Marlon Riggs
Encyclopedia
Marlon Troy Riggs was a gay
African-American filmmaker, educator, poet
, and gay rights activist. He produced, wrote, and directed several television documentaries, including Ethnic Notions, Tongues Untied
, Color Adjustment
, and Black Is. . . Black Ain't. Riggs' aesthetically innovative and socially provocative films examine past and present representations of race and sexuality
in America
.
on February 3, 1957. He was a child of civilian employees of the military
and spent a great deal of his childhood traveling. He lived in Texas
and Georgia
before moving to West Germany
at age 11 with his family. Later in his life, Riggs remembered the ostracism and name-calling that he experienced at Hephzibah Junior High School
in Hephzibah, Georgia
. He stated that black and white students alike called him a “punk," a “faggot,” and “Uncle Tom
.” He explains that he felt isolated from everyone at the school: “I was caught between these two worlds where the whites hated me and the blacks disparaged me. It was so painful.”
From 1973 to 1974 Riggs attended Ansbach American High School's opening year in Katterbach, Germany. He was elected student body president at the military dependent's school. In 1974, Riggs returned to the United States to attend college. As an undergraduate, Riggs studied history
at Harvard University
and graduated magna cum laude in 1978. As Riggs began studying the history of American racism
and homophobia
, he became interested in communicating his ideas about these subjects through film
.
After working for a local television station in Texas for about a year, he moved to Oakland, California
, where he entered graduate school
. He received his master's degree
in journalism
with a specialization in Documentary film
in 1981 from the University of California, Berkeley
, having co-produced/co-directed with Peter Webster a master's thesis titled Long Train Running: The Story of the Oakland Blues, a half-hour video on the history of the blues
in Oakland, California
.
and producers
initially as a production assistant and later as a post-production supervisor
, editor, and sound editor. His first projects included short documentaries on the American arms race
, Nicaragua
, Central America
, sexism
, and disability rights. Because of his proficiency in video technology, Riggs was the on-line editor for a video production company. In 1987, Riggs was hired as a part-time faculty member at the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley to teach documentary filmmaking. He became a tenured professor
at Berkeley shortly thereafter.
That same year he completed his first professional feature documentary Ethnic Notions. The film was produced in association with KQED, a public television station in San Francisco, and aired on public television stations throughout the United States. In Ethnic Notions, Riggs sought to explore widespread and persistent stereotypes of black people – images of ugly, savage brutes and happy servants – in American popular culture
of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The film uses a narrative voice-over
provided by African-American actress Esther Rolle
in explaining striking film footage
and historical stills which expose the blatant racism of the era immediately following the Civil War
. The documentary also presents a set of contemporary interviews
with expert commentators, including historians George Fredrickson
and Larry Levine, cultural critic Barbara Christian
, and many others, who discuss the consequences of historical African-American stereotypes. This film expanded the commonly held assumptions about the parameters of documentary film aesthetics through its bold use of performance, dance, and music to explore a historical narrative.
While Riggs continued working as an educator at Berkeley, he kept making his own films. The 1989 film Tongues Untied, a highly personalized and moving documentary about the life experiences of gay African-American men, was aired as part of the PBS television series P.O.V.
The film employs autobiographical footage as well as performance
, including monologues, songs, poems, and nonverbal gestures such as snapping, to convey an authentic and positive black gay identity. In order to demonstrate the harmful effects of silence on self-esteem
, the film contrasts this image with negative representations of gay black men as comic-tragic stock caricatures and drag queens in contemporary American popular culture. The three principle voices of Tongues Untied are those of Riggs as well as gay rights activists and men infected with HIV Essex Hemphill
and Joseph Beam. Riggs characterized the film as his legacy, his "last gift to the community," that displays him as both a filmmaker and a gay rights activist. He described the production as his own personal "coming out
" film celebrating black gay life experiences and that he ultimately became "the person, the vehicle, and the vessel" for these experiences. Riggs explained that Tongues Untied was a catharsis for him: "It was a release of a lot of decades-old, pent-up emotion, rage, guilt, feelings of impotence in the face of some of my experiences as a youth. . . It allowed me to more past all of those things that were bottled up inside me. . . I could finally let go."
In 1988, while working on Tongues Untied, Riggs was diagnosed with HIV
after undergoing treatment for near-fatal kidney failure at a hospital in Germany
. The film shows the pain as well as the mentally and physically agonizing therapy that Riggs had to go through in order to deal with his kidney failure. But despite his deteriorating health, Riggs decided to continue to teach at Berkeley and make documentaries.
