Review: "An Englishman in New York"

Two watchings now of An Englishman in New York and I’m still processing what to make of it.  It isn’t straight-forward, at least for me.  The Naked Civil Servant, which dealt with Quentin Crisp’s life in England seems simpler, more funny.  Its sequel strikes me as more problematical, more ambiguous.  Of course, the story of a man growing old is bound to be different from the story of a man coming of age.  But the films also deal with different places and times.  New York is not London.  And the 1970s and 1980s are not the 1930s and 1940s.

For now, I just want to say a few things about the second film, the film about New York, share my initial reactions, and suggest some deeper issues.

With the BBC broadcast of The Naked Civil Servant, Quentin Crisp has become a celebrity.  He is invited to New York to speak.  This is around 1980.  Arriving in Manhattan, he immediately falls in love with it.  And New York seems to fall in love with him.  But not for long.  Crisp misjudges the growing AIDS epidemic.  Fearing that the straight world will once again saddle homosexuals as the bearers of disease, Crisp suggests that AIDS is just the latest “fad.”  His remarks spark outrage, event cancellations—and even threats of violence against him personally.

In the meantime, Crisp has been introduced to the New York gay scene, and been asked to leave a gay bar because he and his friend were not dressed in the “appropriate” garb—in this case, construction outfits, leather, or shirtless.  It’s a change for Crisp, who in England had always been bullied for not looking “straight.”  But this is New York after Stonewall.

Now, feeling like a relic of a bygone time, he meets Susana Ventura, aka Penny Arcade, who invites him to join in her performance art.  He is still relevant, she tells him, pointing out the prevalence of gay-on-gay discrimination, pointing out the rise of the commercialism of the “pink dollar,” decrying the party culture of body building and drug taking where deviation from the new gay “norm” means expulsion.  Crisp continues onstage into his eighties.

He has also met a young artist, Patrick Angus.  Crisp helps to win him some recognition, despite mainstream feedback that his paintings are “too gay” and “dirty.”  Angus lives long enough to see some success, before dying from complications of AIDS.

By the end of the film, Crisp has become an icon all over again.  He is now donating thousands to AIDS research.  Speaking at a gay club in Florida, he sums up his attitude towards life, urging people to ask themselves, “Is there anything inside that you have not yet unpacked?”  He dies having returned to England for a speaking tour.

That’s the outline.  Within this lie questions about the value of being yourself, being who you are; questions of how to behave when you are part of a despised minority.  What is the value of art and artifice for an individual?  What is the value of politeness and civility?  

Crisp had an oddly Calvinist attitude.  He said he didn’t believe in “rights.”  If everyone got what they deserved, he said, everyone would starve.  And he didn’t believe in an afterlife.  He made other controversial remarks in addition to the “AIDS fad” remark, but they aren’t covered in this film.

I plan a report, though, on the related documentary, Resident Alien.  Curiously, the documentary was released in 1990, when Crisp was still alive.  An Englishman in New York appeared in 2009, ten years after his death.  In some ways the film builds on the documentary.  Curious also is the interaction between Sting and his song/video (“An Englishman in New York”), and Crisp, and the documentary (in which Sting appears).   But more on that later.