I like Sadie Benning's style of video recording her voice in relation to the text that she had prepared to portray her thoughts and confusions about her place in society as a young lesbian girl. Especially since she made this in the 80s, it was still something "coming of age" and a concept that was just starting to be "accepted" and only begun to decipher and attempted to be understood. With this video, Benning shows the darkness, the scariness, the timidness of a young girl who has a life crisis of trying to figure out who she really is, according to the demographics of Unites States. The choppiness of the film, the background (and ironic) happy music, the static from the old style camera, the black and weight all create this sense of finally "coming out", slowly.
For a 16 year old girl, she took a risk at bringing up a subject that was so controversial, and still is to this day. I congratulate her for being strong enough to acknowledge the fact that she is different than the "normal" 16 year old, and put it on public display. This video is almost like a personal diary and it almost seems crazy for her to bring out her deep secret. I know that I really wouldn't want to publicize the intimate feelings I had at that age, but she is an artist and she wasn't scared to push the limits of the classical art and created her own mark.
I can't say I really found it aesthetically pleasing, or if I found it beautiful, but I respect the way she calmly expressed her sexual identity, while still making a great impact.
It's interesting how you addressed this as a "coming of age" project. It's interesting to wonder what it would be like to view this piece the year that it came out t=when the personal recorder was still new.
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