MAKE IT DANGEROUS

Canadian Film’s Punk Sensibility

ROB BENVIE

Mark L. Lester’s Class of 1984. am the future. So warns Peter, leader violence. Watching it now in all its in failure, whether out of naiveté, failed I of the nihilist punks controlling revved-up paranoia recalls a certain ambition, or sheer absurdity. The narra- Lincoln High School, the devastated, fervour of its time – the fear that such tive forms of punk cinema typically cul- graffiti-drenched site of the unhinged untameable scum might be society’s minate in tragedy or farce (or a hybrid Canadian film Class of 1984 (1982). future. It also prompts consideration of the two). As Greil Marcus notes in These slovenly, racist ne’er-do-wells of what might constitute a “punk sen- Lipstick Traces, his foray to contextual- sneer at authority, sling angel dust sibility” in cinema, and how such an ize punk within a broader avant-garde to sophomores, and mosh joyously to insurrectionary spirit (whether genuine tradition, “nihilism can find a voice in Teenage Head. After menacing their or posed) has been filtered through a art, but never satisfaction.” music teacher, Andrew Norris, into a distinctly Canadian perspective. The form’s easy signifiers have been murderous rage, they meet untimely Punk comprises many modes: a well-recognized since the seventies: ends via buzzsaw, via steering wheel, musical genre, a criterion, a stance. It’s hacked-up leather, overheated miscre- via skylight. Order once again prevails. regularly self-contradictory, frequently ants slamdancing to rudimentary rock, Shot in recognizable locations around self-negating, often quite stupid, and sloganeering of a smash-the-system bent. downtown Toronto, Class of 1984 pres- perpetually facing the pronouncement British punks donned bondage-lite garb ents as a statement on escalating teen of its own death. It’s a sensibility rooted to rattle conservative sensibilities, while

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Benvie.indd 37 4/11/2017 1:53:54 PM Goin’ Down the Road uses a documen- tary-like, rough-hewn aesthetic (the film actually began as a documentary project) to tell the story of a pair of down-and- out Maritimers travelling westward in pursuit of lucre and lager. Its bump- kin heroes, Pete and Joey, arrive in a scrappy Toronto brimming with proto-­ punk energy. Tragically out of step with the unyielding city in a transitional, post-sixties cultural climate, they prowl record shops and Yonge St. bars, cat- calling at women and bathing in booze. With their prospects dimming, they even- tually awaken to the futility of the cap- italist machine: “Everything keeps going around in the same circle,” Pete laments, “the same stupid thing over and over, and there ain’t nothing happening.” The linkage of work and identity, and a rejection of this ideal, foretelling punk- ish stances to come, also lies at the heart of Don Owen’s Nobody Waved Goodbye Goin’ Down the Road (d. Don Shebib, 1970). (1964), a coming-of-age story à la The America’s disaffected youth rejected disco eschatological cues and Wizard of Oz Graduate (though arriving three years glitz for hard-core skateboarder grubbi- riffs heavy with the blasé stance toward earlier). Its hero, Peter, is an obnoxious ness. Canadian incarnations, meanwhile, death that would define punk’s later yet charming Toronto kid daunted by have often adopted