The Raspberry Reich (2004)


Directed by Bruce LaBruce
****

 To watch a Bruce LaBruce film is to wait patiently for it to exhaust itself or to give up and get intensely frustrated. It's why they tend to work better when you're thinking about them afterwards.

 The Raspberry Reich is this at it's most extreme. LaBruce's provocations are incredibly overbearing here. Not just in sexually explicit material, but in the style of performance and visual appearance, splashing text all over screen to deliberately challenge and subvert the visuals, most often during those sex scenes. So, there'll be two guys fucking while CORNFLAKES ARE CAPITALISM flashes on the screen like a hyper socially conscious Noe. And that gets exhausting after a while.

 But as I sat in bed, trying to go to sleep, I couldn't shake the idea that The Raspberry Reich had something more important to say. And then it hit me, this is perhaps the only film I've seen that comes close to examining the overwhelming schisms in the gay community. In a recent article about Dale Peck's supposed homophobic hit piece on Pete Buttigieg, Jezebel writer Rich Juzwiak argued that it was indicative of larger divides in the gay community. Roughly, there were the assimilationists (advocates for marriage equality, straight acting gays determined to fit into society, the Love, Simon crowd basically) and the radicals (the queer people who fought for a new way of thinking, who wanted to burn it all to the ground, kinda like New Queer Cinema at it's most proudly gay).

 The mainstream media likes to think of all gay people as one entity, a singular presence that wants the same things, but that couldn't be further from the truth. These divisions are complex and deep. According to those divides, my rage at Love, Simon and its determination to present gay people as safe, sexless and straight acting is incompatible with my loving comitted monogamous relationship with my boyfriend of 5 years. And it's this central program that The Raspberry Reich explores.

 It's notable that the revolution that the Raspberry Reichers want is not a homosexual one necessarily. Gudrun may state that "There is no revolution without sexual revolution. There is no sexual revolution without homosexual revolution!" However, in practice, the constant fucking and blurring of sexual boundaries has the unfortunate tendency of letting the boys fall in love. Monogamy is incompatible with the revolution, The Raspberry Reich argues, but whether that's a tragedy or a triumph remains unclear.

 My biggest problem with the revolution that LaBruce appears to want is that it remains unclear what the endgame is. Yes, the current world order is an unsatisfying, racist, sexist, homophobic Capitalistic nightmare, but he doesn't offer an alternative. Communism is a nice idea but in practice, it has a tendency to fall apart. Gudrun wants a sexual revolution based on the ideas of Wilhelm Reich (much like in W.R.: Mysteries Of The Organism) but those concepts are so vague that it remains nebulous at best.

 It seems to be about shattering divisions of sexuality, homosexuality vs heterosexuality, but the film is so in love with gay men and demonising the straight community (which, fair) but it does mean that blurring the boundaries is more of a side effect (like in porn where a gay guy convinces a "straight" guy to suck him).

 So, what does Bruce LaBruce want? To shock the audience? To provoke us into SOME kind of response? Or does he just want to show some straight dudes exploring their sexuality and failing to revolt because they fall in love? Only LaBruce knows the answer to that, but it is fascinating to ponder.

 Also, I need t-shirts of THE REVOLUTION IS MY BOYFRIEND and HOMOSEXUALITY IS THE OPIATE OF THE MASSES immediatley. I told my boyfriend this and he said our straight friends might get offended. Maybe that's LaBruce's aim, to offend the straights at every turn. If so, maybe we have more in common than I thought.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Passing Strangers (1974)

Image
Directed by Arthur J. Bressan, Jr. ***** Incredible. Bressan's debut feature is a remarkable work of erotic cinema that feels unlike anything else I've seen. It's less interested in fucking than it is about romantic connection, bridging the gap between experience and coming out and the yearning to be with someone. The first half is a beautiful but quietly devastating portrait of loneliness, the black-and-white cinematography just making their sadness more stark. Yet, there are moments of light and passion. The sex is hot and the artistic flourishes Bressan uses are delightful. A dreamy bubble sequence is full of intense close-ups and joy. In the film's second half our two lovers meet and the world bursts into gorgeous colour. What struck me most about this wasn't that it was some fantasia. That beach date and subsequent sex are rooted in reality. Flying a kite together is stupid and silly but it's also so so sweet. It kinda reminded me of my first dat...
Read more

Golden Years (1982)

Image
Directed by Toby Ross **** Less of a narrative (despite an odd framing device that never gets any kind of explanation) means there is more of a focus on the action. Most of which is heavily stylised, like the naked dance that opens the film or the fantasy fireside sex at the end. Uses pop music in a hilarious way that adds to the mood. One scene, featuring a vaguely bored boy, is set to Emerson, Lake & Palmer's 'C'est La Vie', giving the scene a touch of bitterweet melancholy that actuallly works, even if I doubt it's what Ross intended. But the best scene in the film is a lengthy solo session where a naked guy walks around the house vaguely horny. Unlike many solos in modern gay porn, climax isn't the point, more of an erotic exploration. It feels unlike anything else I've seen in erotic cinema because it doesn't feel performative, but merely an expression of this guy feeling himself.
Read more

Forbidden Letters (1979)

Image
Directed by Arthur J. Bressan Jr. ***** Been trying to think of the right words to talk about Forbidden Letters for a couple days now. After seeing the new restoration on PinkLabel.tv, I was blown away. Each scene has complex thematic exploration and is visually stunning. Forbidden Letters is a film about distance, longing and being closeted even when you're out and proud. Richard has been in prison for a year, while his boyfriend Larry waits and remembers. Today is the day Richard is released. They've had little communication, the letters they've so desperately wanted to write never sent for fear of outing Richard and increasing his jail time. So they wait in their pain, the ache getting stronger and stronger. The film opens on a strange avant-garde montage of a lawyer explaining the situation, which is later revealed to be Larry's dream. He is woken by a call from his friend, Iris, the rare female character in a gay porn film. She's a fun presence, but her role be...
Read more