Educational Media Reviews Online

Subtitled Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstructions #2 - #32 Los Angeles-based writer-director-composer-artist Mike Kelley’s Day Is Done could be considered his magnum opus. Here is Kelley’s own description of his work:

“All the scenarios for Day is Done are based on images found in high-school yearbooks in this particular case, though I’ve also done a whole collection of similar kinds of images from the small-town newspaper of the town where I grew up.”

“The rituals run the gamut from something like dress-up day at work to St. Patrick’s Day or Halloween, to a community play or an awards ceremony. So all I have is this image, and then I have to write a whole scenario for it like a play, and then do the music and everything. Each one is just based on the look of the photograph that tells me what style it has to be done in.”

The end result is a massive visual and cultural collage, something strange yet oddly familiar— Kelley has dubbed it “American carnivalesque”. Innumerable vampires, thugs, dancers, mimes, ghouls, and Satanists prance, cavort, and emote from one tableau to the next. Imagine Rob Zombie mounting a high school variety pageant/talent show after watching The Wicker Man, and you get the idea.

Shot on video, Kelley frequently cuts and flashes between various scenes, the crisp visuals dramatically highlighting the work’s meticulous production design—a slide show of the original found black and white photographs juxtaposed with production stills from the video (included in the extras on disc 1) illustrates this simulacrum to remarkable effect.

More on the artist can be found at his website. A preview of the DVD can be watched at Microcinema.

Recommended for public and academic libraries.