Synopsis
See it in a theater.... where you can't get hurt.
The Los Angeles punk music scene circa 1980 is the focus of this film. With Alice Bag Band, Black Flag, Catholic Discipline, Circle Jerks, Fear, Germs, and X.
The Decline of Western Civilization
1981 Directed by Penelope Spheeris
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Pretty much anyone who was ever into punk rock has some boring story about how it affected them personally. Here's mine (nobody has to read this, but this movie welled up a bunch of old memories and feelings so I feel compelled to exorcise them here):
Last time I saw this movie I was 14 or 15-years-old, sitting on a musty couch with Mary Blackwell in the basement of her aunt and uncles' house in Candler Park. Mary was a senior in high school, and I was a freshman. We met because in some morning period class she would graffiti her desk, and later in the day when the room was used for a completely different class, I would come… -
here's my punk story: in high school there was a cool crowd of punk dudes who said i was a poser bitch for claiming i was punk when i wasn't. but i never said i was punk. for whatever reason they really hated me. so to get back at them i wrote a poem about how their rich parents bought all their expensive equipment and got them gigs and sent it anonymously to the literary magazine. everybody knew it was me, though.
eventually i got into the late 80's/early 90's california stuff. when i was 16 i went to a guttermouth show and the then-30ish year old singer hit on me relentlessly and pretty soon after that i started listening… -
takes the incoherent and aimless feelings of rage that powered this scene and these performers and turns them into a very sad and sweaty concert film that focuses on the physical expression of them in movement, sound and violence.
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There's a slender thread here, and some would probably say in the DNA of punk itself, of creepy shit like white supremacy, homophobia, and genuinely antisocial and violent behavior (as opposed to the cool kind) that to the movie's credit isn't brushed under the rug but isn't quite the subject of serious exploration either. Contrast that with the often straight-ahead mockery of Part II and you have quite a study in how subtle differences in presentation can make a huge difference in material. It's also a study in how much shittier music apparently got in less than ten years.
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I'm not a fan of the Punk genre. It's not that I hate it as I love pretty much everything that has to do with rock, and there are many Punk bands that I enjoy listening to, many of them more modern and leaning more towards Punk Rock and Pop such as Sum 41, AFI, Anti-Flag, Rise Against and, of course, Blink 182.
Although I am familiar with many of the classic bands that left their mark beyond the Punk scene, breaking into the mainstream, I am not as knowledgeable about the much obscure bands. I know X's publicist so I knew of their existence, just like I knew about Black Flag, but the majority of the band and everything…
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Lightning in a bottle. A who’s-who of the L.A. punk scene, with Fear, X, Circle Jerks, Germs, Black Flag and others performing and talking shit. Spheeris asks great, direct questions behind the camera and allows the audience to cast whatever judgment they like over what gets said. Sometimes what gets said is funny and illuminating, and sometimes what gets said is revolting beyond belief. Closing set by Fear is the biggest highlight among many.
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X is not my favorite band in this movie, but they are the only people I would be able to tolerate hanging out with for more than 10 minutes.
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Cinematic Time Capsule
1981 Marathon - Film #77”If they’re bashing each other and enjoying it, well that’s up to them.”
A wonderfully gritty snapshot of the early LA punk scene in all it’s raw beautiful ugliness.
”They’re really nice kids...
They just have to be doing something different.” -
I sure hope that things
Get a whole lot better
All I know is that
They fucking better!
- Black FlagThat pretty much sums it up.
A time in the world when only a hungrier, faster new brand of Punk Rock would do. Only these craziest and loudest of kids could drive their agenda. And they really didn't give a fuck.
1980 was an epic time for music. Loud, gritty and genuine guitar violence directed at a fanbase that just wanted to pogo and forget the pain of the diabolical world in which they existed.
We're desperate
Get used to it!
- X -
stories of nazis getting their ass beat out of the scene get retold like old war stories in service of glorifying punk rock as this bastion of leftism, and that may be the case now, but it also seems a naive romanticization of the reality. watching this doc, i don't see much coherent thought--let alone coherent leftism--as i do a lot of angry and aimless youth with a fetish for the rebel aesthetic. fantastic documentary, as sad as it is eye opening. i love punk and i love that this was made with such irreverence, even while the scene was at its peak.
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