riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (11/06/83)
A very prolific director, many of whose films have gay themes, is the
late German genius Rainer Werner Fassbinder. I haven't seen "Querelle"
or any of his other films which really centered around homosexuality,
but I do remember a very funny sequence in "In a Year of Thirteen Moons"
in which Fassbinder lampooned non-gays who feel compelled to identify a
little too closely with the gay scene out of a desire to be trendy and
liberal. The main character of the movie is an insane and extremely
untalented poet who decides that he is a reincarnation of a little-known
nineteenth century writer who happened, among other things, to be gay.
Our hero assembles a motley crew of young boys whom he pays to listen to
him recite poetry by candlelight in an imitation of the soirees of his
alter ego. Finally he begins to feel that his genius will never really
flower unless he can get some "real" experience under his belt, so he
heads for the local subway station restroom (or whatever) with the inten-
tion of making a pickup. In walks a pretty tough-looking "Ledertyp"
(played if I'm not mistaken by Fassbinder himself) who with relatively
little ado proceeds to "whip it out." Our protagonist faints.
Has anyone seen "Querelle"? The movie was criticized, among other things,
because it was both graphic and brutal. I'm afraid that I haven't yet
summoned the nerve to see it. I suppose that that's why I found the bit
in "Thirteen Moons" so funny: like a lot of non-gays who sympathize with gay
causes, I'm much more comfortable with homosexuality in the abstract than
in the concrete.
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Prentiss Riddle
{ihnp4,seismo,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle
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