LA Zombie (2010): Fucking the Status Quo

LA Zombie (2010)
dir: Bruce LaBruce

Bruce LaBruce is a provocateur, first and foremost. His films have, traditionally, ridden a punk line between political statement and pornography, with both vying for screen time. Most of the political statements are of the anarcho-punk nature, but they always seemed to be more pointed to a solution than to the ills of society, and the sex was there to make you take note.

With L.A. Zombie, Bruce LaBruce isn't providing any answers. But, he's seeing a hell of a lot of problems.

First off, any reader should know there are two versions of L.A. Zombie in existence. A 67-minute cinema and film festival edition, and a 103 Hardcore edition. You'll know which one you're watching because, LaBruce retitled the full movie to LA Zombie Hardcore in the credits. And, there is a lot of gay hardcore sex (a lot).

The movie centers around a being who emerges from the Pacific Ocean as a zombie with vampiric fangs and a gaping red mouth. Throughout the movie this being changes into a regular homeless man, and also a beast with huge teeth or horns, and an modified fantasy cock. The essence of this character, played by Francois Sagat, could be that he's a schizophrenic homeless man. And, he could also be a zombie and a monster, which is how society regularly sees our mentally ill homeless population.

Homeless Zombie Monster, once out of the ocean, hitches a ride with a guy, who promptly crashes his truck and dies with gigantic gaping holes and a heart on the outside of his body. HZM then proceeds to fuck the gigantic gaping holes with his deformed fantasy cock, and ejaculates black semen in order to bring the driver back to life and in order to have a full-on hardcore sex scene with the living, but still completely injured, driver.

Much like David DeCoteau with his 1313 series, this pattern repeats itself rather ad nauseum. Guy dies. HZM sees the dead guy. HZM fucks dead guy back to life. And, then they have hardcore sex. Repeat.

With almost no dialogue whatsoever, Bruce LaBruce is forcing us to watch the images and see if we actually care about this. The sex, for the most part, isn't shown as erotic, being largely overlaid with somber boner-killing music that makes the sex almost dirge-like. The one exception to that is a 4-person leather orgy which is punctuated by men making manly gay sounds of passionate orgiastic gay sex.

The characters that HZM runs into, though, are actually symbols of the ills of society that we're constantly ignoring, or not caring about. The truck driver represents the ills of driving. There is a business deal that goes bad, with the business man surrounded by his white collar crime money. A black gang member who is dumped, dead, in an alley. A homeless guy who died alone in his refrigerator box home. And, four leather guys who are killed in a drug deal.

The film ends with HZM crying tears of blood as he looks over societies ills, before he digs the soft dirt over a grave marked "Law" as a storm brews overhead. Whether LaBruce is saying that the law of the land has created these horrible conditions, or whether he's saying that HZM wants to fuck Law back to life to fix these things is unclear. HZM never finds the body of Law to fuck it back to life. And, law never returns to the land.

Bruce LaBruce is creating a weird pornographic blend of political commentary that is pointed straight at the materialistic heart of society, namely American society. He isn't fetishizing these ills. He shows that he has the ability to create hardcore porno that's kind of hot when he actually shows us the pre-death 4-man leather orgy, which is the only scene I found stimulating. LaBruce is exposing these ills in society to the gay art house audience.

But, his main problem is that he puts in a lot of hardcore sex into this film. I mean, A LOT. We're talking about 10+ minute scenes of semi-unerotic blowjobs and fucking. Given that LaBruce cut out these scenes for the festival circuit, it leads to the question of why film them like this at all?  What's the statement he's trying to make, if any? Is he trying to say, "if you're bored of this, imagine if you were living like this?" Or, is he just trying to provoke some sort of shock value out of gay sex, but ending up with boredom?

LaBruce isn't a master filmmaker. Never was. Never will be. He's a punk filmmaker. He knows how to shock, or get a reaction. When you watch Sagat's unadorned cock starting to probe the shotgun wound in a guy's head, you're still a bit shocked, even if he's penetrated many other wounds before that. LA Zombie is almost Cronenbergian in its obsession with blood, wounds, and sex and the intersection thereof. Blood and open holes exist so that HZM can fuck people in their wounds back to life. But, LaBruce is no Cronenberg. His set ups and shots are like mid-level porn quality in the mid-90s. And, his editing is mildly atrocious.

But, does it provoke? Does it communicate his intention? Not as well as he hoped. And, it is in this that LA Zombie is ultimately a failure. Sure, I just spent an inordinate number of words talking about LA Zombie's cataloging of society's ills, but a lot of movies do that. LaBruce brings nothing much to the table, except, possibly, that we're killing ourselves. It's a sour note, in part because its a sour message that you have to give some credit for trying.

