F Words

Matt Brooken’s The Art of Pain is clearly a labor of love. Filmed on-site at the historic Landmark Century Centre Cinema, the film follows its neurotic (and occasionally sociopathic) characters across Chicago as they grapple with the eternal struggles of the human condition — life, art, love, and ninjas. The listless and uninspired painter Jack (Anders Erickson) coasts along in a relationship which has obviously lost its spark, occasionally working up enthusiasm for a creative project before quickly losing interest. Marcus (John LaFlamboy), a co-worker who also moonlights as a ninja, takes it upon himself to become Jack’s “muse”, inspiring him to create bold new works by stealing Jack’s girlfriend, destroying his relationship with his family, and committing random acts of violence.

The film is obviously low-budget (or, as LaFlamboy informed the audience, introducing the film at the Gene Siskel, “no-budget”) and the script could use some tweaking, but The Art of Pain is surprisingly ambitious in its scope. The film takes on the tropes of the horror and martial arts genres and turns them on their heads while managing to be mostly funny and sensitive to the characters as more than just one-dimensional stereotypes. At times, the humor delves into the realm of the utterly sophomoric, and the occasional joke falls flat, reminding the viewer that this is the work of nonprofessionals, but the really sophisticated moments shine. The film’s self-aware irony is subtle and takes some time to develop — the semi-autobiographical characters talk about creating lofty works of art rather than wasting their time on silly projects never carried through to completion, yet the project Brookens managed to complete is an absurd B-movie parody.

The Art of Pain is not bad at all considering the constraints the actors and director were under financially. Most of the acting is excellent, most of the dialogue on the mark, and the extremely cheesy special effects excusable. It’s not a film that could be mistaken for Hollywood fare, and certainly won’t be picked up by a major distributor any time soon. But there’s a value in that sense of ordinariness, and perhaps the knowledge that this film would never be seriously marketed to a mainstream audience allowed the cast and crew to take creative risks that would be immediately dismissed by a big production company. Overall, it’s an enjoyable film, and worth seeing if you can catch it touring your town.

-Julie Rodriguez

In 2007, Wafaa Bilal’s installation, Domestic Tension, elicited praise, criticism, sympathy, and confusion from virtual observers across the globe. Stationed in a room in Flat File Gallery, Bilal rigged a paintball gun to be remotely aimed and fired by visitors to his website. For a month, Bilal dodged the paintballs, living under the constant stress of not knowing where or when the gun would fire, in an effort to raise awareness for those who live in war zones and contend with the constant threat of real gunfire every day.

“Shoot an Iraqi,” Bilal’s memoirs and reflections on the installation, offers a poignant portrait of the life of a political refugee and a deeper insight into the highly personal nature of his politically-charged artistic practice. Passages describing his day-by-day experience in Domestic Tension are interspersed with personal reflections about his life in Iraq under Saddam’s oppressive regime. Bilal’s story serves as a reminder that freedom of artistic expression is not something to be taken for granted.

Understanding his life is crucial to really understanding the highly inflammatory nature of much of his work, such as the controversial Virtual Jihadi installation which was banned by the city of Troy, New York for “promoting terrorism.” Coming of age as a young artist in a society where painting the wrong images could result in one’s execution, Bilal’s controversial art is far from an indictment of American society — it is a celebration of the creative freedom legally afforded American artists, even when many may not approve.

“Shoot an Iraqi” is worth a read whether you are an artist or just an admirer, and also serves as compelling primer in trying to understand the current tensions in the Middle East from an engaging, first-person perspective.

-Julie Rodriguez

The Ministry of Social Affairs in Saudi Arabia has banned music, dancing, singing, and fashion shows at events held by women’s charitable organizations. Well, they add, they’ll let fashion shows happen if they don’t feature any live models (i.e. clothes are to be displayed only on mannequins.) And you thought we were hard on Calvin Klein! Read more about it here.

-Rachel Sima Harris

Advertising, like art, is always walking the thin line between what is edgy, sexually titillating content and what is illegal. Once again Calvin Klein has accidentally come down on the wrong side of that line. See the banned video here.

-Rachel Sima Harris

If it wasn’t such a weird concept I’d say the name was self-explanatory. The Brassage is a bra marketed with claims that it “massages” breasts thereby “promot[ing] circulation and the removal of toxins,” with implications that it could “help prevent breast cancer.” It doesn’t really massage as much as it just has a few padded lumps sewn into the side to “stimulate lymphatic flow” thus “flushing toxins away.”

