Content warning: This article contains mentions of disturbing imagery and discusses topics of sexual assault.
The obscure 1983 horror-musical short Possibly In Michigan feels as if Lana Del Rey’s 2011 homemade music videos, The Love Witch, and I Saw the TV Glow had a baby. Created by Cecelia Condit, the film follows two young women, Sharon and Janice, through a shopping mall, blissfully unaware that a cannibal named Arthur has made them a target. The short’s tone has a profoundly unsettling energy rooted in every woman’s worst fear: being stalked and murdered. And it’s not entirely fiction, either.
Accompanied by Karen Skladany’s eerie song “Animal Cannibal,” who also plays Janice in the film, the two protagonists speak in mismatched tones that go against natural conversation cadence. The world of Sharon, Janice, and Authur seems adjacent to reality, almost as if recorded in a dream. Almost sporadically, we’re shown glimpses of seemingly unrelated images that turn gradually darker throughout the film. Between the uncanny communication, fuzzy 80s camcorder-quality footage, and Arthur’s disturbing agape mask, Possibly In Michigan puts the viewer in a vulnerable, blue-tinted trance, paving the way for the horrors to come.
Condit’s films have famously showcased the dark side of female subjectivity for the past 45 years. Her biography states that her work “puts a subversive spin on the traditional mythology of women in film and the psychology of sexuality and violence.“
Possibly In Michigan is no different. The short opens with a narration: “Sharon attracted violent men. Strangely, she had a way of making the violence seem like it was their idea. Her friend, Janice, was cut from the same mold; they even liked the same perfume. Arthur, who had been following them closely, was similarly disposed. The three of them had two things in common: violence and perfume.”
Cue the viral TikTok sound about Janice’s mother’s crazy sister, Kate, who put a poodle in the microwave oven to dry it.
Following this exchange, Sharon asks why she only attracts awful men and explains that she once kissed a man known for “eating his women friends.” Janice notices that Arthur is still stalking Sharon, and the two decide to leave the mall together.
Amidst the eerie lyricism, the film cuts to a shot of Sharon lying down, turning into a corpse. Immediately after, we see her beautifully surrounded by vibrant flowers. The back-to-back cuts show the relationship between death and beauty, the grotesque and the elegant, violence and perfume.
Once the women return to their neighborhood, they enter their respective houses, and the viewer sees Arthur on the lawn. Arthur rotates between different masks — a bunny, a bear, a donkey, a pig. The narrator explains, “Arthur longed for that sexual scent that smelled like home. He has used so many masks to disguise himself that he had forgotten who he was — who he’d known. He imagined himself a frog transformed into a Prince Charming. He felt the moment he kissed her, he would become the man she would want him to be.”
In addition to showing Arthur’s desperate attempt to eat Sharon, the masks represent different men and their innate ties to the violent consumption of women.
When Sharon notices Arthur is outside, she calls Janice for help, but Arthur has already broken in, his dire need leading him to enter her space without consent. He open-mouth kisses her before informing her that she has two choices: “One, I will eat you now. Or two, I will cut your arms and legs off one by one and eat them slowly.”
Sharon sings a collection of dissonant “whys?” to which Arthur replies, “For love.” Sharon follows with a humorous, “But love shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg,” and asks Arthur if he loves her. “You smell so good, the sweetest flower of all,” he says — emphasizing evil’s attraction to the innocent and pure. He then reveals that she will be his seventh victim.
Before he can follow through with his plan, Janice emerges with a gun and shoots Arthur, who goes from being bare-faced to wearing a large wolf mask. Sharon and Janice proceed to dismember Arthur’s lifeless body and turn him into a stew. They pair his remains with a nice glass of red — blood, that is — and smoke entirely naked by the window as if they had just made love to each other. This seemingly horrid act seems to have spiritually connected the two, once again showing the relationship between sex and violence, solidified by the cut of a mirror showing one of the women smoking in a panda mask not too dissimilar to the ones Arthur wore.
Or perhaps they were just washing Arthur’s blood from their clothes. Regardless, the film ends with Sharon spitting into the trash bags containing Arthur’s leftovers and waiting for the garbage truck to whisk away any evidence of his existence.
The brilliant feminist-coded concept behind Possibly In Michigan didn’t appear out of thin air. Condit dated convicted murderer Ira Einhorn, also known as “The Unicorn Killer,” a name derived from “Einhorn,” which means “unicorn” in German. She explains this in a short she created two years prior to Possibly In Michigan, Beneath The Skin. Einhorn was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Holly Maddux, who went missing in 1977.
It’s suspected that when Sharon says she once kissed a man who ate his women friends, Condit was referring to her experience with Einhorn.
Possibly In Michigan is reminiscent of Ethel Cain’s “Strangers,” which tells the story of Ethel Cain, a character created by Hayden Silas Anhedönia, falling victim to her boyfriend’s cannibalism. Similar to Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, these pieces dissect how women are relentlessly and selfishly pursued at the cost of their humanization. They’re objectified, sought after, and consumed — be it waking up alone on a football field or stored in a man’s freezer — if you know, you know.
Condit’s older films were light-years ahead of their time. Possibly In Michigan is so beautifully shot that, despite being released in 1983, it almost resembles a modern-day film trying to replicate an ’80s film. It offers abuse survivors — or any woman who has ever felt consumed and discarded — a chance to witness justice obtained through the same flavor of violence. This violence is hidden behind soft displays of feminine visuals like flowers and perfume, perfectly encapsulating the duality between purity and sin in Condit’s artistry.