Short of the Week: Andy Warhol takes a crack at oral sex
Andy Warhol might be regarded as one of the pioneers of the pop art movement, but for film fans, he has a different significance. One of the most courageous experimental filmmakers in American history, Warhol facilitated the reconceptualisation of the cinematic medium as a space for subverting our normative understanding of the world.
Through his boundary-pushing projects, Warhol altered our traditional views of narrative. Some of his more popular cinematic works, such as Sleep or Empire, are extensive studies of fascinating subjects – a sleeping poet or the Empire State Building. Consisting of hours of footage, Warhol’s lengthier productions attempt to trace the world’s dynamism in real-time.
For this edition of Short of the Week, we have highlighted Warhol’s notorious 1964 silent film Blow Job. As the name suggests, this piece attempts to paint a radical portrait of sex and sexuality by featuring only the face of DeVeren Bookwalter. We witness his changing expressions as he receives oral sex from a partner outside the frame.
While we assume that there’s only one partner, Warhol famously claimed that oral sex was performed by “five beautiful boys”. In addition, the casting process was also arbitrary since Warhol described the lead actor as “a good-looking kid who happened to be hanging around the Factory that day.”
Blow Job becomes even more relevant within the context of modern society and the internet’s amplification of pornography. It is a powerful critique of the structures of porn where capitalist forces completely commodify the bodies within the frame. Warhol’s subject is defiantly human, expressing emotions ranging from boredom to self-awareness.
Claire Henry, the curator of the Warhol Film Program, reflected: “It’s the younger artists that were arguably more influenced by a film like Blow Job. Now that the films are out, I believe they are influencing younger artists in a way that hadn’t happened before. Within the age of the iPhone, we are influenced much more by video… I truly wish he would have lived to see the iPhone.”
Watch the film below.
