Cremaster 2 was produced fourth (out of five), meaning a notable uptick in technical precision and thematic complexity, far more than the joyous and (relatively) simple Cremaster 1. Clearly, madman Matthew Barney was maturing in his own cremastery, just as the films thematically show the progressive movement into manhood (all they really do is chronicle the descent of a scrotum, guys). But recourse to this pure biological info shall not be helpful in 2, even with whatever insights one gleaned from 1. When presented with the picture, or installation, without context or critical analysis, it is simply best to experience the effect, and let one’s further ideas of the piece develop through pre-linguistic means.
Other critics have compared this effect to Wagner or Tarkovsky. (Did I just call myself a critic?) For my part, it most reminds me of “Finnegans Wake.” Yup, I’m the sort of idiot who actually went and read that supposedly “English” “novel,” all 800 or however many pages of James Joyce’s own damn language no one’s ever really translated (such an act would be silly anyway). And really, why the hell put out something, be it a book or film, into such an incomprehensible format, unless that format itself can convey some importance. Otherwise it’s just a really complex mind game with no depth, like a crossword puzzle or Inception.
Now let’s try to figure it out!
Of course, like The Wake, some critics have made a very profitable game of providing codices to “answer” The Cycle’s cremaster plan. We’re talking 100 pounds of book you’re supposed to pore through before, during and after 7 hours spent inside someone else’s gonads. That’s all well and good, I guess, but seriously?
All is darkness, with a morphing, atonal soundtrack quite at odds with Cremaster 1 (still Jonathan Bepler). In fact, the whole mood drops the sterile for the gritty. There is much shadow, and a pervasive sense of dirt, oil and glacial water.
We open on a…thing. In extreme close up of the…thing, camera slowly pulling back. It kinda looks like a reproductive organ, and has the V-shape 1 ended with.
It is a cowboy saddle encrusted in diamonds, held upside down.
Into a dark room we find ourselves, the editing scheme never able to settle on one setting at once. A man and a woman, presumably a couple, sit before an older matron, the room increasingly resembling a bee hive.
The couple are Frank and Bessie Gilmore (Scott Ewalt and Lauren Pine), parents of Gary Gilmore, an important real life Mormon about whom this film concerns – even while it’s about the universal testicle. It’s so obvious, non-bolded text! Actual on screen dialogue says they’re names; you’re supposed to automatically recognize who they are!
The older woman leads the couple in a sort of séance, much sensual attention given to the joining of hands and bodies (and the disassembly of one very strange table). Then it’s a bunch of close-ups of honey bees and – Ah-hah! I knew it! Hive metaphors today! For as frankly sexual as this project is, at least Barney manages to avoid overt documentation of genital-AAAAAH! They’re having sex right there on the bees! Enjoy slow, melodious close-ups of sexual congress – in – and – out – in – and – out – in – and – out – Those are some good burgers, Walter. Why oh why does TRUE ART delight so in waggling penises at us (first Piranha 3D, now Cremaster 2)?
Also, did you see that the male dies following orgasm. Of course, I cannot blame you for neglecting to point out the extreme body horror as his penis swells mightily and cums bees and honey.
Then, for no reason, a pair of Canadian Mounties in an empty, dank airplane hangar bind a (hive-like) corset to an elderly man (Norman Mailer of all people).
Norman Mailer wrote the 1980 Pulitzer Prize winning novel “The Executioner’s Song.” Honestly, I’m surprised you don’t recognize this extremely obvious, not-at-all privileged knowledge about an event and book that happened before your birth. All you can do is reference Piranha 3D!
A man is on the drums, pounding out a beat to replicate the persistent humming of the bees. Over in the recording booth, another man croons his lovely heavy metal ballad, bees covering as much of his upper body as is apoideally possible.
