Film-Philosophy , 12.
2 September 2008
Review: Jack Sargeant (2008)
Deathtripping: The Extreme Underground
3rd Edition
New York: Soft Skull Press
ISBN 1-933368-95-0
pp. 288
G iuliano Vivaldi
The first American edition of Jack Sargeants Deathtripping more than a decade after its
first UK edition allows us to take a new look at the phenomenon of the American-based
Cinema of Transgression movement of the late 70s and the 80s, a term coined by the main
coordinator, Nick Zedd, of a post-punk group of filmmakers from New Yorks East Village.
Sargeants account is divided into three sections: in chapter one he gives an introduction
looking at the origins and influences on the Cinema of Transgression, gives a description of
the earlier Punk/New Wave Cinema of Beth and Scott B and gives an overall introduction
to the movement as a whole and its emergence as well as its difference from other avant-
garde or underground movements in film. The main body of the book is a look at the
individual filmmakers and long interviews with them (these include Zedd, Richard Kern,
Tommy Turner, David Wojnarowicz, Tessa Hughes-Freeman, Cassandra Stark and others) as
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Vivaldi, Giuliano (2008) Review: Jack Sargeant (2008) Deathtripping: The Extreme Underground .
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Film-Philosophy , 12.2 September 2008
well as a more recent wave of filmmakers working in the same vein, for example Jeri Cain
Rossi and Todd Phillips. A concluding section speaks of more recent work by these
filmmakers, looks at their growing recognition outside the East Village post-punk scene by
more established art institutions and their legacy and influence through the
establishment of Underground Film Festivals. Finally there is an appendix with three film
scripts by Zedd, Turner and Wojnarowicz and by Kern.
Many questions immediately arise after a viewing of some of the films by these
filmmakers1 - was this really a new and significant stage in Underground Cinema history?
What is the exact meaning of the term transgressive is in relation to the works by these
filmmakers and what validity is there in using this term for these films? Was their aim to
shock an authentically Dadaist impulse or did they merely reflect the exploitation ethos
with a theory of transgression tacked on as an afterthought? What were the material bases
to this movement? What were the fissures and contradictions in the movement? Did they
expand the possibilities of cinema (as their idea of Expanded Cinema implied) or did they
at times unwittingly reproduce reactionary trends in Reagans America which they aimed
to combat? Did punk (or post-punk) cinema really specifically valorise the radical
democratic and egalitarian aspects of popular culture: amateurism, conviviality,
improvisation, illegitimacy, profanity, transgression and collectivity (Reekie 2007, 187)? 2
The answer Sargeant gives to these questions is generally one that accentuates the
positive side of the movement although the general tone is not simply hagiographic. A
real effort is made to explicate the thought processes and ideas that belonged to this
group of filmmakers. The interviews manage give a broad picture of the ambience, the
ideas and the individual styles of the various filmmakers and to locate them historically.
Four decades ago it was another historian of Underground Cinema, Parker Tyler, who made
a critique of Underground film criticism as all too-often consisting of more or less
flattering bouquets extended to a big round of in-under filmmakers going on to add that
Underground Film criticism may sound persuasive and to the point till one actually
witnesses the creative work it pretends to interpret; an appalling gap then appears
1
Some of these films can be viewed on the web at <www.ubu.com/film/transgression.html>.
2
An opposing viewpoint was offered by Simon Taylor who in his review of Deathtripping argues that
Some of the worst aspects of the punk aesthetic are emphasized in the Cinema of Transgression:
the aestheticized violence and puerile humor, the racism and sexism, the fascination with Nazi
regalia and the radical chic of serial killers. (Taylor 1996)
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Vivaldi, Giuliano (2008) Review: Jack Sargeant (2008) Deathtripping: The Extreme Underground .
Film-Philosophy, vol. 12, no. 2: pp. 157-164. <http://www.film-philosophy.com/2008v12n2/vivaldi.pdf>.
