Truths and Lies: Lucia Antonini’s “Marcians always arrive to the United States”
Bruno LeMieux-Ruibal
When a young Spanish artist approached me with a video about America she had produced some years back, I shuddered. What could I expect? Yet another evisceration of America, probably, coming from somebody who has never actually been to the United States. Perhaps some flimsy, crude criticism of American foreign policy, pinpointed by the usual choice words: “imperialism”, “capitalism”, “aggression” and a rapid judgment of the wars the United States has been involved in and the presidents who fueled them. This is, after all, what a great deal of American-related art made in Europe typically looks like.
Thankfully, Lucia Antonini (born in Madrid in 1980) avoids any and all politicking and coarse, stereotypical criticism in her “Marcians always arrive to the United States”. Instead, she offers a clever and charming view of America through the lens of the Hollywood movies she grew up with in her native Spain.
“Marcians always arrive to the United States” is as nostalgic and sweet as those visions of Main Street America present-day folk, jaded and tired, often long for- Mayberry in Spain. Even the title itself, delightfully misspelled, feeds into the fantasy: those “Marcians” are not here to invade the United States as they would in any Hollywood movie. Instead, they “arrive”. They come, like millions before, ready to join this nation of immigrants and chase the ever-elusive American dream. One can almost imagine those aliens waiting in line, patiently and anxiously at customs at JFK airport in New York, or perhaps in Ellis Island, like Hollywood would want it, right behind Vito Corleone.
The occasional reference to American violence (indeed ingrained in this nation’s roots as thick as the apple pie the artist mentions in the video) does nothing to spoil the sweetness of the piece: guns here are politely left at the front desk of a hotel or safely tucked away underneath a farmer’s pillow. There are neither mass shootings in “Marcians…” nor a word about the gun violence that plagues the streets of urban (and suburban) America. Guns are romanticized, blurred. This could easily be an NRA ad touting Second Amendment rights… or a subtle Orwellian nightmare. This ambiguity is the forte of the video indeed. Much like America, “Marcians” is a pretty landscape ready to explode.
It is as if these women had only seen Frank Capra and John Hughes movies- teen angst and American ingenuity, or George Bailey meets Ferris Bueller. Surfers, farmers, cheerleaders, skaters, football players… they are all here, as are milkshakes, soda pop, sauces and a wealth of products at restaurants and supermarkets. The obesity, health problems, bullying and economic inequality that America’s wealth and culture of success-by-all-means bring along are conspicuously absent from the narrative of “Marcians”.
Antonini’s work reflects the America everyone loves to love: apple pie and marshmallows, Thanksgiving dinner and high school proms, lemonade stands and campfires, Halloween and Christmas… the only concession to grittiness is Antonini’s precise description of New York City, a place she has never visited but knows well: the hot dog stands, the mysterious steam vents rising in the middle of a busy avenue and those garbage-lined narrow streets where rats roam free among hurried commuters. New York has always been (in movies, literature and popular culture) the Sodom of America, a hole of sin and despair where the farmer and the cheerleader and other immaculate characters of Middle America go to get a taste of immorality and transgression. “Marcians…” uncannily captures this, with the added irony that most Spaniards only visit one place in the United States: New York. The surfing and the football and the Thanksgiving celebrations (the real America) can wait, or better yet- reproduced comfortably at home in Spain, where a sweeping Americanization of life has been taking place for years now.
The innocence of the girls in the video, that mixture of naïveté and lack of deceit, their laughter and smiles and broken English reinforce this overall utopian vision made in Hollywood. Antonini’s America is also global and shared by millions- if we asked a peasant in Bangladesh what he thought of America, his narrative would most likely be similar to that of “Marcians”.
Of all three women, Antonini herself stands out as particularly fascinating. Her remarks on surfers and the sharks that bite them and the quintessential California skating girls clad in revealing outfits are as disarming and disconcerting as a little kid explaining the ins and outs of sex.
And yet it could all be an act, a calculated farce. That uncertainty recalls documentary movies that fog the line between fact and fiction such as “Exit Through the Gift Shop” or the Orson Welles classic and influential “F for Fake” (“Marcians…” owes in fact more to the art of cinema than to contemporary visual art, down to the final, very movie-like “surprise” that ties the entire story together, reminiscent of Billy Wilder’s “Sunset Boulevard”). Are the women in the video honest? Are they and their narrative as innocent and cheerful as they appear? If there is criticism in their words, where is it hidden? Did they really grow up in Spain watching only sappy-happy American movies? Are their dialogue and memories part of a script or pure improvisation? All of these questions remain unanswered, burning in the mind after watching “Marcians always arrive to the United States”. Antonini’s idea of America is as real and fictional as life itself and the Hollywood stories she consumed. A life-like fairytale… or not all.