Matt Marello, Sitcoms (installation view, "Shout Outs," Rice University Art Gallery, 1999), mixed media, video, dimensions variable.
These tapes are funny and sad, smart and stupid - they're complex in their simplicity. I could go on but you probably feel like the Beverly Hillbilly, Granny, when she says to Sartre, "I've heard more than I can swallow now - I've got pig's knuckles on the stove." It's good to be a grand enfant.
© Dike Blair (New York, 1997)
The French are fond of describing Americans as les grands enfants (the big children). It pains Europeans to see us run around their capitals in sneakers and T-shirts, licking ice cream cones and talking too loud. What may be even more painful for them is that America is heir to their intellectual legacy - we're the beneficiaries of the thinking of Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, Hegel and Sartre. Imagine their chagrin as they watched us put our legacy to use by creating TV sitcoms peopled by the likes of Herman Munster and Gilligan. But, dopey though they may be, American 60's TV sitcoms captured the texture and spirit of America and are part of our legacy to civilization. They're testaments to American imagination, ingenuity and egalitarianism - they're also examples of how consumerism corrupts noble ideas and they're the distillate of the strongest mass opiate ever invented - TV. Such is the humor, horror and absurdity of Matt Marello's Sitcoms. Sitcoms is also about the rupture between literacy and post-literacy, education and entertainment, and the failure of dialectics. And they are about artistic vision and ambition.
A funny thing happens while watching Sitcoms; you pay attention to the sitcom character - not what comes out of their mouths, but how tragically iconic they are. Jed Clampett is a post-literate Gatsby. The Munsters could be cast in a Beckett play. Inversely, the towering philosopher becomes the buffoon. This is no disrespect toward Philosophy or elevation of Hollywood because there is no understanding or communication between the cultures. There is only the tragedy of no common ground, no dialectic, and no reason.
Sitcoms use the same basic technology and a similar spirit that gave us Zelig and Forest Gump - but rather than pursuing the technical seamlessness of those films, Marello's homemade special effects create their own content by rupturing TV's reality. Behind the mock seriousness and the horseplay, behind the all-knowing laugh track, is the artist. Sitcoms reveal a process and a desire of an artist who wants to insert himself into the TV. Marello wants the fantasy and the escape of these black and white worlds. He wants the respect given a philosopher and he wants the power of access to the culture held by sitcoms and their stars. He may even want his art to be the dialectical synthesis of the old and the new worlds...but wait, I think I hear a laugh track.
A funny thing happens while watching Sitcoms; you pay attention to the sitcom character - not what comes out of their mouths, but how tragically iconic they are. Jed Clampett is a post-literate Gatsby. The Munsters could be cast in a Beckett play. Inversely, the towering philosopher becomes the buffoon. This is no disrespect toward Philosophy or elevation of Hollywood because there is no understanding or communication between the cultures. There is only the tragedy of no common ground, no dialectic, and no reason.
Sitcoms use the same basic technology and a similar spirit that gave us Zelig and Forest Gump - but rather than pursuing the technical seamlessness of those films, Marello's homemade special effects create their own content by rupturing TV's reality. Behind the mock seriousness and the horseplay, behind the all-knowing laugh track, is the artist. Sitcoms reveal a process and a desire of an artist who wants to insert himself into the TV. Marello wants the fantasy and the escape of these black and white worlds. He wants the respect given a philosopher and he wants the power of access to the culture held by sitcoms and their stars. He may even want his art to be the dialectical synthesis of the old and the new worlds...but wait, I think I hear a laugh track.
These tapes are funny and sad, smart and stupid - they're complex in their simplicity. I could go on but you probably feel like the Beverly Hillbilly, Granny, when she says to Sartre, "I've heard more than I can swallow now - I've got pig's knuckles on the stove." It's good to be a grand enfant.
© Dike Blair (New York, 1997)
Matt Marello, The Beverly Hillbillies With Guest Star Jean Paul Sartre,
video, 02:27.
Matt Marello, Bewitched With Guest Star Georg Hegel,
video, 03:02.
Matt Marello, The Munsters With Guest Star Immanuel Kant,
video, 02:49.
Matt Marello, Hogan's Heroes With Guest Star Fredrich Nietzche,
video, 02:49.
Matt Marello, Gilligan's Island With Guest Star René Descarte,
video, 02:49.