a vulgar, quasi-work- resurgence as nineties grunge (trench- a world of conformity and allegiance ing-class hoser persona fuelled by beer coats, cigarettes). Its baffled heroine, to “the almighty buck.” While his ges- and fuck-the-man disaffection. Bands Ramona, tracks the errant punk band tures of rebellion are tame – shoplift- like DOA, and later SNFU and No Means The Children of Paradise, the plot not ing, swiping his father’s car for a 401 No, reveled in unpretentious Canadiana so much unfolding as occurring – a joyride, mouthing off to his probation draped in flannel and toques. dream logic in tune with a certain breed officer – his worldview is prototypically Bruce McDonald’s Hard Core Logo of punk negation and its recusant punk (even if plinking his banjo on the (1996) champions this vibe as it follows stance; the band’s leader, breaking his TTC is about as rockin’ as Peter gets). its titular group through a dismal reunion vow of silence, asserts there is “nothing The punk sensibility is invested in rough tour, faithfully depicting the rock circuit’s left to say.” Yet in fleeting moments of determinations of justice, i.e., not “sell- beer-stained stages, bleak stretches of connection, Ramona tastes liberation. ing out,” rather than moral valuations. highway, and subzero post-show parking Following the film’s climactic carnage Resigned to a parking-lot-attendant job, lots. Centred on the shaky homosocial at the Apocalypse Club (subtlety, not a Peter’s tragedy is that he might become camaraderie of Joe Dick and Billy Tallent, thing here), she enjoys a vague awak- precisely what he fears most: a working aging rockers losing step with time, it ening buoyed by newfound fortitude. stiff like his parents. styles itself as a punk movie (anarchy Taking the stage, Ramona entreats her Two tales of beat-generation wastrels symbols, cameos from Joey Ramone and punkish audience, “Let me hear you say bummed out by society, A Cool Sound from Art Bergmann, lots of spitting), but little yeah.” And, as punks do, they say Yeah. Hell (1959, see p. 19) and Bitter Ash (1963), distinguishes these saps as anything but Filmed in Night of the Living Dead- navigated similar concerns. The affable failed careerists, absent of any ideological esque black and white, Roadkill takes Montreal artists and smalltime crooks energy. McDonald’s heroes have more in an ambivalent stance toward its Ontario of Allan Moyle’s The Rubber Gun (1977), common with the soft-metal burnouts landscape (“This land wasn’t made to while chiefly focused on maintaining their of The Decline of Western Civilization support human life,” Ramona muses) as drug habits, also take punkish delight in Part II: The Metal Years (1988) than the McDonald indulges in corny scenes of flouting cops and indulging in boho lei- punks encountered in the first volume of the downhome Canadiana kitsch firmly sure. Out of boredom and antipathy, they Penelope Spheeris’s landmark documen- enshrined in our enduring, self-installed cultivate new styles of behaviour in defi- tary series. narrative. Don Shebib’s Goin’ Down the ance of a humdrum establishment, their McDonald’s earlier Roadkill (1989) is Road (1970) serves as a progenitor of this hardscrabble existence fuelled by animus another highway movie, a mishmash of breed of dirtbag realism. Like Roadkill, similar to punk culture’s combustibility.

