In Lockdown with Le Fil: Queer Identity and DIY Music Videos
By: Liam Heitmann-Ryce
Tags: Creative Non Fiction, Identity, Queer, LGBTQ, Music

In Lockdown with Le Fil: Queer Identity and DIY Music Videos

Keeping creative during COVID is such a drag

“Immerse yourself in complete and utter fabulousness!” [Image courtesy of Le Fil]

Keeping your mind active in lockdown is rather like being in a closet: it’s very inconvenient and nobody ever asks to be put in one. Yet while the walls of a closet can eventually be smashed apart by the power of the personality trapped within, you can’t do much with a pandemic. If working from home keeps a whole load of others safe and healthy, then you just have to grit your teeth and get on with it. But that isn’t to say there aren’t ways to make the best of a world put on hold, especially for those who have already made their living in being creative.

Thousands of artists have turned to livestreams to get their music heard, and while you can’t beat seeing a performer live, it’s a step above nothing at all. One artist to have taken a very literal approach to the work from home guidelines is singer-songwriter and Sink the Pink member Le Fil, whose latest single, “Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is,” features a music video shot entirely on green screen — in his kitchen.

An anthem championing self-worth, and a battle cry against duplicitous fuckboys who can’t put their money where their mouth is— You’re not worth my love, if you don’t love me in return, as one line goes — Le Fil says the song came so easily to him during the writing process. An outspoken LGBT+ activist, raising awareness of minority experiences both as a gay man and a Chinese person living in England, Le Fil strives to give his listeners “a sense of optimism, or poptimism, as I call it. My music is a queer love letter to pop culture. No matter if it’s a ballad about shit men like my song ‘Nightlife,’ or the new single, it’s always about creating a sonic and visual world where I can hopefully lift others and provide comfort and solidarity.”

The latest single, released at the start of August, was easy to put down on paper, then — but the task of bringing it to life with Le Fil’s usual flare for wild colour and eye-popping design proved to be a major challenge. “I had all these grand plans for the video, with lots of jazz and Singin’ in the Rain-style street choreography. I started planning all this and looking at licenses for locations, and wondering how I was going to be able to afford it all — and then lockdown hit.”

Faced with the difficulty of blueprinting a whole new music video, with a global pandemic preventing him from hiring any kind of creative team — no lighting or graphics, no actors or dancers —Le Fil was grateful to have been able to release the psychedelic, studio-shot video for “Undercover Lover,” which he had completed a week before lockdown.

In conceiving his latest video, this one featuring a roster of distinct and intricately designed characters, Le Fil revisited the storyboard he had started drawing and realised it could all be done at home with a green screen.

“The heart of it would be that, no matter what, I will always put my money where my mouth is and get it done!” As with everything Le Fil does, this new video would serve a very specific purpose: to raise the spirits of every person who saw it. Unable to leave the house, he wanted “to create an escapist environment with many locations to jump into. Since the nation’s mood was so sombre and downbeat, I’d make the most camp, fun and ridiculously ambitious video.” Given the technical restrictions, shot entirely on a phone and put together using an old computer, all of this achieved with a limited budget, the proof is very much in the pudding. “It’s a piece of work that has had so much detail and attention put into it, that it’s truly a labour of love and my lockdown baby.”

There is also a fun nod to last year’s Sink the Pink tour with “Sporty Spice” herself, Melanie C, which clearly made a lasting impression on Le Fil. One of his new characters seems to be more than little inspired by Victoria Beckham, and with a name like “Gosh Spice” it’s rather hard to ignore this musical hat-tip to the iconic girl band.

Some of Le Fil’s many different characters — including “Gosh Spice”, third from left — in the homemade music video for new track “Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is”

Meeting the challenges of a world-stopping pandemic with the conception, creation and promotion of an original song featuring grin-stretching lyrics and scintillating visuals, Le Fil’s latest track has been more than an exercise in adapting to circumstance. It also fostered his own development as an artist. Seeing the restrictions of lockdown “as a springboard to defy them even further to create something magical,” it gave him time to explore the traditional side of drag.

