Queer Cinema in Europe by Queer Cinema in Europe

Author:Queer Cinema in Europe [Europe, Queer Cinema in]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Queer Cinema in Europe 234p 9781841500799 1841500798
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

136 | QUEER CINEMA IN EUROPE

Figure 16. Reclining naked in a bubble bath, seventeen-year-old ‘straight’ boy Robert does his best to

“meet the needs of the homosexual [or film-maker] who hires [him]” in Not Angels But Angels/Andělé

nejsou andělé (1994).

As Eve Sedgwick has previously observed, a queer identity-formation proposes an “open mesh

of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances, and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning

[wherein] the constituent elements of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or

can’t be made) to signify monolithically” (1993: 8). The purportedly queer heterosexuals

that these films thus envision – though unable to fit the label of ‘homosexual’ – have become

aligned with the gay communities, cultures and politics of post-communist Prague in spite of

their politically ‘troubling’ sexual proclivity towards the opposite sex. They are, in fact, the

apparent embodiment of a knowing and radical new world of “mobility” that is situated at the

intersection of many fertile boundaries, both real and illusory. An ‘imagined community’ that

dovetails with other identity-fracturing discourses to produce a uniquely postmodern nexus for

‘liminality’, and a disruptive, negotiative space where sex and sexual orientation – amongst

other things – have become subversive sites of transaction, role-play and fantasy: “a space

for sexual experimentation and unknown pleasures” (Bunzl 2000: 85). And regardless of any

superficial pathos and preaching, it is this apparently ‘borderless’ dimension to the neo-Czech

adolescent male identity – the challenge it poses to the established demarcations and territories

of hetero- and homo-normativity – which really fascinates Grodecki. That blurring of boundaries

which has, as a result, opened up a whole new world of multiple possibilities: “my body is just

an illusion… a game to play”.

BODIES WITHOUT BORDERS? QUEER CINEMA AND SEXUALITY AFTER THE FALL | 137

“There is no love without money”

In his analysis of the structural arrangement of Not Angels But Angels and Body Without Soul,

Kevin Moss surmises that both films are “in many ways heavy-handedly manipulative and

moralistic”. And while it is true that Grodecki exhibits a less than subtle tendency to juxtapose

most of his more ‘shocking’ confessional footage with a knowing cutaway to one of the

numerous religious statues that omnisciently dominate the city’s ancient skyline (“as if the saints

were looking down in stern judgment”), these rather clichéd ‘interventions’ in truth do little to

really detract from the somewhat matter-of-fact and uneasily erotic nature of the experiences

that these ‘corrupt’ young men expose. Furthermore, the true exploiters presented here are

not the supposedly malevolent western sex tourists that have flocked to the region, but those

home-grown pimps and pornographers (all apparently ‘straight’ family men) who have come

to realize the very lucrative potential that this new pink economy holds. As Grodecki is only too

keen to emphasize, they have learned to both appropriate and subvert these mutually beneficial

new structures of “Eastern supplies for Western demands” (Bunzl: 87). And are, in the end,

just as quick to capitalize and profit from the misguided erotic assumptions of the “sad” and

“perverted” westerners upon whom they prey: “I choose them”. What is more, the unforeseen

consensus that is gleaned from the testimonials of most of his titular fallen angels implies that

their supposedly hopeless existence is, on the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.