Cindy Sherman's Office Killer : Another kind of monster [1 ed.] 9781783202959, 9781841507071

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CINDY SHERMAN’S OFFICE KILLER ANOTHER KIND OF MONSTER DAHLIA SCHWEITZER

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer Another Kind of Monster

Dahlia Schweitzer

intellect Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA

First published in the UK in 2014 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK First published in the USA in 2014 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Copyright © 2014 Intellect Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Cover concept by Eric Denman Copy-editor: Michael Eckhardt Cover image: Office Killer (1997, dir. Cindy Sherman). Courtesy of Miramax. Production manager: Jelena Stanovnik Typesetting: Contentra Technologies Print ISBN: 978-1-84150-707-1 ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-295-9 ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78320-296-6 Printed and bound by Hobbs, UK

Elements from the "Conception: In Art We Trust" chapter appeared on Frieze blog. Elements from the "Another Kind of Conclusion" chapter appeared on Hyperallergic.com. Various excerpts were published by Jump Cut.

Contents Acknowledgements

vii

Part I: Another Kind of Introduction

1

Why Office Killer Deserves Your Attention (And How It First Grabbed Mine)

3

Character Reference Guide

9

Office Killer Plot Synopsis

11

Part II: Another Kind of Art

17

Conception: In Art We Trust

19

Direction: Sherman’s March

33

Production: The Big Picture

37

Part III: Another Kind of Entertainment

41

How to Look at Office Killer (And What I Missed the First Time)

43

Part IV: Another Kind of Commentary

103

Considerations: Cast, Costumes, and Characters

105

Conversations: Noir, Horror, and Comedy

117

Considerations: Disease, Technology, and the Workplace

141

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

Comparisons: Working Girl, Basic Instinct, and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

155

Part V: Another Kind of Conclusion

169

How Office Killer was Absolutely Right about Everything (Yet Still Managed To Fail So Miserably)

171

Study Guides

175

Office Killers: Character Crib Notes

177

Textual Insanity: Relationships to Other Movies

183

Horrific Experiences: Interviews with Christine Vachon, James Schamus, Todd Thomas, and Tom Kalin

185

Film Credits and Cast List

189

Selected References

193

Notes

195

vi

Acknowledgements Quite simply, this book would not be here without the help and support of Sean Patrick Sullivan and Eric Levy. I am most grateful to them for the edits, guidance, inspiration, and for always being ready to act as sounding boards at a moment’s notice. I am also grateful for the support of Gabriel Jones, for helping my ideas sound coherent and keeping me employed; Eric Denman for the last minute design assistance; my mother for always believing in me; and Bruce Hainley, Amy Gerstler, Jane McFadden, and Rosetta Brooks for getting this whole thing started in the first place. Extra special thanks go to Samantha Kurtzman-Counter, Krystal Boehlert, Galen Loram, David Tytler, Scott Chambliss, Micha Ziprkowski, and everyone who donated on Kickstarter to help make this book a reality.

Part I Another Kind of Introduction

Why Office Killer Deserves Your Attention (And How It First Grabbed Mine)

F

or some of us, spiritual introspection leads to a sense of calm, center and comfort. For others, though, a critical review of the images and texts around them is an essential part of understanding themselves and the world. I’m one of those others. At first glance, the divergent and occasionally intersecting paths I’ve followed—curating an exhibition on postmodernism for Wesleyan University; publishing books of short stories; writing and producing a music album; touring Europe for three years as a musician and performance artist; displaying my photographs in both solo and group shows; completing an MA in criticism and theory at the Art Center College of Design; and writing a book on Cindy Sherman’s film Office Killer—might appear to have neither a common theme, nor purpose. In fact, I see them all as part of a larger whole; elements that have contributed to my desire to combine film with academic theory and research in order to explore individual moments in a larger cultural narrative. Relationships between self and Other, and the tensions between boundaries of gender, identity, and public versus private space, fascinate me. I find those places where things are undefined, evolving, or under conflict to be the most interesting because I see myself and the world as all of those things. In the twenty-first century, the borders between public and private space are growing more blurred and unstable. I am fascinated with the erosion and evolution of these borders, as well as with the ease with which we could morph and adapt our identities. Despite being a writer, I am drawn to visual representations of these ideas. And it is through cinema as a fixed representation of cultural phenomena and processes that I continue to be most fascinated in studying the shifting manifestations of boundaries of gender, identity, and the internal and external. A close look at one film merely opens up the door to a larger conversation: films, after all, are sociocultural constructs, the text upon which are inscribed notions of otherness, gender, sexuality, and differences—as well as a variety of historical, social and cultural discourses. By studying film, it is possible to study the world, and by studying specific films, it is possible to appreciate and deconstruct specific aspects of society. This is why I decided to return to a formative film from my past—Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer (1997)—for a closer look. The movie—representing Sherman’s only foray into filmmaking—is set in a 1990s America in which the traditional boundaries between interiority

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

and exteriority, and by extension the public and private, have been all but eradicated. Sherman presents a material body that, even if it must be maintained with Windex and Scotch tape to remain so, locates the irreducibility of the two realms. My analysis of this film expands my own internal dialog regarding the production of self by way of the staging of the body. It also complicates my questions about the public and private with its representation of torn and open bodies; bodies that are literally toying with the boundaries of inside and outside. Our fascination with technological reproduction and machines, our evolving definitions of self, Other and intimacy, play out in what at first glance might seem like a simple little horror film. With every viewing, however, I realized that there was nothing simple or “little” about Office Killer. In fact, Office Killer, in a charmingly effortless way, encapsulates all of my interests—theoretical, visual, and cultural. My goal is to valorize Office Killer, which, despite being critically and commercially ignored, is a very important film, one rich with material for students of film theory, criticism, and production. Ideally, intellectuals should be able to go back and forth between academic theory and mass media, since the two are inexorably linked. Mass media should not be discussed in isolation, because it is not intended to be viewed as such. Mass media references and regurgitates elements of high culture and low culture with the same easy fluidity; a cyclical vortex of cultural ideas and concepts. Mass media is media for the masses. As Camille Paglia wrote, it is our culture.1 It is integrally connected to the society to which it appeals. This is part of the explanation for its authenticity. While the box office failure of Office Killer prevented it from becoming any sort of mass media sensation, it is still, as a commercial film, a product of mass media, and it is therefore integrally connected to the society that existed when it was released. It is a cultural archive for a particular moment in time, just as much as it is a reference point in the chronology of Cindy Sherman’s work. One of the most interesting questions Office Killer raises is: Why are we not talking about it? The second question is: Why should we? I begin this book by addressing these questions, as well as explaining my personal connection to Cindy Sherman and to Office Killer, along with outlining the reasons it remains so intensely problematic, and providing an overview of the film. In the second chapter, I provide a general summary of Cindy Sherman’s life and career in order to contextualize Office Killer within it. Since Office Killer is usually left out of any conversation about Sherman’s work, it becomes all the more important to acknowledge its place—intellectually, artistically, and chronologically. I also look at the production of Office Killer, and its problems of marketability. In the third chapter, I provide a shot-by-shot analysis of all the film’s significant scenes. This kind of analysis not only permits a close reading of Sherman’s visual style and how it carries over onto the big screen, but it also helps pick apart the many layers of nuance and reference. Office Killer is an incredibly complex film, and even after countless viewings, I discover more and more within it. In the fourth chapter, I contextualize the film within its Zeitgeist. While many films could happen anywhere, at any time, Office Killer could not. Office Killer would make no sense 4

Why Office Killer Deserves Your Attention

outside of its place and time. Not only are its characters products of the late 1990s in a way that would not carry over to another decade, but the conflicts and tensions within the film itself are particular to that era as well. Therefore, it becomes essential to any conversation about Office Killer to examine the larger issues of the time: AIDS, technology, and the evolving workplace. I also look at Office Killer within a larger film narrative, drawing close connections between three films—Working Girl (Nichols, 1988), Basic Instinct (Verhoeven, 1992) and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Aldrich, 1962)—with which Office Killer has many parallels. In the same section, I describe the characters most important to the film’s story: Dorine, Norah, Virginia, Kim, and Dorine’s mother. In the fifth and final chapter, I explain how Office Killer was right about everything— even while managing to fail so miserably. Connecting Office Killer to a conversation about Sherman’s work and placing it in a larger context, I draw parallels between Dorine and Sherman, between Office Killer and the 1990s, and between Office Killer and the twenty-first century. By studying this film, we can both learn about the era from which it came, and also who and what came after. ***** In the fall of 1997, I wrote to Cindy Sherman. I did not know what to do with my life, and I figured I might as well ask the person most relevant to my career what I should do next. “Dear Ms. Sherman: Tell me what to do with my life,” I wrote. Not quite as precociously, but that was the sentiment. She wrote back, and thus began a brief correspondence, over the course of which she told me that she was working on a movie. Of course, I wanted to see that movie more than anything, partly because I take my idols seriously, and also because it sounded amazing. Cindy Sherman does a horror film! But few others were as excited, including Miramax, who bought the film. Office Killer fizzled, so I had a hard time finding it. I did not see it until I moved to New York a year later, and the act of seeing it was so consuming I cannot even remember the venue. I think it was at the Museum of Modern Art, which is the same place that showed her complete sixty-nine “Untitled Film Stills” in 1997. The first time I saw the movie, I remember being disappointed. Not because it was a bad movie, but because, at first, it seemed so different from Sherman’s photographs. For one, Sherman was not in the film. Since most of Sherman’s fame and notoriety have come from how she repurposes herself in her work, her absence from the film felt conspicuous. This may have been why so many other critics chose to ignore it. Another diversion from everything else she was known for was that the film was titled. This was one more sign that things were not going as expected. Suddenly, her work was labeled, leaving behind the realm of innuendo and suggestion. The queen of the implied narrative had finally told an actual story. To make matters worse, it was a story that seemed clear, simple and comfortable in its clichés. It was a horror film. There were dead bodies. There was a killer, a self-styled detective, and murder. There was Molly Ringwald. It seemed so frustratingly easy to decode that many did not even bother. They just ignored it, even claiming that Sherman also wanted nothing to do with the movie either: “Sherman does not consider Office Killer to be part of her own 5

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

body of art, since she was more of a hired gun to direct the picture,” wrote Catherine Morris in The Essential Cindy Sherman.2 But Sherman was not simply a hired gun. In the June 1997 issue of Art in America, Sherman herself acknowledges that the general idea for the story was hers, that she was involved in preproduction, that she gave specific instructions to the cinematographer and the actors about what she wanted, and that she played a direct role in the editing. Even producer Christine Vachon says that Sherman had full creative control. But the movie bombed, and everyone, including Sherman, stopped talking about it. Part of the problem is that the movie is not really a horror film, or even a send-up of a horror film. It is somewhere between genres; more of a dark “chick flick” combined with elements of film noir, black comedy and horror. All the main characters are female, and their relationships echo a Joan Crawford-led women’s picture from an earlier era, where films like The Women (Cukor, 1939) and Mildred Pierce (Curtiz, 1945) explored the complicated interpersonal dynamics between women and their struggles for men, power, and independence. There are also numerous thematic and atmospheric parallels between Office Killer and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), another mix of horror and melodrama from three decades earlier. On one hand, the intensity of some of Office Killer’s scenes, and the conflict and competition between the film’s various women, support the film’s placement in the category of melodrama, while other elements are more reminiscent of film noir and horror. To complicate categorization further, the movie also has a defiant sense of humor. When analyzing Office Killer, there is no question that it is fun to watch the movie with an eye for Sherman’s style, to match up shots from the movie with her photographs; but it is still a movie, and therefore much of its meaning, significance, and style of execution are fundamentally different than a photograph’s. It is both relevant and provocative that this is Sherman’s only work with sound, motion, and a title, and which involves other people besides herself. So why there is so little discussion of Office Killer as a film? The film is almost completely ignored in discussions of Sherman’s work post-1997, and when it appears, it is merely as a means to turn the conversation to her photos. This is not completely unusual: critics tend to flatten the differences in Sherman’s work, fusing her various photographs together as continuations of the “Untitled Film Stills,” interpreting every work in relation to what came before. This is partly because of the narrative quality that builds easily when her individual photographs are organized in a row, since alone each seems fragmentary, speaking merely in notation; but it also creates a dangerously limited, one-dimensional perspective that prohibits any real complex understanding of her work. If we examine the film, and the way that, like her photos, it twists and parodies horror, fashion, and melodrama, we can not only understand why the film is fundamentally upsetting, but we can also acknowledge why it remains so relevant, and why it remains such an important component in her body of work. While the film can be seen as a summation of Sherman’s photographic themes, it also deserves its own conversation. Not only does addressing the movie provide us with valuable insight into the American psyche at the end of the twentieth century, but it also alters our 6

Why Office Killer Deserves Your Attention

conversation about Sherman’s photos. Most dialogs about Sherman’s photos start and stop with a discussion about the feminine image, but Office Killer takes the conversation to another level entirely. If we start to think about Sherman as an artist transfixed by the materiality of the body; if we look at her photos as reflections of the themes so clearly evident in the movie (rather than only looking at the movie as the neglected kid sister to her photos); if we start to pick up on the aggression inherent in her depictions of women, the lack of pin-up glamour, the steely solitude, and the decaying bodies: how does that reinvent the “Untitled Film Stills,” the “Centerfolds,” or the “Fashion” series? How does that change our understanding of the entirety of Sherman’s work? If we take the time to examine her film with the attention it deserves, if we zoom out to evaluate its cultural and social context, we gain a richer understanding not only of Sherman’s messages, but also of a specific era in American history.

7

Character Reference Guide Dorine Douglas (Carol Kane): Our protagonist, Constant Consumer magazine’s best copyeditor. Daniel (Michael Imperioli): Norah’s boyfriend and office technology guy. Carlotta Douglas (Alice Drummond): Dorine’s mother. Peter Douglas (Eric Bogosian): Dorine’s father. Mail Boy (Jason Brill): Distributes the mail and flirts with Kim. Kim (Molly Ringwald): Office sexpot, fashionista, and gossip; having an affair with Gary Michaels while flirting with the Mail Boy and Daniel. Mr. Landau (Mike Hodge): Head of Constant Consumer magazine’s copy department. Gary Michaels (David Thornton): Writer at Constant Consumer magazine and office lech. Mrs. Michaels (Marla Sucharetza): Gary’s wife. Norah (Jeanne Tripplehorn): Responsible for bringing technology to Constant Consumer magazine; her specific title is unclear, but she is in charge of budgets, a task that allows her to embezzle funds from the magazine. Receptionist (Florina Rodov): Her brief appearance not only opens the film, but also introduces the news of the magazine’s downsizing. Ted and Naomi (Doug Barron and Linda Powell): Editors at Constant Consumer magazine, they seem to function as a pair. Virginia (Barbara Sukowa): Editor-in-chief of Constant Consumer magazine, she authorizes the downsizing even though she appears to despise Norah.

Office Killer Plot Synopsis

O

 ffice Killer opens with a dot matrix printer spooling back and forth, informing us of the downsizing about to take place at Constant Consumer magazine. A large number of full-time employees are being shifted to part-time, and many are going to be sent home to work. The Mail Boy distributes mail throughout the office as the receptionist talks on the phone, chewing gum as emphatically as she gossips about the “massacre” that will happen in the office, about how many jobs are on the cutting block. These mundane tasks take place as Virginia and Norah argue about who is going to distribute the pink slips. Norah claims that she is dragging the magazine out of the Stone Age, while Virginia retorts that Norah knows nothing about running a magazine. Virginia wins the argument, and Norah slumps out of the office, pink slips in her hand. Within the lair of the copy department, Dorine instructs a coworker as to proper grammar, while Kim and Norah bicker playfully down the hall, before Norah sets off to distribute the pink slips. Everyone in the copy department has been bumped to freelance. Dorine and Mr. Landau talk about a recent article. He urges her to open her pink slip, which sits unopened on her desk. The next time we see her downsizing notice, it is on the copy machine, in front of Dorine. As she changes the machine’s toner, it explodes all over her. Norah rushes in, but is ineffectual at helping the situation. She clearly does not want to get too close. The presence of the downsizing notice implies that the shock of the bad news may have been responsible for Dorine’s accident. Later that night, Kim, Norah, and Daniel are at their favorite bar. Norah complains about having to distribute the pink slips. “No one ever said you’d be popular,” Kim retorts. Norah tells Daniel and Kim that at least they still have their jobs. Kim is offended. Tensions rise, and Norah and Daniel leave. The next morning, Dorine is at home, making breakfast and tea for her mother. She discovers her cat has killed a mouse, and she sends him down the garbage disposal. This is our first exposure to death in the film. Her mother, impatient, presses on her buzzer to urge Dorine to hurry. When Dorine gets upstairs, her mother issues a litany of complaints. A dejected Dorine reveals that she will be spending more time at home. Her mother is pleased that Dorine will be able to do more around the house, but Dorine does not share her mother’s enthusiasm.

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

Once at the office, Dorine spots Kim and Gary Michaels in Gary’s office, clearly having an inappropriate moment. She stares, and Kim closes the door in Dorine’s face with disgust. “I hate her,” Gary tells Kim. Dorine does not have many fans. Neither does Gary Michaels. When he brings his latest article to the copy department, he tells Mr. Landau he needs his article done quickly—“Chop, chop”—to which Mr. Landau replies, with a tone of exasperation, “The copy department doesn’t work for you.” Gary thinks they should. As Norah and Daniel unpack computers, Kim slinks in, drapes herself over the computer boxes, and asks who will be the first victim. Norah, annoyed at the amount of leg Kim is revealing in front of Daniel, sends him away, but not before tossing him his new beeper. “Keep it on,” she tells him, in case she needs him. Mr. Landau talks to Dorine about computers. “You took the tutorial, right, Dorine?” he asks her, reassuring her that the manual can also be useful if she runs into snags. She is confident in her technical abilities. However, later that night, her computer starts buzzing, and she cannot figure out how to make it stop. She goes to Mr. Michaels’ office, as he is the only other one still at work. She asks him to help her. Even though he is rude to her, he comes to figure out the problem. He makes her so uncomfortable by rubbing her shoulders that she rushes nervously to the bathroom to wash the back of her neck. When she returns, Mr. Michaels has turned off the power and is tinkering in the outlet. He barks at her to be useful; startled, she stumbles into the fuse box and turns the power back on. Mr. Michaels is electrocuted. Dorine’s first reaction is to call 911, but once the call goes through, she reconsiders and hangs up. “Look at this mess, I’m going to have to clean it up,” she tells Gary’s dead body— and clean it up she does. She wheels his body out to her car on a cart and brings him home, dumping him on the couch in her basement. After Dorine comes upstairs, she is startled by her mother, who made it downstairs despite the fact that Dorine unplugged the chair that allows the handicapped Mrs. Douglas to travel between the two floors. Her mother chastises Dorine for being late and making too much noise. Dorine, irritated and exhausted, sends her mother to bed. The next morning, we see Dorine standing outside the bathroom while her mother does her business. She offers to help her mother, but her mother insists that a little getting around is good for her. This is Dorine’s mundane life. At the office, Virginia is freaking out about the missing Gary Michaels and his delayed article. “Where the hell is he?” she barks. The staff meeting is already running late. Tensions are high. In contrast, Dorine is at home, sitting in an armchair forlornly, waiting for Daniel to show up to install her computer. “This is your lifeline to the office,” he tells her as he sets it up. He asks her if she knows what she needs to do, and suggests she play around with the tutorials. She does not seem intimidated by the new technology. Kim calls Mrs. Michaels to see if she knows where Gary might be, but she does not know anything. Kim is frustrated by the conversation, but then she gets an e-mail from Dorine, 12

Office Killer Plot Synopsis

sent as if by Gary, telling her not to worry, that he has just gone away for a little while. Kim tells Norah about the e-mail, asking what she should do about it. Norah tells her not to stick her neck out, not to do anything. Virginia tracks down Dorine, calling her Dora. Dorine meekly corrects her. Virginia could not care less. She only wants to know what happened the night before, if Dorine knows anything about Gary’s disappearance. Dorine tells Virginia about the computer problems, that Gary wanted to be left alone to figure them out. “You’re a bit long in the tooth for such rookie behavior,” Virginia snarls. Kim walks into the office, and Virginia tells the two women that they will be working together to finish Gary’s missing piece, which she needed yesterday: “Make it up if you have to.” Kim is horrified at the prospect of working with Dorine, but neither woman has a choice in the matter. Daniel and Norah are at home. Norah is on the bed, surrounded by paperwork and calculations. Daniel asks her what it all is, and she says it is her effort to get them out of their dump and moving up in the world. Daniel does not appreciate the gravity of what Norah is doing, instead telling her to take a lesson from Kim and find herself a life. Norah runs into the bathroom, upset. Kim and Dorine are working late at the office on Gary’s missing article. Kim goes to get food; Virginia is at the copy machine. On her way back into her office, she is surprised to find Dorine standing ominously in the corner. Virginia struggles to breathe with the help of her asthma inhaler, but Dorine has filled it with butane. Virginia collapses and dies: victim number two. Dorine brings Virginia’s body home to join Gary Michaels. This time, Dorine does not appear anxious or tense at all. On the contrary, she seems quite pleased after this latest death. She sits on the couch, with each of them on either side. “This is just like old times,” she says joyfully, as they all watch television. The next morning, Dorine’s mother complains that Dorine has moved so much of the furniture into the basement. “Your father would hate what you’ve done to this house,” she says over breakfast. “It was better with a man around the house. He sure knew how to keep us girls under his thumb.” This is not what Dorine wants to hear. She cuts the meal short, and brings her mother back upstairs to finish breakfast alone. A group of Girl Scouts stops by to sell some cookies. Dorine invites them in, her mood seemingly lightened. Later that morning, Dorine sits in front of her new laptop eating Girl Scout cookies. She calls the office to let them know she has submitted the article by fax/modem. She then sends another e-mail as Gary to Kim, telling her that she should finish the article with Dorine as soon as possible. Kim is agitated by this e-mail, and complains to Norah about being abandoned by Virginia and Dorine the night before. She accuses them of being “lezzies” and running off together. Norah tries to get her to relax, but it does not work. Kim storms into the editorial meeting, and tells Ted and Naomi that Dorine is a bitch and a “fucking freak.” Ted and Naomi respond by firing Kim, saying that Dorine did a great job on the article, and that Kim actually was the one failing at her job by not finishing the article. 13

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

While Kim is being fired, Norah shows up at Dorine’s desk with a bag full of old clothes. “They’d look great on you,” she tells Dorine. She asks about Dorine’s father, who was one of the founding editors of the magazine. Dorine tells Norah about the accident in which her father was killed and her mother injured, and we see this take place in a flashback sequence. Before the accident, Dorine’s mother accuses Dorine of having a dirty mind. Her father asserts that Dorine just loves her father. The subtext is clear, as Dorine’s father fondles Dorine’s thigh. Dorine grabs his hand and does not let go, forcing the car to crash into an electrical pole. We assume Dorine does not reveal this last element of the accident to Norah. Kim packs up her desk and runs into Daniel in the parking garage. He invites her to join him and Norah for drinks. At the bar, Norah tries to defend Dorine, but Kim argues that Dorine is horrible and manipulative. As if to emphasize the irony of their different perspectives, we intercut with Dorine stalking and then killing the Mail Boy. Just as Norah describes Dorine as a “lonely, defenseless woman,” Dorine pulls a Cuisinart blade out of the Mail Boy’s neck. Dorine wheels the Mail Boy’s body into the parking garage and to her car in a big mail cart. He, too, is being brought home, where Dorine maintains her bodies in a do-it-yourself way. She pulls Virginia’s fingernails off, telling her that she will be more comfortable without them. She sprays Gary down with Windex and pulls him back together with tape. “It’s so much harder to be on your toes when you’re not feeling fresh as a daisy,” she tells her former coworkers as she primps and adjusts them. At work, Norah’s computer buzzes, much like Dorine’s did on that fateful night. Norah is frustrated. She does not know what to do. Dorine comes in to help and notices the spreadsheet on Norah’s monitor. She realizes that Norah is embezzling money from the magazine. A short time later, Norah gets an anonymous e-mail signed from “a consumer” that accuses her of larceny. Norah is understandably agitated, and she goes off to confront Dorine. Kim comes back to the magazine to try and convince the editors about Dorine, but they just accuse her of lying. Upset, Kim walks out a door aptly labeled “No Re-Entry” to have a cigarette. She sits in the stairwell and the lights go off. Someone attacks Kim and tries to strangle her. That person appears to be Dorine. Surprisingly, Kim survives the attack and escapes, running into Norah’s office. She tells Norah that she just got attacked by Dorine, but Norah tells Kim to stop “haunting the place,” refusing to believe her. Norah finds Dorine to ask if she sent the e-mail, but Dorine denies it, and they go to have lunch and get manicures. However, as they are about to get into Dorine’s car, Dorine whacks Norah in the head and knocks her out. Dorine drives off with Norah’s passed-out body in the passenger seat. Norah is being brought home to join the others in the basement. Unfortunately, Dorine comes home to discover that her mother has passed away. She screams at her mother’s body, the most emotional we have seen her or anyone in the film. The coroners, who say that the whole place reeks of death, remove the body but ask no questions. Kim goes to Norah and Daniel’s apartment to try and convince Daniel about Dorine’s true nature. Daniel starts to believe her, the first person so far to do so. After talking to 14

Office Killer Plot Synopsis

Kim, Daniel goes to Dorine’s house to try and find out more information about Norah’s disappearance. Dorine flirts with him and avoids telling him anything. While they are talking, Norah wakes up and makes some noise in the basement. Daniel, suspicious, asks what it is. Dorine blames the noise on her cat, and heads into the basement with a large kitchen knife. She locks the door behind her, leaving Daniel upstairs. In the basement, Norah cowers and whimpers as Dorine stands over her with the knife. Dorine accuses her of being responsible for all the harm that has been done to the workplace. Daniel manages to sneak down into the basement, but his beeper goes off just as he is about to knock Dorine out. She whirls around and slashes his midsection with her knife. He collapses and dies. Dorine turns back to deal with Norah. The scene fades out before we can see exactly what happens. Later, with bloody hands, Dorine sends Kim an e-mail as Norah, claiming responsibility for embezzling funds and for killing Dorine, Daniel, and “half the office.” After sending the e-mail, Dorine then calls Kim. When Kim asks who it is, because Dorine is silent, Dorine responds by saying, “No one, Kim, no one at all.” Dorine then hangs up the phone. Kim calls the police to tell them about Dorine, but they put her on hold. While Kim is being ignored, Dorine sets her house on fire and drives off. Smoking a cigarette and wearing a blonde wig, she is barely recognizable. The only sign of her past is an open bag on the passenger seat containing body parts of some of her victims. Prominently displayed beside her is a circled help-wanted ad for an office manager position. She is on her way to a new life and a new job. Her transformation is complete.

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Part II Another Kind of Art

Conception: In Art We Trust

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efore she even got to the 1990s, Sherman had already built an important body of work examining the fundamentals of appropriation, identity, and gender. Not only had her work established certain elements of femininity and physicality, but she had grown comfortable enough with these elements to remove and destroy them, to toy with and manipulate them. Sherman, like an expert puppeteer, controls and plays with these fundamental aspects of society and behavior in order to explore our core dynamics, and the 1990s were not the only decade to fall under her lens. The “Untitled Film Stills,” arguably her most well-known series, focuses on iconographic imagery of women from the 1950s, both a decade of significant change and cultural shift, and the decade into which Sherman was born. Born in New Jersey in 1954, Sherman spent her childhood on Long Island, immersed in the television and culture of the era. The 1950s combined worries of nuclear war with dreams of a better life, conformity with capitalism, all amidst a growing blitzkrieg of images selling everything from washing machines to cigarettes, bras to Cadillacs. What better time to be watching (and absorbing) television? What better time to be introduced to the constant consuming at the heart of American life? The context of her early years not only influenced the “Untitled Film Stills,” but also all of Sherman’s later photographs and Office Killer. Key aspects of what it means to be a woman—established and explored in the cultural vernacular of the 1950s—remain evident in her work today. During the 1970s, Sherman studied at the State University College in Buffalo, New York. Initially a painting major, Sherman switched to photography because she felt it was a more efficient way of communicating her imagery and ideas. Painting, she thought, was a limited medium: “[T]here was nothing more to say [through painting],” she later recalled. “I was meticulously copying other art, and then I realized I could just use a camera and put my time into an idea instead.”3 Ironically, Sherman failed her introductory photography course because of her lack of interest in the technical aspects of photography. For Sherman, the concept was more important than the technique. Her interest in self-portraits started early, with her paintings often being self-portraits as well. Her ideas at the time already revolved around masquerade. In college, she regularly visited local thrift stores to find clothing in which to dress up, not only for her photographs but also for social events. This interest in performance and costume continued when she moved to

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

New York with her boyfriend, fellow artist Robert Longo, after their graduation. It was then that she began her “Untitled Film Stills,” most of which were shot either in her apartment or around the streets of New York. Sherman’s first major series, the “Untitled Film Stills,” examine 1950s female iconography from the viewpoint of the 1970s. Containing sixty-nine black-and-white images, sometimes crudely developed and a modest 8.5x11 inches in size, with no titles or explicit citations, the “Untitled Film Stills” became Sherman’s most well-known body of work. Reverberating with references to the 1950s and film noir, this series of photographs plumbed the depths of the common cultural mind through images of the girl-next-door and the girl-in-trouble; images we recognized because they told stories we knew—women whose roles and faces we had seen before. However, despite the familiarity, there was no specific reference point; Sherman was not simply re-creating and re-presenting an original. Her appropriation of cultural imagery and stereotype was broader than that. She was documenting the many facets of the American woman. There is no single character in the stills, or underlying narrative to unify them. Instead, there is a collection of personas, each created as a function of framing, lighting, distance, and camera angle, as if to reference the dizzying array of women filling the airwaves and magazines of the 1950s. You could be everyone while still being absolutely no one. The implicit message of the photographs is that images of femininity are exactly that—little more than images. Femininity only requires a little maquillage, the right dress, and a perfect pout, as countless drag queens have demonstrated in the decades since. As Simone de Beauvoir famously declared, “One is not born a woman but becomes one,” and Sherman showed us all the different women we could become. The reason the “Untitled Film Stills” resonated as strongly as they did was because that they tapped into womanhood at a time when it was splitting into a million images like a fractured kaleidoscope. The deluge of marketing images from television, magazines, movies, and advertising combined with a growing sense of empowerment, to give women a sense of tremendous possibility. You could be her, or her, or her. This empowerment also felt restricted because it remained defined by the male gaze and a need for societal approval. Even while fun, fearless, and female (to quote Cosmopolitan magazine), you were still female. Whatever role you chose to play, it had to be a feminine role. The box confined us. We took two steps forward and one step back. “Do Not Pass the Glass Ceiling” conflicted with “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby”; “Because You’re Worth It” was pitted against “Is It Her Or Is It Maybelline?” You could not be just anyone. Whatever role you put on, you were still a woman underneath. In Untitled Film Stills #21, #22 and #23, Sherman is obviously the (same) model, and this similarity and repetition is compounded by the fact that she is wearing the same suit and hat. In all three photos, the figure of the woman is positioned against massive buildings. She is determined and informed by the buildings, and the buildings represent a society dominated by the masculine. The buildings stand for power and stability against which the feminine struggles to assert and define itself. In each image, this struggle plays out in various ways. 20

Conception

Untitled Film Still #21, 1978.

Untitled Film Still #22, 1978.

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Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

Untitled Film Still #23, 1978.

Despite the visual similarity, these are three radically different women with radically different stories. In #21, the shot is taken at a low angle, placing the character at the mercy of the towering buildings crowding in upon her. She is looking off to the side; everything is askew. Sherman appears lost and exposed. There are no other people in the frame. There are also no people evident in #22, but rather than seeming lost here, she is picking her way down the stairs with careful precision, away from the architecture behind her. The blur accentuates her movement from darkness to light. Only her shadow lingers ominously, reminding us that here, too, Sherman is vulnerable. Perhaps she is not moving out of the shadow; maybe it is moving toward her? Upon closer examination, her movement makes her appear unsteady in front of the solidly defined mass of shadow. We are aware of her solitude. Still #23 also emphasizes that Sherman is alone in an urban environment. Here she is framed at the far right side of the image, against the darkened emptiness of a deserted 22

Conception

street, flattened by the use of a wide-angle lens.4 In this image, the position of the figure at the very edge of the frame, with her fingers cut off, makes the emptiness of the rest of the frame that much more conspicuous. We wait, anxiously, for someone to join her. Sherman is looking off at someone or something with an expression that seems both impatient and fearful. The deserted street exacerbates the sensation that something is not quite right. With each reframing and altered depth of field, her characters evolve and morph, moving from type to type and genre to genre. The fact that every character is a creation of technique and surroundings is emphasized by the fact that her figures are, for all intents and purposes, the same. In these three images, the clothes and the woman do not change, yet each photograph is dramatically different from the others. Sherman demonstrates, even in her early work, not only how much a director can influence our perceptions of the figures on the movie screen, but also how the photographer can create personas, and how we relate to these personas based on our cultural context and experience. Sherman emphasizes the role-play inherent in both femininity and identity. It is no coincidence that women refer to the process of getting ready as “putting on their face.” Lipstick and mascara are a women’s warpaint. Makeup does not just define a woman as a woman: it defines what kind of woman she is. Is she a red lipstick kind of girl? Or a sparkly lip gloss type? Is she the kind of woman who wears a lot of makeup, or the kind of woman who favors a bare face? It is not as simple as saying that a woman wears makeup to look good. A woman wears makeup to tell the world who she is. Especially significant in terms of Sherman’s work is not just the art of the masquerade, but the artificiality of its construction; the fact that it is nothing more than painting on a surface, a pretty shell. The glamorously perfect façades of the women who fill films, advertising and cocktail parties conceal the actual body underneath: a raw, wet, and bloody expanse that would creep out in Sherman’s later work, eventually evolving into the gaping and damaged bodies of Office Killer. This tension between inner and outer, between pretty surface and the real underneath, between painted face and raw insides, only grew louder and messier with Sherman’s later work. In 1980, Sherman’s aesthetic underwent two significant changes. She began shooting in color, and she began using projected images of locations behind her, rather than shooting in actual physical locations. The effect of the projections not only created a shallower depth of field, thus flattening the image, but it also began Sherman’s move toward even more isolation and alienation—another trend which would surface later in Office Killer. Not only were her women alone, but they were now no longer allowed outside, much like the characters of the film. Sherman’s locations would become almost exclusively internal. A year later, another significant change occurred—Sherman’s images went horizontal, similar in shape to a movie screen. Commissioned by ArtForum, this series was called the “Centerfolds.” These images were even more claustrophobic, shot exclusively indoors, with no hint of an outside world. Sherman’s facial expressions throughout the series were also more intense and emotional than in her earlier work. These were not our conventional centerfolds. 23

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

Untitled #90, 1981.

In Untitled #90, Sherman’s centerfold has a telephone, but the telephone cord is not wrapped seductively around a bulging breast or a curvaceous midsection, as we might expect from a typical centerfold. In fact, we barely see her body at all. Sherman’s centerfold is dressed to the very base of her neck, wrapped up in what appears to be lavender flannel or cotton. There is no beguiling gaze; she is not even looking at us. Her eyes, in the shadow of her mousy brown hair, are looking downward, at the base of the telephone perched beside her on the couch. She is not happy. In fact, she looks as though she might have just received a phone call from a dying mother, a cheating suitor, or a mortgage company revoking a loan. If Sherman had not told us this was the “Centerfold” series, we would never have made that conclusion. Centerfolds by their very come-hither nature want to connect with us. A typical Playboy model asks us to come closer, to lick her, to taste her flesh, to bite her lips. Not these. Sherman’s centerfolds are alone, and none of them beckon you to come closer. This is consistent with Sherman’s other images, even those that have a coquettish appeal. Sherman never suggests that you touch her. In the photographs in which her character is more conventionally attractive, as in Untitled Film Still #3, the essence of the pose is so mannequin-like that the detached artificially enhances the separation between viewer and model. These are not blonde bimbettes. In fact, in Sherman’s own notes for the series, she lists various lying-down positions: “sleeping, fallen or thrown, unable to walk, lounging.”5 Nowhere is there a reference to sex. Fallen or thrown? One would be hard-pressed to image a Pamela Anderson centerfold in which she is fallen or thrown. In none of Sherman’s centerfolds is the woman done up either. The hair is often sweaty and mussed, the faces glistening and shiny. But it is the kind of shiny that would never make it into the pages of Playboy. This is not the shine of a light orgasmic mist; this 24

Conception

Untitled #88, 1981.

is the shine of sweat, fear, and humidity. If it is erotic, it is not the eroticism of airbrushed Playmates; this is the shine of women without a compact, stylist, or makeup artist. What Sherman’s and Playboy’s centerfolds do have in common, is the same emphasis on construction and arrangement, however disparate their execution and intention. The Playboy model’s persona is built on her carefully modeled image, just like Sherman’s women. Even though Sherman’s work is constructed around the notion of the unavailable, it, too, is built on the notion of the performance as communicated via arrangement. It is the vernacular of body parts, of body language. Who you are is how you pose. How you pose is who you are. In Untitled #88, the “centerfold” is not even lying down. She is hunched in a fetal position, knees to chest, arms wrapped around knees, one hand holding the other arm tighter in. The other hand is nestled under her chin, partly obscuring her mouth, and totally obscuring her chin. Her socks are pulled practically to her knees. She wears a loose gray sweater. Her facial expression combines sadness, concern, and fixation. Sherman stares into a red-orange light. More than half of the image is in total darkness. This darkness would take a firm hold in her next series, a set of fashion images commissioned by fashion designer Dianne Benson for Interview magazine, and a set commissioned by French fashion house Dorothée Bis for French Vogue. Like “Centerfolds,” these images were also atypical for their intended use. Described by Elizabeth Manchester as “silly, angry, dejected, exhausted, abused, scarred, grimy and psychologically disturbed,”6 they seem to be a response to the confines and expectations placed on women by the fashion world. Sherman herself says about the experience: From the beginning there was something that didn’t work with me, like there was friction. I picked out some clothes I wanted to use. I was sent completely different clothes that 25

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

I found boring to use. I really started to make fun, not of the clothes, but much more of the fashion. I was starting to put scar tissue on my face to become really ugly.7 Sherman parodies the kind of image normally found in fashion magazines, subverting restrictions commonly imposed on women in terms of their appearance and behavior, while also suggesting that the perfect body which appeared in her earlier work—the perfect body found on the pages of every fashion magazine—is only one half of the equation. The second half is the other extreme: the grotesque, the disgusting, the imperfect, and the internal. It is this half which caught Sherman’s attention. The faces we normally see on the cover of Vogue, the models in their editorial spreads, Photoshopped and styled to perfection, are nothing more than a shell concealing what lies beneath. For her, this surface was now disintegrating. She wanted to move beyond and inside it. It is not simply that her fashion photographs are shot with overly bright, unflattering light, or that the poses are awkward and sometimes angry. What makes them stand out is the model herself. Sherman’s role, the characters she was playing, was evolving, or more accurately de-volving. In Sherman’s own notes to herself for the series, she wrote phrases the opposite of what we would expect to find in connection with a fashion spread, such as “throwing-up, drooling, snot running down nose, bag-lady like; end of bad night; fat person; shooting up, snorting coke; bleeding, dying, etc.; but clothes perfect looking.”8 Sherman’s fascination had moved to the tension between extremes, between the messy and the neat, between the impeccable outside and the bloody inside, to the struggle to conceal our humanness with fashion and cosmetics. In Untitled #133, Sherman looks pale and corpselike in a gray sheath, a sadly blank expression on her face. Her eyes are dead and dark, blacked out, no sign of pupil or reflection. The hair is a coarse gray wig, the same monochromatic color as the sheath-like sweater, the bluish-gray floor and the gray backdrop. The only sign of light in the image is projected behind Sherman’s head, a seemingly misdirected spotlight illuminating the wall. Her frozen expression hangs in the shadows, the eyes staring unfocused and downward. Here, too, as with others from this series, something appears wrong with Sherman’s skin; her right cheek somehow scarred or disfigured, lumpish and uneven. In Untitled #137, her hair is disheveled, face mottled and red, hands dirty, as if she has clawed her way out of being buried alive. The red cloak she wears looks like a blanket handed to her by an emergency medical technician. Her hair is matted and dirty, coarse and tangled. The uneven red splotches on her face could be either from a skin disease, extreme heat, or an allergic reaction. The dirt on her fingers is a dark red, either from blood, or mud, or both. She sits in front of what seems to be a white wall marred with occasional flecks of paint, the most conspicuous one just over her left shoulder—a red jagged stripe, either from the slash of a knife or a painterly accident. Her eyes here, too, are downcast and dark, dead brown orbs upstaged by the glistening reflection of light off her sweaty skin and lips. Her eyebrows, in stark contrast to the rest of her face, are meticulously groomed and drawn on, as neatly defined as the sleeves of her bulky coat are folded. She is a strange contradiction of managed mess. Has 26

Conception

Untitled #133, 1984.

Untitled #137, 1984.

someone dressed her, cleaned her up, and arranged her on her chair? If she is so messy, if her hands and hair are so entrenched with dirt, how is her jacket so clean? How are her eyebrows so perfect? And what rape victim or seemingly-buried-alive woman (whatever narrative you choose to project onto the image) has such perfectly applied green eyeshadow? This figure, like many of Sherman’s portraits, raises far more questions than she answers. In Untitled #138, Sherman perches on a stool like a court jester, wearing a different gray wig and a black and white striped dress matched with an accompanying black and white tie. As if the diagonal stripes of the tie, conflicting with the vertical stripes of the dress, were not enough of an eyesore, the forced, plastered grin on her face is disconcerting, as is the gleam in her eye. None of this, however, is as disturbing as the tips of her fingers, which appear stained with blood. Her hands rest upside down on her lap, as if to avoid staining the designer dress with the accoutrements of bodily fluid. In Sherman’s Untitled #122, the blonde wig is willfully unbrushed, one eye barely peeking out but still looking directly at us; a rare moment of one-to-one confrontation, the fists clenched resolutely on either side of her hips. This is not a coquettish, come-hither glance. This woman 27

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

Untitled #138, 1984.

