DANNY

Although Crimp criticizes MOMA curator Peter Galassi for attempting to formally approach the photographs of Nicholas Nixon, I think that a semi-formal approach can be utilized when looking at the film Danny. Crimp certainly uses this approach effectively to juxtapose Nixon's work (or Media representations) with Kybarta's tape to problematize the question of representation of people with AIDS, but I think he leaves something out in his analysis. His words do, however leave something up to our imagination. "We must also recognize that every image of a PWA is a representation, and formulate our activist demands not in relation to the "truth" of the image, but in relation to the conditions of its construction and to its social effects" (100). If we consider the slow moving images from Danny, video shot from a car of a grey industrial, "slowly dying" landscape in relation to the stop motion stills of Danny an affect is achieved through montage. The landscape is obscured by "television's [video's] inventive techniques" not the portrait of Danny. When Crimp speaks of these effects he is referring to the effects used by television specials such as "AIDS HITS HOME" but I think there is a parallel between these techniques used to obscure. The landscape is sick and dying from neglect and its demise is distorted and obscured by television programs warning people of the dangers of homosexuality and AIDS. The landscape is sick from the neglect of the Reagan years. I do not want to reduce the severity and impact of AIDS to a symptom of an economic and political scheme, but Rather wish to convey a parallel in its representation and misrepresentation. Perhaps the most significant element of Danny is the relationship between the filmmaker and the subject, a relationship based on real emotion, and sexual desire. It is a relationship that does not distort or hide the humanness of the subject but also places that subject in a context of neglect and systemic distortion of representation.