Puce Modern Moment: Camp, Postmodernism, and the Films of Kenneth Anger Author(s): VINCENT BROOK Reviewed work(s):

Source: Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 58, No. 4 (WINTER 2006), pp. 3-15 Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the University Film & Video Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20688535 . Accessed: 19/05/2012 08:15
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Puce Modern Moment: Camp, Postmodernism, and the Filmsof KennethAnger

VINCENT BROOK

WE

OPEN

ON AN

ITEM OF WOMEN'S

CLOTH

ING spread across the screen likea theater curtain. The curtainrises to revealanother item
of clothing, shawls, and another, and another. sequined, Dresses, diapha negligees?silken,

nous?flutterpast likea disembodied dance of the seven veils. On the sound track, harsh, music clashes with the whiningelectric-guitar Mick soft,sensual image,as does the snarling
Jagger-like vocal:

a I've learned lot, my shooting through mind, And so I'vedecided to live life alone. my I'm to the goingto learn fly clouds, I'm to the goingto learn fly wind,
I won't stop till I've understood the dark. Things Inever guessed at before,

As the notes on thevideo box tellus, this six-minute Puce Moment, is "a lav titled film, colored evocation of theHollywoodnow ishly an gone, shown through afternooninthemilieu of the 1920s star"(Anger, Kennethvol. 3). The are notes, likethe film, by avant-gardefilm maker Kenneth who shot and edited the Anger, filmin1949,when hewas nineteen; the track, by Jonathan Halper,was added inthe 1970s.1 It concludes overMarquis descending the stairs of herHollywoodHills home, a teamofwhip my pets intow: "I am a hermit, mind isnot the
same... and ecstasy's my game."

A silent film made inthe late 1940s, set in the Roaring '20s, rereleased inthe 1970swith
a dope-rock soundtrack?an amalgamation and postmodern associating camp or in conjunc

of periods and styles strungtogether with a

precocious consciousness. camp sensibility Of course,

The lifting the lastveil, a glittering of black

dress, reveals the film's star, Yvonne

? (see fig.1).
vincent

gazing coquettishlyintothe camera. She slips on thedress, thena pair of highheels, daubs with perfume and slinks languorously herself onto a plush sofa.Marquis isheavily made her jetblack hair is up and lushlylipsticked; cropped intheDutch-boy, flapperfashionof the 1920s. Indeed,herandrogynously seduc tive mien ispatternedaftertheColleenMoore/ Clara Bow/BarbaraLaMarrtypeofthat period

Marquis,

and postmodernism,

withAnger'swork is hardlystartling. What tion, is revelatory the link is between the twomodes thathiswork brings intostarkrelief?a link that has heretofore gone unexplored. In mobilizing of the films Kenneth Anger to examine the his torical,aesthetic, and ideological connections between camp and postmodernism, Ihope to broaden and enrichour understanding these of
complex tices. and still controversial cultural prac

separately

Ain't Kosher Here: TheRiseof the"Jewish" Sitcom of (Rutgers, 2003) and editor YouShouldSee
Yourself: Jewish Identity in Postmodern Culture (Rutgers, 2006). American

brook teaches at USC, UCLA, Cal-State Los Angeles, and Pierce College. Besides his nu merous journal articles, he is author of Something

Out: of Camping A Brief History the GayStyle

Ifthe camp cessive elements inPuce Moment are ex sexu to the point of parody?epicene

JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO ?2006

/ WINTER 2006 58.4 3 BY THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

figure i: (Un)veiling the 1920s star inPuce Moment (1949).

ality, garish apparel, bittersweet homage to

Hollywood,

and early eighteenth-century music, "emerging veau Movement... and

literature and

colorand playon "pussy")?why do Iterm

use of them precocious? has been located Camp's

tongue-in-cheek

title (puce

as "gay" deri

full-blown with the Art Nou finding its conscious

Anger's vation

ideologists insuchwits as Wilde and Firbank"

(280-81). between camp, mass Her analysis "old" and tilts toward Anger's his

as early as sixteenth described "in

"camping" costumes young men who wore women's earliest records of a gay subcultural ceremonies": degenerate "A particular

century England, where

toric when she distinguishes position,however,

"modern" schema, modern camp. Old-style vulgar in Sontag's disdained

play" (Rogers40). David Bergmanfindsthe

connection

to camp inThe LondonSpy's expose, in1709,

of "camp Wretches... Gang of from all Masculine

and "sought raresensations, undefiledby ity

appreciation"; mass camp, conversely, 289; "Smith" culture" ("Notes"

"relish[es]

or Deportment Manly exercise thattheyfancy themselves women" ("Strategic Camp" 93). icon,noted inthe stage directionsto herplay
The Pleasure Man: "Boys (female imperson In 1928, Mae West, herself to become a camp

231).Wilde here isseen as a transitional fig

ure. His dandified dress and effete manner

when bespoke theearlierelitistaesthetic; yet he proclaimed"the importance the necktie, of

the boutonniere, doorknob could the chair," or asserted be as admirable that "a as a painting,"

ators) camp?enter through (centralfancy door)."When a characterintheplay isasked

ifanyone you heard heard a scream, she responds, "No, them queens next door campin'" to have

one hewas formulating ofmodern camp's key precepts: "the equivalence of all objects" (289).
A correlative tag suggests, of this "democratic ismodern camp's esprit," eclecticism. Son

