Newspaper Page Text
Page 22
Flagpole. Magazine
October 16, 1991
Book Marks. . .
Lipstick Traces, A Secret History
of the Twentieth Century
by Greil Marcus ! 496 pages $14.95
Copyright 1989, Harvard University Press
The cover of Lipstick Traces has a picture of Johnny
Rotten gazing maniacally and gripping a microphone sur
rounded by a collage of random pictures, paint smears,
and slashed burlap, all of it tinted a kind of burnt orange-
yellow. On the basis of the book's cover. I expected some
light reading filled with amusing anecdotes of those wild
and raucous punk rockers with a nod to the proto-punk
bohemian sub-cultures of the twentieth century, a sort of
Party Out of Bounds, except for all of Europe instead of just
Athens, GA.
Lipstick Traces is a thick book, filled with abstraction
and theorizing. It had me running for the dictionary more
than once (Do you know what “reification" means? I
didn’t.) I found myself wishing on more than one occasion
that Marcus would slow down and explain in simple English
what he was talking about.
Nevertheless, Lipstick Traces is consistently interesting
and I had no trouble getting through even the more obtuse
sections because I was always intrigued by what Marcus
was saying. I also found his reasoning consistently persua
sive.
Marcus succeeds in his goal of writing out a secret
history of the twentieth century. Whereas I once thought the
German Dada artists, the May '68 riots in Paris, and the birth
of Punk in London 77 were ail basically isolated outbreaks
of protest and social unrest, Marcus weaves a narrative
which connects them both historically and thematically.
Thematically, he shows each movement to be a mani
festation of the same impulse of negation, to reject out-of
hand society and its values. Historically, he shows each
movement influencing the other. Marcus wants to de-
emphasize the historical connections between these vari
ous movements because he wants to represent them, not
as adomino chain of cause-and-effect, but as each moment
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as an independent manifestation of the same impulse
towards negation.
To further this end, Marcus chooses a deliberately un-
chronological format for his book. First he talks about the
Sex Pistols and their singer Johnny Rotten/Lydon, jumping
back to the 16th century uprising of radical Anabaptists
lead, ironically enough, by John of Leyden, then he talks of
the birth of Dada in World War I Zurich, slowly progresses
to the Lettrist International and Situationist International,
which leads to the May '68 uprising in Paris which later
inspires Malcolm McLaren and Jamie Reid to start Punk
which leads to the Sex Pistols. Then he skips ahead to after
the Punk heyday, and then back to Berkeley ’64 and the
Free Speech Movement.
They didn’t give a damn
if the mainstream
art world thought they were
clever or not.
They wanted to destroy —
period.
Even within this structure jumps of a half-century back
wards or forwards are not uncommon. The narrative
progresses more by connections of theme than time in an
effort to show the similarities of various times and move
ments which seem, at first glance to be unrelated. Still, the
effect can be disorienting at times, especially at the begin
ning when the reader is not familiar with all the major
characters and groups.
The desire for the utter negation of the old world and
creation of a new world where “all is action and there is no
reckoning" is shared not only by heretics and the avant-
garde far left, but also by the far right in people like Hitler
and Mussolini. Marcus opening acknowledges this con
nection, pointing out the Hitler and Mussolini started out as
kf\
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artists but quickly grew discouraged by the lack of impact
art had on the modern world. However, Marcus never
discusses the implications of this connection or what it is
that separates Nazism's mode of negation from Dadaism’s,
or even if such a separating line exists.
Also. Marcus never addresses what is, in my opinion,
the radical departure Punk makes from earlier movements.
Many of the Dadaists, Lettrists and Situationists came from
educated, bourgeois backgrounds. Although they would
be loathe to admit it, they wanted their movements to reflect
their education and intelligence. They secretly wished
validation from the very world they professed to despise. It
also bred an elitism into these earlier avant-garde move
ments. Nothing would have horrified a Situationist or
Dadaist more than to have one of their works become a hit
single. They wished to remain esoteric and exclusive.
Punk was encumbered by none of this elitism. They
didn't give a damn if the mainstream art world thought they
were clever or not. They wanted to destroy—period. They
also were almost completely unencumbered by elitism;
anyone who could make three chords was welcome. That's
why Dada or Situationism can oe called “avant garde"
(advance guard or watchman) and the Sex Pistols cannot.
Whereas the former wanted to appear clever, the advance
guard to something else, the Punks said there was "No
future." In other words, the game was asham. They weren’t
clever, just fed up. This lack of elitism and pretension is
what makes Punk a potent force today. It is still be used by
many as a tool for rejection of society whereas Dadaism
and Situationism are now history.
Yet even if, as some will maintain, Punk is dead, Marcus
shows that Punk is but a manifestation of a larger tradition
of protest and rejection that outlives any of its single
incarnations. He has succeeded in creating a secret
history which always stands in contrast to the traditional
history of society and progress, an “anti-history" of nega
tion instead of affirmation which may disappear only to
resurface in another place, another time. In this sense, the
spirit of Punk, as well as Dada and Lettrism and Situation
ism, is unkillable. Drew Nordvall
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