Joan Sees Stars

A video in two parts (Starstruck and MGM: Movie Goddess Machine), focusing on celebrity culture, identity, and the body. “What is Liz Taylor doing in my bed, in the bed of my friend Leland, as he dies of AIDS?” These and related questions are enacted in a series of encounters between the artist/ performer/ spectator and a host of famous people from la Liz to Anita Hill. In Joan Sees Stars, Braderman addresses the subversive potential of masquerade in a parade of video-assisted star sightings.

“Videomaker Braderman uses her own body as the site for exploring the ways our own culture of appearances meets the politics of identity... She looks at life through rose colored glasses, then whips them off and dishes the dirt: movies meet life, life meets death and romance meets Perdue chicken in this meditation on our illicit VCR pleasures. Watch and eat your heart out.” 

— B. Ruby Rich