Hexploitation

In 1962, the film „Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" was released in theaters. The psychological horror thriller about two aging female movie stars became a surprising success and founded a whole new film genre: the so-called psycho biddy or hagsploitation film. The film diva steps in front of the mirror in a studied pose, she sees her aged face as a distorted image of herself and breaks out into a horror-inducing scream over it. An image that has become iconic.

This year, the members of She She Pop will all be around 50. And so in „Hexploitation" they deal with the fear of the ‚hag', the old woman and the witch. For this, of course, the performers use their aging bodies. With them they fight against the disappearance and the loss of meaning that women beyond childbearing age suffer as social subjects. To this day, the label 'witch' is used to discipline women or to demean them socially. The witch, the anarchic, heretical woman, represents unproductive sexuality and generally deviant behavior in relation to power structures and authority.

In „Hexploitation", She She Pop place themselves and their audience in a stage space, set up as a darkly kitschy film set from which there is no escape. The live camera serves them as a magnifying mirror and intimate investigative instrument. With its help, She She Pop explore their own disturbing flaws and obsessions, they trace taboos and examine traditional representations of witches. In the process, they also discover the camera as a magic box through which their own bodies can be transcended to create ever new liberating self-images with melodramatic disgust and comic delight: „Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up!" (Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, 1950)