But, I do miss overly punk LaBruce.

The Tulse Luper Suitcases Part 3: From Sark to Finish (2004): Writers are corrupt

The Tulse Luper Suitcases Part 3: From Sark to Finish (2004)
dir: Peter Greenaway

In the previous 2 movies, Greenaway has taken the time to explore each stop of Tulse Luper's episodic life. He would spend 40 minutes on each station, and linger on each stage to explore the themes each episode reveals. But, for a reason I haven't entirely fathomed yet, Greenaway turns up the pacing in Part 3, rushing through the final 10 episodes in one 2 hour blast. Some of these episodes seem to be 2 minutes in length, while he spends an extraordinary amount of time both on Sark, and near a border between the East and West that developed in Europe.

After Tulse Luper's escape from Northern France, he finds himself on a coast on the island of Sark, which is just outside of Normandy. On Sark, he develops himself as a writer, writing stories on the cliffs of the beach in which he is now trapped. There he is visited by three sisters, each of which lust after him, and then decide that none can have him.

Sark itself, is an island that belongs to Guernsey, a British dependency off the coast of France, which also has its own parliament. This is an island that is 2.1 sqmi in area, and also has a population of 600.  This island exists. And, from 1940-1945, it was occupied by the Germans during World War II. But, unlike other significant locations, Greenaway doesn't even explain what Sark is.

Greenaway's focus on storytelling, and the three sisters, explores the difference between Parts 1 and 2, and Part 3. Part 3 begins to explore the sick rotting interior of the writer. Its an attempt to focus on both propaganda and the dangers of fiction. The rivers of Europe were beginning to fill with corpses, as World War II was coming to a close. The Nazis, believing they were doing the right thing, were killing the corrupt (Jews, homosexuals, dissidents, etc) in 3s. They would tie them up, and kill two of them, then throw them into a river to let the third drown. At least, in Greenaway's world.

Finally, Tulse ended up at a border between the west and the east, as a prisoner (as usual). There, he was forced to write 1001 stories for the guard's wife, whom he was also schtupping in order to give her a child. Eventually, many of the still surviving characters end up at this gate, in an attempt to get him across. And, in the end, he makes it.

Ultimately, in the final episode, we discover this whole 3 movie epic is actually an in-movie fiction. Tulse Luper actually dies in Episode 1, and the other episodes have been a fictional character created by that friend mentioned in the beginning, Martino Knockavelli. Sure, Martino would pop up periodically to involve himself, but the whole movie is a fiction within a fiction.

Greenaway, by exposing this whole history, and pseudo-documentary, to be a complete meta-fiction, is engaging in a conversation about the corruption of documentaries, as well as the corruption of the screen, and the corruption of writers in general. He focused much of this part on Luper's writing, including his 1001 fictions, and his cliff writing, but Luper didn't exist, and those stories were actually the fiction of Knockavelli. As such, the documentaries are the works of the victors, and the ruling class.

Part 3 completely rewrites the understanding of Parts 1 and 2, which had been hinted at by the out-of-time Moutessiers in Part 2. And the unverifiable Mormons of Part 1. Greenaway is having a lark, and playing a game, which is in line with the cinema he engages in. He exposes trappings, boredom and also tries to subvert our expectations at every turn. After a 6 hour investment, we don't expect that our whole story has been a lie by Greenaway.

How does the audience deal with this information? What are we supposed to do with this/ Is it all a complete lark, as it seemed to be in The Holy Mountain? Is Greenaway making a gigantic F for Fake that kind of fails because of its sheer scope before you get to the punchline? Was this perfected in his Rembrandt's J'Accuse? The main takeaway I got from this whole windup is don't believe anything. Don't believe what's been constructed. Don't believe the fictions. Don't believe the victor-written histories. Don't believe the loser-written histories. Everything is false. The very act of writing is a corrupting act.

Does that make this watchable? Worth it? Is it a lesson we need repeated? Is that even the lesson? Greenaway's movies cause us to ask so many questions, it is totally fascinating for me to watch, but is probably an exercise in frustration to the usual audience, who probably could use the lesson most.

