Matthew Barney: The Cremaster Cycle (1994-2002)
I recently researched and watched clips of the
Cremaster Cycle. If you are still getting familiar with this installation art/film/transcendental
experience, it was created by visionary visual artist Matthew Blarney. It is a
visual experience that spans five films, four of which are an hour long, and
the final installment, Cremaster Cycle 3, is a three-hour film. The
film is named after the Cremaster muscle that raises and lowers the testes to
help regulate heat and protect sperm production. The film isn’t in
chronological order but can be viewed as a stand-alone. The movie’s order starts
at four, one, five, two, and three. It is an exciting film that explores
different stages of the male’s sexual maturity from conception to gestation and growing from a child to sexual maturity. It is a film
that explores themes of masculinity, and Blarney (2001) strives to show through
the characters that he plays that “violence is sublimated into form somehow” (Art
21).
I
found it interesting that Blarney strived to show violence as the driving central
force of his films. While I couldn’t watch all the films in their entirety,
there are a variety of clips and interviews with Matthew Blarney available for
viewing. Blarney (2001) stated in the interview “Consumption” that “A system
that has an internal object, Freudian narratives—consumer and producer,
violence, sexually driven, NFL films—these are the things I think about” (Art
21). I found that kind of typical for the contemporary American male. What I found
interesting was how Blarney presented these themes in his work that explored
the complexities of life, reproduction, and identity while presented with
conflict and violence. It is a cycle of death and rebirth through the male’s
sexual reproduction maturity. The thought I had throughout viewing and reading was
that Blarney was saying, “Who am I, and where did I come from?”. Each movie was
a cycle of the male reaching sexual maturity to begin the cycle again. Every
film is about sex, but the one I found the most divergent was the first film, which
was about sexual reproduction, but it was at a point of gestation where the sex
was formed but showed pure potential (Blarney, Cremaster.net). It is a musical
where the dancers dance at the Broncos stadium in Boise, Idaho, Blarney’s
hometown. The dancers resemble cells dividing, but the sex hasn’t been decided
yet. Is Blarney yearning for a simpler time of “pure potential” in film one,
while the rest of the films are more specifically related to the descension of
the testes?
Film three is a great film to explore themes of masculinity, with the testes fully descended and manhood being achieved. Blarney becomes the “apprentice” in the film to the “architect” while it is set in New York during the construction of the Chrysler building. It is the staging of a Freemason initiation, a Fraternal order of men. The construction of the building, which is phallic in nature, represents spiritual transcendence and growth into sexual maturity. There are scenes of the apprentice with cloth in his mouth, which made me think about something I read by Lisa Adams (2018) that stated:
Between four and twelve
months of age, children who are not autistic develop an attachment to a special
object, which he calls the “transitional object.”1 This can be anything from
the corner of a blanket—or an entire blanket, such as that of Linus in the
Peanuts comic strip—to a pacifier, a teddy bear, or a tattered rag.
Developmentally, the transitional object is later than the autoerotic
attachment to a part of the child’s own body—a thumb, a toe, a strand of hair,
and so forth (p 243).
I viewed that cloth as a metaphor for a transitional
object as he reached sexual maturity. Tying ribbons to his penis and attaching
it to the tower as it transforms into a maypole is a fertility symbol.
These
films explore the fear and anxiety of the transition into sexual maturity. The
descension of the testes is viewed as a destiny you can’t escape. This theme
is explored in the second film. All the movies are biological in nature. Blarney
explored his own experience of humanism through growing up and sexual maturity
and addressed his own feelings and thoughts on contemporary masculinity.
Films like these are engaging and interesting. I find the context interesting in how it has turned the male gaze upon itself and is viewing it with a magnifying glass. I think that contemporary masculinity is a complex thing. There are many different gender identities, and many associate with masculinity even if they don’t have a penis. The penis is a biological reproductive organ part of being a human, but masculinity is a societal conditioning. As I wrote in my prior blog about how butch lesbians are decolonizing masculinity and confronting ideologies of what are inherent male qualities vs. learned. I think it has become more inclusive, and discussions are being had to analyze what is and isn’t masculinity. Would viewing the Cremaster cycle films have the same viewing experience as a transgender male that wasn’t born with a penis but is masculine? I think masculinity is a fluid thing that transcends the penis.
References
Adams, L. S. (2018). The Methodologies of Art (2nd ed.). Taylor & Francis. https://tiffin-bookshelf.vitalsource.com/books/9780429974076
[Art in the
Twenty-First Century Season One]. (2001, September 28). Matthew Blarney in Consumption [Video]. Art 21.
https://art21.org/watch/art-in-the-twenty-first-century/s1/matthew-barney-in-consumption-segment/
Blarney, Matthew (n.d.). The Cremaster Cycle. Retrieved September 8, 2023, from http://cremaster.net/
Comments
Post a Comment