The March Hare

The Cremaster Cycle is a giant work. Five films, collections of sculpture and stills and self-lubricating portraits that travel the world again and again. Masonic symbols. Elaborate vision. And I have a problem with it.

Maybe my problem stems from the fact that, beng unable to go to New York and spend a day in the Guggenheim, I will probably never be able to see the full cycle. There is one thirty-minute section from the third film out on DVD, and that's all, and that's all there will ever be, presumably. I can understand if you want the films to be seen in a controlled environment, surrounded by sculpture. But then why allow this one part to be seen outside of that environment? Why does the exhibit go to only major museums in large cities? Because they can pay enough? But what is the price on art? I find it self-defeating to spend aproximately ten years creating a huge world in films and their ephemera so that only the percentage of the population who can afford to go to Munich or Prague or New York can see it. That's a pretty selective audience. That's really narrowing down your critics. What is art without audience? Can it succeed or fail if it can only be viewed by so few? Shouldn't an artist, no matter how rich and famous, still care to have his vision seen by as many as possible?

The second problem I have is with the portrayal of women in the cycle. Once again, having only seen stills on the website and the tiny slice of the much larger work that is currently available to us plebes, I may not know the full story. But I have it on good authority from two friends who have seen the entire cycle (in the Gug) that it is a continuous problem.

Now, normally, I take a while to mull things over before I uncover disturbing aspects of films or art works that offend me as a woman. Immediately after the DVD went off, I turned to Clurg and said "There's a problem here." This section of Cremaster 3 contained five homogenous 'Hostesses' wearing thongs, pasties, and stiletto heels. It contained a kickline of blue-eyed women all dressed as sexy sheep. And the only other woman portrayed was Aimee Mullins, a double-amputee actress-model-athlete, who wore the most painful-looking prosthetics I have ever seen, who transformed into a cat after being embraced by the main male character (how Duran Duran, woman painted like animal both sexy and dangerous) and who had to be brutally murdered by the main male character because of her dangerous transformation (sexuality dangerous to your spiritual growth, not your own sexuality but theirs, you must defeat the temptresses if you want to achieve enlightenment, no woman could climb to the top.)

I'm fully aware that the title 'Cremaster Cycle' makes it a male thing. (The cremaster muscle retracts the testes into the abdomen when it gets chilly or when there is danger about.) But is objectifying women a male thing? Or is it a people thing? If a woman did a Clitoris Cycle, would she have men beaten or arranged into colorful formations like pretty toys? Somehow, I think not. Somehow, I think that either she would treat men fairly well or not at all, just leave them out entirely because it would be a work about femaleness, why involve men at all?

Then again, I haven't been to the Gug in a while so what the hell do I know.