Birth of a Notion

Toward Black, Gay, and Lesbian Imagery in Film and Video

In mainstream media, gays and lesbians of color are either woefully present or predictably absent. The litany of black gay and lesbian characters in Hollywood films and network television reads like its own form of blackface.

They range from the burly, black "bulldagger" as whorehouse madam in the 1933 film The Emperor Jones (starring Paul Robeson) to the predatory lesbian vamp in Spike Lee's 1983 She's Gotta Have It; from Eddie Murphy's ultracamp Miss Thing hairdresser on NBC's Saturday Night Live to the snap! queen duo on Fox TV's In Living Color.

These relentless stereotypes are part of a continuum of silence and mockery and denial surrounding lesbians and gay men within our own African American community — a community that is, of course, one of the largest consumers of Hollywood and network entertainment. With no other screen alternatives, audiences believe this is who we are.

In reducing our lives and complexity to caricature, such program formulas, capitalizing on homophobia and racism, produce big profits for mainstream media. The constricted images of black gays and lesbians are the same appropriated to all nonwhites in film and video: enemies, entertainment, or exotica.

Recently a new generation of gay and lesbian filmmakers of color has begun to produce imagery countering the invisibility and social stigmas. These filmmakers are using media to reverse decades of misrepresentation, replacing negative myths with whole and humane depictions. The films and videos currently being produced by black gays and lesbians about black gays and lesbians — this birth of a notion — represent the opening of a dialogue, overdue and unflinching. From the United Kingdom, witness Isaac Julien's lush cinematic meditation, Looking for Langston (1989), and here in the United States, Marlon Riggs's Tongues Untied (1989). Both feature the incisive poetry of Essex Hemphill and the music of Blackberri. These groundbreaking black gay directors expand the discourse on race and homoerotic desire in their current works: Julien's ebullient Young Soul Rebels (1991) and Riggs's video shorts, Affirmations (1990) and Anthem (1991).

Among younger generations of black gay men and lesbians, the films and videos of Dawn Suggs, Thomas Harris, Sylvia Rhue, Cheryl Dunye, Jacqueline Woodson, Jack Waters, Aarin Burch, Jocelyn Taylor, and Yvonne Welbon are emerging. Their works challenge the boundaries of experimental, autobiographical, and documentary genres. They offer innovative production styles in presenting visions of being "in the life." These productions are also changing the complexion of AIDS media — exploring the devastation and celebrating the courage of a community disproportionately ravaged by the epidemic. These film-and video makers are the first wave of a developing black gay and lesbian film movement. Now a legacy begins.

Several other films by white producers and directors have investigated black gay life: Shirley Clarke's 1967 experimental study of a black hustler, Portrait of Jason, and the Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss documentary, Tiny and Ruby: Hell-Divin' Women. This 1987 film highlights the lesbian flamboyance of Tiny Davis, former trumpeter extraordinaire for the International Sweethearts of Rhythm jazz band, and is narrated by the African American lesbian poet Cheryl Clarke. More recently Jennie Livingston's remarkable, controversial, 1990 documentary, Paris Is Burning, explores the world of vogueing balls created by young black and Latino street queens in New York City.

As the body of black gay and lesbian film expands, a wellspring of critical analysis and theoretical study has concurrently evolved, validating this birth of a notion. Scholars in lesbian and gay studies, film theorists, and cultural activists have proclaimed, in articles and new publications, the significance of this first wave of black gay and lesbian media (particularly the works of Riggs and Julien) in illuminating the transgressive territory of identity and gay representation. Many of these critics are themselves black gay men and lesbians. In the United Kingdom are the filmmaker Pratibha Parmar and the critics Kobena Mercer and Stuart Hall. In the United States the writings of Marlon Riggs, Thomas Harris, Essex Hemphill, and bell hooks (who is not gay) have been influential and provocative.

Indicative of the growing visibility and accessibility of gay film, a media conference in New York was dedicated to investigating the concept of queer aesthetics unique to lesbian and gay imagery. The most compelling and contentious moments of that 1989 "How Do I Look?" conference were stimulated by discussions of race and representation in the works of Julien and other black gay artists, as well as white gay artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe who were perceived as commodifying black male sexuality.

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