The Creative Mind; 102; Marlon Riggs. Part 1

The artists through their work for me reconciles himself particularly for me with death when this obviously is very present in my mind being someone who is HIV positive that I don't constantly think of death but I know that there will be a time. And for that reason my work has been a way of not running from death or trying to undo death which will come. I'm not afraid of that but rather it's living beyond death in a way that continues to move people to show them that there is a reason for living that humanity is something that can be occasionally is virtuous and that we should worship that we should reverence that. Join me for a conversation with San Francisco documentary film producer Marlon. The writer Tom Wolfe has called the moral fever.

Not since the McCarthy era I have issues of personal expression been so hotly debated in our society. Those attempting to silence expressions considered obscene or controversial are met head on by those fighting to be heard and recognized. Marlon Riggs is the producer director and writer of numerous documentary videos whose work attempts to break that silence and confront issues of homophobia and racism. For his documentary ethnic notions which explores the racial stereotypes that have fueled anti-black prejudice since slavery he received a national Emmy Award. His more recent work was internationally acclaimed for its unprecedented look at black male gay identity as his art is also a celebration of both physical and spiritual well-being and highly values the importance of fitness and dance in his own life. I spoke with Marlon Riggs prior

to the release of his latest documentary color of blacks in prime time. What brought you to work in video. It was a very intellectual decision for me. I was not a person in particularly in high school that or in college that went to movies. I didn't watch TV I didn't even watch the news in college I think I watch television maybe twice. But what I was learning particularly in college was for me so fascinating and more than that just so powerful and terms of shaping my understanding of myself and my community in terms of black people. And I think of America in terms of America's history America's problems around race around identity that I wanted to communicate what I was learning to people I know who would never go to Harvard who would never go to Ivy League schools or who were never in fact go to any college and yet this seemed to me to be so intrinsically important to their understanding of themselves

as well as to understand in the larger society. I wanted to communicate to people all that I was learning and for me I thought well how can I do that. Should I write. You know people don't read. Should I become a teacher a year which will get maybe 200 students a year maybe a little bit more if you teach a large lecture course. Oh I guess I should do maybe video or film television. It was rational decision I want to communicate what I'm learning historically to masses of people. That means motion pictures. That means I guess documentary making isn't that what most nonfiction motion pictures are about and they're after they're after I said about the job or learning to be a producer. Video documentaries. In fact I wasn't even thinking video at the time I didn't make the distinction between video and film it was motion pictures. I worked for one year at a television station in which I encountered tremendous resistance to who I was as a black man recently from Harvard.

People perceive me as wanting to take over the television station. I was told this by friends people when I talk to you about their jobs because they think that you want to take their jobs over. I was 21. You know I was very naive I was just asking people what do you do. You know what is it like what is this. People thought that I was collecting information so I could make that pitch at some later point to the station. I realized I wasn't going to get far and thereafter applied to the School of Journalism at UC Berkeley which had a graduate program that allowed people to produce a documentary as their master's thesis. And that began my road in a way down this path. I traveled down this path to being an independent producer of video documentaries experimental video work. Gas tank gas.

But your first documentary won I won awards. I was surprised I wasn't thinking of winning awards when I did my first documentary was it which was about the history of blues music here in Oakland and Richmond Berkeley California and the East Bay. I was doing something again trying to affirm my community and my community's history through a medium that would communicate to large audiences. I wasn't thinking about what glory or fame or whatever would come maybe down the road. But I think because the work came out of a such a heart felt place within me that it spoke. And it's something that I've learned continuously that when I approach my work it's not because of a professional

interest. You know I think the way a lot of for instance journalists approach their work they bring a certain professional regard to their work and they're not particularly attached you know to the people the community the issue. In fact the dict principle in fact is that she remain as detached as possible which I really think is one impossible but also has been very detrimental in terms of the communication industry in this country. So for me what I learned through the blues and later through I think notions through tongues untied my works which was to end the process of speaking from this very impassioned heartfelt heartfelt place that one could communicate beyond one's immediate community. Two other people who maybe didn't quite understand or have knowledge of or feel any attachment to that particular issue or community or culture but yet they did respond to the passion of one's humanity of one's expression and therefore could access the community the

issue of the culture that the work was about. That's been a singularly important lesson for me particularly in a society and in my profession and I'm speaking of both documentary and journalism which teaches you just the opposite which teaches you to speak dispassionately to speak in a way that detaches you from your community from your audience which teaches you to disengage to be objective which teaches you to be professional but professional in a way that gives you gloss but not much some substance and not much substance that really requires that you as a maker have to search your soul. Not that you just searching other people's souls or getting them to confess to their sins or their virtues or achievements but rather for you to search in turn and to express that it's been for me a lesson and that ongoing struggle of redefining at the same time. The industry that is the video film nonfiction industry in terms of

how we tell stories our own as well as others stories. All the nation not man was not shall not was when the man who carried out if there's another meeting very shortly in his sight that they say were on the same boat we should be brothers. But before I accept his kinship political or otherwise this is what I want to know where this is loyalty lie. Yeah well we got a role model as a punk anyway. Give no. Credit there's no calling on softball do you sonny not for our enemies. That's what I want to know. Come the final throw down one of the first black forget you know the answer. The absurdity of that question. How can you sit in silence. Stuart Thompson time. Made me think

