Interview with Marlon Riggs
by Chuck Kleinhans and Julia Lesage Reprinted with permission from JUMP CUT: A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY MEDIA NO. 36 (1991) JUMP CUT 1991. All rights reserved.
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/RiggsInterview.html

This interview was conducted by Chuck Kleinhans in Oakland CA in November 1989, with Marlon Riggs shortly after the premiere of Riggs' TONGUES UNTIED at the American Film Institute Video Festival. The interview was prepared in written form by Julia Lesage.

CK: Well, this [Tongues Untied] is quite a change from Ethnic Notions in terms of voice, and whom you are explaining something to and what you are taking for granted. Yet you're also doing a continuation of Ethnic Notions.

MR: That's true. With Ethnic Notions, I was trying to communicate to a broad audience, the kind people write about in their grant proposals as "general audience." I wanted to communicate to a primary audience which was a large, multicultural, black, white, latino, asian, male, female, gay, straight, bisexual, whatever audience. It is important for everyone to understand how racial caricatures and stereotyping function as tools of socialization and social control.

First I had to assume that most viewers don't know much about U.S. history, so I had to re-inform viewers about the basic historical context for these images. And then I had to connect these images to real social consequences, so that viewers could see a relation between the image, for instance, of the black mammy and the opportunities previously afforded black women to work just as cooks, maids and housekeepers. I wanted to demonstrate the relations between image and social control.

Also, because these images work on such a deep subconscious level in our culture and have done so for so long, I was afraid to play with them. A playful, nontraditional, nonlinear, nonhistorical form could be easily misinterpreted. To have images coming this way and that, 1850s images thrown in with 1950s ones, and a sort of funny voice-over poking fun at the images-such a style could have been easily and justifiably interpreted as: "Well, you're saying that none of this is really serious. Either it's all behind us so we don't need to take it seriously anymore, or it's so well integrated in our lives and we understand it so well that we can laugh about it." I didn't feel that either of those interpretations was the case. The tape required a certain gravity, a certain scholarship, if you will, a certain sense of authority in speaking about those images.

And it required a sort of unity or consensus of voice about what those images mean. Given the audience I wanted to reach, I faced a set of real constraints in terms of what people knew and how they would interpret the material. I already knew some common reactions when people saw the images. They were either totally blown away and shocked and disgusted, or they'd look at a little figurine of a black child eating a watermelon and say, "Isn't that cute?" I realized I had to walk a fairly narrow and straight line; otherwise, things could really go awry. A more experimental, quirky or eccentric form would have deeply and rightly offended an audience that wants to understand the weight of these images in our culture and how much such images have held us down in terms of racism and discrimination and oppression. It was not an unconventional piece at all. Only the content made it different.

InTongues Untied, I was not dealing with history, or at least a tradition of historical scholarship rooted in physical evidence. The history in Tongues Untied is phrased more in terms of the context of understanding a culture. And I use it in a kind of advocacy role, placing black gay men within the overall historical context of black struggle in this country. I was also dealing with personal expression, my own and that of the other poets. That was liberating, too. The rules about getting the facts right or the correct interpretation of history no longer applied. Actually I now believe this other form of expression is true for conveying history, too (though at the time I didn't). In Tongues Untied I was dealing with the weaving, in terms of our lives, where truth, fiction, fantasy, fact, history, mythology really interweave to inform our character, psyche, values and beliefs. Changing my mind about traditional history has been part of my evolution. Before I considered history and mythology, fact and fiction as separate and obviously discreet. Now I don't think so in terms of how they inform us and work within us to make us who and what we are as individuals and as a culture, as a group, race, and nationality. Without these constraints I not only could express a very different content but had room to play with form. I could experiment in a way that even might confuse some viewers. Since my intended primary audience was really focusedon black gay men, I didn't mind if everybody got it. It was important that everybody got the point of Ethnic Notions. Frankly, with Tongues Untied if white heterosexuals don't understand the reasons why black people are angry and just consider this piece militant, then so be it. I'm not going to take time to justify this for people for whom this experience is totally alien. Tongues Untied is an affirmation of the feelings and experiences of black gay men, made for them by a black gay man, or actually by black gay men because the piece has a number of voices. If others understand, fine, but making sure everyone understands was not my prerequisite in making this. Audience is very important to me, but in terms of thinking critically about who your audience is and how you intend to reach them. Who are your other potential audiences and how they might read your work? Are they are as important as your primary audience? It's very important to think about those issues before actually constructing your work because it affects what you do and the decisions you make.