ISSN: 1466-4615 online
Film-Philosophy , 12.2 September 2008
between the object in view and the description itself. By and large, Underground Film
criticism is an occupation to be termed blurbing (Tyler 1974, 217). But one does not feel
that this critique is wholly applicable to Sargeants work. He has managed to give the
fullest possible account of the Cinema of Transgression movement that presently exists
and gives very precise descriptions of many of the films which by now may be unavailable
for public viewing.3
Sargeant begins his account of the Cinema of Transgression by situating this
movement within a history of cinematic transgression the key exponents of which, for
Sargeant, were Jack Smith, Ken Jacobs, Andy Warhol, the Kuchar twins and John Waters.
This constellation of filmmakers does point to a rather exclusively American-centred view
of underground cinema and although a discussion of what constitutes the idea of
Underground is rather outside the scope of the book it is indeed rather rare to find any
history of the Underground being anything but a history of the Anglo-Saxon Underground
- what is all too often missing is any sense of Underground as a global phenomenon. Some
of the transgressive filmmakers might mention Dadaism and Parker Tyler in his list of
Underground Classics may make reference to French, Soviet or German classics of the 20s
and 30s (1974, 233-238), yet surely any concept of Underground must have some more
universal connotations or must we see Underground as a movement in film that has arisen
within the confines of American cinema with ties mainly to subcultures like Beat and
Punk? If the term Underground itself originated from the subculture of European
resistance during World War Two (Reekie, 139) then couldnt one see a kind of
Underground at work in strongly transgressive films made under authoritarian regimes
what would the inclusion of films like Strange Journey (El Extrao Viaje, Fernando Fernan-
Gomez, 1964) or A Bad Joke (Skvernij anekdot, Aleksandr Alov and Vladimir Naumov, 1966)
mean for a more global idea of Underground or transgressive cinema? Perhaps more
appropriately, where would the more explicitly Underground films such as those by the
3
Some of the texts from the other contributors to the book- (who include Stephanie Watson, Jeri Cain
Rossi, Duane Davis and Jack Stevenson) detract at times from the unity of this approach that
Sargeant manages to achieve and one or two (most notably, Duane Daviss sections on Joe Coleman
and Lydia Lunch) lapse into fanzine-speak.
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Vivaldi, Giuliano (2008) Review: Jack Sargeant (2008) Deathtripping: The Extreme Underground .
Film-Philosophy, vol. 12, no. 2: pp. 157-164. <http://www.film-philosophy.com/2008v12n2/vivaldi.pdf>.
ISSN: 1466-4615 online
Film-Philosophy , 12.2 September 2008
late Soviet necro-realists fit into schemas of a transgressive underground made by
filmmakers completely independent of any official film-making authorities? 4
Sargeant begins his account of the central figures of transgressive cinema with the
work of Beth and Scott B. He sees them as being the immediate precursors to the Cinema
of Transgression and argues that their work does not fully belong to this movement owing
to its more directly political stance - for Sargeant they belong to the New Wave/New
Cinema movement and directors alongside directors like Amos Poe and Vivienne Dick who
were part of the early Punk movement (the Cinema of Transgression being situated in a No
Wave/ post-punk ethos). However, it is also clear from the interviews published in this work
that the movements protagonists can be said to have taken widely differing approaches
and that there were significant fissures within the movement: if the self-appointed leader,
Nick Zedd (author of the original manifesto of the Cinema of Transgression under the
pseudonym of Orion Jeriko) speaks of two waves within the movement, other filmmakers
in the movement would point to more definite points of conflict over approaches and a
clear parting of the ways.5
A number of themes come through in both the interviews carried out by Sargeant
and in his introductory articles which suggest that some aesthetic and even formal traits
are shared by the various filmmakers belonging to this post-punk wave. Stacy Thompson, in
his look at punk cinema from a materialist perspective, states the history of punk is the
history of the interplay between (aesthetics and economics) which find expression in and
through one another (Thompson in Rombes 2005, 22) and the very D. I.Y. nature of punk
(or post-punk cinema) was, of course, made possible through technical innovations (the
super 8 with synched sound) and the specifics of the New York scene is amply described as
4
It is curious, though, to note that American Underground as a movement was full of first and second
immigrants-in its early history one may speak of the influence of Jonas Mekas, Oskar Fischinger,
Hans Richter and others and even the Cinema of Transgression is replete with examples like
Cassandra Stark, Tessa Hughes-Freeland and Ela Troyano.
