Larry Fessenden and Horror as Activism
Written by Gauntgirl, copyright 2002
When considering strategies for activist art, horror films don’t usually jump to mind. Generally, film in itself, is a prohibitive medium for making activist art (due largely to constraints of budget and distribution). However, the aspects of film that make it an unlikely venue for activist criticism are the same limitations under which the horror industry has flourished. In making mainstream cinema, the primary prohibitive issues of cost, quality, and distribution are most effectively negotiated by the genre industries. This target audience, while existing somewhat on the fringe of the commercial audience spectrum, is widespread and easily accessible as a community (through conventions, festivals, web sites and magazines). Also characteristic of the genre audience is an acceptance of low production quality, direct to video features, and experimentation. After all, these issues, which would normally sink a big budget Hollywood film, characterize precisely what the horror fan wants and expects. Eco-activist, guerrilla filmmaker, and self-professed horror fan Larry Fessenden has taken on the independent film and horror genre community through his production company Glass Eye Pix , and through his challenging film series The Trilogy of Horror.
Larry Fessenden began his film career in 1980 at the New York University where he found inspiration in their new video department. While at NYU, Fessenden wrote, produced, and performed in his own award winning public access TV program and shot his first independent feature. In 1985, shortly after leaving NYU, Fessenden took what he’d learned from the collaborative efforts of his college years and launched his independent production company Glass Eye Pix . However, for Fessenden and his film family, Glass Eye Pix has not been just about making films, it’s also about community, the environment, and personal truth. The philosophies of the Glass Eye Pix family are thus:
“That process and collaboration in filmmaking constitute a microcosm of life and socio-political interaction. To do good work in a collaborative process with fairness and finesse is an accomplishment and an end in itself. That movies don’t have to cost a lot. Resourcefulness breathes life into the process and the product and frees us from the tyranny of commercialism. Personal cinema is stimulating and exploitable if the audience is open, and the work truthful. Just as a work is comprised of an accumulation of choices, an artist is defined by a body of work. The choices of projects over time tell a thematic story about the artist’s point of view.”
In examining the films that Larry Fessenden has directed since starting Glass Eye Pix, it is clear that these philosophies are extremely important to him and that they play a major role in each of his productions.
In the beginning of Glass Eye Pix (GEP), Fessenden acted mainly as a producer and editor for several performance artists, non-profit groups, and independent filmmakers . Then, in 1991, Fessenden set out to shoot his first major feature film through GEP. The subject matter for his first major film is what has characterized Fessenden as both an activist and a horror filmmaker. No TellingThe Frankenstein Complex internationally, in the most basic terms, is a graphic film about the horrors of bizarre medical experiments that are routinely performed on animals. Fessenden sets up his movie both as a testament to his Eco-activist beliefs and as a response to the typical structure of Hollywood environmental cinema.
Throughout the 1990’s, Hollywood studios produced a number of big-budget, star-packed films with an environmental slant (from Fern Gully to Medicine Man to Bio-Dome). A common thread through many of these films is a characterization of the environment (or ‘nature’) as a passive, feminine construction or an innocent who needs to be saved by a hero. The complexity of environmental/economic issues are often simplified into an “us vs. them” scenario or the story is simply reduced to a ‘maiden in distress’ type of theme (where the environment is characterized as the maiden; faceless, masculine, big corporate business is the villain, and the ‘knight-in-shining-armour’ is characterized by Man’s desire for mastery over nature – i.e. the feminine) . Fessenden turns the Hollywood standard of enviro-films on its head. In No Telling, getting back to the farm (to nature) is not equated with a return to innocence, nor does he characterize the environment as passive. Rather, he explores the complexity of environmental issues through debate, facts, and honesty. The primary villain of No Telling is a research doctor who uses animals to test transplant procedures. Even though he can be interpreted as representing big corporate business (the Hollywood villain standard), he certainly isn’t faceless or necessarily evil. In fact, the film takes the viewer directly into his personal life by showing us his home, his fears and desires, and his resolve to help the world through medical experimentation. The film’s ‘knight-in-shining-armour’ takes the form of an environmental scientist who is trying to educate farmers on environmentally friendly farming practices. However, the film refrains from constructing ‘the hero’ as an all-powerful do-gooder. Rather, he experiences the frustrations, roadblocks, and set backs of any determined activist. As the ‘maiden’, the film’s natural settings are not characterized as passive and helpless. Rather, the environment seems to be fighting back against the farming traditions that have abused her. The farms that consist of the majority of the film’s settings emerge as death traps. We learn that from 25 years of farming with chemicals, the neighboring farmer is dying of cancer. And, in a gruesome discovery, we learn that the ground water is so full of poison that cows must be kept locked up in a barn lest they wander into the fields to eat the wild grass – a deadly meal. Abuse and death characterize even the surrounding forest where, in each one of the films’ forest scenes, there is an underlying soundtrack of a chainsaw. As for the animals, which are central to the film’s theme and horror, Fessenden continually reminds the viewer that they are not merely tools, they are friends and family. The cow, found dead from eating poisoned grass, wears a blue ribbon and a bell around its neck – placed there by the farmer’s daughter as a token of love. The border-collie trapped by the doctor protagonist for one of his experiments turns out to have been a hero – having saved a toddler from drowning. Even the animals eaten in the film’s many meal scenes remind us that they were once alive – the egg for breakfast has an undeveloped foetus within and the roast is shown oozing with blood.
