Todd Haynes
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Todd Haynes says LGBT people in the US now live in a “culture that seems to be increasingly infantilizing in every imaginable way” and this has led to an “open season on queer and trans bodies, identities and youth” .
Haynes spoke about the current political and cultural climate among the LGBT community while accepting the NewFest35 Queer Visionary Award last Thursday at New York’s SVA Theater. How May December Before the screening of his new film, the director held a brief discussion spanning his entire career and spoke about his work on Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story And Velvet goldmine; creating art—especially queer-centric art—over several difficult decades; and his long-standing relationships with collaborators such as Julianne Moore, Pamela Koffler and Christine Vachon.
At one point, Haynes reflected on his decades-long career in filmmaking, from when the LGBT community was “under attack” in the ’70s and ’80s to today, when it’s happening again “at that moment.” when we find ourselves in a culture under siege,” said moderator Tom Kalin.
“We are living in terrible times right now,” Haynes responded. “I think we all know all the reasons, how and why, or maybe not why, but how and examples of it; what is behind many aspects of what we all do in the environmental and cultural fields, and in the kind of degradation of a culture that seems to be increasingly infantilized in every conceivable way, and the policies that lead to it.”
Carol And Far from heaven The director described how he sees several communities currently under attack. “Queerness is the new fair game, and it’s open season on queer and trans bodies, identities, and youth, coupled with attacks on women’s reproductive health and how we tell our racial history and teach our racial history in this country.”
Explaining how the community is currently facing a new wave of attacks, he spoke about how this moment ultimately differs from the challenges faced by the queer community at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis four decades ago.
“There is no pandemic that revolves around queer body panic the way there was around HIV, which gave a life-and-death urgency to the kinds of activism in which you and I took part,” Haynes said. “But also in terms of defining what art making or film making should be—sort of an armed moment where we all felt like we needed to be involved and whatever everyone could do was needed to make change.
According to Haynes, it was a moment in time where the community “really made change as a culture—as a queer culture—and we learned how activism could work in Act Up.”
While accepting the award, Haynes began his May December pre-screening conversation acknowledging how his experiences in his early decades in the city shaped him. “
We have a lot of history in this city, and our careers were forged in the city during some very difficult times, but it gave us… man, it gave us a strong need to do work that was relevant to what’s going on around us and to find ways to tell stories. stories that also challenge notions of form and style as well as content,” he told the crowd. “So these are my roots. That’s where I come from. This is who I am, this city. I currently live in Portland, Oregon, but will always be a New Yorker.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, Haynes talked about the upcoming project, which he previously described as an NC-17 gay love story starring Joaquin Phoenix set in 1937 and 1938, calling the story “completely transgressive.” Haynes came to this work in part by listening to the music of The Velvet Underground, a band he covered in his 1998 musical drama. Velvet goldmine.
“When I first heard Velvet Underground music, it was like this room—this space—where I felt like I was eating a piece of dirty candy off the floor. It made you realize that the sweetness of the candy and the dirt were mixed together,” he recalled. “Which made me want to do something in return. It stimulated a creative urge that had darkness in it. It took you somewhere outside the norm, to a place where there was some element.”
Speaking about his work in general, during the discussion Haynes focused on his own aesthetic and why he chooses the style and themes he creates. “My films are not about natural history, they are about social history. We are talking about languages that we all share and inherit,” he explained. “That’s why I think (there is) a return to themes that are often considered natural, that my films try to redefine or rewrite as emphatically artificial, and that has to do with same identity and even sexual identity and gender – things that are constructed and that we all navigate in these stories.”