"You Can't be a People Unless You Have a History"

My artist’s statement for this project was essentially an ode to Postmodernism, some of it tongue in cheek, some of it very serious. The older I have gotten, and the more consumed with reinventing the old society has gotten, the more tired I have become in trying to say new things or to get my voice heard before someone louder or richer than me says what I want to say first. Yet in some ways, art is not even about saying anything directly, but more about taking what already exists in one’s everyday life and recontextualizing it when juxtaposed with the other things from one’s everyday life; the emphasis is on the experience, not necessarily on the creation.

For this project, I first became interested in the history of the LGBT individual, rather than community, through reading a copy of Maria Helena Dolan’s speech titled “You Can’t Be a People Unless You Have a History.” This speech was incredibly inspiring to me, especially in the capacity of becoming more educated myself, about myself and about my past, as a gay man. These things had never been evident to me, and their realization was the shifting of a paradigm within me. And while Dolan’s speech as a whole is very moving, it was simply her title that got me thinking about certain things.

Despite my own history, much of what I know in my past and in my own present is sex. People in America have a problem with gay men, first and foremost because of gay sex. Not only is sodomy outlawed still in most places in the country, but there is a connotation that goes along with gay sex, especially when a man "bottoms."  Being the one who gets sodomized, especially in American culture, is undoubtedly the lowest and most immasculating thing a man can do, maybe aside from being a “cocksucker.” Why? Because the man is a. taking on a woman’s role, b. is allowing another man to seemingly have power over him, and c. because he enjoys both of those things, he is a danger to all things masculine. Combined the fact that the sex is not in fact missionary in a culture that still refutes sexual exploration and enjoyment in most places between the vastness of New York and California, gay sex is still taboo, even to some gay men.

There is shame not only in sex, but also in pornography, right off the bat for obvious reasons. However, gay porn is interesting when compared to lesbian porn or straight porn. It is obviously a form of pornography where there focus is primarily on the men, and the functions of and dealing with the penis. So in gay porn, not only are all of these masculinity issues coming into play - with what it means to be the person receiving versus the person giving, in both anal and oral sex -  but there is also an anonymity of the present day with having it be online. This is opposed to yesteryear, where one would actually have to get up, get dressed and put on a jacket to go get some porn. Now, we can just tuck ourselves in a dark corner and get off, no muss no fuss.

However, along with that comes a whole new slew of issues that can brood and fester because of the fact that personal connection or interaction is no longer required; people’s fetishes and fantasies, both healthy and unhealthy, are allowed to roam cyberspace with no leashes, viewable to anyone who wishes to be a voyeur. It is extremely liberating and extremely dangerous all at once. The issues of the real world follow us into the cyber one, and the same issues that we deal with walking down the street are now in front of our face as we look for an orgasm. Racism, violence, misogyny, rape: all of these things are focuses on what people look at online to bring them to climax. These issues are not going away in our culture; and not are they not only not going away, they are becoming so ingrained in us, that we now use them to bring us sexual pleasure.

I began to explore these issues in my own work as an artist when I first realized that I indeed had something to say about them. I have begun to think about the issues that arise out of porn that say much more about us as a culture than the actual sexual act itself, although to some that is shocking enough alone and I will get to that in a second. These ideas of race and violence, combined with interpretations of what it means to be a man have become increasingly more important to all of us as a society. This is even more important to myself and as consequence, these notions have popped up in places where I least expect it.

I began to compile mental notes of things that I saw in porn: first off, there is an outward implication to those outside of my community that I even know this exists, and putting it in an art form, on display, is already sending out messages about who I am not only as an artist, but as a person. The obvious implication is that I know this exists because this is what I in fact enjoy, which is not necessarily the case. The race and masculinity issues are in fact a part of our history as gay men, and yet sometimes to some, it seems to be the only history we have. If it is, then we all should have no problem seeing it up close over and over again. It is after all, on face value, what we all enjoy.

***
So when I decided to put gay porn on twenty some odd computer monitors in a computer lab at George Mason University, some people were genuinely (and surprisingly) shocked. One professor, whom I had previously gone to for support and guidance immediately questioned its value as art, and was visibly upset by what they had seen. And I realize that to some, especially outside the gay community, gay sex at all is shocking. I had a student come up to me and say that she had never seen gay sex before, ever. This is a continuation of erasure of gay history to some extent, that we as a people are not even valid enough for those outside our community to know what brings us pleasure.

