Cremaster 2

The second instalment of the pentalogy is rendered as a murky, “gothic” Western that introduces conflict into the system. Barney continues to pursue the motif of creation emblematically: at the biological level the film corresponds to the phase of foetal development during which sexual division begins. In Matthew Barney’s abstraction of this process, the system resists partition and tries to remain in the state of equilibrium imagined in Cremaster 1. The narrative journeys through time: moving from 1977, when the murderer Gary Gilmore (played by Barney himself) was executed, to 1893, when magician Harry Houdini performed at a huge American exhibition. The film is structured around three themes: the landscape as witness, the story of Gilmore, and the life of bees. Here the bees metaphorically  represent the potential of backwards motion – escape from one’s destiny. Houdini is played by the writer Norman Mailer (the actual biographer of the condemned Gilmore). Both Gilmore’s kinship to Houdini and his correlation with the male bee are established in the beginning of the film: Houdini’s spirit is summoned and Gilmore’s father expires after fertilizing his wife. Gilmore killed for a girl: here the relationship is represented by their two conjoined cars: white and blue 1966 Mustangs. Among other hidden meanings there is a play on the word drone, in the sense of a male bee, a freeloader, and the musical sense as well: which is why Dave Lombardo, ex-drummer of the group Slayer, plays a solo to the buzzing of the bees in the recording studio. The musical motifs here are not coincidental: Johnny Cash is said to have called Gilmore on the night of his execution in response to the convict´s dying wish.