Quaderno di Ricerche | Tesi per Storia delle Comunicazioni Visive | Design della Comunicaze

rground Pietro Martina QUADERNO DI RICERCHE underground

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intro: Underground è un quaderno di ricerche incentrato sulla questione storiografia delle seconde avanguardie, focalizzato su gli artefatti comunicativi prodotti dalle subculture che si sono sviluppate tra il 1976 al 1999.

La ricerca di Underground parte dal punk: subcultura sviluppatasi a partire dagli anni 70’ in Regno Unito, poi diffusa in tutto il mondo, che con il suo carattere sporco, dissacrante, ed estremo ha influenzato ogni forma d’arte. Si passa quindi negli States, dove le (spesso anonime ma) significative testimonianze grafiche della scena nottura newyorkese riprendono, seppur con dei risvolti completamente differenti, alcuni elementi del punk, rivisitandone altri e generando nuovi stili e gusti estetici, questa volta non riferiti al mondo della musica rock ma a quello dell’hip-hop e della house music. La UK Club Culture risulta, in un certo senso, la summa di tutto quello che i due precedenti fenomeni subculturali hanno lasciato in eredità. Un nuovo genere, la techno, e nuovi spazi di aggregazione, come rave e discoteche, vengono promossi e comunicati con una coscienza nuova, in un certo senso più “professionale”.

Inoltre, rimanendo negli anni nell’ombra, la club culture inglese riesce a rimanere fedele ai suoi principi senza diventare mainstream (come era accaduto col punk) e la continua innovazione ed evoluzione del genere l’ha resa estremamente longeva (differentemente da quella di New York).

Ogni subcultura ha prodotto una quantità non indifferente di flyer, copertine, poster, inviti e fanzine, i quali non sono solo oggetti promozionali ma rappresentano in sé dei veri e propri manifesti della stessa. I testi (principalmente articoli e interviste poichè i libri sull’argomento sono estremamente difficili da reperire) legati alle immagini descrivono situazioni, pareri, idee, raccontando ed analizzando gli artefatti comunicativi, le loro caratteristiche e che tipo di influenza anno avuto al di là del loro micro-mondo di appartenenza. Ed è forse proprio quest’ultimo il lascito più grande delle subculture: svilupparsi al proprio interno per poi infuenzare, definire e cambiare il mondo che le circonda.

A sinistra: Anonimo.

WIld Pitch’s party flyer (New York City underground nightlife) (anno ignoto)

Pun

SECTION ONE 2

nk subculture

1976-1977

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Nils Stevenson, Helen Wellington-Lloyd.

Flyer for the Sex Pistols at the Nashville, London 29 April 1976

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punk subculture

The current wave began in the mid-1970’s with the English punk scene, a raw expression of youth frustration manifested though shocking dress, music and art.

Punk’s naive graphic language – an aggressive rejection of rational typography that echoes Dada and Futurist work – influenced designers throughout the 1970’s and seriously tested the limits imposed by Modernist formalism. Punk’s violent demeanour surfaced in Swiss, American, Dutch and French design and spread to the mainstream in the form of a ‘new wave’, or what Gary Panter has called ‘sanitised punk’. A key anticanonical approach later called Swiss Punk – which in comparison with the gridlocked Swiss International Style was menacingly chaotic, though rooted in its own logic – was born in the Mecca of rationalism, Basel, during the late 1970’s. For the elders who were threatened (and offended) by the onslaught to criticise Swiss Punk as ugly was avoiding the issue. Swiss Punk was attacked not so much because of its appearance as because it symbolised the end of the modernist hegemony.

Rigley, Steve.

“An Unbearable Lightness?”

Visual Communication vo. 6, no. 3 (October 2007): pag. 281–304

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Jamie Reid.

Poster for the Sex Pistols’ signle “God Save The Queen” May 1977

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punk subculture

There were numerous examples of Reid’s earlier subversive ‘agit prop’ efforts, or what critic Jon Savage has described as ‘art that was political but didn’t shout it’.

The Suburban Press stickers ‘This Store Welcomes Shoplifters’ and ‘Save Petrol Burn Cars’ (1972-73) were exhibited alongside ‘stolen’ Cecil Beaton portraits of the Queen collaged with safety pins, swastikas and ransom note typography. These have since become recognised as the methods of anarchic subcultural bricolage. The images are immediate and recognisable. Their success lies in the appropriation of conventional media imagery to subvert the very same political, social and cultural conventions such media portrays.

Jamie Reid’s work and the message embodied in it have become myth. His lexicon of ‘do-it-yourself graphic design’ has been universalised and ‘acculturated’. Specific meanings are no longer to be found in the ritual and secret codes of punk. Rather, Reid’s graphic and linguistic ‘language’ has in some measure become part of the establishment. Reid parodies this, as well as his own career, by producing his own pragmatic design aid in Letraset Multi-Punk (1988). Instead of creating random note texts with the aid of scissors and newspapers, Reid sees the advantage of a rub-down Letraset sheet. Such commodification institutionalises his graphics, reducing it to both a do-it-yourself form and a conventional medium and process. It is perhaps this formal rejection and subversion of conventional ideology that stabilises new media, allowing them to be elevated to high art, and encourages purely artistic readings of what has traditionally been understood (and is probably still considered by Reid) to be pure ephemera.

