Speaking the Self: Cinema of Transgression Flaming Creatures

“At once primitive and sophisticated, hilarious and poignant, spontaneous and studied, frenzied and languid, crude and delicate, avant and nostalgic, gritty and fanciful, fresh and faded, innocent and jaded, high and low, raw and cooked, underground and camp, black and white and white on white, composed and decomposed, richly perverse and gloriously impoverished, Flaming Creatures was something new. Had Jack Smith produced nothing other than this amazing artifice, he would still rank among the great visionaries of American film.”

[J. Hoberman] Jack Smith: Flaming Creatures, 1963

• Writer, performance artist, actor. Classic “downtown” underground personality.

• Smith endorsed a realm of “secret flix” ranging from B-grade horror movies to Maureen O'Hara Spanish Galleon films, from Busby Berkeley musicals to Dorothy Lamour sarong movies. Singled out Universal Pictures' “Queen of Technicolor,” Maria Montez, star of exotic adventure films such as Arabian Nights (1942), Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944), and Cobra Woman (1944).

• Loose tableau set to scratchy needle-drop music: “polymorphous perverse.”

• Banned in New York state, 1964. Vigorous defense by Susan Sontag and others.

Outsiders • David Lynch: “John Waters opened up an important space for all of us.” Pink Flamingos

• Why has this work come to be celebrated? Midnight Movie shock value or esthetic/cultural importance?

• What role does this film play in the lives of its actors? • Film as an esthetic experience vs. film as a liberatory social rallying cry. Compare to punk music. • How does this film address its audience? How might “specific, historical audiences” read this differently?

Outsiders “The term camp—normally used as an adjective, even though earliest recorded uses employed it mainly as a verb—refers to the deliberate and sophisticated use of kitsch, mawkish or corny themes and styles in art, clothing or conversation. A part of the anti-Academic defense of popular culture in the sixties, camp came to academic prominence in the eighties with the widespread adoption of the Postmodern views on art and culture. “Camp” Sensibility

Much like the closely related notion of kitsch, camp has traditionally been viewed as hard to define. Susan Sontag, in her famous 1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp' ", emphasises artifice, frivolity, and shocking excess as the key notes. While the common use of the concept includes these, usually the element of naïve middle-class pretentiousness is highlighted. Typical examples of this latter use are Carmen Miranda's tutti frutti hats, low-budget science fiction movies of the 1950s and 1960s and the multi-genre pop culture of the 1970s and 1980s.” [Wikipedia] Outsiders Marlon Riggs

• Black Is…Black Ain’t, 1994 • Boys’ Shorts: The New Queer Cinema, 1993 • No Regret, 1992 • Anthem, 1991 • Color Adjustment, 1991 • Tongues Untied, 1991 • Affirmations, 1990

Outsiders Tongues Untied, 1991

• First personal film affirming black, gay identity: double outsider • Shown on PBS in the POV series • Firestorm from the right: film and the series both had small NEA grants • Fullscale attack on the program and PBS from the right: Tongues United

Outsiders