Fingered (1986)

WARNING: Discussion of sexual assault

“This film is an EXERCISE in the CAPITALIZATION of an EXPLOITATION that some may find unnecessarily VIOLENT, SEXIST and DISGUSTING. We therefore suggest the viewer EXECUTE caution and discretion. Although it is not our sole intent to SHOCK, INSULT or IRRITATE, you have been warned that we are CATERING only to our own preference as members of the SEXUAL MINORITY.”

Lydia Lunch is pretentious. But she’s also fucking awesome.

Cinema of Transgression is a weird thing to talk about. Despite proclaiming to be a fully-fledged movement, modern discussions tend to revolve exclusively around Nick Zedd and Richard Kern. For all of Zedd’s talk about destroying film schools and creating something truly transgressional, the work that transpired was extremely narcissistic and often straight-up boring. It’s cool to break conventions, but when it results in Kembra Pfahler pretending to be a fish and getting fucked by tentacles for twenty minutes (War Is Menstural Envy) it just feels grating. Kern was always the filmmaker I gravitated towards more, and although there’s a good deal of his films that fall into the same trap of dick-stroking, Fingered feels truly transgressional. Fingered is where it stops being talk.

The first thing that you’ll hear about Fingered is that it’s misogynistic. It is a film full of sickening sexual violence, played back in sneering black-and-white, only 25 minutes long but scarily effective. If it was an endeavour exclusively driven by Kern, you could no doubt hold its view of women as deplorable, but it isn’t. Lydia Lunch’s presence is everything, as an actress and as an artist. Both her and Kern’s ugly thoughts and feelings are palpable, literally spread out to see. It was co-written by Lunch and based on her own experiences, including her romance with Marty Nation, and she makes everything as disgusting as it deserves to be. Lydia Lunch also appears alongside Lung Leg, the two of them giving performances simultaneously dogshit and perfect, in a way that can only be achieved within no wave scuzz. They are stars, they define the screen, and their personas retain themselves even when plunged into a nightmare territory.

Lunch alternates callously between victim and perpetrator, but Lung Leg is purely victimised. She appears as a terrified girl, stumbling over her words as she tends to do in Kern films, and looks towards the camera as she lies covered in blood as if she were modelling for another Sonic Youth cover. Information about Marty Nation is scarce, but a Tumblr post from his family shares that he was a hairdresser, musician and motorcycle enthusiast who also apparently made thousands of meals for firefighters during 9/11. His presence in the film is raw and terrifying, although Lunch is ten times moreso. Her power is impossible to ignore.

The film greets you with a phone sex scene where an indifferent Lydia Lunch listens to a client recount his little boy/mommy fantasy, and it only gets more miserably pornographic from there. The production is bare-bones, which goes without saying in regards to no wave, and the lo-fi nature and shaking camera play a central role in carving out the film’s atmosphere. Although it isn’t a faux-snuff film, it shares a lot of the same visual signifiers, presenting the grimness in the rawest form possible. J.G. Thirlwell’s score creates the same effect - absent for uncomfortably long stretches of the runtime, and grimy and distorted when it is present - stripping the film down to ugly events and the shitty-perfect performances accompanying them.

This was the first true exploitation film that I saw, finding it during a weird night online. Nothing has ever gotten a visceral reaction from me in quite the same way. It really shook up my semi-sheltered sixteen-year-old brain, and I remember lying awake at night for about a week. The scene where Lunch is raped with a loaded gun was the one that troubled me most, and that scene will always define transgression in its most repulsive form to me. The first time I spoke to someone I knew in real life who had similar tastes in film, I told him Fingered was probably the most disturbing film I’d ever seen and warned him against watching it. It might’ve been an exaggeration, or it might’ve been my own weakness. A transgressional film is a challenge, and it was an interesting challenge to be met with right out of the gate. It kicked down the door to exploitation and underground cinema for me, and the impression hasn't disappeared.

If you want to find a “point” to all the shock, you’ll be hard-pressed to find one. It exists as its own uncontrollable entity. It spits in the face of morality and artistic merit, and refuses to give any power to the audience. Fingered hates you. Lunch hates you. Kern hates you. Human behaviour is dark and vulgar. It exists, you have to experience it in one form or another, so you might as well screech it in the most blatant form possible. It’s an ugly film, but it’s a real film. It’s raw and jagged on every edge. Cinema of Transgression’s central figures always seem way up their own ass, but maybe, just maybe, you can buy it for a bit. Despite this, it's interesting to note that Lunch states in the documentary Blank City that she and Kern didn’t think the film’s contents were that bad, and were taken aback by the strong reaction from audiences. Ugly art escaping containment.

I’d compare this to Michael Snow’s Wavelength as a demonstration of cinematic power. Wavelength engages with all the pretentions of “high art” and successfully executes upon them, and Fingered does the same with the pretentions of “low art.” You won’t see it in an art gallery, but you’ll see it lauded by various piece-of-shit punks with too much time on their hands. I’m probably overselling it here, but if you value art that extracts a strong emotion from its audience, then there's no reason to discount that just because that emotion is shock or disgust. You can probably discount it because Lydia Lunch was a dick to Nardwuar, though. I’m not the boss of you.