We were desperate

The Decline of Western Civilization

(1981)

This documentary about the early LA punk scene has been a White Whale for me, a Holy Grail--I've been wanting to see the film since a friend who wasn't isolated, as I was, in West Virginia saw it and sent me a cassette dub of the soundtrack. It had a VHS life, I guess, but I never came across it in that format, and its DVD existence has been sketchy at best. Thus, uncharacteristically, I'm linking the title not to the Rotten Tomatoes page (which inexplicably dates the film 1988) but to the Amazon streaming video link (seems not to be available in any format from Netflix, but you can now [finally] buy it on DVD or BluRay, though only packaged with its two sequels). I finally got hold of it when TCM showed it in the middle of the night, and I noticed in time to DVR it.

Long, birthday-related story why I came to be watching it with my friend Laura B, but I was fairly certain that she wouldn't have seen it and absolutely certain that she'd want to. I was correct only in the second assumption, as she had a much more immediate relationship with the music than I and also wasn't isolated in West Virginia. So let's do another of those email dialogue posts:

LB--I was worried that after so much time this documentary wouldn't stand up. I think I find it MORE compelling now. In addition I wanted to know what happened to the people (other than the ones we know have died. Darby [Crash, enthusiastically self-destructive frontman of Germs],  didn't live much past postproduction). What happened to the movement?  Are they all capitalists now?

CB--The where (and who)-are-they-now? question is irresistible, of course, but for present purposes I'm more interested in the personal grip punk and this film (for you as a film, for me as a cassette dub of the soundtrack) had on us in 1981. I was an age-inappropriate 27 when I put away the Manilow and Newton-John of my married life and embraced Jonathan Richman and X and Ian Dury, but you were of the punk age cohort--but living in what I've always imagined was a fairly quiet, fairly protected community. Correct my misconceptions, and tell me why you listened to punk and got all those tattoos and piercings as a kid.

LB--Yes, yes, it was a difficult time for sure. I was really angry. Angry at my broken family (divorces, drugs, domestic violence, neglect, emotional abuse). Angry about living in a trailer in a biker neighborhood on the outskirts of Phoenix. Angry knowing that my generation was the first generation that wouldn't do as well as our parents'. Angry at race inequality, gender inequality, class inequality. Angry at the horrible education I got. (I remember the first time someone told me their parents took them around to shop for colleges. The idea was completely foreign to me and the very working-class background I was accustomed to.) Punk came along and ignited the fuse. Suddenly there were 100X more like me, disillusioned and exploding with energy. Watching the film now I understand that it wasn't a very healthy thing to respond to anger with more anger. We gave our anger carte-blanche, when really there were probably other things I could have been doing to create a better future for myself and the world around me. Everything that I experienced as a teen is nothing new. There are kids experiencing the same things now. I feel guilty for not behaving better, for not being a better person and looking for a more positive outlet. But hey, I was 14, 15, 16 . . .  And it was seriously fun to slam. 

CB--Are there photos? Were there tattoos and piercings? Apart from the chronological difference—when I was discovering punk, it had zero practical application to my lower-middle-class-but-upwardly-mobile life; it was just exciting new rock & roll, in stark contrast to the mind-deadening sentimental dreck that had dominated the predivorce playlist—it’s hard to establish, if I had been the right age but living the life I lived at that age, how punk would have worked for me. Sad to say, I suspect I never would have noticed it, because I was the antithesis of the rebel when I was in high school. “Rebellious” music for me then was the Doors, Cream, Led Zeppelin, but I mostly listened through headphones, to avoid rocking (!) the house/boat. If anything, I’m afraid I’d have been like the skin-deep suburban pseudopunks (though I was way too far from any “urb” to have been remotely suburban). In my real life, punk, like so much else, was essentially an academic construct.

LB--For some reason, in Dec. 2013, my high school friend Tracy posted the attached picture to my FB page. I was 19 when the photo was taken in 1985. It's a pretty tame photo given the topic, but you can see I wasn't your average Deb. That's Danny Elfman's guitar pick on my left ear, captured the year before at a show in Phoenix. Lou Reed is over my left shoulder. We silkscreened the B&W prints in our graphic arts class in high school. The high school I attended was heavily focused on graphic arts, we learned printing and photography among other skills. There was no such thing as college prep; I was told not to bother to apply to college by my counselor. Of the people who did not leave Phoenix, many of my peers wound up either in jail or working at the jail. A cohort just posted her prison release papers on FB. Very few of my peers got a college education, and those that did got out. I've been mighty uncomfortable with the middle-class most of my life. It is a conflict, I desperately want to be accepted by the middle-class while at the same time eschew it for all its comforts and societal ease. I have seen classism, sexism, and racism perpetuated by many "good" people who call themselves middle class. But I have also seen incredible generosity, humanity, and empathy. Today the middle-class is declining and I have some sympathy. Maybe the demise of the classes will bring us closer together as a country. The 99%.

CB--You’re pointing at Bowie’s dick! You little hussy!

LB--Not possible, Bowie is an androgynous being.

CB--In that case you're pointing at both of his genitalia.