Pure Product

From Jimmy Olsen’s sex life to an animated wrestling match atop a cake, found footage of ‘The Waltons’ to a barely hinged Kennedy-era chanteuse, these dozen shorts from 1987 to 2003 present wildly fluctuating responses to consumerism, family and city life, shot through with a Cold War pop culture-saturated sensibility. A rich, heady spread served in two courses, it proves consistently provocative and amusing, if challenging to digest.
The first clutch, ‘No Place Like Home’, includes a witty amalgam of Hitchcock’s mothers and affecting pocket memoirs of childhood from Cordelia Swann (economical narration over New York street footage) and Matthias Muller (a Freud-meets-Lynch world of red velvet, wedding gowns and spilled milk). Queer animated pop art palimpsests stand out in the second collection, ‘Karaoke Culture’, from the transgressive desires of Lewis Klahr’s comic-book collage to Tarzan montages and robot filmmakers. In a less fantastic vein, George Kuchar gives us a running commentary on his attempts to get in touch with nature.