A Catastrophic Start

A White Jewish Woman In Rebellion Makes Queer Film History

“They want to keep you in that little world where they can control you. That's where the money comes from."

Norman Mailer, at the height of his fame in the 1950s, declared that the one insupportable persona for him was to be "a nice Jewish boy." His lifelong rebellion against his middle-class upbringing produced, amongst many other writings, "The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster." This 1957 essay is now something of an embarrassment as its championing of "Negro culture" was posited as a liberating defiance of the stifling morality and conformity of the Eisenhower era. Beatniks and hipsters took their cues from "the best minds ... dragging themselves through the Negro streets, looking for an angry fix."

There was a distaff side to this as well, viz. Hettie Jones, Marilyn Hacker, and l'enfant terrible of independent film, Shirley Clake, nee Shirley Brimberg, daughter of a multimillionaire Polish-Jewish immigrant who made his fortune in manufacturing. Her most important films dealt with a seamy New York slice of Black life (The Connection, The Cool World, and Portrait of Jason.) She wrote, "I identified with black people because I couldn't deal with the woman question and I transposed it. I could understand very easily the black problems, and I somehow equated them to how I felt. When I did The Connection, which was about junkies, I knew nothing about junk and cared less. It was a symbol of people who are on the outside. I always felt alone and on the outside of the culture that I was in."

Through her work with this Black demimonde, she got to know a fascinating Black raconteur, hustler, sex worker, and houseboy to the wealthy, who renamed himself Jason Halliday. She persuaded him to come to her room at the storied Chelsea Hotel. She filmed him for twelve hours, cinema verité style, as he raffishly, then bitterly recounts his life "gettin over on old massa" before dissolving into a throbbing dung heap of misery thanks to the alcohol and weed he consumed as the hours passed and the camera turned. At his messiest and most vulnerable, Clarke and her crew throw insults and accusatory questions at him, seemingly to make the pile of pain and self-pity writhe higher. The edited result became Portrait of Jason, the first feature-length film to put a Black gay character at its center.

This was so radical and out-of-left-field for American culture and Black gay culture that.it barely made a dent and was thought to be lost for a number of years. It's been meticulously restored and can be streamed on Kanopy, but it doesn't really get the commentary it deserves and even less love. How can you love a train wreck? How can you love this pathetic, deluded, unhappy man who has no filter and rips himself open to a world that would hardly have found anything positive about a Black gay sex worker and servant? (Remember that 1967 was also the year that Sidney Poiter's super clean and handsome Dr. Prentice barely squeaked into the good graces of his white fiancée's liberal parents in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?)

Does this stand at the head of Black queer representation in film? Can't we just fast forward to Isaac Julien's Looking for Langston (1987) or Marlon Rigg's Tongues Untied (1989)? The answer is "yes" if we make the argument that only films made by Black gay filmmakers carry sufficient authenticity to launch a tradition. (But then what do we do with Jennie Livingston's Paris Is Burning?)

Life is messy; film history is messy. Portrait of Jason is not a blackface production -- to be simply condemned and "canceled." It raises serious and complex issues. The film itself exposes the artificiality and manipulation of cinema verité. The question of who controls Jason's story is a vexing and probably irresolvable one. And yet Jason does tell his story. He has wit and intelligence and gives us a glimpse into a world that would have been as foreign to white heterosexual viewers as a Martian landscape. In spite of his anger and self-pity, he gets some zingers in, for sure. "White people... they love you when you're down and out. Then they can help you. Makes them feel good."

Although Jason recognizes his manifold failures, he rather touchingly believes he may have the talent and drive to become a cabaret singer. What he settles for, even after the gaudy breakdown on camera, is what the film gives him, his 15 minutes of fame. Of course, that too was a poisoned gift. He hoped the film would launch his career; it didn't. (Compare what Grey Gardens did for Little Edie Beale.) He became homeless later and felt abandoned by the same people who celebrated the film. "It made me famous and what did I get for it?"

Portrait of Jason did nothing for Jason Halliday. On a macro level, it was a landmark of documentary filmmaking. As for gay Black culture -- an out version of which was all but invisible (and had been for decades) -- Jason Halliday had his snap queen moments, and they are part of the record. "I've been through it all, baby ... and I've still got my pearls on!" Is this Black resilience? Is this gay resilience? Is this intersectional resilience?

O snap!

--Dr. Robert Philipson

Read more about Dr. Robert Philipson's personal connection to this foray in At 54, I Hit My First Film Festival Entry Out of the Ballpark

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