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Benvie.indd 38 4/11/2017 1:53:55 PM The possibility for renewal out of captures the performativity and inward be waged in the terrain of the symbolic or trauma is a defining common feature of questioning already evident in punk- the sheerly conceptual, Aila’s struggle for Canadian cinematic narrative. With ten- rock’s nascent period (by all accounts, redemption – rooted in historic atrocities sions rooted in a multifarious, elusive Toronto punks considered the NYC scene still resonating – transcends any such “national identity,” the rough matter of tame and already past its prime). Here we doomy absurdities. history – colonialism, class strife, the see hard-core kids driven both by ardent And yet taking critical inventory of church – can be sculpted into revamped, belief in their scene’s ideals and the disil- any counterculture ultimately proves a yet familiar, forms. Denys Arcand’s qua- lusionment already settling in. futile enterprise: once codified, it loses si-allegorical Jesus of Montreal (1989), Zero-budget production values and a its potency. The subculture itself splin- Robert Lepage’s The Confessional (1999), sense of tightknit community brighten ters and auto-extirpates before the inev- and the trippy works of Guy Maddin all the art films of G. B. Jones (also of itable descent of the suited opportun- employ these historiographical, metafic- landmark post-punks Fifth Column). ists. Mainstream depictions of punkers tional tendencies to ironic effect. The Yo-Yo Gang (1992) and The Lollipop quickly became a staple of eighties But to the punk sensibility, tradition is Generation (2008), shot on recognizable Hollywood fare – a scorn for delinquency the enemy. Rather than indulge in such locations using handheld cameras, befitting the end of Reagan-era con- nuanced subjectivity, the punk impulse is exemplify, on the other hand, a choppy, servatism. Canadian incarnations and to smash, to chide, to insult. Nostalgia is punkish celebration of sex, solidarity, connections inevitably emerged. While boring, self-aggrandization via hackneyed and community. shot in British Columbia, Ladies and sentiment to be held in contempt. Against Punk has always been integral to Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (dir. Lou these pressures, the punk appoints itself queer art in the way that it allows for Adler, 1982), starring a young Diane the future, a point of nullification so a the expression of outrage through Lane and with Sex Pistol Steve Jones new history can be forged. In doing so, the irreverence and defiant co-opting of and The Clash’s Paul Simonon playing punk draws its strength from community, forms. As a mode for expression for bit parts, is a decidedly American story or at least a shared program of definition. Canada’s minorities, however, punk of mainstream commercialism. The cult The punk sensibility should therefore not has a thorny history, having typically teen romp Rock ‘n Roll High School (dir. be mistaken for coarse nihilism; rather, been the province of wound-up white Allan Arkush, 1979) begat the abysmal it’s a measure of reclaiming and sharp- males. While punk’s factious tenor Rock ‘n Roll High School Forever (dir. ening identity: you are, for now, a punk shares kinship with those filmmakers Deborah Brock, 1990), a Corey Feldman among punks. whose work gives voice to the underrep- vehicle notable only for its substitution of Documentary projects like The Last resented, that sense of piss-take irrev- The Ramones in the original (Joey again!) Pogo (1978), Bloodied But Unbowed erence rarely intersects with films vying with Toronto’s The Pursuit of Happiness. (2006), or books like Treat Me Like Dirt for broader social revelation. Raunchy comedies appealing to over- (2009), have preserved the record of Jeff Barnaby’s Rhymes for Young heated adolescent tastes arrived in heaps Canadian punk-rock outfits like The Ghouls (2013) portrays the hard-fought in the eighties, with Canadian produc- Viletones, The Subhumans, Forgotten existence of a seventies-era Mi’ kmaq res- tions benefitting from tax breaks. The Rebels, and their ilk. But such efforts ervation, where hustlers peddle narcot- cartoonish Rebel High (dir. Harry Jakobs, also threaten to veer into nostalgia and ics in order to pay off Indian agents and 1987) works almost as a bizarro version of deification, as the countless documen- avoid being placed in residential schools. Class of 1984 (dir. Mark L. Lester, 1982), taries, summations, and retrospectives Amid a community dulled by drink and with its do-nothing juvenile-delinquent dull the genre’s history into just one of drugs, any joy squashed by white oppres- punks preying upon a sad-sack teaching many phases in a cultural continuum. sion, Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs’ young staff. Painfully unfunny, it’s now forgot- The DIY aesthetic propagates a sense Aila wields a spiky cunning. “This is what ten to all but hard-core fans of VHS com- of immediacy, of history witnessed as brings my people together,” she sneers, edy junk (but preserved on YouTube). it unfolds; nothing screams “authentic- “the art of forgetfulness.” Aila, seething More enduring in the national collective ity” like unwashed punks shot through with punkish derision, chooses action in memory is Porky’s (dir. Bob Clark, 1981), the cruddy lens of scratchy celluloid or the face of obliteration. Barnaby engages shapelessly raunchy and notable only cheap videotape. in postmodern perspectival interplay, for its long-held position as Canada’s top While this documentary feel self-con- merging traditional fables with man- box-office earner. These comedies strive sciously permeates narrative works like ga-ish animations and zombie-horror to offend, but offer little in the way of any Hard Core Logo, it can be better experi- tropes. The potential cutesiness of such punkish sneer; instead, they largely side enced in Peter Wronski’s Crash ‘n’ Burn, devices, however, is supplanted by the with the entitled establishment the punk an impressionistic take from the summer intensity of this community’s strug- sensibility works to resist. of 1977. Shot in Toronto and New York, gle. Rhymes for Young Ghouls thereby In Ivan Reitman’s Meatballs (1980), its footage of groups like The Diodes and demonstrates the limitations of a punk Bill Murray memorably stars as Tripper notable figures like Danny Fields and The sensibility when approaching actual Harrison, Camp North Star’s lazy-lidded Viletones’ Steven Leckie (a.k.a. Nazi Dog) injustice: while punk’s sedition tends to counsellor, who provides the majority