In the short 1990 piece Affirmations
, Riggs further developed his critique of homophobia that he originally expressed in Tongues Untied. In Affirmations, a film made from the outtakes of "Tongues Untied", Riggs included a coming-out story of black gay writer Reginald T. Jackson and footage of black gay men marching in a Harlem
African American Freedom Day Parade. In 1991, Riggs directed and produced Anthem
, a short documentary about African-American male sexuality. The film includes a collage of erotic images
of black men, hip-hop music, and a call to celebrate difference in sexuality.
In 1992, Marlon founded Signifyin' Works, a non-profit corporation whose mission is to produce films about African-American history and culture.
The 1992 documentary Color Adjustment was Riggs's second film to air on the PBS television series P.O.V. The film Color Adjustment was Riggs's follow-up to Ethnic Notions, focusing on images of black people in American television from the mid-1940s through the 1980s. However, unlike Ethnic Notions, which presents a putative, neutral stance on popular American representations of blacks, Color Adjustment presents a cultural critic
ism of these images through an African-American perspective on race. Produced with Vivian Kleiman, the film is narrated by African-American actress Ruby Dee
. Using contemporary interviews of television actors, directors, producers, and cultural commentators, the documentary conveys personal reflections and academic analyses of such television programs as Good Times
and The Cosby Show
.
In 1992, Riggs directed the film [Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (No Regret)], in which five gay Black men who are HIV-positive discuss how they are battling the double stigmas surrounding their infection and homosexuality. It was commissioned as part of a series of documentaries on the AIDS crisis. In 1993, Riggs received an honorary doctorate degree from the California College of Arts and Crafts. That same year, Riggs's experimental short Anthem was featured in a collection of short films entitled Boys' Shorts: The New Queer Cinema.
Riggs began work on his final film Black Is. . . Black Ain't in 1994. However, several months into developing the film, Riggs became critically ill, and the film was completed posthumously by co-producer Nicole Atkinson, co-director/co-editor Christiane Badgley, and Signifyin' Works. Much of the final text of Black Is. . . Black Ain't was developed by Riggs one night in his hospital room. "It was as if the film were rolling before me," he said, "and I was just transcribing; I almost couldn't keep up." The film therefore contains many scenes of Riggs on his hospital bed. The documentary takes on the topic of African-American identity, including considerations of skin color, religion
, politics
, class stratification
, sexuality, and gender difference
that revolve around it. "In this film, Marlon Riggs meets a cross-section of African Americans grappling with the paradox of numerous, often contradictory definitions of blackness. He shows many who have felt uncomfortable and even silenced within the race because their complexion, class, sexuality, gender, or speech has rendered them "not black enough," or conversely, "too black." The film scrutinizes the identification of "blackness" with masculinity as well as sexism, patriarchy and homophobia in black America." (University of California)
, and High Performance as well as anthologies such as Brother to Brother: Collected Writings by Black Gay Men. The themes of his writings include filmmaking, free speech and censorship
, and criticism of racism and homophobia.
In his noteworthy essay “Black Macho Revisited: Reflections of a SNAP! Queen,” Riggs discusses how representations of black gay men in the United States have been used to shape Americans' conceptions of race and sexuality. He argues that Americans' emphasis on the “black macho” figure – the warrior model of black masculinity based on a mythologized view of African history – signifies an exclusion of black homosexual males from the African American community, which results in their dehumanization
and rationalizes homophobia. Riggs makes a distinction between the black gay man's perception of himself and his representation in America as the “Negro faggot,” an extreme displacement and distortion of black homosexuality. He explains that the “black macho” image is sustained through performances such as rap music, television shows, the films of Spike Lee
, and the comedy routines of Eddie Murphy
. According to Riggs, the black homosexual male is therefore defined as the deviant Other
in relation to the African American community, and Riggs claims that this contemporary practice mirrors the historical racist constructions of the African American identity: “Blacks are inferior because they are not white. Black gays are unnatural because they are not straight. Majority representations of both affirm the view that blackness and gayness constitute a fundamental rupture in the order of things, that our very existence is an affront to nature and humanity.”
and history, and sense of belonging
. When you present anything on the level of contention, you encounter resistance.”
Riggs believed that being a filmmaker was a means to communicate his message, not an end in and of itself. Riggs explained that he did not become a filmmaker because he loved films as a child but because he wanted to communicate his message: “I didn't know anything about filmmaking when I decided to become a filmmaker. What drew me to film and video was that I wanted to communicate so much. . . I wanted to communicate to the broadest possible audience and for me that was television.” Riggs strongly believed in speaking out about the topics he cared about through his films. He explained that whenever he became passionate about an issue, he could not stop himself from speaking out about it: “Silence kills the soul
; it diminishes its possibilities to rise and fly and explore. Silence withers what makes you human. The soul shrinks, until it's nothing.”
