Whack!

 

“Oh, give me a whack at it!” cries a bikinied babe gleefully hacking at a man’s meaty leg with a hatchet.  Two more women (also in bikinis and flip-flops) and the detached members of a film crew look on as she cleaves through the chuckling “victim’s” skin.  A skewed, slow-mo shot reveals a convincing gash that leaks cherry syrup blood onto the floor and walls of a confined cabin. Sprays of red hit the camera lens.  Close-ups of red-smeared pelvises gyrate to white noise and distorted music. The women speak to each other and laugh. They pass the hatchet.  They finger a seeping cut near the man’s knee.  A woman lies on her back, thighs parted.  Another has playfully stuffed the severed leg down her bikini top.  Skin on skin.  A camera operator is visible in the margins of several frames.  A man’s real leg is discovered under a false floor. A woman applies eye-liner, waits for a cue.  Production lights blare into the camera lens.  An overexposure.

        WGG Test (2003) is Paul McCarthy’s boating party. The video’s title is an abbreviation for “Wild Gone Girls,” which is also an inversion.  Like a “Girls Gone Wild” video, McCarthy orchestrates an all out exposure, but he bares less of a woman’s body than the performing system of his artwork.  McCarthy teasingly reveals the making of—the special effects, key lighting, make-up, the constructed sets and the camera apparatus itself.  The cinematic image is left uncensored, exploited.  

        WGG Test is a screen test, a casting couch.  The women are directed to perform a staged sexuality, but it is motivated by something other than a gaze.  It is violent, exuberant and menstrual.  It’s fun.  Blood becomes paint and the hacking becomes expressionistic. Fluid on flesh is relished—the texture, consistency, its color under a boom light.  The women celebrate corporeal urges, bodily functions and desire.  This is not a return, but a release. A catharsis.  Sailor’s delight. Sailor’s meat. Meat Joy.  

A studio visit was arranged for 11 am at 470 E. Poppyfields.  At the time, this was two and a half hours and four miles away from my front door.  I arrived on time. Eager. We spoke over lunch about advancements in imaging technology, aesthetic and militaristic. We spoke easily.  Then he showed us a series of early videos.  It was during Karen Ketchup Dream that our conversation turned towards Carolee Schneemann.  As images of a young McCarthy lovingly massaging sauce over his nude wife flickered in front of us, we mused over Schneeman’s career. Why the neglect from certain historians? Why the few sales? Why the recent reclusion? Why the rigid control over her own estate?  Someone spoke honestly from personal experience, suggesting it was because she was “crazy.” Was this why?  Hysterical.  Paul grew stern and asserted “No.”  At the defense of Schneemann he challenged, “Do you think it would have been this way if she was a man?”

http://www.ubu.com/film/mccarthy.htm

Catherine Taft