S3E22.5 Cruising

The opening with the trans sex workers and then Abigail talking about how this movie depicts the LGBTQ+ community as being unmournable reminds me of how kids would talk about sex workers in the late '00s due largely to Grand Theft Auto. My peers seemed obsessed by the idea that you can hire a sex worker to restore your health then kill her to get your money back. It was up there with Missingno. and the LBJ in terms of noteworthy game exploits and was discussed entirely in those terms, which very much rendered sex workers as unmournable, but I didn't have the vocabulary for why it felt gross until many years later when I saw the video essay that Philosophytube teased in this very episode. Almost like I'm being haunted by that concept, I wonder if there's a term for that...

This discussion is pretty difficult to get through due to all of the horrific shit in this movie, and I can only imagine how bad it is actually watching it. I salute you three for getting through it.

Gay YouTuber Matt Baume just made a Cruising deep dive video

listened to this when it came out and finally got my hands on a DVD of cruising, re-listened and agreed much closer to Devon's reading and I had a fun time. I believe the hatred of cops and the killer(s) being 5 different looking guys that remain unsolved and allows for continual violence as well as Al Pacino's arc does in fact suggest a way better reading beyond the movie/filmmakers homophobia

An important bit of context for the protests is that there was already (which would only increase as the decade went on) a lot of horror and thriller fiction about queer serial killers. For instance, the film Windows, where a woman is stalked, sexually assaulted on behalf of and attacked by her lesbian neighbour, would come out around the same time as Cruising. In some ways then Cruising was a focal point for that build up of anger.

I have listened to several queer horror movie podcasts that have covered Cruising and, interestingly, all of these did have taken a more middle of the ground approach to the film.

I actually was a bit let down with the overly negative attitude towards this one. This film has become a favorite of mine in recent years and I think it’s susceptible to more gay-friendly readings than its creators perhaps intended. The divide between the leather gays who were happy to be extras in this and the more mainstream gay activists who tried to sabotage the production of the film seems to persist today in the stark contrast in contemporary attitudes towards it. I do think your analysis that the film’s own statement that the killer is stalking just the leather community, a uniquely extreme subset of gays, a “world unto itself”, is not borne out in the text, given not all victims are “in the seen.”

If we're talking lesbian movies to discuss I would love you folks to do Bound 👀

What Abi is saying about the colocation of gayness and death and it therefore not being a loss when we die.... is hitting very weirdly right now. I was just doing some shopping in the city centre with my rainbow lanyard with my pronoun pins on, and an evangelical Christian comes up to me and tries to give me a leaflet because "it might save your life."

I would suggest watching the Q&A with friedkin where he places the film in context of the events of the time and that this would lead more towards Devons thoughts on the film.

Thanks for the vigorous debate. I've engaged intellectually with this film in a way I haven't in a long time and that's entirely due to the work the hosts put into the conversation giving me something to jump off from. As a not particularly kinky cis het man, it's a bit awkward to sound off on this movie, but as the hosts point out, the movie was made more for me than the LGBT community, so see the subreplies if you want to read some ramblings.

When I came out in 1990, on the verge of turning 16, my mother's number one response was also "I'm afraid this means you will get murdered" as well. To share a correlating anecdotal experience to the testimony in the conversation. My take, roughly, on Cruising has long been that it doesn't know what it's saying, it is too tentative about itself to have a thesis but it heavily gesticulates towards a variety of very loaded things which makes both Dev's reading and November and Abbie's readings all not only fully plausible but seemingly all invited actively by the film. The movie feels, to me, very like adolescent rebelliousness from Friedkin. He has become fascinated with a few things coded by society as transgressive and he wants to show it to the world in a very reactionary kind of way, he has become aware of a variety of things that are hot button topics for society (queer people, s&m, police violence, transphopia, etc) and waves his camera at them and shouts "see... this exists," but isn't developed enough as an observer of any of these elements to actually articulate a take on it. Like an adolescent, to my way of thinking, he's mostly just doing "I just discovered this and the newness of my discovery combined with my sense that society isn't open to conversation about these topics is in itself enough of an important act that I don't need to meaningfully consider any of it or actually say anything." This invites really almost any read. And for informed audiences, that means articulating much more thoughtful and meaningful reads than, i think, the film or the filmmaker are actually engaging in. That, for me, has rendered the film equal parts fascinating and infuriating. I'm sorry if that was maybe a bit incoherent at all. I absolutely loved this episode and felt like it connected a bit to my previous reads on the film is all.

If anyone wants to hear more about the kind of scene depicted in cruising I highly suggest checking out On Guard Cigar Salon. Its a podcast hosted by a group of "old guard" leather gays in SF. Some of the episodes can be a pretty rough listen but it is really great to learn more about the scene (the hosts are also very funny).