The Tulse Luper Suitcases Part 2: Vaux to the Sea (2004): Europeans are corrupt

The Tulse Luper Suitcases Part 2: Vaux to the Sea (2004)
dir: Peter Greenaway

In The Tulse Luper Suitcases Part 1, Peter Greenaway brought Tulse Luper from London to America to Belgium in a long and windy way of showing the various forces at work in the development of uranium into the atomic bomb. But, also showing the various aspects of society through the early 20th century, from the British devastation from World War 1 to the Mormon movement to the Nazi takeover of Europe.

This time around, Greenaway stays largely in France, to show the effects of the Nazi occupation through three different scenarios. In Part 1, Greenaway had to spend time getting the audience used to his style by re-iterating the facts frequently, and reintroducing us to characters. In Part 2, Greenaway figured that, if you're 2 hours into this experiment you should know what is coming. Eliminating the adjustment period allows Greenaway to focus on his other indulgences, such as architectural history, cinema history, and art history.

Part 2 covers episodes 4-6 of Tulse Luper's life. Remember that The Tulse Luper Suitcases is also "a life in 16 episodes" and "the personal history of Uranium." With these 3 episodes, Tulse Luper makes the run through France in an attempt to escape the Nazis, or at least save his own ass.

Episode 4 is set in Vaux-le-Vicomte, a French chateau built by Nicholas Fouquet, and also a source of jealousy from King Louis XIV. Of course, it is well known that the Nazis, during their occupation of France raided museums and palaces in order to steal valuable works of art. But, Fouquet was arrested and imprisoned by the jealous Louis XIV, who would create an ode to it in Versailles, and raid Vaux-le-Vicomte in order to fill Versailles with art and tapestries. Greenaway hammers the parallels home through elaborate scenes that take place in the 17th century. Tulse Luper is rescued by a Nazi soldier and a woman, in a relationship. But, as they are fleeing, the soldier kicks the woman out of the car.

Episode 5 regards a French cinema, which is running under Nazi occupation. The cinema shows mainly silent films, such as The Passion of Joan of Arc. While running the cinema, Tulse falls into an orgiastic group where he starts interacting with film and with the stories he sees. Also, the dumped woman finds him, and plots to kill a Nazi in the cinema. But, actually then is going to kill him, with Tulse's help, in a Cathedral. Tulse narrowly escapes this situation.

Episode 6 brings us to a house in Northern France with the Moitessiers, who are a bit out of their time element. The Moitessiers agree to hire Tulse Luper as their children's tutor, but they can only hire women. So, Tulse must dress as a woman. Monseiur Moitessier had had an affair with the previous nanny-dude, and would like one with Tulse. Meanwhile, Madame Moitessier is a cold, brutal woman who takes pleasure in abusing the help. When the world crumbles around them, Luper makes his bolt for the sea.

As in the previous episode, Greenaway's goal isn't to tell a completely coherent story about Luper. But, he's telling a story of European history, and European corruption. In the beginning of Part 2, Greenaway pointedly kills the Americans from Part 1, so that we can focus more on his history of corruption in the European vein. While saying that Nazis are corrupt would have been a facile statement, Greenaway isn't ever content with something so basic.

All three episodes are about the corruption of the ruling parties of Europe through history. He explores the corruption of the European government through the incidents between Louis XIV and Fouquet. This corruption is also evident not only through the wrongful imprisonment of Fouquet, the stealing of a bunch of erotic woodprints, statues and tapestries. But, the corruption is also shown through Fouquet's abandonment of traditional architecture by crafting Vaux wholly from his head, or something. And, in a way, he started to define a whole new architectural language...according to Greenaway.

The second episode explores the corruption of everyday people, setting the cinema as a place where both Nazis frequently went, and also the people went to be entertained by corruption. The historical corruption is explored through the corruption that lead to the burning of Joan of Arc. Greenaway, of course, isn't content for just Joan of Arc, and even wraps his own movies into the story of the European corruption.

The third episode is more about the corruption of complacency, especially in the complacent rich. While the Moitessiers didn't exist during the 20th century, they are used as examples of aristocracy believing that they can use people in order to get what they want. Whether this is by having drag servants that they abused sexually, or by having Black assistants they abused physically, they used their "cover" and the Nazi occupation to get their sick jollies out. The help was never altruistic, nor was it all that help. It begs the question whether this is actually the better choice, considering the last Nanny had been murdered. This whole corruption was exposed through two portraits of Madam Moitessier which had been started and finished at vastly different times. This would be a predecessor to Greenaway's Rembrandt's J'Accuse.