(qtd. inRobertson160-61). Farfrominventing

camp, then, Anger appears tradition. how Anger's was of camp representation original, even revolution Sontag's Sontag seminal traces painting overt tapped a centuries-old To grasp

This isdiscoverable inthe behaviorof persons as well as inthe qualityobjects. Sontag's

personal Bellini's catalogue

includes (as of 1964): Tiffany lamps,Swan Lake,

operas, Schoedsack's King Kong, Vis

of camp's

objets

d'estime

inPuce Moment ary, one must 1964 essay camp's and rococo

turn to Susan

"Notes

on Camp."

lineage

from Italian mannerist through more

architecture

manifestations

in late seventeenth-century

conti's directionofSalome, and '77s She's Pity a Lady.Other itemson her listapply directly toAngerand hiswork: TheEnquirertabloid scandal sheet newspaper (Anger'sbook-length HollywoodBabylon); AubreyBeardsley draw
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4 ?2006

ings (theopening titlestoAnger's Inauguration of thePleasure Dome); theold FlashGordon

comics (a love of Anger's that consciously in

Fireworks (1947) Sontag did not underestimatethe qualityor

import of Anger's tures review she work; in her Flaming Fireworks Crea and references

formed many of his films)(Sitney117);women's and clothes of the 1920s?feather boas, fringed beaded dresses, etc. (PuceMoment) (Sontag,
"Notes"

a film "about the deems it serious and stirring

beauties Omitted and terrors of homoerotic love" (230). is any from this assessment, its abrupt however,

A modern camp isnot Sontag's Exhibit for

one of Anger's underground Creatures. films, however, classic: but another Flaming film, Sontag the jack Smith's

277).

mention of the film'sludicplayfulnessand ir

reverent humor, shifts in tone from

In a review of Smith's

the sublime to the ridiculous,itsessential the

atricality and sense of artifice?all

notes itspastiche of camp images: effusively great exotica of the 1920s, theSpanish and
the Arab, as well star Maria Montez as mass-cultural references pre-Raphaelite languidness, Art Nouveau,

of attributes camp bySontag's own reckoning.

A fourteen-minute film, Fireworks

paradigmatic

toDracula, Sternberg/Dietrich movies, and B moment inthemodern for Sontag thedefining was made in Smith's film camp sensibility?yet
1963, Puce Moment in 1949. Moreover, Anger's as films: (231). Flaming Creatures is

an lowing emblematic imageof a firecracker water)with a sailor holdinga young floatingin man (played byAnger) ina "Pieta-like"pose ex Now 123). The lighting low-key, is (Dyer, lendan and lightning pressionistic; thunder farcicalfeel to the ominous but also slightly
"sacrilegious" image (see fig. 2). The scene's

opens

(fol

first released film, Fireworks (1947), isalready

replete with "modern camp" elements, Creatures

Rabbit'sMoon (1950),Eaux D'Artipce (1953), and Inauguration thePleasure Dome (1954) of Now 119).2The brief analyses ofFire (Dyer, works thatfollow works and otherearly Anger will attemptto fill "moderncamp" lacuna the in Sontag's otherwiseestimable gloss and will begin to chartthe connectionsbetween camp
and postmodernism.

are other of his pre-Flaming

tableau-likequality is "explained"when the image reappearson a series of stillphotos strewnon the floor beside the bed onwhich theyoungman is sleeping.As forthe semiotics of the sailor,Angerexplained in1975: "That's a now,but the sailorwas a kindof partof history
sex symbol there was on one level, and on another of ambivalence level a great deal and hos

and tility, fear inthe image" (qtd. inHaller 2). Inkeeping with camp, thisdarkeraspect is

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lacedwith low-brow humor.Beside the bed is a sculptureof a handwith themiddle finger brokenoff. enormous bulge protrudesfrom An
beneath the bed covers?revealed to be, when but an the covers are removed, not an erection

act guistic juggling establishes an intriguing dialectic between Fireworks EauxD1'Artifice and emblematic (Haller;Sitney).RecallFireworks's
image of a firecracker several electric conjunctions inwater, as well as the of fire and water?sailor, wharf, fireplace, flam fiery erection?

motif African sculpture.Continuingthe reflexive of theopening tableau,when theyoungman gets up and collects the photos, theoverlap ping still imagesare "suggestiveof the sequen tial framesofmotion picturefilm"(Haller3). and of Such surrealisticlayering signification mark the remainder the film'sfractured of affect the narrative.Insearch of a light, youngman exits a doormarked "GENTS,"only to emerge Un magically (or is it ChienAndalouslaniy?) in
a wharf-side bar, where a muscle-bound sailor

storm, matches,

thattogether suggest a dialectical interrelation of primalelements.Anotherassociation the

title conjures, of course,

ing branches,

milky substance,

was As d'orifice. the firecracker toFireworks, seminal sparks fromitsphallic tip,so spewing the fountainis toEaux DfArtifice3 fig.3). (see was shot at the fountains theVilla of The film
D'Este in Rome's Tivoli Gardens. A "woman"

is patently

sexual:

eaux

with his pummels himbefore lighting cigarette col branches.Violence and ribaldry flaming lideonce morewhen a gang of sailors beat the
young man

Salvatorelli,a male dwarf), (playedbyCarmillo

wearing

mense feathered headdress (shades ofPuce

wanders among the forest of foun until "the tains to Vivaldi's Four Seasons...

