I have always been tres intrigued by Msr. Jean Genet. How? Why? Qu'est-ce que, Chris?
Let's go back to the beginning. I had no idea who Genet was when an old friend of mine turned me on to the movie, Querelle. It was a movie from the early 80's, directed by Rainier Werner Fassbinder, the famed German filmmaker. It may have been his last. I recall watching a VHS(!) copy of it with my friend when we were both about 17. The movie was Artsy, with a capital "A." It was also campy. Like uber campy. I still do not know to this day if that was intentional on the part of Fassbinder. But, the movie was undeniably Erotic. Or should we say Erotique (with a capital "E")? It starred Brad Davis, an actor who was a movie star; but never with a capital "S." He never really broke through to Superstardom; probably because he did a lot of roles that leaned a in a little too much to the Homoerotic (with a capital "H." Okay, I'll stop doing that now). Brad had (and still does have) a huge--err--gay following. The man was hot and he knew it and he knew how to work it. And I think he worked it with an eye towards the males of a certain lean, who may have been watching. Let's take a look at a scene and I think you'll see what I mean:
Let's go back to the beginning. I had no idea who Genet was when an old friend of mine turned me on to the movie, Querelle. It was a movie from the early 80's, directed by Rainier Werner Fassbinder, the famed German filmmaker. It may have been his last. I recall watching a VHS(!) copy of it with my friend when we were both about 17. The movie was Artsy, with a capital "A." It was also campy. Like uber campy. I still do not know to this day if that was intentional on the part of Fassbinder. But, the movie was undeniably Erotic. Or should we say Erotique (with a capital "E")? It starred Brad Davis, an actor who was a movie star; but never with a capital "S." He never really broke through to Superstardom; probably because he did a lot of roles that leaned a in a little too much to the Homoerotic (with a capital "H." Okay, I'll stop doing that now). Brad had (and still does have) a huge--err--gay following. The man was hot and he knew it and he knew how to work it. And I think he worked it with an eye towards the males of a certain lean, who may have been watching. Let's take a look at a scene and I think you'll see what I mean:
The song "Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves" is woven throughout the movie, and no, it never improves over time. I just found a clip with the song in its entirety; for those of you interested and/or brave enough it's on Youtube. In any event, this movie made such an impression on me, that I wrote about in my first book. Here's what I thought then, and still feel now. Much like my feelings about Flashdance. From 83 In the Shade:
AND NOW, OUR FEATURE PRESENTATION!
(Boy, they sure liked exclamation points in 1950’s Hollywood!)
The screen was suffused with a hazy orange glow and Jean Genet’s masterpiece as interpreted by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the bad-boy wunderkind of modern German cinema, began to unspool. A card came up with what was presumably text from the novel, narrated by a guy who sounded like he was explaining quantum physics theory on NOVA.
Cut to Brad Davis standing on the bow of his ship. He is wearing a white scoop necked tank top and the tightest bell-bottoms a French sailing man was ever sewn into. Brad is shoveling coal into the ship’s furnace and he is covered in soot from the waist up, which only adds to his off the charts smolder quotient. However, his trousers are impossibly pristine. In fact, they are so snowy white they glow. Clearly a directorial choice. Chiaroscuro. Light and Dark. Black and White. Two halves of a whole—etc. etc. Querelle is conflicted. I get it. I think Brad is in the French Navy. It is impossible to place the period of the film. Everything—the lighting, the sets, the acting, is hyper-stylized into some Anytime/Anyplace world. Timelessness of subject matter. Got it Herr F.! The sets are minimal to the point of abstraction. You know, a lamppost suggests the entire street and so on. However, the walls of the port city where Querelle and the gang are docked are elaborately detailed parapets with columns that don’t just suggest phalluses—They are phalluses!
