New Queer Cinema, Queer Utopias in artistic practice, and Sufi Poetry
The political is personal and the personal loves to be entertained. With the debut of the camcorder came a new medium of entertaining — the personal began to make movies. This led to the rise of home videos, as well as a possibility for a new medium, one which told the stories of the truly personal. Film has always been the bridge between socio-political movements and the masses, but it was never something that anyone could just do. Times changed, however, and so did the things that anyone could do.
New Queer Cinema was a genre of film that was heavily politically and aesthetically charged — it didn’t really have a name, but with the unchecked spread of the AIDS crisis in the 80s, the subsequent outrage, and the growing consciousness of queerness and what it meant, films were beginning to come out in the 80s that directly referenced the larger movements that were occurring at the time. To call something New Queer Cinema implies that there was an old — which there was. It was not the first time that movies with queer themes were being made for the public. However, in the 80s, there was the formation of a larger and more open counterculture that began to speak openly about issues the community was facing, pouring into artistic output across media.
I believe that the link between queer identity and art is a strong one — for all the political discourse around it, it does come down to love and identity. These are themes that have historically been intertwined, even dictated the character of artistic practice. Queer filmmakers at the time were experimenting with a plethora of styles, themes, and narratives. This led to new ways of visualizing queer worlds and new ways of defining what it meant to be part of such a world. Sexual fluidity, the subversive nature of this fluidity, and brutality and repression were some common themes. But filmmakers were also exploring the idea of a queer utopia, of this fluid sexual identity and its power — as a result, there were films that were extremely sexual and played around with the idea of how normalized the presence of sexuality could be to the masses.
It’s interesting to look at the idea of a queer utopia. Would the ‘queer’ films coming out today be considered part of this New Queer Cinema movement? Not really. They didn’t arise from the socio-political context that films such as Paris is Burning or The Doom Generation did. But there is still something inherently political about them — and not necessarily because they mean to present themselves that way. Their inherent presence is subversive. And that’s why it’s interesting to look at the idea of a queer utopia — what does that entail? Are there only queer people? Does the community have all the sociopolitical rights as straight people, aspiring to that mode of life as the norm? Does everyone simply coexist — struggling to find their way in a system that is dominated by all the other hegemonies that still exist…just queerer? Or is it simply a fantastical world that artists utilise to make a space and setting for their queer art?
Paris is Burning was a 1990 documentary that recorded ball culture in New York City. It documented an underground world created by the ‘alternative’ — which consisted of the gay, transgender, Latino, and African-American communities. While it isn’t what one would call utopia — it is still a world constructed by communities that have been historically repressed, a world that allowed them expression and freedom. Jennie Livingston, the director of the film, presents drag as a performance of identity — a way to express one’s aspirations of their presence. It references the idea of what it means to be a man, a woman, gay, straight — a fixed identity, and how in reality, this is constantly in flux.
Gregg Araki is a film maker whose initial work came right around the time that New Queer Cinema was beginning to take off. A central feature of his films is the disparate young — the new generation of the narcotic dependent, sexually fluid, pleasure seeking youth. They toy around with a queer utopia where the repressive aspect ranges from fantasy to sci-fi. His characters are sexual to the point where onscreen sex is normalized, the scenarios outlandish, and the cultural landscape volatile. Everything rubs against each other to explode into a fantastical nightmarish world. I mention him because his films have been carrying a certain visual and cultural narrative since the 80s, one that queer theory in the 80s began to propagate — the idea that sexuality and identity is socially constructed, and all the known rules and labels need not apply. His worlds give space for characters to simply be queer (he also does deconstruct many tropes within the queer genre — and is also noted for his inclusion of a multitude of characters that aren’t, well, white) while also carrying on their sci-fi side quests on the parallel. Notable examples include The Living End, The Doom Generation, and, Totally Fucked up.
These, and other films of the genre, seem to focus on this idea of a world where queer characters can just be — where they live the way they want to be seen. And I see a parallel with that in the Sufi poetry and their concepts of desire and love.
Sufi poetry is laden with indirect homoeroticism, through the relationship between the devotee and their master — but the beloved and the lover seemed to be one and the same. The concept of annihilation of self, the idea that one is the other, feeds into the idea that to love and desire is to give ones own self up to immolation. There are no boundaries, for how can there be? There is no duality, there is no one else. I am you, and you are me.
There is also plenty of direct homoeroticism in Sufi poetry. Hafiz was a Sufi poet who regularly wrote on love and desire, and its divine nature which coincided with ecstasy and drink.
His sweet lips have (still) the scent of milk /
Even though the demeanor of his dark eyes drips blood
Another poet, Ubayd Zakani, wrote in verse that dripped with satire and that many considered obscene.
I’d like a boy to fuck — but I can’t pay;
I’d like some wine to while away for the day —
But as I’ve got no cash for carnal pleasures,
It seems there’s nothing left to do but pray
It is evident that there is a link between art, poetry, and queerness that seems to take on themes of a fluid world, where there is no external framework that restricts or binds characters to social norms. Yes, it depicts reality — but artists also choose to frame reality the way they want to, and more often than not, bend desire into a world of their making. It selectively affects their work. And what’s interesting is that this all exists within a hegemony that is supposedly structured and has no space for the alternate. This desire seems to just exist within a nation that is so heavily influenced by religion, tradition, and established ethics. This is not just restricted to Sufi poetry but to Indian mythology in general — all over, you can see this prominent theme of alternative sexuality that just seems to coexist with the rest. This is a world that runs in parallel to our institutional and societal framework.
There is something beautiful about artistic practice and how it expresses what an establishment cannot about the people. It depicts the personal, we add in the political, and the impact is carried on through its legacy. Artists can shape the way people view ideas and concepts; they can build on sentiments that they see around them and bring them to a larger stratosphere where people desire the same content. Film, poetry, music, art — these give us access to another realm of existence, one that we know currently resides within all of us.
