The Creative Mind; 103; Marlon Riggs. Part 2

See we are no longer slaves. We no longer live under Jim Crow segregation. I don't have to bow or a brick to my face when a white woman or man passes my way. I don't have to sit at the back of the bus. And the reason I don't have to in any way abide by any of those horrific premises of life is because black people have spoken out and defined themselves and defined their humanity to the world. So I participate that and that dynamic I participate in that struggle through my work which is a video. This is a continuation of a two part conversation with Marlon Riggs. I'm Bettina grey. I am the writer Tom Wolfe has called the 90s a decade

of moral fever. Not since the McCarthy era have issues of personal expression been so hotly debated in our society. Those attempting to silence expressions considered obscene or controversial are met head on by those fighting to be heard and recognized. Marlon Riggs is the producer director and writer of numerous documentary videos. His work attempts to break that silence and confront issues of homophobia and racism. For his documentary ethnic notions which explores the racial stereotypes that have fueled anti-black prejudice since slavery he received a national Emmy Award. His more recent work tongues and was internationally acclaimed for its unprecedented look at black male gay identity as his art is also a celebration of both physical and spiritual well-being rig's highly values the importance of fitness and dance in his own life.

I spoke with Marlon Riggs prior to the release of his latest documentary color adjustment blacks in prime time. You have a t shirt that has the slogan silence equals death that you lose your identity and silence you lose your identity you lose your soul through silence. I think the attempt within the larger cultural framework and political framework of America to deny the humanity of all kinds of people not just black people not just gay people but people who are different has been more so than through oppressive laws through attempts at segregation Corentin immigration restrictions has been rather through cultural and political silence to not even acknowledge that these people exist and are worthy of belonging to the body politic is far more destructive I think than saying that you simply don't

belong or that this law prevents you from migrating or sitting in this particular place silences kill people literally killed people in terms of their sense of self. And for that reason silence equals death is more than just a slogan and response to the governmental and action around aid which has been horrific but rather it's dealing with the end tar and action of our society around issues of different irresponsibility and dealing with the very conflicted notions of who we are that this nation has in many ways struggle with over the centuries of its existence. So that's what silence is to me and in my work I hope to. I hope to explore that silence and also explode that silence through the articulation of what it means for me to be a black man a man and gay. Those areas in my work

directly address and shatter that silence. But when you bring out these images and these contradictions sometimes that leads to censorship homoeroticism and obscenity have been linked. Race has been linked with obscenity. Look at 2 Live Crew. I mean look at rap music in general that linkage between that which seems to threaten society and the mainstream mainstream society defining that which threatens is inherently obscene is not new. And my work has been challenge just on that level. It's controversial it's repugnant repulsive offensive. I mean all of these terms have been applied to not only tongues untied but to ethnic notions because it dealt with the areas with which were most conflicted and which we regard as being the greatest taboo because we're so frightened of dealing with

sexuality dealing with racial fragmentation and division. And for that reason I mean particularly when you try to reshape the dominant culture so that it deals with you and embraces you. You find this tremendous resistance and resistance by applying terms to you so that others will look at you as being offensive or controversial or aggressive. To this to that obscene and unworthy. Not only funding support airplay but unworthy of entrance interest or curiosity on the part of a viewing audience. And that's the sort of insidious nature of the entire sort of censorship arguments that it presumes that these people who are speaking about their experiences who are ticky lading through visual images through Portree through literature through photography their experiences their struggles their identities that they're unworthy of humanity's

attention because they're not really a part of humanity. That's what the censorship struggles often in many ways manifest what in at bottom I think is the issue here is how definitions of humanity and identity are being construed or constructed. So that our empowered and others are disempowered. Some are privileged and others are displaced and denied and marginalized. And that's the contest you know so much of your work is about speaking out about breaking the silence of anonymous identity. Doesn't that take a lot of courage. In some ways I guess it takes courage to speak out but in the many ways it doesn't. I mean the history of the African-American condition is just that articulating one's self one's identity to a society which from day one has systematically conditioned black people to believe that they're absolutely

unworthy of humanity that they are rubbish that they don't belong or should belong to the society. So that that quality that quality to speak out to articulate one's life one to experience one struggle is something that I participate in because it's a very ancient for me at least African-American dynamic and it's a dynamic which has gotten us where we are today. We are no longer slaves. We no longer live under Jim Crow segregation. I don't have to bow my eyes when a white woman or a man passes my way. I don't have to sit at the back of the bus. And the reason I don't have to in any way abide by any of those horrific premises of life is because black people have spoken out and defined themselves and defined their humanity to the world. So I participate that and that dynamic I participate in that struggle through my work which is a video by me.

I am you can any. These are the images that decorated our servant and amused and made us lunch taken for granted. They work their way into the mainstream of American life and ethnic caricature is an American. These have been the most enduring. Yeah yeah the ethnic notions talks about stereotypes. The Sambo or the mammy. You're trying to show the damage that those stereotypes have done.

