“Pornography as a political tool”, can you develop this idea?

In my movie “The Misandrists,” Big Mother, the faux-nun leader of the lesbian feminist terrorist cell, declares that “pornography is an act of insurrection against the dominant order; it expresses a principle inherently hostile to the regulations of society.” I believe I stole that line, probably from either Simone de Beauvoir or Ulrike Meinhof (the movie is a kind of mash-up of their respective sexual and feminist philosophies). Still, it pretty much describes my view of pornography. (I added the sentence, “When men are taken out of the equation, there’s nothing more potent” to accommodate Big Mother’s lesbian separatist agenda.) I see pornographers and porn stars in general as sexual warriors of a sort, pushing the pleasure principle to the extreme, smashing taboos, fighting sexual repression. I see them as sacrifices on the altar of the reality principle, providing fantasies and sexual release for people constrained and frustrated by the effects of surplus repression. The sexual imagination is full of dark and politically incorrect fantasies that people shouldn’t feel guilty about or be ashamed of, and pornography helps us to work them out as a kind of immersive fiction. There is so much shaming and judgment in the current zeitgeist, particularly coming from the left, which has traditionally been associated with conservatives on the right. There is a “thought police” quality to the left now that I find disturbing. So for me, pornography allows me to sidestep that a little bit. It’s more of a ludic space, a playful, imaginative world where the same rules don’t apply. (I’m talking about the fantasy realm. Obviously, issues of consent and age of consent within the professional standards of the porn industry itself are essential.) Apart from all that, porn is a vast area of representation that is untapped in terms of using it for political purposes, including agitprop or even plain old propaganda. I’m not sure why more people don’t make porn with more explicitly political messages or themes. When people are blissed out and aroused, they could be more susceptible to all sorts of ideas! But personally, I also like to take it to the next level and question and challenge the conventions of the porn industry itself. Gay porn is also implicitly political in its militant and aggressive depiction of same-sex sexuality. It’s particularly useful for making tolerant, patronising liberals uncomfortable about the reality of the homosexual act, which they otherwise might not really want to think about. And transporn is the great uniter. Everyone seems to love transporn!!

The film poster of your last movie, “Saint Narcisse”, seems inspired by Andy Warhol’s cover for The Rolling Stones album “Sticky fingers”. Could you speak about your inspiration for the movie and its potential link with Andy Warhol?

Yes, that is the reference. “Saint-Narcisse” opens with a close-up of the protagonist’s crotch as he’s sitting in a laundromat, the camera craning up to his face. It’s a Warholian gesture, leading into a wild sex scene in the laundromat, which is something you might have seen in a Warhol movie. (Think “Nude Restaurant” or “Blow Job” or “My Hustler” – sex and/or nudity in public spaces.) But “Saint-Narcisse” is certainly not my most Warholian film by a long shot. My first three films, “No Skin Off My Ass,” Super 8 1/2,” and “Hustler White,” made direct references to specific Warhol/Morrissey films (like Flesh, Trash, and Heat), or to his cinematic work in general in terms of camera style and subject matter. I even style myself very much like Warhol in “Super 8 1/2.” Warhol’s movies are often pure melodrama and camp, which I often trade in, but sometimes more in the spirit of Fassbinder, whose work was more strictly narrative and much more overtly political. But there’s always a bit of Warhol in my movies, like the “fuck life in the gallbladder” scene in “Otto,” or the militant feminism in “The Misandrists” which was partly inspired by Warhol/Morrissey’s “Women in Revolt,” my favourite film of theirs.

The term queer is often associated with your work. Is it something that you claimed or a label that fits your work and makes conversation easier?

I’ve been around a long time, so queer has meant so many different things at so many different times in my life that it’s difficult for me to use it without experiencing those echoes from the past. There were times, for example, when I did not relate to the word because it had a particular political connotation that I didn’t necessarily identify with. At a certain point, it was much less inclusive, being associated more with a kind of largely white middle-class gay activism, especially in terms of AIDS. Or, at one point, it became quite disassociated from the old school, “pre-liberation” sensibility, which I’ve always had a soft spot for. (My thing has always been mixing sensibilities that seem on the surface to be completely incompatible with one another, like old school gay, punk, romantic, and pornographic.)