Bruce LaBruce has become one of the most daring filmmakers in recent decades and has often been framed in the New Queer Cinema that was formed in the 1990s. He disagrees. In a 2020 interview he said: “What really distinguishes my films, what makes them unique, is that I am totally pornographic. I never give up pornography. I was joined to this movement, but I was the only one who was making a really hardcore porn.”

Use porn as a political instrument: “As a kind of queer activism, an extreme activism. In fact, the whole engine of the gay liberation movement was based on extreme sexuality and pushed sex to its external borders, being absolutely unusual and sexually experimental.”

LaBruce’s films also show a “more clandestine aesthetic” when compared to New Queer Cinema members. For example, in his latest film, The Visitor (2024), a refugee puts up a wealthy family in London with its ability to seduce. Based on the film Pasolini's Theorem, on the banks of the River Thames, in London, a naked refugee appears. A high-class relative will stay at home, but that refugee will end up somehow altering the stability of his family, due, among other things, to his crude attempts at sex.

The reader can imagine that LaBruce has suffered more than once the hammer of censorship, because of the explicit content he has shown in his works. He has sometimes made two versions of the same film: a raw original version and a lighter one. In addition, copies of their films have been destroyed by customs in several countries. You have spoken publicly about this: “My films have not only been banned because of explicit sexual content, but also because of issues related to explicit fetishism.” However, LaBruck has also received numerous awards at film festivals in 11 countries.

In addition to
film director, LaBruce is also a photographer and writer, and has written in various media, as author of articles, and film critic, including Eye Weekly, Talkhouse, Exclaim! And vice. Texts of a painful and rigorous style that resemble social satire. Well, the editorial Cantico has included in his book Contra la cultura (Kultkontra) several of the writings published in the years 1990 and 2000.

The title of the collection refers expressly to the book Contre le cinéma (Zinemaren kontra), published in 1964 by the French situationist thinker and filmmaker Guy Debord. According to Situationists, cinema is the dominant art of contemporary society, so to achieve it it should be revolutionary. Situationists also warned that it could be a passive representative of artistic individualism, which would lead to the growth of the non-participative show jackpot. In a recent interview, LaBruck says: “When I have used the term against culture I do it with a certain lightness, but also as a warning against the dominant ideology and passive recognition of culture, and as a stimulus to embrace subcultures.” As for the purpose of cinema, he pointed out on more than one occasion that he began to make and write movies to disturb and confuse people, with the aim of making them angry.

Through the title, LaBruck also wants to eliminate the gap between high and low culture, showing a strong disposition in favor of the second: “People who extol the virtues of high culture often despise pop culture a little, and I am completely against it.”

The texts of LaBruce that have been collected in the book to highlight some passages are from different eras. For example, some were published along with the millennial change and terrorist attack in EE.UU. 11 September 2001 and focus on a number of issues: Photo shoot on car accidents based on the film Weekend by Jean-Luc Godard, live sex performances, pornographic scenes between homosexual neonazis with real sex, drugs, parties or reflections on the condition of gay... “I don’t think that because I’m gay I should write only about homosexual issues.”

In addition to these topics, LaBruck has included in the book very interesting texts on film, taking advantage of his enormous academic knowledge – he studied at the Toronto film school in the late 1970s. Among other things, he tells in a writing how he saw on an airplane trip to Erin Brockovich (Steven Soderbergh, 2000) and Music of the Heart (Wes Craven, 1999), and after comparing and combining them, he is in favor of the second, that is, of the small film: "When you watch the film Music of the Heart along with Erin Brockovich, the first one seems almost cynical, although she was strongly denounced for being sentimental and sentimental."

The text by How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Ron Howard, 2000), starring Jim Carrey, is also excellent: “Probably the most disturbing aspect of the new Grinch is the sexual burden and aggressiveness of his plays [Carrey]. While Jerry Lewis was the most talkative actor ever created by Hollywood (when he threw a full glass in his mouth or held his hand until he touched his throat), Jim Carrey is the most analyst comedian. From her shameful ass she sings to her endless jokes about shit, Carrey is in love with her ass and other people’s ass.”

Mention should also be made of the cult text Tursday Weld, which appears on the cover of the wonderful album Girlfriend by musician Matthew Sweet, and the actor of “intrantsigente and subversive identity”. “Her supposedly beautiful faces and her big blonde hair, her smile with her separate teeth and her blazing black eyes, assume all the contradictions, pleasures and torments of modern women.”

In short, these articles are the delicate chronicles of transgression, which demonstrate the desire to destroy culture, but which, at the same time, give rise to a smart smile. They're a reflection of a punk that wants to look at the world at a critical distance, or as LaBruck would say, "a thorn in the creamy belly of the educated society."