Blow Job, both made in 1963. By this time underground cinema
itself had arrived.
The term 'underground cinema' itself had come into use round about I960
(Noguez 1985:161—2), along with the infrastructures for such a cinema: distrib-
utors, places of exhibition (museums, galleries, schools, as well as cinemas and
film clubs), criticism and journals, sources of funding beyond the film-makers'
own pockets. The use of the term signalled that the underground had become
something more than a series of scattered and isolated films and film-makers.
The importance of gay film-makers was now fully acknowledged, Jonas Mekas
writing more positively in his Village Voice film column in May 1963: 'The
homosexuality because of its existence outside the official moral conventions,
has unleashed sensitivities and experiences which have been at the bottom of
much great poetry since the beginning of humanity' (1972:86).
The gay underground films of the sixties were very different from those of
the late forties. The earlier films were carefully made studies of an inner gay
consciousness that was taken to be the filmmaker's own; the later films were
apparently artless depictions of the exterior forms of gay life. The troubled
young men in Fireworks and Twice a Man give way to the incandescent drag
queens and sullen hustlers of Flaming Creatures and Couch. This change has to
do with both the social perception of homosexuals and with the convergence of
new ideas in the arts and the gay sub-culture.
Homosexuality was coming to be perceived as something present and
significant in US society. Gay activism had begun to make homosexuality felt
in public life, while a number of high profile writers - the Beats, novelists like
James Baldwin and John Rechy — were constructing the homosexual as a figure
symptomatic of contemporary society. The drag queen and the hustler, key
figures of this writing and of the sixties gay underground alike, were no longer
weird side-shows but symbols of the state of the nation. At the same time many
of the formal qualities of sixties underground films — their apparent artlessness,
the cult of spontaneity and chance, the use of pop material and pastiche -
136
while they can be related back to internal developments within the visual arts
have clear affinities with gay culture. Once again gay and artistic subcultures
converged, notably in pop art and in the development of off-off-Broadway. The
following pages deal with each of the elements in this paragraph in turn, linking
them where appropriate to gay underground film.
The fifties is often thought of as a period of sexual repressiveness before
the permissiveness of the sixties. For gay people it was a period in which Joseph
McCarthy extended his witch-hunting activities from 'commies' to 'queers',
in which the police stepped up raids on lesbian and gay meeting places, in
which the press discovered, or invented, the homosexual scandal story (D'Emilio
1983:40—53). Yet, as D'Emilio points out, this also indicates that there were
homosexual communities there to be attacked, and the publicity attendant
on the attacks drew them to the attention of other lesbians and gay men.
Moreover the roots of the sixties' more open attitude towards sexuality reach
back into the fifties.
The fifties saw an increase in the direct and single-minded attention paid to
sex in popular culture. The two Kinsey reports, on men in 1948 and on women
in 1951, were immediate best-sellers and the magazines Confidential and Playboy,
with first issues in 1951 and 1953 respectively, gained very rapidly in circula-
tion. Many of the best-selling novels, most of them made into successful films,
centred on questions of sexuality, and Hollywood films began to break many of
the taboos on what could and could not be dealt with on film (Dyer 1986:24—7).
Playboy most clearly articulated the view that sex was both urgent (you had
to have it) and benign (it was good for you) and that only the suppression of
sex did harm. Though this was generally understood to be within hetero-
sexuality, and indeed within marriage, it did provide an attitude and a space
for alternative, and thus homosexual, voices.
There had been sporadic attempts at setting up gay rights organisations
in the late forties, in Boston, New York, Los Angeles and probably elsewhere
but the Mattachine Society, founded in Los Angeles in 1950, and the Daughters
of Bilitis, founded in San Francisco in 1955, were the first really successful
groups (D'Emilio 1983:57-125, Licata 1985:165-73). They worked at
establishing a respectable culture and network for lesbians and gay men
and educating heterosexuals through publications and example. However, in
New York in the early sixties, the style and approach began to change (D'Emilio
1983:149-75). Randy Wicker, a member of the New York Mattachine, tried
leafleting and recruiting in the bars, and although this was not directly
successful ('"There's Miss Mattachine", they would say' (quoted in ibid.: 158)),
it did force a mutual awareness between activists and the gay scene. More
important, Wicker courted mass media publicity, appearing on a radio pro-
gramme which itself became a media controversy skilfully milked by him, with
substantial coverage in Newsweek, the New York Times and other journals. This
led to more general coverage of gay life in New York, notably in the Village Voice,
the alternative newspaper in which Jonas Mekas had had a regular column
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covering independent film since 1958. Gay rights was now a live media issue
and for the first time gay people themselves were speaking as gay people, not
deferring to or hiding behind a mask of professional expertise.
In San Francisco in 1961 Jose Sarria, a drag artiste at the Black Cat bar, ran
for city supervisor, the first openly gay person to run for a political appointment
(ibid.: 186-8). Sarria's drag acts often directly expressed outrage at the situation
of gay men:
Donning an outlandish hat to sing Carmen, for instance, he reworked

the script for his audience and its milieu. The heroine would be
in Union Square, a gay cruising area in downtown San Francisco,
scurrying through the bushes in an attempt to avoid capture by the vice
squad. An overflow crowd of 200 or more cheered Carmen's escape.
(ibid.: 187)
Sarria was not elected supervisor but the act of standing gave a politically
explicit edge to the potential for defiance that he found in drag.
Sixties gay underground films were not gay activist. They appear politically
indifferent and although drag is ubiquitous, for the most part it just seems
fun, not an expression of defiance. Yet they appeared at a moment when homo-
sexuality was now firmly on the public agenda and, with Sarria, in its most
flamboyant form. Even where the films appear listless and inconsequential,
they have behind them the force of these new interventions by gay men in the
political arena and, like the activists, were howled down for their pains.
Gay activism was part of a widespread conviction that to be sexually pro-
gressive was also to be socially progressive. At an intellectual level there were
new versions of Freudianism: Herbert Marcuses Eros and Civilisation (hardback
1956, paperback 1962) and Norman O Brown's Life against Death (hardback/
paperback 1959) played down Freud's insistence on the need for repression and
stressed rather the essentially bisexual, genderless, polymorphous perverse'
nature of human desire. The body and the unconscious were inherently free
of notions of male:female, straight:gay and so on, and a society which imposed
these categories was destructive of its people; to get back in touch with the
body and the unconscious was to begin the transformation of society. The notion
of polymorphous perversity, and therefore the embrace of homosexuality as part
of the range of libidinal activity, informs such underground films as The Bed (see
below), Amphetamine (Warren Sonbert and Wendy Appel 1966), men making
love as part of the high of drug taking, and Lovemaking, made by one of the
most highly regarded of all underground film-makers, Stan Brakhage, in 1968.
Brakhage's films explore a range of sexual and mystical experiences, including
masturbation, childbirth and, with Lovemaking, male homosexuality, which
is placed as one of four sequences alongside heterosexuality, dogs copulating and
children playing together naked, thus making homo and hetero equivalent
and both as natural as 'nature' and innocent as 'childhood'.
138
Such views — the essential benignity and polymorphousness of human

sexuality, the assertion of this as a demand for social change — were not confined
to intellectuals and the avant-garde. In the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of
Playboy (January 1979) it is suggested that the magazine was very much part
of a general mood of dissent in the period:
Playboy came out of aspects of the same energy that created the beat
crowd, the first rock-'n'-rollers, Holden Caulfield, James Dean, Mad
magazine — and anything else that was interesting by virtue of not
eating the prevailing bullshit and being therefore slightly dangerous.
(267)
Many would demur at this yoking of Playboys glossy, antiseptic pages to that
alienated crowd of misfits, but it is not clear that there would in the period
have been so great a feeling of inappropriateness.
From a gay point of view, an even more interesting, and surprising, example
of such a connection being made is a speech by the father of the 'sensitive' male
protagonist of Tea and Sympathy in the 1953 film version. He is expostulating
to a friend on how shaming it is not to be able to talk to his colleagues about
what his son is going to do for a living because he cannot tell them that his
son wants to be - and here there is a long pause and we surely anticipate 'ballet
dancer' or, a fifties favourite, 'interior decorator', but what he actually says is,
'a folk singer'. From the thirties folk music was associated with socialism in the
USA and in the fifties everyone knew that commies and queers were bedfellows.
The reference may be this precise or it may be a general nod in the direction
of the fecklessness of those who don't have proper, male, bread-winning jobs.
In the period it was the Beats who most fulfilled that role.
The Beat writers were 'beat' in the sense of beaten, frustrated, 'right down
to it, to ourselves' with 'a weariness with all the forms, all the conventions of
the world' (Jack Kerouac quoted by John Clellon Holmes in Cook 1971:6).
Their poetry broke with the tidy, neat, carefully wrought work of the time, it
sprawled, it abandoned obvious or self-conscious technique, words and images
tumbled over each other in splurges of feeling. They identified middle-class
America with conformity, restriction, lack of spirituality, domesticity, in short,
dullness. To it they opposed a cult of authenticity, of being 'real' and one's 'self'
over against conforming to social and moral convention. Drugs and sex helped
free one from the sickness of normality, as did a loose way of living that was not
tied down by a nine to five job and a house and family.
Many of the poets of the Beat movement were gay, Allen Ginsberg, Robert
Duncan, Jack Spicer and others, and many lived in San Francisco in the same
neighbourhood, the North Beach, and used the same bars and cafes as the
developing gay and lesbian community (D'Emilio 1983:176—95). Others, such
as Kerouac and Neal Cassady, thought gayness was 'cool' and were open to it
on occasion. From early on, with the reading and publication of Ginsberg's long
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poem Howl in 1956, beatness associated homosexuality with revolt against

bourgeois convention and identified in gay sex, vividly and unflinchingly
evoked, the sources of a new holiness.
The Beats' stress on the spirituality of sexuality is not to be found in the
sixties gay underground, but it is there in the work of the San Francisco based
poet and film-maker James Broughton. His films, the first of which was made
in 1946, show a progression from a rejection of homosexuality through an
acceptance of it as part of the spectrum of sexuality to a total embrace of it. In
The Adventures of Jimmy 1950 the hero seeks love in San Francisco and at one
point even in a Turkish baths, but this is rejected along with other alternatives
in favour of marriage. The Bed 1968 shows a series of naked people (alone, in
couples or more) outdoors on an old fashioned bedstead. Filmed in bright
sunshine, with humour but without ridicule, it constructs a sense of sexuality
as natural and polymorphous, though this is less open than appears: most of the
people are white, the one black woman treated exotically and in a faintly kinky
context; there is no lesbian sexuality; gay male sexuality is introduced by a track
back from a close-up on one man's face revealing that he is in the bed with
another man, clearly something we are meant to be surprised at, not simply take
for granted. Dreamwood 1972 is a quest-for-the-self movie, mainly heterosexual
but including a Whitmanesque sequence where the searching protagonist meets
a beefy woodsman and after an initial struggle goes into the forest with him;
they emerge naked and the woodsman points the way for the protagonist,
who heads off for more heterosexual self discovery. Together 1976 (made with
his lover, Joel Singer) is Broughton's first whole-heartedly gay film, consisting
of two images of his face which gradually merge, while on the soundtrack
a poem celebrates the idea of coming together, meaning at once merging one's
male and female selves, coming out and perhaps the harmony of simultaneous
orgasm. Hermes Bird 1979 has a close-up of a penis filmed in slow motion so that
one sees 'every small pulse and throb of it as it slowly opens into flower, growing
in thrust and assurance, elevating toward heaven' (Broughton 1982:36), a
spiritualised delight in the penis, that links to the Beats' phallic worship
without their masculinist hang-ups (Stimpson 1982). Devotions (with Singer)
1983 does for the variety of gay sexuality what The Bed sought to do for human
sexuality in general. Shots of men in leather, of male nuns on roller skates and
other icons of the urban gay male culture are intercut with shots of Broughton
and Singer together. As in The Bed, there is humour without ridicule, and the
imagery of spiritual things, together with the film's title, indicates that this is
a spiritual embrace of the range of contemporary gay sexualities.
More influential on the sixties gay underground than the Beats' 'heartfelt,
populist, humanist, quasi-heterosexual, Whitmanic, bohemian, free-love,
homosexual tradition' (Ginsberg 1974:9) were the novels of urban alienation
such as Another Country (James Baldwin 1962), City of Night (John Rechy 1963),
Midnight Cowboy (James Herlihy 1965) and Last Exit to Brooklyn (Hubert Selby
1965). Here poverty, prostitution, drugs and street life are represented as the
140
condition of America, with homosexuality seen as both symptomatically

anomic but also sometimes a genuine grasping after human contact. This is
well suggested by the film Echoes of Silence (Peter Emmanuel Goldman 1962—5),
a series of fifteen vignettes of life in Greenwich Village shot in rough, grainy
black and white, in one of which two boys, Viraj and Robert, 'return home after
a frustrating Saturday night' (voice over) and begin tentatively, unpremedi-
tatedly to touch and caress one another until the film fades to black. Although
presented as two straight boys turning to each other for want of a woman,
lighting, the hesitancy and delicacy of touch and interaction all suggest an
acceptance of homosexuality as an option among others. The much later film,
Corner of the Circle (Bill Daughton 1972) uses New York more bleakly as the
expression of a gay man's hatred of being gay, of fruitless cruising and lonely
evenings in grotty surroundings (see p. 249).
The key figures of the novels, as of the sixties underground, are the hustler
and the queen. The central character of two of the most successful, City of
Night and Midnight Cowboy, is a hustler, and hustlers figure importantly in
Another Country, Last Exit to Brooklyn and other less acclaimed novels such as
The Messenger (Charles Wright 1963) and Naked to the Night (K. B. Raul 1964).
If the sad young man of earlier novels is in search of his 'self' and his 'true
nature', the hustler is by contrast testing himself; if he is in search of anything,
it is 'America' (cf. Moon 1993). The structure of the earlier novels hinges on
discovery and revelation: the character discovers 'what he is'. There is no such
introspection with the hustler. The tension derives more from the uncertainty
about his masculinity and heterosexuality. It is not that he wants to find out if
he is gay or what that means, but that he wants to prove that he is masculine.
He does this by making it with women and only having sex with men for money.
Heterosexuality proves he is a man, and manliness has not to do with inner
feeling but with performance, acting like a man.
The novels explore the emptiness and hopelessness of the hustler's aspirations.
In the section about him in City of Night, Chuck, 'one of [the} best-liked citizens'
(Rechy 1963:126) of the Los Angeles hustling scene, recounts his aspiration to
be a cowboy, though he was born in Georgia, and how he hitched out West and
got a job on a ranch, but 'it was not like I figgered. I jes work aroun the place,
doing, you know, odd things' (ibid.:l40). When he tries to take a horse and
ride on it, he is turned in to the police: 'And when I left, I think: Well, hell, it
ain like in the movies' (ibid.:l4l). As he speaks to the narrator, 'his eyes search
the park, as if wondering where the West of his imagination twisted into the West
of Los Angeles' (ibid.: 140). To be a cowboy is to be a man and to be an American;
the hustlers' various macho outfits all attempt to embody this dual ideal, and yet
time and again this is shown to be based on illusion, often explicitly the movies.
At their most ambitious, and certainly in how they were widely received at the
time, these novels suggest that the hustler's experience tells the truth about
America, its obsession with masculinity and effeminacy, its identification of
maleness with Americanness, the emptiness of all definitions of Americanness.
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Figure 4.6 Some of the Flaming Creatures. (National Film Archive)
The other major characters in the novels are the queens, who also figure in a
minor capacity in practically all fifties and sixties novels with a gay theme and
are important to such literary successes as Giovanni's Room (James Baldwin 1955)
and The Gaudy Image (William Talsman 1958). The latter, written entirely from
within a queen perspective, was itself a kind of underground novel, published
by the Olympia Press in Paris and seized by US customs. The queen too could
be taken as a symptomatic figure of the USA: 'her' hysterical affectation
could be seen as another product of the obsession with effeminacy, with the
exaggeration of sex difference in US life, and 'her' very being as a 'fake' woman,
'her' excitement when a man thinks she is 'real' (i.e. a woman), 'her' modelling
of herself on movie stars, all suggest a life lived on the basis of illusion. But
the queens also have tremendous energy, courage and conviction. Unlike the
hustlers, they are not faced with the shattering of their illusions when they
discover that one cannot be what one aspires to be — the queens know they are
not real women and never can be, they know they are giving a performance and
choose to do so up to the hilt.
The queen, especially at his/her most screaming, is curiously placed in rela-
tion to the shift at the end of the sixties from the authenticity' of the Beats, and
other contemporaneous aspects of the art world such as abstract expressionism
in painting and the Method in acting, to the impersonality and artificiality of
such developments as off-off-Broadway and pop art. The queen could be appro-
priated to both these seemingly antithetical tendencies.
142
In his Gay Sunshine interview Ginsberg suggests how the queen can be
seen as authentic, with spiritual roots that mean he can be seen as outside the
inauthenticity of mainstream culture: 'the old shamanistic transvestite that
we see running up and down Greenwich Avenue. . . . The screaming young
queen — there's something very ancient and charming about that' (1974:19).
This perception of the queen is suggested by the film Chumlum 1964 Ron Rice,
a series of sequences, full of superimpositions, of men making up, trailing about
parks in diaphanous drag, playing on swings, lounging in hammocks, all to the
accompaniment of'Eastern' sounding instruments. The latter are campy, a bow
in the direction of Hollywoodian Arabian Nights movies, but also part of a
beat interest in mysticism and the 'otherness' of the East.
Queens might thus be perceived as spiritual, but equally they are the supreme
instance of role play and artifice, of a purely material play with the signs of
social life. The queen can undermine all certainty as to what could be labelled
authentic or real. Portrait of Jason 1967 Shirley Clarke has Jason Holliday, 'a
black queen' as he calls himself, talking direct to camera about himself and
his affairs, hustling, pick-ups and so on. As Dwoskin observes, it is not clear
what kind of film this is — is it just a documentary record of a street queen or
is it something else: 'Is Jason acting? Is he real? Jason loves it; he entertains —
showbiz baby — but he is real. There before your very eyes is Jason, laughing
and crying. Fact or fiction?' (1975:227).
This perception of the queen is more in line with the new sixties art. Beat
writing, abstract expressionism and Method acting had all shared a commit-
ment to authenticity and masculinity that resulted in sprawling, ranging,
apparently undisciplined and artless art, the untrammelled exteriorisation of the
self. Susan Sontag, in her review of Flaming Creatures in 1964, saw this as 'an
old cliche of European romanticism' which persisted longer in the USA than
anywhere else, a belief that 'neatness and carefulness of technique interfere
with spontaneity, with truth, with immediacy' (Sontag 1967:228). Something
of'artlessness' remains in off-off-Broadway and pop art, and sixties underground
cinema, but no longer connected to notions of authenticity and self-expression.
The development of off-off-B roadway, starting at the Caffe Cino in
1959, meant not only new venues for theatre but a new kind of theatre: 'Twice
each night, and sometimes three times, the Caffe Cino presented the outrageous,
the blasphemous, the zany, the wildly poetic, the embarrassingly trite, the
childish, and frequently, the moving and the beautiful' (John Gruen, Joe
Cino obituary, New York Herald Tribune, 3. 4. 67, quoted in Poland and Mailman
1972:xviii). The major reference point for off-off was mass culture, recognised
as illusion and seen as extravagant, ludicrous, baroque and wild, in other words,
as camp. There was mockery, but no desire to undermine. Such theatre replaced
authenticity, which retains some notion of the fidelity of a representation to
what it represents, with intensity, a commitment to incandescent performance
that burns away any lingering concern with so-called realism. Hollywood movie
stars, especially the women with their devotion to glamour, especially in films
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set in, for instance, Arabia or Transylvania, places that owe nothing to geog-
raphy and everything to the imagination — these are the stuff of off-off, and the
cheaper and tackier the better, for then the triumph of intensity is all the greater.
This feeling is present in the films made in the early sixties in Los Angeles
by the Gay Girls Riding Club, a group of friends who met on Sundays for
horse riding, brunch and home movie making. Shown in the Los Angeles gay
clubs, they were a series of campy film parodies, including Always on Sunday,
Roman Springs on Mrs Stone, What Really Happened to Baby Jane and All About
Alice. The same sensibility informs the films of the Kuchar brothers, an amazing
outpouring of wild trash parodies with titles like I Was a Teenage Rumpot I960,
Lust for Ecstasy 1963 and Sins of the Fleshapoids 1965 (Finch 1993, Stevenson
1996). Some of George Kuchar's solo films are on the cusp between the two gay
undergrounds. One of his earliest, Eclipse of the Sun Virgin 1967, has many of the
motifs of guilt and furtive homo-erotic longing of the first gay underground,
as well as the intense colour and clean-grained image quality. Yet its sense of
the outlandish banality of middle-American conversation and style, its use
of an extravagant (popular, classical and Hollywood derived) music collage
soundtrack and its loose, unhurried structure bring it much closer to both Jack
Smith and Andy Warhol, as will be apparent in the discussion of their work
below.
By the sixties camp, manifest now in fringe theatre and film, was becoming
a known quantity beyond its roots in gay subcultural entertainment, partly
thanks to Susan Sontag's influential article in Partisan Review in 1964. She
presented camp as part of pop art, though where off-off is all intensity, Warhol's
silkscreens of Campbell's Soup tins or movie stars' faces (Marilyn Monroe,
Elizabeth Taylor) seem all cool and detachment. What they share is the use
of imagery drawn from mass culture and their lack of moralism' in relation to
it. Where some see pop art as a critique of US society (eg. Poland and Mailman
1972:xiii, Rowe 1982:35—9), Sontag stresses its refusal to criticise: 'The best
works among those that are called pop art intend, precisely, that we abandon
the old task of always either approving or disapproving of what is depicted in
art — or, by extension, experienced in life' (1967:229—30).
Yet if camp and pop art are without moral or political 'position', they are
not, especially from a gay perspective, socially inexpressive. They may embody
a gay strategy for dealing with the world, as Bruce Boone suggests in his article
on the work of the poet Frank O'Hara. O'Hara was a curator at the Museum of
Modern Art in New York and much involved with the development of abstract
expressionism and 'Action Painting', even writing a monograph on Jackson
Pollock. He was also a gay man. He was thus influentially at the intersection
of the art and the gay sub-cultures, in this case the sophisticated, less street-
based gay milieux of up-town New York. It was this inflection of gay tradition
that came to influence the art world. Boone sees at the centre of this a gay way
of handling language that he calls 'trivialisation'. On the surface, seen from a
straight perspective, this is simply taking nothing seriously, treating everything
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as trivial. Boone detects more specific formal strategies in O'Hara's poetry,

which derive from gay men's speech patterns and give a particular edge to
trivialisation. O'Hara's poems, like gay gossip, work 'paratactically', that is,
'events, observations, etc., are simply enumerated: "I do this, I do that'" with
all connectives left out (1979:81). What this bespeaks is the fact that 'con-
nection' for gay people may be 'dangerous'. All situations hold potential disaster
for gays, straight ones because you don't belong, gay ones because they are
outlawed - better then not to spell out connections. At one level such an
approach expresses 'a sense of a life lived as continuously imperilled and
unfulfilled in its essential social needs by virtue of membership in a community
whose existence is always in question' (ibid.:83). At another level, writing,
speaking, like this is also a strategy for survival, skating along over the perils
and uncertainties of community.
Sixties gay underground films belong with camp and pop art, in various ways
exploring surface, role, artifice and the detritus of mass culture as discussed in
Juan Suarez' Bike Boys, Drag Queens and Superstars (1996). Their formal strategies
may be seen as part of the denaturalising, trivialising impulse of some forms of
gay language. But their imagery - homosexual acts, hustlers, queens - also had
resonances because it seemed a harbinger of the importance of sexuality,
expressing now the hope for a libidinal transformation of society and now a
sense of the USA's destruction of all such hope. This combination of strategies
and imagery is most fully exemplified in the work of Jack Smith and Andy
Warhol.
Jack Smith7
What all [Smith's] movies have in common are Jack Smith, wild and
perverse sexuality, prankish improvisation, costumes related to all
previous elements, and camera work loose as a goose.
(Kelman 1963:4)
The work of Jack Smith cannot be pinned down. Elusiveness, flux, transience,
transformation seem to be its essence. It is not just that Smith took so many
roles (performer, scriptwriter, theatre piece maker, film-maker, writer on films),
but that most of what he did did not not stay in one fixed form for long, and
even the major exception to this, Flaming Creatures, feels impermanent, fluid,
mutable.
He was a performer in films made by Ken Jacobs (Little Cobra Dance 1957,
Star Spangled to Death 195 7—60, Little Stabs at Happiness 1958—61, Blonde Cobra
1962) and a nightclub show, The Human Wreckage Review, which they put on
together in Provincetown in 1961. Jacobs used a monologue Smith had recorded
as the soundtrack for Blonde Cobra, and there is a good deal of improvisation
by Smith in all the films he made with Jacobs. Apart from appearing in his
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own films and theatre pieces, he also appeared in, among other things, Queen
of Sheba Meets the Atom Man 1963 and Chumlum 1964, both directed by Ron
Rice, Batman Dracula 1964 (Smith plays the former) and Camp 1965 by Andy
Warhol, and Markopoulos's The llliac Passion 1964—6. In many of the films
Smith appears in tacky drag; in Queen of Sheba he plays Hamlet. The quality of
the performance veers between a wild-eyed, hysterical intensity and a lolling-
about playfulness: in the opening sequence of Little Stabs, he gobbles at a plastic
doll's crotch before gleefully stubbing a lighted cigarette into its eye, yet in the
final section, 'The Spirit of Listlessness', he dawdles about in Pierrot costume,
itself redolent of floppy inconsequentiality, idly sucking on or playing with
different coloured balloons.
Smith's soundtrack for Blonde Cobra is a scabrous monologue involving
necrophilia, burning a little boy's penis with a match and a long sequence about
Madame Nescience, a Mother Superior who lashes one nun with a rosary and
beats the convent girls with the cross for using a plaster cast of Jesus as a dildo.
These shriekingly violent passages, with their vein of misogyny, are however
preceded by a camp languidness ('Gloria Swanson had a pair of shoes for every
dress') and followed by languidness shading off into despair ('Why shave when
I can't even think of a reason for living?') and a reference, at once witty and
uncomfortable, to gay sex ('Sex is a pain in the ass').
Smith's first film, now lost, was called Buzzards over Bagdad 1951—6; in I960
there was Overstimulated and in 1961 Scotch Tape, described by Stefan Brecht
as 'various faggots cavort[ing] in . . . what appears a rubble-strewn ground'
(1978:23). Flaming Creatures (discussed below) was made in 1963 and thereafter
Smith's films appeared in constantly changing forms, the same footage being
reassembled, with new bits added, different soundtracks and changing titles,
often only shown once. David Ehrenstein (1984:20-1) gives some of the
titles: Normal Love 1963—4 (later Tales of Cement Lagoon and Normal Fantasy), No
President 1969 (aka Slave President and The Kidnapping and Auctioning of Wendell
Wilkie by the Love Bandit), In the Grip of the Lobster Claw c. 1966, Loathsome Kisses
of Bagdad 1969, Zombie of Uncle Pawnshop n.d. and Lucky Landlordism of Lobster
Lagoon 1981. I find the titles evocative, even without having, alas, seen the
films. Hollywood is raided, especially for horror and Arabian fantasy imagery,
but juxtaposed with imagery inimical to such escapism (buzzards, cement);
there is the suggestion of social comment (normality, the presidency, land-
lordism) though even to name it as social comment is being too heavy. The
most intriguing title is Overstimulated, almost suggesting the effect of the films
as registered in the films themselves, rich, heady imagery that collapses under
the weight of its own excess, the way that a bout of shrieking camp ends up in
febrile exhaustion.
In 1962-3 Film Culture published Smith's article 'The Perfect Filmic
Appositeness of Maria Montez'. Montez was the star of minor forties adventure
movies put out by Universal Studios, such as Bombay Clipper, Arabian Nights,
Cobra Woman, Gypsy Wildcat, and Siren of Atlantis. The titles suggest films of
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opulent spectacle and vivid excitement, but in reality the sets are cardboard,
the acting wooden and the story negligible. Much of the appeal resides in the
films' failure to live up to their promise - they are examples of camp as 'failed
seriousness' (Sontag 1967:287). What is important about them for Smith is
Montez's 'convictions of beauty/her beauty'. She is not acting, which is after
all 'hoodwinking', she is displaying her belief in the films'/her aspiration to the
creation of magic, beauty. This gives an intensity to the films even while
the crappy acting and sets cut across any potential viewer involvement in the
plot. Smith finds the convulsive beauty prized by the surrealists in the gestures,
clothes and props of films whose controlling, explaining narratives can be
ignored (cf. the discussion of Rose Hobart above). It is this quality that is evoked
in his most celebrated film, Flaming Creatures.
Flaming Creatures
Flaming Creatures consists of a series of sequences loosely hung together,
performed by a group of people who are sometimes clearly male or female but
more often ambiguous — transvestite, hermaphrodite, hormone assisted. It was
shot on outdated raw film stock, giving the image a washed out, overexposed
or occasionally murky look. Clothes, props and music all refer to Montez's
notions of Hollywood glamour and femininity and of what Spain, China and
Arabia are like. The bleachy, grainy look and the Hollywoodiana all make it look
like an old B-movie that has been run too many times through projectors. At
the same time, it is nothing like a Hollywood movie.
In the opening sequence, the handwritten credits are accompanied by
Scheherazade-style music and a voice repeating 'Ali Baba is coming!'. Various
indistinct figures flutter about and there are close-ups of a flower being
slid along a bare arm and a shell being placed at a crook in someone's body
(between the legs? on the inside of a bent elbow?). All the feel of the film is
there: you can't quite work out what or where anything is, yet the music and
voice evoke a familiar world of the imagination and the image insistently
suggests a languorous eroticism. Nor can you work out where the film is going.
'Ali Baba is coming!' sets up narrative expectations, but of course he never
comes, the narrative 'hook' is never picked up - like the flaming creatures
of the film, we are left to languish in the moment, abandoning the pleasures of
tension and development, of'following', that characterise mainstream feature
films.
The first scene after the credits has a transvestite in white, holding white
lilies, meet, kiss, and play about with a woman8 with swaying hips, wearing
black. This is accompanied by a fake South American pop song and at one point
is shot through lace. Next there is the lipstick sequence. A voice over reads out
from an advertisement for a 'heart-shaped lipstick'. At one point a male voice
asks, as if writing to a women's magazine advice column, 'How does a man
get lipstick off his cock?', to which comes the reply, 'A man is not supposed to
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have lipstick on his cock'. Meanwhile various creatures are putting on lipstick,
including a man with a beard and another with a penis resting on his shoulder.
A long-held shot of a group of the creatures sitting perfectly still, until one
of them starts to wiggle his/her toes, seems to introduce the more or less central
and longest sequence. With Chinesey music on the soundtrack, the creatures
from the scene after the credits chase one another back and forth (and off) the
screen, until the transvestite grabs the 'woman' and forces her to the ground.
Other creatures descend and rape her, the camera moving hectically about, loud
screams on the soundtrack. There are extreme close-ups of her wobbling breasts
and at one point her dress rides up to reveal her vagina. The rape somehow
develops into an orgy which itself seems to be accompanied by an earthquake.
But no-one shows much alarm, petals are scattered over everything and 'things
quickly dissipate, disintegrate, and collapse into inertia' (Ehrenstein 1985:24).
In the following sequence the raped 'woman' gets up and is kissed, comforted
and petted by another woman. They too are scattered with petals.
Next a coffin opens and out of it comes a transvestite in a blonde, Monroe-
esque wig, to the accompaniment of honky-tonk music. 'She' dances and rubs
calla lilies over herself, before vampirising an androgynous creature.
In pained rapture, the vampire, whose wig is slipping and whose breast-
padding is falling out, pulls down her own stocking and desperately
wiggles her limp genitals with one hand as she clutches the androgyne's
still breast with the other.
(Packman 1976:55)
It is a characteristic moment. Her femininity is coming apart, she pleasures

herself, and she doesn't have an erection. It is 'failed seriousness', the drag
unconvincing, the vampirism no turn-on. Yet, in the final group of inter-cut
sequences, the ecstasy of acting out imagination and desire are reaffirmed.
Everyone, including a black transvestite and a hustler type, dances to tango-
like music, with many close-ups of armpits; the vampire and a transvestite
in Spanish drag (figure 4.6) dance together; a group of Arab men and a large-
breasted woman recline together, one of the men stroking the woman's breast,
to the accompaniment of'Bebopalula'. The film ends on a close-up of a wobbling
breast.
In Queer Theatre, Stefan Brecht suggests the nature of Flaming Creatures beauty
in terms which rework Smith's appraisal of Maria Montez:
the images . . . are all cast in the artwork's searing gesture of irony, an
adoration neither of the tawdry, nor of beauty, but of the aspiration
toward beauty, the purer for its immersion in the tawdry, a more fond,
defiant and compassionate respect for this aspiration, than an adoration
of it.
(1978:26)
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What is lacking in Smith on Montez but apparent in his film work is the sense
of pathos Brecht implies. It is as if Hollywood's successful attempts at beauty
produce a rationalistic, controlling beauty, but all other attempts are bound
to fail because of their marginality and cheapness, so that all that is left is
the aspiration to beauty. This aspiration is bound to fail, just as drag queens
will never be women, which evokes in the films a mood of 'fond, defiant and
compassionate respect'.
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol may have been the most famous openly gay artist who ever lived
(cf. Doyle et al. 1996, Finch 1989, Merck 2000, Rayns 1997, Tinkcom 1997).
He was a world-wide celebrity, his doings known to millions who had never
seen, much less admired, his work. Like movie stars before him, he was famous
for what he was taken to be rather than what he did; but unlike previous stars,
he did not give the illusion that he was sharing or revealing his 'self', his inner
person. W i t h Warhol, what you saw is what you got, the appearance of stardom
was the limit of it. If the first gay underground was obscure and concerned with
inner reality, with Warhol it was ultra famous and concerned with self as surface.
Warhol was a well-established artist when he made his first film, Tarzan
and Jane Regained. . . Sort of in 1963. He had made his name in the fifties as
an illustrator, notably of shoes and short stories. 9 In 1962 he had exhibited
silkscreens of Campbell's Soup cans, flat poster-like reproductions of one of the
most familiar domestic objects in US homes. It was the cheek of it that drew
media attention: the skill required was no more than that of the person who had
designed the cans in the first place, there was no sign of the ineffable touch of
an Artist; the object was mass culture trash, not worthy as a subject for Art; and
it wasn't as if the work seemed to be criticising consumer society or something.
Much the same might be said of the films that he began to make a year later.
Between 1963 and 1967 Warhol made upwards of eighty films. Many are
lost, others were incorporated into longer films. There is no definitive list. 10
They are commonly divided into four groups. The first, from Tarzan and
Jane to Mario Banana (November 1964), consists of silent, black and white
films. The camera is generally perfectly still and a take lasts as long as there
was film in the camera. In some of these nothing apparently 'happens': Sleep,
six hours, a man asleep shot from different positions; Empire, eight hours, the
Empire State building from 8 p.m. till dawn; Taylor Mead's Ass, just that for an
hour and a bit. As so little happens, the spectator may nonetheless notice what
does happen, in what is filmed - the sleeper's body registers his breathing, night
wears on - or in how it is filmed - Mead's buttocks are overexposed at first but
become gradually more palpable. Some of the other films in the period are
positively eventful by comparison, but there is still the effect whereby minutiae
of body movement or camera placement become enormously noticeable. With
both The Thirteen Most Beautiful Women and The Thirteen Most Beautiful Boys,
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the camera just gazes at the subjects as they pose, increasingly uncertain of what
to do, embarrassed, turning away, even crying. In Haircut one man has his hair
cut by another, while a hustler type preens and poses, prepares pot and strips;
in the last third, the man having the hair cut stares fixedly at the camera and
at the end the other two men also stare at it, before everyone bursts into giggles.
BlowJob consists of a close-up of a man's face, while below off screen he is being
sucked off by another man; the fellatee's face registers various heights of pleasure
until, just before the end, before the final can in the camera ran out, it contorts
in the pleasure of coming. A more detailed account of a film from this period,
Couch, is given below.
The last film of the first period anticipates the first of the next. Mario
Banana shows Mario Montez eating a banana and this is the substance of Harlot,
December 1964, but here there is also a soundtrack, consisting of three queens
off camera talking about movie stars. The films in this group are again black
and white, with, mostly, still camera and long takes, but they have sound and
often a script by Ronald Tavel (who subsequently worked with the Theatre of
the Ridiculous (Smith 1987)). Again there are no events or incidents, people
sit about and witter on; the forms and styles of femininity and masculinity
seem, in a desultory way, to be what the films are about. Femininity is perceived
principally through Hollywood, with references to Hollywood stars (Harlow in
Harlot, Hedy Lamarr in Hedy (aka Hedy the Shoplifter after the scandal involving
Lamarr to which the film alludes), Lana Turner in More Milk Yvette (why? why?).
Lupe Velez in Lupe), or, failing that, either invented stars (The Life of Juanito
Castro) or else the business of becoming a star, as in Screen Test #1, where Mario
Montez, already becoming an underground star, is on screen in drag answering
questions and reading lines given him by an off-screen voice, and finally admit-
ting that he is a man. Masculinity takes centre screen in Horse, a parody of the
Western, and in Vinyl, based on A Clockwork Orange and focusing on the protago-
nist's attack on a book-reading passer-by and his subsequent punishment, bound
to a chair and tortured, surrounded by others in the throes of sadomasochistic
encounters.
Probably the last film in this second grouping would be Hedy, but already
in July 1965 came the first of the third grouping, Beauty #2. Still mainly in
black and white, the films now begin to make greater use of camera movement,
while the scenarios by Chuck Wein are less outlandishly camp, with no elements
of fantasy, more fly-on-the-wall documentary in feel. The best known is My
Hustler (see below).
The Chelsea Girls summer 1966 is often seen as the transition point from the
third grouping to the last. The footage is much like that of My Hustler or Beauty
#2, but now there is colour and the film was designed to be shown on split
screens, different episodes unfolding side by side in arbitrary sequence. Further
'expansions' of cinema followed, comparable to Hollywood's move into wide
screen and stereophonic sound in the fifties: which lasted twenty-five
hours and was shown only once (in New York on December 15—16, 1967)
150
consisting of various films made over the previous year, projected randomly
two at a time on top of each other; The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a rock event
with overhead projection of films. The Chelsea Girls was also the first big success
of the underground. It was transferred from the small, independent Filmmakers'
Cinematheque in New York to an up-town, first-run cinema and ran contin-
uously for nearly a year, meanwhile getting cinema screenings all over the States.
Newsweek ran a story on it; the big distributors began to take an interest. The
other films of this final grouping were marketed as commercial movies, part of
their success being the promised frisson of seeing something come up and out
from the underground.
The Chelsea Girls consists of a number of sequences, whose only connection is
that they were filmed at the Chelsea Hotel. They include: a blond young man,
caressing himself, tripping on LSD and stripping; a high camp 'Pope' hearing
confessions; a hustler and his client, serenaded by Mario Montez in drag; two
women making love. Other films in this last grouping include The Loves ofOndine
(featuring Ondine, the most 'unapologetically and adamantly homosexual'
(Berlin and Bruce 1986-7:57) of Warhol's stars), I, a Man, Bike Boy, Nude
Restaurant and Lonesome Cowboys (1967), which is discussed below.
In June 1968, Warhol was shot and wounded by Valerie Solanis, a former
member of Warhol's entourage and author of the manifesto of SCUM (the
Society for Cutting Up Men), one of the earliest voices of a new, separatist
feminism. He may have made one film after this, Blue Movie (aka Fuck), but most
writers seem to think that this is really Paul Morrissey's first film as director,
though like his subsequent films for the next few years sold under Warhol's
name. Morrissey had become part of the Warhol entourage round about My
Hustler and Koch credits him with the move towards greater narrative coherence
in Warhol's work (1973:62). After Blue Movie he made three films centred on
Joe Dallesandro as a hustler: in Flesh 1968 his lesbian wife pushes him out
on to the streets to earn money for her and their child; in Trash 1970 he is a
heroin addict who cannot get an erection and therefore cannot earn any money;
in Heat 1972 he tries to make it in Hollywood. The drag queens in these films
played Women in Revolt 1972, which can be seen as a critique of female stereo-
types by having 'transvestites enact other people's fantasies of "the feminine'"
(Gidal 1981:1299) or else as saying, 'Life is a camp — and this means your life,
too, lib ladies!' (Tyler 1972:231).
One way at looking at these groupings of Warhol films is as an ironic, knowing
recapitulation of the history of the movies, a history at once technical-aesthetic
and commercial (James 1985). The first films are fascinated by the process of
filming itself; gradually spectacle and performance become more important,
and are then organised into increasingly coherent and planned narratives.
Concurrently, the films reach beyond the fine art world, first to the sub-world of
gays, prostitutes, addicts and so on, who stand in in this history for the fairground
and immigrant audiences of conventional histories, and finally to mass media
success with stars and a studio set-up ironically named The Factory.
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Warhol's stars were drawn both from other underground films (Taylor Mead,
Mario Montez, Frances Francine) and from the denizens of the 'interlocking
subcultures of the late 1950s — artistic, sexual, sometimes even criminal' (Koch
1973:3) who hung about his loft in New York. These stars are representative
figures of the gay underground: the gay-identified men, camp but not in drag
(Ondine, Mead); the drag queens (Montez, Francine, Candy Darling, Holly
Woodlawn); the hustlers (Paul America, Joe Dallesandro); figures like Gerard
Malanga and Eric Emerson, who play at being butch but undercut their play
with camp; and, ambiguously placed, the real women such as Edie Sedgwick,
Viva, Nico, Brigid Polk and others. Berlin and Bruce (1986—7:53) point out
that all these figures are the kinds of people 'on whose backs Hollywood was
built, both on screen and off (closeted gay actors, actresses, and directors, set
designers, wardrobe and make-up people, mistresses and gigolos, etc.)', yet who
were portrayed on screen 'as tragic or indecent figures'. The Warhol films put
them centre screen, and what's more have them then ape Hollywood's onscreen
images, precisely, as in the references about Lamarr, Turner, Velez, Montez, or
more generally in the transvestites' appropriation of glamour and the hustlers'
approximations of the sullen hunkiness of Brando, Dean, Presley and co. So
here were these perverts, who were always anyway the unspoken part of
Hollywood's history, now openly in the movies and putting on the very put-
ons of glamour and sexuality that Hollywood had been peddling for so long.
Then, a further irony in the Warhol recapitulation of movie history, they actually
got taken up by the industry proper, really did become stars, featuring in maga-
zines, guesting on chat shows. They then sometimes proceeded to undermine
the cosy, nice 'n' normal assumptions of the success machine. Berlin and Bruce
describe the effect of Nico's appearance on the Merv Griffin chat show:
Merv started his show biz chatter, but Nico refused to talk. She said
not one word. Merv, live, began screaming on camera to someone off-
screen, 'Who is this woman? Who booked her on the show?'. He was
reduced to a blubbering idiot, and Nico had made her point. The facade
of happy Hollywood had given way to reveal a man screaming at a
woman who sat very still.
(ibid.:57)
This simultaneous buying into and debunking of Hollywood was done by those
groups of people closest to it in terms of sensibility (producing sensuousness and
glamour and/or trading in sex) yet most rigorously excluded from it at the level
of representation.
Yet this makes Warhol's films sound too critical, whereas the overall tone
is a detached embrace of what Hollywood stands for in full recognition of
its phoneyness. One of Warhol's best known quotes catches the stance: 'I love
Los Angeles . . . I love Hollywood . . . Everybody's plastic - but I love plastic.
I want to be plastic' (quoted in Koch 1973:23). In the educated middle class's
152
vocabulary of the fifties and sixties, plastic' was a by-word for all that was wrong
with Hollywood, itself the epitome of contemporary civilisation: artificial,
cheap, disposable, available, in a word, inauthentic. Warhol's statement, and his
work, do not deny this; on the contrary, they affirm it and get off on it, to the
point of wishing to be it. The early gay underground films sought authenticity
in the self, often with recourse to metaphysical systems that would heighten the
sense of self. By the time we get to Warhol notions of the authentic self have
been discarded, to be replaced by the desire to be as inauthentic as possible.
Oscar Wilde had been there already. In the preface to the Portrait of Dorian
Gray he wrote of the great virtue of being 'as artificial as possible'. He too was
coming at the end of a movement that had concealed its perverse well-springs
in a display of splurging emotional authenticity. Not only does Warhol recap-
itulate the history of Hollywood, the underground more generally recapitulates
the history of romanticism and decadence, as well as that history, which echoes
it, of modernism and postmodernism (cf. Suarez 1996).
Couch
Couch was made in July 1964, though not shown until April 1966. It consists
of eight sequences, each the length of a roll of film, each ending as the film
whites out at the end of the roll. It shows various people doing various things
on an old couch. Though there are no credits and one would not necessarily
recognise them, part of Couch's frisson is that it stars, in addition to some Warhol
regulars (Malanga, Mead, Ondine), some celebrated Beats, Corso, Ginsberg,
Orlovski, Kerouac, and various other people.
The first sequence has two men lying together on the couch, one naked;
through the sequence they get into various positions, including fellatio.
Meanwhile in front there is a young man talking, soundlessly but clearly
campily, off screen, presumably to the film-maker; he gets up, strips. Meanwhile
two other men, one of them only half on screen, start dancing. The man who
stripped walks towards the camera, almost blotting out the image, then drops
down, so that we can see the naked man on the couch being stroked by the
other, until the image whites out. In the second sequence there are again two
men on the couch, snuggling up together; two men in front pick up something
bright which shines into the camera, then one sits on the edge of the couch,
pointing off screen while he chats; meanwhile, another man has come in and
leant over the back of the couch, looking at the two men snuggling on it.
In both sequences, the camera is at a right angle to the couch and there is a single
source of harsh, white light, coming from over the back of the camera and
creating a ring of light across the couch.
Heightened by the subject-matter, the stark rudimentariness of the technique
draws attention to the simple but essential excitement of film: what you see and
what you don't see. On the one hand, we are getting to see what is not normally
(especially in 1964) seen: male nudity, gay sex. The centrality of the sex, centre
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screen, where the one bright light falls, on the eponymous prop, emphasises it
as the thing seen, and having someone come in and look emphasises the fact of
looking. Yet it may also emphasise what we don't get, a close-up, and elsewhere
the two sequences obstruct our looking with people walking into camera or
lights shining into it. They also draw attention to what we don't see. Some
men are only half seen, characters talk to and point off screen, the sense of
there being a space beyond the frame is not concealed but emphasised. It is an
interesting and gay space too: the half-seen men look like they may be sexy, the
chatter is obviously campy, and what is that queen pointing to? We're seeing
flesh and sex, but we're also missing things too. In this way the film can be
seen, with the rest of the early films, as an 'investigation of the technological
and social mechanisms of the recording apparatus' (James 1985:25), because it
explores the bare mechanics of lighting, framing, having the camera run; but,
because of the subject-matter, it also shows this is never just mechanics but
inextricable from our investment in the pleasure of looking.
This play continues through the film. The third sequence is shot from another
angle, 90 degrees to the first two shots, lengthwise across the couch, making
noticeable the fact that we are seeing from a different angle, seeing two men,
one white, one black, making love to a white woman. Next shot, another angle,
a naked woman on the couch, adopting glamour poses, while a man on a bike
fiddles with it, indifferent to her apart from saying 'hello'. We look uninter-
ruptedly at what (the women) he seems not to be interested in looking at.
Sequence seven marks a startling break: the couch is no longer seen whole.
The camera is closer in, and about a third of the frame on the left is taken up
by a woman, smoking, shifting about in her seat, looking ahead; behind her,
along the top of the couch, a man is lying, but we can only see his brilliant white
jeans; kneeling behind the couch, we see a man in a black T-shirt and dark
glasses, who leans over, unzips the man's jeans, takes out his penis and sucks it.
Once again, a play on what we see and don't see. We don't see the rest of the
man in the white jeans, yet, in terms of light, he is the most noticeable thing
on screen and we do see what we are normally least likely to see, his penis being
sucked. The man doing the sucking, on the other hand, wears dark glasses, part
of his posey look, but also drawing attention to eyes. Meanwhile, the woman
does not look at the fellatio. In part, her refusal to look and the spatial domi-
nance of this person not looking, emphasises that we are looking; but also, she
is a woman, she looks awkward, self-consciously pecking at her cigarette. Gay
sex excludes women, but her awkwardness suggests something more, either a
testing of traditional feminine sensibilities (cast as reactionary in much sixties
sexual rhetoric) or witness to the denial to women of the right to look, especially
at men.
The last sequence reverts to the first camera set-up and shows three men on
the couch, falling about each other, getting undressed, kissing, scattering drops
from a bottle over each other. It is the most straightforward episode of all, the
kind of sequence that earned Warhol's films their reputation for matter-of-fact
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acceptance of gay sex. But the looking on at it is not straightforward. Blow Job
makes the point still more teasingly — we are watching a man being sucked off
to orgasm, and there's no doubt about it, except that we don't see his penis
being sucked and is he really having an orgasm or just acting? We see and we
don't see what the film's title has invited us to see (cf. Koch 1973:47-51) 11 .
Couch, Blow Job and the other early films are thus not just about breaking the
taboo on seeing gayness, but exposing some of the aesthetic mechanisms of the
proscription and the lifting of it.
Kitchen
Filmed in May 1965, Kitchen records in two 35-minute takes a script by Ronald
Tavel set in a modern, domestic kitchen, with fridge, blender and streamlined
units. In the first half a woman, Jo (Edie Sedgwick) sits on the table, doing her
make-up and bickering with a bare-chested man, Micky; in the second half, the
bickering continues with another pair, a man called Joe and a woman called
Mickie. Behind them, unheeding, a young man potters about the kitchen, and
at various points a man enters from behind the camera and takes photos of the
characters.
The play on the processes of film concentrates here on the construction of
what is filmed, rather than, as in the silent films, how it is framed and lit. The
film opens with someone reading out a description of the set from the scenario:
what we see isn't just there being filmed, it was assembled or selected to be
filmed. We are then told that copies of the script are concealed about the set:
we are going to see people playing lines, not just, as may appear, being in front
of the camera. The fact that this is a space for a performance is emphasised by
having all the characters enter from somewhere behind the fridge, but having
the photographer enter from behind the camera, from the space outside of the
performance. The play on what you see and what you don't see is shifted, in this
sound film, to what you hear and what you don't hear. The chat covers all sorts
of things, including gay sex in a shower, men's underwear and Bette Davis
imitations, but you can't make it out a lot of the time, it is poorly recorded, and
for a long period the blender is running, drowning out what is being said.
This emphasis on the fact that the film has been constructed, despite its
fly-on-the-wall look, does not just deconstruct the film as fiction but also
domesticity itself. The dialogue deals in the banal, the everyday, the cliched,
but the repetitions, inconsequentiality and flat delivery betray a camp pleasure
in the styles and forms of ordinary conversation. Much of the opening conver-
sation is about a 'litter basket', Micky repeating the words meaninglessly, then
telling Jo she should 'rummage around in it', her sharply saying that she does
so because 'that's how I found you', him complaining that she has thrown his
'undergarment' in it. This undercutting by heightening of domestic chit-chat
is given a further twist by employing the psycho-babble that was the standard,
middle-class mode for comprehending the tensions of domestic life. So Micky
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goes on about how he likes to wear another man's clothes so that he can under-
stand the other's personality even though he cannot understand his own, while
at other points more specifically Freudian discourse is parroted ('I've failed you.
Both as a mother and lover I've failed you'; 'Isn't a mother a boy's best friend?').
It is partly in the language that the normal world of the kitchen is denor-
malised, but also in the way that what happens undercuts the heterosexuality
that is the bedrock of domestic normality. One of the first things Micky tells
Jo is that he has had sex with Joe, to which she indifferently replies, 'How nice'.
Later, just before Joe and Mickie join them, a voice reads from the script that
Jo/e should be played as high camp and Micky/ie as a dumb blonde. So far we
have only seen Jo and Micky and don't know there are other characters to come.
Certainly when he arrives, Joe is a full-blown queen, but hasn't Jo's chatter also
been a witty camping of domesticity? As for Micky and Mickie, neither is
blonde, both are witless, and it is the man, Micky, posing about in levis and bare
chest, who most resembles the sex object suggested by the term 'dumb blonde'.
This confusion, with names and roles no longer clearly sexed, muddles up the
certainties of heterosexuality, until Joe says 'Why does everyone have to have
the same name? How is one to know who to have sex with?'. Jo points out that
'You don't have sex with a name, do you?', but perhaps the point is that one
does, that one has sex with the social image of male and female as much as with
men and women apprehended in pure biological terms. The sexual and gender
certainties that underpin domesticity evaporate, leaving the charade of playing
at being domestic.
My Hustler
My Hustler has a plot, a situation which has the audience asking, 'what is going
to happen?' It also, in its first half, makes very noticeable use of camera move-
ment, creating a strong contrast to the still camera in the second half.
The first half consists of a conversation between a man, Ed Hood, and his
guests (a woman, Genevieve and Sugar Plum Fairy, an ex-hustler) on the veran-
dah of his beach house about a blonde man, Paul America, away out on the beach,
whom Ed has hired from Dial-a-Hustler. This is all shot in three longish takes,
with the camera intermittently panning and zooming sometimes fast, sometimes
slow, between the house and the beach. The talk is about Paul, the object of
desire; every so often we spend time looking at him while we hear him being
discussed. The effect of the zooming and panning (and the rather jolting two cuts)
is ambivalent. Like Hollywood, they give us the sight of the object desired, give
us the pleasure sought by the man, but they also draw attention to the devices
that are permitting the object to be seen and establish distance, so that when Paul
is in frame we may nonetheless be aware that only we the audience, and not the
speakers, can gaze so closely. The frisson, especially for the mid-sixties audience,
is also that we are able just to sit there, in a public place (a cinema) rather than
secretly at home, and look with uninterrupted lust at a man.
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UNDERGROUND AND AFTER
Ed realises that the other two are out to seduce Paul away from him; he makes
a bet that they won't be able to. During a long camera hold on Paul, Ed starts
on the soundtrack to wonder where Genevieve has got to and she enters the
frame and at once starts chatting Paul up and oiling his back. The disjunction
between voice and image maintains the sense of separation between the desirer
and the desired, making the woman's entry into the space of the desired all
the more disturbing for the desirer (the male speaker and the gay men in the
audience).
The moving camera of the first half emphasises distance. The second half
takes place in the bathroom in the client's house, occupied by Paul and Sugar
Plum Fairy. The still camera keeps the confines of the space rigidly in place. It
is now proximity rather than distance that is emphasised. This does not mean
there are no barriers to desire. In part what we see are the rituals of 'straight'
butchness, showering, shaving, haircombing, oiling, that is, exhibitionism and
voyeurism that don't recognise themselves as such. This is intensified by the
hustler's straight identification. The excitement of the proximity of their bodies
is evident, but the old hand can only make a play for the newcomer by treating
it as a professional matter, making out that he just wants to teach Paul some
of the tricks of the trade. Homosexual desire could be openly spoken when the
object of desire is at a distance, but in circumstances of proximity requires an
elaborate manipulation of male codes of'business'.
The sequence ends with first Genevieve, then Ed, then Genevieve again
coming in and telling Paul what financial inducements they can offer him. He
remains oblivious, grooming himself gazing in the mirror, while Sugar Plum
Fairy still lurks in the background. The central narrative hook — who will get
him? — remains teasingly unresolved, while the camera keeps him gorgeously
central frame.
Lonesome Cowboys
Lonesome Cowboys consists of a string of incidents, loosely threaded together but
with much left unexplained or disconnected and with many camp diversions
from the central Western set-up (Finch 1989).
Ramona (Viva) and her 'nurse' (Taylor Mead) are hanging about some
Western street set when a group of cowboys rides into town. There is
an immediate, but ambivalent, hostility between the two groups, with
Mead at one point running to ask the Sheriff for protection from one
of the cowboys who, he says, has a big bulge in his pants, is smoking
hashish and wearing mascara. Two of the cowboys, Joe and Eric, hang
about town discussing gunplay and hair-dos. Mead approaches another,
Julian, to ask him to come and meet Ramona, and shows him how
to dance a Lupe Velez number. One of the boys slaps Ramona, who is
rescued by Mead and the Sheriff. The scene shifts to the cowboys
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camping out in the country. Eric wakes his bedfellow Joe to discuss
newcomer, Julian, who is sleeping with the oldest 'brother', Mickey.
Eric runs over to the others, who get up, play about, spraying each
other from beer cans. They all go off to Ramona's bordello, where they
rape Ramona and Mead. Joe tells Julian he'd like to go off with him
to California, where there are 'lots of women, lots of beautiful men'.
The Sheriff, who has refused to interfere in the goings-on, gets dressed
up as a woman for one of Ramona's clients. The other cowboys join in,
dancing, putting on women's clothes, faking sex. Ramona and one
of the cowboys, Tom, make love. Mead joins them and gives them a
fatal leaf to take, but only Ramona takes it. She collapses over Tom and
Mead kisses them both. Mead and Joe dance to a Beatles song. Tom
and Eric ride off to California together.
Lonesome Cowboys operates with an opposition, between the group of cowboys

