Cremaster is a medical name for the muscles that raise and lower the testicles,
depending on the temperature.
We have undescended testicles (semennik), which, in the course of fetal (plod) growth,
eventually drop, but not before the fetus swims in a presumably blissful sea
of gender ambivalence.
We have Celtic legends and chorines and tests of physical strength (mostly for Mr. Barney
himself, as his own star)
and Harry Houdini and Gary Gilmore and Mormon and Masonic signs and rituals.
letting the imagery captivate you on its own, preverbal terms
4
the tap-dancing man-beast and androgynous “Faeries” and motorcycle racers with what
Ms. Spector calls “gelatinous gonadal forms” oozing from their pockets in “4”
—
In “Cremaster 4,” the earlier of the two, the artist plays a redheaded satyr
in a white suit who is slavishly attended by three androgynous “faeries” as he
tap-dances around a hole at the end of a pier, eventually slipping through it
into the water. From under the sea, he makes his way back to the land through
a white viscous tunnel made of a mysterious substance that suggests paste,
sperm and blubbery animal innards.
–
The scenes of his descent and re-emergence are intercut with a contest on the
Isle of Man between two racing-car teams speeding in opposite directions around
the island. When one of the cars stops for a tire change, the faeries futilely
attempt to replace an ordinary tire with one equipped with testicles. The final
image is an enigmatic logo viewed through a pair of spread legs while bagpipes
play on the soundtrack.
—
“Cremaster 4” suggests sperm frantically competing to fertilize a female egg,
1
sleek (ulizana) elegance of the dirigible stewardesses in “1”
—
On each of two nearly identical Goodyear blimps, four female flight attendants
monitor a table whose centerpiece is a bunch of grapes (green on one
aircraft, red on the other) that surround a vaguely phallic sculpture.
Underneath each table a weirdly angelic woman surreptitiously pulls the grapes
through a hole in the table and arranges them into pretty formations.
–
Meanwhile, on the ground below, an elaborate ceremony unfolds across a football
field covered with bright blue Astroturf. As a bland beauty-pageant musical
theme is repeated over and over, a corps of smiling air hostesses attired in
double hoop skirts (designed by Isaac Mizrahi) and holding blue balloons repeat
the same formations arranged by the woman under the tables, in choreography
worthy of an Esther Williams extravaganza. At the end of the film, the woman
under the table magically appears on the field and skips across the Astroturf,
pulling the two blimps on ropes behind her.
—
the egg and its welcoming committee: the yang and yin of the biological equation
5
the Budapest Opera House and dappled Asian water sprites and the amazing image of
Mr. Barney’s descended testicles attached to ribbons borne by fluttering doves, from “5.”
2
the dazzling desert and ice landscapes and bizarre Gary Gilmore enactments (although
as an actor Norman Mailer is no Richard Serra) in “2”
3
the Houdini zombie and demolition derby, the racetrack of rotting horses,
the Chrysler Building and the Guggenheim itself, the dueling Celtic giants and
the extraordinary Aimee Mullins as the Cheetah Woman, all in “3”;
Richard Serra, playing Hirma Biff or the evil Architect in “3” as an Oedipal father figure