Perspectives of Nude. Queerness and Masculinity in Derek Jarman

Derek Jarman is considered the ‘godfather’ of European queer cinema for the strength of his representation of men’s bodies, and also for the exhibition of a peculiar male gaze. In most of his films – from the earlier Sebastiane (1976) to the last ‘lyric film’ The garden (1990) – the director shows «his bold queer erotic vision, and his historical roots in a radical cultural politics – from Gay Liberation to anti-thatcher punk protest to AIDS activism» (Thomas Waugh, 2009). If Sebastiane claims a homoerotic icon for a homosexual historical tradition, The garden draws attention to the martyrdom of Aids and, in a specific way, to the brutal persecution of a couple of gay by a clerical, heteronormative society. His films prove to be a paramount source of fruitful instances to analyse how masculinity is represented, whether its representation contradicts, supports or contrasts with existing ideas/concepts/representations of masculinity. Instances of sexuality, identity, desire and power intermingle can also be retrieved to draw a more complete picture. Jarman's focus on nude, usually one of the most frequent representation of canonical masculinity, is a perfect starting point. Movies are texts semiotically complex, threfore through a multimodal analysis the paper aims to recognize a series of categories of nude, in which the iconoclastic character of Jarman’s masculinity consists, and to put them in relation with the broader debate concerning a possible revision of masculinity representation.