and the townspeople (Viva, Mead, the Sheriff), that is characteristic of the
Western: country versus town, the range versus the settlement, East versus
West, male bonding versus heterosocial arrangements. This is generally how the
film has been perceived, though there is disagreement about where the film's
sympathies lie. Peter Gidal (1971:124—32) sees the boys as representing an
unrepressed, natural, sweet form of sexuality, as opposed to Viva, Mead and the
Sheriff, who represent sex for money and law 'n' order. Berlin and Bruce, on
the other hand, see 'Viva, the sexually self-determining female, and Taylor
Mead, the affirmed gay male' as the positive figures in the film; by contrast the
boys' 'unstated homosexuality — bathing and sleeping together, but retaining
a heterosexual stance — is repressed and contained, and results in a rigid
patriarchy' (1986-7:60). The rape scene is crucial to these arguments. For Gidal
it is 'sexual parody' (126), the boys acting out the sexuality the genre requires
of its men, but their real sexual interest being in each other, whereas for Berlin
and Bruce it is real (even to the point of Viva not knowing it was going to
happen), 'the male unit using rape to protect its power and assert its hostility
toward the female' (60).
The film is probably a good deal less coherent and critically conscious than
either of these readings suggests. For instance, neither Gidal's sweet sexual
freedom nor Berlin and Bruce's patriarchal unit quite seem to catch the film's
attitude towards the boys, which may doubt the value of their manliness but
fancies them all the same, playing with the signs of masculinity but turned on
by them too.
When Ramona and Taylor Mead first see the cowboys riding into town,
Ramona says, 'Maybe they're real men', to which Mead replies, 'Oh not real
men! Ramona, I must protect you'. The levels of irony in the delivery of these
two improvised lines are so unresolved as to defy analysis. Does Ramona want
them to be real men? Does Viva already know they are not? How insincere is
Mead's shock-horror at the prospect of real men? How could he protect Ramona,
158
and would he be protecting her in order to have the boys to himself? Just where
is the irony directed — at the very idea of'real men' or at the idea that these gay
boys might be it? And would their being real men make them more or less
desirable?
For desirable, to the film, they certainly are. In a series of sharp cuts, Mead's
voice repeats 'Look at' and we see a different part of each of the boys in turn,
the fragmenting of their bodies suggesting the appraising look at their attri-
butes. Throughout the film there is far more emphasis on the male body than
the female, most memorably in a long take on Julian washing, stripped to the
waist, the camera moving over his body, the whole sequence even less narratively
motivated than anything else in the film, just an excuse to look at his body.
The focus, in all this desiring, remains on the boys' maleness, but by no
means contained by the idea of the real man. A real man might be defined by
his being heterosexual or else by his having traditionally masculine qualities.
Gay desire may find either or both a turn-on, but the boys in Lonesome Cowboys
overturn all that. In the conversation between Joe and Eric as they hang about
the town, Eric first of all compliments Joe on his 'sexy jacket' because 'it makes
you look butch', before going on to tell him he should do something about his
hair. Then he advises him that he should do some exercises to build up his legs
so that they will hold up his gun. The exercises turn out to be ballet plies, with
the hitching post used as barre. Eric reveals that the real value of this exercise
is not its help in gunslinging but because 'it puts meat on the buns'. The
conversation is camp, cowboys talking about their hair and doing plies, but
it also acknowledges that strain in US gay culture that came into its own in the
Nautilised seventies, the conscious creation of a hunky look - so the jacket is
good because it 'looks butch' and the exercise is good because it tones and builds
up the arse. 'Male' qualities are being stressed, but there is no intention of
passing for straight.
After having sex with Tom, and because it was so beautiful, Ramona makes
the grand romantic gesture of committing suicide; but Tom is too impassive
to do likewise. At the end of the film he rides off to California with Eric. Grand
gestures are for heterosexuals or women - riding off to a hedonistic land where
there are 'lots of women, lots of beautiful men', a Utopia of free floating sexuality,
is the boys' ideal. Pace Gidal, there is nothing particularly right-on about this,
especially from a feminist perspective, but nor, pace Berlin and Bruce, does it
suggest an ultimate identification on the film's part with Viva and Mead. What
it conveys best, genially or insidiously, according to view, is Warhol's 'complete
refusal to assume critical consciousness' (Koch 1973:108).
After
The lack of both anxiety /guilt and 'critical consciousness' in the later gay under-
ground is a measure of the arrival of homosexuality in, at any rate, certain circles
in major metropolitan centres. Only when homosexuality is seen as a fit subject
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and sensibility for art and when gay scenes and organisations are well developed,
can art be produced which takes gayness as a starting point, just gets on with
being camp, can afford to investigate the mechanics of men looking at men in
the ways indicated above.
One can get a sense of this context from the film Gay San Francisco, made by
Jonathan Raymond between 1965 and 1970, in part a record of gay life in the
city, but with affinities at moments to sixties underground film in its style. The
extensiveness of the San Francisco gay scene is documented in footage of cruising
places, parties, clubs, bookshops and so on. Intercut with this are interviews
with three pairs: two drag queens, confident in the Tightness and, to a large
extent, acceptedness of their life-style; a clean-cut gay couple, distancing them-
selves from queens and hustlers, sure of the normalcy of gayness; and a lesbian
couple, talking unembarrassedly about their relationship. The interviews
suggest the confidence with which lesbian/gay people were beginning to live
their lives in such environments. Much of the footage is conventional home
movie/documentary, but there are more undergroundish moments. On the one
hand, there are (gay male) sex scenes, shot with a hand held camera close to
the bodies, so that the effect is blurry and uncontrolled; on the other, much of
footage of the gay scene is accompanied by a travelogue style voice over, scan-
dalised at the goings-on it so gleefully presents, while some of the parties have
the kind of atonal music accompanying them that Hollywood and television
used to connote perverse weirdness - examples of the gay instinct for pastiche
so evident in sixties underground film.
Much of the confidence evidenced in Gay San Francisco, and implicit in the
stance of the sixties gay underground, underpinned the development of a newly
militant gay movement, discussed in chapter six. As a cohesive phenomenon,
the underground as such fell away during the seventies and yet, throughout that
decade and since, gay underground film bequeathed a number of possibilities
that have been the point of departure for a large proportion of gay cinema. A
good starting point for surveying this is Pink Narcissus. Released in 1971 (but
made over the previous seven years) and credited to 'Anonymous' (though now
acknowledged to be by J i m Bidgood 12 ), it manages to combine most of what
the underground was and what would become of it.
Pink Narcissus opens and closes with sequences in a forest, the camera tracking
past plastic foliage shot against a sheer full moon. In between the film centres
on a soft-faced, dark-haired, full-lipped, well-endowed young man (Bobby
Kendall) (figure 4.7) in a variety of settings: in his room, looking at himself in
rococo framed mirrors, taking his clothes off repeatedly, pouring champagne on
himself, masturbating; out in the sleazy streets and lavatories; as a Roman slave;
in a bullring, a forest during a storm and an Arabian Nights style male harem.
The movement between these sequences is described in a synopsis accom-
panying the original release as between the man's fantasies and the intrusions
of reality (the street scenes), though now the latter too seem like fantasies, with
their men in construction worker helmets or sailor shirts, naked from the waist
160
1
Figure 4.7 Bobby Kendall in Pink Narcissus — underground, kitsch, softporn.
down, and a sexual encounter in a lavatory leading to violence, all part of the
standard repertoire of gay porn. Equally the more obviously fantastic sequences
contain s/m elements: dragged in as a slave in one, watching a near naked dancer
felled by a scimitar in another (the latter followed by orgasmic imagery, streams
of white beads superimposed on an extreme close-up down on to the glans of a
penis). Only two things take the edge off the delirious stream of erotic fantasy.
One is the image of a butterfly, breaking out of its cocoon in the opening
sequence and flying to the young man, later held in his hands and at his crotch
but later still crushed to death by him, following a street sequence of him
hustling. The other is a moment near the end in which an older man comes into
the young man's room and turns round to reveal that he is the young man, now
himself become a hustler's client; a pane of glass in front of the scene shatters,
forming a broken cobweb pattern which then becomes a cobweb as the final
sequence begins, the sinister cobweb contrasting with the butterfly emerging
from a cocoon in the opening sequence.
The film has imagery from most phases of the underground: the sensitive
young man, a visionary use of nature, intensified B-picture Hollywoodiana,
hustlers and sailors. The only thing missing is drag, though there are demented
ladies in the street scenes and harem boys, different aspects of the use of drag
in Smith and Warhol. Stylistically, the use of 8mm blown up to 35mm gives
the film both the iridescent colour of Anger and Markopoulos and the graininess
of Warhol. The structure, oneiric, mythic, masturbatory, with a moment of
terrible self-discovery towards the end, suggests the forties underground, but
the looser, languorous shifts from one sequence to another also recall Flaming
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Creatures. The enjoyment of artifice, the embrace of seediness, the unremitting

eroticism all suggest the sixties underground imposed on more personal,
obsessive and tormented forties underground structures. All that is entirely
absent is Warhol's detached, observational mode.
Pink Narcissus stands somewhere between continuing elements of the
underground and new developments that both exaggerated particular aspects
of the underground and also in the process moved it some way above ground.
As much as anything this has to do with changing patterns of exhibition during
the seventies. At one extreme, there are film-makers whose small-scale, highly
personal, even hermetic, work is largely shown in the original underground
spaces: galleries, art schools, collectives devoted to avant-garde film. Some of
these film-makers have been able to move into the art cinema circuit, but the
real commercial success has lain in those highly profitable fringes of the industry,
'midnight movies' and pornography. These different institutional spaces do not
fit entirely smoothly with different kinds of product: all of these films would
be considered pornographic by some people, all of them have elements of the
'personal' about them.
Among those working at the avant-garde end of the scale are Tom Chomont
(see below), J i m Hubbard (May 21-22, 1979 1980, Homosexual Desire in
Minnesota 1981-5), Roger Jacoby (Kunstlife 1975, How to be a Homosexual 1978),
Curt McDowell (see below), Warren Sonbert (Divided Loyalties 1978, Noblesse
Oblige 1981), Jerry Tartaglia (Lawless 1977), Michael Wallin (The Place between
Our Bodies 1975) and two poets from previous generations discussed above,
James Broughton (see above) and Charles Henri Ford.13 The latter's Johnny
Minotaur 1967—70 concerns a man making a film based on the Minotaur legend
and the mainly homosexual and masturbatory sexual activity off screen. It is
probably the last underground film to make use of classical Greek reference
in its treatment of homosexuality and the fact that it is about making such
a film, which is moreover never completed, together with the image of a crum-
bling papier-mache Minotaur mask at the end, perhaps suggest how little
currency there was still in such classical allusion. The work of Chomont and
McDowell, on the other hand, indicates the potential of other aspects of the
underground.
There is a stronger feeling of the personal in Tom Chomont's films than in
even Markopoulos or Smith. These are films drawing on the film-maker's
personal circle: a lover in Oblivion 1969, a group of polymorphous perverse
men, women and children in Love Objects 1971, a soldier friend in Minor Revisions
1979, a man head-shaving and tying up his lover in Razor Head 1984 and so
on. The images have an intimacy conveyed by the use of close-up and repetition,
suggesting the cherished importance to the film-maker of, say, this moment of
peeling an onion (Minor Revisions) or this way that a loved one takes his under-
wear off (Oblivion). The sense of the specialness of these otherwise banal images
is often heightened by a certain strangeness in the filming, much use of negative
reversal, superimposition or remarkable set-ups such as that in Minor Revisions,
162
a man's genitals glimpsed from beneath in a hand mirror laid on a grey towel.
The images, seldom held for more than a few seconds, are repeated and
recombined with a strong rhythmic sense, so that the overall effect is both of
evanescence and intensity, the intimate moment slipping from grasp yet regis-
tered with great tenderness. There is neither anguish nor camp in this work,
no felt need to interrogate or assert a gay identity, just getting on with being
homo-erotic among other things. Chomont's films seem one of the few cases
where gayness is incidental without being in the process marginalised. Perhaps
now this can only be achieved in such a highly personal and intimate mode,
where the questions of effect and representativeness, necessarily entailed in
more public modes, do not insistently obtain.
Some of Curt McDowell's films also appear very personal, but are far more
self-conscious about themselves as films and the act of going public with such
personal material. The films present, but also take to pieces, the film-maker's
sexual desires. Confessions 1971 has him talking to camera telling his parents
about childhood thefts and fibs and about having been in love several times, once
with a woman. This monologue is cut up and interrupted by people playing at
burglary and confession, making the stream of confession seem less transparent
and authentic. Ronnie 1972 is the first of his films to explore his fascination
with straight-identified men, here a hustler who poses about in front of the
camera while on the soundtrack boasting of his macho straightness. Nudes: A
Sketchbook 1974 shows a variety of people, male and female, in couples and alone,
including one sequence where a delivery boy is observed by the camera — when
he suddenly falls to the ground, the camera moves in and we see McDowell's
hands reach in and pull the boy's trousers down as the film goes black. The play
with voyeurism is fascinating and/or discomforting: the boy seems to know he's
being filmed, but you're not sure; McDowell oversteps the boundary between
watcher and watched, but we, the other watchers, cannot. Loads 1980 shows a
series of men undressing and masturbating, while on the soundtrack McDowell
talks about how he picked the men up and how attracted he is by straight men.
The different encounters are loosely edited together to suggest a repeated erotic
structure — the men hanging about, undressing, playing with themselves,
coming — but the voice over moves from coolly intimate delivery to stumbling,
excited stuttering until, his mouth full of cock on screen, there is no more
speech. The attempt to render a verbal account of sexual desire goes awry in the
excitement of recall; the assumption that the person behind the camera has
power over the person in front of it is thrown into confusion by it being a gay
man looking at straight men, by the range of embarrassment and pleasure the
men evince and the question of class (the men are working-class, some Hispanic;
McDowell is a poor but college-educated film-maker). Taboo: The Single and the
L.P. 1981 focuses on an Arab youth, Fahed Martha, hanging about outside with
a friend or in McDowell's apartment, staring at the camera, 'no more than a
graphic presence — an empty centre, a hook of flesh for desires not his own'
(Ehrenstein 1985:113).
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With films like these, Chomont and McDowell remained underground film-
makers in a classic sense, but others have succeeded in establishing a niche in
the field of relatively well-financed (often state-subsidised) feature films shown
on the international art cinema circuit. Of these, the British director Derek
Jarman is the best example (O'Pray 1996, Parkes 1996).
There are two strands to Jarman's film work, strands initially identified
with differences in technology and institution and which come together in his
later work (O'Pray 1985). On the one hand there are short films shot on super-
8 (such as Fire Island 1974, Duggie Fields 1974, Picnic at Ray's 1975, Gerald's
Film 1976) and on the other 35mm feature films (notably Sebastiane 1976,
Jubilee 1978, The Tempest 1979). The former have a home movie feel in terms of
subject-matter, records of friends, visits, parties and so on, but shot and edited 14
to create a distinctive erotic texture. The dark, grainy, gentle, washed-out yet
palpable look of the films, together with the kinds of boys and settings featured,
give a somehow very English inflection to the underground tradition. The
features on the other hand are lit and shot in a relatively conventional art cinema
style, though tending to play down narrative drive in favour of lingering on
tableaux which are painterly both in their visual texture and in their clear
evocation of famous paintings. The subject-matter is tougher, notably in Jubilee,
which depicts a future state of England characterised by punk-style violence,
in which, among other things, policemen who have sex with each other destroy
or beat up beautiful young men. The gentleness of the super-8 films is largely
absent but not their homo-eroticism, here explored in sadomasochistic guise.
The two sides of Jarman's work began to come together in his later work:
Imagining October 1984 explores the homo-erotic appeal of soldiers but softened,
literally stripped of their violent accoutrements; The Angelic Conversation 1985
is a 35mm, feature length film originally shot in super-8, consisting of loving
images of men set to readings of Shakespeare's sonnets; Caravaggio 1986 is also
the fullest exploration of the historical and social complexities of the imagery
found throughout his work.
Sebastiane (discussed in O'Pray 1996: 80—94) was one of the first indepen-
dently gay-made feature films to get a wide showing (including, astonishingly
and fortuitously, a commercial release in Britain). It tells of the banishment
of the Roman soldier Sebastiane, once the favourite of the Emperor but now
a Christian, to a remote outpost, where he refuses the advances of the captain,
Severus, who finally has him shot to death by arrows. The film uses this story
to lay out some of the forms that 'eros' (love, desire) can take. At one extreme,
there is the character of Max, endlessly spewing lewd talk of women while
initiating evidently homosexual horse-play between the men; at the other,
Sebastiane, representing an etherealised, spiritual love, embodied in poems
and dances to the sun as well as his Christianity. In between there are: Severus,
whose desire for Sebastiane is frustrated; Justin, Sebastiane's selfless friend,
beaten up by Max for his attempt to protect Sebastiane from Severus; and the
lovers Anthony and Adrian. The latter provide an image of untrammelled eros
164
in the beautiful central sequence of them making love, in the open air and in
a pool. Slow-motion photography caresses their limbs and in the pool shows
mesmerising streams of waterdrops glancing off and haloing their glowing
bodies. The use of water to convey this dreamy eroticism links it to, but also
distinguishes it from, the violent sexuality of horse-play and frustration. In
an earlier sequence, Max leads the crude verbal by-play as the men cavort in the
sea playing ball; when Anthony tackles Adrian, the latter, recognising it as an
advance, backs off and refuses to play any more; yet later we have the love scene
between them, now whole-heartedly sexual, not uglified by the others' need to
declare a heterosexual fuck mentality. Their love-making is observed by Severus,
standing at a distance with Sebastiane. Earlier Severus had looked longingly at
Sebastiane as he poured water over himself in the early morning, a sequence shot
in the same besotted slow motion. Now Severus looks at Anthony and Adrian,
but when he puts his hand out to Sebastiane, has it brushed away. Sebastiane
rejects Severus in the name of a higher love ('Poor Severus. You think your
drunken lust compares to the love of gods'), but this love is expressed in vividly
homoerotic terms ('. . . his blue eyes . . . his golden body . . . I love him, I want
to be with him'), and first in an ecstatic delirium after Severus has tortured
him. His Christian love is sexual, but fixed on an impossible love object,
stimulated by pain, unable to realise itself in the loving sensuality represented
by Anthony and Adrian. Sebastiane recognises the fascination of the morbid
eroticism of the St Sebastian figure, notably in the final execution which makes
reference to many of the paintings of his martyrdom, evoking an art tradition
long recognised for its homo-erotic appeal (cf. Castillo 1983, Kaye 1996). Yet
even while acknowledging this fascination, the film also evokes in Anthony
and Adrian an alternative to it.
If Jarman can be seen as moving on from the forties underground, the gay
contribution to the 'midnight movies' phenomenon is clearly rooted in the
sixties underground. 'Midnight movies' were 'a distinctive strain of subter-
ranean moviegoing' and programming (Hoberman and Rosenbaum 1983:1),
developing during the seventies, usually late night, often all night, a heady
mix of avant-gardism, B-pictures and youth movies which was a continuation
by other means of the cultism already associated with the cinema in the forms
of fandom and buffery. Some gay underground films (Scorpio Rising, Lonesome
Cowboys, Jubilee) were part of it as were many films with pronounced gay content
(Fellini Satyr icon, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, The Rocky Horror Picture Show),
including physique movies (Waugh 1996: 269-70), but the key gay contri-
bution grew out of the off-off-Broadway brew of drag, kitsch and schlock, which
flowered through the late sixties and seventies in the Theatre of the Ridiculous
(Smith 1987). Films like Luminous Procuress 1972 showcased drag performers,
in this case the San Francisco group the Cockettes; the continuing work of
George Kuchar (including his script for Curt McDowell's Thundercrack! 1975)
upped the delirious banality of melodrama, soap opera and cinema verite. The
films of John Waters went still further (Stevenson 1996). Much of the content
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of his films (.Mondo Trasho 1969, Multiple Maniacs 1970, Pink Flamingoes
1971, Female Trouble 1975, Desperate Living 1977, Polyester 1981) is not in any
obvious sense gay: most of the characters are heterosexual, or sometimes lesbian,
and mostly concerned with self-advancement, filth, hair-dos, killing, eating
and fucking. It is the perspective that is distinctly gay. Desperate Living features
'a bevy of fast talking dykes accompanied by their buxomly kittenish girlfriends'
and even includes a lesbian glory hole scene' in which a woman discovers 'two
bouncy breasts thrusted from the next cubicle' (Murray 1994:120). In Female
Trouble, Edith Massey declares 'The world of the heterosexual is a sick and boring
life' and it is just this that the films show, but with a gleeful sense of the
gross that makes them intoxicating. Waters' star was Divine, an enormous drag
queen who often seems the only really positive person in the film, full of energy,
fun and lust for life. 'She' (Glenn Milstead) always played definitely female
characters in the films, yet every viewer must know she is a man. In sex scenes,
the scraggy or self-obsessed quality of her partners evokes joyless heterosexual
screwing, but Divine's magnificent lust is a paean to gay desire.
While many would consider Waters' films obscene, they are not pornographic
('I would never want to film hardcore pornography because it always looks like
open-heart surgery to me' (quoted in Samuels 1983:120)), but this is the third
direction in which the gay underground moved. There has been gay film
pornography almost as long as there has been straight (the earliest examples
in Waugh's researches date from the twenties), and it has generally followed
straight porn in becoming gradually more publically available, first through
mail order and then finally in cinemas. Paul Siebenand (1980:2) gives the Park
Theatre in Los Angeles in June 1968 as the date of the first public screening
of gay porn films in the USA. Such films were short and artisanal (cf. Waugh
1996: 359—364), but industrialisation swiftly followed with films such as
Stud Farm 1969, The Fraternity, Hang Loose, Meat Rack, One Touching One and
Sticks and Stones 1970 and in 1971 Boys in the Sand, generally reckoned to be the
breakthrough film, Hollywoodian in both its camera work and its production
of the first gay porn star, Casey Donovan.
Films like Fireworks and Un Chant d'amour had been deplored or welcomed
as porn and when porn as business took hold it often remained, and remains,
startlingly close to the conventions and concerns of these earlier films. (One
Touching One, for instance, was marketed as portraying male homosexuality as
'one of the life forces of the 20th century'.) Many of the structures of under-
ground film, formal analogues of psychic states, organise gay porn: dreams (Song
of the Loon 1970, Boys in the Sand), memories (Nights in Black Leather 1972),
hallucinogenic visions (Destroying Angel 1975) and conscious fantasising (Boys
in the Sand, American Cream 1972, Adam and Yves 1974), all always sexual, often
intercut, Chinese boxed or not clearly distinguishable from one another. Porn
films are offered to the audience as fantasies, but these structures show a self-
consciousness about the process, in some cases authenticating the fantasies as
fantasies, in others drawing attention to their fabrication. The latter tendency
166
is even more evident in the common reference to film itself, in plots about
making porn films ( B i j o u 1972), in pastiches of films (of A Star is Born in The
Light from the Second Storey Window 1973, of Cocteau, Garbo and Brando movies
in Adam and Yves 1974, of gay porn itself in Catching Up 1975, of American
Graffiti in Cruisin 57 1979) and in films in which people watch films, in some
cases having sex in cinemas showing porn films {The Back Row 1973, Passing
Strangers 1977), a scenario which of course is itself a reflection of what actually
went on in gay porn cinemas.
Two early films illustrate porn's relation to the underground, The Song of the
Loon and L.A. Plays Itself 1972. The former, based on a best-selling novel by
Richard Amory (published in 1966), is still softcore, telling the story of a young
man, Ephram, in frontier times and his discovery of (homosexual) love through
contact with Native Americans and Whitmanic woodsmen. The imagery of
nature, the recognition of Native American values, the talk of free love and
spiritual values, the unfetishistically manly coupling, all root the film firmly in
beat/hippy culture and the film culminates in a visionary sequence, induced
in Ephram by the wise man, Bear Who Dreams, in which Ephram discovers
the truth: his love for the woodsman Cyrus and his rejection of his attachment
to Montgomery, symbol of the repressed, restrictive mores of the white man.
In content Song of the Loon lays out many of the informing ideas of one part of
the gay underground, yet technically it is straightforward, even the visionary
sequence clearly signalled as such as in a Hollywood film. L.A. Plays Itself also
uses hippyish imagery in its first half, a sexual encounter between two men in
the countryside near Los Angeles. Long-held extreme close-ups of flowers, fossils,
butterflies are intercut with those of the two men making love, accompanied now
by Orientalish flute music, now by Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. Towards the
end of this sequence images of a tractor are superimposed over the love-making,
a disruptive incursion of the mechanical which segues into shots of down-town
LA and the second half of the film. Here s/m, bondage and fist fucking are
intercut with a welter of images from popular culture to the accompaniment of
rock music, more hectically cut than Scorpio Rising but very much evoking the
feeling of that film, which is more explicitly evoked in director Fred Halsted's
next film, Sex Garage. Both films suggest aspects of where gay porn would mainly
go, towards conventional film style and macho sexuality, while also sometimes
retaining the visionary, playful and self-reflexive qualities of underground
cinema.
* * *
Underground film was the space in which gay cinema could emerge, at that
time, in the USA. Gay films could be made in that space, partly because of the
overlaps of avant-garde and gay milieux and the importance of homosexual
imagery in what informed the underground (Freudianism, the novel of alien-
ation, camp and pop art) but above all because of underground cinema's
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definition of cinema as personal'. Being personal meant not making films as

impersonal, routine or official as mainstream cinema. It also generally meant
being open about sexuality, since this was seen as constitutive of the personality,
a view which it was especially hard for 'a homosexual' to resist. If the point of
underground cinema was to be personal, then any gay man making a film was
liable to include gayness: being personal' inextricably entailed being gay.
In the underground film gay expression thus emerged through self expres-
sion. The films suggest shifting definitions of the self: disturbingly fractured
in the early examples, unless, as in Anger, healed through ritual; sheer surface
and performance in Warhol or Waters; fragmented, numinously in Smith or
Chomont, excitedly in porn. What they did not present was the unified, affirma-
tive self suggested by the films of the lesbian/gay movements discussed in
chapter six. Indeed, gay underground films did not claim to be gay at all, they
claimed to be personal. Such a stress on the individual self is anathema to collec-
tive notions of identity. The point about 'the individual' is his/her difference
from everyone else, not what he/she shares with others. Moreoever, the obscurity
of underground films in every sense — difficult to understand, technically
deficient (judged by mainstream criteria), hard to get to see - meant that many
gay people did not recognise themselves in them. Yet it was perhaps only a
convinced, and for that very reason idiosyncratic, individualism that allowed
gay cinema to emerge at all in the period — this was the form that progressive
ideas took. Besides, the variations in the underground's constructions of the
gay self suggest conundrums of personal identity that the lesbian/gay movement
had to ignore but which will not go away. Lesbian/gay identity is a paradox: it
makes defence and promotion of homo-erotic relations possible, but it also
depends on the illusion that 'gay/lesbian' is a unified sense of self held in
common amongst lesbians and amongst gay men. The fragments and surfaces,
authenticity and theatricality, control and abandon, of gay underground cinema
suggest some of the disturbing and exhilarating instabilities of the necessary
fiction of identity. In its attention to film as film, especially in Warhol,
McDowell and some porn, it also counsels caution about connecting selfhood
and cinema at all.
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5
LESBIAN/WOMAN
Lesbian cultural feminist film
In Maya Deren's third film, At Land 1945, a woman, played by the film-maker,
emerges from the sea, encounters the land and returns to the sea. On land she
steals chess pieces, first off a banquet table, then from a pair of women playing
chess by the sea. She steals the piece from the women through seduction,
stroking their hair until 'they lay their heads back rapturously in a kind of self-
forgetting orgasm' (Brinckmann 1984b:81); then she takes the chess piece and
runs off, but comes back and again caresses the women and all three turn their
bodies in unison before Deren runs off to the sea.
This is the only sequence in Deren's work that is in any obvious sense lesbian.
It anticipates a body of lesbian film work that could only begin to emerge
twenty-five years later. Like this work, At Land relates female sensual bonding
both to the alienation of women within a male-defined society and to time-
honoured notions of the feminine. The chess pieces seem to symbolise Deren's/
women's relation to the world. She finds the first piece at the end of a banquet
table that she has to crawl along, quite ignored by those sitting at it; she loses
it/him and has to chase him through various landscapes and then has a conver-
sation with a man who keeps changing into other men. These developments are
part of the film's use of chess as, in Judith Higginbottom's words, 'a traditional
and potent symbol of patriarchal processes of power and domination'; from this
game she steals a pawn, perhaps, as 'the lowliest piece in the game', it 'represents
herself' (1983:7). The pair of chess playing women, however, play this 'men's
game . . . in their own way — quickly, light-heartedly, continually communi-
cating to each other, apparently not taking the rules very seriously' (Brinckmann
1984b:81); from this game, Deren steals a queen, the most important female
piece. Through sensual involvement in a women's way of handling culture, she
can possess an important symbol of female power and return to the sea, itself
'a conventional symbol of the female and the womb' (Higginbottom 1983:7).
The title of the film and its structure, emerging from and returning to the sea,
suggest the idea of being 'beached', the woman out of her element; the return
to that element is effected through erotic contact and identification with women
and women's culture.
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A less obvious lesbian moment occurs in a later Deren film, Ritual in

Transfigured Time 1946. Here a woman, 'the Widow', runs from a man's sexual
advances and finally leaps into the sea. At the point of leaping the film is
negative reversed, so that the Widow's black clothes become bridal white: 'The
woman has returned to the sea, the domain of instinct and the unconscious and
the female. Perhaps she has married the sea; perhaps a part of herself has returned
to be reborn' (ibid.:9). The sexuality is less sensually presented here, but is
suggested by the idea of being a 'bride' in order to return to 'the female', lesbian
eroticism as the entry to the feminine.
Deren's work is not 'really' lesbian, but these moments can be seen as part of
what Adrienne Rich in 1980 would call 'the lesbian continuum', the sense
of connection between all forms of experience in which women know themselves
as women beyond male definition. Such notions have always been controversial:
many women feel that they have hijacked the definition of lesbianism at the
expense of most actual lesbians (e.g. Clark 1982, Echols 1984:61-2) and pre-
suppose an essence of'womanhood' existing outside of the social and historical
production of womanhood as a category in the discourse of a male-dominated
society (e.g. Barry and Flitterman 1980). Yet it was these notions that informed
a coherent body of lesbian films made during the seventies in North America, 1
work developing in but away from the space of underground film as part of the
growth of the wider phenomenon of what became called cultural feminism.
Underground cinema by 1970 had established the possibility of this kind of
film practice, and although women as directors remained few, still there were
more than in mainstream production (Rabinovitz 1991). Their work provided
some of the forms for the seventies lesbian films: Deren, Constance Beeson, Storm
de Hirsch, Marie Menken, Gunvor Nelson, Carolee Schneemann and, in Canada.
Joyce Wieland, all explored specifically female experiences; Menken and Wieland
used traditionally feminine spaces and crafts (Hammer 1981:122-5), and
Schneemann in Fuses 1965-8 presented a flowing, blurring evocation of female
(hetero)sexuality.
The male gay underground, especially in its West Coast variant, was also
important. There are links of imagery and structure between Barbara Hammer's
early films and those of Anger and Markopoulos (cf. Zita 1981:30); the Canadian
film Labyris Rising Margaret Moores and Almerinda Travassos 1980, with its
title and women with push-bikes dressing up in boots and denim, all set to
women's rock tracks, is a friendly parody of Scorpio Rising. Even where there
are no such specifiable links, there are general similarities between the two. Yet
their different contexts give such similarities radically different significance.
Both use symbols that at first sight seem purely personal, but which can
be related to both psychic and mythic schema. The difference lies not just in
the schema themselves — feminine spirituality and archetypes as opposed to
Freud, Magick and Greek myth - but in the use that is made of them. The
gay films are individualistic, using psychoanalytic and mythic imagery as means
to express, explore and heal the self. The lesbian films are no less personal,
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LESBIAN/WOMAN
but much less individualistic: the personal becomes the intimacy and inward-
ness shared by women, to which the spiritual and archetypal give access. This
emphasis on the personal as collective rather than individuated means that
the quest structure of Deren, Markopoulos et al. is not used. What are formally
similar are: the use of fast, often subliminal, editing, with many films seeming
to be a rush of images hard to pin down; the use of superimposition, which
further breaks down the space-time continuum of conventional film-making;
much hand-held camera work; and, often, an apparent lack of finish and
precision, a feeling of spontaneity and immediacy. For both the lesbian and the
earlier films this has in part to do with what Sontag castigates as 'the old cliche
of European romanticism — the assassin mind versus the spontaneous heart'
(1967:228), but given a new inflection by the lesbian feminist suspicion
that the mind is an assassin because it is male, that to recover the heart may be
a way out from under patriarchal consciousness. Moreover many of the editing
and camera techniques which express anxious feelings of fragmentation and
lack of control in the male films embody feelings of merging and blurring
that are welcomed in the lesbian films as aspects of a specifically feminine
aesthetic. 2
This aesthetic emerged from the resurgent feminism of the early seventies,
and especially from the notion of the 'woman-identified woman'. This notion,
always controversial within the seventies sexual political movements, led in
one direction towards radical separatist politics but in another towards the idea
of rediscovering and developing a distinct and alternative women's culture
(Zimmerman 1985). Part of this endeavour was the creation of appropriate
modes of film. In what follows I describe some of the underlying principles of
cultural feminism as it developed out of the women's movement before consid-
ering how these principles relate to the characteristic iconography and form of
lesbian cultural feminist film. (This label is not one much used in the criticism
of these films, but I hope this chapter makes clear that it is an appropriate one.)
The chapter ends with a discussion of the work of the most prolific of these
film-makers, Barbara Hammer, and a consideration of an issue raised by all this
work, the possibility of lesbian lesbian erotic film.
Principles
In 1970 the New York Radicalesbians published a manifesto entitled
'The Woman-Identified Woman'. In it they argued that male power maintains
itself by preventing women from associating with each other and, potentially,
standing together against men. As they saw it, the term 'lesbian' was used by
men to disparage women who try to be strong and independent or who try to
associate with each other; in other words, 'lesbian' is a term of abuse directed
at women who don't accept subordination and don't help to maintain male
power. Radicalesbians spied in this abuse a reality: women who live inde-
pendently of men and bond together are a challenge to male power, and therefore
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women who recognise that women are oppressed by men should be lesbians,
should be among those whose way of living challenges male power. Hence they
proposed a definition of lesbians not as a purely sexual category, but as women-
identified women, identifying with each other as women, but also identifying
with themselves individually as women, refusing the negative sense of self that
male domination instils in women.
One of the ambiguities of this definition of lesbianism was whether it entailed
sexuality. In 1970 3 Ti-Grace Atkinson defined lesbianism as woman identifi-
cation, regardless of sexuality practice:
There are women in the Movement who engage in sexual relations

with other women, but who are married to men; these women are not
lesbians in the political sense. . . . There are other women who have
never had sexual relations with other women, but who have made, and
live, a total commitment to this Movement. These women are lesbians
in the political sense.
(1974:132)
Similarly, Arlene Raven, in a discussion with Ruth Iskin on lesbian art in the
cultural feminist journal Chrysalis, argued:
We can describe a relationship of love among women which is lesbian

regardless of whether or not their sexual practice is with women.
(Raven and Iskin 1977:26)
This was always a controversial move. Older lesbians or women who did not
come out as lesbian through the women's movement were often, as Sidney
Abbott and Barbara Love put it, 'both surprised by, and leery of, women with
little or no sexual experience with other women who call themselves Lesbians';
they felt that such women lacked 'a gay consciousness' or 'any recognition of
society's hostility towards homosexuals' (1972:153). Other feminists argued
that it was not enough just to identify and live with other women, sex was
important too. The Gay Revolutionary Party Women's Caucus in 1971 argued
against 'self-identification and affirmation [as} solely a head-trip', for
a woman can never comprehend herself in sensual isolation. It is only

through sensual communication and association within her sexual peer
group that she can hope to do this. The process of physical and psychic
self-affirmation requires full relation with those like oneself, namely
women.
(1972:179)
In the films discussed below lesbianism does entail sexuality, but within the
wider sense of woman identification, as is made explicit in Labyris Rising, where
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LESBIAN/WOMAN
one woman has 'Woman Identified Woman' sewn on her jeans and another reads
the radical feminist magazine Off Our Backs.
To identify with each other and to build a new sense of self already imply
the need for a women's culture, that is, both a space separate from men where
association between women can develop freely and also a wholly different
way of thinking and feeling. Radical lesbianism emphasised the importance
of 'creating a space for women-loving-women separate from the homophobic
and misogynistic culture of the patriarchy' (Arnup 1983:53), which in practical
terms meant setting up women's publications, cafes, bookshops, record com-
panies, festivals, contact networks and so on, all well established by 1977
(Zimmerman 1985:257). It was in such spaces that lesbian film-makers could
show their work (Wolf 1979:78). In this cultural space, women themselves
could determine women's consciousness. Radicalesbians saw the ways women
in a male-dominated society habitually think and feel as male-derived, male-
serving modes of thought and feeling which have to be rejected: 'irrespective
of where our love and sexual energies flow, if we are male-identified in our heads,
we cannot realize our autonomy as human beings' (1972:175). Such a process
of altering consciousness is achieved through relating to women, for '[o}nly
women can give each other a new sense of self' (ibid.: 176).
The need for a change of consciousness, for a new sense of self, seems to
imply something entirely new in the way of cultural forms. Yet from about
1974 'cultural feminism', as it was first (critically) termed by the Redstockings
in 1975 (Echols 1984:67) tended to explore traditional aspects of femininity.
Just as Radicalesbians took possession of the notion of lesbianism as the rejection
of men, so cultural feminism looked to what patriarchal societies had labelled
'feminine' and saw there alternatives (or a space for the creation of alternatives)
to the destructive values that patriarchal society promotes. Thus although
cultural feminism came out of radical feminism, it also marks, according to
Gayle Kimball, a distinct break from it: radical feminists 'advocated entirely
eradicating gender-linked roles of men and women' and hence were uneasy with
the promulgation of a women's culture, which is by definition based on notions
of the specificity and distinctness of gendered identities (1981:3).
The idea of a gender specific culture suggests, though does not necessarily
entail, a notion of inherent differences between women and men. In principle
Kimball and others leave open (or 'demonstrate a cavalier disinterest in' (Echols
1984:51)) the question of whether the different ways women and men think and
feel are socially or biologically determined, but they are often drawn to nature-
based arguments about women's consciousness and culture. Kimball suggests
that women may have developed the right hemisphere of the brain (associated
with the 'relational, artistic, integrative, intuitive and imaginative') while men
have developed the left hemisphere ('analytical, linear, intellectual, and logical')
(ibid.:4 4 ); and even if this is not so women 'project their own way of relating to
nature because they feel that they are more closely allied to it' (ibid.:5). Similarly
Estella Lauter argues that a woman's
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actual or potential experience of menstruation, penetration, pregnancy,

birth, lactation, and menopause may leave her more open to a 'story'
of human relationship with nature which is non-hierarchical and less
compartmentalized than the one to which we have become accustomed.
(1984:170)
Such formulations are careful not to be biologically determinist but they do

embrace modes of feeling and expression that arise out of the specificities of
women's situation in the world. Other feminists have argued that these modes
do not arise but are 'imposed on women through oppressive social conditions
or prejudice' and therefore 'should not be made part of our definition of women's
art and thus be further perpetuated' (Ecker 1985:16). Yet this is just what
cultural feminism set out to do, arguing that such work wrests the definition
of femininity out of the hands of society (men), rediscovers female traditions
long hidden or denigrated by history, by his story, and/or invents new forms in
this traditional space of the feminine.
Kimball maps out in the introduction to her book (to which Barbara Hammer
contributes the section on film) some of the features of women's art that flow from
these ideas of women's culture. In the next section I use her breakdown as points
of departure for describing the recurrent characteristic imagery, or iconography,
of lesbian cultural feminist cinema. Ecker argues such cataloguing in fact
excludes much of the art produced by women (ibid.: 17), which is why I have
used throughout 'cultural feminist art' (rather than 'women's art' favoured by
cultural feminists themselves) in order to locate the work within this specific
context of its production. The section ends with an account of the film Getting
Ready, in many ways a summation of both the principles and iconography of this
cinema, before turning to a discussion of lesbian cultural feminist film form.
Iconography
Kimball lists first the importance of images of power, of female power counter-
vailing that of men, which leads to the rediscovery and use of such past icons
of female power as goddesses (cf. Orenstein 1994), figures in Biblical and Greek
mythology, 'evil' women now seen as powerful ('Eve, witches, and Lilith'
(Kimball: 1981:11)) and famous historical women. Examples in lesbian cultural
feminist films include a witch in Psychosynthesis Hammer 1975, Amazons in
Superdyke Hammer 1975 and (in the shape of a double-headed axe pendant)
Labyris Rising, and a reference to Artemis/Diana in Luna Tune Carol Clement
1977. Like Scorpio Rising, Labyris Rising also invokes figures from the mass media
who can be appropriated for lesbian consciousness, notably Janis Joplin and
women blues singers. Kimball also suggests that simply by choosing themselves
as subject women have explored 'their own identity and strength' (ibid.: 12)
and have felt a power in relations between women, as friends, siblings or mothers
and daughters. Several lesbian films have a clear autobiographical element — I
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LESBIAN/WOMAN
Was/I Am Hammer 1973, Cumulus Nimbus Virginia Giritlian 1973 (about

a young woman wondering if she is lesbian), Women I Love Hammer 1976
and Lebisia Jere van Syoc 1979. Moon Goddess Barbara Hammer and Gloria
Churchman 1976 brings the iconographic and autobiographical together with
its final image of women merging into one another in a mythically suggestive
landscape, the merging suggesting 'finding the mother within one's self, a step
beyond the external mother search' (Hammer 1982:62).
Secondly, women have explored alternatives to the nuclear family. This
aspect of women's culture is implicit in lesbian underground films but more
fully explored in documentary work coming out of the women's movement
and discussed in chapter six. Thirdly, cultural feminist art may be grounded in
women's experiences, taking, exploring and celebrating experiences specific to
women, whether these be bodily ('menstruation, childbirth, and sexuality'
(Kimball 1981:17)), to do with women's traditional roles (imagery of food,
craft, clothing, jewellery) or grounded in 'the daily experiences of women'
as recorded in 'journals, diaries, letters and oral statements' (ibid.: 18). Each of
these is important in lesbian underground films. Sexuality is explored directly
and explicitly in Cumulus Nimbus, Dyketactics Hammer 1974, ('the first lesbian
lovemaking film I am told to be made by a lesbian' (Hammer 1982:60)),
Dura Mater Lainard E. Bush c. 1970, Exotica Numero Una Winona Holloway and
Marcia Still c. 1970, Multiple Orgasm Hammer 1976, On a Cold Afternoon Barbara
Jabaily c. 1970, Wheel Dream Jabaily c. 1970. (Sexuality is by contrast for the
most part absent from non-avant-garde feminist films (Rosenberg 1983:72).)
Menstruation is the subject of Menses Hammer 1974. The eroticism in Dura
Mater is mixed with scenes of daily life and in Wheel Dream flows out of a
woman's involvement with making pots, often considered a traditional female
craft. Women I Love includes all these elements: sexuality (lesbianism and mastur-
bation), menstruation, food, crafts and such everyday activities as washing up
and gardening.
Everyday life also forms the basis for Cool Hands Warm Heart Sue Friedrich
1979 though here rather more ambivalently explored than in cultural feminist
celebrations. Habitual women's tasks are rendered violent, most notably in the
opening sequence in which a woman shaves her legs and armpits on a podium
set up in a busy street - close-ups suggest the razor's destructive potential, while
the setting wrenches an intimate, private act, one that is both banal yet taboo
to mention, into a public arena. This sense of violence in women's lives is
counterposed to the interactions of a black and a white woman, including one
giving the other a rose which she tucks into her jeans, suggesting other dimen-
sions possible in life among women. An even stronger sense of women bonding
over against male exploitation is suggested in Chinamoon Barbara Linkevitch
1975, in which four prostitutes murder their clients in a pagan choral ritual.
(This suggests the possibility of a different tradition, that of lesbian separatism,
which only really began to emerge in film in the eighties, most notably with De
Stilte rond Christine M (Netherlands 1982 Marleen Gorris) (Murphy 1986).)
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Figure 5.1 Vaginal iconography: Suzanne Santoro from Towards New Expression (1974)
Kimball's fourth characteristic, women's bodies, is in some ways the most

controversial (see also Frueh 1994). Though she states that it is 'the woman's
body' that is at 'the core of the female experience' (1981:18), most of her discus-
sion emphasises the vagina, as both sexual and generative. What is at stake is
not just reclaiming women's genitals for women, but freeing them of the actual
dislike, even disgust, at them that many feminists argue is what men really feel
about female genitals. Lisa Tickner (1987) begins a discussion of such 'vaginal
iconology' with a quotation from Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch (1971)
evoking the general distaste which little girls are taught to take in their genitals,
while Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock point out that for all its obsessive
interest in the female nude, the Western art tradition never actually represents
female genitalia, because they are the sign of women's difference from men and
thus provoke 'men's fear of sexual difference' (1981:126). In contrast, vaginal
imagery in cultural feminist work both looks head-on at female genitals and
sees them as beautiful. Multiple Orgasm Hammer 1976 starts with an extreme
close-up of a vagina, with a finger playing the clitoris; the use of imagery and
colouring (see below) insists on the beauty of this startlingly direct image.
Women I Love uses a variety of vegetables that open out (cabbages, artichokes,
cauliflowers and so on) as vaginal images; the first is a red cabbage, starting
from an extreme close-up, when one cannot identify that it is a vegetable but
only has before one an image of red, veined lips creating a half-diamond, half-
circle shape surrounded by membranous folds. In its abstraction, its vivid colour
and elliptic patterning, this is the cinematic equivalent of the vaginal imagery
(figure 5.1) in the work of contemporaneous artists such as Judy Chicago,
Miriam Schapiro and Hannah Wilke and traceable in the work of perhaps the
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LESBIAN/WOMAN
most widely revered US woman artist, Georgia O'Keefe. The fact that it can be
traced in work by women who were not declaredly woman-identified, much less
cultural feminist, gives credence to those, like Lauter (1984), Chicago and
Schapiro (1973) or Sandra Roos (1981), who would argue that this is intrinsic
women's art, rather than only a specific political-aesthetic project.
Lesbian use of such imagery insisted on its sexual - rather than its procreative
- significance, and such imagery is even more significant for lesbian sexuality
than for hetero. If it is true that female genitalia are figures of disgust within
male consciousness, then for women to treat them as figures of beauty and a fit
subject for celebration is not only to stop thinking in male-identified ways but
also places delight in female genitalia within an all-female circuit of pleasure.
This is women looking with pleasure at other women's sexuality. Multiple Orgasm
shows solo masturbation not sex between women, yet it is a (cultural feminist)
lesbian film, not just because Hammer is known as a lesbian but because this
is a sexual image offered by a woman to women.
Kimball's final characteristic is the controlling role of the right hemisphere
of the brain in cultural feminist art, emphasising intuition and emotion, the
unconscious, receptivity to nature and openness to mysticism and spirituality.
Accordingly cultural feminist art draws upon the female unconscious (defined
in Jungian rather than Freudian terms), nature (assumed to be directly know-
able, without the interference of cultural perception) and forms of women's
spirituality. This is seen as in part getting back in touch with ancient ways of
being a woman: women's closeness to nature in part gives rise to their spirituality.
Kimball quotes the anthropologist Elizabeth Gould Davis:
Throughout the ancient world the tradition prevailed that women

held the secrets of nature and were the only channel through which
flowed the wisdom and knowledge of the ages. [Hence the] priority of
female oracles, prophets, priests, sybils, pythonesses, maenads, Eringes,
shamanesses, and so on.
(Davis 1972:32; Kimball 1981:5)
Because unconscious, natural and ancient, these sources of imagery are, in

cultural feminist theory, beyond the reach of male definition.
Diane Nelson, a Jungian psychotherapist, has analysed the use of images
of the 'Archetypal Feminine' in the works of six women film-makers. This has
two aspects: the Elemental, with both 'life-promoting and death-devouring'
qualities; and the Transformative (1978:495). An example of the first, life-
promoting aspect is Near the Big Chakra Anne Severson 1972, consisting of'a
silent and stately color presentation of the vulvas of thirty-six women', the title
referring to the Hindu 'mulaharachakra', 'the primary energy center at the base
of the spine where the life force serpent Kundalini lies coiled' (ibid.:496).
Nelson relates the film's imagery to both the 'primordial memory . . . [of) the
tunnel, the cave, the spiral, the call of the womb-sea, the realm of down and in'
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and to the ancient worship of the moon goddess, not seen up in the sky, but from
the same position as the camera in the film, legs spread open with the sexual
aperture the focal point of adoration' (ibid.). Although a more erotic film,
Multiple Orgasm involves similar feelings: the cave imagery in the middle of the
film very much suggests 'the realm of down and in', and the camera never wavers
from keeping 'the sexual aperture' its 'focal point'. What makes it different is
its emphasis on clitoral imagery (described below). The clitoral orgasm had
been 'rediscovered' by the women's movement, largely through the enormously
influential article by Anne Koedt (1973) 'The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm',
first presented at the US national women's liberation conference in 1968 and
published in 1970. It needed 'rediscovery' (literally, for astonishing numbers
of both women and men) because of the persistent attempt in official discourse
in midcentury to locate true female sexual experience in the vagina. The signifi-
cance for feminists of its rediscovery was the assertion of an autonomous female
sexuality, not inextricably tied to either men or procreation. In practice, it has
been lesbian cultural feminist cinema that has insisted on the clitoral as much
as (though by no means to the exclusion of) the vaginal dimension of female
genital imagery.
An example of the second, death-devouring Elemental imagery discussed by
Nelson is Silverpoint, the only one of the films she discusses to have any obvious
lesbian content. This has a narrative element ('[a} young woman dancer loves
another woman and loses her to a third' (Weiss 1981a:22)) but the treatment
uses symbolism (a razor blade, the sound of sirens) and 'a rather chaotic,
tumbling, agonizing style of mood-collage' to convey 'the ambivalent Shadow
side of relational life' (Nelson 1978:501). Desire is symbolised in 'night sky
imagery . . . glittery star-and-crescent-bedecked veils', portraying 'moon lure
romanticism' (ibid.). Nelson claims that there is nothing specifically lesbian
about the death devouring imagery in Silverpoint, but moon imagery does figure
as part of the construction of lesbian desire in some cultural feminist work.
Luna Tune illustrates this as well as Nelson's other category, Transformative
imagery.
Luna Tune (figure 5.2), an animation of shapes formed out of sand, consists
of transformations. A white shape becomes a woman becomes a moon becomes
a woman; she becomes two women, with heart shapes at their crotches; there
are more transformations, a bird becomes a woman, her vagina becomes a bird
becomes spirals become flames; a woman shoots an arrow at the moon; a line of
women holding hands become spirals; a heart-shaped vagina becomes a bird and
flies into the moon. In these rapid transformations — the film is only two minutes
long - women are identified in archetypes: the moon (privileged in cultural
feminism because it is 'inexorably related to women's menstrual cycles and
childbirth on earth' (Nelson 1978:495; cf. Shuttle and Redgrove 1978)), the
spiral ('the down and in') and, in the image of a woman shooting at the moon,
the goddess Artemis/Diana, who was both a huntress and identified with the
moon. This is given a lesbian inflection by the image of two women together,
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LESBIAN/WOMAN
Figure 5.2 A frozen moment from the ever shifting sand animation of Luna Tune.
(Women Make Movies)
their emotional and sexual bond suggested by their heart-shaped vaginas; and
this lesbianism is part of woman identification not only because of the archetypes
but because they are linked to a line of women holding hands. The use of bird
and flame imagery perhaps suggests the untrappable essence of womanhood,
something also suggested by the use of dry sand as the medium of figuration
and the pace and fluidity of the film as a whole.
Even where archetypes are not directly used in these films, nature in general
is. Women bare breasted in nature is a common image, as in the sequence
at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival in Labyris Rising and throughout
Hammer's work. As Jacqueline Zita puts it:
Just as the spiritual side of lesbianism is one mode of counter-currency

present in the new lesbian cultural movement, so the material side
seeks its exuberance and legitimation in the world of nature. It is here
that Barbara is most at home. Images of nature proliferate in her work,
most with the effect of fitting the lesbian body into the libidinal flow
of life, in its coming and going.
(1981:29)
The insistent association of lesbianism with nature goes against the dominant
tendency in Western thought to consider homosexuality the epitome of the
unnatural. Yet, as Zita points out, there are problems here. For one thing
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the spiritualisation and naturalisation of lesbianism may obscure the reality

of lesbian oppression and of the class, race and cultural differences between
lesbians. Images of oppression are left off screen and though a black woman
figures briefly in Superdyke and Native American imagery is used in connection
with one of the Women I Love, the over-riding impression of these films is pretty
white. Moreover, there is a danger, especially in much cultural feminism's
attachment to procreative imagery, in falling back into a patriarchal and hetero-
sexual division of the world, binding women to their 'natural' function of
reproducing for men.
Lesbian work does sometimes go beyond this. Hammer's genital imagery
emphasises the clitoris (Multiple Orgasm) and sexual pleasuring (Dyketactics,
Women I Love) as much as the labia. The sororal commune, which some believe
characterised ancient human societies and in which 'female collectivity, not
matriarchy per se' shaped culture and religion (Nadeau 1983:38; cf. Shinell
1982), may be evoked as in the images of collective female rites and bonding,
without reference to procreative femininity, in Superdyke and Luna Tune. Such
female togetherness is celebrated in Labyris Rising in the choice of Ma Rainey
singing
Went out last night with a crowd of my friends,