a luxurious baroque

gown

and

im

Moment),

ripopen his chest to reveala quiveringelectric

gauge for a heart. The visual puns "cum" fast

to a pulp with ball-and-chains,

then

WaterWitch and Fountainare one" (Anger, Ken

neth vol. 1). The mise en scene is sensuous, ro

as and furious theyoungman's face and body are splattered with a milkysubstance; or is the trueclimax the lighting an eponymous fire of
thrust from the lead sailor's fly? cracker

and mantic,otherworldly, on one levelthe film can be takenas a mysticalelegy not for1920s were Hollywoodthistimebut fortheglories that
Europe. As such, the film might be clas Western

EauxD9Artifice (1953)
Eaux D'Artifice what further demonstrates
Sontag some sense inwhich termed camp's "double things can be taken." This refers not to construction" between

sifiedas highcamp, inChristopherIsherwood's sense: "HighCamp is the whole emotional

basis of the ballet, for example, seriousness. that you don't and of course always of baroque about art. You see, true High Camp

has an underlying something

You can't camp take seriously.

"the familiar split-level

the film'stitle, which again showsAnger's fond ness for puns andwordplay (Haller The dou 4). as ble entendrecan be takenhomonymically, or intheaural pun "Ode toArtifice," morphemi
cally, as Alan Williams does observes: "Eaux d'artifice not exist as a correct phrase in French;

and symbolic literal meaning, but to thedif as ference"between the thing meaning some as and the thing pure artifice" thing, anything, ("Notes" 281). This aspect isevidentalready in

You're notmaking fun of\t;you'remaking fun out of it. You're expressing what's basically and of serious toyou interms funand artifice
elegance" (qtd. in Bergman, "Introduction" 4).

Modern camp, for of Sontag, isdefinitely the lowvariety. Itispredicated noton seriousness a of but rather "sensibility failedseriousness": "Thewhole pointof [modern] Camp is to de
stroy the serious. More precisely, relation Camp Camp is playful, anti-serious. involves a new, more One can be

instead,the titleisconstructed one of lan by the guage's oldest artifices, pun.Feuxd'artifice means 'fireworks' and artificial fires), (literally
so eaux d'artifice are logically waterworks, or

complex

to 'the serious.'

serious about the frivolous, frivolous about

the serious" ("Notes" 288). EauxD'Artifice's subtext. As Rich

deflationof seriousness flowsprimarily fromits

sexual, or rather "orgasmic,"

'artificial' waters" (qtd. inHaller4). This lin

ard Dyerdescribes the iconography: "[S]tone

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6 ?2006

Figure 3: Fountain cum fireworks inEaux D'Artifice (1953)

close mouths spewing liquid,and a long-held up of a (stone)male facewithwater running obvious symbolicpossibility"(Now119). In
deed, Anger's the "ever-gushing phrase leaping fountains," in (Kenneth vol. 1), grow ever more of the film's thir continuously over it (make) semen ... an

new soundtrackto the fourth version,but the

thirty-eight-minute Sacred Mushroom was version available on video

today (copyrighted 1986) isessentially the

version, including Janacek's

Mass (Sitney124). Glagolithic

Inauguration conceived from the start inspired to make in terms of ritual. Anger was

ejaculatory

over the course

teenminutes. The cumulativeeffectisnothing less thana giant "moneyshot" inthe faceof all
of one long, ecstatic wet dream.

seriousness,

the film afterattendinga masque organized of AnaTsNin by RenardDruks,a friend writer were other influences, (Haller5). But there
most significantly Attracted Anger's involvement in pa ganism. to paganism from an early

Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954)

There Anger's have been at least four versions of of the

age, Angereventuallygravitatedtowardthe occultistAleisterCrow teachingsof theBritish was based on the principleof the "magick" which aspirants "invoke theMagick ritual,in spiritsbyvariousmeans (drugs,the use of occult objects and words, and so on)" (Dyer, with particular Now 118).A Crowleyantenet
relevance ness to Anger, and makes camp, is "the sacred of sex" of sex, which a sacrament ley. Crowley's philosophy, called "magick,"

camp

was filmedin1954. Pleasure Dome. The first The second, made forthe Experimental Festival held duringtheBrusselsWorld's Fairof 1958,
featured "three-screen synchronous projec

tour de force, Inauguration

tionforthe finalclimactictwo-thirds itsforty of made minutes" (Sitney104). The third version, Ford with the help of a ten-thousand-dollar
Foundation room version grant, was called the Sacred Lord Shiva's Mush Dream and subtitled

30). As RobertHaller points out, how (Hardy would be misleading to assume thathis films are essentially illustrations Crowley"(2). of
Anger himself has averred, ever, "while Anger is a student of Crowley, it

(LSD). It premieredatAnger's SpringEquinox program inNewYork in1966 and opened with his readingofColeridge'sKuhla Khan, from
whose Kubla famous Khan first couplet, "In Xanadu did decree," /A stately pleasure-dome

at the same time I'ma believer" (qtd. inHardy

as Dyer reminds us, "fflhere 30). Nevertheless, between is a long association homosexuality

"I remain a skeptic

the film's derives.Angeradded a originaltitle

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JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 58.4 7 / WINTER 2006 BY THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

and outlawed cults and fringe and witchcraft, alities" (Now 106). VictorTurner'snotionof Anthropologist condition of camp and theoccult. The liminal
relates "liminality" further encourages or "threshold the imbrication provide a space formarginal or forbidden sexu

