In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

11 Nigger, Coon, Boy, Punk, Homo, Faggot, Black Man reconsidering established interpretations of masculinity, race, and sexuality through NOAH’S ARC mark d. cunningham Black men loving Black men is the revolutionary act. —Joseph Beam At best, our knowledge about the lives and experiences of Black gay men is limited to a series of stereotypes, snap judgments, and ridicule. In terms of television media product, this aforementioned knowledge has been packaged mostly within the framework of comedy: a red-leather-clad Eddie Murphy talking about the most effective ways to shield his ass from the gay male gaze in the 1983 HBO stand-up performance Delirious; Damon Wayans and David Alan Grier’s effeminate film critics Blaine Edwards and Antoine Merriweather on the 1990s television variety show In Living Color; fashionista panel members Miss J and Andre Leon Talley on Tyra Banks’s America’s Next Top Model, or real-life gay man Antoine Dodson, who became a flamboyant talk-show-circuit sensation after his humorously stereotypical diatribe admonishing his sister’s would-be attacker became a hit on the Internet. In fairness, some attempts to curtail the obviously offensive depictions of homosexual Black males of years past have been made. Yet even these efforts prove problematic, as more recent depictions find these men to be gay in name only and not fully developed characters. Examples such as those portrayed by Michael Boatman in the comedy Spin City, Vondie-Curtis Hall in the hospital drama Chicago Hope, and Taye Diggs in a guest-starring role on the awardwinning Will and Grace as a love interest for the titular male character are all largely asexual, have no mates, and appear to function mainly as an attempt to silence any critics who might protest their omission otherwise. Even Black gay male characters with more complexity such as Mathew St. Patrick’s amiable and 172 conflicted police officer in HBO’s Six Feet Under, Michael Kenneth Williams’s malevolent urban gangster Omar Little in HBO’s The Wire, and Nelsan Ellis’s vampire-blood-dealing cook Lafayette Reynolds in HBO’s True Blood are relegated to supporting character status and not always prominently featured in support of the narrative. However, in the midst of less than innovative portrayals, filmmaker Marlon Riggs audaciously challenged the thinking about Black gay male culture with his controversial and groundbreaking documentary Tongues Untied (1989). Using poetic verse, music, and bold imagery, Riggs composes a striking chronicle of how the harshness and difficulties of reality shaped his ability to find a balance between his racial and sexual identities, and in so doing, deftly tells a story that is as much about the affirmation and celebration of self as it is about racism and homophobia. Scholar Jacquie Jones considers it to be “possibly the most powerful examination of Black sexual identity ever produced”; she also recognizes how the work valuably “integrates on all levels, structurally and thematically, and ultimately delineates the immediacy of situating the sexual at the core of selfde finition by equalizing it with the political and social imperatives of Blackness.”1 Unfortunately, this attempt to address the Black gay male experience was not achieved without contention. A portion of the documentary was funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and was broadcast on the public- and government-funded PBS network, and many conservative detractors were incensed that federal monies had been used to support media that featured nudity, coarse language, and homosexual intimacy. In fact, as a result of this firestorm, many PBS affiliates declined to show the documentary, which was featured on the network’s series P.O.V.—a series that has long served as a showcase for independent nonfiction media. Interestingly, Riggs opens the video with the staccato cadence of Black male voices chanting the words “brother to brother,” which serves as a rallying call of sorts for the owners of those voices to freely love one another without apology or shame and despite narrow-minded and ignorant opposition. In the spirit of the African and African American tradition of call and response, writer/director Patrik-Ian Polk answered Riggs’s appeal to revolutionize how we think about love and affection among Black gay men with the creation of his television series Noah’s Arc. Aired on the cable network Logo, a subsidiary of MTV targeted to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities (LGBT), Noah’s Arc focuses on the devoted friendship, relationship complexities, and professional lives...

Share