They're most of 'em women 'cause I don't like no men.
(Rainey, one of the greatest of all blues singers, was lesbian, a fact that was
beginning to be widely known in the 1970s; her repertoire included this 'Prove
It on Me Blues' as well as 'Bull Dyker's Dream' (Katz 1989).)
Another possibility is presented in Judy Grahn's book Another Mother
Tongue, where she suggests that the 'special knowledge' of the oracles, priests
etal. derived from their special place, because lesbian/gay, outside conventional
society and from their transgression of the gender boundaries that keep con-
ventional thought in place.
One of the major homosexual/shamanic functions in any society is to

cross over between [the} two essentially different worlds [of female and
male sub-cultures} and reveal them to each other. . . . Access to worlds
inaccessible to most people has always been a Gay cultural function;
we have always had underworlds of every description.
(1984:47-8)
Grahn's use of the word 'underworld', with its criminal connotations, is no

accident: it suggests the degree to which lesbians and gay men are outlaws,
which also means, in this perspective, untouched by the rigidities of conven-
tional society.5 This observation comes at the end of Grahn's discussion of the
traditional dyke image, and throughout the book Grahn is interested in cross-
over, androgynous images of lesbians and gay men. Here then is an argument
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LESBIAN/WOMAN
for lesbian/gay universal archetypes, mining a very different tradition from the
feminine procreativity archetypes discussed by Nelson, Lauter and others. Yet
though there are dykes (with dildos and motor-bikes yet) in Superdyke and plaid
shirts and a montage of boots in Labyris Rising, lesbian cultural feminist films
do not generally use such imagery. They are woman, not androgyny, identified.
Getting Ready
The qualities discussed so far are really to do with content - they can be present
in a film that is formally conventional. This is the case with Getting Ready Janet
Meyers 1977, a film which in some ways sums up what has been said so far. It
concerns two young school friends, Val and Diana, who gradually realise their
love for one another. This involves an explicit rejection of the world of men, an
awareness of an alternative, female culture and some sense of the continuousness
of lesbianism with other relationships with women.
The film establishes the idea of male control of the female body, and hence
of women, from the start. A series of photographs of women from different
cultures (suggesting the universality of the situation of women) is accompanied
by sounds of appreciative male noises - women are seen through the eyes of men,
and the film begins by reproducing that, all the better later to wrest us and the
central characters away from it. There are images of women being looked at by
men and then a shot, freeze-framed, of a woman's shadow on the pavement; it
unfreezes, starts to move and there is a cut to the young woman whose shadow
it is. She is one of the main characters of the film, Diana; the montage intro-
duction suggests the typicality of her situation (under the gaze of men), and her
introduction via her shadow suggests the issue of identity.
From this point on, the system whereby men seek to control women through
their bodies is established within the narrative of the film. Diana passes a school
friend, Bobbie, on the street and they smile at each other, but a male voice off
screen calls out 'Hey, Bobbie, over here' and Bobbie at once goes off in the direc-
tion of the voice — the command of the invisible male, and of the heterosexual
imperative, is more powerful than the greeting of the two women visibly present
to one another. In the next shot, Bobbie is led past Diana by the man who has
claimed her, his hand on her neck. Male control is not only established through
heterosexuality: it is Diana's father who comments intrusively on the fact that
she is growing up ('You're really getting to need that bra') and has started her
period; it is a male teacher who lectures the class of girls on menstruation. The
alienating quality of male culture is further suggested, first by the bike-boy
film that Diana sits through, petted by Chuck on a date that her parents have
more or less forced her into, and then later by a bearded layabout who pesters
her and Val.
Gradually though a woman-identified way of being asserts itself. The idea
that relationships with other women are less important than those with men
is presented, ruefully acknowledged by Diana in the decline of her friendship
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with Bobbie since the latter has got a boyfriend, asserted as a principle by
Diana's mother after Diana has tried to be physically affectionate with her much
to her dislike. Yet that idea is rejected by the film. The possibility of a female
sense of the female body is suggested in sequences of Diana alone. In one,
immediately following her father's 'bra' remark, she looks at and caresses herself
in her bedroom mirror, suggesting her appropriation of her body for herself.
At several other points she caresses and turns over in her hands a cowrie shell,
a vaginal icon which is also part of the way that a woman-identified lesbianism
is established between Diana and Val.
In the last narrative sequence in the film, Diana and Val come out to each
other as friends. They do not use the word lesbian' but by saying that they are
'admitting' to the desire to be 'friends' they clearly indicate something beyond
casual, non-erotic friendship. The sequence mobilises many of the ideas and
symbols of cultural feminism. Womanhood is stressed. Val asks Diana what
she wants to be when she gets older:
Diana: A woman.
Val: What do you mean - a good woman?
Diana: No - just a woman.
Diana reads an Emily Dickinson poem out loud, invoking a famous, creative
woman from the past, whose love for women had only recently been identified
by feminists (in for instance Myron and Bunch 1974). The sequence opens with
Diana wailing into the wind, practising what she had earlier said she would like
to be, a professional mourner, a traditional women's occupation.
Womanhood, Dickinson, wailing all place Diana and Val within specifically
female traditions; the setting gives this a further mythic inflection. They are
sitting by the sea, long a symbol of womanhood. Diana buries Val up to her neck
in the sand and dances hollering around her, doing what she has earlier said older
women did with menstruating girls in Australian Aboriginal culture as a
celebration and rite of passage to womanhood. Thus menstruation is taken back
from the earlier attempts by men to define and announce it, through an ancient
women's rite which connects what these particular young women are doing to
deep rooted women's traditions that transcend cultures. However, the fact that
Diana refers to the source of the rite as 'Indians in Australia', while narratively
excusable as adolescent ignorance, may also alert one to this as a Western
construction and appropriation — cultural feminism's use of images and symbols
from colonised cultures as markers of an authentic otherness betrays its
embeddedness in white Western culture (cf. Smith and Smith 1981).
Finally Diana shows Val the cowrie shell, a further sea symbol but also, as
Diana tells Val, a powerful object, for out of it came the goddess Aphrodite
and it is the symbol of the Great Mother. Earlier the shell's vaginal symbolism
was suggested. Now in the narrative, the women handle it as they declare their
friendship. The shell thus unites the womanly, spiritual, sexual and loving
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LESBIAN/WOMAN
imagery together. It only remains for the film to show another set of images of
women of all ages, from all periods (though only white) but now without the
sounds of male response.
Form
Getting Ready expresses many of the ideas of cultural feminism, making explicit
their connection to a critique of patriarchal society, a critique often only implicit
in other films. It is, however, formally conventional. Most lesbian cultural femi-
nist films break with mainstream (felt as male) ways of looking and seeing as
well, in particular in terms of physicality and of merging and interweaving.
The sense of physicality means both an emphasis on the sensuous properties
of the art work itself and the use of forms and structures felt to be analogous
with women's bodily experience. All art uses the physical properties of the
media employed, but often either to represent the physical properties of what
is being depicted or, in much modernist work, to draw attention to the medium
qua medium. Cultural feminist art on the other hand emphasises physical
properties in order to express the subjective experience of the physical world:
not the inherent properties of objects or art media, but how they both hit the
senses and are extensions of the artist's body. Composition is not concerned with
creating the illusion of an objective three-dimensional space, hierarchically
organised so that everything is in its allotted place, but is rather spread across
the surface, using the immediate and subjective qualities of texture and colour,
rather than shape and line, as the main concerns (Brinckmann 1984a:4).
There are precedents for this in some of the US art discussed in the previous
chapter: the rolling language of the Beats, the squirts and washes of abstract
expressionism, the use of subjective camera in some underground films, but
these are based on constructions of male physical experience (driving, ejacu-
lating, probing and so on), whereas cultural feminist work is based on the
female. Joan Snyder speaks of the 'softness' of women's work (in Lippard
1976:86), while Lucy Lippard notes 'a new fondness for the pinks and pastels
and ephemeral cloud colors that used to be tabu unless a woman wanted to be
accused of making "feminine" art' (ibid.:49). This very much characterises the
cloud imagery in Cumulus Nimbus or Double Strength Hammer 1978, with its soft
sepia sequences alternating with gently coloured ones.
Much of Hammer's work is based on the sense of touch, the sense that
most directly links the body with the world and one especially valued in
women's cultures (its role in mothering or in such woman-associated activities
as massage, kneading dough or arranging flowers; cf. the importance of touch
in the work of lesbian artist Harmony Hammond (Hammond 1981)). This
may simply involve insistently showing touching, as in the carefully named
Dyketactics (figure 5.3), where every shot (110 in four minutes) involves the
sense of touch: feet walking through grass, hands holding hands and objects,
kissing, caressing, cunnilingus; even the title credit is shown just after being
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Figure 5.3 One of the 110 shots of touch in Dyketactics. (Barbara Hammer)
painted on a wall, another tactile act. Equally a film can suggest that the act of
filming is itself tactile, the camera as an extension of the body, as in Women I
Love where we often see the film-maker herself (her shadow, her reflection, part
of her body) as she films, physically involved in the enjoyment of filming and
celebrating the women she loves.
What are taken to be the shape and structure of female bodies and bodily
experience may also form the basis for aesthetic properties. Vaginal imagery may
extend beyond specific symbols to a general interest in compositions charac-
terised by 'circular forms, central focus, inner space' (ibid.:49); menstruation
suggests a use of cyclical structures while female orgasm suggests an open ended
series, 'excitement and ebbing, excitement and ebbing — seemingly without
beginning or end' (Jay 1978:56) in contrast to the male organisation around a
single climax. Both in composition (spatial structure) and sequential organi-
sation (temporal structure), 'instead of a division into major and minor elements
(with the major at the centre), or a structure which gradually leads to a high
point then falls away, there are more centres, more or less equal, next to one
another' (Brinckmann 1984a:4; cf. DuPlessis 1985:278). Compositionally, this
does not seem to be especially true of lesbian underground films (less uterus,
more clitoris oriented?), but sequentially many are indeed based on multiple
and equal centres: Women I Love is a series of equally arresting film portraits; Luna
Tune has no climax, merely a sense of emerging out of a blob and into a moon.
Even Double Strength and Silverpoint, which have elements of narrative, are not
organised around narrative high spots. The former parallels different stages in
a relationship, showing its demise alternatively (one segment after another) or
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LESBIAN/WOMAN
simultaneously (sound and image out of synch) with its good times, not showing
one leading to' the other. Silverpoint uses its intricate editing to show 'not
the structured pain of the accident, the suicide or the funeral, but the diffuse,
bleeding-out-of-boundaries pain that is characteristic of the meandering ways
of the feeling function' (Nelson 1978:501).
The qualities discussed in the last paragraph point towards the other general
way of characterising this work formally, in terms of merging and interweaving,
the use of layers, or strata, or veils, an indefinable looseness or flexibility of
handling' and 'striation' (Lippard 1976:49, 81). Where the emphasis on physi-
cality is based on a perception of the inherent nature of the female body, merging
and interweaving have been seen (including by Brinckmann and DuPlessis)
to relate to women's socialisation. Here Nancy Chodorow's work has been
especially important. Chodorow stresses the fact that both boys and girls in
this society form their first bond with a woman, the mother figure, and this
is fundamental in establishing gender identity. Boys learn their anatomical
difference from the mother and hence notions of autonomy, separation and
uniqueness are central to male identity, whereas girls know their anatomical
identity with the mother, and so notions of connection, relatedness, fusion and
blurring characterise female identity. Many writers see in cultural feminist art
forms analogous to this female identity formation. Lauter speaks of "permeable
boundaries" between the female self and other phenomena' (1984:215) and
concludes her survey of women's literary and visual art: 'The images and forms
presented in this body of work depend upon a different conception of appro-
priate boundaries between things — a conception that does not erase the
boundaries altogether but allows for easements' (ibid.:216).
Some also see in this a different way of thinking, one which rejects rigid
dualisms and categorisation. DuPlessis writes of 'both/and vision . . . the end
of the either-or, dichotomized universe. . . . [a vision} born of shifts, contraries,
negations, contradictions' (1985:276). Kimball similarly suggests that what
characterises women's art is 'wholeness', a refusal of'the patriarchal view that
splits conscious/unconscious, humans/nature, spirit/body, friend/stranger'
(1981:21), to which one might add 'friend/lover, lesbian/straight'. Kimball
sees this expressed even in purely abstract qualities, the revaluation of quilting,
for instance, an art that makes fragments into wholes.
In film, these qualities may be present in what is selected to be filmed: the
medium of dry sand in Luna Tune, which is formed into clearly recognisable
figures but without sharp edges; the ease with which, in the same film, one
figure becomes another; the selection of objects and fabrics in Hammer's films.
It can be achieved through lighting, as in the complex play of soft shadows
over women's bodies in the central sequence in a tent in Superdyke\ or the use of
a camera that refuses to keep its distance, hand held and in extreme close-up,
involved in and connected to what is being filmed; or in compositions that do
not wholly frame, and thereby box in, what they show. It is most evident in rapid
editing, interlacing images so fast that they fuse in the mind's eye; in dissolves
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between shots, one bleeding into the other rather than crisply cutting; above
all in superimpositions, often multiple, layer upon layer of merging imagery.
Merging and blurring may characterise all cultural feminist art, but it has
a special significance for lesbian work. Though certainly not the intent of her
work (which some would consider homophobic), Chodorow's arguments are very
close to those of lesbian theorists as different as Charlotte Wolff (1971:52—60)
and Adrienne Rich (1980:638-9), who see the mother-daughter bond as funda-
mental to lesbianism and besides as women's primary emotional and sensual
experience. Lesbian feeling becomes what is most natural or characteristic of
women and, conversely, what is most fundamental to female experience (physical
and emotional connectedness) comes to characterise lesbian feeling and sexuality.
Barbara Hammer
Barbara Hammer has produced the largest body of lesbian cultural feminist
work. With at least fifty films since 1973, the quantity of her work is several
times that of all the other films discussed in this chapter put together. There
have been retrospectives of her work at the Berlin Film Festival, the Pompidou
Centre in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and elsewhere, and
she has won prizes and awards at several festivals. All this from someone who
did not make a film until she was gone thirty.
Thematically there are four major strands in her work: autobiography,
sexuality, lesbian collectivity and spirituality/nature. Something of each is
present in most of the films, but one generally predominates. Since about 1980
the content of her films has been much less 'obviously' lesbian (Hammer 1993),
but these four elements have not ceased to characterise them. Here I trace these
strands in turn through her work in the seventies, before looking in detail at
four characteristic examples: Superdyke, Multiple Orgasm, Women I Love and Double
Strength.
Her earliest films are among her most autobiographical. Her first, I Was/I Am
1973, together with X 1974 and Psychosynthesis 1975, form a trilogy, with, as
Zita points out (1981:27), a psychodrama element close to that in Deren, Anger
et al. Through the trilogy there is a shift from anger and bitterness to a feeling
of serenity. I Was/I Am draws together elements of women's oppression experi-
enced directly in the film-maker's life (the only woman in a film class, being
refused treatment for a bullet wound because as a woman she might complain
if it left a scar) with pain at the death of her mother. X has images of carcasses,
disembowlment and meat being sliced up, expressing the pain at the end of a
relationship. In one sequence, however, the film-maker is shown masturbating
behind a large window, observed by mothers and children passing by, a defiant
claiming of her own sexuality. The shift is underway. Psychosynthesis represents
the inner self in four figures: a child, a witch, an athlete and a film-maker. The
aggressive tone suggests that these are 'the splinters of a fragmented psyche
caught in a chaotic phase of life'; but suddenly at the end, 'we are transported
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into an altogether new tranquility and peace', conveyed through silence and
gentle nature imagery (ibid.).
Even when not self-evident from the films themselves, the viewing context
suggests their autobiographical dimension. Though anyone might see these
films, most viewers will know they come out of a lesbian context, in which
women as subject matter are not held at a distance as biographically other.
Hammer has written about her work and been widely interviewed, and probably
audiences for the special screenings of her work are familiar with some of this.
Besides, most of the screenings are special, frequently put on by lesbian/gay
or women's groups, or if in cinemas, seldom just a routine part of a cinema's
repertory, but accompanied by extracts from Hammer's writings and interviews
or by her in person.
The representation of the next strand, sexuality, is also strongly autobio-
graphical. With Women I Love, this is evident from the film itself: the title
announces the film-maker's feelings for the women we see, and in various ways
the film shows the presence of the film-maker in the sexual scenes on screen.
With others, Dyketactics or Multiple Orgasm, this would once again be inferred
from the viewing context. Women I Love and Multiple Orgasm show individuals,
the film-maker herself and/or those she loves; Dyketactics also shows women
together, public group experience as an extension of private love experience, the
one indissoluble from the other.
With the films that emphasise lesbian/women's collectivity, the viewing
context acts like a reflection, the (usual) audience's own lesbian/women's collec-
tivity one with that on the screen. Some of the earlier films {Sisters! 1974, A Gay
Day 1974 and Superdyke) show liberationist collectivity, lesbians defiant and
having fun together in public as a group; Menses 1974 explores menstruation as
an experience at once common and unique to women; other films are of women's
collective rituals (Women's Rites 1974, The Great Goddess 1977, Sappho 1978).
Just as sexuality cannot be separated off from collectivity, so, as the last titles
indicate, neither can collectivity be separated off from the final strand in this
work, spirituality. Moon Goddess has two women, lovers, exploring a landscape
for ancient sites; Arequipa 1981 is shot in a convent in Peru, evoking spiritual
collectivity in an exploration of doors, walls, passages and courtyards, 'dissolves
and translucent blue and mauve paints . . . pull[ing} us deeper into its recesses'
(Leduc 1982:35); Stone Circles dwells on these prehistoric formations, which
can be associated with women's religion (Grahn 1985:37-41). With other films
{Eggs 1976, Pools 1981, Pond and Waterfall 1982, PearlDiver 1984), it is aspects
of nature alone that suggest a spiritual dimension.
Hammer's films also have many of the formal features of cultural feminist
film. The 'permeable boundaries' of her work are not confined to the use of
superimposition, the film-maker in the shot and so on; she has sought to move
beyond the limitations of film itself, beyond, that is, film conceived as a thing
made by one person in one place, and then moved about the place to be screened
separately from the film-maker. Though most of her work does inevitably
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remain within this framework, she has found ways of breaking out of it. She has
made films with other people {Moon Goddess with Gloria Churchman, Superdyke
Meets Madame X with Max Almy, Pools with Barbara Klutinis) and in 1982
inaugurated a project, as yet unrealised, called Eros, Women's International Erotic
Art Film, which would be 'a compilation of film shot by women all over the
world depicting what they think/feel is erotic to them' (Leduc 1982:34). If this
would break down the boundaries between women as isolated artists, Hammer's
ongoing Audience breaks down the separation of who is on and who looks at the
screen. It consists of a series of interviews and discussions (so far in San Francisco,
Toronto, Montreal and London) with audiences at screenings of her work; when
shown to another audience, there is the possibility of a sense of connection
between people on the screen and people in the auditorium.
Hammer's most thoroughgoing assault on the limitations of film is Available
Space 1978. The implicit subject-matter of this film is autobiographical, 'the
suffocation of a tight relationship' (Hammer 1982:63). There are shots of
constricted spaces, with the frame itself emphasised as a further constriction.
When the film is shown, it is projected from a revolving table and at the end,
while on film there are images of Hammer cutting through the screen, Hammer
in person stands by the screened image and appears to push it round the room.
The cutting and pushing, the presence of the film-maker both in and with the
film, break the boundaries of film at several levels: who sees (cameraperson)
and is seen (performer) merge; the film-maker, generally absent once the
film is made, is present; revolving the image blurs its rectangular boundaries,
while creating a strong sense of a centred circularity emanating from the
centrally placed projector. Hammer's presence thus both personalises the film,
makes explicit its biographical lesbian content, and simultaneously, through
its form (on screen and in projection), embodies a cultural feminist aesthetic of
centredness and diffusion.
Superdyke
Superdyke shows a group of women romping about San Francisco (wearing
Superdyke T-shirts that were top sellers at the women's bookstore in San
Francisco (Wolf 1979:115)), then together in the country and finally returning
to the city. It connects elements of dyke style and liberationism with sexuality,
spirituality and nature; and it is fun and funny.
The women are part traditional dykes, cropped hair, jeans, some on motor-
bikes, but crossed with lesbian feminist images of powerful women, carrying
shields emblazoned 'Amazon', like Diana shooting with bow and arrow. Aspects
of the dyke image are referred to humorously: two women try to squeeze into
a telephone box labelled 'Closet'; in a department store, women grab various
objects and mime using them as dildos. The Amazon image too is seen as fun:
the shields are obviously cardboard; a woman flexes her muscles like a macho
man; another wears a T-shirt with the Superman logo on it.
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LESBIAN/WOMAN
While they remain in San Francisco, these Amazon dykes zap the place with
instant street theatre. They are enacting coming out, bursting through a crowd
with their shields and dancing together in a public square. At an art exhibition
and a department store, they are outrageous, not only by being so openly lesbian
but by miming a lesbian response to the places. The art exhibition is of erotic
art, including vaginal imagery, and the women stand before the images and
play with their crotches, exaggeratedly miming opening them out to view. In
the store, all manner of objects become potential dildos until one is grabbed and
borne aloft out into the shopping mall.
In the country the women are naked and the imagery is less dykish/
Amazonian, more 'Archetypal Feminine'. Collective imagery merges into and
out of love-making imagery. They dance together in a circle, with braids of
flowers in their hair, before falling to the ground, and the camera swings in
an echo of this movement to 'discover' two women rolling over together on the
ground; in the following sequences, it is night and the women kiss, massage
and caress each other. Daylight again and the women are outside, naked in
nature; then inside, a group of women in a semicircle, holding each other round
the waist, caressing themselves and each other with bones; they scatter sand over
one woman lying on the floor before leaving the tent and, outside, walk along
through grass in a chain, each putting her hand on the shoulders of the one in
front. This section is rich in spiritual significance. Circles and chains are basic
forms of ritual; the sand burying is reminiscent of the ancient women's ritual
alluded to in Getting Ready; bones were part of the equipment of divination and
shamanism, and they may be felt to be the ground of animal being (cf. Lauter
1984:150,160). Throughout this sequence collectivity, sensuality and spiritu-
ality are not separable, and this feeling lingers over the final section of the film,
the return to the city, the women disappearing together into the night.
The fun of the film is not only in the antics of the women, but in the
filming. The sequence in the store is pixillated, a traditional comic device where
editing makes the actions frenetic and jumpy, reminiscent of wrongly projected
silent movies. Music, a piano accompaniment played by Margaret Moores,
often provides comic counterpoint: a biker accompanied by that male action
cliche, the William Tell Overture, rather falteringly played; Tchaikovsky's piano
concerto, a high point of lush Romanticism, accompanying fooling around
at the erotic art exhibition; cod 'Red Indian' music with the beginnings of the
country sequence; 'vamping' underscoring the kissing and massage. This use
of humour, especially the music, might have something of the 'gay sensibility'
about it, simultaneously humorous and serious, ironic and intense, but without
the corrosive, defensive edge of gay male humour. It feels joyous, more fun than
funny, a celebration of the geniality at the heart of collective, erotic and spiritual
experience.
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Multiple Orgasm
The few silent minutes of Multiple Orgasm consist of the continuous super-
imposition of two elements: rock formations and a woman masturbating.
Together they construct a sense of the experience of female orgasm.
The rock formations are both external and internal, cliff faces and caves.
The patterns in both are analogous to female genitals, and there is a sense of
movement between outer and inner genitals, the camera moving over the cliff
face but into the space of the cave. In cliffs and caves, outside and in, the camera
discovers both the whorls and folds of 'central core' vaginal imagery and also
buds and protrusions that suggest a clitoral imagery. The latter are the more
remarkable, partly because rock formations have long been used as a source of
phallic imagery. The camera in Multiple Orgasm scans the skyline and finds not
rearing, thrusting shapes, but knobs and nodules; peaks and boulders nestle into
the tucks and grooves of both cliff face and cave walls; camera angles make even
stalactites look clitoral.
The shots of the woman are first of her vagina, then her face. The film opens
with an extreme close-up of the vagina, fingers parting the labia, then rubbing
the clitoris. After a while, the film cuts to and remains on the woman's face,
sometimes thrown back in ecstasy, sometimes calmer, smiling. The predom-
inant colour of both rock and body shots is reddish/pinkish, though a bright,
blue in the rock shots occasionally serves to set this off, heightening its
body/blood colour qualities. The rock formation element uses many cuts and
a constantly moving, hand-held camera, whereas the vaginal and face shots are
long takes with a static camera, the only movement coming from the subject
herself. Though there are technical reasons for this (Hammer was filming herself
masturbating) it has the effect of anchoring the diffuse rock imagery, the
analogue of experience, in the physical presence of the body.
The film is sequentially, not randomly, structured, but not towards precise
moments of orgasm. The first few minutes superimpose cliff shots over the
vagina; round about the time the face replaces the vagina, the cave shots are
introduced; after a bit, both superimposed elements momentarily freeze on a
frame. Up to this point the camera movement has been quite slow and steady,
though the finger's movement has been fast and the head has been jerked back
quite violently; now the camera movement, still on internal imagery, is much
faster, only slowing, very considerably, when the film returns to external, cliff
imagery. Finally the film ends on another freeze.
The structuring does suggest periods of greater frenzy or calm, but it does
not pinpoint the orgasms as events in the way that Fireworks, for instance,
does (to say nothing of male porn). The treatment of lesbian love-making
in Dyketactics similarly avoids such constructions of orgasm. The women
undress each other, kiss and caress all over, manually and orally pleasure one
another, but all of this is shot from many different angles and with no sense of
coming to a final climax. This contrasts with Constance Beeson's film of lesbian
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love-making, Holding 1971. Beeson is an experimental film-maker and Holding

is one of three films by her depicting lovemaking, the others being Unfolding
1969 (heterosexual) and Stamen 1972 (gay male). Interestingly a similar percep-
tion of sexuality runs through all three. Beeson uses many of the aesthetic
qualities associated with cultural feminism: sea imagery in Unfolding, flowers
in Stamen, woodlands in Holding; soft, blurry composition, much superimpo-
sition and interweaving editing, with things shot from many different angles.
Where they differ from Multiple Orgasm or Dyketactics is in the sense of a gradual
building up to a climax, conveyed partly through music (crescendo, intro-
duction of ever more and varied instruments and sounds) and through faster
cutting and dissolving. The multiplication of sounds and images means that
this is still not the orgasm as isolated, one-off event as in men's films, nor is there
any emphasis of the visible moment of orgasm. Nonetheless there is not the
sense of open ended orgasmic pleasure as in Hammer, and Zita feels that there
is still a feeling of'eroticism reduced to "getting the orgasm'" (1981:28).
Zita also suggests that Holding remains at a distance from what is being
filmed, maintaining 'the voyeuristic alienation between the spectator and
the event' (ibid.). Multiple Orgasm avoids this not only because we are likely
to know that the film-maker is also the woman we are looking at, but also
by at one point including the film-maker as film-maker in the film. Near the
beginning her shadow falls across the cliff face being filmed; superimposed over
the vagina shot, it looks as if she is also filming the vagina, as if the labia are
being parted for her to see. The woman is a sexual image for herself as well as
for her audience.
Women I Love
Women I Love (figures 5.4, 5.5, 5.6) is a series of portraits of women, single or
in couples. It makes the most sustained exploration of both vaginal imagery
and showing the film-maker in the film of any of Hammer's work, while also
in effect presenting an account of a certain kind of seventies lesbian life-style.
Vegetables are used throughout the film as a source of vaginal imagery. The
opening shot (described above) of a red cabbage, is followed in quick succession
by lettuce, broccoli, artichoke and cauliflower, the camera pointing straight
down from overhead, slowly zooming back, one shot dissolving into another -
vaginal imagery and boundary-less technique. Thereafter such shots punctuate
the film, generally separating one portrait from another. Most of the vegetables
are obvious choices: those already mentioned, and used again, all fold out; others
introduced later, oranges, lemons and onions, peel open. A corn cob, an arche-
typally phallic vegetable, is more surprising, yet this too is rendered vaginal:
it is shown still wrapped in leaves, then, through stop-motion animation, is
unwrapped, with the silvery, ribbony strands that cover it laid out around;
because it is shot from overhead, it seems less phallic, less big and jutting, more
jewel-like; and a tiny zoom in and out on it suggests it quivering. The film stock
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Figures 5.4, 5.5 and 5.6 Three of the Women Barbara Hammer Loves
Figure 5.5
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Figure 5.6
used brings out the glowing colours and intricate shapes of the vegetables,
while the animation, zooms and dissolves give the whole film a celebratory elan.
There are other sources of female body imagery in the film. Spiders' webs
towards the end of the film have vaginal (core centred) qualities, in addition
to their long cultural association with women. The title is given against a
shot of water dripping down in front of a sunrise, suggesting perhaps vaginal
wetness and/or the association of women and water. Flowers too are used in the
film, though in a different way and in relation to particular women. One woman
is shot standing close to a lilac bush, then in fir trees, then behind hanging
orchids. In another portrait sequence, the woman is associated with daffodils,
to the point that they seem to characterise her existence. There are shots of
opening a dish washer to find daffodils inside, a broom gently sweeping daffodils
along the floor, a rubbish bin moved to show daffodils lying behind it, daffo-
dils lifted out of the washing-up suds and rinsed under the tap. This domestic
association then gives way to sensuousness: daffodils, shot from several different
angles, lie on the pillow in the bedroom; in the garden, the woman smells
daffodils and caresses them with her lips. In between these sensuous shots there
have been shots of daffodils in a back pocket, in a plastic holder, held in the hand.
At several points, particularly the most intimate, the film-maker is visible as
she makes the film. One woman's body is explored by the camera in extreme
close-up; the camera is hand held and bounces a bit, reminding us of the presence
of the film-maker; at one point we see her filming her naked reflection in the
mirror, thus drawing her explicitly into the sequence. At another point, we
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again see her naked in a mirror; a clothed woman passes in front of it; the film-
maker turns the zoom handle and as a result the shot zooms in on her, finally
focusing on her vagina. The normal situation of film-making is reversed: here
it is the film-maker who is naked and revealed; and we see the mechanics of
achieving a shot, the zoom consciously, personally directed on to the most taboo
part of the anatomy. Later, with another woman, the naked film-maker filming
is reflected in a window behind which another woman caresses and kisses herself;
the film-maker approaches the window until finally we can no longer see her,
only the other woman. Again we are reminded of the film-maker's involved and
connected presence; both women are equally vulnerable because equally naked;
and at the end the film-maker merges into the image of the other woman.
Such sequences both show the film-maker's connectedness to what is being
filmed and dissolve the strict boundary between who films and who is filmed.
Another sequence achieves this even more directly. It is a quite long sequence
of cunnilingus, shot from the position of the woman being pleasured; at the
end the other woman looks up, laughs and rests her head on the pleasured
woman's thigh, smiling. Here the film-maker, as one being genitally pleasured,
could not be more bodily connected to the image, and her lover's smile at
her/the camera/us also stresses the lover's happy participation in being filmed.
In the other sequences it is Hammer's presence and movement into the scene
that crosses the boundary between filmer and filmee; here the lover's smile to
the filmer is a movement back across that boundary from the other side.
Because of its portrait album quality, Women I Love does also have a dimen-
sion as a record of a lesbian life-style. All the women are white, though the
last might be Native American if the head-dress she wears is not just a cultural
borrowing. The film is not a documentary study and is not concerned with, for
instance, what these women do for a living or what their political views are;
but it does nonetheless construct a not unfamiliar milieu of a rural life-style with
all mod cons, with domesticity, art production and spirituality all inseparable
from this rural base. We see only wooden houses, porches, gardens, countryside,
the sea, no urban imagery; there is washing and washing up, gardening and
cleaning, writing and reading, and filming. In one shot a smiling woman twirls
a blood red tampon from a string, an open and celebratory inclusion of another
facet of womanhood - but the tampon reminds us of modern conveniences.
Spirituality could be read into the vaginal and nature imagery throughout, but
it really comes to the fore in the final sequence, which draws together images
of all the women in the film with imagery of webs, the moon, the sea, the Native
American head-dress, a galaxy.
The final sequence also seems to have strongly sexual rhythms. An extreme
close-up of clitoral manipulation is superimposed first over a woman's face, then
over the sea. The redness of the vagina makes the sea red too. Then following a
series of shots of a spider's web finishing on its centre, there are a series of shots
of the spiritual elements listed in the previous paragraph, each one faded into
and out of, ending on a shot of the masturbating hand, now still; there is then
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a final shot of the moon ending the film. The fade-in, fade-out editing makes
the sequence throb; while the ordering of shots frames the spiritual within the
sexual imagery.
At one level the structure of the film suggests a cultural feminist reading,
whereby the individuality of the women in the different sequences is finally
merged into a mystical-orgasmic sense of womanhood in the final sequence.
Hammer's programme notes make clear that the film was shot over a period of
years, as the varying quality of the film stock betrays, and this suggests another
dimension. The film explores not only lesbian sexuality but also alternative
forms of lesbian relationships, based not on the model of the monogamous,
once-and-for-all couple but on successive couple relationships (or 'serial
monogamy') and a desire to embrace them all in the memory, not seeing the
latest as the one which denigrates the value of all that went before. Andrea Weiss
sees this as a weakness of the film, since the representation of the relationships
is based on romantic conceptions of love (long a target of feminist criticism
before its 'revaluation' by some in the eighties). As she says, there is (daffodils
apart) rather little differentiation between the women and Weiss sees this
as idealising each woman, effectively casting her into a certain mould of the
desirable woman. She suggests that the succession of women implies that each
relationship is a failure, and that the structure is both a refusal to recognise
this, always passing on to the next one, preserving the idealisation intact, and
also a mere repetition of the same relationship (idealisation and failure) without
'progression' (198lb:30). Yet, taking the film as it stands, there is no reason to
conclude that the relationships must have been failures, nor would it be wrong
to preserve in an album images only of the good times. Weiss's argument is part
of a wider concern, that Hammer's imagery remains caught within a patriarchal
repertoire of romantic images of women, which no more tells the truth about
women and lesbianism than do the more overt denigrations of both.6 These are
arguments familiar from the general critique of cultural feminism indicated
above, and there is no easy intellectual reconciliation between those that see
that world view as a mere inflection of patriarchal ideas and those who see it as
a radical alternative to them. Perhaps here the boundaries are impermeable.
Double Strength
Double Strength is probably Hammer's most critically praised film: 'One of
Barbara's most beautiful films' (Zita 1981:28), 'the most exhilarating of the
. . . films' (Leduc 1982:35), 'one of Barbara's best films' (Springer 1980:35).
It shows a relationship between two women, Hammer and a trapeze artist, Terry
Sendgraff; it both celebrates the relationship while registering its break-up.
The film alternates sepia and colour sequences, showing the women, mostly
naked, exercising on a trapeze bar, cartwheeling, doing handstands, climbing
a tree. For the most part it is Sendgraff not Hammer doing these things, but
Hammer is still characteristically connected into the scene. In one shot the
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camera follows a piece of rope along the floor and up a ladder until the film-
maker's leg comes into the image; in another the camera zooms back from a
close-up on Sendgraff's face and the film-maker's feet come into frame; in
another the camera looks down on Sendgraff turning the trapeze in her feet and
then letting go, so that the image spins into a blur as the trapeze swings round.
These sequences do not only show Hammer's connection to the image, but also
signify her participation in her lover's art, trapezing.
Already on the soundtrack there are hints of the end of the relationship:
the sound of a telephone permanently engaged, then a voice saying it has been
disconnected; a voice speaking about death, not gloomily but in terms of com-
pletion and sleep. As the film proceeds, images also begin to suggest the
end: stills of Hammer's face in rage; one woman's movements superimposed
harshly, not mergingly, over the face of the other. In the last few minutes there
is a loud, urgent heart-beat on the soundtrack; and the fast cutting between
elements becomes a violent flicker effect before slowing down to the end of
the film.
As Weiss notes, although these elements showing the end of the relationship
are clearly present, it is somehow easy not to take them in: 'each time I've
seen the film, audiences have stated that they missed all the signs, had no
idea that the relationship was deteriorating' (1981b:30). This was my own
impression. Weiss argues that the film uses idealising, romantic imagery that
is far more powerful than its attempts to break such imagery down through
juxtaposition and editing. A different explanation is possible. Probably what
one remembers most of the film are the images of Sendgraff trapezing. They are
remarkable for celebrating a woman's beauty in terms of strength and athleti-
cism, and they continue throughout the film - Sendgraff's beauty and strength
is never forgotten or turned into something hated. Moreover the use of sepia
suggests images from the past, memory and nostalgia. The film wants to hang
on to a good memory of the loved one and the relationship, an impression
reinforced by the voice over speaking of death (the end of a relationship?) in posi-
tive terms. Not surprisingly then, and movingly, what abides is the impression
of love rather than the pain of separation.
Towards lesbian erotica, or pornography

Lesbian cultural feminist films celebrate and often directly show lesbian
sexuality but it was not necessarily part of their purpose to turn women on. Yet
to communicate an erotic delight in women's bodies and to show acts that
a film-maker finds sexually pleasing is at the very least liable to give a pleasure
to the viewer that can be categorised as erotic, sexual, sensual or pornographic.
Much of the problem, of course, is which of those words you use. Two films made
in 1979, Three Short Episodes GB Rachel Finkelstein and Sweet Dreams USA
Honey Lee Cottrell, opened up, in very different ways, the question of this
pleasure. I want to look at them both here before considering their relationship
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to one of the most remarkable developments in the mid-eighties, the emergence

of avowedly pornographic lesbian film.
Three Short Episodes contrasts male constructions of female sexuality and
the erotic with, in its third episode, female constructions of the erotic. The first
section makes fun of the idea of penis envy with pixillated images of women
frantically searching between their legs or forcing a banana down their throat
then sicking it up; the second uses old heterosexual porn film, keeping it at a
distance by running it fast or filming it being projected, conveying a mucky,
hole-in-the-corner feeling. The third episode opens with the title, 'Towards a
New Female Sexuality'. Its central image is an oval hole torn in cardboard with
the bowed figure of a woman superimposed below it; as the episode develops
this figure raises her arms in a parabola, thus seeming to embrace the hole.
Circular shapes form the basis for the montage of images that accompanies
this: a woman looks at her vagina in a round hand mirror; buttocks are shot to
emphasise their roundness and caught in a pool of light; hands caressing
another's hair outline the head as a sphere; batik (a fabric associated with women
in African tradition) provides further curving shapes and even the music,
solo flute arabesques (by Kay Gardner) is, we learn at the end, entitled 'Moon
Circles'. The whole episode is an evocation of'central core imagery', its cool,
languorous tone constructing an eroticism quite other to what had gone
before.
Sweet Dreams also draws on some of the cultural feminist repertoire, notably
in an opening sequence where a woman's hand plays softly over the shape and
texture of blossoms, feeling the stems, fronds and heads of daffodils and lilies.
A cactus, its soft, furry texture suggesting pubic hair, is shot from one angle to
evoke the clitoris, while in another shot a finger probes into its core. After this
however the film presents female sexuality more directly. There are four main
sections: a white woman masturbating; a black woman caressing herself; the
white woman masturbating again and finally the two women making love.
Though the imagery is plain, there are differences of cinematic treatment. The
black woman's solo sequence, shot in sepia, uses more editing of close-ups
of different parts of her body; the two white woman's sequences are in colour,
with much less editing. The first sequence in particular starts with an extremely
slow zoom back from a close-up of a woman's hand masturbating, back and
back until her whole body and environment are in frame. In both her sequences,
she speaks about masturbating, about fantasies, about tasting and smelling
her vaginal juices. In other words she is much more fully present to us than
the fragmented and unspeaking black woman. The final sequence of the
women making love is cross cut with shots of the white woman masturbating,
suggesting that this is her fantasy; near the end a long hold on her face in spasm
and a repeated keening phrase of harmonica and violin on the soundtrack convey
orgasm, but we do not see the women together coming to orgasm. At the end
of the film, the white woman smiles slightly at the camera and her name, Pat
Califia, comes up.
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Three Short Episodes signals a need for imagery of female sexuality, to enable
women to feel beyond heterosexual, male constructions of sexuality; to do this
it has to eschew existing aspects of sexual representation that might seem too
contaminated by those male constructions: sex as narrative, the importance
of orgasm, an address which elicits the viewer's excitement. Sweet Dreams
has no such problems. Pat Califia is one of the best-known spokespeople for
forms of sex, including s/m and pornography, that were long identified with
male constructions of sexuality; she has contributed a regular column to the
gay journal The Advocate (thus acknowledging a link with male gay sexual
practices (cf. Byron 1985:48)) and in 1980 published Sapphistry, a celebration
of the diversity of sexual practices open to lesbians. With its floral opening and
diffused treatment of the black woman, Sweet Dreams shows its roots in cultural
feminism, but the insistent signalling of orgasm, Califia's presence (and final
look at the camera) and the direct reference to smelling and tasting juices
suggest a very different direction for lesbian erotica.
In 1985 two US companies put out films (available straightaway on video)
that for the first time 7 were made by lesbians and aimed to provide for profit
erotic entertainment for lesbians. In other words, the first lesbian pornography
for lesbians. These were Erotic in Nature Tigress Productions and Fun with a
Sausage, LIngenue, Private Pleasures and Shadows Blush Productions.
Tigress in fact refused the term 'pornography', insisting that their work
was 'erotica'. As Kate Millett suggested in an interview with Chris Bearchall,
however problematic the distinction, many women preferred to think in terms
of erotica because pornography is associated with exploitative imagery rooted
in misogyny and at root 'all the old attitudes of a puritanical and prurient
society' (Bearchall 1983:31; cf. Lorde 1984:55-6). 8 Bearchall herself however
remained sceptical, preferring to stick to pornography, partly because of the
class connotations of'erotica' ('the rich person's pornography' 1983:33), partly
because of the unhappy hard: soft core distinction that seems to flow from it. This
embrace of the pornographic is of a piece with the development or reclamation
among some lesbians — or, as they would as likely say, dykes — of such practices
as butch:femme role play, sado-masochism, the use of dildos, all of which are
explored and celebrated by Blush Productions' films. Blush is affiliated to the
magazine On Our Backs, whose title is a deliberate provocation of the radical
feminist newspaper Off Our Backs, seemingly reclaiming the pleasures of the
missionary position. Erotic in Nature is more tentative. An opening sequence
has a woman masturbating with an translucent, amber-coloured dildo; in a
central sequence, the two lovers wear clothes suggestive of butch:femme roles;
and the high colour gloss look of the film is reminiscent of Playboy or Penthouse.
The latter also do spreads shot in natural surroundings, but the emphasis
here from the title through the opening shots of a bare breasted woman
chopping wood to the sex sequences by a river and in a clearing in a wood, also
evokes cultural feminist iconography (figure 5.7); and the fact that the 'sex is
variations on Vanilla' (Rodgerson 1986:33) shows that Erotic in Nature, though
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LESBIAN/WOMAN
Figure 5.7 Cultural feminist or standard straight porn imagery in Erotic in Nature?
(Tigress Productions)
a commercial turn-on proposition, eschews the 'dirty' sex of the new lesbian
pornography.
* * *
Lesbian cultural feminist film put the possibility of an erotica for women on to
the lesbian film-making agenda, though many of its proponents would certainly
not recognise this impulse in the likes of Blush Productions. The division that
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these new initiatives have opened up, between varieties of not easily reconcilable
definitions of lesbian desire, are only a more recent version of a problem that
always confronted lesbian cultural feminism: its appeal to an essential core of
womanly/lesbian identity in which in practice many women and lesbians did
not recognise themselves. Some would see this as a telling indictment of lesbian
cultural feminism, passing off as universal a particular, rather white, rather
vanilla version of lesbianism. Yet if many lesbians' often pretty fierce rejection
of this work does invalidate its claims to universality (unless one were to argue
that a lesbian's inability to recognise her essential identity is itself an effect of
patriarchal domination), its particularity does not invalidate it as a construc-
tion of lesbian identity and desire. All lesbian/gay identity images are culturally
and historically particular, but this does not make them less real, it merely
makes them particular. Cultural feminist lesbianism is no more invalidated
because it took its particularity for universality than any of the other construc-
tions of lesbian/gay identity in this book. It was one way that some women
forged from what was available a construction and unequivocal celebration of
lesbian desire.
200
6
FROM A N D FOR
THE MOVEMENT
In 1949 the Dutch gay rights movement, the COC, produced a short silent
film entitled In dit teken, directed by Jan Lemstra. Made thirty years after Anders
als die Andern, it was the first film to be made directly by and in the name of a
gay organisation.
The films discussed so far were rooted in the gay/lesbian culture of their
times, which had more or less strong links (as did the film-makers) with the
concurrent gay/lesbian movements. The latter may even have been necessary for
the films' existence: they created a public space and climate of self-confidence
for lesbian/gay cultural production. Without the movements, lesbian/gay films
would often have remained home movies in the closet. Yet no film so far in the
book was clearly part of and speaking for the organised movement of lesbians
and gay men. Even the shots of Hirschfeld addressing a meeting in Anders are
only moments in a conventional feature film that neither deals directly with the
gay movement nor declares itself to be part of it.
The films in this chapter are grounded in the iconography and rhetoric of
the lesbian/gay movements, ally themselves with these and were for the most
part funded and produced by them. I have divided them into three groups,
corresponding to different forms of politics which I shall designate institutional,
confrontational and affirmation. The first group, consisting in fact only of In dit
teken, belongs to an approach concerned with establishing gay organisations and
promoting change through existing mechanisms of reform. The second group,
still only a handful of films, comes out of the libertarian impulses of late sixties
politics. The last group, outnumbering the other two combined by something
like forty to one, are from the gay, lesbian and women's liberation movements
of the seventies, concerned to affirm the worth of gay/lesbian existence.
These distinctions have to do not only with different analyses of society but
also, built into those, with different assumptions about how change is brought
about, how a given kind of politics can bring it about. The films are part of
the politics, not only presenting political content but also placing the viewer
in relation to the processes of change the politics advocates. Not just what they
say but how they address the viewer is central to the politics: who they imply
the viewer is, how they want her/him to react, what they want her/him to do
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and also who they imply the film-makers are, their place in the political process.
The differences at this level are also differences of film form - the mode selected,
the use made of it — and it is this relationship, between kinds of political practice
and of film form, that is especially at issue in what follows.
Institutional politics
The COC1 was founded in Amsterdam in 1947 in the spirit of the pre-war gay
magazine Levensrecht (The Right to Exist). The earlier NWHK (Dutch Scientific
Humanitarian Committee), founded in 1911 along the lines of the German
WhK, had put most of its efforts into changing attitudes through influencing
influential people, whereas Levensrecht had placed the emphasis on establishing
a safe and respectable gay sub-culture. The COC contained both approaches,
but the latter was its dominant emphasis (Tielman 1987:10—13).
In dit teken opens on a shot of the COC's logo, a man in silhouette raising
his hat in a welcoming, slightly foppish gesture (figure 6.1), superimposed
by the title reading, 'This sign has given hundreds of people the courage to go
to the Keizersgracht'. The Keizersgracht was (is) the street in which the COC
had its offices, and we next see shots of it and of Nick Engelschman, aka Bob
Angelo, one of the founders of the COC, in the office. Two men are shown asking
for directions, being greeted by Bob, given pamphlets, having a cigarette,
becoming members. Having established the Centre's existence, the rest of the
film is in two sections. The first warns of the dangers facing homosexuals: shots
of a (well-known) public toilet in Amsterdam, of a queeny man in a bar; a title
enjoining 'Don't go to . . .' followed by shots of a scouts club, a swimming
pool and then a prison. The final section presents the alternative, principally
as provided by the COC: a cultural evening, mostly men singing to a piano
or guitar, but including a one-man sketch sending up queeny behaviour; a
'bal masque', with the preparations of drag and decorating shown as well as
scenes of dancing (including the only shots of women in the COC spaces of the
film). In between, there is a sequence showing the possibilities of going 'free
in nature with your friends': shots of trees, rivers, pools, men and women sitting
or wandering, and particularly pairs of men, riding horses, sitting outside
drinking, giving each other piggy-backs.
No individuals speak in In dit teken. (Even a silent film may use intertitles to
indicate what people say.) The only 'voice' in the film is the voice of the COC
itself. This is in part because of the film's function, which is akin to advertising,
the inter-titles working like slogans or headings in a leaflet. It also relates to the
kind of politics represented by the COC. The Centre is established as an organ-
isation that provides facilities, an already existing structure to which one can
belong. The impersonal 'voice' of the film is part of the construction of a stable
institutional identity.
In dit teken clearly assumes its audience will be gay men and, maybe, lesbians.
It may be the only film in this book unequivocally addressed to a gay audience.
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FROM AND FOR THE MOVEMENT
Figure 6.1 The COC logo in In dit teken (COC)
Many others may imply or only really work for a gay/lesbian audience, but
none proceeds as if what is being said could only conceivably be relevant to gay
people. This is a gay organisation talking to gay people about being gay. Again
this is a question of function - who but gay people would be potential recruits
to a gay club? — but also of politics. As Tielman explains, the COC operated
according to the characteristic Dutch principle of 'verzuiling' ('pillarisation'),
whereby society is split into pillars', distinct, separate spheres of concern
supported and legitimated by the state. The Dutch government came to treat
the COC as a kind of 'mini-pillar', the agency for the regularisation of homo-
sexuality. By presenting itself as an institutional grouping of homosexuals, the
COC both established the existence of this 'pillar' and could speak on its behalf
with other 'pillars'. Part of its strategy was then not only an institutional style,
but the construction of a constituency of homosexual people. The film, with its
deliberate address of a gay audience, is part of this strategy of building a 'pillar'
of homosexuality in Dutch society.
This kind of politics appeared 'closetty' to later generations of gay and
lesbian activists. The suspicion that straight values probably come along with
'verzuiling' might appear confirmed by the film's attitude towards the unre-
spectable aspects of homosexual existence: pederasty ('Don't go to scouts clubs'),
public sex ('Don't go to toilets') and queens. The film does not waver on the first
two, but it is more ambivalent about the last. The injunction not to go to bars
shows a queen chattering with a group of men and there is the sketch sending
up queeniness; yet the last third of the film is devoted to the bal masque.
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Preparations are dwelt on. At a fitting one man parades about in the style of
Queen Wilhelmina, a great camp moment. At the ball, the film shows the wide
range of imaginative and outlandish costumes. It is as if with its mind the film
says, 'Don't act like queens', yet with its heart wants to celebrate the exuberance
and ingenuity of queening and camping.
At the end of the ball, the title 'demasque comes up and everyone takes off
their masks, followed by the title 'Now only for this evening, but later in the
future . . .'. Demasking symbolises a political point, suggesting that organising
a club and 'verzuiling' are parts of a strategy towards the full participation
of homosexuals in society. Demasking anticipates coming out, something
longed for but not yet thought possible. The closet is not the long-term goal
of Levensrecht and its moment of demasking/coming out is also the climax of its
perhaps inadvertent celebration of the carnival of camp.
In dit teken is a modest and hardly insurrectionary film, yet is nonetheless
an isolated example, without equivalents in other countries or follow-ups
within the COC itself. Film was still an extremely expensive medium of
which few people had experience as producers; film-making was bound within
the institutions of the entertainment industry, the art world and the state or
industry sponsored documentary. Few marginal pressure groups could afford
or would probably even think in terms of film. Equally the spaces for showing
films remained restricted, especially for propagandising gay or lesbian films
- neither entertainment nor art, as conventionally defined, such films would
not be part of the range of social issues favoured by schools, colleges, unions,
women's groups and so on. By contrast the later movements benefited from
the greater cheapness, accessibility and ease of use of new developments in film
technology (lightweight cameras, 16mm film (itself lighter, easier to handle and
cheaper than 35mm), light-sensitive film stock (not requiring cumbersome
artificial lighting), portable synchronised sound-recording equipment) and
from the increased use of film among radical movements at large. Indeed, the
new lesbian and gay movements put a special emphasis on film, partly from
the desire for high public visibility for gay people and partly as a consequence
of identifying mass media film as a central aspect of lesbian/gay oppression.
Confrontational politics
The protest movements of the late sixties in the capitalist countries managed
to be both visceral and cerebral: 'zapping' 2 (demonstrations and sit-ins, storm-
ing and disrupting meetings and conferences, sabotage and mainly symbolic
terrorism) went hand in hand with a readiness for, and often an insistence
on, analysis and theory. Society was to be grasped in its totality, any particular
oppression seen as an expression of the whole way in which society was
structured; culture, including film, was as much an arena of political struggle
as the shop-floor or university, as much the vehicle of power and control as the
government or police, as ripe for zapping and analysis as anything else.
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F R O M A N D FOR THE MOVEMENT
If everything was to be seen as political, it followed that gender and sexuality

too should be put on the revolutionary agenda, though the act of doing so by
women, lesbians and gay men was often experienced, by them as well as
by straight men, as a break with the revolutionary left. The new sexual politics
alarmingly acknowledged everything as politically loaded, including how
you react to men and to women and what you do in bed. Zapping and analysis
animated the early days of the gay liberation movement (see next section) and
such short lived, tiny groupings as the Comite d'action pederastique revolution-
naire in May 1968 in Paris. They remained moments or marginal tendencies
within the seventies movement, but nonetheless a handful of European films
furthered this politics by finding ways of using film both to analyse and to zap.
There are two main groupings: films made by Rosa von Praunheim in
Germany and the USA and those made in France (and a few elsewhere), notably
by Lionel Soukaz. I'll look at these two groups in turn, ending with a considera-
tion of the most internationally commercially successful confrontational film,
Taxi zum Klo. All this work mixes zap and analysis. The difference in emphasis
lies partly in who appear to be the object of the zap, gays or straights, and partly
in what they are being zapped with, the sordidness of gay oppression or the
delight of gay perversity. Broadly speaking, von Praunheim is more given to
confronting gays with the ugliness of their conditions of existence, the French
work to defy the straight imagination with the wilder reaches of the gay libido.
Rosa von Praunheim

