However one interprets Kodak’s co-option of gay black dads Kordale Anthony and Kaleb Lewis for a recent advertising campaign, it’s nonetheless heartening to see open, honest depictions of black male homosexuality explored in a prominent space. This subject matter has never been well represented in the media, and the lack is particularly notable in the arena of filmmaking. While a handful of directors have carried the torch in recent years—like Stanley Bennett Clay (You Are Not Alone) and Patrik-Ian Polk (Punks, The Skinny, TV drama Noah’s Arc)—it’s arguable that the gap left by pioneering documentarian Marlon Riggs, who died from AIDS in 1994 at the age of 37, has yet to be filled.
Riggs was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1957. He shone academically, graduating first from Harvard, and then with a Master’s degree from UC Berkeley, where he became a tenured professor at its graduate school of journalism. He spent many years making documentaries, and his first professional effort—1986’s Emmy Award-winning Ethnic Notions—is a supremely cogent analysis of the evolution and perpetuation of the deep-rooted racial stereotypes which have historically fueled anti-black prejudice. In 1988, he further signaled his commitment to inclusive art by speaking before a US Senate Committee as part of the successful campaign to create the Independent Television Service (ITVS), whose remit was to support independent, unorthodox voices on public television.
Riggs’ most well-known work remains 1989’s Tongues Untied. This dense, lyrical essay film explores the joy and pain of the black, gay, male experience, from the freedom of erotic self-expression to the corrosive effects of homophobia manifested personally and systemically. It runs just under an hour, and boldly combines performance poetry (from Riggs’ friend and colleague Essex Hemphill, among others), stylized direct address, and archive footage from various civil protests. Its pulsating, fragmentary form reflects the inherently complex nature of its subject matter.
Throughout, Riggs distils tricky ideas into elegant and eloquent sequences. For example, a first-person account of Riggs’ one-time infatuation with white men (“I was immersed in vanilla—a flavor not my own”) segues seamlessly into a perceptive sociological treatise on the idea of “whiteness” as default, its deleterious effect on black self-worth, and the manner in which historically negative black representation—particularly images of bucks and slaves—has transitioned into the realm of gay pornography. Elsewhere, Riggs implicitly critiques received notions of a monolithic “black community” by interspersing scenes of black actors performing fire-and-brimstone religious bigotry with genuine homophobic stand-up routines from Eddie Murphy, and a disturbing anti-gay sequence from Spike Lee’s college-set comedy School Daze.
For all its intellectual heft, however, Tongues Untied is never an oppressively serious work. Riggs leavens the mood with humor—one particularly enjoyable passage focuses on ‘The Institute of Snap!thology’, who deliver a tutorial in the art of ‘Grand Diva’ finger-snapping—and he also celebrates romance in a series of sensually filmed, erotic reveries.
Ultimately, Tongues Untied—as indicated by its title—resonates as a paean to the joy and necessity of open communication and self-expression for black homosexuals. “What future lies in our silence?”, implores Riggs, midway through. “Let’s end the silence. Together. Now.” Crucially, the film is also about the importance of listening. Riggs invites us to ingest the real, lived experiences of men existing in a state of neo-Du Boisian triple consciousness (black, gay, American) so we may gain a greater understanding of life for a routinely oppressed, underrepresented group.
Tongues Untied had the misfortune to screen on PBS, in 1991, at the sharp end of America’s “Culture Wars,” a period in which art ranging from gangsta rap to photography by Robert Mapplethorpe was pilloried and suppressed by right-wing fundamentalists. Outraged by the film’s public funding, The Christian Coalition edited it into an incendiary seven-minute reel, and distributed it to every member of the House of Representatives as “proof” of its moral rot. Notorious conservative commentator Pat Buchanan, meanwhile, used unauthorized clips during the 1992 Presidential campaign in an attempt to discredit George H.W. Bush as a candidate who was happy to support illicit art.
Of course, the eloquent Riggs was more than capable of standing up for himself, and penned an op-ed in the New York Times which concluded with a stinging riposte worth repurposing in full:
“Needless to say, the insult in this brand of politics extends not just to blacks and gays, the majority of whom are taxpayers, and would therefore seem entitled to some measure of representation in publicly financed art. The insult confronts all who now witness and are profoundly outraged by the quality of political—one hesitates to say Presidential—debate. The vilest form of obscenity these days is in our nation’s leadership.”
Though suffering from AIDS, Riggs continued to make further documentaries, including Affirmations, a bright, brisk short tenderly exploring the intersection of black homosexuality and spirituality; and Non, Je ne regrette rien, a poetic study of five black men’s individual confrontations with the disease from which Riggs himself was afflicted, and would soon tragically succumb. He shot parts of his final film, Black Is…Black Ain’t while hospitalized, and it was completed by colleagues following his passing.
In the twilight moments of Tongues Untied, a spoken mantra develops, with impassioned , incantatory voices layering on top of each other: “Black Men Loving Black Men is the Revolutionary Act.” The bold exploration of this theme lives on in Riggs’ work, and if the stories of more Kordales and Kalebs become commonplace on our screens—and more filmmakers are prepared to assume Riggs’ mantle—then the Revolution will, perhaps, be televised after all.
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