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Popular Culture Review
similar situation when upon witnessing Andy Warhol emerge from a limo and
enter a restaurant, Benny tells the star-stmck Basquiat that Warhol is a “fucking
homo.” This time Basquiat does reply; he tells Benny that “he is the greatest
painter in the world.” Again, the artist does not have to join in or agree with
Benny’s sentiment in order to assert his heterosexuality as that has already been
established by this point in the film. These two scenes establish that Benny and
Basquiat are simply two types of heterosexual; the former is the macho and
homophobic type while the latter is more reserved and soft spoken.
In Basquiat, the character of Benny functions to assure the viewer that
although the artist may not have possessed the most masculine persona, he was,
without a doubt, straight. The differences between Benny’s and Basquiat’s
masculinity are most pronounced in a scene in which they play one-on-one
basketball. The artist initially does not want to play and when he finally does,
after some urging from his friend, we can see how he “throws like a girl.”
Throughout the film, Jeffrey Wright captures many of Basquiafs traits,
including his “self-conscious shuffle and his occasional stammer” (Hoban 55).
These traits, which do not convey black male confidence, could be seen as
threatening the image of the artist as heterosexual. Thus, the artist’s gendered
persona cannot and is not avoided by Schnabel; rather, it is presented in the
context of other dialogues, characterizations, and scenes that stress the artist’s
heterosexuality. While we are constantly reminded of Benny’s manliness and
Basquiafs unmanliness throughout the film, we also are reminded that the latter
gets the girls, even before his fame becomes a factor. When, in one scene,
Benny steals a kiss from Gina, she blows it off telling him he “should take more
drugs.” In this sense, Benny’s gendered characterization and his lack of success
with women weakens the connection between manliness and straightness so that
both Benny and Basquiafs versions of masculinity can both inhabit the category
of heterosexuality.
One more scene involving Benny and Basquiat deserves discussion
here because it is the only one in Schnabel’s film in which the artist participates
directly in a discussion of homosexuality and, as such, it plays an important role
in distancing him from that category. Very early on in Basquiat, Benny and the
artist, while sitting around Benny’s apartment doing drugs, decide to prank a
suicide hotline. Basquiat can barely contain his laughter as he tells the counselor
that he is going to kill himself because his boyfriend left him. In this sense, the
possibility of his homosexuality is framed as a joke or a gag, as something to not
be taken seriously or as real. This is further supported by the way in which the
scene is set up and the scene that follows it. The prank call is told in a voiceover;
as the dialogue unfolds, the camera stays focused on a silent Basquiat who
giggles and stares off into space in a drug-induced haze. Not only is the situation
a drug-induced one, thereby reducing its gravity, it is also a detached one in that
we do not see him say, “my boyfriend left me.” The possibility of a queer
Basquiat is further undermined in the scene that follows in which we learn that
he taped the prank call so that he could use it as a sound loop in one of his