This is one of those bizarre multinational productions (French novel, German director, actors from ACROSS THE GLOBE!) that almost always result in some sort of celluloid disaster. Or camp classic. Querelle, as essayed by Mr. Davis (he of the third hairiest chest in Hollywood), is one naughty boy. When he’s not getting into shenanigans at the local brothel, he’s out stabbing someone to death in an alleyway. He’s conflicted—not evil—so we get a lot of The Narrator periodically offering up some armchair psychology and/or cryptic running commentary—kind of like Left Bank Cliff Notes. “Querelle felt as though he were thrusting his tongue into the mouth of some great granite statue…” This, after our hero’s rather lackluster lip-lock with the local Leader of the Pack.
The owner of the brothel is a seven-foot tall, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound black man named No-No, whose wife Lysiane (played by a seriously spent looking Jeanne Moreau) is the “entertainment” in their Existential establishment. Like some Franco-Greco chorus of one, she listlessly toddles through the cathouse she calls home, singing a little ditty called “Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves.” Besides the words of the title and some other lines muddied by dialogue, the song lyrics consist of a series of wonkily warbled “Da-da-da-da…Da, da, da…da’s.” She sings it at least a dozen times.
Meanwhile, in the back room, No-No challenges Querelle to a game of dice. If Querelle wins, he gets to mount Lysiane (presumably for free). If No-No wins, he gets to mount Querelle. Querelle cheats in reverse. He deliberately loses. You’re never sure why either; since Brad’s facial expression never changes. Perhaps Querelle would rather walk bow-legged for a couple of days than get it on with a lady old enough to be his Mom. No-No lays him face down across a writing desk and before he can say “yes-yes” opens a new chapter for Querelle. This leads to lots of skewed camera angles of sweaty armpits and heaving, statically ecstatic close-ups. And afterwards as No-No engages in some nonchalant conversation with Querelle’s brother, the immortal line: “Well, if you’d like to know, when I pulled my dick out, it was covered with his shit.”
To which Sean proclaimed: “Gross! Eeeewh, gross!” (This kind of put the kibosh on my chocolate dipped biscotti, which I hadn’t eaten yet). At this point, Lady Cambridge turned around and glared at us. “Well, it is—” Scooter said. She harrumphed and gathered up her things in a fury then moved to another section. Which was fine by me. The dice game scene was kind of the climax of the movie. The rest of it had something to do with a twink named Roger and a construction worker named Gil who said he wanted to (in regards to Roger’s sister) “fuck her good”. And then Querelle’s brother was having an affair with Lysiane and he’s supposed to be Querelle’s identical twin but he actually looks exactly like Gil (is it the same actor?) and the Captain who’s lusting after Querelle (Franco Nero) gets shot. And maybe there’s another murder just for fun and Criminals are Beautiful and blah-blah-blah. Nothing is resolved and then Jeanne Moreau wanders out in a negligee and sings “Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves” again. The Narrator makes one more indecipherable speech, which confuses things even more, and it’s over.
All that sashaying man-booty and the town they’re in is named “Brest”. I guess that’s French humor. Or maybe German. Or possibly Italian. Only a couple of years earlier I would’ve mistaken this mess for profundity, much like I’d done with Mommie Dearest and Interiors; but now I recognized it for its laughable pretensions. It was an unintentional parody of an Art Film (the best kind!). Or was it an intentional parody of an Art Film? The second-best kind! Querelle could have a slot on the midnight movie circuit, complete with Jeanne Moreau drag queens conducting musical Angst-A-Longs.
The lights came up and we headed for the aisle.
So, this was my first exposure (so to speak) to Jean Genet. When I found out much later that he and I shared the same birthday, I was hooked. And, since I've been a Francophile since youth, I was further drawn in. And of course, he's a playwright and a novelist and a former pick-pocket and male hooker. A monsieur after my own coeur! I must confess, I find him rather attractive, as well; or is this just a kind of vanity, as I think we kind of look alike--more and more, the older I get (although I still have more hair and my ears are way smaller). He had style. He was quite dapper. Here is perhaps the most famous photograph of him:
AND NOW, OUR FEATURE PRESENTATION!
(Boy, they sure liked exclamation points in 1950’s Hollywood!)
