Some Reflections on The Fruit Machine documentary
By Gary Kinsman
The Fruit Machine, 2018, Directed by Sarah Fodey, SandBay Entertainment/TVO.
The Fruit Machine documentary has now been shown on TVO and I thought I would post some of my reflections based on my second viewing of the film. This is the first major film on the Canadian War on Queers and is a crucial resource. I both want to celebrate it and also to raise some critical questions.
I really appreciate the way the film is able to bring tragedy and humour together and the interviews with people directly impacted by the purge campaigns are incredible and very valuable in bringing to life the realities of the purge campaigns. These primary narratives are at the very heart of the film and taken together are an amazing record of the violence and pain inflicted by the Canadian state on thousands of people. In particular the ways in which lesbians in the military were gone after is detailed in the film. This film works against the forgetting of the national security purge campaigns against queers, or LGBT people, which after the official apology has been given is a danger we need to face. I urge as many people as possible see this film and to discuss it with people you know. In all these ways I sing its praises and my more critical comments below are meant to be constructive criticism. It should also be kept in mind that no one film can ever do everything.
I have some problems with how the film portrays the start of the national security campaigns as if they started with the Gouzenko affair in the context of the Cold War. National security campaigns can actually be traced back to much earlier campaigns against Indigenous peoples with the formation of the Canadian state and the campaigns against workers, unions, immigrants and leftists (and not only members of the Communist Party) in the period after WW1. During WWII the internment of the Japanese was certainly motivated by ‘national security’ concerns. In the Cold War contexts this included campaigns against unions, immigrant groups, housewife groups, Black activists, leftists, Indigenous activists, feminists, supporters of Quebec independence, as well as LGBT people. None of these campaigns were justified and denied people their rights and expelled them from the fabric of the nation. Unfortunately, the film can be viewed as suggesting that the campaigns against the left may have been justified but not the one against LGBT people.
I think the line that the RCMP was a force onto itself comes from John Sawatsky. From his work this may have seemed to be the case since it was mostly based on interviews with former and then current RCMP officers. He could not fully explore the mandating of these campaigns from the highest levels of the cabinet and security panel. Coupled with later remark of Doug Elliot that after the 69 reform the RCMP and military leaders realized that their days were numbered and they had to hurry up with the purge campaign this leads some viewers to think that this campaign was not mandated at the highest level of the Canadian state but was instead the responsibility of some individuals or only some institutions. I know this because I have talked to a number of the people who have seen the film about what they take away. The reality was that Pierre Trudeau fully supported the national security campaigns against queers and there was no direct relation between the 69 reform — and its exemption of gross indecency and buggery from criminal prosecuetion if conducted in a limited ‘private’ realm with only one other person 21 years or older — and any lessening of the purge campaigns which continued into the 1980s and early 1990s in the military with official support.
I was very glad that the RCMP surveillance at the Lord Elgin basement tavern in the early 1960s was mentioned in he film since we start The Canadian War on Queers book with this story. At the same time I wish the film had included the resistance to this surveillance which is the better part of the story. That the men in the tavern were able to expose and challenge these RCMP informants was crucial. It was this resistance and non-cooperation that meant that previous gay informants no longer cooperated with the RCMP, forcing the RCMP to shift their tactics to rely on threats of criminal code charges to get the names of ‘homosexuals’ in the public service and to support the ‘fruit machine’ research that was supposed to provide a ‘scientific’ way of determining who was ‘homosexual’ or not.
There is a problem with parts of the film in terms of the marginalization of the resistance that the purge campaigns faced. This can lead some people to read this as largely being about queer people as victims. For instance as just mentioned one the reasons why the Fruit Machine research itself was developed was because of the resistance the RCMP began to encounter from previous gay informants.
The film states that the 1969 criminal code reform was the decriminalization of homosexuality. It was not. The reform provided for an exemption from criminalization regarding only two of the offences that could be used against queer sex – gross indecency and buggery – if they were engaged in with only one other person, in the narrow private realm and if both participants were 21 or over. This is why sexual policing intensified in the 1970s and 1980s as the police focused on queer sex in state-defined broadly defined public places.
While some photos are used of the We Demand lesbian and gay rights demonstration in August 1971 on Parliament Hill it is not pointed out that this demonstration was under RCMP surveillance since our movements were seen as challenging national security since we challenged the purge campaigns. This protest was against the limitations of the 69 reform as well as against the purges in the public service and the military. One area Justin Trudeau’s apology did not cover was the widespread surveillance of lesbian and gay groups in the 1970s.
Regarding the question of blackmail. It is unfortunate that the film does not more clearly point out as people directly affected told us that the only people who ever tried to blackmail them were the RCMP trying to get the names of people in the public service and military.
There is a problem produced by the general lack of interviews with public servants in the film compared with people from the military. This means that important aspects of the Canadian war on queers are not brought into view. For a number of reasons many people purged from the military still often have a more patriotic and pro-military response despite the horrors and violence done to them than do people purged from the public service. A number of people who have seen the film have asked me why it focuses so much on the military. I know there are reasons for this but it creates a somewhat skewed perspective of the purge campaign.
On the Prime Minister’s apology statement the film includes the media conference right after which is the response of the class action suit and EGALE to the statement. The group not involved in that media conference was the We Demand an Apology Network, which brought together people who had been purged, researchers and writers like myself, and supporters in demanding a state apology and redress, as well as the expungement of criminal code conviction for consensual ‘homosexual’ sex. In general the work of the We Demand an Apology Network in bringing about the apology statement is eclipsed in the film.
Finally, the ending of the film seems to only mention those who were purged who were later on more successful in their lives. Those whose lives remained more destroyed do not get mentioned in this context, nor do those who resisted and fought back but whose lives were really set back by the purge campaign. This does not fully display the diversity of experiences people have had.
My major concern is that at least some people are coming away from viewing the film with the idea that only a small group (or just the RCMP) were behind the campaigns and they do not come away seeing how this war on queers was mandated at the highest levels of the Canadian state.
This is a film that must be seen and talked about. We cannot let the Canadian war on queers be forgotten.
Reference:
Gary Kinsman and Patrizia Gentile, The Canadian War on Queers: National Security as Sexual Regulation, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010).