video poetry it was documentary but hardly in the documentary that I'm used to. Lyric lyric documentary if you will which is something that's actually not new I think in fact the first documentaries made in this country from Robert Flaherty were in fact a very lyrical because many of the people who worked in documentary who started out in fact conceived and gave birth to documentary as a discipline as we now know it as an art form came from a poetic literary photographic background so that they brought those aesthetic sensibilities to their work. And created something which is much more than just information but rather was something that spoke to the heart of humanity. And for me what was interesting for us was for me to recover that recover that sensibility. But in a way that I thought

addressed a group a community that had been spoken to that had been silenced before and that was obviously the community of black gay men. And within the larger context people affected and who have shaped in some ways notions about this community even if those notions are just of invisibility. You know that one does not see acknowledge believing and because one does not believe that these people exist that in fact had to be addressed. And I was addressing that in a way that I thought communicate the way people tend to communicate which is poetically. I mean the way we talk is in fragments we talk in metaphor we speak to each other and language which is highly condensed in its meaning so that what we say in fact contains much more than what we just say. If you look at the words on a piece of paper there's no kind of meaning that's inflected. And the language that we use. All kinds of codes of of ideas of a communication expression

inscribed in the language. So for me using Portree became a way of speaking to people the way we really talk to each other and particular to talk to African-Americans the way we really talk to each other. And I started with the rhetorical chant but you don't hear sitting Rouxville around his quickened footsteps a wad of spit glued to his shoulder he could battle against room sparring with jagged edges. Motion for his Black Jack not to Monk Conches his money an ID removed his face disfigured. He. Left. And he waited for the police.

The kindness of brother and Jesus to pick up this message. Did you weigh the shock value. Some of the content. I know I wasn't about shocking people at all that wasn't the point. Tongues untied was meant for me to affirm and experience and in some ways because I can see. At the time of its making the audience to be primarily black gay men. This I knew would not be shocking. I mean this is our lives our lives are not shocking to us. Now it may be controversial shocking aggressive all the usual words of the mainstream press tends to use to denote works that exist and challenge that mainstream for that group of people before black gay men. The work would be true. And that truth was what I was about that searching attempt to uncover to explore that truth or actually the many truths

of the black gay experience. That's what the work was about and for me the idea was to affirm to explore to acknowledge not to shock your comments have been so inspiring to ask this question but why do you consider obscene. Exploitation of people the degradation of people as people is an obscenity to me the deliberate distortion falsification of who they are of their humanity is an obscenity. It's an horrific obscenity that for me is obscene and to the degree that that occurs then you are engaged in something perhaps it requires some legal protection or regulation. The rest is a lie. The rest is humanity. And we have to accept and deal with that. I think of the characterization of gay with promiscuity with a lack of connection. And what you have

been saying. Contradicts that. Oh yes. To the degree that we've embraced that turn has always contradicted that. That partly being gay has been looking for I think for many of us the meaning of gayness is the search for connection and the search for the reclaiming of some connection with family with others that's been denied us because of who we are. And I think that his being challenge I mean and that's being challenged in ways it is reconstituting our notion of society not just of gay people but of society as we move again into this 21st century. The image comes to mind from your tongues untied is the image of a black man in drag walking the streets. It's a very powerful image to me. Us.

That solitude. No I mean I think that's what when I talk to people because I asked people why. Especially people who are not black or gay or male I asked why did this work speak to you. What was it about this work that touched you. I mean because I didn't quite honestly mean it for you so what is it. And I was told you know by people again who are outside of the group that I foresaw being my audience that this work talks to me because it speaks of solitude a fragmentation being denied one's expression of one's true self. And so many of us have borne that burden and had to pay that price for our acceptance into the family. However the family can see whether it's a society or an aerial in our nuclear families we had to pay that price of denying who we are. People who have had to go through that struggle and who are going through it whether they are again sexually different from the mainstream or

whether they're a person of color are not people who have had to deal with that kind of struggle can feel the work that resonates with them. The experience is resonating for that reason particularly that image of the black drag queen walking the streets alone searching for the man who will love him realizes that perhaps no one will. So we'll have to love himself. And that's the first step for so many of us to learn to unload that shame because it's so deep. I mean it's so deep for us to learn to accept and not willing to accept but to love who we are when we've been told all along that we're rubbish we're unworthy. We should remain secret silent. Shut up. Stay away. And that first step is perhaps one of the most important for people who are different. To learn self acceptance self acceptance self love it's hard.

