In “Rattles and Cherries,” one of many highlights in the Boca Museum’s inspiring exhibition of the performance-art videos of Shannon Plumb, the artist’s attempted soft-core exploitation film doesn’t go as planned. Clad in a nightie and a blonde bob wig, she reclines on a deco chair, attempting lascivious actions with fruit that inevitably fall flat—the dangling cherry that misses her meandering tongue, a banana that promptly falls apart after its protracted peeling, a watermelon that throws off her spatial balance.
All the while, her baby wails off-camera, distracting her from the most unsuccessful striptease ever, until she has no choice but to breast-feed the child on camera: the un-erotic anticlimax of a hilarious personification of the mother-whore paradigm.
Good-humored, self-effacing, and occasionally lacerating in her societal critiques, Plumb is an artist, provocateur and silent-film comedian who injects sly feminism into the deadpan avatars. She’s something like the love child of Buster Keaton and Gloria Steinam, with a dollop of Cindy Sherman and Chantal Akerman. She’s unafraid to look wild and silly onscreen, to make her travails the brunt of the joke. After all, in most of the videos in the Boca Museum’s “Shannon Plumb: What a Character” showcase, she fails at whatever task she tackles.
In “Maximus,” she tries to woo a stoic dog in a park with every matter of treat and chew toy, but the pooch remains disinterested in every overture. In “Madison and E. 24th Street,” she plays a businessman, with a three-piece suit, moustache and briefcase overstuffed with papers (her male characters recall Carrie Brownstein’s parodic men on “Portlandia”), who tries in vain to hail a cab before giving up. In the hilarious “Sunbather,” in which she superimposes herself in front of a placid park scene, even arranging a beach chair becomes an insurmountable hassle.
In Plumb’s films, even the most banal actions provide an opportunity for choreographed high jinks and saucy satire, and her longest videos in the exhibition prove that she can extend her imagination beyond five-minute sketches. “Paper Collection” is a brilliant send-up of fashion shows, with Plumb embodying the models, the photographers and the judges, none of whom can successfully apply gloves to their hands, let alone wear high couture with any degree of conviction. “Olympics Track and Field” similarly takes the pomp and circumstance out of another international tradition, Olympic sports. In this 18-minute series, Plumb dons wigs that are even more hideous, attempts to fire a faulty starter pistol, and heaves a shot-put ball that clearly weighs nothing.
Some viewers can accept Plumb’s work on their comedic face value, but the films are deeper than their surfaces suggest. For one, she’s a deceptive nostalgist. Even though most of these movies date from the 21st century, they’re shot on grainy Super 8 film that suggests long-lost films from Warhol’s Factory. Some of her black-and-white selections are shot with the epileptic flicker of a reduced shutter speed, so that they resemble the kind of private films that used to project from turn-of-the-century nickelodeons.
In “Tack or Musical Chairs,” she hand-draws a “chair” directly onto the celluloid in the manner of experimental film pioneer Stan Brakhage. Plumb’s movies take filmmaking back to year zero, and they can inspire even the most jaded creatives to ditch digital ease for more retrograde pleasures.
Moreover, Plumb’s shorts are important because feminist commentary usually underlines her outsized farces. In “Woman With a Fan,” she dons a burqa and contorts herself this way and that in front of a fan. In this poignant and hilarious snapshot in time, her character liberates herself from the oppressive heat of her sanctioned modesty garb. In “Mother,” she channels motherhood’s constant torrent of everyday labor by tidying up a house that becomes cluttered and askew the moment she’s finished.
I was especially fond of “High Wire Artist.” Plumb plays the titular circus entertainer, not only walking a suspended tightrope but doing it while jumping rope, balancing cocktail glasses and dodging obstructions—all in high heels! It’s perhaps her best metaphor for the impossible responsibilities and expectations of the modern woman.
“Shannon Plumb: What a Character” runs through Aug. 23 at Boca Raton Museum of Art, 501 Plaza Real, Boca Raton. Admission costs $10 seniors, $12 adults and free for students and children 12 and younger. Call 561/392-2500 or visit bocamuseum.org.
