An exploration of Shirley Clarke's film Portrait of Jason

1. OBSCURING GAZES
Race, Sexuality and Performance in Shirley Clarke’s Portrait of Jason
Dan Calhoun
9 April 2018

2. RACE, SEXUALITY AND PERFORMANCE IN
PORTRAIT OF JASON
• This presentation will focus on:
• the optics of a White, heterosexual director filming a Black, queer subject
• the concept of the gaze and the resistant spectator
• and ways in which Jason Holliday subverts the intentions of director Shirley Clarke
and the expectations of spectators, obscuring both a white gaze and a heterosexual
gaze.

3. THE PRODUCTION OF PORTRAIT OF
JASON
• When Milestone Films released a restored version of the film, a press kit
accompanied the restoration. The kit provides great insight into the film’s
production.
• Shirley Clarke, a heterosexual White woman, along with Carl Lee, a heterosexual
Black man, and a small production unit (all White men) gathered with Jason Holliday
in the Chelsea Hotel and filmed for about 12 hours with a production budget of
$21,500.

4. PRODUCTION
• Clarke was influenced by Andy
Warhol’s film, Poor Little Rich Girl.
• In 1969, Clarke had mentioned
that Warhol had attempted using
Holliday in a film a month prior to
Clarke’s production (Press Kit, 6).
• The film follows a day in the life of
Edie Sedgwick as she “performs” as
a heightened version of herself.

5. WAIT? PERFORMS A VERSION OF
HERSELF? WHAT?
• Warhol isn’t interested in penetrating the depths of Sedgwick’s interior. And
Sedgwick isn’t interested in displaying her true vulnerabilities. The film is a study in
surface, what it means to act in a role society determines for one based on a variety
of factors (gender, race, class). By placing this artificiality front and center, Warhol is
able to interrogate it and reveal performance for the construct it is.

6. WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE JASON?
• In the film, Holliday says, “Jason was created in San Francisco.”
• From the beginning he’s creating a smoke screen, telling the viewers what they see may not
be authentic.
• Two of his impersonations in the film, Mae West and Katharine Hepburn, offer an interesting
contrast.
• Mae West created an exaggerated persona whereas Katherine Hepburn struggled to live
authentically as herself in a Hollywood system that sought to control and package her for
mass consumption.

7. JASON ON HIS ‘PERFORMANCE’
• “I know I am a great actor and I got a chance to prove it… I wondered if people
would think I was a homosexual, bisexual or heterosexual. I wondered if I was great
enough to convince them I was all three… I was aware filmwise of what I was doing.
I never got too far beyond my image. But what is my image? Other than a well-
dressed, well-liked swinging cat? I also play many roles in life? I was also hip enough
to do it on the screen—dig it?” (Press Kit, 13).

8. PERFORMANCE
• As Jason talks, he displays a working knowledge of the entertainment industry (his
impersonations of actresses, recreations of scenes from specific films, his
impersonations of singers).
• He also reveals how he’s survived by code-switching, creating various personas for
various people.
• Jason understands that Clarke’s audience will be largely White and heterosexual.
The question hanging over the film is how in on the joke is Jason? Is he playing to
what he expects this largely White, straight audience?
• What do people mean when they use terms like ‘gaze’ and ‘spectator?’

9. THE MALE GAZE
• In “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey lists three types of looking:
the look of the camera, the look of the audience watching the film and characters
looking at each other in the film.
• Mulvey writes that “Unchallenged, mainstream film coded the erotic into the
language of the dominant patriarchal order” (839) and the act of watching films in a
dark theater promotes “the illusion of voyeuristic separation” and gives “the
spectator an illusion of looking in on a private world” (840).
• In a nutshell: film has been produced by men, for men. In film, women exist as
objects of desire instead of fleshed out humans with rich inner lives. When the
audience watches a film, they identify with the male protagonist and vicariously live
through his desire for the female love interest.

10. THE MALE GAZE CONT
• An example of the gaze occurs in David Lynch’s film, Blue Velvet.
• In the closet scene, Lynch depicts voyeurism as Jeffery, in the dark closet, peers
through the lighted blinds and watches Dorothy undress. The setup recalls the act
of sitting in a dark theater and watching a screen. Viewers identify with Jeffery as he
violates Dorothy’s privacy.
• Dorothy is viewed as an object for the viewer’s (and Jeffery’s) pleasure.
• Lynch, toying with viewers, recreates the castration anxiety inherit in the male gaze
as Dorothy catches Jeffery, and for a few seconds, taunts Jeffery with a knife and
forces him to pull off his underwear. In those few seconds, the threat of physical
castration (which mirrors metaphorical castration) is real.

11. IS THERE ONLY A MALE GAZE?
• Well, no.
• Mulvey’s essay pioneered a new way of understanding film but critic Manthia
Diawara argues in “Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance”
that Mulvey’s argument limits its critique to white male spectators.
• Diawara writes, “...as a black male spectator, I wish to argue, in addition, that the
dominant cinema situates black characters primarily for the pleasure of white
spectators (male or female)” (895).
• Film prioritizes— instead of challenges— White supremacy. Black characters in film
exist to uphold a racial hierarchy that places Whites on top and are depicted as
subservient, violent, hyper-sexual or Black characters exist solely to establish the
white characters.

