JOHN CAMERON MITCHELL by Ben Turner

John Cameron Mitchell

by Ben Turner

I consider the moment I first watched Hedwig And The Angry Inch as the moment I truly understood sexual diversity. Rather than labelling someone as “gay” or “bi” or “transsexual”, it proudly displayed the whole spectrum, with sexualities, genders and sexual behaviours as fluid and as different as the people exhibiting them. From that moment, the man behind Hedwig, who wrote the play, starred in it, adapted it for film, directed it once again and defiantly starred in its titular role, thrusting his unknown face into the world’s spotlight far enough to even get a Golden Globe nomination, became my personal icon and Hedwig herself, my totem.

John Cameron Mitchell is uncompromising in his stoic depictions of sexuality on film. Never before has a director been so determined to showcase the whole array of human sexuality than in his second movie Shortbus. Though light and comic in tone, the movie defiantly shouts “Sex is nothing to be ashamed about!” and doesn’t flinch at showing us everything. The people involved aren’t pornstars, but nor are they afraid of showing us that sex(uality) shouldn’t be a taboo. And to illustrate his point, if you squint hard enough and pause at the right moment, there too is Cameron Mitchell, practicing what he preaches in an orgy scene.

Like all artists, he has paddled in various pools, with the subtly nuanced Rabbit Hole in 2011 a striking departure from his trademark brazen boldness, but it is for being such a loud voice in the Queer Arts that Cameron Mitchell will be remembered. From Tarnation to his Agent Provocateur commercial and his seminal music video for Scissor Sisters’ Filthy/Gorgeous, his is a CV cluttered with flashes of artistic excellence married with a stark refusal to be censored. The world he shows us is the Gay Community we know, not the Gay Community people want it to be, unsanitised, both light and dark and bursting with colour and life. He holds up a mirror without judgement or comment, determined to show humanity in all its sexual and diverse glory.

Hedwig exploded on Broadway this year, winning universal acclaim, Tony Awards and huge audiences, wowed by its mad glamour. Cameron Mitchell’s work is surfacing in the mainstream at last, but this has never been his concern. If ever there were an artist who stayed “true to themselves” and maintained his artistic integrity, it’s him. You wouldn’t see this acclaimed director popping up in a directing credit on a summer blockbuster, because that’s simply not who he is. And for that I’m grateful – the world that Cameron Mitchell lives in is the same as we do and for as long as the Gay Community exists as it does, he will be one of its most creative and reflexive voices.


Ben Turner writes for blog Haus of Phag.