CARNE VALE
Andy Warhol understood that perfectly. His work as an artist revolved around cultural icons that are etched into our collective unconscious through sheer repetition. Even when those images are as trivial as a soup can or as frivolous as Marilyn Monroe, they become significant because they are massively disseminated. Warhol called his workshop in lower Manhattan the “factory,” cynically implying that he could mass-produce art the way our culture mass-produces its mythology.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
In Carne Vale an Andy Warhol-type figure named Andy presides over auditions for a project he is planning. Several actors perform skits and monologues in an effort to come up with material that Andy can use. Although Andy never addresses the group, his director–a nasty, hyperactive bully named Billy–constantly interrupts the proceedings to belittle, scold, and taunt the actors. During the opening skit, for example, the actors are trying to re-create a London street scene in 1665, the year of the plague. Some flop on the floor moaning, others stagger around yowling in misery. One woman is undergoing a treatment that involves getting her head dunked in a bucket of water until she’s almost drowned. Andy whispers in Billy’s ear, and Billy jumps up to announce that “Andy just wants to hear the moaning.” He keeps screaming, “More pain! Andy wants more pain.”
The other reason these actors endure such humiliation is their hope that they can become celebrities by attaching themselves to Andy’s fame. “Andy can make you or break you,” says Billy, and the group seems to live by that assertion. “I work in a restaurant waiting on important people, and I want to be one of those important people,” Armstrong admits. The actors seem to view celebrity as a form of surrogate self-esteem, and they are desperate to feel adequate–so desperate they even submit to a suicidal exercise in self-revelation that Billy devises.
