Resurrecting Cocteau: Gay (In)visibility and the Clean-up of French Culture

Abstract

The recent exhibition held in 2003–2004 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris entitled Jean Cocteau, sur le fil du siècle provided the opportunity to reappraise Cocteau's work and influence. However, his rebranding as a quintessential postmodern artist conformed to the normative aims of France's state-sanctioned culture. By highlighting key aspects of the show and its various strategies to ‘clean up’ Cocteau, including the effective imposition of a taboo on his sexually explicit sexual imagery, this article argues that no sooner was Cocteau resurrected and made visible to a wider audience than he was rendered all but invisible as a gay male artist. This recuperative institutional move reflects the assimilationist aims of official French gay culture (including the Comité Jean Cocteau itself) and is symptomatic of contemporary culture in France in general which, despite—and perhaps indeed partly because of—the greater mainstream visibility of gays and lesbians, is lagging behind a society in historical transition, specifically on matters of gender and sexual difference. The study suggests that a powerful model for addressing and resisting this paradoxical situation is offered by Cocteau himself who transcended and subverted all genres, classifications and taboos, and fully assumed the risks of increased visibility. The article concludes that there is a vital continuity of gay transgression between Cocteau and contestatory new writers such as Guillaume Dustan and Eric Rémès who sexualise totally the queer experience and share an ethical imperative of high-risk self-exposure and excess. Un vice de la société fait un vice de ma droiture […] En France, ce vice ne mène pas au bagne à cause des mœurs de Cambacérès et de la longévité du Code Napoléon. Mais je n'accepte pas qu'on me tolère. Cela blesse mon amour de l'amour et de la liberté. (J. Cocteau, Le Livre blanc)