Untitled #122, 1983.

is not going to play by your rules, and she is not going to toe the line. It is impossible not to see Office Killer’s Virginia behind the Eighties power suit and the thick hair, the tension, and the aggression. Both Virginia and Untitled #122 are clenched figures, women whose strength is in marked defiance to the cut of their skirt. Their femininity is grimly hostile. These, like Sherman’s other characters in her photographs and in Office Killer, are enigmatic women of curious strength and belligerence. Her women may be alone, their space confined by the boundaries of the frame, but they are also in control of that space. Men are conspicuously and consistently absent both in her photographs and in Office Killer. Even Sherman’s “Fashion” series photographs are antagonistic, her women refusing to mimic conventions of femininity and expected glamour; the kind of attractive complicity typically associated with fashion images. The façade would crack further open in Sherman’s later work, which grew increasingly horrific. The external was torn open, even disappearing outright, as the internal became exposed. Full of menacing monsters, dismembered body parts, and sinister lighting, her “Fairy Tales” series (1985) and her “Disasters” series (1986–89) seem inspired by the stuff of 28

Conception

Virginia, Office Killer, 1997.

nightmares. Sherman had evolved from hinting at the existence of this kind of darkness to exposing it and the creatures within it. In Untitled #140, Sherman wears a pig’s snout, totally altering the shape of her face. She lies on the ground, skin dirty and glistening. Is it from semen, sweat, or the remains of carnage? The fingers of one hand rest on her lips as if finishing one last bite. The eyes, however, are glassy and unfocused, and it is not clear if Sherman’s figure is even still alive. The lighting is purple-tinged, but this could also be the color of her skin. The entire image is so dimly lit it is hard to tell exactly what is going on. Living in our darkest nightmares, these creatures represent how thin the line is between sanity and insanity, between the civilized and the primal. The only things keeping us in the realm of the proper and privileged are the right manners and the right lipstick. As soon as things start to slip, the beasts come out to play. The journey that began in the 1970s with the black-and-white “Untitled Film Stills” would take a pronounced turn with the “Disasters” series, as Sherman abandoned the figure completely in favor of, in the words of Laura Mulvey, “the disgust of sexual detritus, decaying food, vomit, slime, menstrual blood, hair. These traces represent the end of the road, the secret stuff of bodily fluids that the cosmetic is designed to conceal.”9 The body had deteriorated, the façade had been destroyed, and the internal made external. Sherman had finally exposed the messy reality of not only what it means to be a woman, but also what it means to be human. Femininity might be a role-play, but now the show was over. Sherman had removed the mask, chipped away at the armor, and taken a hard look at the wounds, guts, and gore that make us real. Now she was showing it all to us. In Untitled #168, the body has evaporated, as if from a futuristic nuclear explosion or spontaneous combustion, leaving behind all that identifies and defines us in the contemporary 29

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

Untitled #140, 1985.

Untitled #168, 1987.

age: our clothes and our electronics. In Untitled #175, the body is again missing; the only hints of its existence are trails of vomit, discarded junk food, and other trash strewn across a sandy beach. A single hint of human outrage is adhered to the sunglasses left behind, reflecting the face of a woman whose mouth is stretched open, as if in disgust or pain. Sherman’s images, both in Office Killer and in her photographs, remind us of the futility of trying to distance ourselves from all that is primal and unclean. In her “Fashion” series, we see the conflict between perfection and the grotesque; the hypocrisy of an immaculate external while the inside pulses and quivers with blood and guts. This fascination with the imperfect only became more prevalent as Sherman’s work evolved. Sherman herself explains: The world is so drawn toward beauty that I became interested in things that are normally considered grotesque or ugly, seeing them as more fascinating and beautiful. […] It seems boring to me to pursue the typical idea of beauty, because that is the easiest or the most obvious way to see the world.10 In Sherman’s “Disasters” series (and in Office Killer), we see what would normally be concealed and kept inside. We distance ourselves from disease and decay, but they are inside us all along. 30

Conception

Untitled #175, 1987.

Throughout the last forty years of Sherman’s work, isolation is repeatedly coupled with aggression, a refusal to age gracefully, to play by anyone’s rules of how women (or people) should behave. There is strength in the steely solitude of Sherman’s solitary figures. They are alone because they choose to be, because their bodies are prophylactics from a world of disease, contagion, and weakness. Even in couture fashion, Sherman’s women dare to look away, to leave their hair uncombed, to apply their makeup badly (if they apply it at all). There is a duality in her images, much like there is a duality to her subjects; two ways of looking and being looked at. Is Mistress in Untitled #122 clenching her fists because she is a victim of female hysteria? Or is she clenching her fists because she is preparing to kill? Are her centerfolds ready for bed (an assumption inherent in Sherman’s titling of the series), or are they resolutely alone and unavailable? Is the housewife of Untitled Film Still #3 frilly or domestic? Each perspective is equally important, and Sherman is in the middle, creating both, defying definition, exactly as a woman in the twenty-first century must. We must reposition ourselves in relation to the image, pulling at the tension between the artificial and the real, the performative and the self. Her work is not simply about stereotypes, but about aesthetic explorations of image, woman, genre, bodies, and space, complicating the code with which we live our lives. 31

Direction: Sherman’s March

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his, in so many words, is the road to Office Killer: a journey that began with the neat black-and-white 8x10s of the “Untitled Film Stills” grew graphic as the images got larger and larger, until they filled an actual movie screen. Insides were turned outside as Sherman moved from depictions of heartbreak, loneliness, and longing to body parts and gore. Bodies were sliced open to expose the reality of their insides. The cosmetic façades evident and exploited in Sherman’s earlier work were eviscerated in order to reveal the raw authenticity beneath. Sherman not only moved from the outside in, but from the abstract and conceptual to the real and tangible; from the metaphoric equivalencies of femalehood to a literal depiction of the body’s collapse; from frozen moments in time to eighty-two minutes of narrative, character, and metamorphosis. The decaying corpses in Office Killer are bodies literally turning inside out, the internal exposed without the pretense of perfection; an uncomfortable confrontation with everything we hope to conceal and avoid. Part of the reason horror is so disturbing is because it exposes our tenuous hold on all that is pretty and perfect. Death, after all, is always just around the corner, a constant reminder of the fragile grip we have over life and our own bodies. It is not only that the bodies got bigger as Sherman’s work progressed, but that we also get the full story in Office Killer, not just a captured still. We get the sound and the movement, the before, during and after—and we get to watch the decay. We see the maintenance, arrangement, and presentation of these bodies. After all, Sherman’s photographs are an encyclopedia of body language, identities performed with carefully arranged figures. The body is a collection of limbs used to convey roles, personalities, and situations. Each gesture, each object, is loaded with meaning. Her photographs are never casual snapshots or self-portraits. Rather, they are explorations of arrangement and archetype. She questions stereotype and learned behavior through her compositions and subjects, and through the diorama-like environments she creates for each scenario. She exposes the ruptures under the surface by taking everyday life and shifting it off kilter, examining society’s expectations for appearance and behavior. Her photographs work for the attention they bring to that which does not fit, to the exact point of the tear. While Sherman does not physically appear in Office Killer, she has said that Dorine is “a stand-in” for herself,11 and it is impossible not to recognize the parallels between the

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

character of Dorine and Sherman herself. Not only does Dorine bear a visual resemblance to a Sherman character during the course of the film, but in the final shot of Dorine in the car’s rearview mirror—hair blonde, sunglasses chic and retro—she could be Sherman herself; yet another devotee of the power of makeup to transform; a societally-sanctioned form of postmodern role play. The most compelling similarity between Sherman and Dorine has nothing to do with appearance, however, and everything to do with their shared interest in arranging bodies. Sherman herself said that Office Killer is more than anything else about “what this woman does with the bodies after they’re dead. […] She doesn’t even notice the bodies are rotting.”12 When Dorine brings the bodies home, she brings them into her studio; her role switched from that of detached voyeur in the workplace to puppeteer in the dead womb of her house. These are her children, her figurines. Dorine is not interested in having adult-like relationships with these people. Instead, like Sherman, she creates situations, like a makeshift tea party, but always with a sense of isolation and detachment. After all, her friends are dead. She is an arranger of things that do not talk back: words and grammar at work, bodies and limbs at home. Photographers and copyeditors arrange what and how you see. Sherman, too, plays with the dead in her images—what makes it bearable is that the figure is her. One by one, the other characters in Office Killer become elements of Dorine’s mise-enscène after they die. They have to be killed in order to be dressed up. Sherman may work alone, but the next best thing to working alone is using people who are dead. After all, when the flashbulb goes off, is rigor mortis that different from striking a pose? Both feature bodies frozen in unnatural movements. For any kind of representation, a violence has to occur: a ripping from original content/context; a recreation on different terms, however contrived and artificial. Something must be changed, held longer, space shifted and altered—a selfconsciousness inherent in any representation. This is what both Sherman and Dorine do. Dorine, like Sherman, is a puppeteer, an arranger of her own dioramas, and this tendency only gets stronger as the movie progresses. To varying degrees, the other characters in Office Killer are like puppets; devices both in the narrative arc of Dorine’s journey—as evidenced by their lack of progress or evolution—and in her basement diorama. This notion of being controlled and arranged marionette-style also pervaded several other films during the mid- to late Nineties. Johnny Mnemonic (1995), directed by Sherman’s longtime friend and former boyfriend Robert Longo, was released two years before Office Killer. While it paints a very different picture from the one Sherman creates in Office Killer, it, too deals with issues of arrangement, puppetry, and a lack of consciousness. It examines the struggle to find independence, to slice the umbilical cord from that which controls.13 The Truman Show (Weir, 1998) exposes a man’s universe as actually a soundstage, and his unknowing role as the world’s most famous television star. In Dark City (Proyas, 1998), John Murdoch discovers that his city is being controlled by aliens who want to take control of his mind and destroy him. In The Matrix (Wachowski & Wachowski, 1999), the narrative stems from the protagonist’s revelation that life on Earth may be nothing more than an elaborate simulation created by a malevolent cyber intelligence, while in Being John Malkovich (Jonze, 1999), 34

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a puppeteer discovers a door in his office that allows him to enter the mind and life of actor John Malkovich for fifteen minutes each time. Sherman’s work, too, is about being controlled and arranged, exploring the ramifications of the relationship between display and the body in contemporary culture. It focuses on the body, on what happens between body and clothing, objects and space, the code and language of the body—on how society and learned behavior pull the strings. By presenting the body as a doll, removing any sense of personal self, Sherman eradicates all sense of intimacy while maintaining total control over her own body. She is a puppeteer of her own limbs and expressions. Sherman sees herself from the outside in, watching what happens when she picks herself apart and puts herself back together again. The isolation created by this loss of intimacy, by this clinical sense of arrangement, is heightened by the fact that, in her photographs, Sherman is always alone. The rest of the world is merely implied, if not conspicuously absent. In similar work by other photographers, there is always at least the implied duality of the photographer and the subject; but in Sherman’s case she is both the photographer and subject. To accentuate the solitude and disconnect in her images themselves, she often looks outward, beyond the camera, outside of the frame. In Untitled Film Still #3, the one which most closely echoes the scene in Mrs. Michaels’ kitchen, the character’s head is cropped off, one eye cut off by the top of the image, the other eye just millimeters from sharing the same fate, both eyes staring above and beyond. She cannot even connect with us, her viewer. We stare at her, but she is forever out of reach. We see this kind of isolation in Office Killer as well. Even though there are other characters in the film (unlike in Sherman’s photographs), it remains a small group; a group strangely disassociated both from the world at large and itself. Dorine, as the Sherman stand-in, seems perpetually alone. The characters cannot connect with each other on any real level; bodies seep and drip but never merge. Dorine can place Mr. Michaels’ dead leg here, Virginia’s arm there, but Dorine’s body is still hers, their bodies are still theirs. We are each alone, together. Even when Mr. Michaels’ organs start spilling out, he remains intact, his organs still connected, his body still clearly his. There is no intermingling, no physical fusion in the film, and when touching does happen—as in the case of Mr. Michaels, or the Mail Boy, or Dorine’s father—it always has a bad result. Touching in Sherman’s photographs is to be avoided; touching in Office Killer leads to disaster. Post-AIDS, that kind of connection is verboten: solitude is equated with self-preservation. Isolation also leads to safety in terms of technology since “the only sure way to curb the threat of computer viruses […] is not to share programs and data.”14 Office Killer is a literalization of the body’s inability to be touched by others, of the body as a prophylactic, protecting internal organs from germs and disease, and of the benefits of keeping your hands to yourself.

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Production: The Big Picture

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  ffice Killer is not structured along the lines of a conventional narrative. In contrast to other similar office films of the era, like Working Girl or Wall Street (Stone, 1987), our protagonist does not learn from a superior and then come into her own by defying the same superior and learning a valuable life lesson—at least not in a typical way. There is no heartwarming sense of accomplishment. Daniel, the only character with the responsibility of teaching others, does not provide any real instruction, at least not in front of the camera. He sets up Dorine’s computer and suggests that she play around with it, check out the manuals, and do the tutorials—but that is it. Dorine must teach herself. Her evolution is not as a result of external instruction, least of all from Daniel. She promotes herself from copyeditor to office manager. She teaches herself the life lessons she needs to progress in life, and she does all this in order to reach success on her own terms, spilling whatever blood is necessary along the way. This is the story of Office Killer. Instead of a story with a typical narrative or a “normal” heroine, we have a movement through genres, with layers of reference to horror, melodrama, and contemporary culture, and the opportunity to fill in the blanks ourselves. When Dorine Douglas’ job as copyeditor for Constant Consumer magazine is turned into an athome position during a downsizing, she does not know how to cope. After an accidental electrocution does away with the office sleaze, Dorine realizes she can just move the office home with her. The bodies begin to pile up as, one by one, she picks off her former colleagues, intentionally targeting those who, for whatever reason, have offended her. This pattern of behavior is not without precedent, as revealed by the flashback in which Dorine’s father also dies by her hand following his own inappropriate behavior. The implication is that he abused her sexually and paid the price. This is a woman who does not tolerate bad behavior. The camp horror truly emerges as Dorine tends to her bodies, taping over the gaping holes and decomposition, spraying glass cleaner as a general disinfectant, neatly arranging the bodies so they can all watch television together. The sequence of the movie is perhaps best outlined in terms of deaths: first Mr. Michaels, then Virginia, the Mail Boy, Daniel, and lastly Norah. The initial death is that of Gary Michaels, chief office contaminant. His death may have been accidental, but Dorine is not sad to see him go. After all, his behavior was inappropriate. Next is Virginia: she of the deathly

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

pallor, leather suits, cigarettes, and inhaler. She is the first intentional death in Dorine’s mission to clean up the workplace. Third to go is the Mail Boy: devotee of pornography and pusher of the mail cart, transmitter of communication and communicable diseases, and yet another office flirt. Fourth (and fifth) are the Girl Scouts: spreaders of cookies and propaganda from door to door, representative of a childhood innocence denied to Dorine; their doll-like qualities emphasized even more after death, as their bodies flop together in the style of conjoined twins. Dorine, significantly, brings Norah home alive so that she can “explain” to the others what she has done to the company, enhancing Dorine’s role as corporate avenger against Norah’s corporate thievery. Dorine does not kill Norah until she serves her final purpose. Norah has to see the damage she has wrought. It is not enough for Dorine to make sure Norah is properly punished; she must know why she is being punished. We think we know what to expect when we see certain scenarios play out in movies, but Sherman plays on those expectations, using them to build her story while also defying them in surprising ways. We expect Molly Ringwald to be the star, the hero; we do not expect Carol Kane to bring bodies home with her; we do not expect pretty people to die while ugly, unattractive people get away with murder. Sherman also amps up to nightmarish levels the tensions built on typical female-to-female conflict—notions of female aggression, competition, role-play, and beauty. Office Killer is full of unexpected characters and bizarre plot twists, a comedy/horror/melodrama/noir/feminist statement/art piece. In addition to its lacking a predictable narrative structure or an easy-to-categorize genre, the film also had its marketing odds further stacked against it by Sherman’s choice of Carol Kane as Dorine. Kane’s career has been defined as much by quirky roles in the television series Taxi (1978–83) (in which she appeared from 1980–83) and The Princess Bride (Reiner, 1987) as by her childlike voice and mane of frizzy, curly hair. Well-known actresses Molly Ringwald and Jeanne Tripplehorn play Kim and Norah, the two most charismatic and polished women in the film, but the movie is not about them. Jeanne Tripplehorn would have been a more commercially safe choice to play the lead. Even Molly Ringwald, as a female star of the Eighties, might have gotten more press, if not more box-office dollars, had she been cast in the main part. However, neither of them would have been right for the role. Instead, this story is about Carol Kane’s Dorine Douglas, a quirky loner with bad makeup, even worse fashion taste, and a propensity for accumulating bodies in her basement—nothing PR-ready about that. And so Office Killer had already become a problem after casting alone. When Miramax set up focus groups to watch early screenings of the film, its target audience was young males who had seen Kids (Clark, 1995), I Shot Andy Warhol (Harron, 1996), Basquiat (Schnabel, 1996), and subUrbia (Spheeris, 1996), films viewed as having similar appeal. “More Molly Ringwald” was the dominant response, both in terms of more screen time, and literally, as in more of her body.15 However, these kids obviously did not get the movie, and neither did Miramax, who had the rights to Office Killer for a year before deciding not to release it. Strand Releasing picked it up, gave it a very select distribution in a handful of art houses nationwide, and then sent it to the grave of the VHS/DVD bin—a 38

Production

difficulty which Christine Vachon, the film’s producer, briefly alludes to in her book, Shooting to Kill. Additional discussion of the film in the book is almost non-existent, dwarfed by conversation about her other, more successful movies, such as Velvet Goldmine (Haynes, 1998), Safe (Haynes, 1995) and I Shot Andy Warhol. The longest segment about Office Killer deals with the test screenings that doomed the film.16 Vachon is not the only one saying little about Office Killer. Out of the articles Metro Pictures, Sherman’s New York gallery, lists as being about Sherman in 1997 (the year the film was released), fewer than half deal with the movie. Especially telling is the assigning of Roberta Smith, an art (not film) critic, to review Office Killer for the New York Times. She devotes the first three paragraphs to the movie before returning to the familiar terrain of the photographs for the next four. She does go back to the movie eventually—to discuss the problems involved in Sherman’s making one—before skipping ahead to review the current Sherman (photographic) retrospective. It is as if the discourse on Sherman was established with her “Untitled Film Stills,” and all we have done since then is expand on the same ideas, continually relying on an urge, writes Johanna Burton, “to posit Sherman’s characters […] as passive and preyed upon: in danger of (or in process of) being consumed variously by the (media-produced) male gaze, by culture at large, even by space itself.”17 Office Killer is simply excised from her body of work when it is convenient, because it does not support this interpretation. By the time Smith concludes her review, it is with the succinct statement, “The movie itself is almost a Sherman retrospective.”18 But the movie is not a Sherman retrospective. A retrospective is an exhibit featuring an artist’s life work. A retrospective looks backward, encapsulating what has come before; Office Killer moves Sherman’s work forward. It takes her imagery and ideas in new directions, bringing in a heightened richness and complexity.

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Part III Another Kind of Entertainment

How to Look at Office Killer (And What I Missed the First Time) Opening sequence (0:00) The film’s noirish opening credits blend violins with modem dial tones, projections of names over printing presses, office paraphernalia, ashtrays, marked-up articles, and computer keyboards, all interspersed with bits of indeterminate red goo, the lurid type rippling across the screen as if by projection from a copy machine. The lettering doubles and mirrors, fading away and lighting up, shifting and swirling beneath red liquid. Designed by New York’s Bureau, a company that does print and advertising work in addition to credit sequences for other Christine Vachon films such as I Shot Andy Warhol, Swoon (Kalin, 1992) and Safe,19 the sequence here is tense and lurid, already establishing, in the words of David Geffner, a sense of drama and foreboding, “as if the titles themselves were on the hunt for

Good Fear, the production company behind Office Killer.

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

Dorine Dougas is being downsized.

yuppie prey.”20 Right from the start, the titles are also indicative of contagion as well, morphing like a virus adapting to a new host. They may not preview the plot, as some titles do, but rather they act as a preface, setting the tone for the rest of the film. Then a voice-over begins: “At Constant Consumer magazine, there is but one constant rule: get the job done. This can be hazardous however, when the laws of economics affect our workplace and threaten to downsize us.” While the voice-over is going, we see an old dot matrix printer spool back and forth over Dorine Douglas’ downsizing notice. The words spelled out in front of us warn of the changes about to take place: March 23, 1996 Dorine Douglas 78 A23 Copy Department Employee Number 0140 0301 We regret to inform you that your position here at Constant Consumer has been modified. Because of decreased advertising revenues and low worker productivity, many positions currently held by full-time staff members will be scaled down. Many of you will remain with the company as part-time “at home” employees. Status as a part-time employee will exempt you from many of the benefits you currently enjoy as a full-time staffer. A complete list of benefit re-adjustments and a re-location schedule for home installation is attached in this notice for your convenience. Sincerely, Virginia Wingate EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 44

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The Mail Boy making his morning rounds.

So much happens in those opening moments. First of all, there is the built-in irony between the voice-over telling us that the only constant rule of Constant Consumer magazine is to get the job done, yet the downsizing is a result of “low worker productivity.” Obviously, not everyone is getting the job done. Next, is the word choice of “downsize us.” Not downsize the job, but downsize us. Physically, the employees are being sized down, made irrelevant, evacuated, and forced to disappear. They are literally being scaled in half, from full- to part-time. The use of the word “hazardous” is also unusual. Normally, when our jobs are scaled back, we do not think of it as hazardous. Depressing, perhaps, or frustrating. But hazardous? Not usually. The titles conclude, and we shift to the point of view of a mail cart zipping about an office space. We cut back and forth from the POV of the mail cart to the face of the Mail Boy as he pushes the cart while the voice-over continues: “For those of you who cannot keep pace with such changes, be forewarned, you will be terminated.” Again, the use of the word “terminated” is heavy with subtext. “Termination” means being fired, but it can also mean to be killed or extinguished, and that is what will soon start taking place. Another irony established in the opening scene is visually based. Most magazine offices are designed to be trendy and hip, glamorous and upscale. They feel, at least, white collar. The film The Best of Everything (Negulesco, 1959), another women’s picture/melodrama set in the world of publishing, also opens with a mail boy delivering the mail, but everything is different visually. The magazine takes up a brightly lit, wide-open space where everything is chic and pristine. In contrast, in the few shots we have already seen of Constant Consumer magazine, this office looks more like the set from Carol Kane’s TV show Taxi. Both sets are ultrafunctional and low-budget, grimly bathed in browns and tans, and lit in order to 45

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maintain a dim and muted atmosphere—the exact opposite of real-life magazine offices at Condé Nast or in The Best of Everything. Constant Consumer looks more like an office for an exterminator, low-rent private detective, or insurance company. Also, strangely for a magazine, and especially for a magazine that is devoted to consuming, Constant Consumer seems weirdly dated. The office space feels like it could be from the 1970s. It is anything but cutting-edge. It looks anything but consumer-oriented. Since this workplace is the film’s primary shooting location, we are left disoriented and confused. Much like with Dorine’s fashion sense, we cannot identify the film’s era or specific aesthetic style. We next cut to a shot of the receptionist on the phone. What is unusual about this shot is how startlingly similar it is to the later shot of Mrs. Michaels on the phone. Both women hold the phone at the exact same place in the frame (the center), with their heads off to the left, cropped off at the corners of the frame. Mrs. Michaels, in her white kitchen, holds a white phone. The receptionist holds a black phone. Mrs. Michaels’ hand, as it grips the phone, is conspicuously adorned with a silver diamond ring. The receptionist’s hand, as it grips the phone, is conspicuously adorned with a similar diamond ring. Perhaps even more distracting than her ring is the receptionist’s gum, which she chews frantically while talking on the phone. With an accent somewhere between Long Island and New Jersey, the receptionist, discusses the lay-offs: “Everyone’s been saying a third, but Janice, she heard half….” The receptionist is interrupted by another call. She answers the call with an indifferent “Constant Consumer, please hold,” before switching back to her gossipy exchange. Already, we see someone not doing her job. Already, we see the toxic workplace environment. Already, we

“Constant Consumer, please hold …” .

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see that Constant Consumer is not about getting the job done. “Can you believe that? Half?” she continues, jaw grinding away. “It’s a massacre.” There is that macabre word choice again. Termination and now massacre. “Now listen, sweetie” (1:19) “Norah, shut the door. I’ve got a four o’clock with Ted and Naomi. Go ahead and distribute them on your way out.” With the delivery of that first line, Virginia establishes not only her personality but also her superiority over Norah. Norah is not even important enough to warrant eye contact. Virginia keeps her eyes on her planner, her dismissive hand gesture telling Norah to follow instructions and get lost. However, Norah does not acquiesce so easily. “Look, you crawl out there and do the dirty work, Virginia,” she replies defiantly, her use of the word “crawl” connoting insects and other unpleasant creatures. “I’m the one dragging this magazine out of the Stone Age. You’d be out of business if it wasn’t for me.” Like a six-year-old having a temper tantrum, Norah drops the papers back on Virginia’s desk and spins around as if to leave. Only Virginia will not tolerate this kind of behavior. She laughs, amused at the outrageousness of Norah’s absurd defiance. “Norah, I never crawl, and you’re spitting germs in my face.” It is clear that Norah is little more than a germ carrier to Virginia, an

Virginia and her beloved tincture of Echinacea and goldenseal.

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unpleasant little speck to be dealt with as quickly as possible. “Now listen, sweetie,” she says condescendingly. Her disregard for Norah is so high, in fact, that she stops midsentence to pick up a small vial full of dark liquid in order to send a couple drops down her throat—inappropriate behavior in the office space before we are even two minutes into the film. It is as if Norah were not there; as if Virginia were alone to perform her private acts of self-care and maintenance, but also as if Virginia needs the extra pharmaceutical fortification to deal with the annoyance that is Norah. “Just because you know a thing or two about…” she trails off, the contempt evident, “computers and…”—she trails off again, thoroughly uninterested in whatever Norah knows a thing or two about—“…office downsizing, that doesn’t mean that you know shit about running a magazine.” When she practically spits the word “shit” at Norah, we wonder how many germs she is spitting out, horrified, again, at her behavior. Norah stands, arms crossed, still petulant and disobedient. Virginia continues: “Now take a few drops of Echinacea/goldenseal. That will knock that cold right out of you. And then get out there and drop [pause for emphasis] the [another pause] axe.” Norah smiles, obedient at last, looking like a child who has just been reprimanded and knows there is not a chance in hell of retaliating. In defeat, she grabs the papers, spins around again, and leaves without saying a word. The axe will be dropped, leading the way for termination and massacre. “Douglas, Douglas” (2:20) We first see Dorine from above. Her head bent, she looks down at her desk, marking up pages; an antiquated keyboard sits under one elbow, the other elbow points at a trash can full of crumpled-up paper. She wears a sensible white sweater over a brown top, her hair pulled tightly back into two Princess Leia buns, the center part jagged and uneven. Dorine is an aggressively confident copyeditor, as revealed by her uncanny ability to distinguish immediately between correct usages of “which” and “that.” Her cup, filled with dozens of sharpened number-two pencils, makes the same point. Her desk is tidy and covered with three stacks of paper. There are no personal effects to clutter up the surface. We cannot see her face. We only see two lamps shining down on her work. The only sign of her unconventional personality is the erratic part in her hair. The camera cuts back and forth between the top of Dorine’s head and the grateful face of a colleague, whose grammar has just been corrected. After the third cut we finally see Dorine’s face, and even then it is just for a split second, on the side of the frame. Dorine says nothing when we see her. She only gives the slightest hint of a nod, a white telephone taking center frame rather than her face, the sharpened pencils illuminated by the two desk lamps on the right. Her expression is hard to read. Is she displaying irritability? Efficiency? Clearly, she is professional. With her neatly-tied shirt and array of pencils, she is an official person. Her elbows are pulled tightly to her sides, fingers clutching her pencil, poised over her latest 48

How to Look at Office Killer

Our first glimpse of Dorine Douglas, with plenty a pencil to spare.

Norah, in her pink suit, with her pink slips.

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Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

proofreading task, her face and eyes turned away from us, looking somewhere beyond the frame. She is the substitute teacher everyone hates, the librarian no one wants to approach. Cut back to the copyeditors’ quadrant. An unnamed male wearing the brown colors characteristic of the magazine’s employees obscures Dorine from us. Norah has come to issue the “pink slips” to the copy-editing department. She calls out for Dorine. She does not know where Dorine sits or who she is. This further emphasizes Norah’s disconnect from the actual day-to-day workings of the magazine. Everyone else knows, and they point toward the back of the room, but we still do not see Dorine. She is behind the group, the only one seated at her desk. Perhaps she is the only one working? The next time the camera goes in her direction, a huge monitor hides Dorine from our view. We see her from behind, to the side of the frame, handing completed drafts to Mr. Landau. We have yet to see what she really looks like. The anticipation builds. The camera finally comes around for an instant, as we follow Mr. Landau handing Dorine her pink slip, which she promptly files at the front of her desk. She is too busy working to be bothered with potential downsizing. It is as though she is too busy to appear in this movie at all. If we try to focus on her face, all we really see are the enormous glasses. They slip down her nose, covering up half her face, their immensity displaying poor vision, a separation from the world—either protecting her from it or keeping it at bay—accentuating her lack of eye contact. What would she see without them? What would we see of her without them? Do her glasses allow her to see and experience a reality we cannot, metaphorically equivalent to the goggles Johnny Mnemonic wears in order to “see” the Internet? Or are they just another

Mr. Landau and Dorine discuss a recent article while she avoids reading her pink slip.

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How to Look at Office Killer

barrier between us and her? Or, much as Sherman uses props to reference narratives, are these glasses merely establishing Dorine’s status and character in the film: the lowly and awkward copyeditor at the bottom of the totem pole? By the time we return to Dorine, we are separated from her by a window and what could be either an alley or a courtyard, peering into the dollhouse-like squares of light, watching the action from a frustrating distance. We know it is Dorine working the copy machine because we have seen enough of the white librarian sweater and the hair buns to know it cannot be anyone else. Also, as practiced movie viewers, we know we are due to meet our protagonist. Convention requires it, but Sherman persists in keeping us apart. We do not know Dorine; we do not even know what city we are in, or exactly what year it is, leaving the film feeling curiously timeless and dated at the same time. Sherman keeps us alienated and disoriented. The ambient noise is overpowering as the camera zooms in on Dorine’s pink slip. We see her hands shaking the print cartridge vigorously, directly over her “your position has been modified” notice as if in retaliation for its bad news, but we still do not see her. Cut again to the exterior of the building, peering in at Dorine as the lid of the print cartridge comes apart, spraying its murky blackness all over her. She cries out, a dying animal noise, her hands flung apart, helpless. Dorine, the model of clean, grammatical efficiency, has been knocked off balance, seemingly by the pink slip’s revelations. Ink covers her. We continue to be denied a proper look at her face. Norah, out of nowhere and dressed immaculately in pink, comes rushing to the rescue, calling out, “Miss Davis, Miss Davis.”

The view from the outside: Dorine covered in toxic toner, Norah being useless.

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It takes all she has for Dorine to stammer back, “Douglas, Douglas.” She is still correcting other’s errors, struggling to be identified and acknowledged while clawing at the air in vain. Norah will not get too close, cautioning Dorine that “it’s probably toxic,” and feebly offering an extra jacket. Dorine, her face half blacked out, is clearly a leper. She cannot even bear to take Norah’s tissue, and instead runs out of the room whimpering. All Dorine has said in the entire conversation is, “Douglas, Douglas.” All we have heard her say in the movie so far (with the exception of her introductory voice-over, which, it will become clear, reflects the later version of Dorine), is: • To a coworker: “‘Which.’ ‘Which’ is correct, not ‘that.’ And there’s a split infinitive, sentence two, paragraph one.” • To her boss: “There you are, Mr. Landau.” “Not at all, sir.” “Yes, sir.” “Oh, thank you.” • And to Norah: “Douglas, Douglas.” We are practically ten minutes into the film, and we have yet to see her face. We have yet to hear her deliver more than a sentence or two. We have yet to meet Dorine. “Get the job done” (9:24) Our first sign that we are not at the office anymore is the underside of a dingy white tea kettle pouring boiling hot water into a green teacup. Strangely, Dorine combines the tea bag with a heaped spoonful of cocoa. This combination of cocoa with tea seems odd, but it parallels the odd contradiction that is Dorine. Cocoa is marketed to children. Drinking tea, on the other hand, and meditating over it, is a grown-up activity. While the blending of the two may taste disgusting, the blending of the boundaries between child and grown-up can also be disgusting. Tea represents the adult world of the workplace, while cocoa reflects the domestic comfort of the home. Dorine is trapped between childhood and adulthood, her boundaries blurred there as much as they are between the worlds of home and office. Therefore, while peculiar, the combination of both tea and cocoa personifies the inner conflicts of Dorine’s character. Steam rises up as we get another close-up, this time of the dials on the stove, where the camera lingers perplexingly. There is another cut, a large cat in the foreground of this shot, and, at last, there is Dorine, bustling in the background of her kitchen. Our first real shot of Dorine is in her house. This is significant since the domestic abode has an extremely relevant place in the movie, and clearly Dorine is more comfortable there. Dorine is at home with herself when she is at home. Her home is her domain, and that is why she brings her workplace to her basement. Home is where she feels in charge. Dorine finally approaches the camera in the guise of coming to greet her cat. The first time we see her making direct eye contact with anyone since the movie began and it is with her cat. Dorine sweeps the cat off the counter, only to be startled by the discovery of a dead 52

How to Look at Office Killer

Dorine’s peculiar blend of cocoa and tea.

Dorine gets the job done.

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mouse. After taking a brief moment to collect herself, she picks the mouse up by the tail. Her face set in grim determination; we are reminded of Constant Consumer’s mantra: Get. The. Job. Done. This, too, is Dorine’s mantra. There is a moment of impasse when Dorine stares at the mouse, and we wonder what Dorine will do with it. Dead mouse and Dorine are eye to eye. There is no pity here, no tenderness or femininity. The body goes down the garbage disposal. The mouse is the first casualty of the film. “Coming, Ma!” (10:35) The first time we see Dorine’s mother, the frame is full of warm reddish tones. A pattern of red flowers and big green leaves covers her dirty and dingy robe. Her skin is old and wrinkled, arm jutting out across the center of the frame, a knobby arthritic finger knuckle poking angrily at the button of an ancient intercom system. The intercom box looks like it is out of the Seventies, as does the bathrobe. The mother looks to be in her seventies. Any part of the nightstand not occupied by the intercom box is, like Virginia’s desk, covered with prescription pill bottles; one more reference to living with a decomposing body. The lighting is sharp and directly angled. What we notice most is her face, even though it is in shadow, and what we notice most in her face is her mouth. It is open and aggressive. The lines around it are angry. There is a darkness inside. We only see the faintest hint of teeth, the edges showing behind the curled lip. Her mouth is the black hole, the toothed vagina, otherwise known as the

“Dorine? Dorine!”.

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vagina dentata: a popular motif in the sci-fi horror narrative, where the mother is often portrayed as a negative force, a metaphoric black hole. Barbara Creed, in her essay “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine,” describes this archetype: We see her as the gaping, cannibalistic bird’s mouth in The Giant Claw, the terrifying spider of The Incredible Shrinking Man; the toothed vagina/womb of Jaws; and the fleshy, pulsating, womb of The Thing and Poltergeist. What is common to all of these images of horror is the voracious maw, the mysterious black hole which signifies female genitalia as a monstrous sign which threatens to give birth to equally horrific offspring as well as threatening to incorporate everything in its path. This is the generative archaic mother, constructed within patriarchal ideology as the primeval “black hole”. This, of course, is also the hole which is opened up by the absence of the penis; the horrifying sight of the mother’s genitals-proof that castration can occur.21 Carlotta Douglas is the force with which Dorine struggles to free herself, to define herself against—not only by unplugging her mother’s chair, but also on a symbolic level by setting fire to the house. Her mother is irritated because Dorine is slow. Her mother is irritated because the cats have been allowed in the room. Her mother is irritated because she has to repeat everything. Her mother is irritated because Dorine did not come the first time she pressed the buzzer. Her mother is irritated because Dorine is just like her father. We are irritated with the mother because of the extent of her irritation. Dorine just stares silently at the television screen, her mind clearly somewhere else. Television, her mother’s preferred form of technology and entertainment, represents the old guard, a passive form of entertainment. Television, much like this entire bedroom and the woman in it, feels like a relic. We understand why Dorine is bored. “I’m going to be working from home now, Mama,” Dorine says, seemingly on the verge of tears. She stares at the television, her face directed away from her mother. Her mother is enthusiastic for the first time. “Oh, Dori, we’ll get to spend more time together!” She does not ask why. Dorine seems to hear her mother’s words as a death sentence, and the idea of so much desensitizing television in her future may have felt like one. Finally, Dorine stands up and turns to face her mother, who exclaims at the prospect of getting work done on the house now that Dorine will be around more. Obviously far less excited about this prospect than her mother, Dorine does not reply, merely dropping the remote back on the bedside table with an air of tremendous resignation. The association of bored housewives with television and dumbness looms large on Dorine’s horizon, and her posture seems even more stooped as she turns to grab the laundry basket. The one-sided technology of television, and the passivity with which we associate it, is clearly in opposition to the new electrifying interactive engagement of computers, and Dorine does not want to give one up for the other. Dorine needs technology to help her escape the stultifying numbness of life with her mother and her mother’s television. Dorine needs her job to break free. 55

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Dorine and her mother staring at the television screen.

Dorine unplugs her mother’s stair chair, preventing her from getting to the first floor.

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Her mother, still oblivious, calls out at her daughter’s retreating back, “Don’t forget to leave my chair on.” Dorine says nothing to her mother, but says something to us. For the second time in the movie, we get a voice-over. “It is true,” she tells us, “that to live inside a warm and nurturing environment is everybody’s dream. But as we grow up, we also need to experience independence and adventure. That is the key to a successful mother-daughter relationship.” As she delivers the last sentence, we see her bend over and unplug the automated stair chair which allows her mother to go back and forth between the house’s first and second floors, the chair that her mother specifically asked to be left plugged in. We smile at this blatant defiance. Is there more to Dorine than meets the eye? Is there significance to the fact that the voice in Dorine’s head is so different from the voice that comes out of it? There is a disconnect between Dorine’s reality and the world which surrounds her—and this disconnect is pivotal to the entire film.

“I’ve been waiting all night for something like this to happen.” (14:48) Dorine is having computer problems. Her computer buzzes angrily, and the solution is not in her manual. It is late, and no one is around. She is forced to turn to the only lighted office—the one belonging to sleazy Mr. Michaels—but Dorine cannot bear to look him in the eye. She timidly stammers, “Mr. Michaels, sir,” as her fingers knead her dress nervously, clutching at the fabric of her dress. Her stress is evident in her inflections, as if it were not

A very awkward Dorine comes to ask Mr. Michaels for help.

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Mr. Michaels crosses a line when he rubs Dorine’s shoulders.

already obvious by her physicality. Her body practically crouches in upon itself. We ache for her, at the mercy of unsympathetic Mr. Michaels, who obviously could not care less about her problems or anxiety. Apathy drips off his tongue, as he replies with a “Shocking, whatever shall we do”— although it is more of a “Shockingwhatevershallwedo,” the words running together without any effort to keep them apart, in marked contrast to Dorine’s overly precise phrasing. We cut to Dorine’s corner of the office. He asks her to sit down so she can see what he is doing. She is okay with that—until he begins to rub her shoulders; then her nervousness eclipses everything else. Her discomfort is obvious to us and to him. We think of the germs he could be spreading, realizing that this is the first time someone has touched Dorine since the movie began. “I have to go to the restroom,” she stammers, fleeing the scene. While Dorine is in the restroom, Mr. Michaels attempts to perform some kind of electrical repair in the wall socket. Dorine, at the same time, washes the back of her neck and her hands, typical film vernacular for calming oneself, but she could also be literally cooling herself down. Is she turned on or is she removing potential contaminants? As she scrutinizes her reflection in the bathroom mirror, Dorine’s face is full of resolve, but we do not know how to interpret it, or how to predict what will happen next. Will she seduce Mr. Michaels? Will she fight back? Will she, too, catch his cold? All we know is that when he calls out to her to come help when she is done “playing with herself,” his rudeness has gone too far. 58

How to Look at Office Killer

Dorine’s look of shock as she bumps into the fuse box, turning the power back on.

As she creeps out of the bathroom and down the hall, she is so nervous that, when Mr. Michaels startles her, it is not surprising that she stumbles backward, as if to cower, hitting the power switch and sending an electric current through Mr. Michaels’ body. His electrocution is surprising, not only because it is the first death in the movie, but also because, plot-wise, we did not expect anything so dramatic to happen in an otherwise mundane workplace. However, it also feels appropriate. Considering the dark lighting, the tense atmosphere, and Mr. Michaels’ smug and inappropriate behavior, something like this was inevitable. We want the sleazy man with the mustache to be put in his place by the awkward librarian with something to prove. We were actually hoping for it. At first, her reaction is the same as anybody else’s would be: shock and horror. She crosses herself. She nervously tugs on his arm in an attempt to wake him up. In a feeble manner, she hits his chest, but the gesture is so nervous and lightly staccato, it is as though she is afraid to touch him or to catch whatever disease(s) he has. She cracks open his mouth with her hand as if to peer inside and gasps, horrified and disgusted. She shakes her hand violently—a gesture similar to what one might do after touching a hot stove or being whacked with a blunt object. She inspects the body before standing up, and now, in marked contrast to the earlier shot of Dorine, we are below, looking up, the angle mimicking the upward “hero shot” common to so many westerns. This is the first time we see Dorine without her glasses. The glasses have fallen to the floor when she inspected the body, although we only heard and did not see it happen. Shaking her hand at the wrist, she turns to the phone. She dials 911, pacing back and forth. Her hand continues to be flung back and forth. 59

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Dorine tries, ineffectively, to tap Mr. Michaels back to life.

