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By Christopher Wallenberg
Friday, September 07, 2007
When William Friedkin’s notorious 1980 film “Cruising” was shot in New York in the late 1970s, it sparked a firestorm of controversy from the city’s gay community. A thriller set in the underground gay S&M scene, the film was decried by protestors for what they called its stereotypical and negative depiction of gay lifestyle. “Cruising” quickly solidified its standing one of the most controversial gay films ever to hit the big screen. (Read The Blade’s accompanying interview with Friedkin in this week’s issue.)
Remarkably, in the almost 30 years since its initial release, “Cruising” has developed a bit of a cult gay following. Now, a newly restored print of “Cruising” is receiving a limited theatrical release in New York, in advance of its DVD release on Sept. 18.
So is the reappraisal of “Cruising” warranted? And does it negate the initial controversy? While “Cruising” isn’t a masterpiece or even a classic, it does deserve another look.
Based in part on the 1970 novel, the film starred Al Pacino as a New York City cop asked to go undercover to investigate a recent string of murders linked to the hardcore leather scene in the West Village. As Pacino’s green detective, Steve Burns, descends deeper into this world, his sanity seems to unravel and his grip on his own identity begins to slip, affecting his relationship with his stable, safe, white-bread girlfriend (Karen Allen). As Burns gets closer to nabbing the real killer, zeroing in on a Columbia University graduate student with apparent daddy-neglect issues, he appears to become hooked on the lifestyle.
It’s probably hard for young gays viewing the film now to imagine what sparked such scorn from activists. The world, especially when it comes to the visibility and depiction of gays and lesbians in the mainstream media, has changed tremendously. While the film is indeed flawed, it remains a curious cultural artifact remarkable for its bold, graphic depiction of an underground gay subculture—something you’d be surprised to see in a mainstream movie even today. The film is also worthwhile viewing for its status as one of the last films to come out the 1970s heyday of adventurous Hollywood filmmaking—a time when ambiguity, dark themes and flawed, troubled characters populated the big screen. Rarely do today’s thrillers revel in the grey areas of life or take the kind of risks that “Cruising” does. “Disturbia,” “Vacancy,” and the endless string of cookie-cutter thrillers-of-the-week traffic in familiar genre tropes, heroic characters and a safe Us vs. Them mentality.
But the grittiness and libidinous suggestions of gay sex and violence will certainly surprise younger viewers. Shockingly, “Cruising” received an R-rating. Today’s conservative MPAA would quickly slapped it with an NC-17. As Pacino’s character stalks the underground leather clubs, the film is awash in lurid images of ass-rubbing, chain-wielding leather daddies and popper-sniffing bottom boys.
Menace lurks around every corner, enhanced by the seedy visuals and edgy punk-rock score. As the camera pans across sweaty, undulating bodies in a dark subterranean leather bar on “cop night,” we see a guy giving head to his pal’s police nightstick and a leather-clad bloke lubing up his forearm with Crisco in front of a guy in a sling. At first, it may seem bit over the top, but it eventually comes off as a realistic depiction of that last vestige of post-Stonewall, Dionysian excess before the onset of the AIDS crisis.
Of course, there are some ridiculous, improbable moments in “Cruising” that veer dangerously close to camp—most infamously, when the big black cop wearing nothing but a jockstrap and cowboy hat steps into an interrogation room and bitch-slaps Pacino across the face. Not to be outdone are the schlocky speeded-up visuals Friedkin uses when Pacino’s character sniffs some amyl-nitrate in a leather bar and starts dancing like a madman. The audience at the screening I attended couldn’t help bursting into laughter.
Regarding the criticism that Friedkin and Co. link the act of gay sex with violent tendencies, the evidence at hand is almost damning: There’s Pacino girlfriend trying on her boyfriend’s leather cap and jacket at the end of the film, suggesting that homosexuality or an interest in S&M is somehow contagious. Then there’s the explicit first murder when the victim allows himself to be stabbed by the mysterious killer. Friedkin inserted subliminal clips of bareback anal sex in between shots of the stabbing knife hitting the flesh. He claimed that he did this to make a correlation between the sexual penetration and the penetration of the flesh with the knife—something that the killer probably got of on. Others argue he’s stoking his gay-hating manifesto, likening gay sex to murder.
In a final scene, Friedkin seems to be saying that all people have the ability to become something very different from what we think of as our true selves. However, Friedkin’s larger point has as much to do with his interest in fractured or lost identity as it does with him playing into mainstream America’s fear of queer lifestyle.
While we can’t let Friedkin and Co off the hook for irresponsibly playing into those fears, “Cruising” is still worthwhile as a visual and aural tour-de-force, as a time capsule look at an era when filmmakers sought to challenge an audience rather than placate them, and as a flashback to the Dionysian days of uninhibited sexual freedom and energy in the gay community—right before the onset of AIDS destroyed a generation.
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