Writing, Images, and Pop Culture Overanalysis by Elizabeth Grammaticas
My roommate and dear friend Sarah Tricker directed a fantastic new video for the hip hop artist Rocco Katastrophe that was released this week. The video is gorgeous, and a good chunk of the video was filmed in my apartment. My painting “Spoiler Alert II: Marissa Dies” makes a few nice cameos. I the nice media-circle of a painting inspired by a TV show being in a music video on the internet…and hopefully the TV. Be sure to check out the video, it’s beautiful.
Hey folks! I’ve been busy! I’ve finished up a few pieces!
The first piece, “Someone This Week Will Die. (R.I.P. Marissa)”, is my favorite piece of my Marissa series so far. The composition of this piece is based on visual style used in promotions for various teen television series.
"Someone This Week Will DIE. (R.I.P. Marissa)" 16 x 18. Acrylic on Panel. 2012 © Elizabeth Grammaticas
We know Marilyn Monroe as bright, bold, and omnipresent. As a result, the images of Marilyn I find most interesting are the quiet illusive ones, often on poorly preserved materials. For me with Marilyn, less is more and my most recent pieces have this in mind.
"Happy Birthday Mr. President". 10x10. Acrylic on Panel. Mixed Media
Marissa Cooper. If you are familiar with this blog, than you are familiar with my fascination and studies of trauma, death, exile, etc in teen television. Marissa, one of the main characters of television series The O.C. , dies in the season 3 finale unexpectedly and traumatically via car accident. Sure, she was the so over-privlidged-and-beautiful-that-surely-must-self-destruct character from the get-go. Still, she is one of the few characters from the series that has been consistently a main character since the pilot. She dies, and the rest of the cast is left to carry on without her for one more season. …and then the show is cancelled. They did try though, to show life after death somewhat realistically via teen soap context.
Summer Roberts (Rachel Bilson) unable to face her former self, the one best friends with Marissa, creates an entirely new life for herself at Brown
The superficial seeming best friend, Summer Roberts, becomes a hardcore environmentalist at Brown. The love interest who also was at the scene of her death, Ryan Atwood, goes off the rails and gets involved in fighting matches for $$$$ and self punishment.
Marissa’s mother becomes a pill popping walking zombie, no longer able to check in to any other part of her life other than her daughter’s deaht In the realm of teen television, this is pretty darn good.
Julie Cooper (Melinda Clarke) drugs herself into oblivion after her daughter's death.
Yet, the actual death of Marissa Cooper in the end of season 3…is very much in the melodramatic form you would expect from a teen show. You have Ryan holding Marissa in his arms as she dies. …and best of all…you have the montages of the beautiful memories of Marissa. Flashbacks to Ryan first meeting Marissa in the driveway.. She looks angelic, with the sun setting behind her (of course). We cut to Marissa dying in the road, after the car accident. Everything feels epic and appropriately cinematic…many of Marissa and Ryan’s most important interactions in the series took place in the road/on a driveway. If it wasn’t enough with the montage, cue the soundtrack of Imogen Heap’s cover of “Hallelujah”..the obligatory song of love and loss. In this moment, the editing of the O.C. makes Marissa Cooper’s death feel very full circle in a way that life at the moment of a traumatic death does not. They wrap up a bloody traumatic mess into a prettier network tv package that we can let into our living rooms.
This cheesy tv/pop culture strategies for marketing weighty issues in a light way is what I love. I am starting to play around with this for painting ideas.
Painting Study 2
No editing here. I just screen capped this brilliant image. painting to come.
Spoiler Alert II (Marissa Cooper Dies) . Acrylic on 18x24. Acrylic on Panel. 2011
So I am just about finished with my second Marissa Cooper painting. I mostly need to tuck that lower jaw bone in from popping up and make her face slightly more anatomically correct.
Here ya go:
(Recent O.C. re-viewing acquired knowledge: Marissa and Ryan had it coming. She put Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah” on her first mix for Ryan Atwood before dating. geez girl).
Marissa Cooper is epic.
Played by Mischa Barton, Marissa has a mythology and iconography which is continued in some form throughout the entire series of the teen show The O.C.
The pilot for The O.C. is one of my favorite TV pilots. It pays a blatant homage to Rebel Without A Cause but without being stifled by it. I am not going to do a character to character comparison; even if one has a casual knowledge of Rebel Without A Cause the similarities are evident. I did however, find a nice little example on YouTube of one scene being compared…as well as I want to give some context of the cinematic and cultural vocabulary used by The O.C. to those unfamiliar.
Despite the cinematic similarities, Marissa Cooper ends up being more of the rebel than Ryan Atwood…and with somewhat of a cause. She is the rich but troubled girl next door. Marissa continuously is attempting to fight her own self destruction, only to break to occasionally fight some battles against world around her.. (all while being a fashion plate, and having those around her fall in love with her…) She abuses alcohol and pills. She is often saved, and sometimes does the saving. Ultimately, she needs to remove herself from role expected of her in her world……to go live on a fishing boat..but is killed in a car accident on the way to the airport.
She is an archetype, and am important one. With a few words substituted, the above paragraph could be used to describe the an icon as big as Marilyn Monroe.
We can’t see Marissa on a fishing boat, much like we couldn’t see a movie in theaters with Marilyn Monroe as a mother. Both are far too removed from the mythology we demand of them culturally. While Marissa Cooper may just be a character on canceled teen television series, fictional Marissa Cooper carries a vein with symbolic Marilyn Monroe and countless others. (*I am referring to Marilyn Monroe’s created symbolism, not her privately) She was never meant to live.. She is symbol and must continue to enact her obligatory mythic cycle….something that is not conducive with a long fulfilled life. She is the one that joins us temporarily, but leaves an impact that is lasting. The O.C. continues on for a season after Marissa is killed with the remaining characters attempting to deal with her absence.
Below I have some screencaps of part of the Marissa Cooper cycle as seen in The O.C. pilot. This cycle is repeated throughout the series both thematically and visually.
Marissa welcomes the outsider, and the possibilities of danger he brings. you know, like with cigarettes.
Drinking heavily at a party. Her mood and presence is separate from the other party go-ers.
Oh snap. She drank too much. Despite being the most popular girl at school, her friends just drop her off in her driveway when she's shitfaced.
she's not dead yet, but she's practicing.
Ryan finds his fallen beauty.
We are presented the young, beautiful, and seemingly dead woman.
Rescued: Ryan brings passed-out Marissa to rest in his bed instead of on display on a driveway.
Covers her with a shroud...or fine blanket. (Even the episode commentary makes shroud jokes).
The next day. Marissa is the pretty girl next door again. Ryan is leaving.
Leaving Marissa at sunset. ethereal much?
going for the angel look.
Marissa is temporal. We leave her.
She is picked up by someone else...to start the cycle again.
More to come of Marissa Cooper and other transient TV teens.
Here’s a peak at the piece I have going up in South Boston Open Studios Group Show. It will be on display this weekend throughout the month of June.
This is my first finished piece in my Marissa Cooper series. This is part of my larger series on exile, exit, and loss in Teen TV. More on that will be posted soon…but for now..here’s Marissa Cooper.
Spoiler Alert: Marissa Cooper is Dead, 12x16, 2011
