Sal Bardo | Chaser / 2013

desire for destruction

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sal Bardo and Max Rhyser (screenplay), Sal Bardo (director) Chaser / 2013 [15 minutes]

 

Very few gay films being made today in the 2020s would dare to focus almost entirely on the sexual worlds of their central characters as films did in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century. AIDS was still very much in focus, and even as late as 2013, sex was still the prominent definition of being gay—so unlike today where gay life seems to be more of an imitation of heterosexual normality, and gay films focus on ways that gays have succeeded in that transformation, are still being kept out from that desired world, or still just can’t quite fit in. But the fact that gay men fuck other men and lesbians hump other chicks doesn’t any longer quite fit into the picture; and as some critics suggest, is perhaps why the films of Fassbinder or reminders of the past closeted gay world such as Boys in the Band are seen by some gay moviegoers as retrograde and even occasionally described as homophobic.

 

    Sal Bardo’s film of 2013, Chaser goes even a step further in re-claiming sexuality, featuring a young man. Zach (Max Rhyser) who is the eldest son of a somewhat conservative Jewish family and who himself works responsibly as an English schoolteacher—reminding one of a host of gay figures going back as far as Paul Körner, the violin teacher of Richard Osward’s Different from the Others (1919), John Alden, the classics professor in Oscar Apfel’s Phil-for-Short (1919), and the memorable character Frank in Frank Ripploh’s Taxi to the Toilets (1981), among others—all gay men who taught young students for a living.

      But beyond those representations of cultural normality, and perhaps in reaction to those restrictions, Zach is a gay man chasing down men (also referred to as “bug-chasers”) willing to participate in bareback sex in a time when its clear that he can be deadly through the infection of AIDS. Even more frightening, Zach is a bottom, nightly attending closed parties where wearing a condom is not permitted, while getting fucked on those same nights by numerous sexual partners.

     Bardo’s film attempts, in part, to relate his actions to some of his Zach’s students’ problems, one of whom writes a story about the act of “cutting,” describing his character as angry who feels lighter and relieved by taking a knife to his own flesh, as if his own self-mutilations are a better substitute for those imposed by others in his clearly painful life.

      Quoting from the nineteenth-century revolutionary and philosopher Mikhail Bakunin’s 1842 writing— “Let us put our trust in the eternal spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternally creative source of all life. The desire for destruction is also a creative desire”—the schoolteacher appears to justify his own desire for degradation or, as some would perceive it, of being used by others. How this might be perceived as creative is not ever explained, but Bardo and Rhyser throw it out as another way of perceiving the situation.

       As commentator Chucho E. Quintero notes, furthermore, “The particular beauty of Chaser is that, for all its chaos, emotional isolation, and physical degradation, there is no shame or tragedy in the way the protagonist’s sexuality if handled. The film doesn’t turn into a horror movie the minute the barebacking starts.”

 

     He continues, “Maybe Zach is looking for intimacy and a connection in all the wrong places; maybe he’s truly against the conformity of heteronormative relationships (the first scene with his family speaks volumes); maybe he sees anonymous bareback sex as a form of self-harm which

brings him some relief. … Chaser works because it doesn’t serve judgment on a platter for us to find a moral at the end. We get to make our own choices, just like Zach does.”

     Moreover, we are also shown another side of Zach, who despite his disdain for his brother’s “perfect” heterosexual marriage, aggrandized by the parents who see in their younger son all that they cannot find in the elder, truly likes his sister-in-law Sara (Rachel Claire), daily runs laps with her—his healthy exercises alone suggesting an odd contradiction to his nightly shots of possibly diseased semen—and generally enjoys her company. We might also suspect that his refusal to protect himself relates to his determination to live his very different life with the same full unchecked pleasure and enjoyment that his brother and sister-in-law live theirs, without the onus of the reality (he might describe it as a “belief”) that gay men, because of their numerous sexual partners, have a greater likelihood of infection.*

      And finally, this film seems to provide a slight possibility for of a way out of Zach’s dilemma. The doorman who has checked Zach’s pass to enter the fuck party we attend with him, stops him as he exits to shyly ask if Zach might be interested in meeting up some time for coffee or a drink, giving his name, Ian (Ismael Cruz Cordova) and writing out his address.

       It’s clear that Zach saves the address and intends on taking the cute boy up on his offer, which perhaps might be beginning of a one-on-one relationship that could pull him away from the group bareback parties. Perhaps he too can find his way into a deep fulfilling love focused on one individual. If nothing else, we do know that Zach’s open to it as an alternative for his current mode of living. And Ian is certainly better looking than some of the thugs whom Zach has allowed to penetrate him.

       Yet, Bardo and Rhyser are insistent in their intent to not judge their character’s current way of life. As Bardo noted in a radio interview, he and Rhyser rejected the idea of having Zach go to a doctor to get an AIDS test or even to require that he seek out other kinds of sexual satisfaction. As Bardo argues, life offers no answers, and we just wanted to show that there are people out there who are involved in this way of life and let the viewer come to his own conclusions.

 

*In what is a rather startling coincidence, immediately after seeing this film, I watched the Israeli film Rubber Dolphin (2018), in which the top of a gay couple complained about having to wear a condom, feeling every time he puts one on he felt as the film’s title describes it, and is given permission by his friend to fuck him without a condom.

 

Los Angeles, March 15, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2024).