As a graduate student at Berkeley, Riggs was educated in conventional documentary filmmaking, which stresses objectivity and employing an academic stance. But his film style quickly evolved to be rather personal and emotional. His first professional film Ethnic Notions, was composed of expert commentary, historical stills and film footage, and omniscient narration—standard elements for documentary films of the time. Yet at the same time, the film greatly departs from the norm of the day through its playful use of performance, satire and audio. Philip Brian Harper, an associate professor of English
at New York University
, explains that by challenging the norms of standard television documentary, Riggs was an innovator of television programming in America: “Riggs's work itself challenged television's generic boundaries. Riggs troubled broadcast convention, seen as implicitly under attack in the presentation of his work.”
, the New York Documentary Film Festival, the American Film and Video Festival, and the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. In 1992, Riggs was awarded the Maya Daren Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute
. Additionally, Color Adjustment won the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award, Erik Barnouw Award
from the Organization of American Historians
, the International Documentary Association
Outstanding Achievement Award, and a premier screening the Sundance Film Festival
. Riggs also received the Frameline Award from the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival for his film Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (No Regret). Moreover, Black is. . . Black Ain't won the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival
and was praised by the Sundance Film Festival.
, an independent federal agency that provides funding and support for visual, literary, and performing artists. The P.O.V. television series on PBS, which Tongues Untied was a part of, also received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts in the amount of $250,000. The film received much contention due to its depiction of nudity
, use of street lingo
, and scenes of men making love.
News of the film's airing sparked a national debate about whether or not it is appropriate for the Federal government of the United States
to fund artistic creations that to some are considered obscene
. Artists stressed their basic right of free speech and vehemently opposed censorship of their art. However, several right-wing United States government policymakers and many conservative watchdog groups
were against using taxpayer money to fund what they believed were repulsive artistic works. In the 1992 Republican presidential primaries, presidential candidate Pat Buchanan
cited Tongues Untied as an example of how President George H. W. Bush
was investing “our tax dollars in pornographic
and blasphemous art.” Buchanan released an anti-Bush television advertisement for his campaign using re-edited clips from Tongues United. The ad aired for several days throughout the United States but was quickly removed from television channels after Riggs accused Buchanan of copyright infringement
and asked his campaign to stop airing the ad.
Reverend Donald E. Wildmon, the president of the American Family Association
, opposed PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts for airing Tongues Untied but hoped that the film would be widely released, because he believed most Americans would find it offensive. “This will be the first time millions of Americans will have an opportunity to see the kinds of things their tax money is being spent on,” he said. “This is the first time there is no third party telling them what is going on; they can see for themselves.”
Riggs defended Tongues Untied for its ability to “shatter this nation's brutalizing silence on matters of sexual and racial difference.” He explained that the widespread attack on PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts by moral critics in response to the film was predictable, since “any public institution caught deviating from their puritanical morality is inexorably blasted as contributing to the nation's social decay.” In his defense, Riggs claimed that “implicit in the much overworked rhetoric about 'community standards' is the assumption of only one central community (patriarchal, heterosexual and usually white) and only one overarching cultural standard (ditto) to which television programming must necessarily appeal.” Riggs stated that ironically, the censorship campaign against Tongues Untied actually brought more publicity to the film than it would have otherwise received and thus allowed it to achieve its initial aim of challenging societal standards regarding depictions of race and sexuality.
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
African-American filmmaker, educator, poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, and gay rights activist. He produced, wrote, and directed several television documentaries, including Ethnic Notions, Tongues Untied
Tongues Untied
Tongues Untied is a 1989 semi-documentary film directed by Marlon Riggs. The film seeks, in its author's words to, "...shatter the nation's brutalising silence on matters of sexual and racial difference."-Content:...
, Color Adjustment
Color Adjustment
Color Adjustment is a 1992 documentary film that traces the evolution of the black image in television from the explicitly racist 1948 to more subtle 1988, where blacks are portrayed as wealthy and having achieved the American dream, an image that director Marlon Riggs finds inconsistent with reality...
