[in]Transition

William Friedkin’s Cruising (1980) remains an object of fascination. Since its release, the film has provoked a range of complex and contradictory emotions. This is particularly true of queer scholars, whose reactions have extended from revulsion to celebration via ambivalence. “Cruising Différance” seeks to explore both the multiplicity of these responses, and the reasons for such variety. Through a reflection on three key sequences in the film, each of which is matched with extracts from scholarly commentary, the essay tries to convey the diversity of critical opinion on Cruising; to capture what the introductory statement describes as the film’s “affective potency”; and to frame all this, audio-visually, through the concept of “différance”.

“Cruising Différance” is thus structured in conversation with Derrida. This is reflected in the author’s choice of multiple texts, the non-chronological arrangement of these texts, and the essay’s deliberately polyvocal conclusion. These tropes underline the introductory statement’s point that Cruising’s critical reception should not be neatly and teleologically historicized; such a “progressivist narrative” ignores the film’s history of competing and conflicting interpretations, while implicitly minimizing its power to disturb viewers in the present. For me, though, the essay makes this argument most effectively when it brings out Cruising’s sensory allure. The complementing of colour and movement across the first two sequences analysed—cruising in Central Park and Precinct Night at the S&M club—deftly conveys the original film’s sensuality. In drawing out the deep blue tones, chiaroscuro, and the conscious choreography of bodies having or seeking sex, the essay demonstrates how Cruising uses cinematic form to make being gay feel both “dangerous” and “sexy”, to quote the early voice-over drawn from Melissa Anderson’s “Rawhide”. This is precisely the “affective potency” the introductory statement discusses. That for others such stylization can tip over into excess is captured beautifully in the sudden rewind that occurs halfway through the S&M scene, which forces the viewer to re-watch the sequence recontextualised through a different reading. Not only does this shift bring out the internal ambiguities of the text, pitching us from Alexander Wilson’s (slightly strait-laced) discussion of role-play right into Eve Sedgwick’s exploration of camp, but the choice of formal technique perfectly matches the feeling of “repetition with difference” being conveyed critically. Re-viewing the same scene juxtaposed with new critical fragments made me reassess my own initial response to the club sequence. It also generated a real sense of how queer scholars have returned, almost compulsively, to worry over the significance of these moments in Friedkin’s film.  When “Cruising Différance” matches form and argument in ways both critically incisive and elegantly simple—as it does in these instants—the author demonstrates both the power of the original text, and how effectively the critical audiovisual essay can convey this to an audience.

Although it has become more common in recent years, it’s nevertheless refreshing to see scholars take Cruising and its reception seriously. Marc Francis’s provocative video, Cruising Différance in 3 Scenes, is well constructed both visually and aurally, and I found the montage work in the piece particularly compelling (e.g. the leather/keys/steps soundtrack matched to the slow-motion image of Burns cruising Richards on the park bench). The video’s final montage also works effectively to illustrate the film’s unique combination of queer and straight forms of eroticism in addition to what Francis calls the “noisiness” of its reception. Along these lines, one of the greatest strengths of the piece is its willingness to put competing critical perspectives on the film (at times from different historical periods) into a productive dialogue with key scenes from the film and with one another. Francis uses the play of text, voiceover, and film scenes very convincingly to capture what he identifies as the “relay of affects” that the film has historically incited and inspired. I likewise appreciated Francis’s efforts to complicate “a progressivist narrative” of Cruising (and its reception) by maintaining an open-ended, dialogic quality to the presentation of critical takes on the film. Indeed, the final montage best captures this approach by aurally overlapping fragments of these critical comments on the video’s soundtrack to enhance their dissonance, while also sustaining the productive potential of critical disagreement in relation to Cruising. I likewise appreciate the irony of using Willy DeVille’s “It’s So Easy” to close the video given the actual complexity—of images, sounds, and critical discourses—that grounds it.