Greenaway is showing his hand even more than he did in Part 1. Cursory research finds the times Greenaway gives for Moitessier to be different than WWII, and Tulse Luper's life. So, why does he include it? What is he saying using these two specific people? Greenaway's postmodern style starts to rip itself apart, including two actors playing Tulse Luper, which may or may not be showing Luper's maturity, or may just be a way to get around long-term scheduling conflicts and budgeting.

But, Part 2 is the typical middle movie, where nothing much is added to the original. If you want to see Greenaway fucking around with European Nazi fiction, Part 2 is for you. It gets to his corrupt fantasies. Hell, it practically seems that Tarantino trainspotted the cinema scenes from the second episode for Inglorious Basterds, where it seemed very much, for a few minutes, that the lady was going to kill a head Nazi, and not just the guy who ditched her. But, it doesn't seem to add much other than getting Luper out to the sea, and out of the main battlegrounds of WWII so he can flourish.

The Tulse Luper Suitcases Part 1: The Moab Story (2003): Americans are corrupt

The Tulse Luper Suitcases Part 1: The Moab Story (2003)
dir: Peter Greenaway

Peter Greenaway has been at the forefront of pseudo-interactive cinema. Starting with The Pillow Book, Greenaway was beginning to experiment with cinema that broke every rule of conventional and arthouse cinema by using onscreen text, screens within screens, scenes within scenes, juxtapositions, voice-overs, repetition, overlaid imagery, intentionally fake sets, image projection, and a whole variety of other methods that smashed through the fourth wall with the force of a wrecking ball. In no other place has this more heavy-handed than here in The Tulse Luper Suitcases.

The Tulse Luper Suitcases is a huge scope of a project. It has its roots as a web project which was a sort of contest examining the life of Tulse Luper through 92 characters in his life, 92 suitcases he left behind, 1001 stories he had to write, and 92 random objects of life. 92 is the Atomic number of Uranium, which is a major theme in The Tulse Luper Suitcases, which is subtitled The Personal History of Uranium.

The website for The Tulse Luper Suitcases, however, appears still somewhat unfinished, as it is supposed to be a whole network of suitcases, events, characters, and real life history. But, as you'll see over the next three days, The Tulse Luper Suitcases isn't simple or easy.

Following The Tulse Luper Suitcases website were three 2-hour movies. Six hours to explore the life of Tulse Luper. Following that, there was a television show of 16 episodes, which seems to use a lot of the footage of the initial 2 hour movies (and has close to the same running length), as well as A Life in Suitcases which is a condensation of the 6 hour edition into 2 hours.

And, following the website, the 3 movies, the re-edited movie, and the television show, Greenaway also had installations which explored the life of Tulse Luper through the use of short repeated videos projected on multiple screens throughout a warehouse. In essence, the Tulse Luper Suitcases are the basis of what is now termed a Vine, in that most of these videos are very very short loops of 10 seconds or less. But, Greenaway used these to form a singular pastiche as an installation.

One of the debates that should be surrounding The Tulse Luper Suitcases is whether any of the above information is actually necessary to the project. Should the movies be stand alone films completely separate from the website? Or, should everything be taken as one big whole with the installations, that very few people had a chance to see, and the website and the show and the films all recalling and informing each other, making this a project for one person to get lost in for months as they create the lists upon lists and networks that the website was attempting to make.

The review that follows, as well as the next 2 reviews, will ignore all of the other media and focus solely on the 3 2-hour movies. While, I am not of the mind that no project can have appendices outside the main body of work, if a project is of a large enough scale, then each piece should be able to stand on its own.

The Moab Story

Peter Greenaway has stated that Tulse Luper is his alter ego. Indeed, Tulse Luper has had periodic references made to him throughout Greenaway's oeuvre. But, Tulse Luper is also a physical parallel to the development of Uranium in the modern world. And, to top it off, he's also a figure to explore the various aspects that eventually went into the development of the bomb.

The film version of The Tulse Luper Suitcases is subtitled "a life in 16 episodes," with the first movie containing the first three episodes of Tulse Luper's life, moving Luper from London to Utah to Belgium in episodic formats during the run up to World War II.

The first episode is Tulse Luper as a child in London, playing World War I games with his friends. They had a game crossing yards which were in reference to the historic areas or battles of World War 1. At the end, they break the final wall and Luper is punished by his father with imprisonment in a shed. Though, his friend Martino Knockavelli visits him and tries to define him according to a book with facial elements segmented out.

The second episode is Tulse Luper exploring Moab, Utah around the time of discovery of Uranium in Utah. While he is looking around at old abandoned towns, and discovering the importance of Utah, he also spies on a hot Mormon wife, and is punished through honey and bees to the genitalia...and then through imprisonment again.

