Cat Food in Camelot: Animal Hoarding, Reality Media, and Grey Gardens

Abstract

GREY GARDENS (1975) records the daily life of Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie, two formerly wealthy socialites long fallen from prominence, surrounded by the squalor of their once elegant mansion in East Hampton, Long Island. The film shows the two women, who are the aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, sunbathing, sorting through family pictures, eating ice cream in bed, and performing song and dance numbers, even as their house crumbles around them and cats walk, scratch, eat, and sleep on every surface. Directors Albert and David Maysles, who had achieved success with their previous documentaries, including Salesman (1968) and Gimme Shelter (1970), were at once praised for their innovative filmmaking and criticized for their exploitation of two vulnerable women (Arnold; Canby; Goodman).Although the film has remained a cult favorite and has been celebrated as a significant example of the direct cinema style that the Maysles brothers were in the process of establishing, it has recently enjoyed newfound popularity. In 2005 Lillian Greenfield-Sanders released Ghosts of Grey Gardens (2005), a documentary about the making of the film and its influence on various artists. A musical titled Grey Gardens, with book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel, and lyrics by Michael Korie, premiered off-Broadway in 2006 and moved on to a successful Broadway run. An HBO film, written and directed by Michael Sucsy and starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore, was released in 2009. Lois Wright, the Beales' neighbor at the time the film was made, released a book in 2007 titled My Life at Grey Gardens: 13 Months and Beyond. In 2006, David Maysles contributed to the renewed cultural interest in the Beales by releasing outtakes from the original film under the title The Beales of Gray Gardens (released on DVD in 2001 by Criterion along with the original documentary as part of a two-disc set). One would expect that in an era of reality television and YouTube, the direct cinema footage of the 1970s would seem quaint or tame. We now have plenty of fallen celebrities to choose from, and gossip about the Bouviers is at least a generation out of date.This article argues that the recent upswing in the film's popularity derives from its uniquely powerful illustration of the relationship between celebrity and abjection, which is also a preoccupation of reality television. The film investigates how the cinematic idealization of the body is intimately linked to its vulnerability to dirt, illness, and age. Current popular culture often addresses the bodily distortions underlying media celebrity. The various cosmetic technologies through which the body can be transformed are both exposed and celebrated in reality makeover shows such as Extreme Makeover, What Not to Wear, and The Swan. Gamedocs such as Fear Factor and Jackass establish an equation between celebrity and bodily violation or soiling, and self-improvement shows such as The Biggest Loser equate success with arduous and humiliating public exposure. Crime shows such as Cops present relatively little physical violence but plenty of sweat-soaked shirts and unshaven faces, as do work-focused reality shows such as Deadliest Catch and Dirty Jobs. Docusoaps such as The Real World and Jersey Shore give viewers access to many, if not all, of the bodily functions of their participants. The conflation between celebrity and abjection is most explicitly apparent in A&E's Hoarders and TLC's Hoarding: Buried Alive, which combine the scientific documentary and the renovation show, following psychologists and social workers into homes piled high with garbage, ruined possessions, and rotten food.Derek Kompare identifies as the operative mode of reality television, in which participants appear exhausted, enraged, careless, undressed, asleep, inebriated and sick (106). With the arguable exception of enraged and depressed, all of these forms of ignominy involve physical weakness made visible, and the celebrity that participants achieve in reality shows is intimately linked to the display of this physical weakness. …