UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ DEVIANT PROGRAMMING: CURATING QUEER SPECTATORIAL POSSIBILITIES IN U.S. ART HOUSE CINEMAS, 1968-1989 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in FILM & DIGITAL MEDIA by Marc Francis Newman June 2018 The Dissertation of Marc Francis Newman is approved by: __________________________________ Professor B. Ruby Rich, chair __________________________________ Peter Limbrick, Ph.D. __________________________________ Janet Staiger, Ph.D. __________________________________ Amy Villarejo, Ph.D. ___________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by Marc Francis Newman 2018 Table of Contents Introduction 1 1. The Bricolage Effect: The Post-1968 Turn in Art-House Film Programming 40 2. “Cavalcades of Perversions”: Deviant Film Programming as Redefining Queer Politics 96 3. For Shame! On the History of Programming Queer “Bad Objects” 149 4. Repertory Time: Theorizing Queer Double-Feature Spectatorship 194 5. Imaging Dialogue: A Praxis Teaser, Cruising Différance in 3 Scenes, and Triple Bill (Vimeo links included) 250 Works Cited 256 Filmography 264 iii Table of Illustrations Figure 1. Pauline Kael’s programming at Cinema Guild, November/December 1960 63 Figure 2. Divine, Empress of Perversion, reigns over her minions in Nuart’s Outlaw Cinema series, summer 1981 99 Figure 3. More of Parker Tyler’s imaginative categories (from Screening the Sexes) 112 Figure 4. One locked closet and a whole lot of open doors, Roxie’s winter 1978 calendar 162 Figure 5. "When You’re Good to Mama…," Frameline 1990 174 Figure 6. One queer double bill after another, Strand Theatre, June 1980 220 iv Abstract “Deviant Programming: Curating Queer Spectatorial Possibilities in U.S. Art House Cinemas, 1968-1989” By Marc Francis Newman This dissertation looks back at how popular queer films—canonical then or now— were programmed at urban art-house, independent, repertory, and second-run theaters primarily from 1968 to 1989. Contrary to assumptions that undergird queer film criticism, queer cinema was by no means marginal, rare, peripheral, or strictly nocturnal within these spaces. What I call deviant programming in art-house and repertory houses provides pivotal access into an underlying register of subversive and deviant spectatorial political imaginaries beyond the LGBT circumscription to which queer politics has grown accustomed. Programming, the practice of selecting films to be shown for exhibition in a specific space for a specific audience, aggregates discrete texts to form interrelated networks. It continually offers spectators of all sexualities v and genders opportunities to encounter narratives about non-normative subjectivities. Positioning calendars and programs as acute indicators for spectatorial desires, I argue that these practices shook audiences with depictions of masochism, bodily fetishes, abjection, and other “degenerate” practices that fall outside of or are relegated within the bourgeois ethos of sexual propriety. Programming metabolized these confrontational aesthetics, leading spectators to enjoy, resist, discover, as well as learn from their atypical renderings of sexual pleasure and gender performativity. Merging concepts in affect studies (e.g., contact zones and reparativity) with semiotics (e.g., intertextuality and bricolage), I try to capture what it means to feel the intertextuality of programming, both in knowable and inchoate forms. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Though I have decided not to dedicate this dissertation to anyone in particular, my advisor B. Ruby Rich is without a doubt the most deserving of recognition. Her continual encouragement, patience, generosity, and insight came in equal measure to her intellectual and creative rigor. She has voiced her excitement for this project from the get-go, and it has often given me the sustenance I have needed to proceed in these precarious times. She has, to an extent, lived the history I attempt to tell here. To my delight, she welcomed this rather “eccentric” reading, one primarily told through pleasure. Perhaps reading history as such came easily because the process itself has been unsuitably pleasurable. She has guided me from this project’s gestation as an independent study on programming to the recent line editing of the chapters here. I have learned more from her than she’ll ever know. My committee—B. Ruby Rich, Peter Limbrick, Janet Staiger, and Amy Villarejo— have all been wonderfully supportive, and I thank them for their invaluable feedback vii throughout various developments of this project. There are several faculty members at UCSC who also require my humblest gratitude. My qualifying exam committee members Yiman Wang, Deborah Gould, and B. Ruby Rich provided me with the best questions, and challenged me to not always answer them. Peter Limbrick served in several capacities on my different committees, offering meticulous attention to my writing and thinking. He is a true generalist in the best sense of term whose wisdom equals his compassion. I am also grateful to Jonathan Kahana, Jennifer Horne, and Shelley Stamp for professional guidance and thoughtful comments on my work throughout my time at UCSC. Uncommon or strange as it may be to thank one’s undergraduate professors in this context, I feel I must address several educators who have indelibly transformed my thinking. Some I have remained in touch with through the years, while others remain deeply present in my work. From my time at DePaul, I am indebted to Allison McCracken, Melissa Bradshaw, Kate Kane, Rachel Shteir, Dean Corrin, Chris Jones, and Lenora Inez Brown. From my time at Columbia, I thank Jane Gaines, Nico Baumbach, and Weihong Bao for their brilliant and encouraging mentorship. I am warmed when I think of the many colleagues whose hearts are as big as their brains. Linnéa Hussein is—I blush as I say it—my academic life partner. There is no one else with whom I can muse over Michel Foucault and Dolly Parton within the span of a single conversation. She has also taken so much of her time to read copious viii drafts of my writing over the past decade that we’ve known each other. Nilo Couret is also a godsend. His professional advice and willingness to read draft upon draft of whatever I throw at him would have put Mother Teresa to shame. In regards to my video essays, I am grateful for the feedback from the participants in Middlebury College’s 2017 Workshop on Videographic Criticism, led by Jason Mittell and Christian Keathley. There are many friends and past classmates for whom I also feel a great intellectual fondness: Dolores McElroy, Rachel Schaff, Zack Olson, Vika Paranyuk, and Alece Oxendine from my Columbia days (but who I am lucky enough to see quite frequently); in Los Angeles, Mark Valen, Lynora Valdez, Lindsay Vance Armstrong, Victor Rodriguez, Madeline Wager, Andrew Kraft, and Vanessa Peña, among many others, have all been the best chosen family I could have dreamed of. Programmers, past and present, who agreed to be interviewed by me provided a wealth of information and idiosyncrasy. Fabiano Canosa, Stephen Soba, Edith Kramer, and Kay Armatage all took substantial chunks of their time to teach me about their programming sensibilities. Mark Valen deserves distinct credit for all that he has offered me. The reader will note that his presence is felt throughout the dissertation; my video essay Triple Bill is dedicated to him. I am also lucky to have encountered such helpful and insightful archivists who sensed my enthusiasm for this project. At PFA’s Film Library & Study Center, Jason Sanders and Nancy Goldman provided me with stack upon stack of programs. At MoMA, Ashley Swinnerton and ix Jenny Tobias took time to organize program materials that had—to the best of their knowledge—never been requested or even catalogued. Lastly, I thank my parents for their ability to endure the looks they receive from friends and colleagues when they have to tell them what kind of film and media their son studies. In all seriousness, they have supported my professional goals and trusted the many turns I have taken over the past decade of my life. In many ways, I have tried to channel the remnants of their 1970s selves into this dissertation, hopefully gesturing at what they experienced as well as what might be envisioned in hindsight. x INTRODUCTION In May 1978, the Strand Theatre, located in the heart of San Francisco’s downtown, programmed a month’s worth of fare that would not to a contemporaneous cinephile have appeared as anything out of the ordinary. All the usual classics were present: It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946), Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958), The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock, 1935), and Giant (George Stevens, 1956).1 A signature of the time was its mixture of high, middle, and low brow, Hollywood and independent, U.S.- made films and foreign art-house. Thus Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966) played in a double bill with 3 Women (Robert Altman, 1977); Forbidden Planet (Fred M. Wilcox, 1956) and Journey to the Seventh Planet (Sidney W. Pink, 1962) were shown concomitantly before the midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975) on one Saturday before a somber Sunday of family melodramas in which a double feature of Sounder (Martin Ritt, 1972) and To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962) played back-to-back. Interwoven throughout was a number of films with queer appeal. Besides The Rocky Horror Picture Show, double bills of Therese and Isabelle (Radley Metzger, 1968) and Camille 2000 (Radley Metzger, 1969), Desperate Living (John Waters, 1977) and Pink Flamingos (John Waters, 1972), and Some of the My Best Friends Are (Mervyn Nelson, 1971) and The Killing of Sister George (Robert Aldrich, 1968) were screened. Interspersed were queer classics such as Death in Venice (Luchino 1 Visconti, 1971), Gay USA (Arthur J.