GG Allin—All in the Family: DVD
As a new age of barbarism is dawning across America, it
seems like a good time to drop in on everyone’s favorite punk rock barbarian,
GG Allin. And though the new documentary GG
Allin: All in the Family gives no indication of GG’s possible political
leanings—a true anarcho-primitivist nihilist is not easily plotted on the
conventional left/right political spectrum—it’s intriguing to speculate if GG
could be claimed by the barbarians of the Alt Right now that they’ve asserted
republicanism as “the new punk rock.” His mongoloid misogynism is guaranteed to
set off a million #MeToo alarms and not even the most primped and pumped-up Proud
Boy could touch him in raw yobbish political incorrectness. “GG Allin,
Conservative Icon” may sound absurd at first, but is anything really absurd
anymore in the socio-political realm?
Unlike Todd Phillip’s 1993 GG documentary Hated,
where the Allin family was a mere footnote to Kevin Allin’s Rock’n’roll
Terrorist act, what’s front and center here is, as the punny title states:
ALLIN, the family. That would be brother Merle, GG’s mom Arleta and, to a
lesser extant, the damaged drummer Dino Sex. Each is shown going about their
post-GG life, each dealing with their grief with their own reconstructive
narratives, as the psychologists say. It would be oversimplified, but it could
be crudely said that the spirit of Kevin primarily lives on through the filtered
memories of Arleta, while the spirit of GG primarily lives on through the
filtered memories of Merle. Each has chosen their own ghost to haunt them.
Merle, for example, basically lives in a GG shrine which doubles as a GG Allin merchandise
warehouse. And incidentally, Merle is in the privileged position, solely
because of his infamous brother, of being able to profit from scooping his own
mushy grunt-pie out of the toilet, brushing it onto a canvas and selling that
canvas as an object d’art. Similar to how Donny Trump Jr. is—solely due to his
relationship to the pear-shaped plutocrat currently infesting the White
House—able to scoop the brain turds from his own cranial cavity, compress them
into book form, and profit from it. Fame and infamy are funny things.
No concrete answers are given to the question of what caused Kevin to
transmogrify into GG. That mystery is left hanging like a pair of besmirched
underpants on Arleta’s clothesline. But disturbing hints are dropped about
Merle Sr., GG and Merle’s father, who looms over this film like a twisted
specter and who only peeks out of the interstices of the storyline briefly. One
can only guess what sort of “Daddy-Dearest”
secrets disappeared with that kook.
If TV execs are paying attention: this fascinating, almost Dadaistic showcase
of the Allin family should be fleshed out into a TV series, one that would make The Osbournes look like Leave It to Beaver. And then maybe
Merle, Arleta, and Dino can be the new Reality TV family to finally dislodge
our embarrassing national fixation on the Kardashians. I think that would make
GG proud. –Aphid Peewit (MVD visual, MVDvisual.com)
Bill Direen: A Memory of Others: DVD
Two types of music documentary are becoming very formulaic. One
is the obligatory doc about a seminal band with a boring origin story. The
second is a documentary about how mainstream success has eluded some artist. In A Memory of Others, director Simon Ogston dodges
the typical pitfalls of the latter while still exposing the enigmatic career of
Bill Direen to a larger audience. Ogston breaks from convention, not by
dramatically categorizing the ups and downs of Direen’s career in a
conventional timeline, but instead choosing to showcase Direen’s phases based
on the flow of their discussions.
Direen is New Zealand’s
punk-Shakespeare, similar to John Cooper Clarke or Jim Carroll. He’s played in
punk bands, written poetry, and done experimental theater. Direen is a humble
optimist with rough charisma. Ogston follows Direen on a recent tour of coffee
houses, art spaces, and small bars in New Zealand. Direen makes music, gives
talks, and reads poetry in front of small gatherings of enthusiastic fans, all
the while gently proselytizing about what it means to be an artist through
discussions about his career.
Ogston takes a refreshing turn by utilizing few talking head interviews and
their footage of the New Zealand landscape is masterful. The only frustration
with the film comes with the decision to tell the story out of order. There is
no cataloguing of bands’ eras, more or less. As the film unfolds, it makes
sense in congress with Direen’s attitude towards art. The film paints a
portrait of an interesting artist and a nice guy who is relatively happy with
what his compulsion to create has brought him in life. He’s an inspiring man
and the film does Direen’s attitude justice. –Billups Allen (Self-released)
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