The third episode is Tulse Luper writing in Belgium during the rise of the Nazi party, with his friend Martino while also looking after friends of the Mormons. Until he is imprisoned again, and the Mormon family comes looking for him and for everybody else.

These three episodes just form the bare bones plot on which Greenaway does whatever the fuck he wants to the structure, themes, and style. Some of the post-modern structural elements will stretch through the three movies, some only through two, and others only through this one movie. But, they're all telling.

The three episodes in Part 1 are separated by auditions for the various characters in the movie. The characters will repeat lines that haven't happened, yet, change actors or actresses, and faux-explore the various elements that go into movie making. In a way, Greenaway is having a conversation with the audience, and also with other movies that have preceded him.

It's rather obvious that Tulse Luper's three main conversationalists are History Channel documentaries, Zelig, and Forrest Gump. But, Luper borrows deconstructive elements of the hyperlink culture we started living in, some of which was seen in early adopter movies like Run Lola Run, sketch comedy shows, and sitcom cartoons like The Critic. Of course, Greenaway had already been exploring the limits of the frame and the constant delivery of condensed information since The Pillow Book and Drowning By Numbers.

With The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Greenaway begins deconstructing the constructions of the historical documentaries and biographic shows, and also pointing fingers at the fictionalization of historic events through popular culture. The set he constructed for London was an open stage set with cardboard blocks to represent the various yards or sections that the children crossed. A deconstructionist trait that Greenaway shared with Lars Von Trier's 2003 released Dogville, which even removed those walls for a completely open set.

By exposing the filmic trappings of set design as pure constructionist fiction, Greenaway already opens his firing shots at discussing the corruption of the world. Corruption, of course, being one of the most major themes in every single episode of The Tulse Luper Suitcases. In the first episode, the father is corrupt, the game children play is corrupt, the fictionalization is corrupt, the rehearsals we're shown are probably corrupt, the suitcases are corrupt. Everything is a corrupt commentary on everything else.

As I mentioned, Greenaway isn't just content to tell the story in a linear format. The traditional narrative film is frequently interrupted by talking head historians who are putting false context to the events happening, explaining or over explaining the story, and also introducing us to the various suitcases, most of which are filled with elements taken directly from the story, or with symbolic gestures that comment on the story.

In additional to that, Greenaway uses a style of placing frames over frames, sometimes of the same event, and using the same dialogue, starting to expose the repetition in modern culture for the confused corruption that it is.  We see commercials on repeat, we hear songs played over and over again on the radio, and this was just before America would be plagued by that terrible commercial for HeadOn. By constantly interrupting his own various styles, Greenaway participates in a cinema of frustration. All of our traditional narrative expectations are destroyed, and we try to build our own network of events and suitcases and history, all of which has been corrupted and fictionalized by Greenaway.

Greenaway uses the techniques the heaviest in the first 40 minutes, as he's acclimating us to the techniques he'll be using, as well as to the world he is creating. He will frequently return to his techniques throughout the films, but as he moves into the world of Moab, Utah and Belgium, Greenaway more and more frequently allows the story to play through for longer periods of time.

The main story-based element that Greenaway is criticizing in this first part are the Americans. He seems to be criticizing their handling of the first World War in the London segment. In the Moab, Utah section, he is openly critiquing the weird hyper religions, capitalism, the obsession for torture, and the self-serving nature of Americans. By the time we get to Beligum, and the Mormons enter sided with the Nazis, Greenaway is being completely critical of the Americans, even going so far to hint that they are more corrupt than the Nazis themselves. The Americans in Belgium act more like jackbooted thugs who rape, abuse and imprison people at their will, moreso than the Nazis do on screen.

Contrastingly, Tulse Luper is the constant victim in the first three episodes. He's imprisoned by his father for playing a game. Luper is tortured for spying on the Mormon wife. He is again imprisoned for succumbing to her charms after he was tortured. And, in Belgium, he's imprisoned by the Nazis and then by the Americans as Nazis. By making Luper be an ineffectual victim, Greenaway is starting to expose the corruption of our victim culture, where people who sacrifice are considered to be better people than the ones who do the punishing.

What Greenaway does in Part 1 is lay the corrupt groundwork for Tulse Luper's corrupt journey through the world of World War II, and the history of the 20th century. He introduces his dense post-modern techniques, and basically informs the viewers that, if they can't keep up with his attitude, they're going to suffer. The Tulse Luper Suitcases is a game within a conversation within a corruption within a movie, and it forces you to keep up or die. Some will say that it is cinema of the unpleasant, but I find this overindulgence entertaining, even if it is kind of exhausting.

