Not your ordinary family. The parents are “world famous performance artists”. Way, way, way off the beaten path. And the kids are given a part to play in the “skits”. For better or for worse as it were.
So, is this something that a parent ought to do? Is it moral? They drag the kids into the spotlight and that spotlight is bursting at the seams with controversy. Their art after all is political. They make “political statements” about the world around them. And now the kids are ever linked to that.
As a consequence the kids [as adults] come to blame their parents for any and all travail they now endure.
Only now the parents have disappeared. The sister however is convinced it’s just one more of their “stunts”.
Films like this always bring back the question of parental responsibility. After all, we know that children are being raised in families that are anchored to any number of extreme agendas. Political or otherwise. Where then should the line be drawn. When does “the state” have the right to intervene once the parents have gone “too far”?
It brings to mind stories like this: dailymail.co.uk/news/article … -back.html
Some will watch the film and thank their lucky stars they didn’t have parents like this. Others [like me] would have given just about anything if their own mom and dad had been the same. But that’s what it always revolves around: where you draw the lines.
And the part where “I” becomes “we”.
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_Fang_(film
trailer: youtu.be/J-jWH0tIrak
THE FAMILY FANG [2015]
Directed by Jason Bateman
Caleb [to his young children]: Imagine you’re dead. Feel yourself go numb. Start with your fingers. Move to your hands…your wrists…right on up to your elbows. Everything is dead. If we can imagine our own deaths but still manage to come back to life, then it proves that we can survive anything. Now, don’t be afraid. Own the moment. If you’re in control, then the chaos will happen around you and not to you.
You won’t believe what comes next…
[b]Baxter [as a child] hands the bank teller a note: “Stay calm and don’t do anything stupid. Hand over the lollipops.”
Bank teller [smiling and giving him a lollipop]: Have a nice day.
Baxter [tapping a gun on the window]: All of them.
…
Freeman: What’s up, sunshine?
Annie: You want me to get naked.
Freeman: Topless.
Annie: A guy answers the door, and I am standing there with my tits out?
Freeman: Gina wants to control the situation.
Annie: With her breasts?
Freeman: Come on. I… I never would have guessed that you were so uptight. You know, it’s like, I mean, Annie Fang. You know, wild woman. Indie darling.
…
Freeman: I want to show the world that…that you are still a legitimate actress.
Annie: Uh-huh. Thanks, Freeman.
Freeman: As brave and fearless as you’ve always…
Annie: Yeah, I’m not doing it.
Freeman: I know what I am asking you to do is difficult.
Annie: Mm-hmm.
Freeman: But great art is always difficult!!![/b]
Out they come.
[b]Howard to Baxter [on the phone]: Do you know what a potato gun is?
…
Nurse: You’ll feel better when your people get here.
Baxter: What does that mean? I don’t have any people.
Nurse: Well, we went through your wallet. Standard procedure. The doctor called your parents. They’re driving up to get you.
Baxter [as she turns to walk away]: No, no. No, no. Miss? Miss?
…
Announcer [voiceover]: Caleb and Camille Fang are most known for creating improvised public events that incorporate their own children into the artwork. The results are often as unsettling as they are arresting…The Fangs simply throw themselves into a space as if they were hand grenades, and wait for the disruption to occur. They seemed to have no expectations other than to willfully cause unrest. This kind of event is so rudimentary, so unencumbered by the traditions that have come before it, that it almost strains the notion of what constitutes art.[/b]
You won’t believe what comes next…
[b]Critic: I mean, you know, whether or not you like the Fangs’ work, you can’t deny the artistry, certainly.
Critic: What? Of course I can. That’s my job. Look, the Fangs pass off these hollow pranks as if that’s enough.
Critic: You can say the same thing about the diggers, or the situationists, or the Dadaists for that matter. But if you care to look a little deeper, you’ll find that the Fangs transcend what…
Critic: They’re not transcending anything. It’s just tricks.
…
Critic: In the…in the pageant piece, they challenged gender stereotypes. In the restaurant piece, they ask us to look at food not as sustenance, but as status or style. In some of the early…
Critic: Oh, come on! Just because… just because you attach a statement doesn’t make it art, you know? You can call it art but real art requires an aesthetic intelligence.