I do, however, have some problems with the centrality of Derrida’s theory of différance to the video’s overall form and theoretical goals. Francis’s attention to the slippery symbolic work of Cruising (as well as its fraught critical reception) does indeed provide an intriguing illustration of Derrida’s concept. But given that différance could surely be applicable to any film, it’s unclear to me what makes Cruising unique or important in this regard. My worry here is that the Derrida framework enables a certain historical imprecision in the video that threatens to undermine its overall critical power. Francis attempts to clarify the historical implications of différance in his statement, but I remain unconvinced. As I see it, the analysis of Cruising demands more, not less, historical specificity in order to fully capture the film’s formal, political, and cultural significance. Moreover, I can’t help but be somewhat perplexed by a video that features a vast array of provocative queer insights on Cruising but that ultimately centers Derrida.

Just as Francis highlights the term “Different” at various points in the video, he also emphasizes the phrase “Over Time,” and it is in relation to this nod to the historical reception of Cruising that I have a few additional criticisms of the piece. The video helpfully provides dates for the critical/scholarly readings of the film that Francis provides in voice over, and this element does indeed serve to cue the viewer to “contemplate the (sub)cultural context in which these readings formed.” In addition, the inclusion of Melissa Anderson’s precise dating of her first screening of the film (in 1997) and her acknowledgement that a degree of “political nostalgia” might be at play in her response does an excellent job of situating the reception of the film as historically variable. Unfortunately, this type of precision is neither developed nor carefully sustained throughout the video. Moreover, while the artist’s statement now briefly notes the role of both AIDS and DVD in (re)shaping and further complicating the reception of Cruising, the lack of attention to the pandemic in the video itself still strikes me as a rather glaring omission. I understand that the influence of AIDS is implied throughout, but given that AIDS would have clearly informed nearly all post-1981 responses to Cruising and the fact that many of our current students have no idea that AIDS was once specifically aligned with the gay male community, I wish the video could have addressed the pandemic in a more direct manner.

The recent wave of critical re-evaluations of Cruising was also specifically inspired by the film’s digital remastering for DVD release. Original prints and videos of Cruising have a notably different color scheme (far more muted), and thus the film text itself has notably changed since the 2007 DVD release—that’s why it’s now “drenched in royal blues.” I realize that one can’t include everything in a video of this length, but it would nevertheless have been interesting to address the ways in which these key commercial/industrial factors have also shaped the film’s reception and form. Such variations might even have provided Francis with an opportunity to illustrate Cruising’s enactment of différance in a more textually unique and precise manner.

With regard to the video’s “Precinct Night” section, I do like the way that Francis’s visual strategy of rewinding the scene actually suggests the important role and function of re-viewing and retrospection in relation to Cruising. That said, I’m not entirely convinced that the quotations from Sedgwick effectively convey the various ways that Cruising and its reception might be framed in camp terms. Given that Sedgwick’s comments appear over the Precinct Night sequence, is camp then framed here as a textual quality of the film (as Francis seems to imply with the revised “Or Does He?” text onscreen)? How is Cruising specifically camp? When do such readings of it occur and why? Might there be a difference, say, between straight Brooklyn hipsters “camping” Cruising at a revival screening and gay men in 1980 laughing at the “hips or lips” line? In other words, is there a historical dimension to camp in relation to Cruising? Moreover, whose camp strategies are we talking about in using Sedgwick here?

I’m also not entirely sure about the use of split screen/mirrored imagery in relation to the ending of Cruising in the video. I wonder if this visual strategy of doubling/splitting both Burns and Nancy might actually undercut the sense of erotic multiplicity and the proliferation of desire (and identities) that’s implied by both Miller’s use of “queer” and Nancy’s donning of the leather garb. One could read the dissonant, overlapping montage that follows as an intentional contrast to the more dualistic use of the split screen, but my sense is that this thematic/aesthetic contrast needs to be signaled in the video in a more effective manner.

Finally, despite the reservations noted, I should emphasize that I thoroughly enjoyed watching, reading about, and analyzing Francis’s critical video on Cruising.  I’m also encouraged by the continued interest among younger film/media scholars in this one-of-a-kind queer text. My comments on the video’s potential limitations (or omissions) are also admittedly informed by the historical focus of my own research methodologies. Thus, if Cruising Différance in 3 Scenes doesn’t entirely work for me, that may simply be because cruising Derrida isn’t the kind of queer practice that turns me on.