and elaborating on older uses of queer camp per- personal, and political and cultural arenas that formance, the film contains a much greater came to underscore the very phenomenon of gay degree of sentimentality about, and admiration liberation. Evoking a spirit of ‘stranger sociabil- for, the many things it stages and indeed dresses. ity’, to borrow a term from Michael Warner, the Much more extensively developed as a form of film advances the construction of new kinds of live theatre, camp performance in the late ’60s social formation, by elaborating on experiences BIBLIOGRAPHY and early ’70s was very much about bringing par- and feelings that many male-desiring men had in ticipants into the fold of new kinds of social, cul- common, though could not always easily share in tural and political spaces, where the values a collective context due to the prohibitions and assigned to things in everyday life could be inven- anxieties of a repressive society. !' tively challenged and given new life and meaning Just as the film potently and provocatively through their re-configuration. addresses the audience through its complex Camp in Pink Narcissus is also an integral combination of the sexually direct and the polit- part of what might be described as the film’s ically sharp, it also, more simply, offers audi- world-making ethos. The film repeatedly uses ences the sheer pleasure of viewing, for its own camp to garner a feeling for the pleasure of sake, a glistening, endlessly unfolding display of gay male experiences of socialising, if not col- light, colour, texture and movement. In every Introduction Glenn, Susan, Female New American Culture, Mizejewski, Linda, lectivising, at this critical historical juncture. sense of the word, Pink Narcissus was an exper- Marketa Uhlirova Spectacle: The Theatrical Vintage Books, 1994. Ziegfeld Girl: Image and Characterised by groups and organisations such imental endeavour and Bidgood’s devotion to Roots of Modern Feminism, Icon in Culture and Lenne, Gérard, Le Cinéma Harvard University Press, Cinema, Duke University as the Effeminists, Gay Flames and, later and on using a trial-and-error approach to filmmaking Brakhage, Stan, Metaphors ‘fantastique’ et ses 2000. Press, 1999. a much larger scale, the Radical Fairies, playing resulted in a film unlike any other – it is a film on Vision, ed PA Sitney, mythologies, Éditions du with iconographies of gender and sex also func- that has continued to inspire generations of cul- Film Culture, 1963. Golden, Eve, Anna Held Cerf, 1970. Moon, Michael, ‘Flaming and the Birth of Ziegfeld’s Closets’, October, vol 51, tioned as a sort of rallying point, bringing scores tural practitioners. !* While Pink Narcissus is too Brewster, Ben, and Lea Lista, Giovanni, Loïe Broadway, University Winter 1989. Jacobs, Theatre to Cinema: Fuller and the Cinema’, of people together as they enjoyed and found expansive and inclusive to be reduced to any Press of Kentucky, 2000. camaraderie in the pleasure of transgressing single feature, it would be a mistake to overlook Stage Pictorialism and the Cinegrafie 19, June 2006. Mulvey, Laura, ‘Visual Early Feature Film, Oxford Gunning, Tom, ‘Loïe Pleasure and Narrative MacKenzie, John M, traditional gender dictates at a time when their its capacity to inspire in the viewer an almost University Press, 1997. Fuller and the Origins Cinema’, Screen, Orientalism: History, upholding was literally being policed. To reject overwhelming feeling of wonder. Re-working of Cinema’ in Camera vol 16 no 3, 1975. Bukatman, Scott, Theory and the Arts, Obscura, Camera Lucida, these norms meant, and often still means, tak- the alibi-ridden constraints of physique film and ‘Spectacle, Attractions and Manchester University Musser, Charles, Before eds R Allen and M Turvey, ing on a good deal of risk, and while to do so may photography, through which standard-issue Visual Pleasure’, in Cinema Press, 1995. the Nickelodeon: Edwin Amsterdam University have prompted feelings of threat and discom- ‘veiling’ apparel plays on the viewer’s desire to of Attractions Reloaded, S Porter and the Edison Press, 2003. Malthête, Jacques, ed, ed W Strauven, Amsterdam Manufacturing Company, fort, it also promoted feelings of mutual appre- see more, Bidgood turned dressing itself into a 158 scénarios de films University Press, 2006. Gunning, Tom, ‘The University of California ciation amongst those who did so. new kind of spectacle. disparus de Georges Méliès, Cinema of Attraction[s], Press, 1991. Cheatham, Maude S, ‘Betty Association ‘Les Amis As an underground project propelled by the Early Film, Its Spectator Blythe: The Peacock de Georges Méliès’, 1986. Osolsobě, Ivo, ‘Estetika persistence of Bidgood’s desire to fuse elements and the Avant-Garde’, Princess’, Motion Picture zábavněhudebního in Cinema of Attractions McCarren, Felicia, ‘The of romance, porn and camp-reflexivity into a new Classic, vol IX no 6, divadla’, in Teória Reloaded, ed W Strauven, “Symptomatic Act” circa and distinct kind of cinematic experience, Pink February 1920. dramatických umení, Amsterdam