You missed out on some fun stuff here. The drummer is Dave Lombardo, formerly of Slayer, and the vocalist is Steve Tucker of Morbid Angel. Together, they are supposed to stand for Johnny Cash (really, read the credits), who reportedly called up Gary Gilmore on the night of his execution to assu– But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Things eventually move to a grimy old gas station, out in some godforsaken wasteland (it’s Utah – hmm, the beehive state!). Barney’s camera persists endlessly in slowly considering each scene from every angle, lending Cremaster 2 its slow and hypnotic pace. An attendant is there, working his dipstick and fuel nozzle in and out and in and out and gee wasn’t it lucky you chose to make a series about sex, the easiest thing in the world to make metaphors about? Actually, there are two cars there, conjoined like, say, two embryonic gonads, by, like, a gigantic corset or a beehive deallie.
The conjoined cars represent a yearning for sexual oneness. But really, toss a stone in a modern art gallery, and you’d destroy a piece that means the same thing.
Inside the other car is a bearded freak (it’s Barney himself). His interior is all parts womb, hive and 1966 Mustang. After a very, very long while of exploring this vague, indescribable space from every position, the freak, um…he pulls some strings from the corset-hive’s walls and, er, makes two loops and joins them with a string. It makes fuckol sense, really (though it’s vaguely sexual, natch). Really, the thing most resembles a flux capacitor.
That “freak” is our hero, Gary Gilmore, Mormon son of the honey-cumming man above. Indeed his automotive repair is sexual, re: the aforementioned oneness, resembling Gilmore’s lust for Nicole Baker, who is never even indirectly mentioned in Cremaster. That attendant, by the way, is Max Jenson. If you knew your incredibly specific and unimportant history, you’d know what’s coming next.
Max comes around and – Gah! The freak – sorry, Gary Gilmore (thanks, Mr. Bold) – removes his pants to expose his flaccid little dingly-dangly. Then, thankfully, he dons new clothes, emerges from the car with a pistol, robs Max blind, and shoots him twice in the head in the gas station restroom. The camera lingers on the corpse for a bit, finally revealing a Goodyear banner in the window – Hey, that was a completely unforced callback!
What Barney doesn’t portray is Gilmore’s subsequent murder of a motel clerk in Provo the following evening. These acts of violence represent the next descent of the cremaster muscle, as manhood tries to distinguish itself…or whatever.
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir sings something that sounds like Ligeti or Penderecki – combine that with a certain slit-scan imagery from before, and I cannot help but assume references to 2001. It’s unlikely, of course, because Jeebus forbid Barney’s mighty Cremaster Cycle cite something as lowly as a classic mainstream movie (pshaw, peons!), only…It’s about the embryo. Star child quotations aren’t that outrageous, right?!
Actually, it’s a reference to this dream Barney had one time, and never told anyone about. This is the minimum level of acceptable obscurity for quotations in TRUE ART. Never forget, the Artist is God, and you diminish his wholeness by your sheer chutzpah in watching the ART.
Okay, geez, sorry!
Would you just get on with it?
Okay, fine…So I guess the Choir is, like, the judgment of Gilmore, or something. (Right, moron!) This conveys, um…Gilmore’s refusal to appeal his case in favor of execution, in order to satisfy his own misinterpretations of Mormon faith – See, Bold, I can look things up on Google too!
I hate you.
Hovering over the flooded Bonneville Salt Flats, the camera discovers a salt arena – shades of the field emblem and Bronco Stadium. A mounted cavalry arrives on horseback, as they describe the same patterns inside the arena that the chorus girls did in Cremaster 1. This ain’t that hard. (That’s what she said.) Knock it off!...So, more literal footage shows Gilmore led by prison guards to his execution. Then Gilmore appears in the salt arena in prison-striped cowboy getup, as the cavalry sets to execute him – by Brahma bull bucking! Cool! If only the death penalty was really like this! Gilmore bucks, as soon enough both he and the bull give up their life essence and collapse dead in arena’s center. They are surrounded by delicious buffalo.
This movie’s full of bull – I…Okay, I can’t B.S. this. It’s just cool imagery. Though…okay, I guess there’s some Mormon symbolism going on in there, what with the lost tribes of Israel and whatnot.
From here on out, frequent, under-edited footage of the Canadian wilderness interrupts us. It’s pretty and all, most pleasant, like Werner Herzog’s Lessons of Darkness, but it does go on.
It’s nature offering silent judgment (and comical reaction shot) to Gilmore’s deeds. And really, you now think your Herzog references are enough? Puh-lease.
