This is my review from the January 2014 issue of Sight & Sound of Beth B’s documentary Exposed: Beyond Burlesque, about the NYC alt performance and burlesque scene. It features Bambi the Mermaid, Bunny Love, Dirty Martini, Julie Atlas Muz, Mat Fraser, Rose Wood, Tigger! and World Famous *BOB* and plays at the ICA until January 23.
More than a decade into its full-blooded revival, burlesque remains a contentious form of performance. Rooted in the act of getting naked in public, it defines empowering self-expression to its devotees and deluded self-exploitation to its detractors. Exposed is solidly in the pro camp, and quite the most convincing, indeed rousing, celebration of the form yet to find its way on screen – unsurprising, perhaps, given director Beth B’s history as a groundbreaking No Wave filmmaker and documentarian with strong roots in New York City.
Not – and this isn’t to detract from the film’s achievements – that the competition is very stiff. In cinematic terms, burlesque has generally been associated with skulduggery of various kinds. Lady of Burlesque (1943), based on a book by a pioneer of the form, Gypsy Rose Lee, starred Barbara Stanwyck as Dixie Daisy, an up-and- coming performer suspected of murdering her rivals; the gorgeously garish Showgirls (1995) and blandly patronising Burlesque (2010) revelled in bitchy rivalries and didn’t even feature burlesque proper; and Burlesque Assassins (2012), a likeably lo-fi WWII romp featuring current burlesque stars, suggested that stagecraft and tradecraft were more or less the same.
In reality, the contemporary burlesque and cabaret scenes are characterised by striking levels of cooperation, collaboration and mutual support. (Full disclosure: I’m personally familiar with the London and, to an extent, New York scene and am friendly with several of the performers featured here.) One of the most refreshing aspects of Exposed is its foregrounding of the supportive and progressive qualities of this kind of performance. It treats its subjects and their work respectfully and seriously, allowing their humour, intelligence and charisma to speak for themselves.
Unlike other recent documentaries about the form, such as Burlesque Undressed featuring Immodesty Blaize, Exposed evinces minimal interest in ‘cheesecake’, the classical form of burlesque rooted in conventional feminine glamour and epitomised by slinky lingerie and outsized feather fans. These performers are intensely political and acutely engaged in interrogating the social construction of gender and sexuality. Dirty Martini, perhaps the single most influential pioneer of the new wave of burlesque, found her way to the form after effectively being told she was too fat to be a dancer. Now she delivers routines such as her ‘Patriot Act’, in which she eats money and then pulls a string of dollar bills out of her ass to use as a dance ribbon. Julie Atlas Muz expresses incredulity at the continued cultural taboo about nudity (of which this film contains a lot), saying: “I want to take people back to the time before the fruit of knowledge was eaten in the Garden of Eden.”
Bunny Love, ostensibly a conventionally gendered woman, identified as a gay male in her teens before taking on a flamboyantly female persona in adulthood. “When I became a woman, I chose to be a woman,” she says. “I can put it on and fake you out but it’s so much more complicated than that.” Tigger!, the scene’s pre-eminent male performer, expresses his relief at working in a milieu where conventional masculinity is not a requirement: “It’s work to present yourself as a straight man! I’m delighted not to do that shit.” As a boy, Rose Wood wanted to be a rabbi; now, having had breast implants, she uses both her tits and her cock “to present my audience with an indelible picture of the body seen in another way”. Mat Fraser, born with short arms after his mother took thalidomide during pregnancy, joyfully exploits the expressive opportunities of his distinctive looks. Audiences “suddenly find that which they thought they were revolted by attractive”, he says. “I become more normal by highlighting my difference.”
The alchemical quality of live performance with no fourth wall can’t be captured on film but Exposed documents these acts with sensitivity, dynamism and the occasional frisson of audience exhilaration. With no narrative trajectory per se, the pace lags somewhat in the second half, but Exposed remains consistently engaging and provocative thanks to its subjects’ articulacy about their politics and performance, and their evident affection for themselves and each other.
Clips from the film:
