Response 4: Theme Song

While I was watching Vito Acconci’s Theme Song, my initial reaction was, “Wow, this guy’s really desperate.” He talks to the close-up camera screen as if it is another person who he is trying to get to join him. He tries hard to make a good impression by playing “romantic” music while smoking a cigarette and lying down, facing the camera. Perhaps he is trying to be seductive, but it seems like he’s doing whatever he can to draw in the viewer. He even admits: “I can’t see your face. I have no idea what your face looks like, “which means he doesn’t even care who he draws in with his attempts to be seductive. However, instead of successfully attracting the viewer, Acconci’s methods only seem to disgust and drive away the viewer.

As the video goes on, Acconci tries various methods to persuade the viewer to join him, but he only succeeds in making himself look like a creep. He starts off by saying he’s lonely and needs someone to keep him company, making him seem vulnerable. But then Acconci admits he isn’t really lonely, and says that he just “needs a body next to [his].” This portion really makes the artist look like a creep. He openly tells the viewer that an important relationship is definitely not going to happen, but he wants the viewer’s body next to his for the “now.” Acconci proceeds to writhe and twist in an attempt to attract the viewer. But instead of attraction, all I felt was digust. His tactics quickly move on to flattery, where he praises the viewer as an angel who is far above him. He says he’ll “wait as long as [he] has to” because the viewer is his fulfiller of dreams. And then his words: “I really do love you. I really would love you” really make the artist look desperate. It sounds like something a person would say in that final attempt to persuade someone to enter/continue a relationship. Acconci tries to appeal to the viewer’s “pale eyes” as he tries to convince the viewer to get “wrapped up” with him. This portion of Theme Song definitely gives the impression that all Acconci wants is to engage in sexual activity. And his final effort of persuasion was using guilt. The artist tells the viewer, who has apparently rejected his advances, that “we have nothing to remember anymore. Feeling good would have been easy with you. It would have been enough.” But it didn’t work. By the end of Theme Song, I saw Acconci as a selfish, disgusting creep who would try anything to get the viewer to come to him.