Even though the film’s imagery is rich with meaning, the primary political discourses are really played out in the debate between the research doctor and the environmentalist. Again and again, the film returns to the idea that the reason why the public at large is so complacent about medical research practices is because they are ill informed. Through his character’s words and actions, Fessenden is critiquing the manner in which these experiments are performed behind closed doors, like a dirty secret. The argument on the side of the medical researcher is that people want medical break-throughs to happen quickly and inexpensively , despite what has to be done to get there. The argument on the side of the environmentalists is that the secrecy of medical research (compounded by media “newspeak”) is disempowering to the public and that we are left without any choices or alternatives in the matter (when in fact alternatives are plentiful). In the end, the film offers no resolution to the scientific “progress” Vs. environmental ethics debate, and the viewer is left to make her own decisions.
Despite the apparent concern that no one wants to hear about (or talk about) these animal rights and environment issues, No Telling received a relative amount of success internationally by way of film festivals and video distribution through Largo Entertainment. In North America, the film was denied a theatrical release and didn’t find video distribution until 1997. It did fairly well in the 1992 film festival circuit, however, winning best first feature at the Long Island Film Festival . In 1999, No Telling also had regular showings on the Independent Film channel (which is still more that PeTA has ever accomplished with their commercial campaign). None the less, in the history of the Independent Film channel, no film has received as many complaints as No Telling – particularly about the “sensational exaggeration” of the experiments performed in the film. Fessenden, however, maintains that his film is not fantasy and that all of the procedures portrayed in the film are based on the actual experiments uncovered in his research . This element of truth is the real horror of this film and, I believe, at the source of its impact and ability to disturb. This effect clearly removes No Telling from the ranks of studio horror films that aim to disturb the viewer through gore alone.
"Fessenden manages to avoid turning the drama into melodrama, and the occasional shock scenes of animal experimentation keeps the emphasis on the story rather than gore effects. That seriousness, however, forecloses this film as entry into the horror market.” – Daniel Kimmel, Variety
“Only when we are touched personally by environmental calamity does environmentalism become an issue to us. The horror then, is when the acceptable and the every-day turn against us. When what we have supported and believed in becomes abhorrent to us.” – Larry Fessenden
For Fessenden, categorizing his film as ‘horror’ is only in part a means to finding an audience, it also enables him to explore the everyday terror found in our own backyard – no holds barred.
Simultaneous to filming No Telling, Larry Fessenden also published the book Low Impact Filmmaking. This book acts as a guide for filmmakers on how to make environmentally responsible films and videos (through recycling and reusing, as well as through being conscious of ethical practices in filmmaking) and it uses No Telling as its real-life application model. Low Impact Filmmaking not only teaches filmmakers how to be frugal and more aware of the waste involved in filmmaking, it also teaches about the greater value of environmental and animal rights issues within a wide historical context. Moreover, Fessenden is stressing a mindset – that environmentalism is more than just recycling practices, it’s a value by which the film community should live up to (as should we all).
Again, I’ve come back around to Fessenden’s regard for community (in filmmaking) and moral value in his work (as outlined in Glass Eye Pix’ mission statement ). The activist nature of No Telling is not merely in its environmental context or in its deviation from film studio dictated standards, it also lies in Fessenden’s approach to filmmaking. Through Glass Eye Pix, he has turned filmmaking into a more collaborative process by fully immersing and involving his cast and crew into the activist discourse of his films. Particularly with No Telling (and the simultaneous publishing of Low Impact Filmmaking), Fessenden had set out to make as much of an environmental/activist impact on his cast and crew (and the independent film community at large) as he intended for his audience.
BibliographyFessenden, Larry. Low Impact Filmmaking: A Practical Guide to Environmentally Sound Film and Video Production. New York: Terre Verde, 1991.
Fessenden, Larry. Glass Eye Pix: fierce independent cinema since 1985. Glass Eye Pix, New York. www.glasseyepix.com/index.html. 1999
Hochman, Jhan. Green Cultural Studies. Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1998.
Ingram, David. Green Screen: Environmentalism and Hollywood Cinema. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000.
Kimmel, Daniel. No Telling. Variety, www.glasseyepix.com/html/prnt.html, 1992
Macaulay, Scott. Low Impact Filmmaking, Filmmaker Magazine, www.glasseyepix.com/html/prlo.html, 1992
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. United States. www.peta-online.org. 2002
