Theme Song starts off in a very leisurely, innocent way. Acconci's just having a smoke, talking to the viewer. His closeness makes the video very personal, but it's really pretty uncomfortable to be this close to him. His whispered words are very seductive, and yet his stream-of-concsiousness way of talking makes him very exposed. At some point I wondered if this was an impromptu performance, or whether he had carefully scripted it. Or whether he was drunk perhaps. But after a while, his insincerity is obvious and he seems like a creep, and the only interesting thing left is how many cigarrettes he had.
Vito Acconci sure knows how to make some disturbing videos. In Undertone, the audio is very unclear and low, so I had to turn the volume up to hear what he was saying. But then I immediately had to turn it down, because what he was saying was pretty disturbing. He's making the viewer a witness to his pathetic sounding fantasies, and it's very uncomfortable to watch this spectacle. The table creates a separation between the viewer and Acconci, but also gives the illusion that the viewer is sitting AT the table, across from Acconci. The trouble is, we cannot get up and leave. As he alternates between believing the existence/nonexistence of the girl, he expresses a schizophrenic self. Near the end of the video, I realized why it was uncomfortable to watch. The reason this video is disturbing is because Acconci causes a kind of perverse curiousity, a fascination with the abomination in the viewer. For the viewer, there is no way of telling whether there is or isn't a girl under the table touching him. But he makes us wonder.
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