We start to see a very different Dorine. Her hair is still in its trademark buns, but we notice golden highlights that we did not notice before. We see her face without the glasses, and it is almost as dramatic as Darth Vader without the mask. Is this a nod at her newfound power and persona, like Clark Kent losing his glasses when becoming Superman? She looks human, approachable, less mousy. We see her flesh and imagine touching it. Her arms are gripped close to her body, but it is with determination rather than anxiety, the right elbow pulled in, the left arm holding the phone, fingers tight against the handle. Her sweater today is gray, but it is equally as conservative as her previous one. The brown shirt underneath matches the parallel lines of the brown blinds behind her. The lines on the left run directly into the parallel lines of the bookcase to her right, its horizontally-piled contents creating even more imprisoning parallel lines. It is Dorine versus the office. The line of the phone cord and the angle of her right forearm are the only diagonals in the frame. Even her sweater is lined, the vertical cords of fabric drawing a sharp perpendicular to the horizontals behind her. All the lines, crisscrossing back and forth throughout the frame, make us feel as oppressed as Dorine. We are caged in. “This is 911,” we hear through the phone receiver. “Is anybody there?” Pause. “Is this an emergency?” Like a coin-operated doll, Dorine’s posture jerks its way upward in each pause. Straighter. Straighter. Straight. She hangs up the phone and sits down. The curls in her hair present the only softness in the image as Dorine lowers the phone. She stands resolute, arms on either side, frozen for an instant, before bending over to look at Mr. Michaels one more time. She finally sits down, emphatic, her glasses in her lap. Her hair 60

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“I was just trying to pitch in. I was just trying to help”.

looks almost pre-Raphaelite, the center part suddenly straighter than it was in the film’s first shot of her; but her clothes are still bunched up unflatteringly, the gray sweater seemingly a size too big. We cannot see her body. Whereas both technology and femininity dictate a streamlined efficiency, a sleek exposure of contoured bodies, Dorine is a bulky anachronism. We do not know what to make of her. She talks to Mr. Michaels, or at least in the direction of his body, as the camera stays pointed at her. She sounds defensive. “I was just trying to pitch in. I was just trying to help. There was no need to get so personal.” She says “personal” like it is a bad word, which to her it obviously is. “Personal” implies touching, which connotes disease, contagion, and inappropriate behavior. For her, “personal” is practically unprotected sex. Dorine cannot look directly at Mr. Michaels. Her eyes roll around, dark little orbs in her pale face. She is so upset that she twitches. The twitch starts with her right thigh, bouncing slightly up and down, before moving up her body, her right arm gesturing. We cut to her shoes, then a close-up of her calves. They are meaty and thick, in sensible tights. She wears orthopedic shoes, more like a grandmother than a librarian. The left sensible shoe jerks like an epileptic as Dorine, her voice both squeaky and adamant, says that she is going to have to clean up the mess Mr. Michaels has made. The camera pulls back, and we see Dorine, eyes closed, fists clenched on either side, repeating to herself, “It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. I’m going to have to clean it up. I’m going to have to clean it up.” She might as well be repeating the Constant Consumer mantra, “Get the job done.” 61

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Dorine, in her orthopedic shoes and bulky coat, whisks Mr. Michaels through the parking garage.

It is unclear which is more important for her to clarify: the fact that she is not responsible for the mess that has been made, or the fact that she must still take responsibility for making it go away. With overemphatic precision, she grabs some papers from her desk, shoves them in her bag and marches off to deal with the situation. Much like a copyeditor cleaning up text, she must now clean up Mr. Michaels’ mess. Dorine understands the necessity of asserting and maintaining order. She will make things tidy again. Ever the copyeditor, she will organize what is in disarray, whipping into shape the dangling and the unmodified. She wheels his body out to her car with his head placed on the pillow-like shape of her purse. Even after his death, she is methodical and precise with Mr. Michaels. She is considerate and conscientious. After all, there is no need to be sloppy. There is no need to be rude. Dorine finds a place for everything and puts everything in its place—including body number one. An interlude with Mrs. Michaels (27:44) This short scene in Office Killer stands out for its use of especially tight framing, reminiscent of some of Sherman’s photographs, and particularly Untitled Film Still #3. The subject of that photograph is upstaged not only by the close framing, but also by her bottle of Joy dish soap and her container of ubiquitous Morton’s salt. We would rather see her face, we would rather marvel at the exactitude of her bob (and her striking resemblance to Molly Ringwald), but instead Sherman thrusts her subject to the side of the frame, barely giving us both eyes, denying us a forehead; the figure dwarfed by the aggressive diagonal of a saucepan’s handle 62

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Untitled Film Still #3, 1977.

aimed directly at the two strangely pointed breasts. This is Sherman’s cropping style, reminding us that she is in charge, instructing us that this is how we should be seeing the world. The woman herself seems an afterthought, just another object in the diorama-like assemblage of kitchen-sink paraphernalia. What we can see of the eyes is neatly accented with pencil and mascara. Femininity happens (and belongs?) behind the kitchen sink, encircled with a frilly apron. This scene from Office Killer features a rare appearance by Mr. Michaels’ wife, but we never really get to see her. We see even less of her than of the subject of Untitled Film Still #3. There is not one shot of her whole face, much less of her body. Instead, Sherman documents the domestic objects that represent womanhood with a precision worthy of Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen.22 The claustrophobic cacophony that makes up Office Killer is here in full effect. This scene is not about a person, much like Sherman’s photographs are not about typical portraits. It is about a life lived in code; meaning built on signifiers, gestures standing in for concepts. The implication, however, is clear: as women, we are defined by the accoutrements of our domesticity. It is no coincidence that our first proper shots of Dorine also take place in her kitchen. 63

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Pink teddy bear, asleep.

The beginning of Mrs. Michaels’ scene demonstrates Sherman’s idiosyncrasies; her fascination with cropping and quirky close-ups of surprising objects is just as striking here as in her photographs. We look through the legs of an ironing board, peering around the folds of a dangling shirt at the object of our gaze; the only thing in focus, the only thing close to the middle of the frame, is a pink teddy bear. It is seemingly asleep on what appears to be a white, plastic diaper bag slumped behind a rocking horse, as a pair of whitesocked feet walk by. We hear a phone ringing, although our glimpse of it is brief, before it is obscured by a hand reaching for the receiver. It is Kim calling from the magazine, trying to find Gary Michaels. A voice answers “Hello,” but we cannot identify it. This is someone new. All we see is a shoulder covered in a pale-pink nightgown or housedress. The camera is too impatient to linger, sending us straight to a shot of a crowded kitchen sink. Sherman is content to stay here; to let us fixate on the remnants of forgotten meals on dirty plates, pink sponges and soap dispensers. This shot is held longer than any we have seen in this scene so far, but it too is brief. We next get a quick glimpse of an iron perched proudly on its ironing board, and then, as if by afterthought, we see a blurry figure in the background that must belong to the voice on the phone—since the phone’s black receiver is being held up to a face—but we cannot make out any relevant details. The most important elements of this shot, at least as dictated by the selective focus and narrow depth of field, are the neat little circular indentations on the base of the iron. After giving us just enough time to register these details, Sherman skips forward, this time lingering for an instant on a bowl of unpeeled onions and bagged potatoes—seemingly sitting on the kitchen counter beside the laundry basket—but the framing is so tight that the bowl and basket could easily be on the floor or on a table. All we really see are the onions, the bag 64

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Every housewife’s nightmare—a sink full of dirty dishes.

containing the potatoes, and the neat white grid of the plastic laundry basket, khaki-like material pressed against the insides. We are not here for long, however, before we get to one of the most striking shots of the scene: the woman we assume is Mrs. Michaels is holding the phone receiver against her face with her left, diamond ring-accessorized hand. However, with typical Sherman perversity, the central image of the shot is not Mrs. Michaels’ face, but of the black telephone receiver that is reflecting so much light it could have been made out of platinum. This shot is almost identical to the earlier shot of the magazine’s receptionist that opens the film. In comparison, Mrs. Michaels is neglected and upstaged, her face cropped off at the top edge of the frame, just above her nose, so we cannot see the most important part—her eyes. She cannot see us, we cannot see her. It is an old-fashioned game of peekaboo. All we get are a mouth, a chin, the tip of a nose, a sliver of earlobe—and, of course, the telephone, front and center. The baby screeches in the background. Mrs. Michaels, who does not seem to care, insists to Kim that she has no clue where her husband is. As if to poke fun at our need to see a complete face, Sherman cuts next to the refrigerator door, which, as in many happy households, is bedecked with many cheerful photos, drawings, and magnets. We do not get to see the actual screeching baby whose cries we hear, but we can see photos of a baby who is probably intended to be the same one who is making all the racket (although as jaded film viewers we can assume it is not really). We do not get to see the woman whose voice is filling up the audio track, whose kitchen we are inspecting, but we can see a drawing on the refrigerator door of what may be a woman (but could be a girl) with a brown bob, blue eyes, and bright red lips. It could be Mrs. Michaels, although, again, as jaded film viewers we assume probably not. 65

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Mrs. Michaels in action.

Attuned to Sherman’s levels of communication, we think about the image of a mother through a child’s eyes, and the layers of staging and infinite reproduction/representation inherent in art and movies. The only full shot of a woman in this scene is sketched in crayon, a picture clearly not drawn by the barely-old-enough-to-hold-a-crayon baby we just saw. The sounds of crying are superimposed on the soundtrack from a different baby than we see. We cannot help but be amused, once again, by an object that Sherman chooses to put practically center frame in most exact focus. It is a magnet in the shape of a polar bear’s head (referencing taxidermy and Norman Bates?), staring out from the refrigerator, holding up the drawing of a woman who could also just as easily be Dorine as Mrs. Michaels. We only look at the refrigerator for an instant before getting another shot that exemplifies Sherman’s idiosyncratic way of looking at the world; a fascination that has clearly transferred from her photographs to this film. Her cropping is relentless and defiant. It could be a small, bright pink troll doll in the very foreground, but we only see the legs, so we cannot quite tell. That could be a plastic watercolor tray in the middle of the shot, but even though it is only an inch or two away from the possible troll, the depth of field has already dropped off, and it is out of focus. Nothing else in the frame is discernible. Mrs. Michaels and Kim are still talking to each other, but we see neither; the camera instead cuts to another obscured shot, this time of a blurry rocking horse head in the foreground, a hungry tabby cat eating directly behind it. The cat and its food are in focus. With no specific reasoning apparent, we then return to the first shot of the scene: the teddy bear, the rocking horse, and the ironing board legs. But this time, center frame, are 66

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Refrigerator display.

Modern-day life: cigarettes and telephones.

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Mrs. Michaels’ feet, in pink socks and, as we can now see, white slippers. As if to repeat the sequence, we cut back to the telephone shot, the framing of which is almost identical this time, except that Mrs. Michael has angled her head slightly to one side, perhaps for the purpose of the cigarette she now smokes. The sequence cuts to an abrupt end, however, as we return to the offices of Constant Consumer magazine, and the person on the other end of the phone. It is Kim’s turn to get some screen time; the camera pans across the outside of her cubicle, stopping to give us a shot of Kim, perched in her office chair, looking flirtatiously at the Mail Boy as he delivers her mail off the cart. Kim is asking Mrs. Michaels about calling hospitals, but her attention is focused squarely on the Mail Boy (whose face we do not see) as he places her mail on her desk. She fusses coyly with her shirt. As the Mail Boy and his cart move on, the camera continues its journey, affording us a lingering shot of Kim’s neatly crossed legs, very much exposed in sheer black tights. It takes Virginia’s presence, her act of collecting a small stack of papers off Kim’s computer monitor, making Kim sit up straight, conclude her conversation, and get off the phone with a disappointed look on her face. We are not sure if she is disappointed about her inability to find Mr. Michaels, her lack of success at getting Mrs. Michaels to care, or the fact that the Mail Boy has already finished his rounds and probably will not be back for a while. Whichever it is, she slaps the shade of her metallic desk lamp downward and sighs. We do not get another chance to see Mrs. Michaels. Just like that, her appearance in the movie is over. Disjointed, confusing, disorienting, Sherman’s brief departure from the offices of Constant Consumer shows us the kind of slice of life which makes up any housewife’s day, referencing her own “Untitled Film Stills” and drawing obvious comparisons between Kim, as the single working woman, and Mrs. Michaels, as the frumpy and exhausted housewife. They are both grim options for modern-day women. Even though Mrs. Michaels’ scene is brief, it is significant for its demonstration of the importance Sherman places on objects as signifiers, and of her method of communicating through a code of iconography. The various “random” kitchen items on which she chooses to focus are not random at all. They are all articles representative of womanhood insomuch as they reflect domesticity: a cat, an engagement ring, a kitchen sink. This scene, like her “Untitled Film Stills,” is not intended as a portrait of a woman. Mrs. Michaels, like the woman at the heart of Untitled Film Still #3, is not important in her own right, which is why we do not ever see her face. Her face does not matter. Her status as a woman, what she represents, is more important than who she is. Sherman does not shoot portraits; she makes statements. She looks at the coding of sexuality by situating it in a domestic setting. The paraphernalia around the sink is foregrounded, Mrs. Michaels’ ironing board upstaging her, so that we read women in a different way; femininity is exiled behind the apron, domestic articles take center stage, women replaced by their responsibilities—a build-up that makes Dorine’s later attack on the Mail Boy with a Cuisinart blade all the more significant.

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Virginia R.I.P., or “Here we go. Up, up, up!” (34:16) Walking down the dark hallway, Virginia looks beaten down, submissive, and sick. This is a far cry from the Virginia we saw at the beginning of the film. There has been a shift in the power dynamic. Now she is an antiquated representative of a pre-technology past, her expiration date just around the corner. It is Virginia’s turn to be downsized. There are no lights on in the strangely dim Constant Consumer offices, but there is enough of a glow for us to see the tired anguish on her face. We do not need any light to hear the fatigue and illness in her cough. We watch Virginia moving slowly down the hallway, like a student on her way to the principal’s office, while Dorine sits silently watching in judgment. If we had not realized the shift in the power dynamic already, it is clear when we see Virginia standing over the copy machine, the rhythmically sliding light the only illumination on her face. Much as in the earlier scene where Dorine is contaminated by the exploding toner, it is Virginia’s turn to be watched from the detachment of the outside-the-window camera. Instead of the ink that explodes over Dorine, Virginia is inhaling her own specific brand of toxicity—the cigarette. Her clock is ticking. The glowing orb of the cigarette’s tip is shot from underneath, as Virginia deeply breathes the nicotine in. The shifting lights of the copy machine make us feel vaguely seasick, and give Virginia a lit-from-below Frankenstein effect. She looks haggard. Her skin sags over her protruding cheekbones. The camera cuts back to the alley outside the building, and we remember what happened to Dorine when we cut to the same vantage point. The rain keeps pouring down. It is one of Office Killer’s most distinctive film noir moments, the noir atmosphere and aesthetic accentuated not only by the narrative of the scene itself, but also by the heavily dramatic lighting. The screen is almost completely black, except for a small sliver of light just left of center. Appropriately, Virginia is afraid. It is as if by recognizing the power shift, she is complicit in what is about to transpire. By acknowledging her newfound status as victim, she is destined to become one. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Virginia, surrounded by darkness, holds a stack of white paper to her chest as if for protection. “Kim? Dorine?” she calls out feebly, her fear palpable. Virginia is vulnerable. Underneath the black leather suit is just another lonely woman with no one to save her. The location changes to Virginia’s office. Flames burn in the ashtray on Virginia’s desk. It is like a witch’s bonfire, only we are not sure who set it, since Virginia has just been in the copy room. We get another shot of the numerous pill bottles on Virginia’s desk, reminding us that she is infected and infectious. That she is a consumer of products meant to combat illness. Virginia stares at the flames on her desk, confused. She does not know who set them either. Sweat glistens on her face. She inhales more nicotine, as though that will give her courage. She spots Dorine standing in the corner, behind the lamp, and drops her stack of papers in shock. “Jesus fucking—Dorine!” she exclaims, leaning against the desk for support. Dorine just stares in silence. Dorine does not need to respond, defend, or explain herself. She is in charge.

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Virginia in the glow of the copy machine.

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Virginia continues to stammer, but it is obvious that she is a broken woman in more ways than one. She stabs the cigarette out amongst the ashtray’s other flames before lifting up her inhaler. If nicotine will not do, something else will. This is a far cry from the woman who once held her magazine in her long, black, talon-like fingers. She scrambles, between gasps, to find a functioning inhaler to help her lungs get air. She tries to talk to Dorine, to play the part of the boss, but she has no conviction. Virginia is now the stammering copyeditor. Virginia takes one grateful breath off her inhaler—one full delicious inhale—before she realizes that things are not as they should be. We see it in her eyes seconds before her hand starts to twitch. Her mouth hangs, jaw opening and closing like a fish struggling for oxygen. Something is wrong. Her hand quivers, her bracelet jingles. She cannot breathe. Her body convulses. Dorine watches without moving. We cut to a long shot from outside of Virginia’s office, so we can clearly see Dorine’s stick-straight stance behind the lamp, in contrast to Virginia’s collapsing body as she crumbles into a Wicked Witch-like heap beside the desk. We imagine that all that is left is a pile of clothes, but there is, in fact, a body for Dorine to drag home. We see this body, in all its post-death glory, at the same time that Dorine does. We see her stoop down before switching to her point of view. Virginia’s eyes are bloodshot, her mouth leaking white foam. Either she is not quite dead or her muscles are still spasmodic, because her lower lip quivers slightly as the foam oozes out of it. It is not a pretty sight. Dorine, with the efficiency of a true caretaker, briskly removes the butane container from the inhaler, slips it into her pocket, and replaces it with the asthma medicine container that should have been there originally. We sense the disdain the healthy often feel for the accoutrements of the ill.

Virginia, freshly murdered.

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“Here we go. Up, up, up,” she cheerfully says to Virginia’s dead figure, as one might say to a very old woman or a very young child, pulling her off the ground and dragging her away. Virginia, ever the lady, keeps her legs crossed even in death. “You love your daddy, don’t you?” (45:43) The Douglas family accident is told to us via installments throughout the movie. Norah has come to visit with Dorine in a strangely creepy attempt to reach out. She has found out that Dorine’s father started the magazine, and she practically purrs, “Sounds like quite a man, your father,” as if she wants to sleep with him. We cannot see the reaction on Dorine’s face, but we hear her stony silence. “Is he still alive?” Norah asks. The camera pans slowly between the two women, drifting across blurry shelves and paperwork, before finally reaching Dorine’s profile. “No, my father was killed in a car accident. My mother was crippled,” Dorine replies. Fade to flashback. We are now in one of the few outdoor scenes of the movie, and we see trees, sky, and a wide-open road. The only other time we will see those three things is in the final moments of the film, as Dorine rides off to freedom. It is clear that cars and journeys are symbolic turning points. Dorine achieves partial liberation through this trip with her parents, and she will achieve complete liberation through her final drive away from her childhood home. But she is not liberated yet. Not in this scene. We see Dorine staring out the car window, wishing she were anywhere but here, while her mother’s grating voice (and it is clearly not the same actress who will play her mother twenty years later) drones on: “We ought to wash her mouth out with soap.” We cut to the mother’s mouth, her weak chin and hanging jowls. Even if it is another actress playing this role, the mouth is clearly still important. The frown lines define her lips. “You wouldn’t believe her filthy lies,” she continues. While we are not sure where we stand on believing Dorine, we absolutely believe that a mother with a mouth like this would sound so much like a schoolmistress. It would be impossible for a mouth set with so much disapproval to sound any other way. Carlotta turns her disapproval toward her husband, Peter, who is too busy watching his daughter in the rearview mirror to notice that the car has started drifting across the road. There is curiosity in his voice, but we also detect an amount of (guilty?) concern when he asks Dorine what she has told her mother. In contrast to the mother, all we see of him are his eyes in the rearview mirror. They flicker back and forth between Dorine and the road ahead. He watches as the mother talks. Dorine says nothing, just looks out the window. “She’s ashamed of herself. She should be,” says the mother’s mouth and chin again. “She has a dirty mind.” Dorine’s mother will not articulate why she is so upset, merely that she cannot even repeat it—the implication being that it is just so awful that she will be dragged through hell for even uttering the words. Dorine stares daggers at the back of her mother’s head. 72

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A father, his daughter, and an inappropriate touch.

Her father’s voice, in contrast, is smooth and easy, warm and jovial. He does not care, he does not judge, he knows that Dorine loves him. “Don’t you, honey?” he asks. Dorine says nothing, not even when he snakes his hand around the top of the seat to pat her knee. We know because of how Sherman frames and depicts the action, and because of the depth of the mother’s reaction, that there is more at stake here than a father tapping his daughter’s knee. We imagine deeper, more inappropriate contact, but Sherman does not make this explicit. Instead, we cut back to Mr. Douglas’ eyes in the rearview mirror as he asks again, “You love your daddy, don’t you?” This time our shot of Dorine is taken from below. We notice for the first time that the melancholy look in her eyes is combined with a grim determination in her jaw, a grim determination we have seen before and will see again. There is a strength, too, in her pursed lips, echoing her mother’s mouth “You’re probably just jealous of your mother …?” asks her father; another question met with silence, but the look on Dorine’s face would be enough to smite him if given the chance. We are left to wonder what her father is (or is not) doing to make Dorine jealous. Mrs. Douglas now directs her uptight sternness at her husband, whom she chastises for encouraging Dorine, but there is a hint of a smile at the very ends of her lips, as though she is somehow enjoying the power of all this. All we see are lips, the moral wrath of the tight pink lines of flesh curved around a row of orderly white teeth. Again, as with our first shot of Mrs. Douglas, the mouth is center frame, in prime focus. Even though she is not our mother, it is hard to resist the urge to throw something, to shout, to tear into the puritanical flesh. She is horrifying. Dorine, though, continues to sit in silence. We wait for something to happen. 73

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A young Dorine, ready to do what she needs to do.

Mrs. Douglas and her disapproving lips.

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As if he is participating in a completely separate conversation, Mr. Douglas, whose hand is still resting on Dorine’s lower thigh and knee, begins to move his hand back and forth, fingers squeezing. She reaches forward, grabbing his arm with both of her hands. The car begins to swerve. The brakes squeal, the steering wheel spins, the wind whips her hair, his right hand jerking back and forth as he tries to reclaim it, but she will not release her grip. We get our first full-on close-up of young Dorine, the green eyes staring through the Clark Kent nerd glasses straight at us, as their car smashes into a pole. Sherman immediately cuts from the shot of the pole to present-day Dorine, who is staring directly at us in a manner identical to that of her younger version. The glasses are different, the eyes a little more blue, but the eyebrows are the same. “I’m so sorry, Dorine,” murmurs Norah, and we immediately wonder what version of the story she heard; if she got the same version that we did or if hers was sanitized. We cut to Norah’s face, swirling into focus, as the sounds of a car accident fade into the background. How much does she now understand of Dorine? How much do we? How much has been directly communicated versus inferred, not only between us and Dorine, but also between Dorine and her father, Dorine and her mother, and Dorine’s parents with each other? How much has been said, and how much has been left out? How did Dorine edit her own story? We are left with even more questions than the flashback answered. This technique of intentionally complicating the plot to confuse and disorient the viewer is symptomatic of classic film noir, which often complicates and ruptures conventional narrative structure with its frequent twists and turns and flashbacks. Another element of film noir reiterated by this scene, and by this particular flashback, is that of a haunting memory; a trauma from the past seeping into and corrupting the present. Death of the Mail Boy (47:20) The Mail Boy’s killing is strikingly different from Virginia’s, although it does share strong parallels with Norah’s death still to come. One of the primary differences is that there has been no verbal interaction between Dorine and the Mail Boy in the previous scenes, so his murder is unexpected. He has not antagonized her in any obvious way. His death is all the more startling for its apparent randomness and unpredictability. The only interaction we have seen between the two of them is during the film’s opening sequence, when he accidentally rams his mail cart into her while checking out Kim. Other than that, the two of them seem to inhabit different worlds, the Mail Boy coming across as little more than a bit player both in the film and in Dorine’s universe. Yet his murder elevates him to the level of the other core characters Dorine selects to build her “home office.” Cinematically, his murder scene is shot differently from most of the film. It is smoother, the camera tracking alongside the shelves, keeping up with Dorine as she walks down the hall, peering through the boxes at the Mail Boy on the other side. We switch back and forth to Dorine’s point of view, a technique that happens rarely in this movie. We are often 75

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Dorine on the prowl, and coming for the Mail Boy.

looking at her or looking at the scene from a respectful, detached distance. This is one of the few times we see what she sees; we are in her head. When we are not looking through Dorine’s eyes, we are looking at her eyes as they move steadily, her gaze more powerful than we are used to seeing. This is a new Dorine, full of strength and conviction. Another difference is that there is practically no diegetic sound, except for a slight rustling from the characters’ movements. The soundtrack to Dorine’s attack is instead provided by Evan Lurie’s dramatically sweeping score. The camera cuts to the inside of the Mail Boy’s alcove, an area encircled by shelves and boxes. We watch him rummaging behind some objects to pull out a porn magazine. The camera slides around, showing us Dorine as she, too, watches him, her face full of wrath and moral judgment. She peers at him from between boxes, her eyes thoughtful and her expression serious. We can see she is displeased. And then—frustratingly for us, but typical for a horror narrative—Sherman cuts away from the action to another scene, a very different scene; of Kim, Norah, and Daniel at their usual bar. In the scene’s first line of dialog, Kim turns to Daniel and asks, “What do you think, Danny boy; is your girlfriend a corporate monster yet or what?” This is an example of the layered ironies built subtly into the film’s script. The timing of this question, just after we watched Dorine scrutinize the Mail Boy, and just before she stabs him, makes us wonder who the movie’s monster actually is. Is it Norah, as our manifestation of corporate greed and (lack of) ethics; or is it Dorine, our neighborhood serial killer? We are left wondering, however subconsciously, if Norah could be the monster of the film, despite the fact that we know Dorine is currently slicing up another one of her colleagues. 76

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The Mail Boy being naughty, as seen by Dorine.

Dorine spying on the Mail Boy.

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Who is the real monster?

Proving that it is all a question of perspective, Norah shouts on a bit to Kim about how Dorine is lonely, defenseless, and misunderstood—yet another clever juxtaposition because of the scene with which we are intercutting—before she and Daniel leave Kim alone at the bar. As the token single girl at the office, Kim is left alone a lot. We see Kim pensive and dejected at the bar, a discarded apology to Norah lingering on her lips, and then we cut to a shot of red blood spilling across the floor. We are now back in the mail room. We have also abandoned Kim to focus on bloodier matters. Another intriguing aspect of the Mail Boy’s killing is that we do not see it—we just see the results. Gary and Virginia die with graphic detail, but here we only see the aftermath. Not only do we miss the killing itself—much like in the famous Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960) shower scene where the camera cuts away from the action—but this is also the messiest, bloodiest killing in the film. Dorine’s other deaths are clinical and businesslike, devoid of rage. There was no blood at Gary Michael’s death, only burnt hands, singed and blackened. Virginia’s death was respiratory, the only visible physical reaction being the foam at her mouth. However, the Mail Boy’s death reeks of retribution—more so than the others. Here there is a rage that we have not seen elsewhere. Blood oozes, amplified by the accompanying sound effects, as Dorine tugs a Cuisinart blade out of the Mail Boy’s neck, walking away as blood continues to pump out of his body, his aorta spurting for all it is worth. Despite the gory premise of Office Killer, there is surprisingly little actual gore on the screen. The messiest moments are the Mail Boy’s execution and the decomposing bodies in Dorine’s basement, but only the Mail Boy leaves a bloody trail. The Mail Boy is messy even in death, his blood dripping all over the magazines 78

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Yet another use for the handy Cuisinart.

in the basement. Why? Why would the Mail Boy’s death be so different, so much bloodier than the others? Considering the era from which this movie spawned, we can draw a direct trajectory from sex to blood to death. Blood was not a life force in the 1990s, but a carrier of illness; a literalization of the messiness wrought by the breakdown of the body and its immune system. Blood became the transmitter of disease. A fixation with contaminated blood led naturally to a fixation with blood itself, as well as an obsession with the concepts of disease and contagion. The body demands upkeep, precautions, and appropriate behavior in order to avoid the messiness of decay and bleeding, in order to keep death at bay. The Mail Boy disregards these demands. Because of his lascivious nature, the Mail Boy is more of a threat than Gary Michaels. Maybe it is actually not Gary’s cold that contaminates the office. Gary may have had the cold, but perhaps the Mail Boy represents “Patient Zero.” The so-called “Patient Zero” for HIV is considered to have been a flight attendant, allegedly responsible for the initial spread of the disease in the United States, who had sexual partners in numerous American cities.23 In Office Killer, it is the Mail Boy who is the sluttiest and the most deadly, traveling around the office, delivering disease as easily as the mail. Mr. Michaels, after all, only sleeps with two people: Kim and his wife. He cannot be that contagious. The Mail Boy, however, transmits mail to everyone, flirts with most, and sleeps with God knows how many. He is the carrier, and therefore more dangerous than the actual victims. Maybe this is why his death is so bloody and graphic, and why Dorine’s sense of retribution is so strong. While Dorine’s father was the molester at home, the Mail Boy brings inappropriate sexual behavior to the workplace: he masturbates in the office; his contagion is everywhere. 79

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It is clear that his murder has to do, at least partly, with his sexuality, with his desire, both for women in the office and the plasticized blondes in his porn magazine. When Dorine sees him masturbating, her rage explodes. She sees her father symbolically invading the workplace again. The boundaries she tries to maintain, the order she tries to control, are being eliminated—again. There is a breaking down of a boundary where there must be one. The workplace is for work, the home is for sex(uality). The Mail Boy is an invasion of the molesting father from the past into the present. When Dorine sees the Mail Boy pulling out his naughty magazines, it breaks boundaries between work and home, past and present. It is like a flashback to a time when she was abused and no one defended her. Dorine says, in the movie, that we all want a warm and nurturing environment. This is exactly the environment that was denied to her. Her mother should have provided warmth and love—but she did not. Her father should have built and respected boundaries—but he did not. All the anger from past wrongs wells up in Dorine, and this is why the Mail Boy’s killing is so violent. This killing is especially bloody because it is not clinical in nature. It is emotional. For Dorine, this job is personal. The gash on his throat leaks blood across the floor; the dangers of his sexual promiscuity, combined with the transmissive qualities of his profession, made visual as his body is carried out to the parking lot in the big mail bin, as if he, too, were going out with the mail. Even though the Mail Boy’s role in the film seems minor, the violent nature of his death renders his crimes the most toxic—or at least the most explicit—and it is with his death that we clearly see Dorine’s opinion of him.

Some conspicuous bloodletting.

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By killing the Mail Boy with a Cuisinart blade, Dorine finally breaks out of her domestic cage; a set-up that has been building throughout the entire film, most explicitly laid out earlier in Mrs. Michaels’ brief scene. Women do not get bloody and messy as often as men, but when they do, it is major. If poison is a feminine way to kill, and stabbing is a masculine way to kill—if silent, sneaky murders are feminine in nature, and bloody, violent deaths masculine—then murder with a Cuisinart blade fuses the domestic (feminine) with the aggressive (masculine). By slashing him to death, Dorine is clearly getting in touch with her masculine side, but her choice of implement paints an image of a housewife gone mental. From the beginning of the film, Sherman establishes that Dorine has more power in the domestic realm than the professional one. With this particular murder, Dorine fuses the domestic with the professional, the personal with business, much as she fuses the feminine with the masculine. As Dorine carries his body through the parking lot, she is spotted by two of her colleagues. They do not notice the body, or question the presence of the mail cart—more of the “see no evil, hear no evil” ethic of most of the characters in the movie. Sherman inserts more ironic dialog here, as one of the colleagues thanks Dorine for being a “lifesaver” before driving away. After she kills the Mail Boy, Dorine says, “Now your hands will finally get some rest.” We are later startled to discover what she meant by this. Dorine cuts off his hands, not only playing with them on occasion, but also leaving them on the kitchen counter in plain view. When Daniel stops by, looking for Norah, Dorine merely drops a kitchen rag over them, dismissing the strange mound as “meatloaf.” Why does Dorine separate his hands from his body when she seems so concerned with preserving the bodies of her other victims? What does she mean by giving his hands some rest? The obvious answer is that, by removing his

Before … .

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…and after.

hands, she prevents his ability to masturbate, to touch himself and others. Beyond that, with his hands removed, he is rendered powerless and conquered. Like an ancient warrior taking a trophy, Dorine claims souvenirs of her killings— fingernails from Virginia, hands from Norah and from the Mail Boy—displaying them prominently on the kitchen table or on the front seat of her car. With this act, Dorine references ritualistic warfare behavior by Native American women, who frequently emasculated the dead bodies of enemy males. Jean-Baptiste Truteau describes this mutilation: “I have seen these furious old hags […] cut off the hands, limbs, [and] the virile parts of the dead enemies, hang them around the neck and at the ears, and dance thus at all the lodge doors of the village.”24 These taken objects are talismans of her victory over those who would underestimate her, much like the items of clothing and jewelry she also claims from her victims. “Arrest me. Yeah, right.” (57:03) Kim Poole, as played by Molly Ringwald, is both the only major character of the film to survive and the one character whom Dorine tries but fails to murder. It is unclear if Dorine actually intended to kill Kim or only to scare her, but whichever her intention, Kim’s attack is unique within the text of the film. The fact that Kim survives is not because of any kindness shown to Dorine. From the beginning, Kim throws insults at Dorine (and literally an object in one scene), and also closes doors in Dorine’s face. She does not think twice before giving voice to her own thoughts (“that weirdo Dorine”), thoughts that quickly escalate (“they’re 82

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probably lezzies”) and intensify (“shitty backstabbing dyke”) to levels that make us cringe. She becomes more and more vocal as the film progresses, an increasingly shrill Cassandra warning everyone of their inevitable doom but destined to be disbelieved. Right before Kim’s struggle with Dorine, she loses her job and is asked to leave the premises. Norah, her former friend, requests that she stop “haunting the place.” It is ironic that the person most truly alive in the film would be accused of being a ghost. Wearing a tan trench coat, Kim also references the classic film noir detective. Her earrings, amusingly, are little daggers. Wearing a floral print dress, and a complementary scarf wrapped around her head, she is also feminine; but the look on her face, despite the coral pink lipstick, is pissed. She is angry. She is a woman who feels and reacts and screams out at the coolly choreographed dollhouse that is the world of Office Killer. However, none of the zombies believe her. Even her former friend Norah is not on her side. Kim is alone in the world, and, indirectly because of Dorine, she has lost her job. What else is there to do but storm into the stairwell to have a smoke? The steel fireproof door clicks shut behind her, and we cut to the inside of the stairwell. This is one of the most beautifully-lit sequences of the film. Echoing a Dan Flavin installation, there is a fluorescent bulb attached to the wall behind her at a diagonal angle. At an even more extreme diagonal are the three lines of the stair railing, each one reflecting the light of another overhead light, so that they too look like elements of a Flavin. Everything is cold steel or gray blue with the exception of Kim’s tan coat and her tannish blonde hair. She talks to herself as she smokes. Her former supervisors have threatened to arrest her if she does not stop hanging around, and she is angry. She has been betrayed by her job and her friends. She inhales and exhales, the little orb of fire at the end of her cigarette appearing and disappearing, little puffs of smoke floating skyward. “Arrest me. Yeah, right,” she spits out to the empty stairwell. The lights go out. The only illumination is from the three parallel lines of stairwell railing, echoing some other, more stable light source. The wall to her left has gone indigo. Kim leans over, through the railing. “Hello?” The moment is dark, dramatic, and suspenseful. “Is anyone there?” she calls out, the camera now several flights above her, as we look down upon her through the narrow opening between the stairs. It is almost like the shot of Virginia right before her death, when the entire expanse of the screen was black except for the sliver of her upper body. Now the sliver is horizontal rather than vertical, but we are, once again, made aware of Kim’s tremendous solitude and vulnerability through the sheer expanse of darkness surrounding her. She cautiously, slowly, lifts her cigarette to her mouth, but before she can inhale there is someone behind her, and a scarf is pulled around her neck. The choice of a scarf is especially ironic, not only since it is a very feminine and flowery article of clothing, but also because Kim wears a similar one. Kim screams and struggles—something we have never seen any of the other potential victims do. For once, we do not see Dorine either. The camera cuts to outside the stairwell and we see Kim pounding on the door. We hear her gasping, we see her palm hitting the glass, and then we cut back into the stairwell, where Kim tries to wrench the scarf away from her neck, fighting with some dark and shadowy figure behind her. They stumble down 83

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Lights on, lights off: Kim does Dan Flavin.

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the stairs together, slamming into the wall; Kim somehow lit while the other figure remains obscured, yet lit just enough for us to identify her as Dorine through the reflection on her glasses and a quick blur of brown sweater. Kim launches herself away from Dorine, and it is unclear if Dorine lost the fight or just let her go. Maybe Dorine was as surprised by Kim’s vigorous response as we were? Kim’s almost-killing is shocking to us because we did not expect this result. We expect Kim to die because every other killing has been effortlessly successful. We expect Kim to die because Dorine does not make mistakes. Kim runs down the stairs screaming, and heads straight into Norah’s office. Kim tells Norah what has just happened, but Norah does not believe her. She is not only dismissive but disgusted with Kim’s lies. Kim is now regarded as hysterical and unbalanced—the Cassandra curse. Norah walks out, leaving Kim alone yet again. “Oh God,” Kim moans, leaning against the wall, tenderly touching her bruised neck. “Oh God” because she has almost been murdered? “Oh God” because no one will believe her? “Oh God” because even her best friend has turned against her? “Oh God” because no one sees the danger that is Dorine, and they are all doomed to die as a result of their ignorance and denial? At the end of the movie, even the police do not believe Kim, placing her on hold when she calls to alert them to Dorine’s bloodbath. Kim is doomed to be ignored. The louder and shriller she gets, the less anyone hears her. She has been excluded from her community. Although Kim has survived physically, she has died symbolically. Everyone (Daniel, Norah, the editors of the magazine) thinks Kim is paranoid. Paranoia, appropriately enough, is a common characteristic for a “woman’s film”—more common even than hysteria25—but the suspicions in these films are far from baseless or deluded; two qualities typically associated with paranoia. This is the case in numerous films where the female protagonist is accused of being paranoid; from Gaslight (Dickinson, 1944) to Bunny Lake is Missing (Preminger, 1965) and The Forgotten (Ruben, 2004). The women are encouraged to think that their fears and beliefs are nothing more than delusions, when in fact their fears and beliefs are actually accurate. The men in their lives are merely forcing the symptoms of mental instability upon them. In Office Killer, with its primarily femaledominated cast, the gender lines are not drawn as clearly. Both men and women tell Kim to relax and go home, that she is out of her mind. Usually when it is the woman who sees, it is the men who disbelieve, but here it is everyone. It is Kim against the world. This resistance to the protagonist’s beliefs is common to many narratives where the protagonist must fight alone for what only she/he believes in: a typical plot device that serves to create drama and strife, allying us with the main character, as she/he forges ahead against all odds (see Erin Brockovich [Soderbergh, 2000]). Few things are more invigorating than watching the little man win against the big. However, in Office Killer, Kim is not the protagonist. So we are conflicted, especially since we are not even tempted to wonder if she is right. We know she is right about Dorine, but she is still not our primary character, so we are not sure how much we should care. What we do know is that Office Killer is a story of women struggling to be heard, to be seen, to exist. Kim and Dorine are consistently pushed aside, ignored, lost in the cracks. Despite 85

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their differences, they are both fighting to be acknowledged, to prove that they are right—that they are—whatever the question may be. Unlike Norah, Kim is never positioned as Dorine’s nemesis. Maybe this is why Kim is allowed to survive? In a strange way, they are allies against a world determined to ignore and underestimate them. The tension in Office Killer comes from the way it incorporates this common element of a woman’s picture: the struggle to find legitimacy and support in a man’s world, a struggle to be heard, believed, and recognized. “Shall we have lunch?”(58:32) The wannabe Jackie O/First Lady of the office is not herself today. She looks stricken and pale. Most of all, she looks badly dressed. Norah is not wearing her normal suit. Instead, she wears loose-fitting pants in need of ironing, in a light brown color reminiscent of cheap wicker furniture. To make matters worse, she has on a poorly fitting white camisole-style sweater top, cropped sharply across the least flattering part of any woman’s waist. Norah looks like a frumpy Hamptons matron on her way to an Easter picnic. The panic in her wideset eyes does not help, and neither does the anxious flush on her cheeks. Sweat must be gathering on her brow, but Sherman does not let us get close enough to see it. For once, Norah is the one stammering and nervously clenching and unclenching her fists. It is as though she and Dorine have traded places. In another strange gesture from the woman once sleekly running the magazine, she stands several feet past Mr. Landau’s desk as she talks to him, facing the camera rather than his body behind her. Like the old Dorine, Norah cannot make eye contact with people when she talks to them anymore. The e-mail from “a consumer” has terrified her. Standing nervously over Dorine’s belongings, the assorted tools of a hardworking copyeditor, Norah fusses with various items, rustling papers, picking up objects, as if she is looking for something, perhaps some hint that Dorine was the sender of that anonymous e-mail. When Norah does not immediately find anything, she walks back toward Mr. Landau, scanning the room as if it will tell her its secrets. Since it does not, she begins to ask Mr. Landau questions about Dorine’s past. We find out that Mr. Landau got his job from Dorine’s father, the magazine’s founder, in exchange for staying away from Dorine. Apparently they were once attracted to each other, although nothing in the movie has shown us that Dorine has, or ever had, a crush on him (or vice versa), demonstrating another disconnect between Dorine and the rest of the world—or perhaps, more specifically, a disconnect between Dorine and her father. Norah listens intently, the fingers of her right hand against her lips as though for better concentration, but her eyes do not stay on him. They drift nervously around the room, fixing on something behind him; huge brown circles of consternation set off by ultra-white eyeballs and childlike bangs, as Mr. Landau emphasizes that Dorine’s excellent work ethic is “all that really should count around here.” We never see whatever it was Norah was looking at behind Mr. Landau, because Dorine finally arrives on the scene, ready to lunch. 86

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Dorine glammed-up and ready to lunch.

The difference in Dorine between now and earlier in the film is astonishing. Her hair cascades over her shoulders in smooth waves. Her lipstick seems especially coral—almost identical, if not actually identical, to the color Kim favors—with matching round circles of blush on her cheeks. Virginia’s gold earrings dangle from her ears. A flowered scarf is tied jauntily around her neck, eerily similar to the one used to strangle Kim. The biggest change, however, is in her demeanor, in the way she carries herself. “Shall we have lunch?” she says, full of perk, her head tilted at a coy angle. She is cheerful and confident, easy and gregarious. Who is this woman? What happened to the old Dorine? It is vampiric the way she absorbs life force from the bodies she has killed. Todd Thomas, the film’s fashion designer, explains, “The mementos taken from each of her victims fuel both her internal and external transformation. In fact, she is on her way to a self-realized makeover by the time Norah so generously offers to treat her to one.”26 With every kill, Dorine is incrementally more confident, a confidence evidenced in both her personality and her appearance. Even though Kim survives her attack, it appears as though Dorine still got a boost out of that exchange as well. When Norah asks if Dorine sent her an e-mail earlier, Dorine’s lie is as amazing as the way she delivers it. Her eyes are wide open; she is an innocent child, her mouth a blameless O of incredulity. She explains that she does not even know how e-mail works yet. Her voice has the apparent lightness and ease of the innocent—or of a really, really good liar. Norah believes her, her face relaxing as she says, “Yes, let’s go to lunch.” She compliments Dorine on her scarf, and Dorine, like a beaming, blushing bride, thanks her. Once they are out in the parking lot and standing beside Dorine’s old car, Norah suggests they go get manicures since they do not have to be back to the office for the 87

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rest of the day, thanks to “executive privilege.” This brings to mind a line from The Best of Everything: “Executives don’t do the work.” The little people get the work done. Now that the editors have blessed Dorine for a job well done, she can relish in executive entitlement—temporarily. They sound like two regular girls heading off to lunch—at least until Dorine pulls out a tire iron and whacks Norah across the head. We laugh at the incongruity of the hefty metal tire iron wielded by the newly girly Dorine, and we marvel that Norah is still alive. Is this intentional? Dorine gets in the car, Norah’s unconscious body in the passenger seat, and pulls out a compact. She powders her face. Murder makes one shiny. Dorine’s eye settles in the middle of the compact mirror, and she stares—either at us or at Norah, since the angle would be the same—and it feels like a moment out of Sherman’s “Disaster” series, echoes of Untitled #175 (1987). Our focus centers on the reflection neatly framed by the small, square shape of the compact, the reflected eye looking back at us, the only part of the image in tight focus. With the care and focus of a teenage girl—or maybe a mother seconds before the curtains open on her daughter’s first beauty pageant—Dorine turns in her seat to powder Norah’s face. Norah is still unconscious and does not appreciate the effort. As Dorine shifts back in her seat, the film cuts to the next scene, and once again, Sherman uses the tactic of having dialog from one scene refer back to the scene just prior. Kim, venting to Daniel, exclaims, “I keep telling her that Dorine is a psycho.” Unfortunately, Norah, like everyone else, did not listen, Kim suffering the curse of the disbelieved.