I put up at least eight different signs warning people about the sexual content inside the room, and I felt that was needed because while the images were shocking to some, my intent was not for shock value. I wanted my viewer to be aware of, not to be scared of what was going on inside. As the viewer walked into the room, they were faced with over twenty computer monitors, most of which displayed a short Quicktime movie of gay porn that was looped. I mostly chose gay porn videos that dealt with racism and violence, yet given the fact that apparently some were not even aware of gay sex, it was important that I sent out the message not that sex is bad, but that what we are looking to for sex needs to be questioned, as well as the identity that goes on behind it.

On the very first computer screen there was the website that Maria Helena Dolan’s article was displayed. I borrowed so much from her inspiration, that I very much wanted it to be apart of the display. Along with this, the computers were set up in rows, in an obvious classroom style, and the very first row was visible to passers by from the hallway. Because of consent issues, I did not want any of the porn to be visible to those just walking by, so on the other two monitors that were viewable from the hallway I decided to put news articles about gay men who had been murdered for being gay, which I also interspersed in the next row which dealt with violence.

In the violence row, all of the movies had obvious dominance issues: one was of a “daddy” figure pulling a younger male toward him and spanking him, another was of one man bending over the side of the bed and another from behind pulling his hair and forcefully penetrating him. The most disturbing one to most people seemed to one from a “twinks for cash” site in which two older men were trying to persuade another younger man to perform oral sex, and visibly forcing one of the men’s penis’s into his mouth, when he was clearly (or acting convincingly) uncomfortable. Also in this row I displayed the homepage of a website called “Bareback My Ass” in which the main draw to the site is in fact unprotected sex. This is another important aspect of gay history erasure when the current generation is blatently ignoring the past, especially when it is crucial to their survival. A few monitors down from that site, I displayed the site for the Northern Virginia Aids Ministry.

Over these computer screens I used an over head projector to display text that I felt juxtaposed and correlated to the images being shown. For this particular section of images, I selected a selection from transgendered writer Patrick Califia entitled Manliness in which he talks about male body image, as well as what it in fact means to him to be a man, when he lived half of his life as a woman. This idea of male self respect is so important to this issue, especially when compared to what was being seen on the computer screens. Califia then talks about what it means to be male and spur antigay remarks and how in turn it is really anti-male, regardless of sexual identity. His call to his readers, especially the male ones, is to respect our bodies and one another and not use them to perpetuate an image that society has placed on us.

The next row of videos that were playing were most of Asian-White porn. This idea of the Asian American Gay Male has always interested me, partly because of the influence of Asian ideas and customs in my life, as well as the continued invisibility of Asian Americans when compared to African Americans and even Hispanics, and the impact of people in my life of this group of people. In the hyper-masculinized society that is America, there is a de-masculinization that happens with Asian males, especially gay Asian males. They are stereotyped through out the gay community as being effeminate and taking the “woman’s” role during sex and in life, and are stripped of sexual identity through the process of prejudice both in and out of the gay community. Richard Fung wrote about this, especially in the realm of pornography, where Asians are often fetishized and/or somewhat anonymous participants in the acts. Fung argues that most of the time, the Asians faces are not shown, and more often than not they are always in the receiving position of gay sex. Very rarely, if at all, are they shown in the dominant role. If they are, it is almost never showing dominance over whites, only over other Asians. I put Fung’s text over videos of current gay Asian/White porn, to capitalize that this not only still exists, but also that it is more alive than ever.

The next row of video used were of ones showing an African American dominance over whites. Again, along the same idea of fetishizing race, there seems to be this new idea of having “black power” fantasies in which whites fantasize about being dominated by blacks, particularly stereotypical blacks. Juxtaposing this was an article by George Fredrickson titled “White Images of Black Slaves (Is What We See in Others Sometimes a Reflection of What We FInd in Ourselves?).” Besides the obvious connotation in the title alone, the text goes on to explore the role of the African American slave and how White people saw them, and how that image was in a sexual way, which is juxtaposed to the pornography of now.

The final projection of text I used was that of Walter Williams’ essay, “The Abominable Sin: The Spanish Campaign Against ‘Sodomy’ and Its Results in Modern Latin America.” This text I chose because William's goes into great detail about how Latino males view gay sex, and being that this country is populated with so many Latinos, it is relevant here as well. This body of text that I chose dealt with the role of the man giving the sex, giving the penis to the other man, with very much correlates to much of what I was talking about before in the realm of masculinity. William's takes this evidence further by documenting how in hispanic communities, as long as one does not “receive” anal sex or be the one performing oral sex, ones masculinity would not be questioned. It would only be one would receive anal sex or perform oral sex than one would then be classified as a maricón.

