Punk's Dead Knot: Reflections on an Essay by Ian Trowell - Part 1: I Got You in My Camera ...

 

Sex Pistols on Carnaby Street 

Photo by Ray Stevenson (1976)

 

I. 

 

Ian Trowell's dead knot essay [a] provides a fascinating insight into how time and space are encoded in punk imagery and demonstrates how a photograph, for example, is not simply an objective or neutral representation of reality, but an artefact that is both constructed and constructive of the world as we know it.    

 

The essay analyses two visual artefacts: a photograph of the Sex Pistols from 1976 and a 30-second TV commercial for McDonald's from 2016. Here I shall reflect on the first of these, whilst in part two of this post I shall discuss the latter. 

 

 

II.

 

Ray Stevenson's famous photo of the Sex Pistols strolling along Carnaby Street in the spring of 1976 still makes smile almost fifty years later, due mostly to what Trowell terms the performative iconoclasm and punk theatricality that is here captured and preserved on film; a second of their lives ruined for life, as Rotten might say [b]. 

 

According to Trowell, whilst Paul Cook is perfectly content to eat his grapes purchased from Berwick Street Market and remain not only partially obscured but as anonymous as the brown paper bag containing his fruit - and whilst Steve Jones and Johnny Rotten are both happy to clown and pose for the camera - Glen Matlock looks uncomfortable and out of place:

 

"His comportment is akin to Wittgenstein's multi-stable rabbitduck illusion in that he is both relaxed and not relaxed at the same time. He has taken the relaxed pose of a pop star going through the motions of a publicity photograph but it clearly seems that he is out of step with the posed anti-comportment of the rest of the band." [183]

 

Matlock, with his buttoned-up jacket and persona, doesn't quite fit in with a band safety-pinned together or with the wider punk aesthetic and ethos; he's just a little too smart and sensible; the slightly nervous observer of the scene, always hanging back and looking on: 

 

"It is a disorienting picture since he appears to know his time is running out, but at the same time he gives the impression of lingering with admiration and anticipation, an adumbration of what is to come evidently with or without him." [184]

 

If, due to Rotten's "hogging of the frame" [185], locating the picture's true point of magic is made difficult, neverthless, for Trowell, it's not Rotten's ugly mug but the fastened button on Matlock's jacket that forms the pictures punctum - i.e., that troubling detail that disturbs and distracts from the more general field of interest (the photo's studium); that which pricks our attention and often moves us with a certain poignant delight [c]. 

 

 

III. 

 

Glen Matlock's button and Wittgenstein's duckrabbit aside, Trowell gives us many other interesting ideas to consider; about Carnaby Street as a subcultural epicentre; about the staging of photography; and about Rotten's performance for the camera.

 

He suggests, for example, that "Stevenson's photograph bears an uncanny resemblance to Roger Fenton's 1855 photograph Valley of the Shadow of Death" [184]. I don't quite see it myself, however, and might just as easily imagine the Sex Pistols "photoshopped into the immediate foreground" [184] of many an image containing a tapering path. 

 

For instance, here's Jones and Rotten following the yellow brick road:

 

 

 

I wasn't entirely convinced either by Trowell's suggestion that we might consider Stevenson's photograph as "a precisely posed document with the four punk musicians reminiscent of the generic crouched figures of Captain Kirk and his original Star Trek crew materializing on a hostile, alien planet with their phasers at the ready to deal with the subcultural detritus that might turn on them at any moment" [186], although it's certainly an original reading.  

 

These things aside, for the most part one agrees with Trowell's interpretations and marvels at his insights. Rotten's captioning of Stevenson's photo as forced fun at Malcolm's behest is pithy, but one needs Trowell's essay to provide the theoretical and cultural context without which it's just another snap. 

 

The band may never have had much clue as to what was going on or what was at stake, but Malcolm knew exactly what he wanted to do and how he wanted the band to look: "The photograph tries to set out McLaren's deliberate positioning of punk as against the process of accumulation of all music genres and stylistic connotations and manifestations that have gone before." [188]

Obviously, in due course every image loses its power and becomes just another stock photo filed away in an archive: cultural fodder, as Trowell puts it. Some truly great pictures, however, retain their abilty to shock or seduce or to scandalise for decades; others, like this one, now mostly rely on Matlock's button to provide a point of interest.