The screen was suffused with a hazy orange glow and Jean Genet’s masterpiece as interpreted by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the bad-boy wunderkind of modern German cinema, began to unspool. A card came up with what was presumably text from the novel, narrated by a guy who sounded like he was explaining quantum physics theory on NOVA.
Cut to Brad Davis standing on the bow of his ship. He is wearing a white scoop necked tank top and the tightest bell-bottoms a French sailing man was ever sewn into. Brad is shoveling coal into the ship’s furnace and he is covered in soot from the waist up, which only adds to his off the charts smolder quotient. However, his trousers are impossibly pristine. In fact, they are so snowy white they glow. Clearly a directorial choice. Chiaroscuro. Light and Dark. Black and White. Two halves of a whole—etc. etc. Querelle is conflicted. I get it. I think Brad is in the French Navy. It is impossible to place the period of the film. Everything—the lighting, the sets, the acting, is hyper-stylized into some Anytime/Anyplace world. Timelessness of subject matter. Got it Herr F.! The sets are minimal to the point of abstraction. You know, a lamppost suggests the entire street and so on. However, the walls of the port city where Querelle and the gang are docked are elaborately detailed parapets with columns that don’t just suggest phalluses—They are phalluses!
This is one of those bizarre multinational productions (French novel, German director, actors from ACROSS THE GLOBE!) that almost always result in some sort of celluloid disaster. Or camp classic. Querelle, as essayed by Mr. Davis (he of the third hairiest chest in Hollywood), is one naughty boy. When he’s not getting into shenanigans at the local brothel, he’s out stabbing someone to death in an alleyway. He’s conflicted—not evil—so we get a lot of The Narrator periodically offering up some armchair psychology and/or cryptic running commentary—kind of like Left Bank Cliff Notes. “Querelle felt as though he were thrusting his tongue into the mouth of some great granite statue…” This, after our hero’s rather lackluster lip-lock with the local Leader of the Pack.
The owner of the brothel is a seven-foot tall, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound black man named No-No, whose wife Lysiane (played by a seriously spent looking Jeanne Moreau) is the “entertainment” in their Existential establishment. Like some Franco-Greco chorus of one, she listlessly toddles through the cathouse she calls home, singing a little ditty called “Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves.” Besides the words of the title and some other lines muddied by dialogue, the song lyrics consist of a series of wonkily warbled “Da-da-da-da…Da, da, da…da’s.” She sings it at least a dozen times.
Meanwhile, in the back room, No-No challenges Querelle to a game of dice. If Querelle wins, he gets to mount Lysiane (presumably for free). If No-No wins, he gets to mount Querelle. Querelle cheats in reverse. He deliberately loses. You’re never sure why either; since Brad’s facial expression never changes. Perhaps Querelle would rather walk bow-legged for a couple of days than get it on with a lady old enough to be his Mom. No-No lays him face down across a writing desk and before he can say “yes-yes” opens a new chapter for Querelle. This leads to lots of skewed camera angles of sweaty armpits and heaving, statically ecstatic close-ups. And afterwards as No-No engages in some nonchalant conversation with Querelle’s brother, the immortal line: “Well, if you’d like to know, when I pulled my dick out, it was covered with his shit.”
To which Sean proclaimed: “Gross! Eeeewh, gross!” (This kind of put the kibosh on my chocolate dipped biscotti, which I hadn’t eaten yet). At this point, Lady Cambridge turned around and glared at us. “Well, it is—” Scooter said. She harrumphed and gathered up her things in a fury then moved to another section. Which was fine by me. The dice game scene was kind of the climax of the movie. The rest of it had something to do with a twink named Roger and a construction worker named Gil who said he wanted to (in regards to Roger’s sister) “fuck her good”. And then Querelle’s brother was having an affair with Lysiane and he’s supposed to be Querelle’s identical twin but he actually looks exactly like Gil (is it the same actor?) and the Captain who’s lusting after Querelle (Franco Nero) gets shot. And maybe there’s another murder just for fun and Criminals are Beautiful and blah-blah-blah. Nothing is resolved and then Jeanne Moreau wanders out in a negligee and sings “Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves” again. The Narrator makes one more indecipherable speech, which confuses things even more, and it’s over.
All that sashaying man-booty and the town they’re in is named “Brest”. I guess that’s French humor. Or maybe German. Or possibly Italian. Only a couple of years earlier I would’ve mistaken this mess for profundity, much like I’d done with Mommie Dearest and Interiors; but now I recognized it for its laughable pretensions. It was an unintentional parody of an Art Film (the best kind!). Or was it an intentional parody of an Art Film? The second-best kind! Querelle could have a slot on the midnight movie circuit, complete with Jeanne Moreau drag queens conducting musical Angst-A-Longs.
The lights came up and we headed for the aisle.
So, this was my first exposure (so to speak) to Jean Genet. When I found out much later that he and I shared the same birthday, I was hooked. And, since I've been a Francophile since youth, I was further drawn in. And of course, he's a playwright and a novelist and a former pick-pocket and male hooker. A monsieur after my own coeur! I must confess, I find him rather attractive, as well; or is this just a kind of vanity, as I think we kind of look alike--more and more, the older I get (although I still have more hair and my ears are way smaller). He had style. He was quite dapper. Here is perhaps the most famous photograph of him:
And there are other similarities. 'Frinstance, I always roll up my sleeves. Always. Always have, always will; since at least Junior high school. If I'm not rolling them up, I'm pushing them up, like Michael Jackson. I also wear belts that are overlong and then pull them through at the waistband. Or up over and then through again, for that oh so insouciant Ralph Lauren thing...what do the Italians call it? Sprezzatura. That's it. It's the art of being nonchalant. But it's also quite intentional. There's an art to the Art. It's like, when you put your outfit on and then leave one shirt tail askew. The French have a similar thing; particularly when it comes to putting on a scarf. You can't overthink it. Put it on and go. Because the second you start thinking about it is the second the nonchalance flies out the window. I call it "Spreggadoccio" simply because I can never remember "sprezzatura." I'll put on what I'm wearing, muss something up and then proclaim, LOUDLY, usually with the window open: "SPREGGADOCCIO!"* and then immediately leave the house. No looking back. If you do, your outfit turns into a sackcloth. Here's Mr. Lauren doing the belt bit.
Dang! Ralph is packin' in that last one! I could live without all the Western "concha" belts he seems to favor. They can be overwhelming. And Mr. Lauren is of a stature that is easily overwhelmed. He's actually tiny. When I workded at the Rodeo Drive Polo store, he and his wife came in once and "observed." I didn't speak to him. He and Ricky were kind of hiding behind a potted palm. He seemed like maybe he was actually shyer than I was. Now, not to short-shame; I'm certainly no Vince Vaughn; but Ralph may even be more compact than Jean Genet; who just looks small (or maybe it's the high wasted pants (oops, "waisted." And when are those going to make a come-back? I love the high waisted pants on men with the skinny belt look of the mid to late 50's; although they tend to make short men look shorter and you kind of end up looking like one of The Three Stooges).
I can't find any official height for Genet; but Ralph is listed at 5' 6" and I can tell you, first hand, that's a stretch. Side-note: short guys are usually really good in bed. Like really. So what else do or did I know about Msr. Genet? Uhhm, I've learned a bunch of new stuff recently; but between Querelle and yesterday...let's see...oh! The movie Poison, by Todd Haynes, was based on the work of Genet. I did see that (again, on VHS) and all I remember is a scene where a prison inmate is spat upon by his fellow incarcerees. It's like a slo-mo-homo-spit-shower. Very niche; but I found it rather erotic. I'm not sure what that says about me...
I saw an interview with Patti Smith once (or maybe I dreamed it?). She was being interviewed by Charlie Rose, maybe, and was talking about how she was friends with Jean Genet and the two of them once went to visit Devil's Island? I can only imagine what that trip was like! I mean, first of all, where did they stay? The Devils's Island Days Inn?
