Wait, Was Your Day Creepy- Free? Let Me Fix That
Everyone here knows about RealDolls, yes? Like eye-pain sites, you are not a proper Internet Citizen until you've been exposed to this idea. RealDolls are "the most realistic sex love doll in the world," a nearly uncontested title from what I hear. They're full-sized artificial people (and by people I of course mean women, although the site has a sideline in male figures and torsos of both genders.) Check out their testimonials if you want a sense of what the business is about: they're not shy about it, and neither are their clientele. "Which male or female celebrity would users like to see reproduced for sexual fun?" asks one customer, following that up with an invitation to be disgusted: "Just think, I could be pumping a likeness of Marilyn Monroe for a measley $5,000."
So - RealDolls. There's a pretty high level of creepiness there, but making fun of RealDolls is played out, so for what follows, that level of creepiness is going to be a baseline.
Savor that for a second.
Now: performance artist Amber Swanson went and got ahold of a (several thousands of dollars) RealDoll with a face that's a duplicate of her own and a body that's close. What happened next I think we call going to town. She proceeded to get a tattoo on her wrist reading "bully" in a typeface to match the one on the doll's wrist that says "prey," filmed re-enactments of rape scenes from cinema with herself in the role of aggressor and the doll in the role of victim with the difference that both Amber and her double were in the costume of the scene's original victim, and finally took the doll to Vegas and got married.
I think this is brilliant and part of why I think that is that oh shit that's creepy. Artistic reflection lets Swanson make a statement about RealDolls, roles, and sex symbolism that's damn compelling, and she does it basically by remix, by grabbing fragments of the culture and putting them in a new shape that illustrates her point. Provocative. I dig it.
h/t: I tumbled to this through Pandagon.
So - RealDolls. There's a pretty high level of creepiness there, but making fun of RealDolls is played out, so for what follows, that level of creepiness is going to be a baseline.
Savor that for a second.
Now: performance artist Amber Swanson went and got ahold of a (several thousands of dollars) RealDoll with a face that's a duplicate of her own and a body that's close. What happened next I think we call going to town. She proceeded to get a tattoo on her wrist reading "bully" in a typeface to match the one on the doll's wrist that says "prey," filmed re-enactments of rape scenes from cinema with herself in the role of aggressor and the doll in the role of victim with the difference that both Amber and her double were in the costume of the scene's original victim, and finally took the doll to Vegas and got married.
I think this is brilliant and part of why I think that is that oh shit that's creepy. Artistic reflection lets Swanson make a statement about RealDolls, roles, and sex symbolism that's damn compelling, and she does it basically by remix, by grabbing fragments of the culture and putting them in a new shape that illustrates her point. Provocative. I dig it.
h/t: I tumbled to this through Pandagon.