Bobbie Gentry In Four Easy Pieces, and Pass The Biscuits Please

The lavish “The Girl From Chickasaw County” collection is on its way to becoming the music box-set of the year, right when the compact disc format sails into its sunset era. After decades of low-level rumbling on behalf of The Legend of Bobbie Gentry, The Stuff been served by the overdue release of her entire Capitol Records efforts, and then some.

Legends of course need to grasp on to something more than core substance for real traction. The embellishments and the made-up stuff take care of things well enough when the personification of the legend itself/herself refuses to take the bait of publicity for any reason whatsoever. It remains to be seem what effect the glamorous box will have on The Legend: its most significant recent boost came courtesy of Neely Tucker from the Washington Post attempting - and failing - to flush Bobbie Gentry out in much the same way a zealous press would stalk a killer on the run. It doesn't seem too iconoclastic to suggest that 'finding where Bobbie Gentry lives' and 'a slow news day' are probably one and the same thing, but Legends can always use sustenance. Fifty years after the fact, Rolling Stone are finally on board with Bobbie Gentry - albeit dismissing her as a country artist. (In the counterculture heyday of the mag, artists who made career choices like Bobbie Gentry were only ever acknowledged with snotty contempt if they were acknowledged at all.)

While Bobbie Gentry’s 1967-71 Capitol recordings are almost her entire recorded output, they’re also representative of a career ethos which frustrates many who are looking for a musical integrity on their terms. Self-styled musicologists will miss the point of Bobbie Gentry if they’re looking for a slew of albums which 'legitimize' her as Swamp Rock’s First Goddess, and pop fans of the era might be wishing for a lot more Top 40 fodder of the Jimmy Webb persuasion. And that's too bad for them: Bobbie Gentry, you see has no interest at all in curating a legacy or a legend. And good luck to the self-appointed arbiters of what is highbrow and what is lowbrow because Bobby Gentry presents a paradox or two for further consideration.

The recordings aren't, or weren't, a woman's work in its entirety. They are however the best documentation we have. Which suggests the first bullet point regarding The Legend of Bobbie Gentry:

The Homoerotics of Orientalism

    While Homosexual History is a disjointed affair – the 1870's Victorian term “homosexual” being a relatively new concept comprising definition, pathology and vilification in equal parts – we the men who desire and have sex with other men can glean much from the past to know about our present day selves beyond modern Western ideas about identity.

We’re wise to take a “Well, yes and no…” approach when trusting academia to stay in its own lane: Queer integrity necessitates viewing LGBTIQ as a political collective whose successes rise and fall on being able to rally around overarching goals...goals which coincidentally intersect with race and broader gender issues only some of the time. Masculinity itself as an academic pursuit somewhat surprisingly however has been most poorly studied, and is consequently misunderstood. And male homosexuality as an offending sub-species of masculinity isn’t likely to fare well within that contextualization.

It’s then overwhelmingly impressive when an academic with impeccable credentials publishes something like “The Homoerotics of Orientalism”. Joseph A. Boone’s 520-page masterpiece (a fascinatingly informative and satisfying read) manages to take Orientalism from its old-tymey connotations and frame so much about how homosexualists are very real (and perhaps universal, if not timeless) participants in masculinity, although currently disenfranchised when it comes to effectively shaping masculinity.

No slouch himself when it comes to nutting out the finer points of Queerdom, race and transnational culture, (the following extract from) Eng-Beng Lim's excellent review highlights the degree of critical thought which pervades the book:

In Joseph A. Boone’s monumental tome, The Homoerotics of Orientalism , the conundrum of engaging in the evidentiary politics of homo-orientalism itself becomes a critical challenge. What the book helpfully provides is a surfeit of historical evidence for their comparative quotidian and sensationalist treatments. Such an exhaustive examination of the ‘cross-cultural interplay of homosexual desires and taboos throughout history’ is best read as a contribution to world sexuality studies rather than queer studies even as it steers astutely clear of identitarian-based readings of homosexuality.

