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Mark Simp­son on how Jean Genet invented the inter­net (Inde­pen­dent on Sun­day, June 2003)

‘I had already won­dered what would become of the meet­ing of a hand­some young guard and a hand­some young crim­i­nal,” wrote Jean Genet in his 1943 debut prison novel, Our Lady of the Flow­ers, penned while he was him­self serv­ing a life sen­tence as a per­sis­tent petty crim­i­nal, one that would only end when he received a State Par­don arranged by Jean Cocteau’s lawyer. “I took delight in the fol­low­ing two images: a bloody and moral shock, or a sparkling embrace in a riot of spunk and panting…”.

Well, you would Jean.…

But then so would the rest of us, judg­ing by con­tem­po­rary pop­u­lar culture’s obses­sion with bloody moral shock, sticky pant­ing and gen­eral low-life pas­sions, whether it’s an episode of the TV prison drama Oz, movies by Guy Ritchie, rap music by Eminem, or surf­ing for voyeuris­tic thrills on the net.

Genet’s famous 1950 short Un Chant d’Amour, released by the BFI for the first time on DVD tomor­row and the only film made by this most cin­e­matic of lit­er­ary tal­ents, seems to be a visual explo­ration of Our Lady’s day­dream. Set in a French prison, this silent, black and white 25 minute “porno” movie intended for sale only to rich homo­sex­ual pri­vate col­lec­tors, Un Chant d’amour now looks like one of the most influ­en­tial mod­ern films ever made. Or at least, one of the most visionary.

It’s well known that Chant d’amour influ­enced under­ground film and Queer Cin­ema direc­tors such as Derek Jar­man and Todd Haynes. How­ever, the impact of Chant — and of the Genet sen­si­bil­ity it’s soaked in — goes much fur­ther and deeper, and is rather more, shall we say, per­verse. In a twist that would no doubt have revolted him, Genet’s mar­ginal sen­si­bil­ity, his out­sider love for hood­lums, drag queens and low-life — and most of all, his pas­sion for sweet-and-tender mur­der­ous hooli­gans — has become, albeit in spayed fash­ion, nor­mal.

What hap­pens in Chant? Very lit­tle — in fact, absolutely bugger-all by the stan­dards of con­tem­po­rary porn. Bore­dom and frus­tra­tion reigns — and so does the des­per­ate, itchy-but-lyrical eroti­cism that comes with seclu­sion, for both the impris­oned and the impris­oner. A list­less prison guard hap­pens to notice a bou­quet of flow­ers being swung from a cell win­dow, the neigh­bour­ing prisoner’s hand, extended between the bars, repeat­edly try­ing and fail­ing to catch it. He inves­ti­gates, peer­ing through spy-holes and wit­nesses one male pris­oner after another mas­tur­bat­ing in dif­fer­ent fash­ions, some danc­ing fran­ti­cally, some lan­guorous on their bunks, some stand­ing, some wash­ing. Aroused, either by the scenes or the sadis­tic thrill of his pow­er­ful posi­tion, the war­den grabs and rubs his own packet. Nearly half a cen­tury before every­one had a peep­hole in their bed­rooms called the inter­net, Genet had envi­sioned a web­cam, Big Brother world of alone-ness and voyeurism, mass sep­a­ra­tion and obser­va­tion, tedium and fascination.

We see an older pris­oner knock­ing on the wall, which is tat­tooed with graf­fiti and a huge phal­lus, try­ing to attract the atten­tion of his younger neigh­bour who is seen jazz-waltzing with him­self in a dirty vest with a face as ten­der as it is tough — antic­i­pat­ing by a few years Mar­lon Brando’s Stan­ley Kowal­ski, and by sev­eral decades the face that Colin Far­rell wishes he had. The lad, as lads must, seems unin­ter­ested and con­tin­ues jazz-waltzing with him­self, caress­ing the tat­too on his shoul­der. The older man, under­stand­ably, works him­self into a frenzy, hug­ging and lick­ing the wall, press­ing his gen­i­tals against it. Finally he lights a cig­a­rette, inserts a straw through a tiny hole, and blows smoke through it into the next cell. The boy stu­diously ignores this flir­ta­tion. The older pris­oner with­draws, stubs out the cig­a­rette. And begins the whole process again.