, and Black Is. . . Black Ain't. Riggs' aesthetically innovative and socially provocative films examine past and present representations of race and sexuality
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the awareness of gender differences, and the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also be described as the way someone is sexually attracted to another person whether it is to opposite sexes , to the same sex , to either sexes , or not being...
in America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
Early life
Riggs was born in Fort Worth, TexasFort Worth, Texas
Fort Worth is the 16th-largest city in the United States of America and the fifth-largest city in the state of Texas. Located in North Central Texas, just southeast of the Texas Panhandle, the city is a cultural gateway into the American West and covers nearly in Tarrant, Parker, Denton, and...
on February 3, 1957. He was a child of civilian employees of the military
Military
A military is an organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats. The military may have additional functions of use to its greater society, such as advancing a political agenda e.g...
and spent a great deal of his childhood traveling. He lived in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
and Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
before moving to West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
at age 11 with his family. Later in his life, Riggs remembered the ostracism and name-calling that he experienced at Hephzibah Junior High School
Hephzibah Middle School
Hephzibah Middle School is a middle school, located in south Richmond County in the town of Hephzibah, Georgia. It is a part of the Richmond County School System. Hephzibah Middle School is the largest middle school, by attendance, in the Richmond County School System. It is located in a rural area...
in Hephzibah, Georgia
Hephzibah, Georgia
Hephzibah is a city in south Richmond County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. It is part of the Augusta – Richmond County Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 3,880 at the 2000 census....
. He stated that black and white students alike called him a “punk," a “faggot,” and “Uncle Tom
Uncle Tom
Uncle Tom is a derogatory term for a person who perceives themselves to be of low status, and is excessively subservient to perceived authority figures; particularly a black person who behaves in a subservient manner to white people....
.” He explains that he felt isolated from everyone at the school: “I was caught between these two worlds where the whites hated me and the blacks disparaged me. It was so painful.”
From 1973 to 1974 Riggs attended Ansbach American High School's opening year in Katterbach, Germany. He was elected student body president at the military dependent's school. In 1974, Riggs returned to the United States to attend college. As an undergraduate, Riggs studied history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
and graduated magna cum laude in 1978. As Riggs began studying the history of American racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
and homophobia
Homophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
, he became interested in communicating his ideas about these subjects through film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
.
After working for a local television station in Texas for about a year, he moved to Oakland, California
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
, where he entered graduate school
Graduate school
A graduate school is a school that awards advanced academic degrees with the general requirement that students must have earned a previous undergraduate degree...
. He received his master's degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
in journalism
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
with a specialization in Documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
in 1981 from the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, having co-produced/co-directed with Peter Webster a master's thesis titled Long Train Running: The Story of the Oakland Blues, a half-hour video on the history of the blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
in Oakland, California
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
.
Film career
Upon finishing graduate school, Riggs began working on many independent documentary productions in the Bay Area. He assisted documentary directorsFilm director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
and producers
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
initially as a production assistant and later as a post-production supervisor
Post-production
Post-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...
, editor, and sound editor. His first projects included short documentaries on the American arms race
Arms race
The term arms race, in its original usage, describes a competition between two or more parties for the best armed forces. Each party competes to produce larger numbers of weapons, greater armies, or superior military technology in a technological escalation...
, Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
, Central America
Central America
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...
, sexism
Sexism
Sexism, also known as gender discrimination or sex discrimination, is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas...
, and disability rights. Because of his proficiency in video technology, Riggs was the on-line editor for a video production company. In 1987, Riggs was hired as a part-time faculty member at the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley to teach documentary filmmaking. He became a tenured professor
Tenure
Tenure commonly refers to life tenure in a job and specifically to a senior academic's contractual right not to have his or her position terminated without just cause.-19th century:...
at Berkeley shortly thereafter.
That same year he completed his first professional feature documentary Ethnic Notions. The film was produced in association with KQED, a public television station in San Francisco, and aired on public television stations throughout the United States. In Ethnic Notions, Riggs sought to explore widespread and persistent stereotypes of black people – images of ugly, savage brutes and happy servants – in American popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The film uses a narrative voice-over
Voice-over
Voice-over is a production technique where a voice which is not part of the narrative is used in a radio, television production, filmmaking, theatre, or other presentations...
provided by African-American actress Esther Rolle
Esther Rolle
Esther Rolle was an American actress. She was perhaps best known for her portrayal of Florida Evans on the CBS television sitcom Maude and its spin-off series Good Times.-Biography:...
in explaining striking film footage
Footage
In filmmaking and video production, footage is the raw, unedited material as it had been originally filmed by movie camera or recorded by a video camera which usually must be edited to create a motion picture, video clip, television show or similar completed work...
and historical stills which expose the blatant racism of the era immediately following the Civil War
Civil war
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same nation state or republic, or, less commonly, between two countries created from a formerly-united nation state....