Readers who marvel at the book’s interdisciplinary visual, literary, historical and ethnographic scope may be struck just the same by its particular strength as an encyclopedic endeavour. Its coverage of same- sex encounters or male-on-male love over a period of 400 years primarily in the Islamicate world and secondarily in Anglo-Europe and the United States is at times breathtaking and at times overwhelming. The sheer range of Western and Middle Eastern objects (miniaturist painting, salon art, diaries, travel writing, canonical texts, films, ethnography, pornography, advertising, cartoons) is itself a useful resource. Many visual artefacts are given relatively long treatments for those seeking close readings of representative images as texts. They are richly descriptive and often outweigh the theoretical framings ghosting them. This encyclopedia-plus approach serves as a kind of repository or locus for myriad meanings generated by the ‘echo’ chambers in the study. As Boone surmises, ‘reading these cultural manifestations contrapuntally, listening to their echo-effects they create, adds a density of texture that illuminates the staying power, connotative energies, and accretion of meanings that emanate from them’ (p. 53).

In this regard, the mounting evidence of what might count as orientalist homoerotica or homo-orientalist art reads like a ‘discovery’, toggling between colonial anthropology and the legal definition of the term to produce a kind of self-conscious, defensive or enlightened form of critical reading. It would seem that this archive of homo- evidence is so big that it can anticipate both homophobic pre-emptions and queer interrogatories around the question of same-sex desire and erotic practice from the precolonial to the transnational Islamic world. The book makes the case for a more textured, if also benign, form of humanistic understanding that is untethered from the overdeterminations or preformulations of power that some scholars are said to model (badly) after Edward Said and Michel Foucault. The result is a compendium of sex acts, courtship behaviours and eros between men that are sometimes observed in their own right as homoerotic evidence. Suffice to say, the book’s engagement with the critical ruminations of Said, Foucault or other theorists is secondary to the full descriptions of identifiable themes, encounters and tropes (such as the beautiful boy, the pasha and the eunuch) that appear in its many sympathetic readings of works by European writers and artists. Boone adopts a largely detached stance in his writing, which shines in the literary interpretations. Elsewhere, it seems almost campy as readers pore over rare images and graphic descriptions of men doing things to other men as he maintains his resolute tone of directed indifference.

    Boone's own preface reveals his clear understanding of the nuances of sexuality which must shape such a broad subject lest it be undone by dualistic assumptions, or an overemphasis on differences. He expertly rises to the challenge of addressing both homosexual acts as well as identity, as they've historically played out for, and by, men of what was once known as The Orient. The author hasn't assembled a linear history as such - more a highly successful attempt to empirically gather evidence which isn't assembled to suit any narrative or foregone conclusions.

von Gloeden's 1890s Orientalized Sicilians

An actual Oriental / Ottoman same-sex couple circa 1920s

 






In focusing on Orientalism, Boone is able to relieve homosexual history of being determined by, or rooted in, Occidental Classicism and its uncomfortable associations with pederasty. In fact, more modern bridging images (as photographed by the likes of von Gloeden) appear to be of rather old  'boys': he coated his subjects in emulsions and used filters to peddle real men as 'youths'. (Anti-pornographers and their missionary kind are usually smart enough to avoid scapegoating von Gloeden as an exploiter of the poor and/or non-consenting: his models received good royalties from their images, and did so with the blessings of their communities.)

Von Gloeden's images are important inasmuch as they are the earliest photographic evidence of homoerotic Orientalism as it straddled the art vs smut divide. They also effectively refute how European art had traditionally insisted on mitigating the penis size of sexually mature males from Classicism onwards. While some insist that the photograph itself is more of a vehicle of pornography  than any painting or sculpture (due to its infinite possibilities for reproduction), there's no doubting its superior ability to document. But what von Gloeden documented wasn't penises of exotic races - he documented forays into erotic Arcadianism and Orientalism by virtue of a then-revolutionary medium. In a way he made homoerotic Orientalism more real, and in doing so dignified it.

It would however be quite wrong to suggest that von Gloeden (or any image for that matter) defines or best represents homoerotic Orientalism, or that it had, or has, watershed moments. The Homoerotics of Orientalism successfully prevents the topic (and the men) from being dismissed as products and images of Western projection: Orientals themselves certainly bring enough meaningful homoeroticism to inform the topic.

 

Professor Joseph Boone address (Van Leer Jerusalem Institute 2016)

 
Of course "The Orient" nowadays refers to territories, races and peoples far removed from what and where Orientalism flourished - Boone's milieu encompasses cultures of North Africa, Asia Minor and a broad Arabia. Language, dress and religion have significantly gutted the Middle-Eastern man of his benign homoerotic appeal, and Boone is courageous enough to invoke Abu Ghraib images of men to demonstrate that demonically dark side of homoeroticism, as practiced by men (and women) who torture.

