Combatting Conservatism With Bruce LaBruce’s Erotic Encyclopaedia

‘I’ve been trying to do a book like this for a while’, Bruce LaBruce tells me. I’ve called to discuss his new book, The Revolution Is My Boyfriend, a visual anthology spanning the Canadian cultural provocateur's prolific (and sexually explicit) career, published by Baron Books. It’s titled after the uncut version of his 2004 film The Raspberry Reich, a pioneering piece of queercore cinema that has made LaBruce’s name synonymous with pushing the boundaries of queer erotica in film. A space that the auteur has come to define since the release of his first major feature No Skin Off My Ass, in 1991.

It’s the image-maker's fearless approach to challenging convention that has made him a creative beacon within the queer community. Approaching artistic expression as a form of liberation, LaBruce’s signature subversive humour and oftentimes politically incorrect subject matter – whether it’s casting gay pornstars like François Sagat in his horny horror L.A. Zombie or depicting a twincest relationship in Saint-Narcisse – is the antithesis of the conservative ideologies that hover over society. As an original punk, LaBruce's rebellious, anti-establishment art strives to question buttoned-up beliefs and rainbow capitalism, in the most extreme way possible.

While hard-ons and cumshots are abound in the 250 page tome, central to LaBruce's career is the community of pop culture icons, creatives, and misfits that he's captured over the years. From actors to artists to adult entertainers, shots for fashion magazines and porn magazines are interchangeable in the artist's oeuvre. In our chat he recalls shooting actress Asia Argento for Index Magazine when she was 8 months pregnant, nude and smoking in a bathtub, and capturing American artist Dash Snow and his wife Agathe partaking in spontaneous intercourse in the bathroom of New York City’s Passerby bar.

The book, organised as ‘intuitive juxtapositions of images that draw attention to my motifs and fixations’, isn’t your typical career retrospective. For LaBruce, a chronological exploration would be ‘too academic or encyclopaedic’. What readers are met with is an experience that (much like his films) is ‘wild, free-range, and feral’.

Joshua Graham: What makes a captivating image?

Bruce LaBruce: ‘I’m not into making people look unattractive, but at the same time, I want to shoot people in their natural habitat and do things that are somewhat outrageous for the camera. Because of my reputation as a punk and queercore artist, I quite often bring out something in subjects that makes them want to rise to the challenge. To do something a bit shocking.’

JG: Do you see your work as shocking?

BL: ‘For me, the elements of irony and humour and the romantic lighting and motifs I use offset the extreme nature of the subject matter. It’s the same in my films. I romanticise the people who are on the fringes of society. Misfits and outcasts, and that comes across in the photos. Maybe they’re doing things that people find outrageous, but for me, it’s the romance of the taboo and breaking the rules’.

JG: Do you ever feel like your work is misunderstood?

BL: ‘In the book I have a picture of an ex boyfriend who was a devout Shia Muslim, and he’s wearing a baseball cap that has a confederate flag on it. It’s a punk strategy really. Mixing recognisable signifiers that might be deemed offensive in a semiotic way to discombobulate the viewer. It’s intended to set up a cognitive dissonance in the viewer. They’re trying to understand what this juxtaposition might mean. It’s not meant to be coherent, it’s disjunctive.’

JG: Do you actively seek outsiders to photograph or are you reflecting your community?

BL: ‘I came out of the punk scene, I've dated hustlers, I’ve lived with strippers in the past. It’s a scene I’ve always been comfortable in. People I gravitate to because they are questioning the conventions of culture, the conservative aspects of culture. It’s an organic collaborative thing that happens.’

JG: Is it a given that counter culture will always exist or do you think we're at risk of total hegemony?

BL: ‘Capitalism is the most insidious co-optive power. It has a way of being able to take the extreme and neutralise it. Make it something that can be commodified and emptied of its significance. That’s what a lot of my work is based on. We live in an era of maximalism where there’s a lot of shit thrown at the cultural wall. People are grasping at the most outrageous expression they can think of without too much thought put behind it or understanding the significance. There’s a lot of supposedly radical imagery you need to wade through these days to find something genuinely subversive or revolutionary.'

JG: Can queer identity flourish in capitalism?

BL: ‘I grew up in another era. I was a punk in the 80s. Punk was DIY, the music scene was autonomous from corporate entities with small labels and independent bands. There was no social media so you didn’t have to self-censor yourself. It was a completely autonomous reality where you were allowed to express yourself however you wanted because there was no one over your shoulder pressuring you to censor yourself to reach a mass market.

‘Its the age old dilemma of the artist. How do you keep your integrity and autonomy and still work within a capitalist system and make a living? I think there’s ways of remaining autonomous and not being co-opted while still participating.’

JG: How do you think late stage capitalism has shaped our views on sex?

BL: ‘It’s a bit schizophrenic. Some people are full-on making their own porn and exploring their sexuality in their work, and others are going in a completely different direction. Being asexual and seeing sex as an unnecessary part of their lives. It’s the same in pop culture. There’s an infantilisation of sex and sexuality. Taylor Swift’s sexuality to me is like she’s a permanent teenager. Her audience is largely very young teenage girls. Her sexuality is so non-threatening. I think we’ve regressed in how we look at sexuality. It’s a very conservative trend. A very infantile, oversimplified way of looking at sex and sexuality’.

JG: What do you want people to get from The Revolution Is My Boyfriend?

BL: ‘I want people to consider the importance of developing a personal style that goes beyond aesthetics into philosophy. A philosophy of life, a philosophy of sex. And to imbue your work with that kind of rigour where a single image can be identified by your signature.

The Revolution Is My Boyfriend is now available at baronbooks.co.uk.