American Hardcore: Disappointing
I finally made it out last night to see the documentary, “American Hardcore”, which I have written about extensively. As I’ve written in previous posts, the music was immediate, aggressive almost to a fault, and the basis of my political consciousness. I was very excoted to see the movie.
Perhaps I got my expectations up too high, which is easy enough when you hold something near and dear to your heart. But the fact is, “American Hardcore” was a flawed movie, deeply so.
One of the weakest points of the movie was that there was no deep context provided. Some documentaries, like Harlan County USA, don’t need a narrator. Others, like High Lonesome, do much better with someone telling the story (and if you haven’t seen High Lonesome, Mac Wiseman is a gem of a narrator). American Hardcore clearly falls into the latter category, and that no narrator exists, indeed the interviewer is invisible, is to the detriment of the flick. The result is a bunch of seemingly random people making definitive statements about something that happened 20 years ago, with no challenge, no criticism, and no… well, no binding narrative. The movie seemed to be directed at people who already knew about hardcore: had my girlfriend been able to make it, I don’t think she would have left the movie with a deeper understanding than when she went in. hell, that was my scene grwoing up, and I didn’t learn anything either. It was like catching up with my friends from high school, digging through an old scrapbook.
When Vic Bondi claims that ““If you’re looking for radicalism in the 1980s, you should look at hardcore,” it’s left at that. Sure, the movie points out that nobody liked Reagan, but it’s simply assumed that everyone already knows that. The radicalism we all felt under the Reagan administration is assumed: it just doesn’t seem to be placed ina wider narrative.
Another weakness of the movie is that the Dead Kennedys are totally absent from the flick. These are the guys that were prosecuted by the Reagan justice department for obscenity, a purely political move intended to squash dissent, and there’s not even a mention of the band?
Steven Wells, writing in the Philadelphia Weekly, throughout the movie you find yourself asking: Was it really this boring? Where are the queer kids? Where are the women? Oh, they appear all right. In passing. And that’s American Hardcore’s greatest flaw—it too accurately mirrors its subject matter. It’s overwhelmingly male, tediously straight and numbingly generic.
Well no, not exactly. If the 1980s hardcore scene comes off as “boring”, it’s because of shallow analysis on the part of the filmmakers. There are definitely women missing in Rachman’s vision. Would it have been too much to go beyond the performers and talk to the [now grown-up] kids who used to go the the shows? I can think of dozens of ordinary punk rock girls and boys who are to this day informed by the hardcore they grew up on, friends like Jess Pratt, Tim Kelly, Trina Cooper, Kelly Bray, Chrissy Cherms, Matt Paddock, Justine Demetrick, Jody Vigniau, Craig Ferris, Paul Sheehan, Marissa Mongillo, both Heather Souzas. Where were these rank-and-file punk kids in the movie?
I have a small quibble with Wells regarding the “queer kids”. I can’t speak for anyone from other scenes, but in the 1980s, I didn’t know anyone my age who was gay and out. Things were very different then: as Dave Dictor says, he was the weirdest guy around because he was openly gay. In contrast, when I was on tour with UncleFucker in 2003, many 16 year old kids we met were not only out, their sexuality was accepted by their peers and parents. So I understand why the queer kids don’t make an appearance in the movie: the closet was a lot bigger then.
One big question I had, through out the flick, was “what happened next?” It was great to see HR from the Bad Brains as a middle-aged man, with his greying beard. There was a time when I doubted HR would even be alive today: at some point in the 1990s, his life went off the rails, replete with rumors of hard drug addiction and crime. Is he better now? Did he get help? Is he more settled now? You never find out.
Same with Keith Morris from the Circle Jerks: what happened next? What is he doing now? How did he get to where he is now? Again, unanswered.
SPOILER ALERT
Perhaps most frustrating is the end of the movie, which amounts to the statement “By 1986 everything went downhill and it was all over.” End of story, that’s a cut, see you around? That is factually untrue. There were still a few more years to go for the more thuggish strains as labels like Caroline sensing money to be made relentless promoted mindless bands like Raw Deal, SOD, and MOD. You simply cannot say that hardcore was done by 1986, when bands like Swiz, Scream, Fugazi, Embrace, and tons of others were making innovative and exciting albums in DC. The scene changed, and some people moved on, lothers moved in different directions entirely, and others continued to innovate in the genre.