 

Ultimately, argues Trowell, even the Sex Pistols "cannot escape time and space" [188] just as punk cannot escape being co-opted and commercialised by the forces of capital, as McLaren and Reid conceded in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980).

   

 

Notes

 

[a] Ian Trowell, 'Punk's dead knot: Constructing the temporal and spatial in commercial punk imagery', Punk & Post-Punk, Volume 5, Number 2 (2016), pp. 181-199. Page references given in the post refer to the essay as published here.  

[b] Somewhat surprisingly, Trowell doesn't refer us to the following lines in the Sex Pistols' song 'I Wanna Be Me': 'I got you in my camera / a second of your life, ruined for life'.

      He does, however, refer us to John Berger who argues that the true content of a photograph is invisible as it "derves from a play not with form, but with time ... it isolates, preserves and presents a moment taken from a continuum". See Understanding a Photograph (Penguin, 2013), p. 20. 

[c] Barthes's concept of the punctum raises a problem discussed by commentators such as Michael Fried and James Elkins; if it calls forth a highly idiosyncratic response on behalf of an individual viewer, then how can that experience ever be communicated and theorised? In other words, can Matlock's button ever intensely move anyone other than Trowell himself? I might understand what he says and appreciate what he writes, but is his experience of pleasure (as of pain) not uniquely his own?  

 

 

Musical bonus: Sex Pistols, 'I Wanna Be Me', b-side to 'Anarachy in the UK' (EMI, 1976): click here.  

 

Part two of this post can be read by clicking here. 

 

 

On Loverboy and the Politics of Queerness

LOVERBOY

 

 

I. 

 

Just a brief note of congratulations to Charles Jeffrey and his Loverboy label for notching up ten years in the world of fashion; a decade of "tartan, trash, animalism, anarchy, paganism and punk" as one appreciative critic wrote in a Guardian piece celebrating Jeffrey's achievement [1]. 

 

If almost inevitably one comes away from 'The Lore of LOVERBOY' exhibition at Somerset House [2] feeling that one's seen much of it before having grown up in the world of Westwood, Galliano, and McQueen, nevertheless one also comes away wishing that one was forty years younger and able to enter into Jeffrey's world unburdened by memory of the above.

 

And, to be fair, his aesthetic sensibility isn't simply a pale imitation of anyone else's; Jeffrey's designs do have something unique about them, even if they unfold within a certain tradition and fashion history. And I'm always going to love clothes that make smile like the outfits shown above ...  

 

 

II. 

 

However, if I were to be critical, then perhaps Jeffrey's work is just a little too much at times; too theatrical, too playful, too romantic, too rooted in a hedonistic club scene ...

 

For better or for worse, I belong to a generation that would rather see the word HATE than HOPE sloganised on a jumper and my politics do not exclusively revolve around questions of gender and sexuality.  

 

And as for the increasingly tired and tiresome concept of queerness - one which Jeffrey repeatedly refers us to - I'm almost tempted to echo what one (queer) writer says here: "Queerness does not ensure that we are more compassionate, more loving, or more fair, or that we are kinder, stronger, realer people." [3] 

 

That is to say, queerness doesn't make virtuous or morally superior - nor even more interesting, alas, when it has merely become another identity and commercial selling point. 

                 

 

Notes

 

[1] Ellie Violet Bramley, 'An absolute joy: 10 years of Charles Jeffrey's playful Loverboy', The Guardian (9 June 2024): click here.  

[2] For details of The Lore of LOVERBOY exhibition at Somerset House, click here. Thanks to Ian Trowell for bringing this retrospective to my attention. 

[3] See Queer is Boring, 'Why Queer is Boring: An Introduction' (21 Feb 2014), on medium.com: click here. 

Notes on SIG News Issue 3: From Bomber Jackets to the Joy of Punxploitation

It's all working well for him and it's all going smoothly for McQueen

 

NB: this post is a continuation from part one: click here. 

 

 

V. 

The MA-1 - or bomber jacket, as it is better known - was a popular fashion staple in the 1980s; particularly with skinheads, who loved both its utility and hypermasculinity (as did certain gay clones). 

 

However, as Ian Trowell reminds us, what imbued this garment with such great "subcultural crossover potential" [1] was the fact it evaded fixed meaning. This also helps explain its strange longevity.

