confirming the new world coming
by Douglas Messerli
Marlon T. Riggs (director) Anthem / 1991
The director begins with lines from Colin Robinson’s “Epiphany” arguing
that gay blacks must “Parade it proudly” and “Pervert the language”—lines
repeated several times—to which, when the recurring image of the men kissing,
alternates with a Donald Woods quotation from his “What Do I Do About You?:
“Every time we kiss”; followed by Robinson’s “Thrust worn, gritty fingers in my
mouth.”
The repeated scenes of an open rose petal, a cross, and the metal cock
ring finally give way to rows of memorial candles, as a voice asks, “Are you
scared,” “Are you safe?”
At
the heart of the work is Washington, D.C. poet Essex Hemphill, who died of AIDS
four years after this short work, reading his entire poem “American Wedding,”
the first stanza of which sings:
In america,
I place my ring
on your cock
where it belongs.
No horsemen
bearing terror,
no soldiers of doom
will swoop in
and sweep us apart.
They're too busy
looting the land
to watch us.
They don't know
we need each other
critically.
They expect us to call in sick,
watch television all night,
die by our own hands.
They don't know
we are becoming powerful.
Every time we kiss
we confirm the new world coming.
The
poem in its entirely is followed by image of an unfurling US flag, with the
artist Blackberri singing "America the Beautiful," followed by a
voice quoting Langston Hughes’ line: “I, too, sing America.”
The
images coalesce, break apart, and reconstruct, with bits and pieces of poems by
not only Hemphill, Robinson, and Woods, but Reginald Jackson and Steve Langley.
Although Riggs’ uses some hip-hop music in his video, he had in the past
also criticized some rap artists as perpetuating gay black stereotypes.
On
April 5, 1994, just 3 years after making Anthem, the director of the
transformative film Tongues Untied died of AIDS at the age of 37.
Los Angeles, November 11, 2020
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog and
World Cinema Review (November 2020).
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