Horror Week 2: Punk
I’ve only ever known one true punk. High school. Freshman year. Gym class. The first few weeks as a freshman were a bouquet of powerful hormones and hypnotic memories, a fever dream.
I liked gym class the most because it resembled the cinematic standards of the high school experience—gym shorts, body odor, cool girls sat on the bleachers, ornery wrestling coaches with whistles —and it was my first anthropological study of upperclassmen. I mostly kept to myself. Hung out with my assigned social circle. Tried not to embarrass myself in front of the basketball players.
The punk was in this class. He is much older looking on recollection, like a thirty-five year old portraying a high school student on a CW drama, but he couldn’t have been more than sixteen, seventeen.
I never knew his name, but I was frightened by what he represented, the intentionality of his rebellion. Sky high mohawk. Checkered pants with chains hanging from his belt loops. A generalized distrust of authority which lead to many altercations with other students and teachers. I saw him climb restricted areas of the school on numerous occasions. This very public display of dissatisfaction was very new to a girl transferring from a charter school to the largest high school in the county.
You’ve got to remember this was 2005, the height of American patriotism. Suburban white girls were not stepping out of line for the aesthetic or social media clout. Opinions of political leaders, religion, the military, food, clothes, were galvanized around a particular event that reinforced our national main character syndrome—a particular date in September, you might know it.
It wasn’t hip to stand out, the media we consumed at that time made that very clear. Any hint at emotional instability or one pound gained was enough fodder for the press to harass an actress on the street. It was a dangerous time to be “other”.
But even at the height of this Tobey Keith, Freedom Fries, US Weekly way of thinking, dissatisfaction bloomed. Think: the evolution of Green Day and pop punk. Vans. PacSun t-shirts. Wide, wide swept bangs with thick, skunk-like highlights. Water-downed punk. In retrospect this anti-establishment peacocking more heavily leaned in the direction of capitalism, more Hot Topic than Sid Vicious, but it still captured some of the disillusionment of growing up in a culture that hated and needed us.
All this to say, there was an underground river running congruently with popular culture. Punk is not punk without something to rally against. That kid in my gym class embodies more than the bounds of his own body. He represents the attitude of the time. What a basic teenager (me) did not yet have the social intelligence to understand.
Punk has no one all encompassing ideology but it a movement of aesthetic, film, dress, music, and politics that attempts to challenge set beliefs. Punk and horror go so well together because they are often statements against the established mundane. They paint reality in “ugly” shades, disfiguring, ripping, sticking holes in flesh, and painting a picture of dissatisfaction and frustration.
This rage is often captured from the point of view of youth because youth is a constant state of discovery, enlightenment often becoming disappointment. In the same way that horror movies are overwhelming about groups of young people walking or stumbling into dangerous situations. It is easier to capture true horror on the face of youth because this is their first time seeing the world for what it is, that nothing really ever changes, the scariest truth of all.
Unlike the last list, this week is a little more loosey-goosey. I am going more off vibes this time around. Some are easier to spot, such as Devil’s Candy and Green Room which have very intentional punk influences.
Generally, all the films include characters that are seeking to subvert social norms, the taboo, such as with Hellraiser and Bliss, often in the pursuit of art, leading to dangerous consequences.
Punk Picks:
Hellraiser
Devil's Candy
Bliss
Beyond the Black Rainbow
Queen of the Damned
Censor
Green Room