According to Bruce LaBruce, the answer is simple. We would argue about Theodor Adorno, try on fetish gear, and then laugh at the absurdity of it all.
In the annals of queer cinema, there are films that comfort, films that challenge, and then there are films that strap you to a chair, force-feed you Marxist theory, and demand you contemplate the political implications of a handjob. Canadian filmmaker Bruce LaBruce’s 2004 feature, The Raspberry Reich , falls firmly into the latter category. Part pornographic satire, part German avant-garde experiment, and wholly unapologetic, the film remains, two decades later, one of the most radical and misunderstood cinematic artifacts of the early 21st century.
The Raspberry Reich is not a film that wants your respect. It wants your discomfort, your laughter, and—just maybe—your revolution. Long live the queer chaos. Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5 - Essential viewing for students of queer theory and anyone who has ever wondered if Lenin wore leather.)
When a key member of the group, the handsome and vacuous Andreas (Andreas Rupprecht), begins to fall for a female radical, the cell descends into absurdist chaos. The group hijacks a limousine, kidnaps a wealthy heir, and proceeds to "re-educate" him through a series of increasingly graphic sexual encounters, all while debating the finer points of Hegelian dialectics and the commodity fetishism of dildos. What makes The Raspberry Reich stand out from standard adult fare is its aesthetic rigor. LaBruce, a former contributor to Index magazine and a veteran of the Toronto art scene, shoots the film like a cross between Rainer Werner Fassbinder and a 1970s loop. The film is drenched in cool, desaturated colors—grays, navies, and the titular raspberry red (the color of revolution and bodily fluids).
The group is led by Gudrun (played with terrifyingly deadpan intensity by Susanne Sachße), a radical leader who is a composite of real-life RAF figures like Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin, but filtered through a lens of relentless queer ideology. Gudrun demands that her male comrades renounce state-sanctioned homosexuality—they must become "homosexual revolutionaries" as a political act. One of her famous lines, repeated like a mantra, is: "The personal is the political. And the political is very, very personal."
