Bruce la Bruce had
an interview long time ago. I still find it relevant for some important issues that are hitting us in the face today. Some of his answers reflect the complex theoretical knowledge that he applies in his cinematic explorations:
" I'm always interested in the idea of identity politics and the arbitrariness or artificiality of sex and gender roles. Most heterosexual men have fixed themselves in a rigid role which doesn't even allow the possibility of bi- or homo-sexual impulses, even though many theorists, from Freud on, have posited the notion that everyone is born with at least some bisexual potential. Females seem to be a little more sexually fluid. Homosexual men have likewise fixed themselves in a gay identity which doesn't allow the possibility of sex with females, sequestering themselves away in an all male environment and trying very hard not to think of the vagina. It's clear that when heterosexual men are confined together under intense circumstances - the military, prison, etc. - that homosexual behaviour emerges quite easily. "
on his relation to various social movements:
"I became disillusioned with the gay movement very early on, even back in the mid eighties deciding that it had become politically stagnant, aesthetically bankrupt, and hopelessly bourgeois. (The current assimilationist trend toward sexual conformity, marriage, and respectability has certainly vindicated my point of view - the oppressed have demonstrably become the oppressors!) I turned to punk because it seemed to be challenging defiantly the status quo, the ascendance of corporate interests and control, and the attempts of the dominant ideology to police, dominate, and neuter all forms of dissent, otherness, and individuality. My first wake up call was realizing that even punk, this supposedly radical subculture, was sexually conformist. This led to an interest in other manifestations of social and political protest, including an investigation into the terrorist or para-military organizations of the late sixties and seventies such as the SLA, the Weathermen, the Black Panthers, and, of course, the Baader-Meinhof gang, the RAF. Each of these groups took very seriously the notion that Godard posited in his movie Numero Deux: le cul, c'est la politique: the sexual is political. They believed that revolution could only be achieved if it was accompanied by a radical rethinking of sexual mores and conventions. People forget nowadays that back then there actually was such a thing as a sexual revolution, when even members of the middle class were experimenting with promiscuity, group sex, bi- and homosexuality, communal living, sex and spirituality, etc. In university I had taken such courses as Protest Literature and Movements, and Psychoanalysis and Feminism, so I already had a background in the teachings of such thinkers as Reich, Marcuse, and other radical theorists who believed that sexual repression was responsible for much of the violence and apathy and spiritual malaise in technologically advanced cultures. I was also very interested in the way that emerging counter-cultural minorities of that era - particularly the black, gay, and feminist movements - adopted a kind of proto-military style and rhetoric, often borrowing from the kind of guerilla insurgencies that had emerged simultaneously in Central and South America. These movements were all initially Marxist-based, defiantly militant, and organized on a kind of decentralized, anarcho-syndicalist model. "
The Raspberry Reich functions as a radical leftist critique of the left:
" I wanted to make a movie that gave voice once more to the left wing, anti-corporate, anti-capitalist rhetoric that was once part of the public discourse but which had become completely absent. The movie also operates as a critique of the left, skewering people who either don't practice what they preach, or who become so self-righteous and intractable in their beliefs that they themselves become oppressive and dogmatic."
The commodification of the left (and any progressive social movement) is another issue raised:
"I also made The Raspberry Reich in order to comment on the modern cultural tendency to co-opt and commodify the signifiers of radicalism and militancy without adopting any of their actual political substance, or worse, in the process, completely contradicting their original intent. In my movie one of the slogans is 'Madonna is Counter-Revolutionary', and I do mean that literally. As I always argue, Madonna is the exact opposite of someone like Jean Genet, whose strategy was to go immediately to any place in the world where there emerged a truly revolutionary impulse (the Black Panthers in America in the late sixties; the Palestinians in the Middle East in the seventies), but as soon as he detected the first sign of co-option or institutionalization, he would not only abandon the movement but turn against it. Madonna also zeroes in on revolutionary moments (usually gay and/or black subcultural manifestations), but with the strategy of co-opting, neutralizing, commodifying, and ultimately exhausting and abandoning them. She is the ultimate example of someone who uses radical chic for exploitative and purely capitalistic ends. "
BlaB does not exclude political chic but raises awareness of the emptiness of pure glamor that is detached from political action:
"Groups like the RAF did have a certain glamour quotient in the seventies, with their leather jackets, berets, sunglasses, and fast cars, but their glamour then also came from their deep convictions in social and political causes and their commitment to carrying out actions against the state. Intellectualism was also considered glamorous in those days, as opposed to the current tendency to distrust and dismiss intellectual analysis. Their glamour had to do with a kind of Robin Hood mentality. With the ascendance of capitalism, crimes against property or theft are now regarded as worse than violent crimes or murder."
The neoliberal intervention managed to brake the solidarity between oppressed groups. Is there any way out?
"Huey P. Newton of the Black Panthers famously reached out to include gays and feminists as part of the kind of revolution he envisioned. It's interesting and kind of sad that the most popular black movement now, hip hop, routinely disrespects women and homosexuals. But then again, corporate hip hop is all about materialism and capitalist capitulation, as is the gay movement. Where's the Baader/Meinhof when you need them?!"
His movies are deliberately offensive as agitprop was in postRevolutionary Russia:
"Generally in my movies I like to include something to offend everyone. I'm often surprised that there is an audience for my work at all. The art world often ignores me because they think I'm too pornographic, while the porn world resents me for being too arty or intellectual and interfering with their precious, pornographically pure product. I'm an interloper, a common adventuress... I definitely want the movie to reach straight male viewers. I've already noticed that it makes a lot of guys who review movies on the internet nervous. They go on and on at great length at how awful and terrible the movie is - it really seems to get under their skin. Perhaps I'm hitting a nerve. I hope so. Especially these supposed underground hipsters who think they're so enlightened and progressive. It's hard to get them out of the missionary position."
The agit-prop influences are there:
"I was referencing movies like Fassbinder's The Third Generation, Godard's La Chinoise, and Dusav Makavejev's WR: Mysteries of the Organism - agit-prop films that playfully illustrate revolutionary principles with narrative skits, direct camera address, or even documentary elements... Also when you make a movie you inevitably adopt this conviction that you will get it done by any means necessary, whatever it takes, that the ends justify the means completely. Shooting a porno always feels like a guerilla activity, like you're contravening some law, morally if not legally... So I guess you could call us film terrorists."