. The documentary also presents a set of contemporary interviews
Interviews
Interviews is:# the plural form of "interview"# a compilation album by Bob Marley & the Wailers, see Interviews # a C++ toolkit for the X Window System, see InterViews...
with expert commentators, including historians George Fredrickson
George M. Fredrickson
George M. Fredrickson was the Edgar E. Robinson Professor of U.S. History at Stanford University from 1984 until the time of his retirement in 2002...
and Larry Levine, cultural critic Barbara Christian
Barbara Christian
Barbara Christian was an author and professor of African-American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley...
, and many others, who discuss the consequences of historical African-American stereotypes. This film expanded the commonly held assumptions about the parameters of documentary film aesthetics through its bold use of performance, dance, and music to explore a historical narrative.
While Riggs continued working as an educator at Berkeley, he kept making his own films. The 1989 film Tongues Untied, a highly personalized and moving documentary about the life experiences of gay African-American men, was aired as part of the PBS television series P.O.V.
P.O.V.
POV is a Public Broadcasting Service Public television series which features independent nonfiction films. POV is a cinema term for "point of view"....
The film employs autobiographical footage as well as performance
Performance
A performance, in performing arts, generally comprises an event in which a performer or group of performers behave in a particular way for another group of people, the audience. Choral music and ballet are examples. Usually the performers participate in rehearsals beforehand. Afterwards audience...
, including monologues, songs, poems, and nonverbal gestures such as snapping, to convey an authentic and positive black gay identity. In order to demonstrate the harmful effects of silence on self-esteem
Self-esteem
Self-esteem is a term in psychology to reflect a person's overall evaluation or appraisal of his or her own worth. Self-esteem encompasses beliefs and emotions such as triumph, despair, pride and shame: some would distinguish how 'the self-concept is what we think about the self; self-esteem, the...
, the film contrasts this image with negative representations of gay black men as comic-tragic stock caricatures and drag queens in contemporary American popular culture. The three principle voices of Tongues Untied are those of Riggs as well as gay rights activists and men infected with HIV Essex Hemphill
Essex Hemphill
Essex Hemphill was an American poet and activist. He was a 1993 Pew Fellowships in the Arts.-Biography:Essex Hemphill was born April 16, 1957 in Chicago and died on November 4, 1995 of AIDS-related complications...
and Joseph Beam. Riggs characterized the film as his legacy, his "last gift to the community," that displays him as both a filmmaker and a gay rights activist. He described the production as his own personal "coming out
Coming out
Coming out is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity....
" film celebrating black gay life experiences and that he ultimately became "the person, the vehicle, and the vessel" for these experiences. Riggs explained that Tongues Untied was a catharsis for him: "It was a release of a lot of decades-old, pent-up emotion, rage, guilt, feelings of impotence in the face of some of my experiences as a youth. . . It allowed me to more past all of those things that were bottled up inside me. . . I could finally let go."
In 1988, while working on Tongues Untied, Riggs was diagnosed with HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
after undergoing treatment for near-fatal kidney failure at a hospital in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. The film shows the pain as well as the mentally and physically agonizing therapy that Riggs had to go through in order to deal with his kidney failure. But despite his deteriorating health, Riggs decided to continue to teach at Berkeley and make documentaries.
In the short 1990 piece Affirmations
Affirmations (film)
Affirmations is a ten minute short film exploring black gay sexuality as well as the inclusion of black gays in the black community. The film was produced by Marlon Riggs and released in 1990.- Production Team :- Synopsis :...
, Riggs further developed his critique of homophobia that he originally expressed in Tongues Untied. In Affirmations, a film made from the outtakes of "Tongues Untied", Riggs included a coming-out story of black gay writer Reginald T. Jackson and footage of black gay men marching in a Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
African American Freedom Day Parade. In 1991, Riggs directed and produced Anthem
Anthem (film)
Anthem is a nine-minute music video released in 1991. The film was produced by Marlon T. Riggs. The film displays mixes images of mainstream African-American pride, such as traditional African tribal dances, alongside images representing gay pride, such as ACT UP’s “Silence=Death.” The film uses...
, a short documentary about African-American male sexuality. The film includes a collage of erotic images
Eroticism
Eroticism is generally understood to refer to a state of sexual arousal or anticipation of such – an insistent sexual impulse, desire, or pattern of thoughts, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality and romantic love...
of black men, hip-hop music, and a call to celebrate difference in sexuality.
In 1992, Marlon founded Signifyin' Works, a non-profit corporation whose mission is to produce films about African-American history and culture.
