生动地了解五位 LGBTQ+ 漫画艺术家，他们的职业生涯从地下场景走向时代杂志和国际舞台的封面。（机译）
Vivian Kleiman - No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics (2021) USA
No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics is a long overdue examination of queer comic culture, directed by the Peabody Award-winner and longtime collaborator of Marlon Riggs, Vivian Kleiman. The film traces the genesis and evolution of queer comics, from the pioneering Gay Comix and Dykes to Watch Out For of the 1980s to the popular success of the genre in the 2010s, when the first print run of Justin Hall’s anthology No Straight Lines: Four Decades of Queer Comics (2013) sold out in a single day. It’s strange that the underground comix of the 1960s - in which no subject was supposedly off-limits - had little or nothing to say about queer culture. The silence is all the more puzzling given the fact that the two main hubs of queer activism - the West Coast and pre-Stonewall New York - were also the engine-houses of underground comix. Yet when they mentioned queers at all the references were more often than not derogatory and homophobic. In the research paper Cops and Queers Everywhere: GLBT Presentations in Underground Comics (2004), Diana Green wrote: “Often considered the model of social change and rebellion in the history of comics, the books known as the undergrounds were sometimes a breeding ground of reactionary ideas and ideologies… Drawing heavily on cliche and stereotype, and perpetuating the fallacy of gay characters as societal menaces, the undergrounds regularly served to magnify misunderstandings and homophobia”. It wasn’t until the 1970s that the queer comic scene really got off the ground, with Mary Wings Come Out Comix and the Wimmen’s Comix collective in San Francisco. Their positive portrayal of queer characters was certainly a step in the right direction, but counteracting deeply ingrained societal prejudices proved to be slow work. We tend to think of artists as the cultural avant-garde - trailblazers and born rebels ever in search of new ways to subvert conventional morality; but several of Kleiman’s interviewees prove that the superegos of artists are just as burdened with internalised rules and prohibitions as those of lesser mortals. For many years Alison Bechdel, whose autobiographical graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006) kick-started the contemporary boom in queer comics, unconsciously avoided drawing her own sex: “Although I had drawn all my life, I almost exclusively drew men, which started to seem really odd to me once I came out and realized that I was, like, really interested in women. Why was I just drawing men?” For the queer African-American comic book artist Rupert Kinnard, the issue was repressed racial self-expression: “I looked at these characters I was drawing and I thought, my God, why the hell am I drawing white superheroes? And there was a certain degree of anger. The word that keeps coming to mind, oddly enough, is “bamboozled.” I felt that I had accepted that the world of comics was white”. Many contemporary cultural commentators are under the impression that Alison Bechdel actually invented the autobiographical graphic memoir, but the form was pioneered by Robert Crumb way back in the 1960s and ’70s. Crumb is undeniably an artist of great power and originality, but he treated autobiographical comics as a psychic playground in which to let his id off the leash and liberate the demons of his unconscious to do their worst. Alison Bechdel and the new generation of queer comic book creators generally take a more constructive and analytical approach. No Straight Lines showcases their work and celebrates the vibrant culture of contemporary queer comics. This release was capped from a broadcast in the PBS Independent Lens series but nothing seems to have been cut; in fact the film runs for almost six minutes longer than the 1h 19m duration specified by the IMDB. PBS’s Coke-ad style multiculti opening montage and warning notice advising viewer discretion account for a mere 20 seconds, so where the extra footage came from is anyone’s guess. Anyway, it’s great that they decided to screen the documentary. I can even forgive the PBS apparatchiks’ failure to grasp the cruel irony of turning the rainbow flag of gay pride into a digital fig leaf with which to pixellate gay genitalia - even as the interviewees are waxing lyrical about the liberating effect of depicting graphic nudity. Will this be the first ever KG torrent to be flagged because of the rainbow flag? Wouldn’t that be a turn up for the books? Quote: PBS Product Description Five queer comic book artists journey from the underground comix scene to mainstream acceptance. When Alison Bechdel received a coveted MacArthur Award for her best-selling graphic memoir Fun Home, it heralded the acceptance of LGBTQ comics in American culture. From DIY underground comix scene to mainstream acceptance, meet five smart and funny queer comic book artists whose uncensored commentary left no topic untouched and explored art as a tool for social change. Featuring Alison Bechdel, Jennifer Camper, Howard Cruse, Rupert Kinnard, Mary Wings, and other queer comics artists. Quote: Guardian Review No straight lines: Alison Bechdel and the unstoppable rise of queer comics The artist discusses her role in an eye-opening new documentary that trails the history of LGBTQ comic books and the people behind them Among other things, the story of LGBTQ liberation is a story of spaces. For as long as the LGBTQ community has sought freedom and equality, it has been essential for this group to have places both concrete and metaphorical where they can safely gather, emote, care for one another and understand their identities. Those spaces have not always been so easy to find, and creativity has been essential. No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics, the Peabody award-winning film-maker Vivian Kleiman’s latest documentary, is about how comics became a site in the struggle for queer people to have room to exist. It tells how a foundational generation of artists, including Howard Cruse, Mary Wings, Jennifer Camper and Rupert Kinnard, fought against censorship of their very existence by creating and distributing their own comics in the 1960s and 70s. It then follows that story down through the generations, integrating the careers of later creators like Alison Bechdel and the Gen Z artists who are again redefining how the LGBTQ comics world looks and where it is found…" Quote: Los Angeles Times No Straight Lines is a timely celebration of the history of queer comics Despite what certain blockbuster franchises would have you believe, there is more to comic books than the mainstream superheroes that jump to various screens. So it’s well past time for the heroic pioneers of queer comics to get time in the spotlight. Directed by Vivian Kleiman, No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics is a celebration of the history of comics by and about LGBTQ people. The documentary profiles five pioneers of queer comics, painting a picture of resilience and community as they carved out a space to tell their own stories. More of a broad overview than an exhaustive history, No Straight Lines is nevertheless an enjoyable and informative look at the careers of Alison Bechdel, Howard Cruse, Mary Wings, Rupert Kinnard and Jennifer Camper and their influence on queer comics and the queer comics community. Interviews with these cartoonists broken into vignettes make up the bulk of the documentary, which also creatively showcases their work to help illustrate different moments and topics of conversation. But it’s when the documentary offers glimpses of context into the broader history of the queer community that it is also quietly powerful…" Quote: Queer Review Directed and produced by Peabody Award-winner Vivian Kleiman (a longtime collaborator of filmmaker Marlon Riggs), the beautifully crafted documentary feature No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics, which received its world premiere at last month’s Tribeca Film Festival, chronicles the history of queer comics by focusing on five lesbian and gay trailblazing cartoonists, with insights from the current wave of LGBTQ artists whom they inspired. As with Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein’s The Celluloid Closet, and Kleiman’s own Color Adjustment produced with Riggs before it, through insightful interviews with its subjects No Straight Lines also reflects on our desire for representation and how the impact of seeing ourselves portrayed in mainstream media can shape our self-perceptions. Lebanese-American cartoonist and graphic designer Jennifer Camper says that she was “always on the look out for tough, beautiful kick-ass women” in the comic strips she read like Steve Canyon, adding that though they might not be explicitly identified as such, she was “finding dykes in comics from a very early age…”.
Language(s) English Subtitles included: English (Muxed SRT) Italian French Portuguese German Spanish Dutch Greek（G5V.NET）
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