The vintage of Hecate is poured. Pan's cup is magickmasquerade atwhich Pan is the prize" vol. 2) (see fig. {Kenneth 4). The film'scastingextends the camp allusion: Astarte isplayed byAnaTsNin; Hecate isplayed Woman, also byAnger indrag; theScarlet a man (Cameron),bears remarkable played by
resemblance to Tim Curry's transvestite Fran-N poisoned by Lord Shiva. The orgy ensues?a

are "neitherhere nor there:theyare betwixt and between thepositions assigned by law,
custom, convention and ceremonial"

to marginal

people,"

who

can Liminality possess mysticalattributes a and can be expressed through "richvariety

of symbols" in ritual, carnivals, drama, and

(95).

in Furter themidnight-movie (and camp) staple Horror Picture Show (1975).A promi TheRocky
nent character not mentioned in the above

film.Itsaesthetic formsinclude"reflexivity of the social process" and "ludic play"; the liminalritualist'srole is likenedto thatof the
court jester. A further connection of "lowliness and to camp, and

synopsis,Cesare theSomnambulist (based on themonster inthe 1919GermanExpressionist classic TheCabinetofDr. Caligari), isplayed by
Anger's friend and fellow avant-garde filmmaker

toAnger's version ofMagick, is liminality's

sacredness" (vii,

The CurtisHarrington. main (laterTVdirector) the deviation from 1954 versionof inauguration
in the later variation's final third, where Dante's

such a fusionof 95-108). Sontag immortalized polarities inher "ultimateCamp statement: it's good because it'sawful" ("Notes" 292). Anger makes a similarcase for Magick inhis video of ofmagicians assume the identity gods and ina Dionysian revel.LordShiva, the goddesses
magician, awakes. The Scarlet Woman, whore box synopsis of Inauguration: "A convocation

bleeding

occurs

were added, of multiple layers superimposition (1935) and Anger'sown Puce Moment Inferno (Sitney104).While the recycledLachman clips
add including footage from Harry Lachman's

ent inthe "original,"the pastiche of archetypal

characters, ritualistic structure, and mass-cul are retained incarnations, camp mask-like throughout the as are other quint such and a tural references film's multiple essential as garish

a reflexive Hollywood

dimension

not pres

Astarteof of heaven, smokes a big fatjoint. theMoon bringsthewings of snow. Pan be stows thegrapes of Bacchus; Hecate offers
the sacred mushroom, sage, wormwood brew.

modern costumes,

accoutrements make-up,

sense ofgrotesquely (Sitney104).4

Figure 4: Magick masquer ade in Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954).

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on The transvestism ample display inInaugu Eaux D'Artiflce)isanotherdefinitive ration(as in componentof camp,which, in itsrelationto masquerade, isusefullyilluminated Mikhail by
Bakhtin's

camp" is the "radical drag" thatemerged from the identity politicalmovements of the 1960s. This hybrid form replaced theelegant couture
of the "queen" with a harder-edged, men in slingbacks, jackets. about and bikers' bisexual jock "Radical variant: mustached straps, fishnets,

word "gay" tode Bakhtineven invokesthe

scribe

notion of the "carnivalesque." and while

more traditional sense of "lively"or gay in its

"carefree," an association with itsmore recent

"carnivalesque,"

he uses

drag," as Mark Finchobserves, "had less to do

with masquerade and was more a reck

ways, and since the homosexual subculturehas carried in itscelebrationofMardi Gras and Hal loweentheverytraditions the carnivalesque, of the two meanings [of'gay']blend ina form Bakhtin licenses" ("Strategic virtually Camp" Yet ironically, "mostvisible" aspect this 99). of camp isalso the "least threatening" the to
heterosexual, of cross-dress at least in its "licensed" "No practice performance. 'real man' will

can construction be implied. David Bergman As the carnivalesque enjoys observes, "[S]ince punningespecially insexuallyprovocative

satire Rising (1969). A twenty-eight-minute of and homage to thebikerscene, based partly on gay pornmagazines of theperiod,Scorpio also signals a shiftfrom modern to postmodern
camp.

lessmix ofgender signs" (112).Gender-bending of isa key ingredient Anger's nextfilm, Scorpio

Camp/Postmodern Though the term"postmodernism"has existed since as earlyas the 1870s (Simviii), it wasn't

(I and II,1978,1980); Victor/Victoria (1982, adapted to thestage); Torch (1988, Song Trilogy the adapted from stage); TheAdventuresof Priscilla,Queen of theDesert (1992); ToWong FoofThanks Everything for (1995); TheBirdcage to the stage). (1996, adapted for Unfortunately the homophobe, however, there ismore to camp masquerade than long titlesand drag queens. As MaryAnn Doane theorizes inrelationto the androgynousstars of classical Hollywood (e.g.,Marlene Dietrich, GretaGarbo), and PeterStallybrassand Allon White elaborate inrelationto camp, a rich vein ofoppositional potentialcan be found"where the politicaldifference between thedominant and subordinate culture isparticularly charged" (cited inBergman,"StrategicCamp" 99). This progressivepoliticalaspect can also be found incamp's questioning of thedualisms of
dominant society, and in its inversion?or sub

man allow himselfto express fearof another women's clothing," dressed in Bergmansug gests ("Introduction" 7-8), and themainstream success of transvestite-based films and stage productionsbears himout: La Cage Aux Folles