Dorine, her eye, and a little powder.

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“It’s so nice of you to stop by.” (1:05:23) Daniel, as the most visible male character in the film, plays a pivotal role, not only in his triumvirate with Norah and Kim, but also in his triumvirate with Norah and Dorine. He is an object of contention between Norah, who has him, and Kim, who wants him. He is an object of status for Norah, as the only character in the film with any kind of significant other, and, as such, something that Dorine wants to possess in her quest to become, or supersede, Norah. Daniel, like the other characters in the film, does not grow or change as the story progresses, but he still plays a crucial role in Dorine’s evolution, which is most obvious during the scene in which he comes to visit her, late one evening, to investigate Norah’s disappearance. The entirety of Office Killer is built around cues, much like Sherman’s photographs, which do not reveal as much as they reference, leaving it to us to draw whatever assumptions feel appropriate. Based on that premise, it is impossible not to think of a first date as Daniel nervously shifts his weight, hands in pockets, waiting for Dorine to answer the door. When she does, she greets him with an equally nervous giggle. Dorine’s hair is down, and she looks the most feminine we have seen since the movie began. She primps and flirts as she pushes her hair behind her ears, voicing her pleasant surprise at his second visit. “I’m looking for Norah,” he says abruptly. As if she is following a different script, she sweetly says, “Forgive my manners, please,” and invites him in. It will not be the last time that, to further her own agenda, she intentionally does not hear what he says. “It’s so nice of you to stop by,” Dorine says, an icon of domesticity and hospitality. Her hair is long and billowy, the bulky gray sweater she wears the only vestige of the old Dorine. Strangely, as if he has forgotten he should be following a different script, Daniel removes both his jacket and his outer shirt, placing them on the chair as he sits down with Dorine. Is he going to stay for dinner after all? The lighting is warm and intimate, spilling out from an old-fashioned lamp hanging low over the table. As the two of them sit facing each other, the light on their faces, it could be a dinner date. Daniel even makes awkward first-date conversation. He notices the painting on the wall. “Is that you?” he asks. “My father and I,” Dorine replies. It is an odd painting, looking very little like the Dorine and her father we saw in the flashbacks. The painting itself is cropped; we only see the middle part, denied both top and bottom. Denying us the bottom does not leave us deprived of much, but denying us the top cuts off the father’s eyes and forehead, giving us approximately the same composition of Mrs. Douglas in the car prior to the accident, or Mrs. Michaels on the phone—in other words, just the nose, mouth, and chin. Mr. Douglas is standing beside Dorine, his disproportionately large hands gripping her shoulders. They are wearing similar suit jackets—hers green, his tan; his set off by a vibrantly striped tie, hers set off by a polka-dotted scarf knotted at the neck. 89

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Dorine prepares drinks for the two of them as Daniel eyes the “meatloaf ” suspiciously. He does not notice the fingers on the clock behind him.

The strange painting of Dorine and her father, as painted by Dorine’s mother.

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We fade into another flashback scene. Peter Douglas sits on the vibrantly patterned couch. In a reverse of the painting, his tie is a solid blue, while the shirt is striped. Also different from the painting is the fact that we can see his face, the cropping reflecting a more standard frame, to his mid-chest. He asks his daughter to come sit beside him, but Dorine, with a voice echoing that of her mother’s from the earlier flashback, gives a disgruntled whine, even though her voice is still soft and childlike: “I have to finish my homework.” We want to defend this little girl in the neat little glasses, with the green headband holding back her hair, so focused on her work she does not even look at her father as she talks to him. We sense something is not quite right. The father is too easy, the daughter too tight. We cut to a long shot, and we can finally see the whole room. What a room it is. There is an armchair to match the couch, both covered in the same vibrant print, which looks like someone vomited red flowers all over the fabric, or as if a tight interlocked system of vines had made its way across the upholstery. The room itself, like the rest of the film, is dimly lit, and there are striped curtains, their pattern bearing no resemblance to the furniture, pulled shut over both of the windows. Are they keeping the outside out or the inside in? There are two paintings on the wall behind Mr. Douglas: one a generic landscape, the other with a small girl—is it Dorine?—staring straight out of the canvas. The real Dorine is sitting at the coffee table, her schoolbooks neatly in front of her. The body language is telling. Although her right hand is turning pages in the book, her left elbow is perched on the table, putting her left hand at exactly the right height to cover the left side of her face, as if to prevent her from seeing her father, or to prevent him from seeing her.

A rare shot of Dorine and her father, at home together.

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Mr. Douglas, on the other hand, is a man of leisure. There is a Raggedy Ann doll on the couch beside him. He is jovial and relaxed, legs spread casually open, one hand resting on his upper thigh, fingers pointing toward his groin, while the other hand lifts a cigarette to his lips. It is hard to imagine that he is the same man who was a founding editor of Constant Consumer magazine. When the mother comes in—flashbulb snapping—his tone suddenly changes. “Hey, what are you doing?” he barks, defensive and annoyed. He sounds different from before, and the mother looks different than she did in the car scene, although this is also the first time we have seen her entire face. Unexpectedly, she is almost attractive from this vantage point. Her face is warm, lit up by her smile and her green eyeshadow. Even more startling than the eyeshadow is her smile. Mrs. Douglas, for the only time in the movie, is beaming as she snaps a photo of her husband and daughter. Mr. Douglas is not pleased. He gestures angrily at her, like a man in Manhattan who has just lost his cab. She glares back at him. “You two are no fun,” she says, even though Dorine has not voiced any argument or resistance. As if to be intentionally contrary, the mother snaps one more photo. We have to examine this scene on another level, asking what Cindy Sherman is giving us in a scene featuring a woman photographer in a movie that contains no other instances of photography. Is there an underlying maternal aggression in the way Mrs. Douglas snaps her shot? Is she aware of the incest she is interrupting? We are led to believe, by later dialog, that Mrs. Douglas completely refuses to acknowledge the unhealthy relationship between

The only time a camera shows up in the movie—and it’s in the hands of Mrs. Douglas.

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her husband and her daughter; so what is Sherman expressing about what the camera sees and what it does not reveal? Is Sherman emphasizing the difference between paintings and photographs? Is the camera a tool of aggression in Mrs. Douglas’ hands, a way of inserting herself into a dynamic that does not include her? Dorine, too, starts to get aggressive when Daniel insists on waiting for Mrs. Douglas to wake up. Now that she has realized that Daniel is not there for her, that this is not a social call, her tone flattens, her face grim. “We’re home now, Norah.” (1:07:53) We cut to the basement. Norah is waking up. She is on the floor, sitting back against the base of the couch, her head slumped to the side, sweaty hair stuck to her face. It is not the same couch as in the flashback. This one is red leather, without flowers, but the Raggedy Ann doll is still reclining on the left hand edge. Norah’s head rolls around, and we are reminded again of how much she resembles a waxen Jackie O. She is the first lady of the magazine, the pink-suited, wide-eyed wife to the missing editor-in-chief; the sugar-sweet-on-top, secret-agenda-underneath lady of Camelot; a smile hiding a steely determination, her head always a little too big for her body, a doll-like quality disguising life-size determination. Her face is pale, gleaming in the light of the television directly in front of her. She vomits a little, a trail of viscous fluid dangling between her lips and her fingers, holding her head in her hands. Her French manicure is still so immaculate that we wonder why she would have suggested going to get a manicure earlier that day.

Dorine lit by the pseudo-romantic lighting of her fake “date” with Daniel.

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Back in the kitchen, things have grown distinctly less romantic. Daniel has pulled his chair back from the table. He now looks out the sliding door rather than directly at Dorine. Dorine sits in the center of the table, further away from him. They are no longer facing each other. The first date energy is over. As if to make this even more obvious, Daniel decides to make really awkward small talk, but it is not I’m-too-nervous-because-I-like-you small talk; it is I-don’t-want-to-be-here-but-I-want-to-be-here-in-silence-even-less small talk. He asks her a banal question (“How’s it been going for you?”) that she uses to open up her own multi-layered narrative: .

It has been going so well. (I’m figuring out who I am and becoming a real person.) In the very beginning, I was spooked by all the gadgets. (In the very beginning, I was shy and awkward and didn’t talk to anyone.) But then I really worked hard. (But then I discovered the power I really had.) I just studied and studied and studied. (I just killed and killed and killed.) And now I really feel as though the computer is my best friend. (And now I am a powerful being, enabled by my understanding of myself and my understanding of technology.) Daniel picks up on some of the subtext, although not all. He responds to her statement by saying that maybe it is true what people say about her. Dorine is startled, and Daniel realizes that he might have dug himself into a hole—that Dorine has no idea how odd people think she is. He has actually—and accidentally—acknowledged the reality of the situation, one of the rare moments this happens in the movie, and it feels unexpected and new. Daniel decides to plunge right in anyway, telling her that Kim has accused her of being the stairwell attacker. Dorine dismisses the accusation, somewhat awkwardly, by resorting back to her “adult” persona. “Well, my, Miss Poole certainly has quite an imagination.” Stressing the irony of Dorine’s denial, Sherman brings us back to the basement, where Norah is now lying against the staircase, holding her head, in the process of returning to consciousness. She coughs slightly, looking bleary-eyed around the room. She first sees the body of the bum from the parking garage (someone whose killing is not depicted in the film, either having been left out of the script, or having met the editing room floor). Norah whimpers. Next, she sees the conjoined twin-like bodies of the Girl Scouts, another killing that happened off-screen. Her eyes move across the room, settling on the chopped wrists of the Mail Boy, into which a finger has been inserted and then placed against the dial of an old rotary phone. We cut back to see the Mail Boy in his entirety, slumped in the armchair to the left of the television set. Norah spots Virginia, supine on the couch, head leaning on a pillow against the armrest, and it is all too grotesque, too horrifying for her to comprehend. 94

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Norah cannot begin to understand what has happened to her, or to the bodies around her.

Norah pulls herself up, half staggering, half crawling, and falls right into Mr. Michaels’ gaping chest. This is by far the worst. Her hand plunges into what looks like a fake high school Halloween display. She is actually inside him, between and inside a mess of gooey organs. She is horrified, practically paralyzed with disgust. The look on her face could be from any horror movie. The camera is close; we see her eyes, huge, and open, and aghast. The sweat makes her face glisten, waxy and pale. The bangs and surrounding dark hair accentuate the whiteness of her skin, framing her against the dark background. This shot is all about her eyes—brown orbs in the bright white of her flesh—and her lips, red and plump and open in horror. For the first time in the film, Norah looks almost sensual. She looks tangible. She looks real. We can practically feel the dampness of her sweat; imagine the softness of her lips. The horror of the moment has jolted her to life. She quivers. She whimpers again. She is physically unable to remove her hand from the inside of Mr. Michaels’ chest. She cannot speak. This is the first time in the movie that she has had real contact with another human being, even if it is a bit more invasive than normal. It is the closest we get to a sex scene. She pulls her hand out slowly, as if there is resistance coming from Mr. Michaels to keep her inside, tendrils of red goo clinging to her fingers. She stares at the goo and whimpers louder. This time Daniel, still in the kitchen, hears it. “What was that, Dorine?” In one of the best lines of the movie, Dorine, at a loss for how to answer, since no southern belle is ever in this situation, replies, “My cats. Jumbo. He screams.” Then, as if it is the natural reaction, as if Daniel might not think it odd, she grabs a knife from a kitchen drawer 95

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Norah, literally penetrating Mr. Michaels.

and heads down the basement stairs. Ever the grown-up, she makes sure to say “Excuse me” as she passes him. Norah’s first reaction on seeing Dorine is to embrace her, to sob, to thank God for her arrival. Dorine merely stands there, on the stairs, stoic and still, watching Norah with the detachment of an uninvolved and disapproving parent. There is no sympathy, only the business of punishment ahead. Daniel has his ear to the door, able to hear what is going on but unsure what to do about it. “Where are we?” sobs Norah, clinging to Dorine’s skirt like a distraught child. Dorine, continuing to be calm and detached, merely states, “We’re home now, Norah”— not “We’re at my home,” but “We’re home now.” This is Norah’s new home. This is everyone’s new home, because everyone works at home now. Dorine’s home is the new workplace. Dorine begins to pet Norah’s head, to brush her hair back in a gesture that might be viewed as sympathetic except that she is doing it a little too fast, and her voice is very cold. “And it’s all because of you,” she spits out, her hand moving faster and faster over Norah’s hair. “It’s all because you sent us home to do our jobs,” she continues, her eyes scanning the room as if surveying her employees. The hand has moved off the hair to pat Norah’s shoulder with brisk intensity. It is not a friendly gesture. Norah only pants, uncomprehending and dazed. Dorine’s breakdown is getting serious. She forcefully grabs hold of Norah’s head and makes her look at the room. “I took you home so that you could explain to everyone about all the numbers on your little yellow pad. So that you explain, explain to everyone about the money.” Her voice is almost squeaky, higher-pitched. This is not only a different Dorine 96

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from the entire rest of the movie; this is a different Dorine than five minutes ago. Things are escalating. “About all the money that you have been stealing.” Norah forces her head back so that she can look up at Dorine. She has finally realized what is going on and what is going to happen to her. She lets loose a yell and shoves Dorine away from her. At long last, ineffectual Daniel realizes that something bad is happening, and he too begins to shout, struggling to open the door. After an entire film of inactivity, he finally gets moving. Norah runs around the basement, crying for help, trying to find a way out. Daniel keeps shouting as he tries to get the door open. The camera cuts back and forth between Norah racing about, slipping on blood and goo, and Dorine, slumped on the stairs where Norah has knocked her down. It is the fastest editing we have seen yet in the entire film. Dorine pulls herself up slowly and, with methodical determination, reaches down to grab her knife. Now it is Dorine’s turn to be the Wicked Witch. Now it is Dorine’s turn, period. Her hair is in her face, hanging down around her head in messy tendrils. She practically hunches over as she makes her way toward Norah, like an animal stalking its prey. “Come on out, you greedy little girl,” she calls out, and she might as well be saying, “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too.” We get a shot that is straight out of any generic horror film: Dorine in silhouette, projected on a red sheet inexplicably hung in the basement, holding her kitchen knife high and preparing to strike. It is a direct nod to the shower scene in Psycho. It is so clichéd we want to laugh, and we would if Dorine were not so disturbed. She makes her way around the laundry as the doorknob turns. Daniel is finally going to join the party.

“Come on out, you greedy little girl…” .

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And what a party it is. Dorine is now channeling both the Wicked Witch and Norman Bates. “You know we’re forbidden to play hide-and-seek in the basement,” she chastises, her voice venomous, as she thrusts objects out of the way with the blade of her knife. “It’s dirty and nasty, and we’ll all be punished.” This is unclear. If Dorine is, as we suspect, an incest victim, is this kind of verbalization hearkening back to that trauma? There is obviously more at stake here than a simple hide-and-seek, since nothing about that game itself is actually dirty or nasty. And if Dorine and Norah are both to be punished, who is going to be doing the punishing? “You wicked, wicked, wicked little girl,” Dorine says, her tone pure venom. Is Norah wicked because she is playing hide-and-seek in the basement, or because she stole money from the company, or because she sent everyone home? “You’re not my friend, Norah, you never were.” Dorine’s face is close now. She looks insane, with the dim light, her hair crazy around her face, and blood trickling down her forehead and nose. Poor Norah, trapped between a washer, a dryer and a lunatic, begs Dorine to leave her alone, but Dorine is too far gone. She bangs the knife back and forth, the clanging sound loud and aggressive, her head framed on either side by white metallic appliances. It is impossible not to think of Jack Nicholson’s famous moment in The Shining (Kubrick, 1980) when he sticks his head through the broken white bathroom door—“Here’s Johnny!”—and we realize that, to our surprise, Norah bears more than a passing resemblance to Shelley Duvall at this moment. Norah whimpers an apology, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” but Dorine turns it into a game, throwing the words back at her with a sing-song inflection, playing patty-cake with Norah’s

Dorine has Norah in a tight spot.

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outstretched palms. There is a clear regression to childhood going on, Dorine playing both the vengeful mother and the whimsical child. She repeats Norah’s words over and over, “I’m so—I’m so—I’m so sorry,” like a battery-operated doll running out of power. Norah attempts to placate Dorine as Daniel sneaks up from behind, but his pager goes off, alerting Dorine to his presence. She slashes out his intestine with a quick stab and leaves him to die, guts spilling across the floor, before turning back to Norah. Norah tries to quiet Dorine as the camera begins to pan away from the two crouching women. There is a moment of silence when the camera has moved completely away from them. We wonder if Norah has succeeded in talking Dorine down from her hysterics, but then Norah cries out, “Give me the knife.” Dorine screams as if in response, and then the two of them scream, and Norah shouts “No, no”—and then the scene ends. Norah’s death is similar to the shower scene in Psycho, or the killing of the Mail Boy, in that we pan away as it happens. We never see Norah again. We do not see her murder, and we do not see her body. This execution is different from the others. It is even less about process and more about completion. It is a task that must be accomplished. It is about “getting the job done,” and getting the job done is what Dorine does, as she wraps up her loose ends before leaving town. It is not important to see it happen, just to know that it did. Dorine’s corporate takeover is complete. Our last sign of Norah is her head and hands in the car at the end of the movie, seated beside Dorine like a twisted trophy, a spoil of war. Not only is this yet another talisman—like the Mail Boy’s hands or Virginia’s earrings—but with them, in her possession, Dorine also accomplishes something strategic. Without dental records or fingerprints, it will be harder for the police to identify the body. With head and hands missing, it will be more difficult to prove that Norah is actually dead. Another of Dorine’s final actions further reinforces the implication that Norah is still alive, thus protecting Dorine from potential pursuit by the law. With her hands covered in blood, Dorine types up one more e-mail, the letter itself as clean and sterile as technology will allow. The letter is to Kim, supposedly from Norah. Kim—I have to leave town. Dorine discovered I had to embezzle funds and I had to kill her. I’m afraid she’s killed half the office, Daniel too. I’m sorry it had to end this way. Forgive me. —Norah It is interesting to pick apart the lie. First, why is Dorine compelled to write to Kim? Is she doing it to protect herself, so that Kim will not send the police after her? It is hard to believe that Kim would swallow this lie, especially since she has seen through Dorine from the beginning. Does Dorine know that Kim will not believe it, and if so, is it just a general fuckyou, to show that she can? Or is it that Dorine already feels as if she is Norah, so when she says that she is leaving town, she means herself-as-Norah? Is Dorine, in effect, killing her old self and literalizing it with this e-mail? 99

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Daniel’s slashed midsection.

Dorine with her spoils of war.

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And what does it mean that Kim’s e-mail address, as indicated in the e-mail form, is [email protected], but Norah’s e-mail is simply [email protected]? Is Norah now separate from the magazine, more of an entity than a person, a persona shifting bodies from one woman to another? Is it because, in death, she is literally remote? Or has Norah always been remote? Maybe she was never an official member of the Constant Consumer staff. Maybe she never had a “CConsumer.com” e-mail address. Maybe she was an independent contractor brought in to assist with the downsizing and technological upgrade. Maybe she was hired specifically to get the blood on her hands. Whatever the answer, Norah’s “remote” status is manifested by her e-mail address. After sending the aforementioned e-mail, Dorine then calls Kim, an act that seems redundant unless we recognize that the phone call serves a completely different purpose. Dorine is silent at first, just breathing on the phone, as Kim demands to know who it is. “No one, Kim, no one at all,” is Dorine’s response. She is actually “no one” by this point, because Dorine is no more. Dorine has been superseded by this new persona whose identity has not yet been revealed. By the end of the movie, Dorine and Kim are both connected to each other by telephone wires and by situation. They have become, once again, a pair—alone and excluded and misunderstood together. Dorine hangs up the phone, having said all she wanted to say. Why did she call if not to enforce her bond with Kim? If not to play with the subtext of the situation? If not to emphasize that there was no longer any “there there” when it came to the character of Dorine? After she hangs up the phone, Dorine languorously fluffs her hair off her shoulders, a gesture strangely out of place considering that (a) Dorine is not the beautiful woman we normally associate with this move, and (b) she is covered in blood. Whether Dorine is “no one” now, or just an improved version of herself, it is clear that she is someone new. There is a primal, scorched-earth quality to the eradication of her former self: she sets her house on fire, eradicating any traces of Dorine and the Douglas family in the tradition of a funeral rite.

Fun, fearless, and female.

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By burning her bodies, Dorine also guarantees that they will find their proper place, that they will not chase her (or others) as living dead. They are laid to rest. She has found closure. By burning the house, she also burns the memory of her father and her mother, fully integrating the trauma they caused her into the text of her symbolic tradition. Like Kim, Virginia and Mrs. Michaels, Dorine now also smokes, the cigarette her own little portable bonfire. She has caught the bug. Mission accomplished, reinvention complete: blonde wig on tight, cigarette between her lips, she drives into the distance, in search of the American dream on the American road.

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Part IV Another Kind of Commentary

Considerations: Cast, Costumes, and Characters

A

t the estrogen-dominated office of Constant Consumer magazine, Virginia, Norah, and then Dorine rule with iron fists. In a way reminiscent of a female-driven picture like The Women (English, 2008) or Mildred Pierce, Office Killer’s primary characters are all women. But with so much female power, not everything is copacetic. Virginia (the boss, representative of the old guard) and Norah (the office manager, i.e. the new guard) bicker over the significance of technology, clearly one of several excuses for them to test their power in the workplace. Norah says her technological savvy is the only thing keeping the magazine out of the Stone Age and bankruptcy. Virginia retorts that knowing about computers does not mean you know anything about running a company. Kim bickers with Norah over Daniel and Dorine. Kim and Dorine bicker over everything. Norah bickers with Kim about Kim’s job performance. The list goes on. These women do not seem happy. Both Virginia and Norah contain elements of Sigourney Weaver’s bitchy brunette Katharine Parker, boss of Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) in Working Girl. Norah and Virginia also echo real-life magazine matriarchs Martha Stewart, Helen Gurley Brown, and Bonnie Fuller. The original “editrix-in-chief,” ultra-skinny and ultrachic Helen Gurley Brown, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Virginia, became editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan in 1965, turning the failing magazine into an icon before being replaced in 1996 by will-do-anything-for-a-story Bonnie Fuller, described by New York gossip columnist Cindy Adams as “Fuehrer-in-Chief.”27 Martha Stewart’s version of corporatized domesticity infiltrated the publishing world in 1990 when she signed with Time Publishing Ventures to develop a new magazine, Martha Stewart Living, for which she served as editor-in-chief. Even in the world of female-friendly publishing, there is nothing friendly about these females at the top. They run their businesses with the ruthless determination of any corporate executive. Virginia and Norah, like all these women, blend unquestionable femininity with ambition and style. One of the underlying themes of this movie is claiming ownership of your identity— being heard and establishing your place in the world—while setting yourself apart from everyone else. Learning how to manipulate the marketplace to get what you want is the ultimate language of consumerism, and the ultimate language of marketing is how you market your self. In the corporate business world, fashion may seem to make men look the

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same, matching clones in monochromatic suits and ties, but the differences, even when miniscule and unnoticeable to anyone but those with the most practiced eye, can be the splitting point between employment or unemployment, life or death, queer or straight. In American Psycho (novel 1991; movie directed by Mary Harron, 2000) and Wall Street (Stone, 1987), the determining factor in who (or what) you are is the make of your suit (Ralph Lauren versus Bill Blass, off the rack versus custom). This difference establishes the break between dressing and posing, between authentic and fake, between Patrick Bateman and the hookers he hires, the men he works with and the man who comes onto him. How you dress signifies whom you work for and who works for you. For the women of Office Killer, what they wear is also how they define themselves. In typical Sherman fashion, the personalities of the women in Office Killer—much like the characters in her photographs—are built on implication and reference. These women represent character types personified by their mannerisms and costumes, translated through codes of stereotype. It is Virginia’s black leather that sets her apart from pink-suited Norah, just as it is Kim’s vibrant fashion that separates her from the otherwise muddy brown office. Costume designer Todd Thomas explains that, when designing Kim’s outfits, the idea was to go “brighter and more fashionably rebellious to contrast with the ever-so-appropriate Norah. I mean, what kind of person wears a Pucci dress and a sparkly headband to a dump like that office? Kim had other aspirations, and her wardrobe needed to reflect glamour, defiance, seduction, confusion and ulterior motives.”28 Dorine’s dowdiness, on the other hand, makes her outsider status visible. Thomas, on the creation of Dorine: The idea was to craft a very insular, vulnerable look with soft, lurking elements of madness (eyebrows drawn on by Cindy). Dorine’s character undergoes a metamorphosis as the story evolves, but initially she is a chameleon disappearing into the mundane crevices of the office environment. The irony of the Geek Chic look we gave to Carol Kane, over 15 years ago, is that it is now practically fashion editorial. Dorine’s appearance was armor yet unlike that of Virgina’s, meant to conceal, repel and protect […] Dorine undergoes the full process of camouflage […] ending with her glam, blonde, femme fatale getaway.29 Norah might be the pretty one at the start of the film, but it is Dorine’s appearance that evolves as the film progresses, as she becomes more and more attractive, while Norah’s appearance, in contrast, grows less appealing. This not only calls into question the roles of beauty and ugliness in depicting our true selves and reflecting the evolution of our personalities, but also the relationship between power and femininity. Dorine and Tess McGill in Working Girl become more feminine, more controlled and subtle in their appearance as they become more powerful. This seems to negate the theory that achieving power necessitates taking on masculine attributes. If the stereotype is that females in power have to defeminize themselves in order to gain power, what does it mean that Norah is in powder-puff pink when she is most in charge; or that Dorine is bedecked in red lipstick, never having looked so girly or so polished, by the end of her killing rampage? Dorine, like 106

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Tess and Norah, becomes more classically stylish as her strength grows, more neutral and muted, her personality and power translating directly to her emerging poise and vice versa. What does this say about the process of growing up? Is who we are a matter of learning what role we play, learning how to appropriate elements of the roles around us, in order to make them our own? And how does our identity depend on the appropriation and promulgation of these fictions? Cindy Sherman obviously believes in makeup (and fashion) as forms of play, communication and personal expression. Is the process of self-discovery merely a process of discovering how to wear makeup and deciding which costume to wear? Virginia Norah and Virginia are the two symbols of power in a company of browned-out, beatendown employees, at least until Dorine gains power over them. However, before we discover Dorine’s hidden dominant tendencies, we see Norah and Virginia as company dictators: one issuing the pink slips, the other delivering them; one bitching out fellow employees while the other embezzles funds. They are obviously both strong feminine women with their slick suits and long hair, but they paint opposite pictures: one very pink, proper and ladylike, the other in black suits and long black nails, echoing a witch’s talons. In the words of costume designer Thomas, Virginia can be seen as a successor to Joanna Lumley’s Patsy Stone, one of the central characters on the television show, Absolutely

Virginia: German, in leather, and about to die.

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Fabulous (1992–2012), as well as the essence of another memorable female lead. Thomas explains: “The idea of pouring Barbara Sukowa into a [faux] crocodile skin dress by Todd Oldham was an overt nod to danger, making her, literally, a Dragon Lady accented with clanking bracelets à la the murderous Joan Crawford in Strait-Jacket [Castle, 1964].”30 In contrast, Norah’s appearance is much more “tidy and restrained […] somewhat lighter than the others, employing more pastels and ladylike tones and silhouettes.”31 Her fashion, appropriately enough for her character, is fake. It is not real Chanel. Their clothes—and their colors—define Norah and Virginia. The conflict between them is made visual. In a movie about claiming identity, you are what you wear. While this is a movie about women, and tough women at that, it remains strangely misogynistic in the sense that there are no real likeable, admirable, sane female characters. From their first scene together, Norah and Virginia’s power struggle leaves no room for any male hero, either in the office or in the film. Neither witch is terribly likeable, much like in the filmic rendition of The Wizard of Oz (Fleming, 1939), where, in the words of Salman Rushdie, the Good Witch is also a “trilling pain in the neck,” and the Wicked Witch is “lean and mean.” Their clothes also establish the same polarity of “frilly pink versus slimline black.”32 The initial conflict of power is between the “Good Witch,” resplendent in pink, and the “Wicked Witch,” wrapped in black leather and cigarette smoke, with both eventually replaced by Dorine, as the Dorothy surrogate. Another parallel is that in both Office Killer and The Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch may be the more redeeming character (narrative implications to the contrary). At least the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz gets things done. In Office Killer, Virginia tries to run her magazine,

Virginia to Norah: “Listen, sweetie …”.

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unlike corrupt Norah whose embezzlement is responsible for the downsizing of Dorine’s job, as well as the jobs of many other company employees. Virginia may look like the more evil one—her outfits are coded that way—but she is actually the more sympathetic of the pair. Although her cackle may be evil, her demeanor bitchy, and her nails black and long, Virginia’s rage is righteous. After all, Gary has not turned in his article at deadline and is nowhere to be found. She has a right to be furious. It is her magazine, and publishing deadlines are non-negotiable. In an office full of people who do not do their jobs, Virginia clearly does hers, and we respect her for that, while also empathizing with the peculiar frailness she demonstrates in her fear of germs. Maybe Virginia is just the strong corporate executive figure everyone calls a bitch because she is a woman, but whom everyone would call driven if she were a man. Anna Holmes, in an article for the Washington Post about the fear and dismissal of female anger, writes that: […] females learn to curb their hostilities from a young age, and when female aggression is deployed, it has to be tiptoed around, gussied up with a shiny coat of lip gloss, an updo and a wink, or, as evidenced in many a junior high school hallway, communicated passively, along back channels and in whispers.33 Interestingly, Office Killer depicts these three types of angry manifestations: Virginia does it old-school style, with her claws and a raised voice; Norah does it with her lip gloss; and Kim is all about the gossip and bathroom diatribes.

Norah’s grim determination masked in pseudo pink Chanel.

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Virginia represents one aspect of the constant consumer, with her steady flow of cigarettes, medication, and natural supplements. She is always wearing leather, referencing consumption and power, like a tribeswoman wearing the spoils of war. Unfortunately, a drawback to consuming so thoughtlessly and vociferously is that you expose yourself to contagion. Virginia would not have died if she had not been so eager to swallow pharmaceuticals. Her consumption literally kills her. Is it possible that Dorine actually brings Virginia, the surprisingly frail, cigarette-ridden, asthma inhaler-reliant, technology-ignorant supervisor home to care for her, to take her under her wing, to protect her and the magazine from capitalistic Norah? The way she kills Virginia is almost thoughtful. She leaves the physical damage internal so that Virginia’s carefully-groomed appearance is not harmed. Dorine also seems unusually maternal during the moment when she removes Virginia’s nails, murmuring that Virginia will find it much more comfortable to type without them, humanizing Virginia as well as herself. She releases Virginia from the confines of typically restrictive feminine molds, from the demanding act of maintaining a role both feminine and authoritative. Suddenly, there is tenderness to be felt for Virginia, and one more way of looking at Dorine. Norah Much as Glinda gives Dorothy the ruby slippers that help enable her personal transformation, Norah gives Dorine her old clothes, which help enable her transformation. But Norah’s support is not genuine. There is something childlike and blank about Norah, with her neat, razor-sharp bangs and Jackie O Chanel suit knockoff. Like Jackie, her eyes are a little too wide, looking somewhere between lost and vacant. We never get a sense of who Norah is or what she cares about; even her embezzling seems just a ruse to give her character some motivation and ulterior motive. Sherman’s work has consistently returned to the theme of actual monstrosity versus superficial depictions of monstrosity. Norah may look respectable and may be given authority for her trappings of experience and knowledge, but it is all just on the surface. Inside, she is a monster. Even her apartment is white (in stark contrast to the browns and beiges of the rest of the film), as if to reflect her fakeness and lack of substance. Despite the pink she wears, she exudes a coldness, a lack of warmth towards her friends, her coworkers and her boyfriend—yet another parallel to her Jackie O counterpart, a First Lady who was also always impeccably and femininely dressed, but still seemed unable to display real warmth during her seemingly awkward negotiation of public and private spheres. Norah aspires to be Jackie, but she is not enough: not rich enough, classy enough, smart enough, or alive enough. It is appropriate that Norah is the one who “returns to life” in the basement, since she has been most zombielike in the rest of the film. She is fresh-faced and ineffectual in front of Virginia, her brown eyes wide and blinking—just another useless pretty face. Ten years later, Jeanne Tripplehorn’s highly unlikely face was used to thrilling 110

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effect in her dead-on portrayal of Jackie Kennedy in the made-for-television movie Grey Gardens (Sucsy, 2009)—another tale of women and decay. Norah represents another aspect of the constant consumer, with her fake suits and her fake technology, buying outdated computers so that she can funnel the excess funds into her own bank account. She is the ultimate in capitalistic greed, working the system—and her employees—in order to get herself further ahead, in order to pad her bank account so that she can have more for herself. It is her greed that kills her. Dorine Dorine’s domain begins with her corner of the copyediting quadrant, but then, as the movie progresses, it expands to the garage, the rest of the office, the stairwell, the basement of her house—but never her bedroom, as there she might appear too vulnerable. Dorine gains more power by gaining locations, and gains locations as a byproduct of gaining power. She moves all the furniture to the basement, taking control of the house from her mother, just as she controls her mother’s chair by unplugging it. This is a film that shows us the most interior of locations: the most domestic and internal places where work is accomplished (the office); places where food is prepared (the kitchen); places where sleep takes place (the mother’s bedroom); and the most interior of all locations, the bathroom. This is not a movie that takes place in living rooms or outdoors, but rather in areas that are womblike and dark, where Dorine is comfortable, where she can dominate. In The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, Zizek discusses the three floors of Norman Bates’ house in Psycho, three floors that echo those of Dorine’s house in Office Killer. Zizek explains that the three floors symbolically represent the three levels of human subjectivity, with the ground floor being the “normal,” the realistic or the ego. The upstairs—the domain of the mother in both Office Killer and Psycho—is the superego, the realm of the critical and the maternal. The basement is the id, the “reservoir of illicit desires,” the location of that which is primal.34 In Office Killer, the basement is also the space of illicit desire, of a regression to a childlike state. While men may remind Dorine of her father, and women remind her of her mother, it is in the basement where Dorine can be a child again. After the death of Mr. Michaels, Dorine creates this fantasy place, a place where she can be in control. In Psycho, we are told that Bates’ killings come as a reaction to his sexual attraction to women, which the “mother” aspect of his personality views as a form of betrayal. The implication is that his psychotic tendencies are a reaction to a mother’s obsessive love, and the unhealthy codependence it fosters. In Office Killer, Dorine suffers from two sets of unhealthy relationships: the father whose affection for his daughter seems perverse and inappropriate; and the mother who not only does not appear to notice any untoward behavior, but who seems barely to notice her daughter at all. In Psycho, Norman stumbles over the word “mother” when he first talks to Marion Crane, and in Office Killer, when 111

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Dorine speaks to the Girl Scouts on her front porch, she too stumbles: “Ma—Fa—Mother always liked those peanut butter smoothies.” With her girlish inflections and high pitch, Carol Kane’s voice communicates the trauma of someone who has been molested at a young age. That is when she stopped developing. But Dorine’s voice is not an affectation—that is Kane’s real voice. Regardless, Kane’s voice sounds like she is swallowing her words and her past, a quality that bears particular significance to the role of Dorine. Both Dorine’s personal relationships and her dialog within them are flawed and weak, lacking focus and clarity. However, when it comes to her work, none of this awkwardness is apparent. At work, Dorine’s job is controlling the text, repairing mistakes, cutting excess, filling in sparse areas. The job of copyeditor naturally carries with it a certain amount of power. If life is scripted, it is the copyeditor who has the responsibility, and the access necessary, to change the script, and, beyond that, to perfect and approve and validate the script. When it comes to her work, Dorine is confidently in control. The choice of her career as a copyeditor is an especially telling one, not only because of the metaphorical positioning of Dorine as a cleaner and organizer of text, editing and perfecting her father’s stories (as a “founding editor” of the magazine, he was the originator of the narrative while she is responsible for its maintenance), but also because her job marks her as a vestige of the old school in the new technology-friendly world. Dorine works with text on paper, a tangible simplicity now long outdated. Her profession itself is practically outmoded, which means she is in danger of being outmoded, too. In the publishing world, before the 1990s, articles were meticulously scrutinized for everything from factual errors to grammatical mistakes. However, during the 1990s, computers not only changed the process of writing and editing, but cutbacks and downsizing left fewer and fewer copyeditors on staff.35 The old system sent articles from person to person as they made their way up the ladder. Now articles go between machines with far less time or attention to error. In 1998, the American Society of Newspaper Editors completed a three-year study of newspapers’ credibility, reporting that 21 per cent of readers found a grammar or spelling mistake in their paper almost every day.36 Dorine would be appalled. Dorine is an anachronism for other reasons as well. Unlike most contemporary Americans, she does not appear interested in consumption, fashion, makeup or accessories, in buying the latest gadgets or having a faster car. Ironically for someone working at a consumer-oriented magazine, she seems terribly out of date with what consumers are consuming. However, what she does consume are elements of everyone she kills. Dorine even says, in one of the film’s voice-overs, “Dead people leave memories that are like dead people living inside you.” These dead people are kept alive by the talismans Dorine keeps. This is what she consumes. And by consuming these objects (and by proxy these people), Dorine makes something happen which “real life” would not otherwise have given her, becoming someone she would not otherwise have become. Unlike the typical American dream, where success is defined by the type of washing machine you have, the model of car you drive, or the designer whose 112

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shoes you wear, Dorine’s success is literally a result of taking the possessions—and lives—of those around her. Consumption yields success. Is this success the American way? When people choose the clothes they wear, they are both picking up on trends and expressing their spirit and personality. The fundamental vampirism of fashion is manifested in Office Killer as Dorine literally steals fashion from those around her. When Dorine sends the anonymous e-mail to Norah accusing her of larceny, she signs the e-mail “A consumer.” As Dorine slowly takes over the role of Norah, it seems logical that she would also want to take over the role of Daniel’s girlfriend, as evidenced by the bizarre way she begins to flirt and giggle with him by the end of the movie. Daniel is more a trophy to be claimed, like Virginia’s earrings or Norah’s necklace, than an actual human being. In a sadistic twist on the Working Girl tale, Dorine wants not only to emulate Norah, but also to become her, while at the same time avenging the company from which Norah has stolen. Robin Wood, in his analysis of Alfred Hitchcock’s film The Birds (1963), argues that the birds, known for their gentle nature, “function as a condensation of exploited nature that finally rises up against man’s heedless exploitation.”37 This same interpretation could be applied to Office Killer, where the gentle, non-aggressive copyeditor, who cannot make eye contact, who barely speaks, is so provoked by the inappropriate behavior and exploitation surrounding her that she too is forced to rise up and take action. Initially gentle, mousy and overlooked, Dorine’s limited power grows into a terrifying dominance she asserts over the world at large. She is a symbol of what happens when the oppressed have been pushed to the limit. Office Killer, at its most fundamental, is the story of Dorine’s journey of self-discovery, her journey to independence. The narrative of a child struggling to “break away from the mother,” especially when the maternal figure is constructed as the monstrous-feminine refusing to relinquish her hold on her child and where the father is absent,38 is a common one in the horror text. Films such as Psycho, Carrie (De Palma, 1976), The Birds, and Office Killer all revolve around this conflict. We can also apply the same dynamic to the relationship between Blanche and Jane in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? if we view them as mother and daughter. The close hold the mother has on the child defines the mother’s existence, but also prevents the child from having an existence of his or her own. The problem comes down to borders and where to draw them, since the mother’s power over the child is one that defies borders. After all, the child was once in the mother, and now here he is outside of her but still not free. At the beginning of Office Killer, we see Dorine going to work, caring for her mother, awkward and uncomfortable in her own skin. The bulk of the film shows Dorine discovering how to talk while defining herself apart from her mother; but it takes the mother’s death for Dorine to be finally and emphatically ripped apart from her. The first tipping point in Dorine’s trauma and ensuing liberation may be the downsizing at work, but the real one is her mother’s death. This is the pivotal change in Dorine’s existence, the ultimate release of her self into the world, and this explains why Carlotta’s death is so upsetting for Dorine and, 113

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in many ways, is the most unsettling moment in the film. The energy and her reaction are the most real and intense. The final release for Dorine, the last step in severing ties from her mother and her childhood, is burning down the family home. This act destroys any ties to her past she might have had, allowing her to become her own person—a development reinforced by Dorine’s look at herself in the rearview mirror. This is the first time in the film when she sees her self. To emphasize this moment, Dorine first glances in the mirror; but then she removes her sunglasses so that she can truly see her own face. She takes off her sunglasses, and there is a moment when, even though she is driving, she just stares into the mirror at her eyes. Satisfied, she puts the sunglasses back on as the voice-over kicks in: “If there is one thing I have learned, it is accepting my limitations while accentuating my strengths.” In other words, she has now learned who she is. She has now defined herself, against her mother, against her childhood, against her former job and coworkers, and against the world at large. Kim For Carol Kane and Jeanne Tripplehorn, their respective roles in Office Killer are not a stretch. However, the casting of Molly Ringwald as Kim is disruptive, a jarring leap from America’s sweetheart to bitchy mean girl. If Demi Moore had played Kim, it would have been less upsetting. It is precisely the lineage that Molly Ringwald brings to the role—Sixteen Candles (Hughes, 1984), The Breakfast Club (Hughes, 1985), Pretty in Pink (Deutch, 1986)— that makes her turn as Kim so uncomfortable for us. Ringwald is supposed to be sweet and fragile, endearing and vulnerable, but here she joins a litany of countless popular girls attacking and mocking the awkward, nerdy and uncool. It is especially interesting that Virginia, as the acting authority figure, would choose to put Dorine and Kim on the same story. Does she sense the tension? Does she care? The work environment brings them together, heightening their conflict and competition, making Kim even nastier. The cheerleader is not supposed to fraternize with the geek, and Kim knows it. Dorine’s gains become Kim’s losses as the competition between the two heightens. By the end of the movie, Kim is fired and alone, while Dorine has been promoted and has had a makeover. To Kim’s disadvantage, this is yet another story about the victory of the underdog. Other than providing a source of antagonism, Kim appears to serve no real function, either in the magazine or in the outside world. She is only there to propel things along; the constant when the experiment goes haywire. As the “normal” one, Kim is the character most at ease in the film. She walks through the magazine’s office as if she belongs there, the only one in the film who seems like a believable person, someone we could imagine existing in our own off-screen reality, someone who voices the concerns and questions we hear in our heads—but her role remains intentionally limited. She is not our protagonist. Instead, she is a foil. The girlfriend. The sexpot. The loudmouth. Another Sherman doll, she is there to be dressed up, to wander around looking stylish. 114

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However, the longer she survives, the more sympathetic she becomes, because in a world of flatness and detachment, Kim is the only one that cares. She is the only one who calls the cops, the only one agitated by Virginia’s absence, the only one freaked out by Mr. Michaels’ sudden disappearance. Is this why she does not die? Because of her awareness of danger and her determination to fight? Because she is three-dimensional and represents a certain kind of reality, a willingness to touch and feel, a counterpoint to a culture of detachment and  neutrality, anesthetized sex and culturally sanctioned denial?39 Is it precisely Kim’s connection to the external world (be it through her John Hughes legacy or through the normalcy of her role) that gives her perspective, soul and a survival mechanism? Her character’s appearance and personality, combined with the persona of Eighties film ingénue Molly Ringwald, represents the popular presence in the movie. We cannot help but like her despite her bitchy and negative behavior. She reminds us of ourselves and of our youth. Kim also represents the consumer who loves to consume. She shops to reflect her aspirations, to stand out, to be sexy and bright and fashion-forward. Painfully out of place in her defeated workplace, Kim is clearly shopping her way to a better destination. Her clothes not only define her, but also define where she wants to go. She consumes the way American advertising has always intended: to make herself sexier, prettier, happier and more unique. Her appearance, her shopping habits, reflect exactly how much Kim belongs elsewhere, and maybe that is what saves her in the end. Mother Dorine’s mother is worthless and useless. She contributes nothing but aggravation to any scene that she is in. She does not move the plot forward in a typical way. Her role is to influence Dorine; to shape (or hamper) the evolution of Dorine’s psychology. She limits Dorine’s progress, and in doing so, forces Dorine to find her evolution in other ways. Carlotta Douglas is not in denial about what went on between her husband and her daughter. Denial is sad and passive. She is in refusal. She is active, angry, and destructive to herself and to Dorine. After all, denial is internal: it hurts you, causing you to implode. Refusal is fundamentally external. It causes you to explode, which hurts others. It is not her father’s molestation but her mother’s disbelief of her own daughter’s allegations that makes Dorine crazy. It is her refusal to see and believe what is going on that devastates Dorine. Men will do what they do, but when a woman (mother or sister) turns on one of their own, this is viewed as unforgiveable. Tragic events happened to Dorine at the literal hand of her father, and her mother did nothing. When a momentous event occurs in Dorine’s life, i.e. her downsizing, she cannot talk about it with her mother. They do not even know how to have a real conversation. Dorine does not even face her mother when speaking to her. They speak to each other, not with each other, since neither of them knows how to listen. Each one merely waits for her turn to talk—or does not talk at all. We think of Dorine’s abuse at the hand of her father, and it seems completely believable that her mother 115

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would entirely avoid noticing any malfeasance. We cannot imagine Dorine talking about it, and we cannot imagine her mother listening or believing. It is Carlotta’s refusal, her tightly closed character, which reflects the type of consumer she is. The polar opposite of Kim, the objects with which Carlotta surrounds herself reflect her outdated nature, her inorganic lack of flexibility and openness. Her room feels like a relic of an earlier era: her bathrobe dingy and dated, her bedside table littered with pill bottles. Even her buzzer feels antiquated. Her lack of interest in the present, her avoidance of current reality, is echoed in her surroundings and her possessions. We expect men to be slimy, to have ulterior motives, to behave inappropriately, but women are supposed to be nurturers. When they are not, the fundamental system falls apart. This is what Dorine’s mother represents: the ultimate breakdown of the domestic arrangement. The paternal force is absent, the vacuum filled by Dorine’s mother and her controlling, forceful, unpleasant, and ultimately neglectful personality.

