Queer film heritage

We can see the influence of earlier queer films like Kenneth Anger’s (1927-2023) Fireworks (1947), Jean Genet’s (1910-1986) Un Chant D’Amour (1950) as well as Jack Smith’s (1932-1989) Flaming Creatures (1963) among others on both Pink Narcissus and Flesh. Film critic Dennis Demody, in a documentary on James Bidgood, even goes as far as to describe Pink Narcissus as “Cocteau with cock.”[32] [open endnotes in new window]

From Jean Genet’s Un Chant D’Amour, a hand suggestively strokes flowers growing forth from his own pants similar to the scene of Bobby and the butterfly.	A shot from Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures of a character smelling flowers reminiscent of Bobby’s scenes in nature.

Thomas Waugh theorizes,

“This pair of opposites [queen-hustler] dominated both the fiction writing and the underground cinema of that transitional decade, from John Rechy to Jack Smith, with Warhol being one of the many artists, high and low, engaged in this iconography.”[33]

Waugh includes Flesh amongst these films that feature both hustler (Joe Dallesandro) and queens (Candy Darling and Jackie Curtis). Although Joe does not approach “swishing” queen, there is a softness to his masculinity that is often overlooked, which will be expounded on in later sections. The character of the hustler had made an earlier appearance in Andy Warhol’s (1928-1987) My Hustler (1965), and the gay-for-pay hustler shows up in contemporaneous films Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Boys in the Band (1970), which saw wider audiences.[34]

Likewise, Richard Dyer connects Pink Narcissus to this queer film heritage, including to Warhol himself, writing,

“The film has imagery from most phases of the underground: the sensitive young man, a visionary use of nature, intensified B-picture Hollywoodiana, hustlers and sailors… Stylistically, the use of 8mm blown up to 35mm gives the film both the iridescent colour of Anger and Markopoulos and the graininess of Warhol. The structure, oneiric, mythic, masturbatory, with a moment of terrible self-discovery towards the end, suggests the forties underground, but the looser, languorous shifts from one sequence to another also recall Flaming Creatures.”[35]

In addition to the imagery and themes of these films, they also share elements of audio montage. Scholar Juan A. Suárez writes that radio and television were “two formative influences on many 1960s underground filmmakers. But while filmmakers imitated the format of these commercial media, they subverted their implicit ideologies and contents.”[36] He points to the mock commercial in Flaming Creatures as well as the way the music in Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1963) uses lyrics of “heterosexual teen love and longing” set “to homoerotic images.”[37] He explains,

“A central function of music in [Jack] Smith, the Kuchars, or Anger, for example, is to work as a coded message to be deciphered in conjunction with the image…In combination, image and sound evoke an unreal realm of fantasy and play.”[38]

We see these same elements of play and fantasy at work with the audio playing in both Pink Narcissus and Flesh. Suárez goes on to say,

“Sound-image juxtapositions in avant-garde cinema tend to work in this manner: they are conceptual rather than natural or organic; sound and music function less as emanations from the world of the image than as reflections or asides.”[39]

These audio intrusions and montage show up in both Pink Narcissus and Flesh. The idea that the sound-image juxtapositions function as a type of reflection becomes even more interesting when considering how the hustlers are reflecting their desire.

Through an analysis of the two main characters Joe and Bobby, in the films Flesh and Pink Narcissus (played by Joe Dallesandro and Bobby Kendall, respectively), I argue they create a performance of desire for their audience by making themselves the object of desire rather than being a subject of desire.[40] Through the creation of the self as an object of desire, Bobby and Joe find agency through their performances of desire. I apply a textual analysis in the tradition of Cultural Studies: I am more interested in how these texts can be interpreted by viewers rather than examining the directors’ intentions.[41] This method allows for more exploration of the queer possibility and nuance within these films.

Finally, both of these films engage in a dialectic about Times Square without actually ever showing Times Square itself. Pink Narcissus, with its alternate version of the space, plays with ideas about queer fantasy while still including cues to the actual Times Square. Flesh, by not including Forty-second Street, creates a narrative about Forty-second Street versus the neighboring areas of Bryant Park and Third Avenue by extension. Thus, by mapping these films onto the city, the hidden histories of queerness, still silently embedded into the city itself, come into view.