Von Praunheim made four films before 1980 dealing directly with the gay
movement (see Murray 1994:107-9 for later work and Kuzniar 2000:88-112
for further discussion). Schwestern der Revolution (Sisters of the Revolution) 1969
and Nicht der Homosexuelle ist pervers, sondern die Situation in der er lebt (It is not
the Homosexual who is Perverse, but the Situation in which He finds Himself) 1970
show and express aspects of post-68 gay politics, and screenings of the second
are generally thought to have stimulated the formation of gay activist groups
in Frankfurt, Cologne, Munich and other German cities (Holy 1985:184).
Homosexuelle in New York 1971 is a record of a gay march and Armee der Liebenden
oder Aufstand der Perversen (Army of Lovers, or Revolt of the Perverts) 1978 presents
developments in the US gay movement since the early seventies, judged from
the perspective of confrontational politics.
Schwestern and Nicht der Homosexuelle only deal in part with gay political
activity as such. The former is in three sections, the first of which features
members of the (fictitious) eponymous collective, described by a voice over as
'a militant group of homosexuals within the political left who fight for the
liberation of women'. They are shown in a variety of tableaux - trailing through
filth on a riverbank, struggling to climb ladders, running frantically down a
street — or in conversation with women; the text of the conversation and of the
voice over accompanying the tableaux is taken from a contemporary women's
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
liberation pamphlet. The second section is a story about a woman looking for
her mother, with encouragement from her brother, and the third a discussion
(effectively two monologues) between a married couple about whether change
in their relationship must happen now (her) or wait for the revolution (him).
The central thread of Nicht der Homosexuelle is a kind of gay Bildungsroman,
the story of a man's moral/political growth told through a series of set pieces
illustrating different aspects of gay existence. Daniel has an affaire with Clemens
which peters out, is taken up by a group of highly cultivated men until he
realises that they only want him for his looks, explores various facets of the
Berlin gay scene (bars, beaches, leathermen in the park, toilets) and ends up with
a gay commune that seeks to change social attitudes towards homosexuality and
to rid themselves of sexual attitudes that ape hetero norms.
The groups at the beginning and end, respectively, of Schwestern and Nicht
der Homosexuelle provide perspectives for the rest of the film. The Schwestern
section voices a critique that informs the sections that follow; the commune
in Nicht der Homosexuelle suggests a critique of, and alternative to, the forms
of gay existence shown before. The critique in Schwestern focuses on gender.
The opening voice over does speak of the Schwestern coming out of hiding
and confronting 'the wreckage of a civilisation whose structure they despise',
but thereafter the spoken ideology of the film, from the feminist pamphlet,
deals with relations between the sexes. Within the first section the link between
women's and gay oppression is not so much argued as willed: voicing ideas of
women's liberation over symbolical images of gay men in struggle forces
connections between them. Sometimes this is in terms of the idea of the politics
of the personal — a man says to a woman (the words straight from the pamphlet):
'It is necessary to understand oppression in one's private life not as private but
as politico-economic. It is necessary to alter one's private life qualitatively and
to understand this change as a political action'. At other points the pamphlet's
critique of relations between men and women is used to point up the way these
are reproduced in gay relationships. A shot of two leathermen carrying a man
in chains between them is accompanied by an analysis of the way men organise
sexuality in terms of power and sacrifice, victory and pain, at the end of which
the man in chains spreads his arms in an appeal for help, repeating direct to
camera, 'I don't want to be a bunny, just because I am sensitive and in need of
love'.
This sexual politics then informs the other two sections. The brother in the
second is one of the Schwestern and urges his sister to find their mother in terms
of the need for women to help one another and to separate from men. In the final
section each partner expresses their version of sexual politics, but hers founders
on her love for him, suggesting, as the pamphlet has, that women will never
attain autonomy while locked in emotional thrall to heterosexuality. The
critique of heterosexism is remarkably sharp, yet it is striking that, though
gay men speak as gay men in Schwestern, they do not do so on their own behalf.
Women's struggle is seen as the political priority, gay struggle as such is not
206
referred to. This displaced relation to politics is reinforced by the delivery

of the lines. On the one hand, the men speak the lines awkwardly, as if not in
possession of them, signalling their separation from them; and yet it is they who
speak, not the women, often at inordinate length, often directly lecturing the
women, and it is the brother who urges the sister to go out and be a liberated
woman. The Schwestern may champion the liberation of women above their
own, yet the film's style reproduces women's subordination.
The other reference to homosexuality in Schwestern accompanies a shot of
two men clinging to each other while trying to hang on to a steep ladder placed
across water; the voice over says that 'they' (i.e. homosexuals) lack solidarity
because they have such low self-esteem and that homosexual relations never
last because to commit oneself to them means committing oneself to a loss
of social status. This view is echoed in Nicht der Homosexuelle, which paints an
unflattering picture of homosexual life to show the 'perversity' of homosexuality
in contemporary society. Every stereotype is evoked, bitchiness, predatoriness,
piss-elegance, joyless promiscuity; the voice-over commentary is derisive,
making liberal use of derogatory terms for gays.
The point of this is given in the title. How gay men live in this society is
perverse, this is what oppression reduces them to; society does not just restrict
homosexuality, but perverts its expression to the very core. This is what society
has to be indicted with, and hence what must be shown. The film offers us a
distance on this perversion by various means: the title; a dialectical use of image
and sound tracks (a narrator tells parts of Daniel's story, the words and lip
movements of characters in conversation are not synchronised, sequences are
accompanied by political disquisition on gay existence); vocal delivery, charac-
ters mouthing banalities in flat voices, political discourse uttered in a somewhat
ranting fashion; the commune's discussion, rejecting the forms of homosexuality
imposed by capitalism and male supremacy.
The formal qualities of both films relate to a kind of radical cinema much
canvassed in the wake of May 1968 and most associated with the work of
Jean-Luc Godard (Harvey 1978:62-9). Ideas and images are not presented as
self-sufficient and fully worked out: the audience must actively participate in
making sense of the film's politics. Schwestern s use of juxtapositions (of symbolic
tableaux and spoken theory; of three apparently unrelated sections) requires
the spectator to work out their inter-relations; Nicht der Homosexuelle poses
its title, sound-image dialectic and final discussion sequence against a familiar
narrative structure in a titillating milieu, and again requires that we make the
former critique the latter.
As in Godard, the implicit injunction to the viewer to work it out for
him/herself is in part disingenuous — when one of the commune in Nicht der
Homosexuelle says, 'We gays must stop hating gays. We must love them and not
just deal with them as competitors', it is clear that this is what we the audience
are supposed to think. Yet part of the film's interest resides in what escapes
this dictatorial impulse. The fact that the commune member refers to both 'we
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
gays' and 'them' suggests a tension between being both of and distinct from
gay people. This replays a familiar ultra-left dilemma, the divorce between the
political vanguard (drawn predominantly from the bourgeoisie) and the masses,
but one least easy to sustain with gay politics where laying oneself on the
line as gay was such a fundamental principle. A sense of being both within
and without gay existence runs through much of the film, making it more
open than the rather closed pronouncements of the commune at the end might
suggest. Thus muscly posing is condemned and yet a hunky guy stripping
to trunks on the beach is dwelt on, with shots of Daniel's longing gaze and a
close-up of the hunk's crotch as he teasingly unbuckles, unzips and lowers
his jeans. Similarly, the narrator tells us that Daniel finds the leathermen's
silent choreography uncomfortable and the political voice compares them to
Nazis, yet the sequence showing them is probably the longest, seemingly most
captivated in the film - it is for most of its length entirely silent, and it is by
no means clear whether this is simply to show the silence noted by Daniel or is
hushed fascination with the unsmiling manoeuvres.
Despite the welter of verbalisation and appeal to cerebration, Schwestern
and Nicht der Homosexuelle are as much zap as theory. Moreover, as the commune
member's quote suggests, it not just straights who are to be affronted. Nicht
der Homosexuelle, by seeming to rub our noses in the sordid perversity of the gay
underworld, is intended to provoke anger at the way gay men have to live, but
as often as not it provoked anger from gays at von Praunheim/the film itself for
showing this side of gay life and feeding the prejudices of straight viewers. The
film Audience Response to 'It is not the Homosexual. . . s h o t following a screening
of Nicht der Homosexuelle at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1973,
records this reaction and von Praunheim's defence of the film on the grounds
that it provokes anger and therefore starts people thinking (Kelly 1979:116),
a belief characteristic of late sixties radical politics.
Zap is at the heart of von Praunheim's political practice. In Keith Kelly's
words, his
mission is largely involved with provoking . . . a fight. The name Rosa

(taken to force people to question sexual branding), his dress (almost
always entirely in black), his public attitude (baiting his audiences
through insult if necessary), and most of all, his films, are, in effect,
weapons of confrontation.
(ibid.rl 15)
Bryan Bruce similarly discusses von Praunheim's deliberately disconcerting

self-presentation of a feminine name and macho look, heightened by a cultivated
porno star image which 'is clearly intended to shock his audience, testing
the tolerance of liberals who are sympathetic to gays as long as their sexual
activity remains hidden and discreet, and challenging reticent gays to be more
open and assertive' (1987:27). Armee der Liebenden continued this politics,
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F R O M AND FOR THE MOVEMENT
although focusing on the US gay movement and its rather more affirmative
politics.
Armee interweaves a history and survey of the gay movement in the USA. The
history refers back to the pre-Nazi German movement and the post-war US
movement but its main narrative is an oscillation between radical (confronta-
tional) and reformist (accommodationist) moments in the post-69 US gay
movement. Thus the Stonewall riot and foundation of the Gay Liberation
Front gives way to a split between the Gay Activists' Alliance, keeping the
spirit of Stonewall alive, and the National Gay Task Force, 'a conservative, elitist
organisation' with besuited officers doing gay business through the established
institutions of society. This moment of conservatism is reinforced by gay men's
retreat into 'discos, baths and orgy bars'. What saves the gay movement is the
anti-gay campaign launched by Anita Bryant in the mid-seventies, galvanising
gay people back on to the streets. In particular, the murder of a gay man in
San Francisco by a group of 'punks' shouting 'One for Anita!' mobilises a
huge demonstration in the city. The final part of the film contrasts the New
Orleans Mardi Gras with the Briggs initiative in Los Angeles (the attempt to
have homosexuals banned from holding positions in schools). The initiative is
defeated but the narrator warns against 'rosy passivity' and losing the confronta-
tionist spirit again.
The survey aspect of the film suggests the diversity of the US gay movement
(though the narrator acknowledges that the film deals more with gay men than
lesbians because 'as gay men we are incompetent to deal with the whole
range of women's points-of-view'). Not only are there interviews with repre-
sentatives of all the forms of activism mentioned above (including Harry
Hay from the Mattachine Society and Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon from the
Daughters of Bilitis), but an astonishing range of people and points of view
are also featured: Parents of Gays, the black, Asian and Native American Tri-
Base Collective, a lesbianfeminist, a porn star, a gay Nazi, gay religious groups,
human rights organisations, the 504 emergency coalition (for disabled gays), a
nun, gays who support gay rights but don't belong to anything, the G40+ club
for older gay men, Coming Out (a gay youth group in Boston), a pedophile and
the novelist John Rechy, who lays out his philosophy of promiscuity.
These historical and survey elements are supplemented by two more personal
sequences. Following the interview with the lesbianfeminist and her strong
criticism of gay men's misogyny, there is a sequence of von Praunheim visiting
gay cruising places, musing whether his increased understanding of women's
oppression has really had any effect on his sexual practice; the sequence ends
with him getting off with porn star Fred Halsted. Following sequences at a
gay parade in San Francisco, there is a section showing von Praunheim's class
in 1977 at the San Francisco Art Institute, who film him having sex with Glen,
another porn star.
All three aspects of Armee s structure promote the political value of provoca-
tion. The narrator's comments spell it out and are reinforced by the sequences
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
of street theatre and demonstrations. These are very much part of the rationale
of confrontational politics - the point of the zap approach is a belief in, as
Laud Humphreys put it, 'the symbolic success of melodramatic confrontation'
(1972:112), in other words, in the political value of the filmable. Of the inter-
viewees, the two people who seem to be given most space are those who advocate
the more extreme politics: the lesbianfeminist, 'livid' and 'in a rage' at men's,
all men's, attitudes towards women, and Rechy, insisting that the most perverse
aspects of homosexuality are 'actually the most enriching', that homosexuality
is 'revolutionary' because it 'confronts the archaic laws'. These two state con-
frontationist positions, but the very choice of some of the other interviewees
is provocative. It goes well beyond the liberal range to include, unchallenged,
a porn star (extolling sadomasochism), a neo-Nazi and a pedophile. The latter,
Tom Reeves, presents himself as a revolutionary: he does indeed 'recruit' boys,
the great fear of anti-pedophiles, 'I recruit [them] away from the middle-class,
up-tight, violent family'. Perhaps most confrontational of all are the two
personal sequences — showing cruising (at length) and gay sex (in extreme close-
up) insists on gayness as sex, stripped of the more socially acceptable vocabulary
of rights or relationships; having film students film gay sex challenged their
liberalism, and filming them filming dares them not to be liberal; having the
film-maker himself at the centre of these two sex sequences breaks with
the comfortable sense of'distance' that the documentary convention allows the
viewer the rest of the time. The film ends on a confrontational note, the Gay
Sweatshop company singing 'As Time Goes By', holding hands staring out to
the audience and ending abruptly on the words, 'No matter what the future
brings
Armee illustrates well some of the problems of this form of political film-
making. It makes analytical statements but does not analyse — a proliferation
of instances does not amount to an analysis of the social situation of gay people.
It both has a point of view (pro-confrontation, anti-accommodation) yet wants
to be open, giving space to many voices, getting the viewer to make connections.
It is caught between vanguardism (telling people what's what, urging them
into action) and libertarianism (refusing to have a position or set oneself up
as a leader). This was a contradiction running deep within late sixties politics
which remained unresolved in von Praunheim's seventies work and which gave
it much of its bite.
France and elsewhere

Armee confronted audiences with the diversity of gay desire, giving a verbal
space to the disreputable. Yet there is something grim about its visual presen-
tation of desire and, as with Schwestern and Nicht der Homosexuelle, gay self-hate
(diagnosed in other gays but also expressed in the films' contempt for them)
comes across as strongly as delight in being gay. This is where they differ from
(mainly) French confrontational cinema.
210
The history of the gay movements in France and Italy in many ways replays
that decried in Armee. The Front Homosexuel d'Action Revolutionnaire (FHAR),
started in Paris in 1971, was superseded in 1974 by the Groupe de Liberation
Homosexuelle (GLH), with both reformist (GLH-Groupes de base) and revolu-
tionary (GLH-Politique et Quotidien (PQ)) tendencies (Girard 1981:8 Iff, 118ff);
the Fronte Unitario Omosessuale Rivoluzionario Italiano (FUORI) started in
Turin in 1971 and in 1974 joined a coalition of feminists, civil rights activists
and others in the Radical Party (Adam 1987:87, Pezanna 1978:27). The revo-
lutionary impulse did not disappear but continued alongside reformism, often
finding expression in film.
FHAR's earliest manifestos, notably a four-page intervention in the left-
wing paper Tout on 23 April 1971 and later that year the Rapport contre la
normalite, went beyond simply demanding freedom for homosexuals. In Tout,
they called for rights for 'all sexualities' and for children 'freedom of desire and
its realisation' (quoted in Girard:83), demands rooted in a belief in the wild
richness of libidinal desire that has been repressed and controlled in the form
of the acceptable behaviour of adulthood. Demanding less than this, restricting
oneself to homosexual rights, was a betrayal of desire. Drag, pornography and
pederasty, insistent components of the films, were of particular importance.
Each was something homosexuals had been taught was a shameful part of homo-
sexuality, yet each in reality had been selected out for shame because of its
subversive nature. Each poses a threat to the social order: drag as a refusal of male
privilege, porn making present the polymorphous perversity of desire, pederasty
undermining the authority of the bourgeois family. What is distinctive,
however, is not these arguments in themselves, which had their counterparts
throughout the international gay movement, but the way they are fuelled
not by political correctness but by pleasure itself. Other pro-drag, -porn and
-pederasty positions seem to imply that one should get into these things in
order to smash male and familial power, but the French polemics start from
wanting them. It is the power of desire, its unruly urgency, that is championed
first, in its own right, not for its role in political agendas laid down elsewhere.
Drag, porn and boys are all eminently visual, but this is not the only reason
for the role of film in this politics. The favoured form was not documentary or
fiction but avant-gardism, for reasons part institutional, part to do with political
style. As Alain Sudre (1983) argues, the development of a space for independent
film in France and the assertion of a homosexual identity both happened in the
wake of May '68 and were closely interconnected. Both occupied a marginal
social position, avant-garde film having no more social status or economic
security than open homosexuality, and avant-garde film's use of the idea of the
'home movie' had special significance for gays seeking to explore and develop
new forms of intimacy and sexual community. Most of this work, referred to
in passing in chapters four and five, is personal and experimental, only by impli-
cation political, but the mutually reinforcing sense of the marginality of both
'cinema different' and lesbian/gay identity meant that it was here that an
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
uncompromising politics of the edge was maintained. Moreover, the particular

form of avant-gardism favoured - montage, based on a mixture of original
footage and images from the mass and gay media — was particularly appropriate
to a style of politics that sought simultaneously to analyse and celebrate the
construction of homosexual desire.
Given that the starting point is pleasure, it is not surprising how full of
humour and eroticism much of this work is. Both in terms of production and
exhibition, these are films made and shown by gay groups or active members
of gay organisations, yet they do not always contain content that would be
evidently political to all viewers. The festivals organised by FHAR in Paris in
1977 and 1978 (and by the Circolo Culturale 28 Giugno in Bologna in 1982)
included pornographic films, labelled and welcomed as such. More More More
(Wallace Potts 1976) is described in the January 1978 Paris programme as 'half
way between pornography and a critique of the family' and films such as Hommes
entre eux (Norbert Terry 1977), Homologues ou la soif du Male (Marvin Merkins
1977), Et. . . Dieu crea les hommes (Jean Estienne 1978) and he Beau Mec
(Potts 1978) incorporated philosophical/political discourse into their hardcore
scenarios. Similarly drag was accepted as part of the revolutionary gay repertoire
right across Southern Europe (see, for instance, Mieli 1980:193-9), as in Les
Intrigues de Sylvia Couski (France 1974 Adolfo Arrieta), Miss O'Gynie et les hommes-
fleurs (France 1974 Samy Pavel) Fatucha Superstar (Portugal 1976 Joao Paulo
Ferreira), La Cite des neufportes (France 1977 Stephane Marti), Lisa and the Other
One (Greece 1977 Takis Spetsiotis), Satan bouche un coin (Belgium 1977 Jean-
Pierre Bouyxou), La Tasse (France 1977 Michel Nedjar), La Belle (Greece 1978
Takis Spetsiotis), Ocana, retrat intermitent (Spain 1979 Ventura Pons) and notably
Una Filma, made by the gay collective Fioli Frochie Audiovisive Gotiche in
Rome in 1977 and taking off from Andy Warhol's observation that women
stars are so excessive and false that only a transvestite is adapted to playing their
roles. One film - La Banque du sperme (France 1977, Pierre Chabal and Philippe
Genet), in which men going to donate sperm are given a helping hand by gleeful
members of FHAR — suggests in its anarchic sexual humour the simultaneous
defiance and fun of this work, explicitly connected to a consciously political
movement.
All this sounds genial enough, but the whole-hearted embrace of drag, porn
and pederasty undoubtedly flew in the face of acceptability, pederasty especially,
undoubtedly the sticking point for seventies tolerance and widely disowned by
gay people themselves. Porn and pederasty are brilliantly and provocatively
intertwined in three films by Lionel Soukaz: Boy Friend 1 (1977), Boy Friend 2
(1977) and Le Sexe des anges (1978). Soukaz in many ways embodies Sudre's
observations on the interconnections of gay activism and 'cinema different'. On
the one hand, he worked on personal films, such as Lolo megalo (1974) and Ixe
(1980). The latter begins with a man shaving and putting on make-up and
escalates through a series of image and sound montages (e.g. shots of the Pope
crosscut with men having sex, to the sound of the Singing Nun) to shots of an
212
atom bomb exploding, ending on blackness and the sound of interminable

maniacal, mechanical laughter. At the same time, Soukaz was involved with the
GLH-PQ, including organising with them the film seasons in Paris, the second
of which in October 1977 was forbidden by the Ministry of the Interior and
physically attacked by fascist groups (Soukaz 1978:53-4). In 1979 he made
with Hocquenghem Race d'ep! (see below), but it is in the two Boy Friend films
and Le Sexe des anges that the politics and the 'cinema different' come together
most clearly in work which Soukaz himself in an interview called provocative
and generous . . . publicity films, manifestoes' (Garsi 1981a:51).
These films already provoke by their subject-matter. All three contain imagery
taken from pornographic magazines, as well as new footage of gay sexual inter-
course and masturbation; there is also much imagery of adolescent boys. This
showing is then given intellectual weight, by means of voice over or editing:
theoretical texts on pornography and pederasty by Hocquenghem, Tony Duvert,
Gabriel Matzneff and Soukaz himself are read out; Le Sexe des anges is organised
around the figure of an adolescent, Bruno, using montage to contrast the restric-
tive world of familial, patriotic and religious images that surrounds him,
including that of the angelic asexual innocence of childhood, with his actual
angelic sexual imagination. What however makes the films still more provocative
is the way they elicit from the viewer a libidinal response to their pornographic
and pederastic imagery.
They do this in part by editing the images to straight-identified music.
Classic heterosexual love songs, notably Piaf singing La Vie en rose, accompany
images of boys, crotches and cruising, in a way that casts them all in the pink
glow of mainstream romance. Boy Friend 2 ends deliriously with shots of a man
masturbating over the cover of a porn magazine, with cut-in shots of boys, all
to the sound first of the Internationale, then, as he comes, the Hallelujah! chorus,
pinnacles of Marxist and Christian cultures respectively, neither of which have
had much time for homosexual desire.
Beyond this use of straight celebration in the service of gay libido, the films
also use the cinema's codes of subjectivity to encourage the viewer to experience
pornographic and pederastic desire. The attenuated narrative structure of Le
Sexe des anges resembles that of two other films of the period, L'Hiver approche
(Georges Bensoussan 1975) and La Chambre desphantasmes (Jean-Michel Senegal
1979). In the former a young man wanders about Paris at night, real encounters
and visits to gay places being intercut with fantasy images culled from gay porn
and mainstream media alike; in Chambre a young man fantasises on the basis of
the pin-ups that he finds covering the walls of a maid's bedroom. Both films give
us an identification figure through whom we can experience the pleasures of
fantasising and shows the source of these fantasies in the mass media and urban
life. Unlike the rather more puritanical Anglo-Saxon gay movements, there
is no criticism here of porn, the media and the gay ghetto, but a celebration of
the exuberant bricolage that the erotic imagination makes out of the images
available to it.
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Boy Friend 2 is still more challenging. By dispensing with an identification

figure and placing the viewer directly in the line of desire, it denies us the
get-out of not identifying, of associating the parade of desire with a character who
is not ourself. This becomes most agitating when the focus is on pederastic desire.
One sequence begins with the assertion that all men want boys' and proceeds to
nudge the viewer into experiencing that. Cross cutting of explicitly sexual images
(porn, masturbation) with documentary footage of boys (in the street, playing
rugby) associates the former with the latter, bringing out the sex-appeal of boys
for even the least pederastically inclined viewer. The editing of the football
sequences uses repetition (of, for example, one boy putting his hand through
another's legs) to suggest the erotic charge of contact sports. This sequence
provokes not by its anger and ugliness, as in von Praunheim's work, but precisely
by the pleasure it invites the viewer to feel at desires so far beyond the pale.
* * *
The films of Soukaz et al. remained highly marginal and even von Praunheim's
films have had relatively minor success on the art cinema circuit. Only one film
of gay confrontational politics really made it, Taxi zum Klo, released in 1980.
Directed by Frank Ripploh, who had worked with von Praunheim, it has some-
thing of the look of the latter's work as well as moments that confront the viewer
with gay desire. However, its extraordinary success, critically and commercially,
has to do with its use of straight modes, bringing it closer in effect to the
affirmation politics described in the next section.
Much of Taxi depicts the contrast between the working and leisure lives of
Frank, a teacher, and the conflict between the appeals of promiscuity and perma-
nent relationships, standard themes in gay fiction. The film presents sexual
lust as inescapable, inescapably mucky and precisely on that account exciting.
It defies the audience to be shocked, partly through techniques that suggest the
audience is being confronted with reality (detailed and repetitive sequences of
cruising shot on location; sequences showing very directly what is not shown
outside of porn (ejaculation, flagellation, urination into another's mouth));
shooting with the grainy colour stock and harsh lighting characteristic of New
German Cinema's grotty realism) and partly by cutting in shots from other
films which suggest the ubiquitous insistence of sexuality (old porn showing
that heterosexual lust is no more elevated than gay; an anti-pedophile film
which is contrasted to a boy making an entirely unencouraged pass at Frank).
This defiance, of the film towards its audience, is of a piece with Frank's coming
out scene. He has been to an all-night gay ball in drag, beard and all, and goes
without changing into the classroom where he encourages the kids to act out
their wildest desires (much paint spraying, brawling and general carnival).
'Radical drag' (men wearing frocks but not trying to look like women) was one
of gay liberation's most confrontational modes and here it inspires revolt against
the order of school.
214
Yet if Taxi is confrontational, it did not anger, perhaps because of its humour.
This too was provocative, most notably in the sequence which gives the film
its title, when Frank sneaks out of hospital and hires a taxi to take him from
one toilet to another, and most wickedly in the close-up of pleasure on Frank's
face as the doctor gives him an anal examination. This is standard sex humour,
not a million miles away from Benny Hill or much German comedy, except that
it is gay in content — the idea of the ridiculously driven nature of (male) sexuality
and the naughty turn-on potential of medical examinations is very familiar.
Perhaps this accounts for the film's success: despite its confrontational elements,
it achieves acceptance for gay life by presenting it in terms familiar from straight
movies. Though very different from affirmation movies, it ends up by achieving
what they sought to achieve. Von Praunheim, Soukaz et al., on the other hand,
continue to provoke — you still feel zapped by their anger and their resolutely
perverse desire.
Affirmation politics
Probably the best-known example of affirmation politics on film is Word Is Out
1977. It could not be further from the grottiness of von Praunheim or the outra-
geousness of Soukaz. Though there is verbal reference to oppression, the overall
mood is joyful and positive. It uses clear, translucent film stock and sets its
interviewees against pastel interiors or sunny, flower filled exteriors; these are
all personable, attractive people (good-looking, amusing or both), who extol the
fulfilment of being gay or lesbian. The march at the end is full of smiling faces
and celebratory music. The whole film epitomises the politics of affirmation.
Affirmation politics grew out of both Gay and Women's Liberation. The
start of the former is generally taken to be the riot at the Stonewall bar in New
York on 28 June 1969, when patrons, lesbian and gay, resisted police arrest
during what was a routine raid. Resistance sparked off a riot that lasted for
two to three days, during which the first Gay Liberation meetings were held. 3
The movement took off, spreading rapidly throughout the States and Canada,
Europe, Japan, Australasia and even parts of South America. 4 Though different
countries had different inflections (the European and Australasian being notably
closer to socialist politics), the US experience continued to provide the model.
The Stonewall riot was a rebellion, but in the slogan coined right at the start
of the movement, 'Gay is Good', lay the seeds of the affirmation politics that
came to predominate over the confrontationism of the early pamphlets, demos
and zaps. The shift can be traced in the writings of the time. In 'Gay is Good',
one of the first articles to come out of Gay Liberation, Martha Shelley challenges
straight people, but the terms of her attack also reveal the sense of release, of,
indeed, liberation, that was to be the lasting ambition of the movement.
From the beautiful boys at Cherry Grove to the aging queens in the
uptown bars, the taxi-driving dykes to the lesbian fashion models,
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
the hookers (male and female) on 42 nd street, the leather lovers . . .

and the very ordinary very un-lurid gays . . . we are the sort of people
everyone was taught to despise — and now we are shaking off the chains
of self-hatred and marching on your citadels of repression.
(1972:31-2)
The militancy, the feeling of being against something, is there clearly enough,
but there is also the feeling of being for something, the sense of release at taking
hitherto despised gay identities and embracing them as something positive.
Three years later, in the collection The Gay Liberation Book, this sense is upper-
most. In their introduction, Len Richmond and Gary Noguera define the
'concept' of Gay Liberation as 'The marches and the rap groups. The affirmation
that "Gay is Good" and "Gay is Proud". Coming out and telling our parents and
friends and employers that we're gay. The new life' (1973:12). Though the book
does recount activism and zapping, its main impulse is to latch on to the affirma-
tive. The front cover has the biological male sign in the colours of the rainbow;
the back cover has a butterfly; the illustrations inside are of smiling faces and
kissing couples.
Richmond and Noguera's book dealt exclusively, and consciously, only with
gay men. By 1973 the unity of lesbians and gay men within a Gay Liberation
Front, as assumed in Shelley's article, had already fallen apart. In part the
political agendas of gay men and lesbians differed, but in any case it soon became
apparent that gay men were, after all, men, as prone to male chauvinism as
straight men. Most women left Gay Liberation very quickly. For a time there
were Gay Women's Liberation groups (Sally Gearheardt in Word Is Out talks
about going to the first meeting of 'what we were then calling Gay Women's
Liberation' in San Francisco in 1970), but it was the new women's movement,
which had started in 1967-8 (Carden 1974:59-65), that came to provide a
primary base for lesbian politics. Initially it had not been welcoming to lesbians
(ibid.: 113) and women in the older lesbian organisations were sometimes
suspicious of it — Meredith Grey of the Daughters of Bilitis, for instance,
feared that lesbians joining the new movement might 'once again' have to put
on the "mask" and pretend to be heterosexuals so that we don't rock the boat
or frighten the ladies' (Martin and Lyon 1972:282). Yet many lesbians did join
and challenge the new movement and gradually lesbianism came to be seen
as more than just another issue. Martin and Lyon, stalwarts of Daughters of
Bilitis, describe how at a meeting of the Bay Area Women's Coalition (part of
NOW), a member of the newly formed Gay Women's Liberation group spoke,
challenging any women in the audience who had 'ever felt any sort of physical
attraction towards another woman' to stand up — gradually three quarters did
so (ibid.:288—9). With similar events occurring throughout the movement,
lesbianism could no longer be seen as a minority or side issue.
Lesbians coming into the women's movement put lesbianism on its agenda.
They forced the issue. Yet it was also emerging through consciousness raising
216
(CR), one of the movement's most distinctive features. CR was a process in which
small groups of women met together on a regular basis and discussed their expe-
rience of being women, enabling them to see that their feelings and frustrations
were shared by others, were socially, not just individually, significant, hence that
'the personal is political'. At the same time the process broke down barriers
between women, bringing them closer together in sisterhood. For many, the
dual recognition of the social pressure to be a wife and a new, or unchecked,
closeness with other women spelt lesbianism ('at last I could be in love with my
friends' (Shulman 1983:56)). If many lesbians, already conscious of themselves
as lesbian, came out in CR groups, sometimes to the consternation of other
women present ('You could hear the ovaries roll on the floor, so great was the
shock', says Rita Mae Brown in Some American Feminists), many other women
discovered lesbian feelings through CR itself. For yet others the general context
of feminism attuned them to the possibility of lesbianism — Betty Powell in
Word Is Out describes how she began to realise the lesbian dimension to a
friendship at the same time as she was getting into somewhat of a feminist head'.
Gay Liberation had always been very influenced by the women's movement.
It too used CR, and much of its political analysis was grounded in that of
the new feminism, emphasising the importance of the family, monogamy and
sex roles as the sources of oppression. For a period there were groupings of men
within Gay Liberation that identified strongly with women, known in Australia,
for instance, as Effeminists, suggesting both feminism and effeminacy, a
readiness to take on board, or confound, both changing notions of female identity
and gay sub-cultural traditions of camp and sissiness. Though influential, such
approaches remained marginal. On the other hand, there was no real equivalent
of the women's movement for gay men, since we did not experience our oppres-
sion as stemming from our being like men but rather from suspicion of the
contrary.
Women's and Gay Liberation provided different routes into affirmation
politics, which also embraced other differences, of national and local particu-
larities, of civil rights, socialist and radical feminist ideas. What united them
was simply the assertion that to be lesbian or gay is a positive thing to be. This
was the basis for the common practices of affirmation politics: consciousness
raising (allowing lesbian/gay people to realise their worth), coming out (living
a lesbian/gay life proudly and openly), analysis/activism (working to understand
and change the situation of lesbian/gay people) and the creation of positive
images (to replace the negative ones purveyed by the mass media). These prac-
tices underlay the forms used for affirmation films and serve below as headings
for their analysis. First however I indicate what those films were. The section
(and chapter) ends by looking at two other categories of films: those influenced
by but not made directly within the movement, and those that emerged out of
it to move beyond affirmation.
* * *
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Affirmation politics documentaries 1970—1980

Aspect rose de la 1980 France Chi Yan Wong portrait and self-presentation
chose, L' lesbian/gay group Mouvance
Rimmel de Grenoble
August and July 1973 Canada Murray lesbians Sharon Smith and
Markowitz Alexa Dewiel; talking, making
love
Bail Fund Film 1971 USA women students woman, Paul, speaking
at New York University film
school
Blackstar: 1977 USA Tomjoslin daily life of film-maker
Autobiography of
a Close Friend
Bogjdvlar 1977 Sweden Filmgruppen gay oppression and alternative
gay life-styles; discussion,
daily life, demonstrations
Come Together 1971 GB John Shane 'for' GLF members speaking;
London GLF meetings, demonstrations
Coming Out 1972 USA Arthur Bressan Gay Liberation Front demo in
San Francisco
Coming Out 1973 USA Berkeley Lesbian coming out
Feminist Film Collective
Coming to Know 1976 USA Marie Ashton two young women discuss
discovering their lesbian
feelings
Continuous 1973 USA Twin Cities five women speaking; one,
Woman, The Women's Film Collective Sherrie, a psychologist, is
lesbian
Enough Is Enough 1980 Canada Gordon Keith protest at police raid of bath-
and Jack Lemmon houses in Toronto;
demonstrations, interviews
Gay Day, A 1973 USA Barbara Hammer
Gay Is Out 1980 USA Manfredini; ? (part of Filmworks)
Horses Inc
Gay Parade, A 1972 USA A. Rubin gay parade
Gay, Proud and 1977 USA Jesus Trevino
Sober
Gay USA 1977 USA Arthur Bressan footage shot on 26 June 1977
in San Francisco, San Diego,
New York, Chicago, Houston
and Los Angeles of Gay Pride
marches that were also protests
against the defeat of the gay
rights bill in Miami on 7 June;
interviews, archival material
218
Gay Women Speak 1979 USA Laird Sutton; discussion between three
National Sex Forum professional women
Greta's Girls 1978 USA Greta Schiller daily life of two lesbians
and Thomas Seid
Home Movie 1975 USA Jan Oxenburg self-portrait, using old home
movies and contemporary
footage of lesbian gatherings
Homo-actualites 1977 France Norbert Terry series of newsreels; first was
interview with gay author
Roger Peyrefitte; another with
five gay local government
candidates (series shown at
La Marotte and Le Dragon,
cinemas in Paris specialising
in gay films)
International 1977 Netherlands Melkweg women's festival, including
Women's Festival lesbian singers and a debate on
— Melkweg pornography
In the Best Interests 1978 USA Elizabeth Stevens, lesbian mothers and their
of the Children Cathy Zheutlin, Frances Reid children; daily life and
interviews
In Winterlight 1974 USA Laird Sutton; portrait of sexual relationship
National Sex Forum between two women
JillJohnston, 1977 Canada Lydia Wazana visit of lesbian author Johnston
October '75 and Kay Armitage to Toronto - public and
private events
Lavender 1972 USA Elaine daily lives of lesbian couple
Jacobs and Colleen
Monahan
Lesbians 1975 USA Portland NOW
(National Organisation of
Women)
Marche gay, La 1980 France/USA Lionel march in Washington DC
Soukaz
March On! 1970 USA J i m Hubbard gay march
March On 1975 USA Philip Quetschke
Washington and Donald Smith
Men's Lives 1975 USA W i l l Roberts and
Josh Hanig
Michael, a Gay Son 1980 Canada Bruce Glawson young man coming out to his
family; interviews, discussions
Minimum Charge 1976 Canada Holly Dale and lives of prostitutes,
No Cover Janis Cole homosexuals, transvestites and
transsexuals
Mondo Rocco 1970 USA Pat Rocco compilation of several films,
including (in addition to porn
continued
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shorts) Homosexuals on the

March (gay liberation march
in Los Angeles, including
interviews with Troy Perry,
J i m Kepner and other
activists) and Meat Market
Arrest (footage of police raid
of gay club, interview with an
attorney)
Music from the 1976 USA Sharon Karp, Women's Music Festival in
Heart Joan Nixon and Judy Champaign, Illinois
Whitaker
Oiseaux de nuit, 1979 France Luc Barnier a 'hommage to the world of
Les and Alain Lafargues queens' (Sanzio 1981:51)
Olivia Records: 1979 USA Anita Clearfield lesbian feminist collective;
More than Music interviews, work life
Ontbinding 1977 Netherlands Arnold dramatised reconstruction of
Veenhof Gronings; sodomy trial in eighteenth
Filmkollektief century in the region of
Groningen
On the Beach 1978 USA Darlene Mitera 'the tension between an older
woman whose husband has
left her and taken away the
children, and the film-maker,
a younger lesbian who is both
observer and catalyst for her
lover's changes' (Weiss
1981a:22)
Out of the Closets 1971 USA Vincent J Sklena
Paulines 1977/9 Germany Fritz interviews, rehearsals and
Geburtstag, oder Matthies performance at gay male s/m
Die Bestie von theatre in Hamburg
Notre Dame
Position of Faith, A 1973 USA Mike Rhodes events, reactions surrounding
(eventually successful) attempt
of gay man, Bill Johnston, to
be ordained in United Church
of Christ
Prison Film: 1971 USA? life in Frontera, a women's
Still Living prison in California
Race d'ep! 1977 France Lionel Soukaz four moments in gay history:
interviews, historical
documentation, re-enactments
Rosa Winkel? Das 1975 Germany Peter Recht, criminal prosecution of gays in
ist doch schon lange Christiane Schmerl, Detlev West Germany
vorbei. . . Stoffel
220
Sandy and 1973 USA Sherrie Farrell, lesbian couple of title and their
Madeline's Family Peter Bruce and John G. Hill (successful) child custody
battle; daily life, interviews
(including with professionals
in case). (In 1979 the couple
were featured in a TV film,
Family Portrait: the Schuster—
Issacson Family, one of a series
made by Stanley Losak and
Marion Lear)
Sisters! 1973 USA Barbara Hammer International Women's Day
march; scenes at lesbian
feminist music festival; visions
of strong women; women
making love and dancing
Some American 1977 Canada Luce Guilbeault, interviews with US feminists,
Feminists Nicole Brossard, Margaret including Ti-Grace Atkinson,
Wescott Rita Mae Brown, Kate Millett
Some of Your 1972 USA Kenneth interviews with gay activists;
Best Friends Robinson; University of meetings, demonstrations;
Southern California disruption of psychiatric
symposium on aversion
therapy; gay lawyer recounts
entrapment by vice squad and
trial; whole presented as TV
news with link man
Stop the Movie 1979 USA J i m Hubbard protest against homophobic
'Cruising'! film Cruising
Susana 1979 USA Susana Blaustein self portrait; interviews,
discussion with family and
friends
Three Lives 1970 USA Kate Millett three women speaking about
their lives; one, Robin Mide, is
bisexual
Truxx 1978 Canada Gordon Keith police raid on Montreal gay
and Jack Lemmon bar; interviews
We Are Ourselves 1976 USA Ann Heshey; life together of Tee A Corinne
National Sex Forum and Honey Lee Cottrell
We're Alive 1976 USA Women's Film women prisoners in discussion,
Workshop of University of including about lesbianism
California at Los Angeles
We're Not 1974 USA? TV news format with link man
Afraid Anymore presenting gay oppression and
liberation
Who Happen to 1979 USA Dale Beldin and
Be Gay Mark Krenzien
continued
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Witches and 1980 Australia One in Seven lesbian/gay movement in

Faggots, Dykes Collective Australia; demonstrations,
and Poofters interviews, discussions; voice
over narration
Woman in Your 1978 New Zealand? experiences of four women,
Life Is You, The including lesbian couple
Woman's Place Is 1976 USA Nancy Porter and Elaine Noble, a Massachusetts
in the House: A Mickey Lemle state legislator; daily life and
Portrait of interview (including with her
Elaine Noble lover, Rita Mae Brown)
Woman to 1975 USA Donna Deitch interviews with women,
Woman including lesbians
Word Is Out 1977 USA Mariposa Film interviews with twenty-six
Group lesbians and gay men
World of Light: 1980 USA Marita Simpson lesbian author Sarton; daily
A Portrait of and Cathy Wheelock life, interview
May Sarton
You Just Love 1978 USA Richard James gay fathers
Your Children and Jeffrey Lunger
* * *
From the start Gay Liberation identified film, in the shape of the movies, as part
of the armoury of oppression. On the one hand, they denied our existence. Early
on Stuart Byron (1972:59) observed that '{ijnasmuch as they reflect society,
mass media pretend that homosexuality does not exist'; eleven years later
Barbara Halpern Martineau (1983) writing about lesbian representation still
had to focus on its absence. On the other hand, on the rare occasions when we
were represented, it was demeaning and derisive — as Suzannah Lessard wrote
in 1970 'Wherever Homosexuals are portrayed in movies they are ridiculous
or desperate or disgusting' (1972:208-9), or as Frank Pearce (1973:284) put
it, we were shown as 'immoral and ill, pathetic and dangerous, all at the same
time'. Films were needed which would counteract this, make us visible in forms
we could feel good about.
The majority of affirmation films up to 1980 were documentaries (Waugh
1997), listed in the accompanying chart (Barsan 1992:366—70 takes the list
into the 1980s). The reasons for this, and the specific inflection given to the
documentary tradition, are discussed in a moment. Apart from these, there was,
not counting the films influenced by or moving beyond affirmation politics, a
handful of more or less straightforward fiction films:
Happy Birthday Davy USA 1970 Richard Fontaine

Saturday Night at the Baths USA 1974 David Buckley
A Very Natural Thing USA 1974 Christopher Larkin
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Anna und Edith BRD 1975 Cristina Perincioli 5

Apartments Australia 1977 Megan McMurchy
Du er ikke alene Denmark 1977 Lasse Nielsen and Ernst Johansen
Vm Not from Here USA 1977 Harvey Marks
Outrageous! Canada 1977 Richard Benner
David is Homosexual GB 1978 Lewisham Campaign for Homosexual
Equality
Nighthawks GB 1978 Ron Peck and Paul Hallam
After the Game USA 1980 Donna Gray
Ella une vraie famille France 1980 Michka Gorki
Liv og D0d Norway 1980 Svend Warn and Peyter Venner0d
The Squeeze New Zealand 1980 Richard Turner
Home Made Melodrama GB 1980-2 Jacqui Duckworth
Some of the documentaries contain other elements: Bogjavlar interpolates

sketches and slogans; Ontbinding and Michael, a Gay Son involve dramatised
reconstructions; Greta's Girls is a scripted documentary account of two women's
daily life together. Documentary is overwhelmingly the chosen mode in relation
to consciousness raising, but its limitations and the advantages of fiction begin
to become apparent with the other practices of affirmation politics.
Documentary offered itself as the form par excellence for affirmation film,
partly because it is cheaper and easier to do tolerably than fiction, partly because
of its historical association with progressive movements (Waugh 1984), and
especially for its supposed special relation to reality. 6 Fiction, by contrast, was
the territory of the movies. Films were needed that would show the reality
of our existence — the fact of our existence and what our existence was really
like. To achieve this, affirmation cinema built on prevalent assumptions about
documentary in general, but also inflected them according to the new attitudes
towards reality that underlay the politics.
Part of documentary's appeal lay in its basis in recording, the fundamental
technology of film. Recording guarantees' that what is on screen was there to
be filmed and did look like that. Just having lesbians and gay men on screen,
not actors playing them, said in the face of media invisibility, 'we exist'. For the
early examples it was enough to be showing lesbians and gay men at all. Later
examples have extended documentation to other unseen aspects of lesbian/gay
existence: lesbians and alcohol (We All Have Our Reasons USA 1981), teenagers
(Veronica 4 Rose GB 1982 and Framed Youth GB 1983), Asians (Orientations
Canada 1984), older people (Silent Pioneers USA 1985), Parents of Gays (Australia
1986), lesbians and reproductive technology (Alternative Conceptions USA 1986)
and the many films dealing with AIDS.
Documentaries are versions of a recorded reality. The changing styles in
documentary history are not just the effect of new techniques and fashions (both
of which may help reality come up fresh, as it were) but of changing notions of
how one knows about reality. Early documentary, Grierson or Vertov, sought
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to present the basic mechanisms of social processes; they assumed a need to

bring a perspective from outside, Grierson using experts, Vertov organising
his material according to Marxist principles. 7 A later generation, cinema verite
and direct cinema, 8 reacting against what they saw as the authoritarianism and
preconceived frameworks of earlier styles, took the sequence of events as they
happened as the key to reality, observing it detachedly and without comment,
leaving it, in principle, to speak for itself. Feminist and lesbian/gay documen-
taries also refused the 'objective' knowledge of earlier traditions, but were
equally uneasy with verite's detachment and its tendency in practice to organise
its material around what were seen as macho values of crisis and conflict
(Rosenberg 1983:36). Verite film-makers were not identified with the people
they were filming and their detachment often came across as irony or disdain.
Feminist and lesbian/gay documentarists, by contrast, were part of what they
were filming; their reality was grasped through subjective understanding;
it was characterised by coming together, not conflict. Making oneself the
subject of politics, acknowledging the validity of subjective truth, coming
together — these were also major characteristics of the CR process. Affirmation
films' inflection of documentary's claim to a special relation to reality is part of
the new movement's distinctive way of comprehending (lesbian/gay) reality.
Consciousness raising
Some movement films show CR in progress. There are no recordings of meetings
of an ongoing CR group as such, since they were closed to non-participants, but
films could stage reproductions (Michael, a Gay Son), record CR-type discussions
at more open meetings (Bogjavlar, LAspect rose de la chose) or bring people
together for the camera (August andJuly, Coming to Know, We're Alive, Gay Women
Speak). However, even when no attempt was made to show CR as such, it was
always felt that the films were somehow like' CR. Newsday 15 November 1971,
for instance, in a review of Three Lives, considered it had the 'feel of a Women's
Lib rap session' 9 ; similarly, Ruth McCormick, in one of the first overviews
of women's liberation cinema, suggested all the films made thus far had 'more
or less political or consciousness-raising ends in view' (1972:2). This early
perception has been theoretically developed by Julia Lesage, who argues that
the organisation of women's liberation documentaries 'is the artistic analogue
of the structure and function of the consciousness-raising group' (1978:515).
I want here to discuss the applicability of this proposition to affirmation
documentaries.
Their central method is footage of an individual speaking about him/her
self, often referred to as 'talking heads'. This was the format from the start.
Three Lives 1970, one of the first women's movement films, has Robin Mide
talking to camera about her homosexual feelings. Come Together 1971 moves
throughout between sequences of activism and footage of personal testimony.
Bail Fund Film 1971 consists mainly of Paul talking about her experience and
224
life, including her lesbianism. Talking heads occupy at least part of most
movement documentaries and are the core of many; Word Is Out consists almost
entirely of intercutting between twenty-six of them.
Most talking heads films are based on interviews. The speaker does not look
direct to camera but off to one side of it, clearly addressing someone. This person
is only rarely heard and very seldom seen — all attention is on the interviewee,
which makes it feel as if s/he lays down the agenda for the interview as an indi-
vidual should in CR. The vestigial presence of an interviewer may be a bit like
a stand-in for the viewer, providing us with a place in the film as if next to the
person in a CR session.
In some films, the interviewer is more directly acknowledged. Rita Mae
Brown in Some American Feminists, for instance, begins one shot saying, 'Well,
you asked me when did I first come out . . and proceeds to tell us. Word Is Out
keeps in a number of such moments, notably in the pre-credit sequence: we hear
a woman ask Nadine, a Chicano woman, if she was 'always gay', and she replies,
'Always? I don't think so. Oh, maybe. I don't know. It's hard to say. I think I
. . . yeah, maybe'; Betty raises with the unseen interviewer the question of
whether she will be the only black lesbian in the film (figure 6.2); Nick, a white
man, is asked when he first started acting on his feelings, and replies, 'No, no,
that's like way . . . that's like, getting into puberty. Though I . . . I . . . oh boy
Figure 6.2 Betty raises the issue of her representativeness in Word Is Out. (National Film
Archive)
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. . . are you running now?' There is a sense here of the film-makers laying down
an agenda, prompting thoughts on topics such as when one first knows one is
gay, topics that seem very open ended and yet contain hotly contested assump-
tions (such as that there is a stable identity, being gay, that one comes to discover
in oneself; that it is a given of one's personality, not a choice). Yet these moments
also suggest that interviewees can resist the frameworks that the film-makers
have brought to bear. Betty explicitly raises the issues of selection and represen-
tativeness in the film, insisting that she, the film-makers and the viewer be
self-conscious about what she is doing in the film. The more hesitant responses
of Nadine and Nick suggest that the question may be inappropriate, that they
can't tie up their experiences in its neat assumptions. As in principle in CR, the
film is willing to register resistance to presupposition.
Not all talking heads footage is interview. Sometimes the subject speaks
direct to camera. Robin Mide in Three Lives, several of the people in Susana, look
at the camera, introduce themselves, say what they want to say. In the second
section of LAspect rose, 'Lexique' ('Lexicon'), each of the twelve members of the
group speaks a text they have prepared on some aspect of being lesbian/gay,
basing what they say on their own experiences - for example, Denis talks about
pederasty, Martine about lesbian prostitution, Didier about camp, Catherine
about sisterhood and so on. Such departures from previous documentary practice
are part of what Waugh (1988) sees as these films' empowerment of gay/lesbian
people, as in CR giving them the word.
Talking heads footage centres on the close-up, like CR focusing on the
individual consciousness. Yet few films consist relentlessly of head and shoulder
close-ups. Camera movement, generally zooming or hand held, may break the
monotony, underscore what is important, intensify feelings. It may also situate
the individual voice in a wider context. If it shows more of the interviewee's
environment, it can suggest (quite possibly misleadingly) more of their char-
acter and social position. We are bound to attend to Kate Millett and Ti-Grace
Atkinson, in Some American Feminists, differently, when the former is shot
wearing a loose, smock-like top over cotton trousers, sitting on a polished brown
wood floor with rugs on it in a cavernous studio flat whereas Atkinson wears
a neat, fitted grey jumper and is sitting on a beige sofa along the back of which
at one point walks a beautiful, long-haired cat.
Elsewhere camera movement may suggest the immediate situation out of
which the person speaks. When Rick Stokes in Word Is Out starts talking about
meeting his lover David, the camera zooms back from an extreme close-up
on his face to bring David into frame, thus placing Rick as part of a couple,
no longer attended to as a single person. In In the Best Interests of the Children,
Margaret Sloan talks about her daughter Cathy's first experience of lesbian
oppression; as she speaks, Cathy sits next to her at a table laying out playing cards
and getting Margaret to participate. Cathy's presence is appropriate because
Margaret is talking about her, but the set-up also reproduces the characteristic
situation of women having to speak while attending to the distractions of
226
domesticity and motherhood. (It is interesting to compare this with a similar

moment in Janie's Janie 1971, a feminist documentary about a white, working-
class woman in New Jersey. At one point Janie is talking while preparing a
meal; she puts a chicken in the oven while she speaks, but then notices that the
oven has gone out and has to interrupt what she is saying and see to the oven.
Like Margaret, Janie does not speak in isolation from the remorseless demands
of women's work. The difference however is that for Janie, domesticity interrupts
the train of thought, whereas Margaret continues speaking even while playing
cards with Cathy. Janie's Janie is a film about the limitations of the domestic role
for women; In the Best Interests on the other hand is about the comparability of
motherhood and lesbianism.)
Camera movement and everything visual in these films is nevertheless
subordinate to the lesbian/gay voice. The dominance of the voice in documen-
tary was characteristic of pre-verite traditions, but in the form of an impersonal,
unlocated voice explaining and placing the images for the viewer. Affirmation
documentaries eschew this, dispensing with voice over narration altogether
(with the major exceptions of We're not Afraid Anymore, Witches and Faggots and
the two autobiographical films, Home Movie and Susana). Such narration would
be associated with fixing the truth from outside, whereas what was favoured here
was the individualised, located voice of subjectivity. This is the voice to which
all the images are subordinate and which acts as the guide as to how to make
sense of what is shown.
The most common pattern in affirmation documentaries is predominant
talking heads footage, broken up by footage and photographs cut into it (i.e.
while the person keeps on speaking) and by interludes between it, generally
showing the people about their daily lives. The voice provides the anchor for both
cut-ins and interludes. Generally the image corroborates or illustrates the voice:
in Word Is Out, Mark Pinney's reference to having been 'a fairly hunky little
teenager' is corroborated by snaps; John Platania in Some of Your Best Friends talks
about his entrapment on the site where it occurred; May Sarton's sense of lesbian
fulfilment is echoed in World of Light in footage of her gardening or with friends.
Sometimes the relationship between voice and image is more complex. This
generally occurs when use is made of footage not specifically shot for the film:
home movies, snapshots, newspaper stories and so on. This may refer to other
images in society: pin-ups of heterosexual role models such as Gary Cooper and
Clark Gable, for instance, as Harry Hay speaks about growing up in the thirties
in Word is Out. More often it refers back to the speaker's own past image, now
perceived as inauthentically straight. In Lavender, one of the women elaborates
on her statement, 'I knew I was different from an early age', as we see a montage
of snapshots from her life, all of which we are thus invited to read in terms of
'difference', either catching the hint of deviance in these normative snaps or else
marvelling that a lesbian identity should lurk therein.
The most sustained use of interplay between image and voice is Jan Oxenburg's
Home Movie, in which the film-maker's voice interrogates her parents' old home
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movie footage of her. In the first such section, she is seen in a frilly pink dress
imitating mummy feeding baby and dancing to a record, while the voice over
muses, 'I wonder why I was doing this? I look so . . . normal, just like a little girl.
And it's really strange, because I didn't feel like a little girl'. The voice stresses
the contrast between the 'normal' exterior and the felt inner 'difference', but we
may perceive that difference in the little girl's behaviour. Michelle Citron suggests
that the girl looks awkward in the role, 'desperate' as she dances, like 'a kid who
doesn't quite catch on' (1981:31); at one point, she looks out to the camera with
a pugnacious expression that seems to suggest she is not the feminine little thing
she and her parents were trying to put on film. When next the home movie is of
Oxenburg as cheerleader, the voice says, 'The thing I liked best about being a
cheerleader was being with the other cheerleaders'. The indisputable normality
of cheerleading is subverted, both by suggesting the lesbian dimension of all
girls together and suggesting that being together was more important than
supplying support for the boys' game - 'the football match was just an excuse for
the cheerleaders to get together and do our thing'. Her parents' camera is not
so sure: while the voice is all with the other girls, the camera sometimes swings
out to take in the match, registering a tension between what the voice says she
felt mattered and what the image indicates social convention deemed significant.
The home movies are framed by contemporary footage at the beginning
and end. The film opens with a montage of still and moving images of women
together, marching as lesbians, being affectionate with one another - in other
words, a 'positive' image of lesbian identity from which to view the construction
of feminine identity in the home movies. The end of the cheerleader section
cuts from the adolescent Oxenburg, the image slowed down, her voice over
saying, 'It feels real good now to have broken through the facade', to her with
a group of women playing softball. The cut emphasises a shift in role, no longer
cheerleading but playing, and creates a feeling of release, from the home movie
slowing down to the fast movement of the women playing. The feeling of release
conveys a feeling of'breaking through the facade'; it also suggests, as does the
whole film, a notion of having discovered a true, authentic self and identity.
Both this, and the sustained implicit contrast between the feminine and the
lesbian, are ways of thinking and feeling about lesbianism that are both charac-
teristic of affirmation politics and yet fiercely contested within it.
For the most part, Home Movie seems to be contrasting a contemporary,
authentic lesbian self against the inauthentic image of the past. The home
movies are introduced by white leader visible on screen and accompanied by
the sound of a camera running, underlining that such footage, often considered
raw and innocent, is nonetheless ideologically constructed. The surrounding
material, on the other hand, is presented straight, as if transparent, natural,
unmanipulated. Except at the very end. The final shots show the players hug-
ging together in a group and kissing, but then there is white leader before the
credits and accompanying them the sound of a camera running; when the last
credit has come up, there is the sound of the camera being turned off, just before
228
the film ends. These last details, and the film's title, suggest that the contem-
porary footage too is a 'home movie'. This might mean that being with women
is the film-maker's true home, maintaining the contrast between real and
phoney home movies. Equally it could suggest that the new lesbian identity is
also recognised as a construction, a reading supported by Oxenburg's later film
Comedy in Six Unnatural Acts, discussed below. Be that as it may, Home Movie's
principal strategy is to reveal the truth about the past from the vantage point
of the raised consciousness of the present.
Affirmation documentaries are then like CR in that they centre on the indi-
vidual voice as the source of knowledge and the vehicle of truth, with the
image situating, corroborating or occasionally being interrogated by the voice,
but never itself questioning that voice. Most often, several voices are brought
together in ways that both establish lesbian/gay identity and demonstrate the
social dimension of personal experience.
Identity is achieved partly simply by bringing these voices together under
the aegis of a lesbian/gay film. Many films stress the diversity of lesbian/gay
people. Films like Word Is Out and In the Best Interests are extremely careful to
include a wide range of people (black, white, Chicano, Native American, Asian;
rich, middle, poor; queeny/dikey and straight looking; all ages — only disability
seems not to get a look in), and most films have someone protesting the variety
and diversity of gay people even if what is shown reproduces a white, middle-
class image. Yet the stress on diversity is there principally to reinforce the
sense that, despite all the differences, homosexuality represents a unifying
identity - as Keith Birch observes in recollection of GLF CR groups, 'men and
women, age-groups, class, even though there were divisions apparent, there
was this idea that a gay identity could transcend all these things' (1988:32).
Many women's films that include lesbianism similarly stress the essential unity
of women as women, beyond differences of sexual preference. The Continuous
Woman, its title and construction, fitting Sherrie in on a continuum with other,
non-lesbian women of different ages, expresses the idea particularly clearly.
The sense of identity is also achieved in the repetition of a narrative structure
that also indicates the social dimension of gay/lesbian experience. The subjects
tell stories about themselves, or sometimes more broadly the story of their
life, and across the many different stories, a common pattern emerges: realising
one is lesbian/gay, coming out. People tell about when they first had lesbian/gay
feelings, how they felt about it, recognising what others, society at large, felt
about it, doing something about it (falling in love, having sex), telling other
people about it, meeting with other lesbian/gay people. This is the basic overall
structure of Word Is Out. Though in many ways loose, even rambling, repro-
ducing something of the feel of a CR session, it does have named sections which
group bits of what the speakers say into three stages, corresponding to the
progression just outlined — 'The Early Years', 'Growing Up', 'From Now On'.
The voices telling their stories make up a general lesbian/gay biography.
At the same time, as with feminist documentaries, the films also condense
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the narrative of the CR process itself. In CR people speak individually; as they

