Teen angle

ArtForum, Jan, 2004 by Bruce Hainley

Of course, what's telling is that it's Kathleen's demo, not Seth's, that we hear in the film, a woman's voice singing her rockin' heart out. De Beer proves herself enraptured by such difference and at a time when such issues, some would argue, are becoming obsolete, "merely" electronic (which would be when it's most crucial to think through the difference): She closes the video, crossing over and in between the teen male and female pleasures and burdens of living and dreaming, with a juxtaposition of some of the possible and historical outcomes of how each gender deals with the unbearable lightness of being and how the culture at large incorporates the dealings. Shorthand it by saying it's Charles Manson versus Sylvia Plath, but less sensational and more quotidian, homely. (I'm tempted to suggest some of the consequences could be allegorized in the move from D&D to video gaming: the imaginary constantly exteriorized--digital manipulations instantly more "productive" than throwing a twenty-sided die and waiting for the dungeon master's reading--leading somewhere not simply good.) With an obviously fake gun, Kip takes target practice in the air. De Beer cuts between him alone with his gun in his room and dummy figures seated in a classroom.

A clock ticks. Dried blood stains a windowsill. Gunfire. The dummies are shown blown away, piled in corners of the classroom. Cut to: Sean with a fake but pulsing pregnant stomach. Her voice-over: "You can't sit around forever waiting to be rescued because it's never going to happen. No person's ever going to save you, not ever ... . I keep all my secrets to myself." She gives a lit cigarette to her stuffed bear to drag on. She discusses the option of suicide but thinks that even if you kill yourself, you hang around, "watching everyone forget that you were ever alive." It all closes with Sean alone but not quite suicidal: "Personally, I'm not into it. But that's just me. I think I've always been pretty afraid of being alone."

The world's loss and confusion ensorcelled in girls and boys in rooms. Teenagers may prove the richest embodiments of "between" states or of sexual and psychic unruliness, but if you think their turmoil is any less real than adults', you'll miss the haunted beauty of it all. The film keeps cutting back to the outside of a nowhere little prop house. Rinky-dink music plays. It's the world's address, but no one's really at home.

Bruce Hainley on the Art of Sue de Beer

Bruce Hainley is a contributing editor of Artforum.