Anonimo.

“Safety pins and Letraset | Jamie Reid: The Rise of the Pheonix” Eye no. 6 vol. 2, 1992

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Jamie Reid.

Poster for the Sex Pistols’ single “Anarchy In The UK” 26 November 1976

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punk subculture

In Mott’s punk hoard, Jamie Reid stands out as a special case. Reid was the ultimate punk auteur and by far the most inventive British designer/artist working in the punk idiom. Although Bubbles is now regarded as one of the UK’s most conceptually imaginative graphic designers see the Philishave face masks he gives the Blockheads. he is more ‘new wave’ in manner than strictly punk, and the same is trde of Garrett.

Reid’s thematically coherent body of work was carried out for the most notorious and publicly visible British punk band, the Sex Pistols, and by association, as well as by its tremendous rhetorical clout, it immediately defined the essence of punk’s graphic style, as it is commonly understood. The roots of this graphic method lie in the counterculture! publications and graphics of the 19605 and early 19705, and for the Sex Pistols, Reid was able to draw on and refine techniques he had used as the designer of Suburban Press, a Situationist-Iike publication. His Never Mind the Bans poster, a collage of canceuation letters, is not onIy an incisively satirical idea but also a deftly crafted essay in graphic chaos. The cover of the Anarchy in the UK fanzine, with Reid’s urgent red lettering and a photo of London punk Soo Catwoman by Ray Stevenson, remains one of the quintessential images of British punk.

Poynor, Rick.

“Oh So Pretty - Punk In Print 1976-1980” Phaidon London 2016

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Mark Perry.

Sniffin’ Glue #1 July 1976

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punk subculture

Sniffin’ Glue was not so much badly written as barely written; grammar was non-existent, layout was haphazard, headlines were usually just written in felt tip, swearwords were often used in lieu of a reasoned argument. . .all of which gave Sniffin’ Glue its urgency and relevance. As its founder Mark Perry reminds us in a lengthy published conversation with his former partner Danny Baker, back in 1976 there was no music subculture in the UK. [...] So when Mark Perry, a teenage music fan toiling as a bank clerk in south east London, fell in love with the Ramones and then saw that they were being slammed in the music press for all the reasons he thought made them so great, he started a fanzine to redress the balance, naming it after the Ramones song ‘Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue’. Within the space of three issues, Mark had connected the dots from the Ramones to the Flamin Groovies, through Eddie And The Hot Rods and the Damned, and onto the Clash and the Sex Pistols - and Sniffin’ Glue had become the mouthpiece for the British punk underground in the process. Punk germinated underground just long enough for Sniffin’ Glue to become indispensable within the scene - it had already put out five issues by the time the Pistols swore at Bill Grundy on live television and punk exploded as a media concern. As Perry and Baker note of contemporary so-called subcultures, even that short a period of gestation won’t happen again: “everything is now exposed to the masses instantly.”

Fletcher, Tony.

“The iJamming! book review Sniffin’ Glue: the essential punk accessory” iJamming!

2001. Originally published on: Jamming, no. 3 June/July, New York 1978

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AA.VV. The New Wave Magazine #6 July 1977

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punk subculture

The visual language of zines means they are of interest to courses with a design focus across the university, not least because the ‘graphic language of resistance’7 used in the early punk fanzines has been influential in design and absorbed into design history.8 But zines are cultural rather than design objects. As Stephen Duncombe suggests, their DIY aesthetic comes out of necessity, as a quick and inexpensive means of transmitting ideas, or in opposition to the mainstream, with design rules disregarded intentionally, creating an ‘anti-style’.9 Punk fanzines, for example, point to a specific period of socio-economic, cultural and political change, the ‘product of agency, a means of participation and a platform for creative and political expression’10 so it is important for students to read zines within these contexts.

Collingwood, Ruth. Kassir, Leila.

“Gathering the margins: the London College of Communication Library Zine Collection” Cambridge University Press 2018

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Anonimo.

Poster for the Sex Pistols, The Clash and Siouxsie and The Banshees at the 100 Club 20 September 1976

Mark Perry.

Sniffin’ Glue #5 November 1976

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punk subculture

Paul Welsh.

Pentration #10 1977

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Anonimo.

Poster for The Clash’s “White Riot” tour May 1977

Jamie Reid.

Poster for the Sex Pistols’ single “God Save The Queen” May 1977

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punk subculture

AA.VV. New Wave News #3 1977

AA.VV. Rock Against Racism’ right to work campaign poster with Buzzcocks and The Verbals 25 June 1977

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Barney Bubbles.

Poster programme for Ian Dury & The Blockheads August 1977

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punk subculture

Debbie Harry (photo).