The 1992 documentary Color Adjustment was Riggs's second film to air on the PBS television series P.O.V. The film Color Adjustment was Riggs's follow-up to Ethnic Notions, focusing on images of black people in American television from the mid-1940s through the 1980s. However, unlike Ethnic Notions, which presents a putative, neutral stance on popular American representations of blacks, Color Adjustment presents a cultural critic
Cultural critic
A cultural critic is a critic of a given culture, usually as a whole and typically on a radical basis. There is significant overlap with social and cultural theory.-Terminology:...
ism of these images through an African-American perspective on race. Produced with Vivian Kleiman, the film is narrated by African-American actress Ruby Dee
Ruby Dee
Ruby Dee is an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and activist, perhaps best known for co-starring in the film A Raisin in the Sun and the film American Gangster for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.-Early years:Dee was born Ruby...
. Using contemporary interviews of television actors, directors, producers, and cultural commentators, the documentary conveys personal reflections and academic analyses of such television programs as Good Times
Good Times
Good Times is an American sitcom that originally aired from February 8, 1974, until August 1, 1979, on the CBS television network. It was created by Eric Monte and Michael Evans, and developed by Norman Lear, the series' primary executive producer...
and The Cosby Show
The Cosby Show
The Cosby Show is an American television situation comedy starring Bill Cosby, which aired for eight seasons on NBC from September 20, 1984 until April 30, 1992...
.
In 1992, Riggs directed the film [Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (No Regret)], in which five gay Black men who are HIV-positive discuss how they are battling the double stigmas surrounding their infection and homosexuality. It was commissioned as part of a series of documentaries on the AIDS crisis. In 1993, Riggs received an honorary doctorate degree from the California College of Arts and Crafts. That same year, Riggs's experimental short Anthem was featured in a collection of short films entitled Boys' Shorts: The New Queer Cinema.
Riggs began work on his final film Black Is. . . Black Ain't in 1994. However, several months into developing the film, Riggs became critically ill, and the film was completed posthumously by co-producer Nicole Atkinson, co-director/co-editor Christiane Badgley, and Signifyin' Works. Much of the final text of Black Is. . . Black Ain't was developed by Riggs one night in his hospital room. "It was as if the film were rolling before me," he said, "and I was just transcribing; I almost couldn't keep up." The film therefore contains many scenes of Riggs on his hospital bed. The documentary takes on the topic of African-American identity, including considerations of skin color, religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
, politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
, class stratification
Class stratification
Class stratification is a form of social stratification in which a society tends to divide into separate classes whose members have differential access to resources and power. An economic and cultural rift usually exists between different classes...
, sexuality, and gender difference
Gender
Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...
that revolve around it. "In this film, Marlon Riggs meets a cross-section of African Americans grappling with the paradox of numerous, often contradictory definitions of blackness. He shows many who have felt uncomfortable and even silenced within the race because their complexion, class, sexuality, gender, or speech has rendered them "not black enough," or conversely, "too black." The film scrutinizes the identification of "blackness" with masculinity as well as sexism, patriarchy and homophobia in black America." (University of California)
Poetry
Besides making documentaries and teaching at Berkeley, Riggs also wrote poetry from time to time, as evidenced in Tongues Untied, which contains several of his poems about his life experiences as a black gay man. In his poem “Tongues Untied,” Riggs discusses the racism he encountered as a child while living in Georgia as well as coming out about his homosexuality.Writings
Riggs's writings were published during the late 1980s and early 1990s in various art and literary journals such as Black American Literature Forum, Art JournalArt Journal (CAA)
Art Journal, established in New York in 1941, is a publication of the College Art Association of America . As a peer-reviewed, professionally moderated scholarly journal, its concentrations include:...
, and High Performance as well as anthologies such as Brother to Brother: Collected Writings by Black Gay Men. The themes of his writings include filmmaking, free speech and censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
, and criticism of racism and homophobia.
In his noteworthy essay “Black Macho Revisited: Reflections of a SNAP! Queen,” Riggs discusses how representations of black gay men in the United States have been used to shape Americans' conceptions of race and sexuality. He argues that Americans' emphasis on the “black macho” figure – the warrior model of black masculinity based on a mythologized view of African history – signifies an exclusion of black homosexual males from the African American community, which results in their dehumanization
Dehumanization
Dehumanization is to make somebody less human by taking away his or her individuality, the creative and interesting aspects of his or her personality, or his or her compassion and sensitivity towards others. Dehumanization may be directed by an organization or may be the composite of individual...
and rationalizes homophobia. Riggs makes a distinction between the black gay man's perception of himself and his representation in America as the “Negro faggot,” an extreme displacement and distortion of black homosexuality. He explains that the “black macho” image is sustained through performances such as rap music, television shows, the films of Spike Lee
Spike Lee
Shelton Jackson "Spike" Lee is an American film director, producer, writer, and actor. His production company, 40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks, has produced over 35 films since 1983....
