Isabella Rossellini on the Intersections Between Science and Fantasy
One of the strangest and most original things you can come across on YouTube – and as we know, there is some fierce competition there – is Green Porno by actress-model-activist Isabella Rossellini, a series about the biology and sexual habits of different creatures in the animal kingdom. A little more David Lynch than David Attenborough.
"If I were an earthworm, I would have no brain. I would have a long, slimy body like a tube. It would be formed of many segments. At one end I would have a mouth but no teeth with which I suck up my food, and on the other – an anus to excrete feces. I would pee and breathe using my entire body, ” says Isabella Rossellini, all wrapped in a pink worm costume that shows only her beautiful face. "I am an ordinary worm," she continues, "but I am a mixture of two Greek gods, Hermes and Aphrodite. I am a man and a woman at the same time. In order to get pregnant, I have to mate with another hermaphrodite in a sixty-nine position.”
One of the strangest and most original things you can come across on YouTube – and as we know, there is some fierce competition there – is Green Porno by actress-model-activist Isabella Rossellini, a series about the biology and sexual habits of different creatures in the animal kingdom. A little more David Lynch than David Attenborough.
Rossellini first became famous for her part in the strange world of Lynch and his cult classicBlue Velvet, where she played Dorothy Vallens. Like the director, with whom she was in a romantic relationship for many years, Rossellini – daughter of actress Ingrid Bergman and director Roberto Rossellini – is an artist in the most colorful and broadest sense of the word. For her, art is not just mimesis, an attempt at a documentary-realistic reflection of reality, but rather magic, a dream-vision in which fantasy and facts are invariably linked.
PHOTO: ANDRE RAU
At the same time, Rossellini is a serious biologist. She has felt emotionally drawn to animals since she was a child, and a few years ago she got a master's degree in Animal Behavior and continues to work in this field. What excites her the most, however, is the combination of science and art (and by the way, the border between the two is a relatively modern phenomenon). This is how the Green Pornoproject was born in partnership with the Sundance Festival.
Green Porno, as well as its sequels Seduce Me and Mammas, are Rossellini's short films for online platforms, in which she is the screenwriter, protagonist and director. Dressed in extravagant, absolutely fantastic costumes of animals, she recreates with a great sense of humor their most interesting sexual and physiological characteristics, marriage rituals, social relationships, etc. Rossellini is a veritable Bjork of the biology world. However, this animal extravaganza / human carnival is always based on real scientific facts. Did you know, for example, that dolphins masturbate, enjoy oral sex, have homosexual relationships, and sometimes even pleasure each other using their nostrils? Did you know that snails are into BDSM? That young shrimp are male, but over time they become female? Or that female bedbugs don't have vaginas, so males pierce their bodies with their penises and ejaculate into their circulatory system?
Well, you can learn a lot of other strange facts from Rossellini's wonderful series.
About two years ago, I had the pleasure of virtually meeting Rossellini because of our common interest in animals. I sent her poems about animals; she sent me descriptions of her farm on Long Island. For the current issue of Vij! she agreed to talk on the phone about the Green Porno series.
Dimiter Kenarov: If you could be reincarnated as an animal, what would it be?
Isabella Rossellini: There are forty short films in Green Porno and I play some kind of animal in each one. Each movie starts with the phrase "If I were…" and then I mention the name of the animal. So I've actually been reincarnated as about forty animals.
DK: Do you have a favorite incarnation?
IR: Actually, no. Some of the films just turned better than others. Some costumes were awkward. For example, the earthworm costume. This is an episode that I really like, but the entire time I was wrapped in a long worm suit and my hands were completely useless, so I couldn't drink water, I couldn't scratch my nose and in general it was extremely uncomfortable to lie there like a worm for the three days it took to shoot the film.
DK: Do you think that there are fewer social taboos when we talk about sex between animals than sex between people, and did playing these roles feel liberating?
IR: Personally, I'm already liberated. I didn't make these movies to explore my own sexuality or anything. As far as the audience is concerned, some people certainly feel more comfortable when it comes to animal reproduction than their own reproduction. But the audience is quite diverse, so it's hard for me to generalize.
STILL FROM THE GREEN PORNO SERIES, PHOTOGRAPHER: JODY SHAPIRO
DK: Do you think that when you talk about sexual diversity in animals, which includes homosexuality, transsexuality, etc., it allows us to look at human sexuality through a different perspective and see that there is actually no such thing as a "normal" sexuality?
IR: Yes, definitely. At least you can't say that something is against nature. Many people say that it goes against nature to be gay or to be a biological sex that is neither male nor female, but when we look at the animal kingdom, we see that all these behaviors and states exist, so they are completely "natural". . That's why I made the movie about Noah's Ark. The question was how could Noah even try to accept animal pairs — one male and one female of each species — when, in fact, animals often do not have these divisions.
DK: There are a lot of comic elements in your films about animal sexuality. Can you tell us more about that?
IR: When I started making these films, it seemed like we were actually often treating animal sex too seriously and that comedy was lacking from the topic. We usually watch some very straightforward popular science films about animals on National Geographic, or let's say the films of David Attenborough, who is very charming and, of course, has a humorous streak. But personally I wanted to have fun, to make comedy movies. We have so many comedies about sex between people. So when I decided to make a film about sex between animals, I decided to be humorous. There are so many wonderful popular science films that it would be difficult for me to compete with, so the question was, what can I say that is mine and that can also contribute to the dialogue on the subject.
STILL FROM THE GREEN PORNO SERIES, PHOTOGRAPHER: JODY SHAPIRO
DK: Some of the episodes feature a biologist who gives a short lecture on the topic and its environmental aspects.
IR: The films were not made all at once, the format developed. One of the aspects we looked at was ocean ecology, and in particular the depletion of fish populations. I was asked by Sundance to include a direct message. So I asked a friend of mine, an environmentalist, Claudio Campagna, to help me make the films, to mention which fish are endangered, which fish we should stop eating, and so on.
DK: Tell us about your new Link Link Circus project. You explore animal intelligence, not so much their sexual behavior.
IR: Scientists do not like to use the word intelligence, but rather cognition, knowledge. Our ability to know what action to take, whether we have free will, how we make decisions, etc. What they are observing is that animal behavior is not really based solely on instinct responding to stimuli, but in fact, when confronted with a new stimulus, some animals think quite rationally about how to proceed. There is already evidence that our previous view of animals as machines without free will that merely follow their instincts is incorrect. Of course, this is especially true for vertebrates which have a brain similar to ours. But what is the deal with an octopus which does not even have a brain, but at the same time demonstrates intelligence? Octopuses can hide, they have hunting strategies. We still know very little about these matters, and more recent science shows us that we need to shake off our old prejudices and see animals differently. Of course, we make cars, travel to the moon, write poems – things that animals can't do, and I guess by that logic, we're smarter. Yet, as Darwin says, the difference between humans and animals is only in degree, not in kind. At least as far as vertebrates are concerned.
DK: And one last question: Do you think animals have a sense of humor?
IR: Yes, definitely. There are some animals we know very well, such as dogs. Dogs play, pretend, hide objects. There are studies that mice laugh when they are tickled and make laughter-like sounds. So, yes, I think animals have fun and even have a sense of humor.