5
Cassandra Stark Mele is the most critical voice here. She sees the Cinema of Transgression as initially
involving an active resistance against capitalistic uses of film with a large female presence in the
movement. But the initial moment was distorted by certain egos (who) seized opportunities to
dominate, by the usual means of manipulation and feigning appearances as being the biggest,
meanest, baddest, loudest; the usual infant perversions. The biggest mouths are definitely absent
from all the various social struggles going on I guess they must have transgressed themselves so
far that they are no longer concerned with fighting injustice and oppression. They want to project
themselves as rebels, they turned out to be pimps! (Cassandra Stark quoted in Sargeant 2008, 202-
3). Her criticism later specifically is directed at Kern, Zedd and Lunch and for Stark Mele the imagery
pertaining to violence and sexuality was used in damning ways, to oppress and titillate and
entertain the sick oppressors (Cassandra Stark quoted in Sargeant 2008, 210).
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Vivaldi, Giuliano (2008) Review: Jack Sargeant (2008) Deathtripping: The Extreme Underground .
Film-Philosophy, vol. 12, no. 2: pp. 157-164. <http://www.film-philosophy.com/2008v12n2/vivaldi.pdf>.
ISSN: 1466-4615 online
Film-Philosophy , 12.2 September 2008
being the fundamental backdrop of this transgressive cinema. Much is made of the
description of the actual physical environment in which this movement played itself out
(fundamentally the East Village in Manhattan but equally other areas such as the
warehouse district in Chicago and SOMA district of San Francisco which would be
important in the development of this new form of Underground film- these were all
depressed areas where rents would be cheap and the protagonists of the movement could
live in a state of independent poverty (Hawkins in Jancovich et al 2003, 224). The
interviews printed in Sargeants book give accounts of the more significant clubs and a
lively and convincing description of the scene in which the films of this movement were
made and shown. The very material limitations faced by the protagonists would often lead
to new aesthetic solutions being brought into play. The idea of found footage became an
absolutely central notion for many of the filmmakers discussed in this book as well as their
dependence on the super 8. Their links with the No Wave punk movement as a whole also
would influence their work as being very much dependent on the idea of film as
performance. If the inspiration is Dadaism, some of the practical solutions to their material
constraints are surprisingly reminiscent of early Soviet agitki and the use of found footage
echoes that of Esfir Shub six decades earlier.6
As well as the technical and material aspects of the Extreme Underground of
transgressive cinema (of course, the earlier Underground of the sixties was also a response
to new technology in the guise of the 16mm film), the move from camp to punk was the
thematic disjuncture that separated the Underground Cinema of the 60s (Jack Smith, Ken
Jacobs, the Kuchar brothers) with that of the Cinema of Transgression. For Hoberman and
Rosenbaum while the films of the sixties underground were often displaced orgies, those
of the para-punks were shot through with fantasies of punishment and revenge
(Hoberman and Rosenbaum 1991, 283).7 For Sargeant the transitional figure is John Waters
for it was Waters seventies movies which pushed the personal vision of the underground
6
The transgressive use would later be replicated in the late Soviet work of the Aleinikov brothers
and their parallel cinema (the first authentically independent and underground cinema movement
in the Soviet Union along with the Necro Realists led by Evgeny Iufit mentioned above).