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Benvie.indd 39 4/11/2017 1:53:55 PM of the fi lm’s laffs. Any insurgency in against a domineering establishment, The sci-fi oddity Metal Messiah (1978) is Tripper’s slacker persona is of a tooth- its cheerful levity masking an inscru- loftier, ambition-wise, gloomy cold-war less, post-hippie variety. The real ten- table thematic core. Any plot summary imagery and lo-fi scuzziness bringing an sion here is among the kids within the would, frankly, only serve to bewilder. aura of menace to director Tibor Takács’ camp’s isolated microcosm shaped by Residential Montreal is the battleground story of a messianic rock fi gure in a post- values of sexual approval and jockish for a war between children enslaved into Bowie vein, though its sensibilities reside competition – one quivers in dread of manufacturing paintbrushes for a meg- more in the realm of cheap glam. the society these young conformists alomaniacal art teacher. Leading their These relics, embracing nothingness will form. But amid this mainstream, revolt is Michael, a mopey, prepubescent over hope, fl aunt a corrosive ferment disco-dancing herd, Chris Makepeace’s dreamer (reminiscent of Nobody Waved born in Cold War disillusionment. Zale Rudy Gerner stands out. Possessed of Goodbye’s Peter) who goes prematurely Dalen’s Terminal City Ricochet (1990) a sensitive, doe-eyed resignation, his bald after seeing a ghost, and … any- plows snarkily into this fi eld with a cast vibe portends the post-punk new-wave way, okay. For all its silly elements, the that includes the Dead Kennedys’ Jello style of years to come. Sweetly demure, fi lm demonstrates a grotesque comedic Biafra and DOA’s Joe Keithley. Its cri- and likely a Siouxsie Sioux fan, Rudy is sense aligned with the underdog, the tique of American culture incorporates surely doomed once summer ends. overlooked, the dismissed – and a glee- fevered juxtapositions of cable-TV pas- Teenage societies breed contempt, fully surreal, at times horrifi c, bent. tiche, post-Rodney King police brutality, both against the adult forces governing Schlocky horror and sci-fi have and fears over falling “space junk” – it’s them and within the ranks of their peers. always been integral components of the very late-twentieth century po-mo, and In Matt Johnson’s The Dirties (2013), punk ethos – think Stooges/Ramones/ gleefully dumb. It’s also very Canadian, suburban Toronto dorks plot revenge Cramps/Misfi ts – bringing to light unvar- with its villain, a power-mad American against their high school’s bullying foes. In nished corners of the pop culture spec- tycoon, taken down by Germain Houde another story of homosocial camaraderie, trum. Canadian horror productions like as a French hockey-jersey-wearing movie-obsessed Matt and Owen use their Black Christmas (dir. Bob Clark, 1974) revolutionary. As zingy as a two-chord art as a bid for self-preservation to reshape and Prom Night (dir. Paul Lynch, 1980) anthem, it wears thin stretched over and transcend their dismal reality. Like reaped box-offi ce success, but these ninety minutes. Rudy in Meatballs, acute sensitivity to the slasher fl icks come doused in estab- Bruce LaBruce’s The Raspberry injustice of their social milieu is both the lishment morality and mainstream teen Reich (2004) is a parody of/homage source of their anguish and their most titillation. Drenched in weirdness, Jack to Godardian didacticism, as well as a powerful asset. If punk narratives must Bravman’s Zombie Nightmare (1986) full-on queer fuckfest. As a comment culminate in farce or tragedy, The Dirties opens with Motörhead’s “Ace of Spades,” on the military-industrial complex, it’s undoubtedly demonstrates the latter; but and plods downward from there. Though both direct and oblique, co-opting Che the force of its protagonists’ revolt, however it aims for cheap punk thrills, its Z-movie Guevera and Baader-Meinhof imagery ill-conceived, is its own form of victory. production values, dreary Sainte-Anne- and sloganeering to rail against heter- The profoundly bizarre kids’ fi lm de-Bellevue setting, wooden cast (Adam onormativity and sexual commodifi ca- The Peanut Butter Solution (dir. Michael West! Tia Carrere!) and “voodoo” plot tion while indulging in goofy porno act- Rubbo, 1985) also stakes claims mechanisms are mostly just depressing. ing and campy setups. Sexual liberation

