Jason Driskill

One of the books I’m currently reading is titled “Dirty Pictures” by Micha Ramakers and is a sociological look at the work of Tom of Finland. Needless to say, it’s fascinating (how could it not be?).

One of the artists that Ramakers references is Kenneth Anger - specifically his short film “Fireworks.” I have never seen or heard of Anger’s work before. Here’s what I found out about “Fireworks” from www.filmfreakcentral.net/dvdreviews/kennethangerv1.htm:

The movie that put Kenneth Anger on the map, Fireworks (1947, 15 mins., ***/****, A/B/A) is all the more amazing for the filmmaker’s young age. 19-year-old Anger himself plays a young man who wakes up, enters a room marked GENTS, admires a bodybuilder flexing his muscles, and is subsequently menaced and beaten by a crowd of sailors brandishing chains. While one would normally chalk this up to pure masochistic fantasy, it would appear that things are more complicated than that: in his commentary, Anger cites the Zoot Suit Riots (and their instigation by racist sailors) as defining the key image for the film as well as the dream that inspired it, suggesting that the mass battery scene is done for menace and not for thrills. Still, like unconscious dream and conscious fantasy, it’s often hard to separate one from the other, and the sense of sexual ambiance is hard to shake. Consider the bookends in which another sailor holds Anger in his arms, the brief shot of a urinal, a reclining naked man, or the notorious image of a sailor lighting a roman candle in his crotch: in pain or pleasure, ecstasy is the film’s guiding force.

Here are a few still images that I found online from “Fireworks.”

 

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I checked the library at school and found that they had two videotapes of Anger’s work on file. So today I went in and checked them out for viewing. This film is full of beautiful visual content. I’m surprised at how it functions as experimental video even as it predates that genre. The conceptual content is very compelling, especially for its time. There were several moments where I wanted to stop the video and use stills as source for paintings or drawings… Perhaps I might.

Lucky you! Here is a link that shows the video in its entirety: http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/MWIIVYDx6C4/. The film quality is much better here than it was on the VHS version that I watched. Someone obviously cleaned up parts of the film when they formatted it for DVD.

After being completely enchanted with the visual beauty, queer perspective, and use of humor in Anger’s work, I went to wikipedia to find out a little more about Kenneth Anger, and why he made so few films (because really there aren’t enough - especially like “Fireworks”). He was friends with Jean Cocteau and Alfred Kinsey. Amazing.

Things get a little weird for me with “Lucifer Rising” and Anger’s fascination with the occult. Same thing with Walter Disney - what’s with that??

Here’s another film short by Kenneth Anger that I found to be particularly enchanting: Kustom Kar Kommandos. Really, this one is so erotic, you could call it “spank bank.” I think if I could program my dreams at night, this is what I’d loop over and over again and never wake up - God, with the pinks and blues, revving engine, tight jeans and blond hair…
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I forget what I was talking about. Anyway, below is a video that puts Kustom Kar Kommandos in an appropriate perspective, in that that while these videos use cars as a setting, they are both addressing issues that extend far beyond mere automobiles. One might argue, in fact, that neither video is about cars at all.
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