freakboy on film: PINK NARCISSUS (1971)

It’s Pride Month 🏳️‍🌈 and I know the question everyone in the LGBTQ+ community is asking.  

What if filmmaker David Lynch made gay porn? 

Ok, maybe not everyone is asking that question, but a lot of inquiring minds want to know.  Fine, it’s probably just me, but I believe the answer is PINK NARCISSUS.  

Though I hesitate to actually call it porn.  While the plot totally sounds like a porno, a bored young man spends the evening fantasizing about various sensual encounters with men and plants, it’s all very artsy and suggested, with the exception of a couple of eyebrow raising scenes.  “Oh, that’s why the back of the box has an X rating on it,” is what I said out loud when I first popped in the DVD.  Never mind IMDb designates it as Not Rated.  Still, even these scenes are surreal enough to make a certain puppet film seem hardcore.  

It’s rough being young and beautiful.

This classic, and seemingly obscure, piece of queer cinema is a visceral, dreams within dreams experience of sights and sounds.  There is no dialogue between characters, but it’s not a silent film.  The young man’s imagination takes us to a public restroom where he becomes a bullfighter, daring to dodge a  leather-clad guy in a motorcycle.  There is also a journey to an Arabian Knights fantasy that would probably be cancelled today, but the male belly-dancer seems progressive.  After a brief detour through the lonely and dangerous city outside his window, the young man imagines a Garden of Eden style landscape, except he is alone.  I guess Adam doesn’t need his Steve when he has sensual vegetation trying to seduce him. 

Green Boys Are Easy

SPOILER ALERT! 

No peeking at the ending!

According to IMDb, the young man is a prostitute.  This makes sense with a phone call he receives and the ending, I guess.  An older man shows up and looks into the mirror.  Then suddenly the older man is now the younger man while the mirror cracks.  My interpretation is the splintered mirror indicates the end of the younger man’s fantasies.  The older man transforming into the younger man may represent how the older man will now live out his fantasies through the prostitute.  Then again, maybe it means something else entirely! 

The moral of the story? 🤔 

I must add some other interesting tidbits about PINK NARCISSUS from IMDb.  There had been some mystery surrounding who directed this film because a lot of the onscreen credits simply state Anonymous.  Some assumed it was Andy Warhol or Kenneth Anger.  (It was probably too early in the 1970’s for David Lynch to be an option.). Turned out James Bidgood was the writer and director.  He had took his name off the film when the producer edited it before more material could be filmed.  Speaking of filming, with the exception of a few scenes, the film was shot in the director’s New York City apartment.  

In conclusion…
It’s bold!  It’s daring!  It’s art!  The visuals transport the viewer into a phantasmagorical fugue state, where everything is somehow both tangible and ephemeral.  In my opinion, this film captures the abstract realness feel of dreams more than any film I’ve experienced.  So, if you want to celebrate Pride 🏳️‍🌈 in a different way, dive into the subversive sensory submersion of PINK NARCISSUS! 

Freak Out, 
JLH 

P.S. An older post about a film that totally sounds like a porno, but isn’t… 

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