Lasagna Cat Sex Survey Results: technology, art and absurdism in postmodern times
Lasagna Cat Sex Survey Results (USA, 2017, dir. Zachary Johnson and Jeffrey Max) is a 4 hour and 40 minutes long work that focuses, mainly, into how technology has changed human relationships and art during the last decade. The first 4 and a half hours of this film depict several people calling a number just to state their name and number of sexual partners so a group of unknown people who created a web series can have it and use it for only God knows what. How is it possible that so many people can give such intimate information away? Why would they do it?
To understand the purpose of this film, we have to comprehend that art and artists themselves can transcend distance and intimate relationships. We can empathize with an artist because of the emotions its work can evoke us, and therefore, have a certain relationship and intimacy with them even though we don’t know them or have had the chance to interact with them. We can talk about how an artist inspires us or the impact their work has had in our lives, just like an intimate friend would have! And the members of Fatal Farm gave their audience the chance to get in contact with them to answer such an intimate question. They know that these people trust them in a certain way, because they see something –if not themselves- in their videos that parody a comic strip about a cat who eats lasagna. And it’s an equitable relation, as both the directors of this film and the people who called the number do not know each other, but have a close bond: a piece of art.
This bond between the artist and its audience is complimented by technology and Internet relationships, which of course are, in current time, on the same level as “human” or “face to face” relationships. We can get to know people who could become an important member of our lives through social media, interact with them only by those means and it would be the same as if we knew each other in person. The Internet and technology are extensions of ourselves and thanks to it we can discover new people, information and also, works of art, all of which are made for and with the Internet, which is the case of Sex Survey Results. But also, in and with the internet we can create a new identity and show us ourselves in a completely different way. And this is a crucial factor of why so many people would give such information to us for this film. The audience of Lasagna Cat could expose themselves without giving people the chance to actually be able to judge them or even to know if the answer was true, because they do not know if the persona they are showing is real. The answers given go from jokes with the numbers 69 and 420 to people saying they want to kill themselves, a person answering in Morse code, and even someone giving away their phone number in case anyone wants to have sex with them. We have a raw and intimate confession about sex chatrooms, criticism to the concept of virginity or what we even consider sex, people calling and just giving a straight answer to the question asked, people who are ashamed, and some who are proud. All of these different types of people gathered in a YouTube video thanks to the Internet and art, unafraid of showing who they really are, and, on the other side, to be a completely different person; maybe the person they want to be, or a person that they would make fun of.
Now entering the film itself, we can see one very important aspect of it: it takes place on an ordinary, and extremely realistic day, probably a Sunday. As the hours pass, we can see the clock in the wall advancing too. The sun light goes from early afternoon to evening. We can see people outside doing their Sunday plans and/or routines: they walk their dog, they get in the car and then come back home, the ice cream truck passes the street, and kids ride their bicycles like they usually do. And at the same time, we, while watching this film, are stuck in a rut. We know what is going to happen next: Jon, then Garfield, then Odie, then Jon once again, do a knock-knock joke, each in their own manner–though it is almost done on the same way every time; very few exceptions on the question asked or reaction can be seen in the movie-, then open the door and we are shown a mannequin that gives us an answer. We know that that is going to happen next. We have the same shots and camera movements over and over again, and that infernal waiting room music on a loop. We know that Garfield is going to ask “Who’s there?” on a tired and fed up way and that Odie is going to go “Barf barf?” etc. Just like the characters in Jim Davis’ Garfield, we are trapped in a three panel comic strip that has no actual joke but that we are somewhat forced to laugh about or to just think that is funny. It becomes tedious, boring and irritating, just like any rut does. The purpose, on technical and formal aspects, of Sex Survey Results is to give us this feeling of a tedious routine, but at the same time a sense of uncertainty: who is going to be at the door? What is their answer going to be? What are the people in the background doing now? What is this, what is happening? Because despite the somewhat extremely normal ambient this irradiates most of the time there is also something extremely disturbing about it. Maybe the topic of the film itself, maybe the fact that we have people dressed up as a cat and a dog form a comic strip, or the eerie mannequins and how as the hour pass, they all become weird and deformed… But mainly, what I think is so disturbing about Sex Survey Results is how much introspection it can generate on the audience watching it. Upon the answers of several individuals, one begins to question their own sexual life and choices, and to remember experiences and/or people. Though every piece of art is experienced in different ways depending on the viewer´s life, there is something about this film that takes it on another level by using such a personal and somewhat unique information from each individual subject that is their sex life. We can get different reactions to people’s answers based on our own experiences and number of sexual partners; one could laugh at someone having just 1, others could empathize with it, and some might feel ashamed as they have never had sex, and so on. And then we can wonder: Is it ok that I’ve had 4 sexual partners? Is it too few? Is it ok to have 20? Is it normal that I am still a virgin? Is a blowjob sex too? Do sex chatrooms count as real sexual experiences? The questions this film might generate on us can go on forever.
What Fatal Farm does during these 4 and a half hours is the epitome of absurdist art in postmodern times. How a film that really just seems ridiculous is so well produced and meticulously done is baffling. Why would someone put so much effort into this? There is really no answer. They just had to do it, once again, to prove how much the media and art itself have changed over the years. A YouTube channel can make a full length film with such impressive technical aspects and having no actual plot, but it doesn’t make it less worthy of acclaim than a film by Truffaut or Bergman. And I am not afraid to say that Sex Survey Results has done to internet art what Waiting for Godot did to theater back in 1953. Or what Infinite Jest’s unconventional narrative, realism and absurdism generated between readers in 1996. Or what Eraserhead’s eerie, confusing, surreal and haunting aura did to film critics in 1977.
Somewhere in the future there will be another text about a different piece of art, and I hope it ends saying that it does the same to art as Lasagna Cat Sex Survey Results’ brilliant technical aspects, philosophical topic about technology and human relationships, absurdism and postmodernism in their pure form, did to YouTube users back in 2017.
