Andy Warhol’s Empire
Andy Warhol’s eight hour film, Empire, was infamous for its incredibly lengthy duration and subject matter. Warhol was frequently embracing the world’s understanding of commercialism and capitalism, taking advantage of the concept of mass production, visible through one of his most iconic works, Campbell’s Soup Cans. Often he compared himself to machinery, motivated by the desire to create art in such a way that it lacked man-made characteristics, but was constructed with the drive and repetition of a factory production, hence the name of his studio where his process took place, The Factory. In order to understand Warhol’s methodology in creating his work, it must be contextualized with the history prior to their creation.
Post World War II was characterized by a rise in consumerism that ultimately altered the appearance of American culture. Lawns boasted pink flamingos and shiny new Chevrolets, while kitchens hummed with the newest frigidaire. Warhol was interested in the way things behave as commodities and his work can be seen to “represent the random play of consciousness at the mercy of the commonly available commercial culture. ” () This way of interpreting commercialism plays into our understanding of Empire as potential commentary on American iconography and obsession with enlarging everything in an effort to maintain an image of global superiority. The Empire State Building is a symbol of American culture and the nation’s desire to do everything the largest, the tallest, the most innovative first among every other country competing to do the same.
However, America was always looking to outdo itself and accomplish even greater developments architecturally. At the time of filming Empire, it was amidst the news of the twin towers being constructed, two buildings that would exceed the seemingly unmatched power and cultural magnitude of the Empire State Building becoming the world’s tallest skyscrapers. This was also occurring simultaneously with the installment of flood lights in the Empire State Building, an effort to maintain the buildings landmark status by demanding attention even through the night when other buildings would eventually recede into the darkness. And yet even something as believed to be invincible and immortal cannot go unscathed by the “humbling and devastating effects of the relentless passage of time” (Tv, Time and the Films of Andy Warhol).
And as time has passed beyond the making of this film, even the Twin Towers faced a tragic death; time will mark everything’s end. Andy Warhol’s Empire was a widely misunderstood and controversial moment in filmmaking. Interpretations of Warhol’s motives in creating a film so intentionally unmoving and unbearably long have been argued in several different directions. From claims of wanting to purposefully bore his audience to dissecting it’s “meta” aesthetics in the photographic process and time based media. Even Warhol himself was vocal in claiming his intentions with such an unorthodox viewing experience. While some believed Empire was a move towards creating a movement of “boredom chic” Warhol merely wanted to challenge film-viewing mannerisms and expectations where the audience must be seated and silent as they watch a film screen in front of them. Warhol “advocated a distracted, fragmentary, and unfocused mode of spectatorship” (Motion(less)). While prior filmmaking and viewing established strict expectations of its participants and environment, Warhol wanted to break ties with these traditions and create something new and possibly playful.
Empire, along with Warhol’s several other lengthier films, wasn’t about enduring uncomfortably long visuals, but what could take place in a space alongside its screening. In other words, his films were designed to realize the beauty of human interaction that evolves out of a viewing space and “emphasized that audience dynamics were more important to him as a filmmaker than what was on the screen. ” (Motion(less)). Warhol envisioned a new mode of seeing in which his spectators weren’t expected to focus their attention entirely on his work, embracing the idea of distraction. The length and stasis of his films allowed for breaks in attention that he found interesting, stating that “you could do more things watching my movies than with any other kinds of movies: you could eat and drink and smoke and cough and look away and then look back and they’d still be there” (motion(less)).
However, this new mode of viewing that Warhol advocated wasn’t received entirely positively, as audiences were often angered by the film’s length and lack of dynamics in visual content. Warhol’s intentions were necessary in contextualizing how the film was expected to be experienced and was not always understood. Those who purchased tickets frequently found themselves demanding their money back as they found themselves wasting time on a film they found lacked entertainment quality and was a waste of time. This gap in understanding between his audience and Warhol even led to it having “manifested itself as outright hostility” as Jonas Mekas, a filmmaker, recounts a moment in which audience members fled Empire, merely minutes into its viewing, to make violent threats at the theater in demand for a refund (motion(less)). While Warhold intended to reinvent spectatorship and reinterpret the role of the audience through his longer films, he was also challenging our perception of time and its objectivity. Empire was not eight hours in length because of the duration of filming, but because of Warhol’s choice to manipulate its length through the speed in which the film reel played.
Warhol was frequently toying with the concept of time in his film by mode of film speed, conceptualizing the idea of time as something that can be altered and deconstructed through personal interpretations. Time is quantifiable through seconds, minutes, hours, but we’re led to question the gravity of the passage of time through his manipulation. While one minute can feel like an eternity, one hour can pass far too quickly. Warhol intended for his audience to witness the seemingly minute changes in the Empire State Building’s appearance that can only be explained by time passing. And yet this time is supposedly inaccurate as we know it has been altered by the choice to play the film at a slower speed. This can be said about the several films that Warhol manipulated the time in, but in context with the Empire State Building, we are reminded of the gravity of time’s passing while simultaneously being asked to ignore it (Films of Andy Warhol part II).
Empire’s development as a film was also entirely dependent on the camera as an apparatus and its relationship with time. Warhol used the camera’s features to showcase time passing and the viewer’s ability to witness the Empire State Building coming into view. By allowing the camera’s aperture to remain open at the same depth consistently throughout the film the viewer is essentially seeing the image develop in real time as compared to a “photograph slowly developing before your eyes in a darkroom”(Our Kind of Movie). The film begins with no detail whatsoever, a white plane fills the screen as it is daylight and the lens is allowing in so much light it is overexposed, practically blinding the audience with light. As the day progresses, the building slowly comes into view until it is night and the flood lights assume their role.
By the end, all that is visible are the floodlights leaving no trace of architectural evidence, somehow mirroring how the film began (refer to image A). Unlike the beginning where we had no information at all to tell us what existed beyond the bright white sheet of light, the hours of footage that gradually revealed the building act as contextualization for the nearly abstract forms of the flood lights within the blackness of night. With this technique of involving the camera in parting a message upon the audience, we are reminded that time has the power to corrode our understanding of the preceding images that allow us to know it is the Empire State Building, ss “your perceptual experience doesn’t hold steady over such a long time… it’s meaning becomes destabilized” (Our Kind of Movie).
This method of filmmaking acst almost as a means of desensitization that Warhol involved in other works such as his Electric Chair series. If the viewer sees an image repeatedly, it will ultimately lose its meaning and become a mere object of no greater value. This is yet another facet to Warhol’s commentary on American culture and mass media and he could possibly be using the Empire State Building as a means of communicating the damage that image making has on our ability to produce an emotional response. Empire is more than just a dramatically long film, and in spite of Warhol’s own claims, it is also not just a way to explore audience dynamics. It is a reflection of society and what we uphold as valuable throughout the passing of time.
