Affliction (1996)

User Rating:

7.2/10   

Director:

Mark Hejnar

Genre:

Documentary | Short

Plot:

This 45 minute documentary by Mark Hejnar is a sort of Whitman's Sampler of sickness, chronicling such wildly diverse and extreme personalities as G.G...

Plot Keywords:

Human Dart Board | Self Mutilation | Blasphemy | Compilation | Uzi

Cast

GG Allin	...	Himself (archive footage)
Mike Diana	...	Himself
Full Force Frank	...	Himself
Annie Sprinkle	...	Herself

Runtime:

45 min (uncut version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Self-destructive cinema at the margins

A scorching, forty-five minute modern mondo with an intense, breakneck focus on self-abuse and sexual and moral deviancy within underground performance art and culture. Live footage of the performances of G G Allin, interviews with banned-from-drawing comic book artist Mike Diana, and a vitriolic ode to mass slaughter courtesy of the masked Full Force Frank, are amongst the film's more noticeable moments.

Mark Hejnar's film successfully recalls the mondo format in its fascination with cultures that deviate from the everyday, and its assumption that this interest will be instinctively shared by the audience. Indeed, a title-card which introduces startling (for the uninitiated, at least) footage of G G Allin defecating on stage and anally masturbating with a banana alludes to this, the title reading 'What You All Came To See.' Mainstream culture may be appalled, but Hejnar nevertheless appears to be goading it into admitting the presence of a grisly fascination. This is often shocking stuff, for sure, yet frequently with an intentional sense of absurdist humour (Diana struggling to make himself vomit, on demand, over a crucifix) that allows greater access into this patchwork of controlled chaos.