speak and listen, they come to realise the wider significance of their individual
story. Thus CR has its own narrative: the dawning of awareness. Likewise in
the films, footage near the beginning will often be pure story telling; later, the
person will speak about how they feel about things; towards the end, they will
discourse on the social/political significance of their experiences. The sense
of a collective movement in this direction, arising out of the CR process, is
achieved either by dovetailing similar accounts, the similarity foregrounding
what is common, and therefore social, to personal testimony, or else by a progres-
sion, noted by Rosenberg in feminist documentaries (1983:56), from someone
shown talking first alone and then to a small group of other people.
In its centring on the individual speaker, its privileging of the voice over the
image and its structures of parallelism the talking heads documentary can
indeed be seen as the artistic analogue' of CR. It also raises some of the paradoxes
of CR.
The aim, of the documentaries as of CR groups, is the truth, and the
source of truth is the individual voice, but there are limitations to this approach
to truth which may in part be heightened by the talking heads format. Centring
on the individual voice takes on trust, first, the speakers' sincerity (they are
saying what they genuinely think and feel, honestly recalling their past),
and second, their self-knowledge. Yet we know that people perform, say what
is expected of them, especially in the presence of a camera; that even if they
say what they think is true, they may forget, deceive themselves; that the
social reality of anyone's personal circumstances far outstrips their grasp of
it; that all thought and perception is governed by frameworks of understanding
that we do not individually create (though we may learn to be aware of them
and struggle with them). So-called subjective truth is no less (and no more)
problematic and unstable than so-called objective truth.
The repetition of stories, the films' insistent perception of sameness within
difference, relates to a further paradox of CR. The latter was in principle entirely
free and open ended, yet if you had been in a lesbian/gay CR group and had
raised your consciousness to the point where you saw clearly and fully that it
was quite right that you should be oppressed, it would surely be held that CR
had failed in your case. Some consciousnesses are more acceptable than others.
The term consciousness raising evokes the Marxist idea of'false consciousness',
the wrong seeing consciousness you had to rise above, yet feminism and the
lesbian/gay movements rejected the idea of 'correct' views. CR had a hidden
agenda of things one should go through, a hidden idea of where one should end
up, but this was always masked under the phenomenology of the individual
speaking out. The same holds true for the documentaries. At their worst they
both sprawl and yet say the same thing over and over. This same thing is the
affirmation that gay is good. Conflict, contradiction and difficulty are erased.
Talking heads documentaries do thus in many ways reproduce the approach
to knowledge embodied in CR, even down to the limitations of subjectivity as
230
truth and the quest for sameness. Where the analogy with CR begins to break
down is in the assumption of sharing and identity between speaker and listener.
In a CR group they were on an equal footing — every listener was a speaker and
vice versa. For the analogy to hold we would at least need to be sure that the
film-makers are gay/lesbian, even if they do not literally speak on film. However,
this is by no means always clear.
Occasionally the text of the film is explicit about who made it: Sisters!, for
instance, includes the statement, 'This film is made for women, by women and
is dedicated to women'. Some films include enough of the interviewer to let us
know that he or she is gay or lesbian. Sometimes we know from surrounding
publicity that the film-makers were lesbian/gay, for example the collectives
behind Coming Out, Rosa Winkel, Bogjavlar, Word Is Out, In the Best Interests,
LAspect rose, Witches and Faggots, the directors of Race d'ep!, Greta's Girls, Truxx
and Enough Is Enough. In other cases the directors are well known as lesbian/gay
from other kinds of film work - from the avant-garde (Barbara Hammer), from
pornography (Pat Rocco, Norbert Terry), from both (Arthur Bressan). When
none of these are the case, we probably take it on trust that the films were made
by lesbian/gay people. We are not always right to.
In some cases information is so scant that one can say nothing about their
makers, even their sex, let alone their sexuality. In women's films, there may
be an assumption that it does not matter whether the people behind the camera
were lesbians, it is enough that they were women. If lesbianism is understood
as part of the continuum of female experience (Rich 1981:23—33), then any
woman can be supposed to identify with lesbian subjects. The same argument
was not usually made for men, for whom it was assumed there was a polarity
of interests between gayness and straightness. Thus it is not in itself enough
reassurance that the makers of Some of Your Best Friends, A Position of Faith or,
Michael, a Gay Son were at any rate men; and it is even less reassuring to note
that two of three directors of Sandy and Madeline's Family were men, as was the
only director of August and July. It is not that straight men could not possibly
make a decent film about lesbians or gay men, but that it necessarily breaks with
the idea of CR if they are the film-maker, because CR is about the mutual
sharing of experience. In many cases, the film-makers may in fact have identified
as lesbian/gay with their subjects, but have remained silent about it, because
they wished to efface themselves before their subjects, or because they did not
consider the significance of the viewer knowing who made the film, or because
they had not yet come out.
There is then a range of apparent identification between film-makers and
subjects. There are senses in which this both does and does not matter. It does
not matter if, as Waugh (1988) says, one feels that the subjects have been
empowered by the film. Collectives who make films generally stress very close,
inter-active participation with their subjects, and this may be true of individu-
ally directed films. Waugh (ibid.:260) cites Michael, a Gay Son, based on 'such
close collaboration' with its subject that it is virtually a 'joint film'; Russo
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(1981:244) suggests that the Mariposa collective's practice of screening footage

to groups of gay people, using their suggestions in shaping the film, means
that in 'a real sense, the gay community made Word Is Ouf. The interview
and statement to camera are generally handled, Waugh suggests, in ways that
avoid the selection and manipulation found in the use of these same techniques
in mainstream cinema and television. The editing generally 'endeavours to
preserve the full scope and rhythm of the interview' (1988:261); long takes are
favoured, with no cropping at the editing stage; the presence of the interviewer
may be signalled, 'the subjective presence that has catalyzed the subject's
contribution' (ibid.). Statements suggest even stronger control by the subjects
over what is talked about and how; they may even select where they are filmed
and from what angle.
In practice, it is nearly always lesbian/gay film-makers who empower lesbian/
gay speakers, but it need not be so. To that extent, it does not matter who made
the film so long as they empower the lesbian/gay subject. Yet it does affect how
we look at and experience the film. Given the history of straight perceptions
of lesbian/gay people, the construction of us in official discourses (including
traditional documentaries) as exhibits of evil, sickness or deviance, as well as
male heterosexual voyeurism of lesbianism, given these, the sense of closeness,
one-ness, identification between film-maker and subject matters to lesbian/gay
viewers very much indeed as a countervailing tradition.
There is a further way in which the revealing analogy between CR and affir-
mation documentaries does not work. CR is by definition a private and intimate
experience, but the moment it is filmed and shown in public it ceases to be so.
It becomes, on the other hand, coming out.
Coming out
One of the first Gay Liberation slogans was 'Out of the Closets! Onto the
Streets!' and Out of the Closets is the title of two of the first books on the movement
(Jay and Young 1972; Humphries 1972) (figure 6.3). The name of the Italian
gay liberation movement, Fuori, means Out; in its newspaper it declared: 'What
are we asking of you? To come out!' (Richmond and Noguera 1973:154).
Similarly Carl Wittman's 'Gay Manifesto', first published in the San Francisco
Free Press at the end of 1969, begins its list of 'imperatives for gay liberation'
with 'Free ourselves; come out everywhere' (1972:341). Several movement films
have titles playing on the idea: Coming Out, Coming to Know, Word Is Out, Gay Is
Out. As Bob Cant (1978:33) observed in relation to Nighthawks: 'we are never
left in any doubt about the importance of coming out. And that does remain
the central tenet of the gay movement as it is now'.
Coming out (CO) was the one strategy unique to lesbian and gay politics.
No other group is quite so literally socially invisible. Being lesbian/gay does
not show — unlike gender, colour or disability, it is not physiologically apparent;
unlike class or ethnicity, it is not something the visible markers of which you
232
Figure 6.3 The first slogan of gay liberation on two book covers from 1972.
(Douglas/Links and Prentice-Hall)
have to unlearn if you wish to disguise it; only if you choose to behave in
an 'obvious' style is being lesbian/gay in any sense visible. This of course does
afford a measure of protection. CO is a deliberate decision to do without that
mask of invisibility. It has a special edge to it. Women, blacks, Jews, the disabled
may all be socially disadvantaged, but only exceptionally (in Nazi Germany, for
instance) has their very right to exist been in doubt. Although death for lesbians
and gay men was not on the cards in the fifties and sixties, biological treatment
aimed at eradicating homosexual feeling was and such feeling was largely illegal.
CO is making visible something that is not merely invisible but also deemed
worthy of extermination. It is dangerous, moving and dramatic, the stuff of
a good picture.
CO was generally understood to have three stages: coming out to oneself
(recognising homosexual feelings in oneself, accepting them, being willing
to act on them); coming out to other lesbian/gay people (going on the
scene, joining groups, CR); coming out to other people (both in one's daily
life, coming out to friends, family, employers, colleagues, and also in public,
wearing badges, going on marches, kissing and holding hands in the street and
so on). Personal testimony films often describe all of these but, in the nature of
things, they cannot really show the first two (you'd have to know someone was
going to discover/decide they were gay in advance of them doing so). Despite
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this, CO is a defining characteristic of the form and content of affirmation

documentaries.
It is enough that they are films. The act of being filmed, knowing that
the film is going to be shown, is inescapably an act of coming out. As Waugh
(1988:265) says, 'consent to declare oneself before the camera . . . has for
every potential subject of a lesbian/gay documentary all the dimensions of an
irreversible life-changing political commitment'. People in the films often make
reference to the fact that they are, even as they speak, in a film and coming
out. They also state why they are doing so. At the end of Lavender one of the
women says it is frightening to be as exposed as the film will make her, but that
it is the only way to change people's attitudes — it is because they 'haven't seen
anything to do with lesbians' that straight attitudes remain limited or bigoted.
In In the Best Interests a black woman observes that the only way for there to be
change is for people
to be around us more, to read our books, to see our films. This film is a
great avenue for people to see, hey, they're mundane, you know, they're
nutty, they're crazy, they're exciting, they're black, they're white, they
have children, they don't, they live in structured families, they live very
loosely. . . . It seems to me that exposure's the only thing to change
people's minds.
Two autobiographical films, Blackstar and Susana, play on film as CO. Both
establish their maker's identity as film-maker as inseparable from their identity
as gay/lesbian: Blackstar starts with bits of gay-ish surrealistic film made by
Tom Joslin since he was fourteen; Susana has Blaustein speak in voice over
of her discovery in early adolescence of her 'vocation for art and women'. Both
then focus on film on people's responses to them as out film-makers.
Blackstar is based around a series of interviews with Joslin's family and lover.
All the interviewees seem awkward: the family are uncomfortable with his
gayness and even more with having to acknowledge both it and their discomfort
on film; the lover is embarrassed, especially when Joslin tries to get him to
make love on camera. No-one wants to talk about gay sexuality, highlighting
precisely the avoidance of openness which CO challenges. This is compounded
by the film's construction, where one interview undercuts another, revealing the
strain involved in Tom's attempt to integrate his family and love-life. Ray Olson
(1979:10) describes one instance:
the juxtaposition of his mother's talk with that of his lover criticizing
her erodes our confidence in both of them: she seems not so much as at
first the warm, accepting mother; he is caught out in loverly insecurity.
Showing awkwardness, evasion and distrust, Blackstar constructs a picture of

the uncomfortable way that CO works in day-to-day interactions.
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Susana also has interviews with various people the film-maker has known
through her life, family, friends, lovers, together with old photographs and
home movies. Blaustein is sometimes present in the interviews as a participant;
at others, she speaks to camera as if replying to what has just been said. Her
presence provides two registers of CO: celebratory, as when talking with or
making love to women friends, and challenging, when she first replies to her
parents' statements and then, in a climactic final scene, confronts her sister
Graciela. The latter tells Blaustein she cannot accept what she is, still thinks she
should get married but that she will 'try to be open and understand'. Blaustein's
presence here is bristlingly combative. Her self-presentation, wearing what
Claudia Gorbman (1983:44) calls 'the popular lesbian iconography of a dyke-
vogue sportcap', is overtly lesbian; Graciela, in conventionally feminine clothes,
is sitting waiting for the interview to start, when we hear Susana shout 'Action!'
and then come in, entering what has been established as Graciela's space;
throughout the interview, Susana is restless, shifting about, lighting up a
cigarette; she takes the microphone from Graciela in order to speak but does
not return it to her - in other words, throughout she has the upper hand. This
may turn the viewer against Blaustein ('we may cavil at what [Graciela] says
. . . but visually speaking she is defensive, and we actually tend to root for her
as the underdog' (Gorbman, ibid.)), but equally the sequence does reverse
the position lesbians usually occupy, in two ways: Blaustein is in control of the
situation, not controlled by it; and she turns anti-lesbianism into the thing that
has to be come out about, to be confessed, as Graciela embarrassedly admits
that she still disapproves of Susana's identity.
Beyond the simple fact of it being film, affirmation documentaries may
intensify the sense of CO by showing straightforwardly what was (is) taboo.
Occasionally this may mean sexual intercourse, but usually it is simply open
affection. Greta's Girls shows the ordinary domestic life of Chris and Sarah, the
lesbianism of their relationship evident in a myriad tiny glances, touches
and interactions. Bogjavlar uses two men, Hakan and Pelle (who stress that
they are friends who have sex together rather than 'a couple'), as a central thread;
after the title credit, the film opens with the two of them having a bath
together, laughing and giggling, Hakan shampooing Pelle's hair. There is
nothing shocking or outrageous about it, yet it is a kind of gentle physical
intimacy between men that is never usually shown. Later, they walk down the
street, holding hands, kissing. The framing is wide enough to be able to show
passers-by turning to look at the men, and the shot is followed by a rapid series
showing people's reactions, some curious, some shocked. Here the impact of CO
is registered in the film itself and going out to do and film this in the streets of
Stockholm is itself a classic act of gay liberation.
Such deliberate, politically informed CO is well documented in movement
film: all the footage of street marches and demonstrations is also always footage
of collective CO. A few films show lesbians and gay men who are out in their
daily lives away from home. Lavender shows both women at their places of
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work; A Woman's Place shows Elaine Noble about her state gubernatorial
business. There is no lesbian content to this footage, they are just doing their
job, not coming out in any overt sense, but the fact that we know (from the film)
they are lesbian, that they were being filmed in situ at work because they were
lesbian, places them 'out' in public.
It is easy enough to show people recalling coming out and demonstrating
their outness by being in a film but, as has already been said, it is much more
difficult to show the process of CO. It is only as one approaches dramatisation
that it becomes possible. Documentaries that try to deal with it either, like
A Position of Faith, are strongly organised around narrative suspense (will Bill
be accepted for ordination?), or else, like Michael, a Gay Son, resort to acted
reconstructions (of family therapy sessions) to show the drama of coming out
to parents. In the fiction films proper, CO is undoubtedly the narrative structure
par excellence.
No films show the purely private self-realisation that one desires people of
the same sex, but other moments in the story of CO are charted — discovery
of one's feelings in relation to someone one is attracted to {After the Game, Anna
und Edith, Apartments, Du er ikke alene, Liv og D0d), coming on to the gay scene
{Happy Birthday Davy, Saturday Night at the Baths, A Very Natural Thing), telling
people you know {Anna und Edith, Du er ikke alene, Liv og D0d, Michael, a
Gay Son), coming out in public {Nighthawks, A Very Natural Thing). These can
explore both the dimensions of the process and its consequences.
Implicit in any representation of CO is an idea of the nature of lesbian/gay
identity itself, that is whether, at one extreme, it is presented as a fixed, pre-given
identity which then gets recognised and expressed, or whether, at the other, it
is seen as something one becomes in the process of forming relationships. There
is a difference between the women's and men's films here. Coming out in the
gay male films tends more towards the idea of the already fixed identity, whereas
the lesbian films represent it more flexibly, though with a strong pull toward
the 'becoming' end of the continuum. This can be related to the different routes
to lesbian/gay political awareness indicated above. For women, lesbianism could
be either something one knew about oneself before involvement in the gay
or women's movements or something one discovered through the experience
of the latter, whereas there was no equivalent men's movement, only a gay
movement to which you came if you already thought you were gay. More con-
tentiously, this difference might also be related to differences in the construction
of male and female sexuality themselves, a point I shall return to after discussing
the different constructions of coming out in these films.
The elliptical narrative of Apartments evokes an experience of realising lesbian
feelings through a response to a particular person. Two women living in a block
of flats see one another and catch each other's eyes in passing; these moments
are crosscut with shots of them making love; only at the end do we get the
moment of meeting. The love-making may be what does happen or what they
want to happen, but either way the film suggests how feelings of lesbian desire
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may arise unpremeditated in day-to-day interactions. This is explored more

fully in conventional linear narratives.
After the Game shows two school friends, Nicole and Diane, spending time
together at Diane's place after a ball game; when they take a shower together,
the water suddenly runs too hot and Diane has to press against Nicole to avoid
it, leading to confused looks between them; Nicole says she must go, Diane asks
why and Nicole tells her, 'I think I'm in love with you'. For Nicole, this is the
culmination of feelings: how she has felt before (as she now tells Diane) when
they have showered together, what was at stake for her when, just before, she
told Diane how much her friendship means and they hugged. For Diane, on
the other hand, these are new experiences, which she says she doesn't think she
can handle; but when Nicole has walked out of the door, Diane goes after her
and says, 'Don't go'. Nicole comes out with feelings she already has and in doing
so enables Diane to explore similar but unsuspected feelings in herself. There
is something of the same balance in Anna und Edith. The two women work
in the same office and share a flat. In one scene, Edith is cleaning her face before
a mirror and Anna comes in, gives her a glass of wine, stands behind her looking
at her in the mirror and starts to caress her; when Edith says that she has never
had women friends, Anna says that she did at school but lost them when she
married. A little later, it is Anna who gently seduces Edith, when they have gone
out into the country. Towards the end of the film, Edith tells the other women
in the office that through Anna she has discovered what had been lacking in her
relationships with men, but there is no sense of her having specifically desired
women before this, whereas this is suggested by Anna's remarks and initiative.
In the gay male films by contrast characters are already gay before they first
express it. Bo in Du er ikke alene is shown looking at other boys before falling
for Kim; Jacob in Liv og D0d says he's always wanted to sleep with a man
after he meets the more gay-identified John; in Happy Birthday Davy and A Very
Natural Thing, the main characters go on to the gay scene to explore the sexu-
ality they have recognised in themselves. Michael in Saturday Night at the Baths,
who lives with his girlfriend Tracy, insists that he is not gay when he takes a
job as a pianist at a gay baths, yet both Tracy and Scotti, the baths' manager,
accuse him of resisting gay feelings inside him. After he has finally slept with
Scotti, he tells him of a traumatic experience when his father broke up a loving
relationship he was having with one of his father's male friends, which serves
to confirm that Tracy and Scotti were right. Thus even a narrative of a man
discovering sexual feelings he thought he did not have winds up demonstrating
that in reality a man 'is' gay before he knows or does anything about it.
The lesbian films tend to see sexual identity as itself created in the process
of forming relationships. This is suggested by their representation of men.
While gay relations are counterposed to heterosexual ones in Saturday Night at
the Baths and Liv og D0d, there is no sense of a rejection of women (in these cases,
not even sexually), whereas in the lesbian films men always figure, perhaps
just as alternatives in Apartments, but definitely as something to be rejected in
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After the Game and Anna und Edith. In these films, men are seen as controlling
and defining women's sexuality — having any sexual identity of one's own at all
seems only realisable through lesbian relations. After the Game opens with shots
of a married couple bickering in a restaurant and Diane saying that that is not
what she wants to be like; later, she tells Nicole how bored she has become with
the self-centred boy who was once also Nicole's date; significantly, Diane is
not the one who already recognises lesbian feelings in herself but she has sussed
the inadequacy of heterosexual relations for her. In Anna und Edith, Anna's
husband wants her to be 'a wife'; Edith's boyfriend, Herr Schonherr, the manager
at the office where they all work, wants her to side with him in office politics;
the brothers Anna and Edith meet in a bar paw at them until they get up and
go. The women realise their sexual feelings for each other through the scene at
the mirror, perhaps suggesting starting out from each one's own image of herself
rather than one imposed on her by men. It is not that the men are unattractive
or especially hateful or that the women are 'really' lesbian, but that being sexual
in one's own terms means being lesbian.
This difference between lesbian and gay male films' representation of realising
homosexual feeling relates to current views of the construction of gender sexu-
ality differences. Men are socialised into determining their own sexuality and
also into thinking in terms of separate categories, and are therefore more liable
to try to decide whether they 'are' one thing or another. Women are socialised
more in terms of relationships and responses and have to struggle against their
socialisation to determine their own sexuality; when this struggle is recognised
as being against men, their openness to development through relationships
makes lesbianism a ready possibility. Such ideas have by no means gone uncon-
tested. Many women feel that their experience of having always been lesbian
is discounted by such an account, many men resent the rigid binarism that
seems forced on them and a readiness to countenance a greater plurality of
sexual identities perhaps characterises more recent thought (including Queer
Theory).
The representation of the consequences, as opposed to the processes, of CO
is more straightforward. Some films show negative effects, notably Liv og D0d,
where John and Jennifer (Jacob's girlfriend) are murdered by thugs on account
of their open and accepting life-styles, Nighthawks, where the hero, Jim, is
threatened with losing his job if he again discusses being gay with his pupils
(which he has only done at their prompting), and Michael, a Gay Son, where the
counselling sessions of Michael and his family run the gamut of reactions to
coming out: refusing to believe (brother), pushing it under the carpet (mother),
worried what others will think (father). Yet all the films affirm the importance
of coming out, not just as a strategy but as a good experience. The sequence
in Nighthawks where J i m talks to his fellow teacher, Judy, about being gay feels
very liberating, not just because he says to her that that is how talking about
it feels, but because we have been waiting for this scene throughout the film
and because it comes after a school dance that Judy enveigled Jim into attending
238
as her partner and which he found miserably alienating. He drives furiously

through the night with her out to a motorway cafe — the circling camera and
flashing lights of the drive embody the release of his anger, while the still
set-ups at the cafe express the calmer mood of talking it out.
CO is also often shown as an act of connection, an assertion of personal iden-
tity that leads to an experience of collective identity. This may be with other
gay people, as at the gay street parade in A Very Natural Thing or the lesbian/gay
support group in Michael, but it can also be with wider forces of resistance and
rebellion. The school's attempt to break up the relationship of Bo and Kim in
Du er ikke alene is part of what fuels all the kids' resistance to authoritarianism.
A similar connection is made in Anna und Edith. The other women in the office
are at first divided about how they feel about the relationship but Anna points
out that they have found out about it from Schonherr and that this is an attempt
by him to turn the women against each other just as had been done earlier
during their strike. This is the argument that wins the women over. Even more
powerfully, Anna und Edith suggests the growth of female solidarity out of the
love between the central couple. The other women discuss with Anna and Edith
the pros and cons of lesbianism, but when Schonherr comes in they all turn and
face him together until he backs out defeated. The discussion sequence is shot
at first with close-ups of different women expressing their views but then
becomes a long shot with all the women grouped around Anna and Edith,
embodying their growing closeness which is then in place for the confrontation
with Schonherr. Again, in the final sequence of the film, when all the women
have gone to a bar for a drink, the camera slowly zooms back from Edith singing
a song about women's self-realisation gradually to include all the women into
the lesbian based experience of liberation (figure 6.4).
The fictions mainly show processes of coming out whereas the documentaries
show those who have come out. Michael, a Gay Son mixes the two, the sequences
with the therapist scripted and acted, in an extremely naturalistic style, whereas
Michael, his lover Jerry and the gay support group play themselves. This
mixture of genuine and fake documentary may disconcert some viewers, but it
also expresses the difficulty of coming out. Michael, Jerry, other lesbian/gay
people are themselves, out on film before us; but the pain and psychological,
social and ethical delicacy' (Waugh 1988:265) of coming out are such that it
becomes unshowable except through performance. The film ends with Michael
and Jerry playing happily together in a park. When we see such things in a film,
we are seeing people who have already reached the point where they have the
confidence and conviction to be out on film; behind them there will always lie
a story of pain and delicacy which their outness may make us forget (even if they
tell us about it verbally); Michael uses fiction and documentary to bring the two
together, the process and the outcome.
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Figure 6.4 The lesbian relationship between Anna und Edith forms the core of solidarity
between other women by the end of the film. (Cinemien)
Act ivism! analysis
In addition to CR and CO, affirmation politics took a wide range of forms, many
of them recorded in the documentaries: pride marches (Homosexuals on the March,
A Gay Parade, Sisters!), protest marches (Gay USA, Enough Is Enough, Witches and
Faggots), lesbian/gay contingents on other marches (a trade union rights rally in
Come Together, a May Day parade in Bogjavlar), counter marches (in Witches and
Faggots against an anti-abortion rally, seen as provocatively timed to coincide
with a gay rights rally); producing and distributing newsletters and leaflets
(Come Together); picketing anti-lesbian/gay events (Stop the Movie Cruising!)',
zapping homophobic occasions (the aversion therapy symposium in Some of Your
Best Friends)', holding meetings (Come Together) and conferences (Witches and
Faggots); addressing public meetings ( J i l lJohnston, Ti-Grace Atkinson in Some
American Feminists), giving talks (to a class of students in Come Together).
Yet activism is much less represented in affirmation documentaries than
CR and CO. Of the sixty-odd films in my list, only fifteen contain any activist
footage, in some cases (e.g. Word Is Out, Some American Feminists) very briefly.
Probably the most sustained treatment is Gay USA, which cuts together footage
from six simultaneous gay pride/protest marches, supplemented by shots of
earlier marches going back to 1970, as well as civil rights and Nazi demon-
strations. There are vox pop interviews with marchers and onlookers and longer
interviews with lesbians and gay men about their experiences. All of this builds
up a picture of both the mood at the marches and the pressure of events and
240
history behind them. The overall picture is what Lee Atwell (1978—9:54)
calls 'the politics of celebration': 'Gay USA is the first film ever to fully capture
the intense anger, joy, and love embodied in these very public expressions of
freedom'.
Music and poetry carries much of this spirit: a ballad, 'Reflections', by Marjie
Orten over shots of women carrying banners in San Francisco; Pat Parker
reciting her poem, 'For the straight folks who don't mind gays but wish they
weren't so blatant', placed as an up-beat after a series of men recalling being
taunted on the streets. The footage of the marches emphasises diversity: Dykes
on Bikes lead off the San Francisco procession where there is also an interview
with a gay businessman dressed in a three-piece suit; there is a balance of women
and men, care to include representatives of all ethnic groups, readiness to include
'obviously' gay people (drag queens, bull dykes, clones) as well as straight-
looking gay people; there is both humour and seriousness, often cut directly
together.
Diversity and joy of living are contrasted with uniformity and emotional
emptiness in a sequence towards the end. Shots of a float bearing blow-ups of
bywords of reaction (the Ku Klux Klan, Hitler, Stalin, Anita Bryant, Idi Amin)
are cut together with shots from the Nazi rally film Triumph of the Will, attesting
to the ubiquity and longevity of oppression. This is accompanied by an inter-
view with a drag queen talking about the conformism, the lack of diversity, of
fascism: 'When you look at mass demonstrations in totalitarian societies, I mean
where you see as many people as there are here today, you don't get a sense that
these are real people. . . . I mean, you just see herds of sheep'. The film thus
brings together two styles of politics, suggesting how the difference in style is
also a difference in attitude towards freedom, variety and individualism.
Gay USA includes a fair bit of material showing anti-gay attitudes. Some
of the onlookers voice homophobic sentiments ('I'm not prejudiced or anything
like that, but when they come in the street and mess with normal people . . .');
fundamentalist Christians aver that sex outside of procreation is 'degrading,
decadent, weakening, childish'. The film is dedicated to Robert Hillsborough,
a gay man murdered in San Francisco a few days earlier. The attitudes and
this chilling fact stand as a reminder of why activism is necessary. Towards
the end there is a gay history section. The Nazi persecution of gays is described
and visually evoked, followed by a vox pop sequence, in which people say what
famous 'gay person from any period in history' they would 'like to see here
today' (the answers include Alexander the Great, Sappho, the goddess Diana,
Jesus Christ, Herman Melville, Andre Gide and Bessie Smith). The history
section encapsulates the contrast of oppression and celebration which is also
the sustaining contrast of the whole film: affirmation as celebration not just for
its own sake, but as a means of combating oppression.
In addition to showing activism, many films have an activist purpose.
In some cases, the aim is agitational, interventions in a specific situation with
specific goals. Bail Fund Film was made to protest Paul's treatment (kept in
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prison because unable to raise $100 bail against a $10 theft charge); A Position
of Faith supports the decision to ordain Bill; In the Best Interests was intended for
use with professionals involved with lesbian custody cases; Truxx and Enough is
Enough protest police raids on bath-houses; the goal of Stop the Movie Cruising!
is self-evident. More broadly, all the films have a propagandist purpose, to put
truth in the place of media distortions and thereby to change attitudes and
treatment. In the majority of cases, this involves the idea of positive images, but
before getting on to that, I want to look at the small number of films that offer
analysis rather than pure celebration.
The idea of knowledge that underlay CR and affirmation cinema alike made
film-makers wary of offering a developed analysis of their own, which felt like
imposing correctness rather than permitting self-discovery. This was an under-
standable revulsion against the rigidities of conventional politics, but at the
same time it tended to push into hiding a political agenda that was no less
strong for being latent and all the harder to debate for being unacknowledged.
Documentaries that did make their analysis more explicit had recourse to
devices of which both cinema verite and talking heads were suspicious: strong
expository structures, the use of experts and narrators.
Expository structures clearly lay out a case or perspective on what is shown.
Rosa Winkel details the forms and extent of gay/lesbian oppression in West
Germany as a riposte to those who would say, as the film's title has it, that such
oppression is a thing of the Nazi past and 'ist doch schon lange vorbei' ('that's
long past'). The first three sections of Race d'ep! are moments in gay history,
illustrating the idea of the changing construction of homosexual identities: 'Le
temps de la pose' ('The posing period'), when there was an attempt to form
male homosexuality in the 'Greek' mode, here represented by the work of Baron
von Gloeden; 'Le troisieme sexe' ('The third sex'), where the Hirschfeldian
biological model was uppermost; and the place of homosexuality in the
'sexual revolution' of the sixties. Come Together organises its material as a move
from the personal experience of being gay before GLF through the change it
has made in people's lives to the political agenda for Gay Liberation. The
opening sequence cuts between footage of meetings and talking heads, people
recalling their life before GLF, then talking about what GLF has done for them
('Personally it means to me - ur - a liberation of my own life'). Affirmation
documentaries tend to conceal their interviewee's involvement in the movement
or present it as an optional extra that some get into after they come out; in Come
Together it is the movement itself that allows people to come out and feel good
about themselves. As the film develops, the individual perspective expands
into a collective one, with one form of gay collectivity, the gay scene, contrasted
with the new one of gay liberation. This general orientation then gives way to
questions of strategy: GLF's demands, making links with other oppressed
groups, various kinds of activism and finally a call to take the movement beyond
London to the provinces (presumably the film itself was to be part of this last
move). The return throughout to talking heads means that the film shows both
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the social dimension of the personal and the process of making the personal
socially effective through political activity.
Affirmation documentaries are seldom explicit in their use of experts.
Occasionally people accredited as experts in the straight world are given
a chance to speak, but generally only to represent the voice of oppression. The
voice of liberation, by contrast, is supposed to be the voice of the people - all
lesbians and gay men are experts on being lesbian/gay. Some films (Homosexuals
on the March, Some of Your Best Friends) have interviews with activists, but even
here their status as leaders is often disavowed: Some American Feminists, for
instance, opens with a disclaimer that the women featured are not to be taken
as spokespeople for the movement, yet they are in fact among its stars. The
status of expert is occasionally implicitly accorded a speaker. In Come Together
one speaker, identified by Weeks (1977:206) as Warren Hague, 'a leading
activist', is shot away from the background bustle of GLF meetings and against
a background of relevant books (Weeks notes Laing, Cooper and Marcuse),
which gives his words (among the most politically elaborated in the film) the
authority of distance and learning. The (female but not declaredly lesbian)
clinical social worker and attorney in In the Best Interests are introduced with
a sub-title giving their occupations, which are relevant to the issue of custody.
In such cases the speaker brings to bear a developed discourse (of political
analysis, of legal practice and so on) which is not derived from immediate
personal experience.
As noted above, narrators are generally absent in these documentaries, and
when they are present it is not as the voice of authority but as a participant. In
Witches and Dykes the narrator does not function as the only source of knowledge
in the film. Her narration does provide a broad historical perspective (in a pre-
credits sequence presenting a chronology of lesbian/gay oppression), a narrative
of the struggles of the movement in Australia and information not given in
the documentary footage, but for much of the film she is silent, with footage of
activists and interviewees carrying the film's analysis. At one point, a protest
march against police harassment is under discussion and there is heated debate
about the paradox of whether to ask permission from the police to demonstrate
against the police. The editing here implies that those who would act without
permission are in the right: it is they on whom the film focuses, ending the
sequence with their words followed by rousing cheers; yet the voice over then
says, 'Permission was granted, and we marched on July 15th'. The narrator
states what happened, but without comment one way or the other on the rights
and wrongs of it. At the same time, as throughout, she identifies herself as
lesbian and a participant in what she relates. Thus the film constructs a complex
approach to knowledge, not pretending not to have a point of view nor trapped
in the equally sterile extremes of'mere' subjectivity or 'pure' objectivity.
Many of the fiction films also analyse, but only as implied in dialogue
or narrative structure; only one, Ella une vraie famille, is more unconcealedly
analytic. Its intense individualism sets it apart from the collective impulses
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of other films discussed here, yet it is also the only one to attempt to represent
an inner process of raising consciousness and to link it to the political interro-
gation of family psychology. It centres on the character of Ella (played by
the film's director, Michka Gorki), her relationships with both women and
men and her realisation of the way that they all reproduce family patterns:
she finds in her lovers mother, father, brother, sister. The film suggests both the
oppressiveness of these patterns yet also their appeal in ideal form: if in practice
relationships with men involve deception and submission, they need not do
so and relationships, especially with women, always suggest the possibility of
realising the nurture of family relations without the domination.
From the way the relationships are presented in Ella, it is not entirely clear
where they are events, where memories or fantasies; Ella receives letters and
answering machine messages, but by the end of the film we realise that she has
sent some of them herself. This allows the film to operate at the level of the
structure of desire, refusing a hard and fast distinction between how things are
and how we want them to be, since the latter in part determines the former.
If we can understand this, the film suggests, we can take control of the desires
patriarchal society reproduces in us and make them over into our own.
The film operates with a notion of patriarchy as something extending beyond
male advantage to the (characteristically masculine) authoritarian and repressive
exercise of power, at all levels of the social order and in our minds. Imagery
suggests the wider web of oppression (children at school shot through railings
to suggest imprisonment; a sequence suggesting the nightmare of childbirth
in a situation controlled by men; a down-trodden woman in the downstairs flat,
unconvincingly extolling the fulfilment of housewifery), while the familial form
of Ella's relationships argues the reproduction of oppression in the very fabric
of desire. Yet the overall movement is towards the transcendence of patriarchy.
At the beginning Ella meets a little girl coming from school, crying because
she has a bad report to give to her mother. Ella comforts her, says she is not angry
- but she is not her mother. At the end of the film they meet again and Ella
says that one must choose one's family. 'Would you like me to be your mother?'
she asks, and when the girl says yes, they run off into the country. This Utopian,
voluntaristic ending asserts the idea of creating the family one wants rather
than reproducing, as Ella has up to now, the family patterns into which one
is born.
Although Ella has relationships with both sexes, it is women who offer
any sense of an alternative to patriarchal family patterns. At various points in
the film, Ella's gypsy background is suggested by music and furnishings (to say
nothing of her long raven black hair). In one of the more obviously fantasised
sequences, she dances with and makes love to a gypsy woman, in a dreamily
sensuous way that suggests this would be a full realisation of self and 'family',
uniting both cultural and gender identity. By contrast, the most extended and
least satisfactory relationship shown in the film is with an American man, a
foreigner in nation and sex.
244
Yet Ella does not unequivocally show fulfilment in any sexual relation. Given
its awareness of the pervasiveness of patriarchal familial patterns, it is perhaps
hard for it to show, as well as assert the will for, non-oppressively familial rela-
tionships. It is as if the available imagery is so contaminated by patriarchy that
there is no way of actually showing an alternative. This was one of the problems
that faced those affirmation film-makers who responded to the movement's
demand for positive images.
Positive images
Rather than analyse the situation of lesbian/gay people, most affirmation
films sought to present a positive image' of lesbian/gay life-styles. Though the
most frequently voiced demand made of the media by lesbians and gay men and
seemingly straightforward, it raised two sets of issues, to do with imaging the
positive and acknowledging the negative.
The imagery selected to show lesbian/gay life as positive depended upon
prior assumptions about whether what is positive about it is the degree to which
it is like straight life or the degree to which it differs from it. Most affirmation
films seemed to suggest the former. In the Best Interests is full of scenes of every-
day domesticity and playful interaction in its lesbian mother households, scenes
which were tactically expedient for the film's agitational purpose and can be
thought of as lesbian colonisation of the space of the familial, but which leave
unchallenged the model of the nuclear family, which for many activists was the
very fount of lesbian oppression. Similarly Sandy and Madeline's Family may
both surprise by the fact that the family is composed of two women and their
children but annoy by the absence of any questioning of family-ness or imagery
of distinctly alternative lesbian life-styles.
The claim such films make is not that lesbians are the same as straight
women, so much as that motherhood is the same, regardless of sexuality; the
counter position is that heterosexuality has cornered the market on the defini-
tion of motherhood, as on everything else, and since those definitions involve
the denigration of homosexuality, they should be resisted by gay/lesbian people.
A similar kind of debate informed responses to A Very Natural Thing. This
tells the story of David, who has an affair with Mark, which founders on
Mark's wanting to have the right to go on seeing other men; a year after they
break up, David meets Jason at a gay march but his previous experience makes
him hesitant about committing himself; the film ends with the pair of them
frolicking happily together in the sea. For most critics the film felt like a straight
love story which just happened to be about two men, part of that tendency
which integrates homosexuality into classic cinema' (Mazieres 1978:40). Burton
Stevens in In Touch (November 1974) couched his praise of the film in terms of
the universality of both subject-matter and appeal, gays partaking in common
human values: the director, Christopher Larkin, had succeeded brilliantly in
'describing an element of reality that exists in every human experience: love.
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A Very Natural Thing is a milestone for gay people and for all people who believe
in love'.
Tom Waugh, on the other hand, argued that, because the film drew on the
conventions of classic cinema, it denied the specificity of gay experience.
Discussing the surf-and-sand ending ('a slow-motion sequence that bore the
brunt of the outrage and criticism directed at the film' (Russo 1981:208)), Waugh
recalled its initial impact, sending audiences out 'into the dark homophobic
world with a euphoric, Utopian energy' (1977:15) but argued that the imagery
is derived from straight advertising (it 'could be part of a Bahamas travel ad'
(ibid.)) which makes it impossible for the film to imagine a specifically gay
alternative to the heterosexual model of relationships supposedly rejected by the
central character.
If some films defined lesbian/gay positiveness in terms laid down by straight-
ness, others tried to show the value of distinctively lesbian or gay life-styles.
II etait une fois dans Vest (Canada 1974 Andre Brassard) had charted the doings of
a group of gay transvestites, their friends and lovers in Montreal, wholly
accepting and delighting in their lives without questioning its circumstances or
limitations. A few years later, Outrageous!, set in Toronto, had a similar starting
point but in its development shows the impact of affirmation politics. What is
most interesting about it is its relation to stereotypes of gay men, the target of
so much gay criticism of the movies. The main character, Robin (Craig Russell),
is a hairdresser who does drag shows on the side, two stereotypes for the price of
one. Yet he is the hero of the film: the story is about his desire to become a star
and if this classic narrative drive works, we root for him and feel satisfaction on
his triumph in New York - the film has got us to identify with a queen. Yet
Outrageous! was also one of the first films to show that not all gay men were
queens, introducing the new macho style of gay culture. When Robin arrives in
New York, he takes a taxi driven by a gruff, bearded man; however, when they
arrive at a gay club, the driver, to Robin's and (presumably) our surprise, comes
in with him, turning out to be one of the regulars. The film thus upsets stereo-
typical expectations twice over: first by making a hero out of a queen, second by
not limiting the image of gay men to queenliness. Nor is there any antagonism
between these gay styles: the driver becomes Robin's friend and agent, Robin's
first success is with the leather and denim crowd. All of this is cast within an
affirmation of gayness in terms of outsiderdom, realised through the character
of Robin's schizophrenic sister, Lisa (Hollis McLaren). Informed by sixties ideas
about madness (and especially schizophrenia) being socially, family induced (e.g.
Laing and Esterson 1964), Lisa represents the sickness visited by straight society
on women; the only support she gets is from those, like Robin and the gay world,
who accept their own 'madness'. The film ends with Robin dancing with Lisa in
a gay disco, saying over and over in his Tallulah Bankhead voice, 'Mad! Mad!',
music and camera swirling in a celebration of outsiderdom (figure 6.5).
If constructing the positive raised difficulties, there was also a problem
about not representing the negative. Although verbally most affirmation
246
Figure 6.5 Drag queen (Craig Russell as Tallulah Bankhead) and schizophrenic (Hollis
McLaren) - the solidarity of outsiderdom in Outrageous! (National Film
Archive)
documentaries refer to the problems of being lesbian/gay in a homophobic

society, they seldom show oppression from society or its negative consequences
on lesbian/gay culture. The effect of privileging talking heads reminiscing
from the vantage point of having been through CR and CO results in endless
repetition of a story characterised by Cobbett Steinberg (1978:42) in reference
to Word Is Out as, 'I was miserable when young, straights fucked me over, finally
I came out, was accepted by gays, and now everything is fine'. Steinberg, Olson
(1979) and others argue that elimination of the negative both played down the
scale of the oppression visited on lesbian/gay people and did not grasp the nettle
of the divisions within the lesbian/gay community, most notably between
women and men, but also between blatant and discreet styles, new political and
old sub-cultural identities and the different wider political and social (notably
class and ethnic) allegiances. Films like LAspect rose and Gay USA do show
diversity but only Witches and Dykes begins to suggest that diversity can also
mean conflict.
Yet where films do show the vicissitudes of lesbian/gay life, they run into
other criticisms. The relentless return to sequences of seemingly joyless cruising
(figure 6.6) and a final inferno-like shot of a vast gay disco made Nighthawks
a downer for many gay viewers. Treating lesbian/gay problems seemed to have
the effect of reasserting the inevitable association in straight cinema of homosex-
uality with problems and, often, tragedy. Films likeJagdszenen aus Niederbayern
(BRD 1968 Peter Fleischmann), Absences repetees (France 1972 Guy Gilles), Die
Konsequenz (BRD 1977 Wolfgang Petersen), El Deputado (Spain 1978 Eloy de
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1
1
s %
I}
1
Figure 6.6 Grainy, off-centre cruising in Nighthawks. (National Film Archive)
la Iglesia), Nous etions un seul homme (France 1979 Philippe Valois) and Liv og
D0d (Norway 1980 Svend Warn and Peter Venner0d) show warmly affectionate
relationships between men destroyed through, respectively, peasant proto-
fascism, drug addiction, bourgeois respectability, political machination, straight
identification and lumpen machismo - positive images curtailed by social
repression. However, the lugubrious or elegiac tone of all but the last and the
fact that all end in the deaths of the gay protagonists could also earn them a place
in Russo's necrology, a list, appended to The Celluloid Closet (1981), of lesbian/
gay deaths in straight movies.
Ending in death need not of itself mean that that's how gay life must
end, need not be simply depressing. This is suggested by Un hombre llamdo Flor
de Otono (A Man Called Autumn Flower; Spain 1977 Pedro Olea) (Dyer 2002:
204, 209, 222-4). Like Outrageous/, its heroic central character, Lluis, is a drag
queen, though this is presented here (in a film set in 1920s Barcelona) in terms
of a contrast between Lluis' respectable daytime, passing-for-straight identity
as a lawyer and his night-time identity as a drag artiste in a queer club. Though
the latter is outlawed and perilous, it is clear that the drag Lluis is the real Lluis,
and there is a strong sense of bonding with other, non-drag gay men (notably
his lover Alberto and a boxer Kid Surroca): Flor de Otono does not flinch from
gay oppression and the closet, but it does also present drag and gay relationships
(sexual and otherwise) in positive terms. Again like Outrageous!, the hero's
commitment to drag is linked to other social issues, though this is much more
explicitly political in Flor de Otono. Lluis, Alberto and Surroca fight alongside
anarchists and trade unionists against the dictator Primo de Rivera, carrying
out various acts of sabotage. In one instance, Lluis in (as always, convincing) drag
248
and Alberto make noisy love, distracting the guard of a small arsenal, enabling
Surroca to knock him out and then to rob the arsenal - they use their sexuality
in the struggle against dictatorship. The film ends when they are executed for
blowing up Rivera's train. Though specifically gay oppression has been shown,
with Lluis in drag beaten up at one point, the friends are not executed for being
gay. Yet they clearly see their terrorist activities as part of a struggle for gay
liberation (to use a term anachronistic in terms of the film's setting but exactly
right for when it was made). When they are called to execution, Lluis, with
several days growth of beard, applies fresh lipstick (in a gesture surely modelled
on Dietrich's at the end of Dishonored 1931) and goes to his death with his arm
around Alberto. They are executed for being revolutionaries, but their way of
going to their deaths makes clear that they are revolutionaries in the name
of homosexuality.
A different, more equivocal variation on the problem of representing the
negative is Corner of the Circle (USA 1975 Bill Daughton), made from the point
of view of a central character, Arthur, who passes for straight at work, cruises
at nights but is unable to develop relationships, even with a student, Bob,
whom he picks up and really likes. Grainy black and white photography, bare
apartments and scruffy streets and the film's ending (Arthur exposes himself at
his window, cowers as police bang on his door and then next morning gets up
and goes to work as normal) all combine with the sex versus commitment theme
to create a familiar image of gay anomie. Yet the film also provides a perspective
on Arthur's position, aware of the inadequacy of his life yet unable to make the
leap to a whole-hearted gay existence for fear of losing the privilege of the status
of being, as both he and Bob put it, 'in the mainstream'. In fact, this main-
stream, at the office and at Arthur's parents', is shown to be unrelievedly dreary
and, in Bob's openness, including his readiness to get involved in Gay Liberation
(explicitly referred to), the possibility of something preferable is represented.
Corner of the Circle thus knows about and probably approves of the gay move-
ment, but prefers to explore what it is like to feel unable to be a part of it.
The dilemma - that by showing lesbians and gay men with problems the
latter may appear to be an inevitable outgrowth of being lesbian/gay — has been
avoided by some films made since 1980. In Novembermond (BRD 1984 Alexandra
von Grote) and Westler (BRD 1985 Wieland Speck), the problems faced by
the protagonists — respectively, a gentile-Jewish lesbian relationship in occupied
France, a contemporary relationship between men from East and West Berlin
— are not specifically to do with being lesbian or gay. Moreover, through courage
and resourcefulness, the characters survive and with their love intact. On Guard
(Australia 1983 Susan Lambert), Territories (GB 1984 Isaac Julien) and The
Passion of Remembrance (GB 1986 Maureen Blackwood and Isaac Julien) place
their lesbian and gay characters in the context of other political struggles, over
reproductive technology in the case of the first and black and feminist politics
in the latter (both made by the London based collective Sankofa). Lesbian/gay
relations are suggested here through simple, strong affirmative imagery — two
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women showering together in On Guard, the camera circling two bare shoul-
dered men looking into each other's eyes in Territories, male lovers going out
dancing and swimming in Passion. This contrasts with the violence of the
rest of each film, the images working as touchstones of affection in a world of
patriarchal manipulation and, in the Sankofa films, racial divisions. The latter
make brilliant use of highly complex and rhythmic editing. In Territories the
smooth circling shots of the men provide a formal and affective continuity
underlying superimpositions that explore the discontinuities and fragmen-
tations of British race history; in Passion, the sequences featuring the lovers,
Gary and Michael, are straightforwardly shot, creating a kind of stability that
contrasts with the tension of the ritualised debate and brilliant montage
sequences that address issues of patriarchy and racial violence.
The hardest thing for affirmation cinema with the positive images' demand
hanging over it was simply to take as a given the fact of being lesbian or gay
and to construct a sense of the ordinariness of lesbian/gay life without winding
up suggesting that it is either better than or the same as straight life. Gay life
has its own ordinariness, whether it is lived within straight or gay communities.
Two films, Vm Not from Here and Home-Made Melodrama, are exceptional attempts
to acknowledge this.
Vm Not from Here represents the ordinariness of gay life within the straight
world. By using a recognisable iconography of an urban working-class milieu
it breaks with the sense that there is anything distinctive or separate in
class terms about gay people. The story has one startling event in it: a married
man that the main character, Brian, has picked up, inexplicably drops dead.
Remarkable though this is, it could of course happen to anyone, there is nothing
specifically gay about it. Yet the particular anonymity of the cruising relation-
ship, the problems of explaining the situation to police and family, the feelings
of guilt (Brian apologises to God when the man drops dead), the vow never
to do it again and the return to cruising at the end - all of these, while not
unique to gay life, are characteristic of it, to the point of banality. The film's
grainy, black and white photography and laconic rhythm, both familiar from
naturalistic film traditions, point up the irony of the title, I'm Not from Here, for
they insist that Brian, like all lesbian/gay people, is from 'here', the everyday
world.
Home-Made Melodrama, on the other hand, takes as its starting point a
lesbian milieu, and in fact a specifically lesbian feminist one. It uses the familiar
melodramatic plot of a love triangle, though here between three women, and
twists it by having the characters explore a three-way relationship as a positive
alternative to both monogamy and one-night stands. Funding problems meant
a considerable delay between shooting and editing, but this was turned to
advantage by shooting further sequences, whose translucent 16mm look
contrasts with the earlier footage's 8mm graininess; the new footage consists
of three women in a car on their way to a women's march discussing their
lives together. This enables the film to be more explicit about the politics of
250
non-monogamy, distant enough to be open about the difficulties of putting it

into practice and yet hanging on to the importance of trying to do so.
At one point in Home-Made Melodrama, the women in the car discuss an inci-
dent just shown in the story, when Katie throws a group of toy camels belonging
to Jude on to the floor in the course of a row:
'I never threw your camels. I think this is Jacqui imposing something
she never actually saw.'
'The camels are such a symbol of the nuclear family. I couldn't resist
artistic licence.'
Here, as in the title's self-conscious reference to both home and melodrama, the
film puts the fact of representation, the ideologically loaded choices involved,
on to the agenda. Such awareness informs some of the other films discussed
above, notably Outrageous!, Un hombre llamado Flor de Otono and the Sankofa
films, but with these important exceptions, affirmation cinema presented the
question of representation, as of identity, as unproblematic.
Affirmation beyond the movement

