Jordan Biren in Person The banality of evil or the evil of banality: the two seem locked in a struggle for dominance. From within this struggle, gruesome deeds erupt, inspired less by criminal intent then by the nerve-wrenching hum of the humdrum. Cecelia Condit's Beneath the Skin (1981, 12:05 mins) is an unnerving story of a woman who discovers that her boyfriend had violently murdered his former girlfriend. Details like body parts accumulate as she pieces together the heinous truth. The narrator of this tabloid tale mixes incredulity and death-defying naiveté for a queasy brand of humor. Dale Hoyt's Over My Dead Body (1982, 16 mins) starts off with a bang: a suburban dad has massacred his family. We never see Pop, but come to know him through a collection of trite images that place him in a void of consumerism while the unstoppable Hoyt interviews unsuspecting suburbanites about the domestic disaster down the block. The death of self as the final expression of power haunts Julie Zando's dizzying Hey Bud (1987, 10:36 mins). Clips of Bud Dwyer, a government official who committed suicide during a televised conference, are juxtaposed with oblivious girls in prom dresses. Zando examines Bud's fatal act as an analogue for the grim results of female exhibitionism. Banality curdles the soul in Jordan Biren's Meaning (1991, 22 mins). This unflinching look at the psychopathology of everyday life finds the vapid and dull cause for outrageous acts. Trim shots of a tract home, breaking waves and tacky lamps surround monologues about self-loathing and dismemberment. Meaning suggests that only furious spasms can disturb the monotony of present-day culture. --Steve Seid