The gaze, identification and performing desire

In these films, through the characters of Bobby and Joe and their performances of desire, they turn the gaze back onto themselves thus subverting their own objectification. Through this inversion of the gaze, the hustlers perform their desire for the johns with a distinctively queer gaze or “ga(y)ze,” that it is neither a male nor a female gaze. Scholar June L. Reich posits,

“The language of performance, critical to the theoretics of postmodern bodies, usually constructs subject and object as spectator (reader) and performer (read) in a dualism that either forecloses or negativizes agentic possibilities.”[42]

Through the creation of the self as an object of desire, Bobby and Joe find agency in this performance of desire. In their interactions around Times Square, these characters explore their sexualities and queerness through these performances, creating space for more nuanced possibilities of queerness. This then shows how queerness can resist specific identifications to take on more fluid meanings.

Feminist scholar Laura Mulvey coined the term “male gaze” in her famous essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975). Mulvey theorizes that the male gaze is created by the camera, representation and characters, and by the audience who receives it. She posits three “different looks” or gazes in cinema: “that of the camera as it records the pro-filmic event, that of the audience as it watches the final product, and that of the characters at each other within the screen illusion.”[43] Women on screen are passively consumed by the active male for the pleasure of the male viewer and thus objectified.[44] Queer Studies scholar Alexander Doty explains that as Mulvey theorizes the gaze: “patriarchal masculinity leering at objectified femininity—writes homosexuality out of existence.”[45] Scholar D. N. Rodowick furthers expounds on this writing, “Mulvey discusses the male star as an object of the look but denies him the function of an erotic object.”[46] Mulvey’s theorization does not account for a same sex or queer gaze of any kind.

Scholars Caroline Evans and Lorraine Gamman write about the limitations of gaze theory as it has been traditionally theorized wanting “to suggest a ‘queerer’ or more fluid model of identifications, and consequently of the text.”[47] Similarly responding to Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze, Thomas Waugh writes,

“If heterosexual culture simplifies and rigidifies the dynamics of male subject and female object through the tyranny of gender difference, same-sex eroticism opens them up, rendering them ever more volatile.”[48]

He argues against the separation of subject and object that Mulvey describes as happening in heterosexual encounters instead describing a sameness or unity:

“Same-sex eroticism layers upon the individual erotic object choice the option of identification as well as voyeurism, project as well as objectification: we (often) want to be, we often are the same as the man we love.”[49]

Conversely, I argue that the characters in these films queer this dynamic between subject and object by flipping the script. They become themselves the object of desire for their gay male clients and thus for the audience. Clients are made legible as gay men, but through a queer reading, they too become more complex.

The characters portrayed by Bobby Kendall and Joe Dallesandro become themselves the object of desire for their clients, turning the gaze back onto themselves thus subverting their own objectification. The characters “Bobby” and “Joe” create the self as an object of desire, a form of empowerment in which they find agency in their performance of desire. Through this inversion of the gaze, that is neither a male gaze nor a female gaze, operating in these instances as a distinctively queer gaze or ga(y)ze. Bobby and Joe re-inscribe their own gaze, and thus their masculinity, onto themselves to create that performance for their clients and, by extension, for a queer viewing audience.[50]

Contemporaneous reviews of these films diminished the complexity and nuance of the characters’ sexualities, leaving little room for ambiguity nor the potential for sexual fluidity. A New York Times review from 1968 described Joe in Flesh simply as “bisexual,” not doing justice to the fluidity and potentiality of his queerness.[51] Similarly, Bobby’s character in Pink Narcissus gets simplified to a “gay male prostitute”—ignoring the nuance of his sexuality and its many characterizations throughout the different fantasy settings.[52] The characters’ sexualities are more complex than these reviews convey and cannot simply be reduced to a surface-level reading.

