Pop-Pop-Video: General Hospital / Olympic Women / Speed Skating

The “cross-over” in Olympic Women Speed Skating is juxtaposed against General Hospital’s whites in reverse angle shots. A couple tries disparagingly to reach an understanding. Skaters continuously return to the starting line. Frustration and exertion combine with originally scored soundtracks of disco, rock, and jazz.”Dara Birnbaum’s Pop-Pop Video… [has] been hailed as [a] classic of the new wave. [The tape] juxtaposes fragments from a soap opera with sequences of ice skating races. The graceful movements of the skaters punctuate repeated excerpts from a dreadfully intense discussion between a doctor and his patient: ‘He doesn’t do anything, doesn’t say anything…. It’s just the way he looks at me…. That sound crazy?’ The narrative builds up slowly as a few more words of the deadly dialogue are released. Extended in this way, the pathos is bare, the narrative content becomes meaningless and the result is particularly moving.” –Katherine Elwes, Performance (July/August 1981)