used extensively untilthe 1960s, and then criticism didn't (jencks6); it only in literary usage in itscontemporary gainwide currency, untilthe 1970s sense, and application to film various (LapsleyandWestlake 206). In its applications to the arts and philosophy,the notion has been used both descriptively and a to prescriptively, analyze and also to foment
presumed rupture or break from the "austere

canon of highmodernism" (Huyssen 17). Key was to the emergingpostmodern sensibility the rebellion a new generationof artists, of the many of themgay, springingfrom Beats of the 1950s and extending intothe Pop Art Film movements of the late and Underground
1950s

were joined by sympatheticcritics, ists among themSontag,who indirectly argued forthe her postmodern through championingof camp (Huyssen 17).5 has As our examinationofAnger's films was rife with the camp sensibility shown, and eclecticism, sense of theatricality artifice, and conflation categories are all trademarks of one of the of the postmodern.Charles Jencks, criticsto articulatethe aesthetic principles first of postmodernism, described postmodern
postmodern tendencies. The former's rampant

and early 1960s.

These

avant-garde

art

version?of categories ("Strategic Camp" 95, such pointedly"subversive 99). Themodel for

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architecture,

in 1977,

in a way

that bears

strik

ambivalent,"

on ingly our discussion of camp: "[T]he style is double-coded, based on fundamental hybrid, dualities. Sometimes itstems from the juxta position of new and old ... sometimes it is
based on the amusing inversion of the old ...

"intrinsically

double,"

and "ir

ambiguous" (54). And the film's retrievably homoeroticizedHell's Angels motif is not the
sole source

cess resultsfrom swirlof pop signifiers: the Uli

Abner comic strips, children's toys, James Dean

of polysemy.

Further exegetic

ex

and nearlyalways ithas somethingstrange about it. Inshort,a highly developed taste for of paradox is characteristic our timeand sensibility"(5). Inthe 1980s, FredricJameson
invoked camp's

posters,Marlon Brando filmclips, all backed by a soundtrack contemporaneous rocksongs of (including BobbyVinton'sBlue Velvet,chosen when Angerheard the song on John Cage style the radio while editing the film[Sitney 118]). Sontag had locatedone ofmodern camp's enduringprinciples in its loveof "the old," whereby "the process of deterioration provides
the necessary necessary detachment?or Failure arouses the sympathy." in contemporary "may make

collage of images, in regardto postmodern film ("Postmodernism");BrianMcHale ascribed ludicand carnivalesque aspects to the post modern (151-52; 171-75); and Jean Baudrillard
touted and reviled a postmodern "fragmenta

penchant

for "pastiche,"

or

tionof the subject" (Simulations) thatSontag had situated twodecades earlier incamp: "This sensibility insistson the principlethatan oeuvre inthe old sense (again, inart,but also are in life)isnot possible. Only 'fragments' possible" ("Notes" 287). The aesthetic bond between camp and postmodernismextends to issues of class as
well. Compare, for example, taste Sontag's state ment?"Camp only is by its nature possible or circles in societies in affluent societies,

cultural artifacts, on the other hand,

us indignant. Time can change that. Time liber ates the work of art from moral relevance,deliv over to theCamp sensibility"("Notes" ering it The delivery process apparentlyhas been 285).
accelerated, or evacuated altogether, by post

which has turned indignationinto modernism, indulgence.For itispreciselythe immersion in"the new," indisposable pop culture,that
marks the passage from modern to postmod in senses. ern camp?with "troubling" and consequences,

capable of experiencingthepsychopathology
of affluence" neo-Frankfurt ("Notes" School 289)?with Jameson's linkage of postmodern

both the subversive

recuperative

AndrewRoth,for example, pointed hopefully

to pop camp's "commitment to the new and

ismto a "logic of late capitalism"marked by "[n]ew typesof consumption;planned obso of lescence; an evermore rapid rhythm fashion the penetration adver of and styling changes;
tising, television, ernism" and the media... culture" and the arrival of the automobile 125). ("Postmod

to as everyday, quantityand to the throwaway a directaffront thosewho governed thebound to aries of officialtaste" (55).Andreas Huyssen more skepticallylinked pop to postmodernism inspeaking of Pop artists' "uncritical espousal
of the commercial vernacular of consumer cul

Anger calls Scorpio Rising "a 'high'view of theMythof theAmerican The Motorcyclist.
Power Machine seen as tribal totem, from

Thanatos inchromeand black toyto terror. leather and burstingjeans" fe).6 This descrip tionnotonlyplaces the film squarely inthe but captures postmoderncamp (pun intended), the symbiosisof barb and embrace, uncannily dread and desire, thatepitomizes both camp
and postmodernism and that David James, in

tureas an inspiration their for work" (15). For did good and/or ill,camp/postmodernism more than justcommodity "newness," itcreated a thattranscended languageof commodification concepts ofold and new, thatsubsumed all
tenses within the present: no more "was" or cat with in James that obliter 125). it, "will be," only "is." The egories, on's Time, has been History. The postmodern famous and formulation, in a perpetual last of the sacred smashed?and condition, exists

"in a perpetual

present, ates

change

his analysis ofScorpio, deems "thoroughly

traditions"

("Postmodernism"

