NEW YORK – A racy short video produced by a group of female undergraduates at two preeminent universities may not have generated the philosophical discussion the young women intended, but it did get people talking.
The coeds call “INITIATIΦN” a postmodern artistic effort to raise questions about gender equality and sexism, using a fictional Ivy League secret sorority’s rituals as a device. Critics call the three-minute video pornography.
Shot between the stacks in Columbia University’s Butler Library and at other on-campus locations last November, “INITIATIΦN” begins with five fully dressed young women meeting for what is presumably a study group. Within seconds, the girls remove their tops. What follows is a rapid-fire series of bizarre imagery incorporating nudity, riding crops, milk, raw eggs, chocolate syrup and a plucked chicken corpse that has been dyed blue. Instead of dialogue, vaguely religious, chant-style music provides the soundtrack. Combined with determinedly amateur camera work, the effect is somewhat like a mashup of The Exorcist and The Blair Witch Project.
In a couple of spots, by design or accident, the ritual’s participants encounter other students, who merely glance at the strange proceedings before continuing with whatever they were doing before they were interrupted by naked women smeared with food.
“The video is us exploring the idea of female sexuality and female desires, through the lens of an Ivy League secret society,” Coco Young, the Columbia junior who co-directed the film, told CBS 2 News.
Young and other participants, at least one of whom is an undergraduate at Barnard College, rejected the label “pornography” for the project.
“Personally, like, when I think of porn, I think of sexual intercourse, I think of full nudity, and those two things are not in our video,” Young told CBS 2.
The video went viral after New York-based Purple Magazine posted the work online, drawing both outrage and praise from viewers and, of course, attracting the snarky attention of online tabloids like Gawker.
The students involved said they have discussed their sudden infamy with both Columbia and Barnard, and the schools do not plan disciplinary action. Though neither school has commented in public, other students presented mixed reactions.
“I know it’s disturbing, at least,” Columbia student Aram Balian told CBS 2. “That’s definitely my first reaction. I don’t think of it as art.”
Columbia student Helena Shi added, “Personally, I think it was kind of perturbing.”