Many films since 1970 have been made in the spirit of affirmation politics
or, as is discussed in the section after this, moving on from it. The distinctions
between films firmly within, influenced by or developing out of the movement
are not hard and fast and in some cases are largely matters of emphasis and
(my) judgement. All deserve fuller attention, and have generally not received
it here due to lack of space, availability of prints and/or information. This section
indicates the impact of affirmation politics in the two areas of production open
to it, pornography and art cinema. It is only in the eighties that commercial
entertainment cinema began to find a tiny space for lesbian/gay-themed
films clearly made by and addressed (though not exclusively) to lesbian/gay
people. 10
The burgeoning of gay and, latterly, lesbian pornography, always a major
economic enterprise, was nonetheless often done in a spirit of asserting the value
of the homo-erotic. In France, as discussed above, porn was embraced by at least
part of the gay movement and the connection was not lost on some US pornogra-
phers. Pornography in Hollywood, made by John Kirkland in the early seventies,
intersperses interviews with gay activists and a de-frocked gay minister with
nude go-go boys and hardcore sex; the earliest affirmation fiction film, Happy
Birthday Davy, was made by a veteran of softcore porn, Richard Fontaine; Tom
de Simone, a prolific gay porn film-maker, made the case in an interview in
strikingly gay terms (Siebenand 1975:88):
I think the fact that people can just walk into public theatres now and
see homosexual films made by homosexuals for homosexuals and see
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ads for them in the daily papers is really something. I think these films
can give gays a sense of identity, if nothing else.
Arthur Bressan's first porn film Passing Strangers 1976 sets its encounters in
the context of a gay parade in San Francisco (as did Celebrations 1978 Zachary
Youngblood) and, like Norbert Terry, Pat Rocco or Honey Lee Cottrell, Bressan
moved between porn, experiment and agitation with no sense of contradiction.
If one is affirming lesbian/gay identity, such work seems to say, then one must
be affirming lesbian/gay sex.
Art cinema has been particularly accommodating to gay/lesbian film, partly
because it is a space permitted to affect an attitude of high seriousness in matters
sexual' (Merck 1986:166). Films made under its rubric11 up to 1980 (and regret-
tably not discussed below) include Ich liebe dich, ich tote dich (BRD 1971 Uwe
Brandner), Children (GB 1974 Terence Davies), Manila (Philippines 1975
Lino Brocka), Johan, carnet intime d'un homosexuel (France 1976 Philippe Valois),
Los placeres ocultos (Spain 1976 Eloy de la Iglesia), El Lugar sin limites (Mexico
1977 Arturo Ripstein), A un dios desconocido (Spain 1977 Jaime Chavarri),
Showtime (Australia 1978 Jan Chapman), Dimenticare Venezia (Italy 1979 Franco
Brusati), Ernesto (Italy 1979 Salvatore Samperi), Milan bleu (France 1979 Jean-
Frangois Garsi), Avskedet (Finland/Sweden 1980 Tuija-Maija Niskanen), Lieve
Jonge (Netherlands 1980 Paul de Lussanet) and Tread Softly (Australia 1980
Di Drew). Two groupings are particularly notable: New German Cinema and
women in European art cinema.
Homosexuality had re-emerged as a subject in German cinema in the fifties
in forms harking back to the Weimar period: the Hirschfeldian-sounding Anders
als Du und Ich (aka Das dritte Geschlecht) 1957 and a re-make of Madchen in
Uniform 1958. Neither was a gay- or lesbian-made film, as is signalled by the
difference in the title of the first from Anders als die Andern. A gay person could
say the latter, indicating the otherness of the straight world, but Anders als Du
und Ich firmly locates the film in the irremediably normal world of'you and me',
who could never be other. The German—Swiss film Der Sittlichkeitsverbrecher
1962 is an early film entry into the discourse of sexual permissiveness, including
homosexuality, while from the end of the fifties, heterosexual pornography
became a major feature of German film output and thus a major source of images
of lesbianism. Classic twentieth-century German literature provided the occa-
sion for more respectable treatments of male homosexuality in adaptations
of Thomas Mann's Tonio Kroger in 1964 and Robert Musil's Der junge Torless
in 1966. The latter is generally considered an early example of what has become
known as New German Cinema and it is within this that gayness and lesbianism
have figured so largely.
New German Cinema refers to those films made under the impetus of
the 1962 Oberhausen Manifesto, a call by a group of young film-makers for a
'new' cinema in Germany. I do not intend to try to define or delineate it here,12
beyond indicating that it is an art cinema, not mass audience popular (though
252
often drawing on popular idioms), not tastefully literary and with strong
modernist and postmodernist influences. The perception, and marketing, of
NGC is in terms of directors: it is considered a cinema of authors, and many
of these have been gay men treating gay subjects (Fassbinder, von Praunheim
and Ripploh as well as Lothar Lambert (Nachtvorstellungen 1977, Paso Doble
1983 (cf. Peck 1993, Murray 1994:63-4)), Martin Ripkens and Hans Stempel
(Wiegeht ein Mann? 1981, Eine Liebe wie andere auch 1983) and Werner Schroeter
(Der Rosenkonig 1984-6) (Kuzniar 2000:113-38)) or lesbians treating lesbian
subjects (Mikesch and Treut (Knight 1995, Kuzniar 2000:157-73), Ulrike
Ottinger (Bildnis einer Trinkerin 1979, Dorian Gray im Spiegel der Boulevardpresse
1984 (Kuzniar 2000:139-56)) and Alexandra von Grote (Weggehen um
anzukommen 1981)).13
One impact of the new feminism was a growth in the number of women who
got to direct films within European art cinema, previously very much a preserve
of the male auteur. It is striking how many of these films, though speaking
from a heterosexual (or unclear) position, provide very affirmative images of
lesbianism, often seen as an enviable alternative to relations between the sexes
or else as part of an exploration of women bonding together, dissolving distinc-
tions between comrades, friends and lovers. Examples include Alskande Par
(Sweden 1965 Mai Zetterling),Jtf tu il elle (Belgium 1974 Chantal Akerman),
Das Ende der Beherrschung (BRD 1976 Gabi Kuback), Nea (France/BRD 1976
Nelly Kaplan), Das dritte Erwachen der Krista Klages (BRD 1977 Margaretta von
Trotta), Io sono mia (Italy 1977 Sofia Scandurra), Rapunzel let down your hair (GB
1978 London Women's Film Group), Zwielicht (Austria 1978 Margarete
Heinrich) and En Frouw als Eva (Netherlands 1979 Nouchka van Brakel).
In other cases the sexual dimension of characters' relationships is not clear,
yet for many lesbians the relationships feel lesbian because of their intensity,
closeness and commitment - for instance, Les Stances a Sophie (Canada 1970), 14
La Vie revee (Canada 1972 Mireille Dansereau), Natalie Granger (France 1972
Marguerite Duras), Erikas Leidenschaften (BRD 1976 Ula Stockl), Riddles of
the Sphinx (GB 1977 Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen), Thriller (GB 1979 Sally
Potter) and Coup defoudre (France 1983 Diane Kurys).
Alskande Par (Loving Couples), a startlingly early and beautifully made film,
illustrates the idea of lesbianism in these films. Based on a classic novel by the
lesbian Agnes von Krustenstjerna, it is constructed out of the intertwined
flashbacks of three women about to give birth in hospital: Adele, an unhappily
married woman whose baby is still-born, Agda, a happy-go-lucky 'model' who
has the easiest birth and Angela, who lives with another woman, Petra, and
who has a fine baby after a painful labour. Angela and Petra represent the only
alternative to patriarchal exploitation in the film (symbolised by the severe
hospital run by contemptuous male doctors), which bears out Angela's remark,
that 'marriage is like falling asleep for the rest of your life'. In contrast, Adele's
marriage is loveless, while the man who makes Agda pregnant marries her off
to a gay man, Stellan, an arrangement made between the two men without
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reference to her. At the wedding rehearsal for Agda and Stellan, Angela, seeing
Stellan walk up the aisle with his boyfriend, runs out of the church into the snow
and climbs a tree exultantly; when someone asks her what she is doing, she
says, I ' m celebrating my freedom'.
Angela is emotionally fulfilled through women. At finishing school, she
and another woman, Stanni, are referred to as the 'loving couple' (the only pair
who are referred to in terms of the film's title); her relationship with Petra
is consistently affectionate and supportive, with Petra referring to the baby as
'our child'. A classic image of the lesbian as neurotic and predatory is evoked
in the character of the teacher at finishing school, whose advances Angela
rejects; but a more woman-identified construction of lesbianism, reminiscent
of Madchen in Uniform, is suggested between Angela and Petra. The latter was
originally Angela's guardian after her father died, implying a mother-daughter
quality to the bond. When Angela asks Petra why she has never married, she
replies, 'it is because I am a woman'. Petra has earlier said that she finds it
impossible to be 'feminine' in the way that society requires, but this femininity
is the opposite of the womanhood realised in her relationship with Angela.
The idea of lesbianism as an extension of womanhood characterises women's
art cinema films and echoes aspects of films discussed earlier CMadchen, Deren,
Hammer, Anna und Edith). Whilst for many lesbians this continuity is the
defining characteristic of lesbianism, for others it is a myth that obscures
the distinctiveness of lesbian identities. The lesbian friend with whom I most
recently watched Alskande Par did not find it authentically lesbian at all, the
character of the teacher functioning to represent and denigrate sexuality
between women, rendering the relationship between Angela and Petra prettily
asexual. Nothing perhaps illustrates better that lesbian (and gay) identities are
not fixed categories but culturally perceived and constructed. The consequences
of realising this were already beginning to unsettle some of the certainties of
affirmation politics, and cinema, by the late seventies.
Post affirmation
Affirmation politics and cinema sought to replace negative feelings about
lesbians and gay men with positive ones. Positive meant three, not altogether
compatible things: thereness, insisting on the fact of our existence; goodness,
asserting our worth and that of our life-styles; and realness, showing what
we were in fact like. Thereness entailed constructing a sense of presence out
of documentary's claim to transparency, with unclouded imagery and repeated
life stories, the creation of fixed positions of knowledge from which to judge
and assert the representation of what we are and a concomitant erasure of
conflicts within the lesbian/gay community which would destabilise the sense
of lesbian/gay being a definite thing. The goodness involved happy endings,
smiling faces, the repetition of the life story as success, avoidance of narratives
of intra-gay/lesbian conflict or internalised homophobia. Both thereness and
254
goodness were at odds with the other positivity, realness — conflict, self-hate and
oppression, to say nothing of the usual ragbag of human iniquities, are a part
of gay/lesbian reality (and conflict is not even necessarily a negative one).
These contradictions can be recast in terms of the debate in lesbian/gay
research between essentialism and social constructionism, between, that is, a
view of homosexuality as a given personality type found in one form or another
in all cultures at all times, and a view that the very idea of such a fixed person-
ality type is a modern one, part of a process of categorising sexuality in relation
to persons not acts. Gay liberation had averred that lesbians and gay men
were and had always been everywhere. The political need to create a sense
of lesbians and gays as a people, as a constituency, called forth the intellectual
need to establish for this people the fact of its universal presence, history and
cultural heritage. Yet when sociologists and historians began to work on this
they ran into major problems of recognition and definition. It turned out to be
less easy to know when to consider a relation between women or between men
relevant to the task; even the words homosexual, homo-erotic, lesbian or gay
were hard to apply outside of Western culture since the nineteenth century.
Many came to argue that, while affective and/or sexual acts between persons of
the same sex were indeed a universal reality, the idea that people who engaged
in them belonged to a distinctive category of persons (homosexuals, lesbians)
was found only in modern times in the West. In the jargon of the debate, those
who take this position see the very idea of a lesbian/gay person as one constructed
through historical and social processes, whereas those who disagree operate with
a sense of a fundamental gay/lesbian identity, manifest in different forms in
different times and places but still in essence the same (cf. Niekerk and van der
Meer 1989).
In this perspective affirmation politics is essentialist.15 CR and CO structures
and imagery imply the discovery of a sense of a self that is already there hidden
inside one, and assert the basic, not just tactical, unity within the diversity of
lesbian/gay people. The strength of this politics is precisely its definiteness, the
sense of thereness, and the delight in being lesbian/gay. It provides inspiration
and a sense of being to fuel the business of, in the words of Britain's notorious
Clause 28, promoting homosexuality. Social constructionism, in contrast, can
feel as if it is pulling the rug from under your feet, by making it seem as if you
are not really there, are 'merely' a product of social forces. But constructionism
does not deny the validity of homosexual life-styles, it simply casts the terrain
of struggle differently, shifting it away from the idea of realising an essence
towards a notion of a struggle over definitions, definitions which are historically
produced and for that very reason amenable to change, definitions which do not
reflect what lesbian/gay life must of necessity be but by which we nonetheless
live. The possibility of a cinema based on this approach to gay/lesbian identity
was suggested in the seventies by five films — Maidens Australia 1978, Royal
Opera France 1979, In Black and White Canada 1979, Comedy in Six Unnatural
Acts USA 1975 and Madame X - eine absolute Herrscherin BRD 1977. The first
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is aware of the question of definition, although from what remains an essentialist

vantage point; the second explores the way in which we inhabit discourses of
essentialism; the other three move away from essentialism altogether.
Maidens
Thematically, Maidens resembles After the Game or Anna und Edith in its
sense of lesbianism growing out of and into other kinds of relationships
between women, sharpened by the contrast with relations between men and
women; stylistically, it is closer to cultural feminist films with its iconography
of nature, pregnancy, water and bare breasted women, its verbal imagery of
female bonding ( w e made each of ourselves the mother and daughter of each
of the others') and its structures of repetition and superimposition. What it
also has is a more self-conscious relation to imagery. Like Home Movie, it uses
photographs and films in the family collection of the film-maker, Jenni
Thornley, combined with other material (verite style family rows, symbolic
set pieces), to interrogate not only her own personal development but that of
women in Australia.
The central section of the film is built principally out of the family collection
material. The ordering is chronological and the voice relates the imagery to
the developing fortunes of white settlers in Australia, the impact of two
World Wars and so on; but there is also another history — or, indeed, herstory
— unfolding, that of the bonds between women. The voice over suggests that
one see the family chronology as a chain of mothers and discerns a pattern
of maidenhood, whereby the bonds of women are periodically broken by the
obligation to relate to men. Thus a posed photo of a group of schoolgirls (figure
6.7) is accompanied by the words, 'School was a time for women to be together
before falling in love with the men, to be divided and ruled again', suggesting
a way of reading the image against its grain. As the film develops, the security
of this pattern begins to break down.
A succession of snapshots of women together without men during the Second
World War unfolds, another interlude when women could be 'maidens again'.
One shows a woman resting her head on another's shoulder; the image fades but
then, unprecedentedly, it returns, closer up and held for longer than usual; the
easy flow of maiden imagery is interrupted to register the possibility of more
powerful bonds at work than snapshot formulae intend. From this point on the
presentation of imagery is never so secure. More material, Thornley's and other
people's, creeps in, verite sequences showing power struggles and exploitation
within the family, violent imagery (blood, knives, tears) indicating a crisis of
identity, sharpened by shots of a woman looking at herself on film that we have
already seen, at herself in a mirror, with the voice shifting from T to 'you'. This
builds up to a confrontation with a man in a kitchen followed by her running
along until there is a cut to her dressed in fur, like a stone-age woman, leaping
down a path, followed by shots of women together bathing, making love,
256
Figure 6.7 Reading against the grain in Maidens — schoolgirls as 'women together . . .
before being divided and ruled'. (National Film Archive)
chopping wood, pregnant, a repeat of the opening section of the film. The
imagery and circular structure suggest an embrace of maidenhood, of bonding
with women, that through radical feminist culture will no longer be temporary.
There is thus a sense of a position of true identity from which the central
deconstruction of other feminine identities can be viewed.
Royal Opera
Royal Opera is the last section of Race d'ep! (see above). Unlike its preceding
sections, which present moments of gay history illustrated from contemporary
documents, this section, exemplifying the seventies, uses a fictional form. An
American meets a Frenchman in a gay bar in Paris, the Royal Opera; they chat
and go for a walk in the Tuileries (a well-known cruising area), call in on a
public toilet and wind up by the Seine. We do not hear what they say to each
other but rather their alternating voices recalling what passed between them.
It is the radical disjuncture of their accounts that suggests the degree to which
reality, including gay identity, is subject to discourse, to the frameworks of
understanding available to us.
The American, whose recollections seem to be an internal monologue,
sees himself as a straight man who happened to wander into a gay bar and
spend an intriguing, but finally embarrassing evening with a French queer. The
Frenchman, on the other hand, gossiping on the phone to a friend, claims it
was a meaningful encounter with a Russian, which ended in their going to a
hotel together. At first sight, it might seem that it is clearly the Frenchman
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who has got the wrong end of the stick: the other man is American, there is
no evidence that they slept together. But it is clear that the American also wants
the Frenchman to have been a certain kind of person. We hear the latter prat-
tling about romance, the size of the American's penis, other queens about the
place; but the American constructs him as a determined marginal, a sexual
anarchist opposed to the integration of gay people into society. He sees this as
so different from the gays he knows back in the States, but '. . . I found this
touching, a bit naive, very continental, this idea of being an "outlaw", no matter
what' (my emphasis). Though the name is not mentioned, the American seems
to want to make the Frenchman conform to a 'Genet' model of queer revolt.
The film is not simply opposing two irreconcilable perceptions of the
same sequence of events. The Frenchman performs in a subcultural mode made
passe by the American influence on international gay culture (cf. Altman
1982); whatever his views on the matter might be, his whole-hearted embrace
of the 'folle' (queen) repertoire does militate against his integration with
straight society. Neither voice is entirely wrong, but both can only construct
the encounter in their minds according to the categories at their disposal. Nor
is there a position for the spectator outside of these competing definitions of
the situation. The visual evidence does not tell us 'what really happened'. In the
Tuileries, shots of male nude statues both heighten the homo-erotic atmosphere
and yet remind us of the gardens' official identity, suggesting the degree to
which, especially in a gay context, appearances are open to cultural use. Towards
the end there is a montage of snaps of the pair together, providing fixed
mementoes of the encounter, but right at the end these snaps fly up into the air
and fall into the dingy water of the Seine, as if to symbolise the insecurity of
the photograph as a record of reality. Both voices speak as if there is an essential
gay reality to be grasped, but the film indicates that such essentialisms are
themselves constructions.
In Black and White

A man goes into a public toilet, hangs about; another man comes in and they
go into a cubicle and start having sex; they are interrupted and arrested by the
police. The centre of In Black and White is this simple narrative; its presentation
suggests that what you think of it depends on how, literally as well as metaphori-
cally, you see it.
The film opens with close-ups of hands exploring someone's back as they
embrace, then a hand caressing a nipple, then kissing. Over these tenderly
sensual images, one hears a discussion between a man (presumably the film-
maker, Michael McGarry) and woman about how to portray the 'erotic
interaction of two men making love', the woman stressing the need to bring out
the 'human-ness of sexuality' and the man saying, as if countering an implication
in the woman's remarks, 'can't you be sensual with each other's genitals?' This
sense of wanting to value sex for itself, neither redeeming it by reference to other
258
values nor accepting a brutal notion of raw sex, is echoed later, when the male
voice says, apropos of anonymous sex, 'does impersonal have to be insensitive?'
The opening images of sexuality are repeated in the toilet, when the men go
into the cubicle, carrying the theoretical debate about how to 'see' sexuality
over into a narrativised encounter, that is, from an issue we may think about to
a situation we may identify with.
Towards the end of the opening sequence, the image is worked: frozen,
reversed, until the camera zooms back to show we are watching a video image.
The full significance of this only emerges towards the end of the narrative, when
it becomes clear that what we have been seeing is closed-circuit material on
a police surveillance monitor. What can be seen by gay men as sensitivity is
criminality in the eye of the police. There is discussion over the credits of the
issue of sex in toilets, ending with the male voice saying, 'it's a public place, but
Jeez, you don't see anyone', a tough irony, because the film has shown that the
intimate, by connotation unseen, imagery of the opening shots is indeed seen,
and its significance transformed, in the era of hi-tech surveillance.
Comedy in Six Unnatural Acts

Comedy, made by Jan Oxenburg, takes six stereotypes of lesbians in six sections
— can't-get-a-man in 'Wallflower', butch:femme in 'Role Playing', outdoor girls
in 'Seduction', radicalesbian in 'Non-monogamy', pervert in 'Child Molester'
and bull dyke in 'Stompin' Dyke' — and plays with them, not in order to dismiss
them but to try out responses to them and tease out some of their implications.
Each act has, as it were, a punch line playing on the expectations stereotypes
set in motion. The woman who can't get anyone to dance with at the school hop
at last looks up with delight into the eyes of someone requesting the pleasure,
a woman. The butch prepares for a date and goes to meet her, another butch.
The outdoor girls talk about everything but what's really on their minds until
their hands touch and they are in the middle of a musical number. A woman
juggles apples symbolising the non-monogamy celebrated in a tract on the
soundtrack; but the juggling goes awry, apples get dropped, she resorts to
hiding one apple behind her back while furiously juggling two others, until,
as the voice over becomes more and more strident, she starts taking bites out
of the apples, finally gagging on them. The child molester sets out to entice two
little girls with cookies, but they kiss each other leaving the pervert stranded.
Finally a dyke gets off her bike and the world — groups of men, heterosexual
couples, pigeons, finally the sea itself — parts before her. In each case, what
the stereotype leads us to expect to happen either doesn't (the wallflower gets
a woman, the butch a butch; non-monogamy runs amok, the child molester is
confounded by child sexuality) or happens with glorious exaggeration (love
is a cue for a number, the seas part).
Each ending is a happy one (apart from 'Non-monogamy' and even that
ends with the juggler laughing as she gags), but often ironically presented. The
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
female couple in 'Wallflower' walk through their schoolmates throwing confetti

over them, treating them to the rites of heterosexuality. Behind them is a pen-
nant with 'West' on it, the symbol of US optimism — only it actually points east.
The main dancer in 'Seduction' emerges out of, then leads all the dancers into,
a jacuzzi, the arch-symbol of happiness California-style. All of 'Stompin' Dyke'
is a happy ending to the film as a whole, the world parting before the powerful
lesbian, played however by the most petite, delicately featured woman in the
whole film.
Further resonances of the stereotypes are suggested by reference to film
conventions: the school hop scene, focusing on men pawing at women; the high
glow of glamour lighting for butch grooming in 'Role Playing'; the accou-
trements of romance (candelabras, wine, a violinist) and then a musical number
in 'Seduction'; silent melodrama, with piano rag accompaniment, in 'Child
Molester' with at the end a Nosferatu-like shadow of the pervert walking off.
Still further play is possible. The butch grooms herself with exaggerations
of masculinity: a screwdriver to open the jar of gel, great fistfuls of the stuff on
her hair, slapping perfume on like aftershave. The chorus girls in 'Seduction'
nonetheless wear regulation dyke attire: shirts, jeans, braces and sneakers.
There is no fixed strategy in Comedy. It plays equally with movie images,
traditional sub-cultural styles and lesbianfeminist ideals; it is equally prepared
to appropriate movie styles to celebrate lesbianism (the spectacle of the dance
number and the exhilarating special effect of the parting sea) or to mock straight
perceptions (the exaggerated villainy of the child molester). The self-confidence
of affirmation politics makes such an assured examination possible, so much so
that there is no need to roundly condemn anything or assert unproblematically
positive alternatives. What is positive about the film is its assumption that
lesbians are strong enough to be able to work with and against definitions of
themselves, strong enough to have humour, even at their own expense.
Madame X — eine absolute Herrscherin

Madame X (an Absolute Ruler), made by Ulrike Ottinger who was mentioned
above in the context of New German Cinema, is a film that has been taken as
both an adventure film for dykes and an endlessly shifting deconstruction of the
imagery of adventure for women (cf. Hake 1988-9). It is both: the latter makes
the former possible.
Madame X and her servant Hoi-Sin gather together a group of women on
her pirate ship Orlando and they set sail, picking up later the androgynous
Belcampo; seduction and power play are the order of the day on board, with
all the women dying yet at the end coming back to life, transformed, sailing
off with renewed energy and inspiration. This rudimentary adventure story
structure is playfully filmed and performed. Genre reference, title and character-
isation all refer to already available imagery, but none taken over in any sense
straight and all leading to adventure.
260
The possibility of putting lesbians at the centre of traditionally male-oriented

genres is not one that has so far been much pursued by lesbian cinema (unlike
lesbian writing). On Guard and De Stilte rond Christine M. (Netherlands 1982
Marleen Gorris) use thriller and detective genres respectively and Ninja (USA
1977 Christine Mohanna) is a portrait of a young lesbian who lives her life
according to the Japanese samurai code, but these are exceptions. Madame X too
puts women at the centre of a male genre but not just so as to give women a piece
of the action. The genre chosen is already a marginal one (the corpus of pirate
movies is small), making this an intervention in marginality. At the same time
the reality of women pirates, as recent historical research shows (e.g. De Pauw
1982), means that the choice of genre not only makes a point about media images
but has a resonance of historical discourse behind it. Thus the film takes on some
of the pleasures of action and adventure reserved for men, recognises its own
marginality and the fact that there is nonetheless a real female tradition behind
its desirable imagery. Similarly, the title is that of a thrice-made, archetypal
Hollywood women's picture. This Madame X is a very different sort of women's
picture, action/adventure not weeping and suffering, yet the title still retains the
notion of mystery, of a question mark hanging over female identity, just as it does
in Hollywood cinema. Again, the women in the film are emblematic, some
of traditional female roles in a heterosocial world (Blowup, a pin-up; Betty
Brillo, a US housewife; Noa-Noa from Tai-Pi, thrown out by her husband for
breaking a taboo; Carla Freud-Goldmund, servicing male intellectualism), others
of women's potential for physical action (Flora Tannenbaum, a traditionally
German outdoor type; Omega Centauri, an Australian bush-pilot with a yen to
be an astronaut; Josephine de Collage, a roller skating avant-garde artist). At the
end they take on still other media-familiar images, yet all become pirates.
The film submits images of women and what one can do with them to a
process of scrutiny, and in the process brings them round to affirm not so much
present lesbian reality as the ideal of a homosocial world' (White 1987:84). The
sexuality shown explores the boundaries of power within relationships, antici-
pating the lesbian sado-masochism explored in Verfuhrung: die grausame Frau.
The names and the exaggerated playing suggest both camp, a largely neglected
aspect of lesbian culture, and the lesbian cult of sportswomen and others, both
of which complement Madame X's own sub-cultural style, with her all-leather,
Hosenrolle outfits (figure 6.8) and ship named in honour of Virginia Woolf's
most sexually ambivalent novel. The figure of Belcampo reinforces the sense of
a homosocial world in two ways: the women are initially suspicious of this man
in a skirt, but come to accept him as part of their masquerade, the chosen refusal
of the norm; he has a romance with a sailor, bringing male gay relations into
the film's homosocial world. Madame X knows that such a world is not unprob-
lematic, either in terms of knowing what it would be like or as something that
could be brought about, but you feel it wants it and suggests that the way to
get it is to make use of the backlog of images of women. Hence the process of
deconstructing this imagery is not just to make a point, but becomes itself
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
Figure 6.8 Madame X's leather outfit. (National Film Archive)
262
a fun adventure. By taking possession of the imagery, the film has the women
make it their own, enabling them to sail forth to excitement.
Films like these anticipate the postmodern lesbian and gay films of the eighties, 16
alongside many in other styles, some even making it to the margins of main-
stream entertainment cinema (Desert Hearts, Parting Glances). What is remarkable
is the way that post-affirmation cinema combines an awareness of surface,
construction and play with a sense of urgency and edge. Its touch is light, its
approach eclectic yet it moves beyond the quality of many of its postmodern
peers, in which there is a bit of this and a bit of that but nothing much matters.
This is in part because, no matter how sophisticated one's take on lesbian/gay
identity, it was hard to pursue and express a gay/lesbian existence without
knowing what was ranged against it. The repository of images of oppression,
devastating in their scale and implication - pink triangles in the Nazi death
camps, the Cuban UMAP camps and subsequent lesbian/gay exodus, the Harvey
Milk assassination (and light sentence received by his assassin) — intensified
what the lesbian/gay press reported week in, week out: beatings, arrests, court
cases, discrimination, murder. Moreover, post-affirmation cinema was produced
in a period of retrenchment against lesbian/gay sexuality, embodied in the US
Supreme Court sodomy ruling and in Britain's Clause 28, reaction mobilised
through the spectre of A I D S . It is hard in this context to be skimmingly super-
ficial. At the same time, post-affirmation films drew on a long tradition within
lesbian/gay culture. There is nothing new, nothing all that eighties for us about
surface culture. Lesbian/gay culture has always been aware of surface, of the
construction of appearance - as a perception of the straight world, as an ironic
distance on it, as a strategy for survival within it. Surface and construction are
valued for their own sake within lesbian/gay culture, because we see what is at
stake in them. Post-affirmation cinema thus mobilises, in a situation of intensi-
fied oppression and conscious politicisation, specifically lesbian/gay traditions,
reaching back through and beyond many of the moments of gay/lesbian cultural
production touched on in this book. Its play is doubly grounded, in political
realities and cultural traditions. It is art for which mattering still matters.
* * *
Politics demands immediacy and clarity. Lesbian/gay movements, like any

other, need films that tell people who is speaking (who the movement is) and
what to do. In dit teken is an established organisation of homosexual people
telling other homosexual people to join them and to lead a respectable life.
Confrontational films defy straight and gay viewer alike with the film-makers'
own sexuality and with the viewers' own responses to it, to jerk them out
of apathy into liberation. Affirmation cinema presents lesbians and gay men
presenting themselves, calling forth identification from the lesbian/gay audi-
ence, unconditional acceptance from the straight.
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Art however is never as ruly as politics needs it to be. Even In dit teken
lets slip that there might be other and as appealing ways of being gay. Because
of the feelings and responses it sets out to stir up, confrontational cinema could
feed guilt and self-hate, turn off as likely as turn on. Affirmation cinema
stumbles across the contradictions of 'simply' showing us as we really are,
accentuating the positive at the expense of recognising the negative and hence
the need for struggle. Out of these contradictions, and as a result of affirmation
cinema's stress on the importance of how we are represented, emerged a cinema
which systematically undercut affirmation's certainties while still being glad
to be lesbian/gay.
Movement cinema is to this extent just another version of the old tussle
between art and politics, but its many variations also echo the very enterprise
of creating lesbian/gay films, or identities or cultures, at all. They are, like all
ideology, necessary fictions. They are not the 'truth', but without them we do
not live. (Humans could live, and do and have, in worlds without gay/lesbian
identities and cultures, though not without gay/lesbian acts; but we do not live
here and now in such a world and cannot magically transport ourselves to one.)
It is hard to hold on to both sides of the formulation 'necessary fictions', the sense
that they are constructions, not inevitable outgrowths of reality, which we
do, all the same, really need. The many gyrations of lesbian/gay film - to take
only the instance examined in this book — are part of the ceaseless process
of construction, reconstruction and deconstruction of identities and cultures,
ceaseless because experience always outstrips constructions so that they are never
quite satisfactory, never quite get it, and yet also ceaseless because we need
constructions in order to make sense of experience at all. This is what it means
to live in society (and there is nowhere else to live and be human). Lesbian/gay
culture is different only to the degree to which the erasure of the gap between
construction and experience is less naturalised than with many other human
categories (notably race, gender and, supremely, heterosexuality) and thus in its
high degree of awareness of that gap. This — and the simple need to express in
order to survive, to be seen to be believed — is why lesbians and gay men have
to go on making lesbian and gay films which all the while may betray the folly
of the enterprise.
264
7
AFTER 1 9 8 0
Margins and mainstreams
by Julianne Pidduck
The first edition of Now You See It was part of an emergent body of lesbian, gay
and queer historiography, and especially film historiography — an archaeological
quest for past and often forgotten queer cinematic moments spanning film
scholarship, spectatorship and production. Much recent lesbian/gay film shares
this passionate interest in history: the ongoing legacy of 'Genet' (.Poison Todd
Haynes 1991) and Fassbinder (Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brulantes Frangois
Ozon 2000), historical biopics (Derek Jarman's Caravaggio 1986 and EdwardII
1991, Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon John Maybury 1998),
and a body of inventive historical documentaries (Forbidden Love Lynne Fernie
and Aerlynn Weissman 1992, Color Adjustment Marlon Riggs 1992, Greta
Schiller's The International Sweethearts of Rhythm 1986 and Paris Was a Woman
1996, Stuart Marshall's Comrades in Arms 1990 and Bright Eyes 1984). 1 And
in 1995, the Celluloid Closet Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, a documentary
based on Vito Russo's seminal critique of Hollywood's stereotypes of lesbians
and gay men marked the 'mainstreaming' of the archival film project.
Home video, DVD and internet sampling now facilitates the broad distribu-
tion of (selected) gay/lesbian classics such as Madchen in Uniform, Fireworks, Un
Chant d'amour or Salo Pier Paolo Pasolini 1975. New networks of information
and distribution such as the website PopcornQ,2 quick reference film guides, 3
and specialised distributors 4 contribute to widespread historical savvy amongst
contemporary queer spectators and film-makers. For instance, in Meeting of Two
Queens (Spain 1991), Cecilia Barraga intercuts resonant gestures and glances
from Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo in The Scarlet Empress 1934 and Queen
Christina 1933 to create an erotic frisson between these two lesbian icons.5
Patricia White (1999b) uses the term 'retrospectatorship' to describe how
past and present cultural imagery is imbricated into the collective and indi-
vidual fantasy lives of lesbian/gay subjects. But this historical image bank offers
more to some social subjects than others. Cheryl Dunye's Watermelon Woman
1996 follows Michelle Parkerson's Storme: The Lady of the Jewel Box 1987 6 to
explore black lesbian history. While Storme follows a realist documentary format,
Watermelon Woman uses the distinctive 'Dunyementary [style}: a hybrid of narra-
tive, documentary, comedy and autobiography' (Juhasz 2001:291) to follow
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black lesbian filmmaker Cheryls (Dunye's) quest for Fae 'the Watermelon
Woman' Richards, a black lesbian actress who worked in Hollywood and race
movies from the 1920s to 1940s. After an exhaustive search that reveals huge
gaps in the archive of black women's and especially black lesbian history, the
film concludes with a title stating: 'Sometimes you have to create your own
history. The Watermelon Woman is fiction' (See Juhasz 2001:291-303; and
Goldstein 1997). Looking for Langston 1989, Isaac Julien's poetic meditation on
Langs ton Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance, is another hybrid documentary
that forges links between contemporary queer authorship and Black cultural
traditions (see Diawara 1991, Arroyo 1991, Mercer 1994:210-15, 220-6).
If retrospectatorship and documentary practice form a rich and tangible
bridge between historical works and more recent production, mapping the
last twenty years of lesbian/gay/queer film is a complex task. The past two
decades have witnessed a proliferation of circuits of production, distribution
and viewing for lesbian/gay cinema. If Now You See It traces the emergence of
lesbian/gay subcultures against the the constraints of 'actual social and historical
reality', we now find ourselves in a cultural moment of'hypervisibility'. Even
as documentaries and critics unpick the historical conditions of lesbian/gay
self-representation, contemporary queer works are increasingly entering into
mainstream culture. The community spaces forged by lesbian/gay film and
video festivals in the 1980s have been followed by the commercial success of
certain film-makers in the 1990s - notably in the rise of the 'new queer cinema'
and an increasing number of lesbian/gay directors working in international
art cinema and popular genres. This is generative period where white gay
male audiences (and to a lesser extent lesbians and queers of colour) have become
'niche markets', with not one but two 'Queer as folk' tv series, Oscars for
Marleen Gorris's Antonia 1995 and Pedro Almodovar's Todo sobre mi madre 1999,
a retrospective of Sadie Benning's videos at New York's Museum of Modern
Art, Isaac Julien nominated for the 2001 Turner Prize in Britain. Do these
extraordinary changes mark the end of a discrete political and critical category
for lesbian/gay cinema?
The explosion of lesbian/gay/queer film and video over the past two decades
is a success story that far exceeds a survey essay. Rather than claiming any com-
prehensive coverage, I trace here several key aesthetic and political trajectories.
The essay is organised through four major case studies — lesbian and gay film
festivals, activist/art video, 'new queer cinema', and popular genres — to explore
salient debates around positive images and transgression, formal innovation
and popular genres, and the 'queering' of lesbian/gay politics, identity and
culture. Clearly, the current 'hypervisibility' of lesbian/gay/queer works is
largely confined to the contexts of North America, Europe and Australia/New
Zealand, and some parts of Asia. 7 1 focus here primarily on Canadian, Australian,
European and American examples to examine how shifting local and global
circuits of production and distribution have facilitated new regimes of visibility.
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MARGINS AND MAINSTREAMS
Lesbian and gay film festivals

Lesbian/gay film production increased exponentially in the 1980s, and Richard
Dyer notes above that film festivals are 'the clearest index' of this growth.
Community-based film and video festivals were established from the mid-1970s
in large metropolitan centres across Western Europe, North America, Australia
and New Zealand. More recently, festivals have been established in Eastern
Europe, some parts of Asia, South and Central America, and South Africa. In
early 2002, the PopcornQ website listed more than 150 events worldwide; this
figure attests to a new international (if not global) circuit that links films and
videos, film-makers and audiences. White describes the festival circuit as part
of the 'queer public sphere' (1999a:76).
Besides giving public exposure to thousands of works (and, as exhibi-

tion venues, causing work to be produced, as mushrooming annual
submissions bear out) and - one hopes - garnering publicity for gay
and lesbian media, film- and video makers, and organizations, the
festivals constitute a counter public sphere, providing a collective
experience and a literal site of critical reception. What they exhibit and
make visible, alongside their programming, is an audience. (ibid:74)
Festivals have been extraordinarily generative for screening a wide array of recent
experimental works, documentaries, comedies, short and feature length fiction.
Festivals have also consistently screened formerly rare or obscure films such as
Anders als die Andern, Madchen in Uniform or Michael Carl Dreyer 1924 from the
Weimar period, the works of Genet and Cocteau, or the experimental Japanese
film Bar a no Soretsu/Funeral Parade of Roses Toshio Matsumoto 1968. 8 Whereas
homosexual-themed Weimar works and the American gay underground gained
(surreptitious) distribution through feature circulation or avant-garde networks
respectively, feminist and lesbian/gay festivals have created an autonomous
and relatively 'safe' zone for the critical viewing of queer works, at least for some
urban audiences. In many parts of the world, such zones are part of a concerted
political project to seize the means of self-representation in the face of widespread
cultural invisibility and stereotyping.
B. Ruby Rich suggests that loyal audiences are pivotal to the ongoing success
of lesbian/gay film festivals - as they are to the successful niche marketing of
recent queer film.9 For instance, Image et Nation, Montreal's lesbian/gay film
and video festival, was founded in 1988. It has survived and flourished through
the sponsorship of local gay and lesbian businesses, activist and community
groups, and especially through the flair and dedication of volunteers. Predating
the large gay pride parade DiversCite, Image et Nation has provided a focal point
for the city's lesbian/gay communities — one of the few yearly events that con-
venes audiences from across lines of gender, language, ethnicity and generation.
As Martha Gever suggests, audiences approach festivals 'with a presumption of
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community, no matter how fictional, these become cultural spaces that can
change our relationship to the screen. Our identities are constituted as much
in the event as in the images we watch' (1990:201).
Much has been written about the festivals of the last 20 years. 10 The develop-
ment of art and activist video has been central to this history, particularly in
North America, where the relative flexibility and cheapness of small-format
video has allowed broad access to the tools of self-representation. In the US,
activist video (Paper Tiger Television, Deep Dish TV, Gay Men's Health Crisis)
has been facilitated by public access cable television (cf. Burnett 1990, Tamblyn
1990, Rosier 1990). Meanwhile, Stuart Marshall (1985) argues that British
video developed through an engagement with late modernist aesthetics in
art colleges. In Canada a distinctive public access' tradition has generated a
distinctive network of community-based artist-run centres and independent
distributors, enabling a diverse body of video not directly reliant on commercial
circuits of distribution (see Marchessault 1995). Supported by these networks,
Canadian lesbian/gay documentaries, shorts, and experimental works have
flourished over the past fifteen years. Notably, the preface to the 1998 London
Lesbian & Gay Film Festival guide extrapolates from the 'ever-increasing
Canadian quota' in its programme that 'Canada is largely populated by film-
making queers' (Baker and Hanson 1998:2).
Festivals are nodal points in a network of film and video makers, distributors,
post-production facilities and audiences. Part of their historical importance
has been a cross-fertilisation of international images, ideas, and people. It
was through Image et Nation that Montreal audiences first viewed works by
Testing the Limits, Su Friedrich, Rosa Von Praunheim, Pratibha Parmar, Ulrike
Ottinger, Stuart Marshall, Isaac Julien, Marlon Riggs, MonikaTreut, Michelle
Parkerson and Sadie Benning. In turn, the festival has consistently screened
a dynamic range of works by local makers including Louise Archambault,
Charline Boudreau, Maureen Bradley, Jeanne Crepeau, Nikki Forrest, Anne
Golden, Nelson Henricks, Trish Kearns, Michel Langlois, Jean-Paul Monette,
Marc Paradis, Cathy Sisler and Deb VanSlet. Much of this work has circulated
internationally through festivals and exchanges - for instance, an ongoing
exchange of artists and video between Montreal and Glasgow in the 1990s.
A recurring theme at 'Persistent Vision' (the conference marking the 25th
anniversary of San Francisco's Frameline Lesbian and Gay Film Festival) was the
ongoing relevance of festivals in the face of the mainstreaming of (some) lesbian/
gay/queer authored work. It might be argued that the separate spaces of the
festival circuit form a 'ghetto', whereas the political aim of lesbian/gay repre-
sentation should be to infiltrate popular culture in order to engage wider
queer and straight audiences. However, it is important to remember that this
newly found commercial success favours certain styles of (white male) production.
Rich reminds us that 80-90% of festival programming is (still) not distributed
outside this context;11 as Black British artist Pratibha Parmar asserts: 'Queer
film festivals are essential for many film-makers, especially lesbians and people
268
of colour, because it's often the only place we can get our work screened and
affirmed.' (Smyth 1992:35).
With large festivals such as London and San Francisco's Frameline increas-
ingly relying on corporate sponsorship, it becomes increasingly difficult to
differentiate 'community-based' from 'for profit' products and institutions. It
is fair to say that the networks created in the 1980s helped to facilitate feature
production in the 1990s. John Greyson, Cheryl Dunye, Isaac Julien, Tom Kalin,
Midi Onodera, Denis Langlois, Richard Kwietnioski, Shu Lea Cheang, Pratibha
Parmar, Lisa Cholodenko and others have all made the transition from shorts
and video into features. At this complex juncture, it is more important than ever
to track the fleeting histories of activist and art film and video that helped to
lay the foundations for subsequent developments. In the following section,
I focus on three pivotal categories of Canadian activist/art video: identity, AIDS,
and sexuality.
Activist!art video
AIDS and activism
In Montreal, Maureen Bradley and Danielle Comeau's 1990 activist video
We're here, we're queer, we're fabulous documented the aftermath of homophobic
police raids on a warehouse party called Sexgarage. Intercutting footage from
demonstrations and parties with interviews, the Sexgarage video exemplifies a
particular New York-influenced 'queer' style and politics taken up by Canadian
activists. We're here represents the most ephemeral mode of production from the
1980s and 1990s; produced quickly and cheaply in response to police gay-
bashing, this video survives as a fragile document of an extraordinary wave of
queer and AIDS activism. From its first event in 1988, Image et Nation screened
activist video, notably the influential work coming out of New York from the
Testing the Limits Collective, the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), DIVA TV
(Damned Interfering Video Activist Television) and the feminist collective
'Paper Tiger TV' (cf. Juhasz 1995).
This cycle of agit prop video was made in reponse to the devastation of the
AIDS crisis coupled with the Anglo-American rise of the New Right exemplified
by the governments of Brian Mulroney in Canada, Ronald Reagan in the US
and Margaret Thatcher in Britain. 12 In this period, fraught public debates over
homosexuality and AIDS unfolded through the media, and lesbian/gay activists
developed highly visible protest tactics. For instance, ACT UP (the AIDS
Coalition to Unleash Power) used striking images, slogans (SILENCE=DEATH)
and theatrical media-oriented protests (cf. Crimp 1988). The discursive struggle
over the public articulation of (queer) sexuality, desire and disease spurred a return
to earlier 'zapping' practices by Canadian and American activists: 'Assault on
authorship has lead to the practice of anonymous and collective production.
Assault on originality has given rise to dictums such as "If it works, use it" or "If
it's not yours, steal it'" (Crimp cited in Folland 1995:229). 13
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This approach is exemplified by the prolific Toronto-based video and film-

maker John Greyson. Addressing political issues such as censorship, police
harassment, gay public sex, gaybashing, and AIDS, his work blends documen-
tary, drama, musical and music video genres in scenarios that juxtapose historical
queer references with direct political address. For instance, The Pink Pimpernel
1989 intercuts clips from The Scarlet Pimpernel — the 1935 film about an effemi-
nate English dandy who secretly rescues aristocrats during the French Revolution
- with a 1980s drama where a seemingly apolitical Toronto gay man smuggles
contraband AIDS drugs into Canada from the US. The video innovatively
embeds a traditional documentary about AIDS treatment (including traditional
talking heads and protest footage) into an episodic 'soap-opera' style drama
that explores a troubled gay relationship (the Pimpernel's boyfriend is critical
of his seeming apathy in the face of AIDS). These diverse generic elements
are framed in rectangles (drama and demo footage) and circles (talking heads)
over a video 'wallpaper' of the 1935 black-and-white Pimpernel and the television
cartoon The Pink Panther,14 The use of split screens and embedded images
is typical of Greyson's strategy of reappropriating mainstream media. As he
notes:
I don't think we gain anything, as queers and as people committed to

an alternate media practice, by dismissing the dominant media, what
has gone before and what has oppressed us . . . Our engagement, our
subversion, our poisoning of those genres is going to give us much
more (quoted in McGann 1992:11).
In general, activist video makers have been highly conscious that the AIDS
crisis was, as Paula Treicher puts it, 'simultaneously an epidemic of a transmis-
sible lethal disease and an epidemic of meanings or significations' (cited in
Greyson 1996:251).
The World is Sick (Sic) 1989 is more of a conventional documentary covering
the activist presence at the Fifth International Conference on AIDS in Montreal
in 1989- Sick documents international activists storming the opening cere-
monies, and Toronto AIDS activist Tim McCaskell opening the conference 'on
behalf of Persons Living With AIDS'. Brief statements by international AIDS
activists are inset in frames against a constantly changing backdrop of activist
images; this strategy complicates and animates the realist documentary form.
Like many of the ephemeral agit prop projects of its time, Sick now stands as
a record of an urgent political moment rather than a stand-alone work of art.
As I scan these images, I recognise a generation of activists, some of whom have
since died. 15 There is a rough and ready quality to Greyson's video that reflects
the 'passion and tenacity' of AIDS activist video: 'Such media is based primarily
upon the urgency of politics and . . . the notion of struggle', struggle to find
funding and equipment, struggle to learn skills, to organize distribution, and
to invent the best forms for new content' (Juhasz 1994:32).
270
Figure 7.1 Three singing sauna divas in Zero Patience. (Kobal Collection)
Greyson's work spans the mid-1980s and 1990s, including short drama/
documentary (The Kipling Trilogy 1984-85, Moscow Does Not Believe in Queers
1986, Pimpernel, Sick), short film (The Making of Monsters 1991), and feature
films Urinal 1991, Zero Patience 1993, Lilies 1996 and Uncut 1997. 16 Patience,
featuring the ghost of the Quebecois airline steward known as 'Patient Zero'
who was seen to have brought HIV to the Western world, adopts the unlikely
form of the musical. Patience harnesses humour, activist anger, romance and
music to address the rhetoric of blame levelled against gay male sexuality during
the AIDS crisis. With this film Grey son sets out to disrupt audience expec-
tations through humour, explicit sexuality, and political critique - Patience, for
instance, sports a duet by two singing assholes and a song and dance routine at
a sauna (figure 7.1). 17
Sexuality
Greyson's The ADS Crisis 1987 touches on another mode of activist video,
the safer-sex PSA (public service announcement). Produced for screening in a
shopping mall, ADS transposes Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice 1971 into
a safer sex music video. The film draws from Thomas Mann's novella where the
aging writer Aschenbach becomes obsessed with the beautiful boy Tadzio while
holidaying in Venice. In ADS, a liberated Tadzio frolicks (safely) with his best
friend, while the unhappy Aschenbach is afflicted by 'ADS': 'acquired dread of
sex'. Greyson uses irony and pastiche to critique the persistent articulation
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of homosexual desire with death and disease, with song lyrics: 'This is not a
death in Venice/ Its a cheap unholy menace'. Similarly, a series of brief PSAs cut
into Pimpernel reenact famous moments from films by Genet, Warhol, McLaren
and Jutras. 18 For instance, Un Chant de safe amour begins with a simulation
of the prison images from Genet's film, but the two young prisoners break down
the prison wall, ending up in a menage a trois with the guard who cheerfully
provides condoms and lube. This brief and explicit sex scene concludes with the
intertitle: 'Jean Genet says: live out your fantasies with safer sex.'
The rearticulation of queer desire against the grain of homophobic mass
media has been common to much activist video since the 1980s. An important
genre has been short documentaries, safer sex videos and PSAs, often collectively
authored, including Safe Sex Slut Carol Leigh 1987, Kissing Doesn't Kill Gran
Fury Collective 1990, Steam Clean Richard Fung 1990, Truth or Dare: In Bed with
Morals S.A.F.E. 1992, Current Flow Jean Carlomusto 1989, Safe Sex Is Hot Sex
Maureen Bradley 1992, Safe Soap Anne Golden 1993 and Le Ravissement Charline
Boudreau 1993. The latter Montreal video spoofs a 1930s Hollywood high
society party, where a dark, handsome stranger (a butch dyke played by maker
Boudreau) courts a glamourous blonde (Andrea Slade). Their public encounter
is intercut with brief fantasy sequences of explicit 'safe' penetration with dildo
and hand.
Questions of context and audience are important for explicit sexual imagery.
In Montreal, explicitly erotic or pornographic lesbian/gay tapes and films were
screened at Image et Nation, as well as at warehouse parties and clubs. However,
outside of explicitly lesbian/gay public spaces, activists also sought to dissemi-
nate critical work on AIDS and sexuality more widely through television. For
instance, in the UK from 1989 the British magazine series Out on Tuesday
broadcast Khush Pratibha Parmar 1991, 19 This Is Not an AIDS Advertisement Isaac
Julien 1987 and Looking for Langston (see Hamer and Ashbrook 1998). In Canada,
the 1990 AIDS Cable Project/Toronto: Living with AIDS screened alternative AIDS
coverage. Ultimately, the explicit (queer) sexuality of Ian Rashid's Bolo/Bolof
caused trouble with the cable company, leading to the cancellation of the series
on the grounds of'public taste' (Folland 1995).
With the development of video, pornography, the most prolific and profitable
mode of production for gay men has led to a huge market for private home
consumption (see Waugh 1996, Dyer 2002: 187-203; on porn and racial differ-
ence see Fung 1991 and Mercer 1991). In contrast, pornography produced by
and for lesbians is still a very limited phenomenon (see Henderson 1992, Smyth
1990). Here, though, I would like emphasise relatively 'minor' lesbian art and
activist practices. Explicit home-made sexual imagery has been especially risky
and important for lesbians, whose sexuality has historically been either erased
or appropriated for heterosexual male fantasies. The imagery developed by AIDS
activists — an important number of whom were lesbians — intersects historically
with a late 1980s sex-positive movement within urban lesbian and feminist
circles, particularly in Canada and the US. In the 1980s North American
272
feminists were publically engaged in 'the sex wars', fraught public debates
around the regulation of pornography, sexuality and prostitution. Feminists
were split between the 'anti-porn' position, and an emergent 'sex-positive' or
'anti-censorship' feminism (cf. Vance 1980, Snitow et al. 1983, Feminist Review
1990, and Henderson 1992). In Canada, the state regulation of pornography
gained considerable ground in this period (Lacombe 1994); ironically legislation
intended by feminists to protect women from the harmful effects of pornog-
raphy was used to censor lesbian/gay materials (cf. Burstyn 1985, Valverde
1985, Kinsman 1987; on artist video, see Bociurkiuw 1988 and Diamond
1996).
This is the context of Kiss & Tell, a Vancouver-based artist group that
explores lesbian sexuality through photography, performance and video (figure
7.2). Comprised of performers Persimmon Blackbridge and Lizard Jones and
photographer Susan Stewart, Kiss & Tell produced an exhibition 'Drawing the
Line' in 1988. A series of black and white photographs depict Blackbridge and
Jones in sexual poses ranging from 'vanilla' (consensual images of kissing
and caressing) to an increasing use of sex aids (dildos) and S/M (bondage and
knives). The audience was asked to write their comments on the wall alongside
the photographs, and to 'draw the line' where they found the images to be
offensive. This exhibition is documented in Lorna Boschman's video Drawing
the Line 1992 where interviews with Kiss & Tell and audience commentary are
played over the photographs. This exhibition participates in a movement
Figure 1.2 Kiss and Tell explore urban lesbian sexual iconography. (Susan Stewart)
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(including the San Francisco lesbian porn magazine Off Our Backs) to 'bring
lesbian desire above ground, affirming its legitimacy and encouraging lesbian
women to find and embrace what pleases them sexually' (Henderson 1992:178).
Kiss & Tell's 1992 multi-media performance entitled True Inversions toured
Canada, parts of the US and Australia. Boschman's 1992 video of the project
intercuts masturbation and fantasy sequences with Blackbridge and Jones
engaged in live sex', and 'behind the scenes' discussions with photographers,
cast and crew. True Inversions seeks to complicate discourses of power, pleasure
and censorship, drawing attention to the 'framing' powers of the camera/director,
directly addressing how the lesbian sexual imagination has been colonized
by straight male porn, and freeze-framing sex sequences to 'censor' unsafe sex.
Stewart describes Kiss & Tell's aims:
When Kiss & Tell makes photographs or videos that include images
of lesbian sex, we are venturing into hotly contested territory that feels
hazardous, confusing and utterly exhilarating. We give ourselves
permission to . . . image our own sexuality, to show pictures of lesbians
for lesbians. Imagine our surprise . . . when our photographs some-
times look achingly familiar [like those in} nasty porno mags. Worse
yet, some of these images are hot. I wonder a lot about what that hot
signifies . . . I think it has something to do with occupying forbidden
territory, a retrieval of something we lost or perhaps never fully had,
that we are finally claiming.
(1994:51)
Drawing the Line and True Inversions use video to document 'live' performances
and historically specific debates; they parallel better-known American projects
such as Annie Sprinkle in Sluts and Goddesses Video Workshop Maria Beatty and
Annie Sprinkle 1993 and Monika Treut's Annie 1989 - or Treut's filming of
Susie ('Sexpert') Bright in DieJungfrauenmaschine 1988. 20 Along with the safer
sex PSAs, erotic short films and videos, a distinctive 1990s lesbian 'pro-sex'
iconography has develeoped including sex toys and leather, lesbian seduction,
role-playing, and S/M imagery. This iconography becomes increasingly visible
in Le Ravissement, No Glove, No Love Inke Petersen and Anja Schulz 1991,
Mano Destra Cleo Ubelmann 1985/6, or Maria Beatty's Gothic short porn films
The Elegant Spanking 1994, The Black Glove 1996 and Ladies of the Night 2000.
Returning recently to Boschman's videos, I was struck by the courage
and difficulty of Kiss & Tell's task. At the time, and even more so now, the
erotic power of their images is variable, and is often overwhelmed by analysis.
Ironically, for many lesbians, the most sexy lesbian film to date is the mainstream
Bound 1996 by the (straight male) Wachowski Brothers with the 'technical
assistance' of Susie ('Sexpert') Bright. Bound adroitly incorporates lesbian icon-
ography and courtship, appealing simultaneously to lesbian and non-lesbian
viewers. Does the Bound phenomenon imply that lesbian sexual imagery is now
274
more robust and need no longer be sequestered in community-based art and

festival venues? Or is this merely another cynical reappropriation of lesbian
sexuality for male fantasy and profit?
Identity
As independent sites for the screening and discussion of lesbian/gay film and
video, festivals provide a public context for the negotiation of queer identity.
The 1970s account of a unified lesbian/gay identity has been challenged by
questions of difference - race and ethnicity, gender and sexual practice (bisexu-
ality and transgender identities, S/M) (see Seidman 1993). In this vein, Toronto
video maker Richard Fungs work offers a sustained and nuanced meditation
on identity and belonging. An early video, Orientations 1985, for the most part
follows a traditional 'talking heads' format to document the experience of gay
Asians. In keeping with the 'affirmation politics' of 1970s documentaries, it
intercuts interviews with Asian-Canadian and American lesbians and gay men
with location footage, photographs and accounts of political groups. The tape's
emphasis on the specificity of race and ethnicity critiques the uniformity of the
normative white collective identity forged by gay liberation.
Fung's oeuvre as a whole displays a self-reflexive formal experimentation char-
acteristic of recent lesbian/gay documentary. For instance, Orientations begins
with a shot showing Fung, the Caucasian cameraman (John Greyson) and a third
(caucasian) man behind the camera. In the foreground appears a face covered
in a white mask; this face alerts the viewer that the initial shot was taken into
a mirror. The camera pulls back to reveal a dancer framed on three sides with
mirrors; clad in blue jeans, construction boots and a singlet, he performs a series
of slow, ritualistic movements. In voice-over, the dancer (Lim Pei-Hsien) notes
that when he performs for gay Asians, the mask represents
Asians wearing a white mask in North America, or Asians in general

in a white dominated world, and taking off the white mask [means}
reclaiming who you are and celebrating that, along with gay liberation.
Throughout the dance sequence, the three film-makers and camera are reflected
in the mirror. This shot breaks the distance of 'objective' documentary form,
implicating the ethnic and gendered gaze of makers and viewers. The specific
political agenda of the tape is indicated with a coda typical of activist documen-
taries, where Orientations closes on images of several of the tape's protagonists
under a 'Gay Asians Toronto' banner in a Gay Pride march. Along with
collective activism, the tape emphasises the importance of cultural traditions
including dance, t'ai chi, Chinese medicine, film-making; a sequence at the
end of the tape includes footage from a Gay Asian variety show where performers
sing, and dance in traditional costume. Here, we return to the masked dancer
as he ritually removes the mask in a liberatory gesture of'coming out'.
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Fung's work can be situated within debates around race and identity arising
in the 1980s. 21 His tapes address the specificity of gay Asian experience as part
of a widespread challenge to the erasure of difference within Anglo-American
gay liberation politics and imagery. Some of Fung's subsequent works move
away from explicit accounts of identity grounded in sexuality toward the
articulation of personal history, migration and hybrid cultural identity. My
Mother's Place 1990 chronicles the life of Fung's mother Rita from her poor
Chinese immigrant experience in Trinidad. The film is anchored in a series of
interviews with the elderly Rita, but Fung is careful to expose the constructed-
ness of the family history. He notes at the beginning of the tape: T m asking
these questions of my mother and all my life I've heard the answers. I know
which questions not to ask. I live in this family, and there are consequences.'
In a strategy common to much recent lesbian/gay family work, 22 the video
incorporates home movie footage of Fung's childhood.
Fung insists on the contingency of lesbian/gay identity as the negotiation
of a fraught network of allegiances. The political and emotional power of
Fung's work lies in its articulation of personal memory with political context,
holding in tension colonial history, personal memory, gender, race and ethnicity
in lesbian and gay identity. The stunning poetic work Sea in the Blood 2002
intercuts the story of Fung's sister Nan's struggle with a rare blood disorder with
his life partner Tim McCaskell's struggle with AIDS. The tape describes a
painful struggle between Fung's early gay relationship and family demands at
the time of his sister's death; at the same time, it parallels the two illnesses in
their social construction and through the lived experience of living with illness
and mourning. To link these two, Sea uses the visual metaphor of swimmers:
Fung and McCaskell, Fung as a child with his sister. For Nayan Shah, 'the rose-
tinted waters dilute and refract the blood everywhere. The color of the water
recalls the blood of heredity: the blood that carries illness, the blood that can
cause distress, and the blood of intimacy' (2002:102). 23
Jose Munoz suggests that Fung practices 'autoethnography', a method that
'in many ways [seeks} to reclaim the past and put it in direct relation with the
present. Autoethnography is not interested in searching for some lost and
essential experience, because it understands the relationship that subjects have
with their own pasts as complicated yet necessary fictions' (1995:89). Munoz
links Fung's autoethnography with Sadie Benning's account of 'white queer
youth culture' and Marlon Riggs's excavation of an 'African-American gay male
image that has been elided in the history of both black communities and queer
communities' (ibid:89). Fung's work resonates with other experimental projects
chronicling specific family histories and psychic structures: Julie Zando's
disturbing psychosexual mother—daughter dynamics in Let's Play Prisoners
1988, 24 and Jean Carlomusto's Italian-American family history in To Catch
a Glimpse 1997; Cassandra Nicolaou's Dance with Me 1995 lyrically evokes the
ties of traditional dance and fragments of language and memory that bind
the (implicitly lesbian) daughter to generations of Greek women. In these works
276
same-sex desire often becomes secondary to reflections on ethnicity and family.

