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EMBARRASSING MAYBE, artsy definitely, but I’m sorry, dancing around while lip-syncing is not scary. A host of Portland filmmakers, dancers, and performance artists (including Alicia McDaid, Tanya Smith, and Wendy Haynes) star in a program at the Works titled Terrifying Women, which might feature more than a little lip-syncing— curator Justen Harn describes it as “Vagina Monologues on nitrous oxide wearing strap-on penises.” But I want violence, domineering personalities, and disturbing pre-teen rage in my evening of hair-raising females. So in the spirit of the Time-Based Art Fest, let’s shine a speculum light on the esoteric nooks of cinema’s ladyparts-having humans for a brief list* of truly terrifying women. Vera Cosgrove, Dead Alive (1992) Long before director Peter Jackson explored the special love between two Hobbits, he pursued zestier relationships in the bloodtastic Dead Alive. Vera Cosgrove, an inhumanly overbearing mother, takes parental love to grotesque new levels when—after being zombified by a Sumatran rat-monkey bite—she stuffs her meek son back into her putrefied womb. Mrs. Bates has got nothing on the dog-eating Vera. Aughra, The Dark Crystal (1982) Never mind the stanky hippie Gelflings or the unholy shell-stripping Skeksis monsters in The Dark Crystal, Aughra used to scare the pee out of my peehole. She’s like the nightmare baby from an orgy with Miss Piggy, a ram, and Yoda. And don’t even get me started on the way she pops out her one eyeball like a pair of ocular dentures. Yuck! Madame Medusa, The Rescuers (1977) Trashy redhead Madame Medusa is a jet-ski-exhaust-polluting, orphan-stealing, alligator-wielding harpy—with none of the redeeming fashion sense of either Annie’s Miss Hannigan or 101 Dalmatians’ Cruella de Vil. The way she turns a gun on pigtailed orphan Penny and shoves her down a dank hole in search of a sparkly diamond is pretty damned coldhearted. I wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark bayou.
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Bringing Up Bucky
Totally Terrifying Women A Glut of Actually Scary Females from Cinema by Courtney Ferguson
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Sam Green and Yo La Tengo Collaborate on The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller by Matt Stangel
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and Stanford’s archives, Green sent short film clips of Fuller to HEN ACADEMY AWARD-nominated documenexperimental and indie music pioneers Yo La Tengo, along with tarian and experimental filmmaker Sam Green (The scratch audio culled from the band’s preexisting recordings. Weather Underground, Utopia in Four Movements) accepted After several meetings between Yo La Tengo and Green, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s commission to create score—to be performed live behind an assemblage of clips, still a live documentary about the life of R. Buckminster Fuller, he images, and Green’s narration—was completed. inherited an aspect of his subject’s legacy. Yo La Tengo songwriter, singer, and guitarist Ira Kaplan says Much of Fuller’s story and impact survives in the public he knew “very little” about Fuller before taking on the project. mind by way of the Buckyball and geodesic dome. The doNow he sees him as a figure who personifies an optiit-all inventor/architect/writer/social theorist operated mism lost. Kaplan references a recent Daily Show under self-generated “Dymaxion” principles—the interview that centered on the idea that humanterm combines “dynamic” and “maximum,” plus Sam ity is destroying itself with technology—a belief the action-implying suffix “-ion”—the foundaGreen & Fuller spent his life protesting. tion for which is that all humanity could live Yo La Tengo “I saw that there was nothing to stop me comfortably, but only if organized to a state from thinking about our total planet Earth of techno-terra harmony. The Love Song of R. and thinking realistically about how to operBut the aspect of Fuller’s legacy mirBuckminster Fuller ate it on an enduringly sustainable basis as rored by Green’s The Love Song dates to Washington High School, the magnificent human-passengered spacethe beginning of Bucky’s career, when he Wed Sept 12, 6:30 & ship that it is,” writes Fuller in his final manuwas a Harvard dropout living in New York 8:30 pm, $20-25 script, Guinea Pig B. City and writing a book about Albert Einstein’s “I am also a living case history of a thoroughly discovery of the theory of special relativity. Just documented, half-century, search-and-research projas Fuller immersed himself in Einstein’s personal paect designed to discover what, if anything, an unknown, monpers, teasing out the connection between lifestyle and aceyless individual, with a dependent wife and newborn child, complishment, so Green worked from details of Fuller’s life might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity that found in what is considered to be the polymathic genius’ could not be accomplished by great nations, great religions, or greatest project, the Dymaxion Chronofile. private enterprise, no matter how rich or powerfully armed,” he Archived at Stanford University, the Dymaxion Chronofile writes in the same text. consists of “every paper that passed over [Fuller’s] desk,” exHad we followed Fuller’s plan for the world, things could’ve plains Green. It is speculated to be the most complete history wound up looking an awful lot like a future-Stalinist monoscape of a single person’s life, containing updates made every 15 of pod houses and cities in the clouds—rad or not, you decide— minutes from 1920 through 1983. but the temperature might not be as high as it is today. After spending some time with the Dymaxion Chronofile
Rhoda Penmark, The Bad Seed (1956) Speaking of pigtailed tykes… Rhoda Penmark from The Bad Seed reinforces every instinct I’ve ever had to permanently seal up my uterus. Ten times creepier than the blonde Poltergeist tot, the clever sociopath Rhoda is willing to kill lots of meddlesome folks to get shiny trinkets. Like shoes. She will totally set your house on fire for a pair of Mary Janes. “GIVE ME MY SHOES!” Jaws, Jaws (1975) Okay, I’m about to blow your mind… Jaws was a lady! I’m sure you’re thinking, “No way, brah! That scary he-beast thought skinnydipping chicks were sexy, so he ate them.” Well, right you are about the shark’s snacking proclivities, but I submit for the court’s consideration: female great whites are bigger than males, and Jaws was huuuu-ge! And terrifying! Unlike that yuppie mommy shark who took her baby spawn on vacation to SeaWorld in Jaws 3.
Terrifying Women curated by Justen Harn Washington High School, Tues Sept 11, 10:30 pm, $5-7
DENNIS MAGNUM
* For sure, it’s a non-comprehensive list that blatantly ignores pop culture’s most obvious demon women—the ones who boil bunnies, wield clothes hangers, and masturbate with crucifixes.
August 30, 2012 Portland Mercury’s TBA Guide P7