I'm trying to show both the damage that they have done and are still doing. This is not history as removed a distant past as far as I'm concerned. But history as history often is which is very still very present living moving animating force and the life of a people and the life of their culture. And what I wanted to show with ethnic notions was how not only how it's damaged us as a people not just as black people but as an American people but also how we and why we've held on to these icons to these metaphors of ourselves and our conflicts within ourselves particularly within the conflicts within white America more so I think then black America. That Sambo the mammy the coon the pickaninny that these were manifest manifestations of society profoundly in contradiction with

itself and attempting in some way to resolve that contradiction through a notion of people which were not regarded as a people but in fact were subhuman or at least an inferior species of humanity such that this group of people could be treated one as slaves and when slavery ended as children as wards of the state wards of a paternalistic white supremacist society which had to take care of them because they could not take care of themselves. So I wanted to show that and how those images continually foster that mentality that black people were a problem that needed to be taken care of and how that problem is something that we still hold on to and how that problem is still perpetuated by the images of today. That this is something not something ancient that the images of Sambo are still refined still with us refined somewhat and that I mean we don't

see somebody with an era to era Grand most of the time but we do find images of blacks still who are almost menstrual like playing the comic and able to assimilate into the culture and in their attempt to assimilate showing the limitations of their character the limitations of their intelligence and behaving like before. As a consequence. So that's still very much is with us whether we're talking about film or whether we're talking about television. That image and the need for that image which is much more important the need to reconcile our contradictions about black people in the society. Through the symbolic means through entertainment images the need to control black people through these images when in fact society is out of control. You know black people are coming into your home and taking your things because television and the media culture in general says

in order to be an American living the good life you need the VCR the color TV the nice stereo set the Mercedes and so forth. Well if I need these things to be an American and I can get them by one means I will get them by another. And we're letting someone else make us who we are instead of knowing ourselves we're retreating were retreating from who we are and what we know the conditions of our society to be. And it's not totally letting someone else make the world. You know in another's view in order to just go along or to be comforted but rather we are to accomplice you know accomplices in the creation of that myth of that fantasy that means of denying and displacing the reality with which we don't want to contend.

We are responsible to as well as those who make the media images which we consume. So there is a double responsibility there's a double complicity there. We're right up against the fear of the alien. It's no coincidence that a lot of the popular films science fiction about the Alien and the fear reaction to alien. Do you experience that fear. But of course I mean I experience a fear quite literally and not so much the fear that I might feel but rather the fear of others toward me. For instance only not too long ago I was speaking at a class at a public high school here in the Bay Area where I was say the percentage of students there is heavily people of color primarily black Latin and Asian. I was speaking about my work tongues untied and about ethnic notions. The work that created the lightning rod of controversy and discontent

was of course Tang's anti dealing with black gay sexuality and black identity. People could not deal with me because of all of the associations the fantasies the fears of what they thought I signified. Why do you hate women. I don't hate women. Why do you not love God. I believe in spirituality. What is it about you that sort of makes you feel like you have to be so different. But difference is a virtue here so. But I saw there people were so not so much intent about really understanding me but protecting their own very fragile defenses of who they were. That my presence in and of itself nearly shattered that and so they had to be as resolute stubborn as possible and trying to undo me and trying to not just you know in some ways displace me from their presence but rather to completely annihilate me as being in any

way akin to them as a human being that I had to be someone who was a what in fact the question was Why are you what are you not who are you but what are you which said a lot that they could not make that connection that here was a human being who was different. Yes. And yet still the human being who was able to identify with them in some ways but also different with them. They couldn't make that leap that I was a what not a who and therefore that what was something that was in many ways something lower than themselves and not even quite belonging to the status of humanity. That's the fear that I encounter constantly. That is the fear the black people in the society and American society have encountered in had to deal with throughout the centuries. Enslavement both legal as well as defacto in the society. It's the same situation that we as gay lesbian and bisexual people encounter day in and day out.

And the same struggle that people of color generally have had to deal with and had to contend with that fear that resistance that attempts to deny and displace the other the alien. Do you have any suggestions for embracing instead of fearing differences. That's exactly what I try to do in my work to reconcile ourselves to ourselves to our pasts to in many ways those things with which we are most uncomfortable about in ourselves. I think so much of American society to me tries to present and reinforce this mythology that we are a wonderful nation illuminated with light and virtue morality ethical responsibility and that we move ever onward and upward. And occasionally there's some turbulence and turmoil but the manifest destiny of the nation is to rise and to show like a beacon. The way for the rest

of the benighted civilizations if they are civilizations in the world. Now that's a crock. We have many blights and blemishes and corruption extensive corruption within our own identity and within our own so what we need to learn is how to deal with that and how to integrate that into what we are and who we are so that we can really grow. We'll never be able to grow as a people as a nation as a society until we come to terms with ourselves and in particular come to terms come to terms with difference with the diversity of what has constituted in comprise this nation with a diversity that moves this nation still forward into the 21st century. Until we come to terms that will continue on this decline that we see manifest you know in our relations. You know the nation over whether it's in drug drug addiction or crime whether it's in unemployment whether it's in alienation whether it's in school