University 1900: Hysteria, Hypnosis, ed R Mrlian, Tatran, 1979. Narcissus is very much the product of the film- Curtis, Barry, and Claire Press, 2006. Electricity, Dance’, maker’s very personal vision. At the same time, Pajaczkowska, ‘Looking Critical Inquiry, vol 21 Schweitzer, Marlis, ‘Her Gilded Cage’, Sharp’, in If Looks Could no 4, Summer 1995. When Broadway Was one of the things that is most striking about Pink Kinematograph Weekly, Kill: Cinema’s Images of the Runway: Theater, Narcissus is how this vision manifested in a film no 837, 10 May 1923. Fashion, Crime and that, far from being slight, solitary or exclusive Violence, ed M Uhlirova, Kessler, Frank, ‘The Féerie in its treatment of the social world, is so fantas- Koenig Books, 2008. between Stage and Screen’, in tically accommodating, finding in anything and Deleuze, Gilles, Cinema 1: A Companion , eds everything rich possibilities for homoerotic The Movement-Image, to Early Cinema A Gaudreault, N Dulac and expression; re-dressing the ‘world out there’ to University of Minnesota Press, 1986. S Hidalgo, Wiley- meet the grand aesthetic criteria set by Bidgood’s !' Michael Warner, Publics and Counter- Blackwell, 2012. Evans, Caroline, source material. This expression does far more, publics, Zone Books, 2002: 121–2. ‘ “La Loïe” Talks of The Mechanical Smile: however, than simply communicate feeling and Her Art’, New York Times, !* While a number of films, photographs Modernism and the First 1 March 1896. desire. Like the many people who came in and and paintings appear to be informed Fashion Shows in France out of the ‘bedroom’ world of Bidgood’s studio by Bidgood’s work, two notable examples and America, $%## – $%)%, Leach, William R, Land over the greater part of a decade, it bespeaks the include the work of the French photo- Yale University Press, of Desire: Merchants, kind of merging of public and private, social and graphy team Pierre et Gilles and 2013. Power, and the Rise of a the hyperbolic set design and costuming that comprises the mise en scène of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1982 film Frame enlargements from Pratermizzi, %!) Querelle. dir Gustav Ucicky and Karl Leiter, 1927. %!' Fashion, and American Evans, Caroline, Wait for Me at the Bottom Cecily, ‘At the Play’, ‘“La Loïe” Talks of Cosmic Voyages in ‘Loïe Fuller is Here’, The Serpentine Culture, University of ‘Jean Patou’s American of the Pool: the Writings Hearth and Home, her Art’, The New York Advance of Cinema: New York Times, Dance in the Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Mannequins: Early of Jack Smith, eds 20 October 1892. Times, 1 March 1896. 25 February 1896. Fashion Shows J Hoberman and Edward ‘La Loïe’ Skirts the Cinematograph Solomon, Matthew, Coffman, Elizabeth, Lista, Giovanni, McAllister, TH, Catalog of and Modernism’, Leffingwell, High Risk Universe Giovanni Lista Disappearing Tricks: Silent ‘Women in Motion: Loïe Fuller, danseuse Stereopticons, Dissolving Modernism /Modernity, Books and PS1, 1997. Film, Houdini, and the Loïe Fuller and the de la Belle Époque, Jody Sperling View Apparatus and Magic vol 15 no 2, April 2008. Fuller, Loïe, Ma vie et la New Magic of the Twentieth Suárez, Juan A, “Interpenetration” of Hermann, 2006. Lanterns, TH McAllister, ‘An Ill-Mannered dance, ed G Lista, Editions Century, University Hoberman, J, Jack Smith Bike Boys, Drag Queens, Art and Science’, 1900. Mayer, David, Audience’, New York Times, L’Œil d’or, 2002. of Illinois Press, 2010. and his Secret Flix, and Superstars: Avant- Camera Obscura: ‘The Actress as Photo- 17 August 1893. ‘Real Electric Dancers’, Program Notes, American Garde, Mass Culture, Feminism, Culture Lista, Giovanni, Cinéma et Suárez, Juan A, graphic Icon: From New York World, 1 January Museum of the Moving and Gay Identities in and Media, vol 17 no 1, Amusement for Profit, photographie futurists, Bike Boys, Drag Queens, Photography to Early 1893. Image, 1998. the $%,# Underground 2002. Amusement Supply Skira-Flammarion, 2008. and Superstars: Avant- Film’, in The Cambridge Cinema, Indiana Company, Chicago, 1908. Sommer, Sally, ‘Loïe Garde, Mass Culture, Kracauer, Siegfried, Current, Richard Nelson, Companion to the Actress, Lista, Giovanni, Loïe University Press, 1996. Fuller’, The Drama Review, and Gay Identities in Theory of Film: The and Marcia Ewing eds MB Gale and Blake, John E, Fuller, danseuse de la Belle vol 19 no 1, March 1975. the $%,#s Underground Redemption of Physical Current, Loïe Fuller: J Stokes, Cambridge Astronomical Myths: Based Époque, Somogy Éditions Cinema, Indiana Reality, Princeton Dancing on Top of Goddess of Light, University Press, 2007. on Flammarion’s History Sommer, Sally, ‘Loïe Fuller’s d’art – Éditions Stock, University Press, 1996. University Press, 1997. the World: A Northeastern University of the Heavens, Macmillan, Art of Music and Light’, 1994; second, augmented ‘Miss Kate Vaughan Press, 1997. 1877. Dance Chronicle, vol 4 edition, Hermann, 2007. Thompson, Kristin, Léger, Fernand, ‘Eleven Serpentine through on Dancing’, Northern no 6, 1981.