Sex Love and Life, The Backstory, 1.3 Fledgling alternative communities in the early twentieth century (part 2)

It would also be remiss of me, after discussing somewhat flawed playrights and poets, in part 1, not to mention the famous hispanic poet and playright Federico Garcia Lorca (1898 -1936). He is not someone I ‘discovered’ until relatively recently, as I explored my hispanophilia more fully and so I cannot claim to have even considered him a potential role model in my youth. However, he would certainly have been someone worthy of consideration at the time, had I known more about him.

Most of the classic texts on Lorca were not published until the late seventies and eighties and perhaps one of the most famous biographies ‘Federico Garcia Lorca’, by Ian Gibson was published in 1989, explores far more of the way his homosexuality shaped his work (which, as it turns out was considerable) than previous work. He was obsessed by death and was of course infamously, shot for his support of the Republicans, and what was deemed then his ‘blasphemous’ work and his assumed ‘deviant sexuality’, by Nationalist troops in 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. At the time of his death he had been seeing his novio,boyfriend, Rafael Rodriguez Rapun for some years, although was being relatively secret about it, and as the era became ever more repressive, little documentation of their relationship exists. Rapun also died, a year to the day after Lorca’s death, in the Civil War whilst fighting on the front, as Franco’s troops tried to take Santander in August 1937. Some say he deliberately sacrificed himself; he was just 25.

One of the famous artists and protagonists that Lorca mixed with (and my goodness he mixed with so many..) and was inspired by, in his earlier life and work was Salvador Dali, (1904-1989) with whom he had a relationship, in the late twenties for some years. He also met and became friends with Luis Bunuel (1900-1983) in this period and was inspired by his creative output and energy, though Bunuel’s rather curt dismissal of his play Mariana Pineda and then of his sexuality, turned the relationship less than luke-warm. In truth though, all three sparked off each other, in this exceptionally creative period in our recent European history (though Lorca actually had quite an important role in developing and encouraging literary creativity in South America as well: he loved for example the vibrancy of Buenos Aires).

In retrospect, Lorca would have been (indeed still can be..) a reasonable role model, despite his ‘demons’, as although he lived his personal life very carefully and secretly initially, afraid in particular of his families disapproval, (especially his fathers’), eventually he was relatively open as a gay man in the early thirties, as indeed was Dali, although Dali very much less so later on, as his fame and career blossomed. In fact Dali in later years, sought to play down this aspect of their relationship, claiming that Lorca was more effete and much more into him than he was into Lorca, even suggesting that Lorca tried to have penetrative sex with him a number of times but that he had to rebuff him. I cannot help but notice he did not rebuff ideas that he had penetrative sex with Lorca however. Dali was always (or perhaps as his fame grew, became) a hugely egotistical character and there was a tendency in his later career that anything which might have been seen as ‘negative’ in the past was always rebuffed, denied, if at all possible.  

There is however something else that reading Lorca’s biography reveals, which I think is particularly important and relates to something that it took me many years to learn, to realise. History records many things about the men and women whom we look back upon, that we may try in some way to learn from, to see if they could be our own role models. All too often however it only records their successes: the things that they wrote, discovered, said or imagined that were feted. Yet too little attention is paid to recognising that for all the success that such people eventually enjoyed, there are often a myriad of projects, ideas, thoughts, that are ‘failures’. Failures in the sense that they do not get any attention, they fail to get off the ground or ignite peoples passion or interest. 

The reality is that everyone has failures and has to come to accept that a lot of creative activity: thought, sweat, tears, has gone into something which does not progress, does not receive wider kudos and is not perceived as a success. Philosophers have taught us about the acceptance of failure. Socrate’s view was that philosophy itself is a lifelong lesson in preparation for our own death, in that it attests to the eventual ‘failure’ of us all. Becoming mindful of death makes us honest about our universal impermanence, argues William Desmond in ‘Philosophy and Failure’. Indeed, within society we have long nurtured those writers, poets, playrights who have created work that has the ability in tragi and comic forms (or indeed both), to name and transfigure failure. A more modern philosophical interpretation of failure is one of defiance. Philosophy is perhaps in the best position to address failure because it knows it intimately with every new philosophical generation taking it as its duty to point out the failures of the previous one.

Costica Bradatan, in an 2013 article entitled ‘In praise of failure’ in the New York Times argues that:

We insatiably devour other species, denude the planet of life and fill it with trash. Failure could be a medicine against such arrogance and hubris, as it often brings humility.Our capacity to fail is essential to what we are.