Orientalism as a viable homoerotic pursuit probably had its last days of innocence in our own times immediately before the demise of the busy cruising areas around the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. They hosted Israeli and Palestinian men coupling in the name of Eros...oblivious to the reality of The Other being rapidly recast as The Enemy. Given what came before (The Crusades) and what has since transpired, it's not too simplistic to isolate these acts of homosexuality as possibly the only tangible evidence of men behaving with any degree of sanity toward each other in the entire region, for a very long time.

The Seditions and Subversions of "Querelle"

The thought of murder often evokes thoughts of the sea…of sailors…and what 

eventually follows thoughts of the seas and murder is the thought of love and sexuality. 

Querelle by Cocteau 1947

   Or so the opening credits voice-over for R.W. Fassbinder’s Querelle claims. The credits themselves state that the film is about Genet’s “Querelle de Brest” - rather than "an adaption of” or “based on” the book. The novel's anti-hero is both pretty homosexualist and psychopathic killer. Some knowledge of the classic 1947 Existentialist tome may or may not be a hindrance in appoaching the 1982 Expressionist-cum-Surrealist film. Querelle challenges direct access from almost every approach: the narrative is Querelle himself, and that’s underscored by anti-cinema devices like bad dialog, obvious sets, melodrama and the darkest of comedy.

Film school teaches that script is of elementary importance. Consumers of porn know it isn’t. Fassbinder knows how to get ‘em where they think, and in doing so abandons most traditional elements of film-making in favor of images and sound which can steer a viewer in diverse or conflicting directions. The film's sound design incorporates narrations which mock the idea of Great Truths being told. Occasional title inserts from Genet serve as other theater-in-the-round asides. "Clues" are often thrown from long shots, and some scenes back-reference others within the labyrinthine plots. Querelle was gutted prior to release - twenty percent of the film was edited after Fassbinder's death for running-time considerations. Scenes have been rearranged, and secondary characters like Matrose and Mario's stool pigeon / boyfriend Dede are gone. Querelle's earlier murder and robbery of  The Armenian has been excised altogether.

Three and a half decades of being relegated to cult-but-not-camp status haven’t anointed Querelle with any revisionist patina, causing it to be celebrated for something it isn’t. And what it isn’t is a film with a clear story line – the auteur rightly deemed the book as coming up short on story. Nor did he attempt to create one: the convolutions of Querelle’s exposition challenge us to focus on what we get as fact or fantasy. As Dylan’s wordy “Lily, Rosemary and The Jack of Hearts” assembled shady characters, ideas and images for an unresolved musical tale with cabaret and crime motifs, Fassbinder does it cinematically. He approaches the source material thus:


“As far as discrepancy between objective plot and subjective fantasy is concerned, “Querelle de Brest” may be the most radical novel in world literature. On the surface, its story, when divorced from Genet’s world of images, is a fairly uninteresting (in fact, third-class) tale about a criminal, and as such is hardly worth our while.  

 
Only those who are truly identified with their own selves no longer need to fear fear. And only those who are rid of their fear are capable of loving nonjudgmentally. The ultimate goal of all human endeavor: to live one’s own life.” 

 

 Token Identities

 

Querelle...sailor

Lieutenant Seblon... Querelle's voyeuristic superior and closeted admirer 

Lysiane...Madame of the Feria Bar bordello, wife of Nono

Robert / Gil....Brother of Querelle, lover of Lysiane / Unwitting patsy to Querelle

Nono....Husband of Lysiane, gatekeeper of the Feria Bar

Vic...Querelle's partner in crime, his murder victim

Mario...Corrupt police officer, Feria fixture

Roger....pretty boy, brother/substitute of Gil's unseen girlfriend

A pox be upon this house and all it stands for: the Feria bordello

   On a massive soundstage sits the set of Brest redux - an Expressionistic  re-imagining of the French port destroyed in World War 2.  For cinematic purposes, the town is more lately dominated by the Feria Bar, replete with enormous phallic statuary. Like a mosque of sorts, there's little doubt about what overshadows the town's trade and sensibility. The theatrically lit and painted port of no fixed temporal identity is not unlike its denizens and visitors, inasmuch as they too are of identities of dubious substance, and of no particular age. All exist as interchangeable people - not limited to, but most notably within sexuality considerations and the inherent vagaries of same.

