About Marlon Riggs (with 3 films) Journal Entry 24 - Xiongyue Yu

About Marlon Riggs

 

Marlon Troy Riggs is a black queer filmmaker, educator, poet, and activist. His films examine prejudices and stereotypes about race and sexuality in America from the past to the present, and are cultural creations that are intimately connected to both of the topics discussed in our course. Riggs' work was driven by his own personal experience, realizing while studying at Harvard that he had a different sexual orientation than others. He wanted to gain an understanding and study of this, but since there was no course that supported queer studies, he petitioned the history department and was allowed to independently study "the portrayal of male homosexuality in American fiction and poetry. As he began to research the history of racism and homophobia in America, Riggs became interested in conveying his ideas about these themes through film. While his actions did contribute to the openness and acceptance of black homosexuality, he himself endured many hardships along the way, both from the hatred of whites and the misunderstanding of his fellow blacks, as he endured the social pressures of both identities while trying to change the status quo with his own efforts.

 

Tongues Untied

Riggs is a 1989 American experimental documentary film that Riggs hopes will break the brutal silence on gender and racial differences in America. The "silence" refers to black gay men who are unable to express themselves because of prejudice in white and black heterosexual society and white homosexual society, hiding their will and risking a double intersectional identity that is simultaneously unacceptable to the larger society and to race. Because the identity of black characters, especially black males, was also served by whites in the mainstream American media at the time. This is why the identity of black gays was even less acceptable because the stereotype of gays at the time was that they would no longer be able to meet the needs of the rich and extremely masculine that whites needed, so they were subject to a second layer of racial segregation even within the LGBTQ community. With such perceptions and the needs of the Black queer community in mind, this documentary Service critiques the politics of racism, homophobia and exclusion and talks about its intersection with contemporary sexual politics. The film is part of a series of films and videos that explores issues at the heart of black gay and lesbian life, challenging the general boundaries of documentary films of the time.

 

Black Is… Black Ain’t

Riggs' 1995 award-winning feature documentary, in which he explores the diversity of expressions of African American identity, is an exploration and comprehensive commentary on the African American experience. Riggs seeks to demonstrate that there is no single definition of what it means to be "black. The African-American race should not be defined by a single stereotype, and Riggs uses this direction and content to illustrate the diversity that black people can have. Thus, the film presents as much black identity as possible, their different living environments, different occupations, different interests and personalities. Riggs' vision does not allow for a single generalization or stereotype of the richly diverse black community. To this end he explores a variety of topics, including the history and rise of African Americans, patriarchal structures and their impact on the way black families, men and women are viewed today. For in any conception of race, they each possess their own diversity, and the unity of identity among them outweighs the differences within the community.

 

Ethnic Notions

In Ethnic Notions, a documentary with a difference, it opens with an American animation that was popular in 1941 as an introduction. In this animated film featuring black people, stereotypes of African-Americans abound, both in terms of exaggerated and ridiculous images and negative character traits such as stupidity and rudeness, illustrating the deep-rootedness of such stereotypes in historical deposits. After that, there are sculptures, stories, movies, and even music and dance, which are also full of such anti-black stereotypes. Such stereotypes are not the same as cultural records that amplify basic characteristics, but rather mainstream cultural propaganda with a clear negative connotation of prominence. Confronted with the historical legacy of stereotype culture in the United States, Ethnic Notions' 1987 interrogative documentary reflects on the negative stereotypes of black people that permeated mainstream culture in a subtle way before the 1960s through the accumulated achievements of the civil rights movement.

 

The historical record of these stereotypes helps to understand the formation and evolution of racial consciousness in the United States, while at the same time illuminating, through documentary film, the devastating consequences of these stereotypes on culture then and today. This insidious stereotype is a stigmatization of African Americans from beginning to end, and this damage is certainly reflected in American popular culture today, where many social events have their roots in the cultural transmission of history. And the main idea of the documentary is to hope that such stereotypical historical records are not forgotten and hidden, because the effects they have had have become irreversible facts, deeply rooted in the perceptions and habits of successive generations of American residents. Therefore, it is all the more important to bring them into the modern society, to update and try to transform them, so as to bring new social effects and impacts.