"The human is just another animal who is able to speak out freely, to express himself clearly." And that is just what G.G. Allin's problem is. He does not try to express himself with words like any animal who can speak would do, or to express himself clearly like any human with some sense would do. He uses nearly exclusively body language and in that body language only one side of the picture, the gross and the gore, the dirty and the bloody. Punk they say? Punk they have the right to say. But G.G. Allin demonstrates if it is necessary to do so that he, as a punk rocker with a death wish, is an exhibitionist, an aggressive and violent person, a literal s***t-eater, a true p***s-drinker and a self p***e-taster. So what! So nothing. So not much. The death wish is no longer only a death wish in him. It is also a death instinct because he not only wishes death but he is cruelly violent against other people. If he really believes a body is a rock and roll temple, his vision of the temple is particularly dilapidated. It is Stonehenge after a gang of looters armed with twenty bulldozers have been on the site for a fortnight. Look at his temple, at his body: out of shape due to no exercise, extreme alcoholism, drug addiction of all types and kinds, not to speak of his idea that the body is like paper, to be scribbled on I guess. There is no explanation in this very superficial film. And there is no real presentation of his music. It is more some kind of self-satisfying review of this annihilating and nihilistic anti-art attitude on what is not even a stage, but just a piece of floor in some kind of back room. Punk for sure but without the music or without the political anarchism. Just some scatological provocation as if a provocation was enough to be considered as art in the simple fact that it is a provocation or as politics in the simple fact that is outside all norms. Too bad, and what's more he did not even hold his promise to commit suicide on stage. He simply died of an overdose. What a flop! What a let down! An artist should be able to hold his promises.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines