VIDEO DESCRIPTION:

Play, download and edit the free video Breaking the Code: Scorpio Rising by Venus Edlin.

Kenneth Anger’s film Scorpio Rising came out in 1964. According to Melanie Kohnen, “In 1961, the Code was revised to allow limited depictions of homosexual subject matter, and, in 1968, it was abolished entirely and replaced by a ratings system,” (44). This makes Scorpio Rising’s release impeccably timed. Years earlier, Anger would not have been able to legally show the film because of its explicit homoeroticism and glimpses of queer sex acts. However, the influence of the Code still affected the film’s fate. Newspaper archives chronicle the legal battle theater manager Michael Getz faced when he first decided to show the film following screenings of Hallelujah the Hills (1963). Police arrested Getz in Los Angeles on March 7, 1964 with charges of “exhibiting an obscene film.” Getz lost the first court battle on June 27, fined $500 or 50 days of jail time due to mere seconds of the 28 minute film. Getz believed he had a chance to appeal the decision, and was correct; the California Supreme Court decided to overrule the previous verdict on December 8. The film’s legal battle was occuring at the same time as Jacobellis v. Ohio, one of the most important obscenity cases determined by the United States Supreme Court. The case, which concerned Louis Malle’s film The Lovers, was first argued in March of 1963, but was reargued on April 1, 1964. It was finally decided on June 22 with the film escaping the obscene label. Justice Potter Stewart’s opinion from the hearing is the most famous from the case: He claims that everything except hard-core pornography should not recieve the “obscene” label, futher elaborating "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.” These two cases represent the cultural reckoning the U.S. was going through at the time. Scorpio Rising certainly pushed the limits of the time, and forever impacted cinema moving forward. In my video essay, I chose to represent this more abstractly by providing the legal and cultural context surrounding the film, then showing its most lewd clips. I start with the title sequence, which precedes clips of the film’s main character Scorpio being contrasted to rebels James Dean and Marlon Brando, both of whose sexualities were constantly questioned. Next, are bikers getting dressed. These clips are suggestive, but show Anger’s deliberate use of restraint to evade censorship. After this sequence, I intercut a scene where Scorpio snorts either methamphetamine or cocaine. In Anger’s work, the drug use contextualizes the following chaos, which I mirror in my video essay by turning the homoerotic into the homo-explicit following the bump. The dressing scene turns into a undressing scene through editing and the most explicit and erotic shots of the film are all composited together. The entire video essay is paired with snippets of three songs that were featured in Scorpio Rising.

Download, play and edit free videos and free audios from Breaking the Code: Scorpio Rising by Venus Edlin using RedcoolMedia.net web apps