Critic: But that ambiguity is what makes it interesting. Is it art or is it a joke? Is it profound or is it a prank? Are they geniuses or charlatans? These are the questions that they want us to ask.
Critic: Well, they’re not too hard to answer.
Critic: And the Fangs are challenging the very nature of art itself.
Critic: I don’t think they are.
Critic: They embrace everything that’s wonderful about art, and they subvert it at the same time. They are deeply serious class clowns who celebrate…
Critics: “Clowns” is right, yeah. I’m sorry. What were you saying?
Critic: I… I think what they’re doing is wonderful.
Critic: Well, I guess… I guess I just don’t get it.
Critic: Well, that’s pretty obvious.
…
Reporter: Look, I think you’re a great actress. But the artist you are, don’t you think she was already there in child A? The emotion? The joy? The anarchy? It’s too bad none of your directors have known how to channel all that the way your parents did.
Annie: When I was 9 years old child A was a role. It was a role I played. It’s not who I am.
…
Caleb: Hey, we saw your titty shots.
Annie: Holy shit.
Caleb: They were wonderful.
Annie: Jesus Christ.
Caleb: Hey, it’s about time you started playing with the idea of celebrity in the female form as viewed objects.
Annie: That’s not what I was doing.
Caleb: Of course it is, whether you know it or not. You could take the girl out of the art, but you cannot take the art out of the girl.
Annie: Well…I’m still an artist, Daddy.
Caleb: That’s what I just said.
Annie: Actors are artists.
Caleb: Yes. Didn’t I say I like your titty shot?
Camille: We both liked them very much. You have beautiful breasts, sweetheart.
Annie [banging the table]: Okay, that’s it! Can we not talk about the titty shots anymore, please?
…
Annie: What is this?
Caleb [driving them to an amusemment park for a new “event”]: It’s a shirt, honey. And you need to wear it, or the event won’t work. All you have to do is hand out these fake coupons. For chicken sandwiches. And when we’re doing that, Baxter will film all the people at the counter demanding free food. Then I rally the angry customers, I get them to storm the counters. It’ll be a thing of beauty.[/b]
Only it doesn’t quite turn out that way…
[b]Annie: If the tabloids get a hold of this, it will be terrible for me.
Baxter: Exactly right.
Caleb: Who cares? You shouldn’t be in that business anyway.
Annie: What? Please don’t say that.
Caleb: Well, you’ve been at it for 20 years. What have you got to show for it? A bunch of crap movies and a tampon commercial.
Camille: Caleb, be nice.
Annie: Oh, my God, Dad.
Caleb: Was it not a tampon campaign?
Camille: It was.
Caleb: “Absorb all the good things in life and leave the rest to us.”
…
Annie: I think they’re losing it.
Baxter: Their artistic sensibility?
Annie: No, their minds. They’re…I mean, he’s always had an odd idea of what constituted art. But come on, that was almost silly. Did he really think he could lead a coup on a Chicken Queen?
…
Annie: Is this because of the Chicken Queen?
Camille: What a disaster.
Baxter: Great art’s always difficult, though, right?
Caleb: What’d you say?
Baxter: I just said what you always tell us. That great art’s always difficult.
Caleb: Do me a favor. Don’t talk about things you know nothing about.
Baxter: Okay. Deal.
…
Sheriff: We checked the security cameras and interviewed employees at the surrounding locations. But we’ve been unable to come up with anything conclusive at this point. All signs indicate that your parents are currently missing, and we have to suspect foul play.
Annie: I’m sorry, sheriff. This is…our parents aren’t missing. They’re artists. It’s all a performance.
Sheriff: We know all about their art things. But the fact is, they’re missing from a car that they were driving, and it’s covered in blood.[/b]
The part about crying wolf? Nope.
[b]Baxter: What is that?
Annie: This is a corkboard. I can’t conduct an investigation without a corkboard.