I was strongly reminded of the Bruce McArthur murders. A serial killer did his killing in the space opened up by police homophobia. William Freidkin was a good film maker. I was saddened to learn of his terrible attitudes here

if gays live in proximity to death, that makes us a kind of samurai, no?

The whole thing about co-locating death and queerness, and rendering them as the living dead, holy shit that feels like how I see people talk about Jews, like omg.

It was really eerie hearing about the idea of these neighborhoods that had a really strong gay character that were then gentrified cause everyone was dead and the buildings are there but stripped of their character. And that reminds me *SO MUCH* of the experience of going through a lot of cities, esp in Europe, as a Jewish person, with all of these places there used to be Jews and they're all dead, but the buildings are still there.

You could also say that the film is kind of a record of the activists’ efforts to stop it

So I just read the Wikipedia page, and was not comforted to see that there was a “Hate Crime Connections” section. Allegedly the film did inspire some real world hate crimes, possibly including the shooting at the bar they filmed in, which happened two months after the movie’s release. I don’t think the real world effects of a piece of media necessarily impact its quality, but it is something that one should think about as an artist, especially when dealing with subject matter such as this. Allegedly, some people got the message that gay people are inherently violent from this movie and as a result committed or threatened to commit real life violence against gay people, which definitely lends a lot of credence to Abby and November’s interpretation. Even if the movie contained an anti-cop reading if you look more closely, that’s not what matters when it comes to people’s lives and safety. And you don’t see anyone doing hate crimes on cops because of this movie. This is also not to say that we should censor art like this. It’s kind of a tough question in terms of art vs ethics.

I mean, with the way things are going I *do* expect to be murdered, and I *do* expect the cops to be either directly responsible or passively supportive, so I can at least appreciate that aspect of the film

Please make the Premium episodes available on Spotify <3

I watched the film twice, once just before listening to this and once more the following evening. I hadn’t expected it to be so divisive between the group but I can see the validity of all points made in each individual take. Personally, I found myself bonding quite firmly with it. For me it falls in line with a lot of slasher/exploitation films of that period; where sex and drugs = death and often bearing reflections of the christian conservative morality politics of that era. So viewing it through a lense of queer horror, I found Cruising to be very comforting; getting the chance to see my own anxieties of all the violence and abuses I fear may be visited upon me for being visibly trans and queer in public play out on screen gave me this safe avenue to process those fears and be emboldened by them to feel less afraid of walking out my front door.

I wish I could talk about this with my friend Luca who was in the leather scene and told me a little of the history. She's unfortunately no longer with us.

As one of the last of the Old Guard in leather circles, I am so delighted that they not only know about the olden ways, but speak of them with a degree of respect. There were very much huge problems in the old school leather community, but there was a lot of good too, and we lost basically the entire generation before me in the 80s and 90s.

Whenever the hanky code comes up it reminds me of that Tumblr post that wonders why they're all sex things except for watersports, because the poster assumed that meant, like, waterskiing.

I am mostly in favor of Novembers arguments. I'd like to add to Abby's point that I would describe "The Gays" as being part of the "less than dead" which is a concept that wasn't brought up here but certainly wasn't limited to sex workers. In that way I do think Devon is onto something with that one. I further don't think that this a result of media but the result of way older societal structures that get reflected forward in time at us by movies like this. On one point I disagree with November tho: I would not hold not having a gay sex scene against the movie. Gay sex in 1980 would almost definitely give the movie an X rating which would have killed any profitability. There were cut scenes depicting gay sex. I am also certain that Al Pacino would not have done a gay sex scene.

It weirdly became a time capsule of west village clubs where very few photos exist.

Thanks for the warning

Really great episode, appreciate that the hosts are all good enough friends to admit to disagreeing and present clashing takes on the film - even when the film touches very close to home. I do think Devon is onto something tangible and intentional in the choice to obfuscate the killer's identity, and the intent behind that being to embody the figurative killing of this community by societal antipathy & an unjust police force. Abi and Nova didn't miss in pointing out all the harm done by media associating gays with death & violence & "dirty living". But if this was a film about AIDS, there would be a difference between portraying it as "gay plague" caused by victims sin and promiscuity, and portraying it as a national health crisis caused by authorities shirking their duties and deliberately ignoring a community in need. The film isn't abstractly connecting gays with death, it's protesting a real and unjust cause of death visited upon gays and showing them as victims of societal rejection. The edge where that message might start to curdle is Pacino's own character though. He definitely seems like he was intended to be somewhat closeted the whole time, and the parallel drawn between his self-doubts, the killer's "you made me do it", the suspect with weird daddy issues etc. seems to be proof that this conflict of societally-acceptable vs. more honest identities is being made out as the source of much turmoil.

