Friday, July 09, 2004
Terrorist gay porn comedies – and Shane Crawford
And no, that’s not just a spiced-up headline. Last night, I went to see The Raspberry Reich, a film which improbably (at first blush) combines gay porn, terrorism (both of the 70s German and current-day mid-East varieties), and a conventional screwball comic narrative – albeit of the “Dude, where’s my head job?” sub-genre.
Two things especially surprised me about the film: (i) that it worked aesthetically, and (ii) that it could be legally shown. As for the censorship side of things, there was apparently some last minute (day of screening) dramas involving the OFLC – even though The Raspberry Reich was screening (only) as part of a film festival, the OFLC still held the power to ban it, as I understand things. Perhaps that the screening went unhindered indicates that the last decade of increasingly intrusive censorship has finally reached a high-water mark, which this recent appeal-board decision (PDF) would appear to support.
In terms of the film’s aesthetic merits, my mind boggles how the OFLC would have handled this one. The particular bete noir of the current censorship guidelines – the combination of explicit sex with any level of violence – was certainly trespassed upon; albeit the violence (i) was of the cartoonish variety, and (ii) had nothing to do with the sex scenes. Indeed, a big part of the film’s success was, for me, the gay porn scenes – which were as cheesy, contrived and languid as they come – being central to what might be called (if I may descend to rank FR Leavis-ism for a minute) the film’s “message”.
And in the best tradition of filmic messages, this one was worn – or should that be nuded-up? – on its sleeve. Here’s one synopsis of the narrative:
Gudrun brings attention to her East (sic) German group of anti-capitalist revolutionaries with a kidnapping. She also encourages the breakdown of the bourgeois construct of heterosexual monogamy by making her male apprentices have sex with each other.
What this synopsis doesn’t convey, however, is the comedic, and ontological, “g-spot” touched by the ensuing gay-sex shenanigans. Young middle-class male terrorists, of course, usually do have a homophobic blind-spot, and juxtaposing this blind-spot with passion – here, latent cock-munching desire, as well as “Let’s kidnap a bourgeois pig”-type political enthusiasm – leads to inevitably revealing results.
(Plot spoiler alert!) Far from do-it-for-the-revolution gay sex unshackling the comrades’ egos and turning them into a single, well-oiled machine, it divides them (surprise, surprise), mainly by coupling them off, so causing counter-revolutionary hijinks and mayhem.
One couple turn into the clingy, sex-crazed poofs from central casting – too busy fondling each other to care about anything else. The group’s alpha-male (Gudrun’s boyfriend before she issued her gay sex reverse-fatwa on him and everyone else) secretly betrays the revolution, by letting the group’s kidnapped hostage (himself left-wing, and so “a gay Patty Hearst”) escape into the sunset with, needless to say, his co-captor (and secret) boyfriend. Moral: the two uber-traitors just want to be conventionally hetero/homo (respectively), and if this requires counter-revolutionary betrayal, then so be it.
Is the film therefore unsympathetic to the Left? Yes and no. Writer/director Bruce LaBruce – at the film last night for a Q&A – spoke of the Left’s apparent paralysis in the aftermath of September 11. Which have been my sentiments for the last three years, too.
Whatever is going to bring about a Left renaissance eventually, unburdening oneself of a few sexual hang-ups – and having a good laugh while so doing – sounds like a fair-enough interim strategy to me. Ultimately, I think that the reason The Raspberry Reich has got such a relatively smooth run censorship-wise (and not just in Australia) is that it is a spot-on film for its time. In a fractured, deeply-compartmentalised world, the film shows some real courage in joining together some of the smashed-up pieces of our lives. That it goes to extremes in so doing – by showing explicit sex – amply shows the rawness of the nerve, the post-September 11 Western world’s almost unbearably sensitive, exposed and ticklish tummy.
Finally, the Shane Crawford factor. Wednesday’s TV doco on/by him could well be described as gay-porn lite. Again though, the titillation here can be seen to have considerable serious intent – although I doubt that Crawford’s aesthetic intentions are all that similar to LaBruce’s. Repeated motif: Shane Crawford sexually horseplays – a lot – with men. Cliffhanger: Is he therefore gay or bisexual? Resolution: Go back to square one; aka “You’re looking at your own prurience in the mirror I’m holding up, sunshine”.
Fact (well, I learnt it from “Big Brother”): straight women can kiss – as in tongue kiss, not nanna kiss – other women, and probably do more besides, without any agonising over their sexual identity. Hetero men can do the same, but only in circumstances of great secrecy or jocularity. Shane Crawford has therefore done the boofy blokes of Australia a big favour – there’s no need or point in making Big, Humourless Revolutionary Statements like “We’re all bisexual, really”. The only thing we really all are is exposed, vulnerable and ticklish. Now more than ever, it’s the small steps that count, and things don’t get any more folksily at-home than a personal commitment to banish one’s homophobic blind-spot.
