performative activism
June 24, 2018 10:23 AM   Subscribe

"For Gilbert Baker, sequins and rhinestones weren’t just fabulous. In his hands, they became political." Gilbert Baker, the ‘gay Betsy Ross’ (San Francisco Chronicle)
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome (3 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
His decision not to trademark or monetize the flag meant he lived most of his life on a relatively modest income

I worked at Paramount Flag Company on 9th St, South of Market in San Francisco 1975-1984; we manufactured a lot of obscure flags and banners and did a lot of custom flag work (in addition to the basics), so we ended up as collaborators with Baker for a few years, teaching him about the fabrics, doing big production projects, like huge rainbow flags as well as the banners for the Market St parades, and standardizing the stripe colors to 6,7,and 8 stripe versions in cotton and nylon outdoor flag spec materials for production, which we did a lot of, as well as play with creative variants. He did flag fashion display windows for us as a side project -- they were spectacular work.

Attempting to trademark the rainbow flag would not have worked. Not only are there rainbow flags with other uses, but attempting to control or limit usage, if at all successful, would have interfered with what has happened: the flag, its use and symbolism, are universal. This was the goal of the artist and the community.
posted by lathrop at 7:19 AM on June 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


Thank you for posting this, what a fantastic read. I knew a little bit about the flag and it's creation, but it was wonderful to read more about the amazing man behind it. The power of some of the costumes in that slideshow... damn.
posted by skycrashesdown at 7:27 AM on June 25, 2018


Beautiful in so many ways. Must get the book for more pictures of his gorgeous and powerful work!
posted by cui bono at 6:47 PM on June 26, 2018


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