Marlon Riggs was Punker than Kurt Cobain.
Apr. 5th, 2004 08:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gordonzola(This was written for a zine that never came out so I'm posting it here on the ten year anniversary of the death of Marlon Riggs and Kurt Cobain. The topic? It was ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mala106's idea and I still think it's a good one. "Each person will write an essay about a person who is more punk rock than the average punk rock scenester. It can be anyone you want, living or dead. For example, Toby is going to do 'my GRANDMA is more punk rock than you.' I am going to do 'harriet tubman is more punk rock than you'll ever be.'")
I was still working at one of punk rock’s big institutions that week in 1994 when Marlon Riggs and Kurt Cobain both died. For once, the myopic indie label "politics" of punk worked in my favor. Because Nirvana had "sold out" by signing to a major label, public Kurt Cobain-mourning wasn’t OK there. So when I put up a memorial to Marlon Riggs at the punk store it was, ironically, one of the few places in the country where Riggs’s death wasn’t completely overshadowed by Cobain’s. I’ve been waiting for a chance to write this article ever since.
Marlon Riggs was a Black, gay, political, pro-feminist documentary filmmaker. In his far-too-short career he produced only four films, Ethnic Notions, Tongues Untied, Color Adjustment and Black Is, Black Ain’t . When I first saw his films I was in my late teens/early twenties and searching for models of how to be a political, pro-feminist man. With each film, and despite our obvious differences in background, Riggs provided some of these examples by showing the world in nuanced, complicated ways, rejecting easy political models and pushing for more.
If one thinks of punk as an underground art form, they should try finding copies of Riggs’s films today. Even though they were made for PBS, they’re very hard to find unless you want to buy your own copies. Not having seen any of his films since they came out, I decided watch them again while preparing to write this article. Unfortunately I could only find two of the four and if it wasn’t for the Gay Collection at the Castro branch of the San Francisco Public Library it would only have been one.
Tongues Untied is probably Riggs’s punkest film in terms of attitude, reflecting a sarcastic, political and angry subculture and not prettying it up for the public. Tongues is also activist, arty, and poetic. Surveying American Black, gay culture, Riggs tried to show the love, creativity, humor and resistance skills that dwell there through poetry, and dance as well as more standard narratives. He also tried not to ignore the confusion and ugliness engendered by struggles to survive in a society that wants to kill, use, or ignore Black men, especially Black, gay men. The film seemed to be an attempt to actually create dialogue and community out of the people and testimony it was portraying, rather than seeking to be just a viewing experience.
Riggs said of the film, "Frankly, with Tongues Untied if white heterosexuals don't understand the reasons why black people are angry and just consider this piece militant, then so be it. I'm not going to take time to justify this for people for whom this experience is totally alien. Tongues Untied is an affirmation of the feelings and experiences of black gay men, made for them by a black gay man, or actually by black gay men because the piece has a number of voices. If others understand, fine, but making sure everyone understands was not my prerequisite in making this." (Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media #36, 1991) As a white man watching this film, one of my points of entry was precisely this. Prettied up or assimilationist may have appealed to some audiences, but the honesty with which Tongues was created made it accessible to me with the cultural criticism I grew up on. And even if the final product was more Last Poets (without the homophobia) than The Clash.
When Tongues came out, the Christian right targeted Riggs, using selective images of gay, Black men from the film to help scare U.S. legislators into cutting public funding for the arts. Riggs spoke out against this. "(The Christian Right says) Bring back the melting pot. Restore ‘traditional values.’ Re-institute prayer in schools. Preserve the primacy of Western civilization (the only one that matters anyway). And not least, protect that critical bedrock of American greatness: ‘the American family’ Such pronouncements reveal an intense, even pathological desire to perpetuate a thoroughly obsolete myth of America, and through this, a repressively orthodox system of sociocultural entitlement."
There is some poetry and dance in Black is, Black Ain’t, but it’s a more standard form of documentary with heavy hitters from the left Black intellectual and arts communities (including bell hooks, Essex Hemphill, Angela Davis, Cornel West, Barbara Smith and Bill T. Jones) weighing in on the construction of Black identity. It’s epic and ambitious for an 86 minute film, discussing, the origins of Black as an identity, the Black Church, language and dialect, hair, Creole identity, Black Power, Black feminism, afrocentricity, and the meaning of "unity" (impossible, in Riggs’s thought, until Black people "start talking about the way we hurt each other".)