We’re in a golden ballroom, hexagonally shaped, with gold, hexagonal-shaped studs all over a sculptural saddle in the center – Hah! Bees again! Bees bees bees bees bees!
Ah, but you completely missed out on the country-western couple doing the two-step. See, the two-step is clearly and unmistakably metaphorical for regression, the desire to loop backwards and escape one’s own destiny, as Gilmore himself wishes to do. This appears in cinematic terms by the overall narrative moving from the 20th to 19th century, and even in the minute editing scheme, which employs a “two-step” of its own to transition scenes.
Okay, the movie’s really starting to drift…glacial drift. Along with increasing glacier footage, we creep through a dank, under lit cabin as stuffed Canadian animals stare directly into my soul! A sign, actual text to help the idiotic viewer (me) informs that this is the 1893 Columbian Exposition. (That should’ve already been overly obvious, you uneducated dunce. What else could soul-staring bears represent?) The sign also informs us of Harry Houdini’s special metamorphosis act – okay, that’s some tangible evidence, not reliant upon knowing forgotten 1970s Utah history! Really, there’s engaging in the history-long art dialogue, and there’s obscurity for its own sake.
In honesty, let’s take it easy with the complaints. This is a substantial work of visual imagination, with a message so complex it couldn’t be told in any other way.
A 19th century woman creeps through the airplane hangar, a pug on a leash, herself corseted up to a ridiculously fatal degree (as thin as my arm!). It’s clearly 1893 now, which is why there are so many modern vehicles unidentifiable under a myriad of sheets.
Okay, I don’t get this either.
Meanwhile, Norman Mailer has emerged from his corset closet cage, employing a technique previously used by Gilmore in his car – with exceptional usage of sexual, sexual goo. Sex sex sex.
Mailer is successful in de-gooifying himself in a way Gilmore never could. Hence he finds a way beyond his present state, which Gilmore is unable to do without regressing to the past. Referring back to the scene of Gilmore’s conception, he is but a mere shadow of his father.
Mailer greets the woman, as actual explanatory dialogue occurs (because Barney realized just how otherwise impenetrable this whole entry was). The woman is Baby Fay la Foe (Anonymous – knowing these casts, it’s probably her real name), which means nothing to me. Mailer is Harry Houdini, so…Okay, I really ought to have gotten that one sooner. La Foe explains she is the queen, and Houdini is a drone (bees, baby, bees!). She asks Houdini of his metamorphosis, a mere stage act, and if he fancies to accomplish true change.
Baby Fay la Foe was a crazy spiritualist beast of a woman, who claimed to have seduced Harry Houdini (his true metamorphosis). Frank Gilmore was the fruit of this supposed union. Thus, there is every chance Harry Houdini was Gary Gilmore’s grandfather, which is the sort of knowledge which should be swimming about your head already. Also, the Columbian Exposition took place in Chicago, NOT the most inaccessible parts of Canada.
The penultimate shot is the most beautiful and poetic. We hurtle directly above Canada, mere feet from the dry, cold earth. Soon water becomes apparent, then a rushing river, as we move upstream. The river multiplies in power, until we are instead at a massive glacier, even the frozen waves showing different shapes the further we move. At least we plunge into an ice cave, and to darkness.
This glacier in Canada is what feeds the Salt Flats in Utah – as Houdini’s seed led to Gilmore. By progressing backwards from salt to ice, we follow the linear narrative path of Cremaster 2 into a more ancient oneness – a chemical metamorphosis. By the way, SEX and BEES.
Really, the act of writing about Cremaster 2 almost forces one to try considering the point behind it, which I maintain is not necessary to enjoying the pure flowing visual splendor. This is the problem with purely experiential media, and why I think Cremaster omnibuses are such a silly notion. But for this one, at least, I can offer at least some further advice, in the form of a web link where one can see the piece. And as ART’s function is to be watched (and Cremaster surely ain’t a commercial entity), I see no problem in you going out and familiarizing yourself with the strangeness.
Related posts:
• No. 2 Cremaster 1 (1996)
• No. 5 Cremaster 3 (2002)
• No. 1 Cremaster 4 (1995)
• No. 3 Cremaster 5 (1997)
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