events syllabus links index gape


Banned & Censored Cinema


Flaming Creatures
Jack Smith, USA, 1963, 16mm, 45 min.


Described by Smith as "a comedy set in a haunted music studio," this carnal polysexual explosion of filmic terrain literally caused reactions as if to a bomb threat--from the 1964 unanimous decision by the jury of Belgium's Third International Experimental Film Competition that "the showing of it was impossible in regard to Belgian laws" to the 1967 opinion of Chief Justice Warren (U.S. Supreme Court) that the film was "not within the protections of the First Amendment" because of its "utter [lack of] social value." Flaming Creatures is lauded by many as the most radical and influential film experiment to emerge from the period.

Sound by Tony Conrad.

With: Frances Francine (Himself), Sheila Bick (Delicious Dolores), Joel Markman (Our Lady of the Docks), Dolores Flores, aka Mario Montez (The Spanish Girl), Arnold Rockwood (Arnold), Judith Malina (The Fascinating Woman), Marian Zazeela (Maria Zazeela)




"Flaming Creatures is a rare, modern work of art about joy and innocence. Without any doubt, this innocence is composed of perverse - according to the current acceptance of that term - and decadent, at least theatrical and artificial themes. But I think, it`s just for that reason that the film attains beauty and modernity. Flaming Creatures is a wonderful specimen of what in a genre is named Pop Art. Jack Smith`s film possesses the casualness, the arbitrariness and the unrestrainedness of Pop Art, its ingenuity and its liberty towards morality. One of the great qualities of Pop Art is the manner in which it swept the old imperratives about the position to take concerning the subject of something.The best works in what we used to call Pop Art suggest precisely that we abandon the old habits of always approving or disapproving what is depicted in art - and, in a broader sense, what we experience in life. Pop Art favours new and wonderful patterns of behaviour that previously seemed to be contradictory.
 
Flaming Creatures is also a brillant parody on sexuality itself, at the same time it shows the lyricism of erotic compulsions. Concerning the visual, it is full of contradictions. Very carefully elaborated visual effects (dentelle-textures, falling flowers, and paintings ) are introduced in a disorganized manner into clearly improvised scenes, in which typically feminine bodies and other meager, hairy ones, would fall, dance and make love."--Susan Sontag, 1964
 
"He has shown more clearly than anyone before how the poet's license includes all things, not only of spirit, but also of flesh; not only of dreams and of symbol, but also of solid reality. In no other art but the movies could this have so fully been done; and their capacity was realized by Smith." - Film Culture


REQUIRED READINGS & WEBSITES
 
• • Dawn B. Sova, "Flaming Creatures", Forbidden Films: Censorship Histories of 125 Motion Pictures (NY: Checkmark Books, an imprint of Facts On File, Inc., 2001), course reader
 
• U.S. Supreme Court Case: JACOBS V. NEW YORK , Case #: 388US431, NO. 660. DECIDED JUNE 12, 1967, course reader and online http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/supcrt/index.html
***Note that you must enter 388US431 in the CASE NUMBER box, click SUBMIT and then on the next screen click TEXT under JACOBS V. NEW YORK
 
• Susan Sontag, "Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures", Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966), course reader
 
• Richard Foreman, "During the Second Half of the Sixties", Jack Smith: Flaming Creatures: His Amazing Life and Times, Edward Leffingwell, ed. (Serpent's Tail, 1997), course reader
 
• J. Hoberman, "The Big Heat: Making and Unmaking Flaming Creatures", Jack Smith: Flaming Creatures: His Amazing Life and Times, Edward Leffingwell, ed. (Serpent's Tail, 1997), course reader
 
• Sylvère Lotringer, "Interview with Jack Smith", Semiotexte (Vol. III, No. 2, 1978), course reader


SUGGESTED READINGS & WEBSITES
 
• J. Hoberman, On Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures and Other Secret-Flix of Cinemaroc (New York: Granary Books and Hips Road, 2001)
 
• The Films of Jack Smith, online http://www.hi-beam.net/mkr/js/js-bio2.html
 
• Constantine Verevis, "Flaming Creatures", Senses of Cinema, July 2002, online
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/02/21/cteq/flaming.html
 
• Runar Hodne, "Introduction: Amongst Ali Baba, weirdoes and other Outcasts" to the program "Jerry Tartaglia Presents the Films of Jack Smith", The Norwegian Short Film Festival (1999), online
http://www.kortfilmfestivalen.no/arkiv/english/articles/99_JerryTar.html


Case: JACOBS V. NEW YORK
Case #: 388US431NO. 660. DECIDED JUNE 12, 1967. - APPEAL DISMISSED. JACOBS ET AL. V. NEW YORK.
APPEAL FROM THE APPELLATE TERM OF THE SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK,
FIRST JUDICIAL DEPARTMENT.


MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, DISSENTING.

IN THE PRESENT CASES, WE ARE IN THE AREA OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT.
OVER AND OVER AGAIN WE HAVE STRESSED THAT FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS NEED
"BREATHING SPACE TO SURVIVE" (NAACP V. BUTTON, 371 U.S. 415, 433); AND
WE HAVE BEEN WATCHFUL LEST COERCIVE MEASURES EXERCISE AN IN TERROREM
EFFECT WHICH INTIMIDATES PEOPLE FROM EXERCISING THEIR FIRST AMENDMENT
RIGHTS. SEE, E.G., SPEISER V. RANDALL, 357 U.S. 513; NAACP V. BUTTON,
SUPRA; KEYISHIAN V. BOARD OF REGENTS, 385 U.S. 589. WE HAVE BEEN
MINDFUL THAT "THE THREAT OF SANCTIONS MAY DETER .. ALLMOST AS
POTENTLY AS THE ACTUAL APPLICATION OF SANCTIONS." NAACP V. BUTTON,
SUPRA, AT 433. ACCORDINGLY, WE HAVE MODIFIED TRADITIONAL RULES OF
STANDING AND PREMATURITY TO FIT THE PECULIARITIES NECESSARY TO ENSURE
ADEQUATE PROTECTION OF FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS. SEE DOMBROWSKI V.
PFISTER, 380 U.S. 479.