It's very hard. Most of us don't. Most of us go through life not really dealing with that because it requires us to search too much to see too much to acknowledge too much. It requires us to deal with our pain requires to us too in some ways acknowledge our own complicity and bearing that shame and that pain both in their personal interior sense but also in a larger cultural sense. You know groups who have participated in their own demise and self-destruction as a people as a cultural group that's very hard because you can't just displace all of the blame onto somebody else you can't just say it's a white man's problem or it's you know it's straight homophobes problem when in fact you share in the burden of the problem to share in the responsibility. That's very difficult for people to accept which for me again is why. When we deal with these very conflictual issues we deal intrinsically with the whole group of

us. We deal with we not just with me. So much of the attacks and the effort to negotiate these differences have amounted to drawing lines this way instead of circles and drawing lines even within ourselves. I mean what I try to deal with in tongues untied too was the degree to which we have often accomplice to the privileging of the aspects of our own characters. So that for black gay men in particular those who are out there call to to answer the question which will they be first black or gay or black women particularly during the 70s and still now which are they first feminists or black or for people who are you know who are black Canadians blacks French speaking black Canadians which are they first they French speaking people or are they black. I mean we have all of these ways that we try to not only break people apart in terms of our cultural groups. But also in how we

attempt as well I think to break ourselves apart internally by this notion of an internal hierarchy that we can privilege one aspect nurturing virtuous aspect of our character above another. I think that's rubbish. It leads to schizophrenia of the worst type. I may not be manifest in clinical schizophrenia but in terms of the all the other problems that we bear and we see again in terms of drugs sexuality in terms of problem security that kind of promiscuity that goes from person to person that could form no kind of attachment in terms of violence self-inflicted violence acting out behavior. We see it played out in so many different ways that inability to heal ourselves and to integrate ourselves as whole people. So I mean I address this because partly because I've gone through it myself. I mean this is not all sort of abstract philosophical for me. My struggle as a black gay

man with HIV is to constantly negotiate attempts within myself as well as within and within the larger society to deny some part of who I am. And for me to have to constantly say you know I am who I am and I am proud of that. And that includes all of the above and I think at bottom that's what we as artists who are politically engaged are trying to affirm the humanity of ourselves particularly if we are from despised oppressed groups. But the humanity of U2 that is the fuller humanity which you should embrace if you would let go of all that which attempts to define you in a very narrow sense in opposition to me. I mean what I try to do in my work is in many ways I think a loving bond across the time the history of the African-American experience that

even though I came into the poor tree of Langston Hughes late in life compared to I think generations before me in segregated schools who had to learn Langston. I mean it was only it wasn't until I was an adult that I really learned because I was going to integrate institutions Langston didn't matter or Jimmy ball one in the same way within the integrated educational institutions. Jimmy ball one's works were irrelevant. It was only when I searched these works out myself that I found this connection across time across eras that I wanted to bargain with. In my work through my art to affirm and to continue the living force of that work within the present day situation. And for me that's in some ways the beauty of working as an artist that you can you can have communion in that way and also establish communion with audiences with those who see the work with others who also with that

past with that history. It's a vibrant living dynamic history it doesn't just. And when the person dies the artist dies the day continues it lives after their death. So in fact the artists through their work from reconciles themselves particularly for me with death when this obviously is very present in my mind being someone who's HIV positive that I don't constantly think of death but I know that there will be a time. And for that reason my work has been a way of not running from death or trying to undo death which will come. I'm not afraid of that but rather it's living beyond death in a way that continues to move people to show them that there is a reason for living that humanity is something that can be occasionally is virtuous and that we should worship that we should reverence that. And that is how an artist I think binds with bonds with unites both with

his history or her history and the present condition. You make a statement at the end of tongue tied black man loving black man is the ultimate revolutionary act. Have gotten some heat for this. But underlying that isn't loving the ultimate. Oh yeah. Yes. I mean in some ways it was a trope being a signifying an all of the particular within the African-American community all the ways that revolution has been defined which tends to do with undoing Y.D. the raised faced your political power or economic salvation I was saying no it's far more basic than that that the problem with us as a people is that we have not learned to love ourselves or each other that we are still in contention with our history with our identities with our past with the people on the streets and we have not engaged in the most rudimentary level of understanding who we are

and what we have to come to terms with which first is not white power or white supremacy or whatever all of the various isms that we confront as a people. But rather it's with ourselves. And once we make that step. Then we're on the road to salvation. We're on the road to redemption. And that's a forward step. That's not going back to anything it's not going back to Africa. You know it's not going back culturally somewhere some mythic ideal age when we were innocent. There was never such a time. We must construct our own salvation in the future in the now and we must construct that out of the fragments of our past as well as of our present. That's the challenge for me and that challenge is a loving act on a bottom line. I don't know what else there is to say with that. That's lovely. We could all use it. We could make ourselves that way. I would hope so. I think again that will be the challenge of what we as people face

to reconcile ourselves so much of life whether it's father and mother and daughter white and black gay and straight is a reconciliation. And it's so difficult because it requires a letting go of so much that we've held on to define who we are. And the letting go when we learn to do it is letting go of a lot of hatred and shame hatred of others and hatred of self. Yeah. And the letting go allows for what I believe again is something basic that many of us just don't have which is a self and communal love. We really don't have it. We claim to. We clench the hands and raise the fish. You know we slap high fives we don't have it. Those little symbols you know attempt at communion with their symbols without any meaning. And until we learn the basics and deal with

and grapple with the basics of ourselves then we'll never go beyond the meaningless superficial symbols. This has been the first of a two part conversation with Marlon Riggs. I'm Bettina grey.