My Hustler (1966): I am a Meat Popsicle

My Hustler (1966)
dir: Andy Warhol
uncredited: Paul Morrissey

It's been said that My Hustler was Paul Morrissey's first bout of participation with Warhol's Factory, and it marks the departure of the Factory films from static images that are better as ideas to more narrative films. Paul Morrissey would say that he was responsible for My Hustler, and had to teach Andy Warhol how to move the camera. Of course, Paul Morrissey is a raving narcissist, but then so was Andy Warhol.

My Hustler was made in 1965, before Chelsea Girls, but released after that movie. The release of My Hustler shows more of a movement towards character studies and fascination with bodies compared to emotions and subjects. Before Paul Morrissey, Warhol's films were generally static shots of the subjects, like a close-up of the face of a man getting a blow job, or a multi-hour shot of the Empire State Building. Later, we started getting snap shots of personalities.

My Hustler is a character study of four people. At a beach house, an aging queen hires a blond hustler for his own pleasure. While the hustler is sunbathing, the queen's two neighbors - a rich young straight girl and an aging hustler - stop by to try to scheme on who will be getting the hustler in bed.  The first half of My Hustler is a 32 minute reel mainly leering on the body of the hustler sunbathing while the other three people talk about the hustler as a piece of meat. The second half is the aging hustler finding out that the young meat isn't really a hustler, and talking him into the hustling game; and then the aging queen tries to talk him into being his boytoy, and then the young girl tries to get him to live with her.

Originally, I had I, A Man in my Friday slot, but I moved it to a special Saturday post as I found My Hustler to be far more fascinating than I, A Man, for the pure fact that My Hustler completely objectifies a male of questionable sexuality. Paul America, the hustler in question, has maybe 3 lines in the whole first half of the 64 minute movie, but is always the object of desire. The camera is purely the gaze of the people who are desiring him.

Laura Mulvey, in her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, which I had brought up in my earlier essay of narrative with Vertigo, wrote about how the camera is inherently the straight male gaze, mainly because the director is usually a straight male (especially at the time she wrote that essay). She was wrong of course, in that the sometimes the camera takes on the personality of the characters, or has a more complex relationship to the audience. But, with that essay, Mulvey started to define how the camera retains the gaze of whomever is behind it. In the case of My Hustler, it turns out to be a gay male. But, I've noted in several other film reviews on this site, the camera has retained the desires of the director, man or woman, straight or gay.

If you'll indulge a bit of a detour, the works of David DeCoteau completely embodies how the camera retains the desires of the director and/or the intended audience. In DeCoteau's earlier works, like Sorority Babes at the Slimeball Bowl-a-Rama or Test Tube Teens from the Year 2000, both the closeted DeCoteau and his intended audience cause the camera to act like leering straight men who objectify the female body. But, in DeCoteau's later works, like The Brotherhood, or the 1313 series, or even A Talking Cat?!?, the camera operates as a gay male viewer, lingering over and objectifying the bodies of the young muscular men in their underwear.  Similarly, lesbian cinema like Go Fish or High Art, made by lesbians and for lesbians, objectifies the female body in a way appreciated by women who lust after women rather than in a manner that is completely pleasing for men.

Of course, most of this intellectualization was all underground when Mulvey was writing Visual Pleasure. Besides, the whole purpose of the essay was to start a conversation about the proliferation of male directors and female objectification. This desire to objectify the female body is still common in movies made by straight men for straight men. Last Vegas, for instance, offers primarily female bodies to ogle. Only occasionally is young nubile male flesh offered as objects for the audience to ogle. That young male flesh is in the pool party in Last Vegas where the old men participate in judging a wet t-shirt contest while the mainly male crowd cheers them on.

As far back as James Whale, the camera has always been complicated by who is behind the camera. My Hustler, especially the first half, acts as a sort of thesis about how the sexuality and gender of the characters doing the visualizing, and also the sexuality and gender of the director, are key to the behavior of the camera and how it views the world. In the first reel of My Hustler, we're subjected to the camera swinging between the holders of the conversation - that of two gay men and a straight woman - and the object of their desire, Paul America. As such, the audience feels they are watching a young male, who may or may not be straight, be talked about as if he was just a young, dumb, hunk of meat.

