“Screening^^ the Sexuality of Jean-Michel Basquiat
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Warhol and Basquiat go food shopping together, take walks together, talk about
taking a vacation together, and exchange gifts, all of which work to position
them as a dating couple. Furthermore, Schnabel posits Warhol’s death as the
beginning of the end for Basquiat. Although the film foreshadows Basquiat’s
demise earlier on, the scene that captures his reaction to Warhol’s death and
others that follow tell us that the film will be over shortly. We see Basquiat
sitting at home watching old home videos of the two, sobbing, as he writes
“Titan” on a pair of shoes to commemorate Warhol. After a few scenes showing
Basquiat wandering around the East Village in his pajamas and a bath robe and
one with a brief reconciliation with Benny, a black screen with white writing
appears to tell us that Basquiat died on August 12, 1988, at age 27 from a heroin
overdose.
The vague homoeroticism between Warhol and Basquiat is touched on
in Schnabel’s film because, in one sense, it existed and, thus, cannot be avoided
as “their relationship though never overtly physical had a certain sexual frisson”
(Hoban 210). Within the context of the film, the exploration of Basquiat’s and
Warhol’s relationship does not call into question Basquiat’s heterosexuality
because by the second part of the film, with the help of Gina, Big Pink, Benny,
and Ricard, his straightness has already been cemented. Furthermore, Basquiat’s
attraction to Warhol is unique to Warhol as he serves also as a father figure,
professional collaborator, and friend to Basquiat. In this case, the homoeroticism
that marks their relationship is dependent, for Basquiat, on Warhol’s status as
“the greatest artist in the world,” which Basquiat tells Benny when they first see
him. Ultimately, the focus and emphasis in Schnabel’s film on the “queer
circuits of identification” (Munoz 153) between Basquiat and Warhol serves to
misrepresent and redirect the extent and nature of Basquiat’s non-heterosexual
activities; not only is his queerness limited to slight homoeroticism, it is also
directed at one of the men with whom he did not have a sexual relationship.
While Schnabel’s Basquiat, like Bertoglio’s Downtown 81, functions to
deny the queer Basquiat, there is no evidence to suggest that either does so
deliberately; in fact, interviews with both filmmakers reveal that neither gave
any consideration to the portrayal of the artist’s sexuality. The image of the
undoubtedly straight Basquiat is rather a byproduct or unintended result of other
concerns; in this case, as Basqniatjdnd Downtown 81 “clean up” the artist’s hard
drug use, his often confusing racial politics, and his complicated family life,
they also “straighten up” his sexuality. The possibility of this occurrence is
supported by scholar Dwight McBride, who points out that the insistence in
African-American discourses that the authentic, respectable, and communityminded black person is a heterosexual has created a history of black gay
invisibility, especially when a black figure of serious investment is at stake.
McBride argues, “there are many visions and versions of the black community
that get posited in scholarly discourse, popular cultural forms, and in political
discourse. Rarely do any of these visions include lesbians and gay men” (207).
That there is much at stake in the “real” blackness and heterosexuality of