Turn Me On, Dead Man

Requiem for Detroit? is a documentary by Julian Temple produced for the BBC that documents the decline of the Motor City. The picture of Detroit this documentary presents is beyond bleak, to put it mildly. It's presented as a "darkly cautionary tale for the entire industrialized world” that focuses on the most troubled parts of this city. The film devotes a great deal of attention to Detroit's industrial ruins, which are extensive. In fact, Bill Shea, a reporter for Crain's Detroit Business, criticizes to Requiem for Detroit? as "ruin porn goes hardcore," focusing only on the bad and none of the good. Still, given how easy it was for Temple to find scenes of devastation in Detroit, such criticisms sound desperate.

Detroit's ruins have been well documented. Forgotten Detroit provides pictures of abandoned theaters, office buildings, hotels, and other buildings around the city. A collection of photography by Yves Marchand and and Romain Meffre that captures the strange beauty of decaying structures of the industrial era is set to be published soon. You can even take a virtual tour of Detroit's ruins.

Equally shocking are the areas of the city that have been abandoned and lost most of their housing. Requiem for Detroit? only briefly cover areas such as those around St. Cyril's, now the St. Cyrl Parish Urban Prairie and Herman Gardens, which have little urban character left. The wholesale clearance of housing has left these areas utterly empty. The Detroit News recently ran this story about the problems that abandoned neighborhoods pose for the city of Detroit. Requiem for Detroit? devotes some time at the end of the film to people who are trying to use abandoned parts of the city for agriculture. Though their efforts to reinvent the city are presented as a ray of hope for Detroit, given what Requiem for Detroit? has presented in the preceding hour, it doesn't leave the viewer with much of a sense of hope, particularly given the contrast between the small scale of these agricultural efforts and the immense scale of the industrial devastation.

Julian Temple is best known for music related films, particularly The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle(1979) and The Filth and the Fury (2000), both about the Sex Pistols. The Great Rock and Roll Swindle was told primarily from Malcolm McLaren's perspective, and indulged much of the mythology that had arisen around the band. The Filth and the Fury, by contrast, gave the surviving members of the band the opportunity to tell the story from their perspective. The Filth and the Fury went some way toward dismantling the Sex Pistols' mythology, but the band members were interviewed in silhouette, allowing the audience to maintain an image of the band as still being teenage upstarts. Requiem for Detroit? can be seen as something of an extension of the sort of documentary filmmaking evident in The Filth and the Fury. Where The Filth and the Fury placed the Sex Pistols in their social context, Requiem for Detroit? uses music extensively to talk about the social conditions brought about by Detroit's economic decline. One particularly effective technique Temple employs in Requiem for Detroit? is projecting video, mainly of musical performances, onto Detroit's ruins, contrasting the vitality of the music that has come out of Detroit with the decayed phsyical environment that remains.

Malcolm McLaren, best known as the manager of the Sex Pistols, died at age 64 after a long battle with cancer. John Lydon, who once called McLaren "the most evil man on Earth," said in a statement (signed Johnny Rotten) that McLaren was, "always entertaining and I hope you remember that." Lydon went on to say, "Above all else he was an entertainer and I will miss him, and so should you." The First Post offers a concise summary of views on McLaren by those in the know.

One thing I was struck by in looking over the reports of McLaren's death is the reaction from financial news publications. Obituaries appeared in Forbes and the Financial Times, and Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal both included articles pondering McLaren's legacy.

Clearly Malcolm McLaren was a key player in the development of punk and contributed to the commercial success of the Sex Pistols and punk generally. Having said that, I'm wary of claims such as John Savage's assessment that "Without Malcolm McLaren there would not have been any British punk." Such a claim would be easy to dismiss, except that Savage is the author of England's Dreaming, Revised Edition: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond, an excellent account of the early history and significance of punk. The enduring interest in the Sex Pistols, however, is not because of the headlines they grabbed with their antics, which McLaren made the most of, but because they made great records, which had little to do with McLaren.

While he no doubt played a part shaping the image of punk rock, McLaren was also a destructive influence.  Under more conscientious management, the Sex Pistols and Sid Vicious may not have met such an early demise.  Or perhaps that's beside the point.  In any case, John Lydon is right, Malcolm McLaren was always entertaining.