Flesh follows a day in the life of Joe, a young hustler played by Joe Dallesandro. The film begins with an opening shot of Joe naked and asleep in his bed only to be awakened by his wife. She insists he go out to make money for her girlfriend’s abortion. From the opening of the film, there is a focus on Joe’s naked body—fetishizing his form. Joe’s body is not only on display for his clients but also for the pleasure and desire of the viewing audience through the ga(y)ze. While he traverses spaces near and around Times Square, he explicitly voices that he does not want to go down to Forty-second Street. The film shows Joe on the street and through his interactions with various johns: a stroll down the avenue while men cruise him, a quick hookup in a bathroom stall, an extended session with an artist and ultimately a meeting with a regular john. At the end of the film, Joe finds himself back in his apartment with his wife and her girlfriend. He lies about actually having worked and learns that the girlfriend no longer needs the money anyway. The final shots of the film zoom back in on his naked body in bed again to close out his day.

Joe walks down the busy avenues in search of work avoiding Times Square proper.	At the end of day, the closing shot of Joe back in bed bookending his day.

In Pink Narcissus the young hustler Bobby Kendall appears in various scenes lounging in his pink, gilded hotel room. These scenes are then juxtaposed with different daydream sequences. Each scene comes to mirror each other: those in the hotel room with either those on the street or the other daydream sequences.[53] The film opens with a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis as Bobby enters the hotel room, lights a candle, and then admires himself before a wall of mirrors. These mirrors in his daydream then transform into an arena with phallic columns where he is a matador urging along a young handsome biker, played by actor Don Brooks. The scene also transforms into a row of urinals in a tearoom where the two men have a sexual encounter.[54] When a handsome young bellhop arrives, the scene changes into a Roman court where Bobby transforms into both a classical statue and then a Roman slave. Bobby is transported to an “Arabian Nights” style all-male “harem” with his gaze fixed on a dancer who wears nothing but pearl necklaces and a gauzy scarf.[55] Bobby doubles—simultaneously finding himself on the street in Times Square hustling and in the hotel room receiving a phone call from one of the johns who is on the street. He blows out the candle he lit earlier similarly showing the cyclical nature of his work as it does for Joe in Flesh. The alternate Times Square is presented in stark contrast to the fantasy of the hotel room, yet all of these sequences present unique fantasies.

A butterfly emerges from its chrysalis mirroring Bobby’s own emergence and later transformation.	Bobby lights a candle when he enters the hotel room.
Bobby enters the hotel where he admires his reflection in front of a hall of mirrors.	The mirrors from the previous shot transform into phallic columns where Bobby is now a matador who instead of urging along a bull will urge along a handsome biker.
Bobby stands in front of a row of urinals in a tearoom transformed from the arena columns.	Actor Don Brooks plays the bellhop as well as the biker. He also appeared in many of Bidgood’s physique magazine spreads.
In the Roman court Bobby appears as a classical statue as well as emperor.	Bobby also doubles to appear as a prisoner/slave in the Roman court.
	Bobby on the street talks to a john. Here his clothes appear stiffer, more masculine.

Pink Narcissus and the fantasy of Times Square

There is a strong connection between hustlers and the gay subculture of Forty-second Street/Times Square in both of these films. This space becomes symbolic in Pink Narcissus.[56] For example, there are moments where Bobby is simultaneously in the hotel room and in Times Square soliciting johns. This doubling illustrates a tactic of queer survival—being mutable in identity and being able to exist in multiple spaces at once.[57] Bobby’s gender presentation shifts as well, from feminine within the domestic space of the hotel to masculine out on the street.

Bobby lounges in the hotel room surrounded by all things pink and decadent making a call on a jewel-encrusted phone.	Some of the bottomless men on the street including a construction worker alongside a completely nude man with an umbrella.