The other aspect that I included was that of music, and particularly two music videos, two by Madonna. One was of her music video for “Vogue,” which has obvious relation to the underground gay dance of the same name that she made mainstream with this song. The other correlation that this video provided was the aspect of a very “traditional” gay dance, in a piece of film that was beautifully shot, and the movements of the bodies of the dancers in the video with the movement of the bodies of the people in the pornography. There is a relationship with beauty going on that is both obvious and subtle that is very important to way the pornography is received, both actual and perceived.

The other Madonna video I had was for that of “American Life,” and that was smaller and on the the opposite side of the room, further from the entrance mostly because it was a more abstract and personal correlation to what was going on, but it also dealt with much of the other music. This music video happens to be the only music video that Madonna has ever censored herself, giving no more than a reason out of “respect of American troops” and never speaking more about it. The video is controversial, turning the War in Iraq into a fashion catwalk, and having the whole video be very tongue in cheek, using elements of hip hop and iconography in order to create this brilliant piece of film that she then pulled. In a climate of censorship growing bigger and bigger, it is interesting to think about governmental influence in other artists and writers, such as the whole 1989 NEA debacle, or Naomi Wolf, when they are too outspoken, especially in a country that celebrates as many freedoms as we currently believe we have. The idea of censorship, when compared to the other porn videos, and compared to the other video of “Vogue,” which caused a controversy because of Madonna’s exposed breasts, is interesting when this video that features violence is pulled from the artist and her more sexual one is shown fine, when usually in America it is the other way around.

The other aspect of the “American Life” video is the fact that one of the main questions asked by Madonna is “Do I have to change my name?”, presumably in order to say what she is saying without getting in trouble. These little snippets of lyric are very important to me, and I included other music that have a similar effect. I used a pseudonym for this project, which was the first unveiling of another identity that I had been toying with for a while. There was something about this project that I wanted to seem anonymous, and there is a definite distinction within myself to keep my work separate from my personal life, which is ironic on many levels because the two are so intertwined. However, in this case, the idea of what I was trying to do in the context of geographic and educational landscapes was somewhat frightening to me, and there was a comfort behind taking a fake name that I needed in order to complete the project. Whether that be cowardly or simply a necessary step can be debated, but the fact remains that I needed it. So the question of “do I have to change my name,” do I have to be someone different, do I have to have this separation of who I am, in this case, yes, I did. I did need to change, and because I felt that need, I wanted to ask the questions of what does that then say about the society and my comfortability in that society.

Above the “American Life” video I projected a simple line of text that I have used in other projects that said “I am the American Dream,” along with other text in Spanish and Japanese about wanting to live in America. If indeed this is our history that I share with the modern gay male, is this what we want? Why are people still wanting to come here and live in this country and participate in a dialog that includes this violent and sexually immoral and more importantly, unfufilling, nature? And yet, this is the history that we as gay men have for ourselves, while our more historical perspectives are continually washed away because some of us are more entwined in all of this other stuff to be educated about it.

As I said, I also used music that I felt correlated to the videos. The very first computer display that had the Dolan article played “The Beast Within” again by Madonna, who simply read biblical passages from the book of Revelation set to a lebanese artist chanting in the background. It is eerie and ephemeral, yet juxtaposed with other music, such as Hole’s “Violet” (Courtney Love screaming over violent sex “go on take everything, take everything I want you to”) or Anna Nalick’s “2 a.m. (Breath)” (“2 a.m. and she calls me ‘cause I’m still awake, can you help me unravel my latest mistake, I don’t love him, winter just wasn’t my season”), there this story telling that then happens with the songs playing, as well as a connotation that is given. These videos, if taken out of context of sexual frankness, each tell a story of a situation, and if the participants in the videos are in fact mere representations of the viewers who watch them, what are their stories, what has lead them to be the way that they are, what voices do they have?

Also, all of the music in the piece is by women, adding a feminine touch to very much testosterone filled images. Yet the women also tell a story themselves, and about their role in this, especially in realms of the “fag hag” and the women that gay men turn to for friendship when they cannot find it within their community. All of these pieces of music are an outside voice, continuing the story of struggle from a different perspective and yet adding their own spin on the issues of racism, dominance and a history through sex.

***

The struggle always for me in my work is not to repel people, but to include them in my world and the world’s that I feel have the possibility to benefit them. It is akin to what Sarah Schulman talks about in her essay “Why I am Not a Revolutionary.” It is the personal relationships and connections that are made with people that change them, not the shock value. However, some things in life are shocking. So what is the way to get them to be led on a journey that they do not want to go on? I cannot say that as of yet I have the answer. However, the things that I do have are a zeal and a passion for common understanding among people. Life is shocking, especially when we realize that there is so much about people that we don’t understand. It is bridging that misunderstanding between all of us that is the goal.

Updated 1/20/13, JRR.