Honey Flavored Feminism: The Genius of Karen Finley

"Her furious cry from the heart was so intense that it reduced the audience to a stunned silence." -- Praise for Karen Finley's The American Chestnut, a performance piece that debuted in Los Angeles

I will never forget the first time I saw Karen Finley. She was running around the stage naked, covered in honey, screaming expletives, and dancing strangely. I was definitely not in Texas anymore. Better yet, were the shocked expressions of my male counterparts who had been so thrilled at the prospect of seeing an attractive naked woman rolling around in honey as a theatre assignment. Now these college boys looked anything but titillated, they looked disturbed on some deep physiological level. Of course, their horror couldn’t be a higher compliment to the controversial Karen Finley.



Born and raised in Chicago, Finley is the daughter of a late jazz musician who when she misbehaved would lock in her a refrigerator and eventually ended up killing himself. She made her way into performance art after receiving her MFA from the San Francisco Art institute. Interestingly, Finley chooses to rarely go into her personal life for material, which I have found to be relatively unique, at least in the world of solo performance. Her art is nearly always a greater statement on the state of the world or a specific issue. She gained major infamy as one of the NEA four. She was given a grant for the National Endowment of the Arts for her show We keep Our Victims Ready which was promptly protested by the conservative right. Jesse Helms even went so far as to use Finley as the focal point for his cause to abolish the NEA and referred to her as the ‘chocolate smeared woman’ which was a jab at her earlier work. Finley and fellow artists Tim Miller (another I highly recommend), Holly Hughes, and John Fleck all took their cases to the Supreme Court in order to keep their grants on the grounds of freedom of expression. Incredibly to me, they all lost on the basis on indecency.

This to me is when our Government gets frightening.

Karen Finley was the first artist to ever make me question anything. I remember sitting in that theatre, my mind totally blown, as I watched her flail around in Shut up and Love Me .In her own words, the show is a “post feminist illustrative performance of a woman’s journey, of dysfunctional companionship, and psycho social lust without apology.” The show features a series of gritty, sardonic dialogues about people trying to find sex. There is crazed disco dancing, cut up scenes from Winnie the Pooh, a deconstructed lap dance and of course, the nude frolic in honey.

Above from Karen Finley's
"Weekly Meditations For Living Dysfunctionally"

I have always identified with fearless women like this. I am so inspired by artists that can just say ‘fuck it’ and do what needs to be done without letting anything get in the way.
As an actor I am jealous of Finley’s complete freedom. Her words are so much her own, in a way that I will never be able to posses or even emulate. This kind of art is so incredibly necessary to our society. We have to have voices like this that question, in a blunt fashion, what the state of our affairs. Finley has the power, as I witnessed, to completely deconstruct the idea of the male eye owning the nude female body. Yes, she was a naked woman rolling around in honey, and yet there was absolutely nothing eroticized or vulnerable about her. The majority of the women in the crowd, I noticed, could not help but laugh at the confusion of the men. You could truly see it in their eyes. This was a beautiful naked woman in honey. How had she managed to make this entirely unattractive? Finley had completely control over it. Her naked body was pressing upon every eye in the theatre, not the usual powerless naked woman. In a word it was remarkable.

Finley attacks her audience on every level to wake them up to the realties of violence against women, emotional despair, loss, and abuse in a way that thoroughly challenges everything we understand to be ‘decent’ and ‘good’. I truly believe the best art is the kind that gets to you somewhere deep inside, that can upset you---and you may not always know why. I can only hope to someday be as fearless and as dedicated as Karen Finley.

I want to be an actor completely separate of my own fears and insecurities and be able to throw all caution to the wind and tell the stories of the unglamorous, bleak, and painfully silenced women of our time.










Although, I have yet to eat honey again.