'Gay sex kits' : lessons in the history of British sex education

The research for this essay was funded as part of the ‘Cruising the 1970s: Unearthing Pre-HIV/AIDS Queer Sexual Cultures’ project, financed by HERA and the European Commission.This article details the genesis, making, release and reaction to ‘Homosexuality: A Fact of Life’, an educational tape-slide kit produced by the Tyneside branch of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality in the late 1970s. The kit is situated in relation to the history of sex education in Britain and beyond, and compared to other subsequent examples of educational materials that have caused a furore: the book Jenny Lives With Eric and Martin and its connection to Section 28, and the No Outsiders programme that generated protests in 2019. It is argued that the tactics adopted by the makers of ‘Homosexuality: A Fact of Life’ could serve as a valuable toolbox for future activists.PostprintPeer reviewe

Drifting and Cruising

How might the Situationist International's concept of the derive, or drift, be brought into valuable interaction with the activity of cruising? Whilst recognising significant distinctions between these two urban practices, this essay also explores points of connection between them. It does so through a consideration of the biopic 'Tom of Finland' (Dome Karukoski, 2017), alongside a number of images produced by Tom throughout his career as an illustrator of homoerotic imagery. The optimal conditions for cruising and carrying out a derive are outlined; the relations of each to visuality are examined. The aims and objectives of cruising and deriving are compared, including considerations of the sexual currents at work in each practice, and their value as data-gathering activities. Finally, the temporalities of cruising and deriving are discussed, including the role of waiting and boredom in both, and the challenges they present to normative organisations of the day. Drawing Leo Charney's ideas about drift into the conversation, the essay ultimately argues for the epistemological and ontological value of deriving and cruising.<br/

Filmographies as archives : on Richard Dyer's list-making in Gays and Film

I was asked to contribute a retrospective book review of a canonical film studies text on archives, but instead offered a look back at a crucial archive for queer cinema historians: the filmography at the end of the two editions of Richard Dyer's edited volume 'Gays and Film' (1977/1984). I argue in this short essay that the filmography serves as a vital archival trace of political debates occuring at the time of its assembly.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

The speed of the VCR:Ti West's slow horror

This essay makes two interrelated arguments. First, it engages with the notion of cinematic slowness, and the recent emergence of ‘slow cinema’ as an object of analysis. The canon of slow cinema as it has been constructed to date is challenged, and an expansion is proposed. In addition to the roster of examples of international auteurist art cinema now recognised as ‘slow’, it is suggested that instances of slow films can also be found within the parameters of popular genre fiction, such as horror. In order to support this proposition, the essay provides an overview of the workings of horror as a genre, its dominant temporal forms and devices, and highlights various examples that could be characterised as slow. Second, it argues for a recalibration of the slow cinema debate, which tends to focus on matters of form and aesthetics, to include sustained considerations of technological slowness. Specifically, it is suggested that, especially retrospectively, videotape and VCRs can be understood as slow technologies. Bringing these arguments together, the final section of the essay examines nostalgically-inflected contemporary horror cinema – in particular, those indebted to a culture of consuming horror on home video which exhibit elements of slowness. The essay interrogates the ways in which these contemporary films – including examples made by Ti West such as The House of the Devil (2009) – reveal the changing temporal dynamics of genre cinema across history, as well as the complex interrelations between genre texts, distribution platforms, viewing technologies, narrative form and aesthetics

The queer archive in fragments : Sunil Gupta's 'London Gay Switchboard'

Sunil Gupta's 'London Gay Switchboard' (1980) was a forty-minute tape-slide work made whilst Gupta was a student at Farnham. The work was only staged once, and has survived in pieces: individual photographs have been shown, and a short edit of the work was made from surviving fragments. This essay attempts, for the first time, to reconstruct the work from elements in Gupta's archive. It also interrogates the value of the archival fragment for queer history and practice, proposing that the fragment's connotations of loss can be set against its political utility and affective force.PostprintPeer reviewe