, and the comedy routines of Eddie Murphy
Eddie Murphy
Edward Regan "Eddie" Murphy is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, singer, director, and musician....
. According to Riggs, the black homosexual male is therefore defined as the deviant Other
Other
The Other or Constitutive Other is a key concept in continental philosophy; it opposes the Same. The Other refers, or attempts to refer, to that which is Other than the initial concept being considered...
in relation to the African American community, and Riggs claims that this contemporary practice mirrors the historical racist constructions of the African American identity: “Blacks are inferior because they are not white. Black gays are unnatural because they are not straight. Majority representations of both affirm the view that blackness and gayness constitute a fundamental rupture in the order of things, that our very existence is an affront to nature and humanity.”
Personal life
Soon after arriving in California for graduate school at UC Berkeley, Riggs settled in Oakland. For 15 years, he made his home with his life companion Jack Vincent. His parents Jean and Alvin Riggs and his sister Sascha live in Arlington, Virginia.Themes and style
Riggs's films deal with representations of race and sexuality in the United States. Riggs was critical of American racism and homophobia. He used his films to show positive images of African -American culture as well as those of physical and emotional love between black men in order to challenge representations of African Americans and black gay men in popular culture. However, he recognized that the images he conveyed would cause resistance among many Americans: “People are often frightened of difference. . . that requires that they rethink their own beliefs, their own premises, their own sense of self, cultureCulture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
and history, and sense of belonging
Sense of community
Sense of community is a concept in community psychology and social psychology, as well as in several other research disciplines, such as urban sociology, which focuses on the experience of community rather than its structure, formation, setting, or other features...
. When you present anything on the level of contention, you encounter resistance.”
Riggs believed that being a filmmaker was a means to communicate his message, not an end in and of itself. Riggs explained that he did not become a filmmaker because he loved films as a child but because he wanted to communicate his message: “I didn't know anything about filmmaking when I decided to become a filmmaker. What drew me to film and video was that I wanted to communicate so much. . . I wanted to communicate to the broadest possible audience and for me that was television.” Riggs strongly believed in speaking out about the topics he cared about through his films. He explained that whenever he became passionate about an issue, he could not stop himself from speaking out about it: “Silence kills the soul
Soul
A soul in certain spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions is the incorporeal essence of a person or living thing or object. Many philosophical and spiritual systems teach that humans have souls, and others teach that all living things and even inanimate objects have souls. The...
; it diminishes its possibilities to rise and fly and explore. Silence withers what makes you human. The soul shrinks, until it's nothing.”
As a graduate student at Berkeley, Riggs was educated in conventional documentary filmmaking, which stresses objectivity and employing an academic stance. But his film style quickly evolved to be rather personal and emotional. His first professional film Ethnic Notions, was composed of expert commentary, historical stills and film footage, and omniscient narration—standard elements for documentary films of the time. Yet at the same time, the film greatly departs from the norm of the day through its playful use of performance, satire and audio. Philip Brian Harper, an associate professor of English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
, explains that by challenging the norms of standard television documentary, Riggs was an innovator of television programming in America: “Riggs's work itself challenged television's generic boundaries. Riggs troubled broadcast convention, seen as implicitly under attack in the presentation of his work.”
Awards
Riggs's documentaries have received much critical acclaim. Riggs received a National Emmy Award in 1987. Tongues Untied was awarded Best Documentary at the Berlin Film Festival. The film also received recognition from the Los Angeles Film Critics AssociationLos Angeles Film Critics Association
The Los Angeles Film Critics Association was founded in 1975. Its main purpose is to present yearly awards to members of the film industry who have excelled in their fields. These awards are presented each January...
, the New York Documentary Film Festival, the American Film and Video Festival, and the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. In 1992, Riggs was awarded the Maya Daren Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
. Additionally, Color Adjustment won the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award, Erik Barnouw Award
Erik Barnouw Award
The Erik Barnouw Award—also known as the OAH Erik Barnouw Award—is named after the late Erik Barnouw, a Columbia University historian and professor who was a specialist in mass media...
from the Organization of American Historians
Organization of American Historians
The Organization of American Historians , formerly known as the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history. OAH's members in the U.S...
, the International Documentary Association
International Documentary Association
International Documentary Association , founded in 1982, is a non-profit organization promoting documentary film, video and new media, to support the efforts of documentary filmmaking and video production makers around the world and to increase public appreciation and demand for the art of the...