We need to preserve, cultivate, even treasure this capacity. It is crucial that we remain fundamentally imperfect, incomplete, erring creatures; in other words, that there is always a gap left between what we are and what we can be. Whatever human accomplishments there have been in history, they have been possible precisely because of this empty space.

This strikes me as something which needs to be essentially recognised, a part of our very being. Yet our written history generally ignores these things and tells us all too often that ‘life was beautiful’. It took me years to realise and accept that just because something does not ‘make the grade’, get accepted or work out, it does not mean that you should give up trying. That in fact, some of the greatest people in our history books are those who experienced failure and yet did exactly this, kept on trying. My point being that I initially thought that my role models had to be perfect, pristine. I realise now that they do not. Now, I would never consider someone’s life – or my life- a failure if things simply did not work out sometimes. I have beaten myself up too many times for personal failure before coming to recognise that it teaches us many important things about ourselves: it is humbling, it is a natural thing, and a very useful learning experience.

I would have liked to have known long before I did, that it does not matter to sometimes fail at what you set out to do, as long as you can learn from that and move on. Lorca, we realise in Ian Gibson’s marvellous erudite biography, had many projects he was working on that never came to fruition and a good biography will always tell you about those times along with the successes, the ‘good times’. There were things that I attempted in my life that never came to fruition and I felt an abject sense of failure about. Equally, in the same way for Lorca, we understand that his relationship with Dali was never what he really wanted it to be. Some things in a budding relationship are simply outside of our control. For Lorca it really did not help that Bunuel more or less poisoned Dali against Lorca for some time (a strong word but I believe it is justified by the evidence Gibson presents in Lorca’s biography). There is a relatively happy ending to this tale though, in that although they didn’t see each other for many years, just before Lorca’s murder they did meet up again one last time: there was a reconciliation and a realisation that they still thought in much the same way and still understood, had an empathy, for each other. Lorca was very happy that they had done this and presumably went to his grave with this knowledge. Equally on learning of Lorca’s death, I think Dali would have been comforted by the reality of their last meeting.    

Bunuel, (however negative his views on homosexuality, although I did not know this then) sparked an interest fairly early in my own life, as I had developed a particular passion for films and filmmaking, in the period after I had come up to London and had joined the National Film Theatre (NFT), which was (and remains) a marvellous cultural oasis on the South Bank in the late seventies, along with the South Bank Centre and the National Theatre. I went to see a retrospective of Bunuel’s work there one evening and was introduced to the selective delights of ‘Un Chien Andalou’ (An Andalucian dog) (link to whole short film, 1929, 16 mins, warning.. this is absolutely not for the faint hearted!) Bunuel’s early short masterpiece, made in collaboration with Dali in Paris in 1929 (and now reputed to be a ‘put down’ of the Andalucian Lorca). It soon became clear to me from their programmes, seasons & catalogues that there was also a historical context in which sexual alternatives and difference had been portrayed in the cinema for many years previously. 

I discovered for example, that just after the First Great War ended in 1918, around a decade before Bunuel became active, perhaps remarkably, a German film titled Anders als die Andern (link to whole restored film on Vimeo, ‘Different from the Others’, 1919) was released, starring Conrad Veidt and Reinhold Schünzel. The story was co-written by Richard Oswald and Magnus Hirschfeld, who partially funded the production, through his groundbreaking work at the Institute for Sexual Science. The film was intended as a polemic against the then-current laws under Germany’s Paragraph 175, which made homosexuality a criminal offense, as in the UK. It is therefore believed to be the first ‘pro-gay’ film made in the world. 

The cinematography was by Max Fassbender, who two years previously had worked on Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray, one of the earliest cinematic treatments of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Veidt himself became a major film star the year after Anders was released, in the rather more famous but less controversial film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

Anders als die Andern is one of the first sympathetic portrayals of homosexuals in cinema, even though it concerns the blackmailing of a gay couple. In fact the film’s basic plot was used again in the 1961 UK film, Victim, starring Dirk Bogarde and was considered groundbreaking even then, over 40 years later, an issue on which I will return. However, unfortunately it served to highlight the issue in a negative way, with the censors and laws enacted in reaction to films like Anders als die Andern, eventually restricting viewing of the film specifically to doctors and medical researchers. It is no great surprise that prints of the film were among the many “decadent” works burned by the Nazi’s, after they came to power in 1933.

