email print share on Facebook share on Twitter share on LinkedIn share on reddit pin on Pinterest

GLASGOW 2022

Review: Wake Up Punk

by 

- The son of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren valiantly attempts to navigate and resolve the contradictions of an easily misunderstood and commodified movement

Review: Wake Up Punk

After beginning on a rather confusing note, with a sequence of archive footage and a voiceover explaining way too quickly the court case that marked the split between Malcolm McLaren and the band he managed, the Sex Pistols, Nigel Askew’s Wake Up Punk goes on to paint an often tiring and uncomfortable, but ultimately appealing, portrait not so much of the punk era, but of its offspring and his efforts to salvage the movement’s legacy. Indeed, Joe Corré’s parents are none other than Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, two key figures of the punk movement: he was the mastermind, whose general principle could be summed up as “making as many people as possible as uncomfortable as possible”, and she was the designer, who gave punk its look, helped publicise it and, consequently, whether intentionally or not, market it. The film premiered recently at the Glasgow Film Festival.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Casual interviews with Westwood and other punk figures help give a brief history of how punk came about – an oddly conventional approach to use when looking at a movement built on disruption and whose genesis inevitably carried within it the seed of its own destruction. It is hard to imagine that McLaren, as fearless as he was smart, ever expected punk to last. The inclusion of dramatised, Dickensian scenes featuring young actors playing poor children under the thumb of a Fagin-like figure (which is how, according to one person interviewed, McLaren apparently liked to think of himself in his days managing the Sex Pistols) is a rather tedious interruption and does not really work as a metaphor for anything explored in the film.

More engaging are the movie’s attempts to grapple with the contradictions of punk’s later years. Scenes shot in 2016 show the commodification of this anti-establishment culture over decades and its apotheosis that year, where you could get a credit card bearing punk iconography or have a punk-themed afternoon tea as part of the city-wide celebrations of punk’s 40th anniversary. Though the film could hardly be described as impartial when it comes to the fate of the movement, it does make the commendable and pertinent decision to highlight some of the counter arguments from people who do appear to profit from punk’s legacy. This makes for a rather stressful but engaging watch, as telling the hypocrites from the genuine punks sometimes only seems to be a matter of perspective: after all, weren’t McLaren and Westwood already commodifying punk from its very inception? In fact, could it be that this was the point of the whole endeavour?

The final part, centred on Corré’s decision to burn millions of pounds’ worth of punk memorabilia, helps clarify things, as it suggests adopting an even bigger lens through which to look at punk: namely, one that looks beyond punk itself. Asked in a press conference why he does not donate the valuable memorabilia to charity instead, the clear-eyed Corré gives an answer that takes a wider view on the issue: the UK government relies too much on charity organisations to provide services of care which it should be handling itself. At the actual burning, staged on a boat on the Thames, Corré turns the event, which has naturally attracted scandal-hungry journalists, into an opportunity to call out climate change and the big corporations that are responsible for it, as well as the complacency of governments that let it happen. Later, the ashes are turned into works of art and exhibited in a London gallery, where they are priced at about £6 million, with proceeds going to charity. The point is that anything can be commodified and sold – even ash, even a burning planet. Even punk.

In freeing punk from its marketable iconography and legend, both literally and metaphorically, Corré’s gesture allows us to take a fresh look at his father’s work and methods. It suggests that his rebellion was, at least on his best days, and at least at the beginning, not a childish rejection of the rules and the status quo, but a constant and unrelenting struggle to escape from the pervasive powers of commodification, and a search for something better, bigger and brighter than money.

Wake Up Punk was produced by the UK’s Know Future Ltd. It is set to be released in the UK by Republic Film Distribution.

(The article continues below - Commercial information)

Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.

Privacy Policy