In the hotel, he wears luxurious, gauzy fabrics and lounges while taking a call on a gem-encrusted gold telephone, enveloped by a soft pink light. Times Square, brimming with all of its vices and men (many of whom go bottomless even in the winter), awaits Bobby just outside his window. Gay Scene film critic Bruce King in his contemporaneous review of the film, calls it a “depraved Times Square, Forty-second Street area.”[58] Likewise writer Bruce Benderson describes “the hellish apotheosis...a descent into a depraved underworld of homoerotic desire in an urban setting.”[59] Benderson further explains,

“That fragile butterfly becomes synonymous with the innocent, budding masculinity of a beautiful young man in a Times Square hotel room, who is quickly learning to use his body for pleasure and gain.”[60]

The outside world stands in stark contrast to the indoors of the softly lit pink, gilded hotel room. Outside is dirty and dangerous with the perverse and criminal lurking around every corner.

Bobby wears all white when he is out on the street, although the contrast to the dirtiness and darkness of the street is much more apparent than when he is lit by the pink hue of his hotel room. His clothing appears stiffer and gives him a more masculine air. On the street Bobby has a greater need to perform his masculinity to elicit the desire of his clients and also to protect himself from the dangers that lurk on the street. In the safety of the hotel room he is more able to explore his femininity. Bobby sheds his outer layers almost immediately upon entering the hotel. His clothes lie on the hotel floor like fallen flower petals of the titular Pink Narcissus.

Bobby’s clothing, once shed, appears like flower petals fallen on the floor.	A long arrow covered in lightbulbs announces Bobby on the street or perhaps directs him to his place.

Yet on the street, Bobby is surrounded by darkness, the only visible light emanates from the neon signs. The sign closest to him reads “TASTE ME” as well as large arrow covered in light bulbs announcing Bobby’s presence on the street. Each space, the hotel and the street, represent their own kind of fantasy: escapism through luxury and anonymity. The hotel presents an escapist fantasy and spatially provides a heavenly ethereal quality above the hell of the streets into which Bobby descends. The alternate Times Square, despite the nightmarish quality, still represents a fantasy of desire and sexual vice amidst the grime.

The first time the film introduces this alternate Times Square, Bobby opens the window, and the sound of the radio announcing the day’s hockey scores can be heard and subsequent channel surfing of other radio shows including news about a union strike. There is no dialogue in the film and save for the song “I’ve Grown So Lonesome Without You” and then “alleluias” sung during the rainstorm scene, the only other voices in the film are from New York news radio stations. The radio only plays when Bobby is either staring out the window onto Times Square or when he is actually out on the street. The radio is an “intrusion of reality,” to borrow a phrase from Richard Dyer, as are the other “realistic” elements that the film includes in the street scenes.[61] Even within this space of fantasy, there is a reminder of the harshness of the real world—queers are never allowed the luxury to escape for too long.

Outside Bobby’s window, there are neon signs naming the hotel he is in as well as several other hotels, theatres and bars. The signs mark the space and locate the viewer in this fictional Times Square. The hotel room serves as a contrast to the street below. Everything in the hotel is pink, silky and soft or alternatively glittery and gilded like the jewel encrusted telephone that Bobby answers when johns phone him up. The hotel room is brightly lit, while the street is dark, dirty and gritty not unlike the actual Times Square.

The glowing sign of the hotel where Bobby stays.	Neon signs for bars, theatres and other hotels glow outside of Bobby’s hotel window.

Even Bobby transforms outside of the hotel room. The street has the feeling of a soft-core porn scene with all of the men walking around without pants. Here the fantasy of the gay porn spills out from the porn theatres into the streets of Times Square. The press release, from a recent exhibition of James Bidgood’s work at CLAMPArt in 2022, reads: “He translated the city surrounding him into a flamboyant queer utopia, driven by his love for everything kitsch.”[62] It goes on to say,

“Using humble materials in combination with his advanced tailoring skills and aesthetic literacy, Bidgood built a cosmos of queer belonging in his apartment…Within this space, and in front of his lens, the homosexuals that were ostracized by larger society could be beautiful, glamorous, complex, silly, or simply themselves, transforming into characters from another universe.”[63]

This conception of “queer belonging” in Bidgood’s work, especially in Pink Narcissus, cannot be underestimated at a time when these representations were hard to find.