And no, that’s not just a spiced-up headline. Last night, I went to see The Raspberry Reich, a film which improbably (at first blush) combines gay porn, terrorism (both of the 70s German and current-day mid-East varieties), and a conventional screwball comic narrative – albeit of the “Dude, where’s my head job?” sub-genre.
Two things especially surprised me about the film: (i) that it worked aesthetically, and (ii) that it could be legally shown. As for the censorship side of things, there was apparently some last minute (day of screening) dramas involving the OFLC – even though The Raspberry Reich was screening (only) as part of a film festival, the OFLC still held the power to ban it, as I understand things. Perhaps that the screening went unhindered indicates that the last decade of increasingly intrusive censorship has finally reached a high-water mark, which this recent appeal-board decision (PDF) would appear to support.
In terms of the film’s aesthetic merits, my mind boggles how the OFLC would have handled this one. The particular bete noir of the current censorship guidelines – the combination of explicit sex with any level of violence – was certainly trespassed upon; albeit the violence (i) was of the cartoonish variety, and (ii) had nothing to do with the sex scenes. Indeed, a big part of the film’s success was, for me, the gay porn scenes – which were as cheesy, contrived and languid as they come – being central to what might be called (if I may descend to rank FR Leavis-ism for a minute) the film’s “message”.
And in the best tradition of filmic messages, this one was worn – or should that be nuded-up? – on its sleeve. Here’s one synopsis of the narrative:
Gudrun brings attention to her East (sic) German group of anti-capitalist revolutionaries with a kidnapping. She also encourages the breakdown of the bourgeois construct of heterosexual monogamy by making her male apprentices have sex with each other.
What this synopsis doesn’t convey, however, is the comedic, and ontological, “g-spot” touched by the ensuing gay-sex shenanigans. Young middle-class male terrorists, of course, usually do have a homophobic blind-spot, and juxtaposing this blind-spot with passion – here, latent cock-munching desire, as well as “Let’s kidnap a bourgeois pig”-type political enthusiasm – leads to inevitably revealing results.
(Plot spoiler alert!) Far from do-it-for-the-revolution gay sex unshackling the comrades’ egos and turning them into a single, well-oiled machine, it divides them (surprise, surprise), mainly by coupling them off, so causing counter-revolutionary hijinks and mayhem.
One couple turn into the clingy, sex-crazed poofs from central casting – too busy fondling each other to care about anything else. The group’s alpha-male (Gudrun’s boyfriend before she issued her gay sex reverse-fatwa on him and everyone else) secretly betrays the revolution, by letting the group’s kidnapped hostage (himself left-wing, and so “a gay Patty Hearst”) escape into the sunset with, needless to say, his co-captor (and secret) boyfriend. Moral: the two uber-traitors just want to be conventionally hetero/homo (respectively), and if this requires counter-revolutionary betrayal, then so be it.
Is the film therefore unsympathetic to the Left? Yes and no. Writer/director Bruce LaBruce – at the film last night for a Q&A – spoke of the Left’s apparent paralysis in the aftermath of September 11. Which have been my sentiments for the last three years, too.
Whatever is going to bring about a Left renaissance eventually, unburdening oneself of a few sexual hang-ups – and having a good laugh while so doing – sounds like a fair-enough interim strategy to me. Ultimately, I think that the reason The Raspberry Reich has got such a relatively smooth run censorship-wise (and not just in Australia) is that it is a spot-on film for its time. In a fractured, deeply-compartmentalised world, the film shows some real courage in joining together some of the smashed-up pieces of our lives. That it goes to extremes in so doing – by showing explicit sex – amply shows the rawness of the nerve, the post-September 11 Western world’s almost unbearably sensitive, exposed and ticklish tummy.
Finally, the Shane Crawford factor. Wednesday’s TV doco on/by him could well be described as gay-porn lite. Again though, the titillation here can be seen to have considerable serious intent – although I doubt that Crawford’s aesthetic intentions are all that similar to LaBruce’s. Repeated motif: Shane Crawford sexually horseplays – a lot – with men. Cliffhanger: Is he therefore gay or bisexual? Resolution: Go back to square one; aka “You’re looking at your own prurience in the mirror I’m holding up, sunshine”.
Fact (well, I learnt it from “Big Brother”): straight women can kiss – as in tongue kiss, not nanna kiss – other women, and probably do more besides, without any agonising over their sexual identity. Hetero men can do the same, but only in circumstances of great secrecy or jocularity. Shane Crawford has therefore done the boofy blokes of Australia a big favour – there’s no need or point in making Big, Humourless Revolutionary Statements like “We’re all bisexual, really”. The only thing we really all are is exposed, vulnerable and ticklish. Now more than ever, it’s the small steps that count, and things don’t get any more folksily at-home than a personal commitment to banish one’s homophobic blind-spot.
