Written by Clara Perlmutter
Nora York from Franklin Furnace on Vimeo.
While I was very excited by the idea of going through the videos of avant-garde performance art on Franklin Furnace’s Vimeo, I was also equally as nervous. Though I am not all that familiar with avant-garde art, I do have a basic understanding of what “avant-garde” means, which was what was instilling so much fear in me. I was worried that the content I would be watching would soar way over my head. Without any context, would I be able to recognize why something was groundbreaking? Would I get it? I pushed these thoughts aside and began watching videos. I soon found that my anxiety had been kind of pointless - as anxiety usually is - because the majority of the art did a great job at speaking for itself.
The first video I saw that really spoke to me was entitled, just simply, “Nora York”. I generally do judge books - metaphorically speaking, and literally - by their covers, and this is perhaps one of my largest character flaws. Naturally, the cover photo for this video is what grabbed my attention. My eyes were drawn to the tiny pixelated rectangle immediately because of its bright colors in a sea of videos whose thumbnail images involved muted colors. Writing this, I am just now noticing that the thumbnail vaguely resembles, probably unintentionally, the flag of Nazi Germany, with a red background, and a black and white image that juts in many directions, drawing the viewer’s eyes around the rectangle. This realization has me feeling slightly unsettled by the fact that, as a Jewish young woman, I found the thumbnail image to be inviting, and like perhaps I need another visit to Yad Vashem. Anyhow, I really enjoyed the performance.
At the start of York’s performance, many different colored versions of the same image from the thumbnail flashed across the screen. I noticed that the image looked like a combination of the graphics during the “Origin of Love” scene in John Cameron Mitchell’s film of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and the figures depicted in Frances Cobain’s debut art show, “Scumfuck”. The title of the whole performance piece, “Fox Fire”, came on screen, and then music began playing. The graphics began changing, and York began singing. The song was familiar, but I couldn’t place exactly what she was singing until the first chorus. I smiled upon realizing that she was covering “Twentieth Century Fox” by The Doors, replacing the “she” pronouns with “I”.
The Doors have been a part of my life since my freshman year of high school. I had spent my middle school years infatuated with Grunge. Anyone who knew me knew that I loved Nirvana. As the boys in my grade began dabbling with the use of ye olde cannabis sativa, they also began dabbling in Classic Rock. As I have a twin brother in my grade, I have always had close relationships with the boys my age. I would hear from them about their God, Jim Morrison, and they would compare him to my God, Kurt Cobain. I remember one day, one of my guy friends was telling me that Jim had the best scream in Rock ‘n’ Roll history. I didn’t buy it. I asked him to prove it. He whipped out his phone and started playing me live performances. Pretty quickly, I was sold. I was outgrowing the phase of my life in which I idolized people, especially rock stars, so I wouldn’t say I was obsessed, but I did begin listening to The Doors.
I eventually passed through my Grunge phase, and now listen to mostly Folk Rock. I think my guy friends’ tastes in music have changed, too, but regardless, I wanted to share the Nora York video with my Classic Rock-loving guy friends, most of whom still appreciate The Doors. However, something held me back. I didn’t want them to view this video in the way that they view all the music-related videos I send out. I, like most people I know, love a good musical performance. I really enjoy concerts, both the ones of questionable legal status that I find on YouTube, and the ones I attend, myself. But I also love covers. I often get lost in Internet rabbit holes while looking for covers that I wouldn’t expect, such as acoustic covers of Sex Pistols songs. I’ve gotten sucked into many a weird YouTube cover niche. One of my favorite little things in life is when I begin watching a cover video and the artist turns out to have a foreign accent. It’s always interesting to see how far music can travel. When I find a good cover, I send it around to anyone who I think would care, and am usually met with appreciation. I rarely give people any context. I have, so far, refrained from sending out the video of Nora York’s performance because I want to be sure that the people I show it to fully understand why what she did is art, why it is avant-garde. In order to do this, I need to fully understand the performance, myself.
