Kenneth Anger’s Magick Lantern Cycle & Spectacle, Subculture and Style

eye Weekly magazine
April 9, 1992

It is rare to encounter a pioneer. A true pioneer. Someone who invented—or at least was the first to adapt—cultural symbols that today are essential and widespread.

Kenneth Anger is most famous for two books, Hollywood Babylon I and II, in which he told, in painstaking detail, the full gamut of scandalous life in pre-war Hollywood. The books made him rich and notorious.

But Anger’s art—his pioneering art—is found in his films. The most famous can be broken down into two types (although there are many more that don’t fit these categories).

On the one hand, he made jarringly experimental, rapid-cut adaptations of Satanic and mys- tical rituals. These films include Lucifer Rising, Invocation of My Demon Brother and The Inaug- uration of the Pleasure Dome (yes, he is responsible for re-inserting that term into contemporary language). Accompanying music was either grating experimental stuff or minimalist classical assemblages (some of it, strangely enough, written by Mick Jagger).

On the flip side, he made a series of sweet, post-modern postcards of homoerotic fantasies: clean-cut bikers cleaning their chassis to the tune of “One Fine Day”; a Hardy Boy cleaning his steering wheel while “Dream Lover” plays in the background.

All of his films have the edgy quality of proto-MTV vignettes. But Anger’s work is smarter: camp references and astonishing images are the rule here, not the exception. His unquestionable hip- ness and modern flair make the work often seem years ahead of itself. Conceptual video directors—like James Herbert (REM’s “Low”)—owe much to Anger’s astounding talent.

For many experimental and virtually all gay filmmakers, Anger is the beginning. He sets up the seminal homoerotic studies that permeate not only the work of Derek Jarman, Gus van Sant and Isaac Julien, but most glossy magazine advertising (per Bruce Weber); his restructuring of narrative, po-mo pastiche and anarchic camera stylings recur in many key avant-garde artists’ work and, from them, have filtered into several mainstream “art” films.

If any of this interests you, the entire cycle of Anger’s films will be on display as part of the Rockumentary series at the AGO.

In addition, Anger will be speaking at the opening event (April 9–10) of Spectacle, Subculture and Style—a fascinating lecture series presented by Public Access that will also feature po-mo guru Fred Jameson (April 24), race writer Michelle Wallace (May 6) and cultural critic Sue Golding (April 15).
—Noah Cowan