Will Squibb
Essay on ”Chekhov's gun”

“If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.” - Anton Chekhov

Originally I had hoped to leave this body of work open and available for reflection, presenting these objects and collages as formal barometers of political affinity by rendering a socially contentious object more or less docile or menacing, depending on one’s relationship to firearms. I didn’t want to insert my political views into the presentation as I considered the reception of these objects by an array of individuals a way to complete the conceptual circuit and satisfy an earnest curiosity I had about the relationship between form and politics. I had hoped that both a 2nd amendment protectionist and reformist might mutually be attracted to or repelled by the work depending on the degree of sculptural manipulation. While I think reflexive critique might have a flattening effect, I think it’s necessary to provide my point of view for anybody that finds the work disconcerting or is simply curious. 

Below are a few areas of research which have held my interest over the course of this project, which began in a somewhat of a performative spirit in the spring of 2020 as I noticed a spike in firearm and ammunition sales at a moment of political uncertainty and potential scarcity. I planned on crafting an arsenal of flaccid guns sourced from specific action films, some of which I had seen in my adolescence and teen years. It would be a way to think about the culture surrounding firearms both as presented in film and in contemporary society. The particular gun models, UZI, MAC-11, AK-74, AR-15 and others – each with its own context in history -- would provide a material pathogen, spanning borders through which I could research the actual arms trading industry in relationship to the reductive geopolitical scenarios found within most action movies produced in the Reagan era onward, all while confronting my fascination with firearms as they had in a way been marketed to me from a young age. 

I began to consider the aesthetics, design, ergonomics and even ASMR that might generate interest from various consumers. I've watched gun reviews and firing range videos exhaustively on youtube as an attempt to better understand the thrill of shooting to the point that my tailored YouTube algorithm suggests increasingly reactionary content as the predictive software attempts to chisel my ostensible interests into a consumer profile.

Throughout my lifetime I’ve witnessed the regularity of gun violence emerge from the fictional narratives of film and TV and seemingly transfer to the news cycle. Today we see the recurring aerial imagery of fleeing civilians and positioned teams of law enforcement, the feigned grief and speculation over motive in the news and interviews with incredulous neighbors and relatives, all appearing time after time as if the news segments—as formulaic as the plots of so many action movies in which these firearms became iconic—were generated by predictive algorithm.

Within the context of film production I’ve become interested in the inversion of this dynamic relationship between artifice and documentation or narrative film and broadcast news, where film production itself intersects with the interests of real life city planning and private development agendas. Filmmaking is obviously an industry of its own, situated in an economy where tides of thematic profitability, tax incentives, product placement etc. govern what can be produced; however, there are examples of filmmaking where the special effects team is demolishing buildings with controlled explosions in order to make way for newer developments. Here, the interests of economic expansion and fictional narrative share a motive in demolishing architecture. An example of this is the 1985 film “Invasion, USA” starring Chuck Norris. A long winded action sequence takes place in a shopping mall, which had previously been scheduled for renovation and expansion under new ownership, so the filmmakers were allowed to destroy the interior without fabricating a set, presumably to save on production costs. Within this scene you can see how the mall is as cheaply constructed as a movie set, and in a way the film production--in addition to reinforcing vague neoliberal ideology--is a function of economic expansion in the 1980's. The capacious American shopping mall, a common public setting for action sequences in this era, alludes to material security in its spatial abundance. 

The firearms used by the protagonist here have a cyclical rate of approximately 1,500 rounds per minute, meaning a 20 bullet magazine would have been emptied in under one second; however, Norris is never seen reloading as he sprays bullets at hoards of 

Soviet and Latin American guerrillas, as though his guns are symbols of limitless credit and financial instruments conceived within the same era. Life itself appears expendable and cyclic as armed “bad guys” charge into the Mall interior and are promptly liquidated and replaced like end-of-season merchandise. In another scene, two Russian operatives drive through a suburban neighborhood, demolishing homes with an RPG from the bed of a pickup truck prior to Christmas. The spoils of free enterprise and symbols of prosperity are blown to smithereens. The controlled explosives in this scene were used to demolish an actual neighborhood in order to make way for more landing strips at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta international airport shown below. 

I should add, this scene might seem outlandish but if the setting had been shifted to Nicaragua in the same year this degree of violent intimidation was commonplace as the Reagan administration funded paramilitary forces and encouraged civilian targets before and throughout the Iran-Contra affair in order to counter rising Sandinista influence and open Nicaragua's labor markets and natural resources to US corporate interests--a regional trauma which has stunted economies in central America to this day and necessitated waves of emigration.   

In another action film, Lethal Weapon 3, the production crew rigged the former Orlando City Hall building featured in the opening scene with explosives to create the visual effect of an improvised bomb. The building was leveled and its footprint became a plaza in front of the newly constructed City Hall building. 

Additionally, the film's climax scene, which takes place in a fire engulfed housing tract, was filmed at an existing, unfinished mid-income development in Lancaster, California. The homes which had been scheduled to be torn down were demolished throughout the filming process, cleared and eventually acquired by another development agency. 

Also, in the closing credits the Soreno Hotel in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida explodes before the two protagonists are able to diffuse another bomb. The film's producers arranged to contribute to the cost of the building's implosion in exchange for use in the film. The lot was later developed into the Florencia Condominiums shown below. There are countless examples of this in pre CGI filmmaking.

I had considered the means of production of film and television a sort of floating signifier machine. It is especially easy to see this retrospectively in cinema. Oftentimes an action movie, for example, will be made whether or not the political premise is clear initially. The special effects, sets, actors, dummy guns etc. are all available to be implemented; however, the geopolitical scenarios that make the storylines possible are oftentimes a secondary consideration, ancillary to showcasing action sequences and special effects. In this way, film becomes a conduit for collective anxiety a nation or society might be feeling through history, both reflecting and exacerbating fear. Villains in the US in the 1940s were German, then Soviet, then South/Central American drug lords, Jihadists and so on, all while the most prominent sources of domestic mass violence today—alienated and emotionally unstable white men—aren’t typically represented in film. As is the case anywhere, motivations oddly become more entangled and inscrutable the closer they are--both temporally and globally--to the historical circumstances that created them. In a way, it’s as though broadcast news fulfills the unconscious fear of what cinema would have done for other, more digestible and distant forms of potential or projected violence as the distinction between entertainment and broadcast news becomes increasingly ambiguous. Action titles like "Shoot to Kill," "A Better Tomorrow," "Invasion USA" etc. function as floating signifiers for the unrigorous meaning in the films, as is the way I conceive of the inert guns, simultaneously conduits for variable political views and inert symbols of the bygone economic bubbles which have informed a collectively unfulfilled sense of prosperity and national entitlement. 

—Will Squibb, July 2021