LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
PAST Out |
by Rawley Grau |
Who Was Marlon Riggs?
One of the leading documentary filmmakers to emerge in the late 1980s, Marlon Riggs dissected issues of racism and homophobia in a number of ground-breaking films, including Tongues Untied, an exploration of what it means to be a black gay man in America. Almost inevitably, the film became a major battlefield in the "culture wars" of the early 1990s. Born in 1957, Riggs was part of a military family. In 1974, Riggs received a full scholarship to Harvard University, where he studied African-American history. He decided to go into documentary filmmaking, he later explained, because he wanted to share what he was learning with as many people as possible. After graduating from Harvard, he sought his master's at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1979, he became roommates with a white man named Jack Vincent, and soon they became lovers. Riggs completed his degree in 1982 and started working on his first feature-length documentary, Ethnic Notions, an examination of racist stereotypes in popular culture. The 1987 film won numerous awards, including an Emmy. Around this time, Riggs became interested in making a short film about black gay men. But in December 1988, he suffered kidney failure and almost died. Hospital tests showed he had AIDS. He pulled through, but the concept for the documentary radically changed. "I found that the story would be my life," he later recalled. "I never thought of putting myself before the camera; it was really liberating." In Tongues Untied, Riggs interweaves his own experiences with those of others, using poetry, music, and provocative imagery to create an intense yet lyrical portrayal of what it's like to be a gay African-American man. The hour-long documentary candidly addressed both racism within the gay community and homophobia among African-Americans. Completed in 1989, Tongues Untied won a number of prestigious awards and was slated to air on PBS. But religious right groups mounted a campaign against televising the film, citing its sexual content and graphic language. Although PBS still aired the documentary in July 1991, 18 network affiliates refused to broadcast it, while others scheduled it for the wee hours. Right-wing politicians denounced Tongues Untied as yet another misuse of public funds (Riggs had received a $5,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts) and another reason to shut down the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. "What the hell is going on when the taxpayers are required to fund such garbage as that?" thundered Jesse Helms from the Senate floor. Patrick Buchanan used racy clips from Tongues Untied in his presidential campaign ads to illustrate how the (first) Bush administration had "invested our tax dollars in blasphemy and pornographic art." Riggs continued to explore the black gay experience in three short films, including No Regrets (1992), which dealt with AIDS among African-Americans. He also made the feature-length Color Adjustment (1991), which told the history of the depiction of African-Americans on television. In 1992, Riggs began work on Black Is... Black Ain't, taking up the thorny question of what constitutes African-American identity. But Riggs' health was deteriorating rapidly, and in November 1993 he entered the hospital for a six-month stay. Still, he poured whatever energy he had into making the film. Riggs died at home April 5, 1994, surrounded by his family and his partner, Jack Vincent. Black Is... Black Ain't was completed by his co-director, who incorporated scenes of Riggs speaking from his hospital bed. Much more than just a study of black identity, the film stands as a moving testament of Riggs' own unflagging search for meaning. Rawley Grau has won four Vice Versa Awards for his writing on gay and lesbian culture. He can be reached at GayNestor@aol.com. Suggested reading and viewing: Everett, Karen, director, 1996. "I Shall Not Be Removed: The Life of Marlon Riggs." California Newsreel videocassette, 60 min. Kleinhans, Chuck and Julia Lesage, 1991. "Listening to the Heartbeat: An Interview with Marlon Riggs," Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, No. 36. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 11, No. 9, July 13, 2001. |