X: Art About Art

 

[Trying to escape the past; image: Bloody Disgusting]

Ti West’s homage to '70s exploitation cinema succeeds in mastering the key technique of absorbing historical fiction: depicting a deeper past in contrast to the period in which it is set, thereby making the setting appear modern, contemporary, and present. The past creeps closer. This ability to evoke an era, to touch history, is mostly accomplished with set design. While coeval events are separated by a simple split screen, the split between past and present is made spatially: inside the old house is a deep past, and outside the old house it is modern times. The house is so convincing as a portal to another time that I am reminded of visiting the house my father grew up in before it was torn down: dark and oppressive with the weight of the previous century, cluttered with dusty brack-a-brac. Full of dust and objects that seem layered in it, the old dark house is a time capsule that sucks the characters into history and threatens to trap them forever. A work of art all its own, one might even say the house is not merely a setting, but a character.

But I wouldn’t say that.

I would instead say the house is a genre: its structure determines the way objects are placed and the way we walk through it. It restricts our range of motion and directs us to certain paths. The influence of the house, an art object, is part of the film’s exploration of the role of art and media in our lives.

The question of artistic influence is part of the plot: the juxtaposition of scenes from the film-within-the film with the action off-set suggests that the pornographic film the group are creating is determining or predicting events.

These uncanny parallels between art and life are depicted as almost supernatural, but a reasonable explanation is offered by the underpants-clad producer as he attempts to calm the photographer’s anxieties about unexpected changes to the storyline.

 

[Martin Henderson as Wayne, courtesy of Actors in Underwear]

Attempting to soothe the sensitive artist, the producer, Wayne, explains that, “Well, sometimes life imitates art,” to which the photographer, R.J., exclaims, “No! It’s supposed to be the other way around!”

But himbo is on to something. As Oscar Wilde remarked on the tendency of Victorian women to model themselves after Pre-Raphaelite portraits that “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life,”[1] Doesn’t it follow that pornographic art might influence our sexual life? For Wayne and his performers, this influence is positive, creative, and life-enriching. For the sensitive artist, R.J., who is desperate to prove his ability to capture the real – like Dorian Gray’s portraitist, “to show the world as it is"[2] – this possibility is frighteningly unpredictable. But the actors have already tried to explain to R.J. that his task is impossible; as Wilde wrote, “Art . . . can never really show us the external world. All that it shows us is our own soul, the one world of which we have any real cognizance.”[3]

Alas, R.J. will not live long enough to read the complete works of Oscar Wilde as he is about to be butchered with a paring knife.

Traditionally, slashers have punished characters for hypersexuality, but X instead targets the voyeur. The actors in Wayne’s pornographic film accuse the crew members who merely watch of perversity. Wayne’s sexual activities do not endanger him, but looking through a peephole does.

 

[Martin Henderson as Wayne, peeping; image: KinoTV]

Implicitly giving weight to audience over media, the film reaches out and reminds us of our role as participants, rather than passive observers. As characters onscreen are influenced by media while they co-create it, how are we, the audience influenced by this film, and what do we create in turn?

Influence is variable and unknown. While everyone watches the same program, where is takes them is not uniform. For example, the old woman’s strange attraction to Maxine is her resemblance to the image on television. The religious program has installed an image in the woman’s mind, which, without being pornographic, becomes part of her inner pornographic imaginary.

 

[images: Colossus (an interesting exploration of the technical aspects of the film)]

As individual films and as a series, X and Pearl historicize porn and media in general, depicting media not merely as instruments of recording history and culture, but as creating it.

The story line is ridiculous, although arguably so are those of the films it imitates. Although I suspect it’s not meant to be, the depiction of aging as repulsive is less than convincing. The theme of aging, lost beauty, and inset, in-world media programing is worth comparing to Debbie Rochon’s independent film, Model Hunger, which contains these same themes, but deals with them in a nuanced, feminist way.

 

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[1] “TheDecay of Lying”

[2] ThePicture of Dorian Gray

[3] “ThePicture of Mr. W.H.”