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A&E Briefs:
New TV, Art Show,
& Two Concerts

 

BY EUAN BEAR

Wonderfalls Worth Watching
There’s a new mid-season replacement
show to watch for on the Fox Network,
of all places, called Wonderfizlls. Set in
Niagara Falls, the show follows Jaye
Tyler (Caroline Dhavemas), a college
grad working in a tourist-gift shop.
Inanimate objects in the shapes of ani-
mals start talking to her and browbeating
her into taking specific actions, mostly
talking to designated people. It’s quirky
and weird and quite funny, and even my
ofien dour, cynical, TV-bashing partner
laughed out loud.

The family of origin comes in
for quite a send-up, too, as they (mom
Karen, dad Darrin, sister Sharon, and
brother Aaron — are we sensing a theme
here?) rather awkwardly attempt an inter-
vention, while Jaye is hibernating with
depression, after being passed, over for a
promotion. OITM got a preview of the
pilot because Jaye’s sister Sharon (played
by Katie Finneran) is a lesbian. In the I A
first episode, two or three people end‘up
with new love interests, including
Sharon, as a result ofJaye’s involvement
in their current crises.

It came across as a combina-
tion of Joan of Arcadia, Ms. Match, Twin
Falls, and Northern Exposure.

Art & Activism
There’s a space at UVM dedicated to art
with an inclusive message: the Center for
Cultural Pluralism, also home of the
LGBTQA Services office. Last month,
the Center hosted a “closing” reception
for Caitlin Daniel-McCarter’s show of
photograms and two video works.
Daniel-McCarter is president of Free to’
Be, a studentorganization. .,
Daiiiel-McCarter exhibited
“Identity,” a series of works meant to be
viewed from over the shoulder with a
mirror in hand. Combining drawn ‘
images, old fashioned typewriter-style
type, and handwritten words, the series
makes physically as well as cognitively
obvious the anxiety and sense of coming
from outsidelthe mainstream. Further, it
explores the idea of identity as a liability
in a bigoted world. The text briefly sum-
marizes two stories: that of Brandon

Teena, a transman raped and killed in the V

U.S., and Severa, a Tutsi raped by Hutu
men in Rwanda.

A self-portrait collage of
images the artist felt shaped her, a series

called “Coming Out,” and a photogram
series called “Grace and Deterioration,”
juxtaposing images of war and torture

next to American Eagle advertisements to"

signify “backwards progress,” rounded
out the ,exhibition’s artwork. '

Daniel-McCarter also showed
two videos she had made, the first called
“Lover,” the reenactment of a poem she
wrote. Arty and purposely out of focus, it
suggested a tryst between lovers enacting
the voice-over narration of the poem.

The second video, “Silent
War,” was an advocacy piece pushing
both participants and viewers to think
about rape. Talking heads (or parts there-
of: chin and lips, or nose and eyes) say
what rape is.to them, intercut with
images of war and torture, including the
famous Vietnam War-era image of a Viet
Cong shot by a South Vietnamese officer.
The point is explicit: rape is war against
women.

More disturbing is the ending,
in which Daniel-McCarter’s message is
that victims of rape never recover from
the trauma, that they are doomed to lead
mediocre lives of substance abuse and
psychic pain forever.

Daniel McCarter said she A
made the film in a “bizarre" film class
she shared with “800 frat boys.” She
characterized their films as “Are you
queer? I’m going to shoot you, queer!”
So perhaps the hopelessness of the mes-
sage is an understandable attempt to
shock an unreceptive audience into actual

' thought, feeling, and awareness of the

consequences ofa violent sexual act. The
video was the embodiment of Daniel-
McCarter’s credo that an and activism go
hand in hand.

Music on Memory Lane
Alix Dobkin played a house concert in
Burlington last month for two-dozen
women and a handful of kids, and it was
an up close and personal tour down
memory lane. Between songs from
Lavender Jane Loves Women (technically
the second overtly lesbian album pro-
duced in the U.S.) and later albums, the
“mother of women’s music” told stories
of breaking into the folk scene in the
Greenwich Village of the 605, then
moved on to the 70s (Lavender Jane
came out in 1973, Dobkin in 1972) and
80s.

Liza Cowan, the woman Alix

. came out with, was the concert’s host,

and Dobkin’s daughter Adrian, heard on
Lavender June in the kids’ song “Theirs
is a Little House," was present with her

 

 

infant son.

Dobkin looks like the grand-
mother she now is, and told lots ofgrand-
mothery jokes about death and dying,
some with her distinctly Jewish flavor.
But her voice instantly took us back 30
years to a time when simply declaring
out loud a woman‘sjoy in loving another
woman — much less performing in
women-only venues — was an intensely
radical act. It was surprising how few
members of Burlington’s “radical
women’s community” ofthat era were
there, and gratifying how many of the
audience were under 30.

Strong and Sweet

Sweet Honey in the Rock has been
singing everything from gospel to rabble: I
rousing feminist political and lesbian

love songs for 30 years. They made it
very clear in their November concert in
Burlington that they have no intention of
stopping now. ‘

They’re still flowing smoothly
with the deepest, richest harmonies l’ve
ever heard any five women produce. And
they’ve produced a show, Eveningsong,
that moves into the future with founder
Bernice Johnson Reagon’s daughter Toshi
and her rock band Big Lovely (including
guitarist Judith Casselberry, formerly of ‘
the duo Casselberry & DuPree).

The musical transformation
began with the a cappella quintet sitting
eight rows up in the audience, pouring
forth a pre-show repertoire oftheir
strongest songs of the past three decades,
as all around them, audience members .
sauntered in, chatting and finding their
seats, thinking itwas a “best of‘ cd play-
ing and meaning no disrespect.

The lush wall ofsound and
emotion went on for two hours, including
a long medley shaped into a primer on
the history of why residents of
Washington, DC, still have no right to
vote. African chant moved into rock Cit)’,
with Toshi Reagoii on electrified
acoustic, backed by drums, electric bass,
and two other guitars. The wall became 11
tower.

It was nothing short of emo-
tional and musical redemption, such
power as to make you want to follow
them anywhere. V

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