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Gay Sex in the 1970's Gay Sex in the ‘70’s (2005) – Joseph F. Lovett This documentary is an interesting time capsule that remembers or reveals, depending on one’s age, the heyday of the post-Stonewall era where both the political and the sexual landscape for gay men (and women, although not explored here) changed dramatically. Lovett has drawn from personal experience and memory to develop a framework through which the memory and experience of others re-animates the gay sexual revolution in the pre-AIDS world. Using archival footage, an intense photographic record, disco music, and personal accounts, this film elucidates a period in time in which sexual freedom exploded and crossed, if not dismantled, the lines that delineated sexual behavior prior to that decade. The 1960’s is often packaged as the decade of love, but it really was the 1970’s that expanded those roots into the decade of open sexuality. As one watches the film the tangible freedoms explored and expanded thirty years ago are revitalized beyond a muted “joy” that pervades memory or myth now. This cultural shift had evolved, become chic, and pervaded mainstream culture in the later half of the decade. Music, television and film began to dabble with gay themes and characters, some more successfully and valued than others. Anonymous and kinky gay sex became the fodder for Friedkin’s “Cruising” (1979) staring Al Pacino. This film was somewhat of an exploitation film, and one that clearly placed “gay” into the category of “danger” and “something to be feared”. But the scenarios in which the characters engaged one and other were derived directly from the gay sexual culture of New York City of the time, and which are the main topic of this documentary. Why is this film important? It is somewhat very much a guiltless lament of a lost time and a generation gone. However there is something that the film only briefly alluded to, and something that, for those having worked in the political climate of mid-1980’s AIDS activism, has great meaning. The political power that gay activism in the post-Stonewall era gained, allowed the social climate of gay culture and sexuality to flourish. It was barely a decade of change before AIDS surfaced beyond the street-level health clinics. Had the political change sparked by Stonewall not occurred, the openness of gay life would not been revealed. It is the openness of gay sexuality combined with political power that would become the engine of AIDS response. There is clearly no argument that would support that the institutional response to AIDS was anything less than snail pace. Silence did truly Equal Death. For those who worked the frontline, grassroots, early days of the crisis, it was more of a cultural response than a medical one. The culture of gay sex had to change first and foremost. Had that openness not been present in the wider culture for so long, the required change would not have had the direction and influence it did. The very openness of sexual expression that allowed the spread of AIDS (and other STD’s) was one of the key factors in mounting a counter-attack through behavioral change. Safe and Safer-sex was the goal of behavioral change, yet one could not discuss in great detail, without fear and shame, the sexual behaviors that needed to be modified without the cultural ground having been sowed. For instance, how could safer-S&M be taught without frank open acceptance, understanding and knowledge-sharing of the activities in question? For this reason the importance of sharing a generation’s history and experience is critical. HIV and other STD’s are opportunistic viral and bacterial organisms that require sexual exchanges to be replicated in new hosts, but the opportunity that is exploited is less in the physical contact, but rather in the social construction of sexuality in the society at large. Understanding sexual culture is the primary defense. ---------------------------------------- Note: for those that do not know me, and therefore have not endured my personal recounting, I was deeply involved with AIDS activism in the later half of the 1980’s and early 1990’s. That experience taught me more about politic struggle, education methodology, human sexuality, global pandemics, death, information dissemination and the economic framework of knowledge than my decade and a half of post-secondary education ever did. I both highly encourage and caution everyone to stand up for something and let it consume you for a while. Although it can come at great social cost, it is a powerful thing to have in your life-toolbox. Note: my inclusion of this documentary and others that explore gay, lesbian, bi, and transgender themes in no way represents an explicit labeling of these orientations as a form of “kink”. These grander themes are part and parcel of the freedom of expression that is exemplified by this site and others.  |
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