I just finished watching a independent film called Brother to Brother. It's a 2005 historical fiction movie starring Anthony Mackie about Richard Bruce Nugent. Nugent was a Harlem Renaissance writer and painter, most famous for his controversial and sexual short story, "Smoke, Lilies and Jade." The story reads as a kind of stream of consciousness (marked by ellipses) and contains erotic images of a man referred to as "Beauty." I could go on about the story, but here's a link to the full short story if you're interested: http://www.brucenugent.com/Assets/Text/Smoke.htm. I actually wrote a little bit about this for my final exam paper for my Harlem Renaissance class this past semester. My paper was about how the Harlem Renaissance was not "the queerest avant-garde," as one scholar argued. While this short story certainly provides decidedly queer (explicit homosexual) depictions, my criticism of Nugent's story is that it highly exoticizes and eroticizes homosexuality and particularly the black homosexual body. The fascinating aspect of "Smoke" is the other gay male is white. I'm discovering more and more in some of my research that black gay bodies--as distinct entities, without white bodies--are one crucial aspect of scholarship; and/but the inclusion of (gay) white bodies changes the discussion entirely.
In Brother to Brother, the protagonist (not Nugent, but a young gay black male college student who meets and befriends Nugent) engages in a sexual and intimate relationship with a fellow white student. (This is slightly tangential, but I'm also fascinated by the fact that this white student self-identifies as heterosexual, until he begins this homosexual relationship. A phenomenon I'm not sure I entirely understand and one that I know exists even in real life--nevertheless, I thought it was treated well in the movie.) The conflict between the two arises initially when the white student (after hooking up, having sex, or whatever they did--the movie didn't show) leaves the black student's room, seemingly uncomfortable or confused about his recent homosexual encounter. The second sexual encounter ends with the black student leaving after the white student makes some unintentional, unaware racist remarks. The white student essentially eroticizes/exoticizes the black student by making sexual comments about his appearance (specifically, his "black lips," "fine black ass," and "soft skin"). In other words, the black student feels objectified as a exotic, sexual object. In contrast to the previous encounter, race, not sexuality, becomes a catalyst for this particular departure. I really liked how this film revealed to some extent how race and sexuality together complicate general interactions, particular interracial interactions.
In Marlon Riggs's semi-documentary Tongues Untied, his concluding statement is: "Black men loving black men IS the revolutionary act!" The documentary portrays the specificity of the gay black male experience, especially in regards to the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. The movie also refers to "silence." This "silence"--which I've also been interested in exploring, from my Harlem Renaissance paper to my 12 Ophelias performance and now to this research project--refers to the silence of black gay men, who are unable to express themselves because of the prejudices of both white and black heterosexual societies, as well as the white gay movement. In his movie, Riggs includes some his personal stories. The movie tells about his interactions with gay white and black men. He has sexual experiences and/or fantasizes about white men, while he shies away from black men; and the "moral," or message, of the movie is that the act of gay black men loving themselves allows them to love other black men. Riggs's movie suggests that black men loving white men is a result of decades--even centuries--of black subjugation under white culture.
Both movies, as I've outlined, articulate arguments or stories that suggest that interracial homosexual relationships are complicated and not beneficial for the black lovers. Gay black men are exoticized as erotic, unusual sexual objects. In this way, interracial homosexual sex becomes an exotic experience for white men, who exploit black men for their "queer" racialized bodies. The black men then must determine their identities and feelings in relation to the white men/bodies, rather than create their own identities free of racialized and sexualized histories (complicated with white men). After examining Nugent's story several times, I feel that the erotic story offers a written/literature perspective on the gay black man's feelings toward erotic white men. Nugent's black character sees the white body as "Beauty," which suggests that the black character is idolizing the white man or placing him on a pedestal. Personally, I don't feel that my attractions to people are based on race. I am attracted to people, to personalities; so I do not fear that I am going to be subjugated. That said, I feel like I'm discovering more and more that my research interests lie in how interracial homosexual relationships are complicated by both race and sexuality. I have a great book called Queer in Black and White by Stefanie K. Dunning, which seems to talk directly about my interests. I have yet to crack it open, but I plan to soon! In the meantime, I will be posting shortly on how LGBT issues are tied to class/socioeconomic issues.
Additionally, you may have noticed that I've limited my use of the word queer. I created a blog post about the nature and use of this word, and I thought that I was okay with its use. Having done more research on the word, I have decided that LGBT is a more appropriate term for my purposes. While I appreciate and admire the idealism/optimism of reclaiming queer as a positive signifier, LGBT has less stigma around its usage, and it is more comfortably used in society and culture. Queer still resides in scholarly articles and circles; I think most people still feel uncomfortable using the word or have negative emotions/memories stemmed from its pejorative use.
"Are you dreaming what I'm dreaming? I can't read your mind. One step towards you, two steps back--feels like I'm crawling, feels like I'm crawling. If I'm alone in this, I don't think I can face the consequences of falling."
-"The Consequences of Falling," K.D. Lang
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