'Waiting as Such':The Politics of Tarrying

This essay explores the relationship between cinema and waiting. It was submitted to the journal 'Aniki' because it has a themed issue on 'Long Duration'. The essay looks in particular at films that have extended running times, focusing on one example made for screening in cinemas (Lav Diaz's 'Death in the Land of Encantos'), and one produced as a gallery installation (Wang Bing's 'Crude Oil'). As well as outlining the theorisation of waiting and the ways in which this can be mapped onto the moving image, the essay examines the politics of waiting, and any political possibilities the films under scrutiny may offer

James Benning, taxidermist

This essay explores the relationship between cinema and taxidermy, and some of the ways in which artists and experimental film-makers have used the moving image to engage with the ramifications of stuffing and preserving animals. It is argued that the taxidermied creature’s eerie mixture of death and life has particular resonance for film-makers with an interest in slowness and stasis. James Benning’s 2014 film natural history, which was shot behind the scenes at the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, serves as a central focus. As with other films by Benning, natural history can be understood as both structuralist and a landscape film. The film is compared to works depicting stuffed animals by other experimental film-makers who explore stillness and slowness; it is proposed that such film-makers can be conceived of as taxidermists. Finally, the article looks at the complex relations between cinema, taxidermy and sound. The aural dimension of Benning’s film, missing from many other artists’ engagements with taxidermy, enables a richer exploration of its operations

Comrade Warhol

This article explores Andy Warhol’s Hammer and Sickle series of the 1970s. It outlines the history of its production, and examines the place of politics, especially communism, within Warhol’s drawings, paintings and photographs. Most commentary on the Hammer and Sickle series has emphasized the power of the symbol in the United States, but this article explores the value of reading Warhol’s series as ‘European’

The political independence of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The Australlan Broadcasting Corporation, created in 1932 and reconstructed in 1983. is a public-fundod national broadcasting organisation. It was estabilshed to provide a oomprehensive, innovative and impartial radio and television service for all Australians. The ABC is a statutory corporation. intended to be accountable to Parliament for it's actions, but independent of the government of the day. Controversy about ABC news and current affairs serv1ces, about whether Corporation programs are obective, impartial, balanced and free from political interference, is a hardy perenial of Australian public life. The ABC'c public credibility depends on its perceived ability to function without government influence over program content. The ABC does not operate in isolation. It must negotiate for finance and resources with a federal bureaucracy 11nd conform to standards of accountability set by Parliament. Corporation claims to independence cannot be assessed in absolute terms, but must be viewed within its setting in a world of complex interaction between Parliament, the government and the Corporation. Within this framework, ABC independence must be viewed in two arenas - the administrative independence of the organisation to control and aliocate Its resources, and function a/ Independence to make program judgements without outside interference. This dissertation examines both dimensions of the contemporary ABC. Through institutional analysis it seeks to determine whether the ABC in practice enjoys the independence which in theory is guaranteed by its legislative form. The thesis opens with a discussion of the theoretlcal assumptions underlylng the ABC and a description of the organisation's environment: the origins of the ABC in the ideology of pubiic service broadcasting, Its place in the Australian broadcasting system and its relationship with governments and the Public Service. It is argued that the precise objectives and aims of the ABC have never been clear. that a lack of agreed goals makes it difficult for the organisation to win public aupport against governmental intervention in ABC administration, and that the structure of the Australian broadcasting system enables commercial media rivals to lobby governments to restrict the ABC to marginal activities. ABC decision-making is then examined: the influence of the ABC's legislative basis, structure, the role of the Board of Directors, ABC management, the internal allocation of resources and the work environment. The focus is on the relative involvemont of directors and managers on ABC output; it is argued that structural impediments limit the influence Directors can exercise over Corporation policy, while confused lines of responsibility, the structure of the organisation and the production process make it difficult for ABC managers to tightly control program output. With the external and internal context established, the production of ABC news and current affairs programs and the political control of ABC resources are examined. The study concludes with an assessment of whether the rhetoric of an independent but accountable ABC is realised, or whether the Corporation is part of the general machinery of government, with its independence a convenient fiction