In turn, the conversation is only that. The aging queen who owns the beach house, and also claims to have invited Paul America through a "Dial-A-Hustler" phone line, mainly bitches about how he invited Paul to the beach house, and he deserves to fuck Paul. The young girl insists that she has the goods that Paul wants. The older hustler goads the aging queen by insinuating that he's fucked Paul in the past, and that he might know Paul through the hustler channels. But, they never really talk about Paul's true desires or his life. He's just an object of their desire. Only the young female interacts with Paul in a way that doesn't call his sexuality to attention.

In turn, Paul only can be the object of desire. By not even giving him any lines, Morrissey and Warhol neuter any agency that Paul has in the film. Paul becomes the object of lust to the audience in the film, the director, the camera, and the audience of the film. He is the piece of meat everybody desires. However, in alignment with Hitchcock's Vertigo, much like Madeline, Paul actually has the agency to be the object of lust. Paul knows that he's being lusted after. In the opening, Paul is being reprimanded that he did not arrive dressed in leather because he is wanted for more S&M practices. Consequently, he is essentially instructed to go suntan on the beach while the aging queen watches. Then while the young girl watches when she comes over. And, finally he knows the aging hustler is watching because the hustler first interacts with Paul and gets called back by the aging queen. We are not objectifying a reluctant object. Paul isn't unhappy with being objectified. Instead, he knows that he is the object and is willing to be the object to please the customer.

The dialogue and acting in the first half is about as casually degrading as it can get regarding Paul. It's about his dick size, his status as a top/bottom, his virginity, his past, etc etc But, the second half gives Paul agency as well by being the active subject of desire.

The second half, as mentioned earlier, is a static shot of, primarily, the two hustlers grooming and talking in the bathroom. The aging hustler is trying to talk the younger hustler into going into prostitution, and also taking a role as the aging hustler's protege. This line of conversation is plausible because Paul is being coy by claiming that he wasn't bought by the aging queen. during the course of the conversation, the aging hustler is telling Paul that Paul has the body to be a hustler, and can actually make a living off his body. It's half a ruse for the aging hustler to get Paul into his bed free of charge, and half a discussion about how johns are good only to fill in their pockets. It's also about the happiness and freedom of living life as a hustler, and being able to make bank off your looks while you have them. Because, really, if you can you should.

The hustlers are mainly shirtless in this reel, though we get glimpses of their asses, and a brief couple shots of the aging hustler's genitalia. But, the camera is all about the leering shots of these two glimpses of the hustlers grooming, and the aging one occasionally pawing Paul. Sometimes he'll just pet, and at one point he rubs Noxzema into Paul's back, saying it is good for the skin, even though it is mainly an excuse for the aging hustler to rub Paul's back.

At the end of this half, the aging queen comes back and desperately tries to get Paul to be his boytoy in the future, promising him cars, trips to Europe, the allowance of having girlfriends, and money. It's such a desperate ploy for this straight body, it almost reads as self-deprecating. And, it is self-depricating and desperate even though boy toys are also status symbols in the gay world. This is a trait as old as time. It is the gay version of having a trophy husband, only without he legalities. Think Behind the Candlabra. Finally, in the last couple of minutes, the young rich girl also makes a last minute pitch to get Paul in her bed long term, but that's practically a non-starter, as it is barely pitched and runs into repetition before her less than 4 minute segment is even finished.

What makes this far more fascinating than I, A Man is that there is gay agency in My Hustler. In My Hustler, there is active objectification of the male body, there is female agency, and there is even competition for the object of desire. While the camera definitely lingers on Tom Baker's body on occasion in I, A Man, it is primarily about objectification of everybody, and how almost everybody on Earth is an object of desire to everybody else. On the other hand, My Hustler implies that there are definite power structures in sex, and that they are all upturned by hustlers. Even the discussions of S&M activities and macho activities are all implying that there are definite power structures at play with money and experience having far more agency than the younger non-experienced hustler.

The appeal of the film is definitely related to how much the idea of 2 long takes of people objectifying another human being in desperate attempts to find connection, sex and love appeals to you. To me, it was fascinating in multiple fashions, obviously. But, it definitely tests your patience.

Chelsea Girls (1966): Happenings are commodified

Double Woronov = Double Fun

Chelsea Girls (1966)
dir: Andy Warhol, Paul Morrissey

It's nearly impossible to review Chelsea Girls from 47 years in the future. After 47 years, there have been movies that have ripped off Chelsea Girls, used techniques that it used, and imitated many of it's semi-faux-verite arthouse style.

On the other hand, it seems like a copy of the type of cinematic underground experimental work that other dadaists and surrealists like Salvador Dali had been doing for years. From almost 50 years later, Chelsea Girls almost seems like it is the commercialization of the happenings. It seems like its goal is to bring the progressive drug culture to the masses.