Riggs also has a crucial part, narrating and talking from his hospital bed as he lay dying of AIDS-related illnesses. At one incredibly funny and sad scene, realizing he won’t live to finish the film, he gives advice to his co-producer about a scene of him naked in the woods." It’s of critical metaphoric importance. I’m confined and lost in the woods as the community is confined by its own limited notions of identity." While metaphor usually plays better when not explained, watching Riggs trying to get his message out as he sits, nauseous, in a hospital bed with little time left had me mourning his death all over again.
Whatever view one takes of Cobain and his death, it was heart-wrenching to watch one artist trying to create his political art and build community and audience with his last breaths at age 37, while another offs himself at 27, at the height of his popularity, leaving behind a kid and millions of people who wanted to listen to what he wanted to say.
When I first saw these films, parts of San Francisco felt like a ghost town due to AIDS. I lived on the Castro edge of the Mission back then, and watching men much younger than they looked, and many younger than I am now, limp and roll by my apartment on Dolores Park was just part of the environment. This landscape also included dementia in public, funerals at the mortuary down the block a few times a week and pages of Obituaries in the back of the gay press. Beyond the merit of the films themselves, Black Is and Tongues Untied are also opportunities to remind oneself of that time and mourn the people lost in that era. Even though his last movie was completed ten years ago, Riggs’s films are also opportunities to find our own voice and strength and figure out ways to prevent the generation-killings that are, or are about to be, carried out today.
And how punk is that?
mala106's idea and I still think it's a good one. "Each person will write an essay about a person who is more punk rock than the average punk rock scenester. It can be anyone you want, living or dead. For example, Toby is going to do 'my GRANDMA is more punk rock than you.' I am going to do 'harriet tubman is more punk rock than you'll ever be.'") I was still working at one of punk rock’s big institutions that week in 1994 when Marlon Riggs and Kurt Cobain both died. For once, the myopic indie label "politics" of punk worked in my favor. Because Nirvana had "sold out" by signing to a major label, public Kurt Cobain-mourning wasn’t OK there. So when I put up a memorial to Marlon Riggs at the punk store it was, ironically, one of the few places in the country where Riggs’s death wasn’t completely overshadowed by Cobain’s. I’ve been waiting for a chance to write this article ever since.
Marlon Riggs was a Black, gay, political, pro-feminist documentary filmmaker. In his far-too-short career he produced only four films, Ethnic Notions, Tongues Untied, Color Adjustment and Black Is, Black Ain’t . When I first saw his films I was in my late teens/early twenties and searching for models of how to be a political, pro-feminist man. With each film, and despite our obvious differences in background, Riggs provided some of these examples by showing the world in nuanced, complicated ways, rejecting easy political models and pushing for more.
If one thinks of punk as an underground art form, they should try finding copies of Riggs’s films today. Even though they were made for PBS, they’re very hard to find unless you want to buy your own copies. Not having seen any of his films since they came out, I decided watch them again while preparing to write this article. Unfortunately I could only find two of the four and if it wasn’t for the Gay Collection at the Castro branch of the San Francisco Public Library it would only have been one.
Tongues Untied is probably Riggs’s punkest film in terms of attitude, reflecting a sarcastic, political and angry subculture and not prettying it up for the public. Tongues is also activist, arty, and poetic. Surveying American Black, gay culture, Riggs tried to show the love, creativity, humor and resistance skills that dwell there through poetry, and dance as well as more standard narratives. He also tried not to ignore the confusion and ugliness engendered by struggles to survive in a society that wants to kill, use, or ignore Black men, especially Black, gay men. The film seemed to be an attempt to actually create dialogue and community out of the people and testimony it was portraying, rather than seeking to be just a viewing experience.
Riggs said of the film, "Frankly, with Tongues Untied if white heterosexuals don't understand the reasons why black people are angry and just consider this piece militant, then so be it. I'm not going to take time to justify this for people for whom this experience is totally alien. Tongues Untied is an affirmation of the feelings and experiences of black gay men, made for them by a black gay man, or actually by black gay men because the piece has a number of voices. If others understand, fine, but making sure everyone understands was not my prerequisite in making this." (Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media #36, 1991) As a white man watching this film, one of my points of entry was precisely this. Prettied up or assimilationist may have appealed to some audiences, but the honesty with which Tongues was created made it accessible to me with the cultural criticism I grew up on. And even if the final product was more Last Poets (without the homophobia) than The Clash.
When Tongues came out, the Christian right targeted Riggs, using selective images of gay, Black men from the film to help scare U.S. legislators into cutting public funding for the arts. Riggs spoke out against this. "(The Christian Right says) Bring back the melting pot. Restore ‘traditional values.’ Re-institute prayer in schools. Preserve the primacy of Western civilization (the only one that matters anyway). And not least, protect that critical bedrock of American greatness: ‘the American family’ Such pronouncements reveal an intense, even pathological desire to perpetuate a thoroughly obsolete myth of America, and through this, a repressively orthodox system of sociocultural entitlement."
There is some poetry and dance in Black is, Black Ain’t, but it’s a more standard form of documentary with heavy hitters from the left Black intellectual and arts communities (including bell hooks, Essex Hemphill, Angela Davis, Cornel West, Barbara Smith and Bill T. Jones) weighing in on the construction of Black identity. It’s epic and ambitious for an 86 minute film, discussing, the origins of Black as an identity, the Black Church, language and dialect, hair, Creole identity, Black Power, Black feminism, afrocentricity, and the meaning of "unity" (impossible, in Riggs’s thought, until Black people "start talking about the way we hurt each other".)
Riggs also has a crucial part, narrating and talking from his hospital bed as he lay dying of AIDS-related illnesses. At one incredibly funny and sad scene, realizing he won’t live to finish the film, he gives advice to his co-producer about a scene of him naked in the woods." It’s of critical metaphoric importance. I’m confined and lost in the woods as the community is confined by its own limited notions of identity." While metaphor usually plays better when not explained, watching Riggs trying to get his message out as he sits, nauseous, in a hospital bed with little time left had me mourning his death all over again.
Whatever view one takes of Cobain and his death, it was heart-wrenching to watch one artist trying to create his political art and build community and audience with his last breaths at age 37, while another offs himself at 27, at the height of his popularity, leaving behind a kid and millions of people who wanted to listen to what he wanted to say.
When I first saw these films, parts of San Francisco felt like a ghost town due to AIDS. I lived on the Castro edge of the Mission back then, and watching men much younger than they looked, and many younger than I am now, limp and roll by my apartment on Dolores Park was just part of the environment. This landscape also included dementia in public, funerals at the mortuary down the block a few times a week and pages of Obituaries in the back of the gay press. Beyond the merit of the films themselves, Black Is and Tongues Untied are also opportunities to remind oneself of that time and mourn the people lost in that era. Even though his last movie was completed ten years ago, Riggs’s films are also opportunities to find our own voice and strength and figure out ways to prevent the generation-killings that are, or are about to be, carried out today.
And how punk is that?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 09:49 am (UTC)I agree the "X is more punk rock.." is a great concept for a zine!
Well, X is more punk rock than I am.
Date: 2004-04-05 10:48 am (UTC)Re: Well, X is more punk rock than I am.
Date: 2004-04-05 11:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 11:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 02:21 pm (UTC)It seems like a bad sign that I hadn't heard of Ethnic Notions or
It seems like a bad sign that I hadn't heard of <i> Ethnic Notions</i> or <Color adjustment</i> before I looked them up, since they were the two that you couldn't get a hold of either. But I have hopes since <i>Ethnic Notions</i> won an Emmy! And <i>Color Adjustment</i> won several awards also.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 02:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 10:10 am (UTC)I tend to feel like the only music fan of a certain age who has absolutely no affinity for Cobain and Nirvana. I thought they were crap then, and I still think they're crap. So all this "let's get weepy about Kurt" has absolutely no effect on me.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 11:55 am (UTC)as for Nirvana, I did kind of like the "Smells like teen spirit"-era. I loved telling punker-than-thou peops that it was obviously their best album. which it is.
and thanks.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 12:27 pm (UTC)Nirvana continues to suck my left one. But then, I never really got what middle class white males were so upset about.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 10:12 am (UTC)thanks for minding the details.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 11:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 11:56 am (UTC)yes. yes. yes.
