Tonight (16 February 2009), we watched the second half of CHELSEA GIRLS.
This inappropriately named film (note: there are often more males than females present on the screen) is yet another indication of how ruthlessly exploitative the Warhol machine was. Perhaps ‘CHELSEA BOYS’ wouldn’t have enough pull. Advertising sorts will tell you that girls sell more product than boys and so the film title (like the movie poster) becomes another tool of deception.
I remain hesitant to write more on this film as it affords the undeserving subject further publicity, though I can use this opportunity to state that CHELSEA GIRLS remains barely worth watching. In the hands of a real craftsman or artist, the film ‘highlights’ could be distilled into a 3 minute short that could hold something valid. As it sits, CHELSEA GIRLS is a kind of dated precursor to today’s mindless BIG BROTHER ‘reality’ shows, in which fame-seeking, extrovert youth are followed by a camera and microphone picking up even the most (unedited) mundane, unscripted behaviour unfolding.
It’s amazing how little quality Warhol achieved here, even using such a large number of people at the Factory. You’ve heard ‘Many hands make light work’; in this case ‘light’ translates to ‘insubstantial’ and ‘of little importance’. CHELSEA GIRLS really does look like perhaps a few lazy, inept individuals got up one day with a surprising pinch of pseudo-motivation and decided to rally their pitiful combined lowly energies into a stumbling together of fumbled, base, crass, indulgent drivel. CHELSEA GIRLS is not Art, by non-artists.
Sequence 7 returns to the arrogant, chubby, bald fellow still in bed with the slim fellow (“Patrick”) who’s good ‘bouff’ of hair is again messed up and tussled by an envious balding fellow who can’t leave the ‘do’ alone. Various others enter the picture, including a wigged person (in drag) who loves singing cabaret-style numbers.
Already people begin to leave the cinema. I don’t blame them. These ‘leavers’ must respect their valuable time, not willing to waste it on what appears to be the hazy reality of hazy non-entities on the screen. Not everyone wants to watch the jealous ranting of an overweight “smelly” bald guy with “ugly toes”. “Ingrid” enters the picture as well; she clearly picks her nose, and offers the camera ‘the finger’ a few times.Sequence 8 introduces colour to the screen. Gerard Malanga is on a bed with an angry old woman(?), a bull whip and a crucifix on the wall in what seems to be an exercise in uninterrupted tedium. Also appearing in this segment is the quite attractive head ‘bitch’ from last week’s sequence 5 & 6 who mostly sits there looking fatale.
At times the sequence becomes so boring and uninspired that the person behind the camera begins to add ‘something’ by providing more ‘non-action’ with irritating, harsh, fast zooming in and out. The effect is pathetic, uncontrolled and random. I wonder if it amused the cameraman. Malanga puts on perhaps a dozen long beaded necklaces… time passes slowly in what seems to be a game of ‘what can we do now to fill more time in front of the camera?’. The boredom continues uninterrupted until sound comes on and we hear some interesting, eerie psychedelic music playing in the background.
Sequence 9 is also in colour, but this time an intense, bright ‘solar’ orange filtered aura surrounds a fair youth in close shot. Though no photographs could possibly exist of the romantic poet Percy Bysshe SHELLEY (1792-1822), this young ‘actor’ with his inoffensive dimpled chin, fair skin and long hair has an uncanny resemblance to the radical poet whose image was captured in paintings and drawings of the time.
In this sequence, which seems to be in some kind of sensory deprivation space, he speaks slowly in a free-flow fashion. Awash in warm red light stating he “can’t feel a thing, eyes can’t focus” and “I wish I was a piece of sweat”, he focuses considerable attention on his own hair. He plays with his hair and asks “don’t you want to comb your hair?” before he begins combing and caring for his hair. He describes his hair as “beautiful” and also discusses how “Hair lets people down”. He adds various vacuous comments about how he likes having “fun” and “eating apples” and “meeting people”.
More audience get up and leave the cinema. It is painfully obvious that we are sitting here in the dark watching underwhelming people doing and saying nothing much.