If a bordello's secondary social purpose is to keep men from straying to queerness, then the Feria (transl. "market", "fair") has certainly lost its way by the time Querelle arrives. It's probably not the place for a slow-starting son to come of manly age in the traditional sense, nor would it be an ideal mobile brothel for an army in need of approved sexual release. The identities of the Feria's top brass have caused its culture to morph from prostitution into something else.

  
Enter Querelle then, a loner fresh off the recently docked Le Vengeur ("The Avenger"). While negotiating an opium sale to Nono at the Feria, he runs into his brother Robert, currently ensconced as lover of the ageing voluptuary Lysiane. He decides he "wants" Lysiane - especially when he learns that a toss of dice will determine whether or not his ass first goes to Nono. Lysiane lives in a blurred world of confected desirability, womanly wiles and tarot cards. Games of chance it seems determine how love and sexuality become manifest at the Feria, or at least how they are deconstructed.

Both milieu and subculture conspire similarly with the individual in search of identity, and in the case of homosexuality, identity often is experienced as mirrored male bodies defined by dicks and asses and the what-nots of will-to-power. Querelle however is no genital fetishist: within his apparently disoriented sexuality he seeks a way to prevail without having to ritualistically compete with other men on time-honored terms. But not by assuming “fairy” characteristics (like affected softness and non-violence) will he seek identity: grabbing at crumbs from the table of "real men" isn't his style. Querelle’s world according to Fassbinder isn’t one of misogyny or fascism – it’s one in which femaleness and femininity are ineffective and superfluous...regardless of who attempts it.

Querelle will take upon himself what the Feria is failing to accomplish: the task of how to best purpose a hard dick towards one's own best interests. Too much a narcissist to think with his own -  or to assign magical powers to the dicks of others - the foundations of Querelle's sexuality lie far beyond the simple tawdriness of most men's fears and fantasies.

Subverting the Rough Trade Mystique

 

Querelle 1982

  The protagonist Georges Querelle, of no fixed past and no fixed morality (beyond being a sailor and a criminal) is presented for consideration. As exhibited by Fassbinder in the form of Brad Davis, he’s a ripe Tom of Finland cartoon come to life as a gay archetype: short-legged and working class and presenting as dubiously attractive...in a butch kinda way. Revealed as sexually submissive although murderous, the seafaring trash is enough to signal any homosexualist that there’s a rocky road ahead in terms of identifying with, or desiring Querelle. Within our own sensibilities, we’re not even sure that the boy-man can be pegged as gay or non-gay. And he’s not young enough in close-up to earn sympathies one way or the other, despite his claims to be a neophyte when it comes to bending over.

The murder of Vic has transpired for no good reason. While he's stripping down to wash, Querelle involves him in a hypothetical exchange about what men Vic would have sex with, culminating with Querelle himself on offer. Vic’s rejection costs him his life, and Querelle's sexuality becomes entwined with betrayal and killing. As penance for the murder of his partner in crime, Querelle returns to the Feria to purposely lose a toss of the dice. But the punishment is a most Catholic one: he unexpectedly climaxes quickly while being sodomized, and instead of expected pain he experiences pleasure and no sense of humiliation whatsoever.

Death - the wages of not sinning with Querelle

    While  Querelle inhabits no fixed era, Fassbinder is prepared to go balls-deep into rough homosexuality in a way that Genet couldn’t fully explore post-World War 2. Genet’s set pieces of homosexuality within Existentialism  might still tag him today as a literary enfant terrible, but the rough trade “bisexuals” who fuck, slice throats and betray without remorse weren’t unique to Genet’s tastes and times. Life, love and survival still often play out on the edge of a knife, symbolically and otherwise. 

Self-proclaimed “power bottoms” have much to learn from Querelle, inasmuch as doing it effectively possibly requires varying degrees of contemptuous psychopathy as well as a simple need to be loved and protected. By his own calculation, passive anal homosexuality requires no love at all, but actively fucking requires a little…for a short time at least. He therefore presses his body into service as an object upon which to turn the tables of power in his favor, with sexual gratification as a mere bonus rather than a Muse-like calling or a compulsion. The homosexual queerness of Querelle is of the entrenched European kind, and is repeatedly defined as acts between men: not binary Anglo-American gay couplings of tops and bottoms.