The Lollipop Girls Struggle on the Hard Earth

Full of longing for a return to the safety, the ease, the pretends of childhood, The Lollipop Girls Struggle on the Hard Earth reminds us that Fantasy organizes our experience of everyday reality and tells us who we are.

A woman finds herself, by choice, in a perfected world, reminiscent of classic childhood literature and ready-to-wear film. Satisfactions abound. But the rules of Desire apply.

Equating personal longing and its rich satisfaction with effective advertising, The Lollipop Girls Struggle on the Hard Earth is about the memory of the missing thing (Desire). Whether the singsong of a storybook or commercial seduction, what Fantasy holds behind the veil is subject in abstentum.

And the key. For, as an adult, a return to childhood splendor is by way of taking responsibility for our pretends. Creating beauty is an expression of love. It is elegance in the face of mortality.

Denise Prince

Denise Prince (Texas) was educated in film, fine art and critical theory at CalArts in Los Angeles, California. In the early 1990s, she installed a coin-operated film booth into public spaces in LA and she programmed short 8mm independent films into it. Prince co-wrote and co-produced a feature film produced by Cary Woods, a leading figure of the independent film movement of the 1990’s (Gummo, Swingers, Beautiful Girls) that screened at Anthology Film Archive in New York in 1999.

Her experimental art films have shown in art galleries and festivals in Italy, Turkey, Bangladesh, Spain, and the United States.

Her work is in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, has been featured on PBS Television, and at the International Zizek Studies Conference.