Postscript to The Naked Civil Servant

The Naked Civil Servant, the film based on the autobiography of Quentin Crisp, is lighthearted and inspiring.  It’s inspiring in part because it is lighthearted.  Crisp took a lot of heat for being who he was: An honest, open, "effeminate" homosexual, back in the 1930s in England, when homosexuality was a criminal offense. The way he tells his story, part of how he survived was through a lighthearted approach to his troubles—you don’t see much angst in this film.  He and his friend, the club-footed woman, do discuss suffering to some extent; but it’s brief.

It’s possible that the only way someone could survive the indignity of constant contempt was to be honest and whimsical.  This combination provides the charm to this film.

In preparing to watch the sequel, The Englishman in New York, it helps to consider a few questions implied by the first film.

What are the roles of sex, of love, of friendship, of compassion, in this film?

At several points in the film, Quentin professes never to have experienced love; of course, he’s speaking of conventional love:  Between man and woman.  But it’s not clear whether Quentin experiences love towards anyone.  His first sexual experiences are as a male prostitute.  He and his clients get sex, and he gets money.  What might a gay man expect to get at that time?

He has relationships with four men in the course of the film:  The first is a man known only as Thumbnails (his thumbnails are somehow misshaped).  But Crisp claims this love was never sexual.  The second is a civil servant.  This is sexual, but not terribly exciting.  The third is a large man known as Barn Door, who after knowing Quentin awhile, declares they should sleep together; then, after another while, declares they should stop.  The fourth is a Polish man who has spent some years in a mental institution and is “sexual, but impotent.”  Not a very fulfilling list.

He has platonic friendships with several women:  The club-footed woman, who eventually becomes a nun; the wife of the Pole; a ballet teacher who is his landlady for a while.  These connections seem deeper than the relationships with the men, though non-sexual.

Friendship runs deep in this film.  Quentin is a friend of the Pole long before they are lovers.  He is friends with both the Pole and his wife.  The Pole later divorces the wife and marries the club-footed woman.  Crisp remains friends with all of them.  He is loyal to them, and they are loyal to him.  At perhaps the climax of the film, when Crisp is arrested for soliciting (many years after giving up prostitution), his friends proclaim his good character in court and he is found not guilty.

Crisp is compassionate as well.  In his relationships with men, it is always the other man who initiates the connection.  When questioned about his relationship with the Pole, he declares:  “Love is never closing your hand, not even to the unlovable.”

Looking forward to the film’s sequel, one might also consider the role of fantasy and make-believe in Crisp’s life.  At the beginning of The Naked Civil Servant, Crisp suggests a central image might be him playing dress-up as a young boy.  Certainly part of his endurance came from his refusal to concede to anyone that he was doing anything wrong.

But how does a world of wit and fantasy confront the dark realities of AIDS?  This becomes a major theme of the sequel.

Film Review: “The Naked Civil Servant”

Last night I rewatched the film The Naked Civil Servant, based on the memoir by Quentin Crisp, starring John Hurt.

This film has a special place in my heart.  I’m not sure when I first saw it, but it was broadcast on PBS when I was living in Virginia.  From what I can tell, it was broadcast in the spring of 1975—but I couldn’t have seen it that early; I was still a graduate student at the University of Virginia, and not watching much TV.  I may not have seen it until ten years later, after I’d moved to California.  I do find it difficult to imagine seeing this film in Virginia in the 1970s.

In my memory, my encounter with The Naked Civil Servant blends with my encounter with Christopher Isherwood’s book Christopher and His Kind, which I first read around 1977.  They both changed my life.

In his memoir, Isherwood is unapologetically gay—homosexual.  This was a revelation to me.  Yet Isherwood remained fairly conventional in appearance; Crisp did not.

Crisp liked men, and Crisp liked makeup and flowing clothes.  He decided early on (the 1930s) to be upfront about it.  Consequently he was frequently harassed and ganged-up on.  In spite of that, he made a living for himself through various art-related activities, and ended up as a “grand old man” of the English queer community (though eventually moving to New York).

