Vinyl
(1965) (AKA "Andy Warhol's Vinyl")
What can one say about a film as bad
as "Vinyl" except that it is gloriously bad. Made
in 1965, after Warhol had moved to sound but before
color, and before the success of "Chelsea Girls,"
"Vinyl" is black and white, static, and avant-garde.
It is comprised of two reels each running 30 minutes
projected consecutively. The story is linear but avant-garde
as well. The film stars Warhol assistant and part-time
Superstar Gerard Malanga and features Edie Sedgwick
in a role where she is consistently on screen but
does not speak. The "scenario" is by Ronald Tavel,
who wrote many of the Warhol films of the mid-60's.
But perhaps most importantly, "Vinyl" is one of the
only Warhol films adapted from a book, in this case
Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange." Supposedly
Warhol bought the rights for $3,000 and asked Tavel
to come up with a film script based on the book. This,
of course, was well before Stanley Kubrick's version,
which would take the world by storm some 6 years later.
In Kubrick, the protagonist, Alex,
played by a young Malcolm MacDowell, is a thug who,
when captured by "the establishment," is forced to
find violence abhorrent and becomes physically ill
at the thought of crime or physical harm. At film's
end, his "therapy" is judged to be a mistreatment
by more liberal members of "the establishment," and
Alex is allowed to return to his old ways. In Kubrick,
the criminal becomes victim before returning to a
his former self. In Kubrick, the violent criminal
wins. In Warhol, things are not so optimistic and
far more erotically thrilling. Here Malanga plays
Victor (not Alex), a pretty, petty thug who twists
and frugs to pop music and hassles squares. When he
is arrested, he is stripped of his shirt, placed in
a leather bondage mask and forced to watch film of
violence which he also finds abhorrent. But in the
end, once Malanga is released, he is changed, he has
become victim and slave. His "cure" does not to remove
violence from his psyche but, rather, makes him the
victim of it instead. The "establishment" takes over
his role as criminal and perpetrator. Here, at treatment's
end, his body weak and his mind addled, Victor is
forced to sniff poppers and then take part in a homosexual
orgy of dancing and sexual submission which finds
him at the feet of his captors and doctors who treat
him as sex object, control him, and, in a final act
of humiliation, begin to cut his hair before the reel
of film ends and, therefore, the film is over. One
is left to imagine the humiliation left to come for
young, cute Victor. Most assuredly, he is a "victor"
no more, a victim instead.
Warhol's film is hot. The mid-60's
sexual revolution beginning to emerge, Malanga is
the perfect sex toy. We want him to be subjugated
and made sexual victim. When he finally submits to
his captors, we become excited at his sexual submission
as the seemingly drugged and weak young man humps
and grinds his captors body in an vision of sexual
submission that is nothing short of erotically charged.
Warhol, partially due to the times, partially do to
his interesting insight to sexuality, does not allow
the film to implode into full sexual perversity and
pornography. Rather the film becomes charged due to
what is implied, what is assumed, what is NOT shown.
Our minds run rampant at the image of Malanga as victim
and slave. Our imaginations are far more fertile and
capable of eroticism than any film is. And Warhol
knows this. He uses this. He charges his film with
tension from this implication. This is something Warhol
had played with in many films prior, especially in
"Blowjob."
Warhol was also wise with his actor.
Tavel, in author Stephen Koch's "Stargazer: Andy Warhol's
World and His Films," explains that Warhol often would
not let his Superstars rehearse and here found ample
tasks for his assistant (and star) to undertake which
kept him from rehearsal. Warhol even made sure Malanga
partied quite heavily the night before the shoot.
So here Malanga is very stiff, a poor actor. He reads
his lines loudly (He's the only one who seems to understand
the limitations of the film's recorded sound) from
cue cards obviously placed out of frame. But Malanga
still becomes a character because of his bad acting.
He seems hollow, a liar and a fake. We enjoy watching
him be subjugated and humiliated because he is inhuman.
He is not real; he is a robot, a toy, and, in the
end, a sexual plaything for authority figures (i.e.
adults).
Warhol also plays with film as art
by refusing to move the camera much. Here Bud Wirtschafter
is used as cameraman but only has a broken zoom to
work with so his film is static and features minimal
lens movement. The film starts with a wonderful close-up
of Malanga that takes it's time zooming out to show
us the lead lifting weights while amidst a stage of
actors seated around him. This frame will remain for
almost 30 or 40 minutes as the film evolves like a
stage play. Sedgwick, silenced and seated to the side,
does almost nothing but look pretty. Meanwhile, in
the dimly lit background, another young man is tortured,
his jeans ripped and his face slapped several times.
It's important that young men are all the victims
here and their captors and torturers somewhat older.
Warhol's "Vinyl" is homosexual. It's about power man
has over other men and how that power is abused and
corrupted, as much by the young as the old, the supposed
good as the supposed bad. This, in many ways, is the
politics of some homosexual relationships, especially
in repressed times. Likewise, Sedgwick sits on the
sidelines to remind us that this is a purely masculine
game. She rarely becomes involved and when she does,
it is only in the most minimal ways. So, in this frozen
frame, much is said with image rather than dialogue.
Still, there are problems, for much
of Malanga's initial subjugation, he is barely on
screen, his chair moved out of frame. Wirtschafter
seems either unwilling or unable to pan the camera
and so, much to our dismay, much of the erotic action
takes place just slightly off screen. But could this
be a mask, a happy accident? Warhol's film makes viewer
become voyeur and, much like peering into a stranger's
window, we find ourselves struggling to see more of
the action, cursing our plight. Much like real life,
the action is just out of frame, our sexual interest
curtailed by problematic reality. Eventually one of
the actors returns to the frame to push Malanga's
chair back into frame, but it is far past our point
of frustration, far too late.
Warhol and Tavel do try unique and
"avant-garde" things in the film. Warhol insists the
film be motionless, still, an almost unceasing static
shot. He also insists that frame be filled to the
brim. He insists the actors are off-balance and unprepared.
He invites press and onlookers to act as off screen
"audience." He insists the film occur in real time.
One continuous shot. Warhol often did this and it
is one of his most important contributions to film.
Warhol made the camera silent and motionless voyeur
and, in the process, turned his audience, already
voyeurs, into frustrated, motionless watchers. It
is partially this frustration at the core of the theme
here. We, frustrated sexual voyeurs, are gripped by
the image. We eagerly wait through frustration, hoping
to see a sexually exciting image or action. Warhol's
films are about this frustration as much as they are
about the frustration of sexual dominance and submission.
"Vinyl" is perhaps Warhol's best film about the subject.
Tavel, meanwhile, creates a static
and motionless world within Warhol's framework where
violence and sexual frustration is almost hidden,
threatening to burst from the frame at any moment.
The vision is of a stagnant and static future, a Warholian
future, where everyone is robotic, unreal and beautiful.
Where everyone is an actor. Where life is indistinguishable
from film. Where, in the midst of a torture scene,
credits are read aloud of camera. Not to remind us
that we are watching a film as much as to remind us
that life is little more than a film. And in a world
that is unreal, why should anyone bristle at the image
of a young man being subjugated and tortured? Why
should the voyeur (or the camera) react at all?
Note:
Rock and Motown music is played from
an off camera source during the performance. In an
odd early scene, a Motown song is played and then
immediately repeated as Malanga dances wildly to the
tune (twice) without stopping.
