Renny Kodgers (Mark Shorter) and The Twilight Girls
Most of what we are exposed to in today’s media, which is ubiquitous and inescapable, is bad in some way. Advertising is motivated by the base motive of consumption and will use any means available to achieve its goal. We are surrounded by exhortations and simplistic metaphors. Among the many strategies in advertising is the annoyance ad: advertisements that irritate are, chillingly, among the most effective. As for films, the ones that run along the most conventional lines, following conventions of plot and characterisation, are also among the most popular. These are bad in the simplest sense, by virtue of adhering to a formula. But there is also a sub-genre of film that is ‘bad’. These are often euphemistically bracketed as ‘cult classics’. Ed Wood comes to mind, but there are also directors, like Dario Argento and Robert Rodriguez who have used the visual syntax of bad cinema to considerable creative effect. While they avoid bad production values they toy with self-conscious acting, and exploit the visual effects of protracted and exaggerated violence. The installation and the extended film, Fifty Ways to Kill Renny Kodgers is in many respects an homage to the doyens of bad cinema. But it is also more than that, it uses the idiom of bad cinema, amplified to a comedic fever pitch, to launch what is one of the most sophisticated and sympathetic commentaries on the proverbial war of the sexes that I can remember.
Renny Kodgers, the alter ego of the performance artist Mark Shorter, is the kitschified, camp doppelganger of the country and western singer Kenny Rodgers. Although he has undergone a number of mutations, Shorter has assumed this role from the beginning
Renny Kodgers and The Twilight Girls, Fifty Ways to Kill Renny Kodgers. Production still. Courtesy the artist and Paul Borderi.
