Tombstone

The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, a jaw-dropping block buster directed by David France, stars a police funeral. Tombstone begins with the funeral of Marsha P. Johnson, which took place in 1992, and with the anger that seems to amass in association with the march, with apparently Marsha Johnson’s funeral as the focal point. France explains that at least the police aren’t violent like they would’ve been two decades ago, and for that, they have Marsha Johnson to show some gratitude.

The ever-so reprogrammed Johnson, memorial transcendent, activities director, and drag queen who was influential during the Stonewall riots and all throughout her life readily came back into public view, was discovered on July 4, when friends described that she had been tailed by a certain vehicle. The authorities have said her death was a suicide without clear motivation nor any indication that she had planned to do anything like looking forward to partying or planning for the next day battle, she simply was not planning on doing anything. In particular to her, she seemed annoyed over some finance related issues that occurred within the Christopher Street event. Now hoping to find the truth behind Johnson’s death, Victoria Cruz, in her mid 70s, activists at Anti-Violence project of New York City as a Johnson contemporary goes looking around Manhattan for clues.

Underneath France’s documentaries (last one being the award winner How to Survive a Plague) lies an issue that does not get any less pressing. The question posed is: How, for instance, do you spell out to the young people that they are atop of men and women who not only lived, but in many cases, sacrificed their lives for the rights they take for granted? And how do you get the thought across that people are still dying, and that historic crimes are going unpunished What is equally important is the fact that he and the editor Tyler H Walk are masters at suppressing the voice of time which announces the use of archival footage.

In this instance, they are helped by people who grab onto the screen for dear life. Among these figures, it is easy to identify Johnson but the film also has another main character in her friend Sylvia Rivera who’s a trans activist and an icon. The fact is that the film was willing to grant Rivera such unfettered power over the narrative and one actress. Subjectively, there is no question why Rivera was so prominent France was interested in the images of Rivera and knew that we would be fascinated with her, forget the narrative. But Rivera’s life is not peripheral. Rivera, Johnson (plus Cruz, quite the looker in her day) are key figures in an ending chronicle of an era.

Drag queens (the term is slightly outdated however it sounds far more colorful and more appropriate in regard to Johnson and Rivera than the word “female impersonators”) were an integral part of the gay life in the big and medium cities before the stone wall riots. These were the most obvious objects of harassment and persecution at the time when even kissing a person of the same gender in a public area could get you arrested. At the same time, their presence in a bar was a sign that it was more or less safe for other gays to gather. They were, if you will allow me, the canaries in the Mineshaft.

According to France, Rivera’s life is also a story of loss and abandonment by the society for which she fought so hard. The words gay intellectual and gay apologists thought long ago, back when T was still not followed after LGBT, that drag queens were an insult to intelligence and growth. They were also annoying. In the documentary The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, the most remarkable episode is not, as the title suggests, about Marsha P, but rather about Rivera at a large meeting in New York City in 1973 where the hot-tempered Rivera is greeted with hostility and grabs the microphone, which gets her great hisses, and rambles about how she forgive the microphone back, get even more hisses uneroded her sacrifices and the sacrifices of people like her for the privileges of these rich white homosexuals.

There is a chance that Rivera’s disappointment with the gay rights movement and her withdrawal to Westchester where she lived until recently and ran a cabaret for several years, spared her life and sanity. Although later in the movie she is again located in the West Side of the Hudson among other transients, as they were “cleansed” for the construction of the riverfront park which we now all go jogging or cycling through.

If Marsha P. disappears from the footage as the film rolls ( There is no sufficient footage of her to warrant such a suggestion I suppose but there is enough to suggest that she is irresistible), the sense of fragility that she exudes overspreads the entire film. Cruz also follows the story of Islan Nettles, a 21 year old who was murdered in 2013 by a 25 year old, James Dixon, who approached Nettles and after some flirting realized to the laughter of his friends that she was not a transgender female.

The almost unheard of case terminates in a trial for murder that has very few viewers and the outcome of it is one that hardly satisfies anyone. The man’s traditional excuse for such murderers that these men are so injured that they could not be thought of as entirely accountable for their deeds might be less compelling these days , but there is the smell of it hanging about like a rotten corpse.

There is Marsha P. Johnson in France, of course, who Cruz seeks to interview. Cruz goes to debtors prison where she speaks with Kitty Rotolo, a 6’8” woman and one of the last individuals to witness Marsha Johnson alive, squinting at her accusingly for stealing a $40,000 statue of a Hindu goddess of mercy from a Village Antiquities shop. She also speaks with a starkly terrified upstate trans woman with a pain-stricken expression who is dreadfully afraid to speak of what she knows. A retired detective sounds like an Ashcan actor on a B movie ringing up Cruz and telling her “you are cribbing up against more forces than you dealt with.” He admonishes “don’t play detective.” He says “This should be left for the people in charge to deal with.” He refuses to provide one.

Being a fan of formula mystery-thrillers in print, movies and on TV, I am intrigued by the number of times such plots focus on cops who break the rules and chase cold cases often against their superiors’ directives and end up being fired for crossing the lines of the powerful. It doesn’t matter you see because they simply cannot tolerate injustice. This impression however didn’t seem to be the case in Manhattan’s 6th Precinct responsible for the West Village and area around the Hudson piers close to where Johnson’s body was discovered. Cruz has a target list of people whom they must interview, though they won’t, they never will. Maybe it is because in some circles, figures like M. P. Johnson or Islan Nettles are not considered fully human, why then engage unnecessarily?

It is not possible to tell with exactness what befell Masha P. Johnson on July 4 or 5 in 1992. The autopsy report which was made available by Cruz (through the Joint Efforts of Johnson`s family in New Jersey) gives the report a varied degree of speculation. On the index cards, Cruz enters several of them: “Suicide,” “Accident,” “Dirty Cop” and “Mob.” Names are named. I do hope the movie incites newer circles of informal detective wannabees.

Perhaps, due to films such as The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson, the world will change for the better, and all the dark times we’ve gone through will get exposed to the light.

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