dropout rates we'll see those kinds of symbols those examples of people who cannot come to terms with themselves because they have no place in society. They're dislocated. They're not dealing with the truth of their own interior as well as a larger social character. And for that reason if they don't deal with it we will decline. What fascinates me is your use of the term we. When you've been in a society that has shut you out has drawn a circle to exclude you and you're drawing a larger circle. When you use the term we. We are inextricably interconnected. I mean I'm not one who believes for instance that black people can for instance go back to Africa and they will find the salvation that we will be redeemed there. We cannot go back because we are as an American as American as white Americans are. That is that which has made us what we are that which has formed our identities

is because of our connection because of our intrinsic umbilical connection to American soil to American political and social and cultural life. We cannot divorce ourselves from that. So when you and I myself and all of the people in this country are defined by our relationships there are constantly ways in which we deny our kin if you will. And what my work I think at least attempts to do is to break down those various walls that have imprisoned us from each other so that we can really begin to speak and to heal one another. We don't have to carve our own identity out at the expense of someone else. Exactly. And so much of our identity building building information has been and at the expense of others. It's been in denial of the identity of others and that has to stop. I mean it will stop perforce because of the demographic changes happening in the society.

People will no longer abide by being excluded from the society they will no longer abide by this assimilation that requires that they give up all of whom who they are and in order to belong to and become something called American people will not abide by that. When the numbers continue to grow of those who are forming and shaping what this is this nation is which we call America. When that happens things will just breakdown of their own accord. I would rather see that there is some attempt to deal with this before it reaches the point of just total dissension and total conflict. But rather we realize that we have to redefine in a very proactive way what it means to be an American what it means to be a citizen of these United States what it means to be a man or woman or a family in this country. And in that way learn to embrace true love and acceptance and reconciliation rather than through continued torment fighting dissension and power

brokering among different groups. What I think we have to recognize is that were facing a new age whether we like it or not and that the old identities are crumbling worldwide and that we have to be about the business of trying to shape something anew to forge something new that will bind us rather than continue to terrace apart. Do you have any idea of the Phoenix will rise. No and I probably won't be around when it does rise. I think in some ways in a vague outline of that shape I see a notion of identity that embraces multiculturalism in its truest sense not just a nice diversity in which we have the yellow people here and the black people there and the white people there who all sort of make up the melting pot of this monotonous you know androgynous sort of non descript American image but rather we have a sense a notion of

identity which embraces difference and respects difference which not just tolerate difference but affirms and respects and nurtures difference but a difference which does not attempt in my mind which has been destructive heretofore which does not attempt to privilege that difference over somebody else's but rather acknowledges that difference is something that's special to the human race to human society. But at the same time difference that allows us to appreciate what it is that makes us human rather then allows us to categorize humanity in ways it gives privilege and higher status to above others. That is what I hope this new Phoenix would show us. That's what I hope will come out of the ash heap of civilization as we now know it. That's going to be difficult. I think it's going to be a lot of painful horrific struggle around that because so many people's status and power and identity is tied to

preserving what's now the status quo and so much to the degree that that resistance continues will create and turn the backlash the struggle the pain and the extreme reactions on the other side to shatter that very repressive and oh press or construct style identity. Do you think democracy can really hold this many differences. That's going to be the test. And I really don't know. I really don't. I mean I see what's happening for instance UC Berkeley one of the most so-called diverse campuses in the United States probably in the world and yet they're a democracy if you will is failing. People don't integrate. They don't negotiate difference in any way. They hold off in their little units of sameness of separateness whether it's black or Asian or gay. You know they hold off. And what you have is you know

competing special interest groups playing out their special interests in terms of curriculum rather than political power. But still it's the same phenomenon. It's the same dynamic. It's a dynamic that runs throughout this country. And I think what has to change because we are really becoming one global family whether we like it or not is that we have to in some ways come to a different term. Of self acceptance of communal social identity definition and until we do it will continue to have all these struggles and will to continue to manifest our inability to integrate ourselves as a global people as humanity and vicious struggles and vicious conflicts and continue to displace to distort or to call people Hitlers or saints or the privileged the select or the damned. You know we'll continue to sort of use this kind of rhetoric that in many ways

reflects our own inability again to accept ourselves. It means a new myth. I think about doing is in many ways creating a mythology but a mythology in a sense a way of integrating and seeing the world in ourselves. A myth in the sense that we know is not literal truth and yet is metaphoric transcendent truth that allows us to both perceive and construct a personal identity and also relate that personal identity to the personal and cultural and group and social and national and international identities of others. It's in some ways a way of conceiving of self that is not premised on the other. And that's very very difficult because we really haven't had much experience trying to do that. So much of national identity is personal identities cultural identities are premised on the other. In fact it's the other which gives us our

sense of self. For without the other we would have to really look at ourselves and see the chaos within the other allows us to. It gives us that mirror a sort of distorting mirror that in fact we're unified that we're strong that we're integrated by comparison and yet without that other we're total fragmented chaotic so that's what were afraid of and that's what we have to deal with in the coming century. This has been a conversation with Marlon Riggs. I'm Bettina grey.