Outstanding Achievement Award, and a premier screening the Sundance Film Festival
Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival is a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independent cinema festival in the United States. Held in January in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Ogden, as well as at the Sundance Resort, the festival is a showcase for new...
. Riggs also received the Frameline Award from the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival for his film Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien (No Regret). Moreover, Black is. . . Black Ain't won the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival
San Francisco International Film Festival
San Francisco International Film Festival is the oldest continuously running film festival in the Americas. Organized by the San Francisco Film Society, the International is held each spring for two weeks, presenting an average of 150 films from over 50 countries...
and was praised by the Sundance Film Festival.
Controversy
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Riggs's production Tongues Untied triggered a national controversy surrounding the airing of the video on American public television stations. Along with private donations, Riggs had financed the documentary with a $5,000 grant from the Western States Regional Arts Fund, a re-granting agency funded by the National Endowment for the ArtsNational Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
, an independent federal agency that provides funding and support for visual, literary, and performing artists. The P.O.V. television series on PBS, which Tongues Untied was a part of, also received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts in the amount of $250,000. The film received much contention due to its depiction of nudity
Nudity
Nudity is the state of wearing no clothing. The wearing of clothing is exclusively a human characteristic. The amount of clothing worn depends on functional considerations and social considerations...
, use of street lingo
Profanity
Profanity is a show of disrespect, or a desecration or debasement of someone or something. Profanity can take the form of words, expressions, gestures, or other social behaviors that are socially constructed or interpreted as insulting, rude, vulgar, obscene, desecrating, or other forms.The...
, and scenes of men making love.
News of the film's airing sparked a national debate about whether or not it is appropriate for the Federal government of the United States
Federal government
The federal government is the common government of a federation. The structure of federal governments varies from institution to institution. Based on a broad definition of a basic federal political system, there are two or more levels of government that exist within an established territory and...
to fund artistic creations that to some are considered obscene
Obscenity
An obscenity is any statement or act which strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time, is a profanity, or is otherwise taboo, indecent, abhorrent, or disgusting, or is especially inauspicious...
. Artists stressed their basic right of free speech and vehemently opposed censorship of their art. However, several right-wing United States government policymakers and many conservative watchdog groups
Watchdog journalism
Watchdog journalism aims to hold accountable public personalities and institutions, whose functions impact social and political life. The term "lapdog journalism", for journalism biased in favour of personalities and institutions, is sometimes used as a conceptual opposite to watchdog...
were against using taxpayer money to fund what they believed were repulsive artistic works. In the 1992 Republican presidential primaries, presidential candidate Pat Buchanan
Pat Buchanan
Patrick Joseph "Pat" Buchanan is an American paleoconservative political commentator, author, syndicated columnist, politician and broadcaster. Buchanan was a senior adviser to American Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan, and was an original host on CNN's Crossfire. He sought...
cited Tongues Untied as an example of how President George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush
George Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
was investing “our tax dollars in pornographic
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
and blasphemous art.” Buchanan released an anti-Bush television advertisement for his campaign using re-edited clips from Tongues United. The ad aired for several days throughout the United States but was quickly removed from television channels after Riggs accused Buchanan of copyright infringement
Copyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...
and asked his campaign to stop airing the ad.
Reverend Donald E. Wildmon, the president of the American Family Association
American Family Association
The American Family Association is a 501 non-profit organization that promotes conservative Christian values, such as opposition to same-sex marriage, pornography, and abortion, as well as other public policy goals such as deregulation of the oil industry and lobbying against the Employee Free...
, opposed PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts for airing Tongues Untied but hoped that the film would be widely released, because he believed most Americans would find it offensive. “This will be the first time millions of Americans will have an opportunity to see the kinds of things their tax money is being spent on,” he said. “This is the first time there is no third party telling them what is going on; they can see for themselves.”
Riggs defended Tongues Untied for its ability to “shatter this nation's brutalizing silence on matters of sexual and racial difference.” He explained that the widespread attack on PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts by moral critics in response to the film was predictable, since “any public institution caught deviating from their puritanical morality is inexorably blasted as contributing to the nation's social decay.” In his defense, Riggs claimed that “implicit in the much overworked rhetoric about 'community standards' is the assumption of only one central community (patriarchal, heterosexual and usually white) and only one overarching cultural standard (ditto) to which television programming must necessarily appeal.” Riggs stated that ironically, the censorship campaign against Tongues Untied actually brought more publicity to the film than it would have otherwise received and thus allowed it to achieve its initial aim of challenging societal standards regarding depictions of race and sexuality.
External links
- Marlon Riggs at the Video Data Bank