Derek Jarman’s film Blue

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Recommended: Human sexuality

Derek Jarman’s film Blue

I am a cock sucking

Straight acting

Lesbian man

With ball crushing bad manners

Laddish nymphomaniac politics

Spunky sexist desires

Of incestuous inversion and

Incorrect terminology

I am a Not Gay (Blue, Jarman; 1995: 119).

In offering this extract from Derek Jarman’s film Blue, (England, 1993) I have established an expectation that this paper’s concern is with the sexual body of East End boot stomping, ball crushing queens. However, whilst this sequence has caught our imagination, my interest also lies in the analysis of the cinematic representation of the diseased and medicalised body of the artist affected by HIV/AIDS.

However, in the film Blue, we see neither the diseased nor disappearing body of the filmmaker who has AIDS. Jarman’s body is embodied sonically rather than visually in the film, to counter retrogressive depictions of people living with HIV. Thus, Jarman’s depiction of the diseased body in Blue is inferred rather than seen.[1] This representation of the body may appear to be at odds with AIDS activist discourse, which has advocated at length for positive images of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA)[2] since the 1980s.[3] However, Derek Jarman’s strategy to challenge and derail the notion of visibility was also aligned with an impulse to visually represent his loss of optical vision due to HIV related illness. The strategy to deny the viewer a visual image of the person with AIDS was effectively a counterpoint to the saturation of images that was prevalent in early 1990s post modern culture.[4]

The intersection between queer activist politics and post modernist culture was important to the practice of many western artists working around issues associated with HIV...

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Beauvais, Y 1992, AIDS A SIDA, film, France, 51/2 min

Bordowitz, G 1993, Fast Trip, Long Drip, US, video, 56 min

Cartwright, J 1993, There we are John: Derek Jarman interviewed by John Cartwright, UK, video, 30 min.

Demme, J 1993, Philadelphia, film, US, 155 min

Goldin, N & Coulthand, E 1996 I’ll be your Mirror, video, US, 52 min

Haynes, T 1996, Safe, film, US, 118 min

Hoolboom, M 1998, Panic Bodies, film, Canada, 70 min

Jarman, D 1994, Blue, film, UK, 75 min

Riggs, M 1991, Anthem, video, USA, 10min

Spottiswoode, R , And The Band Played On, USA, film, 140min

Tartaglia, J 1989, Eco Homo, USA, video, 7 min

------------1988, A.I.D.S.C.R.E.A.M., USA, video, 6 min

Thew, A 1993, Cling Film, UK, film/video, 20min

Thomas, I 1992,The Dreaming, UK, video, 13 min

------------1992, The Fading, UK, video, 5 min

Von Trier, L 1987 Epidemic, Denmark, film, 105 min

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