HIGH GEAR/AUGUST 1977

EXPERIMENT IN SENSUAL VISION

By Dave Akers

On May 22, in the Kent State University Student Center Gallery, an exhibition entitled, "An Experiment ihn Sensual Vision," opened for two weeks. The show featured a multi-media approach to exotic themes, in the works of six KSU students: color Xeroxes, by Pamela TurkeRaffaelli; films, by Lainard Bush; paper sculptures, by Steven Wright; multi-media sculptures, by Lynn Forgach; graphics, by Michael Milligan; and multimedia sculptures, by Duane Perolio.

The color Xeroxes of Ms. Turk-Raffaelli were less directly

erotic than some other works

sown, but her use of color and imagery was strongly sensual. The reproduction of faces, hands, metal rings, and even a high-contrast photo of a warrior in tribal regalia, though not altogether original in concept, made for a rich collage-like effect of striking intensity, executed upon backgrounds of

smooth reds and blues.

The films of Lainard Bush

a

worked in similar fashion, using layering of color, imagery, and texture, to achieve psychosexual collage. In the film this reviewer saw, Mr. Bush used quick cuts and fades with interior scenes, nudes, and facial close-ups, all overlaid with trippy light and color effects, to create a sense of vertigo, of a mind flashing through many levels of sexuality and imagery, so quickly that any effect upon the viewer must be subliminal, in some cases. Many of the effects. seemed to be cliched, and as a result, some of the intended spontaneity was lost.

Perhaps the least erotic, and least successful, pieces in the show, were the paper sculptures of Steven Wright. Much drooping of dark paper, and a poorly crafted cardboard box dangling a sort of paper-towel highway, made up his entries; they merely seemed out of place, and uninteresting.

The works of the last three ar-

tists -Forgach, Milligan, and Perolio-were the most directly sexual in content, and seemed to best express a tendency, run-

FALCONER

on the western shore." This

Falconer: The Redemptive view beyond the prison is the

Force of Homoerotic Love

By MITCHELL MENEGU John Cheever has written a novel that should provoke reactions from gays. Zeke Farragut, its protagonist, is straight with a lengthy history of involvements with women to look back on as he tries to reassemble his life in the prison that gives the novel its title. The key incident in the book is the love affair that develops betwen Farragut and Jody, a younger inmate who also seems to be straight.

Characters in the novel make fairly typical anti-gay remarks. When Farragut's wife, Marchia, visits him, he reports to her on the methadone maintenance program that sustains him: " get methadone at nine every morning. A pansy deals it out. He wears a hairpiece." When he reassures her that he has not

encouraged attention from the "pansy," she replies, "That's good. I wouldn't want to be married to a homosexual, having already married a homicidal drug addict." Farragut has been found guilty of killing his brother Eben and had become a drug. addict as an escape from what he considered to have been misfortunes in his early life.

beginning of Jody's gift to Farragut that grows into aspirations to seek a life comparable in scope to the view.

The episode in which they become lovers continues the seemingly anti-gay comments: "I'm SO glad you ain't homosexual,' Jody kept saying when he caressed Farragut's hair. Then, saying as much one afternoon, he had unfastened Farragut's trousers and, with every assistance from Farragut, got them down around his knees." With deliberate indifference to their activities by the prison administration, the two men have a series of trysts.

Farragut is profoundly moved by his love for Jody. He listens for his lover's approach. He considers the possibility of showing his love openly and compares it, favorably, to the series of love affairs with women in his past. He ponders the likelihood that what he feels is only a form of self-love. What he gradually

discovers is a movement of

feeling away from himself outward through Jody in his concern, almost parental at times, for Jody's success in a course in banking and even more for his success in a plot to escape from prison.

At their first meeting, Jody says, "I'm Jody, and I know you're Farragut but so long as The erotic element of Jody you ain't homosexual I don't and Farragut's relationship is care what your name is." Jody not presented explicityly beyond first becomes his best friend, a statement that "his radiant and revealing to Farragut his hideout aching need for Jody spread out from where one can get the from his crotch through every Millionaire's View, "over the part of him, visible and inroofs of the old cellblocks and visible...." The two lovers may be the walls, a two-mile stretch of straight, but they have an inriver with cliffs and mountains tensely homerotic relationship.

ning throughout the show, to selfconscious satire, underlying both form and content. Those of

Ms. Forgach took direct aim at genital sexuality, with a distinct fix on the penis. Her molded paper pulp reliefs of winged double-dongs, and other subjects, were witty, if not completely original; her excellent handles, were detracted from ceramic mugs, with dildos for greatly by being mounted for display among many smaller parti-colored dilodos, each graced with some different functional design-salt and pepper shakers, etc.

This student exhibition went far beyond my expectations for such a show. With just a few exceptions, the work offered was sophisticated in technique and subject, and intent, within its Michael Milligan did not offer a range. It is to be regretted that performance piece, as he had hoped to do: but his wearing of gym trunks at a gallery opening was something of a performance, in itself. And as my mother walked out of the gallery full of gays, she said, "I think they're all hung up on penises."

The quality of their relationship is pointed up by a story told to Farragut by another prisoner in his cellblock who is known simply as the Cuckold. Earlier the Cuckold had described his wife's treatment of him. After Jody has gone, the Cuckold comes to talk to Farragut and, after asking him if he scored with Jody, says, "Hell, man, I know you do, but I don't hold it against you. He was beautiful, he was just beautiful." He proceeds to confess that he also has "scored with a man." As he

tells of his brief relationship with a young hustler and thief, the reader recognizes that for all its negative aspects, the relationship was the only moment of love he has known.

The Cuckold's story emphasizes the profundity of Farragut's love for Jody and clarifies what it means to him. Farragut's involvement with Jody occupies only about twenty pages in the middle of the story, but if informs the prepares for the positive steps quality of all that follows and that Farragut takes at the end of the novel to change the direction of his life.

Although the lovers in Falconer do not end up living happily ever after together, Cheever has presented the most positive dramatization of a love affair between two men that I can remember reading. Falconer is not specifically a gay novel, but is worth the attention of gay readers because it uses elements from their experience to present a situation filled with insights of value to all types of readers.

"The first serious, explicit but non-sensational movie about homosexuality to be shown in this country!" -David Denby, New York Times

FASSBINDER'S

FOX

AND HIS FRIENDS

PAGE 9

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND

With

"One of the great films of the decade!" "A lucid, beautiful work of innovation!"

-Village Voice

-Penelope Gilliatt, The New Yorker

"A tragi-comic love story disguised as a lesbian slumber party in high-camp drag."

Three Women

In A Sadistic Triangle.

RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER'S

-Molly Haskell, Village Voice

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