Review
posted August 2, 2007, 12:12 pm | Log In To Post Comments | 
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this review may show up on another website, but I thought I'd throw it up here, and use it as a very belated next blog entry. this a rough draft, but it works, so far.I hope to be better at posting. anyway, if you are not familiar with it, MVD distributors is a killer site with tons of rare music DVD. check them out.
“Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies” (2002; Directed by Todd Phillips; MVD)
By Mike Wood
The key to successful rage and threats to the status quo, whether by Lautremont, Dada, Iggy, Zappa or John Waters, is humor. Railing against hypocrisy works best when it also points out how absurd the world is, how insane its pretensions, the artist included. You gots to know when you are part of the parade too. Those whose rage against society and were too fueled by self-hatred—Sid Vicious, Artaud, end up more sad and buffoonish than threatening. So it is with GG Allin, who based his descent into depravity on the notion that a genre of popular entertainment was the liberating force of the universe, and it was his duty to keep it real and shocking. The main flaws of that premise are that rock sold out before Elvis left the teat, and that “rock will save the world” jive is more hippie than punk. Not that there wasn’t a point in history when it was possible, but no more. And like hippie, punk wanted to destroy, but did not offer anything to replace what was pillaged, except more pillage. The power of rock is in its small victories, one set of ears at a time.
Did fans of GG really believe that the new world that dawned, after destroying hypocrisy, was a world of naked rockers eating shit and getting pissed on? As Richard Pryor said about the Beast with Seven Heads in the Book of Revelation, I don’t know about you, but I don’t wanna see no motherfucka lookin like that!
Todd Phillips’ “Hated” is a documentary romp through the mind and Aesthetic of GG, seen through the eyes of those closest to the action: GG, His brother/bassist Merle, the naked pedophile drummer Dino, former guitar player Chicken John, who assaults himself on camera just because, and assorted fans, especially one “Unk,” who manages to be both Allin historian and deeply pathetic at once and, probably, as it could only be.
Phillips today is best known for burp and fart classics like “Old School,” and “Starsky & Hutch,” and this film is the dark underbelly of where such yuks lead if left to stew in warped minds. Merle alludes, through his bushy Hitler moustache, to a father that provided much of the scatological/homicidal obsessions of his boys; a bizarre interview with some of their high school buddies, 40 and fat, but still keepin’ it real with weed and beer confirms that in rural Vermont there wasn’t much of a chance outside of the household for perspective. Sadder, though, are the fans like Unk, who write letters to serial killer John Wayne Gacy, procure women to piss in GG’s mouth (caught on camera) and who wax poetic about living vicariously through the Murder Junkies’ war against the world. Living through heroes is not new; living through psychopathic heroes is another thing.
Fortunately or unfortunately, fans of stars with a death wish CAN follow in their footsteps. So we follow GG through a few shit-smeared concerts, a couple of spoken word readings that degenerate into banana-from-asshole-to-projectile antics to beating up a woman who boldly asks GG why he just doesn’t kill himself then and there if he really meant it. An addenda to the film is footage of GG’s funeral. He, as you all know, did not kill himself on stage in a blaze of glory taking some of the audience with him, but died of a heroin OD, a sad whimper from a guy with the smallest dick in the world and who was started on the road to perdition by having his Dunkin Donuts coffee unknowingly spiked with acid when he was a teenager.
What is most shocking is the fact that GG’s music is good! Aside from the kiddie-porn lyrics, he has a nice tenor and his songs are basically over-amped, but similarly melodic, Ramones and Thunders based R & R. Had he not decided on his chosen route, he might have actually been a genuine threat. As a document and a case study, “Hated” is riveting and revolting, but not in the intended ways. The concert footage is great, the music rocks, but the sad fact is that no one, not even GG himself, seemed to care for the music when compared to THE STATEMENT, THE MESSAGE, THE DARING. He conned himself into a corner where even those who loved him thought laughing at his corpse was the proper tribute. At least Divine ate shit in front of the unsuspecting, not the “converted.”
