A disturbing video has begun to make the rounds on Facebook. Titled "American Reflexxx," it's the work of performance artists Signe Pierce and Alli Coates, and it involves the former walking through a city while the latter films her. The result is 14 minutes of deeply unsettling footage.
There have been several of these "a woman walks through a hostile environment" videos of late. Last year, there was the Hollaback video about walking in NYC as a woman, which was praised to the rafters and then hit with an
almighty backlash in the space of about eight hours. A couple of weeks later, it was followed by the oh-so-21st-century spectacle of a social media bro posting a video about the treatment of an apparently drunk woman on Hollywood Boulevard, and sitting back to watch the clickzzz come in (that video later
turned out to be a hoax, because of course it did).
"American Reflexxx" — which
predates both of those videos but only appeared on YouTube this month — starts from the same place: a camera following a woman as she walks through a public space, recording the reactions of the members of the public she encounters. In this case, the woman is Pierce and the space is Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Pierce certainly cuts a striking figure.
She's wearing a skimpy blue dress and neon yellow heels, and most strikingly, her face is entirely covered by a reflective mask. She's also of apparently indeterminate gender; much of the video involves passersby trying to work out if she's a cisgender man or woman, or a trans woman, or what. (I actually have no idea what Pierce's gender identity is, which is kind of the point.)
The results are, as one might expect, pretty depressing.
People seem genuinely terrified by her — several times groups of people scatter as she walks toward them, and at one point a girl shouts, "Oh hell no, don't walk this way!" As the film progresses, the reactions become more violent — she has water thrown on her, someone attempts to trip her, and eventually she is pushed head-first into the pavement. Notably, all the acts of violence against her are carried out by women. The film ends with a sort of survey of her body, lingering on the blood streaming from the knee she gashed open when she hit the ground.
Comment: What an enlightening moment this will be.