Audience is Everything (GEOGRAPHIES OF PUBLIC SEX, 2024)
Nobody yelled at the screen or demanded an explanation for what they had witnessed. Instead, someone behind me whispered “oh my god,” in the tone of someone witnessing a miracle. Any prophet can turn water into wine, but the right audience can turn it into an event you'll always remember.
When we saw LOVE LIES BLEEDING our screening was unexpectedly accompanied by a filmed critic’s introduction, which I found a delightful surprise. I was less enamored when the guy in front of me full-on yelled “THAT WAS WEIRD! WHY DID THAT HAPPEN!?” afterwards (?!).
As one might predict after a lunkhead responds to an unexpected learning opportunity with the indignant fury most puritans reserve for evidence of witchcraft, things did not improve from there. The one high point of the experience was the gender euphoria I experienced when my newly-deepened Midwestern Dad voice spooked him out of his seat.
Maybe that’s why I mostly attend gay porno screenings these days. You could not pay me to endure the anxiety I would experience attending the opening night screening of any Marvel film. And yet, I feel perfectly at ease pressed up against a bunch of sweaty weirdos as we watch someone piss into somebody else’s open mouth. Go figure.
That is why myself and every other pervert in Chicago loves the Leather Archives Fetish Film Forum. It's a particular delight to gather with a bunch of cinema creeps and watch nasty flicks in the Etienne Auditorium, named for and decorated by the work of leather illustrator Dom Orejudos; his warmly-hued portraits of tortured hunks glow over the proceedings like the worst kinds of angels. And listen, it's not like I'm sitting there by myself. If pornography is so abhorrent to so many people, why do these screenings keep selling out? What kind of people are drawn to public displays of filth, and what is it that makes a porno screening a sanctuary for us?
In the Curator’s Statement for the shorts program GEOGRAPHIES OF PUBLIC SEX, Henry Hanson finds a potential answer:
“[...] people have a way of building elaborate social rituals that elevate our bodily functions to the realm of art and philosophy. These rituals become formalized into the norms that both construct and constrain us as sexual subjects in social contexts. When the shape of one’s desires overflows and transgresses these norms, deviance is born. Groups of similarly deviant individuals are thus drawn together to pursue their shared desires, producing new subcultures which, of course, have norms of their own.”
You might recognize the name Henry Hanson if you're into trans cinema. If you're a dirtbag transmasculine romantic who has not seen Bros Before, I recommend seeking it out, especially if you enjoy the films of Gregg Araki or the sensation of being personally attacked. When I learned he was programming a series of short films for the Film Forum, and that they were on the cinematic subject of public sex, I was thrilled to check it out.
Because what are all these porno screenings we all keep going to, if not public sex? We can lie to ourselves about why we’re sitting there, intellectualize our impulses and dwell in flighty ideas of culture, but there are only so many reasons to usher oneself into a dimly lit room to look at a dick or twelve. You can pretend it’s not dirty if you do it in a museum, but I’ve done a lot of things in museums that would disagree with you.
And that was one of the themes of the program I enjoyed the most: queer filth and public sex thrive in every environment, because there are always people who want to fuck more than they want to obey the rules of straight society. A mix of social oppression and opportunism can create hiding places for said fucking, but the individuals within the subculture determine how they are used. Watching GEOGRAPHIES OF PUBLIC SEX in a packed theater of queer perverts left me charmed and fascinated by the way our weird little subculture moved to its own rhythms throughout.
There were times when the intensity of what we witnessed rendered the room silent save murmurs and squeaks, like the sweet dyke cruelties in TRIBUTE. There were times we were united in cooing at unexpected tenderness, like the oddly-wholesome story of a patron’s sweet peep-booth romance with a friendly bear in BEEN TOO LONG AT THE FAIR. There were even times we were united in hometown pride, like the resounding applause we gave the Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary in THE MAGIC HEDGE. We may have winters from hell, but nothing stops Chicago queers from fucking outside!
And there were completely unpredictable moments of joy, like when my friend’s estradiol reminder blared the opening riff of “Man! I Feel Like a Woman” over a particularly dry sociologist’s description of bathroom sex. Imagine an auditorium full of queer perverts tensed up like meerkats, awaiting further instructions from Shania Twain in the middle of an academic porno. The laughter that came afterwards felt joyous, not judgmental. It is the only time in history that a cell phone going off in the middle of a movie has improved the experience, and it will never happen again, but it was possible within that audience that night.
My favorite moment occurred during the final short, FUCKIN’ AROUND. It was a silent black-and-white Super-8 film about cruising. It felt like a high-stakes version of John Cage’s 4’33: if you think incidental sounds might be interesting in a concert hall, imagine listening to absolutely nothing in a porno theater while the money shots roll across the screen.
The quiet held for a minute, and then people allowed themselves to react. In the most graphic shot, an anonymous cruiser pisses in someone’s mouth in a lovingly-framed and lingering moment. Nobody yelled at the screen or demanded an explanation for what they had witnessed. Instead, someone behind me whispered “oh my god,” in the tone of someone witnessing a miracle. Any prophet can turn water into wine, but the right audience can turn it into an event you'll always remember.