This time, as the straw probes, the lad responds, kneels at the wall close-eyed and open mouthed and receives the bil­low­ing white smoke, in what Jane Giles, author of Crim­i­nal Desires: Jean Genet and Cin­ema has described as “one of the most erotic scenes in cin­ema”. But it is the tat­tooed, impas­sive wall itself and its tight, unyield­ing hole that is the real star. Genet knows that romance — and even desire itself — is only really pos­si­ble when it’s impos­si­ble (and is per­haps why the visual long­ing of Chant seems to antic­i­pate so much adver­tis­ing that puts the com­mod­ity — the jeans, the DVD player etc — in place of the wall). The only “sex” we see in Chant is very brief, shad­owy glimpses of mas­tur­ba­tion — and the erotic rever­ies of the pris­on­ers and the guard, in the form of oddly chaste tableaux of longed-for but never realised clinches.

Although osten­si­bly made to excite 1950s homo­sex­u­als, Chant has noth­ing in com­mon with con­tem­po­rary gay porn which is all about brightly lit con­sum­ma­tion; telephoto-lensed oper­a­tions with­out anaes­thetic which, oddly, end up show­ing noth­ing at all. Chant’s end­less long­ing is arguably much more “obscene”. Even as recently as 1989 the film was banned by Hull City Coun­cil for being, in their own con­fused yet per­haps not so con­fused words, both “bor­ing” and “shock­ing”.  (Which also hap­pens to be a pretty good descrip­tion of the con­di­tion of con­tem­po­rary culture.)

None of the par­tic­i­pants in this “gay film” were actors. Nor were any of them homo­sex­ual. Lucien Sen­e­maud who played the young con­vict, was a lover of Genet, but he was also mar­ried (his wife didn’t seem to mind the rela­tion­ship, espe­cially after Genet bought them a house). The older pris­oner was played by a Tunisian Mont­marte baker and pimp with a fam­ily of eight chil­dren. In fact, the only true actor in Chant is the erect penis briefly glimpsed strik­ing the wall — report­edly a stunt dou­ble belong­ing to a pro­fes­sional performer.

Authen­tic­ity was para­mount for Genet, who, unlike most con­tem­po­rary low– life mer­chants, was him­self the real deal: an orphan raised by the French State who spent most of the first 40 years of his life in homes, borstals and pris­ons. Guy Ritchie, on the other hand, the “geezer” direc­tor who made a great play of the fact that many of the men in his lovingly-shot hood­lum movies were not actors but “real tough guys”, spent most of his youth in pub­lic schools and baro­nial homes. Nonethe­less, a spayed ver­sion of Genet’s wor­ship of beau­ti­ful bas­tards has become one of the rul­ing pas­sions of con­tem­po­rary culture.

The gen­eral life-sentence of soli­tary con­fine­ment depicted in Chant is not some­thing that Genet felt great sor­row over. In his last TV inter­view in 1985, a year before he died, an heroic per­for­mance of scorn­ful arro­gance, he was asked by his earnest young inter­viewer, “Do you always feel apart — alone?”

“Yes,” he replied, mat­ter of fact. “I’m apart now. You’re over there, I’m over here.”

“Does this not dis­tress you?”

“Not at all. What would be dis­tress­ing would be if there were no dis­tance between me and you!”

In Chant, it’s only as the guard is walk­ing away from the prison that the flow­ers swung between the win­dows are finally caught. But the guard, with his back to the prison, doesn’t see it

Copy­right Mark Simp­son 2007

You can view the film and read a thought­ful review of it’s ‘ges­tures’ by John Cal­endo at the think­ing onanist’s web­site Nightcharm

The project ‘Games Peo­ple Play’ repro­duces this piece and includes sev­eral new ones about the nature of objectification.