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Tongues Untied (1990)
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Overview
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Plot:
Marlon Riggs, with assistance from other gay Black men, especially poet Essex Hemphill, celebrates Black men loving Black men as a revolutionary act... more | add synopsisAwards:
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Good social commentary, just didn't get it really moreCast
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I had to watch TONGUES UNTIED for my Introduction to Communications class in college. I have never heard of neither this film nor its director, Marlon Riggs. My first impressions: it was just...different. It was a gay interest film mixed in with African-American poetry.
In TONGUES UNTIED, it is basically about black men loving black men as a revolutionary act. The film itself is barely an hour long. The only lines spoken is poetry about being black and being gay. There are scenes of black transvestites and scenes with two black men making love with each other, which if you ask me ran a little too long. It was almost like a gay porno flick that was directed by Melvin van Peebles.
I do have to say, that it is a shocking socio-political commentary. Unfortunately, director Marlon Riggs died of AIDS a few years after this film was made. But I think if he were still alive, he might have become as important and controversial of an African-American filmmaker as Spike Lee.
In the class I had to watch this for, we were talking about denouncing common stereotypes, which is what TONGUES UNTIED was supposed to do. But I don't know what stereotypes that it was trying to denounce. That black men are homophobic? That might be because there was a homophobic rant by Eddie Murphy being shown in the film. Truth I may never understand it, because I'm a heterosexual, but I'm not a homophobic.
Aside from the main point being hard to grasp, and the fact that the two men making out scenes ran way too long, it is a real scathing punch in the face to conformity. That's what I liked about this film. The more controversial the better.