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When Anger, inhis pre-Scorpiofilms, fe tishizes the silent-screen staror thebaroque such as maitresse, or conjuresmythicfigures
Astarte a past remove or Cesare, that remains these characters exist in a

disembow Scorpio Rising embodies, as it

els, the "telematic"

and fantasticalto be sure, but past that is fluid

at a clear and conscious from the present. This present may

be inchoateand vaguelydefined,but ithas a

raison d'etre?if the past, for only to serve as "space" as a screen for its reflection. Once

nels" (and radiostations) incessantly, the film cross-cutsthebikerprotagonists with blur songs that increasingly imagesand rock theboundaries between hero and villain,past and present, reality and illusion. Scorpio, the
eponymous and lead biker, "listens" source remains to "Devil in

spirit. "Switching

chan

Disguise," but the song fillsthe sound track Scorpio "watches" Brando on TV,but theTV imagedoes not appear inthe same shotwith with his glance. The TV Scorpio, only intercut Brando (his image itselfisnotof forty-year-old age at the timeofScorpio's release) but of biker ina 1954movie, TheWild One. The edit Kuleshovian creativegeography ingshiftsfrom
to Eisensteinian a cameo associational montage as Puck, as the in a clip thirty-year-old Brando playing a twenty-year-old its diegetic undisclosed.

the contemporary world ismythologizedalong with history, spatial and temporaldimensions

evaporate, dissolution Baudrillard

of reality. What emerges from chronotopal the

is a new sense altogether, what terms "hyperreality," or a simulated as cause

and with them a grounded

sense

world in which all reality reduced to repre is

sentation.

and symptom, thishyperreal of state is televi sion?that ubiquitous leveler and commodifier
of human image," the whole trol screen experience. Baudrillard "With the television argues, "our own body and

The prime manifestation,

film progresses.A teenagedMickey Rooney

makes appearance

a con surrounding universe become ... which as such may be endowed

with telematicpower?that is, with the capabil a of regulating from distance, ity everything work inthe home and, of course, including
consumption, ("Ecstasy" play, social relations and leisure" 127).

from 1935 film the versionofAMidsummer whichAngerhimselfplayed Night'sDream in a princeling. smiles and points Mickey/Puck
offscreen?"to" and chorus the biker gang, chant "Hit the Road, as Ray Charles Jack." Another

an clip from old Dracula filmisan intertextual of portent doom (andmementomori of Inau guration's Cesare),while otherclips of Jesus

Figure 5: Brandoesque biker inScorpio Rising Phototest, (1964). Photo courtesy of Inc.

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11

The the and his disciples (from B film Road to Jerusalem)are juxtaposedwith Scorpio and his
gang engaged in "unknowingly homosexual"

dirge "WipeOut." Yet such ProductionCode like"punishment" inthe finalreelfailstowipe Nazi slate clean. As Dyercomments, the film's "The forces invoked Scorpio Rising?sadism, by
male sexuality, immaturity,... Nazism?are

fanci A/0W125).7 horseplay (Dyer, Gay/straight, ful/horrific, sacred/profane?all new/recycled, binary oppositions camped/postmodernized oblivion.Add swastikas to themix, as the into bikers' emblem,and morality appears togo up insmoke as well. Scorpio does die at the end ina motorbikecrash, red lights flashingto the

able (Bergman,"Introduction" Some began 8). as to see camp as culturally well as politically of dubious; in itsreinforcement demeaning of stereotypes?"the Stepin Fetchit the leather bars" (Melly5)?it was regardedas fueling ho mophobia (Ross 62). Inthe ideological sphere, Ross denounces camp, despite itsoppositional strand,for bolstering"the economywhereby and discourses of disdain are trans objects formedintocollector's items,"thus functioning as an enabler of late capitalism (67). A cadre of camp loyalistsremains,however.
Doane's notion of "masquerade" Marshalling

not

ones widely approved of,but itisnot at all clear thatthe film disapproves of them" (128). Choosing Camps ticed bySontag,who stated inher 1964 essay, and revulsion: with a mixtureof attraction "Camp isa solventofmorality. Itneutralizes moral indignation, sponsors playfulness
Camp taste is, above all, a mode judgment" of appreciation?not renunciation ("Notes" of enjoyment, 290 Camp's amoral tendencies did not go unno

and judithButler'sof "performativity," Berg man defends camp against charges ofmi
"feminine" characteristics as contributing

sogynyby readingthe drag queen's parodyof

"to a

radicaldesexualization" of the femalebody: "In the contextof the social spectacle where the visible existence outside her femalehas little being posed as the embodimentof the sexual, any readingthatdefetishizes the eroticsce
nario of women-as-spectacle is a progressive

one" ("Introduction" Dyerargues thatthe 9). camp sensibilitycan expose gay oppression
and become

91). Her ambivalencewould turnto outright

over the next turbulent decade.

a of forcethrough demystification "the images world and themedia" ("It's Being" of the art
11). Scott

a radical, progressive,

and

critical

By 1975 she had foundthata new historical

context had made camp even indefensible "because

the ethical and cultural issues itraises have

become serious, dangerous, in a way

tentialdue to the "darkand difficult insights[it] can provide the postmodernspectator" (qtd. in
Bergman, "Introduction"

Long valorizes

camp's

disruptive

po

were not then" (Frank 179). In1982 she they raised a more specific,gendered objection:
"Camp's extreme sentimental reaction to

Inanotherdirectparallelwith camp, post

ever since gaining currency as a

9).

modernism,

beauty is no help towomen" (qtd. inBergman,

"Introduction" 8).

rhetorical concept, has elicited strongnegative similar and positive assessments remarkably to those directed at camp. Antipostmodernist
J?rgen Habermas, cuses echoing Ross on camp, ac postmodernism of "neo-conservative"