Rhymes for Young Ghouls (d. Jeff Barnaby, 2014).

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Benvie.indd 40 4/11/2017 1:53:56 PM enables defi ance against sterile moder- nity (“Heterosexuality is the opiate of the masses!”), with LaBruce adopting a stance of typical Canadian dubiety that draws upon Euro-Marxist philosophy to destabilize American culture, all with tongue in, uh, cheek. In this vein, the punk sensibility explicitly links bodily freedom with intel- lectual liberation, both ironically and in earnest; when the punks of Class of 1984 declare “life is pain, pain is every- thing,” they delineate a stark boundary, a declaration of a leather-studded stunde null. The young radicals of Mathieu Denis and Simon Lavoie’s recent Ceux qui font les révolutions à moitié n’ont fait que se creuser un tombeau (Those Who Bruce LaBruce’s The Raspberry Reich (2004). Make Revolution Halfway Only Dig Their through the collective will, as one char- via video messages, hallucinated and/ Own Graves) (2016) take this belief to acter attests, “we will never die.” or real, suffusing everything in a desta- its most impassioned extreme. With the Transcendence, from both society bilized anxiety – much like the spastic 2012 Quebec student protests as back- and self, is also at the twitchy heart rhythms Terminal City Ricochet apes and drop, these self-styled revolutionaries of David Cronenberg’s Videodrome mocks. Cronenberg’s vision of a frenetic, traverse their world like ghosts, with (1983). With Toronto at its most des- blood-crazed American media is a quint- contemporary Montreal, populated by olate standing-in for generic urban essentially Canadian critique, equally restauranting bourgeoisie and sniffl ing North America, Cronenberg offers, outraged and amused at such insanity. bureaucrats, presented as a twilight depending on your perspective, either Recruited as a terrorist in world of traffi c and commerce. a prescient take on cynical media Videodrome’s service, Max slips further Railing against enemies both manipulations or a dated piece of into this miasma by becoming “the video imprecise (neoliberalism) and explicit schlock cinema. Qualitative evalua- word made fl esh,” just as the revolu- (the Charest administration, their tions aside, Videodrome undoubtedly tionaries in Ceux qui font les révolutions baby-boomer-generation parents), these distills the punk sensibility: insur- aspire to become embodiments of their heroes are strident in their demands, rection, irreverence, and nihilism revolutionary ideals. For Cronenberg, but their passion is justifi ed by the encrusted with a fair amount of absur- the body is where political action is enormity of their foe. Onscreen text dity (and the icy sexuality of new-wave made manifest, but is also rendered and monologues implicate the viewer empress Debbie Harry). futile, just as the punk predilection for directly in this struggle via unmediated Rubbed numb with overstimulation, bondage garb links the intimate space communiqués that demand a taking of James Woods’ TV producer Max Renn of the (fashion-formatted) body with the sides. Ceux qui font is, arguably, less a (modelled on TV mogul Moses Znaimer) societal sphere. Similarly, the physical call for any specifi c political action as it seeks out “tough” new material – osten- expression of the punk-rock moshpit is a portrayal of youthful fury in which sibly to titillate the fl eeting attentions of fuses abrasion with pleasure, agony with idealism is honoured, not impugned. his stations’ viewers, though he’s clearly fun. As the boneheads in Class of 1984 This revolution aims for a rupture of a man on his own quest. The punk’s is a insist, “life is pain, pain is everything.” history, a catastrophic reset that super- restless soul, wrenched tight not just by Ultimately, Max sheds his bodily form sedes the individual: “Yesterday doesn’t alienation from external society but from in his mission of “total transformation,” exist,” one character pronounces, a pained awareness of its inner alienation. and the transcendence achieved only “Tomorrow is a distant dream. Today, Its makers might be capitalist swine through death. Here is the punk sensi- we are born!” In the struggle against serving the military-industrial complex, bility taken to its zenith, in equal mea- illegitimate authority, she continues, it yet the ambiguous entertainment entity sures tragedy and farce. The poignant is “incumbent upon us to dethrone our “Videodrome” offers the salve of release, nature of such futility is, perhaps, why fathers.” To these revolutionaries, who not only sexual but psychological: “It punk is perennially deemed a dead would most likely deem the very prem- has something you don’t have,” Max is enterprise, yet its fi lmic representations ise of “punk” deplorable, nostalgia is a told, “It has a philosophy. And that is persist, albeit in ever-shifting permuta- transgression worthy of punishment. what makes it dangerous.” Information tions – the punk ideal forever remains While the punk wallows in its own grime, and knowable reality is imparted to the ferocious, joyfully unruly, and ulti- the revolution offers transcendence; neophytes of Videodrome’s “philosophy” mately meaningless.

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