Queercore: How to Punk a Revolution

By: Amos Lassen

"QUEERCORE: HOW TO PUNK A REVOLUTION"

Creating a Revolution

Amos Lassen

Yony Leyser's documentary "Queercore" looks at queer anarchy of the early days of homocore to the queercore's Pansy Division opening for Green Day and Nirvana. It shares first-person histories including those of Bruce LaBruce, Fifth Column's G.B. Jones, John Waters, Tribe 8's Lynn Breedlove, Peaches, and Genesis' Breyer P-Orridge along with DIY animation, experimental films, and zine cutups.
We meet a queer generation of artists who revolted against the hetero and homo mainstreams. Queercore came into being as a result of when the community that one need's is not the community that exists. Through fan zines that and queer punk revolutionaries, through circulating and making subversive movies, the fabricated community becomes real and spreads everywhere. In the 1980s, Queercore was a pseudo-movement meant to punk the punk scene as artists used radical queer identity to push back against gay assimilation and homophobic punk culture.
Those interviewed here share their thoughts on homophobia, gender, feminism, AIDS, assimilation, sex, and, of course, art revealing the perspectives and experiences of bands, moviemakers, writers, and other outsiders as a community that is so badly needed is created.