History, Gender Theory, and a Bloody Freemason Scaling a Vaseline-Soaked Guggenheim Museum

Wed, 13 May 2020 07:23:54 GMT

The drummer of the metal band Slayer is covered in bees and howling into a telephone alongside the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The performances are meant to console Gary Gilmore, the first victim of the 1976 reinstatement of the death penalty, as he walks down a corridor anticipating the end of his life. Instead of a firing squad, however, Gilmore has chosen a less conventional form of execution: death by prison rodeo in the Utah Salt Flats. Flags with Hebrew epigrams are placed over the ice and beehives are arranged in a pentagon atop the rodeo's sheer white arena amongst some of the best landscapes in the world. As a severed sunset looks on, Gilmore rides his steed until both creatures collapse. Looking for some sort of escape from his fate, Gilmore finds refuge in a little trick he learned from his great-grandfather Houdini: metamorphosizing into two cowboys doing the two-step in front of a twirling, glam-glitter saddle/corset/honeycomb object. And then things get crazy.