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D

irected by Michael Curtiz and based on the best-selling novel by James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce reignited Joan Crawford’s career and won her an Academy Award. She plays Mildred, a mother desperately trying to attain her daughter’s love, in this combination of noir and female melodrama. The film was a critical and commercial success. But fifty years later, another film that was a literal and figurative collision between film noir and the women’s picture, and also featuring a twisted and inappropriate mother/daughter dynamic, would fail critically and commercially. While it may seem unfair to compare the two films, since the box office potential of Mildred Pierce had much to do with its status as a major studio release with a major star at its center, the two provide an interesting comparison in genre then versus genre now. Today, genre has come to be more essential to understanding, appreciating, and selling films than ever. There is much less tolerance for films that cannot be categorized. Films are specifically “marketed and advertised in ways which highlight their generic specificity” argues Tom Ryall in his essay “Genre and Hollywood,” and, accordingly, genre has become “the pertinent and pre-eminent critical concept for students of the American film.”40 Ryall goes on to describe the impact of genre: “The ‘rules’ of a genre—the body of conventions—specify the ways in which the individual work is to be read and understood, forming the implicit context in which that work acquires significance and meaning.”41 These rules must be upheld or a movie may be ignored, misunderstood or poorly marketed. The concept of genre—a narrative unto itself—helps audiences make sense of movies. As Rick Altman writes, “Genres are simply the generalized, identifiable structures through which Hollywood rhetoric flows.”42 In this visually saturated era, we have grown savvy enough, particular enough, that when a film is coded a romantic comedy, we can practically write the entire script before the previews have even started, and we prefer it that way. When a film is marketed as an action movie, we walk in with certain specific expectations. We walk in having selected a specific experience. In fact, a woman sued the production company behind the movie Drive (Refn, 2011) because she felt it failed to live up to the genre advertised in the trailer. The movie, she claimed, was sold as an action movie, only it was not one. We take the rules of genres so seriously that we even call attention to them for the sake of comedy in movies like Scream (Craven, 1996), which parodies the horror

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genre, or Tropic Thunder (Stiller, 2008), which parodies the war action movie, or Scary Movie (Wayans, 2000), which parodies Scream parodying the horror genre. All these layers of self-reflexivity are okay, because even when poking fun, the rules are still being followed. We like—and need—these rules in order to comprehend what we are watching. These rules provide us with structure and sensibility. Office Killer, however, is too problematically complex and too rich to be contained by one genre, which is part of the reason why it failed at the box office, and why Miramax did not know how to market it. There is simply too much going on. It cannot be played just for laughs or just for horror. Other films—strict comedies or strict dramas—do not require the tension that comes between genres. They slip easily into their own category, clearly following their specific set of rules. Office Killer thrives in that undetermined space. The problem comes when trying to define and understand the parameters of that space. What exactly is Office Killer? Office Killer may be a horror compared to Working Girl, but it is a comedy when compared to Psycho.43 To describe Office Killer as a tweener is not entirely accurate, since it is not a movie that falls between genres. It is not a blend of genres, either. It is a comedy and horror and noir happening at the same time.44 Slavoj Zizek, in his book Tarrying with the Negative, writes that neo-noir, the new wave of noir that surged forth in the 1980s, resuscitated “the noir universe by way of combining it with another genre, as if noir today is a vampirelike entity which, in order to survive, needs an influx of fresh blood from other sources.”45 Perhaps, in the case of Office Killer, noir is combined with two genres: horror and comedy. In order to appreciate the complexity of the film, in order to understand how it can be all three simultaneously, it is necessary to apply the rules and expectations of each genre individually. These genres are often recognized for their visual elements, for their narrative structures, and for the reactions they elicit from their audiences. Tom Ryall outlines the characteristics of specific genres, writing that horror pictures, for instance, create fear, whereas comedies provoke laughter, regardless of the specific subject matter. Thematically, melodramas are often focused on “tensions of domestic life,” along with “an extravagant use of mise-en-scene to embody the emotional highpoints of the drama,” while film noir is often defined by both subject matter dealing with crime and the “shadow-laden mise-en-scene which is often regarded as the essential generic ingredient.”46 The defining qualities of these distinct elements can make it all the more dizzying when they are intertwined, as in the case of Office Killer and Mildred Pierce. Mildred Pierce confuses us with its use of Joan Crawford (typically seen in a women’s picture or romance), by opening with a crime (evocative of a noir) and a flashback (also noir), and by revolving around a central conflict of female domesticity versus career (women’s picture). In Office Killer, we have the gruesome murders of a horror picture, playing off of the corporate crime, dark shadows, and femme fatale of a noir, revolving around the melodrama-esque central conflict of an oppressed office worker coming into her own—and that is just a cursory glance. The addition of Molly Ringwald, contagion, technology, themes of gender and identity, and Sherman’s presence as a female artist merely adds to the mix. 118

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Of extra significance is the fact that the genres of horror, film noir and the melodrama— all of which Office Killer encapsulates—are often seen as specific vehicles for questioning “conventional social and political values.”47 Therefore, an increased appreciation of those genres, and the ways they apply to the film, will enrich an understanding of those social and political issues of the era, as well as provide a more complex enjoyment of the film. Noir Critical Consensus dates the “demise” of film noir to around the end of the 1950s. A variety of causes were to blame: from the happier atmosphere in America to the rise of television’s popularity, and its accompanying bright colors. The anxiety of World War II had finally begun to dissipate, the darkness and fatalism of the war years, and the 1930s before them, lifting. In later years, noir would come creeping back into the popular consciousness and the movie theater, however, finding new opportunities and audiences for its tense atmosphere, claustrophobic environments, and themes of modern urban alienation. Most significantly, noir’s antihero would return, a complex protagonist to reflect the ongoing complexities of the late twentieth century. Noir is originally attributed to several social and historical events: the stress of postwar America; the simultaneous influx of European talent into Hollywood that brought aspects of German expressionism westward; and the popularity of crime fiction by the likes of James M. Cain and Dashiell Hammett. It is not surprising that the combination of these three events would yield films where, in the words of Alain Silver, “dark streets would be emblems of alienations; a figure’s unrelenting gaze becomes obsessive; the entire environment becomes hostile, chaotic, and deterministic.”48 What is surprising is that a genre so symptomatic of a specific time in American culture would keep coming back in the decades to come. Todd Erickson, in his essay “Kill Me Again: Movement Becomes Genre,” lists such later films as Point Blank (Boorman, 1967), Chinatown (Polanski, 1974), and Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976) as some examples of the persistence of noir in contemporary American cinema,49 and Lee Horsley argues that there have been “over three hundred noir-influenced films released since 1971.”50 Noir was clearly reflecting and responding to an angst that would not go away. Noir may reflect anxieties of specific moments in time, but its enduring popularity proves its relevance, even as these moments change and evolve. In his essay “An Introduction to Neo-Noir,” Lee Horsley goes on to break down neo-noir by decade, identifying, for instance, key aspects of the 1960s and 1970s that kept the noir aesthetic viable and relevant. Of specific interest to Office Killer is his analysis of noir elements during the 1980s and 1990s. During those two decades, he writes, neo-noir films and noir literature revolved around the perspective of “contemporary society as a culture of consumption,” looking at “the excesses and dependencies of the society of the media, the spectacle, the consumer.”51 119

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Office Killer not only reflects these themes of consumption and excess, but also references traditional noir, with its tale of exploited workers and a vengeful protagonist in a bleak and oppressive urban environment. Its depiction of a complex antihero searching for her place in the world, and avenging the wrongs done to the things and people she cares about, hearkens back to noir films of the 1940s. While 1940s noir represented insecurity about people’s place in the workforce and at home during a time of great transition, in the 1990s bodies were literally and metaphorically disappearing as a result of AIDS and technological developments. Communication became abstract, nameless, and sterile. A pervasive sense of isolation began to spread, exacerbated by a growing realization of the vulnerability of human boundaries to contagion and contamination; it is to this shift that Office Killer and Dorine respond. Dorine preserves and rearranges bodies in an environment that speaks of warmth, nurture, and order rather than cold, productive, anonymous uncertainty. Office Killer demonstrates how alienation and modernization have changed not only the way we work, but also the way we live. We are still isolated and alone despite the rise of the ironically named “social media,” and the encroaching urbanization warned of in original noir is even more acute. The technology boom has made workers even more anonymous, the ultimate cogs in a computerized machine; a depersonalizing shift exacerbated by the demise of the nation-state, the outsourcing of labor, and the speeding-up of culture. It is harder to find are places of sanctuary and spiritual renewal. Escape from the demands of contemporary life has become increasingly more challenging and expensive. The threats that fed original noir films had only grown more extreme, more hopeless, and more paranoid in later years. Nameless faces, anonymity, and solitude have come to epitomize modern existence. Technology claims to bring us closer together while it really renders us bodiless, genderless, and apart. Edward Dimendberg writes that a distinguishing feature of the noir film is that technology—television, telephones, and computers—has replaced a city-center style of community.52 While this may have begun to be the case during the 1940s and 1950s, by the late 1990s this was more pronounced than ever, and we see this in Office Killer. Not only do Dorine and her mom watch television together, but spending time together means watching television together. When Dorine tells her mother she will be working from home, her mother exclaims that now they will be able to watch more TV together. When Dorine spends quality time with her new friends in the basement, they sit together on the couch, all facing the flickering television screen. In the 1990s, TV screens were the new centerpieces of the American living room. The office would become a zone of computers and cubicles, pencil-pushing drones clocking in and out, e-mails and conference calls replacing personal interactions. Everyone and everything felt as replaceable, interchangeable, and disposable as Ikea furniture. It was this world of insecurity and fear, change and upheaval, that generated Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer, and it was this world that fed into the noir themes and aesthetic. Technology was not the only threat to middle-class existence; at the same time as the explosion of computers into personal and professional spheres, America was also becoming a “virus culture […]

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[a] landscape obsessed with the fear of contagion.”53 We were now alienated and infirm, alone in the middle of claustrophobic cities, oppressed by a capitalism that claimed to empower us, and afraid of a disease that threatened to kill us. Fear of infection spread as AIDS and other diseases appeared to lurk everywhere. Everyone seemed vulnerable. Worst of all, no amount of technological or pharmaceutical innovation could make the fear go away. This was the new modern condition, and these anxieties were manifested in films like Office Killer, Outbreak (Petersen, 1995), 12 Monkeys (Gilliam, 1995), and the television miniseries The Stand (1994), a new twist on the noir aesthetic. Just as film noir uses its pronounced style to depict these types of social fears, Cindy Sherman would use these same motifs to depict the troubled world of Constant Consumer magazine, and, by proxy, America in the late 1990s. We have the skewed angles, the dominant darkness and shadow, and the unsettling mise-en-scène common to the genre. The insides of Constant Consumer magazine are dark and oppressive, stuck in a 1960s cinderblock universe. We never find out which other companies may share the building, or see employees from anywhere else. We do not even get to go in the elevator. This is a claustrophobic movie, meant quite explicitly, to contrast the domestic environment with the workplace, the semiotics of the home with the semiotics of the office, and the oppressive nature of both. There is never sun through the windows; the blinds are always drawn, imprisoning the workers behind the horizontal lines and the heavy colors. Sherman frequently shoots through these blinds (as when Dorine goes to ask Mr. Michaels’ help) or uses the blinds as a backdrop. Even the individual offices are fenced in behind horizontal bars. This visual technique is a common element of classic noir, often through the use of venetian blinds, reminiscent of prison bars. The action often occurs on the other side of the blinds as we peer through like voyeurs—a common noir technique Matthias Frey describes as creating a sense of “surveillance and anxiety,”54 and one that emphasizes the claustrophobic environment of the magazine. The workers of Office Killer are literally kept prisoner by their jobs. As if to enhance this sense of claustrophobia, Sherman uses another device common to noir film: limited establishing shots of the film’s various locations, denying us a sense of spatial orientation. This sensibility is maintained by the film’s emphasis on interior, claustrophobic space, denying us external establishing shots of anything but Dorine’s house—and even that receives a limited vantage point. The only regular locations used in Office Killer are the office, the parking garage, Dorine’s house, Norah’s apartment, and the bar Norah and Kim frequent. Nothing more. For a feature film, this is a short list. There are no street scenes, no exteriors, except for Dorine’s house and a close-up of the outside of the office building where they work, and even these shots reveal nothing of the surrounding area. The only time we have a wide outdoor shot is during the accident scene flashback. We never see a full shot of the building where the magazine is located, the outside of the bar where Norah and Kim go to drink, or the outside of Norah’s apartment building. When we do see Kim, Norah, and Daniel at their bar, the frame is so closely cropped that they could be anywhere, and we do not see anyone else, not even a bartender. On the rare occasions that we visit Norah’s

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residence, the framing is so tight that we cannot tell if it is a house or an apartment. The few smoking breaks taken by Norah and Kim deny us any sense of an outside environment. Every time we see their office building, it is still a close medium shot, refusing us a view of the building as a whole. The film seems to take place exclusively in the perpetually dimly-lit vortex that is Dorine’s basement and the Constant Consumer office space. The only time anyone is actually outdoors is when Dorine is driving away at the end of the film, and during the flashbacks of Dorine’s father’s death. These two scenes also use a very different style of camerawork to complement the different environments they depict— one that is much more open and fluid than the rest of the film. These two scenes are the only brief moments of fresh air Sherman gives us. Instead, she chooses to present her characters through the lens of the office, tying their identities to their roles in the workplace, suffocating and alienating them in the process. In sync with the noir aesthetic and this sense of claustrophobia, the offices of Constant Consumer magazine also suffer from a pronounced lack of light. Not only are they dimly lit with very weak fluorescent lights, but they are often not even lit at all. During several scenes, the office is dark for no clear reason. The lights, when they are turned on, are dim, yellow, and insufficient. The offices are filled with desk lamps, as if to compensate for the poor overhead lighting. But these lamps are small and inadequate. We rarely see daylight. There is even one memorable scene where Virginia is lit entirely by the blinking light of the copy machine, and by the flashes of lightning coming in through the blinds. As usual, it is too dark to see anything outside. The world of Constant Consumer magazine is pitchblack or stormy. The majority of the frame is often in shadow, enhancing the sensation that this is a world of darkness and despair. The other primary location—Dorine’s house—is not as dimly lit as the office, but we still never look out of a window, or see sunlight streaming in. The basement is always dark, primarily lit by a flickering black-and-white television. It is from this oppressive darkness that Dorine escapes at the end of the film in a rare moment of daylight. Like a noir cliché, this movie seems to take place primarily in the dark. The feeling of oppression is enhanced by the film’s color scheme. While Office Killer is not shot in the typical noir black-and-white, it uses a blend of brown, tan, and beige that is drenched in heavy shadows. To quote Joe McElhaney from his discussion of Chinatown, which was shot with a similar color scheme, these are “barely colors at all, an indication of the film’s debt to the noir tradition of black-and-white, and of its attempts to render this drought-ridden environment as completely closed in on itself.”55 Constant Consumer magazine is drought-ridden, too; but lacking life, light, and color, rather than liquids. Office Killer’s costume designer Todd Thomas writes: The buzzing lights, stacks of yellowing envelopes and office stationery, wilting manila file folders ringed with coffee stains, the colors of tan craft paper, dour brown speckled linoleum and peeling, institutional hallway paint served as our Pantone chips and provided the information on how to complete the look of the film.56 122

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Brown seems to be the dress code of the office and dismal darkness the visual motif, all reinforced by the production design, costumes, lighting, and cinematography. The lack of establishing shots, the claustrophobic lighting techniques, and the color schemes contribute to the noir-like tension of the film, an anxiety communicated more by atmosphere than specific action. The composition of the actual images and the film’s editing also contribute to the overall mood. Shots of the characters themselves are often askew, or come from overhead or below-the-waist angles. Noir often features extreme close-ups that frame the head or chin, and Sherman is an active user of these. The scene with Mrs. Michaels is a classic example. We also frequently see close-ups of segmented body parts, like feet or arms. This tension is further exacerbated by Sherman’s choice to use fixed camerawork, with movement used sparingly, and cuts happening for effect rather than smooth transition. Our ability to empathize with Dorine is partly a result of the unsettling mise-en-scène, which is reinforced by the disruptive compositions, claustrophobic framing devices, and the frequent use of objects in the foreground of the frame, assuming more power than the people behind them.57 These framing devices separate not only the characters from each other—much as the cubicles of the workspace do—but also us from them. And no one is more suffocated and separated than Dorine. The first time we see our film’s protagonist and lowly copyeditor, the camera is directly above her head looking straight down. We see the top of her head as she works at her desk. Not only does she look like a rat in a maze—captured in an extreme high-angle long shot that Janey Place and Lowell Peterson describe as the “archetypal noir shot” with its “oppressive and fatalistic angle”58—but she is a modern-day rat in a modern-day maze. The claustrophobic world of Office Killer is Dorine’s world. Sharon Cobb, in her essay on the rules of noir, writes that “the noir protagonist almost always experiences a sense of isolation, either physical and/or psychological, and this isolation and alienation is pronounced.”59 Everyone is against him, no one believes him. In White Heat (Walsh, 1949), our protagonist is betrayed by his accomplices. In The Maltese Falcon (Huston, 1941), we have the alienated hero, misunderstood and alone. Dorine’s isolation is both: she is a rat trapped alone in the maze of her life, betrayed and misunderstood at home and at work. Life for Dorine, much like life for many office workers of the 1990s, was becoming more bureaucratized, more atomized, and more sociopathic. Dorine is the typical anonymous worker; all of which makes it so fascinating that she becomes our hero and evolves into a person of power and accomplishment. The noir hero is a curious breed. He shares much with the hero of western films in that he is “allowed to use any means—including murder—to eradicate the evil in his society.”60 However, the narrative becomes complicated when our hero is flawed, when his motives are not always honorable. Even if we do not admire him, even if we do not aspire to be him, he still fascinates us. We empathize with him, provoking our emotional connection and interest coming into play. We want to know why our hero is the way he is, writes Sharon Cobb, and “how he got to this wretched place in his life.”61 We want to understand the root of his anger. This is one of the reasons why flashbacks are so common in noir film, often helping us to 123

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understand how the hero ends up the way he does, or providing background information to illuminate the plot. At the end of the story, Dorine, like the typical noir protagonist, is not interested in redemption or forgiveness. She does not think she did anything wrong—and in many ways, she did not. Dorine did what she had to do in order to escape from a world in which she is a second-class citizen, where people do not know her name, where she is pinned behind objects and blinds, trapped in a world of browns and blacks, miserable lighting conditions and even worse outfits. How can we fault her for that? Noir films depict a world of flux and chaos, with moral values constantly shifting, argue Janey Place and Lowell Peterson, “as right and wrong become relative, subject to the same distortions and disruptions created in the lighting and camera work,”62 and this sense of moral murkiness translates to the noir protagonist, who is far from a superman. In a noir tale, the lawbreakers are often sympathetic, indicative of the deeply flawed morals of the modern world. They are not simply good or bad. Even if we would not imitate her actions, we recognize that Dorine’s crimes are a form of social criticism. Because we see the world through her eyes, we feel connected to her, as if she represents the darkness within us. We  understand the origin of her behavior and empathize with her. The movie makes it clear that there is a “pre-Dorine”: a Dorine trapped by the muck of modernity; she evolves into the “transitioning-Dorine,” with whom we spend the bulk of the movie; finally, the “post-Dorine” drives off into the glorious daylight to begin a newly empowered life. Sherman sets up the dialectic between the new and old Dorines using a device common to the noir genre—the voice-over. However, in classic noir, the voice-over is delivered by a man, since, after all, the noir hero is usually a man. That the voice-over is delivered by a woman is significant because it demonstrates that here is a woman in charge of her own narrative. There are four voice-over sequences in the film, all of which are narrated by Dorine, and, interestingly, by a Dorine very different from the one we see onscreen. This is her internal voice, and, like many internal voices, it has wisdom and a conviction that is not always manifested externally. This discrepancy, between what we see and what we hear, is just one more example of the fundamental disconnect between Dorine and the rest of the world. What makes this device especially interesting is not simply that it is a woman doing the voice-over, but that, even at the beginning of the film, the voice-over is delivered by the “post-Dorine,” a Dorine omniscient and poised, but who does not fully emerge until much later. Dorine’s narration emphasizes her power, and foreshadows her eventual domination over the coworkers and workplace that dominated her at the outset. Women would no longer be relegated only to the role of the femme fatale or the good wife. Dorine, with her solitary status and overwhelming awkwardness, is clearly neither and both. It is not simply that the film conflates the two, but that Dorine transcends and redefines these categories.

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This is a significant way in which Office Killer, like many other neo-noirs, is not a stereotypical film noir. While many conventions of the genre do remain consistent and recognizable, the points where they evolve illuminate much about our changing gender and power roles. By being unattractive, unpleasant, and awkward, Dorine is as removed as possible from the femme fatale or the lovely and obedient wife, the typical roles played by women in a noir film. This crucial difference will play a key part not only in Sherman’s reinvention of the noir film, but more specifically in how her version reimagines women and their place in modern, bureaucratized life. Neo-noir would allow women larger domains, no longer relegating them to predictable and minor roles. In Office Killer, all the significant characters are women, and the role of staff lecher, perhaps the masculine equivalent of the femme fatale, is given to Mr. Michaels. Violence, much like corruption and power, can now be acted out by both genders. The one character who undergoes true metamorphosis, rather than being a two-dimensional foil, is our central female figure, Dorine. She is both an antiheroine and a femme fatale for a new era, exemplifying the growing and evolving roles of women at the end of the twentieth century. Despite the fact that Dorine is quite different from the stereotypical femme fatale, and clearly does not use her sexuality to achieve her goals or manipulate the men around her (the standard understanding of the femme fatale’s role in a noir film), many of the femme fatale qualities described by Mary Ann Doane do apply to Dorine. The femme fatale is “never really what she appears to be” (we see this with Dorine’s clear alter ego, her “at work” persona versus the person she truly is); “she harbors a threat which is not entirely legible, predictable, or manageable” (this is evidenced by her growing body count); and “her appearance marks the confluence of modernity, urbanization, Freudian psychoanalysis and new technologies of production and reproduction.”63 Dorine and her metamorphosis are a direct result of the convergence of modernity and urbanization, of its impact on the workplace and the home, on bodies and on identity. The femme fatale originated at a time when the male seemed to losing access to the body, which was being “confiscated by the alienation of machines” and “submitted to industrialization and urbanization.”64 This may have been an influence on original noir, but it would be just as significant (if not more so) during the 1990s, as technology replaced human employees with machines that could do the same jobs. While the male was being disempowered and disembodied, the woman’s role in the workplace was building. It is crucial to note that the femme fatale was seen not as a “subject of feminism but a symptom of male fears of feminism.”65 The femme fatale caused alarm because of her increasing power, because of her ability to dominate men and her surroundings. It was the woman’s growing control over her body and her life—as men felt they were losing control over both— that caused the most anxiety. During the 1990s, technology would help level the playing field, making gender less of a component in the ability to perform a job. Is Office Killer a warning of what happens when women get too much power in the workplace? Is Dorine a manifestation of the femme fatale for the twenty-first century? With Dorine, Sherman

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breaks the metaphorical glass ceiling of typical noir characterization, demonstrating that the standard rules would no longer apply. Horror Although Office Killer reflects aspects of the noir and comedy genres, the movie’s basic premise reflects most closely that of a typical horror film. However, much as Office Killer reinvents the characteristics of traditional film noir, it also reinvents the characteristics of horror films. If horror as a genre assumes a predictably thrilling familiarity with what will happen next (girl left alone, wanders to look for the monster, dies), Sherman instead pushes those boundaries, keeping us continually surprised within a construct that still feels so well-known. The first question is: why horror? Why would a group of smart, artistically inclined New Yorkers choose to make a horror film, a genre not generally known for its clever complexity? The original concept for Office Killer came from James Schamus’ and Ted Hope’s desire to make a smart horror film, as an experiment to see if people with more independent orientations could contribute to the genre.66 This is understandable, since horror, in many ways, is the perfect medium in which to explore the anxieties, fears, and evolutions of late-Nineties America. Robin Wood writes that horror films represent society’s collective nightmare, “staging the return of all that our civilization represses or oppresses.”67 Horror is our dark and twisted reflection, providing a visual metaphor for the worst of our realities. Within horror, we can peel back the manicured surfaces of suburban gentility to expose the skeletons and sicknesses, depravities and delinquencies in our closets and souls. Within the context of a horror film, Office Killer both critiques and pokes fun at major social issues: from the terrifying spread of AIDS to the seemingly equally terrifying spread of soulless, bottom-line-obsessed capitalism; all while exploring persistent fears of aging, decay, and death. Horror is nothing less than a Rorschach test for American culture and society. It is a direct response to key aspects of our history and identity over the last fifty years, some of which Gregory Waller lists as “attempts to redirect domestic and foreign policy; Watergate and the slow withdrawal from Vietnam; oil shortages and the Iranian hostage crisis; the rise of the New Right and the Moral Majority; and the continuing debate over abortion, military spending, and women’s rights.”68 Contemporary horror reflects our society’s attitudes toward all of these significant events, and a way to deal with the realization that, as David J. Skal writes, “we may not be able to change our circumstances and may well be stuck with what we’ve got.”69 Unfortunately, this notion of being “stuck with what we’ve got” has become synonymous with contemporary culture, and the failure of the American dream. “Disenfranchisement, exclusion, [and] downward mobility” has reversed everything we were taught to hope for, Skal continues. Even the family has become “a sick joke, its

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house more likely to offer siege instead of shelter.”70 We no longer expect better lives than our parents had. This atmosphere of fear and anxiety filled 1980s America, a decade in which horror had its “most explosive growth,”71 though its popularity continues. Simeon Halligan, director of the Grimm Up North film festival, which takes place over Halloween weekend in Manchester, England, argues that “one of the reasons horror and fantasy are very popular at the moment is because in a recession people throw themselves into escapism. […] Horror reflects a sense of anger and frustration at a society that is not doing so well.”72 The prevalence of horror has only continued to increase in step with our anxieties. The rise of the modern horror film in the early 1980s was partly a result of the “reemergence of the story of nuclear war,” a shift that dramatized both America’s “sense of vulnerability and the capacity for survival.”73 This sense of vulnerability returned in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a reaction to increasing insecurities about health, job security, and the economy. Horror is a perfect place in which to explore these themes, as well as other abstract things we want to control, such as life or death. Horror films are modernday fairy tales, says director Tim Burton, complete with “metaphors and symbols dealing with abstract things that are out of our control.”74 Not only are they cultural barometers and vehicles of escapism, but horror films also provide an opportunity to examine fundamental categories and oppositions: “the relationship between the human and the monstrous, the normal and the aberrant, the sane and the mad, the natural and the supernatural, the conscious and the unconscious, the daydream and the nightmare, [and] the civilized and the primitive.”75 Through the roles of the villain and the victim, the hero and his horrors, we see how these oppositions are established, maintained, and complicated, understanding our own vulnerabilities and relationships. Horror allows us to deal with these abstract issues from the safety of a movie theater or our living room, dramatizing our deepest and darkest fears in ways we can handle. Nonetheless, despite horror’s ability to deal with these large and complex issues, horror films continue to be disregarded as the purview of crass culture, slumming it with the gory and grotesque because of their commercial viability, stubborn popularity, and graphic nature. However, it is precisely because of their affinity for the current and the new that they provide such illuminating and relevant insight into contemporary life. Because of their proximity to popular culture, horror films are increasingly nuanced and reflexive, frequently quoting, parodying, and imitating.76 Since horror is so elaborately referential, and contemporary horror increasingly more so, then an understanding of what came in the decades before Office Killer—from 1960 to 1997—is essential to a richer appreciation of the film itself.

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An Absolutely Horrific Time(line): Significant Moments for Horror Film from 1960–1997 1960 Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is released. It is seen as “a keystone of modern horror, articulating the dread of ordinary people feeling trapped and immobilized in a world otherwise full of rapid change.”77 There are countless references to Psycho in Office Killer, most obviously with the layout of the home, the relationship of child to mother, and the breakdown of the boundary between home and workplace. 1968 Night of the Living Dead, directed by George A. Romero, critiques American institutions and values, a trend seen in later horror films such as Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive (1973), Brian De Palma’s Carrie, Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (1977), and one of Cindy Sherman’s favorite films, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). Like Office Killer, the film deals with ordinary people leading unspectacular lives, victims of the increasing isolation and prisonlike qualities of the bourgeois family. As Margaret Mead wrote in 1978, “Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we’ve put it in an impossible situation.”78 Not just a place of isolation, the home in Night of the Living Dead, as in Office Killer, also becomes the site of death, with the basement as the safest place in the house, and the family itself a locus of turmoil and collapse. As in Office Killer, family values (and the family) are seen as the cause or enabler of social problems. 1976 Based on a book by Stephen King and directed by Brian De Palma, Carrie is described by David J. Skal as “a ferocious howl of the outsider, a cry of class resentment and social disenfranchisement that found its public at the precise moment a certain segment of the population began to suspect perhaps subconsciously, that its safety net was about to snap.”79 The character of Carrie, in many ways, can be seen as an antecedent to Dorine, who also plays the oppressed outsider—repressed by her mother, treated poorly by her peers—gone rogue, with a body count at a time when middleclass America also felt as if its safety net was about to snap. 1978 In a radical move that would be echoed in Office Killer, horror films such as John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th (1980) adopt the point of view of the killer, a technique that places us inside the head of the monster. However, rather than making audiences squirm in discomfort, audiences cheer as they watch “themselves” killing their onscreen counterparts.80

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1991 Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931) and James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) are rereleased. Echoing the economic parallels between the 1930s and 1990s, the “monsters who had put a face on the Depression for millions of Americans in 1931 could be seen and heard in their nearly original condition, during a time of similar national turmoil.”81 Both monsters were back from the dead, with improved sound and picture quality.   Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs redefines the archetype of the movie monster. In a case of art imitating life, the film’s central character, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, sets the stage for the coverage of Milwaukee cannibal/ killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who is arrested later that same year. Emphasizing the connection between the worsening economic situation and current trends in horror, an ad “filled with Hannibal Lecter’s staring eyes [is] printed directly next to a New York Times article about the growing pessimism of American consumers.”82 Once again, a lack of control over significant issues is an impetus for narratives of horror and psychosis, a similar lack of control which would fuel Office Killer’s narrative six years later.   Yet another film from 1991 deserves entry on this list. The Addams Family, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, features themes of lifelessness, cannibalism, and “a household where everything was dead or dysfunctional.”83 While more somber in style than The Addams Family, Office Killer also reflects a decade-long preoccupation with that which is dead and/or dysfunctional. We never see Dorine partake in literal cannibalism, but she does make reference to cooking meatloaf while nodding toward a pair of hands on her kitchen counter, and, like the Sonnenfeld film, the handling of the meatloaf/hands is meant at least partially to be funny. The Addams Family is a comedy, which is another point of comparison with Office Killer, which is partly one too.   Another direct response to America’s existential crisis is Bret Easton Ellis’s book American Psycho, published in 1991. Norman Mailer’s comments on the 2000 film version of the novel apply just as well to the original text:  American Psycho is saying that the eighties were spiritually disgusting and the author’s presentation is the crystallization of such horror. When an entire new class thrives on the ability to make money out of the manipulation of money, and becomes altogether obsessed with the surface of things—that is, with luxury commodities, food, and appearance—then, in effect, says Ellis, we have entered a period of the absolute manipulation of humans by humans: the objective correlative of total manipulation is coldcock murder. Murder is now a lumbermill where human beings can be treated with the same lack of respect as trees.84 129

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In Office Killer, human beings are treated without respect at work, and they are murdered as easily as they are downsized. Both Dorine and Patrick Bateman excel at displacing dead bodies, much as capitalism excels at rendering humans interchangeable. 1997 Not only is 1997 the 100-year anniversary of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, but it is also the year of Office Killer’s release. The film encompasses elements of all these previous texts. It articulates the dread ordinary people feel as new technology threatens to leave them behind. It references the potential failure of the family and the private home, as this is not only the place where Dorine keeps her bodies, but also where she was initially abused. Additionally, the flaws inherent in the mechanism of civil defense can be seen in the failure of any authority figures to notice what is going on. Effective supervision, in terms of parents, the law, or management, is nonexistent. Her editors at work even praise her for being a “lifesaver.” If the supervisors fail at their job, the supervised must rise to the challenge. Dorine, like Carrie, is the outsider pushed beyond her limits, taking revenge on her bullies. Dorine may be an unconventional Freddy Krueger, but she is still our slasher and our hero.

As this list shows, the Nineties were filled with images of death and dying; economic stagnation coupled with social and cultural change. AIDS and post-Eighties commercialism fused together with Jeffrey Dahmer’s cannibalism and that of Hannibal Lecter’s—bodies consumed as readily as products. American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman joined with the rerelease of the original horror protagonists, Dracula and Frankenstein, to create a new breed of horror hero. This morbidity obviously influenced Office Killer, as did the 1993 publication of Killing for Company, a book by Brian Masters detailing the twisted mind of serial killer Dennis Nilsen. Nilsen, as a gruesome precursor to Dorine, murdered fifteen men in suburban London, keeping their corpses as companions, and dressing and bathing them before disposing of their bodies, a real-life version of the same kind of murder and consumption being played out in cultural texts. It is just as easy a task to sync up Office Killer with the basic horror template as it is to sync it with the social and political climate of the 1990s. The references that it quotes and imitates are clear and simple to identify. Like a true horror film, it mirrors its influences as readily as our fears and desires. As argued earlier, another influence on the cultural and social climate of the time was AIDS, but of specific significance to the context of the horror genre and Office Killer is the correlation between AIDS and the image of the vampire. Ken Gelder writes that Dracula, the most famous vampire of them all, is “coded as promiscuous, perverse, sexually fluid (heterosexual yet homoerotic), insatiable [and] queer,” literalizing internal and unspeakable desires while remaining an external threat.85 Why would we not grow more fascinated with 130

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death and vampires during a time when AIDS had become the silent and deadly killer, infecting millions without any explanation or proper conversation? AIDS was the external threat targeting our bloodstreams. It was the killer no one wanted to acknowledge. The more America denied the reality of AIDS, the more often torn and opened bodies showed up in movies, and the more often a bloodthirsty guest appeared on the scene. David J. Skal describes the landscape of popular culture as “awash with sanguinary themes as never before; splatter movies and blood-spilling serial killers became fixtures of the media. […] Not surprisingly, vampires were a constant presence at the feast, if not the honored guests.”86 Interview with a Vampire (Jordan, 1994), based on the book by Anne Rice, was a huge box-office hit starring mainstream stars Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, and there would be many others. Over seventy vampire films would be released between 1990 and 1992 alone, observes Arlene Russo.87 Just a few vampire movies from the 1990s include Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Kuzui, 1992), Innocent Blood (Landis, 1992), Cronos (Del Toro, 1993), Nadja (Almereyda, 1994), Dracula: Dead and Loving It (Brooks, 1995), Vampire in Brooklyn (Craven, 1995), Bordello of Blood (Adler, 1996), From Dusk Till Dawn (Rodriguez, 1996), Blade (Norrington, 1998), and John Carpenter’s Vampires (Carpenter, 1998). The connection between AIDS and vampires would be made explicit in sources as varied as film (The Addiction [Ferrara, 1995]; Sucker: The Vampire [Rodionoff, 1998]) and avant-garde theater, where American theater director Ping Chong “staged a disturbing ‘yuppie’ version of Nosferatu in 1985, in which the vapid inhabitants of a high-tech Manhattan loft are set upon by a low-tech version of Max Schreck.”88 In some films, like Blade, vampirism was literally seen as a disorder of the blood, combining fears of contagion with the vampire motif. If “each era chooses the monster it deserves and projects,”89 it would stand to reason that the Nineties would choose a monster who both reflected vampirism and capitalism—a connection drawn originally by Karl Marx. He compared capitalism to vampirism, arguing that “Capital is dead labor which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks. […] The stronger the vampire becomes, the weaker the living become.”90 Marx’s words may have originated a century earlier, but their intention felt just as relevant in the Nineties. During the end of the twentieth century, technology was the contemporary vampire, sucking the life force out of the workplace in the name of capitalism and profit. Tania Modleski argues that “rather than truly liberating humanity by freeing it from burdensome toil, the proliferation of dead labor—of technology—has resulted in the invasion of people’s mental, moral, and emotional lives.”91 Technology, as a direct outgrowth of capital, replaced living labor with machines and software, providing higher profits and lower payrolls in the place of jobs. It is therefore unsurprising that technology is being integrated into the Constant Consumer workplace, in correlation to the downsizing happening simultaneously. As the one responsible for shifting the status quo, for altering the equilibrium, Norah is the film’s vampire, monster, and antagonist. She represents the capitalistic force destroying the status quo at Constant Consumer magazine in the interest of her own bank account. 131

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Dorine prepping the “meatloaf.”

