Marlon Riggs (1957 – 1994) Considered A Quarter Century After His Death
Black men loving Black men is the revolutionary act. - Marlon Riggs
Over a quarter of a century ago, we lost one of the most visionary and radical Black queer filmmakers. One of the many men felled in the second wave of AIDS, he left an incomplete legacy. But he managed to provide us with informative, provocative, radical, beautiful works. He said, “I make films to be used, I don’t make them to be seen once on television or seen once in a theater and then that’s it…. I make them to provoke people in some way.” And he succeeded.
Riggs’ film “Ethnic Notions” (1987) documents the fact that long before the 1915 film “Birth of a Nation,” white people eagerly received a piling on of horrid caricatures of Black people. These appeared everywhere: popular sheet music, Black face for musicals and staged skits, posted caricatures, jars, clay containers, cartoon series, etc. spread across the land, positing Black people as objects of ridicule – amusing but sometimes dangerous creatures who inspired classical Aristotelian Pity and Fear, who white people could still scorn and laugh at.
Then Riggs made “Tongues Untied” (1989), a loving and admonishing exploration of Black queer male sexuality. The message is repeated: “Black men loving Black men is the revolutionary act.” We see performing artists reinforce this, the message adorning a large banner in a Pride march, held by Black men with Black men following it with joyous footwork. It’s also held in a Black Pride march, and a man on the sidewalk stentoriously tells the queers that they are wrong and a discredit to the race. They don’t let this pass.
The critic Rhea Combs said “Tongues Untied” was “emblematic of [Riggs’] unique filmmaking style because of its daring bravado and in-your-face examination of a fairly taboo subject.”
It received many awards, including a Teddy in 1990 for “Best LGBTQ Documentary. (The Teddy is a prestigious award from the Berlin International Film Festival--the Berlinale-for LGBTQ international filmmaking.) Essex Hemphill provided wonderful visual and aural poetry.
“Tongues Untied” was scheduled for a broadcast on July 16, 1991, as a POV episode on PBS. Several stations refused to air it. They quaked at this cruise missile in
Pat Buchanan’s “Culture Kampf “quiver. Along with Marlon’s own funds, he financed “Tongues Untied” with a $5,000 grant from a re-granting agency funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. (POV received annual funding of $250,000 from the NEA.)
This all made the Religious Reich crazy while providing a useful tool to attempt to take control of the hated NEA and PBS.
We have Riggs’ own words on this assault in an op-ed he wrote for the New York Times in 1992 titled “Meet the New Willie Horton”:
Because my film, "Tongues Untied," affirms the lives and dignity of [B]lack gay men, conservatives have found it a convenient target, despite the awards and popular and critical acclaim it received after broadcast … on public television.
Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, denounced the film during Senate debate over a now delayed bill to provide financing for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Last fall, the Christian Coalition collapsed the 55-minute documentary into seven, disjointed, highly sensationalized minutes, then sent 100s of copies to members of the
House of Representatives in an unsuccessful effort to force new content restrictions on the N.E.A. Of the total cost of the film, only $5,000 was N.E.A. money. And that came from an indirect source.
“Over a quarter of a century ago, we lost one of the most visionary and radical Black queer filmmakers. One of the many men felled in the second wave of AIDS, he left an incomplete legacy. But he managed to provide us with informative, provocative, radical, beautiful works.”
…The vilest form of obscenity these days is in our nation's leadership.
I should also mention “Black is…Black Ain’t (for Uncle Alfred),” the film Riggs was working on during his final bout with AIDS. It is an astonishing endeavor. Riggs enters front and center with this final AIDS experience. He tries to make light of it (“My T cells are the same number as my weight”). Later, he allows us to watch him in his hospital bed, at one point trying to convince himself that he will get out of bed and finish the film. And then, he accepts it and sings some of the songs that sustain him, from spirituals to George Clinton.
Where can you find these films? Nowadays, it’s easy. The Decatur library has a copy of “The Signifyin’ Works of Marlon Riggs”, a threeDVD set with a 45-page booklet, from the Criterion Collection. You can find it online for $25 - $35 (DVD, Blu Ray). It contains all seven of his works, plus commentary and works by others about Riggs.