When my generation was growing up, teachers, reference books, and movies always presented historical figures as absolutely, undeniably straight. My paperback copy of The Importance of Being Earnest said that Oscar Wilde was imprisoned "on scandalous charges." I asked the teacher what those charges were. She said she didn't know.
In the 1980s, we started to uncover the "lies, secrets, and silence," reveal the gay men and lesbians of the past who had been denied us. We collected them like beacons of hope in a homophobic world: Plato, Aristotle, Walt Whitman, Oscar Wilde, Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, Gertrude Stein, Michelangelo...and Caravaggio (1571-1610), who introduced the Baroque style of bright, naturalistic color to Italy, who scandalized the art world by using thieves, beggars, and prostitutes as models for religious-themed paintings. And who was gay.
Everybody in West Hollywood went to Caravaggio (1986), by filmmaker Derek Jarman (who announced that he was gay later that year). We were expecting a lot of cute Italian guys (there are some), and hoping that they would be nude (no).
As a child and teenager, the artist (Dexter Fletcher, left), is the victim of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. This "turns him" gay, or rather pansexual.
As an adult (Nigel Terry), he is a decadent figure like something out of a Pasolini film, consorting with men and women, although he prefers women. He seduces both Raduccio (Sean Bean) and his girlfriend Lena. But Raduccio is just a dalliance; the heterosexual romance is True Love. Then Raduccio kills Lena, and a distraught Caravaggio kills him. Gay lives must always end in tragedy.
Everybody in West Hollywood went to Caravaggio (1986), by filmmaker Derek Jarman (who announced that he was gay later that year). We were expecting a lot of cute Italian guys (there are some), and hoping that they would be nude (no).
We were also hoping that Caravaggio would be presented as gay, but resigned to the likelihood that he would be straightwashed: turned heterosexual, or mostly heterosexual (a few men as trivial dalliances as he pursued the Woman of His Dreams).
He was straightwashed.
As a child and teenager, the artist (Dexter Fletcher, left), is the victim of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. This "turns him" gay, or rather pansexual.
As an adult (Nigel Terry), he is a decadent figure like something out of a Pasolini film, consorting with men and women, although he prefers women. He seduces both Raduccio (Sean Bean) and his girlfriend Lena. But Raduccio is just a dalliance; the heterosexual romance is True Love. Then Raduccio kills Lena, and a distraught Caravaggio kills him. Gay lives must always end in tragedy.
More after the break. Caution: Explicit.