This is probably part one of a longer series of posts. By all means, go see “American Hardcore.” If you grew up in the scene, the footage alone is worth a million bucks (but why the hell are all the songs cut short?), as scenes like SSD’s reunion and the Bad Brains talking about their recording sessions. But if you bring someone who has no idea what hardcore is about, be prepared to answer a lot of questions, because the film doesn’t do justice to hardcore. Think of it as a brief travelogue: by trying to cover too much territory, the movie sacrifices depth, analysis and a cohesive storyline.
I give it a B-, C+.
2 Responses to “American Hardcore: Disappointing”
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November 13th, 2006 at 3:42 am
The more I think about the comment you related to me about it from the audience member you overheard after the film: “It’s like the Cliff’s Notes of hardcore…” the more I realize how apt that was. It’s hard to encapsulate a six-year phase of such a massive movement and not end up missing some pieces. The timeframe just doesn’t allow for it. What was it, two hours, if that?
More Seven Seconds, more Scream… shit, it’s impossible to list all the bands that were left out who were no doubt important to whatever particular region one happened to live in. It raised so many questions by trying to cover so much and limiting the depth of much of it. Like I mentioned, it probably would be better served if they had pitched it as a doc series to HBO. Every question mark (i.e. Vic Bondi’s radicalism comment that you cite) could be a documentary all its own.
Oh, and I said this earlier to you, but get the fucking Beastie Boys OUT OF THERE! They had nothing to do with hardcore, aside from being fans who brought Murphy’s Law on tour with them in 1988 and influencing a bunch of the late 80s big-sneaker idiot hardcore bands (like Bold) to trade in their Chuck Taylors for Addidas and gold chains. If they couldn’t get a comment out of Mike D or the rest of them, why bother name-dropping them? Is that an attempt at context?
I liked the film, but I would like to get an outsider’s perspective on it and see if they are even able to understand what all the hubbub was about. I probably didn’t notice the blanks because I know alot of this stuff already; shit, I remember when Out of Step was a new album — there are kids who do radio now at WMBR who like Minor Threat, but they weren’t even born when that record came out! It’s mind-blowing. Actually, I did get an “outsider’s” perspective, because I went to the film with my friend Kerri, who happened to like it and said it filled in a lot of blanks for her. She never got into hardcore, but she is a musician who likes some punk in addition to indie, folk, rock, and other genres, so that might be why it worked for her. She particularly got a kick out of the part where Ian MacKaye highlights the DIY ethic by describing how they taught themselves how to put record sleeves together. Earlier that week, she and her bandmates had hand-packaged a bunch of sleeves for their CD.
I could go on an on listing all the areas that could have/should have been covered, so I’ll just mention the first thing that came to mind when Kerri and I were talking about it afterwards. I think there should have been more discussion of the whole importance of networking between bands and how it spurned the growth of the scene throughout the country. Keith Morris’s “spilled water” analogy was apt, but the correspondence that went on between touring bands was absolutely vital. I remember going over to the Jones house after school and the staggering amount of records that Chris (Verbal Assault) and (probably to a lesser degree) Jon (Positive Outlook, Step Forward, etc.) had were largely sent by mail. There was no email, let alone myspace. People wrote to each other to set up shows. The cross pollination that resulted cannot be understated (Newport>Providence, Fall River>Boston, Boston>NYC, Boston>RI, RI>DC, RI>NYC, the list goes on.).
Fanzines were also largely overlooked by the doc, which was a shame. I used to pick up copies of Maximum RnR or Suburban Voice and send away for records just based on the reviews or what the cover art looked like. The thank you lists on the backs of records were also crucial. I mean, if you had a Jerry’s Kids album and you saw that they thanked SSD, The Outpatients, and Gang Green, but had never heard those bands, you’d take a stab anyway at Doo Wop (the lamented Newport record store, for those readers unfamiliar with the resources Brendan and I had) and nine times out of ten not be disappointed.
Still, see the film. I want my dad to see it, because all he seemed to notice was the superficial negativity of hardcore (although he DID actually like 7 Seconds and some Minor Threat songs…).
When are we going to start trading drafts on the Newport stories, Brendo?
November 13th, 2006 at 10:40 pm
Here’s another p.o.v. from the fine fanzine Your Flesh.