[HMD EEO Seminar, Lister Hill Auditorium, June 2nd 2009]

[Michael North:] Hello everyone. My name is Michael North and I'm the Head

of Rare Books and Early Manuscripts in the History of Medicine Division here

at the National Library of Medicine, and I'd like to welcome you to this year's annual Lesbian Gay,

Bisexual, Transgender Awareness Month Lecture.

Before we start, I'd like to mention that the next History of Medicine lecture

will be the second annual James H. Cassedy Memorial Lecture by Professor Nancy Tomes

at Stony Brook University.

And she will be speaking on the Information RX,

and it will be held here on Tuesday,

July 7th at 2:00 in this room. Also on June 17th at noon,

also in the same room, the library will be hosting a panel discussion entitled Addressing Health

Disparities in the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Populations. And I hope you can,

I hope you can join us for both events.

Today we would like to welcome William Pencak, who's Professor of History and Jewish

Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. He's the author of the book, The Films of Derek Jarman,

published by McFarland in 2002, and he's also the author and

editor of over 20 other books. His book, Jews and Gentiles in Early America,

1654 to 1800, which he published in 2005 with the University of Michigan Press,

was runner up for the National Book Award in American Jewish History in 2005.

He is a life member of the Committee of Gay and Lesbian History of the

American Historical Association. The subject of his talk, Derek Jarman,

was one of England's leaders in the battle against AIDS, from which he died in 1994.

This talk explains how he used his multifaceted talents as a filmmaker,

writer of poetry and prose, painter, and even his unique garden to accompany

his political activism, to make the public and medical community

aware of the need for a major medical crusade that incorporated compassionate

treatment against this epidemic. Please welcome him.

[ Applause ]

[William Pencak:] Well, thank you. It's a real honor to be here. And thank you for taking the time to come.

I just wonder how many of you have heard of Derek Jarman?

Some of you. A few of you had. I say about 30% of you have.

All right, then. I need to fill in. Derek Jarman was as I my talk says

his Six-Pronged fight against AIDS. He was the closest thing our time

has seen to a renaissance man. He's most famous as a filmmaker,

but he also was a poet,

a writer of prose, which very fine prose.

In his many memoirs, he was a painter.

He crafted a memorable garden, which is probably like no other garden in the world,

and he was a political activist.

He's born in 1942 and he

died of AIDS in 1994.

My book, The Films of Derek Jarman. I'll start there because that's what he's most known as.

He's most known as a a filmmaker.

And I let's see, I hope this is visible.

Can you all read that? No.

Now can you read it a little better? OK

Jeez. Reminds me of being at the eye doctor,

but this is a list of the books that he

published and the major films that he made,

and what I did in my book is taken together.

His films present an overview of history from

a gay point of view or a queer point of view.

His first major film, Sebastian, deals with early Christianity and the Roman Empire,

but Jubilee looks back on Elizabethan England from the perspective of modern England.

Jubilee 1977 reverse to Queen Elizabeth,

the second's 25th anniversary Jubilee, and talks about the destruction of a

lot of England's beauty and replacement

by sort of sterile modern construction.

The Tempest is a reworking of the Shakespeare

play in which Prospero is presented not as a benevolent agent of prosperity,

but is an evil genius who is manipulating and destroying people.

Caravaggio is about the painter and this paint.

This film is very unique because what Jarman does is imagine scenes from

what would have been Caravaggio's life and has the scenes merge

into the paintings themselves, which he had recreated.

So what he's trying to show is how all those male nudes and Caravaggio's paintings

came out of his own life and desires. The Last of England is a sort

of an updating of Jubilee, how things are getting even worse in England,

how there were refugees coming to England from other countries,

just about how impoverished meant much of the population had become

during the Margaret Thatcher years. War Requiem sets the piece of music

by Benjamin Britton and deals with World War One, and it is the least homoerotic

of all of Jarman's films.

It but it it talks about personal affection and loyalty between soldiers,

at the same time showing just how horrible the war is that sending

these men off to die.

The Garden is

the first film that

he made after well, no, that that he made. Yeah, cuz War Requiem was made a

little earlier after he knew he had AIDS.

And it's set in his garden. And

his garden is this absolutely unique place.

It's in Dungeness, Derek. Charming garden,

and I just want to show you it.

Let's see.

OK. OK. One. [ searching online ]

OK. Oh, images. That's what I need.

Images. Yeah. Here we are. Why doesn't his garden come up?

[ nervous laughter ]

Oh, J, Oh, that explains it.

I'm getting dyslexic in my old age. OK, there we are. This is Prospect Cottage.

That's where he lived in the last few years of his life. Let me see if I can get a

bigger picture up there. Yeah, there we go.

And it's, you can't see it in this one, but there's a big nuclear

power plant in the background, and this is like the most

barren shoreline in England. It has more shingles than anywhere in the world, he said

except Cape Canaveral in Florida. Also, because of the currents,

a lot of detritus from ships wash up there. You know,

bits and pieces of wood and metal and so on. And on the other hand,

it has more sunlight than anywhere else in England, but the wind whips there

constantly or almost constantly. So it's a mixture of beautiful

sunlight and stark and powerful waves. And the nuclear power plant

in the background. And what he did was try to make a garden that reflected different

aspects of of his life and thought.

For instance, here he is in the garden

and you know this. I don't know if that's-- can you see that or

is that big enough? No. Yes, yeah, there he is.

And you can see he's growing all kinds of plants in the midst of these shingles.

And this is a symbol for what he's doing with his life. He's trying to say, even though, you know,

I've realized I've gotten AIDS and this is a terrible time, where much of England's beauty

is being destroyed and the nuclear power plants back there,

I can take the most desolate landscape in England and make

something beautiful out of it. And in his book on the garden,

as well as his film On the Garden, he talks. He loved flowers and he talked a great

deal about the sorts of flowers that he was able to grow in his garden. And as I said,

he mixes these flowers up with the well,

the stuff basically that comes onto the onto the shore.

Now here's a piece of something,

piece of driftwood and he's got plants growing in the garden.

One of the things he said about the garden, and I like this, is he said "try growing a wild garden

it'll give you much happiness." Don't have a, you know, a lawn,

which is all smooth and boring, he said.

Try growing with with flowers and OK,

let's see if these will go bigger.

These are various aspects of his garden that, you know,

you can see and enjoy that there are lots of them on the Internet.

Here's some especially nice group of flowers he was able to to grow in in this,

you know, sort of barren landscape.

And here's his house again with the sort of the sculpture garden

aspect of it you might say, and this is called Prospect Cottage.

And this is where he lived for the last several years of his life.

He found out he had AIDS on December 22nd,

1986 and instead of being well that he was HIV positive. I mean,

he didn't yet discover that he had AIDS, but in those days,

once you in England and most of the men who became HIV positive died within a few years,

including many of his friends were dying at this time.

And instead of being in despair, he said, what he's going to do is spend

the rest of his life working as hard as he can on his films,

on his writings, on his paintings, to leave a testament of what

happened in his time to celebrate, even despite his disease,

to celebrate sexuality and sensuality,

to be an example for men in the future.

And so, and he wanted, he said,

to produce as much in film and poetry and literature as people

who lived a very long time, even though he knew he would, wouldn't live a long time.

And he lived about a little over seven years after he discovered

he was HIV positive. So

his film the garden, which, let's see, let me see if I can go back to that.

OK, let me just this is

kind of a visual thing.

[ keyboard sounds ]

OK, I'm trying to oh, I got to Google first. OK, But his film The Garden is

where much of his work intersects.

He had a film about it. He wrote a book about it,

which is a very beautiful book which

has pictures of the garden all through it.

It also has some of his poetry and prose.

And the Garden was also a focus of his

activism because after it came out, he would have benefit screenings

of the Garden for the group that he favored the most of the English gay

liberation group called Outrage. Which was a group of people who were,

well, outrage has a multiple meanings in the term outrage.

"Out," meaning gay people who come out of the closet. "Rage," that they're angry,

that they're outraged, and also that they're outrageous.

What they would do is they dress up as flamboyantly as possible and try

to disrupt things like the opening of Parliament or a service in Westminster Abbey and call attention

to injustices against gay people. They sold T-shirts.

They sold whistles so they could make a lot of noise. They held parades.

They engaged in civil disobedience so they could get arrested.

One of the things they would do is have kissing, because at this time it was illegal

for men to show same sex affection in public In England they could get in trouble for this,

so thousands of men would get together and kiss each other. Jarman would always,

as Jarman was probably the only reasonably famous person in

England at this time who had HIV, who acknowledged it,

and who participated actively in outrage and in the gay rights movement.

So he would always be on the front lines. If anyone was going to get arrested,

he wanted to be there and offer himself to get arrested. So he would use the garden as

a as showings of it, as a benefit for for outrage and to help help out.

After that he made a film Edward the Second. Edward the Second was a king of England

who was believed to have been a homosexual and took up with his partner.

Pierce Gaveston neglected his queen and was the subject of Christopher Marlowe's play.

And Marlowe himself was famous for the saying he that loveth not boys and tobacco is a fool,

was a Renaissance playwright who also, you know, had homosexual tendencies.

But what Jarman did that was really neat is there's a battle in the final

scene or a battle is implied in the final part of Marlowe's Edward the Second.

And what Jarman did is he got the people in Outrage,

you know to show up and carry their posters, keep your hands off all bodies and things like that.

So what he did is he compared this battle that took place in the 13th century between Edward and his

enemies that was retold by Marlowe in the 16th century and compared it

and in the film got us thinking about the contemporary

battle for gay rights against people who were opposed to it. And basically,

what he wanted to show is that these issues persisted throughout time,

that the struggle for gay people to express themselves is something

that goes back to Roman times, if not before, in the Middle Ages and the

Renaissance and so on. And his films, taken together,

offer an entire history of Western civilization from a gay perspective

and from a sexual perspective.

And this is very radical.

I mean, he started doing this in the 1970,

which is before much gay history was written.

And it's pretty good history. He takes liberties,

but the history is pretty sound. He was a history major at Kings College. He read extensively,

and he published books of many of his films which had the script as

well as all sorts of annotations about both the history and about

the process of making the film. So it's very clear he's trying to and he said this,

he's trying to present this as reclaiming a gay past for for the present-- that,

you know, people who say civilization rests on heterosexuality and the family

just haven't done their homework. They haven't looked at their history.

And the other thing he did is he looked at history from a sexual and an erotic point of view.

Now, this is something that, you know, historians don't usually do.

They look at history from an economic point of view or a social point of

view or religion or ideas or politics. But looking at the eroticism in history that people felt or

might felt and relating it to the eroticism and struggles of today,

well, this is radical history, but it's a point of view that can't be ignored

I think it's part of human experience. And so there it is.

His next to last film was Wittgenstein,

who is the famous philosopher.

He did that about the the time he did the film Wittgenstein, his next to the last film,

he prepared the book Chroma. Wittgenstein had all these interesting

theories about colors and what colors mean. And as with flowers,

Jarmin was fascinated by colors and his book Chroma talks about all the

different colors and the feelings they evoke and how they are used in

Wittgenstein and how they are used in other aspects of life and art.

And then his final painting was, I mean his final film was Blue.

Now he was dying of AIDS at this

time and he was going blind

and he was spending a lot of his time in the hospital by this time where they were trying to

to keep him alive as best and and comfortable as best as they could.

And he read, he had some very

interesting thoughts about this film, just like he did about The Garden.

In The Garden you see him on his bed in the

middle of his garden being ill. You also

see the garden is just his garden in the film, it's symbolically the

Garden of Gethsemane, where Christ is betrayed and he has two young men

who are in love with each other who are attacked and by

police and by other people and tried and convicted and abused.

So he has gay men being playing the part of Christ in modern

times and but he also has himself in there being an ill person.

So this is all in his garden and he made

AIDS, the AIDS struggle part of the garden, just like he made [The] Garden part of the

AIDS struggle when he would show it, have it, shown at Outrage events and benefits for Outrage.

But as he said when he was making Blue,

he said no 90 Minutes could deal with the

eight years HIV takes to get its host. Hollywood could only sentimentalize it.

It would all take place in some

well heeled West Coast beach hut. The reality would drive the

audience out of the cinema. How many times I've touched.

I've stopped to touch my inflamed face even while writing this page.

There's nothing grand about it. No opera here,

just the daily grind in a minor key.

But in spite of the fact we wish

that our lives could be recorded in

an oratorio by Beethoven or Mozart.

Well, Blue is that oratorio.

To the extent that

Jarmon made a story about AIDS, and I hope this works.

We've had a little trouble getting these things to go.

It's just Blue [screen] for 80 or 90 minutes.

And during it he basically compares

the struggles of people against AIDS in England in the 1980s,

early 1990s to other horrible things that are going on in the world,

like what's happening in Bosnia at this time. There are a lot of young Bosnians and Bosnia,

Serbian and other other refugees in London at this time,

and he's just wishing that people with AIDS would get the kind of sympathy

that these Bosnian refugees are getting and that this is one of the

monumental catastrophes of our age.

Now remember from 1979 to 1991,

Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister of England and England had a Conservative government until

1997 and the moralizing about AIDS

was pretty grim in those days. You know the gay people deserved it,

and you know they're people shouldn't live that way. There's a huge struggle going

on at this time. There's against this law that prohibits local councils and

local government organizations in England from teaching homosexuality

is anything other than evil.

You can't portray it in a positive way. 5000 people are arrested for

having homosexual sex in England-- In 1989 there are murders

of gay men in London

in cruising areas. The age of

consent for sex between men is 21,

and it's 16 for age of consent between men and women in England.

There was never a law against lesbian sex in England, by the way,

because Queen Victoria, when she saw when the law was presented to her, she crossed it out because

she said she couldn't possibly imagine such a thing could occur.

So because of Queen Victoria's incredible prudery, there was a law against homosexual

sex but not against lesbian sex. But anyway, two days after Jarmon died,

the age of consent for sex between men in England was lowered to 18.

A lot of this had to do with outrageous another thing Outrage did,

which was outing people. That is closeted homosexuals who were

involved in the persecution of homosexuals. There were people in England who

were leading the crusade against homosexuality and moralizing about

the family when they themselves would carry on secret affairs and Outrage

and other people thought that these people should be called to their what they were doing.

And a fair amount of this happened and even the Tory government, you know, was embarrassed by it.

So even though this didn't give the gay rights movement what it wanted in England, it did,

you know, lower the which is complete equality, which there is now

of age a sexual consent. It did lower it from 21 to 18.

But while this was going on, Jarman,

who was in the hospital much of the time, made this film Blue,

and most of it is narration. It's about what it's like to suffer from AIDS.

It's wide-ranging over civilizations,

comparing, thinking about this catastrophe in the light of other catastrophes.

Thinking about the beauty of the world and just how intense the

beauty of the world is for Jarman, because his life has become so horrible

and so let's hope this will play. This is has some of his most beautiful poetry in it too,

the last few minutes, so let's hope this works.

I caught myself looking shoes in a shop window. I thought of going in and buying

a pair but stop myself. The shoes I'm wearing at the moment should be sufficient

to walk me out of life.

Pearl fishes in Asia seas,

deep waters washing the Isle of the Dead.

In coral harbors amphora spill gold across the still seabed.

We lie there fanned by the billowing sails of forgotten ships.

Tossed by the mournful winds of the deep

lost boy sleep forever in a dear

embrace salt lips touching submarine garden's cool marble fingers

touch an antique smile.

Shell sounds whisper deep love drifting on the tide forever.

The smell of him, dead good looking, in beauty summer.

His blue jeans round his ankles.

Bliss in my ghostly eye.

Kiss me eye the lips, on the eyes.

Our name will be forgotten in time. No one will remember our work.

Our life will pass like

the traces of a cloud. Be scattered like mists that is

chased by the rays of the sun for our time is the passing of a shadow.

Our lives will run like sparks through the stubble.

[ music ]

I place a delphinium, blue, upon your grave.

[ surf, waves crashing ]

[William Pencak:] OK, that's how it ends.

I'm trying to end it. Let's see.

OK, but then they give the credits.

I'd also like to mention that other another thing, that Jarman.

[ computer audio ] Wait, I'm trying to stop this. [I thought of going in and buying]

[ computer audio, trying to stop audio ]

[ computer audio ]

[no speech detected]

[no speech detected]

[no speech detected]

[William Pencak:] OK, thank you. Sorry about that.

I'm technologically challenged.

In addition to making the films of his own,

he also made films with some of the leading rock groups in England

that were the more radical rock groups.

And they did the music

he did the screenplay. And a couple of

these are I'm just going to play for you because I think they're pretty neat

and and they show you what he's about. The Pet Shop Boys,

who are these two gay English musicians

who've done numerous albums and shows

did this song called "It's a Sin," and it starts off with the Seven Deadly sins.

And what Jarman's trying to say is that,

well, much of which passes for sin is just not really sin and morality.

It's just manners and that this sort of sexuality should be celebrated rather than condemned.

So here's the video for It's A Sin.

[ music ]

[ Pet Shop Boys - It's A Sin ]

[ music ]

"When I look back upon my life

it’s always with a sense of shame.I’ve always been the one to blame.

For everything." [William Pencak:] What happened?

Well, you get the idea on we have a school, a religious school,

where everybody's pretty repressed. And basically Jarman's saying there's

a lot of repressed sexuality there, and it should be celebrated,

not condemned. Let's see if we can get this moving.

[ music ]

"When I look back upon my life

It's always with a sense of shame. I've always been the one to blame.

For everything I long to do,

no matter when or where or who

has one thing in common to.

It’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a sin--It’s a sin.

Everything I’ve ever done, Everything I ever do,Every place I’ve ever been,

Everywhere I’m going to, It’s a sin.

At school they taught me how to beso pure in thought and word and deed.

They didn’t quite succeed.

For everything I long to dono matter when or where or who

has one thing in common too,

it’s a, it’s a, it’s a,-- it’s a sin.It’s a sin.

[ music ]

Everything I’ve ever doneEverything I ever doEvery place I’ve ever been

Everywhere I’m going to,It’s a sin.

Father, forgive me.

I tried not to do it.

Turned over a new leafthen tore right through it

Whatever you taught meI didn’t believe it."

[William Pencak:] OK, I'm going to stop this. You can check it out yourself because

otherwise it it's kind of long. I'll just play one more.

This was done with The Smiths

and it was called The Queen is Dead or The Evil Queen. [actually it's Panic by The Smiths]

And basically it shows how

England is falling apart that so much

of beautiful England is being lost and that land is being taken over

and old nice buildings destroyed and huge corporations in their place.

And there's a lot of urban squalor. And this was true in the 70s

and 80s especially. So anyway,

I'll just give you a little of this

if I can.

And I had it here some.

Oh, yeah, here it is. OK, yeah. Here. Here we go.

[The Smiths - Panic]

[ music ]

"Panic on the streets of LondonPanic on the streets of Birmingham

I wonder to myself,Could life ever be sane again?

The Leeds side streets that you slip down

I wonder to myself

Hopes may rise on the Grasmere

But honey pie, you're not safe hereSo you run down to the safety of the town

But there's panic on the streets of CarlisleDublin, Dundee, Humberside

I wonder to myself

[ music ]

Burn down the discoHang the blessed DJ

Because the music that they constantly play

It says nothing to me about my life

Hang the blessed DJBecause the music they constantly play

On the Leeds side..." [ music stops ]

[ clicking ]

[William Pencak:] OK, well, you get the point there. I just want to show you a

couple of his paintings as well, which I haven't gotten to even this so much I could talk about.

And I'm sure you want to, you know, don't want to stay here all day. So let me just get his

couple of his paintings up. OK,

[no speech detected]

all right. Now he started painting when he was a young man in college

and I wish I could make these bigger, but I think you can see him. This is a self-portrait when he

was 19 and these are some of his

sketches. This one we wait and wait. Notice faceless people.

You can't show your true self. People aren't relating or looking at each other.

Little bits and pieces of sort of,

you know, junk really put together,

you know, trying to make something

beautiful out of little bits of detritus. Here's something like an erotic picture.

His later paintings, I think, are the most interesting. These show England burning,

and there's a lot of burning in The Last of England (1987). His film Arson Fires,

things like that.

These are his last paintings. Here he is working on Blood.

And you notice what he did was he took newspapers, sort of like Andy Warhol would present

the same thing over and over again. A picture. And Warhol did it, of course, to, you know,

sort of make fun of, you know, the trivialization of life and the Campbell's soup can and all that.

But what he would do was Jarman would do it, and then he'd paint over it.

Or he'd color it in such a way to make it fearsome. In other words, he's trying to say we're

numbed by these newspapers in these newspaper headlines,

and we don't pay attention to the real problems of our time.

Letter to the Minister as he's got like fire burning you know Letter to

the Minister that is for equal rights for gay people to stop

the police sort of picking up gay people.

Infection, Sightless his last paintings

and you know the Infection so forth.

So his paintings have had many gallery showings and you know,

I think they're very powerful. I just like to read you two poems

from The Garden as well as poetry. You may have heard some at the end of Blue there,

but I these are especially moving poems.

I think he wrote. This is from The Garden and again it links The Garden as a

place of both sadness and remembrance, yet creativity of making

something positive out of a you know, sort of a bleak landscape which is

both natural and yet symbolic of

what he's trying to do with his life and, you know, bringing it into the activism,

the the problem with AIDS, or wrapping it all together around around The Garden.

So here, here are these two poems.

The first, "I walk in this garden

holding the hands of dead friends,

old age came quickly from my frosted

generation. Cold, cold, cold. They died

so silently. Did the forgotten generation

scream or go full of resignations, quietly protesting innocence.

I have no words. My shaking hand cannot express my fury.

Cold, cold, cold.

They died so silently. Linked hands at 4:00 AM.

Deep under the city you slept on. Never heard the sweet flesh song.

Cold, cold, cold. They died so silently.

Matthew, fucked Mark, fucked Luke, fucked John, who lay on the bed that I lie on.

Touch fingers again as you sing this song.

Cold, cold, cold. We die so silently.

My Gilly flowers, roses, violets,

blue sweet gardens of vanished pleasures.

Please come back next year.

Cold, cold, cold. I die so silently.

Good night, boys. Good night, Johnny. Good night.

Good night." And the other. "Here at the sea's edge,

I have planted my dragon tooth garden to defend the porch, steadfast warriors against those

who protest their impropriety even to the end of the world.

A fathomless lethargy has swallowed me. Great waves of doubt broken me,

all my thoughts washed away. The storms have blown salt tears

burning my garden, Gethsemane and Eden."

And if I just may conclude with one

passage from his "At Your Own Risk"

one of his books where he, you know, basically took his journals that he kept,

he kept the diary and rewrote them and sort of did this. He said he wanted to be a witness to what

was happening in the world at this time, which he believed was a time of transition,

where he, he thought things would get better for gay people. They just had to struggle for them.

And he was living through the worst of times with the AIDS epidemic and the struggle.

So here's his final testament as

as he sees it. "But as I leave,

you queer lads, let me leave you singing. I had to write of a sad time as a witness.

Not to cloud your smiles. Please read the cares of the world I have locked in these pages.

And after, put this book aside and love. May you of a better future.

Love without a care. And remember we love too.

As the shadows closed in, the stars came out.

I am in love."--  All right. Well, thank you.

[ Applause ]

[ Off mic, indistinct chatter ]

[William Pencak:] Yes, Question.

[Audience:] Do you mind reviewing in my mind how are AIDS transmitted?

[William Pencak:] OK, it's I'm not a medical expert.

I believe it's through sexual

contact.  And blood transfusion of the person with AIDS or it has [ Off microphone ]

to be through the bodily fluids. I don't know are there

medical experts here? But that's my understanding.

[Michael North:] Let's see.

Also, I guess I wanted to ask a lot of the artwork that he did and

that sort of thing related to his own disease and illness and death.

And of course he's very politically active. Was he involved in very much an

AIDS education also and and sort of encouraging younger gay people

to take care of themselves and have safe sex and that sort of thing.

[William Pencak:] He actually wasn't doing that too much.

He was, of course he. The thing is, there was a lot of that being done at the time,

but he really wasn't active too much.

[Michael North:] Yeah, 'cause I compare him maybe to Keith Haring,

who in some ways did some similar things with his paintings, but he included a lot of artwork

that he did for safe sex or to get organizations and trying to get

awareness out there for young gay people. How to avoid getting it. [William Pencak:] Yeah, I don't know.

I guess he just assumed that on the part of people. But yeah,

he didn't really pay much attention to that, really thought the problem was that

people weren't were being repressed and not expressing themselves.

So many people were committing suicide or living miserable lives

because they were afraid to admit that they were homosexuals. And remember,

this is 19 eighties, 1990s England,

and it's hard to remember just just how

those instincts were even just 20 years ago. Yeah. [Michael Sappol:] Yeah,

I saw a Derek Jarman installation in New York, as I said a few months ago,

and which was actually fairly silent. I mean there there was a bunch of

very short films in a very dark space in a gallery in New York,

and they were all stunningly beautiful. And what I'm wondering is the

title of your talk is Derek Jarman’s Six-Pronged Attack on AIDS.

I was wondering if you could sort of clarify what exactly what are the six prongs?

[William Pencak:] OK, his films, his paintings,

his poetry, his prose, his garden,

and his political activism. He's using all of them to call attention

to injustices against homosexuals, to lobby for better health care for people with AIDS,

to show the the horrors that they're living through and that they

should be treated with compassion rather than as evil monsters who focus on themselves.

[Michael Sappol:] OK, thank you.

[William Pencak:] Yes. [Audience:] I actually wanted to ask you about your language because I

had it when when you were describing, when you were talking about the laws and the Queen Victoria not

passing any laws but lesbian sex, you said you said that there were

laws passed about homosexual people but not lesbians. And I was wondering why you why

didn't you say gay or lesbian? Why wouldn't you call lesbian sex homosexual?

[William Pencak:] That was just a slip of the tongue. [Audience:] OK, sorry. Oh, no, I OK.

[ Audience silence ]

[Michael North:] OK, I guess. Actually, I just saw a documentary last week called Derek.

There was about his life and it mostly consisted of interviews of him with

clips of him from the 1970s and 80s, which I highly recommend.

He talks about going to Catholic school,

as a child but then doesn't really make any other references to

being Catholic or his feelings about Catholicism. Obviously came

up in the Pet Shop Boys video. But I was wondering if that also

sort of was a recurring theme in his art? [William Pencak:] Well he was very he is very

negative on organized religion because especially in England at his time,

the Church of England and the Catholic Church as well are very

anti-homosexual basically.

And so he doesn't have much good to say about the Church.

He thinks so they're hypocritical that they should show love to people rather than passing

judgment on them based upon selective mythical texts and things like that.

Yet you see in his films that he has

appreciation for the beauty in the churches. And they are, you know, with Caravaggio especially,

you know, there's this old Cardinal who is Caravaggio's patron. And well, you know,

he likes Caravaggio's artwork. He also likes Caravaggio.

And yet, you know, it's in this religious atmosphere which

even though it's hiding his sexual feelings, it's nevertheless responsible for all this great art.

So, you know, he recognizes that in fact and that

in fact repress sexuality sometimes is the means of producing great art.

I mean, if life had been all hunky-dory for for homosexuals,

that at this point in time he wouldn't have produced any of this, you know, he probably wouldn't.

You know, it would be what did art if you did films that have been completely different.

So that's one of the paradoxes of

creativity sometimes created opposition to

the way things are because you're supported. The other thing is he made did a

lot of his work on the shoe strip. You know, a lot of it is, you know,

just for a few £1000 he'd make a film and he and his friends would go to

thrift shops and buildings that were torn down and find old clothes or

old furniture and stuff like that. So, you know,

this is another thing that's sort of how he's commenting on contemporary England.

And a lot of it is being destroyed of the old England, that he's, you know, trying to salvage some of

it and take what's in, you know, a situation that's become very ugly

and somehow try to salvage something from it. Just like with his garden, in his books,

he has all these stories. When I went to this old warehouse and guess what I found?

I found this beautiful old robe and I can make some of you look like a Renaissance Prince with

it or something like that.

[Michael North:] That's great. And do we have any more questions or comments?

OK, great. Well, thank you very much for

[ Applause ]

for your talk about Derek Jarman.