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Paul McCarthy makes a noise w ith WS
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I arrived at the Park Avenue Armory just as the seven dwarves were raping Snow White. Or, at least, that's what the noises echoing throughout the Gothic entrance sounded like. When I walked into the drill hall and watched the main video installation, I discovered that the majority of the wailing, whimpering, mumbling, and grunting in Paul McCarthy's bombastic installation WS (co-directed with his son, Damon) signaled only dry humping-no actual "adult" content was to be seen.
Borrowing costumes and character traits from Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (and the unrelenting torrent of merchandise it has since unleashed), McCarthy's primary aim in the video component of the installation is to stage a low-rent provocation across seven-plus hours of pornified-but sexually stunted-footage shot from several different angles. Aside from the moaning dwarves and two princes, the main sexual antagonist is McCarthy himself in the role of Walt Paul, a horny Disney proxy who at one point applies layers of sliced American cheese to the...