I'm not sure that "stage door", our live theater series, is the right place for a video installation but since it's only "live" in NYC, here goes...
If Snow White were a real Princess rather than a fictional one, you'd have to consider her corpse thoroughly exhumed by now. From the 75th anniversary of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) which we celebrated right here through the release of three new filmed incarnations of the princess (Snow White and the Huntsman, Mirror Mirror and, the best of them, Spain's silent feature Blancanieves) and even a Broadway show Vanya and Sonia and Sasha and Spike which uses her costume (on Sigourney Weaver) as plot device and laugh generator, Snow White just isn't getting any sleep these days. She must be exhausted. But sleep deprivation might just be preferrable to the nightmare she's experiencing on Park Avenue right about now...
Elyse Poppers as "White, Snow" and Paul McCarthy as "Walt Paul" in WS
Read on if you can handle NSFW riffs on fairy tales...
Snow White hasn't quite worked out cake-making yetSnow White's latest iteration is as the objectified, stripped, exploited and wholly owned property of a depraved Walt Disney type "Walt Paul" in the new video installation by the controversial performance artist Paul McCarthy. "WS" is now showing at the Armory (until August 4th) and the title stands for "White, Snow" the name the naive princess (played by Elyse Poppers in most segments) keeps repeating sadly while "Walt" (played by McCarthy himself) forces her into a binding contract. Immediately afterwards (in the next video segment) he repays her with a boom mic in her mouth which she fellates for about 17 minutes straight.
That's just a tiny portion of the 7 hours of disturbing footage filmed for the show which includes perverse use of household supplies (particularly food products), real full frontal urination and purposefully fake chocolate defecating, and all seven dwarves masturbating to Snow White's nude body while she sleeps. The grossest thing I saw -- that I honestly couldn't work out a "why" for aesthetically -- was a violent force-feeding (to death?) of Walt himself by the dwarves.
Though the exhibit is hardly as sexually hardcore as media coverage, the "adults only" tickets, and warning signs within the exhibit imply (at least the 100 minutes of it I saw), it is most certainly unsettling... mostly by way of the sick and sometimes sickly funny visuals (Think David Lynch only filthier and sloppier and you'll be somewhere in the right region if not zip code). What didn't work for me so well was the set which consists of the urposefully fake fairy tale forest -- propped up like a stage or film set -- but I didn't like that you always remained removed from it (fire codes I suppose) and the reconstructed suburban environment within it which the artist describes in his poem like so:
The Artificial Forest of "WS" inside The Armory
Outside the exterior of my childhood home
Within the interior of the artificial forest
In a smart twist as you peered in the multiple windows you could see other ticket buyers peering in too, making you all complicit together in the debauchery. But the personal and universal together with McCarthy's childhood home didn't resonate for me. It struck me as an expected or at least repetitive way to make this kind of brand commentary art personal...
Dopey post feeding frenzyor maybe that's because I saw a retrospective of the artists career several years ago with similarly x-rated filthy food, vomit, and chocolate stained sets which would give home visit social workers PTSD. I did however love the use of grammar school desks for seating in the viewing area, as if children should be watching this sort of depravity; I'm an adult and I'm not sure I should be watching it!
My single favorite bit was a darkly funny if obvious joke. In one segment Walt, finding Snow White happily making a bologna cheese sandwich on her own chest, proceeds to smother her entire face in processed cheese slices. Plaster-casts work better for holding shape but you really can't deny that the real Disney corporation found a way to mass produce through cheese.