The first time I rewatched the video with the purpose in mind of understanding the performance, I felt pretty stupid. I had somehow completely missed that the thumbnail image was some sort of statue, or maybe a fertility symbol. She has a bald head, and stands wide-legged, hands reaching underneath her legs to hold open her vagina. When the video of York begins playing, York appears in statue’s gaping vagina, which begins to open wider, splitting the statue up the middle. I guess York is being born, but the birth is like Renesmee’s birth in the Twilight saga, where it rips her mother apart. The image disappears to show just York, who sways and gestures with her arms. She faces her palms out for the majority of the video in a very open manner. During the instrumental solo, artwork of women is superimposed over images of York moving. When the solo ends, the image from the beginning is projected over York, with its head lined up with her head, its vagina lined up with her groin. She concludes the song in the same position as the projected image, her arms bent, resting below her hip bones.
The original version of “Twentieth Century Fox” describes a woman that is, in Morrison’s eyes, so cool that she is maybe a little bit cold. York’s version is brilliant, as using the first person singular pronoun “I” - can you tell I took eight years of Latin by the way I just labeled that? - changes the meaning of the song completely.The Twentieth Century Fox in York’s version is a woman who seems to be very together. The subtle tweaks with the pronouns take the song from being about a woman that a guy cannot have to being about an empowered woman. The twentieth century brought a bounty of changes for women. In 1920, women gained the right to vote, and throughout the 20s, women defied previous cultural norms, and began dressing and acting as they pleased. While there were some setbacks in the decades that followed, the second-wave of feminism that emerged in the 60s, and lasted into the 80s, completely changing what it meant to be a twentieth century woman. Morrison wrote this song in the mid 60s, while all these changes were taking place, and surely had some exposure to many twentieth century women. By 1998, when York did her performance, what it meant to be a twentieth century woman had changed even more. Over the timespan of about thirty years, the United States had been through various types of political chaos, and third-wave feminism emerged from the rubble. It is natural that what it means to be a twentieth century fox would change over three decades, and York adapted the song to fit those changes nicely.
Looking into the performance, I quickly found that the image from the video was visual artist Nancy Spero’s artwork of a Celtic Sheela-na-gig, a type of carving that depicts an old woman holding her vulva open. The origin of these carvings is often disputed (and I highly recommend looking into the various theories if you want to feel like Indiana Jones for, like, thirty minutes). Some believe that the Sheela-na-gig is meant to represent fertility and motherhood, while others believe it is meant to show that female lust is sinful. Either meaning of the symbol would make York’s incorporation of the art piece into her performance into interesting commentary, but it would make more sense that the use of the Sheela-na-gig is commentary on lust, as that origin theory is the most widely accepted one. For much of history, a woman was expected to be docile. Her sexuality, especially, was to be neither seen nor heard. The Sheela-na-gig carvings suggest that being a woman with an “open” vagina is grotesque. Like, your vagina might as well have a big “LANE CLOSED” sign in front of it, inconveniently redirecting traffic to an alternate location, unless you want to turn into an owl-eyed, round-headed old lady (which honestly doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world). York’s inclusion of the Sheela-na-gig raises the question of whether or not the twentieth century woman was actually sexually liberated. In the beginning, she is born from a creature that discourages female lust. Perhaps this is representative of the older generation of women, and their opinion of sexuality. By the end of the song, York becomes the Sheela-na-gig. Does this invalidate the words of the song? Is she saying that she is more an empowered woman in theory than in practice?
While I, personally, only existed in the twentieth century as an infant, and could not tell you whether or not the twentieth century woman was sexually repressed by society, I can tell you that I’ve seen it a lot in the twenty-first century. It’s easy to see sex-positive women on your social media and assume that the world is a sexually liberated place, but it’s important to keep in mind that what your social media has algorithms in place to tailor the content you see to fit your point of view. If you look up from your Instagram Explore page and keep your eyes peeled for societal norms that shame women for their sexuality, you will feel wildly demoralized, I promise! And all these unhealthy attitudes towards sex lead to people having unhealthy, unsafe sex, which is TERRIFYING. However, there are still eighty two years left in the twenty-first century to make the twenty-first century fox a liberated woman (wink).
It took me a few viewings to deeply understand this performance, and I only came to the level of understanding that I’m at because I happened to have a lot of previous knowledge on feminism and the history of these United States of America. I say this with much sadness, but in all honesty, I do not think my Classic Rock loving buddies would be at all blown away by this performance. I’m gonna place the blame for that on society for teaching people, namely teenage boys, that believing women and men should be equal and being a feminist are two different things. Thank you and goodnight, America!
Comments
Post a Comment