Repo Man and the Death of Punk Rock

     Alex Cox’s 1984 film, Repo Man, opens with a brown Chevy Malibu leaving Los Alamos, the birthplace of the atomic bomb and site for the development of the neutron bomb. Within the first few minutes of the film, a police officer opens the trunk to reveal a glowing orange substance that immediately radiates through his body and disintegrates him, leaving only a pair of steaming boots. The rest of the film is a series of bizarre encounters all loosely tied to the same brown Chevy. When Cox, the film’s writer and director, was asked what Repo Man was about, he answered:

Nuclear War... and the demented society that contemplated the possibility thereof... the maniac culture that had so-called leaders named Reagan and Thatcher, who were prepared to sacrifice everything - all life on earth - to a gamble based on the longevity of the Soviet military, and the whims of their corporate masters.¹

     The film is a portrait of a society struggling with illness, an illness that gave birth to the most destructive force in human history. Its scenes are full of disaffected youth and backed by an array of driving punk music. The term “punk” refers to a worldview popularized in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, characterized by disgust of both corrupt, destructive institutions and ineffectual, escapist counter culture. The effort Repo Man makes at engaging and reflecting the horrific realities of society is among the fundamental principles of punk.
     A reaction to the social developments of the 1960’s, punk recognized that as an alternative to corporate, capitalist America, the hippies were almost a complete failure. There are basic beliefs that tie the punk and hippie movements together -- celebration of creativity, humanism over greed, and a basic mistrust of authoritarian institutions, primarily the church and the government -- but while the 60’s spawned a moral code difficult to argue with (“love, man”), it failed to construct a feasible social structure to support it. The faults in this worldview lie in its collective fantasy, the idea that anti-establishment sentiment alone could serve as the foundation for a society. The flaws in this assumption were made apparent during the Rolling Stones’ concert at the Altamont Speedway.²
     The hippies are represented in Repo Man by the parents of the teenage protagonist, Otto. During his only encounter with them, they sit on a couch in a modest rambler smoking pot. The only light in the cave-like atmosphere of the house comes from an evangelical preacher on their television. The preacher claims he’s been given a message, straight from God, “You and your flock shall see the promised land but only if you destroy the twin evils of Godless communism abroad and liberal humanism at home!” When Otto interrupts to ask them for money to use for school, his parents explain that they’ve given all of their money to the television evangelist. Pathetically, Otto’s mother utters through a face full of smoke, “We’re sending Bibles to El Salvador.”
     The shallow goodwill of the hippie culture was eventually directed into a commercial surge that drove corporate, materialist America to new heights. One of the primary goals of the punk backlash was to turn back the tide of the sort of escapist cool personified by Henry Fonda³ and instead force the public to face the mess they and their leaders were making. People involved with the punk movement ingested the results of corrupt institutions of power, a destroyed environment, and the threat of mass annihilation as legitimate political policy, and they became a living byproduct -- filthy, disillusioned and angry. This is perhaps why the common misconception about punk was that its aims were destructive; punks were honestly facing a destructive social structure. As a result, many of their stances were developed by reaction, anti-escapism, anti-authoritarianism, anti-consumerism, but as with every cultural ideology that has posed a threat to hegemony in the last half a century, it was ultimately dealt with through appropriation.
     When punk became palatable in the mid to late 1970’s, educated individualism was replaced by fashion and an honest approach to social realities was replaced with an aimless bad attitude. When Repo Man was made in 1984, punk had long been established as a cultural movement, and it had already largely betrayed its own suspicion of conformity. By the time of its release, Repo Man acted as little more than a death rattle for a movement that already had its teeth pulled.
     Otto, played by a young Emilio Estevez, is perhaps the sole admirable figure in the film, if only because of his refusal to become firmly attached to any group. He fumbles his way through a social structure that has all but fully deteriorated around him and by the time his disgust drives him into the company of the quirky and confrontational repo men, it’s tempting to view the group as heroic. Their practice of repossessing cars offers an enticing parallel to the way punk fought to take back American culture, but the repo man as allegory for punk ideology isn’t convincing as a consistent thesis. While there are many gems buried in expositions of the repo man code -- “fucking millionaires, they never pay their bills... normal people, I fucking hate normal people... I don’t want any commies in my car. And no Christians either!” -- in the end, these characters act as further examples of a society gone wrong. At times, they seem to be exemplars of individualism, but their misinformed, ridiculous personal philosophies, however humorous, only end up exhibiting the results of a poorly educated, essentially ignorant population.
     This ignorance is, perhaps, what facilitated the failure of the cultural movements of the 60’s and 70’s. Like the idealism of the generation before, the nightmarish reality punk brought to light didn’t spark social change; rather, it was embraced, labeled as cool, and sold back to the public. A cheapened, popularized version of punk now furthers the goals of the soulless corporate profit machine most of today’s punks would claim they are “raging against.” This commodified element of the punk world is represented in the film by three of Otto’s friends who are consumed by debauchery and petty theft. After being shot in a liquor store robbery, the leader of the group, Duke (Dick Rude), tries to blame his death on society in a blood gurgling soliloquy. But Otto won’t let him play the role of the victim. “Bullshit,” Otto says, “you’re just another suburban punk. Just like me.”
     Alex Cox claims Repo Man was created through a single thesis: the very thought of nuclear weapons is insane and the culture that manifests them as reality is a sick one. In his indictment, the youth culture that embraced punk rock shoulders an equal portion of the responsibility and, to his credit, Cox does as much to highlight the failures of punk culture as he does to herald its strong points. The pierced, tattooed, fashion-based version of blind punk rebellion is just as ineffectual and ridiculous as anything that came before it, and as Otto made clear, it’s not sad when bullshit dies.