Not only does Norah represent our fears of being downsized, as well as our fears of powerful and manipulative women (a reference both to noir films and to changing gender roles in the workplace), but she also reflects the aspect of capitalism in which the bottom line is valued over everything else, quality of life sacrificed for ambition and success—fears that continue to be relevant today. When, about halfway through the film, Kim turns to Daniel and asks, “What do you think, Danny boy; is your girlfriend a corporate monster yet, or what?” the question is not whether she is a corporate monster, but if she is one yet. Tellingly, Norah is the first character to have blood on her hands. Dorine only gets blood on her hands after tangling with Norah. Norah is responsible, both vampirically and parasitically, for sucking the lifeblood out of the company to feed herself, causing the disequilibrium which precipitates her downfall. Norah is the film’s vampire figure, sucking the life force out of the magazine as she embezzles funds and downsizes the staff. This understanding represents a turning point in the examination of Office Killer as a horror film. Every horror film needs a monster, and at first glance, Office Killer’s monster is Dorine. After all, she is the one accumulating the bodies in her basement, singlehandedly raising the office’s death toll. However, according to the rules of the horror playbook, “without the disequilibrium caused by the monster, there is no story to be told.”92 By this definition, Dorine is not the monster because she does not cause the disequilibrium. Her actions are merely a reaction to the disequilibrium caused by Norah. Norah, then, is the true monster at the center of this horror narrative, because she is the one responsible for irreparably harming and disrupting the status quo. As the capitalistic vampire, she is the monster 1990s America projected and feared. Interestingly, in the twenty-first 132

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century, technology and vampires have never been so popular and desirable; we now embrace both: our smartphones and the bloodsuckers. The Twilight series of films (2008–2012), the television series True Blood (2008–), and Interview with a Vampire have created a legacy of sexy and seductive vampires. Could the switching of vampires from villains to heroes in our culture be linked to our identification with the oppressor? An acclimation to, or acceptance of, our circumstances? But in the late 1990s, we were not ready for the kind of identification. We still feared the changes swirling around us, the unrelenting consumer consumption, and the toll all these economic changes were taking on the American middle-class. With Norah as the monster, Dorine’s role as the Final Girl becomes clear. Carol Clover, in her essay “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film,” outlines the characteristics of the Final Girl: The one character of stature who does live to tell the tale is in fact the Final Girl. She is introduced at the beginning and is the only character to be developed in any psychological detail. We understand immediately from the attention paid it that hers is the main story line. She is intelligent, watchful, levelheaded; the first character to sense something is amiss and the only one to deduce from the accumulating evidence the pattern and extent of the threat; the only one, in other words, whose perspective approaches our own privileged understanding of the situation. […] When she downs the killer, we are triumphant. She is by any measure the slasher film’s hero. This is not to say that our attachment to her is exclusive and unremitting, only that it adds up, and that in the closing sequence (which can be quite prolonged) it is very close to absolute.93 The other option for Final Girl status is Kim; but, despite being sympathetic and watchful, Kim is not the Final Girl. Even though she is the only one savvy enough to pick up on the threat that is Dorine, her character is not developed in any psychological detail— a key component of the Final Girl’s persona. Her narrative is also not the main one in the film; we actually know very little about her. We do not know her exact job, or anything about her life outside of the office other than her affair with Mr. Michaels. Lastly, the most obvious reason why Kim is not the Final Girl is that she does not down the killer. It is Dorine who drives off, victorious, leaving Kim helpless and alone to pick up the pieces. When Clover’s other characteristics are applied to Dorine, she seems obviously the Final Girl—with a twist. She is the only character to be developed in any psychological detail, and we understand immediately that hers is the main storyline. She is intelligent and watchful; the first character to respond to the changes happening in the workplace; the first to determine Norah’s role in the downsizing; and the first to ascertain the “pattern and extent of the threat.” During the film’s closing sequence, our attachment to her is, in fact, absolute, as we drive off into the sunset together. The most unconventional part of Dorine’s personality, which does not fit with the model for the classic Final Girl, is her habit of accumulating bodies. If, however, we reframe Dorine’s killing as a rescuing of her coworkers 133

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from Norah’s vampiric clutches, and the final basement scene as Dorine versus the monster, the Final Girl template is a perfect fit. If we need proof that the deaths of the basement bodies are not real deaths in Dorine’s eyes, we can find it in her demeanor when dealing with “real” death. Early in the film, she grimaces as she drops the dead mouse down the garbage disposal, more displeased at his presence in her kitchen than by the bodies she brings home. At an extreme scale, she cannot deal with her mother’s death; so much so that she shouts at her mother’s dead body with a natural shock and distress, the most unhinged we ever see her. Her mother’s death is the most disruptive and traumatic event she experiences during the film, because this death has actual psychological repercussions—after discovering it, Dorine experiences real shock and horror. The extremity of this reaction contrasts with her lack of response to the bodies that she accumulates, to the people she murders. This is because, in her mind, they are not dying. She is merely taking them home with her, and this is exactly what she tells Norah: “We’re home now.” She has brought them to a place that represents more safety and security than the office in order to resurrect a kinder, gentler work environment, one free of downsizing and corruption. This act is Dorine’s purpose; this responsibility allows her to tap into her maternal and nurturing side. This is why Dorine grows more feminine as the film progresses. Throughout the film, Dorine appears to age in reverse, gaining confidence as she improves her makeup skills. While Office Killer explores issues related to the care and failure of the body, it looks at another aspect of the decaying body as well: what happens when it starts to age, when our looks fail. Dorine may not be the monster, but she is inarguably “monstrous” by fashion magazine standards. She is a “before” picture desperately in need of an “after.” Her appearance, her presence, and her physical body are horrifying for most of the film. Dorine represents what is better left ignored and unacknowledged—the aging and unmaintained woman: [T]he visibly aging body represents a challenge to the self-deluding fantasies of immortality that mark the dominant technoculture. Furthermore, in a sexist as well as ageist technoculture, the visibly aging body of a woman has been and still is especially terrifying—not only to the woman who experiences self-revulsion and anger, invisibility and abandonment, but also to the men who find her presence so unbearable that they must—quite literally—“disavow” her and divorce her.94 Dorine’s fear of being outdated represents our own fears of being outdated, of aging, and of being undesired. Vivian Sobchack writes that, viewed objectively, the aging woman is “ludicrous, grotesque.” Viewed subjectively, “she is an excess woman—desperately afraid of invisibility, uselessness, lovelessness, sexual and social isolation and abandonment.”95 There is something terrifying and sad about Dorine’s attempts at makeup and dress, both because we pity her and because she reflects our fears of what we desperately want to avoid becoming. She is unattractive and, worse, unproductive. 134

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In an era when productivity is the ultimate aspiration, Dorine’s lack of sexual or maternal qualities—she is neither mother, lover, nor wife—represents the inability or reluctance to produce. She is barren and therefore useless. When Freud wrote about women like Dorine— women who do not choose to bear children, who forsake their role and responsibilities as women—he described them as “quarrelsome, peevish, and argumentative, petty and miserly.”96 Elaine Showalter also cites the argument that hysteria has been seen “as a malfunction of the organs of female procreativity,” referencing Ibsen’s Hedda Gabbler as the “paradigmatic hysterical heroine”97 because of her hatred of “her woman’s body, her pregnancy, the femininity that enslaves her to conventional roles.”98 There is something masculine about Dorine’s disregard for her feminine roles, for her contempt or ignorance of the expectations we have for women to look and act in certain ways. The Final Girl, too, is judged for her “masculine interests, her inevitable sexual reluctance,” her unfemininity “signaled clearly by her exercise of the ‘active investigating gaze’ normally reserved for males.”99 To defy the primal level of productivity expected of them; to give up the fight against aging; to defy expectations for feminine behavior; to willingly embody uselessness and decay—this is as horrifying as a woman can get. This is one more way in which Dorine reflects Final Girl status. One of the popular criticisms of the horror genre is that it is misogynistic, that it punishes female sexuality. However, in response to criticism about his film Halloween, director John Carpenter responded: They [the critics] completely missed the boat there, I think. Because if you turn it around, the one girl who is the most sexually uptight just keeps stabbing this guy with a long knife. She’s the most sexually frustrated. She’s the one that killed him. Not because she’s a virgin, but because all that repressed energy starts coming out.100 By positioning the Final Girl as a figure of strength in the horror picture, John Berger’s original dynamic of “men act, women appear” (or “men stab, women die”) becomes complicated. After all, it is the Final Girl who is tasked with the responsibility of bringing down the evil beast. Dorine’s ultimate moment both as a woman in flux and as a Final Girl in fury is her final showdown with Norah, which ends with Dorine stabbing Norah with a very long knife. She is not our heroine, because if she were the heroine, then by necessity she would have been “saved by someone else.” Dorine is a hero by virtue of the fact that she “rises to the occasion and defeats the adversary with his [or, in this case, her] own wit and hands,”101 standing “in the light of day with the knife in her hand,” an adult at last.102 This is the ultimate fusion, not only of archetypes but also of gender expectations. Her true victory is when she drives away from the scene of the crime, very much vibrant and alive. Horror may have been the perfect medium for late twentieth-century America, but Dorine was truly the perfect hero for her time. The film’s genre allows Office Killer to explore major cultural and social anxieties—death, technology, aging—but it is the role of Dorine 135

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Dorine waving her knife at Norah.

that truly encapsulates that unique moment in late-Nineties America, including our fears of women in the workplace, feeling outdated and undesired, and the necessity of taking charge in order to get the job done. It is clear that America at the end of the twentieth century was struggling to cope with something. Beyond AIDS and disease, there was no shortage of other things to struggle with: the Vietnam War was still in our recent history; the Persian Gulf War in even more recent history; and, if anything, advances in technology left our jobs more at risk than before; while contagions seemed to lurk around every corner. These traumas played out in public, in horror films, in books, and on television—our fascination with death growing stronger as our mood plummeted. Comedy It may feel odd to describe Office Killer as a comedy. This is partly because it is so much easier to categorize it as a horror film, but also because the combination of horror and comedy seems at first contradictory and disjointed, diametrically opposed constructions with diametrically opposed reactions. Philosopher Noël Carroll writes: Horror, in some sense, oppresses; comedy liberates. Horror turns the screw; comedy releases it. Comedy elates; horror stimulates depression, paranoia, dread. […] The psychological feelings typically associated with humor include a sense of release and 136

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sensations of lightness and expansion; those associated with horror, on the other hand, are feelings of pressure, heaviness, and claustrophobia.103 These differences are precisely why they work together: one the Yin, the other the Yang; the two balance each other out. Comedy helps us deal with horror. We laugh at our fears in order to defuse them. We laugh at our fears in order to distance ourselves from the emotional gravity of our terror and discomfort. Stuart Gordon writes, “It took seeing [Psycho] three or four times before I started picking up on it as a comedy. [Hitchcock] said that there was a very fine line between getting someone to laugh and getting someone to scream. One thing I’ve learned is that laughter is the antidote. […] The thing I have found is that you’ll never find an audience that wants to laugh more than a horror audience.”104 We need comedy to better manage horror, and horror can bring comedy to levels of absurd and unexpected hilarity. Robert Bloch, author of the novel Psycho, argues that, despite provoking different responses, comedy and horror both “deal in the grotesque and the unexpected.”105 They often favor a particular type of exaggeration and extremity, often manifesting with gore or parody, blood or satire. This kind of exaggeration is linked to a defiance of boundary and expectation, a deliberate defiance of the everyday and expected. Carroll writes that horror and comedy are often “intimately and essentially bound up with the violation, problematization, and transgression of our categories, norms, and concepts.”106 Freud argues that “the object of uncanny feelings is also the manifestation of repressed, unconscious modes of thinking.”107 Horror and comedy operate precisely because of how they push our boundaries; how they surprise and startle us; how they take cultural and social norms and bring them to extremes, tapping into our unconscious fears and desires, blasting them into color on the movie screen. Not only are horror and comedy not in opposition, but they are actually quite complementary. The horror-comedy first became popular in the 1930s and 1940s with films featuring Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges. However, it was in the 1970s when horror comedies started getting really outrageous, with films like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (De Bello, 1978), literally a movie about tomatoes that kill, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Sharman, 1975), a spectacular campy and musical tale of the adventures of Brad and Janet when they get stranded at the castle of Dr. Frank-N-Furter. The genre truly established itself in the 1980s with films like Ghostbusters (Reitman, 1984), where three unemployed psychology professors battle a horde of ghosts attacking New York City; Gremlins (Dante, 1984)—cute little monsters terrorize a small town; Little Shop of Horrors (Oz, 1986)—another campy musical, this time about a man-eating plant and the awkward florist who takes care of it; and Haunted Honeymoon (Gene Wilder, 1986), where a man brings his fiancée home to meet the family—only home is a haunted castle full of ghosts.108 The 1980s also featured horror-comedy films such as Re-Animator (Gordon, 1985), Brian Yuzna’s Society (1989), Basket Case (Henelotter, 1982), and Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981) and Evil Dead II (1987), offering up over-the-top violence and bodily destruction, writes Charlie Anders, as the human body was “transformed into something gooey, icky, or disturbingly awful 137

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[…] decapitated limbs still moving and lots of oozing goop all providing opportunities for slapstick and discomfort.”109 Office Killer may not include moving decapitated limbs, but we do have decapitated heads, hands, and fingers. We also definitely have a lot of gooey, icky, and disturbingly awful imagery: the fingers Dorine uses instead of watch hands on her kitchen clock; or the moment when we hear the crunching sound of Dorine peeling off Virginia’s nails; or when she sticks Mr. Michaels’ organs back into his body and fastens him shut with tape; or when she pulls the Cuisinart blade out of the Mail Boy’s throat; or when she quickly throws a dish towel over the hands on her kitchen counter. All these moments provide opportunity for both comedy and discomfort: they are scary and funny at the same time. Office Killer relies heavily on this specific type of comedy. Not all incongruous moments are funny, and not all comedy relies on incongruous juxtapositions, but this specific style is a useful way to begin understanding how many of Office Killer’s comedic moments work. The most obvious incongruous juxtaposition in Office Killer is Dorine herself: the killer copyeditor. Her character, with her mousy appearance and even mousier demeanor, is the antithesis of the stereotypical serial killer. When she kills one coworker after another, the fundamental comedy is obvious. She ends up in absurd situation after absurd situation: attacking her victims with tire irons and giant knives, lugging bodies in and out of her car, and tidying her decomposing figures. The fact that she does not bury the bodies but takes them home to watch television is also another incongruity at which we cannot help but laugh. We laugh when Dorine wields a tire iron and smashes Norah in the face with it because it is absurd and unexpected. We laugh when she powders her face after tossing Norah’s body in the car because femininity combined with violence is startling. We laugh because she holds her victims’ bodies together with tape. We laugh because she does not recognize the incongruity of what is transpiring, because she does not realize the absurdity of using tape to delay decomposition. We find the very character of Dorine funny, but not because of the way she dresses or the way she acts; she is funny because of the way she dresses and acts because she kills people. We laugh at her mannerisms, at her hair, at her poorly applied makeup because she kills people. We laugh because she does not make sense. Because who she is incongruous. Because serial killers do not correct grammar and sharpen their pencils and wear orthopedic shoes. Because timid and awkward copyeditors do not kill their bosses with butane. Because people like her do not do things like this. When Hitchcock described Psycho as a comedy, he said that you needed a sense of humor to appreciate it. Psycho, like Office Killer, is filled with touches of black comedy, many of which hinge on the dialog, much like the ironic moments in Office Killer. Les Reid lists several examples from Psycho, including when the policeman advises Marion not to sleep in her car because it is dangerous, telling her that she would be better to find some place safe like a motel, even though it is in a motel where she will be murdered. Another such instance occurs when Norman says that his mother is “not herself today,” which is a very polite way of describing his mother’s deteriorating corpse, as well as referencing the way Norman plays his mother. It is 138

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not that she is not herself; she is Norman. Norman also tells Marion, whose surname is Crane, that she eats like a bird “while she is sitting under a display of stuffed birds.”110 Office Killer has many similar moments of ironic dialog and double entendres. For instance, just after Dorine has killed the Mail Boy, she is described as a lifesaver by one of the magazine’s editors. Norah also calls Dorine a lifesaver. Kim refers to Norah a corporate monster at precisely the moment Dorine is slashing the Mail Boy to death. In the opening sequence, the receptionist tells us that the downsizing will be a “massacre.” Dorine tells us that not keeping up at work can be “hazardous” to one’s health. Virginia tells Norah to “drop the axe.” When Dorine is making her nurse-like rounds, looking after her various decomposing friends, she crouches down to “touch up” the Mail Boy, who is no longer feeling “fresh as a daisy.” Well, obviously not—he is dead. We laugh at the irony and incongruity of these comments even as we are horrified. With the same dark wit, Dorine tells the Mail Boy that his hands will get a little rest, as we cut to a shot of his bloody and dismembered hands resting on a pile of Constant Consumer magazines. In Office Killer, this darkly comic tone pervades even the goriest moments, alleviating the horror of the film. It is this shift toward excess and artifice, theatricality, and arch wit that makes Office Killer a thoroughly campy comedy, even while it can also be considered both a horror and noir film. Susan Sontag defines “camp” in several ways that apply perfectly to Office Killer. She writes that “the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration […] of things-being-what-they-are-not.”111 And, of course, the ultimate camp statement: “It’s good because it’s awful.”112 The statement “it’s so bad, it’s good” is often applied to grossout films, a particular blend of comedically excessive gore and horror. Like camp, gross-out films are not meant to be critically superior. They are not meant to be high art or cinematic masterpieces. Instead, as Paul William argues, they “reflect an inversion of traditional values, preferring the gross to the beautiful,” a sentiment echoed by Cindy Sherman herself. It is not simply that the repellent becomes attractive, but that “we find something attractive in the repellent.”113 The repellent becomes so excessive, so deliberately spectacular, that we cannot help but delight in it. We laugh, even at the most horrific moments, precisely because the horror is so ridiculously over the top. We are like children allowed to eat dessert before dinner. We are given permission to break the rules, to get our hands dirty while reveling in the mess of it all. So we laugh as we scream in disgust. The aim of gross-out films is to push boundaries, to take our expectations and defy them, to go grosser and gorier, surprising us with an excess so excessive we do not know how to respond—with humor or fear or both. What is key is that, as a result of this excess being so excessive, as a result of the thoroughly artificial level of camp we are witnessing, we are not invested emotionally in what is transpiring on the screen. It is an experience of sheer spectacle rather than emotional investment. It is like every moment Divine has onscreen in every John Waters film. We shudder, we squirm, we scream—as we revel in it all. It is because of this comedically excessive and artificial tone that we never really get scared during Office Killer. Because the environment in Office Killer feels conspicuously fictional and artificial, and therefore “safe,” such as in a film like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (Barton, 1948), 139

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we react with comic amusement. Any mayhem that transpires does not seem to have “serious physical or moral consequences.”114 The realm of comedy is one in which real fear does not belong; we are too busy laughing. Hitchcock likened the comedy/terror relationship in Psycho to a fairground “haunted house” or rollercoaster.115 After all, as William Paul writes, fright is: […] an appealing element of the amusement park. […] It is fun to indulge in feelings that in the context of the real world would give us pause, to experience the surge of vitality that comes with the sudden onset of any strong feeling. Precisely because we do not take anything in the amusement park seriously, it is easy for us to see the emotions we indulge there as ends in themselves.116 This is a crucial component in the success of horror-comedies. It is the over-the-top absurdity and unfeasibility of the actions that take place that make these moments hilarious. We laugh as we scream because we know there are no real repercussions to ourselves or to others. It is a safe thrill, tempered by humor and excess. Because of this lack of emotional investment, the film’s tension operates on a different level. We do not care when Dorine’s victims die or decompose because of the extremity of the artifice, and the campiness of the whole situation. Hitchcock, in contrast, would specifically build up our empathy for a particular character—like Marion in Psycho—only to kill them off abruptly. In Office Killer, however, because of the film’s unique tone and exaggerated sensation of artifice, we are desensitized to the deaths, and so we are not fazed as the bodies pile up. The characters do not feel like real people, the locations do not feel like real locations, and the bodies do not feel like real bodies. If Office Killer (and its murders) had been played realistically, the film would have had a completely different tone. However, it is precisely the amped-up and campy comedy that makes the film as vibrant and memorable as it is. Gross-out films flourished during the Reagan years, a period of increasing greed and excess in its own right, as a response to, “radical changes in both the structures and mores of American society.”117 It was therefore appropriate that all this excess would find its way onscreen in a way that felt safe and cathartic, and yet very much entertaining, embodying the contradictions, rawness, and spectacle of both the time and the genre. Office Killer is all about these contradictions: contradictions of genre, contradictions of character, and contradictions of appearance. It is the way Office Killer pays tribute to the rules of all three genres, the way it creates a synergy between noir and horror and comedy, rather than placing them in opposition to each other, rather than going back and forth between one or the other, that makes it succeed—but also what made it fail. Without a clear genre category, the movie could not be properly marketed, and without proper marketing or distribution, Office Killer all but disappeared.

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Considerations: Disease, Technology, and the Workplace Disease There are real viruses and metaphoric viruses, but for the past few decades and for the next few decades, we cannot escape a conversation about contagion. The specific topics may change, but the metaphors will stay the same. At the end of the twentieth century, the anxieties of contamination and alienation, combined with social and technological change, started to render us alone and afraid. Now, more than ten years later, we are constantly being warned of SARS and swine flu, HPV and HIV, encouraged to sterilize and disinfect, to boost our immune systems with Echinacea, vitamin B12, or the classic flu shot; illness is just around every corner. Antibacterial hand washes are now fixtures in public restrooms and offices, and unprotected sex is reckless, if not suicidal. Office Killer deals with many of these same issues, reflecting on our contemporary lack of physical contact and the constant threat of potential contagion. The immune system, and its apparent collapse, has become a metaphor for our inability to maintain boundaries between our private and public selves, between our bodies and the increasingly hostile world around us. AIDS, in turn, has become the preeminent metaphor “express[ing] our era,” with its links to sex, drugs, and blood, and its strategy for spreading itself, writes Miko Grmek in his book History of AIDS: Emergence and Origin of a Modern Pandemic.118 With incredible synchronicity, the explosion of computers into personal and professional spheres occurred at the same time that AIDS was saturating our consciousness. By the mid-Nineties, AIDS and technology had become part of the cultural lexicon, permanently changing the way we would interact with the world around us—the two sharing both symptoms and terminology. Susan Sontag writes, “It is perhaps not surprising that the newest transforming element in the modern world, computers, should be borrowing metaphors drawn from our newest transforming illness.”119 While AIDS directly threatens our ability to protect our own bodies from disease and death—altering not only our relationship to our bodies, but our relationship to other people’s bodies—technology threatens our ability to maintain a physical presence in the workplace by eliminating the need for jobs to be done by humans, urging us to work and communicate remotely. AIDS and technology both shifted our approach to physicality, diminishing its

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importance and visibility. Conveniently, as there became less of a need for physicality, it became easier to stay home. The 1990s established a pronounced shift in social interaction that has only become more entrenched in the twenty-first century. If AIDS and technology made people vanish, people have continued to disappear, sending out blips of communication through Twitter posts and Facebook status updates. In-person communication has become optional, replaced by e-mail, video chats, and conference calls. The sexual revolution, for better and for worse, has been superseded by fears of HPV and HIV. Modern living may pretend to bring us together, but it really just puts us inside condoms and computers. Office Killer reflects all these issues while also foreshadowing what lay ahead. It is all the more relevant now, when the social changes wrought by AIDS and technological developments have become so ingrained in our cultural consciousness that we have stopped noticing them. Visually and metaphorically, the film represents a culture that began in the 1990s, but continues to this day: of being homebound at an inappropriate age, fighting to slow down body decomposition, and struggling with an increasing awareness of all the contagions that must be kept at bay. The film constantly references the circulation of materials, as articles move from one desk to another, e-mails from one computer to another, all mimicking the path of “Gary’s cold,” much as AIDS also spread. Sexually transmitted diseases made sex no longer about just two people. As Otis R. Bowen, Secretary for Health and Human Services (HHS) during the second Reagan administration, famously cautioned in 1987, “When a person has sex, they’re not just having it with that partner, they’re having it with everybody that partner had it with for the past ten years.” And now, with the introduction and proliferation of Facebook, it is alarmingly easy to see how all your relationships are interconnected. The “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” have never been easier to determine or visualize. Since viral transmission is often linked to transportation and therefore communication, the most important factor in the “success” of any virus is linked to the spread of its organisms. Gary Michaels, it is made clear from the beginning of the film, is the staff slut, the lothario who is also the magazine’s head writer. He spreads words at the same time as germs. We can trace the route of “Gary’s cold” by its remnants, which are everywhere: the pills on Gary’s desk, the Echinacea on Virginia’s desk, and Norah’s stuffy nose. Norah, the magazine’s manager, passes out the downsizing pink slips with a dirty tissue clenched in her hand. Her pink slips are little notices of doom indicating the metaphorical equivalent of a positive or negative test result. She spreads contagion with every slip she gives out. The office has been infected with more than just a cold. The nature of this virus is further solidified when Dorine, our lowly and awkward copyeditor, finally reads her pink slip. The downsizing has caused a significant slippage in both the magazine’s and Dorine’s status quo, and, as if to reflect the traumatic nature of this event, the toner explodes all over her in a Wicked Witch-like puff of black smoke. The toner literally tones, covering Dorine’s face with a fine black dust, literalizing people’s inability to see or recognize her, concealing her identity behind that of the contagion. She is a victim. The air itself has become deadly. We see this scene transpire from such a distance—far 142

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outside the building, peering in across the alley—that it is as though Sherman herself did not want to get too close. Dorine’s face is covered with a fine black dust, but this contamination may have come with an added bonus. It is as if, for Dorine, the toner is the antivirus, rendering her immune to the destruction that will meet the rest of the magazine’s central employees, instilling in her the elements that will germinate into the newly empowered Dorine. This theory echoes popular superhero plot devices, such as that used in the story of the Marvel Comics character the Hulk. The Hulk is the alter ego of Dr. Bruce Banner, who becomes the Hulk after exposure to the blast of an atom bomb. Similarly to Dorine, although she does not undergo as extreme a visual transformation, Banner becomes the Hulk whenever he gets threatened or angry. This kind of metamorphosis is not unusual, and is actually a common feature in pandemic-related narratives, argues Heather Schell, where the disenfranchised become superhuman and the empowered are often the victims.120 Office Killer makes this clear as Dorine, the modest and unattractive copyeditor, rises through the magazine ranks, avoiding illness to bring home to her basement the bodies of her former superiors so that they can play the roles she delegates to them. She is a different kind of superhero. Her newfound hobby is also a manifestation of the notion of “manageable death,” of caring for decaying and betraying bodies, which AIDS brought to a height in the mid-1990s. In 1997, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) declared that a total of 641,086 AIDS cases had been reported in the United States for 1996 and 1997. At the same time, the CDC also cited a report by HHS secretary Donna Shalala, which declared an unprecedented decline in AIDS deaths. Death rates from HIV had fallen 47 per cent from 1996 to 1997.121 Fewer people were dying, which meant more were living with the disease. AIDS, an acronym for “acquired immune deficiency syndrome,” created a culture of managing health and delaying death while battling a deficient immune system; preserving an existence based on regular medicinal cocktails, constant maintenance, and heightened caution. All bodies decay as a natural result of entropy, but AIDS sped up this disintegration, most conspicuously bequeathing it to otherwise healthy and virile young men. One of the distresses of AIDS was the incongruity of death where health and youth should have been. Surface beauty was no longer an indicator of longevity potential, and we can see this play out in Office Killer, as the bespectacled and frumpy Dorine tends to the deteriorating bodies of her formerly attractive coworkers. The role of caretaker carries with it a certain amount of built-in power, and this power builds as Dorine’s role expands, giving her more confidence. “I put mother to bed,” she tells her basement buddies, indicating both the responsibility and power reversal inherent in caring for the aging. Mother becomes child, child becomes mother. Initially ignored, upstaged, and dominated, Dorine is now the power figure over her colleagues and her mother. She dictates when her mother is downstairs, when she goes upstairs, and what she eats. Clearly not fond of her colleagues, or even able to make eye contact with them when at work, she giggles and cuddles with them when they are under her roof. By moving the office to her basement, Dorine is able to relax. On her home turf, as the caretaker and the 143

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one in charge, she feels a confidence that eludes her in the world at large. Outside of the basement, the only time Dorine seems confident is when it comes to the rules of grammar. As merely a colleague, woman, or daughter out in the real world, Dorine can barely carry on a conversation. Safe (Haynes, 1995), another film from the same time period as Office Killer, looks at our inability to communicate with other people, combined with the difficulties of defining ourselves outside the home. Written and directed by Todd Haynes, who also worked on the script for Office Killer, the film’s protagonist is Carol White (played by Julianne Moore), who is incapable of having anything but the most superficial conversations with her husband and girlfriends. There is also an aversion to physical contact; no one wants to touch each other. In the film’s second scene, Carol and her husband are having sex, but it is a clinical transaction, devoid of emotion and warmth. Carol seems to be suffering through it with the minimal amount of engagement. The first time Carol is hugged with any tenderness, the film is two-thirds over, and she has gone to a special “safe space” to heal. If disease is literally a process by which our physical self is violated by infection, then contamination is a tangible demonstration of the ineffectiveness of our bodies to protect us. Office Killer’s first scene establishes that everyone has a cold. Everyone is sneezing and blowing their nose. Similarly, Safe (1995) opens with Carol sneezing in her garage. We see the pervasiveness of contaminants and pollutants, carcinogenic and otherwise (perfumes, exhaust, perms, hairspray), combined with the general sterility and lack of genuine warmth with which society dictates we surround ourselves. We are reminded of our body’s ability to malfunction as Carol White does not sweat and becomes allergic to milk, her body betraying her as it collapses under the stress of living. The message is clear: there is nothing we can do about these malfunctions but learn to live with them. Our immunities are evaporating, broken down by the constant siege of modern living, and, to make it worse, we are fundamentally detached and disassociated, unable to touch or connect with each other. We have lost the ability to be properly intimate, either emotionally or physically. The AIDS crisis, combined with the explosion of the Internet, normalized a form of neutered communication where minimal physical contact is not only common but preferred. One of the ultimate examples of contemporary neutered communication—a classic monologic manifestation—is television. Television is the domestic activity for the dead or the dying. Watching television makes us dead. We sit side by side, slack-jawed and glassy-eyed, staring at what Stephen King describes as the “glass teat.” Dorine, in her manufactured family tableau, loves to watch TV. The importance of television to the death equation is clear when the basement scene featuring all the bodies artfully arranged begins not with a shot of any of the bodies, or Dorine herself, but with a close-up of the blue screen. The television, despite being on, is often not tuned to anything other than that flickering screen. In many ways, it is the high point of the film to see all the figures decaying in the basement—and watching television with her new friends is clearly the high point for Dorine. There is even gleefulness in her voice at their being able to stay up as late as they want. We never see Dorine and her mother give each other physical 144

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affection. We do, however, see them watch television together. Television brings them together without requiring physical or emotional interaction. Television soothes and entertains, demanding nothing in return. The characters in Office Killer are not capable of actual physical or emotional interaction, so the persistent role of the television in the basement diorama and in the mother’s bedroom feels appropriate and expected. Dorine can only touch, and care for, the dead. The dead, for her, are less threatening, and their company allows her to blossom. When Dorine cares for her mother, it is with far less warmth and concern than is evident when she maintains the bodies in her basement. Dorine does not even touch her mother. Live people are messy in ways that make Dorine uncomfortable. They are liable to touch her, to confront her, to behave inappropriately, to contaminate her. “You’re spitting germs in my face,” Virginia tells Norah. Please keep away. “Don’t kiss anyone,” Mr. Landau, the head copyeditor, tells Gary. “Half the office has your cold.” Please keep to yourself. Please stop spreading disease. As we become more aware of the vulnerabilities of our immune system, and less trusting in our body’s ability to protect us, we grow more paranoid of getting sick. Research shows that we “conflate even incidental touch with contagion,” writes Carol Gosselink, and that the “contagious residue left by an individual viewed as diseased requires sanitizing rituals all the way from washing to burning that which the diseased individual touched.”122 These precautions, as well as others like wearing gauze masks and rubber gloves, and avoiding handshakes, have become increasingly common. We have become more guarded, literally and metaphorically. Dorine, fittingly and sensibly, does not want to touch or be touched by or anyone. It is as if everyone else is contagious—and maybe they are. When Daniel reaches for her hand, Dorine flinches. Gary Michaels’ hands on her shoulders send her to the bathroom to wash her hands and neck. If she could fully sanitize herself, she would. Mr. Landau, another magazine employee, was offered his job as an incentive to stay away from Dorine, and stay away he does, performing a neutrally paternal and platonic role which permits his survival. Dorine supposedly has a crush on Mr. Landau, but we never see any desire for a relationship, and certainly none for physical contact. Theirs is a bodyless, desireless relationship perfect for the 1990s and today. More and more of us are keeping our distance, encouraged by a sexual depression that started with AIDS, but which has been further enabled by technology. A reduction in middle-class promiscuity, writes Sontag, has been matched with “a growth of the ideal of monogamy, of a prudent sexual life” and a “waning of sexual spontaneity.”123 Phone sex, the Internet, and adult movies now permit sexual satisfaction without the dangers of real physical intimacy or the exchange of potentially lethal fluids. Gary’s dead body fades into that of her dead father’s, who also touched Dorine inappropriately. Shortly before Dorine kills her father, we see him clenching and massaging her thigh. There is a definite correlation between inappropriate physical contact and dying. “There was no need to get so personal,” she chastises Mr. Michaels. The implication is clear: both Mr. Michaels and her father would be alive if they had just kept their distance. 145

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At the end of the twentieth century, computers and machines made actual bodies less essential, and what better time to be free of our bodies than when they are decaying around us? Abandoning our bodies seems natural when we look at how fallible they are. Not only is the staff of Constant Consumer magazine full of physical vulnerabilities, seemingly collectively wracked by disease, but they are also propagating unhealthy behavior. This is not a coincidence. Signs of physical decay are often perceived as evidence of “moral decline.” This is partly because we have been taught that it is our moral obligation as adults to delay death and disease with the right lifestyle and diet, but also it is as a reflex to search for answers to explain why certain people get sick and others do not. If something is wrong with us, it must be because we have done something wrong. Illness is justified as either a sign of weakness or punishment—or both. Some religious groups argue that God punishes immoral people in order to encourage virtue and maintain some cosmic order.124 Therefore, unsurprisingly, AIDS was at first blamed on the “immoral” and “unnatural” sex life of homosexuals. Patrick Buchanan, who served under Ronald Reagan as White House communications director from 1985 to 1987, commented in 1983 that “[t]he poor homosexuals—they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution.”125 It would be too logic-defying, too random and terrifying, to acknowledge that someone may have been struck down by a fatal illness for no reason, through no fault of their own. Are Gary and Virginia killed because they are diseased, as demonstrated by the pill bottles on their desks? Are their illnesses an external reflection of an internal imbalance? Virginia needs her inhaler to help her breathe. Norah exclaims that Kim is “not a well woman,” while she herself can barely breathe because

Death of the Mail Boy.

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of her cold. Kim, Norah, Daniel, and Gary all clearly have active sex lives. Are their deaths inevitable because they have been demarcated as broken and contaminated in a world where only the fittest survive? Are they physically broken and contaminated because they are morally bankrupt? Or are they broken and contaminated as an unavoidable result of contemporary life? In Safe, Carol White is drawn to an ad that asks, “Are you allergic to the 20th century?” The explanation for her illness is that her immune system has broken down as a result of environmental factors, an overload of everyday chemicals and toxins. It is not just that viral outbreaks are often blamed on those who are sexually irresponsible or renegade,126 writes Bill Albertini, but that, conversely, the act of cleaning up and enforcing order is left to those who are considered morally superior, those whose job is to maintain the social code. If one set of people makes the mess, it makes sense that the other set would have to clean it up. Norman Bates in Psycho and Dorine in Office Killer are both responsible for cleaning up their parents’ bad behavior. At home, Dorine covers up her father’s incest, and at work, she covers up the errors her father’s department provides. In Office Killer, Dorine enforces the moral code, acting as an avenging angel restoring order to Constant Consumer magazine. Dorine cleans house, eradicating those whose behavior violates the status quo. Norah, as the manager embezzling funds and downsizing employees; Gary Michaels as the staff lecher; and the Mail Boy, who paws through naughty magazines and flirts his way through the office—all meet Dorine’s wrath. At the end of the film, when she drives off to a new life, her freshly glamorous and empowered persona is evident in the rearview mirror; her reorganization has been successful. Her house is left burning behind her, eradicating the leftover germs and destroying the contaminated bodies. The transformation is complete. The plague is eradicated, the contamination contained. Technology “I’m gonna need you to go ahead and come in tomorrow. So if you could be here around nine, that would be great, mmmkay? Oh… oh… and I almost forgot: Ahh, I’m also gonna need you to go ahead and also come in on Sunday, too, mmmkay?” Office Space If defined by its movies, the 1990s could be personified by the evolution of corporate culture and technology, just as much as by vampires or contagion. Office Space (Judge, 1999) parodies work at a software company in the 1990s, while also addressing themes familiar to whitecollar workers: bureaucracy; excessive management; boredom; replaceability and interchangeability; smarmy and overly demanding upper-level management; white-collar crime; and, of course, downsizing. Written and directed by Mike Judge and starring Ron Livingston, Ajay Naidu, David Herman, Gary Cole, and Jennifer Aniston, the plot revolves around three employees of a software company who grow sick of corporate dominance and mismanagement, and take revenge on the company and their boss. 147

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We were our jobs, elements of a larger machine. We worked when we were at home, our jobs encroaching on nights and weekends. Nothing was off limits. Even when we were out of the office, we were still connected to the office by our computers, phones, and fax machines. Working life in America in the late Nineties was no longer confined to the eight-hour day. Technology was supposed to make life easier, enabling us to make money off eBay while sunbathing on a tropical beach, but instead it facilitated the rise of the cubicle, sales of which shot up to $3.4 billion in 1997.127 Office Space’s Spanish title was Cubiculos de la oficina, which translates literally to “Cubicle of the Office.” Cubicles were a visual manifestation of the boxes in which we put ourselves, of the encroaching alienation and anonymity of contemporary life. Efficiency was prized over independence and creativity. The late 1990s workplace was lean and mean, opting for less privacy and more powerful, versatile technology in the interest of higher profits. We became our technology because it was always with us; we became our jobs because we were always working. Technology became a non-negotiable part of the workspace and our identities, as the boundaries between home and office, body and machine, shifted forever. The computer has become, in the words of Daniel, the “lifeline to the office.” We need to be umbilically connected to the office when we are not there, via a life-line. Technology keeps us alive as it keeps us (inter)connected. In the late Nineties, we became slaves to our apparatuses. To quote from “A Cyborg Manifesto,” Donna Haraway’s seminal essay, “our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert.”128 Machines grew dominant, controlling us more than we controlled them. Bruce Sterling writes that our bodies are “thoroughly invaded and colonized by invisible technologies,”129 and Tizianna Terranova describes “the slow penetration into our daily life of almost invisible technological gadgets.”130 The gadgets have gotten smaller, their presence even more invasive, as their integration with our bodies became more complete. Hackers (Iain Softley), possibly the sexiest computer movie ever made, was released in 1995. Computer programmers have never looked so good—or been so cool. Technology allows the underdog, the techno-nerd, the tongue-tied and the awkward to achieve a new kind of power. It releases a new spirit of entrepreneurism through the creation of very different types of power, communication, and infrastructure. Flesh-and-bone capabilities are less important than the ability to program code, to interface with machinery. And interfacing with machinery is cool, sexy, and utterly stimulating, at least according to movies like Hackers, Johnny Mnemonic, and The Matrix. Technology is thrilling, even as it causes irreparable harm to conventional ways of doing business and communicating. A different story, with a markedly different tone, American Psycho also responded to changes in corporate culture with its shocking tale of a business executive turned serial killer. Patrick Bateman, a wealthy young investment banker, takes us—with painstaking detail—through his days, from his empty and narcissistic corporate life to the brutal murders he commits. Ellis explains that the tensions were a retaliation against the emptiness of consumer and corporate culture: 148

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It initiated because of my own isolation and alienation at a point in my life. I was living like Patrick Bateman. I was slipping into a consumerist kind of void that was supposed to give me confidence and make me feel good about myself but just made me feel worse and worse and worse about myself.131 The cheap thrill of fast living and fast consumption so prevalent during the Eighties was wearing thin, exhausted by the superficial demands of contemporary life. By the end of the twentieth century, it was time for a radical shift and reversal. Written and directed by Larry (now known as Lana) and Andy Wachowski, The Matrix (1999) is a futuristic science-fiction action film where what we think is real is merely a simulated reality (also known as “the Matrix”) intended to keep us subdued. The central character, computer programmer Thomas A. Anderson, also known by his hacker alias Neo and played by Keanu Reeves, meets Morpheus, played by Laurence Fishburne. In one of the film’s most famous scenes, Morpheus offers him two pills: one that would let him continue his life unchanged, and another that would reveal the truth about the Matrix. Neo chooses truth and joins a rebellion against the machines. The backlash had begun. People were becoming disenchanted with technology, full of a growing skepticism that these advances were improving our way of life, and a realization that they might actually be making things worse. The late Nineties were an era of postmodern angst, of shifting realities and expectations. The way we saw ourselves, and the way we saw the world around us, were in flux. Corporate America was shifting, and people were changing. How we understood reality, media, business, and personal relationships was evolving, as was the way we were being identified. Our names were inconsequential, replaced by numbers: job identification number, social security number, driver’s license number, etc. Despite their differences in social status, both Dorine and Patrick Bateman are constantly mistaken for other people. They are just cogs in the apparatus, one no different than the next. This anonymity, combined with a lack of individuality, is emphasized when Dorine is identified by an employee number on her pink slip, like a prisoner in a jail or concentration camp, another piece of machinery in the corporate factory. As names vanished, so did bodies. There was a constant fear of being downsized, of literally disappearing. “Oh no, they’re not in today, they’re working from home,” became a common explanation for empty desks, if anyone even asked. No one knew where anyone belonged anymore. No one cared. This facelessness translated to another result of this technology boom: e-mail—and spam. Spam is literally mail with no clear source, addressed to everyone while still being for no one. “Did you get my e-mail?” replaced real dialog. As Daniel tells Dorine, “Some people like [e-mail] so much, they stop talking to people in person.” Avoiding confrontation or conversation whenever possible became the rule of the game. It was much more efficient to sit behind your desk and press “send.” It was much easier to “cc” everyone from the comfort of your laptop. Technology facilitates communication, even while rendering it more abstract and anonymous. Dorine’s actions are in retaliation to this disappearance of the corporeal, for the loss of the physical that reflects a loss of the real, even as she is empowered by these same changes. As 149

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her bodies disintegrate, we are reminded of the oozing organs at the other end of these e-mail accounts. Dorine, like Patrick Bateman, makes bodies real again; a retaliation to the shallow emptiness of contemporary life. She shows us the physicality that we cannot escape even as we deprioritize it. As life becomes faster, slicker, and more antiseptic, there is a converse reaction as we seek out balance. Office Space and Office Killer both end with primal bonfires: in the former, the actual office building goes up in smoke; in the latter, it is the improvised “new” office—Dorine’s home—that burns. These fires represent the real, raw, and primal; an antidote to the meta, clinical, and superficial world in which we live. In Office Killer, leaking bodies, leaking selves, and leaking information are contrasted with technology’s clean efficiency. As the offices of Constant Consumer magazine grow more computer-reliant and more sterile, the messiness of person-to-person contact eradicated by the prophylactic of the keyboard, Dorine wages a one-woman campaign to remind us of the superficiality of that pursuit. The sterility is barely skin-deep, computer cables providing no escape from the inevitable decomposition and failures of our insides, or the uncertainty of our souls. We may consume identities like we consume new cars, transforming ourselves with everything from plastic surgery to vitamin pills, but we do not come any closer to knowing who we are, or to postponing the betrayal of our still death-prone bodies. We need to be bigger, better, faster while we understand ourselves less and less. At the same time, technology is not all bad. The rise of technology in the workplace also serves to facilitate production, and to empower those who might have been left behind. After all, being antisocial or socially awkward is less of an issue thanks to technology. “In the beginning, I was spooked by all the gadgets […] but now the computer is my best friend,” explains Dorine Douglas. For Dorine, a perpetually isolated and ignored woman, the computer is her best friend. She may come off as creepy when she says this, but Dorine is like a child, and says exactly what she means. This blunt statement foreshadows the reliance we would grow to have on our technological apparatuses. Our smartphones have become our confidants and informants. Sometimes our computers really do feel like our best friends. We are increasingly dependent on our technology to function, to remember birthdays, to store data, to organize our archives. Even though she says she was spooked at first, it is obvious that Dorine understands technology, and that it helps her to communicate. She sends e-mails with as much skill as she distinguishes between “which” and “that”; head copyeditor for a staff that clearly does not know any better. She is not frightened by technology, she knows how to use it to her advantage, and she allows it to empower rather than depersonalize her. However, not everyone in her office feels the same way. Most of her coworkers struggle with their computers, with the changes in protocol, and they will clearly be left behind because of it. Dorine’s personal metamorphosis is a direct result of the movement to integrate technology into the workplace—an action that strips her and her colleagues of a level of autonomy—but it is through technology that she is able to come into her own. The introduction of computers, combined with the office downsizing, triggers Dorine’s collapse while enabling her to take revenge. “Your position has been modified,” reads the ubiquitous 150