…
Caleb [on camera]: People need to be shaken up, snapped out of it, look around, see things in a new way. That’s what we try to do in our work, because if you shake something up hard enough, it gets transformed. It’s not really about what we do. It’s what they do. The people watching.
Camille: Our work has an effect on them, because we wake them up. We bring them back to life. It’s a resurrection.
Interviewer: And not a reflection of the human condition?
Caleb: No. You know, it’s not. Who wants to see a reflection of the human condition? I suppose that happens when our pieces are shown in galleries. “Oh, look what they did. It’s so human and wonderful.” But that’s not the art. To me, by then, you know, it’s over.
Camille: Yeah, we really only do gallery shows to get grants.
Caleb: The art is in the actual moment, as it’s happening. Real people really responding. The actual human condition, not some artist’s version of it.
Interviewer: But isn’t that just life?
Caleb: Yes, exactly. Not a reflection of life, but life itself. Art and life, life and art. We make them interchangeable. And both are enriched because of it.
Interviewer: Do you think other art can do that?
Caleb: No. What, painting? Photography? That’s the opposite. That’s death. Art happens when things move around, not when you freeze them in a block of ice.[/b]
Well, I guess that settles that, right?
Sheriff [in a phone message]: Hey, this is Sheriff Hale. I said I’d call when the blood results came back. I’m afraid that the blood at the scene does match your dad’s DNA profile. So it is real, which obviously none of us wanted. But it does mean that we have
a serious situation here. So we’ll need to dig a bit deeper into the investigation, as we discussed. I’d appreciate a call back. Thank you.
Annie [to Baxter]: That doesn’t mean anything. Caleb’s done crazier things than draw his own blood. You know that.
Cue Hobart.
Caleb [on camera]: The first year I was in Hobart’s class, we went to see a piece by the artist Chris Burdon, whose work Hobart did not care for.
Hobart [on camera]: Chris Burdon’s a hack. A complete and utter fraud.
Caleb: So we’re at Burdon’s gallery, and he tells us he’s going to be shot today. Sure enough, an assistant pulls out a gun and shoots him in the arm. I was shocked. I thought it was thrilling. And I made the mistake of saying so in class. So Hobart turns on me
and he says…
Hobart [on camera]: It’s horseshit! Art should never happen in a controlled environment. That’s not art. I don’t know what it is. Taxidermy. I mean, who the hell cares if you let somebody come and shoot you in a goddamn galley? There’s no danger. There’s no… no surprise. No, it needs to take place in the world, around people who just don’t know that it’s art. That’s the way it has to be.
You won’t believe what comes next…
[b]Hobart: Can I offer you a little advice?
Baxter: Sure.
Hobart: Stop looking for them. It was a bad idea, tangling up family and art. It…But maybe you’re free of that now. You need to stop
thinking of this as a sleight and start thinking of it as a gift. Yeah. A gift.
…
Caleb [on camera]: “A” was a baby. And, to be honest, after she was born I was…Well, I was miserable. I thought, “This is the end of our life.”
Camille: As artists.
Caleb: Obviously as artists, because… and I’ve heard this over again, children kill art. They just do. You have them, and the passion you had for creative expression becomes secondary.
…
Baxter: If they’re not dead, they want everyone to think that they are, including their own kids. So if we find them, what difference does it make? You can’t say anything to them to make them change who they are.
Annie: You don’t know that.
Baxter: Yes, I do. And for some reason, you’ve got some crazy idea in your head that suddenly they’re going to stop being who they are. And they’re going to stop doing the things that they do, and being the people that they are, Annie. That they’re going to suddenly become these normal parents, and it’s going to help you fix all of your… stuff. It’s just not going to happen. We can’t fix them. We can only fix ourselves.
…
Annie: You think they’re dead, don’t you? You thought it the whole time.
Baxter: I don’t know. If they’re dead, it’s horrible. But if they’re not dead…it’s kind of worse. In a lot of different ways. So either way, I just think they’re gone, you know?[/b]
Cue Linus and Lucas. Trust me: you won’t see this coming.
[b]Annie: You pay attention, Caleb. You’ve obviously been working on this for a very long time. And Baxter and I, we want to ruin it for you very badly. We want it to explode in your face. And that is what’s going to happen unless you tell me exactly what I want to know.