It is impossible to discuss Chelsea Girls without discussing Andy Warhol or Paul Morrissey. Chelsea Girls is Andy Warhol's cinematic keystone, though Paul Morrissey says Warhol's participation was negligible. Regardless of who is most responsible for Chelsea Girls, Warhol's name is on it both as director and producer. And, Chelsea Girls is almost Warhol's thesis. It feels as artificial as Warhol ever felt. Which can be the point of Warhol.

Chelsea Girls is 12 different videos, each about 35-minutes, run through side-by-side projectors. The sound would be flipped from side to side, and rumor has it that it once had Velvet Underground playing at times as well. All of the videos are stagings starring Warhol's superstars, most notably Pope Ondine and Mary Woronov (*swoon*).

The first video starts on the right, and is Nico (yes, that Nico) in a kitchen. The first video on the left is Pope Ondine with some woman who isn't enthused about him.

The second video on the left is a drag queen named Brigid holding court, where she rants about drugs, injects speed, and generally abuses everybody around her. The second on the left is Boys in a Bed, where two guys, an older guy in a bathrobe and a younger guy in his briefs, lounge on a bed as they're visited by women and men, who play with the younger boytoy.

The third on the right is Hanoi Hannah (Mary Woronov) abusing her friends in a faux-Vietnam POW camp style rant. The third on the left is Hanoi Hannah with the same friends in the same clothes on the right, but also a couple more people.

The fourth on the right is the boys in the bed getting serenaded by a drag queen, then being visited by more people. The fourth on the left is some woman yelling, and beating a bed with a riding crop while a young guy and a young girl look on.

The fifth on the right is an actor who looks like he just took LSD. The fifth on the left is just the cast standing around having random colored lights shone on them for 35 minutes.

The sixth on the right is Pope Ondine giving a speed-fueled rant. The sixth on the left is Nico getting the colored light treatment.

This isn't a random assortment of videos. Nico starts out grooming on the right, and ends up being glorified on the left. The boy toy scene flip flops from left to right. Brigid is analogous to the yelling woman. And, Hannoi Hannah is on both sides at once. The fifth pair is like having a shitty happening right in front of you.

All in all, it just feels soooooo...obvious. While it is interesting to see if you're watching where the voices are, or where there is more action, or where there is boy nudity, or if you're just listening, it doesn't really add up to much at all. Sure, Hannoi Hannah is an obvious silly play about war. The S&M, drugs, and homosexuality is all there because it was all so shocking back in the day. It's like the most commercial version of selling everything that was happening in certain circles at the time.

Which brings us back to Andy Warhol. It's arguable that his pop art and the Factory were largely influential, especially in the commercialization and popularization (leading to the commodificiation) of the rebellious art scene. But, he was almost commodifying commodification in the most basic obvious sense one can imagine. It can be impressive in large, but it all adds up to little.

And, that's what Chelsea Girls feels like. It feels like Andy Warhol calling to the people who may find it interesting but haven't seen what has really been going on, even though Dali was featured in Life and other sorts of magazines. It's the artistic underground movie that is engineered for the artistic underground crowd. And, it feels as artificial, or as Authentic, as Andy Warhol's art ever did.

I could dive into the meanings of everything a bit more, but that feels almost like it would be giving Chelsea Girls too much credit. At least more credit than it is due. Hell, to me, 1968's Head feels more authentic because its artifice is put up front and center because it stars The Monkees. Take that for what you will.

Add in that Paul Morrissey currently denies that any of his films were political. Currently, Morrissey is playing as a staunch Republican religious conservative who is railing against liberals in all standard senses. And, he says that all of his movies are just silly pieces of work that were meant to entertain. Whether he is actually a conservative, or if he is actually pulling an Andy Kaufman-esque stunt of trolling matters not. He's both right and wrong. The movies are silly pieces of art that are meant to reflect the detritus within the sprocket holes, but they aren't created in a vacuum. In doing research for upcoming review of The Point!, I discovered that Nilsson makes the assertion that everything has a point, even when it doesn't. That meaning applies as much to Chelsea Girls as it applies to any other movie you can think of. Still, Chelsea Girls doesn't add up to much.

Ed's Note: Be aware of the Italian Roma disc. There have been comments that it wasn't produced by the Andy Warhol foundation. It features a 24 minute section of pure silence, where there isn't even the sound of open air. They say you should at least play some Velvet Underground during that section. It may help.