橡皮约翰尼

Starting from 9/11, Chris Cunningham strapped himself into a wheelchair and began filming the first shot of this video. It took a full four years until the DVD was released last year, during which poor Chris painstakingly worked frame by frame, following the track "AFX237 V7" from Aphex Twin's album *Drukqs*. I have long admired Chris Cunningham's videos. Whether collaborating with Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Portishead, Björk, or Madonna, he has a penchant for deconstructing the human body. In his videos, no one remains whole—they are either turned into robots or freaks. *Rubber Johnny* can be considered his masterpiece. In this brief six-minute video, he appears himself, playing the role of Johnny, a mutated child locked in the basement by his father. Trapped in utter darkness, the little freak amuses himself by transforming like a Transformer, shifting his nose, eyes, and body in a chaotic dance. The Aphex Twin track is so fast-paced that even a ghost would struggle to keep up, yet Chris matches the rhythm beat by beat, transforming with each pulse. It is said that in slow motion, the video reveals exceptionally rich details and imagination, though at normal playback speed, it appears as nothing more than an abstract dance of freaks. The title *Rubber Johnny* is also the name of a famous British condom brand. Chris doesn’t resort to metaphysical explanations about bodily alienation to interpret his work. Instead, he simply states that when he thought of distorting the body this way, the first thing that came to mind was bubblegum—and condoms aren’t far off, perfectly capturing the imagery of this video. Thanks to ianlin for the brilliant commentary.