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pink slip that changes everything, and it is her self that is literally modified; not her job, but her position—her status in the company and her place in her life. She is sent to work from home, her physical presence replaced with an e-mail address. We are no longer our bodies, ourselves. Instead, we are fleeing our bodies before they betray us, disappearing into technology, into the avatars and icons on our Facebook pages. But this can also have positive consequences. Seemingly encumbered by her awkward body, Dorine finds freedom behind her computer screen. Technology can empower, allowing Dorine to come into her own, gaining both power and confidence; communicating without physical contact, her awkwardness gradually disappearing. “The future is here at last,” exclaims Norah, as she opens up what is clearly an old, boxy laptop—a far cry from the gadgetry of The Matrix. “Actually, this is an old future,” explains her boyfriend, Daniel, the staff tech advisor. “This stuff was cutting edge like two years ago.” “Most of them are practically computer illiterate anyway,” dismisses Norah. The old future will do just fine for them. After all, the future is negotiable and tied to belief. You are as futuristic as you think you are. Norah’s statement demonstrates where she sees herself in relation to others, including her superiors. She knows better, and she does not care. She is far enough into the future to know just how far everyone else needs to be. She is controlling how far others can come. Norah tosses Daniel his new beeper as he leaves her office: “Don’t forget to turn it on, in case I need you!” This beeper, this “future,” will lead directly to both of their deaths. Technology betrays her in the end. Technology implies it will make our lives easier, and yet, inevitably, it can dominate us, unless we control it. Our introductory shot of Dorine’s mother shows her angrily pressing the buttons of her intercom. The intercom gives her a voice when her body fails her, and connects her to her daughter, giving her a sense of power. But this power can be quickly taken away. When Dorine wants independence from her mother, she simply unplugs the automated wheelchair that allows her mother to go up and down the stairs, severing the technological connection. Dorine compares computers to children: “they follow where you lead.” Dominating technology comes naturally to her. For everyone else, technology is a litany of broken promises and failed expectations. Every new technological innovation just supplies more problems. We are never satisfied. We want faster speed, longer battery life, and increased bandwidth. What we have is never enough. There is always a better model, a stronger connection. Technology never simplifies. Instead, it makes things more complicated, distracting, and overwhelming. The matrix has already happened: it is called Facebook, and everyone opted in through Angry Birds. Workplace The traditional idea of home and workplace as separate institutions, once divided for good reason, blurred in the 1980s and 1990s, becoming a mess with no boundaries or limitations. 151

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The office, simultaneously representative of the present and adulthood, bled into the domestic zone, encouraged by the ease of connection via cell phones, e-mail, fax machines, and computers. The notion of home as representative of the past and childhood—a place of safe and nurturing domesticity, a respite from the workplace—became outdated and nostalgic. In fact, if you did not maintain direct lines of communication between home and office, you were outdated and even childlike. The more adult you were, the more wellconnected you were expected to be. In 1987, when Oliver Stone made Wall Street, business took place anywhere it needed to happen, especially in greed-driven New York City. It mainly occurred in designated workspaces, but it also frequently spilled over into corporate lunches, dinners, and limousines. The movie depicts a male-dominated world in which no one ever stops working; and when we do see the home, work is taking place there, too. Charlie Sheen’s character, Bud Fox, even turns his home into both a corporate meeting room and a computer terminal full of printouts. Family, when it is shown, is presented in the context of work, and this work happens rapidly and constantly. Business moves fast, and everyone must move faster in order to keep up. Office Killer, ten years later, is a drastically different film, not only in terms of speed, but also in terms of theme. Slower, methodical, fixated on the mundane details of our surroundings and our selves, it is not about the work that takes place, but about what takes place for the work to happen. It focuses on the aftermath, the sacrifices and adjustments that must occur as a result of work permeating the entirety of our lives. A more feminine film, the gaze turns reflectively inward, focusing on our bodies and our selves. It is about maintaining our bodies in a contemporary culture where everything is a siege against personal immunity, and technology threatens our physical presence in our jobs and communities. If Wall Street looks at the party that was corporate America in the 1980s, Office Killer is about the hangover. Dorine is alone partly because that is how to survive in a world of disease, contagion, and weakness, but also because technological developments encourage it. Office Killer foreshadows the new forms of connections and communications between people that would bring a different sense of would be considered real, intimate, and personal. New ways of doing business were also evident in the shifting gender dynamics. Not only did changing gender roles affect everyone, but specific changes affected certain groups in different ways. As a result of feminist progress, and the proliferation of different kinds of jobs where gender was no longer a criterion, men no longer dominated the office. The playing field expanded. It was now possible for women to succeed at the expense of, or along with, their male counterparts. Gender, height, and sex appeal were now irrelevant to getting the job done. Anyone who could do the job could theoretically get the job. Those who could run the machines—and the companies—became the powerful ones, regardless of sex. Office Killer reflects the conflict between “old school” and “new school” as manifested in ways of doing business: digital versus analog, male versus female. “Old school” can be seen in Dorine, with her freshly sharpened pencils. “New school” is Norah with her laptops and beepers. “New school” represents all the unsettling, disorienting, and exhilarating changes to the way we do live and work. It is ironic that, when Dorine brings Virginia home to the 152

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new workplace, she positions her in front of a typewriter. The retreat to the basement also represents a retreat from the dizzying changes in the contemporary corporate world—a return to the old school. Technology led to major fluctuations in the rules of the workplace, as did the increasing presence and power of women. Corporate monopolies and structures shifted as lines were blurred and redrawn both inside and outside of the office. Working Girl, Office Killer, and Psycho reflect these different problematic aspects of the workplace: from inappropriate boundaries to changing rules and disappointed expectations. Of special significance is that the dramatic tension in all three films comes from an inappropriate permeability between home and office. Psycho is a warning of the dangers that can ensue when no boundaries exist; the mess that ensues when you really do live where you work, when there is zero separation between home and office, or between parent and child. Norman and his mother’s relationship is merely an extreme version of the relationship between Dorine and her father, even to the extent that Norman’s mother dominates him at work and at home. Norman’s mother lives on in his mind; Dorine’s father lives on in her flashbacks. In Office Killer, Dorine and her father also exist together in both the home and the workplace. At home he is her father, at work he is her boss, and at both, he is out of line. The incestuous horror of the household transfers to the workplace, and vice versa. This lack of boundaries corrupts both places; Dorine’s father poisons her childhood and her adulthood, her home and her workplace. The lack of separation between home and office is to blame for the killings in Psycho, much as it is to blame for the killings in Office Killer. The boundaries between home and office, between parent and child, have become hopelessly tangled. Bringing her workplace home is Dorine’s way of gaining power over it and her superiors, of reacting to the toxic nature of boundary blurring. This is not a defeat; this is a response and a retaliation. In typical horror narratives—Scream, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street (Craven, 1984), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre—the killer kills at home. It is symbolic that Dorine kills at work and then collects and preserves the bodies at home. Workplace and home may have become fused, the lines hopelessly blurred, but by bringing the workplace home, Dorine is able to take control away from those who are making the office toxic. Working Girl is also about the repercussions of ignored boundaries and bad behavior. The contempt for boundaries between work and home leads to the demise of Katharine’s career, and the success of Tess’. In fact, some of the most entertaining scenes occur when Tess lives at Katharine’s house. There is a liberating quality to her presence in her boss’ house. We enjoy watching Tess defy these borders because we recognize that her defiance of them is what will propel her forward. On the other hand, Katharine is inappropriately pushy to Tess by sending Tess to her house, which makes us dislike Katharine more—we recognize how Katharine is ignoring the boundaries of what a boss is allowed to request. Then, when Tess is at Katharine’s house, she spots a letter on Katharine’s computer, another delightfully unsuitable moment that sets the whole plot snowballing toward Katharine’s downfall. The narrative is fueled by unfortunate occurrences like these, by transgressions of behavior and defiance (or simply avoidance) of socially-sanctioned boundaries. 153

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Both Psycho and Office Killer are about what happens when you do not fulfill your professional function; when boundaries are ignored, and, as a result, when the workplace is corrupted. Like Norah in Office Killer, Marion Crane in Psycho is the “office killer” or “corporate monster” who steals money from the office. Also, like Norah, she is stabbed to death with a knife, off camera, her murderer shown silhouetted behind a curtain (a shower curtain in Psycho; a sheet hung up as if to dry in Dorine’s basement). In Office Killer, the workplace is made toxic by Norah’s embezzlement, Kim’s gossiping, and Virginia’s poor management techniques—“Just make it up if you have to” are not words you ever want to hear from an editor-in-chief. Norah is vampiric, sucking the funds and soul out of the office; Kim is viral, spreading her bacteria and gossip around the office. If incest is a disease, then Dorine’s father was infectious. By breaking the boundaries between home and office, his illness contaminates both locations. By hiring Dorine, he brings their toxic relationship to work. Dorine’s father, Norah, Kim, Virginia, and Marion are the true office killers. Dorine may stand out because she is obviously damaged, but they are the ones harming the office, draining it of life. Mr. Landau survives not only because his behavior is 100 per cent honorable—he keeps his hands to himself, even telling Mr. Michaels to stop kissing people—but because he does his job. In movies like Working Girl, the film’s narrative leaves us happy, implying that the workplace can be a positive experience. Despite acknowledging the way the world works— with its backstabbing, misogyny, and snobbery—the film still demonstrates that it is possible to succeed, that the American dream is alive. However, in Office Killer, there are no illusions. This is the way it is. This is the current reality of the social climate and the workplace. There is no way out, no real happy ending. Without the murders, Office Killer could be a record of evolving work conditions in America. The workplace has indeed become toxic. Everyone gossips, everyone avoids doing their jobs, everyone looks out only for himself or herself. Upper management takes care of their own while squeezing as much as possible out of lower-level employees. Hours worked have increased as benefits declined, and golden parachutes have grown larger and cushier. Professional integrity is a dated concept. The murders may be the most visually and conceptually memorable part of the movie, but at its core, Office Killer is about the workplace and the real damage done there.

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Comparisons: Working Girl, Basic Instinct, and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

I

 f one were to walk into a Hollywood production office—the task at hand: to pitch Office Killer to a couple of suits—it could sound something like this: “Picture What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? meets Working Girl meets Basic Instinct, with a dash of Psycho on the side.” A seemingly unlikely combination of films, the four of them blended together (perhaps in a Cuisinart) yields one Office Killer. What could be more archetypal and familiar than themes of jealousy, betrayal, and mistaken identity? We see them in Greek tragedy, in Shakespeare, and in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Working Girl, Basic Instinct, Psycho, and Office Killer. All these movies revolve around themes of betrayal: women betraying women, women betraying men, men betraying men, and parents betraying children. The theme of jealousy also plays an integral part in these films, seemingly a non-negotiable component of female-driven pictures such as Single White Female (Schroeder, 1992), Heathers (Lehmann, 1988), Mean Girls (Waters, 2004), The Women, and, of course, Working Girl, Basic Instinct, Office Killer, and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Whenever women are together, they are usually competing with each other for something, whether a man, status, money, success, or attention. We also see themes of mistaken or stolen identity over and over again in these movies. Tess, Melanie Griffith’s character in Working Girl, impersonates her boss’ position; Virginia and Norah both refer to Dorine by incorrect names; and Jeanne Tripplehorn’s character in Basic Instinct is, at various points, Beth Garner, Lisa Hoberman, or Lisa Oberman. In What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, while we know which sister is which, we do not know which sister is responsible for the accident. By the end of Basic Instinct, we do not know if the killer is Roxy or Catherine or Beth—or a combination of the three. Identity is unclear and interchangeable, much like motives and agendas. The only certainty is that someone will betray someone, that someone will act inappropriately, and that someone else will force him or her to pay the price. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Directed by Robert Aldrich and based on the book by the same name, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is known not only for being a classic American film, but also for the role it

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played in the careers of leading actresses Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. The two had had a rivalry for years, and audiences leapt at the chance to see the two women not only onscreen together, but onscreen with such vicious antagonism, even occasionally translating to actual physical violence. The film features the character of aging child celebrity Baby Jane Hudson, who lives with and cares for her crippled sister Blanche, a successful film actress until a car accident injures her spine. Jane resents her sister, both for her success and for her physical helplessness. Jane, however, is financially dependent on her sister, and feels a sense of obligation to her, since she believes herself responsible for the fateful accident that rendered Blanche wheelchair-bound. The two women live together: Jane imposing an isolation from the world around them in order to maintain control over the situation; Blanche putting up with her sister’s cruelty for reasons that only become clear at the end of the film. Jane refuses to let Blanche have visitors or make phone calls, much as Norman refuses to let people see his mother, or as Dorine does not allow Daniel to speak to her mother, and controls her mother’s access to the first floor of their house. The caretaker stands as a barrier, as a sentry, between the invalid and the world. In Office Killer, Dorine’s mother is the stereotypical nagging, dominant mother. A mix of every bitchy, needy old grouch we have seen before, Dorine’s crippled mother presses impatiently on the intercom. “Dorine!” she shouts, while pressing one old and wrinkled finger against the button. This shot is our introduction to her. With that telling gesture of finger to button, with that headache-inducing wail of need, we are reminded of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? While the narrative of the film is different, there are many similarities—not the least of which is the general tension between the women; the mixture of fear, envy, and hatred, the same atmosphere which permeates the office of Constant Consumer magazine. Is it coincidence that Norah first calls Dorine by the incorrect name of Miss Davis? Both Blanche and Dorine’s mother, Carlotta Douglas, are overly aggressive with their intercoms, their physical helplessness balanced out by their extreme neediness, and a power to make noise and summon. Oblivious to the feelings of their caretakers, they press their buzzers over and over again. Surely one buzz would be enough, since the sound is shatteringly loud in both of the houses, and obviously Jane and Dorine are not going to come any faster when being deafened by the repetitive cry. But the two crippled older women continue to use their buzzers as a surrogate for a power no longer present in their deteriorating bodies, as a veritable technological prosthesis. If they cannot shout, damn it, they will let their buzzers wail. Another similarity between the two women is that both Blanche and Carlotta keep a bird in a birdcage in the corner of their bedroom. Blanche interacts with her bird, and the demise of the bird becomes an important plot development. In Office Killer, Carlotta’s bird is ignored, but is there nonetheless, perhaps a small, symbolic nod to the earlier film, to the character on which hers is modeled. Additional parallels between the two films are numerous. The first time we see Blanche, she is watching one of her old movies. During a scene when a woman is talking to a man in a hospital bed, Jane (Bette Davis) comes in and turns off the television. 156

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Blanche to Jane: “I was watching that.” Jane: “Then you’re an idiot.” The first time we see Carlotta, she is lying in bed, watching a soap opera. During a scene when a woman and a man are talking to a man in a hospital bed, Dorine comes in and changes the channel to a game show. Carlotta says to Dorine, “Oh, leave that on. I love them!” Dorine ignores her mother and just watches the game show. Both Blanche and Carlotta have upstairs bedrooms, even though they are wheelchairbound and cannot easily access the lower level of their own houses, further emphasizing their vulnerable, needy states and perhaps the desire of their caretakers to keep them that way. Dorine and Jane bring food up on trays, hurried in their progress by the persistent intercom buzzing of their respective dependents. Their roles are a combination of cook, nurse, companion, family, and maid, in addition to balancing some sort of career. In the guise of the contemporary caretaker, they are expected to cook and care after having worked all day. This is the role of the new housewife. Not only does Dorine need to look after her mother while fulfilling her professional responsibilities, but she also has to look after her coworkers and her magazine, since no one there is taking care of anyone else. As Camille Paglia wrote, “Contemporary moms have become virtuoso super-managers of a complex operation focused on the care and transport of children.”132 Dorine’s children are her mother—and her colleagues. Her mother lacks maternal instincts, as does everyone else, so Dorine is the one faced with the task of keeping it all together. Jane’s children are her dolls, and when she plays with and arranges them, it is eerily similar to Dorine arranging and caring for her bodies. Jane takes away Blanche’s (the child’s) telephone, tugging the cord out of the wall. Dorine, as the caretaker and therefore the “adult,” pulls the plug loose from her mother’s stair chair. The severing of the two cables, a metaphorical recreation of the umbilical cord, renders both crippled women even more helpless and isolated, creating one more way in which they are dependent on their caretakers and separated from the outside world. An additional benefit is that this also keeps Dorine’s mother even further away from the basement, which is Dorine’s domain, while removing the telephone keeps Blanche a prisoner in her own house. Not only are both Jane and Dorine taking care of older crippled women for whom they feel responsible, but both women believe themselves to be guilty for the car accidents which caused the crippling. They are both trapped in their roles as caretakers, performing penance for injuries they have caused. They are compelled by their guilt to look after their victims, to take responsibility for their actions, even while their victims serve as constant reminders of past mistakes and humiliations. Jane and Dorine play the parts of aging little girls, combining childlike naiveté and awkwardness with an unacknowledged, uncomfortable disregard for the social mores of aging—especially evident in their overly accented eyebrows and crudely applied makeup. There is an inherent aggression in their refusal to age gracefully, to comply with societal expectations of beauty and age appropriate behavior. Both characters act younger as their 157

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brains become unhinged: Jane to the point of complete childhood regression, whereas Dorine, by the end of Office Killer, looks more “herself ” as she comes into her own, seeming twenty years younger than during her opening sequence. And yet, despite their childlike nature, they are in positions of power and responsibility. In addition to all these connections between the two films, one cannot help but acknowledge the echoes in Office Killer of another kind of mother in another kind of wheelchair: the smothering domesticity, repressed sexuality, and the inevitable murders of Hitchcock’s Psycho. Unlike Dorine, Norman Bates disposes of the bodies after he kills them (except, of course, for his mother’s), but he also has the responsibility of taking care of a different set of bodies—those that feed his taxidermy habit. Dorine is responsible for cleaning and covering up: her father’s incest, the text at her father’s magazine, the bodies she kills, and her mother; Norman is also responsible for cleaning up: the rooms at the motel, the bodies he kills, and his mother. What are these movies telling us about the relationship between intimacy and independence? Or, in turn, about the relationship between intimacy and dependence? Between intimacy and parenting? Where are the lines between nurture and suffocation, between detachment and independence? How do we define the notion of (s)mothering, and the negative repercussions thereof? Dorine and her mother exemplify all the nuances and complications of the mother/daughter dynamic, and of the perverse inversion of aging, where the older becomes the younger, the powerless clinging to what power they have left. The caretaker controls the taken-care-of, replacing the role of the mother figure, as the taken-care-of resents the neediness and dependence inherent in their invalid status. One of the pivotal struggles of independence is when the child struggles to break free, but the parent (often the mother) is reluctant to let go. Barbara Creed writes that the mother retains such a close hold because the child serves “to authenticate her existence,” and this conflict is heightened when the paternal and/or male figure is absent.133 This struggle manifests frequently in tales categorized as horrific or melodramatic, such as Office Killer, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Psycho, Carrie, and The Birds. The conflict of mother and child fighting for independence is further exacerbated by their inability to communicate and understand each other. In Psycho, for instance, the relationship is between Norman Bates and his dead mother with whom he can obviously not communicate. In Carrie, the mother cannot understand her daughter, and her daughter cannot communicate to her mother what she is experiencing, which makes the mother afraid of her daughter and causes her to crack down further on her Carrie’s independence. The isolation of the women in Office Killer and in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?— their isolation from the world at large as well as their isolation from each other, their mutual codependence combined with extreme levels of neediness while they remain unable to connect on any real level—are all essential parts of their conflict. They cannot let each other go, because their identities are defined by the presence of the other, however oppressive. They live in the same house, but they do not know each other at all. They cannot even engage with the world outside on any functional level. This type of inward isolation and lack of 158

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communication at home would set the precedent for the isolation we would experience on a broad scale at the end of the twentieth century. Working Girl Working Girl, written by Kevin Wade and directed by Mike Nichols, is a lighthearted romantic comedy that takes on the world of Wall Street corporate ambition. The hero of the film, Tess McGill, played by Melanie Griffith, works in the mergers and acquisitions department of a Wall Street investment bank. When her boss, Katharine (Sigourney Weaver), is out of the office with an injury, Tess uses the opportunity to take over for her boss and make her own deals, evolving in the process from a heavily made-up, heavily hairsprayed Staten Island girl into a classy New York executive. Tess McGill undergoes a “cleaning up” and “feminization” throughout the film, much as Dorine does in Office Killer, becoming more classically attractive as the film progresses. Katharine also tries to befriend Tess in a manner similar to Norah’s artificial attempts at friendship with Dorine. Both brunette supervisors, Norah and Katharine, like the boss in Office Space, are untrustworthy and ruthless, as befits the stereotype of a corporate executive. In Working Girl, it is Tess McGill’s growing fashion sense that provides a graphic metaphor of the evolution occurring within her mind, representing her strengthening grasp on the corporate ladder. Tess’ wearing of her boss’ clothes morphs into her ability to present and sell herself, and her cleaner and more upscale look translates into her increased capabilities in and out of the workplace. When we see her looking more successful, we know that she is more successful. In Office Killer, Dorine’s lipstick at the end of the film, combined with her cigarette and new hairstyle, is all we need to see to know she has come a long way, baby. Both characters’ respective appearances signify their personal metamorphoses. Much as in Sherman’s photographs, these women’s external appearance is coded for their respective narratives of success or failure, dominance or submission. Working Girl is also very Shermanesque in that who Tess McGill is does not change. At her core, she remains the same. Her insides are constant, much as it is always Sherman herself inside her images. It is merely the external appearance that changes. Tess looks the way she does externally because of how and where she was raised, and she learns the art of artifice (including the help of the right makeup, the right clothes, and the right way of speaking) in order to appear as a different type of person, in order to play a more prestigious role. In many movies, when people put on costumes their personalities change (such as Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie [Pollack, 1982]), but there is no actual change in the character of Tess or Dorine. Other people just see them differently as Tess and Dorine get better at “operating” in the world around them. They may become more confident and independent, but they remain authentic to who they are. It is merely acting “as if ” that gets them where they want to go. Sherman’s work is also about acting “as if.” Dorine, Tess, and Cindy all know how to fake it. Tess even impersonates a secretary on the phone to protect her fake position. She plays 159

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with our earlier version of her but makes it even more extreme and comedic. This moment echoes the scene in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? when Bette Davis impersonates Joan Crawford on the telephone. She acts as Blanche, but in this case it is genuinely fake (although we are not supposed to know this). Davis could not get Crawford’s voice quite right, so the lines were actually spoken by Crawford and mouthed by Davis. All these layers of impersonation, mimicry, and representation are fundamentally Shermanesque. Despite advances in women’s rights, the corporate world remains a masculine zone. Women may make up nearly half the labor force in 2012, but only eighteen Fortune 500 CEOs (3.6 per cent) are female.134 The top of the corporate hierarchy is still dominated by men. John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Chicago-based employment consultant company Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., confirms that gender discrimination has not disappeared, that there “is still a glass ceiling that makes it difficult to change the number of women who reach the top job in any meaningful way.”135 In order to succeed, women need to be aggressive, strategic, and dominant—traits typically associated with the masculine. What is interesting about Office Killer and Working Girl is that these traits are cloaked behind a feminine mask. According to those movies, in order to succeed women must know how to apply makeup as skillfully as run a boardroom, working skills from both ends of the gender spectrum. Another parallel between Working Girl and Office Killer is in the lead actresses themselves. There is something oddly similar about Melanie Griffith’s baby-doll voice and Carol Kane’s little-girl voice. Both are children playing at being grown-ups, combining adult situations with their childlike innocence. The two actresses also begin their films with frizzy, puffy hair that slowly cleans up as the films progress. Tess, when getting her hair cut at a pivotal moment in her evolution, declares that if “you want to be taken seriously, you need serious hair.” Dorine must agree with this because her hair also gets increasingly serious throughout the film, finally culminating in her very chic blonde bob. The parallels between Katharine and Norah are just as strong as those between Tess and Dorine. Like Norah, Katharine wears pearls. Both are brunettes. Katharine tells Tess how to dress, while Norah gives Dorine a bag of clothes. Tess borrows Katharine’s eyeglasses when she plays at being Katharine, while Dorine takes accessories (like Virginia’s earrings) from the people she kills in order to integrate them into her new, evolving persona. Identity in both films develops via appropriation. Tess describes Katharine as her mentor, and Norah is a mentor of sorts to Dorine, but they are both insincere mentors because they are only looking out for themselves. Norah, Katharine, and Virginia are like the Gordon Gekko character in Wall Street, exploiting others for personal gain (“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”) while failing to teach their disciples properly. Dorine learns nothing from her supervisors, merely imbibing elements of their lifestyle and attire to move herself up the corporate ladder. Norah tries to shield Dorine while destroying the magazine from the inside out. Katharine tells Tess, while stabbing her in the back, “This is just business,” as if that excuses her cruel and selfish behavior. In our culture, we make excuses for everything. As long as you make money, anything is 160

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acceptable, if not encouraged. Katharine and Norah are manipulators, liars, and users of people. Katharine, in her position (and as an abuser) of power, also references Virginia. The two women are smokers, proudly and blatantly, at a time when smoking was becoming seen as more self-destructive than chic. But they smoke because the person with the biggest mouth smokes. It is a way of imposing themselves on the room. Is this why Dorine picks up the habit? Yet another parallel between the two films is that both Norah and Katharine are betrayed via computer. Technology is on the side of the underdog. Norah’s computer problems bring Dorine into her office, where Dorine reads the list of numbers on the computer screen that reveal Norah’s larceny. Katharine’s onscreen memo digitally exposes her lies, and Tess also sees numbers she is not supposed to see on Katharine’s computer. Inappropriate and accidental access of technology by Dorine and Tess reveals the truth. The computer acts as an intermediary, confessor, and betrayer. It is an enabler for these women, a leveler of the playing field. Male/female relationships in Working Girl also echo those in Office Killer. In Working Girl, Tess’ boyfriend, Mick Dugan, betrays her by cheating on her, whereas in Office Killer, Dorine’s father betrays her by molesting her. In either case, the betrayal comes at the hands of the most significant male in each character’s respective lives. The masculine love interest also plays an important role. In the two films, “owning” the boyfriend can be seen as the ultimate acquisition and accomplishment. Harrison Ford, as Jack Trainer, is a pawn between Tess and Katharine, much as Daniel is a pawn between Kim, Norah, and Dorine. Amusingly, but not insignificantly, Mick Dugan, as played by Alec Baldwin, looks like Gary Michaels without a moustache, and, coincidentally, his new girlfriend’s name is Doreen. In a final similarity between the two films, with very small exceptions (Griffith jumping into a cab or exiting a limousine) Working Girl also takes place indoors—in bedrooms, offices, and boardrooms. Much as in Office Killer, we never see a full exterior shot of the office building, and the entire movie also denies us outdoor shots. The last shot of Working Girl is like the first shot of the exterior to Constant Consumer magazine’s building. The camera zooms out, leaving us to watch a tiny Melanie Griffith in the tiny window of her office building, one among rows of identical other windows; a shot strongly similar to our shot of Dorine before the toner explodes all over her. Basic Instinct Directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Joe Eszterhas, Basic Instinct is an erotic thriller that pits police detective Nick Curran against Catherine Tramell, his chief suspect in a recent homicide investigation, and latest love interest. The police psychologist, Beth Garner, who is both Nick’s psychologist and his ex-girlfriend, and Catherine’s current girlfriend, Roxy, add more developments to the plot. Sharon Stone’s portrayal of Catherine Tramell was the role that made her a star, solidifying her as an American sex symbol. Michael Douglas played Nick, and Jeanne Tripplehorn made her film debut as Beth. 161

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Basic Instinct opens the way Office Killer ends, with a deadly blonde with a bob haircut. In Basic Instinct, we are not certain if this hair is a wig or not. In Office Killer, however, we are sure that it is—and this alone is significant. For Dorine, this wig provides an interesting twist. It further complicates the notion of identity, since wearing a wig (for her) is fundamentally unnecessary. Why does she suddenly don it for the last scene? Unless you are wearing a wig to cover hair loss, you only wear a wig when you want to change who you are, or when you want to conceal—or express—your authentic nature in a sudden and spontaneous way. Wigs are coded for identity metamorphosis, representing a quick and easy change from one role to another. In Psycho, Norman dons a wig when he plays his mother. Wigs equal instant transformation, making the everyday sensational—or merely different. So who is Dorine becoming or impersonating when wearing this wig? Perhaps the most important question to ask is why she wears a wig at all. The metamorphosis of her hair has been a metaphor for her strengthening sense of self, so why would she conceal her hair when she should be revealing herself more than ever? Throughout the film, her hair has grown increasingly looser and freer; then, at this pivotal moment, concluding her transformation, she hides it under a wig. Could Dorine be intentionally referencing the blonde hair so crucial to the plot of Basic Instinct? Is the wig that concludes Office Killer paying tribute to the wig that opens that earlier film? Is this, in fact, the blonde wig from Basic Instinct, used by Beth to impersonate Catherine? Is Dorine playing Catherine Tramell? Is this Dorine’s final identity? Hair, as every woman knows, is crucial to identity. A redhead will often be defined by her hair, much as a blonde is remembered by hers. Long, shaggy, hippy hair says one thing about you. A neat Louise Brooks-style says the exact opposite. In the opening scene of Basic Instinct, much as when we first see Dorine, we are denied a view of the woman’s face. Instead, all we see is her hair; in Basic Instinct that hair is blonde—a color representing eroticism, power, and, as Camille Paglia observes, deception.136 Sharon Stone, as Basic Instinct’s protagonist, has beautiful blonde hair, with and without a wig. In Office Killer, on the other hand, Dorine’s hair is brown, scraggly, uneven—reflecting girls who are mousy, awkward, and unattractive. This is why it is so symbolic that in the film’s last scene, Dorine’s hair is smooth, shiny, trim, and blonde. With this haircut and color, Dorine channels Sharon Stone as Catherine Tramell, the ultimate ice-queen femme fatale of 1990s cinema. The idea of “going blonde” is more than just switching hair colors. It is a statement and a state of mind. It is an identity. Blonde has deep cultural significance, and each shade of blonde has its own narrative. There is the Hitchcock icy blonde, personified by Grace Kelly and Kim Novak, and the sunny warm blonde of Farrah Fawcett, Goldie Hawn, and Blake Lively. It represents icons and fairy tale princesses, Playboy centerfolds, and California girls. Jean Harlow may have been one of the first great cinematic blondes, fusing sexuality with blondness—turning it from something angelic and pure to something erotic and delightfully artificial—but Camille Paglia argues that it was Madonna who truly brought it to its glorious sexy, sinful, and defiant heights.137 Sharon Stone, in many scenes of Basic Instinct, out-Madonnas Madonna, the resemblance between the two uncanny. By referencing Madonna, by being that particular shade of cool, 162

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icy blonde, Stone does not just code herself as an iconic blonde, in a lineage with Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe, but also embraces the implications of sexual power and confidence. Her hair is so blonde it is almost white, enhanced by her preference for bone- or whitecolored clothing. She seems to be an ice blonde pagan priestess, outside and beyond the mundane mediocrity of everyday life and everyday hair color. Real life does not apply to her, which is part of the reason Michael Douglas’ character becomes so obsessed with her. She is an enigma, outside the norm. During the film, the extreme coolness of her hair and personality contrasts not only with her fiery and unpredictable personality in the bedroom, but also with actual fire. She repeatedly lets a lighter burn during her police station interview, and, later in the film, stands pensively and majestically beside a bonfire at the beach house after having sex with Nick for the first time. There is no explanation for the fire, but it feels right for this pagan princess—fire and ice. Fire also plays a crucial role in the spectacular end of Office Killer, when Dorine sets fire to her house before driving off in her Catherine Tramell wig. Since Dorine taps into the primal with her homicidal actions during the film, culminating with her final fire, it feels especially appropriate that she would be wearing a Catherine Tramell wig after setting it. She, like Catherine, fuses the fiery with the feminine. Catherine Tramell is not just another movie character. A true feminine archetype, she represents bold sexuality, style, and defiance. A treacherous and confidant woman, she is reminiscent of an era in which women in film were frequently deadly and devious; of characters like Barbara Stanwyck’s Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944). What woman did not want to be Catherine Tramell in that classic interview scene, dressed all in white, legs crisscrossing, underwear famously absent, the men her captive and panting audience? Her role is so large that it transcends a single film. Catherine Tramell became an icon, and like other icons, Catherine can be performed by proxy with the help of a bag of clothes and the right wig. Even Beth Garner, Jeanne Tripplehorn’s character in Basic Instinct itself, pretends to be Catherine. Dorine has similarities to Catherine that run deeper than the shade of her hair. At the end of the movie, when Dorine confesses to her crimes through an e-mail supposedly sent by Norah, she pulls a clever maneuver similar to the one Catherine Tramell establishes to protect herself. “She’s killed half the office,” Dorine writes, as Norah, referencing herself. Although childlike and emotionally stunted, Dorine is smart. She knows that when the police arrive, they will connect her to the bodies in her basement. She knows there will be a manhunt, so by writing (as Norah), “I killed her,” she shifts the future manhunt from Dorine (now assumed dead) to Norah (still assumed living). Dorine is clever enough to know that she cannot pin everything on Norah, so she sets up this doubly clever e-mail to protect herself. This device echoes Tramell’s strategy of writing a book in which a crime is committed exactly like the crime that later occurs in “real life.” When confronted, Tramell declares (as predicted by the knowing Beth Garner) that she would be pretty stupid to write a book with the same crime, rendering herself seemingly immune from potential prosecution. The two women know how to protect themselves. 163

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Another important similarity between Catherine Trammel, Dorine, and even Psycho’s Norman Bates is that the death of one or both parents plays an important part in shaping their psyches. Catherine loses both parents in an accident when she is young, an accident that she may or may not have caused. Dorine loses one parent in an accident she definitely caused, and another to natural causes. Norman Bates loses his father to what appear to be natural causes, but he later kills both his mother and her new lover. Childhood trauma is the source of much of these characters’ instabilities, yielding us not only intriguing plot points, but also incredibly rich and complex films full of psychotic transvestites, murderous lesbians, and incest victims. Parental trauma clearly makes for a compelling story. All three of the films also share another psychological factor: touching is viewed as deadly and/or violent. Sexual touching leads to death: either by an ice pick, in the case of Basic Instinct; a knife in Psycho; or a knife and Cuisinart blade in Office Killer. In Basic Instinct, both ice pick killings are incredibly bloody, much as the killing of the Mail Boy with the Cuisinart blade is the bloodiest of Dorine’s killings. We do not see the aftermath of Norah’s stabbing, but, given the size of the knife Dorine wields, we can imagine it is very bloody, as well. These are the killings that stem from inappropriate touching and behavior. The lack of touching is reinforced by the fact that Catherine and Dorine are not typical females. They are not nurturing or maternal. Catherine even mentions, near the end of the film, that she hates children. The only time Dorine interacts with children, she kills them, and the only time we see her “nurturing side” is with her dead bodies. Catherine and Dorine both threaten the men of the film and the status quo because of their defiance of traditional feminine roles, not merely because they reject their biological responsibility to bear children, but also because of their general defiance of expectations for feminine (i.e. submissive and obedient) behavior. They represent the fundamental aspect of the femme fatale: male fear of women. The more Catherine destabilizes and threatens him, the more Nick finds security in technology. It reconnects him to his manhood, the facts and figures on his computer grounding him after his tumultuous interactions with Catherine. He also finds stability within the walls of the police department, which, like the magazine’s offices in Office Killer, is defined by dark colors and harsh lines. However, in Basic Instinct, these close masculine zones contrast with the organic and expansive realm of nature, shown over and over again as Catherine’s domain. The breathtaking ocean views and wild, staggering cliffs are as feminine as the household settings of Office Killer, even if in markedly different ways. In Office Killer, the home environment depicts a tidy, organized, and claustrophobic version of contemporary domesticity and urban femininity, while Basic Instinct shows us a more traditional, elemental aspect of the feminine, the raw, and the organic. Both films, however, contrast the masculine with the feminine, the domestic with the workplace, much as they also contrast good versus evil. This kind of polarity—good versus evil, masculine versus feminine—is common to film noirs, and both Basic Instinct and Office Killer are classic neo-noirs in terms of style, imagery, and characters. Beyond the character of Catherine, who reeks of the classic femme fatale, 164

Comparisons

the two films are sepia-toned, bleached of color, Basic Instinct favoring creams and beiges, similar to the browns and beiges that drench Office Killer. Also appropriately for a noir, Basic Instinct is a film about stalking and pursuit: Nick stalks Catherine, Catherine stalks Nick, Beth stalks Nick, Beth stalks Catherine. We have a flash of this stalking in Office Killer during the scene in which Dorine stalks the Mail Boy, and when Dorine lies in wait for Virginia. But the most obvious parallel between the two films is actress Jeanne Tripplehorn, who plays Beth in Basic Instinct and Norah in Office Killer. If, as Godard famously said, every film is a documentary of its actors, then every film is also a repository of roles previously played by those actors. We cannot separate Molly Ringwald from her onscreen persona in films like The Breakfast Club or Sixteen Candles. Recognizing the importance of those roles (and the baggage they entail) is essential to a conversation about the character and significance of Kim, but it is just as essential to acknowledge the impact of the role that Jeanne Tripplehorn played a mere five years before Office Killer in her feature film debut. The character of Beth Garner would play an integral role in shaping how we would see Tripplehorn in future films, and the stunning parallels between Basic Instinct and Office Killer, especially regarding Tripplehorn’s roles in both, further reinforces the connection between the two films. Not as alienating or threatening as Catherine, at first Basic Instinct’s Beth tempers her female sexuality with a warm concern for Nick. She seems to be more of the “good girl,” as evidenced by her brown hair color. She is mousier than Catherine. In her first scene in Basic Instinct, Beth wears a boxy brown jacket, and her hair is large and bouncy. She is not as refined and streamlined as Norah will be, and her femininity is further compromised by her interest in the male world of science; she is a doctor, after all, of mental analysis. Similarly, in Office Killer, Norah crunches numbers, diluting her femininity with her proximity to the masculine worlds of business and economics. But it is eventually clear in both films that neither character is to be trusted, whatever their agendas may be. Beth’s warm concern for Nick may be a mask, as we see on occasion when Nick leaves the scene and the warmth fades from her face, replaced by a grim determination. Norah’s concern for Dorine and the magazine is obviously completely hypocritical, as her primary concern is for herself and her bank account. The magazine is just an opportunity for her to embezzle funds. She does not actually care about it or its employees. Both Beth and Norah may look the part of the demure feminine, but on the inside, they are the worst monsters yet. Despite the fact that Beth has a baby-fresh glow and seems less experienced and poised than Norah, both characters are just as conniving. In Office Killer and Basic Instinct, Tripplehorn plays characters responsible for disrupting the status quo of the office; for not doing what they are supposed to do, for not performing their jobs from a structural, functional point of view. In Office Killer, Norah is the manager who sucks funds out of the magazine; in Basic Instinct, Beth is the psychologist who betrays, enables, and sleeps with her patient. Beth and Norah are not the only ones breaking the rules, but they are the central instigators. It is their specific behavior that causes the most significant unraveling. However, much as in Office Killer, all the principal characters in Basic Instinct are also a mess. This is something else the two films have in common. Like the paramedics in 165

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

Office Killer, who notice the overpowering smell of death and decay in the Douglas house but fail to do anything about it, the policemen in Basic Instinct also fail to perform the fundamentals of their job, as made evident in scene after scene of bad behavior: sleeping with suspects, making lewd comments about witnesses and suspects, and letting their own be murdered. As a final blow to contemporary standards of behavior and morality, all of Sharon Stone’s friends are murderers. These are films full of people who are incompetent, indifferent, or worse. One of the biggest mysteries left unanswered in Basic Instinct is what happens to Beth. Even though the film implies that the character of Beth Garner is shot to death by Nick, this is never actually confirmed. We never see a dead body, draped in a body bag or otherwise. In fact, the stretcher leaves the scene strangely empty. For whatever reason, Beth’s fate is left unclear, which leads to an unconventional but intriguing possibility. If Beth had lived on, would she have changed her name a second time? Could she have changed her career from psychologist to office manager? Could she have moved from San Francisco to New York? And if she had switched careers and changed her name, would she be embezzling funds and downsizing employees at Constant Consumer magazine? Vague, unspoken, sequel-type relationships between films with the same actor and/or by the same director are common in neorealist Italian film such as Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione (1943), La Terra Trema (1948) and Rocco and His Brothers (1960), or Michelangelo Antonioni’s Story of a Love Affair (1950). So why not in Basic Instinct and Office Killer? In Office Killer, Norah gives Dorine a bag of clothes, but we never get to see them. Why is this? Is it because the wig is in there, and we are not meant to see it until the very end? Could these be Beth Garner’s old clothes? Could Beth Garner’s discarded clothes be partially responsible for Dorine’s improved fashion sense in the second half of the movie? Could this bag contain a wig identical to the one found in the staircase in Basic Instinct, a wig identical to the one Dorine wears in the last scene of Office Killer? Todd Thomas, Office Killer’s costume designer, explains that “the mementos taken from each of her victims fuel both [Dorine’s] internal and external transformation.”138 This is made clear with the individual victims in the film; however, we never get to see what Dorine takes from Norah. After Dorine kills Norah, the biggest transformation to her appearance is the wig. The implication, therefore, is that the wig has come from Norah. The wig is her latest and final memento, fueling the last step in her internal and external transformation. Another enigma in Basic Instinct is the true nature of Beth and Catherine’s relationship. Popular consensus decrees Catherine as responsible for the murders, but responsibility is complex. Catherine could have manipulated Beth, as she manipulates her male lover in Basic Instinct 2 (Caton-Jones, 2006). In Basic Instinct 2, the twist ending is that Katherine did not kill all the movie’s victims but, rather, manipulated the film’s equivalent of Jeanne Tripplehorn into doing it. Would it then not stand to reason that she did the same in the first Basic Instinct? And, then, does that not speak even more to the relationship between Office Killer and Basic Instinct?