Formerly constitutive of lesbian/gay identity, sexuality is now implicit, to be
decyphered through the inflections of authorship and narration, or in the context
of screening (the festival circuit).
In Fungs case, Thomas Waugh (1998) asserts that 'queer sexual performance'
is often taken as secondary to his treatments of postcolonial and Asian identity.
Fung's work insists on the political juxtaposition of desire with a fluid account
of identity within specific historical contexts; notably the documentary Chinese
Characters 1986 challenges the normative whiteness of gay pornography, while
Dirty Laundry 1996 undertakes a meditation on same-sex desire in Chinese
Canadian history. The complex articulation of keywords 'desire' and 'identity'
unfolds differently in the new queer cinema.
New queer cinema

In 1992, B. Ruby Rich declared the stylish and defiant arrival of the 'new queer
cinema'. This cycle included Poison, Paris Is Burning Jennie Livingstone 1990,
Young Soul Rebels Isaac Julien 1991, Edward II, My Own Private Idaho Gus Van
Sant 1991, The Hours and Times Christopher Munch 1991, Zero Patience, R. S. V.P
Laurie Lynd 1991, Swoon Tom Kalin 1992 and The Living End Gregg Araki
1992. For Rich, this body of work shares a common style and sensibility:
Call it 'Homo Pomo': there are traces in all of [these films] of appro-
priation and pastiche, irony, as well as a reworking of history with
social constructionism very much in mind. Definitively breaking with
older humanist approaches and the films and tapes that accompanied
identity politics, these works are irreverent, energetic, alternately
minimalist and excessive. Above all, they're full of pleasure.
(Rich 1992:32)
At first glance, the new queer cinema might seem to be primarily a 'bad boy'
Anglo-American phenomenon (see Taubin 1992a). The lesbian work that
coincided with this first wave was primarily short, experimental video. Notably,
the whimsical, self-conscious autobiographical shorts of 'Wunderkind' Sadie
Benning (Me and Ruby fruit 1989, Jollies 1990) are included in the new queer
cinema's initial honour role. Shot on a Fisher-Price Pixelvision camera in her
bedroom, Benning's videos reflect wryly on teen-aged dyke experience using
fragmented images of Benning's body, voice-overs, and cut-out dolls. Although
art videos are mostly consigned to festivals and art galleries, the commercial
viability of edgy queer work has facilitated feature productions by lesbian
film-makers from different national contexts: High Art Lisa Cholodenko 1998,
Watermelon Woman, Go Fish Rose Troche 1994, Fresh Kill Shu Lea Cheang
1994, Rote Ohren fetzen durch Aschen Ursula Piirrer, Angela Hans Scheirl and
Dietmar Schipek 1992 (Austria), DieJungfrauenmaschine (Germany/US), Crush
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Alison MacLean 1992 (New Zealand) - and in Australia Love and Other
Catastrophes Emma-Kate Croghan 1996 and Ana Kokkinos's films which I will
return to below.
Todd Haynes's parodic treatment of the AIDS crisis in Poison suggests the
postmodern, 'in your face' politics and aesthetics of the new queer cinema. The
film juxtaposes three disparate generic and historical narratives: the 'contempo-
rary' story of Richie, a child from a violent home;25 a parody of a 1950s science
fiction B-movie where a scientist is disfigured by a mysterious virus; and a Genet-
inspired 1930s/1940S prison narrative exploring the articulation of homosocial
desire and criminality. The exploration of desire within the prison world shot
in grainy black and white jars with the 'excessive' aesthetics of science fiction
segments, where the handsome young doctor's face is gradually overrun with
running sores in a grotesque parody of AIDS.
For Jose Arroyo, the political unconscious of the new queer cinema is the
AIDS pandemic. Writing about My Own Private Idaho and Edward II, Arroyo
suggests that even though (like Poison and Swoon) neither film is explicitly
'about' AIDS, they express an 'epistemic shift' in gay experience; they 'depict
the context of the pandemic through their use of style, their romanticism, their
representation of sexuality and time, and their dystopic viewpoint' (1993: 80).
In an era when sexuality and feeling are especially ephemeral and dangerous,
Arroyo identifies a poignant emphasis on gay desire and romantic love. To this
effect, the 'Genet' segments in Poison are beautifully shot in chiaroscuro, remi-
niscent of Un Chant d*amour, and include citations from Genet's writings, linking
'Genet' with the hysteria of contamination in the era of AIDS. Similarly, 'Genet's'
'criminal underworld' informs Jarman's Caravaggio and Edward II, and Tom
Kalin's Swoon.The recurring triangle of desire, death and criminality illustrates
a historical refusal of positive image strategies by new queer film-makers. The
media-sawy tactics of activist video find their counterpart in new queer cinema's
defiant reappropriation of negative stereotypes. A common point of reference are
controversies surrounding Basic Instinct 1992 and Silence of the Lambs 1991, where
the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and OutRage!
Protesters picketed these films, claiming that they perpetuated stereotypes of
lesbians and gay men as psychopaths and murderers. Following from a similar
campaign around Cruising 1980, these protests brought lesbian/ gay cultural
politics out onto the street, but the long-standing 'positive images' politics were
themselves under fire.
Lesbian/gay cultural commentators did not uniformly denounce Basic Instinct
— in fact many writers identified ironic reappropriations for the discerning queer
viewer (see Hoberman 1992, Carr 1992, Taubin 1992b, and Pidduck 1995).
Basic Instinct and a wave of independent 'queer killer films' (both lesbian/gay
authored and not) sparked a series of complex debates in popular and academic
discourse. Clare Whatling, for instance, foregrounds the 'transgressive' power
of lesbian sexuality by linking Basic Instinct, Single White Female 1992, Heavenly
Creatures 1994, Fun 1994 and Butterfly Kiss 1992 with an historical tradition
278
including A Walk on the Wild Side 1962, The Hunger 1980, Vampire Lovers 1970.
As a corrective to what she calls the 'Laura Ashleyisation of lesbian culture',
Whatling claims that 'cinematic images of pathological lesbians work for a
contemporary lesbian audience through a sheen of nostalgia, which renders
them generative rather than inhibitive' (1997:82). (See also Halberstam 1993,
Hart 1994 and Aaron 1999.)
Ellis Hanson equates this reading strategy with a shift from a lesbian/gay
politics of representation to a queer critical approach: 'If queer theory has
anything to offer . . . it is the rigorous questioning of the very concepts of
correctness, identity, stereotyping, visibility or authenticity' (1999:12). 26 The
term 'queer' equates the new queer cinema with a politics and attitude emerging
in the late 1980s in response to the AIDS crisis and the rise of the New Right.
The following definition appeared in NYQ in 1992:
We feel angry and disgusted, not gay. Using 'queer' is a way of

reminding ourselves how we are perceived by the rest of the world. It's
a way of telling ourselves we don't have to be witty, charming people
who keep our lives marginalised and discreet in the straight world.
'Queer' can be a rough word, but it is also a sly and ironic weapon we
can steal from the homophobe's hand and use against him.
(Cited in Smyth 1992a: 11)
The reappropriation of the epithet 'queer' is a conscious political strategy that

rhymes with an aesthetics that celebrates the 'abject', the criminal, the under-
world of queer desire.
If American (and to a lesser extent, British) cultural politics of the 1980s
and 1990s have largely set the terms 'queer' and 'new queer cinema', parallel
projects have appeared elsewhere. For an analysis of the German queer cinema,
see Kuzniar 2000. In France, Cyril Collard's semi-autobiographical Les Nuits
fauves 1992 (Savage Nights) explores the sexual exploits of an HIV-positive man
with a 17-year-old girl and a neo-Nazi rugby player (cf. Watney 1993, Rollet
and Williams 1998, Marshall 2000, and Merck 2000: 148-76). Nuits shared
both critical acclaim within the French film industry and the dramatic explo-
ration of bisexuality with Les Roseaux sauvages Andre Techine 1994. However,
in contrast with Roseaux s nostalgic innocence, Collard's film was anomalous in
France for its explicit treatment of AIDS and queer sexuality. It was especially
controversial outside of France for its portrayal of the bisexual Jean (played by
the film-maker) having unprotected sex with his young female lover Laura.
Collard's starring role reinforced his Cocteau-style auteurist persona as writer,
photographer, film-maker and musician, while his relentless pursuit of pleasure
and desire links him with Romantic sexual outlaws Rimbaud, Genet and
Pasolini.
Rollet and Williams equate the film with the new queer cinema 'where the
degree of physical desire on display is matched by a breathless heterogeneity of
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form and style, ranging from passages of pure drama to face-on-camera mono-
logues, from hand-held video sequences to split-screen editing' (1998:199).
Collard's film coincides in sensibility and style with Head On Ana Kokkinos
1998. Kokkinos's work takes new queer cinema into a different cultural context
and historical moment where AIDS is no longer the single most pressing
concern. Proponents of the term 'queer' claim that the term can complicate
liberal notions of 'gay identity as a unitary, unproblematic given' (Duggan
1992:17). Even as the term queer broadens the category of 'lesbian/gay' to
include 'bisexual' or 'transgender' people, it also can facilitate a much more
complex understanding of the articulation of race and ethnicity with national
identity, gender and sexuality.
Kokkinos's work addresses the contradictory terrain of 1990s Australian
multicultural and sexual identity.
In Australia the queer moment has coincided resonantly with a shift

in more general debates about what constitutes Australian identity.
. . . [In the} 1980s and early 1990s, 'the official story of Australian
identity was built around the idea of a multicultural, cosmopolitan
and tolerant society embracing and invigorated by change', a move
which led to a degree of inclusiveness towards gays and lesbians and
some recognition of sexual identity as a legitimate area of concern in
the dialogue that was reshaping national identity.
(Hunn 2000:113) 27
Kokkinos's films explore a resolutely dissonant Greek Australian working class

experience in the suburbs of Melbourne. They borrow the 'coming of age' or 'rite
of passage' narrative, which Tony Rayner claims is a specifically Australian
modality recently revived with The Year My Voice Broke 1987, Flirting 1989, The
Getting of Wisdom 1977, The Fringe Dwellers 1986, Sweetie 1989 and Shine 1996.
For Rayner, this generic frame features a 'protagonist undergoing fundamental,
formative and traumatic experience, travelling and questing within a country
supposedly his own but over which he can exert little control' (2000:142).
Kokkinos's hour-long debut film Only the Brave 1994 dramatises a fraught
relationship between two teen-aged girls, Alex (Elena Mandalis) and Vikki (Doris
Kaskanis). Alex is haunted by her mother's abandonment, while Vikki is self-
destructive and full of rage. With its 'dirty realist' aesthetic of post-industrial
cityscapes, the film emphasises both the girls' confinement within a working
class suburban experience - and also the power of dreams to transport them.
They dream of an escape to the bright lights of Sydney: Alex in quest of her lost
mother, and Vikki with the dream of becoming a singer. With a cinematography
reminiscent of the poetic realism of Boys Don't Cry 1999 or the speedy neon of
Fun, the Melbourne suburbs are alternately desolate and strangely beautiful.
The film begins and ends ablaze. In the opening sequence, Alex, Vikki and a
group of friends set a hedge on fire. Shot under a full moon, there is a ritualistic,
280
ecstatic quality to this act, the rebellion of the powerless, the desperate and
(as the title reminds us) the brave. Vikki and Alex flee through an indistinct
suburban wasteland lit only by pinpoints of neon from nearby factories and the
rushing blur of a train passing. Cut to an overhead two-shot of the two girls
lying close together on the grass, smoking a joint and gazing up at the sky.
Kokkinos is oblique about the sexual identity of her protagonists, and in
this respect they are 'queer' rather than lesbian. The story unfolds primarily
through the point of view of Alex who seems to be coming to terms with her
desire for women, but this sexual awakening is volatile and dangerous. Haunted
by dreams of her lost mother, Alex courts her English teacher; meanwhile, she
discovers, too late, that Vikki is a victim of sexual abuse by her father. The girls
interact ambivalently with boyfriends, but their most intensive relationship
is with each other, and this bond seethes with violence and betrayal. Alex is
baited by a group of girls, and a dirty fight ensues. Alex's friends (including
Vikki) merely stand and watch as the other girl clobbers Alex in the head
with a length of pipe. This cycle of violence and indifference culminates in the
penultimate scene where Alex watches helplessly as Vikki immolates herself.
Hardly the nurturing 'sisterhood' of a 1970s feminist politic, Brave shows us a
dark, complex and sometimes desperate world (see Dzenis 1994). Like the 'queer
killer' films of the early 1990s, Brave delves into erotic friendships between
young women. Unlike these male-authored films, however, the girls are more
likely to destroy themselves than those around them.
Michael Bronski situates the 'coming out film' (for instance, Personal Best
1982, DesertHearts Donna Deitch Beautiful Thing Hettie Macdonald 1996,
Edge of Seventeen David Moreton 1998) — as a popular narrative form emerging
after the first wave of independent lesbian/gay cinema. He notes that coming out
films 'offer a simple — continuous — affirmative vision that is both needed and
necessary. They also provide a philosophical, emotional, even metaphysical
grounding for those who have set off on this new road' (2000:20). For Bronski,
most feature-length coming out films rely on a 'positive image' politics, a
triumphant, individualist narrative arc.
While most gay and liberal viewers can see the importance of this —
'coming out' should be presented as a positive and healthy action
— the irony is that this simplistic look at the world actually reduces
the importance, and even the imperative, of the action of coming out.
It also misjudges the harshness of homophobia in the world.
(23)
Brave, and in turn Head On, refuse the stable identity sought by a popular
'coming out' narrative. Fuelled by a restless desire evoked through compelling
cinematography and driving soundtracks — as well as the constant physical
movements of the characters — Kokkinos tracks ambivalent and vivid queer
ramblings that lack a clear destination or outcome. Her second feature Head On
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Figure 7.3 Ari's urban alienation is depicted in intense close-ups in Head On. (Kobal
Collection)
features television heart throb Alex Dimitriades in a bravura performance as Ari,

a young second generation immigrant with no job and no aspirations. Kokkinos
carefully dramatises the complex allegiances that bind this angry young man
to his immigrant family — a quiet moment in the kitchen with his mother, an
aunt reading his fortune in tea leaves. He escapes his patriarchal family home
and the pressures of a tightly knit Greek immigrant community for Melbourne's
gay clubs and the gritty streets. Absorbed in his own world through a steady
intake of drugs, rough and anonymous sexual encounters, and the loud music
of his Walkman, Ari wanders alone through dissonant, multicultural neigh-
bourhoods. The novel's interior monologues are evoked through voice-over, and
through frequent oblique close-ups on Ari's face that emphasise his singular
confrontations with his environment. (See figure 7.3.)
Ari refuses the language of identity politics — 'Proud to be Greek? I had
nothing to do with it' - opting instead for pure pleasure and intensity. When
the bouzouki music comes up in the Greek club that he escapes to, he breaks
away from conversation: Tuck politics, let's dance!' In a reprise of a graceful,
masculine Greek dance practised earlier in the family kitchen with his father,
Ari begins a controlled, stalking, and intensely erotic performance. Dimitriades
performs a stunning solo, his muscular torso pressing through his clingy shirt,
open at the neck. The bouzouki music builds to an intensive crescendo, and
cross-cutting foregrounds the appreciative gazes of both the Anglo man Sean
he fancies, and Sean's friend Ariadne.
282
Kokkinos refuses to allow the dissonances of Ari's world to dissolve into the
pleasures of (multicultural) music and spectacle. At the end of Ari's dance, his
childhood friend Johnny, an openly cross-dressing gay man, arrives dressed as
'Toula'. Embarrassed at being associated with his openly 'queer' friend, the
straight-acting Ari storms out of the club. Ari refuses to publically acknowledge
his friend Johnny/Toula, nor will he proclaim his own homosexuality. The
theme of betrayal from Brave recurs, when the two are later picked up by
the police and Ari stands by in frustration and fear as Toula is badly beaten. The
film's refusal of a liberatory coming out model underlines how gay identity
is criss-crossed by differences of generation, class and ethnic difference (see
Hunn 2000 and Berry 1995). Head On exemplifies a fluid account of identity-
formation. An important related debate that I cannot adequately address here
opts for the inclusive category 'queer' that includes bisexual and transgender
experience (see Seidman 1993, Straayer 1996).
Ari's refusal to embrace his homosexuality is a troubling knot at the core
of the film. The penultimate scene in Head On shows Ari's encounter with Sean
who is depicted as a more promising liaison than his other anonymous sexual
encounters. Yet, the seduction ends in a fist fight, and Sean throws Ari out of
his apartment. Head On closes with a long shot of Ari doing his slow Greek
dance on the waterfront as the sun rises. An ambivalent image of renewal for
the 'coming of age' tale, Ari expresses a new resolve in voice-over:
I'm a whore, a dog and a cunt. I'm sliding toward the sewer. I'm still
breathing. I'm going to live my life. I'm not going to make a difference.
I'm not going to change a thing. No one's going to remember me when
I'm dead. I'm a sailor and a whore, and I will be until the end of the
world.
There is more than a glimmer of 'Genet' in this arresting final image, where
Ari, in keeping with the spirit of the new queer cinema, chooses the dark
pleasures of the sewer over a happy ending.
Head On exemplifies new queer cinema's compelling yet problematic
foregrounding of desire. As discussed above, 1980s lesbian/gay art and activist
works explored autonomous sexual expression within 'safe' community spaces
and in public resistance to homophobic backlash. But, in the context of a vora-
cious global audiovisual that absorbs and repackages difference, it is also the
momentum of this desire, counter-culture rage and distinctive style that propels
works like Head On or Swoon into wider channels of consumption (see Clark
1993). As with its 'underground' antecedents, new queer cinema deploys desire
as an unruly, transgressive 28 force that unsettles normative social structures,
tidy endings and stable identity formations alike. The quandary of Head On is
in a sense the limit-point of the new queer cinema: in Dimitriades's Alex, we
have a photogenic protagonist whose restless queer sexuality and identity first
challenges the coherence of Anglo-Australian gay identity - and ultimately
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unravels the common ground of identity founded on same-sex desire. (On new
queer cinema see also Aaron 2003.)
Popular genres
Queer cultural criticism often explicitly differentiates itself from a more tradi-
tional politics of lesbian/gay representation that champions positive images'
within popular culture. There is a vanguardist tendency within these circles to
celebrate independent or experimental works, while villifying 'mainstream'
commercial or Hollywood forms. But if the new queer cinema audaciously
embraces 'negative' images, this politics has not gone unchallenged. Jackie
Stacey notes in her article on the lesbian romance film:
There is a fashionable view in this age of queer cinema that the absence
of Hollywood-style, happy-ending romances should not be lamented,
since we should not be striving to produce acceptable images of homo-
sexuality; far more desirable are those films which risk exploring the
hidden side of queer lifestyles . . . Indignant indifference is articulated
towards what 'others might think' in the face of the present desire to
explore all sides of transgression.
(1995:93-4)
For Stacey, a common critical dismissal of Donna Deitch's 1985 independent

feature Desert Hearts ignores the views of the 'lesbian audience in general, for
whom this was their favourite film' (ibid:95). This vanguardist view also dis-
counts the difficulties facing lesbian film-makers working within popular
genres. Famously, Deitch raised the film's entire budget herself, and Desert Hearts
was unique in the 1980s as a popular feature directed by a lesbian. Despite its
strong box office, no comparable popular lesbian romance emerged until Claire
of the Moon Nicole Conn 1992. Hearts raises important questions regarding
audience taste and the pleasures and limitations of popular genres.
Based on Jane Rule's novel Desert of the Heart, Deitch's film takes place in
Reno, Nevada in 1959 and portrays a love story between a Columbia University
English Professor Vivian (Helen Shaver) and Cay (Patricia Charbonneau)
who works in a casino. Vivian, 35, is a private, established professional who has
come to Nevada for a quick divorce; ten years older than Cay, she is drawn to
the younger woman's impetuous nature, but frightened by the disruptive
implications of coming out. Like Thelma and Louise 1991, Hearts deploys the
wide-open promise of the desert (encapsulated in Cay's convertible and romantic
outings on horseback) layered with a romantic country and western soundtrack.
The film works both with and against the grain of its nostalgic 1950s setting,
reappropriating its traditional American iconography for lesbian audiences.
For instance, in the opening scene Patsy Cline's 'If You've Got Leaving on Your
Mind' plays over Vivian's arrival at the train station. Part of the film's pleasure
284
lies in restaging generic encounters, where the 'deep feeling' grain of Cline's
voice adds emotional resonance. Cline's music and most of the soundtrack arise
from the aggressive heterosexuality of country and western music, but in this
context, as Stacey suggests, the film comments 'upon the romantic conventions
it deploys as somehow "other"' (ibid: 110). It is worth noting that Cline is a
common lesbian icon, and for audiences who have historically had to make do
with detecting subtexts in films like Calamity Jane 1953 and Johnny Guitar
1954, Hearts makes the all-important leap to an explicit lesbian narrative.
Hearts uses contrasting types common to lesbian romance — the 'East Coast'
'femme' blonde and 'Western' (slightly butch) brunette; both actresses are white,
slim and pretty (see figure 7.4). Stacey observes that Hearts lacks emotional
intensity, as the obstacles confronting the romance are too easily resolved, and
in the process Vivian's homophobia (let alone judgments of 1950s Nevada) are
pushed out of the frame. Nonetheless, Hearts remains a landmark film, its very
generic conventionality facilitating the popular pleasures of humming along to
Patsy Cline, enjoying a lesbian courtship and an unprecedentedly explicit and
lengthy sex scene. Viewing the film upon its release, I remember this scene as a
groundbreaking moment for lesbian sexuality on screen, with its mirror images
of breasts touching and suggestion of oral sex. Vivian's nervousness is convincing,
evoking the awkwardness, tenderness and passion of a first encounter.
For Mandy Merck, however, Deitch's film fails as a 'truly challenging lesbian
film': 'In order to succeed as a popular romance, Desert Hearts was divested of
any social or political ramification or context that would restrict its generality'
Figure 7.4 Conventional beauty: the lovers of Desert Hearts. (Kobal Collection)
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(1993:380). Similarly Teresa de Lauretis dismisses 'the romance or fairy-tale

formulas adopted by such films as Lianna, Desert Hearts, or Vve Heard the
Mermaids Singing (1993:263). Instead, she turns to Sheila McLaughlin's 1987
art film She Must Be Seeing Things as an example of how lesbian/feminist cinema
has the power (and perhaps the responsibility) to change the 'conditions of
lesbian visibility'. McLaughlin's film explores the relationship between Jo (Lois
Weaver) a bohemian New York-based artist and film-maker, and Agatha (Sheila
Dabney), a lawyer from a middle-class Brazilian family. Jo and Agatha's rela-
tionship is fraught with jealousy, where Agatha is threatened by Jo's extensive
sexual experience with men.
De Lauretis notes that the film 'locates itself historically and politically in
the contemporary North American lesbian community, with its conflicting
discourses, posing the question of desire within the context of actual practices
of both lesbianism and the cinema' (1991:263). By presenting fantasy sequences
(Agatha imagines Jo having sex with men, and her violent death), a film within
a film and butch/femme role play, Seeing Things dramatises 1980s lesbian/
feminist debates around sexuality. The distinctiveness of Seeing Things 'lies in
its foregrounding of that frame of reference, making it visible, and at the same
time shifting it, moving it aside, as it were, enough to let us see through the
gap, the contradiction; . . . enough to let us see ourselves seeing, and with what
eyes' (ibid:255). (Cf. Kuhn 1994: 238-42 and Gever 1998.)
These debates about popular and art cinema foreground the dangers and the
possibilities within the shifting field of lesbian self-representation. While de
Lauretis argues persuasively for the formal capacity of art cinema to challenge
the conditions of visibility, her case rests on one minor film which is not widely
available, and perhaps unsurprisingly has proven 'unpopular' with most lesbian
audiences. This brings us back to Stacey's point about popular genres. A unique
event in the 1980s, Deitch's film long bore the lesbian 'burden of represen-
tation'. Critics and audiences' criteria often differ, and many lesbian viewers
have long craved the retelling of familiar stories to accommodate lesbian
desire, courtship and sexuality. Even in the brief time since these debates,
however, I am struck by a modest proliferation of lesbian romance films in the
1990s.
Rose Troche's 1994 Go Fish was a breakthrough film, juxtaposing a lesbian
courtship with witty commentary on lesbian community and dating. Formally,
the film grounds the romance narrative within a contemporary urban American
lesbian community and includes a diverse cast of lesbian characters. From the
mid-1990s, lesbian romance appears in new queer cinema (Go Fish, High Art,
Fresh Kill) and popular romances (When Night Is Falling Patricia Rozema 1994,
The Incredibly True Adventures of Two Girls in Love Maria Maggenti 1995, Better
Than Chocoloate Ann Wheeler 1999). Art/ independent/ new queer/ and popular
films alike have reached wider audiences through the targetting of lesbian/gay
niche markets, and through home video distribution. As Rich suggests, (some)
queer audiences now have access to a menu of'incredibly banal adventures . . .
286
And, after all, aren't queer audiences entitled to the very same mediocrity that
straight people have always enjoyed?' 29 Notwithstanding Rich's sardonic tone,
with a broader base of production, perhaps we no longer need to distinguish so
categorically between popular genres and 'challenging' films. Hearts supports
the view that simplicity of form allows cultural texts to speak to broader
audiences, and the question of access is essential for lesbian/gay film, particularly
for younger audiences and for viewers outside of the geographical loop and
cultural capital of film festivals and art cinemas. 30
On the other hand, the arguable democracy of the market does not erase
the critical importance of films or cycles that shift 'the conditions of lesbian
visibility'. In this vein, I now turn to art cinema, a mode of production that
bridges women's independent cinema of the 1980s and the recent 'popularisa-
tion' of lesbian/gay-authored and themed European art cinema. 31 Andrea Weiss
notes that art cinema has facilitated the development of lesbian film-makers:
'It is within this European art cinema context and its precedent of state-
subsidized production motivated by other factors besides pure profit that
most feature films directed by women are able to be produced' (1992:109—10).
As lesbian/gay film festivals have generated new circuits of exchange outside of
a purely commercial economy, art cinema has facilitated the development
of lesbian directors Marleen Gorris, Yvonne Rainer, 32 Chantal Akerman, 33
Ulrike Ottinger, Lizzie Borden, Lea Poole34 and Patricia Rozema. Weiss asserts
that these directors do not share national backgrounds or film styles, but rather
create a new type of film by combining the 'visual codes of other, non-classical
modes of cinema with the political and personal agendas of feminism'
(1992:110). While much of this work does not directly express lesbian expe-
rience or desire, these film-makers explore affective and political bonds between
women, opening up a space for lesbian readings and politics.
In Dutch director Gorris's debut film De Stilte rond Christina M. (A Question
of Silence 1982), three ordinary women beat a male shop clerk to death; unknown
to one another, these women have no apparent motive for the killing. Gorris
twins the murder investigation with the consciousness-raising trajectory of the
female psychiatrist, who comes to understand women's bond of patriarchal
oppression as she evaluates the women's sanity for the courts. The film thus
dramatises a powerful solidarity among women that surpasses their links
with men, culminating in the film's famed courtroom denouement where the
psychiatrist, the accused women, and several female witnesses to the crime
break into cathartic laughter at the absurdity of the court procedures.35 (See
figure 7.5.)
While lesbianism never arises directly, the film enacts a powerful critique
of heterosexuality where marriage and work relations are seen to be sites of
unrelenting 'silencing' and disempowerment of women. In a brief scene that
suggests 'both the possibility and impossibility of lesbianism' (Weiss 1992:119)
within an over-arching prison of patriarchy, the attractive, articulate secretary
holds her hand close to the psychiatrist, tracing the other woman's body in
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Figure 7.5 The cathartic power of women's laughter in De Stilte rond Christine M. (Kobal
Collection)
outline. Gorris's second film, Gebrokene Spiegels (Broken Mirrors 1984), presents
a harrowing account of patriarchal violence and the objectification of women.
Here, Gorris juxtaposes a male serial killer's abduction, confinement, and even-
tual starvation of a woman with life in a brothel. In Spiegels the brothel becomes
a liminal space, a bastion of female solidarity. Lesbianism figures more directly
in this film through the casting of Henriette Tol (the secretary of De Stilte) as a
feisty lesbian prostitute. (See Murphy 1986, Gentile 1990, Kuhn 1994:239-9,
Smelik 1998a:90-122, Rich 1998:315-25.)
In keeping with the recent wider marketing of international art cinema,
Gorris's 1995 film Antonia speaks to a far broader audience than her earlier
works, particularly after winning the Academy award for best foreign film.
Here, Gorris eschews gritty urban realism for an agrarian matriarchal drama
of generations headed up by Antonia (leading Dutch actress Willeke van
Ammelrooy). The film begins with the matter-of-fact announcement that
the elderly Antonia is to die that day. Subsequently, the narrative unfolds in
flashback, beginning with the heroine's return to her ancestral village upon her
mother's death in 1945. Dispelling any expectations of idealised motherhood,
Antonia's dying mother proves a grotesque, foul-mouthed creature who still
curses her long-dead husband after thirty years. A comic import from horror
film, she leaps back to life to shout at the bewildered mourners, with a parting
shot at her daughter: 'Late as usual. Just like your father. Amen.' Antonia replies:
288
Figure 1.6 Antonia % 'mutant pastoralism'. (Kobal Collection)
'Rest in peace, mother. Although that is extremely unlikely.' This opening

scene sets the tone for the film, described by Liese Spencer as a 'strange admix-
ture of good-humoured feminism and mutant pastoralism' (1996:35).
In echoes of Gorris's earlier work, the village is not exempt from male
violence, but here the perpetrators meet with justice. For instance, Antonia's
daughter Danielle intervenes in the brutal rape of the slow-witted DeeDee by
her brother Pitte, attacking him with a pitchfork. Antonia banishes Pitte from
the village, and when he returns to rape Danielle's daughter Therese, he is killed
by the men of the village. Antonia's farmhouse becomes a respite for village mis-
fits and victims of violence and prejudice. Karen Jaehne suggests that Antonias
sensibility evokes Pieter Brueghel's quotidian realism, with its 'imitation of
worlds beyond our own, combined with her unblinking acceptance of human
pain and labour' (1996:27). Human injustice, violence, illness, birth and death
are played out against the gentle cycle of the seasons. Landscape shots are
intercut with simple farm tasks across the seasons to signal the passing of time,
as the statuesque figure of Antonia becomes the dramatic centre of the film and
the village. (See figure 7.6.)
In Gorris's pastoral vision, the outdoor feast is a recurring set piece where all
of Antonia's loved ones are welcome; time is marked by birth and arrivals and
by departures and death, and the members of the feast change accordingly.
Femininity and fertility are venerated, but are explicitly set apart from hetero-
sexual conventions of marriage and ownership. When Farmer Daan proposes to
Antonia, suggesting that his four sons need a mother, she gently retorts: 'But
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I don't need your four sons'; nor, she insists, does she need a husband. Some
years later, however, she arranges with him to meet for sex outside of marriage.
Meanwhile, Danielle pursues a one-night stand in order to conceive a child, later
falling in love with the pretty blonde schoolteacher Lara. The film's no-nonsense
treatment of sexuality is encapsulated in a scene reminiscent of a sequence
in Sammy and Rosie Get Laid Stephen Frears 1987 that intercuts four diverse
couples mid-coitus: Danielle and Lara, Antonia and Farmer Daan, Loony Lips
and DeeDee, and Antonia's friend Letta and the Chaplain. The couples gain
momentum as the bouncy orchestral music reaches a climax with trumpets and
symbols; finally, a sleepy child appears in the hallway to declare: 'I can't sleep.'
There is a crude sexual democracy and bawdy humour afoot here: Lesbian desire
is neither a necessary political strategy within patriarchy (Stilte), nor somehow
'exceptional' or even 'aberrant'. (On Antonia, see also Sklar 1996 and Jaehne
1996.)
Even as Hearts reappropriates the iconography of the American West for
lesbian romance, Antonia quietly subverts the normative heterosexual structures
of kinship, sexuality and community in the family epic. But to what degree
is Antonia a lesbian film? Rather than beginning from a 'distinct' lesbian
experience and desire, Antonia works from the porous 'lesbian continuum' of
art cinema common toJe tu il elle Chantal Akerman 1974, Born in Blames Lizzie
Borden 1983, Ten Cents a Dance (Parallax) Midi Onodera 1985 and Johanna
dArc of Mongolia Ulrike Ottinger 1989- With reference to the 'permeable
boundaries between female bonding and lesbianism' in feminist art cinema,
Judith Mayne suggests that 'lesbianism is simultaneously a limit and a horizon
of female narration and authorship' (2000:150-1). 3 6
Undoubtedly there is a loss of lesbian specificity in Gorris's radical sexual
democracy. However, something else is achieved when 'ordinariness' becomes
the 'limit and horizon' of lesbian visibility: Lara and Danielle are simply two
more people at Antonia's ample table. Thinking about the broader field of
representation where the unmarked (masculinity, whiteness, middle classness)
is hegemonic, the figuring of lesbian/gay identity as 'ordinary' moves away from
singling out queer identity as problematic or pathological. In contrast with the
new queer cinema's provocative reappropriation of negative images, this strategy
portrays characters who merely 'happen to be gay'. Where queer character types
still commonly serve within predominantly heterosexual narratives as comic
relief (the camp best friend), exotic colour (the drag queen) or to shorthand
perverse desire, 'ordinary' lesbian/gay characters can contribute to the necessary
liberal project of visibility, diffusing the social stigma of homosexuality. For
instance, by narrating lesbianism through the comedy of everyday life, the
American sitcom Ellen infiltrates television, the most accessible (and often, as
in the US, the most heteronormative) popular medium. 37
Clearly, however, there are political limits to the proliferation of characters
who 'just happen to be gay', as certain lesbian/gay subjects will much more
readily pass as 'ordinary'. Gorris's project is more politically pointed, as 'normal'
290
heterosexuality itself, notably the key institution of the family, is revealed as

violent and strange. Pedro Almodovar's Todo sobre mi madre {Allabout my mother),
a film from a very different cultural tradition, also rearticulates family relations.
Blurring the categories of lesbian/gay authorship, content and audience, these
two films call into question the specificity of lesbian and gay cinema'.
Concluding remarks
Almodovar emerges from the 1980s post-Franco cultural and sexual radicalism
of Madrid's Movida. Paul Julian Smith equates this context where the art and
fashion worlds mingle with the gay scene with Warhol's 1960s New York
(1992:167-8; see also Jordan and Rikki Morgan-Tamosunas 1998:112-155).
Hugely popular in Spain, and also internationally since Mujeres al borde de
un ataque de nervios 1988, Almodovar's films flaunt an outrageously 'queer'
dramatis personae — Madre characteristically includes lesbians, transsexuals,
drug addicts, actresses and an HIV+ nun. Although Almodovar commonly
rejects 'fixed' accounts of homosexuality in both his public persona and in his
films, 38 he is often celebrated, particularly outside of Spain, as a 'queer' director.
Incorporating saturated primary colours, a densely intertextual mise en scene,
witty dialogue and an expressive use of Spanish popular music, his films evoke
Douglas Sirk's 'heightened production design', and melodramatic orchestration
of image and sound (Pincus 1999:48). For example, a commonly reproduced
still from Madre frames protagonist Manuela (Cecilia Roth) in a red raincoat
holding a red, blue, green and yellow umbrella in front of a huge mural featuring
actress Huma Roja's face (see figure 7.7). Although Madre s decor is comparably
understated, this image highlights Almodovar's distinctive graphic sense that
draws from music videos and fashion design.
This signature image also crystallises the film's thematic preoccupation with
actresses and mothers: Manuela, a former actress and mother is juxtaposed
with the face of Roja (Marisa Paredes) a famous actress within the film; Paredes
is well known in Spain for her work with Almodovar (La flor de mi secreto 1995,
Came tremula 1997). Madre chronicles the intersecting fates of an extraordinary
cast of women, centring on Manuela whose teenaged son Esteban dies tragically
in the film's first act. A complex narrative of mortality and rebirth unfolds
against the backdrop of the theatre, as Manuela's life is caught up with Tennessee
Williams's dystopic family drama 'A Streetcar Named Desire'. As a young girl,
she played Stella opposite her future husband's Stanley Kowalski, her son dies
tragically seeking the autograph of the actress (Paredes) who plays Blanche,
and eventually she makes peace with her past by reappearing in the play. Madre
narrates the randomness of accident and the inevitability of human suffering
with sombre dignity. In a complex narrative of compassion and foregiveness,
the broken threads of Manuela's life are mended in her reconciliations with
Huma (indirectly responsible for Esteban's death) and the abusive Lola,
Esteban's father, who subsequently dies of AIDS. 39
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
Figure 7.7 The signature image of Todo sobre mi madre. (Kobal Collection)
After losing her son, Manuela reconfigures her life through a group of
women including the HIV+ pregnant nun Rosa and male-to-female transsexual
La Agrado. As with La ley del deseo 1987, this film 'reveals no nostalgia for the
heterosexual family, but rather takes for granted the existence of homosexual
"pretend families": communities of women, looser groupings of same-sex
friends' (Smith 1992:170). In Madre, continuity is secured not only through
blood ties (mother to son, the gift of Esteban's heart to the anonymous transplant
patient) but also through a legacy of gay male authorship and culture: Williams,
Truman Capote and an explicit play upon camp icon Bette Davis in All About
Eve 1950; the film closes on Huma rehearsing the role of the mourning mother
in Federico Garcia Lorca's 'Blood Wedding'. Running through the film is a
tension between artifice and deep feeling characteristic of camp. This camp
sensibility enables a corrosive commentary on normative gender and sexuality,
even as Almodovar deploys the affective force of melodrama to symbolically
mend the rifts within the family. As Arroyo suggests, the film achieves a queer
commentary on seemingly 'universal' themes of motherhood and family with
'formal elegance, nuanced observations and emotional resonance' (1999:40).
The eclectic characterisation of Madre does not straightforwardly conjure a 'gay
family'. Nonetheless, the centrality of AIDS within the narrative and a persistent
gay intertextuality suggests the tragedy of queer alienation from normative
family structures — an alienation that has been exacerbated by the AIDS crisis.
Madre and Antonia share a non-realist Utopian impulse where popular enter-
tainment fulfils a craving for 'the image of "something better" to escape into,
292
or something that our day-to-day lives don't provide' (Dyer 1992:18). These
films negotiate a broader lesbian/gay/queer crisis of belonging and continuity,
a project shared by a number of recent international family dramas that often
include romance and 'coming out' narratives: The Wedding Banquet Ang Lee
1993, Gazon maudit Josiane Balasko 1994, Fire Deepa Mehta 1996, Beautiful
Thing , Ma Vie en rose Alain Berliner 1997, Fucking Amal Lukus Moodysoon
1998, Que faisaient les femmespendant que I'homme marchait sur la lune? Chris Vander
Stappen 2000, 101 Reyjkavik 2000. Of course, the prototypical gay family
comedy of manners is La Cage aux folles Edouard Molinaro 1977, although it
is now often seen as trading in stereotypes. Recently, Hollywood has belatedly
joined the trend, with The Birdcage 1996, In and Out and Philadelphia 1993.
The theme of the family running through art video (Fung), new queer
cinema (Head On, Poison), Hollywood and art cinema illustrates a persistent
dialectic between the political and aesthetic energy of the margins and the
capacity of mainstream culture to reach across different contexts and address
broader audiences. Antonia, Madre, Gazon maudit40 and Amal have been hits in
their countries of origin and internationally. The family cycle reiterates the
complicated state of contemporary lesbian/gay authorship, where the translation
of lesbian/gay experience into mainstream cinema means that some of the
freshest and most topical queer films are being made by non-gay directors:
Happy Together Wong Kar-Wai 1997, Boys Don't Cry Kimberly Peirce 1999,
Bound, and Fire. Do these shifting parameters of authorship, subject-matter
and audiences signal an end to the category of lesbian/gay cinema? Given the
tremendous energy and breadth of production over the past two decades,
perhaps the project of discrete lesbian/gay/queer self-representations is no longer
so fragile. Propelled by political urgency, a tremendous resourcefulness and the
fickle power of the market, the range of 'queer' family films and videos signals
the capacity of lesbian/gay/queer experience, sensibility, scriptwriting and
direction to renew itself and to infiltrate popular genres across different cultural
contexts.
Acknowledgements
This essay has only been possible through the extraordinary generosity of many
people. My deepest gratitude is due first to Richard Dyer, who has long been
an inspiration, and whose insights and careful feedback are fundamental to this
piece. I would also like to thank Jose Arroyo for many influential exchanges,
and for his invaluable guidance in framing this project. Also, for their ongoing
suggestions and support, thanks to Michele Aaron, Bruce Bennett, Lisa
Brown, Gary Needham, Jo-Anne Pickel, Polly Richards, Jackie Stacey, and Ger
Zielinski. For extensive library searches beyond the call of duty, I'm hugely
indebted to Bertie Mandelblatt. A special thanks to Anne Golden at Groupe
Intervention Video for sharing her insights over the years, Emma Hedditch
at Cinenova, and to Charline Boudreau and Katharine Setzer at Image et Nation.
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
Also, V tape, Cinenova, Susan Stewart of Kiss & Tell, the Canadian Filmmakers
Distribution Centre and Video Data Bank have greatly assisted this research
with preview videos and images. Finally, thanks to the Lancaster University
Social Science Research Support Fund for essential financial support.
294
TRANSLATIONS
OF TITLES
(Titles of films discussed at length are translated at that point in the text.)
Absences repetees Repeated Absences

'adame Miroir 'adam Mirror
A la recherche des Amazones In Search of Amazons
Allemagne apres la debacle, L' Germany after the Collapse
Amitie, L' Friendship
Amour a la mer, L' Love at Sea
Anders als du und ich Different from You and Me
aka Das dritte Geschlecht aka The Third Sex
Anna la bonne The Maid Anna
Aspect rose de la chose, L The Rink Side of Things
A un dios desconocido To an Unknown God
Aus eines Mannes Madchenjahren From a Man's Virgin Years
Avskedet Farewell, The
Bagne, Le Penal Servitude

Baro no soretsu Funeral Parade of Roses
Beau mec, Le The Handsome Stud (US: Dude)
Belle et la bete, La Beauty and the Beast
Bildnis des Dorian Gray, Das The Portrait of Dorian Gray
blaue Engel, Der The Blue Angel
Blauer Dunst Blue Mist
Bildnis einer Trinkerin Portrait of a (woman) Drunkard
bitteren Tranen der Petra von Kant, Die The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
Bogjavlar Damned Queers
Bonnes, Les The Maids
Biichse der Pandora, Die Pandora's Box
Came Tremula Live Flesh

Carnet rose d'un homosexuel, Le A Homosexual's Pink Note-book
Cenerella, psicofavola Cinderella, a Feminist
femminista Psycho-tale
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
Certain desir, Un A Certain Desire

Chambre des phantasmes, La The Bedroom of Fantasy
Chants de Maldoror, Les Songs of Maldoror
Chez les mauvais gargons Down among the Bad Boys
Condamne a mort, Le The Man Condemned to Die
Coup defoudre Love at First Sight (GB: At First Sight,
US: Entre Nous)
Couronne d'or Crown of Gold
De I'abjection Of Abjection
Damon und Mensch Demon and Human
Dimenticare Venezia Forget Venice
Diputado, El Deputy, The
Dorian Gray im Spiegel Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Gutter
der Boulevardpresse Press
dritte Erwachen des Krista Klages, The Third Awakening of Krista Klage
Das
Dr Mabuse der Spieler Dr Mabuse the Gambler
Du er ikke alene You Are Not Alone
Du Sang, de la volupte et de la mort Of Blood, Voluptuousness and Death
Eaux d'artifice Water Works

Eigene, Der The Special
eiserne Kreuz, Das The Iron Cross
Ende der Beherrschung, Das The End of Domination
Erikas Leidenschaften Erika's Passions
Es schienen so golden die Sterne The Stars Shone So Golden
Es werde Lichtf Let There Be Light!
Erotisme en face, L Eroticism from the Other Side
(GB: The Other Face of Love)
Eternel retour, U The Never-ending Return
Et. . . Dieu crea les hommes And. . . God created Men
Exzellenz Unterrock Petticoat Excellency
Fall des Generalstabs-Oberst The Case of General Staff

Redl, Der Officer Oberst Redl
Faustrecht der Freiheit Freedom's Survival of the Fittest
(GB/US: Fox and his Friends)
Faux-monnayeurs, Les The Counterfeiters
Fleurs du mal, Les Flowers of Evil
Flor de mi secreto, La The Flower of My Secret
Frauen und die Liebe, Die Women and Love
Freundin, Die The Friend (female)
Fucking Amal Show Me Love
296
T R A N S L A T I O N S OF T I T L E S
Gazon maudit French Twist

Gebrokene Spiegels Broken Mirrors
Gerausch rascher Erlosung, Das The Sound of Quick Relief
Geschlecht in Fesseln Sex in Shackles
Gesetze der Liebe Laws of Love
Gestern und heute Yesterday and To-day
Gosta Berlings saga The Story of Gosta Berling
Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brulantes Water Drops on Burning Rocks
Herr Ames pen gar Sir Arne's Treasure

Hiver approche, L Winter Comes
Hoffmanns Erzahlungen Tales of Hoffmann
Homme blesse, L The Wounded Man
Homme de desir, L' Man of Desire
Homme nu, L The Naked Man
Hommes entre eux Men Together
Homologues ou la soifdu male Homologies or Thirst for a
Man
Hund von Baskerville, Der The Hound of the Baskervilles
Hyanen der Lust Hyenas of Lust
Ich fllr Dich, Du filr Mich I for You, You for Me

Ich liebe dich, ich tote dich I Love You, I Kill You
II etait une fois dans Vest Once Upon a Time in the East
lo sono mia I Am Mine
Jahrbuch fllr sexuelle Yearbook for Inter sexual

Zwischenstufen Variants
Januskopf Der The Janus Head
Je tu il elle I You He She
Jeune homme et la mort, Le Death and the Young Man
Jugend und Tollheit Youth and Madness
junge Torless, Der Young Torless
Jungfrauenmaschine, Die The Virgin Machine
Kabinett des Dr Caligari, Das The Cabinet ofDr Caligari
Laster, Das Vice

Ley del deseo, El Law of Desire
Liebe wie andere auch, Eine A Love Like Any Other
Lila Ndchte Lilac Nights
Lieve Jonge Dear Boys
Liv og D0d Life or Death
Livre blanc, Le The White Book
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Lugar sin limites, El A Place without Limits

(GB/US aka Hell Without Limits)
Marche funebre Funeral March

Masque de chair Mask of Flesh
Miracle de la rose Miracle of the Rose
Mujeres al borde de un ataque Women on the Verge of a Nervous
de nervios Breakdown
Ndchte der Weltstadt Nights in the Metropolis

Nachtvorstellungen Late Night Shows
Notre-Dame des fleurs Our Lady of the Flowers
Nous etions un seul homme We Were One Man
Oiseaux de la nuit, Les Night Birds

Orlacs Hande The Hands of Orlac
Orphee Orpheus
petit Reverbere, Le The Little Street Lamp

placeros ocultos, Los Hidden Pleasures
Prisonnier, Le The Prisoner
Puppenjunge, Der The Rent boy (US: The Hustler)
Que faisaient les femmes pendant que What Did Women Do When Man
Vhomme marchait sur la lune? Walked on the Moon (US: Family
Pack)
Redl ezredes Colonel Redl

Reves interdits, ou Lautre versant Forbidden Dreams, or The Other Side of
du reve the Dream
Ritter Nerastan Nerastan the Knight
Roseaux sauvages, Les Wild Reeds
Rosenkonig, Der The Rose King
Rote Ohren Fetzen Durch Aschen Flaming Ears
Sens interdits No Entries

Sept images impossibles Seven Impossible Images
Sfratto nello spazio Ejected from Space
Sibille, Le The Sibyls
Sindes Frauen? Are These Women?
Sittlichkeitsverbrecher, Der The Sex Criminal
Sonnet du trou du cul Sonnet to the Arsehole
Stadt der verlorenen Seelen City of Lost Souls
Stances a Sophie, Les Stanzas to Sophie
298
T R A N S L A T I O N S OF T I T L E S
Stilte rond Christine M., De The Silence around Christine M. (GB/US:

A Question of Silence)
Student von Prag, Der The Student of Prague
Tagebuch einer Verlorenen, Das The Diary of a Lost Girl

Testament des Dr Mabuse, Das The Testament ofDr Mabuse
Vice organise en Allemagne, Le Organised Vice in Germany

vierde Man, De The Fourth Man
Vie revee, La Dream Life
vreemde Vogel, Een A Strange Bird
Vrouw als Eva, Een A Woman Like Eva
Weggehen um anzukommen Depart to Arrive

Wie geht ein Mann? What does a Man do?
Wir vom dritten Geschlecht We of the Third Sex
zweite Erwachen der Christa The Second Awakening of Christa Klages

Klages, Das
Zwielicht Twilight
299
NOTES
THE FIRST EDITION
1 The filmography in Gays and Film, updated by Mark Finch in 1984, lists over 1300 titles
(Dyer 1984: 69-107).
2 See Russo 1981 and Becker et al. 1981.
THE SECOND EDITION
1 On Akerman and Rainer, see also notes 33 and 32 to chapter seven, on Iglesia Smith
1992: 129-62.
1 SWEDEN 1 9 1 6 : T A K I N G OFF
1 For a brief discussion of Siivet, see Tihinen 2000: 128.
2 I am grateful to Fredrik Silverstolpe for supplying me with a translation of the film's
intertitles as well as of his own article on the film.
3 Danish has 'Mikael', whereas Swedish has 'Mikael'; I have retained this distinction when
speaking of the character in respectively the novel or the film. In Dreyer's German film
version it becomes 'Michael'.
4 This is my translation from the German translation; Mikael has never been translated
into English.
5 On the film's treatment of modernity, see Rossholm 2001. Note also the discussion of
women and modernity in other of Stiller's early films in Wallenberg 2000.
6 Naslund's formulation of earlier critics' reading (1991:84), quoted in Soderstrom
1999b:284.
7 In the legend, Daedalus warns Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, but he disobeys him,
the wax securing his wings melts and he falls to his death.
8 Ganymede is portrayed already in heaven as a cup bearer, so there is no wing imagery.
9 Gay German magazine (see chapter two).
10 Andersen was born in Norway, brought up in the USA and settled in Rome in 1906.
2 W E I M A R : LESS A N D MORE LIKE THE OTHERS