12. RESISTING SPECTATORSHIP
• Diawara uses the Gus and Little Sister scene from D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation as
an example of the resisting Black spectator. In this scene, Gus (played by a white
actor in blackface) flirts with Little Sister (a white woman) and she fears he’ll rape
her. She runs and he chases her, culminating in Little Sister jumping off a cliff to her
death because, in Griffith’s world, death is more honorable than miscegenation.
• Using Mulvey’s theory of spectatorship, audiences would automatically view Gus as
absolute evil and Little Sister, and her brother Little Colonel—who founds the Ku
Klux Klan as a means of establishing White order—as good (Diawara, 894).
• Diawara believes the resistant spectator rejects “the narrative proposition that
lynching is a means of restoring the racial and symbolic order of the South” (894).

13. SO WHAT DO WE MAKES OF THIS?
• Mulvey gave name to a particular problem and Diawara built on Mulvey’s findings,
creating a more complex theory of spectatorship. Spectators need to be aware that
the images they consume are inherently ideological. The camera is never neutral.
• In “Colonialism, Racism and Representation,” Robert Stem and Louise Spence argue
that in film difference is often “transformed into other-ness and exploited or
penalised by and for power” (878).
• Hollywood, in particular, shapes our perceptions of people, America, the world,
institutions like marriage etc. The higher a spectator ranks on the social hierarchy
the more film tends to replicate his or her worldview without challenging his or her
beliefs.

14. HOW DOES THIS APPLY?
• We can use a recent altercation on RuPaul’s Drag
Race as an example of putting all this theory into
action.
• The Vixen, a Black queen, confronts Aquaria, a white
queen, about comments made regarding a traded
wig. Aquaria had made snippy comments and The
Vixen took her to task, which resulted in Aquaria
storming away. During the second altercation,
Aquaria, confronted with her wrongdoing, cries. The
Vixen does not let up, arguing that intentionally or
not, Aquaria has contributed to a narrative that
positions Whites as victims and Blacks as
aggressors.

15. HOW DOES THIS APPLY? CONT
• The Vixen knows she will always be viewed as the Angry Black Girl by the largely
White RuPaul’s Drag Race audience while Aquaria can act anyway she wants and be
forgiven because White audiences inherently identify with Aquaria and give her the
benefit of the doubt, allowing her to be a fleshed out, complex person and not one
dimensional.
• The Vixen attempts to subvert the constraints of the narrative placed on her by
pointing this out to Aquaria and subsequently, White viewers. She does not want to
perform the way White spectators demand.
• Fans across social media largely proved The Vixens point, saying she was too
aggressive, asking why she didn’t act like Chi Chi DeVayne (a Black queen with a
mellow personality) or expressing sadness for Aquaria’s forced tears.

16. LET’S APPLY ALL THIS TO PORTRAIT
OF JASON
• Clarke’s film presents a white, heterosexual gaze that inherently others a subject like Jason
Holliday. White, heterosexual viewers will identify with Clarke’s lens and view Holliday as an
object of otherness and fascination.
• The production of the film has the optics of being unethical as Clarke provides Holliday with
lots of alcohol and Lee berates Holliday, hoping to spur a certain reaction.
• By performing Queerness and Blackness, Holliday can obscure the gazes of spectators and
attempt to break through their preconceived ideas about what it means to be Queer or
Black.
• Through affectations and surface, Holliday draws attention to the performative nature of
sexuality, race and class and he uses these performances

17. HOW SUCCESSFUL IS JASON?
John Powers, in a review of the film writes that Clarke’s film, “raises profound questions about
the nature of the self, about the relationship between fiction and reality, and about the way
that film doesn't simply record raw truth but shapes it into something reflecting the
filmmaker's vision of life.”
Despite Holliday’s efforts, Clarke remains in control as she had say in the final edit. She
selected 100 minutes of material from 12 hours and ordered those 100 minutes in the way she
saw fit. In the end, we are watching Clarke’s interpretation of Jason Holliday.
Holliday is Black, Queer and Poor but, on film, he has been recreated by a White, Heterosexual,
rich woman and that is something spectators should keep in mind when watching the film.

18. WORKS CITED
• Clarke, Shirley. Portrait of Jason.
• Diawara, Manthia. “Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance.” Film
Theory and Criticism 6th edition. 892-900.
• Lynch, David. Blue Velvet.
• Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism 6th edition.
837-848.
• Portrait of Jason Press Kit from Milestone Films.
• Powers, John. “Peeling Away the Layers in ‘Portrait of Jason’.” NPR.
• Stam, Robert and Louise Spencer. “Colonialism, Racism, and Representation: An
Introduction.” Film Theory and Criticism 6th edition. 877-891.
• “Tap That App.” RuPaul’s Drag Race. Season 10.
• Warhol, Andy. Poor Little Rich Girl.