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Maybe Beth and Catherine have been dating since college? Catherine obviously does not do monogamy, and she loves to pit her partners against each other. Beth is obviously still very obsessed with Catherine. Why would she care so much about her; why would she bother framing Catherine; why would she continue be so jealous, if they were not dating? While the idea that they are still dating may sound far-fetched, it may be less absurd than the notion that Beth would continue to harbor such a tremendous grudge against someone she had dated years before. If they were still dating, it stands to reason that Catherine would have been able to manipulate Beth to commit crimes on Catherine’s behalf. The unexpected star of Basic Instinct is cunning and ruthless Catherine, who is probably a serial killer, much like deadly Dorine is the star (and serial killer) in Office Killer. The enigmatic ending of Basic Instinct provides less confirmation that Catherine Tramell is a murderer than that Beth is a psycho suspected in the death of her husband (whom we know she left for a woman), which enforces the idea that this information is less important. Catherine, even if she did kill a few people, created works of art in her wake. Beth, even if she did not kill anyone, cheated on her husband, stole someone’s identity, had sex with coworkers, let dirty cops back on the street, enjoyed date rape, and (worst of all) walked around with dry hair and boxy suits. It is her behavior that is truly monstrous, much as it is Norah’s behavior that is most reprehensible. In both films, the true monster is not the first person you think it is. The standards of monstrosity are not measured in terms of bodies. Monstrous behavior is not doing your job, not playing your role. It is this specific kind of inappropriate behavior that is the worst crime of all.

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Part V Another Kind of Conclusion

How Office Killer was Absolutely Right about Everything (Yet Still Managed To Fail So Miserably)

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hy did Office Killer fail? There are many possible reasons. We can utilize film theory and reference the cultural Zeitgeist to justify any or all of them. We can discuss Jennifer Aniston and Sharon Stone, Basic Instinct or American Psycho. We can try to find explanation in the words of Camilla Paglia and Susan Sontag. We can study the movie for clues and insight. But at the end of the day, the answer may be disappointingly simple. Maybe Office Killer was simply ignored because it was not sold. Because no one knew how to sell it. Because no one cared about Carol Kane, or knew who Cindy Sherman was, or because Molly Ringwald did not show enough skin, or because no one worked the PR machine. Even though I love Office Killer, there may be no special, magical, or remarkable reason why it failed. While it is true that some critics may not want to talk about it because it feels difficult or uncomfortable, most people with whom I have spoken (both inside and outside the artistic community) have not seen the movie for a simple reason: they do not know it exists. In a culture of excessive visual saturation, when Netflix has endless amounts of movies available for instant viewing, it is easy to lose sight of a film even if it happens to be outrageously relevant or critically superior. We watch what is in front of us. We watch what we know, what we have heard of. We watch movies that are advertised to us—even if the movies we end up seeing may not be worth our time and money. This process itself—of choosing what to view, and then examining what is chosen to be viewed—brings up larger questions: How do we find and select the movies we choose to see? Whose opinions do we trust? Who controls the larger cultural narrative composed of those movies with adequate-enough marketing budgets to catch our attention? How is the larger cultural narrative influenced by the movies and television shows loud enough, or spectacular enough, or well-promoted enough, to catch our attention? And how does the cultural narrative, in turn, influence us? These are questions for another book. The fundamental questions here remain: What happened to Office Killer, and what can we learn from it? Office Killer is far from the first movie to fail because of the realities of the movie business. The list of movies that failed simply due to studio politics, audience inattention, and/or inept

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

marketing is long and even occasionally illustrious. Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941), widely considered one of the greatest movies ever made, was originally a commercial flop, due to a boycott by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst that prevented any mention of the movie throughout his massive media empire. It was even booed during the Academy Awards ceremony at which it had been nominated. It was later rediscovered in the 1950s and only then received recognition and acclaim. Duck Soup (McCarey, 1933) was such a commercial failure that the Marx Brothers were dropped by Paramount. Now it is regarded as one of their best films. The Rocky Horror Picture Show was a box-office disaster that went on to be one of the most popular and significant cult classics of all time. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Gilliam, 1998) was initially critically panned but is now available on DVD as part of the Criterion Collection, a selection of the greatest films from around the world. Even such classics as The Wizard of Oz (1939), Blade Runner (Scott, 1982), and It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946) were initially huge disappointments to their studios. Harold and Maude (Ashby, 1971), the story of a relationship between a young boy and a much older woman, originally failed spectacularly in theaters, only later to capture a cult following alongside critical recognition. It is yet another example of a film that first met with scathing reviews— produced by a studio with no clue how to market it—that would become a film classic, and featured on the American Film Institute’s list of the funniest films of all time. It may seem surprising that so many great films could initially be so misunderstood. As consumers of film and TV shows, we may want to reflect on the insanity of this; of movies originally being dismissed and ignored only to be rediscovered years later as classics and masterpieces. Beyond that, we may want to marvel at the seemingly inexplicable decision not to promote or distribute certain films, or to market a film as something it clearly is not, much as Universal did when it decided to market Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight (1998) as its summer action blockbuster. Despite the star power of George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez, despite being a good and entertaining movie, the film tanked because it was not a summer action blockbuster, and audiences did not appreciate the bait-and-switch. However, studios seem to make these strategic errors on a regular basis. Other films, like Office Space and Fight Club (Fincher, 1999) met the double curse of being ahead of their time and not being marketed properly, achieving success only once released on DVD. There is no question that Cindy Sherman is significant, and her 2012 retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art is further proof of her continued cultural stature and relevance to the artistic and social landscape. There is no question that Office Killer, too, is significant; not only as a work of cinema, but also as an accurate reflection of a particular moment in American history, and a prophetic statement of what would happen to the workplace. Much like similarly prophetic films Network (Lumet, 1976) and 1984 (Radford, 1984), Office Killer predicted our fate. It is not simply that Dorine’s wardrobe went from freaky in 1997 to fashion editorial in 2012. On a more profound level, Office Killer is a documentary of what was—and is—happening in the workplace. What it foreshadows has become status quo. Our workplaces have become toxic, run through with corporate monsters milking company profits for their own padded accounts. Our economies have 172

How Office Killer was Absolutely Right about Everything

grown wildly out of balance. In 2012, Earth Island Journal reported that the Earth’s richest 1000 individuals controlled as much wealth as the poorest 2.5 billion people on the planet, and even our politicians are wealthy: 47 per cent of members of the United States House of Representatives are millionaires, as are 67 per cent of United States senators. This allows the imbalance to continue. Gar Smith writes that the very rich are able “to control the media, influence politicians, and bend laws to their favor.”139 The current proliferation of the Occupy movement is yet another testament to our deeply flawed corporate and political systems, and the relevance of these issues today. In other words, Office Killer is not just a reaction to 1980s greed and excess, or to 1990s technological developments. It happened right in the middle of it all. It is happening now. And yet, the more it happens, the less it seems like we care. Political and social apathy reigns supreme. Contemporary movies have higher body counts, but the switch to dehumanization is so complete, it does not matter. We do not care who dies in Office Killer. Body counts keep rising as our emotional investment decreases. These days, the more people die, the less it matters. And the less it matters, the less we care, because we can turn to technology to fill the void. Psychologists have even diagnosed a new malady: internet addiction disorder. In 2007, the British Ministry of Defense’s Global Strategic Trends Report proposed that “within the next thirty years, people who spend long periods of time disconnected from electronic communication systems will be viewed with suspicion.”140 If you are not hooked up or plugged in, you will be left behind. If you are not hooked up, you are literally disconnected. Or, in the ominous words of Dorine, “For those of you who cannot keep pace with such changes, be forewarned, you will be terminated.” Many films have incoherent or mixed messages, moments of cultural clarity that are instantly contradicted by subsequent opposing messages. Other films reflect social or cultural contexts that have disappeared, serving more of an archival or nostalgic purpose than anything else. Office Killer is neither of these. The ideological messages in Office Killer come through loud and clear. And its social and cultural contexts are only more vital and relevant now. Its messages are important for anyone interested in cultural studies, sociology, or anthropology. However, for anyone with artistic interests, the movie has yet another layer of meaning. It plays a significant, if neglected, role in Sherman’s body of work. When it is inconvenient (because it does not support this interpretation), Office Killer is simply excised from her body of work. For someone whose entire career is based on ever-shifting representations of self, Sherman’s work has been nothing less than forty years of integrity and consistency; yet it has been erroneously suggested that she has fallen victim to that one-hit wonder malaise that strikes so many musicians, who deliver delightfully wonderful first albums only to follow up with disappointing sophomore efforts as their careers predictably fade away. They leave behind only memories of that one hit, that one perfect pop tune, only to reemerge, briefly, decades later, in a “Where are they now?” moment. The unusual thing about Sherman, however, is that she has not faded away. Her photographs still command substantial prices, and there is no question of her social and artistic significance. Nonetheless, popular 173

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

consensus among many discussions of her work is that her first series—the “Untitled Film Stills”—was her best work, and that everything since then has been more of the same. An endless remix, if you will, of that original pop tune. While it is true that Sherman has built an important body of work examining the fundamentals of appropriation, identity, and gender—the three buzzwords everyone loves to use when discussing her work—her work goes deeper than trendy feminist vernacular. Sherman got comfortable with these elements of femininity early on, and then she got even more comfortable destroying them and manipulating them. Especially significant in terms of Sherman’s work is not just the art of the masquerade, but the artificiality of its construction; the fact that it is nothing more than painting on a surface, a pretty shell. Glamorously perfect façades only conceal the actual body underneath: a raw, wet, and bloody expanse that crept out in Sherman’s later work, eventually evolving into the gaping and damaged bodies of Office Killer. This tension between inner and outer, between surface and the real underneath, only grew louder and messier with Sherman’s later work. This evolution—or more precisely de-evolution—is especially apparent when Office Killer is part of this chronological conversation. Because Sherman is a photographer whose work involves constant exchanges of artifice, Office Killer proved to be a very appropriate choice for her directorial debut, and the fact that it is often left out of the conversation is an unfortunate one. The horror and comedy we receive via Office Killer is the same horror and comedy we see—sometimes in different forms, sometimes in identical forms—throughout her photographs. Much as her work—both the still and the moving—blurs genres, Office Killer also confounds categories. We do not know where to put it. The way we usually organize visual critique is still in contrast to moving image, but what if we categorize differently? What if we change the rules? We normally place the museum in opposition to the commercial, but with Sherman there is no difference there either. Her commercial work is no different than her “fine art.” Her ads for fashion designers and cosmetic companies are just as striking and compelling as her work shown in museums and galleries—and her commercial film is just as relevant and richly complex as her photographs. There is a discomfort to ill-fitting categories, but there is an even greater fear of removing those categories entirely. Sherman, however, leaves us with no choice. In order to understand and appreciate her work, we must erase the old criteria and start fresh. Genres exist to tell us what to expect, but defying those expectations brings freedom. If old conversations do not apply, if existing questions do not provide answers, then we need to begin a new dialog.

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Study Guides

Office Killers: Character Crib Notes

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

VIRGINIA What is in her bag? Cigarettes, lighter, Echinacea/goldenseal, asthma inhaler What is she wearing? Leather Nail polish color? Black Lipstick color? Coral Hair color? Blonde Relationship status? Unknown Memorable quotes? “Norah, I never crawl. And you’re spitting germs in my face.” “Now listen, sweetie, just because you know a thing or two about computers, and office downsizing, doesn’t mean that you know shit about running a magazine.” Office stereotype? Bitchy boss Separated at birth from? Helen Gurley Brown, Bonnie Fuller, Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous Distinguishing prop or accessory? Cigarettes, asthma inhaler, black fingernails Played by? Barbara Sukowa 178

Office Killers: Character Crib Notes

NORAH What is in her bag? Calculator What is she wearing? Chanel knock-offs, pinks, whites, beiges Nail polish color? Clear Lipstick color? Pink Hair color? Brown Relationship status? In a relationship with Daniel Memorable quotes? “You people still have your job.” “I’m the one dragging this magazine out of the Stone Age.” Office stereotype? Smug manager Separated at birth from? Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Distinguishing prop or accessory? Pearl necklace Played by? Jeanne Tripplehorn 179

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

DORINE What is in her bag? A Cuisinart blade, makeup compact, a freshly-sharpened pencil What is she wearing? Vintage Nail polish color? Chipped pink Lipstick color? Pink Hair color? Brown Relationship status? Single Memorable quotes? “My cats. Jumbo. He screams.” “It’s so much harder to be on your toes when you’re not feeling fresh as a daisy.” Office stereotype? Awkward secretary Separated at birth from? Carrie from Carrie, Samantha Baker from Sixteen Candles, Veronica Sawyer from Heathers Distinguishing prop or accessory? Glasses Played by? Carol Kane 180

Office Killers: Character Crib Notes

KIM What is in her bag? Condoms, makeup What is she wearing? Pucci Nail polish color? Silver Lipstick color? Coral Hair color? Red with blonde highlights Relationship status? Single Memorable quote? “Hey, tramp, get over here.” “They’re probably lezzies.” Office stereotype? Bitchy popular girl Separated at birth from? The Heathers from Heathers, Blair Waldorf from Gossip Girl, Chris Hargensen from Carrie, the stepsisters from Cinderella Distinguishing prop or accessory? Her legs Played by? Molly Ringwald 181

Textual Insanity: Relationships to Other Movies

Horrific Experiences: Interviews with Christine Vachon, James Schamus, Todd Thomas, and Tom Kalin

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 ffice Killer was a critical and commercial failure. Because of this, it does not have the repository of writing available with other, more successful and established films. Therefore I interviewed several of the primary people involved in the making of the film in order to hear their perspective on the film directly. The following is an edited version of several conversations I had with James Schamus (JS), an executive producer of the film, Christine Vachon (CV), a producer of the film, Tom Kalin (TK), one of the writers who worked on the film’s script, and Todd Thomas (TT), the film’s costume designer. James Schamus is both an award-winning screenwriter (The Ice Storm [Lee, 1997]) and producer (Brokeback Mountain [Lee, 2005]), but he is also known for having been the CEO of Focus Features, the company behind such films as Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004), and The Pianist (Polanski, 2002). Along with partner Ted Hope, he started independent film production and distribution company Good Machine in New York in the early 1990s. Good Machine is responsible for, among many other critically acclaimed films, Eat Drink Man Woman (Lee, 1994), Safe, The Ice Storm, and Happiness (Solondz, 1998). Schamus teaches film history and theory at Columbia University. Christine Vachon is the legendary independent film producer of such films as Kids (1995), Boys Don’t Cry (Peirce, 1999), Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Mitchell, 2001), and every featurelength film by Todd Haynes, including Safe, Far From Heaven (2002), and Velvet Goldmine (1998). Based in New York City, she currently runs Killer Films with Pamela Koffer. Vachon is known for producing consistently influential and intelligent independent films. Tom Kalin is a New York-based film-maker, writer, producer and activist. In addition to his feature films Swoon (1992) and Savage Grace (2007), Tom Kalin was a founding member of the AIDS activist collective Gran Fury. Sharing some parallels with Office Killer, Kalin’s first feature film, Swoon, can also be seen as an attempt to understand the so-called criminal mind through the story of symbolic antiheroes. Based on the true story of the Leopold and Loeb murder case from the 1920s, Swoon tells the story of two wealthy and educated homosexuals who murder a young boy in order to prove they are smart enough not to get caught. Another one of the films that he worked on with Vachon, Savage Grace, is based

Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer

on a true story as well, and, like Office Killer, centers around an incestuous relationship in which a child murders a parent in the end. Kalin produced several other films with Christine Vachon, including I Shot Andy Warhol and Go Fish (Troche, 1994). Kalin also teaches at Columbia University. While Todd Thomas is now the head designer behind the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Shows, during the mid-Nineties he was the costume designer for three feature-length films (Angela [Miller, 1995]; Office Killer; and Trouble on the Corner [Madison, 1997]). He has also designed for high-fashion television shows. How It Happened CV: The original premise came from this film fund that a company called Good Machine was handling where they were looking for “smart horror films.” JS: At the time, Ted Hope decided that it would be an interesting experiment to see if people with more independent orientations could contribute something to, and in, the genre. And we thought that these films could be made inexpensively and potentially work in a kind of hybrid way in the marketplace. They might work as genre films; they might work as art house films. CV: So we went to Cindy and asked her. I met her because she and my girlfriend showed at the same gallery, and I just went to her and asked her if she would consider doing some kind of horror film. She was intrigued, and then we set her up with a writer. And, you know, started talking about trying to do something somewhat containable because we knew we weren’t going to have much money, but something that would appeal to her. TT: There was a collective reverence, on behalf of the entire crew, to participate in making a film that was something truly Shermanesque. I mean everyone was on board. We were all so excited to be involved in this project. Subtext TK: There’s some social commentary in the film—done with a light touch through genre— about the role of the woman in the workplace. More specifically, the idea of what’s valued in the contemporary marketplace, and the idea of this kind of woman—valuable in one way for her hierarchical expertise, but not valued in other ways—in a kind of culture that was moving past her, and also commenting on the period of the Nineties. People have forgotten what happened post-Eighties, and the crash into the early Nineties; but this feeling of downsizing, the feeling of reduced expectations, which we’re now quite familiar with in America, there was a kind of freshness to that in the mid-Nineties at the time. CV: It was also the newness of e-mail and how the writing on the wall was clear that these changes were going to destroy companies exactly like that. 186

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TT: The buzzing lights, stacks of yellowing envelopes and office stationery, wilting manila file folders ringed with coffee stains, the colors of tan craft paper, dour brown-speckled linoleum and peeling, and institutional hallway paint served as our Pantone chips, and provided the information on how to complete the look of the film. For me, it was really an effort to sartorially transcend a specific time, giving everything a look that was so close to what the character of Dorine embodied and feared… being outdated. Influences TK: I think that there’s a kind of beyond-language aspect to the movie, kind of tapping into the id. You know: somebody who’s taping somebody up with duct tape in the basement. I remember having conversations with Cindy about this English serial killer named Dennis Nilsen. He was a butcher in the army, and a very repressed gay man who basically picked up many gay men, parallel with Dahmer, a little before Dahmer. In general, he would have very uncomfortable sexual experiences because he wasn’t fully out, but he would kill them, usually through strangulation, and then he would keep them in the house for weeks and draw them in these sort of heartbreakingly beautiful drawings that looked like David Hockney drawings. He buried them under the floorboards, and then, when he got evicted from his house, he had to cut them all up, and he had to burn them. Later, he got caught because he cut them into little one-inch strips and flushed them down the toilet, but he destroyed the septic system because he flushed so many humans down his toilet. So, anyway, that cheerful material was, for sure, part of my conversation with Cindy. That was the kind of stuff I talked to her about. He is interesting because he is not some idiot grunt. He, to me, was more interesting to me than Dahmer. Dahmer lacked a kind of selfconsciousness, and this guy was exquisitely self-conscious in a way that was really almost impossible to bear, because he was doing these psychotic murders and, at the same time, had a kind of tenderness toward the corpses and collecting. I don’t know, it was just like really meta; it was just way, way overboard. Complications CV: When Miramax bought it, they weren’t quite sure what they were getting; they bought it without seeing it, and I think they just didn’t like it. They didn’t respond to the things that make it great and weird. JS: Yes, Miramax didn’t get it, but the question is: is that a cause or an effect? One could argue until the cows come home. You could say they could not get it because it wasn’t to be gotten, or was it not gotten because Miramax didn’t get it? And look, there are films that work and walk that very thin line. They refuse to position their audience as knowing and ironically superior to the material, right? But at the same time don’t deliver just the usual, 187

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by-the-numbers, rote kind of late post-slasher horror genre movies. American Psycho would be a pretty good example of that, and Cindy’s film is really working in some similar veins. JS: We made what were classically known as tweeners, as in “between genres and audiences,” films that probably didn’t address or satisfy the received and perceived cultural needs and desires of any specific intended audience. There are films that manage to succeed in that zone, but I think they have to have extraordinary good fortune or just be extremely powerful texts. JS: It doesn’t fit the model that was just then emerging for artists of film and video. You know, it could only have been contextualized in a kind of commercial context and not a gallery context. And so if you reframe it in a gallery context, it starts to look and feel a lot different. It’s funny. And you would think, after it didn’t succeed commercially, that would be the first thing you would do. I use this word in the technical sense and in an art theoretical sense, but the film is technically an embarrassment. It’s an embarrassment to the dominant modes of discourse that try to validate artistic film and video, precisely because it’s not lending itself to the logic of showing up at a gallery, and being editioned, and selling three signed DVDs for a billion dollars each. Its mode of address is quite different. It can only situate itself in that kind of independent film marketplace context. That is part of what makes it interesting.

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Film Credits and Cast List Film Credits Office Killer USA 1997 Director Cindy Sherman Executive Producers Tom Carouso John Hart Ted Hope Producers Pamela Koffler James Schamus Christine Vachon Writing Credits (in alphabetical order) Todd Haynes, additional dialog   (uncredited) Tom Kalin, writer Elise MacAdam, writer Cindy Sherman, story Original Music by Evan Lurie

Cinematography by Russell Lee Fine Sound Department Evan T. Chen, assistant sound editor Neil Danziger, sound mixer Mick Gormany, sound editor George A. Lara, foley mixer Adam Lerner, apprentice sound editor Jennifer Martinez, boom operator Sylvia Menno, sound editor David Novack, sound re-recording mixer Eliza Paley, sound Paul P. Soucek, co-supervising sound   editor Brian Vancho, foley artist Film Editing by Merril Stern Production Design by Kevin Thompson Art Direction by Ford Wheeler Set Decoration by Amy Beth Silver

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Costume Design by Todd Thomas Hair and Makeup by Evelyn Ortman Production Management Blair Breard, unit production manager John J. Leonard, post-production   supervisor Second Unit Director or Assistant   Director Cindy Craig, second assistant director Jude Gorjanc, first assistant director Victoria Robinson, second second assistant   director Art Department Andrea Stanley, construction coordinator Music Department Randall Poster, music supervisor Special Effects by Rob Benevides, special effects makeup Drew Jiritano, special effects coordinator Rodney Sterbenz, special effects makeup   assistant Stunts Victor Chan, stunts John Copeman, stunts David S. Lomax, stunts (as David Lomax) Steve Mack, stunts

David Shumbris, stunts Manny Siverio, stunts Camera and Electrical Department Lloyd Handwerker, assistant camera Teri Kennedy, second second assistant   camera Kristy Tully, gaffer Costume and Wardrobe Department Lisa Dorr, wardrobe assistant Andrea Swistak, wardrobe supervisor Editorial Department Myron I. Kerstein, assistant editor Jessica Levin, assistant editor Yvette Mattern, assistant editor Hilary Peabody, assistant editor   (as Hillary Peabody) Nelson Ryland, assistant editor   (as Hillary Peabody) Damon Skinner, assistant editor   (as Hillary Peabody) Patricia Sztaba, negative matcher Stan Sztaba, negative matcher Other crew Andy Clark, location manager John J. Leonard, production coordinator Sandra Isabelle Muller, script supervisor Gayle Vangrofsky, assistant location   manager Marlene McCarty, title designer   (uncredited)

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Film Credits and Cast List

Cast List Carol Kane Dorine Douglas

Paula Cale Paula

Molly Ringwald Kim Poole

Harley Kaplan Steve

Jeanne Tripplehorn Norah Reed

Marla Sucharetza Mrs. Gary Michaels

Barbara Sukowa Virginia Wingate

Marceline Hugot Young Carlotta Douglas

Michael Imperioli Daniel Birch

Wayne Maxwell Jimmy the Homeless Man

David Thornton Gary Michaels

Julia McIlvaine Linda, Girl Scout #1

Mike Hodge Mr. Landau

Cleopatra St. John Girl Scout #2

Alice Drummond Carlotta Douglas

Danny Morgenstern Ted’s Secretary

Florina Rodov Receptionist

Timothy Stickney Paramedic #1 (as Timothy D. Stickney)

Jason Brill Delivery Man

Christopher Tracy Paramedic #2

Eddie Malavarca Brian

Rachel Aviva Young Dorine Douglas (uncredited)

Doug Barron Ted

John D. Bair Office Delivery Man (uncredited)

Linda Powell Naomi

Eric Bogosian Peter Douglas (uncredited)

Albert Macklin Brad

82 minutes

Michelle Hurst Kate

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Selected References Avgikos, Jan. “Cindy Sherman, Metro Pictures.” ArtForum, September 2004. Burton, Johanna, ed. Cindy Sherman, The October Files. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. Cruz, Amanda, Amelia Jones, and Cindy Sherman. Cindy Sherman Retrospective. New York, NY: Thames and Hudson, 1997. Cindy Sherman: Transformations. DVD. Directed by Paul Tschinkel. New York, NY: Inner-Tube Video, 2002. Clover, Carol J. Men, Women, and Chainsaws. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. Clover, Joshua. The Matrix. London, England: British Film Institute, 2004. De Man, Paul. The Rhetoric of Romanticism. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1984. Derry, Charles. Dark Dreams. Cranbury, NJ: A.S. Barnes and Co, 1977. *Frankel, David. “Cindy Sherman Talks to David Frankel.” ArtForum, March 2003. Friedman, Martin. Close Reading: Chuck Close and the Artist Portrait. New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, 2005. *Fuku, Noriko. “A Woman of Parts,” Art in America 85 (June 1997). *Geffner, David. “First Things First.” Filmmaker Magazine (Fall 1997), http://www. filmmakermagazine.com/fall1997/firstthingsfirst.php. Gelder, Ken, ed. The Horror Reader. New York, NY: Routledge, 2000. Koestenbaum, Wayne. “Fall Gals.” ArtForum, September 2000. Krauss, Rosalind. Cindy Sherman, 1975–1993. New York, NY: Rizzoli Press, 1993. Morris, Catherine, et al. Cindy Sherman: Working Girl. St. Louis, MO: Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, 2005. Morris, Catherine. The Essential Cindy Sherman. New York, NY: Harry Abrams, 2001. Nobody’s Here But Me: Cindy Sherman. Dir. Mark Stokes. Arena and Cinecontact Production for BBC and the Arts Council of Great Britain; BBC2, 1994. *Plagens, Peter. “The Odd Allure Of Movies Never Made: Cindy Sherman’s ‘Film Stills’ Will Make A Neat Exhibition. Her Flick Is Another Story.” Newsweek, June 30, 1997. *Rickels, Laurence A. “American Psychos: The End of Art Cinema in the 90s.” Art/Text, January 2000. Rushdie, Salman. The Wizard of Oz. London, England: BFI Publishing, 1992. Seltzer, Mark. Serial Killers. New York, NY: Routledge, 2003. Skal, David J. The Monster Show. New York, NY: Faber and Faber, 2001.

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*Smith, Roberta. “A Horror Movie, Complete With Zombies.” New York Times, November 30, 1997. *Tompkins, Calvin. “Her Secret Identities.” The New Yorker, May 15, 2000. Waller, Gregory, ed. American Horrors. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Zizek, Slavoj. Looking Awry. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991. *Texts that contain a discussion of Office Killer.

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Notes    1 Camille Paglia, Sex, Art, and American Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), ix.    2 Catherine Morris, The Essential Cindy Sherman (New York: Harry Abrams, 2001), 104.    3 Betsy Sussler, “Cindy Sherman,” BOMB Magazine (Spring 1985), http://bombsite.com/ issues/12/articles/638.    4 Rosalind Krauss, Cindy Sherman: 1975–1993 (New York: Rizzoli, 1993), 28.    5 Cindy Sherman, Cindy Sherman Retrospective (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997), 100.    6 Elizabeth Manchester, “Untitled #126,” in Tate Collection (London: Tate), http://www.tate. org.uk/art/artworks/sherman-untitled-126-t07185/text-summary.    7 Cindy Sherman quoted in Sandy Nairne, The State of the Art: Ideas and Images in the 1980s (London: Chatto & Windus, 1967), 136.    8 Cindy Sherman, Cindy Sherman Retrospective (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1997), 124.    9 Laura Mulvey, Fetishism and Curiosity (London: British Film Institute, 1996), 71.   10 Noriko Fuku, “A Woman of Parts,” Art in America 85 (June 1997): 74.   11 Cindy Sherman, “Cindy Sherman: Office Killer,” 50th Locarno International Film Festival, August 1997.   12 Fuku, “A Woman of Parts,” 74.   13 Johnny Mnemonic tells the tale of a man, played by Keanu Reeves, who delivers information that has been downloaded into his brain. His memory has been “augmented” to provide him with more than twice the normal gigabytes of the ordinary individual. In his book on The Matrix, Joshua Clover emphasizes the significance of the fact that Johnny “has no conscious access to the digital data he carries; he’s perfectly alienated labor of the digital era.” The film deals with both the alienation enacted by technological advances and the interconnectedness the Internet provides; an interconnectedness based on isolation, which Johnny makes literal when he dons gloves and a mask to enter, literally, cyberspace— a touchable environment complete with animated “physical” objects with which he interacts, all while he is fundamentally alone and disengaged. SOURCE: Joshua Clover, The Matrix (London: British Film Institute, 2004), 21.   14 Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 167.   15 Noriko Fuku, “A Woman of Parts,” 74.   16 Christine Vachon, Shooting to Kill (New York: Avon Books, 1998).

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  17 Johanna Burton, ed., Cindy Sherman, The October Files (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 198.   18 Roberta Smith, “A Horror Movie, Complete With Zombies,” New York Times, November 30, 1997.   19 Swoon was written and directed by Tom Kalin, who also worked on the script for Office Killer.   20 David Geffner, “First Things First,” Filmmaker Magazine (Fall 1997), http://www. filmmakermagazine.com/fall1997/firstthingsfirst.php.   21 Barbara Creed, “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine,” Screen 27.1 (1986): 63.   22 Semiotics of the Kitchen, made in 1975, adopts the form of a parodic cooking demonstration in which, Rosler states, “an anti-Julia Child replaces the domesticated ‘meaning’ of tools with a lexicon of rage and frustration.” In this performance-based work, a static camera is focused on a woman in a kitchen. On a counter before her are a variety of utensils, each of which she picks up, names and proceeds to demonstrate, but with gestures that depart from the normal uses of the tool. In this alphabet of kitchen implements, states Rosler, “when the woman speaks, she names her own oppression.” (“Semiotics of the Kitchen,” Electronic Arts Intermix [2006]. Archived from the original: http://web.archive.org/web/20061006090705/ http://www.eai.org/eai/tape.jsp?itemID=1545.)   23 D.M. Auerbach et al., “Cluster of Cases of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome: Patients Linked by Sexual Contact,” The American Journal of Medicine 76.3 (1984): 487–492.   24 John C. Ewers, quoted in Raymond J. DeMallie and Douglas R. Parks, “Plains Indian Warfare,” in People of the Buffalo, Volume 1: The Plains Indians of North America, ed. Colin F. Taylor and Hugh A. Dempsey (Wyk auf Foehr, Germany: Tatanka Press, 2003), 69.   25   26 Todd Thomas, personal interview, January 13, 2012.   27 Cindy Adams, “The Cost of Christmas Past,” New York Post, December 18, 2003.   28 Todd Thomas, personal interview, January 13, 2012.   29 ibid.   30 ibid.   31 ibid.   32 Salman Rushdie, The Wizard of Oz (London: BFI Publishing, 1992), 42.   33 Anna Holmes, “Even Today, an Angry Female Arouses Fear and is Dismissed,” The Washington Post, January 26, 2012, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-01-26/ lifestyle/35441460_1_michelle-obama-first-lady-marianne-gingrich.   34 The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema. Dir. Sophie Fiennes. Perf. Slavoj Zizek. Microcinema, 2006. DVD.   35 Brook Smith, “The State of the Desk,” Ryerson Review of Journalism (March 2000).   36 ibid.   37 Robin Wood, quoted in Slavoj Zizek, “Hitchock,” October 38 (Autumn 1986): 103.   38 Barbara Creed, “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine,” 50.   39 It is true that Norah and Daniel are in a relationship during the movie, but we rarely see moments of physical affection between them. The one time they are lying on a bed together, they are fully clothed, and the bed is littered with Norah’s folders and paperwork, which she tells Daniel repeatedly not to touch. She says Kim should spend more time on her job, and 196

Notes

he tells her she should get a “life,” and by life, he means she should learn to live. It’s not clear why Daniel and Kim aren’t dating, since they both like each other, and they both seem like they might be fond of physical contact.   40 Tom Ryall, “Genre and Hollywood,” The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, ed. John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 328.   41 ibid. 328.   42 Rick Altman, “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre,” Cinema Journal 23.2 (Spring 1984): 9.   43 Ironically and surprisingly, Hitchcock considered Psycho to be a comedy.   44 There has been debate among film scholars as to whether noir is a genre or style. I side with those like Foster Hirsch who argue that it is a genre. Hirsch writes, “A genre, after all, is determined by conventions of narrative structure, characterization, theme, and visual design, of just the sort that noir offers in abundance […]. The repeated use of narrative and visual structures, which soon became conventional, depending on a shared acknowledgment between the film-makers and the audience, certainly qualifies noir as a genre, one that is in fact as heavily coded as the western.” Foster Hirsch, The Dark Side of the Screen (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1981), 72.   45 Slavoj Zizek, Tarrying with the Negative (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 5.   46 Tom Ryall, “Genre and Hollywood,” 330.   47 Barbara Klinger, “‘Cinema/Ideology/Criticism:’ The Progressive Text,” Screen 25.1 (1984): 30–44.   48 Alain Silver, “Introduction,” in Film Noir Reader, ed. Alain Silver and James Ursini (New York: Limelight Editions, 1996), 8.   49 Todd Erickson, “Kill Me Again: Movement Becomes Genre,” Film Noir Reader, ed. Alain Silver and James Ursini (New York: Limelight Editions, 1996), 311–312.   50 Lee Horsley, “An Introduction to Neo-Noir,” Crimeculture, 2002, http://www. crimeculture. com/Contents/NeoNoir.html.   51 ibid.   52 Edward Dimendberg, Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity (Boston, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 178.   53 Jeffrey Weinstock, “Virus Culture,” Studies in Popular Culture 20.1 (1997): 83.   54 Mattias Frey, “No(ir) Place to Go: Spatial Anxiety and Sartorial Intertextuality in ‘Die Unberührbare.” Cinema Journal 45.4 (Summer 2006): 67.   55 Joe McElhaney,“Neo-Noir on Laser.” Bright Lights Film Journal 12 (1994), http:// brightlightsfilm.com/54/noirlaser.php.   56 Todd Thomas, personal interview, January 13, 2012.   57 Janey Place and Lowell Peterson, “Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir,” Film Noir Reader, ed. Alain Silver and James Ursini (New York: Limelight Editions, 1996), 68.   58 ibid. 68.   59 Sharon Y. Cobb, “Writing the New Noir Film,” Film Noir Reader 2, ed. Alain Silver and James Ursini (New York: Limelight Editions, 1999), 212.   60 Stephen Farber, “Violence and the Bitch Goddess,” Film Noir Reader 2, ed. Alain Silver and James Ursini (New York: Limelight Editions, 1999), 45. 197

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  61 Sharon Y. Cobb, “Writing the New Noir Film,” 209.   62 Janey Place and Lowell Peterson, “Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir,” 69.   63 Mary Ann Doane, The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 2.   64 Christine Buci-Glucksmann, quoted in Mary Ann Doane, The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 2.   65 Mary Ann Doane, The Desire to Desire: The Woman’s Film of the 1940s (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 2–3.   66 James Schamus, personal interview, January 5, 2012.   67 Robin Wood, Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 75.   68 Gregory A. Waller, “Introduction to American Horrors” (Extract), The Horror Reader, ed. Ken Gelder (New York: Routledge, 2000), 263–264.   69 David J. Skal, The Monster Show (New York: Faber and Faber, 2001), 379.   70 ibid. 354.   71 ibid. 356.   72 Simeon Halligan, quoted in Debi Moore, “Is the Current Success of Horror Tied to the Economy?” Dread Central, September 2, 2010, http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/39521/ success-horror-tied-economy.   73 Waller, The Horror Reader, 263.   74 Tim Burton, quoted in David J. Skal, The Monster Show, 397.   75 Waller, The Horror Reader, 264.   76 ibid. 256.   77 Skal, The Monster Show, 378.   78 Margaret Mead, quoted in Michael S. Kimmel, The Gendered Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 111.   79 Skal, The Monster Show, 357.   80 Tania Modleski, “The Terror of Pleasure: The Contemporary Horror Film and Postmodern Theory,” The Horror Reader, ed. Ken Gelder (New York: Routledge, 2000), 290.   81 Skal, The Monster Show, 382.   82 ibid. 383.   83 ibid. 385.   84 ibid. 373.   85 Ken Gelder, “Introduction to Part Five,” The Horror Reader, ed. Ken Gelder (New York: Routledge, 2000), 146–147.   86 Skal, The Monster Show, 334.   87 Arlene Russo, Vampire Nation (Woodbury: Llewellyn Publications, 2008), 85.   88 Skal, The Monster Show, 348.   89 Waller, The Horror Reader, 261.   90 Franco Moretti, “Dialectic of Fear” (Extract), The Horror Reader, ed. Ken Gelder (New York: Routledge, 2000), 149.   91 Tania Modleski, The Horror Reader, 285.   92 Waller, The Horror Reader, 261. 198

Notes

  93 Carol J. Clover, “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film,” in Men, Women, and Chainsaws (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 44–45.   94 Vivian Sobchack, “Revenge of The Leech Woman: On the Dread of Aging in a Low-Budget Horror Film,” The Horror Reader, ed. Ken Gelder (New York: Routledge, 2000), 343.   95 ibid. 337.   96 ibid. 339.   97 Elaine Showalter, Hystories (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 95.   98 ibid. 103.   99 Clover, “Her Body,” 48. 100 John Carpenter, quoted in “Her Body,” 48–49. 101 Clover, “Her Body,” 49. 102 ibid. 59. 103 Noël Carroll, Beyond Aesthetics (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 236–238. 104 Stuart Gordon, quoted in Beyond Aesthetics, 237. 105 Robert Bloch, quoted in Beyond Aesthetics, 237. 106 Carroll, Beyond Aesthetics, 246. 107 ibid. 238. 108 Charlie Jane Anders, “The Scary/Funny History Of Horror Comedy,” Io9, October 29, 2009, http://io9.com/5389628/the-scaryfunny-history-of-horror-comedy. 109 ibid. 110 Les Reid, “Hitchcock’s Psycho—a Humanist Tract?” Belfast Humanists, http://belfast. humanists.net/Review%20Psycho.htm. 111 Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp,” in Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Picador, 2001), 275. 112 ibid. 292. 113 William Paul, Laughing Screaming (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 420. 114 Carroll, Beyond Aesthetics, 253–254. 115 Ian Cameron and V.F. Perkins, “Hitchcock,” in Alfred Hitchcock Interviews, ed. Sidney Gottlieb (Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), 47. 116 Paul, Laughing Screaming, 421–422. 117 ibid. 428. 118 Miko D.  Grmek, History of AIDS: Emergence and Origin of a Modern Pandemic, trans. Russell C. Maulitz and Jacalyn Duffin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), xii. 119 Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 158. 120 Heather Schell, “Outburst! A Chilling True Story about Emerging-Virus Narratives and Pandemic Social Change,” Configurations 5.1 (1997): 125. 121 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report 9.2 (1997): 1. 122 Carol A. Gosselink, “Don’t Touch That! You Might Catch Something,” Verb  5.1 (2007), http://verb.lib.lehigh.edu/index.php/verb/article/viewFile/70/61. 123 Sontag, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and its Metaphors, 166–167. 124 ibid. 168. 199

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125 Patrick Buchanan, quoted in Randy Shilts,  And the Band Played On (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987), 311. 126 Bill Albertini, “Contagion and the Necessary Accident,” Discourse 30.3 (2008): 443–467. 127 Dale Fuchs, “Cubicle Culture,” In-Forum, September 14, 1997, http://www.inforum.com/ archive/purchases/?page=view&type=archive&id=180501. 128 Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 152. 129 Bruce Sterling, quoted in Tiziana Terranova, “Posthuman Unbounded,” in FutureNatural, ed. George Robertson et al. (New York: Routledge, 1996), 166. 130 Terranova, FutureNatural, 167. 131 Jeff Baker, “Q&A Bret Easton Ellis Talks Making Movies,” The Oregonian, July 7, 2010. 132 Camille Paglia, “No Sex Please, We’re Middle Class,” New York Times, June 26, 2010, WK12. 133 Creed, “Horror and the Monstrous-Feminine,” 49. 134 Crosby Burns, Kimberly Barton, and Sophia Kerby, “The State of Diversity in Today’s Workforce,” Center for American Progress, July 12, 2012, http://www.americanprogress.org/ issues/labor/report/2012/07/12/11938/the-state-of-diversity-in-todays-workforce. 135 William McQuillen and Danielle Ivory, “Gender Gap Tops $1 Million for CEO Pay at Lobbying Groups,” Bloomberg, March 28, 2012, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0328/gender-gap-tops-1-million-for-ceo-pay-at-lobbying-groups-1-.html. 136 “Commentary with Camille Paglia,” Basic Instinct, DVD, Dir. Paul Verhoeven (1992; Santa Monica: Artisan Entertainment, 2001). 137 ibid. 138 Todd Thomas, personal interview, January 13, 2012. 139 Gar Smith, “Politics and Plutocrats,” Earth Island Journal 27.3 (Autumn 2012), http:// www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/politics_and_plutocrats_a_parade_of_ inequality. 140 Rob Ager, “The Matrix Analysis,” YouTube, April 8, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=QuiUGGOuGQ0.

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CINDY SHERMAN’S OFFICE KILLER ANOTHER KIND OF MONSTER One of the twentieth century’s most significant artists, Cindy Sherman has quietly uprooted conventional understandings of portraiture and art, questioning everything from identity to feminism. Critics around the world have taken Sherman’s photographs and extensively examined what lies underneath. However, little critical ink has been spilled on Sherman’s only film, Office Killer, a piece that plays a significant role both in Sherman’s body of work and in American art in the late twentieth century. Dahlia Schweitzer breaks the silence with her trenchant analysis of Office Killer and explores the film on a variety of levels, combating head-on the art world’s reluctance to discuss the movie and arguing instead that it is only through a close reading of the film that we can begin to appreciate the messages underlying all of Sherman’s work. The first book on this neglected piece of an esteemed artist’s oeuvre, Cindy Sherman’s “Office Killer” rescues the film from critical oblivion and situates it next to the artist’s other iconic works. DAHLIA SCHWEITZER is an adjunct professor at the Art Institute in North Hollywood, California. She is currently pursuing her doctoral degree in film and media studies at The University of California, Los Angeles, while continuing her work as a critic, novelist, and performer.

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