Saint Genet
Byrnzie
Posts: 21,037
I know the answer will be 'no', but does anyone know where I can get hold of a copy of this BBC Arena documentary/interview with Jean Genet which was shown on British t.v in the 1980's?
It's shown periodically at movie theaters e.t.c but I can't get my hands on the fucker anywhere.
It's shown periodically at movie theaters e.t.c but I can't get my hands on the fucker anywhere.
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I was wondering what the connection was.
Wow what a life, I look forward to reading some of his works. I'll keep my eyes open, I stumbled across this obscure Picasso live action art documentary from the 50s or 60s era, so who knows? There's a very cool video store not far from me.
Be warned..he's not an easy read.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/647/bo1.htm
If you're gonna read any of his stuff then I'd recommend beginning with 'The Thief's Journal'. He's quite explicit re: homosexuality but if you can handle that then cool, because it's also one of the most amazing books ever written.
Here's a pic of Genet being frisked by the pigs in Paris in 1968:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3084/2541739062_fea522273f.jpg
mrzine.monthlyreview.org/JeanGenetinChicago.doc
And this the well known article written by Genet after he visited the Chatila and Sabra refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982 where under the watch of Ariel Sharon and the Israeli army Lebanese Forces were permitted to massacre approx 3000 Palestinians. Genet was one of the first Europeans to arrive on the scene:
FOUR HOURS IN CHATILA
http://www.radioislam.org/solus/JGchatilaEngl.html
'A photograph has two dimensions, so does a television screen; neither can be walked through. From one wall of the street to the other, bent or arched, with their feet pushing against one wall and their heads pressing against the other, the black and bloated corpses that I had to step over were all Palestinian and Lebanese. For me, as for what remained of the population, walking through Chatila and Sabra resembled a game of hopscotch. Sometimes a dead child blocked the streets: they were so small, so narrow, and the dead so numerous. The smell is probably familiar to old people; it didn't bother me. But there were so many flies. If I lifted the handkerchief or the Arab newspaper placed over a head, I disturbed them. Infuriated by my action, they swarmed onto the back of my hand and tried to feed there...
Did the Chatila massacre take place in hushed tones or in total silence, if the Israelis, both soldiers and officers, claim to have heard nothing, to have suspected nothing whereas they had been occupying this building since Wednesday afternoon? A photograph doesn't show the flies nor the thick white smell of death. Neither does it show how you must jump over bodies as you walk along from one corpse to the next. If you look closely at a corpse, an odd phenomenon occurs: the absence of life in this body corresponds to the total absence of the body, or rather to its continuous backing away. You feel that even by coming closer you can never touch it. That happens when you look at it carefully. But should you make a move in its direction, get down next to it, move an arm or a finger, suddenly it is very much there and almost friendly. Love and death. These two words are quickly associated when one of them is written down. I had to go to Chatila to understand the obscenity of love and the obscenity of death. In both cases the body has nothing more to hide: positions, contortions, gestures, signs, even silences belong to one world and to the other. The body of a man of thirty to thirty-five was lying face down. As if the whole body was nothing but a bladder in the shape of a man, it had become so bloated in the sun and through the chemistry of decomposition that the pants were stretched tight as though they were going to burst open at the buttocks and thighs. The only part of the face that I could see was purple and black. Slightly above the knee you could see a thigh wound under the torn fabric. Cause of the wound: a bayonet, a knife, a dagger? Flies on the wound and around it. His head was larger than a watermelons black watermelon. I asked his name; he was a Muslim.'
I've never read the book but the film is interesting to say the least.
Nah, not seen it. I've heard of it though. I had a copy of the book but it was just a bit too much re: explicit homosexuality e.t.c for me. Not really my cup of tea. I've read all of his 5 prose pieces but stopped about a quarter of the way through Querelle. I think that one was definitely written for a particular audience.
I've seen his short film 'Un Chant d'Amour'.
The following is a good article I found on it a few weeks ago:
http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2007/02/15/toughs-low-life-drag-queens-genet-was-the-daddy-of-them-all/
Also another great piece of writing by Genet was the stuff he wrote on the sculptor Alberto Giacometti. There's a selected writings book out there - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0880014202/ref=s9k2a_c1_img3-rfc_p-3237_p?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=0D5H20DRDC2CZ12MCRP3&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=463383351&pf_rd_i=507846 - which includes these interviews/articles and it's well worth a read.
“I don’t quite understand what in art is called an innovator. Should a work be understood by future generations? But why? And what would it mean? That they could use it? For what purpose? I don’t see it. But I understand—though very obscurely—that every work of art, if it wants to reach the most spectacular proportions, must, with infinite patience and care from the moment of its production onward, come down through the millennia, reach if it can the immemorial night peopled with the dead, who will recognize themselves in the work.
No, no, the work of art is not destined for unborn generations. It is offered to the innumerable populace of the dead. Who recognize it. Or refuse it. But the dead of whom I spoke have never been alive. Or am I forgetting. They were alive enough to be forgotten, enough so that there life’s function was to make them cross to that calm shore where they wait for a sign, one that comes from here, that they recognize.
Although present here, where are those figures of Giacometti of which I spoke, if not in death? From which they escape at each summons of our eyes to come close to us……
When previously I said “for the dead” it was so that the innumerable crowd could finally see when dead what they could not see when alive, standing up in their bones. There must be an art—not fluid, but on the contrary very hard—gifted with the strange power to penetrate the realm of death, perhaps to see through the porous walls of the kingdom of shadows. The injustice—and our pain—would be too great if one single shade were deprived of the knowledge of a single one of us…….To the people of the dead, Giacometti’s work communicates the knowledge of the solitude of each being and each thing, and that this solitude is our surest glory.”
Genet seems interesting though. I'll have to read some of his work someday.
Probably best to start with 'The Thief's Journal'.