7
Beth B in her interview with Sargeant explicitly states this point for her, films of the earlier
Underground and, in particular, those by the Kuchar brothers had itself very much more in camp
I was more attracted to a certain reality of the streets and of the underbelly of society, and so the
punk aesthetic fitted perfectly with that because it was all that alienation and self-destruction
which was very much what that time was about (Beth B quoted in Sargeant 2008, 25). Beth B saw
her filmmaking as an explicit rejection of structuralist/formalist filmmaking and as an attempt to take
a more narrative approach than had previous underground filmmakers.
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Vivaldi, Giuliano (2008) Review: Jack Sargeant (2008) Deathtripping: The Extreme Underground .
Film-Philosophy, vol. 12, no. 2: pp. 157-164. <http://www.film-philosophy.com/2008v12n2/vivaldi.pdf>.
ISSN: 1466-4615 online
Film-Philosophy , 12.2 September 2008
into a zone in which it was deliberately confrontational (Sargeant 2008, 13). Moreover
the intervening seventies was also the period of the explosion of the exploitation or
Grindhouse phenomena which may also be said to have had its influence on the style and
perversity of the Cinema of Transgression. The specific thematics of this cinema could also
be read as a response to the times in which the movement was born: Sargeant mentions
Wojnarowiczs statement that the Cinema of Transgression was a socio-political response
to the Reagan era. Wojnarowicz argues that transgressive cinema attempted to push at the
barriers and boundaries that were being made more and more rigid during the Reagan
eras family values, homophobia and racism.8 The economic downturn and the advent of
the second Cold War also certainly appear to explain some of the more apocalyptic tones
of these films as compared to the films of the earlier Underground. The No Future attitude
of punk and the emphasis on evil and violence in many of the films seem to be very much of
their time but some exponents of this transgressive cinema were still making a
fundamentally Baudelairean cinema championed by Mekas or what P Adams Sitney calls a
mythopoeic cinema (Adams Sitney 2002, 328). One can see this in some of the work by
Hughes-Freeland and Cassandra Stark.
The link between Underground film movements and a specific sub-culture are
equally important9 and make it difficult to speak of these movements as movements
within cinematic history in the same vein as French or Czech New Wave or Italian Neo-
Realism. This point is extremely well brought out within Sargeants account: while a study
of, say, French New Wave may not require an intensive knowledge of the scene within
which this cinema is produced, the study of Underground Cinema would be pointless
without it. This, of course, may appear (and often is) a weakness for any general recognition
of Underground Cinema as a subject fit for scholarly study.10 Equally the centrality of the
8
Wojnarowicz (quoted in Sargeant 2008, 36) states that They began to push everything they could
to see how far they could go before they exploded it, or it exploded them.
9
This was as true of the early Underground of the sixties as it was of the extreme Underground of the
eighties. As Reekie states Underground Cinema first developed around the late 1950s as a
component of the emergent counter-culture; a heretical and mercurial combination of experimental
film, amateur cine culture, pop, beat, radical agit prop and anti-art. The shift from experimental film to
Underground was a gradual and disparate process; it was the surfacing of a subculture (Reekie
2007, 140).
10
The Cinema of Transgression can not be said to have brought any aesthetic or formal
breakthroughs to cinema itself as such as noted above the extensive use of found footage was a
feature of Soviet montage cinema. Tessa Hughes-Freelands notion of Expanded Cinema is one of
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Vivaldi, Giuliano (2008) Review: Jack Sargeant (2008) Deathtripping: The Extreme Underground .
Film-Philosophy, vol. 12, no. 2: pp. 157-164. <http://www.film-philosophy.com/2008v12n2/vivaldi.pdf>.
ISSN: 1466-4615 online
Film-Philosophy , 12.2 September 2008
concept of transgression as cement for a movement meant little more than that while
some films were wonderful examples of an exploration in the idea of the grotesque, at
worst some of these films were incompetent adolescent pretension (Reekie 2007, 190).
