Film: Wrangler - Anatomy Of An Icon

Reviews, By davidb, 18th March, 2009

Considering its focus is a gay porn star, it seems fitting that Wrangler: Anatomy Of An Icon largely does what it says on the box. The film tracks the life of Jack Wrangler, a porn actor who was in the right place at the right time. Its first half contextualises what happened to him via his work in gay porn in the 1970’s and, by extension, what happened in the emerging gay movement.

Wrangler, who changed his name from the equally porn-friendly Stillman, chose his new identity from the popular jeans brand, suggesting a certain prescience in terms of his works commercial potential. His image, though, was largely indebted to another of the prevalent cultural icons of the time, reclaiming the Marlboro Man as attainable for much more than oral satisfaction.

Wrangler himself became iconic for mainstreaming a masculinised homosexuality, a visionary shift at the time. Ironically, the film itself is framed in the very straight format of talking heads interspersed with historical footage. Its thesis is that the audience of the time were seeing themselves and their desire reflected positively for the first time; that many of the folk interviewed (predominantly male but for Wrangler’s wife – more on her later) remain in thrall to their subject bears witness that this was an essential moment in the forging of the popular, public gay male identity.

Split into two acts that effectively mirror Wrangler’s life and career, the second half is less interesting in much the same way that the dialogue in porn often is. Somewhat controversially – but as is his right – Wrangler turned his back on both porn and his homosexuality, which says a lot about the time. The film underlines his fame as being intrinsically linked to a brief moment that ended quickly and suddenly with the emergence of HIV/AIDS. While it’s understandable that Wrangler wishes to discuss the achievements of the larger part of his life, turning from this moment seems both disingenuous and markedly less involving.

Either way, much of the footage here, both of Wrangler and the gay scene of the time, is as relevant, moving and important as the work of Robert Epstein (and Gus Van Sant) in chronicling Harvey Milk. As one of the older gentlemen interviewed here notes “Oh my goodness, there we are and look what’s possible!” Jack Wrangler is a part of out history, like it or not.

Wrangler : Anatomy Of An Icon screens on Saturday 21st March at 9:15, ACMI Cinemas at Federation Square, as part of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival.