Lie Back and Enjoy It
Identifier
F.2011-01-0280
Date Of Production
1982
Abstract
Lie Back and Enjoy It presents optically printed material from a porn film along with intertitles and a soundtrack that consists of an argument between a male Filmmaker and his Girlfriend. He thinks he has the “right” to film their life, and especially her, for his Art; she objects and argues that it is his sexist patriarchal assumptions that lead him to think this. “The film is endowed with remarkable structural and rhetorical lucidity. Everyone who watches movies with women in them ought to see it.” – Claudia Gorbman, Jump Cut no. 29, February 1984.
The audio track was improvised by JoAnn Elam and friend and fellow small gauge filmmaker Chuck Kleinhans. The dialogue was originally recorded for Kleinhans' film Shirley and Bruce, and was then re-cut for Lie Back and Enjoy It.
The audio track was improvised by JoAnn Elam and friend and fellow small gauge filmmaker Chuck Kleinhans. The dialogue was originally recorded for Kleinhans' film Shirley and Bruce, and was then re-cut for Lie Back and Enjoy It.
Description
"[…] An eight-minute dialectical film about the politics of representation. More specifically, it examines the politics of filmic representation of women under patriarchy. Its image track consists of technologically manipulated images of women, and some printed titles. […] This small inventory of shots is progressively more deformed and distorted. Elam does this by looping, flicker effects, reversing the image (L-R), including sprocket holes and frame lines, running the frames by in a blur (as if the film is slipping in the gate), high-contrast reprinting, superimpositions, and underexposure. All these devices render the image more and more difficult to read, and subsequently point up the image's materiality — its status as strips of printed celluloid which run through machines. The point here is that woman's image in commercial film — no matter, or because of, how much we psychically invest in it — is just that: an investment, a product, and a commodity which functions in a certain economy. Especially by using pornography footage, LIE BACK makes these connections most unequivocally: woman's body, on the screen, is something desired, reified, invaded, and paid for." – Claudia Gorbman, Jump Cut no. 29, February 1984.
Run Time
8 min 20 sec
Format
16mm
Extent
300 feet
Color
B&W
Sound
Optical
Reel/Tape Number
1/1
Has Been Digitized?
Yes
Language Of Materials
English
Element
Reversal Positive Print
Genre
Form
Subject
Related Collections
Related Places
Main Credits
Elam, JoAnn (is filmmaker)
Participants And Performers
Kleinhans, Chuck (is actor)
Elam, JoAnn (is actor)
Do you know more about this item?
If you have more information about this item please contact us at info@chicagofilmarchives.org.