Sontagwas not alone inherdisillusion or mentwith camp on feminist othergrounds. was drag queens who started the Although it

of Stonewall uprising 1969, campwould be come politically suspect for post-Stonewallgay more incivil rights than activists. Interested cultural these activistsdirected expression, at moral indignation gays' exclusion their moral from mainstream society; neutralizing
outrage, to this end, was therefore unaccept

with the social processes of capital complicity ist modernizationand itscorrelative cultural manifestation. Jameson likewisecastigates a
postmodern condition

duces the brute logicof consumer capitalism

(Postmodernism). ism's evacuation "uncritical espousal Baudrillard's and Huyssen's real" and its

that replicates

or repro

of previouslycited indictments postmodern

of the "really of the commercial ver

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nacular" camp.

resonate

with similar

concerns

about Lyotard, Long:

Propostmodernist

Jean-Francois

Film pelled by theBeat, Pop, and Underground movementsof the 1950s and 1960s had long
been latent in camp. In this re-visioning, camp

meanwhile,

mirrors procampers of science,

Dyer and

out of its incredulity towardthemodernist

"metadiscourse

conditioncan embrace inventive pluralismand resistanceto existingforms op of proliferate Collins pression" (66). Linda Hutcheonand Jim with Bergman,or vice versa, in ally themselves valorizingpostmodernism'sopening up of pos sibilitiesfor progressivechange,most notably
in attitudes toward race, gender, sexual orienta

the postmodern

can itself be seen as a kindof "underground" force which, throughits gradual uncloseting, likethe wardrobe-parade opening ofPuceMo as ment, fed into itteased out thepostmodern not thesine qua non condition. AndAnger, if of thissocioculturalconjunction, deserves, at
least from an avant-garde film perspective, a

in What forJameson tion,and identity general. ispostmodernism'spenchant for"empty to relationship textsdrained parody"?an ironic Hutcheon "ambivalent of any critique?is for the parody"?a relationshiprecognizing text's while not power to capture the imagination denying its ideologicalor aesthetic limitations (Collins335).What forthe antipostmodernists and is cultural appropriation,incorporation, Collins "hyperconscious displacement is for ness: a hyperawarenesson thepartof the text and his itself itsculturalstatus, function, of as tory, well as of the conditionsof itscircula

form artisticself-immolation: ritualistic of the of burning,infront FilmForumfounderJonas Mekas and Film-Makers Cooperativesecretary Leslie Trumbull, all his unreleased pre-and of post-Fireworks footage (Mekas 1-2; Sitney
93). This mock-macabre "performance piece,"

niche inthe pantheon. was notmerelycinematic. His contribution On 26 October 1967,a full-page black-bordered inbothFilmCultureand obituary appeared theVillage Voice: "InMemoriam?Kenneth Maker (1947-67)." The notices Anger?Film a had been placed byAngerhimself, following

tionand reception"(335). Conclusion

It is not my purpose

was on made both as politicalprotest (Anger hisway to the anti-Vietnam War march on the of Pentagon) and inresponse to the recenttheft two reelsof a work inprogress,Lucifer Rising, climactically conjoined the complexstrands we of camp and postmodernism have situ and films:theatricality artifice, ated in Anger's
ritual and Magick, earnestness and humor,

here to resolve

either the

debate, which, camp or thepostmodernist while bothmay have lostsome of their urgency intheNeoconizoic Era,have hardly been settled (Brook).Nordo I wish to posit the no
tions of camp minous. Camp as coter and postmodernism is a sensibility, an attitude, a textual mode, an

As subject and simulated reality. fragmented to thegesture'smoral implications, ap they describes pear to lie,as Huyssen ambivalently and the text, politicaland theaesthetic, history
engagement ernism, and the mission and of art." Postmod as concept cultural praxis, Huys for postmodernism in general, "between the

style;postmodernismhas been considered all

this and more?a

an method, a philosophy,a paradigm for entire epoch.What Ido propose, and have attempted todemonstratevia the films Kenneth of Anger, isa more fundamental and extensive kinship
between category, camp and postmodernism?as phenomenon, and cultural ideo historical

interpretive

sen believes (and I would extend the notionto delimitsand opens up camp), simultaneously
new horizons; terminates the avant-garde as

been logicalpositioning?than has previously

acknowledged. As Ihave shown, postmodern forces gener

while retaining "genuinelyadversaryculture" is "bothour problem its"critical potential"; and our hope" (52).
NOTES l. The film was originally intended as a ninety minute study of a dozen star types, to be shot in the

ated by thepost-World War IIperiod and pro

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stars' actual homes and titled Puce Women. The larger project was scuttled due to lack of funds (Martin and Medjuck 12-15). 2. Anger made several unreleased films, start when he was eleven: Who Has Been Rocking My ing Dream Boat (1941), Tinsel Tree (1941-42), Prisoner fromMars (1942), The Nest (1943), Escape Episode (1944), Drastic Demise (1945), and Escape Episode (shorter sound version, 1946) (Sitney 93). His later released Komandos films not discussed (1965), Invocation ofMy Demon Brother

Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. Ed. Hal Foster. Seattle: Bay, 1983.126-34. Bergman, David, ed. Camp Grounds: Style and Homo -. -. P, 1993. sexuality. Amherst: U ofMassachusetts Introduction. Bergman 3-18. "Strategic Camp: The Art of Gay Rhetoric." Berg

man 92-112. Brook, Vincent.

here include Kustom Kar

Introduction. You Should See Yourself: Jewish Identity in Postmodern American Culture. Ed. Vincent Brook. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2006.

