I've Been Afraid (Cecelia Condit, 2020) (Patreon)

The Internet is stupid, and for the most part, memes are the stupidest part of the stupid Internet. But occasionally, people inexplicably latch onto something worthwhile, momentarily bringing it out of obscurity. One such instance was Cecelia Condit's 1983 video  Possibly in Michigan, a piece of surreal feminist horror that got swept up in one of YouTube's algorithmic nets and started appearing in thousands of folks' recommendations. Then, an excerpt of Michigan was used as the basis for a series of TikToks, making it one of the most demographically successful films in avant-garde history. 

Condit has always been a bit off the track of experimental film and video. Her work is widely admired, but she has avoided trends and stuck to her own strange vision, turning pop culture artifacts and genre tropes inside out to expose their unheimlich subtext. Her latest work, I've Been Afraid, is a combination of digital collage animation and multi-layered live action footage. It is also a music video, featuring Condit singing a song about uniquely female anxieties, from abandonment to bodily harm.

I've Been Afraid employs certain recognizable images, such as the new-generation Apple avatars, the dancing baby from "Ally McBeal," and online animal memes. Condit walks the line between the ironic DIY cuteness one finds so much in contemporary web culture (cf. Jack Stauber, Bill Wurtz, Lemon Demon) and the despondent Gen-Z emotionalism of singers such as Penelope Scott and Mal Blum. Never exactly resolving into an actual music video, I've Been Afraid uses familiar elements in order to tap into current forms of affect, while at the same time giving them the gravitas that comes with being a woman in her seventies. While there have been articles insisting that some of us are too old to be on TikTok, Condit contends that web culture defines the parameter of meaning, whether we participate or ignore it. So, as the Monkees never said, we're the old generation, and we've got something to say.