 

That and the fact that what's good enough for Steve McQueen, is, as a rule, good enough for anyone (although, for the record, I never owned a bomber jacket and wouldn't have dreamed of wearing such). 

 

 

VI.

 

Mike Wyeld and Antony Price are both concerned with subcultural politics. 

 

The former asks whether punk or acid house, for example, has resulted in any long lasting political change. I think we all know the answer to this, even Wyeld, although he wants to keep the dream alive so can't quite bring himself to openly admit it hasn't.

 

Price, on the other hand, is adamant that rave continues to offer a form of "collective resistance to the oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism" [2]. 

 

Unfortunately, Jean Baudrillard has indicated how and why the very idea of resistance in a transpolitical era characterised by the techno-social immersion of the individual rather than their alienation, has become problematic and even a little passé. Speaking in an interview with François L'Yvonnet, Baudrillard says: 

 

"I'm a bit resistant to the idea of resistance, since it belongs to the world of critical, rebellious, subversive thought, and that is all rather outdated. If you have a conception of integral reality, of a reality that's absorbed all negativity, the idea of resisting it, of disputing its validity, of setting one value against another and countering one system with another, seems pious and illusory." [3]

 

Of course, that isn't to say that there cannot exist singular spaces which, at a particular moment, constitute themselves as alternative worlds with their own set of rules. And that's pretty much how Price describes nightclubs:

 

"At their best, nightclubs are places for experimentation, for inclusiveness and exclusiveness, a place to try out different personas, to challenge sexual identity and orientation through both individual and collective freedoms, a space to move outside of the confines of society." [4] 

The problem is, anyone who has actually been to a nightclub recognises that this is mostly bullshit. And even if nightclubs were (at their best) heterotopic wonderlands of transgression and otherness, they still wouldn't offer the kind of head-on socio-political resistance that Price imagines and advocates. 

 

 

VII.

According to Madeline Lucarelli, the practice of witchcraft has been transformed via the establishment of online communities. No longer concerned with the casting of spells and the harnessing of supernatural forces, witchcraft is now all about personal growth and spiritual freedom [5].  

 

Alas, if Lucarelli is to be believed, witchcraft has therefore become a depressingly tame affair; no sex, no scourging, no satanic ritual ... The Dionysian frenzy of the orgy and the blasphemous humour of the black mass appears to have given way to a New Age theology that upholds many of the same woke values that any good liberal might recognise. 

 

Wicca, I'm sorry to say, is now a humanism. And the witch, far from being a figure who inspires terror or offers resistance to hegemonic society, is now merely a Twilight-reading Barbie Goth hardly deserving of the name.

 

 

VIII.

 

Finally [6], we come to Russ Bestley's article on the joy of punxploitation and his deep fascination with Plastic Bertrand's international hit single 'Ça plane pour moi' (1977).

 

Whilst Bestley struggles to say what, exactly, first attracted him to this song, I think I understand (and to an extent share) his love of those songs which have all the energy of punk but which are not weighed down by the spirit of gravity; songs which privilege the joy and laughter of pop over the austere monarchy of rock [7].

Bestley recognises that fun is a vital element of popular culture, even if it is often valued negatively by those commentators whose language succumbs all too easily to moralising imperatives; i.e., the kind of people who are embarrassed by the crude and shallow entertainments enjoyed by the working-class and who will never accept the fact that 'Friggin' in the Riggin'' was a bigger selling-single than 'Holidays in the Sun'.

 

I agree with Bestley that 'Ça plane pour moi' amusingly manages to "embody so much of what 'punk' set out to achieve" [8]. So click the link above, roll around with your cat on the bed, and enjoy!

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Ian Trowell, 'Bomber Crew: Storying the Eighties Through the MA-1', SIG News 3 (1 September, 2024), p. 12.  

[2] Antony Price, 'Rave On', SIG News 3 (1 September, 2024), p. 30.

 

[3] Jean Baudrillard, Fragments, trans. Chris Turner (Routledge, 2004), p. 71.

 

[4] Antony Price, 'Rave On', SIG News 3 (1 September, 2024), p. 30.

 

[5] See Madeline Lucarelli, 'The Body, Broom and Sins of the Witch', SIG News 3 (1 September, 2024), p. 22.

