Agent Orange

5:00 mins. 2002

"The effects are only superficial" - Agent Orange is a toxic pesticide
used during the Viet Nam War by the U.S. Army for the purpose of
destroying the vast foliage covering Vietnamese jungles in order to
prevent the enemy from hiding. The end result was that both Vietnamese and
American soldiers and civilians were permanently exposed to this lethal
agent causing death and/or lifelong sickness. Agent Orange (the film) uses
the political backdrop of the sixties as well as the cinematic avant-garde
of the same period that have effectively "sprayed" us with what Paul
Sharits referred to in his seminal structuralist film as a "Ray Gun
Virus." The corollary results of this cinematic spraying (Conner,
Brahkage, Kubelka, et. al.) is the mass appropriation of experimental
style by the agents of celluloidic sellout a.k.a. "The M.T.V. Generation,"
Agent Orange is thus the toxic consequence of the digital conversion of
avant-garde cinema that not only addresses the problems of the canon, but
the current political crisis brought to head by the liquidation of the
twin towers.