Event Archive

Wednesday, August 3rd 2005
Fox and His Friends with Kath Browne


Discussion interrupted with photo!	Discussion in flow

On 3rd August the BIFS screening and discussion was held in association with Pride in Brighton and Hove. We were very pleased to welcome Kath Browne, a trustee of Pride, to lead the post film discussion on Fassbinder´s Fox and His Friends.

Kath began by speaking about the social context in which the film was made and the way that in the mid to late 70s there was increasing pressure to depict positive gay characters in films. In contrast Fassbinder tended to portray lesbians and gay men as unpleasant, abusive and exploitative, which angered gay rights activists at the time. Most people at the discussion thought that Fassbinder´s films are interesting however because he chose not to focus on sexuality as the defining feature of a character. He explores the power dynamics in relationships - the ability to love and be loved is a defining trait which empowers many of his characters. In Fox and His Friends many of the male characters seem unaware and unaffected by the homophobia that would have been present in 70s Germany. Instead class is the defining system of oppression in this film, and which leads ultimately to Fox's descent to suicide (although some in the group discussion suggested that the ending being almost dreamlike was not as pessimistic as it first appears). Fassbinder does imply homophobia by including an autobiographical reference (not an uncommon feature in his films) when one of the characters, Eugen, gets evicted from his flat for upsetting the neighbours.

After a really thought provoking discussion, during which we also discussed the representation of women in the film, and also went on to discuss the way films in general represent lesbians and gay men, their relationships and gay communities, we concluded that the film was paradoxically enjoyable yet pessimistic. Many of us new to Fassbinder´s films were inspired to see more such as Fear Eats the Soul and The Merchant of Four Seasons.

We look forward to future joint events with Pride in the future.

Film Notes

Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Starring: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Peter Chatel, Carl Boehm. Germany, 1975. 123 mins.

BIFS is screening Fox And His Friends in association with Pride.

The speaker, Kath Browne is a lecturer at the University of Brighton and specialises in Queer Theory and Gender Transgression. Kath is also trustee of Pride in Brighton and Hove.

Fox and His Friends is one of Fassbinder's most poignant and accessible films. It is a powerful work, dealing with some of Fassbinder's central themes, such as the search for love, exploitation and personal power politics.

In its day, it was attacked by many for being homophobic. Andrew Britton, writing in the British Gay Left magazine saw the homosexuality represented in this film as a "version of homosexuality that degrades us all, and should be roundly denounced". But it was also seen as a landmark for depicting gay people with real psychological and emotional depth. Fassbinder, although a gay film maker himself, was never interested in presenting positive gay role models, he was more interested in exploring the power dynamics between people of different classes, races and abilities. His movies assert that in any relationship, personal or political, there will always be the oppressor and the oppressed. In this film, Fox, played by Fassbinder himself, is a naïve working class carnival worker who is both financially and emotionally exploited by his scheming bourgeois lover and his friends. It just so happens that in this film the characters are gay.

Fox is a quintessential Fassbinder character, a character who is victimized by those around him but who appears to be a willing participant in his own downfall. When Fox gets the chance to better himself with an unlikely lottery win, he gains entry to a gay elite but only to be seduced by it, used by it and tossed away. This characterisation is also typical in that many of Fassbinder's characters are based on real life. The character of Fox is based on Fassbinder’s real life love Armin Meier, whose suicide is foreshadowed in this film. But there is also a bit of Fassbinder himself in there, a clue being that Fox’s real name is Franz, a name always given to the onscreen Fassbinder's filmic representative.

The German title of this film, "Faustrecht der Freiheit," literally means "fist-right of freedom," which could be translated as "survival of the fittest.". As such, Fox and His Friends is a riveting evocation of Social Darwinism in action. It also adds bitchy humour, chiselled abs and some great 1970’s tailoring!