On the Decline of Western Civilization (the 1980 movie. not the ongoing story. mostly.)

I watched the Decline of Western Civilization, Penelope Spheeris's classic 1980 L.A. punk documentary, last week. It is, as reputed, great. Want a current-events hook, beyond the title? It’s a movie that — between songs — sympathetically shows you poor-to-struggling white people, few of them very articulate, explaining their world in sometimes-racist, sometimes-violent, us-vs-them terms. Just like so many NPR/ Times election features in 2016! Like those features, “Decline”’s release was followed soon by the ascent to the presidency of a lying far-right ignoramus with a mean sense of humor.

Notes specific to the movie:

* X, as I expected, were far and away the musical highlight. Even without Ray Manzarek of the Doors producing and playing organ like he soon would on their classic debut Los Angeles, they were a genuinely sharp and energetic band that played their instruments well, had snotty/ clever/ searching lyrics, and blended the voices of two incompetent singers into bizarrely attractive harmonies.

What I hadn’t realized was
how — in the flip side of the usual male-band-female-singer setup — they consisted of three conventionally handsome men and a chunky, odd-looking woman (who dated the bassist). I love that: rarely, even now, do you see so blatant a case of “They chose her because she’s a smart and interesting and talented person and they like having her around”.

I also hadn’t realized that John Doe considered the lyrics of “Johnny Hit and Run Pauline” to be a male fantasy, as well as something terrifying. Luckily, authorial intent isn’t magic.

* My friend Keo was taken aback by the big “88” spray-painted, along with other designs, on the wall of X’s apartment: we were really hoping that’s not the “88 = HH = Heil Hitler” use of the code, because oy vey. It wasn’t a silly concern as such: a few swastikas and such do appear during the movie. She later realized X were almost certainly honoring Club 88, the L.A. punk club, whose name I’d missed during viewing.

* Keo, who’s only thirty years old, also wondered at John Doe’s “FTW” tattoo — she yelled “For the Win!”, but in a way that suggested she knew that couldn’t be it. I explained “Fuck the World”, and how extremely confusing I found the modern FTW the first few times I saw it used in jubilation.

* Our second-favorite band here was Fear. This surprised me: all I knew about them was that they were nasty disgusting queer-baiters who lived to provoke fights, which, well, yeah. What I hadn’t expected was (1) their genuine musical skill, in a basic rock’n’roll / blues way, and (2), more importantly, the clever and obvious clownishness of their act. Lee Ving blatantly put-on the part of NYC working-class asshole just to see who was thin-skinned enough to throw punches. I mean he dared people to come up and try to hit him, this wasn't subtle; and it was clearly designed to bait people who couldn't handle being *called* queer, as opposed to people who knew they were. It was so far over the top, in that environment, that it had as much right to feel subversive/ progressive as reactionary.

But really it was neither. They had charisma, and sometimes it’s fun to sing along to “I Don’t Care About You”, directed at every other human being on the planet, even if, on some level, you know you’re lying.

* I still have no idea why people like Black Flag: I hear godawful noise and dumb, ineptly-sung lyrics. But if I’d been forced to blindly guess which young interviewee in the movie would later become famous as a label head who stiffed and cheated his acts, I’d’ve picked out Greg Ginn by the third time he spoke.

* The most articulate, funny, self-aware interviewee in the film is either Nicole Panter, manager of the Germs, a wise and motherly sort who triumphantly quits her “four screaming 3-year-olds” midway through filming. Or Claude “Kickboy Face” Bessy, zine journalist and Catholic Discipline singer, who I think, had he not died of a stroke first, would be one of the only people in France delighted at Donald Trump’s election, because you can be funny and self-aware and still mostly hate everyone.