Just out., May 19, 2000, Page 37, Image 37

may 19.
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beyond the traditional realms of S/M and
leather sex, into a world where power— sexual
power— is the only commodity."
Such extreme language notwithstanding,
the stories cover a wide range of subjects and
emotions. Some are pretty accessible, even for
the vanilla-minded; others are perhaps too spe­
cialized. (1 smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, but
I just plain did not get B.J. Barrios’ stogie-
steeped “Smoke.” )
An air of academic legitimacy and a heap of
hard-core authenticity is lent by Pat Califias
introduction, but Rough Stuff is definitely eroti­
ca, even when a particular tale misses the mark
of an individual readers personal perversion.
While the stories themselves are nothing but
“hot man-on-man action,” several women are
counted among the authors— proof that power,
even sexual power, is essentially genderless.
(Oh, and if you don’t know who Pat Califia
is, you can’t read this book until after you scrub
the bathroom floor and wash my feet with your
tongue.)
—CDC
T he F r u it M achine : T wenty Y ears
of W ritings on Q ueer C inema
By Thomas Waugh. Duke University Press,
2000; $17.95 softcover.
T
his is an important book more for the latter
half of its title than the former. This is no
Cellubid Closet; it chronicles 20 years of
thorough, honest criticism of the ways and rea­
sons homosexuals are portrayed on the silver
screen.
The author discusses the whys and hows of
sexual politics in film in a scholarly manner,
yet without presumption. In fact, given the
range of political and social issues explored by
Thomas Waugh, the book could aptly be called
Queer Writings on Cinema , as he points his pen
far beyond strictly gay films to encompass what
a movie such as, say, Porky’s might mean for
both gay and general audiences.
The Fruit Machine’s 34 entries represent an
overview o f Waugh’s career, which began in
Toronto in the 1970s and ends up in academia,
with Waugh introducing each piece from the
vantage of the present, laudably chastising
himself in retrospect for ones that don’t pass
muster.
The first (and by far the best) half of the
book consists of Waugh’s film writing for The
Body Politic, a Toronto-based gay magazine
that began shortly after Stonewall and fold­
ed in the mid-1980s. The Body Politic was a
sort of anti-A dvocate, a radical left-wing
publication that, while focused on gay lib­
eration at a time when the issue was
extremely urgent, was also known for its
radically feminist, socialist and generally
provocative and anti-conformist viewpoints.
It’s unsurprising, then, that although Waugh
is glad there is finally some cinematic represen­
tation of homosexuality emerging in the early
1970s, he harshly criticizes the exclusion of les­
bians and the uneven focus upon what he
terms an “A dvocate lifestyle,” pointing out that
many minor gay films (which were major
events then, though most have now been for­
gotten) pandered to what he viewed as the
dominant materialistic, classist and often clos­
eted audience of gay men who seemed content
to remain ghettoized and apathetic to the uni­
versal struggle of all people living outside the
cultural norm.
O f Waugh’s Body Politic work, a piece about
gay German filmmaker and sociopolitical com­
mentator Rainer Werner Fassbinder is particu­
larly enjoyable.
Unfortunately, the second half of the
book— which finds Waugh writing less for the
reader on the street than for academic jour­
nals— is bogged down by too much emphasis
on poststructuralism and political correctness;
Waugh seems to accept the status quo dogma
of the gay establishment in the 1980s and
1990s as readily as he rejected it in the 1970s.
Still, The Fruit Machine is a learned work
that offers objective, invaluable insights into
both the history of gay film and the ever-
complex struggle for gay (and human) rights.
— Christopher McQuain
■ C hristopher D. C uttone is a Just Out staff
writer and compulsive reader.
C hristopher M c Q uain is a Portbnd-based
free-lance umter and tireless observer of pop cul­
ture.
1
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# 9
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