In his autobiography, James Fox wrote:
“Not only in a guilty muddle about drugs, but my sexual imagination was also in complete turmoil.”
What does this cryptic sentence mean to you? As far as I know, it’s the only reference he ever makes to his sexuality. He has appeared in several movies where he dressed up as women or played sexually ambiguous characters. I always wondered if he is gay.
It sounds like someone struggling with there sexual identity; “sexual imagination being in turmoil” is conflict in the expression of his true nature.
I’ve never heard or read anyone describe their “sexual imagination” in those terms before. In fact, I’ve never even heard the term “sexual imagination.” Orientation yes. Imagination? What’s that supposed to mean? I’d understand if he said something like, “I was struggling with my sexual identity.” That makes sense to me. But “my sexual imagination was in turmoil”? It almost sounds like he’s saying he was a sex addict or that he was obsessed with bizarre, unspeakable, perverted sex acts (his “imagination”).
Yeah…rather than “gay” my mind went to women’s high heel shoes, chickens, and maybe clowns. You know, shame about being turned on by weird stuff.
On this board, one would assume the ‘turmoil’ would arise from the risk of killing the mood by asking for proof of adulthood.
Sounds to me like maybe he was fantasizing about strange sexual fetishes and perhaps feeling guilty or confused about them.
James Fox’s most noteworthy movie, and his best one, in my opinion, is the extremely weird Performance (also starring Mick Jagger). In this film, there is a scene in which Fox’s character is kidnapped, stripped half-naked by a group of men from a rival London gang, and then beaten and whipped ferociously in a scene that is frankly reminiscent of S&M torture. Given that this was the movie which supposedly caused Fox to have a nervous breakdown, I think it likely that he found himself enjoying this material, and possibly also the scene where he wears makeup and a wig - and then felt guilty about it.
What I don’t understand is - James Fox, and his brother Edward “Jackal” Fox, were born into a family of British theatre performers. Wouldn’t this crowd be expected to have a rather more “libertine” approach to sex life?
And I read an autobiography by Jerry Hall that told of Mick Jagger and Fox giggling together and she asked if there could be two more closeted people.
This was my first interpretation too. Going beyond your typical foot fetish or love of BDSM and being dominant, but rather stuff that socially isn’t acceptable and something that a person would feel real shame over (whatever that may be)
Ok, and his sexual identity was that of an addict, his obsession with bizarre or extreme sex acts was the true nature that he struggled with; it was the “sexual imagination in turmoil”.
In The Day, none of that was “socially acceptable.”
What do you mean The Day? James Fox’s career peaked in 1970 right in the heyday of the Sexual Revolution and the most sex- drug- and debauchery- soaked London you could imagine. Nothing was unacceptable in that time and place - and Fox was right in the middle of it, alongside Jagger, Bowie, and the rest of them. It’s not like this guy had any reason whatsoever to hold himself back from, or conceal, any of his most hedonistic behavior.
But it was still frowned upon by the larger society.
But I don’t think that crowd really gave a damn about the larger society or what they thought.