"The first time we screened the film was at the Writers Guild in L.A. and this woman stood up and said, ‘How dare you glorify these heathens!’" says Penelope Spheeris following the screening of her newly restored punk rock documentary The Decline of Western Civilization at Brooklyn Academy of Music. "And I thought, ‘she’s right.’"
A feature-length glimpse at some of Los Angeles’ most compelling punk acts circa 1979, Decline was a down-in-the-dirt look into the chaos of mosh-pits, stage antics, and shit-faced music that the general public was just beginning to grasp. Respectively, the bands featured were Germs, Black Flag, Fear, Circle Jerks, X, Catholic Discipline, and Alice Bag Band, along with features on Slash magazine and club owners like Bill Gazzarri. Between hectic, screaming live performances from the bands, often fitted with lyrics for viewers to follow along, Spheeris talks to these bands about how they make money, fans about what the music means, and if people get scared of them when they walk down the street.
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After Decline of Western Civilization was released, the original print was destroyed in a now shut down film-holding facility and the copy she had made sat for years before finally making its way to DVD this month. Even when it premiered it was difficult to get distributed because of its subject matter and documentary form; the movie’s initial screenings were met with opposition from the LAPD.
So does Decline glamorize heathens, as that one outspoken audience member cried at its first debut? The documentary is, like the scene it documents, bloody, sexist, and racist. Bands talk of holding girls by their "holes" like six-packs, Whiskey a Go Go security talks of audiences trying to rip Exene Cervenka’s dress off her body, skinheads rattle off racist diatribes. It’s a gritty blueprint of young, white, male aggression, dudes smashing into each other and retorting vocal fry-laden "Fuck, I don’t know"s when asked why exactly they "dance" like that. "It’s not like I’m going to go out and kill a Jew," says one punk teen wearing a Swastika-emblazoned t-shirt. "I might kill a hippie though," he snorts.
Decline is, on one level, a well-directed document of the fomenting L.A. punk scene, from Darby Crash slurring his way through "Lexicon Devil" to how the world was beginning to perceive punk through the editor’s letters to Slash magazine. Spheeris lets the camera linger on the faces and thoughts, giving us comprehensive sense of what kind of kids trekked out to see these spectacles. But, this movie is also an accidental comedy. As a young teenager watching the film, I was entranced by the violence of the scene. But in the sold-out audience at BAM last week it became clear that there was really nothing tough about Decline’s cast. As it’s aged, what is remarkable is how hilarious it is. And a lot of this comes down to Spheeris’ editing and the juxtaposition with how seriously fans take punk but how unseriously the musicians take it.
"We try to tell him to do that," Nicole, the Germs manager, says dryly of Darby Crash. "Do what?" Spheeris asks. "Well, tell him to sing into the microphone." "I put a guy in the hospital a little while back," says Michael, an interviewed fan. "I broke his nose and his jaw and slashed his face…they said I hit him with a chain…I guess I did?" On paper, some of Spheeris’ interviews are dark. But, there’s something about the way her subjects deliver their lines that makes the entire film seem like a "Daria" script rather than a series of conversations on music and mosh pits. They seem bored with their own shenanigans and it’s from this complete nonchalance for their own stupidity and chaos that they become caricatures.
There are even tender moments: Crash playing with his pet tarantula just a year before his death, Billy Zoom goofing around, Ron Reyes singing a tidbit from West Wide Story as he explains how he’s from Puerto Rico. Spheeris manages to locate the comedian in every musician she interviewed. "The reason I got the job to do Wayne’s World was because I did Decline II and those guys were funny in a different way, in a sadder way," Spheeris says. "But these bands really were funny. People see the humor in [Decline] more now than they did back then."
Granted, there is no serious violence in Decline. We don’t see assault, violent racism, homophobia, or anti-Semitism. But there’s also no glorification in Decline, unless you can call mocking glorification. Skinheads look like puerile brats, musicians can’t play their instruments, managers talk about their bands like they’re toddlers in their charge. From these intimate scenes, the vision of punk that emerges is not as a threatening mass of rebellion and politics, but one that plays almost like a satire of itself. I wonder if we’re so far from punk that a film like this can’t be taken seriously. In the eyes of Decline, punk isn’t scary, it’s stupid.
