>>REVIEW
PUNK: ATTITUDE
Directed by Don Lets
IFC, 2005
Don Letts cut his teeth spinning dub and reggae records between sets at London’s infamous Roxy club. Open for only 100 days, the Roxy saw the solidification of the U.K. punk scene and Letts took it all in from behind his turntables. Now, from behind his director’s camera, Letts is giving it all back.
Produced for IFC, Letts's latest offering, Punk: Attitude is a look at the emergence and development of punk, from its early New York days, to its explosion in London, and its eventual rebirth in the early 1990s. However, this is not a series of fond reminiscences, but rather a critical exploration of the ground that punk covered, and failed to cover. For Letts, punk was more than just a musical style, but rather a continuing part of 20th-century counterculture, and he conceived of Punk: Attitude as a documentary designed to help move the counterculture forward.
Unlike a lot of documentaries on punk, Punk: Attitude winds the clock back to the 1960s and dismisses the long-standing notion that the punk and hippie countercultures were separate. Interviews with John Cale of The Velvet Underground and John Sinclair of The MC5 help establish this connection, as do testimonies by Jello Biafra and Henry Rollins. In fact, Biafra sums it up succinctly, saying "A lot of us grew up as the only Stooges fan in our small towns and then moved to larger cities where we all discovered each other."
Letts also spends significant time discussing the birth of punk in New York and the importance of CGBG’s before crossing the Atlantic. He’s even tracked down rare footage of obscure early punk bands like Suicide, and interviews with Punk magazine creators Legs McNeil and John Holstrom, and early punks like Dick Manitoba and surviving members of the New York Dolls. Such thoroughness helps elevate Punk: Attitude above standard rock documentaries. Furthermore, where most documentaries end either with the breakup of The Sex Pistols, the death of Sid Vicious, or the end of the Roxy, Letts continues the narrative through the emergence of the East Coast no-wave scene and hardcore in the early 1980s.
In fact, the discussion about hardcore is one of the most interesting points of the film. Punk historians have speculated as to why women were squeezed out of punk through the doctrinaire and masculine posturing of hardcore, but Letts captures women like Polly Styrene talking about how uncomfortable hardcore made them feel while Henry Rollins talks about the homoeroticism of early mosh pits. Early punk’s acceptance of women is made all the more poignant in the featurette Women of Punk that allows Styrene, Siouxisie Sioux and Alice Bags to recount how liberating and attractive punk was when compared to the male-dominated rock of the 1960s.
Similarly, the absence of a discussion on race makes a point, too. A lot of recent academic work has explored punk’s relationship (especially in the U.K.) to racism and skinheads, teasing latent racist overtones out of lyrics. As a filmmaker of colour, Letts has very little to say on the topic, although he does put legendary D.C. hardcore band Bad Brains front and centre during the hardcore segment, as well as a bit highlighting his role as Roxy DJ in helping to form the punk-reggae connection.
Likewise, the featurette on fashion yields a discussion on the role of the swastika, with early New York City artist Arturo Vega stating that his fluorescent swastika was meant to shock and disturb, not be a fascist endorsement. He strengthens his point by noting that he paired the image with the cross-dressing New York Dolls. English punks chime in to discuss the role of the media in creating the punk uniform.
The one weakness of Punk: Attitude is rectified with its release on DVD. While Letts focuses on New York, London and Washington, D.C., the L.A. punk scene is given relatively little attention. The inclusion of Dick Rude’s short documentary L.A. Punk: A Brief History (1976 - 1980) for the U.S. version of the DVD helps to round out the history, highlighting the importance of such touring bands as Black Flag in establishing a circuit that future bands would follow. Furthermore, while the extended featurette on fanzines like Punk and Sniffin’ Glue are good, a lot more could be said about West Coast ’zines like Maximumrockn’roll and Flipside and the formation of a national community of punk.
With many more features, including a replica copy of Sniffin’ Glue slipped inside the DVD jacket — Punk: Attitude is one of the most comprehensive documentaries of a counterculture yet. Furthermore, because of Letts’s connection to the punk scene, Punk: Attitude is never solely about the music. His invitation to poets, filmmakers, writers and fashion designers helps to capture the mentality that pervaded the streets of major urban centres like New York, London and even Calgary in the late 1970s. |
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