Andy Warhol - Trash (1970)
I just finished watching this epic of a film and came to roughly three conclusions:
1. Andy Warhol is gay
2. Andy Warhol is a hipster
3. I don't like Andy Warhol
Let me explain...
First, I love art and I love film, thus it is no surprise that I also have an affinity for "art films". The issue herein is that Trash which presents itself as an art film, seems to lack any kind of craft or artistry behind it and is rather built on upon Andy Warhol's ability to posture and fan his subject matter like a stylish and self-absorbed fashion model posing for a camera. This is all about cute, and I really despise cute.
Here is a real-world analogy. Imagine you are in college environment and you are doing your best to socialize with your equally gifted classmates, yet at every opportunity to engage in a passionate discussion, the other members of your class simply spout out cliched buzz words like "dialectic" while persisting to talk at you and each other - "at" being the key word here. The result is that no real knowledge or human experience is shared from one to another. The conversation instead boils down to "who can appear more educated and classy" rather than "how can we as people discuss a simple idea". If this scenario seems at all familiar to any of you, you know what I'm talking about....
...yeah THOSE guys.
Trash can be summed up as a lot of intense imagery and drama for the sake of an image and style. Unfortunately this image that Warhol seeks to display throughout the entire film is the utter shit-storm that is sex, drugs and rock n roll in the early 70s... well, minus the rock n roll. Almost every scene is taken up by either a) a social situation that goes horribly HORRIBLY wrong, b) drug use, c) incoherent rambling while during drug use, d) boobs c) the unusually attractive male lead stripping while under the influence of drugs. I understand that Warhol is trying to paint a portrait of the scuzzy side of America in the Vietnam era, but instead of representing the facets of this culture in all its frank and nuanced way, he resigns himself to over emphasize the negative, almost romanticizing his subject matter to the point of pornography.
The issue with the film as an art piece is that Andy Warhol seems more interested in getting off to the excessive and unfortunate events he portrays - almost fetishizing the drama - rather than show the nuances present in low-life American city culture.
To give a better example, take John Waters' Pink Flamingos, which is also excessive and an assault on good taste. While Pink Flamingo's is forcibly disturbing, it never comes off as masturbatory material for the director's sense of style, intellect, or ego. Waters seems more interested in showing the beauty in the ugly through the absurd, while at the same time purposely freaking his audience out. The inherent difference in these two approaches is that Waters is more optimistic and grounded in his attitude towards life, while Warhol seems rather pessimistic while holding a shallow view of human nature. Pink Flamingo's is a film that celebrates the absurd as a natural part of life, thus emphasizing the minuscule and the unremarkable - or even the lowly - as somehow on equal playing field with the grand and the sublime. Trash is a film about how fucked up people are and the kind of shit they do. Period. There is no sense of jest involved or clever irony working behind the scenes. It's all there. Yup, life is shit. The end.
To finalize, I find Warhol's attitude as an artist to be without substance. This is because his attitude towards life is so unfathomably nihilistic and shallow. He was the one, after all who decided that art could be an institution and jump-started the concept of mass-producing art, not for beauty but as statement. Today, as long as one can justify one's artwork with an existential and socially relevant essay, art could literally be anything. The fact of the matter though is that it is this viewpoint which is best exemplified in Trash. It's all one big statement. It's a pose. It's a posture. It's a myspace whore.
I just finished watching this epic of a film and came to roughly three conclusions:
1. Andy Warhol is gay
2. Andy Warhol is a hipster
3. I don't like Andy Warhol
Let me explain...
First, I love art and I love film, thus it is no surprise that I also have an affinity for "art films". The issue herein is that Trash which presents itself as an art film, seems to lack any kind of craft or artistry behind it and is rather built on upon Andy Warhol's ability to posture and fan his subject matter like a stylish and self-absorbed fashion model posing for a camera. This is all about cute, and I really despise cute.
Here is a real-world analogy. Imagine you are in college environment and you are doing your best to socialize with your equally gifted classmates, yet at every opportunity to engage in a passionate discussion, the other members of your class simply spout out cliched buzz words like "dialectic" while persisting to talk at you and each other - "at" being the key word here. The result is that no real knowledge or human experience is shared from one to another. The conversation instead boils down to "who can appear more educated and classy" rather than "how can we as people discuss a simple idea". If this scenario seems at all familiar to any of you, you know what I'm talking about....
...yeah THOSE guys.
Trash can be summed up as a lot of intense imagery and drama for the sake of an image and style. Unfortunately this image that Warhol seeks to display throughout the entire film is the utter shit-storm that is sex, drugs and rock n roll in the early 70s... well, minus the rock n roll. Almost every scene is taken up by either a) a social situation that goes horribly HORRIBLY wrong, b) drug use, c) incoherent rambling while during drug use, d) boobs c) the unusually attractive male lead stripping while under the influence of drugs. I understand that Warhol is trying to paint a portrait of the scuzzy side of America in the Vietnam era, but instead of representing the facets of this culture in all its frank and nuanced way, he resigns himself to over emphasize the negative, almost romanticizing his subject matter to the point of pornography.
The issue with the film as an art piece is that Andy Warhol seems more interested in getting off to the excessive and unfortunate events he portrays - almost fetishizing the drama - rather than show the nuances present in low-life American city culture.
To give a better example, take John Waters' Pink Flamingos, which is also excessive and an assault on good taste. While Pink Flamingo's is forcibly disturbing, it never comes off as masturbatory material for the director's sense of style, intellect, or ego. Waters seems more interested in showing the beauty in the ugly through the absurd, while at the same time purposely freaking his audience out. The inherent difference in these two approaches is that Waters is more optimistic and grounded in his attitude towards life, while Warhol seems rather pessimistic while holding a shallow view of human nature. Pink Flamingo's is a film that celebrates the absurd as a natural part of life, thus emphasizing the minuscule and the unremarkable - or even the lowly - as somehow on equal playing field with the grand and the sublime. Trash is a film about how fucked up people are and the kind of shit they do. Period. There is no sense of jest involved or clever irony working behind the scenes. It's all there. Yup, life is shit. The end.
To finalize, I find Warhol's attitude as an artist to be without substance. This is because his attitude towards life is so unfathomably nihilistic and shallow. He was the one, after all who decided that art could be an institution and jump-started the concept of mass-producing art, not for beauty but as statement. Today, as long as one can justify one's artwork with an existential and socially relevant essay, art could literally be anything. The fact of the matter though is that it is this viewpoint which is best exemplified in Trash. It's all one big statement. It's a pose. It's a posture. It's a myspace whore.