I can't find any official height for Genet; but Ralph is listed at 5' 6" and I can tell you, first hand, that's a stretch. Side-note: short guys are usually really good in bed. Like really. So what else do or did I know about Msr. Genet? Uhhm, I've learned a bunch of new stuff recently; but between Querelle and yesterday...let's see...oh! The movie Poison, by Todd Haynes, was based on the work of Genet. I did see that (again, on VHS) and all I remember is a scene where a prison inmate is spat upon by his fellow incarcerees. It's like a slo-mo-homo-spit-shower. Very niche; but I found it rather erotic. I'm not sure what that says about me...
I saw an interview with Patti Smith once (or maybe I dreamed it?). She was being interviewed by Charlie Rose, maybe, and was talking about how she was friends with Jean Genet and the two of them once went to visit Devil's Island? I can only imagine what that trip was like! I mean, first of all, where did they stay? The Devils's Island Days Inn?
Of course, Patti always hung out with the baddest of bad boys, didn't she?
Although, how bad could any boy be who would do the Day-O limbo look? And if you look closely at Jean Genet's shirt in the famous photo, it's monogrammed; so really, how criminal could he really have been? Side note: in her famous picture from the Horses album, Patti is wearing an extremely similar shirt, right down to a monogram. Coincidence? Perhaps not...
Now I think we need to hear Patti sing...
So, what have I learned fairly recently? So, the man was a novelist. Yes. Playwright, check. Art critic...who knew? Fascination of Sartre? News to me! Film director/writer/cinematographer. He made a movie called Un Chant d'Amour; a 26 minute, queer themed short, set in a prison. Apparently he was a performer in it, as well; so let's give him an actor credit. And as I'm looking into things as I write this, dots are appearing and connections forming. For example: I found this still of one of the actors from the movie and it could be a picture of moiself when I was about 25. It's kind of spooky.
Also, when I first started losing my mind in college, one of the things that pushed me towards the edge was Jean Paul Sartre. You know, with all his charming banter about the meaninglessness of existence. Like literally. Just what a kid just starting out and developing unbeknownst OCD wants to hear! Also: is "Existentialism" capitalized? I've seen it both ways.
Genet, of course, was a political activist later in life. He was involved somehow with the Black Panthers. He wrote a play called Les Negres (I've seen it with several titles). It was one of the longest running off-Broadway shows or something. Here's a piece from Variety about it.
variety.com/2020/legit/news/james-earl-jones-cicely-tyson-maya-angelou-1234803223/
Genet, of course, was a political activist later in life. He was involved somehow with the Black Panthers. He wrote a play called Les Negres (I've seen it with several titles). It was one of the longest running off-Broadway shows or something. Here's a piece from Variety about it.
variety.com/2020/legit/news/james-earl-jones-cicely-tyson-maya-angelou-1234803223/
Cicely Tyson, another December 19ther was in it. I wrote a blog about her called Memories of Cicely Tyson, which you can find on this site, if you're interested.
So, I have not read any of his work. The interweb machine instructed me to start with The Thief's Journal, which is apparently one of Ms. Smith's favorite books and what turned her on to Genet. I thought I would start, instead, with what the general public would've first encountered. So, that would be 1942's Our Lady of the Flowers. I will get back to you with my impressions of that.
So, I have not read any of his work. The interweb machine instructed me to start with The Thief's Journal, which is apparently one of Ms. Smith's favorite books and what turned her on to Genet. I thought I would start, instead, with what the general public would've first encountered. So, that would be 1942's Our Lady of the Flowers. I will get back to you with my impressions of that.
FINIS
CFR 3/28/24
*ADDENDUM
I just looked up "spreggadoccio" and it's an actual Italian word. It means "contemptuous." And if you shorten it to just "spreggadoci" it means "shower waste." So, my outfits are contemptuous shower waste. Also known as "dressing down." Works for me.
CFR 3/28/24
*ADDENDUM
I just looked up "spreggadoccio" and it's an actual Italian word. It means "contemptuous." And if you shorten it to just "spreggadoci" it means "shower waste." So, my outfits are contemptuous shower waste. Also known as "dressing down." Works for me.
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