‘Playland,’ an artistic interpretation of queer history
12/07/23 by Maya Eberlin
On Dec. 7, the unapologetically queer “Playland“ was screened at the Bright Family Screening Room. Director Geordon West graduated from Emerson College’s film MFA program in 2018. Following the film, a Q&A session with West and the film’s composer, Aaron Michael Smith, was hosted by Bright Lights curator Anna Feder.
Image courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival
The film weaves a transdisciplinary tale of Boston’s oldest gay bar, the eponymous Playland Café. Located at 21 Essex Street, just a stone’s throw away from the Emerson Paramount Center, this screening took place as close as possible to the original site of the Café.
One of the most stunning aspects of the film was its dramatic orchestral soundtrack, composed by Aaron Michael Smith. Smith graduated from Boston University’s music composition master’s program in 2018, and “Playland” is his debut feature-length film project. At times, it was impossible to discern the muzak and various background sounds, such as the humming of the space’s ventilation system, from the soundtrack itself.
Established in 1937, Playland would be Boston’s oldest gay bar if it was still around today. The Café closed in the late ‘90s, due to issues with alcohol licensing and rampant prostitution in the area. Playland was located in the heart of what was known in the 1960s as Boston’s “Combat Zone,” a downtown district infamous for its ties to the adult entertainment industry. The film touches on this historic aspect briefly through archival footage of the streets lined with sex shops, strip clubs and seedy bars.
Aside from the brief inclusion of archival footage, the documentary airs on the side of artistic liberty. West explained that, since there are no archival photographs or videos depicting the inside of the Playland Café, their intent was to create their own: the film is dark and eerie, focusing on staff members such as a waiter, bartender and dishwasher. Viewers feel almost suffocated as they watch the ghosts of Playland’s staff fill salt shakers and fold napkins for minutes on end.
West explained their interest in facilitating discussions of queer spaces through the medium of a documentary film. “Not all these gay bars were designed for gender variant folks and for women. Usually they would use dress codes to design out an undesirable population, or at least design in a desirable population. So it was really the uniform service industry…where I could concretely position where someone like me would’ve been within these spaces, and that was back of house.”
Their intent was to highlight discrimination within the queer community itself, and this exploration has resulted in a haunted art film that is arguably more fiction than fact.