arthouse eye candy
by
Douglas Messerli
James
Bidgood (creator and director) Pink Narcissus (created from 1963 to
1970) / 1971 (release)
For
all of its audacious gay scenes—filmed from 1963-1970 by James Bidgood, mostly
in his tiny New York City apartment on 8 mm film—the director’s totally kitsch settings
serve as a stage to actually preach for a life that—unlike the fantasies of Bobby
Kendall, the boy prostitute locked up in a world of cheap gewgaws—that returns
to nature. In fact, the film begins in the natural world, following the development
of a cocoon and butterfly which flitters around the beautiful boy throughout.
Locked away in his own cocoon this beauty
mostly fantasizes a wild world far different from the one the director finds
preferable. Bobby first enters a grungy public bathroom ready to be sucked off
by others who gather there. Immediately after, the director shows us a frying
pan of sizzling steaks and other animal cuts, not so subtly suggesting that
such sexual behavior is no better than being treated like a piece of meat to be
gobbled down and shit out.
One by one, the devastatingly cute Bobby
tries on other imaginary personae, most attached to generic roles that gay men
were once attracted to (today, the figures of a cop, a cowboy, a leather dude,
a hard-hat worker, and a native American—in short, the iconic figures featured
in the musical group The Village People—might be more appropriate). But Bobby instead
sees himself as a handsome matador, who later, seated on a motorcycle runs down
his intended sexual victim who ultimately rapes him; a Turkish slave boy who
lives at the will of the heavy-stomached sultan; an intensely beaded male belly
dancer who, when his dance comes to an end, is sentenced to death; and,
finally, as a kind of circus freak whose specialty is taking huge dildos up his
ass.
In between this technicolor fantasia of
sexual possibilities, Bobby sips on wine and his listens to the songs (of both
humans and birds), allows the returning butterfly to twitter gaily around his
public hair and cock, and mostly stares at himself endlessly in the room’s many
mirrors, often touching and kissing his own image.
His jailer soon after returns, appearing a bit like the stock figure of evil out of 19th century and early 20th century melodramas. But when Bobby looks his way again, we see that his keeper has been transformed into his own face. The boy’s imprisonment apparently is one of his own making, which clearly suggests that he may never escape this frightening world of sexual power and domination.
The movie’s Bobby was a runaway whom Bidgood
took home, fed, and lived with for many years. Even near the end of the
director’s life the two, apparently,
remained friends, with Bobby admitting that he had never imagined himself as
good-looking until viewing his lover’s film.
Bidgood
was a window designer, musician (he also selected the music for his film), and
occasional drag performer who, quite obviously worked on his masterpiece in his
spare hours. When the film was finally released he insisted the directorial and
other credits read “Anonymous,” resulting in a great deal of speculation among
the gay world about who actually made this film, many suggesting Andy Warhol or
Kenneth Anger.
In 1998 writer Bruce Benderson decided
to track down the real director, finding Bidgood living in his 14th
Street apartment, who admitted to the
film’s creation as well as erotic pictures he had published in the 1960.
Arranging for a publication of Bidgood’s work through an agent friend, the
images became highly influential to several gay photographers, most notably the
French duo Pierre et Gilles, who produced a vast trove of similar work using
far more sophisticated techniques.
Despite any statements about Bidgood’s
cinema, however, one can only appreciate it by visually encountering the work.
There is no actual plot and, other than the few observations I have made above,
no completely coherent commentary can hobbled together. Pink Narcissus along
with its photogenic lead (other roles were performed by Don Brooks and playwright
and actor Charles Ludlum) is based entirely on what the eye registers.
Los
Angeles, August 15, 2020
Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (August 2020).
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