James Bidgood
Pink Narcissus
Institutions (universities, libraries, museums, cultural centres…) must add institutional rights to their order. Rates vary by region (North America, Europe & UK, Asia, Oceania).
Add rightsFormat DVD Region 2
Original format 8mm
Year 1971
Language(s) English
Artist(s) James Bidgood
Subtitles French
Booklet 18 pages (English)
Running time 70 min
Films
PINK NARCISSUS (1971) 70'
Description
Pink Narcissus recalls Genet's Un chant d'amour in its obsession with flowers, raw sexuality, and extraordinary masculine beauty, but it more closely resembles a dreamy, opiated version sprung from a drag queen's imagination—or a Disney-esque adaptation of Genet's work—than a true direct heir. (J. Hoberman indeed described the film as "a gay Fantasia... at once underground extravaganza and romantic porn.") Though dialogue is nonexistent and the plot extremely thin, the story features a young hustler or kept boy who spends his waiting hours for his client fascinated by his own beauty, imagining himself a Roman slave or Turkish prince. The room where he seems imprisoned and the worlds of his fantasies are sumptuously designed: every surface is adorned with rhinestones and fake jewels, draped in pink muslin and lace, lit with violet and magenta filters. Entire landscapes are built from potted plants, plastic flowers, papier-mâché and chicken-wire structures, and diaphanous sets cut from old dresses. The protagonist's idle reveries, triggered by a piece of music or a fleeting thought, materialize and compose an artificial paradise, a Garden of Eden where butterflies fly suspended on thin wire threads and the stars are merely pinpricks in a black paper sky.