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‘Don’t Gag Me!’ Explores New
Territory
By Andy Turpin
 How much cinema ground can one short film break in 9
minutes, 23 seconds? A lot, if you’re Armenian.
“Don’t Gag Me” (2007), Hear Me Roar Pictures’ new short from
director Jeff Cohen and Armenian-American actress/scribe
Carolena Sabah, is a spoofy, tantalizing and cheesy little
gem just quick enough to be a slap and tickle on your office
coffee break.
It concerns an over-anxious man on a long overdue visit to
the dentist for a teeth cleaning. His genial hygienist is
none other Sabah, who puts his nerves at ease, and then
transforms in his psychedelic pipe dream into “Angela the
Dental Dominatrix.”
To say any more would spoil “Gag’s” runtime, but winks, nods
and whips are all cracked in the direction of homage to
2002’s “Secretary,” William Shatner’s 1961 Twilight Zone
episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” and Jack Nicholson and
Bill Murray’s characters in “Little Shop of Horrors.”
What makes “Gag” stand out culturally in Armenian short film
circles, however, is that it represents perhaps a first in
unabashed “pink filmmaking.”
The concept of the pink film originated in post-war Japan,
where cultural morays and public morals laws made cinematic
pornography almost a nonentity.
Therefore, filmmakers found innovative ways in their movies
and scripts to construct storylines that were sexually
charged and erotic, but which often used humor, parody,
subversive political statements and other devices to deliver
a quality film that aroused and tittered the viewer without
actually showing any skin or full nudity.
Pink films had no basis for development in the U.S. or
European countries for the most part after 1964 because
conventions were breached and films like 1967’s “Belle De
Jour” and 1979’s “Caligula” emerged. Pink film can only
exist within nations and societies that exercise overarching
degrees of sexual repression.
Armenian-Canadian director Atom Egoyan’s films, “Calendar”
(1993) and “Exotica” (1994) explore issues of sexually
charged power dynamics regarding Armenian sensuality, but do
so in a serious and dramatic context without the brevity and
light-hearted subversiveness that engender true pink
filmmaking.
So don’t discriminate against Sabah when it comes to “Don’t
Gag Me” and mistake it for being in the same category as
Kardashian glam schlock. After all, every Armenian woman
deserves her 9 minutes 23 seconds of fame—even when she’s
wearing knee-high leather boots.
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