This tangentially reminds me of the time Roosevelt I think? signed off on an internal sting operation that the navy pulled in Newport, and likely other places where they had sailors go undercover, meet, have various types of sex with gay men and document it. A lot of gay men were arrested but ultimately all of it was ruled inadmissible because it was essentially hearsay. Really a great time to be a gay man in the navy if you wanted to go undercover and bang a lot.

I really liked Nova's commentary about this being (unintentionally) a documentary of the scene at the time- but at the same time, I can't help but be concerned about it too? Like, were these men consenting to footage of them being released in a major public market film? Was there risk of exposure for them?

Moms and Parent are fighting and I don't like it.

Abby says she didn't hate it, but said "hate" like a dagger drawn with intent

Okay I've been trying to figure out why Dev's reading of the film sits so poorly with me since listening to the episode yesterday (sorry Devon :( ) and I think it's that it makes the film more pro-cop than the film clearly wants to be. I think that the film is positing that the gay community is inherently more violent and more dangerous, like Abi and Nova said, but if you take Dev's reading that the film is saying that that is a side effect of the police's indifference than you are kind of buying into the modern NYPD's (and modern policing more generally) logic. That the only thing stopping constant sexualized violence from happening every day is around the clock police surveillance. That if NYC wasn't a virtual police state then you would have constant serial rapists and murderers victimizing random people. I don't think the movie agrees with this though, I think the movie thinks this is unique to the gay subculture it is portraying. Abi and Nova's readings of the film make the film seem intensely homophobic, but Dev's makes it seem more akin to a Dirty Harry or Deathwish style movie that says the only thing standing in the way of chaos and death is the brave men of the NYPD. And I don't think the rest of the movie backs that up.

I’d say Powers Boothe is a guy we love to see as the shop owner, but didn’t love seeing this movie so who is to say?

The US's MPAA rating system certainly does no favors to queer representation in cinema. Officially the whole system is no rules just vibes. Because if they had rules somebody could challenge the rule that straight sex is OK but queer sex isn't, but since it's just vibes it's just a coincidence that movies with queer sex can't be shown in any mainstream movie theater in the US while movies with straight sex can. (See the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated for more, which itself netted an NC-17, officially because of vibes and not as a punishment for criticizing the MPAA)

:14:30 I'm pretty sure Friedkin mentioned that he had gay sex scenes but was forced to remove them by the censors. The directors commentary for this is pretty fun from what I've seen. Edit: ah they mention that later

If this is a poll on gayness vs emotional availability of dads I am one for one, a 100% average on gay kiddos and favor a dadding style that is emotionally available and open, Abi is on to something re: Freud being full of shit

“Don’t watch the movie before listening to this” I tried, but my dvd player refused to play the library dvd copy. The display literally just said CANNOT which feels like a sign from the universe

Listening to the first 5 minutes of this pod: I read Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues the other day and yep the entire first third of the book was them repeatedly being detained, raped, and tortured by the police every time the clubs and bars were raided

It’s interesting that the movie does the ‘Not All Gays/We Just Mean These Freaks’ disclaimer, because Silence of the Lambs does the exact same thing about a decade later with trans people. There’s a scene where they make a point of saying that Buffalo Bill isn’t ‘’’really’’’ trans. In the book (can’t remember if it’s in the film or not) they specifically cite that she was rejected by the gender clinics as evidence that she’s not a ‘’’real transsexual’’’, which, lmao. It’s just as much of a complete fig leaf there as it is here.

I watched this movie with my grandparents 😂

I can state categorically you would not be the only leather daddy with a cup tits, I've met more than one.

Next Friedkin movie you should review is "To Live and Die in La", great toxic masculinity dirty cop revenge movie. Would love to hear your thoughts on it.

Yess so excited for this episode thank you

I definitely enjoyed listening this episode, especially with the disagreement of Nova / Abi and Devon. Reminds me of First Blood with the disagreement between Abi / Devon and Nova. Gonna follow Devon's word and watch Cruising with the two readings in mind especially as I'm cishet with a feeble gaydar. The movie already exists. Might as well learn from it unless someone wants to recommend me a LGBT movie that's a better use of my time.

Two pre-listen comments having seen Crusing a few times before The smash cut from his first time in the club to him lifting is great. The final scenes have a lot of upper manhattan apartments I have been in vibes, like no those guys have just never left and only slightly update the decor over the last 40 years.

Listening to this phenomenal episode on a 9 hour bus ride at the crack of dawn. Thank you for the highly informative and entertaining commentary! P.S. Devon was cooking.

Cop of Finland

Abi, Devon, Nova. Two words about the Heterosexual Girlfriend's apartment, rent control. Huge ass NYC apartments could be had for a pittance.

"too angry to sleep" is why I can't look at social media after like 8 pm.

A perfect pre-watching-Tories-cry appertif

Ugh so excited to hear you talk about this one, it's such an interesting film