Karen Finley
Exhuming Jackie O.
Mon Feb 1 2010
Actors impersonating icons is an evergreen tradition (this season we’ve seen Roger Guenveur Smith as Frederick Douglass, Geraint Wyn Davies as Dylan Thomas, Jim Brochu as Zero Mostel and next up, Valerie Harper as Tallulah Bankhead). But Karen Finley’s The Jackie Look is no ordinary biodrama. In her new multimedia solo, the performance artist deconstructs one of the most famous women in U.S. history, as well as our obsession with her. Imagined as a present-day lecture given by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis at a Dallas photography school, the piece is a fictionalized take on the late First Lady, in which she ruminates on a variety of subjects, including her husband’s assassination, Michelle Obama and the burden of being one of the most photographed women of her era. We caught up with Finley before a tech rehearsal to chat about the show and her career.
You’ve portrayed other famous women—Martha Stewart and Liza Minnelli. What sparked your interest in Jackie?
Obama’s acceptance speech at Grant Park in Chicago. Looking at that park where the 1968 Democratic Convention happened—many people are too young to remember it, but I do—it was very violent. Afterward, the land was considered to be bad, tainted. Then Obama came out and started speaking, and its history changed. I was moved by that idea of transformation. I started thinking about all the pain in America’s history, how we’re defined by certain images and our emotional relationship to them. Jackie’s legacy is indicative of that. Since it’s supposed to be a lecture, my performance is emotional, but my body is covered. It’s more of a psychological exposure, a metaphor for the way we look at national narratives.
You were set to open last fall but delayed due to a venue’s sudden closure. Has the lapse of time led to script changes?
I’ll definitely talk about the end of the Kennedy era, now that Teddy’s seat was won by a Republican. And I want to include what happened in Haiti somehow. I’m working on that now.
You put the Zapruder film [of Kennedy’s shooting] in the context of today’s era of YouTube. Since practically anyone can capture a historic moment, do you think that affects the way we live?
Absolutely. Photos and video are very deep psychological tools. When we look at images of trauma over and over again, they become neutralized. We use them as vehicles of transference. In the piece, I show the Zapruder film and I also show the website of the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald allegedly shot JFK. It’s been turned into a museum where you can buy collectibles like a model of the car JFK was riding in. The tragedy’s been fetishized. It’s like what’s going to happen to the 9/11 museum. It’s going to be a shopping day!
It’s been two decades since the “NEA Four”: losing grants due to “decency” concerns. Are you still defined by that scandal, the way Jackie was defined by her tragedy?
No. My experience is very unique. Afterward, I didn’t have the same institutional access, so I had to make big changes in my career path. That was actually a very spiritual moment, coming to terms with that. I think our culture is very interested in looking back at these kinds of what-if situations. We want to put them on a grid. We want life to be like Lost: Look, there’s the hatch! One of my favorite lines in my show is, “Your comparing is my way of coping.” We’re always comparing everything, trying to go back to the past. The fact that I still get asked about the yams [which she famously smeared against her butt]...I guess I’ve become my own phenomenon, and for some people, I can never quite satisfy that expectation of the past. They have this desire to return to 1988 or 1990, and I can’t do that. [Laughs]
Do you think artists are being treated better these days?
Artists are still looked at as enemies of the state. Look at what happened to Steve Kurtz a couple of years ago. We need a real national endowment of the arts, true governmental support of artists, but all the money went to the banks.
The Jackie Look is playing at the Laurie Beechman Theatre.
