Pink Narcissus

Film stills from Pink Narcissus, 16 mm, color, 71 min, New York

the influence of James Bidgood

text by FLORENT ROUTOULP

 

In 1971 James Bidgood made Pink Narcissus, his only short film, a surrealistic work that draws the viewer into a visual tornado. The film was a major influence on a generation of gay artists, but Bidgood refused to acknowledge it as his own until the late ’90s. For a long while, Andy Warhol was given credit for making the emblematic film. Shot partly in Bidgood’s New York apartment, the film explores the archetypal homoerotic fantasies of a young Adonis named Bobby Kendall, fantasies that include a bullfighter squeezing into tight leggings. Much of the action takes place in public toilets and Oriental harems, cumulating in a feverish night when Bobby is introduced to sensual pleasure. Bidgood employs clichés of homoerotism, many of which…