WARHOL'S CINEMATIC QUEER UTOPIA

WARHOL’S CINEMATIC QUEER UTOPIA 

By Issa Rashid

Much has been said about Andy Warhol’s art on canvas. It’s an ongoing debate as to whether the art of manufacturing at a commercial scale is in fact “art” or a factory line of so-called copies. Some say that the life that he so well curated within his circles, the Factory, and everything that came with it, was art itself. Truthfully, I’m not as interested in the screen prints, drawings or polaroids, as I am truly fascinated with the lesser mainstream commodification of Warhol’s artistic endeavors: his films. These black & white moving images showcase an array of New York city characters, the true flock of the silver-tin foil factory crowd, relics of a lost city. As opposed to his art, made in mostly assembly lined format, Andy Warhol’s films were collaborative and required personalities to execute, offering a unique window into the New York underground queer culture of the 1960-70’s. 

Where his screen prints expanded on the landscape of American pop iconography of the time, with Brillo boxes, Marilyns, and soup cans, his films opened up a portal into the very eccentric and personal queer life of the artist we know today. In 1963’s Kiss we see faces of all genders holding passionate kisses, women with men, men with men. Sleep (1964) consists of 5 hours of one closeup Bolex 16 mm shot of his slumbering lover, John Giorno. Though Blow Job (1964), in which the viewer watches the face of an unnamed boy as he experiences the pleasures of 5 alleged oral performances, is probably his most controversial, (it seems incredible to think that it would take 5 different guys and a long 26 minutes to make the hunk cum, but I digress.) It’s nowhere near the explicit, full frontal view of Taylor Mead’s Ass (1964), a 70 minute runtime of queer writer, Taylor Mead’s, pure cheeks. Films like Vinyl (1965) and My Hustler (1965) delved into darker territories, like amphetamine-fueled queens living out their S&M fantasies. Warhol's films were often raunchy and perverse, verging on pornographic even for today’s standards. These films showcased queer sexuality during a time when any kind of homosexual activity was punished by law. The fact that they even got produced is a testament to queer underground filmmaking and the power of art in the face of injustice. 

Most of Warhol’s films were produced at The Factory, his artistic studio and open collective of bohemians, artists, actors, and queer personalities. These “Superstars,” as Warhol coined them, became the ongoing subjects of his film experimentation and later on feature films. Andy stood as a kind of house mother wielding the power to make any factory hanger-on into the next luminary, and eventual legend. Of course, these films were nothing without trans superstars Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, and Holly Woodlawn, who famously starred in Flesh (1968), Trash (1970) and Women in Revolt (1971), films produced by Warhol and directed by Paul Morrissey. “Candy came from out on the island/ in the backroom she was everybody’s darling” and “Holly came from Miami F.L.A/ Hitchhiked her way across the U.S.A” forever immortalized them within the lyrics of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side.” Warhol had an immense fixation on drag personas, like the very first of Warhol’s drag-queen superstars, Mario Montez. In his earliest screen test “Mario Banana No.1” (1964), Mario is seen seductively peeling a ripe banana, seducing the viewer, licking, and tantalizing with every bite--so inarguably Warholian. The Latinx cult-drag icon went on to star in multiple Warhol films, including Camp (1965) and The Chelsea Girls (1966). These cult-legends of the silver screen further pushed queer visibility, in an era when identity politics were not as advanced as today's world and gender fluidity even more abstract. 

The behind the scenes filmmaking lore is extremely vast, after 100’s of films thrown into the metaphorical Campbell's soup can, Warhol cemented himself as not only a commercial artist but as an avant garde filmmaker and director, leaving behind a legacy of groundbreaking queer art films. While his paintings are arguably queer-coded in their own right, it’s his films where the bounds of queerness were almost limitless. From queer performativity to high-camp to something altogether more personal, Warhol’s films painted a rebellious queer utopia that has stood the test of time.