Animal Charm: Golden Digest

Animal Charm: Golden Digest

86 mins | Documentary | Jan. 1, 1996

Animal Charm makes videos from other people's videos. By compositing TV and reducing it to a kind of tic-ridden babble, they force television to not make sense. While this disruption is playful, it also reveals an overall 'essence' of mass culture that would not be apprehended otherwise. Videos such as Stuffing, Ashley, and Lightfoot Fever upset the hypnotic spectacle of TV viewing, revealing how advertising creates anxiety, how culture constructs "nature" and how conventional morality is dictated through seemingly neutral images. By forcing television to convulse like a raving lunatic, we might finally hear what it is actually saying.

Animal Charm: Golden Digest

86 mins | Documentary | Jan. 1, 1996

Animal Charm: Golden Digest
Animal Charm makes videos from other people's videos. By compositing TV and reducing it to a kind of tic-ridden babble, they force television to not make sense. While this disruption is playful, it also reveals an overall 'essence' of mass culture that would not be apprehended otherwise. Videos such as Stuffing, Ashley, and Lightfoot Fever upset the hypnotic spectacle of TV viewing, revealing how advertising creates anxiety, how culture constructs "nature" and how conventional morality is dictated through seemingly neutral images. By forcing television to convulse like a raving lunatic, we might finally hear what it is actually saying.
Producers
Original title Animal Charm: Golden Digest
Directors Rich Bott, Jim Fetterley
Writers Rich Bott, Jim Fetterley

Cast

Jimmy Smits

as Himself (Archival Footage)

Gordon Lightfoot

as Himself (archival footage)