Cinema of the Deranged

Remember the part in the 1993 comedy/romance film Groundhog Day when a jaded Phil Connors, futilely stuck in an endless loop wherein he relives a single February day in a small Pennsylvania town, watches on as a hulking, bloodthirsty Punxsutawney Phil rips Ned Ryerson in half at the torso while the alien from Alien snarls in his ear? I don’t. But when I saw C.A. Wisely’s bloody and stylistic painting of Groundhog Day at the Charles Allis Art Museum, one painting of hundreds in the Deadly Prey exhibition of movie posters by Ghanaian artists, I admitted to myself that, had this poster been displayed outside a theater, I would probably catch a screening out of curiosity alone. Certainly this very scene would be hard to witness an infinite number of times, but Bill Murray manages to fix a deadpan gaze upon the gruesome sight, unfazed likewise by an explosion of doomsday proportion in the night sky above his head. I can’t even say this was the wildest poster I saw on May 31 for the one-night exhibition in Milwaukee. But it was among the most memorable. 

The Charles Allis Museum has a mission to “present art exhibitions that engage educational and research organizations and foster dialogue with the broader art community, both contemporary and historic, as well as cross-culturally.” Deadly Prey isn’t technically a research organization, and it’s hard to understand, without a deep dive into their context, how these paintings serve an educational purpose. Based in Chicago, the Deadly Prey arts collective is dedicated to preserving an esoteric art form, and is working closely with the artists to maintain a direct connection between the past and the present. Now in it’s mid-America leg of a nation-wide tour, this exhibition exposes a Western audience to the richly bizarre world of bootleg movie posters from West Africa. With origins in Ghana’s Accra region, these movie posters depict popular films in ways that are either semi-accurate (eight Eminem’s giving the middle finger in 8 Mile) excessively gothic (the poster for Get Out features maggots and corpses, and a skeleton drinking wine) or out-and-out bananas (Anchorman battle royale). Robert Kofi, Heavy J, Farkira, Salvation, Stoger, Mr. Nana Agyq, C.A. Wisely, Magasco, Nii Bi Ashitey, Bright Obeng and H.K. Mathias are masters at false advertising. Seeing so much of their work at once suggests that the movie poster is a modern movement all of its own, and has been evolving under specific conditions based on stylistic traits selected for success. 

Such shock-value images were intended, originally, to be displayed one at a time to draw crowds to film screenings in rural areas. In the 1920s, the Golden Age was just being born in Hollywood, and entertainment from the West began expanding across the world, including cities in West Africa. Foreign correspondents could catch a Charlie Chaplin film for a sixpence in the village picture palace with Africans from nearby regions whose access was far more limited. As technology progressed during the 1970s and 80s, enterprising sorts could travel beyond the city with a small TV and a generator and screen Star Wars in farmlands for a modest fee, bringing a piece of Western entertainment to a new market with more portable equipment and a stack of tapes. But how would they promote the screening once on-site, and how could they draw an audience to the show and compel a skeptical population that what they were about to see was worth paying for? By leaning heavily on a cornerstone of cinematic marketing: gratuitous violence. 

Without access to the official movie posters, these inventive entrepreneurs commissioned their own, and, interestingly, did not require the artist to have ever seen the film. Part provocative lure, part fan art by gleefully deranged film buffs, the hand painted posters in this touring exhibition manage to depict just enough of a familiar Hollywood plot to earn recognition. But that plot is soon careening off the rails, crashing into other films and unrelated characters, misappropriating familiar scenes into nightmare mashups. Displayed all together at once in a large room, and the audience can experience the intentional overwhelm of blood and gore at maximum volume. The show feels scrappy and earnest in ways I have learned to trust, especially since art from West Africa, both contemporary and historical, is poorly represented in our region. 

The Charles Allis Art Museum was an ironic venue for such a lively and bizarre showcase. Charles Allis and his wife Sarah Esther Ball travelled the world collecting art because they could, owning to his lineage as the prosperous son of a manufacturing magnate and hers as a Mayflower descendent from the East Coast. Theirs is a funny contrast to the artists and history Deadly Prey represents. Mobile cinemas once screened films produced especially for the rural African audience that depicted modern Western men as competent and hygienic family role-models. During this time, Africans were almost exclusively portrayed in Western media as savages requiring the type of spiritual and cultural salvation only white men could provide. For a long time, we had limited access to other narratives about the function of these stories, as in many cases of colonization and cultural theft. Spend some time with the permanent collection at the Charles Allis Art Museum, and you might notice a suspicious lack of acquisition details. A handful of the artists in the Charles and Sarah collection are unknown, a sign that the wealthy Milwaukee residents developed a visual sensibility for objects that did not cross over into a concern for historical context. They might have cared more, as many collectors did at the time, about how things looked in their home than where they originated, and from whom, and from what creative wellspring. The Deadly Prey philosophy is different, and, in a way, represents a renewed thirst for narrative repatriation. 

I’ve held my share of bootlegged media in my personal library. There’s a exciting grittiness to the experience that doesn’t happen in a 4K Dream Lounge megaplex. That moment when you first pop in an unmarked VHS or Verbatim CD-R into the system and hold your breath as the media crackles to life matches exactly nothing else. Anything could come up on that screen. You might get the film you paid for. You might get something else entirely. The best bootlegs are a blend of the two, like those with subtitles that somebody hallucinated and have nothing to do with the action on screen. Or films that switch midpoint to a soccer match, or retain commercial breaks that transport the viewer into a former era. 

Because this showcase benefits from mainstream appeal (Bruce Willis! Michael Jackson! Blood and guts!) and incongruous storytelling (Macaulay Culkin’s Home Alone face on the poster for Party Monster) there’s something for every audience in this weird and funny exhibition. Even the history buff will find something to admire, because Deadly Prey is doing a hell of a job illuminating an obscure history for an American audience, and making a strong case for expanding artistic definitions to include bootleg adaptations in more art museums. 

Shortly after I saw the show, C.A. Wisely rocketed into the public eye with a poster for Tonight with John Oliver. If this showcase is on its way to a city near you, check it out. As of this publication, the next showing is at Howdy in Kansas City. Go see it. June 30.