Why Not (1970) - S. Arakawa
Description
from the book Film As a Subversive Art (1974) - Amos VogelThe passionate, masturbatory union of young woman and inanimate object seen as the apotheosis of alienated eroticism; minimal art, touched by emotion, here becomes a terrifying equivalent of the human condition.
Analysis Unquestionably a major work of the American avant-garde of the 70s, Why Not is hypnotic, compulsive and claustrophobic. It is bathed in a cold, pervasive eroticism, which, oblique and displaced at first, finally becomes explicit in one of the most bizarre masturbation sequences ever filmed. For almost two hours, we observe a young, strikingly pretty girl, nude most of the time and alone in an apartment, engaged in a sonambulistic and sensuous attempt at coming to terms with herself. We first see her encircling, embracing, encompassing a round, white formica table. She undresses, mounts it nude, rubbing against it in a vain attempt to possess it. Lather, this same tactile, sensuous exploration occurs with a door, a doorknob and a latch, all of which are compulsively manipulated. She fingers an orange and, simultaneously, one of her breasts, with her eyes closed. Overpowered by the objects around her, she attempts to wrest their mysteries from them and to define her relation to them; even a toilet is explored as a new object. In an extraordinary scene, she props up the legs of a heavy sofa with some books, just enough to allow her to slip under it, and then systematically removes them to feel fully the growing weigh of the sofa upon her as she tries to extricate herself; the heavy, sado- masochistic sensuality of this scene is remarkable.
The most important -- and sensational -- scene of the film, almost 15 minutes long, involves a minutely detailed an seemingly "real" act of masturbation with a bicycle wheel. As the girl reclines on the sofa in mounting ecstasy, the wheel is first fondled, then pressed against her crotch, moistened by mucus transferred from her mouth to a handkerchief, and ever more rapidly rotated with one hand. The passionate union of this beautiful young woman with an inanimate object represents a simultaneous apotheosis of eroticism and alien- ation: her voluptuous exhaustion and playful toying with the wheel after her "lover" has left her without parallel.
The fact that Arakawa is a painter contributes to but does not explain the striking plasticity of the film, the palpable, opressive closeness of shapes, objects and visuals. The room, innocent in its simple, antiseptic modernity, imperceptively changes from environment into devourer; objects are transformed into myths and methaphors.
We see them, as does the protagonist, with an exceptional lucidity and profound tactile sensuality, and are riveted not by a conventional story but by a state of mind. The ritualized style reinforces the film's internal, hallucinatory intensity and the obsessive power of its images. [...]
Biography
Shusaku Arakawa is a Japanese artist. Born in Nagoya on July 6, 1936, he studied mathematics and medicine at University of Tokyo, and art at the Musashino Art University. Initially he worked with printmaking, using abstract and dada styles. He has lived in New York since 1961.
In 1962 he met his partner Madeline Gins, with whom he founded the Architectural Body Research Foundation. Together they have designed and built residences (Reversible Destiny Houses, Bioscleave House, Shidami Resource Recycling Model House) and parks (Site of Reversible Destiny-Yoro). He is the author of The Mechanism of Meaning (ISBN 0-8109-0667-8), and co-author, with Gins, of Architectural Body (ISBN 0-8173-1169-6). --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shusaku_Arakawa [Oct 2006]
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