I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but it’s been cooling off and getting overcast in Austin as we head into the fall. I for one, could not be happier. We’ve had months of three-digit temperatures, the heat forming itself into my nifty foot tan and bleaching the plush Garfield on my car window. I celebrated by frequenting Cheapo Discs after work, adding some key titles from Daft Punk, Ariel Pink, Kate Bush, and Black Dice to my collection, along with snagging Air’s 10,000 Hz Legend, one of the funniest albums by a French pop group that boasts one of the prettiest songs Beck ever recorded (”Vagabond”) and my favorite song by the Gallic duo (”Radio #1″).
The punks of Jubilee; image courtesy of stephanievegh.ca
The electrically depressive weather and investment in discarding and collecting our culture’s trash recalls the late Derek Jarman’s Jubilee, a movie I watched last night with Kristen and Curran (we missed Susan, who also usually watches movies with us). I credit Curran, a future queer punk PhD, for introducing me to the movie in the first place and can’t wait to read about it in his dissertation. Released in 1977, it was Jarman’s second movie, and my first viewing of his feature work. I had a passing familiarity of Jarman, as he also made music videos for acts like Suede, The Smiths, and The Pet Shop Boys. For example:
In addition, apparently he and Tilda Swinton were good friends and often worked together, so I think I’ll start with Edward II. You can read Swinton’s touching, lengthy tribute to Jarman.
So, I kinda can’t get over Jubilee. It was kind of amazing, but I don’t think I have a real handle on its plot. I can tell you these things. Queen Elizabeth I is transported to 1977 England, around the time of Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee and the country’s considerable economic downturn. From there, the movie preoccupies itself with mixed-gender group of punks linked in varying degrees to one another. They’re played by real British punks of the era (Jordan, Adam Ant, Toyah Wilcox), real queer British punks of the era (Linda Spurrier, Ian Charleson), and one quintessential American queer punk icon (the inimitable Wayne/Jayne County). They live in squalor. They steal cars. They play board games. They quote from historical tomes. They attempt to have pop careers, if only to destroy The Top of the Pops. They love each other, sometimes; that is, when they aren’t killing or getting killed by police.
As a document of its era, the movie is pretty significant. Brian Eno composed the score. Siouxsie and The Banshees appear on the telly. Adam and the Ants audition for a record company. While a bunch of kids attend a disco orgy, The Slits smash up a car. And Jayne County sings to herself in one amazing green room.
And yet it had a theatrical release in the UK, which I can’t imagine how that happened but can fully believe people’s non-plussed response to it. I mean, how do you process the scene where Amyl Nitrate (Jordan) performs her pop “hit” “Rule Britannia” for record mogul/madman Borgia Ginz, played by the phenomenal Orlando?
That said, I found the movie constructively, at times rapturously, difficult. How else to feel but to gape at all of the strong female punks, many of whom abide by defiantly non-normative beauty standards who take pride in their pock marks, acne, fleshy thighs, and cellulite dimples? Or Adam Ant’s feminine beauty? Or the sculpted, smoothed, Greco-Roman-bodied men who one imagines Jarman cast with a loving eye? Or the romantic impulses of the mixed-gender queer trio — two of whom identify each other as brothers? Or the upsetting deaths of the movie’s queer characters (including a particularly brutal, seemingly pointless murder of County — talk about killing your idols!)? Or the blinding whiteness, which, by absence, brings to mind England’s issues with nationalist, segregational racial politics? Or the fast-and-loose timeline? Or the preoccupation with classic art and literature amid and outside London’s urban decay? Or queering up the interactions in such a way so as to trigger punk’s oft-obscured homophobia (apparently Sex proprietrix/designer Vivienne Westwood issued a homophobic missive in response to the movie).
But if punk taught us anything, messy can be beautiful, good, and constructive. This is a movie that revels in this idea. Do make time for it. Just presume that you’ll need to see it twice.
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