Deathtripping: An Illustrated History of the Cinema of Transgression

Afterimage, Summer, 1996 by Simon Taylor

Chronologically, the Cinema of Transgression appeared slightly after the "New Wave" filmmakers, who rebelled against the Structuralist filmmaking of the mid-'70s by reviving narrative and/or documentary verite in their movies (e.g., Amos Poe's Blank Generation, 1976). The term, "Cinema of Transgression," was coined by Zedd in the fourth issue of his Underground Film Bulletin (1985), in a self-consciously avant-garde manifesto that renounced the "academic snobbery . . . known as Structuralism," and described an "expanded cinema" featuring "blood, shame, pain and ecstasy." Similar ideas were propagated by Tessa Hughes-Freeland in the 'zines East Village Eye and Film Threat. The punk aesthetic associated with the Cinema of Transgression can also be related to the nihilistic "no-wave" bands who performed at Artists Space in 1978, including DNA, Mars, the Contortions and Lydia Lunch's band, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks. A satire of punk rock lifestyle, Zedd's They Eat Scum (1979) is the first film in this genre. According to Taubin, as cited by Sargeant, this "uniformly revolting" film denoted the existence of a "generation gap" more strikingly than any other New Wave film, noting, "The aesthetic operative here is transgression, both in terms of the events of the narrative, and in formal filmmaking terms."(1) Zedd followed this succes de scandale with The Bogus Man (1980), which concerns the cloning of the United States President, and the no-wave musicians Richard Hell and Lunch appear in his 1983 film, Geek Maggot Bingo, a parody of Frankenstein and Dracula movies.

The most prominent transgressive filmmakers, Zedd and Kern; exploit shock value and terrorize their audiences with gratuitous acts of violence, making them accomplices to the scenes they witness. Punk, no-wave, hardcore, industrial and gangster rap music are frequently used on their soundtracks. In the '80s, these filmmakers often combined their screenings with multiple projections and performance art. Zedd's performance "Ordeals," for instance, were influenced by the bloody exorcisms of the Viennese Actionists, and at the screening of Kern's Blood Boy (1984), the filmmaker brutalized a naked, blood-soaked man for refusing to kiss the flag, thereby criticizing the compulsory patriotism of the Reagan-Bush era. State-sanctioned violence is also condemned in Zedd's film Police State (1987), a dramatization that shows him being arrested, held in custody and relentlessly beaten by two police officers. Since the late '80s, there have been pitched battles between police and "anarchists" in the East Village - Police State was partly made as a response to the murder of Michael Stewart, a black man murdered by transit police around Union Square in 1983 (his eyes were removed during an unauthorized autopsy and bleached to cover-up any evidence of strangulation). The transgressive aspect of this work is no joke, since screenings of these films have challenged censorship laws and been raided by police. A public-across television broadcast of They Eat Scum was attacked on the front page of the Wall Street Journal in 1982.

An exemplary film in the genre is David Wojnarowicz and Tommy Turner's Where Evil Dwells (1985), based on the Northport, Long island, "satan teen" Ricky Kasso. After his arrest on murder charges for knifing a fellow occultist, Kasso strangled himself in prison. The film was financed by Wojnarowicz, who had formerly lived on the streets, with money he earned as a successful artist in the East Village art scene. Originally planned as a 90-minute feature, the film was never finished, although a 30-minute "trailer" still exists, introduced by Howdy Doody. The film takes us on a murderous spree with a group of suburban hoodlums, and reverses the stereotype about "sin cities," by implying that evil really dwells in suburbia. The final "Hell" scene was shot in an abandoned warehouse, with a large cast of punks and bikers, who enact sadomasochistic scenes and satanic rituals. Although the immersion in the occult may remind one of the films of Kenneth Anger, the bleak landscape and black and white filming of Where Evil Dwells has an entirely different, negative connotation, less "camp," and more reminiscent of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919, by Robert Wiene). Playing the devil, the painter and performance artist Joe Coleman bites off the heads of live mice, while Survival Research Laboratories provide explosive special effects. Sargeant quotes Wojnarowicz, saying, "For a period of time I entered a circle of people who were attracted to forms and expressions of violence and bloodletting because these things contained some unarguable truth when viewed or experienced against a backdrop of America."(2)

According to Kern, the most profilic member of this group, "What we did was take everything Warhol had done, and everything Dadaism stood for, and combined it with Punk." Kern's first super-8 movie, Goodbye 42nd Street (1983-84), focused on the porn industry around Times Square and Hell's Kitchen. Manhattan Love Suicides (1984), a collection of four black and white super-8 films, is probably his best work. This collective work includes the gory Stray Dogs, with Wojnarowicz portraying a tormented gay man, who literally falls apart when his love for another man is unrequited. In Woman at the Wheel, the female protagonist is harassed by a series of men before slamming her car into a wall and I Hate You Now continues the general mayhem. In Thrust in Me, a collaboration with Zedd, a young suicide slashes her wrists in a bathtub. When he discovers her corpse, Zedd "thrusts" his erect penis in her mouth, instead of showing regret or horror. A dose-up shot reveals it's actually Zedd on the receiving end. The film ends with an exaggerated cum shot, lampooning the compulsory "money" shot in film pornography. After feminists in Ann Arbor denounced the film, Zedd responded (in Film Threat) with the explanation that the woman's attempt to guilt trip her boyfriend backfires, and the necrophilic conclusion is a critique of romantic love. Sargeant adds that the appearance of Zedd "in drag" deconstructs the performative nature of "femininity," but this quasi-feminist explanation seems almost beside the point.