Bonnie: Didn’t I warn you?
Annie: Shut up! What the hell is this?
Caleb [looking at a photograph]: That’s our family.
Annie: How long ago was this taken? Look at this.
Caleb: Seven years ago.Bonnie’s my wife.
Annie [gasping] Really?!
Caleb: It’s complicated.
Bonnie: Those boys love Caleb, so don’t you ruin that.
Annie: Stop.
Bpnnie: He’s been a wonderful father to them. He goes to baseball games and concerts. And you don’t need him. We do. You can think what you want, but he dotes on the three of us.
Annie: Stop talking!
[glass shatters]
Annie [breathing heavily]: You take us to Camille.
Baxter: Yeah, let’s go see Camille. You take us to Camille right now.
…
Annie: What’s Mom’s fake name?
Caleb: Patty Howard.
Annie: Does she have a fake family too?
Caleb: No. See, Bonnie inherited this cabin up north. Mom’s been spending ummers there, getting to know people in town so it wouldn’t be suspicious when she settled there.
Annie: So this has been in the works for a while.
Caleb: For several years, yes. We had to be thorough. Create new identities we could slip into when Caleb and Camille died. We needed social security numbers, bank accounts, tax history. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have worked.
Annie: It didn’t work.
…
Annie: You’re actually the father of those boys?
Caleb: Every piece has its own complications. And for what it’s worth, the boys did help with the cover story.
Annie: Wow. You actually replaced us.
Caleb: No one replaced anyone. You didn’t want to work with us.
…
Caleb: Everything we’ve ever done is for the art.
Camille: No, it wasn’t just the art, Caleb. You know that. Everything I do is out of love for you.
Camille [to Annie and Baxter]: And I made him a promise after you were born. He wanted to leave, and I swore to him. that if he figured out a way to be happy and still stay, then I’d always do the same for him.
Annie: Even sacrifice your own children?
Camille: Don’t say that.
Annie: Come on. When push came to shove every time, you chose him over us.
Caleb: For God’s sake, you talk like I’m a monster. We had a good life. You were happy children. You forget how fun those pieces could be. The thrill of leaping in…
Baxter: Oh, give me a break.
Caleb: No net, not knowing what was going to happen. You’re telling me that wasn’t fun? The adventures we had. What did other kids do? Go to the Grand Canyon. Disney World? We did something important.
Baxter: I think I would have preferred Disney World, okay?
…
Caleb: I’ve always loved you kids. Whatever ambivalence I might have felt early on, it turned into love.
Annie: As long as we didn’t do shitty movies and compromise your artistic sensibilities, huh?
Caleb: What, I’m not allowed to disapprove your choices? That’s like the main thing parents do.
…
Camille: Promise your dad that you won’t tell.
Baxter: No, we’re pulling the plug. This little piece is over.
Caleb: The hell it is.
Baxter: The hell it isn’t. I’m going to take this video and go right to the press.
Caleb: You give that to me.
Baxter: No.
Caleb: You’re going to ruin years of work because your feelings got hurt.
Baxter: That’s right, Pop.
Camille: Come on, just be reasonable, both of you, and just don’t blow this up.
Annie: Well, that’s what we Fangs do. We blow things up.
Caleb: Look, we get it. You think we damaged you. Fine. My parents damaged me. Her parents damaged her. You have kids. You’re going to damage them. That’s what parents do. So what? I’m not a young man anymore. This is the last big thing I’ll ever make.
Camille: Come visit once a year, and just please don’t tell.
Annie: You want us to pretend you’re dead?
[long pause]
Annie: Sure. We can do that.
…
Caleb: You may not understand or appreciate or value what we do, but you cannot deny its relevance, its…its effectiveness. Everything we did woke you up. Made you look at your life anew. That’s what we do for people. That’s what we’ve always done. And that’s a good thing.
Annie: Yeah. Yeah, I suppose it is. But you know what happens to those people?
Caleb: What?
Annie: Well, they walk away. You never see them again.[/b]