1 There is a huge literature on Weimar and how it is to be characterised. The range of
views is usefully summarised in Willett 1984:12—13; compare also the discussion in
Burns 1977:123ff. On Weimar cinema in general, see Elsaesser 2000.
300
NOTES
2 My account is based on the detailed synopsis in Rau 1981 (first published in Der Eigene,
February 1905).
3 On Nosferatu as a gay film, see Mayne 1986, Wood 1979-
4 When presenting this material in Birmingham shortly after publication, a woman
in the audience said that she had been taught by Sagan at the drama school Sagan ran
with her husband in South Africa and that Sagan was an obvious dyke. I have never found
further confirmation of this. Sagan's only other film, Men of Tomorrow GB 1933, which
is apparently lost, dealt with male students at Oxford, with, it seems, something of the
same sense of rebellion but without passionate attachments.
5 For further discussion, see chapter five.
6 Busse, Elisabeth (1931) 'Das moralische Dilemma in der modernen Madchen-erziehung'.
In Ada Schmidt-Beil (ed.), Die Kultur der Frau, Berlin:594. Quoted in Pieper 1984:121.
7 I should like to thank Jane Caplan for pointing out this reading to me.
3 SHADES OF GENET
1 See Giles 1991 for more details on production and exhibition histories, and on prints,
and for a complete shot breakdown.
2 Except that it was dedicated to Lucien Senemaud, Genet's lover at the time, who plays
the murderer in the film (Giles 1991:19).
3 The scenes are — a Mexican and a statue of the Virgin being repeatedly shot at, the man
dying but coming back to life, the statue shattering but becoming whole again; a little
girl learning to fly, being taught by a governess brandishing a whip; opium smoking;
an hermaphrodite.
4 For a feminist rejection of Millett's appropriation of Genet, see Cochart and Pigache
1976.
5 For further explication of these ideas, see Kaplan 1983, Kuhn 1982.
6 One of Oswald's examples of shot/reverse-shot inaccuracy is the cut from the guard
looking at the garland to the garland itself: 'the guard looking up in the opening shots
is seen in medium long shot. . . The subsequent shot of prison windows is in close-up
and from a different eye level than the guard's look' (1983:111). In fact inaccuracies
of this kind are entirely acceptable within the continuity editing system, as a close
examination of any mainstream Hollywood film will show. So powerful is the convention
(that what follows a shot of someone looking is what they see) that it can even accom-
modate such gross inaccuracies as the one cited by Oswald where there is a cut from the
guard looking through the peephole to a close-up of a prisoner's erect penis against
the wall. Technically, the guard cannot possibly see this, but the editing convention
is probably stronger than the spectator's consciousness of spatial accuracy. In the case
of the shots of the performer looking at the camera, all of these are within the guard's
point-of-view shots, so that they can be read as addressed to the guard/us but do not
entail the spectator being conscious of the presence of the camera.
7 'It is nothing more than hard-core pornography and should be banned', verdict of a
California appellate court, quoted in de Grazia and Newman 1982:287; 'The nearest
any pornographic film comes to being definitive is, I believe, Jean Genet's Un Chant
d'amour\ Peter de Rome, gay pornographic film-maker (1984:162).
8 See Pidduck below pp. 271-2 , and on Poison, p. 278.
4 U N D E R G R O U N D A N D AFTER
1 For a general overview see Noguez 1985; for a more specifically gay study, see Suarez
1996.
2 Mostly in New York (Cooper 1986:113ff, 163-4, 202ff).
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N O W Y O U SEE IT
3 The part is in fact played by a man, Carmillo Salvatorelli, a professional circus dwarf.
4 In interviews, Anger sometimes claims Fireworks was based on an actual dream he had
had (Hardy 1982:30), at others that it is just a dream situation' (Hamilton 1977:22),
at others that it is a conscious statement ('This flick is all I have to say about being
seventeen, the United States Navy, American Christmas, and the Fourth ofJuly' (Sitney
1979:101)).
5 Waugh discusses this in the context of other examples of gay 'erotic martyrology' in the
period (1996:143-56).
6 For a further discussion, see Lowry 1983, Suarez 1996:141-80.
7 For more discussion see Moon 1989, Suarez 1996:181-213.
8 Opinions differ as to whether this second 'creature' is in fact a woman. She has breasts,
dwelt on in the rape scene, and a vagina, clearly shown in the same scene, but Ken
Kelman says that Jack Smith says s/he was an hermaphrodite (Kelman 1963:4). The
confusion is of course characteristic of the film. I certainly did not assume that s/he
was a woman until the glimpse of the vagina and even so, breasts can be implanted or
hormone induced, genitalia have been known to be confused.
9 On the gay implications of this early work and its relation to the film work, see Suarez
1996:214-59 and Merck 2000.
10 The most complete attempts at Warhol filmographies are in Coplans 1970, and Apra
and Ungari 1972.
11 Waugh (1996:166-73) discusses the centrality of tease to all of Warhol's film work.
12 On Bidgood, see Benderson 1999, which situates Pink Narcissus in relation to Bidgood's
physique photography and work for the theatre as well as analysing it in detail.
13 There is also a European gay underground, which merits fuller consideration and of
which I can only indicate some examples here: Yann Beauvais (Homovie 1976-7, Amoroso
1983-6), Sylvano Bussotti (Rara Film 1975, Immagine [co-d. Romano degli Amidei]
1976), Heinz Emigholz (Die Basis des Make-Up 1979-84), Steve Farrer (Ten Drawings
1976), Bruno de Florence (Un Certain desir 1980), Teo Hernandez (Salome 1975,
Luna India 1976), Amet Kut (Gilles, Jose, Marcel 1978), Robert Malengreau (Sept
images impossibles 1979), Roland Mahauden (Amen 1974), Michel Nedjar (Angle 1976),
Lennaert Nijgh (Een vreemde vogel 1967), Oscar Melano (Sfratto nello spazio 1980), Bernt
de Prez (Art.i.cul.ation II 1980), Lloyd Reckord (Dream A40 1965), Georges Rey
(L'Homme nu 1969), Mattijn Seip (Ijdijk 1966, Schemerhoorn 1966), Wieland Speck
(David, Montgomery undlch 1980). See also the appendix to chapter three and the section
on Confrontational Politics in chapter six.
14 '. . . shooting at between three to six frames per second, and refilming it projected at
the same speeds [producing] a strong painterly texture and pulsating rhythm . . .
sensual, dream-like and erotic' (O'Pray 1985:9).
5 L E S B I A N / W O M A N : LESBIAN
C U L T U R A L FEMINIST FILM
1 There is also European work in this vein, but films such as those of Lina Mangiacapre
(Cenerella, psicofavola femminista 1974, LeSibille 1979), Martine Rousset (LePetitreverbere
1977, the Carolyn series 1977—81), Marcelle Thirache (A la Recherche des Amazones 1986)
and the Collettivo Alice Guy (Affetuosamente ciak 1979) must alas remain, as they say,
a subject for further research.
2 Cf. Judith Kegan Gardiner's comparison of splitting and fragmenting male characters
in male writing with female characters dissolving and blurring into one another in
female writing (1982:184-5).
3 Written in December 1970 for the New York Times but rejected by them and first
published in part by Jill Johnston in her Village Voice column in March 1972; reprinted
302
NOTES
in full in Phyllis Birkby etal. Amazon Expedition (New York Times Change Press) in 1973
but quoted here from Atkinson's collection of writings Amazon Odyssey published in 1974.
4 Kimball draws here on the work of Ornstein (1972) and Hutt (1978), work which is
disputed by Fausto-Sterling (1986).
5 Cf. arguments about gay men and witchcraft discussed in the previous chapter.
6 A more critical treatment of the relevance of love and romance to lesbian desire is
Farewell to Charms Australia 1979 Car la Pontiac.
7 A possible antecedent is the 1968 film Angelique in Black Leather, produced, directed
by and starring Angelique Bouchet and featuring only lesbian characters. The action
consists apparently (American Film Institute Catalog, Feature Films 1961-1970:32)
chiefly of power games; no male character comes to 'convert' the women as is usual in
heterosexual male porn. I have however no knowledge of whether the film was conceived
of as lesbian entertainment for lesbians. (Also intriguing, for its date, is Catch 691910,
director unknown, in which a lesbian couple both have sex with the ex-boyfriend of one
of them but end up deciding that 'no pleasure is more intense or more satisfying than
their lesbian love' (ibid.: 158).)
8 Feminist and lesbian writing for and against pornography and erotica is too voluminous
to detail here. Classic lesbian pro-porn texts are Califia 1981 and Rubin 1984, and anti-
Dworkin 1981 and Kappeler 1986.
6 F R O M A N D FOR THE M O V E M E N T
1 Cultuur- en OntspanningsCentrum (Cultural Recreation Centre).
2 On zapping, see Evans 1973.
3 For an account of the riot, see D'Emilio 1983: 231-3, Dubermann 1993.
4 For overviews of the lesbian/gay movement in the seventies in countries whose films are
discussed in this chapter see, in addition to Barry 1987, for Australia, Sargent 1983,
Wotherspoon 1986; for Canada, Kinsman 1987; for France, Girard 1981; for Germany,
Frieling 1985; for Great Britain, Weeks 1977; for Italy, Consoli 1979; for the USA,
D'Emilio 1983, Licata 1985.
5 The director credit is given as Gerrit Neuhaus, but it is generally known that this was
added after Perincioli had completed directing the film; Alexandra von Grote was also
involved in its production.
6 The discussion of documentary in this chapter is particularly indebted to Corner 1986
and Nichols 1981.
7 On Grierson, Lovell and Hillier 1972, Hood 1983; on Vertov, Feldman 1984; for a
comparison of these two traditions, Harvey n.d.
8 On cinema verite^nd direct cinema, Issari and Paul 1979.
9 Quoted in Filmfacts 14 (24): 750.
10 This distinguishes them from such brave interventions by gay people in entertainment
cinema in the seventies as Sunday Bloody Sunday, Making Love and Some of My Best Friends
Are, where the fact of gay authorship is not signalled by the text (known if at all only
through gossip or speculation), and where there is also no clear sense of gay viewers being
addressed as gay viewers. It may be argued that such films are nonetheless at least as
important as any of those discussed in this book, because they would have been seen by
vastly more gay men (and lesbians, though there is no equivalent lesbian example in
the period). I have no quarrel with this view, but the subject of this book is those films
that do signal themselves as lesbian/gay products and openly include the lesbian/gay
audience in their mode of address.
11 It may be that both 'art cinema' and 'gay' are misleading terms to use, as here, in relation
to Egyptian, Mexican or Philippine films, though this is how they are mainly consumed,
if at all, in the West.
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12 The most complete discussion is Elsaesser 1989-

13 For further discussion of some of these films, see Hetze 1986.
14 Though directed by a man, this is generally understood as the work of Christiane
Rochefort, who wrote both the script and the original novel.
15 For a judicious discussion of the political implications of the essentialism:constructionism
debate, see Franklin and Stacey 1988.
16 For example (a personal selection):
Abuse USA 1982 Arthur Bressan, which, through the character of a film-maker trying
to make a film on the subject of child abuse, contrasts the vicious parental abuse of
a boy with gay so-called abuse.
Bond/Weld USA 1982 Cathy Joritz, free association with movie images of the lesbian
pleasures of, inter alia, The Nun's Story, The Children's Hour, Lily Tomlin, sports-
women, nuns, bikers, Personal Best.
Chinese Characters Canada 1985 Richard Fung, an examination of the way notions of the
Orient enter into images and self-images of Asian gay men in the West.
Seventeen Rooms, or What Do Lesbians Do in Bed? GB 1985 Caroline Sheldon, the images
answer the question (drink tea, play scrabble, quarrel, watch TV etc.), written and
spoken words suggest lascivious alternatives, music, including from that great lesbian
icon Dusty Springfield, provides witty counterpoints.
You Taste American Canada 1985 John Greyson, an imaginary encounter between
competing constructions of gay identity, Michel Foucault and Tennessee Williams
(and Montgomery Clift in Suddenly Last Summer).
Echoes of Past Lives GB 1986 Cind Oestreicher, images of writing words about lesbian
identity in sand, condensation, lipstick, which are endlessly washed or wiped away
and endlessly reasserted.
The Mark ofLillith GB 1986 Bruna Fionda, Polly Gladwin and Isiling Mack-Nataf, an
exploration of the potential of the vampire myth for lesbian feminist and anti-racist
appropriation.
Ten Cents a Dance (Parallax,) Canada 1986 Midi Onodera, a devastating set of three long
takes: two women talking round the subject at a dinner table; two men in an overhead
shot fucking in a toilet; a man wanking as he talks to a uninterested woman on the
other end of a phone sex line.
Alfalfa GB 1987 Richard Kwietniowski, a gay alphabet, wittily counterposing dictio-
nary definitions of words with their use in the gay sub-culture.
7 AFTER 1 9 8 0 : M A R G I N S A N D M A I N S T R E A M S
1 On lesbian/gay/queer documentary see Holmlund and Fuchs 1997.
2 See http://www.planetout.com/pno/popcornq/.
3 See Murray 1998 and Olson (1996).
4 E.g. in the USA, Frameline, Women Make Movies and Video Data Bank; in Canada,
Video Out, Vtape, and Groupe Intervention Video; in the UK Cinenova; and in the
Netherlands Cinemiena.
5 Other examples include, in relation to classic films, Dry Kisses Only Kaucyila Brooke and
Jane Cottis 1990; and in relation to contemporary popular culture, We've Been Framed
Cheryl Farthing 1990, L Is For The Way You Look Jean Carlomusto 1991, It Wasn't Love
Sadie Benning 1992, and Jodie: An Icon Pratibha Parmar 1996.
6 A portrait of Storme DeLarverie, emcee and male impersonator of the legendary Jewel
Box Review . . . America's first integrated female impersonation show' which toured
black theatres across America from 1939-1973 (Murray 1998:483).
7 For critical accounts of some aspects of queer Asian cinema, see Grossman 2000 and
Deocampo 1993.
304
NOTES
8 For instance, this surrealist treatment of the Shinjuku gay bars of late 1960s Tokyo was
programmed as part of a 'Shinjuku Society' retrospective of four decades ofJapanese gay
films at the 2001 London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.
9 'Keynote address'. 'Persistent Vision' conference, San Francisco, 18 June, 2001.
10 E.g. Kalin 1989, Kotz 1989, Halberstam 1992, Searle 1996, Gamson 1997, White
1999a, Fung 1999.
11 Rich (1999:82) cites this figure with reference to contemporary festivals in the context
of a commercial boom in queer film distribution; we might surmise that the percentage
was even higher in the early years of the festivals.
12 On British activists' responses to Thatcher's Clause 28 see Stacey 1991.
13 For critical accounts of the cultural politics of AIDS, see Watney 1987, Crimp 1988,
Carter and Watney 1989, Patton 1990, Klusacek and Morrison 1993.
14 This is an intertextual reference to the Pink Panthers, a queer civil defence foot patrol estab-
lished as an adjunct of Queer Nation to combat gaybashing in American urban settings.
15 For an account of this video and the use of video in a struggle over AIDS representation
at this conference, see Greyson 1996.
16 On Urinal, see Greyson 1993. On Greyson's 'critique of masculinity' see Marks 1992.
17 On Patience, see Banning 1994, Cagle 1995 and Gittings 2001. On Greyson see also
Fischer et al. 1989-
18 Norman McLaren is a celebrated Scottish/Canadian animator, and Claude Jutras is an
important quebecois film-maker who made A tout prendre (1963), the first quebecois film
to deal explicitly with race. See Waugh 2000: 195-207.
19 Khush (an Urdu word meaning 'ecstatic pleasure') is a documentary about South Asian
lesbians/gays. Khush is part of a extended oeuvre exploring the articulation of race and
sexuality in videos about AIDS (Reframing AIDS 1988), disability (Double the Trouble,
Twice the Fun 1992), race and national identity (Sari Red, 1988, The Colour of Britain
1994) and Black lesbian/gay art and politics (Emergence 1986, Flesh and Paper 1990,
A Place of Rage 1991).
20 This film follows Hamburg journalist Dorothee to San Francisco, where she encounters
a thriving 'queer' sexual underground; the bemusement and eventual 'conversion' of the
German protagonist into a stripper perhaps reflects the strong allure of the San Francisco
lesbian subculture in the international lesbian sexual imaginary. See Knight 1992:
162-6, 169-70 and Kuzniar 2000:157-73.
21 On race and ethnicity and lesbian/gay identity, see for instance Moraga 1983, Bulkin,
Pratt and Smith 1984, Smith and Smith 1984, Beam 1986, Almaguer 1993.
22 The reworking of home movies is a strategy for the decyphering and rearticulation
of formative family memories, from the classic Home Movies Jan Oxenberg 1992, to Ties
That Bind Su Friedrich 1984 (see Mayne 2000: 193-211 and Holmlund 1997) and
Panic Bodies Mike Hoolboom 1998 (see Varga 2001).
23 On Fung see also Lee and Sakamoto 2002.
24 See Mayne 2000: 161-78.
25 This narrative anticipates Haynes's later short Dottie Gets Spanked 1993 where a young
boy is obsessed with 'The Dottie Show' in a 1960s American suburban home.
26 On the implications of queer theory' for lesbian/gay identity, see Fuss 1991 and Seidman
1993.
27 On the Australian queer context, see Berry and Jagose 1996.
28 Wilson critiques the queer postmodern articulation of'transgression': 'The concepts of
transgression, dissidence, subversion, and resistance - which have become familiar in
radical discourse since the mid 1980s - are oppositional, negative. They are the politics
of being against, they are the politics of rebellion. Yet they are cast in the terms set
by that which is being rebelled against, they are the politics, ultimately, of weakness'
(1993:109).
305
N O W Y O U SEE IT
29 'Persistent Vision' conference, 2001.

30 On lesbians/gays and popular culture, see also Clark 1993, Hamer and Budge 1994,
Tasker 1994, Creekmur and Doty 1995.
31 W i t h reference to Lianna, Merck critiques a trend in art cinema (La Conformista, Les
Stances a Sophie, Rome Open City) where lesbianism becomes an allegorical trope or 'source
of truth about social relations in general' (1986:169).
32 For critical accounts of Rainer's work, see de Lauretis 1987:107-26 and Rainer 1993.
33 For critical accounts of Akerman's work, see de Lauretis 1987:127-48, Margulies 1996,
and Mayne 2000: 179-92.
34 Lea Poole is an established lesbian Quebecoise film-maker whose best known lesbian
work is Anne Trister 1985. See Thynne (1993).
35 The film's juxtaposition of patriarchal oppression with the possibilities of female
solidarity and violent reprisals is reminiscent of Lizzie Borden's seminal Born in Flames
1983. Borden's 'women's revolutionary army' includes many lesbians and has a cult
status amongst lesbian and feminist viewers.
36 For historical accounts of lesbian/gay/queer authorship see Mayne 1990:89-123 and
Doty 1993:17-37.
37 On lesbian/gay visibility and 'types' see Dyer 1984:27-39 and Dyer 1993.
38 While Almodovar has been accused by some critics of 'apolitical hedonism', a mere
'style rebellion' that crowds out other lesbian/gay Spanish voices (see Hernandez and
Perriam 2000) his films are embraced internationally as uniquely queer and postmodern.
39 See also Arroyo 1999, Smith 2000: 189-96, Lalanne 1999.
40 See Vincendeau 1996 and Hayward 1998. On lesbianism within heterosexual space in
this film and When Night is Falling, see Nadeau 1997.
306
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327
INDEX
A un dios desconocido (Chavarri) 252 Anna la bonne (Cocteau) 76

Abbott, A.: and Love, B. 172 Another Country 141
Absences repetees (Gilles) 247 Another Mother Tongue (Grahn) 180
absorption 78 anti-gay attitude 241
Acht Madels im Boot 24, 58 Antonia (Gorris) 266, 288-93
action painting 144 Apartments 23 6
activism: analysis 240-5; art video 269-77 Apocalypse-K-Distranjo (Curagon) 88
'adame Miroir (Petit) 76 Arcadie 86
Adam's Rib 113 Archetypal Feminine 177, 189
adolescence 39; female 56; frustration 109 Arequipa (Hammer) 187
Adventures of Jimmy (Broughton) 140 Armee der Liebenden 208, 209, 210
Advocate 198 art cinema 251, 286
aestheticism 78, 79 artistic analogue 230
affirmation: beyond the movement 251—4; Asians 223
cinema 264 At Lane (Deren) 169
affirmation politics 215—64; Athletic Model Guild (AMG) 119
documentaries 218-22; impact 251 Atkinson, T. 172,226
After the Gam 251, 238, 256 audience 202; gay/lesbian 203
AIDS: activism 269-71; crisis 278; Aufklarungsfilme 26, 29, 32
pandemic 278 August and July 231
Aitken, W. 84 A us eines Mannes Madchenjahren 23
alcohol: lesbians 223 Austen, R. 118
alcoholism 29 authenticity 143
All About Eve 292 autobiography 186
A{ojlskande Par 253 autoethnography 276
ambiguity 14, 20 Available Space (Hammer) 188
ambivalence 30, 33, 116 Avskedet (Niskanen) 252
Americanness 141
Amphetamine 138 bad faith 93
Anders ah die Andern 6, 23-42, 62, 201, Bail Fund Film (Mide) 224, 241
252 Baldwin, J. 136
Anders als Du undlch 252 Barbedette, G.: and Carassou, M. 73
Angelic Conversation (Jarman) 164 Basic Instinct 278
Anger, K. 121, 1 2 2 - 4 Batman Dracula 146
AnnaandEdith 237, 238, 239, 256 Beat 142, 183; movement 139; sexuality
Anna and Elisabeth 60, 61, 62 140; writers 139
328
INDEX
Beautiful Thing (Berliner) 293 Celluloid Closet 94, 248

beauty 74, 77; convulsive 120 central core 190
Beauty #2 150 central focus 184
Beauty and the Beast 88 change 201
Bed 138, 140 Charmides (Markopoulos) 132, 133, 134
Begro 98 Chelsea Gils (Warhol) 150, 151
Benkert, K. 34 Chez les mauvais gargons (du Coglay) 7 2 , 7 3
Berber, A. 26 childhood 138
Berlin, G.: and Bruce, B. 152 Chinamoon (Linkevitch) 175
Bike Boys, Drag Queens and Superstars Chinese Characters 277
(Suarez) 145 Chodrow, N. 185
Birdcage 293 Christ 130
bisexuality 56, 135, 279 Christianity 74, 126
Blackstar 234 Chrysalis 172
Bliss (Markopoulos) 136 Chumlum (Rice) 143, 146
Blonde Cobra 146 cinema 254; new queer 277-84, 290;
Blood of a Poet 84 underground 110, 136, 170
Blood Wedding (Lorca) 292 circular forms 184
Blow Job (Warhol) 136, 150 City of Night 141
Blue Movie (Warhol) 151 City and the Pillar (Vidal) 118
bodies: female 184 Claire of the Moon (Conn) 284
Body Politic 98 Clockwork Orange 150
body shots 190 close-ups 71, 76, 135, 148
Bogjavlar 223, 235 Cocteau, J. 76-85, 123
Born in ¥lames (Bordman) 290 collective imagery 189
Boultenhouse, G. 119 collectivity 187
bourgeois respectability 248 Come Together (Mide) 224, 242, 243
Boy Friend 213 Comedy in Six Unnatural Acts (Oxenburg)
Boy Friend {2) 214 229, 259-60
Boys Don't Cry (Peirce) 280, 293 coming out 232-9; film 281; narratives
brain: right hemisphere 177 293; process 239; three stages 233
Brakhage, S. 138 Coming to Know 232
Brand, A. 39 common style 277
Broadway 137, 142 communists 137
Bronski, M. 281 community 290
Broughton, J. 140 conferences 240
Bruce, B.: and Berlin, G. 152 Confessions (McDowell) 163
Bruce (Los Angeles) 119 Confidential 137
Buzzards over Bagdad (Smith) 146 confrontational politics 204-15
consciousness: critical 159; false (Marx)
Cabaret 24 230; loss of 82; raising 224-32;
Calamity Jane 285 women's 173
Califia, P. 198 construction 264
Camp 146 context: immediate 72—6
Cant, B. 232 Continuous Women 229
Capriccio 24 control 204
Carassou, M.: and Barbedette, G. 73 Cool Hands Warm Heart (Friedrich) 175
Caravaggio (Jarman) 164, 278 Cooper, E.. I l l
Carmina Bur ana 104 Corner of the Circle (Daughton) 141, 249
Caulfield, H. 139 Couch (Warhol) 110, 136, 150, 153-5
329
N O W Y O U SEE IT
counter marches 240 Die Bilchse der Pandora 23, 24, 54

Couronne dor (Velon) 87, 88 Die Frauen und die Liebe (Weber) 5 5
crime 75, 93 Die Freundin 46, 47
criminality 68, 71, 73, 74, 278 Die Gargonne Al
Crush (MacLean) 278 DieJungreauenmaschine (Treut) 277
cult 112 Die Konsequenz (Petersen) 247
culture 204; female 181; sexual 25 Different from the Others 25
Cumulus Nimbus (Giritlian) 175 dilemma 249
Current Flow (Carlomusto) 272 Dimenticare Cenezia (Brusati) 252
Dimitriades, A. 282
Dagens Nyheters 10 Dirk, D. 291
Dance With Me (Nicolaou) 276 Dirty Laundry 277
Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray 23, 30, 32 DiversCite, Image et Nation 267
Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (Oswald) 59 diversity 241
Davis, E.G. 177 documentaries 223, 236, 266; affirmation
de Becker, R. 86 227, 234, 235, 240; feminist and
De Vabjection (Jouhandeau) 7 5 lesbian/gay 224; lesbian/gay 234;
de Lauretis, T. 286 women's liberation 224
de Simone, T. 251 domination 84
De Stilte Rond Christine M. (Gorris) 175, Don Carlos 52,57
261,287 Dona Juana 23
Dead Ones (Markopoulos) 134 Double Strength (Hammer) 183, 184,
Dean, J. 139 195-6
death 82 Drawing the Line (Boschman) 273, 274
Death in Venice (Visconti) 271 dream 124
deconstruct ion 264 Dreamwood 140
defilement 7 5 drug addiction 248
Der blaue Engel 24 Du er ikke alene 237, 239
Der Chroal von Leuthen (Froelich) 45 Du sang, de la volupte et de la mort
DerEigene 20, 35, 3 7 , 4 0 (Markopoulos) 132
Der Gang in der Nacht 30 dumb blonde term 156
Der Geiger von Florenz 23, 49 Dura Mater (Bush) 175
Der Hund von Baskerville 30 Durgnat, R. 113
Der Januskopf^O Dutch government 203
Der junge Torless (Musil) 252 Duvert, T. 213
Der Knabe in Blau 24 Dyketactics (Hammer) 175, 183, 190
Der Puppenjunge (Mackay) 41 Dynasty 122
Der Siegesbote von Marathon (Kruse) 15
Der Sittlichkeitsverbrecher 252 East of Borneo 120
Der Skorpion (Weirauch) 56 Eaux dartifice 123
Der Student von Prga 32 Echoes of Silence 141
Deren, M.: Mother of the Underground Eclipse of the Sun Virgin 144
Film 121 education 39
derogatory portrayal 45 educational work 26
Desert of the Heart (Rule) 284 EdwardII (Van Sant) 277, 278
Desert Hearts (Deitch) 284, 285, 286 effeminacy 217
desire 244, 277 Ehrenstein, D. 120, 146
Desperate Living 166 El Deputado (de la Inglesia) 247-8
Devotions 140 ElLugar sin limites (Ripstein) 252
dictatorship 249 Ella une vraie famille 243, 245
330
INDEX
Ellis, H. 55 films: campy parodies 144; East Coast

Empreintes 76 underground 113; fiction 243; gay
Enclitic 95 underground 136, 145; homosexual
Engelschman, N. 202 251; joint 231; lesbian and gay festivals
Enough is Enough 242 267-84; lesbian/gay 201; pornographic
Eros and Civilisation (Marcuse) 138 167, 212; straightforward fiction
Eros, Women's International Erotic Art Film 222-3; underground 110, 111, 113,
188 115, 120, 167, 168; West Coast 114
Erotic in Nature (Tigress Productions) 198 Fire (Mehta) 293
erotica 197 Fireworks (Anger) 110, 123, 124-9, 136,
Erotikon (Stiller) 10 166,190
Es schienen so golden die Sterne (Nitsche) 40 Flaming Creatures (Smith) 13, 109, 110,
Esprit 87 136,145,146-9,161
essentialism 255 Flesh (Warhol) 151
ethnic difference 97 flowers 68, 69, 191, 193
evil 74-5 Flowers of the Asphalt (Markopoulos) 134
existence: lesbian/gay 223 formalism 65
Exotica Numero Una (Holloway and Still) Fragment of Seeking (Harrington) 122
175 France 2 1 0 - 1 5 ; tradition of literature 73
Exploding Plastic Inevitable 151 Fresh Kill (Shu Lea Cheang) 277
Exzellenz Unterrock 23 Freud, S. 48, 56, 79; ideals 113
Freudianism 138
face shots 190 friendship 39
Fall of the House of Usher 115 Froelich, C. 45
family: nuclear 175; psychology 244; From Caligari to Hitler (Kracauer) 42
relations 244 Fucking A{o}ma{o}I (Moodyson) 293
fantasies 244 Fun with a Sausage (Blush Productions)
fate and tragedy 32 198
fellatio 69 Fung, R. 275
female: adolescent 56; homosexuality 48;
in-betweenism 46—53; sexuality 56 Gammelion (Markopoulos) 136
Female Eunuch (Greer) 176 Ganymede 20
Female Trouble 166 Gaudy Image 142
female-identified 54-60; lesbianism 54 gay: activism 138; eroticism 117; identity
femininity 45-6, 93, 94, 101, 148, 150, 280; images 119; and lesbian film 5;
254, 289; notions 54; procreative 180 liberation 216, 249; libido 213; men 1,
feminism 95, 217, 289; anti-censorship 6, 204; oppression 249; organisations
273; cultural 170-4, 177, 180, 183, 201; rights 138; sensibility 84, 122,
185, 191; cultural repertoire 197; 189; sex 210; sexuality 124, 125, 126,
lesbian cultural 186, 200; lesbian 140
cultural film 199; new 253 Gay Asians Toronto 275
feminist art: cultural 174 Gay Girls Riding Club 144
Feminist Review (1990) 273 Gay is Good 215, 216
femmes 47 Gay is Out 232
fiction 223 Gay Liberation 215, 216, 217, 222
Film Culture 122, 146 Gay Liberation Book 215
film-making: underground 110 Gay News 96
filmable: political value 210 Gay San Francisco (Raymond) 160
filmmakers: lesbian and gay 232; subjects Gay Sunshine 143
231; underground 164 Gay USA 241
331
N O W Y O U SEE IT
Gay and Women's Liberation 215 heterosexuality 72, 102, 103, 107, 141,
gay/lesbian: film 3; movements 201 206, 245, 287; images 129; imperative
gays: and the arts 1 1 1 - 1 7 181; male body type 34; man 33;
Gazon maudit (Balasko) 293 norms 105; superior 116; woman 33;
Gebrokene Spiegels (Gorris) 288 woman body type 34
gender 78, 204; sexuality 41, 292 heterosexuals 137; grand gestures 159
Genet 265, 278, 283 High Art (Cholodenko) 277
Genet, J. 63-8, 74-89; and film 107-8; higher self 122, 123
homophile 85-93; sexual political Hirschfeld, M. 28, 41
93-107 historiography 265
genres: popular 284—91 Hocquenghem, G. 23
Germany: homosexual cinema 252; Hoffmanns Erzahlungen 30
tradition 73 Holding (Beeson) 191
Gerstern und Heute 44 Hollywood 119, 120, 150
Geschlecht in Fesseln 23 Hombres (Verlaine) 76
Gesetze der Liebe 26 home movie 211, 229
Gestern and Heute 46, 47 Home Movie 227, 228, 256
Getting Ready (Hammer) 174, 183, 189 Home-Made Melodrama 250, 251
Giftas 13 homoeroticism 20
Giles, J. 96 homophile 86; movement 85
Ginsberg, A. 143 homophobia 60
Giovanni's Room 142 homosexual 86; characters 1; desire 93;
Girard, J. 86 elements 135; feeling 238; freedom
Godard, J.-L. 207 211; relationships 100; rights 112;
Good-bye to Berlin (Isherwood) 41 sensitivity 113; women 48
goodness 254, 255 Homosexual Desire in Minnesota (Hubbard)
Gossemedorn 14 162
Gosta Berlings saga (Stiller) 10 Homosexual Law Reform 87
Got, A. 24 Homosexual Matrix (Tripp) 87
Gramann, K.: and Schliipmann, H. 52 Homosexual in Society (Duncan) 112
Greta's Girls 235 homosexuality 6, 11, 13, 22-3, 32-5,
Greyson, J. 270 72-80, 92, 107, 122, 136, 138, 222;
gynaecum tale 5 5 aetiologies 113; classical Greek
reference 162; (Clause 28) 255; Dutch
Haircut (Warhol) 150 society 203; epitome of unnatural 179;
Hals ted, F. 209 female 48; harassment and denigration
Hamlet (Shakespeare) 13 117; historians 117; male 166; revolt
Hammer, B. 1 8 6 - 9 6 140; revolutionary 210; social attitudes
Hanson, E. 279 206; social space 111; social stigma
Hanson, L. 13 290; Spain 291; unifying identity 229;
Hapburn, K. 113 witchcraft 112
Happy Birthday Davy (Fontaine) 237, 251 homosexuals 92; dangers 202
Harlot (Warhol) 150 homosocial desire 278
Harrington, C. 121 'Hosenrolle' films 23, 51
Haunted Screen (Eisner) 42, 45 Hours and Times (Munch) 277
Haynes, T. 278 How to Be a Homosexual (Jacoby) 162
Hearts 285 Howl 140
Heat (Warhol) 151 Human Wreckage Review 145
Hermes Bird 140 humiliation 103, 104
Herr Ames pengar (Stiller) 10 Humphreys, L. 210
332
INDEX
Hunger 279 Jahrbuch fiir sexuelleZwischenstufen 27, 34

hypervisibility 266 J ante's Janie 227
Je tu il elle (Akerman) 290
I Was a Teemange Rumpot 144 Johan, carnet intime d'un homosexual (Valois)
I Was/1 Am (Hammer) 174-5 252
Ich fur Dich, Du fiir Mich 24 Johanna dArc of Mongolia (Ottinger) 290
Ich liebe dich, ich tote dich (Brandner) 252 Johnny Guitar 285
iconography 106, 126, 174-83, 201, 256, Johnny Minotaur (Ford) 111, 162
290; lesbian pro-sex 274 Jubilee 164
iconology: vaginal 176 Jugend und Tollheit 2 3
identity 275—7; collective 239; female
185; fixed 236; gay 280; gay and Keizersgracht 202
lesbian 117; homosexual 211; Kelly, K. 208
lesbian/gay 236, 263; personal 239; Kelman, K 145
sexual 33; womanly/lesbian 200 Kimball, G. 174, 176, 177
identity politics: language 282 Kissing doesn't Kill 272
Idestam-Almquist, B. 10 Kitchen 155-6
ignominy 75 Kokkinos, A. 280-3
llliacPassion (Markopoulos) 135, 146 Kracauer, S. 59
I'm not from here 250 Kryl'ya (Kuzmin) 8
Image et Nation 267, 268, 269, 272 Kustom Kar Kommandoes (Anger) 124
imagery 6 8 - 7 1 , 227; acceptable 284; Kwietniowski, R. 97
central core 197; female body 193;
negative 284; phallic 190; poetic 92; La Belle et la bete (Genet) 77
positive 245, 250, 281, 284; power La Cage auzfolles (Molinaro) 293
174; religious 104; romantic 196; La Chambre des phantasmes (Senegal) 213
vaginal 184, 191 La Gargon 23
Images in the Snow (Maas) 113 La ley del deseo 292
Imagining October (Jarman) 164 L.A. Plays Itself 167
immaturity 130 Labyris Rising 172-3, 174, 179, 180-1
imprisonment 92, 93 L'Amitie 72
In the Best Interests of the Children (Sloan) Larkin, C. 245
226, 227, 229, 234, 242, 243, 245 Last Exit to Brooklyn 141
In Black and White 2 5 8 - 9 Last Spring 88
In Dit teken (COC) 201, 202, 204, 263, 264 Lauter, E. 173-4
In and Out 293 Lautreamont, Comte de 74
In Touch (Stevens) 245 Lavender 227, 235
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome 123 Le Condamne a mort (Genet) 89
indeterminate garment 37 Le Jeune homme et la mort (Cocteau and
industrialisation 166 Petit) 123
inner space 184 Le Livre blanc 77, 80, 81
Invocation of My Demon Brother (Anger) 124 Le Prisonnier 88, 89
institutional politics 2 0 2 - 4 Le Ravissement (Boudreau) 272
intensity 74 Le Sang d'unpoete (Genet) 76, 114
Inversions 72 Le Sexe des anges 213
leaflets 240
I've heard the Mermaids Singing 286 lecture 27
L'erotisme en face (de Becker) 87
Jaehne, K. 289 Les Bonnes 76
Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern (Fleischmann) Les Change de Maloror (Lautremont) 123
247
333
N O W Y O U SEE IT
Les Enfants terrible (Genet) 77, 84 Love and Other Catastrohpes (Crogham) 278
Les Eaux-monnayeurs (Gide) 134 Lucifer Rising (Anger) 124
Les Nuits fauves (Collard) 279 Luminous Procuress 165
Les Roseaux (Techine) 279 lumpen machismo 248
lesbian 171; collectivity 186; continuum Luna Tune (Clement) 174, 178, 180, 184,
170; culture 261; erotica 196-200; 185
feeling and sexuality 186; feelings 236; Lust for Ecstasy 144
and gay film 5; life-style 191, 194; Lysis (Markopoulos) 132, 134
relationships 195; romance 285;
romance film 284; self-representation Mabuse, Dr. 23
286; sexuality 195, 196; visibility 287 McCaskell, T. 270
lesbian culture: 'Laura Ashleyisation' 279 McDowell, C. 163, 164
Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (London) 268 Mad 139
lesbian identity: positive 228 Madame X — eine absolute Herrscherin
lesbian/gay: contingents 240; culture 247, (Ottinger) 260-3
263; existence 223; film 2; identity Madchen in Uniform 6, 23, 42-6, 52-62;
263, 275, 290; life vicissitudes 247; remake 252
life-styles 245; movement 73, 263; 'Magick' 122, 123, 124, 128, 129;
organisations 25; people 245; eroticism 127; sexual rite 130
positiveness 246 Magnan, J-M. 65
lesbian/women's collectivity 187 Maidens 256-7
lesbianism 43-5, 53, 56, 59-62, 172, 217, mainstream 284
239, 253, 288; continuum 231; male: control 181; gay underground 170;
schoolgirl 56; woman identification hegemony 95; homosexuality 166;
179 in-betweenism 33-7; sexual desire 125
lesbians 1, 6, 49, 202, 204; alcohol 223 male-identified 37-42; imagery 40
Let's Play Prisoners (Zando) 276 Mario Banana (Warhol) 149, 150
Levensrecht 202, 204 Markopoulos, G. 121, 132-6; et al 171
L'Hiver approche (Bensoussan) 213 Martineau, B.P. 222
liberalism 41 Marzneff, G. 213
liberationism 188 masculine lesbian personality 48
libertarian impulses 201 masculinity 71, 101, 103, 143, 150
libertarianism 210 masochistic pleasures 107
LieveJonge (de Lussanet) 252 Masque de chair (van der Meersch) 75
Life against Death (Brown) 138 meetings 240
Lila Ndchte (Meyer) 25 Mekas, J. 109, 136
Line of Apogee (Williams) 113 Melville, J. 106
L'Ingenue (Blush Productions) 198 Melzer, M. 4 6 , 4 9
Little Stabs 146 memories 244
LivogDo{/}d 237,238,248 men: bodies 115; riddle of love between 34
Living End (Araki) 277 Menses (Hammer) 175
Loads (McDowell) 163 Meshes of the Afternoon (Deren) 121
Lonesome Cowboys 157-9 Messenger 141
Looking for Langston (Julien) 266 method acting 143
Los Angeles: the forties 117-21 Michael 25,40, 239
Lot in Sodom (Webber and Watson) 115 Michael, a Gay Son 223, 231, 238, 239
love: noble 13 middle-class girls 5 5
Love, B.: and Abbott, A. 172 Mide, R. 224
Love Objects 162 Midnight Cowboy 141
Love of Ondeine 151 midnight movies 162, 165
334
INDEX
Mikael (Bang) 11, 12, 14, 15, 20 nuclear family 175

Milan bleu (Garsi) 252 Nudes: A Sketchbook (McDowell) 163
military 117
Millett, K. 1 9 8 , 2 2 6 Oblivion 162
Ming Green (Markopoulos) 136 occult 112; forces 124
Minor Revisions 162 Off Our Backs 173, 198
Miracle de la rose (Genet) 68, 69 Ohm, L. 59
modality: Australian 280 older people 223
monologue 163 Olivia (Audry) 46
Montez, M. 148, 150 Olson, R. 234
Moon Goddess (Hammer and Churchman) On a Cold Afternoon (Jabaily) 175
175,187 On the Edge 122
motherhood 245 On Guard (Lambert) 249, 250, 261
movement cinema 264 On Our Backs 198
Movida 291 Only the Brave (Kokkinos) 280
multi-media performance 274 Ontbinding 223
Multiple Orgasms (Hammer) 175, 176, 178, oppression 247; sexual 94
190-1 orgasm 125
music 241 Orientations (Fung) 275
My Hustler (Warhol) 150, 156-7 Orlacs Hande 30
My Mother's Place (Fung) 27 6 Orphee (Genet) 77, 81, 84, 86
My Own Private Idaho (Van Sant) 2 7 7 , 2 7 8 Oswald, R. 2 8 , 3 0 , 4 1 , 9 7
Out of the Closets 232
Ndcht der Weltstadt 23 Outrageous! 246, 248, 251
Naked to the Night 141 Overstimulated 146
narcissism 79, 80, 102 Oxenberg, J . 227-8
narrative 64, 132, 243; coming out 293;
heterosexual 290; stucture 243 pacifism 29
narrators 243 Packman, D. 148
National Gay Task Force 209 Paris 72
Nazi ideology 60 Partisan Review 144
Near the Big Chakra (Severson) 177 Passing Strangers (Bressan) 252
Neilsen, A. 52 Passion of Remembrance (Blackwood and
Nelson, D. 177 Julien) 249, 250
New Woman (Dauthendy) 5 5 Patience 271
New York Herald Tribune 143 patriarchy 58; notion 244
New York Radicalesbians 171 peasant proto-fascism 248
New York Times 137 pederasty 213
newsletters 240 penetration 103
Newsweek 151 Persistent Vision (conference) 268
niche markets 266 Persons Living with AIDS (conference) 270
Nicht der Homosexuelle (von Praunheim) 21, phallic imagery 190
205,206, 207,208 Philadelphia 293
Nighthawks 232, 238, 247 photography 274
normality 78 physicality 183
Nosferatu 35, 37 Physique Pictorial 129
Notre-Dame des fleurs (Genet) 68, 76, 87 pillarisation 203, 204
Nous etions un seul homme (Valois) 248 Pink Narcissus (Bidgood) 160, 161
novels: gay themes 118 Pink Panther 270
Novembermond (von Grote) 249 Pink Pimpernel 270
335
N O W Y O U SEE IT
Platania, J . 227 Rayns, T. 71

platonic dialogue 133 Razor Head 162
Playboy 137, 139 reality 223
pleasure 97, 101, 103, 104, 106, 130 realness 254, 255
poetry 241 Rechy, J . 136
Poison, Paris is Burning (Livingstone) 277 reconstruction 264
political machination 248 Redlezvedes (Szabo) 23
Politics 112 Reflections (Orten) 241
polymorphous perverse 52 reform mechanisms 201
polymorphousness 139 relationships: permanent 214
pornography 125, 162, 213, 251, 272, religious imagery 104
273; heterosexual 252; lesbian respectability 41
196-200, 198; new lesbian 19 retrospectatorship 265, 266
Pornography in Hollywood(Kirkland) 251 Rich, B.R. 52, 59, 277
Portrait of Dorian Gray (Wilde) 153 Ritter Nerestan 44
Portrait of Jason (Clarke) 143 Ritual in Transfigured Time (Deren) 170
Position of Faith, A 231, 236, 242 Road to Jerusalem 130
Possession du condamneSS, 89, 91, 92, 93, Ronnie (McDowell) 163
107 Rose Hobart (Cornell) 120
post affirmation 254-64; cinema 263 Rose Winkel 242
post-war period 118 Rote Ohren fetzen durch Aschen (Piirrer,
Powell, B. 217 Scheirl and Schipek) 277
power 106, 204; images 174 Royal Opera 257-8
pride marches 240 rudimentariness: stark 153
Princes and Other Mortals (von Tesckow) 42 Ruling, A. 48, 49
Private Pleasures (Blush Productions) 198 Russo, V. 94
profit 269
progression 195 sadism 130
promiscuity 214 sado-masochism 99, 109, 261; ritual 84;
prostitution 29; regulation 273 sex 84
protest marches 240 Safe Sex is Hot Sex (Bradley) 272
Psyche (Markopoulos) 132 Safe Sex Slut (Leigh) 272
Psychosynthesis (Hammer) 174 Safe Soap (Golden) 272
public access tradition 268 Sagan, L. 45
public meetings 240 sailors 118
Puce Moment (Anger) 123 Saint Genet, comedian et martyr (Sartre) 93
Salmagundi 87
Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man 146 Samy and Rose Get Laid (Frears) 290
queer 137; cinema 284; family films and Sandy and Madeline's Family 231, 245
videos 293; killer films 278; public Sapphistry 198
sphere 267; sexual performance 277 Sappho: Friechische Novelle (Flach) 54
Queer Theatre (Brecht) 148 Sarria, J . 138
Querelle de Brest (Genet) 76, 77 Sarris, A. 109
Querelle (Fassbinder) 99-105 Sartre, J.-P. 93-107
Saturday Night at the Baths 237
race 276 Scarlet Pimpernel 270
Rainey, M. 180 Schliipmann, H.: and Gramann, K. 52
Rapport contre la normalite 211 Scholar, N. 59
Raven, A. 172 school-friendships of girls (Ellis) 5 5
Rayner, T. 280 Schreck, M. 35
336
INDEX
Schiinzel, R. 26 Silence of the Lambs 278

Schwdrmerei 55 Silverpoint (Nelson) 178, 184, 185
Schwestern (von Praunheim) 205, 206, 207, Sind es Frauen? (Due) 48
208,210 Sins of the Fleshapoids 144
Scorpio Rising (Anger) 109, 123, 129-32, Sisters! 231
167,170, 174 Smith, J . 145-9
Scorpion (Weirauch) 3 5 social constructionism 255
Scotch Tape 146 society 204
Screening the Sexes 111 Socrates 11
sculpture 20 Some American Feminists 217, 225, 226,
Sea in the Blood (Fung) 27 6 243
sea imagery 191 Some of Your Best Friends 2 2 7 , 2 3 1
Sebastiane (Sharman) 164, 165 song of the Loon 167
self: expression 168; identification 172; Sontag, S. 144
loss 82 Soukaz, L. 213
Sendgraff, T. 195 Spain 291
Sens interdits (Reboux) 72, 79 spiritual unity 40
sensibility 277; homosexual 160 spirituality 189; feminine 170; nature 186
sensitivity 112 Square Peg 97, 106
sensuality 189 Stacey, J . 284
sex 106; value 258 Stamen (Beeson) 191
Sex Garage (Halsted) 167 Steam Clean (Fung) 272
sexgarage video 269 Steinberg, C. 247
sex(ual): aperture 178; domination 95; Stiller, M. 13
identity 33; issues 29; oppression 94; Stockholm 10
partners 42; pleasure 96, 126; politics Stone Circles (Hammer) 187
206; rhythms 194 Stonewall Riot (1969) 215
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Kinsey) straight identification 248
117 straightness 246
sexual desire: treatment 124 Streetcar Named Desire, A (Williams) 291
sexual feeling: contrary 34 structure 64-8; expository 242
Sexual Politics (Millett) 93 subject 232
sexualities 112 submission 84
sexuality 137, 175, 214, 249, 255, 271-5, Sudre, A. 211
290; black 98; female 56, 197, 198; suicide sequence 135
free floating 159; gender 41, 204, 292; Superdyke( Hammer) 174, 180-1, 185,
Hollywood films 137; images 259; 188-9
lesbian 172, 175, 176, 186-8, 272; Susana 226, 234, 235
'Magick' 122, 127; male 130; male Swain (Markopoulos) 134
constructions 198; as power 99; Sweet Dreams (Cottrell) 196, 197
progressive ideas 13; regulation 273; Swoon (Kalin) 278
sinful 86; violence and death symbolism 60
association 82; women 238 symbols 68; sexual 125
Shadows (Blush Productions) 198 Symposium (Plato) 11
Shakespeare, W . 164 Szabo, I. 23
She Must Be Seeing Things 286
Shelley, M. 215 Taboo: The Single and the L.P. (McDowell)
shifts 110 163
Showtime (Chapman) 252 talking heads 224, 226, 227
Siivet (Enckell) 8 talks 240
337
N O W Y O U SEE IT
Tarzan andJane Regained....Sort of (Warhol) vegetables 191

149 Veidt, C. 26, 30-2, 37
Tavel, R. 155 venereal disease 29
Taxi zum Klo (Ripploh) 205, 214, 215 Verfuhrung: diegrausame Frau 105-7, 261
Tea and Sympathy 139 Very Natural Thing, A 237,259, 245, 246
Ten Cents a Dance (Onodera) 290 Vice Versa (Ben) 119
Territories (Julien) 249, 250 videos: safer sex 272
textual difference 98 Viktor und Viktoria 23
textual equality 98 Village Voice 136, 137
thereness 254 Vingarne (Stiller) 6 - 2 2 , 23, 40
Thief s Journal 68 visibility 286
third sex body 34 voice 227
Three Lives (Mide) 224, 226 Voices (Smitz) 113
Three Short Episodes (Finkelstein) 196, 197, Vom Kinde zum Menschen (Reuter) 56
198 von Praunheim, R. 2 0 5 - 1 0
Tickner, L. 176 von Wangenheim, G. 37
Todo sobre mi madre (Almodovar) 266, 291 von Westphal, C. 34
Together 140
Tonio Kroger (Mann) 252 Walk on the Wild Side 279
torture 130 Wandervogel movement 38
Tout 211 Warhol, A. 149-59
transcendence 82, 122 Waschneck, E. 59-60
Trash (Warhol) 151 water-sports 123
Tread Softly (Drew) 252 Watermelon Women, Go Fish (Troche) 277,
Triumph of the Will 241 286
trivialisation 144, 145 Waugh, T. 88, 117
True Inversions 274 Weber, M. 55
truth 230; objective 230; subjective 230 Wedding Banquet (Lee) 293
Truth or Dare: In Bed with Morals 272 Wege zu Kraft undSchonheit 24, 38, 41
Truxx 242 West Coast 111-36
Twice a Man (Markopoulos) 134, 136 Wheel Dream (Jabaily) 175
White Book 84
Ulrichs, K.H. 33 White, P. 265
JJmheimliche Geschichten 30 wholeness 185
Un Chant d'amour (Genet) 63-99, 107, Wieck, D. 4 7 , 4 9
166, 278 Wilde, O. 10
Un chant de safe amour 272 Winsloe, C. 4 4 , 4 5
Un Chien Anadlou 112 Wir vom dritten Geschlecht 35
Un hombre Ilamdo Flor de Otono (Olea) 248 witchcraft 122, 124
unconscious 177; marvellousness 120 Witches and Dykes 243
underground: gay 160; imagery 161 woman: fake 142
undergroundness 109 woman-identified: woman 171, 173
underworld 180 Woman-Identified Woman 171
Unfolding (Beeson) 191 womanhood 170, 182
United States of America (USA): gay Woman's Place, A 236
movement 209 women 169, 173, 181,193; alienation
uranian sex body 34, 35 169; bodies 176, 196; liberation
movements 201; socialisation 238;
Van Sunthorst, A. 86 straight 245
vanguardism 210 Women I Love 175, 176, 180, 184, 191-5
338
INDEX
Women in Revolt (Warhol) 151 Young and the Evil (Ford and Tyler) 111
Women's and Gay Liberation 217 Young Soul Rebels (Julien) 277
woodlands 191
Word is Out 215, 217, 225-7, 229, 232, zapping 204, 205, 208; homophobic
247 occasions 240
World is Sick Zero Patience, R.S.V.P. (Lynd) 277
World of Light 221 Zeus 20
Wyneken, G. 38, 39 Zita, J . 179
339

NOW YOU SEE IT Studies in Lesbian and Gay Film Richard Dyer

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NOW YOU SEE IT Studies in Lesbian and Gay Film Richard Dyer

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N O W Y O U SEE IT

Richard Dyer is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Warwick. He

London and New York

ISBN 0-415-25498-1 (hbk)

1 Sweden 1916: taking off 8

2 Weimar: less and more like the others 23

4 Underground and after 109

5 Lesbian/woman: lesbian cultural feminist film 169

6 From and for the movement 201

7 After 1980: margins and mainstreams by Julianne Pidduck 265

Translations of titles 295

1 Sweden 1916: taking off

2 Weimar: less and more like the others

4 Underground and after

5 Lesbian/woman: lesbian cultural feminist film

6 From and for the movement

7 After 1980: margins and mainstreams

Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania.

Vingame was premiered in Stockholm in 1916 to considerable critical

Figure 1.3 Mauritz Stiller

Of Polish (or Russian) origin, he arrived in Stockholm from Finland, pretending

renownedly promiscuous Socrates; much fuss is made about the discovery in

including homosexuality, about which he had written sympathetically in the

Table 1.1 Winged homo-erotic imagery

1774 Germany Ganymed Goethe poem; set to music by

Capriccio in 1938 (Gramann and Schlupmann 1981:80-8). Acht Madels im Boot

Anders als die Andern

most screenings accompanied Hirschfeld's lectures, it is likely that all the

Famous violinist Paul Korner (Veidt) reads in the paper of the

The film context

The Aufklarungsfilme were a series of films using a melodramatic format

He received his guests in an indeterminate garment made by himself,

Most characteristic perhaps was an effeminisation of male styles based on movie

resemblance to the opposite sex is achieved through powder puffs and

hunched and pinched, as compared to Thomas's shoulders broadened by a

occasional interruptions), contained drawings, photographs, stories, and articles,

The Community of the Special counsels the young man to have no

Such youthful friendship is often depicted in stories between an older and

The ideal male homo-erotic master—pupil relationship is, as discussed in chapter

scantily clad boys doing Greek dances based on the pictures on

Madchen centres on the relationship between Manuela von Meinhardis

As is evident from this synopsis, lesbianism is pivotal to Madcheris plot,

The speech transforms the romantic-erotic intensity of Manuela's individual

The makers 0/Madchen

The homosexual women possesses many qualities, inclinations, and

Freud too, in his essay on a case of female homosexuality published in 1920,

Such strengthening and education had real consequences for relationships

the contributions made to the women's movement by homosexual

clearly annexes this sentiment by choosing the scene in which Don

The younger woman [Manuela] . . . is always passionate and innocent

The good-night kiss, a maternal ritual, is portrayed with the cinema's

[bJarred shadows cross the women's paths, a sternly overbearing

there is something voyeuristic about the frequent shots of women taking

At this point the film is completely unrestrained and builds up an

Anna undElisabeth is clearly in some sense an 'answer' to Madchen in Uniform.

SHOT* GUARD GARLAND PRISONERS** CHIAROSCURO WOODLAND

2-3 guard outside

88-104 guard whips Tunisian

122-3 Tunisian (122)

128-30 Tunisian and guard

148-51 Tunisian and guard

163-5 guard puts gun in

170 guard walking away

171 garland 5 (garland drawn