The Talking-Head Punk Rock Documentary

Last night I attended a film screening of three documentaries regarding different aspects of punk. Each one was short, to the point, and with very little cinematic style to get in the way. Hosted in a little theater in Adams Morgan, I was eager to see what they had to offer. The proceeds were to benefit the upcoming CLIT Fest DC gathering, a summer event that highlights female participation in punk, DIY, and other female contributions to popular culture.

In order, the films examined Dischord Records, riot grrrl and female punk, and finally the world of Latino punk (heavily focusing on Chicago stalwarts Los Crudos, a band I remember reading about in Punk Planet years ago). Each had a somewhat student film look (one was in fact part of a college thesis) but not anything unwatchable. What I walked away these films asking myself was how substantive can this approach be? How much more can the talking-head documentary contribute to our understanding of what this music meant?

While I very much appreciate the attention, documentation, and interest these films perpetuate, I wonder about their goals. Granted, nothing is wrong with simple conversation. However, if they are acting as histories, I struggle with the amount of analysis in these documentaries. Oral history is one thing, but these types of examinations often fall into the pit of nostalgia so easily that I tend to go in with speculation. “Am I going to see anything more than glorified story-telling or rehashing of the past”? That sounds more harsh than it should, but I cannot help but feel somewhat jaded whenever I see a new ‘punk documentary’ in the can. There are several good examples of these, Jem Cohen’s Instrument,^[1] We Jam Econo, and Westway to the World to name a few that I willingly watch again and again. I am biased towards these due to my interest in their subjects, so what about topics I know very little of?

The films themselves had very focused topics and none drifted away from their subjects. The Dischord film only wanted to show their infrastructure, riot grrrl more about the origins, and the Latino film seemed to want to discuss issues of Latino identity in the realm of punk. I valued their succinctness, but I would argue these methods only present an inherently biased perspective. How could they not? When participants are the only voice on a subject, the story can only present one viewpoint that likes to masquerade as the “truth” or the “right” answer because they were there.

After two films, a prominent participant in these stories lent herself to a short Q & A with the rather small audience (I won’t go down that road-the road of local DC interest in its own history). The initial silence quickly gave way to her personal observations from the standpoint of an active participant in the punk scene of the 1990s. I questioned if she is continually approached with historical inquiries and, if so, what did they want to know? She gave an interesting answer that her, and other key players, were thinking of taking on the game themselves and writing their own histories, again, from the perspective of the participant.

I always feel somewhat stupid when I have to describe my work as ‘punk scholarship’.^[2] It sounds so patronizing, almost laughable, and has a tinge of false-authority. I do, however, feel that historians provide the distant observation necessary to push past the personal and see the event from both the micro of the personality and the macro of the socio-cultural perspective. It sounds as if the historian is usually guilty of claiming authority over their subject, but what about when the participants are the only voice?

This always goes back to my initial conflict with doing history in the first place: how can I possibly be an authority of something I was never part of? I understand that there are many academic examinations on all sorts of punk topics. I also understand things have to start somewhere. I am not arguing against these particular films nor do I feel any future endeavors should cease and desist. I’m only arguing that once these approaches lay a foundation, they naturally should lead to more in-depth discussion. To continually use the same model traps us into only seeing what’s on the surface.

1 EDIT: Please note that Instrument is not a talking-head documentary, and should be viewed more as a film rather than a ‘documentary’.

2 By ‘punk scholarship’ I do not mean scholarship with a punk ethos, but rather scholarship about punk.