(1969), and Lucifer Rising (1970-80). 3. Even Anger's response to such critical exegesis exhibits a camp sensibility: "[T]hat sort of [interpre

1-15. Collins, jim. "Postmodernism and Television." Chan Ed. Robert C. nels of Discourse, Resassembled. Allen. 2nd ed. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1992.327-53. Curtis, David. Experimental Cinema. New York: Uni verse, 1971. Doane, Mary Ann. The Desire to Desire: The Woman's Film of the 1940s. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1997. Dyer, Richard. "It's Being So Camp As Keeps Us Going." Body Politic Sept. 1977:11-13. Now You See It:Studies in Gay and Lesbian Film. New York: Routledge, 1990. Finch, Mark. "Rio Limpo: 'Lonesome Cowboys' and Gay Cinema." Andy Warhol: Film Factory. Ed. Mi chael O'Pray. London: BFI, 1989.112-23. Frank,Marcie. "The Critic as Performance Artist." Bergman 173-84. Habermas, j?rgen. "Modernity, an Incomplete Proj ect." The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. Ed. Hal Foster. Seattle: Bay, 1983. 3-15. Haller, Robert A. Kenneth Anger. Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 1980. Hardy, Robin. "Kenneth Anger: Master inHell." Body Politic Apr. 1982: 29-32. Hutcheon, Linda. "The Politics of Postmodernism, Parody and History." Cultural Critique 5 (1986): 179-207. Huyssen, Andreas. "Mapping the Postmodern." New German Critique 33 (1984): 5-22. James, David E. Allegories of Cinema: American Film

It's a tive] statement makes me too self-conscious. little too solemn" (Hardy 32). 4. Anger's appropriation of Hollywood footage was

Anger's revival of appropriation in the second version of Inauguration, two other avant-gardists used the

not the firstsuch instance in avant-garde film, joseph Cornell's Rose Hobart (1937), which consists entirely of reconstituted footage from the B filmEast of Borneo (1931), pioneered the practice. In 1958, the year of

-.

Movie, and Rafael Ortiz in technique: Bruce Conner in 7Vand NewsreeL

5. Besides Anger, and Sontag's poster boy jack Smith, other prominent Underground filmmakers as sociated with camp include Ken Jacobs, Andy Warhol, and the Kuchar brothers (Dyer, Now 134-49). 6. Although Scorpio Rising isAnger's firstfull realization of postmodern camp, he presaged this approach inRabbit's Moon (1950). Made inParis, the earlier film combines commedia dell'arte, A Midsum mer Night's Dream, and Japanese myth, with a high camp quality akin to Eaux D'Artipce (Anger,Kenneth vol. 1). Had itbeen completed as planned, however, the Pierrot character would have leapt from his Magick forest into a metro station, where he would have found an infiniteseries of images of the moon, including some on Eclipse shoe polish posters (Halles).

7. David Curtis claims that the Jesus clips are from the Cecil B. De Mille feature King of Kings (1927) rather than from Family Films' The Road to Jerusalem, as Sitney states inVisionary Film. Since Curtis's book in 1971 and Sitney's in 1979,1 defer to -.

in the 1960s. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989. Jameson, Fredric. "Postmodernism and Consumer Society." The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. Ed. Hal Foster. Seattle: Bay, 1983.111-25. Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late

was published the latter.

REFERENCES
Anger, Kenneth. Hollywood Babylon. San Francisco: Straight Arrow, 1975. -. Kenneth Anger's Magick Lantern Cycle. Vols. 1-4. Videocassettes. Mystic FireVideo, 1986. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Trans. He lene Iswolsky. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968. Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations. New York: -. Semiotext(e), 1983. "The Ecstasy of Communication." TheAnti

Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP, 1991. Jencks, Charles. The Language of Post-Modern Archi tecture. 4th ed. New York: Rizzoli, 1984. Lapsley, Robert and Michael Westlake. Film Theory: An Introduction. New York: St. Martin's, 1988. Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1984. Martin, Bruce and JoeMedjuck. Take One 1.6 (1967): 12-15. "Kenneth Anger." New

McHale, Brian. Constructing Postmodernism. York: Routledge, 1992.

JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 58.4 / WINTER 2006 14 ?2 006 BY THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS

Mekas, Jonas. "Notes on 'Invocations ofMy Demon Brother.'" Film Culture 48-49 (1970): 1-2. Melly, George. Foreword. Camp: The Lie That Tells the Truth. By Phillip Core. New York: Delilah, 1984. 5-6. Robertson, Pamela. '"The Kinda Comedy That Imitates Me': Mae West's Identification with the Feminist Camp." Bergman 156-72. Rodgers, Bruce. Gay Talk: A (Sometimes Outrageous) Dictionary of Gay Slang. New York: Paragon, 1972. Ross, Andrew. "Uses of Camp." Bergman 54-77. Sim, Stuart, ed. The Routledge Companion toPost modernism. 2nd edition. Routledge: London, 2001.

Sitney, P. Adams. Visionary Film: The American Avant Garde, 1943-1978. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1979 Sontag, Susan. "Notes on Camp." Against Interpreta tion. New York: Dell, 1964. 274-92. ??. "jack Smith's Flaming Creatures." Against Inter pretation. New York: Dell, 1964. 226-31. Turner,Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti Structure. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1969.

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