 

[6] It should be noted that there are numerous other articles in SIG News 3 that I have not discussed. These include Rachel Brett's piece on fashion's relationship with the colour black (a dark history I have myself written on here); Isabella Chiara Vicco's piece on Jerry Rubin and his metamorphosis from yippie to yuppie; and Shijiao Kou's musicological analysis of 'Hong Kong Garden' (the debut single by Siouxsie and the Banshees). Oh, and there's also my piece on the revolt into red-trousered style.   

[7] The phrase 'spirit of gravity' is borrowed from Nietzsche (Thus Spoke Zarathustra) and the phrase 'austere monarchy' is borrowed from Foucault (The History of Sexuality 1). I have written on rockism contra poptimism and in defence of fun elsewhere on Torpedo the Ark: click here and here.

[8] Russ Bestley, 'Ça Plane Pour Moi': The Joy of Punxploitation', SIG News 3 (1 September, 2024), p. 27.  

 

 

But Malcolm, They'll Not Be Able to Find It ...

Fig. 1: Sex Pistols: Anarchy in the U.K. (EMI, 1976)  

Fig. 2: Kazimir Malevich: Black Square (1915) 

 

 

I.

 

It's hard to resist loving a paper that explores the links between punk, nihilism, politics and the arts, such as the one delivered by Ian Trowell at the Torn Edges symposium at the London College of Communication a few days ago [1].

 

Kazimir Malevich and Malcolm McLaren; Suprematism, Situationism, and the Sex Pistols - what's not to love? 

 

I don't want to say it was the best presentation on the day, but it was probably the one I enjoyed the most - and if Trowell had only thought to entitle his work 'Don't Be (Black) Square Be There', I would've loved it (and him) even more [2].

 

 

II.

 

Perhaps unsurprisingly to torpedophiles, the aspect of the talk that most excited concerned the plain black sleeve that 'Anarchy in the U.K.' - the Sex Pistols' debut single - was originally issued in on 26 November, 1976. 

I figure that McLaren would be more than familiar with Malevich's suprematist masterpiece painted sixty years earlier, though don't know if this directly inspired the 'Anarchy' packaging, or if, as Paul Gorman says, the insistence on such a sleeve was simply in line with McLaren's own aesthetic, as seen in his portraits of the 1960s and the clothes designs produced with Vivienne Westwood for Sex [3]. 

 

Either way, it was a great idea for a sleeve; one that not only captures the anarcho-nihilism of the band, but affirms the colour with the greatest symbolic resonance and meaning. 

 

And when EMI executives complained that an all black sleeve with no identifying information would make it extremely difficult for fans to find it in the record stores, Malcolm smiled and said: I don't want them to find it ... [4]

 

Notes

 

[1] Ian Trowell is an independent researcher and author exploring themes of popular culture and ideas around myth and memory. His presentation at Torn Edges was entiled '"Anarchy in the UK', 'Black Square', and Pop Nihilism: Exploring the Links between Punk, Nihilism, Suprematism and Situationism". 'Further details of this event and of the other speakers can be found here. Trowell's recently published book - Throbbing Gristle: An Endless Discontent (Intellect Books, 2023) - can be purchased here.

 

[2] The fact that he was wearing an Adam and the Ants T-shirt on the day makes it even more surprising to me that Trowell didn't think of this title. Still, never mind - the presentation was all good clean fun (whatever that means).*  

[3] See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 331. Gorman goes on to say that McLaren was also thinking of the infamous 'black page' in Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1759-67).

 

[4] There were only a couple of thousand copies of 'Anarchy in the U.K.' issued in the black sleeve; after that, it was sold in the standard EMI sleeve with a hole in the middle so the label information could easily be read. 

      The record reached number 38 in the official UK Singles Chart, before being withdrawn by EMI following the Bill Grundy Incident (1 Dec 1976). The Sex Pistols were eventually fired from EMI on 6 January 1977, but they kept their £40,000 advance and had the last laugh when they included the track E.M.I. on Never Mind the Bollocks (Virgin Records, 1977). 

      To watch the band perform the single 'Anarchy in the U.K.' on the BBC's early evening current affairs show Nationwide (recorded 11 Nov 1976 and broadcast the following day), click here.

 

  

* I'm referring here - for those who don't know - to a track by Adam and the Ants entitled 'Don't Be Square (Be There)', from the album Kings of the Wild Frontier (CBS Records, 1980): click here. You may not like it now, but you will ...