This article investigates the transgressive elements in Huck Botko’s family-revenge videos, what he calls the ‘Dessertumentary’ series: Fruitcake (1996), Baked Alaska (1997), Cheesecake (1998) and Graham Cracker Cream Pie (1999). A particular focus will be the medial transgressions – the going beyond of media categories – in order to examine how these works straddle a fine line between video art, performance and modes of documentation. Although delighting in perversity and the juvenile, these works accentuate tensions in self and self-mediation, as well as in media categories. These media categories include not merely televisual expressions but, most apparently, food. Food and food preparation are considered aspects of self-expression, of meeting a bodily requirement – namely, the need to eat – through, at the very least, a craft if not an art. The disruptions to medial genres heighten the challenge to societal conventions associated with food. What Botko’s works explore, in a way that is both confessional and exhibitionist, is abjection and disruption, where he prepares food using unorthodox ingredients, including spit, roadkill, blood and semen, for consumption by unsuspecting family members. Though Huck Botko is currently known for directing mainstream films such as Bad Johnson (2014) and for writing Eli Roth’s The Last Exorcism (2010), his early works are only well known in marginal subcultures. The limited notoriety is perhaps owing to their auto-medial status, as they examine self-expression in a twisted and perverse way, establishing strange relations to selfhood, and disrupt clean categories. More precisely, it is the manner in which Botko produces these works that perhaps explains their obscurity. As such, this article seeks to transpose Julia Kristeva’s insights concerning the abject, especially with regard to selfhood, to media analysis. After discussing Kristeva, it will proceed to analyse Botko’s work by comparing and contrasting his dessertumentary methodology to concepts related to underground experimental transgressive cinema, video art, performance

中文翻译：

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与 Huck Botko 一起烹饪：落魄、自我和媒体类别

本文调查了 Huck Botko 家庭复仇视频中的违规元素，他称之为“甜点”系列：水果蛋糕（1996 年）、烤阿拉斯加（1997 年）、芝士蛋糕（1998 年）和格雷厄姆饼干奶油派（1999 年）。一个特别的焦点将是媒体的超越——超越媒体类别——以检查这些作品如何跨越视频艺术、表演和记录模式之间的细线。虽然这些作品以反常和少年为乐，但也强调了自我和自我调解以及媒体类别中的紧张关系。这些媒体类别不仅包括电视表达，而且最明显的是食物。食物和食物准备被认为是自我表达的方面，满足身体要求——即吃饭的需要——至少通过手艺，如果不是艺术。对媒体流派的破坏加剧了对与食物相关的社会习俗的挑战。Botko 的作品以一种既忏悔又暴露的方式探索的是堕落和破坏，在那里他使用非正统的成分准备食物，包括唾液、道路杀戮、血液和精液，供毫无戒心的家庭成员食用。尽管哈克·博特科目前以导演坏约翰逊（2014 年）等主流电影和撰写伊莱·罗斯的《最后的驱魔人》（2010 年）而闻名，但他的早期作品只在边缘亚文化中广为人知。有限的恶名可能是由于他们的自动媒体身份，因为他们以扭曲和反常的方式审视自我表达，与自我建立奇怪的关系，并破坏干净的类别。更确切地说，Botko 制作这些作品的方式或许可以解释它们的默默无闻。因此，本文试图将 Julia Kristeva 关于下贱者的见解，尤其是关于自我的见解，转化为媒体分析。在讨论完 Kristeva 之后，它将通过比较和对比他的甜食方法论与地下实验性海侵电影、录像艺术、表演相关的概念来分析 Botko 的作品