I’ve read the book the film is based on, but I don’t remember it very well; the film seems more focused.  In it, we see Crisp come to terms with his own nature, and decide to be honest and open about it.  We see the reactions of family, friends, and society.  We see Crisp become involved with various men—and become friends with various women (proto “fag hags?”).

What’s amazing is Crisp’s measured attitude.  He displays compassion for his lovers and his friends.  He tries to educate the society around him, on the assumption that “they don’t understand us; and what people don’t understand, they fear.”  It is his life’s work, his crusade, to educate them.  But he keeps his sense of humor, and his perspective.  This impressed me when I first saw the film, and I tried to learn from him.

The film still impresses me, but in a more personal way. Because now I can see the personal touches involved in the life situations displayed here.  The stories may seem rather fantastic—but you can imagine them all being true.

I’m preparing to watch a sequel to this film, An Englishman in New York, produced 30 years later in 2008.

New Year’s, 2013

Well here it is a new year.  What a surprise <grin>.

But time is always moving onwards, and we move with it.  New Year’s is always significant and memorable for me, probably because I’m always on vacation—paused—when it comes upon me.

I want to take a moment to just be aware of myself and take a deep breath before plunging into this new (by our calendar) year.  What might it hold?

My Brazilian friend asked for one word to describe what people would like in 2013.  I said “determination.”  That’s it, I suppose:  A more sustained focus on what I intend to do.

I intend to write more consistently.  I intend to apply myself more consistently to the writing projects I’ve had in mind for some time:  Poems I’ve thought of but maybe not written down, or maybe only sketched.  Novels (I currently have four novel-length manuscripts, and ideas for four more).  Essays (particularly one about Attraction).  I’ve made notes and sketches for many things, but not followed through.

I intend to pursue publication more consistently.  I’ve always been more interested in writing than publishing.  And maybe writers should be.  But I want my work to be available to the public.

I intend to be more aware of how I interact with other people.  I’ve just lost a friend I value highly, for reasons obscure to me (apparently they didn’t value me highly—or perhaps I was too “high-maintenance” from their perspective?)

I intend to treat my day job with more respect.  Sometimes, I confess, I don’t understand what motivates the people I work for—but I intend to try harder and contribute more.

And finally (as I sit here with a sore throat and a slight fever):  I intend to take care of myself, physically, mentally, and spiritually.  I want to remember to do that.  For myself, and for my friends.

Blessings to all, as we plunge into 2013!

“An Unpleasant Speculation”

Thinking in the shower this morning, I engaged in wild speculations about the possible future breakup of the United States. The question being, where exactly the boundaries would be between the old “Union” and the old “Confederacy.”

The thought came after reading online postings about gun control and the recent killings in Connecticut.  I’m more and more aware that people have visceral reactions to certain events and issues; and different people have wildly different reactions.

I’ve known this for a long time.  But recently I’ve become much more aware of how important gun ownership is for some people.  The idea of gun control hits them very personally.  Some people feel vulnerable and feel they need guns to protect themselves.  Other people feel threatened by knowing that people around them own guns.

For myself, I will issue a disclaimer:  Although I try to listen to other people’s points of view and understand them—and I think I do understand a lot of them—my natural inclinations tend towards the liberal side of politics.  So I have to work harder to understand the more conservative viewpoint.  But I try.

The United States started as thirteen colonies that agreed to come together as a loose confederation, then as a “more perfect union.”  We fought a bloody civil war when roughly half the country decided they’d rather opt out on what they saw the country becoming.  They were forced to remain in.

But what if the differences become too great?  The Soviet government eventually could not hold the Soviet Union together.  Czechoslovakia eventually split into separate Czech and Slovak countries.  Those dissolutions occurred peacefully; Yugoslavia became a disaster.

