Yony Leyser: Queer to the Core

By Travis Johnson

How did you personally first encounter Queercore as a subculture?

I had a ‘zine when I was in university. I discovered this great ‘zine called Bimbox. It had all these 3D cut out pictures of dicks and crazy stories of queer punks. So I discovered it through that ‘zine, and then I found out about Bruce LaBruce’s movies and was very inspired. I was also a punk. I was a teenager and I was shocked to learn that this queer punk scene existed – it wasn’t in the punk world that I knew, which was very hetero.

Why do you think punk’s queer roots often get pushed out of the spotlight when the subculture is talked about as part of mainstream cultural history?

I’m not sure. I think that minorities often get written out of history because the people that write history are the hegemony – the white powerful heterosexual men that want their stories told. In history, half of what we learn is bullshit. So I think a lot of it we have to investigate ourselves.

How did the film first come together? What initially set you on a path of inquiry into Queercore?

I went on this tour with this queer performance group called Sister Spit in 2011 after I finished my William Burroughs documentary [2010’s William S. Burroughs: A Man Within]. I didn’t really know it was gonna be about Queercore, I thought it was gonna be about maybe one of the characters. On the tour I was interviewing a bunch of people with just a camera and a microphone, and along the way I realised it should be about the movement and not about someone in particular. And then I shot a fiction film called Desire Will Set You Free in Germany and then applied for funding for this one. So that’s pretty much how it happened.

So you had no initial thesis going in? You just wanted to explore?

Definitely it’s exploration. You kind of have an idea about how things are gonna go, but then you have to change as you’re shooting and see where things go and be open.

What did you find along the way that surprised you? What were the big revelations that the making of the film brought?

I realised that one of the important, most amazing things about Queercore is it was a social movement constructed by two teenagers as a joke in their bedroom, and how so many other social movements just before the creation of the internet also started in a similar way. In the film Kathleen Hanna talks about how that’s also how Riot Grrl started, and also punk in general – that’s how Malcom McLaren started the Sex Pistols, and the fact that so many youth cultures and social movements and subcultures start with just some frustrated youth that let their fantasies take over and have convictions, and those convictions become a reality. And I think that’s a pretty powerful message for everyone – not just queer people, not just punks, but anyone – I think it’s a nice universal message. When I was shooting I realised that was one of the important elements of Queercore that I went with in the film.

Of course, that was pre-internet. In the digital age, is this kind of subculture possible?

I think it’s still possible. With the internet there’s more fact-checking and it’s easier to fact-check, but you can spread lies on the internet, too – look at fake news! So I think it’s definitely possible – there’s some cool, crazy internet collectives doing things. There’s one on Germany called The PNG which are doing all kinds of crazy antics on the internet so yeah, I think it’s still possible.

One thing that is really striking about the documentary is its portrayal of a stripe of queerness that is absolutely rebellious, that refuses to be part of the mainstream. That seems to fly in the face of modern “orthodox” queer rights, which is generally considered to be about acceptance, integration, and normalisation, Could you expand on that?

I think that part of the great thing the film shows is that queer history is a very political one. It was much more than about a sexual orientation. I think with acceptance you lose the political side of it – it’s no longer about being an outsider and embracing the fact that you’re an outsider and critiquing society – as soon as you want to fit in, you lose that, and queer people have historically been artists and activists and culturally important movers and shakers. When you normalise and assimilate, you lose that. So I think there’s different ways of viewing the word “queer” or the identity “queer” and the political ideology and identity is very important and I don’t want that to be lost. I wanted to document that and also give a definition to the term “queer” as a political identity by making this film.

Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution screens at Event Cinemas George Street on Tuesday, February 27, as  part of the Mardi Gras Film Festival. Book your tickets here.