Though this sequence experiments with light and colour it isn’t enough to warrant attention. The light in the background becomes a contrasting intense blue as the red-lit ‘actor’ becomes a little ‘blue movie’ presence; he performs fellatio on his own finger, then gets “hot” and takes off his shirt as the camera zooms in very close to his hairy chest. He coyly takes off his pants, tips his head back and rubs his long hair over his back saying he loves the “tingle” and “I’m very sensitive”. It feels like we’ve been tricked into watching soft male porn as a pulsating strobe light and changing colour effects play ‘hide n seek’ with his form. He finds a hairbrush and combs his hair down to hide his face and states “I’ll pray with my hair”. It seems more and more that the underlying running theme (if any) in CHELSEA GIRLS is hair…
Concurrently, sequence 10 is being projected. The same ‘actor’ is present in both sequence 9 & 10. At one point he turns his head and seems to be looking at himself in the other projected sequence. In sequence 9 he is alone in the coloured dark (sometimes holding a mirror) and in sequence 10 stands amongst a crowd gathered together looking down from what appears to be a kind of elevated theatre ‘box’; the crowd aglow in blue light all appear to be watching a ‘show’ that we cannot see…not available to the cinema audience, we are watching them watching something we can only hear. Sure!
More people get up and leave the cinema.
Sequence 11 sees the return of the “Pope” (the ‘therapist’ in last week’s 2nd sequence). Here the film is in black and white. This deluded figure ties a tourniquet around his arm and injects his hand. He appears alone, moody, irritable and cannot think of what to say for the camera. He needs to somehow fill 35 minutes and asks Paul Morrissey (who is behind the camera) “What should I do, comb my hair?” He sees himself as an all-important holy figure. He dubs himself “Pope” and discusses his “flock” of “homosexuals, perverts, thieves, criminals, rejects”. He wants to be idolized and even alludes to being God. He wants a confession and soon a female enters the scene to provide one. They pseudo-philosophize and at one point he tells her “Where is heaven? It’s on my shoulder”. It seems she innocently said something he didn’t agree with and in a snap he becomes horrifically angry and obnoxious and with a kind of sick religious fervour, he genuinely, slaps, beats, hurts and curses her in an act of uncontrolled violence. After the terrified girl is driven away, the worked-up ‘Pope’ rants on about various opinions including something about 1954 when “The Roman Catholic Church has disappeared and Greenwich Village took its place”. He is full of himself and is aware that “this may be a historical document”.
On another projection we see the 12th and final sequence featuring Nico (who had appeared in the opening sequence - perhaps conveying a cyclical element). This time Nico is alone and in colour. The scene opens with her looking teary, sad and contemplative. In shadows, colours and lights project onto her face. More zooming in and out to disguise the lack of action, it is perhaps the slowest-moving sequence yet. Nico does so little that she could be mistaken as an anthropomorphic representation of a projection screen. Her face provides the stage and platform to be used for a mini ‘Exploding Plastic Inevitable’ psychedelic light show. The background noise is groovy echo-chambered psychedelic.
Finally it’s all over!
I am far from impressed with this overlong film which exposes Warhol as a charlatan. Warhol was a problem unto himself. Many of his physical characteristics were not strong. He disliked much about himself including his weak eyesight, his bulbous nose and his early balding head. It drove him. For his eyes he wore glasses. For his nose he had surgery, and for his lack of hair he became obsessed with hair pieces, wigs and such. It’s quite possible the weak thread theme ‘hair’ running through this film was suggested by Warhol, relating to his own insecurity which developed when follicles thinned out quite early.
I see Warhol as a kind of pale, wig-wearing, lonely succubus who ‘rapes’ those unsuspecting inside and outside his sphere of influence. He enticed lost youth into his world and absorbed the fruit of their ideas; though he would surely know the fruit wasn’t so sweet, he also knew he could market and package even the rotting stuff in such a way as to fool enough people to provide him with credit.
Warhol had a hunger to be rich and famous; he somehow achieved this, then went on to become his own cliché, which in effect is a cliché of something wrong.
Pia Santaklaus
16 February 2009.
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