Each of the three vignettes included in the Elizabeth Taylor Project is created by editing scenes and dialogue from two major films starring Elizabeth Taylor; Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and BUtterfield 8, Giant and Cleopatra, and, National Velvet and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe. By doing so, I have created a new female soliloquy that, interiorized, becomes a dialogue between protagonist and antagonist. This combination of two female stereotypes—the long-suffering wife and the slut—in the original films is derived from conversations that take place with costars. Here, Taylor speaks from a contemporary female’s context, candid about her desires and feelings as opposed to using the veiled language of the films’ original female characters, who allude to rather than directly communicate concerns to husband and lover. 

In Tin Cat In A Butter Field, Taylor tries on perfume; examines her torn dress, evidence of a transgression from the night before; scrawls messages in red lipstick; grinds a stiletto heel into a man's shoe; and brushes her teeth with scotch while the narrative voice contemplates self-doubt and frustration. In Giant Cleopatra, Taylor wanders her domestic space, destroying her vanity, clothes and bedding, rejecting love in favor of the pursuit of self-control and autonomy. In the end, the presence of a child questions the viability of making decisions motivated by love.  In Who’s Afraid of Velvet?, the heroine repeatedly applies lipstick and fixes her hair – the endless, reiterative gestures of “fixing” oneself. One male voice recalls a past that which she’s determined to race away from.

Symbolic plot points stand in contradiction to and visual disconnection from text, image, and metaphor. Each video`` form holds the deconstruction of two whole narratives, and allows a re-envisioning of a single one that champions a female anti-hero made complex through self-doubt. However, the image of female self-questioning is abstracted by the contrast and disconnection of thought to action.   

Taylor, a woman who in real life dramatically reexamined her identity with each new marriage, serves as vehicle for making a statement about contemporary female self-examination, identity, and domesticity. Low self-esteem and questionable ideals define and explore gender and class for this anti-hero. Revisiting stereotyped images of women here, this southern gothic tale spins a contemporary hero, one conscious of private transgressions and the need to self-interrogate.