#107: ‘Pugilistic Queer Performance: Working Through and Working Out’ by Fintan Walsh

‘Pugilistic Queer Performance: Working Through and Working Out’ by Professor Fintan Walsh was published in volume 26, issue 4 of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, and is also available to download (minus the featured images) via the Birkbeck University website. Walsh is currently Head of the School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication at Birkbeck.

Taking as its starting point Franko B‘s Milk and Blood (2015) and Cassils‘ Becoming an Image (2012), the essay explores boxing’s lasting effect on theatre and performance art, and the queer practitioners working in these mediums (a link here with Bertolt Brecht, who I have posted about previously). Walsh’s abstract begins:

They hurl their bodies into action, respectively against a boxing bag and a mound of clay, under the glare of lights, cameras and spectators, and the mounting pressures of time. Pugilism is both the object and means of artistic production, which physically and figuratively takes to task unresolved queer battles – personal and cultural.

Important to the work of both artists is the spilling, pooling and mixing of (bodily) fluids alongside acts of endurance, so it’s no wonder that they have found themselves reenacting aspects of the sport. Those of us with any experience of the interior of a boxing gym will know how shaped they are by the build-up of dried sweat, blood, saliva and mucus in the flooring, on the walls and of course the ring canvasses. Those of us who have been near an elite competitive boxer will know how the sweat stops running from them and just sort of emerges from their flesh as a shining briny layer, first as beads and then melding into a second skin.

By the end of each vigorous performance, the artists are visibly exhausted, their bodies and the surrounding materials streaming and glimmering with sweat.

This wholly natural sweaty state seems often to be a reason for people’s disgust towards women boxing, that it is this wetness that is unladylike about their participation, and this essay touches on the sexist, and often racist, reasoning behind who is and isn’t ‘allowed’ to appear sweaty. There seem to be some obvious connections here also to how gay intimacy is often described, as unpalatable due to the profusion of sweat and saliva.

Blood as a fluid is also fundamental to Franko B’s work, incorporating as he does bloodletting into a number of performances. This sort of performance is challenging for audiences, often because it forces them to collectively and individually question why it horrifies and how close that horror is linked to titillation and excitement. It is only a small hop here to boxing crowds and their aversion/fascination to and with blood.

Franko B’s performative bloodletting had me immediately thinking of Henry Cooper’s leaky face (the inspiration for the cover of the latest The Spit Bucket), and more recently Arturo Gatti, both of whom have gone down in legend as firm fan favourites, almost certainly due to their thin skin and prominent facial bones, resulting in some of the most famous and gruesome boxing photographs. This combination of claret gushing from eyebrows and cheeks and stoically getting on with their job has allowed generations of boxing fans to indulge in a sort of controlled and mediated blood lust.

Both artists also brought to mind the Italian-American boxer Joe Grim, who was famous for being able to absorb obscene amounts of punishment in the ring, and whose career best highlights the dangerous realities of a crowd’s voyeuristic urge to witness the physical dismantling of another person; to live and ‘experience’ through them the exorcising of personal physical and emotional trauma. (Michael Winkler wrote an astoundingly good book, Grimmish, about Joe’s time touring Australia at a time when boxing shows were promoted very similarly to theatre, and boxers’ careers were little different from touring actors’.)

As with all popular professional sports the number of regular recreational participants far outstrips the number of competitive athletes. In this way I think the work of both Franko B and Cassils closely mirrors our desire to get out of bed and spend time letting go in front of a heavy bag or shadow boxing. The desire to somehow take control of our bodies in the face of daily stresses, and sometimes discrimination. It can, no doubt, be terrifying at first attempt but I’ve seen firsthand the positive effects on people with varying degrees of body dysmorphia, and those with questions around gender, first facing themselves and their bodies in a gym before eventually finding a control and a harmony with the flesh they have felt didn’t belong to them.

Boxing is unique as a sport in forcing you to find a place of acceptance within yourself when participating, but also (if you’re listening) asks some very difficult questions of you as a viewer. It’s perhaps not so difficult to see the parallels with the work of the two artists in question.

As a final, slightly disjointed, note I think this essay is a perfect explainer as to why I felt I should include Isabel Waidner’s Corey Fah Does Social Mobility on this blog back in August 2023.