Now if you’ve ever picked up a SkyMall catalog on an airplane or ventured into the Sharper Image you may be thinking- so what? A company is manufacturing a cute idea backed by shoddy “medical research” and whether the company believes in this product or not the buyer is ultimately to blame if they fall for the gadget. I once purchased a machine that purported to emit a high-pitched sound “only dogs can hear” that would end my yappy pups barking. It turns out it emitted a sound no one, dog nor person, could hear, so I lost my sixty bucks, learned my lesson and moved on. What’s more interesting, at least to me, is the treatment of Christina Erteszek, the woman who runs the apparel company that makes the bra in her ABC interview on the subject.

Her interview on the product is spliced together with an interview of a breast cancer survivor who angrily decries the exploitative nature of selling a product with a health claim it cannot necessarily substantiate. Towards the end of the interview the reporter pushes the issue of exploitation to the extent that Christina Erteszek practically tears up and walks out of the interview. I’m left wondering what this means.

Is ABC going to start going after anyone whose advertisements are predicated on fear or desire for wellbeing? Haven’t we accepted that all advertisement contains has some level of falsehood (i.e. perfume won’t make you sexy, Coke Zero doesn’t taste like regular Coke, your choice of alcoholic beverage won’t get you laid and I have yet to see one ABC special on how all those “barking solutions” machines pet stores sell don’t actually work). It’s all a big fat lie, right? Or is it a matter of the stakes of the thing being advertised?

-Rachel Sima Harris

The Three Cowboy Builders
www.shooflypublishing.com

Check Out the Book

This digital book, a retelling of the Three Little Pigs story, was recently rejected by the UK’s Bett award panel because it was deemed offensive to Muslims and builders. In this version of the story the pigs are builders and the wolf is a building inspector who blows down poorly constructed houses. The judges warned that the use of pigs “raises cultural issues,” and meant that they “could not recommend this product to the Muslim Community.” The judges also suggested the book might offend people in the building trade. Judges commented on stereotyping in the book, writing “Is it true that all builders are cowboys, builders get their work blown down, and builders are like pigs?”

-Rachel Sima Harris

A review of My Beautiful Mommy by Michael Salthauzer, M.D.

“A must have for any mother with young children considering plastic surgery,” proclaims the book’s website. (www.mybeautifulmommy.com) This children’s book follows a mother undergoing the “mommy make-over” (i.e., a tummy tuck and breast augmentation) and a nose job, as well as her young daughter’s perplexed experience of the process. It’s an understandably confusing process for the child. Why, she wonders, does her mom feel she needs cosmetic surgery when she’s “already the prettiest mommy in the whole wide world?” She’s actually got a lot of room for improvement, the book assures young children, although that’s “sweet of [her daughter] to say.” The fact of the matter is that mommy’s got a few irregularities that, by the end of book, are surgically corrected to reveal a more beautiful mommy who now looks exactly like a Barbie (Mom’s complete with midriff bearing tee shirt).

-Rachel Sima Harris

The Get-Your-Man-to-Marry-You Plan: Buying the Cow in the Age of Free Milk

By Lori Uscher-Pines

As the self-explanatory title suggests this book is a how-to guide intended for women attempting to manipulate their unsure romantic partners into marriage. And yes, the reigning metaphor of the book is that women are cows who must sell themselves. In the first chapter, “How This Cow Sold Herself,” Uscher-Pines details why marriage is wonderful (i.e., it guarantees “a date other than Ben and Jerry’s for Valentine’s Day”).

Uscher-Pines intends to allay readers concerns about the old-timey sometimes offensive agenda of the book by purporting that she “too worried that it was anti-feminist to want marriage so much and unromantic and manipulative,” but then thought, “Well, does feminism say that you should be powerless in your personal life?” Because she decides no, feminism does not say that, she’s in the clear.

In a promotional Youtube interview she describes a very “frustrating time” in her twenties when she and her friends stopped talking about important issues “like celebrity gossip” and began “focusing all of their energy on trying to get their boyfriends to marry them.” However, she doesn’t see it as frustrating because she and her friends had apparently lost all sense of their own goals, accomplishments, and development as people in their single goal to be validated by marriage. Instead it was frustrating mostly because it was so hard to convince their boyfriends.

- Rachel Sima Harris