The film premiered in May 1919 and was initially successful at the cinema. However shortly after the premiere, conservative Catholic, Protestant, and anti-semitic right-wing groups started to protest and disturb the public screenings. This initiated an extensive public debate on censorship in general in the still relatively new medium of cinema. The constitution of the Weimar Republic had initially assured freedom of speech and expression, but after the debate, special qualifications were created for cinema in response to the production. It was decided that in future films which were characterised as ‘obscene’ or as dangerous to young people’ were to be censored. Whilst Hirschfeld organised screenings of the film for members of the Weimar National Assembly, the Prussian State Council, and Landtag of Prussia, along with government officials in Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, hoping to impress them of its merit, this did not yield any positive results.

In May 1920, specific censorship provisions for films were approved by legislators, a censors office was created in Berlin and its first review was of Different from the Others. Unfortunately the censorship commission consisted of three psychiatrists: Emil Kraepelin, Albert Moll, and Siegfried Placzek, and all were opponents of Hirschfeld and his advocacy of the legalisation of homosexuality. The panel eventually recommended a ban on the public screening of the film, which was put in place in October 1920.

The judgement was that the film was biased towards Paragraph 175 and thus presented a one-sided view, hence confusing young audiences about homosexuality, and also that it might be used for the recruitment of underage viewers to become homosexuals (and this was a theme that was to become very popular in conservative circles throughout the next half decade and even beyond: a classic moral panic in fact). The film was allowed to be shown only in private and to medical professionals. At the end, the only venue where the film was screened for public viewing was the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, where it was shown for education and at special events.

The film, which co-starred and was co-written by sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, refers to Hirschfeld’s radical theory of “sexual intermediacy”. The theory places homosexuality within a broad spectrum comprising heterosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism, and transvestism (a word invented by Hirschfeld). The film’s protagonist first meets his blackmailer at a costume party, and the blackmailer also frequents a drag club; these scenes are the earliest film footage of gay men and lesbians dancing. The film was initially distributed with 40 copies throughout Germany and the Netherlands. The Nazis however destroyed the majority of the prints and at one stage only one copy of the film was known to have survived. I could not find any evidence that a copy was ever screened in the UK around the time of its original release. Interestingly the german film, ‘Mädchen in Uniform’ (link to a pristine, colourised version of the film, with English subtitles, 1931, English title; Maidens in Uniform) of which a fresh new print has been recently exhibited, was also the first pro-lesbian film in the world, although it too attracted censorship by the Nazis after 1933.

Whilst homosexuality in any form was never openly accepted in mainstream society in the UK in this period, it does seem that coded references to it became ever more frequent after the early 1920’s and more especially so in the early thirties. The partial liberalisation of culture and emancipation of women played some part in this, as did slightly more liberal concepts of gender stereo-typicalisation which allowed a somewhat greater ‘fluidity’ in how both men & women presented themselves in society, though this was mainly confined to the larger (or largest) urban metropolises. It would remain something that was not discussed- at least openly- in ‘polite society’ for some generations yet. 

Certainly, there was an increase in prevalent artistic and cultural bourgeois countercultures of the late twenties and early thirties, exemplified, for example, by the young short skirted, bobbed haired dancing, smoking, female Flappers, the literary ‘Bloomsbury set’ in the UK, and artistically by the Dada pacifist movement originating in Switzerland, which begot Surrealism, the Wandervogel health & naturist movement in Germany (before it became infused with strongly fascistic overtones after the mid thirties), and in the later thirties & throughout the Second War War, the Swingjugend movement influenced by American Jazz sounds & culture in the late thirties and early forties originating in parts of north Germany but eventually spreading more widely through Germany into France, Poland & Czechoslavakia, which opposed fascism (though it was not especially ‘pro-gay’, as for example, they nicknamed the Hitler Youth movement the ‘Homo Youth’, who in turn described them as ‘effete’, both sides trading insults), although they did at least welcome Jewish youngsters. In fact many of its more open exponents were eventually interred in Nazi concentration camps.  

Its artistic legacy remained one of the reasons why the Liverpudlian Beatles went to Hamburg for some time in the late fifties. With similar ideas about permissiveness and with jazz music as its key moniker, there were also the Zazou youth movements in France, the Potapky in Czechoslavakia and the Schlurfs in Austria, right through the late 1930’s and into the 1940’s. In the UK itself American jazz styles were even more pronounced in clubs in the largest cities, helped in the Second World War by the influx of -in particular- black American soldiers. But I am moving forwards a little too rapidly now.

On to Sex, Love and life,(The Backstory) 1.4 Chinks of liberation, the countdown to war and changing moralities

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