This Isn't Your Parents' Punk Rock

Director: Penelope Spheeris

Starring: Lee Ving, Pat Smear, Greg Ginn, Exene Cervenka, John Doe

punk rock: a loud, fast, and deliberately offensive style of rock music - Webster's New World Dictionary

Punk isn't dead in the new millennium, but its commercialization and sanitization by the media and recording industry - and to some extent, American culture at large - has arguably left it on life support. Somewhere along the line, adolescent angst became big business and youth rage transformed from raw emotion to a pre-packaged, well-marketed commodity, no different than any other available at the local mall. Is it possible that director Penelope Spheeris or the participants in her groundbreaking documentary on the Los Angeles (largely) underground punk rock scene, The Decline of Western Civilization, could have predicted such a day? Not likely. Was such a fall inevitable? Positively.

Spheeris' film focuses on music, but ultimately it's about kids - primarily angry, alienated kids attracted to and performing angry, alienated music. For audiences then, The Decline - now celebrating its 20-year anniversary - served as a startling introduction to this disaffected world and its community. Audiences today may find its content less shocking, but in no way should this detract from the fact that the culture it depicts was truly transgressive.

Beneath punk's day-glow hairdos and discordant aural assault existed a self-sufficient community, composed largely of adolescents living, creating and performing together, and along the way defining their own standards (such as the DIY or "do it yourself" work ethic) and agendas. As Spheeris' documentary attests, it was a community that not only survived, but thrived amidst the confines of early eighties Los Angeles - a setting far more renowned for its consumerism rather than collectivism. We witness powerful performances from a variety of Southern California bands including Black Flag, X, The Germs, Fear and The Circle Jerks. Performances that stood out for far more than just their music (which, depending on any number of factors - including the sobriety of its performers - could range from excellent to embarrassing), but for what they represented: a rejection of tradition and materialism by the very audience - youth - to whom those messages were aimed. Punk rock did not reflect this rejection; it embodied it.

Does such a subculture exist today? On some levels, most certainly. (Today's "rave" scene would appear to exemplify many of punk's inherent tenets.) On others, not at all. Punk rock now enjoys a 25-year history in America. In many ways, it no longer represents a rebellion against the establishment; it has become part of the establishment. Worse still, it's no longer a rejection of tradition; it is tradition. And a marketable and profitable one at that.

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