In the late 80s and early 90s, a lot of experimentation occurred with movies that attempted to speak out for "marginalized voices", a media theory that concerns the disruption of the upper-middle class heterosexual white man with a wife and 2.5 kids motif of our Western hegemony. Most of these movies, I'm sorry to say, are only interesting to the audiences of which it reflected, and some of them went as far as to create reversal stereotypes by pretty much assuming that upper-middle class heterosexual white men with wives and 2.5 kids should feel guilty or punishable for what they've done to these "subjugated classes".
Unfortunately for Marlon Riggs, his documentary "Tongues Untied" is part of the genre, but fortunately, his is a beautiful and poetic creation of it. "Tongues Untied" is about being black and homosexual, which is in fact a complicated thing because being homosexual is especially difficult for someone who is black, as one of the unfortunate side-effects of our history between "blacks and whites" (arbitrary, and yet designed) is the feeling of emasculation. Thus, being a gay black man means that one is torn along a racial standpoint and a sexuality standpoint, and that the one also causes conflict with the other.
Thus, when initial audiences were offended that Riggs didn't lay more blame on some particular aspect of society during the movie's release in festivals, they weren't getting the point. Riggs' creation is the projection of himself, his desires, history, motivation, fear, anger, love, sexuality, culture, and humor, onto the screen, and other standpoints or antagonistic standpoints would only serve to destroy the wholeness he finally built within himself. Tongues Untied's theme of "black men loving black men is the only revolutionary experience" doesn't mean that if we want a new revolution, black men need to go out and start having sex with each other, it's that that's Rigg's revolutionary thought for himself--it could have been easier stated "Being yourself is the only revolutionary experience", except that that approach is way too PC and vague to account for the unification of Riggs' experience. The whole film, then, is an attempt to build towards that thesis.
--PolarisDiB
Unfortunately for Marlon Riggs, his documentary "Tongues Untied" is part of the genre, but fortunately, his is a beautiful and poetic creation of it. "Tongues Untied" is about being black and homosexual, which is in fact a complicated thing because being homosexual is especially difficult for someone who is black, as one of the unfortunate side-effects of our history between "blacks and whites" (arbitrary, and yet designed) is the feeling of emasculation. Thus, being a gay black man means that one is torn along a racial standpoint and a sexuality standpoint, and that the one also causes conflict with the other.
Thus, when initial audiences were offended that Riggs didn't lay more blame on some particular aspect of society during the movie's release in festivals, they weren't getting the point. Riggs' creation is the projection of himself, his desires, history, motivation, fear, anger, love, sexuality, culture, and humor, onto the screen, and other standpoints or antagonistic standpoints would only serve to destroy the wholeness he finally built within himself. Tongues Untied's theme of "black men loving black men is the only revolutionary experience" doesn't mean that if we want a new revolution, black men need to go out and start having sex with each other, it's that that's Rigg's revolutionary thought for himself--it could have been easier stated "Being yourself is the only revolutionary experience", except that that approach is way too PC and vague to account for the unification of Riggs' experience. The whole film, then, is an attempt to build towards that thesis.
--PolarisDiB