Some of these films were poignant critiques of societys surrounding violence and
explorations of power and domination but the transformative element in the early work
sometimes got swept away by something mean and irresponsible the imagery
pertaining to violence and sexuality was used in damning ways (Cassandra Stark quoted in
Sargeant 2008, 210).
The lauded egalitarian ethos of punk, the attempt to break down the barriers
between life and art, the importance of performance (and it is central to note here that
often these films were not made as films as such but as components of performance art) 11
didnt necessarily result in any real transformative project but in some ways pushed the
boundaries. Various aspects of the expansion of the US underground such as video
distribution and the development of underground film festivals led to a greater expansion
of film production and even, temporarily, a democratisation of it and perhaps it is here,
rather than by any strictly cinematic criteria, that one may judge the contribution of this
movement to cinematic history.
The strengths of Sargeants account are that he manages to give an account of a
period and a movement, it could also be said to give a convincing account of the
development of a subculture in its historical moment, an account which doesnt neglect
the question of the place of this movement within cinematic history. If many wider aspects
of the historical and global links are not drawn out this hardly belongs to the scope of this
book this book is a fitting account of a single movement (and not one without influence)
within the wider history of Underground or alternative cinema and it allows many of the
main figures of this movement to speak for themselves filling in many of the details of the
trajectory of this movement, its genealogy and its legacy and gives some (although rather
superficial) philosophical grounding for the transgressive ethos citing the works of
the few that comes closest to actually expanding the notion of cinema itself (Hughes-Freeland
quoted in Sargeant 2008, 179).
11
As Hughes-Freeland states a lot of people werent finishing films necessarily to have them as
objects- there was lots of use of films combined with performance and those very performers would
then act in the films in turn. But the distinctions, the boundaries, werent so clear (Hughes-Freeland
quoted in Sargeant 2008, 179).
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Vivaldi, Giuliano (2008) Review: Jack Sargeant (2008) Deathtripping: The Extreme Underground .
Film-Philosophy, vol. 12, no. 2: pp. 157-164. <http://www.film-philosophy.com/2008v12n2/vivaldi.pdf>.
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Film-Philosophy , 12.2 September 2008
Nietzsche, Foucault and Bataille. It is not an academic or dispassionate account but neither
does it lapse into hagiography or the fanzine histrionics of some writing associated with
cult films and film movements. A wider more global history of Underground or Alternative
or transgressive cinema still waits to be written but this volume will be an excellent
source text for a small but not entirely negligible part of this history.
B ibl iogr aphy
Adams Sitney, P (2002) Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde: 1943-2000 , Oxford
University Press.
Hawkins in Jancovich et al (eds) (2003) Midnight sex-horror movies and the downtown
avant-garde in Defining Cult Movies: The Cultural Politics of Oppositional Taste,
Manchester University Press.
Hoberman, J and Rosenbaum, J (1991) Midnight Movies, Da Capo Press, New York.
Reekie, Duncan (2007) Subversion: The Definitive History of Underground Cinema,
Wallflower Press, London and New York.
Sargeant, Jack (2008) Deathtripping: The Extreme Underground, Soft Skull Press
Taylor, Simon (1996) Book Review of Deattripping, Afterimage , Summer.
Thompson Stacey (2005) Punk Cinema in Rombes, Nicholas (ed) New Punk Cinema,
Edinburgh University Press.
Tyler, Parker (1974) Underground Film: A Critical History, Harmondsworth.
Fil mogr aphy
Alov, Aleksandr and Naumov, Vladimir (1966) A Bad Joke (Skvernij anekdot ), Soviet Union
Fernan-Gomez, Fernando (1964) Strange Journey (El Extrao Viaje ), Spain
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Vivaldi, Giuliano (2008) Review: Jack Sargeant (2008) Deathtripping: The Extreme Underground .
Film-Philosophy, vol. 12, no. 2: pp. 157-164. <http://www.film-philosophy.com/2008v12n2/vivaldi.pdf>.
ISSN: 1466-4615 online