Date: 2004-04-05 11:01 am (UTC)I was acquainted with Riggs' dyke assistant/underling/filmmaking protege during that period. Tongues Untied remains a very, VERY important piece of work and I think every
homoqueerfreakmarginalized personbody, everyBODY should see it.So incredibly sad, that time in the Castro. I was at 17th/Hartford, behind San Marcos' back door, btw. AZT-butt, aka the loss of booty, was everywhere. Shuffling ghosts juxtaposed with twinkie party boys were spilling out of the Midnight Sun on Melrose Place nights.
I remember going absolutely numb and not talking to my family for almost two years (and hello, they live in the Bay Area) beacuse I was convinced that they could not POSSIBLY understand the sense of enormous loss, the memorials, the fighting for our fucking queer lives the we were all going through.
So you're right (and sorry I missed responding to your email)...
How on *earth* do we not know each other?
Some reference points pour moi, let's figure out where we've been at the same time/place:
Chaos
boy with arms akimbo
Queer Nation...but I mostly just went to the kiss-ins :)
Club Uranus
Bad Cop/No Donut
ACT-UP
AB101 riots
Rodney King riots
...and probably at least 20 other things I can't remember.
Thanks again. That entry completely ruled.
Re: yes. yes. yes.
Date: 2004-04-05 11:50 am (UTC)AB 101 riots: I was sick in bed. still regret missing it to this day. I mean, sweet christ, why else go to demos? You just hope to hit the one that turns into a riot. It's like leaving the slot machine after hours of playing and someone else comes up and hits the jackpot.
Rodney King riots: oh yeah. still the most intense demo (outside of maybe the Seattle WTO) I've ever been to. Plus everyone got new clothes and stereo equipment. ;)
I went to some ACT UP meetings and many of the demos, usually the larger ones. Bad Cop/No Donut was the best named political group ever. I didn't go to much of the club stuff, I was more interested in the punk scene at the time. I *occasionally* made it to Junk. I was at most of the queer punk shows (at the women's building, epicenter, Kommotion etc.) throughout the '90s. I loved the Crystal Pistol.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 11:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 11:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 12:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 11:03 am (UTC)Well done
Date: 2004-04-05 11:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 11:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 11:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 12:02 pm (UTC)"Frankly, with Tongues Untied if white heterosexuals don't understand the reasons why black people are angry and just consider this piece militant, then so be it. I'm not going to take time to justify this for people for whom this experience is totally alien. Tongues Untied is an affirmation of the feelings and experiences of black gay men, made for them by a black gay man, or actually by black gay men because the piece has a number of voices. If others understand, fine, but making sure everyone understands was not my prerequisite in making this."
i just put a hold on 'ethnic notions' at the library. that was an excellent post .. thanks :)
no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 11:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-06 05:06 am (UTC)Marlon Riggs was punker than most
Date: 2004-04-05 12:44 pm (UTC)Re: Marlon Riggs was punker than most
Date: 2004-04-05 05:09 pm (UTC)HELLA PUNK ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 01:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 11:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 03:00 pm (UTC)Frankly, I can't think of anything that would take priority over a documentary in which "revolutionary outfits" are mentioned! Praise!
no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 04:11 pm (UTC)I don't understand why we now have to make a value judgement between Riggs and Cobain based on whose death was more noble or who sold out the most. I don't think Riggs felt he was in competition with Cobain for the title of "most punk" when they were both alive. I don't understand why we have to frame such an argument now, ten years after the fact.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 05:25 pm (UTC)I never used the words "selling out" for Cobain. as I wrote in a comment above, I liked Nirvana and I think the "sell out" album was by far their best.
As for framing, changing the frame allows one to see art in a different way, doesn't it? I don't really think Riggs was "punk rock". But I do think he exemplified certain punk values in ways that far exceed many punk bands. The fact that most punks can't see things like that is one of the reasons the punk scene is, in the end, fairly useless politically.
(I'd say more but I've gotta run)
no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-05 11:58 pm (UTC)Well, there might be some leather jackets, but they are contextually different.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-06 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-06 05:04 am (UTC)Be nice to the staff - they're waiting for the layoff notices and cuts in hours to hit.
Yet another instance of drive-by librarianing...
no subject
Date: 2004-04-07 09:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-04-08 08:20 am (UTC)