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by Loraine Hutchins
Well friends, there are at least 3 March on Washington (MOW) videos on the market now -- all queer-produced, all vying for your attention. So what's a conscious bi consumer to do? Assuming you either didn't tape it all off CSPAN or are just curious about how our own media queers edit and package the movement these daze, check out this handy review.
I. Giving Each Its Due
1. The Official One - A Simple Matter of Justice
A Simple Matter of Justice, the official MOW video, opens with
former NGLTF director Urvashi Vaid shouting, "America, this day marks the
return from exile of the gay and lesbian people..." and NAACP leader Ernest(?)
Gibson's statement, "Because, as Martin said, justice denied anywhere diminishes
justice everywhere."
It was produced by JEB (Joan E. Biren), the lesbian videographer who
managed the video cable feeds and wide-screen projections on the Mall April
25th. It's the only video that features Lani's speech, in its Families section.
It's also the only video to both explain, and make the links, between the
gender/racial parity representation that powered the March and the sixties
multi-racial civil rights coalition on which this movement is based.
As March co-chair Derek Livingston says, "We wanted to show America what America could be like...That's what this March did and it happened cause women and people of color and people with disabilities were actively involved."
"Simple Matter..." has a great quote from Phil Donahue's speech, "For those who believe the Constitution extends to everyone except lesbians, bisexuals, gays and transgender people we say, `Get over it.!'" and some fun special effects, including "shrinking" the heads of our Right Wing enemies. It also makes it clear that health issues include more than AIDS (right of all to health care, women's health issues too) and that we need to oppose the military --"We demand the right to love not the right to kill," as the crowd chants -- as well as demand our place within it.
As speaker Akiko Carver says, "Sixty percent of the military is non white. We're the cannon fodder of America, you're not fighting to get these rights addressed!" (This video is the only one to include a youth's speech, Carver's.)
2. HRCF's - Prelude to Victory
"Prelude..." was broadcast on PBS, under a different title soon after the March. It begins with historic flashbacks about gay life during WWII, establishing the context for a civil rights momentum. This video is the only one to focus on coming out, perhaps with an eye to its television audience also. There are great accounts by ordinary people of how and why they've come out, including a young man who recalls a gay rights march in LA the year he was born ('66) and a man fired by Sen. Sam Nunn for being gay. There's also a powerful back/forth sequence between two PWA's, the late HRCF organizer Steve Endean, and an HIV+ woman with baby in her arms.
3. NGLTF's - Marching for Freedom!
This one has the hottest cover (a winking globe hologram) and best opening -- endless blue sky and roads, traveling music, all converging on great aerial shots of the capitol monuments. There's even more special effects (geometric dissolves, gels, high contrasts, slo mo's, freeze frames) and a great opening quote from NY Mayor David Dinkins speech about "...thousands of long-term caring and committed relationships between gays, lesbians and bisexuals." (Thank you NYC bi activists for educating him!)
Not surprisingly, considering NGLTF's developing expertise in this area, this video presents the best Fight the Right arguments too. My favorite is the one posed by a San Franciscan interviewed in the crowd. She reverses the usual Lou Shedon hate images, saying, "It's they who won't get out of our bedrooms, it's they who won't leave our families alone."
Although neither Urv nor Torie (NGLTF's two most recent ex-directors) make any bi-inclusive statements, the video does feature Martina ("...Being homosexual or heterosexual or bisexual is not good or bad, it simply IS.") and the heads of four national organizations (HRCF, NOW, NAACP and PFLAG) making bi-inclusive statements.
It's also the only video to show Washington, DC bi activist Elias Farajaje-Jones demonstrating and being arrested at the April 26th Human Rights Action for Health Care, in a stark, high-contrast, freeze-framed sequence.
Marching ends with a moving montage of Margie Adams Unicorn song ("loving is believing in the ones you love") and Rumors of the Big Wave's "I choose life, step out of the shadows of fear" played against a swiftly changing screen of marchers, joggers, dancers, and parting aerial shots of the crowd.
II. KISSES & HISSES
Kisses First
Kisses to JEB for understanding the importance of including a part of the speech of the only out bisexual speaking at the first national march in our name. (Especially since she's an original radical lesbian separatist member of the Furies.) Kisses also to JEB for ending with a focus on what happens beyond the March -- including comments by co-chairs Nadine Smith and Scout about changes reported back to them from small communities since people returned (new Pride marches in rural southern towns, people coming out on their jobs, organizing queer baseball teams) and an end- quote by Cambridge Mayor Ken Reeves quoting poet Langston Hughes, "I see an America that has yet to be."
Kisses to the MOW video for being the only video to include a part of Barbara Dinnerstein's speech, representing people with disabilities, too.
Kisses also to MOW theme song writer and producer Lyn Thomas of Shock T Music for creating "Together, Proud and Strong," whose chorus -- "We are gay, bi and lesbian and we won't go back and we won't pretend, we are marching for our lives you see, and no one's free until everyone is," probably did as much for bi visibility subliminally as the March title itself did. (All 3 videos feature this song.)
Hisses
Hisses to HRCF's video for missing the gender/racial parity theme's significance and hitching a ride on the civil rights train with mostly white faces up front. There are people of color on camera, as singers and entertainers, as a minister conducting the Wedding, as marchers in the crowd; but leadership voices are noticeably absent, especially for a video begun by white men shouting, "Civil Rights Now, Civil Rights Now." Executive Committee member Jaime Rodriguez is interviewed, but not as an organizer, only as a face in the crowd speaking about coming out.
The racial imbalance is most offensive because of the way it plays the
image of a right wing black male heckler against the images of the white
gay men screaming back at him. This megaphone hatemonger is the video's strongest
black male image, unless you count RuPaul, who's playing with gender herself,
much more than drawing attention to racial justice.
Hisses to all 3 videos for implying transgender issues had little political
connection to the March or its stated transgender-inclusive platform. Ironically,
those shown speaking strongest about this are Phil Donahue (MOW video) and
PFLAG's Paulette Goodman (NGLTF video). Nice, but hardly the key leaders
who should have gotten it by now.
Hisses to HRCF for leaving it to one Bi Banner in the crowd and to NOW's Patricia Ireland to be virtually the only mentions that march was for bisexual rights and liberation too. And hisses to NGLTF for leaving it to one Coloradan interviewed in the crowd and to the leaders of other national groups (not theirs), to mention bi rights. This is the national group "committed to building a grassroots movement fighting against discrimination against sexual orientation"? Then let's talk about all kinds of sexual orientation folks!
III. Conclusions
I still don't understand why two key national organizations helping organize the March would market competing videos for their own fundraising, especially when the March still has a debt to retire, partially through sales of this video, but then, that's politics.
If what you want is inspiring memories of Martina, RuPaul, Holly Near, Melissa Ethridge, et. al, coupled with great interviews of Vets, marrying couples, and families, contrasted with political speech clips, sad shots of the Quilt and great shots of queers-do-country music and queers-take the-Metro to a disco beat, buy any of these videos. Otherwise, it's "A Simple Matter of Justice." Throw in the other two if you're rich and have to have a complete set.
Ordering Info:
A Simple Matter of Justice: The Official MOW video
by Joan E. Biren
56 min.,$29.50
March on Washington
P.O. Box 34607
Wash., DC 20043
Prelude to Victory (HRCF video)
(also broadcast on PBS as "Lives in the Balance")
60 min.
$19
Girard Video
1331 F St., NW, #250
Wash., DC 20004
Marching For Freedom! (NGLTF's 1993 MOW Video)
1 hr., 18 min.
$29.95
Project 1993
2020 Pa Ave., NW
Wash., DC 20006