Mike2537’s Weblog
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Cut piece by Yoko Ono
July 14, 2008 by mike2537
This film jumped out and got my attention. Partially because I am old enough that I remember watching the news, and hearing about whatever John & Yoko were doing at the time. I was a big Beatles fan, the second album I ever bought was the white album. The original cover art (that never made it to the USA) for that album had John @ Yoko full frontal nude on the front, and full rear nude on the back, which was a giant scandal. I was nine at the time so that was really cool.
I thought the cut piece film was super powerfull. At first it was mostly women who came up on stage, and carefully cut a piece out of Yoko’s sleve. One woman had a dress on that looked like it had been cut up already; I wonder if she was helping Yoko get the crowd to participate. Then a man came up and cut off a part of her dress hem in the crotch area. This is where I started figuring out what this piece was about; feminism. I don’t think she said it first, but she is famous for saying that women are the niggers of the world. Today it’s easy to see what she was saying; in the culture of that time she was seen as a piece of meat a sexual object not a person, not an artist. Back then the men didn’t get it at all. They just got all excited, and said oh goody we are going to see some skin. At this point a young man comes up and cuts a hole in her dress where her nipple should be. That was where she first reacted, and I knew it had not been planed that way. The camera person was startled too they followed the guy off stage. This was in 1965 a year before she met John Lennon, so nobody knew who she was. Yoko had prefomed this piece in Japan before she did it in london. In Japan the crowd was very quiet and reserved. In London they had to call the cops. Then a woman came up and cut off a big piece of her collar exposing a bunch more skin. I think the fact that women were helping cut off her dress helped make it okay for the men to do it too. Finally a man comes up with a big grin, and glances back at his buddies who are egging him on (I’m guessing) and he starts cutting away her slip; at this point you can see she’s pissed, and maybe a little scared. But that guy made her point, he turned the piece into a much more powerful statement. Because he didn’t see what she was saying at all, he just thought she was some new funny kind of stripper. That was the point; he couldn’t understand he had been raised in a culture that cosidered women second class citizens. This film was an early part of the largest cultural shift humankind has ever gone through, and we are still in the middle of this huge change. Look at the Islamic world.
Mike2537’s Weblog
Just another WordPress.com weblog
——————————————————————————–
Cut piece by Yoko Ono
July 14, 2008 by mike2537
This film jumped out and got my attention. Partially because I am old enough that I remember watching the news, and hearing about whatever John & Yoko were doing at the time. I was a big Beatles fan, the second album I ever bought was the white album. The original cover art (that never made it to the USA) for that album had John @ Yoko full frontal nude on the front, and full rear nude on the back, which was a giant scandal. I was nine at the time so that was really cool.
I thought the cut piece film was super powerfull. At first it was mostly women who came up on stage, and carefully cut a piece out of Yoko’s sleve. One woman had a dress on that looked like it had been cut up already; I wonder if she was helping Yoko get the crowd to participate. Then a man came up and cut off a part of her dress hem in the crotch area. This is where I started figuring out what this piece was about; feminism. I don’t think she said it first, but she is famous for saying that women are the niggers of the world. Today it’s easy to see what she was saying; in the culture of that time she was seen as a piece of meat a sexual object not a person, not an artist. Back then the men didn’t get it at all. They just got all excited, and said oh goody we are going to see some skin. At this point a young man comes up and cuts a hole in her dress where her nipple should be. That was where she first reacted, and I knew it had not been planed that way. The camera person was startled too they followed the guy off stage. This was in 1965 a year before she met John Lennon, so nobody knew who she was. Yoko had prefomed this piece in Japan before she did it in london. In Japan the crowd was very quiet and reserved. In London they had to call the cops. Then a woman came up and cut off a big piece of her collar exposing a bunch more skin. I think the fact that women were helping cut off her dress helped make it okay for the men to do it too. Finally a man comes up with a big grin, and glances back at his buddies who are egging him on (I’m guessing) and he starts cutting away her slip; at this point you can see she’s pissed, and maybe a little scared. But that guy made her point, he turned the piece into a much more powerful statement. Because he didn’t see what she was saying at all, he just thought she was some new funny kind of stripper. That was the point; he couldn’t understand he had been raised in a culture that cosidered women second class citizens. This film was an early part of the largest cultural shift humankind has ever gone through, and we are still in the middle of this huge change. Look at the Islamic world.