Film Series | Doll Parts: Cultural Soup, Tourist Trap
Overview
Paul McCarthy, Cultural Soup, 6:55 min., 1987
David Schmoeller, Tourist Trap, 90 min., 1979
Paul McCarthy’s performance document Cultural Soup presents a familial nightmare in two parts; “the son begets the daddy and the daddy begets the son,” all by way of mayonnaise, dolls, and Astroturf. An early feature production from cult film icon Charles Band (Puppet Master, Subspecies), Tourist Trap is a bizarre slasher film, a deranged step-cousin to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, set in a doll-filled roadside attraction. Unlike Leatherface, however, the psychotic masked protagonist creates casts of his prey to create mannequins of their likeness. Aesthetically reflective of the abject turn in artist Cindy Sherman’s work with dolls and prostheses, Tourist Trap is a cult document of the late-1970s horror film boom, with a fantastic score to round out its off-kilter onscreen antics.
Tickets to Doll Parts include same-night access to the museum, including the Cindy Sherman: Imitation of Life special exhibition, before the film program.
About Doll Parts
The Broad's Doll Parts film series took place from June through September 2016 in conjunction with the Cindy Sherman: Imitation of Life exhibition. Tearing through underground and pop landscapes from Maya Deren to Hole, Doll Parts reframed the Cindy Sherman special exhibition as a moving-image feast of international films, artists’ tapes, and music videos. From fairy tales to horror, femme fatales to “office killers,” Doll Parts examined the iconography of Sherman’s photographic practice, showcasing influences, like minds, and apparent heirs to the artist’s evolving body of work. Outré artifice, feminist trailblazers, and plasticine appendages reign supreme.
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