“I felt like I was actually playing ‘alter ego’ versions of myself. For example, playing the masculine character of The Boyfriend in the video definitely got me into a head zone I’d never really experienced before. Even seeing myself with facial hair was a whole new thing for me.”

The significance of this lies in the fact that Le Fil does not see a distinction between the everyday version of himself and the person who performs onstage and on-camera.

Recognising but neglecting to follow in the footsteps of other pop icons with artistic alter-egos, Le Fil does not feel these two entities are separable. “One doesn’t exist without the other,” he says. “I’m the same. I’m Le Fil all the time; what I wear onstage is just an amped-up version of my day-to-day style. For that reason, I don’t consider myself a drag artist though I can see why others may place me into that genre.”

A major motivation behind Le Fil’s performance is to explore the possibilities of gender, how to express it and to challenge the misconception that drag culture is simply men wearing women’s clothes. Le Fil questions the gendered identification of clothing: “Men wore dresses during the Grecian and Roman times, but it didn’t mean they were in drag. When I wear dresses now, I’m not pretending to be a woman. I’m Le Fil all the time and just exploring other codes of representation. What I bring to drag is a sense of authenticity, a realness — that drag isn’t about the masquerade of gender, but a simpler, purer idea of you.”

This has been a long-held passion of his, having spent much of his time at high school trying to hide his sexuality and assimilate with those around him. It wasn’t until the first years of adulthood that he found an outlet for those aspects of his personality kept hidden for much of his childhood. “Ever since I was at art school,” he says, “I’ve been making performances and artwork about the construction of gender and identity. In fact, my first performance as Le Fil was at my exhibition exploring pop culture and fandom as philosophy, and how it guided people or gave faith like religion does. I was even baptised during the private view! For me, becoming Le Fil was about me owning the authorship over my expression.”

This performative aspect of Le Fil’s identity is even reflected in his chosen stage name: “Fil is my actual name. ‘Le’ was just a cheeky prefix that gave it some objective grandeur, a bit like a sculpture — my own personal artwork, The Fil. It also plays on the French for ‘girl,’ la fille, so that is another fun bit of gender play.”

Ownership of personal identity has always been an important aspect of Le Fil’s life, having grown up gay and Chinese in Huddersfield, a market town in the North of England.

Being both Chinese and gay made Le Fil “undoubtedly different to other kids.” Recognising his status as an Other both sexually and culturally meant “dealing with these big life questions at the age of 11, so I grew up quite quickly. Like all queer kids, unsure of our likes and our sexuality from an early age, we’re always set apart from our heterosexual peers, who take it as a given. That journey of learning from other guys, essentially seeing how it’s done, is what I look at in my music video for “Boyo,” which I filmed in the streets of Brighouse where I actually grew up.”

“Being Chinese brought that added pressure to conform to save face for the family. I was expected to get a good academic job, keep my hair short, and get a Chinese wife. I felt like I had a lot to prove, in an arena that I didn’t aspire to.” The unwanted pursuit of these unrealistic domestic goals drove Le Fil to “shift the entire game,” to play for something which was a lot more meaningful to him. Namely, “art, creativity, and self-expression. For someone who hides away, all you want to do is show everyone who you really are.”

Much as Le Fil the performer and Fil the man are inseparable from one another, so, too, is his life and his art one harmonious whole. Music, expression and creativity are absolutely the components and the product of (Le) Fil in every moment of his waking life. It is the pursuit of joy, in both giving it to others and enjoying it himself, that so empowers his own experience of making and savouring music.

“I remember being sat in the car with my sister,” he reflects, looking back on his earliest moments of recognising the power of music. “Waiting for Sunday school to open, we were listening to the radio and “Say You’ll Be There” came on and I was mesmerised. As a tiny kid who felt so awkward and different, I was so happy to hear the chorus of I’m giving you everything, all that joy can bring, this I swear — they literally brought me so much joy. I remember it so clearly.”

And so music is the binding thread of Le Fil’s life. It is that of which he is made, and that which he makes — and what a glorious, colourful, dazzling, resoundingly queer blessing that is for all us.