Justify My Love by Ryann Donnelly

Author:Ryann Donnelly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Watkins Media

Figure 18: Mykki Blanco, The Initiation, 2013

Blanco arrives at a bunker after passing through an industrial landscape. After entering a room sectioned off with cage wire, they remove their shirt and re-assume their crawling position. Blanco is matched with a shirtless black, cisgender male, who has the same facial animation on his head. The two brawl, and Blanco is shown bludgeoning the man while blood spouts towards the camera. Blanco is paid for the victory, and throws cash upon the victim in an act of disrespect.

Coming from an artist so aware of their gay/trans persona, the masculine violence — similar to what we observed earlier through Le1f’s masculine aesthetics — subverts the perception of gay men as effeminate and “less than,” while also tapping into the homoeroticism of sweating, aggressive, wrestling bodies; further suggesting the broader homo-eroticism of organized male sport. For those already familiar with Blanco’s oeuvre, or those who pick up on the artist’s painted nails as an establishment of their queer identity, the video’s violence subverts the idea of gay men as weak. The video otherwise mocks the audience who misses these elements — a veritable parody of how violence has been thought to authenticate heterosexual manhood.

While Le1f and Blanco seem to draw on stereotypical masculine images of “jocks” and “thugs” respectively, gay, male, solo electronic and pop artist SSION appropriates the masculine figure of a cowboy in his video Earthquake. In this work, SSION exaggerates and glorifies his specifically gay masculinity, while directly attacking hetero-conventions, aesthetics, and roles as limited and boring. The video begins with a long shot of a house on an open plot of green land. Its classic suburban appearance is symbolic of both the typical American model of family and security, as well as the mass-produced uniformity of that model. A red pickup truck circles the house and is shown driving directly over a rose bush. The camera pans up to show SSION singing into a red landline receiver from the truck, while directly addressing the camera. The pickup truck acts as a symbol of his masculinity, compounded by its crushing of another symbol of femininity and love. SSION also wears a masculine cowboy ensemble, subverted by his made-up face with lipstick and eyeshadow, painted nails, and rhinestone jewelry [Figure 19]. The image of him talking on the phone is shown streaming into the bedroom of a character who we presume is speaking to SSION, as he is also shown holding a landline receiver in bed. The boy wears an outlandish outfit of a slightly acid house aesthetic, with checkered pants and a black-and- white tube top over a long-sleeved yellow shirt. He is bald with a thin mustache that draws comparison to iconic gay filmmaker John Waters [Figure 20].

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