Marlon Riggs - Writings

Writings

Riggs's writings were published during the late 1980s and early 1990s in various art and literary journals such as Black American Literature Forum, Art Journal, and High Performance as well as anthologies such as Brother to Brother: Collected Writings by Black Gay Men. The themes of his writings include filmmaking, free speech and censorship, and criticism of racism and homophobia.

In his noteworthy essay “Black Macho Revisited: Reflections of a SNAP! Queen,” Riggs discusses how representations of black gay men in the United States have been used to shape Americans' conceptions of race and sexuality. He argues that Americans' emphasis on the “black macho” figure – the warrior model of black masculinity based on a mythologized view of African history – signifies an exclusion of black homosexual males from the African American community, which results in their dehumanization and rationalizes homophobia. Riggs makes a distinction between the black gay man's perception of himself and his representation in America as the “Negro faggot,” an extreme displacement and distortion of black homosexuality. He explains that the “black macho” image is sustained through performances such as rap music, television shows, the films of Spike Lee, and the comedy routines of Eddie Murphy. According to Riggs, the black homosexual male is therefore defined as the deviant Other in relation to the African American community, and Riggs claims that this contemporary practice mirrors the historical racist constructions of the African American identity: “Blacks are inferior because they are not white. Black gays are unnatural because they are not straight. Majority representations of both affirm the view that blackness and gayness constitute a fundamental rupture in the order of things, that our very existence is an affront to nature and humanity.”

Read more about this topic:  Marlon Riggs

Famous quotes containing the word writings:

    A people’s literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people as no historical reconstruction can.
    Edith Hamilton (1867–1963)

    If someday I make a dictionary of definitions wanting single words to head them, a cherished entry will be “To abridge, expand, or otherwise alter or cause to be altered for the sake of belated improvement, one’s own writings in translation.”
    Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)

    Even in my own writings I cannot always recover the meaning of my former ideas; I know not what I meant to say, and often get into a regular heat, correcting and putting a new sense into it, having lost the first and better one. I do nothing but come and go. My judgement does not always forge straight ahead; it strays and wanders.
    Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)