(Originally published in: Centrefold April and May 1979)

In a sense ‘modern love’ is the perfect title, an idea so ‘apropos’ for an artwork. Say it a hundred times it still sounds good. It’s after all, what so many of us want: to be modern, to be in love. A goal so elusive it’s impractical, so romantic it’s at once the peak of sophistication and the dumbest pretention. Which is the story of Colin Campbell’s latest videotape Modern Love.

The tape is loosely structured around two parallel love stories: Robin and La Monte, Heidi and Pierre. The plot evolves simply enough as a couple of cartoon romances which Colin amplifies by portraying all his characters in drag. For his role as Heidi, Rodney Werden is transformed into a stunning blonde, a fragile German fraulein who wears tight sweaters, too much make-up and a man’s watch. Susan Britton plays the sultry playboy Pierre, a slightly greasy Frenchman who chain-smokes. La Monte del Monte is David Buchan in a different sort of drag – no cross-dressing, just outrageously tasteless apparel, the failed showbiz smoothie. And Robin, played by Colin himself, is the simple-minded punkette from Thornhill who’s too easily impressed.

Despite the extremity of the characters their portrayal is quite suitably low-key. That has something to do with television images, which tend to turn everybody into gray-scale (literally). There are certainly no big production numbers, and the home-made quality of video makes for a nice tension when dealing with such exotic subject matter. But more than that the drag in this tape is very different from the kind you see in “drag shows.” The role-switching doesn’t assume a total identification with another (external) image. And while Colin and friends obviously enjoy the reversal it doesn’t come across as an obsession. This isn’t to say Colin’s drag is just a theatrical device; rather any role-switching implies more of a departure from a role than a switch. What’s left is an ambiguous identity, one with a heavy emphasis on artifice, a conscious superficiality. Gestures become loaded with meaning, but the meaning is ironic, paradoxical and banal.

So to make a long story short (in this case it’s easy), Robin meets La Monte at the Beverley Tavern where Martha and the Muffins are playing. Robin gets picked up, falls in love, but he uses her. She loses her job, her apartment, and in the end she loses La Monte. She gets dumped. Meanwhile, somewhere on the other side of the world Pierre is getting acquainted with Heidi. There is a language difficulty, presumably between French and German, so all emotions remain unspoken. They have an affair, Heidi is obviously in raptures, Pierre is just callous. He grows tired of Heidi and bids farewell with only the most calculated gestures of fondness. That’s modern love.

There are flaws in the tape, mainly it’s too long. Most of the ideas come across early on and what’s left is the resolution of the story-line. However it’s not boring to sit through, in fact it’s very entertaining, only the content could have been accomplished more economically. And although the camera occasionally lingers on details (and there are a million details), most of them are interesting. On the other side of things, some of the imagery is quite successfully romantic. The heavy pathos, the heavy make-up, and the black and white still frame all combine for a silent movie effect. The scenes of Heidi and Pierre posing in mock-poignancy are even beautiful.

Actually, given such a simple plot, one can say this tape is more about being modern than being in love, and this ‘modern’ stuff is perhaps the most interesting dimension in Colin’s work. What he projects is a ‘modern’ sensibility. To begin with, a fascination with anything foreign, sophisticated, exotic, which is always countered with utter disappointment. A lot of Colin’s characters emanate a glamorous image while seemingly caught in some continual fall from grace. All the little details revolve around ultra-sophistication and stupid pretention. And in a kind of double-think there isn’t ever a supposed opposite. Every dilemma is funny, every joke is tragic. In this regard the role-reversals are an intuitive clue: as dangerous as it is to try to pin down a ‘sensibility’ in writing, let’s just say that watching Colin’s video is like thinking in reverse.