two
short films by Kika Thorne -Fashion, Division-as seen
by Barbara Sternberg
These
films have an honesty about them. They are what they
are. They are small films (Kika indicates with
fingers an inch or so apart), Super 8 , black and
white, not glitzy. I do not experience their roughness as statement or
generational identification mark, nor do they exactly fit the stylistic genre
of 'challenging rawness'. Kika has selected and composed : the striped dress in "Fashion" not
incidentally patterns the screen and reiterates the TV monitor off of which it
has been filmed. However, the bathtub heterosexual love-making that comprises
the action of Division has not been
beautifully lit, composed, aestheticized.
As
I watch Division, I am put in mind of
the 50's and 60's Underground films in which men and women - mostly women in
men's films - cavorted naked, breaking taboos or fulfilling fantasies. Here, the 90's woman is in the active role,
in her actions as lover within the film and in the fact that Kika is herself the filmmaker. I observe that while the
bodies are not perfect 'models', no statement is being made in their
uncovering, nor is the love-making especially passionate, daring or unusual. I
think of some 70's videos where the immediate feedback of the medium and social
conditions combined in single-take, self-revelatory, no-hands-ma-
what-you-see-is-what-you-get, honest, not-Hollywood, love-making. This isn't
that exactly, either. The motivation doesn't feel the same. This is more
constructed, though not aesthetized and, besides,
those points have already been made, these are different times.
So
I begin to think, 'Yes, OK you're honest and brave, baring all, but do I need
to see it? Is this it? ' Then the text, a word, comes on the screen, supered in a space between the bodies (past encounters
shadowing, inner doubts and fears, the voice of distrust), one word, small,
faintly typed, 'liar', strikes me from my complacent, even superior,
seat and I am there. Not with Kika, but alone, in the
dark of my emotions, memories alive, totally vulnerable, sad. The pain of it
takes me by surprise—I thought I was "liberated", done with all this,
had it under control - just as smells bring to life past memories
instantaneously and the lump in the throat comes unbidden. The scab on the
wound of betrayal and distrust is easily picked off (filmmaking/ viewing as
therapy; film criticism as confession). What is the lie? That "I" am
accepted, included, (not tolerated or token or resented); is the lie that
"I" am equal; is it a lie that desire speaks, or is it the lie of
love? One truth uncovered here is that
we know and yet deceive ourselves. The impact of the film comes upon one
unawares and it hurts.
The
film ends. Clicked out of myself, I realize this pain is not just me and my
hormones, conditioning, whatever, because, hey, this is Kika's
film. And I am reminded of my group identity, not only an 'I', but a 'we.' And
'we' have far to go and we're working on it. In both films, the filmmaker is
operating from a double position, a splitting of self: the awareness of self as
woman, and the being of it. Kika speaks of these
films and her positions in love-making as responses to her own feminism:
"I have to be strong, dominant - it's the only way not to be dominated, to
be on top. When I'm in the 'missionary position,' I count the seconds! I want
to change myself, make conscious changes. To do that, I have to do it in bed.
Birgit Hein said, 'sex is our prison,' and that's really true. There's so much
involved in it, there's desire, economics, self-esteem, family relations—it's
all there, in bed with you during sex. My films aren't sexy, though. They're
critiques of sex." The bed or bathtub is the stage, and sex, an
arena for testing and a forum for communication.
The
splitting into a self-conscious or critical stance applies also to film itself. At one
moment in Division, Steve Butson, the guy love-making partner, looks up awkwardly,
self-conscious or camera-conscious, and thus breaks the 'reality' within the
film. In his 'look away', deception is revealed, the connection broken. This
reads neither as deliberate strategy a la Godard nor
as 'returning-the-gaze.' And for a moment I am unsure (is Steve embarrassed,
has Kika made a mistake, do we need to enact these
private things publicly, should I as audience be thinking these thoughts),
maybe even disappointed (the film has let me down, released me to judge it).
Control shifts: self-deception to the deception of cinema.
This
moment of interruption echoes the straightforward approach that I was having
trouble placing, a self-consciousness the film has had
all along. Different than the connection that is made between film (material
medium) and subject (the sensual bodies of lovers) in the celebration of both
that characterizes Carolee Schneemann's
Fuses. Kika
had decided, while editing, to leave this "bad" shot in, conscious of
the implications of this convergence between film and its history, this moment
of slippage, and the words 'liar' and 'division'. Film as
lie, as liar. Which of the many possible lies we've been told, we tell,
we tell ourselves, we enact, is being referred to or
is being participated in here?
In Fashion, the form-fitting
, black & white striped dress, shot originally in video and
re-filmed off the screen, doubly references popular culture, the 60's of the
dress style, and its reinstitution in 80's Black Label ads . The fashion of the
title is not only that of clothing, surface, but of the stuff of which we are
fashioned, our formative contexts, submerged, internalized mindsets. Belying
the flat surface are layers. Text voices one layer of desire,
"I want to make myself a victim, to be passive", as image resists it.
(As she lies on her back , fists clench.) We don't
always want what we desire. Kika's acting out of this
position on the screen makes the viewer face a conflicting, yes/no place.
Kika's films are her and hers, in this sense, unique. But she is not
alone. She mentions Fox-Core music groups such as L7, Luna Chicks, Yeasty
Girls, Mourning Sickness—hard core, lusty women expressing themselves in many
contradictory ways, violent and violated and caring. There are also Super 8
films by Linda Feesey and by Nadia Sistonen in which tension exists, the potential for harm
and for tenderness and for foolishment are all held in sensual suspension.