The Jihadis who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan take credit for the collapse of the Soviet Union.  I’ve always thought Bin Laden had something similar in mind for us, and I always thought it was silly.  We don’t have the same extremes of ethnic and religious hatred as existed in Yugoslavia.  We have a long and strong democratic tradition, unlike the Soviet Union.

But I’m beginning to wonder.  I thought the 2008 presidential election was pretty disgraceful, and 2012 was worse.  And watching the defensiveness and fear of various political, social, and religious factions in the United States, I’m not as confident as I used to be.  I used to think, “We’re all Americans, after all!”  

But the very meaning of America is becoming vastly different for different segments of the population.  Is the “American Dream” about freedom of thought and expression?  Or is it about becoming financially independent?  Or is it about becoming, to use an expression, “filthy rich?”  Is it about becoming more powerful than everyone else, so that you can thumb your nose at them?  Or is it about building a community where everyone is welcome—and where, possibly, everyone is cared for?

I don’t know.  I envision a “New Confederacy” of roughly the old southern Confederacy and the general area of the Louisiana Purchase, as well as Utah and Arizona.  What is left of the “United States” is split into three separate enclaves:  The northeast, the Pacific coast, and Colorado/New Mexico (maybe).  Not a pleasant sight.

My father once mused that the U.S. had lost its vision, and that the Soviets would triumph.  I’ve always been more worried about our own internal stresses.  I’d like to think we’ll pull through.

(Audio) Reflection: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Part I

Pretty funny about Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  Now that I’ve seen the movie (did I watch it twice?), and read the book as well, the audiobook seems eerily sedate.  Or should I say, nothing in the book so far seems utterly unreasonable.  It’s amazing how much I have come to accept Thompson’s narrative of his trip to Las Vegas, even though much of the narrative is the narrative of what he was imagining and feeling in his own mind.

But does that mean that Thompson has succeeded, or failed?  The initial strangeness of the story comes from the weird things that Thompson and his lawyer are hallucinating during the trip.  And since the hallucinations not unexpectedly call forth paranoid and gut instincts, it would not be surprising that they react the way they do.  But do they?  Did they?

Because the other half of this equation is exactly what I mentioned to begin with:  The eerie sedateness with which I now react to the story.  Within the story, the characters act as if nothing is very surprising.  They’re a bit startled, of course, when hotel staff morph into lizards and so on.  But they handle it with surprising aplomb.  They never look at someone and say, “My God, you’ve turned into a giant lizard!”  They may talk to one another about what they’re experiencing; but they don’t talk to the others about it.

Or do they talk to one another?  Maybe—they could talk softly to one another, under their breath, about the weird goings on all around them.  And maybe they do.  But how would we know?  Can we trust much of anything that Thompson tells us in this narrative?

In Part I of the book, he’s gone to Las Vegas to cover a desert motorcycle (and dune-buggy) race.  My research says he’d nailed an assignment to write 2,500 words of captions for the photographs.  He did so, but his contribution was rejected by the magazine.

If we are to believe the book, the race began, and within 30 minutes the entire surrounding area was enveloped in a huge dust cloud.   That’s the last he saw of the race.  Part I of the book, far from 10 pages of captions, runs 100 pages, describing some possible facts but more often the anxieties of Thompson and his attorney.

Believable—if we believe that covering the race and subjecting oneself to Las Vegas in the wrong frame of mind could call forth one’s inner demons, especially under the influence of every conceivable illegal substance.

But would a journalist covering a two-day race really take along a trunk load of highly illegal substances, with the intention of becoming utterly bonkers even before arriving, and staying that way for the duration?

It’s an interesting proposition; possibly even true.  Thompson was certainly “unusual”—and an engaging writer.  Welcome to his potentially unnerving world.

The audiobook, by the way, features Ron McLarty and is available from Recorded Books, LLC.  Curiously, the copy I am listening to, from the local library, becomes generally unplayable about half-way through.  “Coincidence???”