Poster for Blondie’s debut album Blondie December 1976

AA.VV. Zigzag #75 August 1977

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N undergro

SECTION TWO 20

New York City ound nightlife

1988-1994

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Anonimo.

PowerHouse night at Night Train flyer 1988

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new york underground nightlife

«Through the coming years I held on to many of those flyers, snapshots of an amazing era in New York club history. A glorious time when people went to clubs pretty much strictly to enjoy the music, and whether rap, soul, disco, dancehall, house, boogie, R&B, the music was incredible! The flyers seemed themselves a physical manifestation of the evolution of New York’s downtown scene: the artwork could look born from a Basquiat 12-inch record sleeve: hand drawn, collagist and gorgeous. Or it could be as playful and eye-catching as Warhol’s pop art, flipping the script on some iconic image hoping to seize your attention as you walked by the window of a hip Soho boutique. When you look at a great club flyer, there’s a beauty in the economy of the design. There’s so much to say in so little space yet you could blow it up poster size and it’d look amazing on a gallery wall. A killer flyer didn’t guarantee a good party but you look at any flyer in this book and you can picture the great time being had» -Mark Ronson

Barton, Adrian. Auerbach, Evan.

“No Sleep: NYC Nightlife Flyers 1988-1999” PowerHouse Books New York 2016

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Dolphina Jones.

Hellraiser’s rave flyer 1992

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new york underground nightlife

Flyers are considered by many club organizers as the most effective means of building a crowd in so far as they are a relatively inexpensive way to target fine audience segments. Their distribution is conducted in three ways: they are mailed directly to clubbers (often members) in the form of invitations, handed to people in the street ‘who look like they belong’ or distributed to pubs, clothing and record shops in order that they might be picked up by the ‘right crowd’. While the first method uses the means of the private party, the last two trace young people’s routes through the city, exhibiting an understanding of what Michel de Certeau would call their ‘practices of space’ (de Certeau 1984). Club promoters talk about how the dissemination of flyers is a deceptively tricky business: one must be wary of printing too many and finding them littering the streets; of depositing them in unsuitable places and procuring a queue full of ‘wallies’. The dispersal of flyers influences the assembly of dance crowds; the flow of one affects the circulation of the other. In her book Design After Dark: the Story of Dancefloor Style, Cynthia Rose celebrates flyers as ‘semiotic guerilla warfare’, likening the form to the old political handbill as well as new art forms which play with mass reproduction processes. But while flyers have clear aesthetic significance, they are more accurately seen as direct advertising rather than cultural combat. ‘Direct marketing’ is the subject of more advertising investment than either magazines or radio, but because it targets tightly, it often feels more intimate and less ‘commercial’ (Marketing 13 August 1992). Moreover, rather than contesting the status quo, flyers mainly suggest that the club whose name they bear satisfies questions like the following: ‘Where can you find the wildest, craziest, maddest, most hedonistic, HARD CORE, dance experience that takes place every Friday and Saturday night?’ (printed on Uproar flyer 1990).

Thornton, Sarah.

“Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital” Polity Press Cambridge 1995

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Keith Haring. “Clebration of Unity - in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.� flyer Januray 1988

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new york underground nightlife

Greg Homs.

Kool’s night at Mars flyer (anno ignoto)

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Anonimo.

Sweet Thang night at New Music Cafe poster (anno ignoto)

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new york underground nightlife

Greg Homs.

Kool night at Mars flyer (anno ignoto)

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Anonimo.

The Muse flyer 1992

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new york underground nightlife

Anonimo.

Shampoo night flyer 1991

Keith Haring.

Sundays poster (anno ignoto)

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DB Burkeman Brilliant night flyer (anno ignoto)

Anonimo Grace Jones birthday at Tunnel 1994

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new york underground nightlife

Anonimo.

The Face night at Night Train (anno ignoto)

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UK

SECTION THREE 34

K club culture

1983-1999

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Dave Little.

Spectrum flyer 1988

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uk club culture

The “peace. love. unity. and respect” (plur) ideals and phitosophies were evident in all areas of my data collection. While comments like those above were commonplace in the study and are the crux of the data presented in this section. PLUR-related views and expressions were also articulated in the rave flyers that advertised the patties.

Since these parties wete often organized around certain rave related themes, the flyers offer insights into widely consumed versions, symbols. and Interpretations of the rave doctrine. Often Included In these flyers were descriptions of the “rave philosophy” as expressed by someone from the promotional company who organized the tave, and a rave party-titte that reflected these views. Some ravers and promoters referted me to these flyers to help explain the ideals of the rave movement, thus affirming that the flyet at least tentatively reflects or guides the perspectives of some ravers.

Wilson, Brian.

“Fight, Flight, or Chill: Subcultures, Youth, and Rave into the Twenty-First Century” McGill-Queen’s Press Montréal 2006

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Nic Gun, Dave Beer. backtobasics flyer 1991

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uk club culture

backtobasics began on 23 November, 1991, a direct descendant of Manchester’s The Hacienda, where promoter Dave Beer did his first hit of ecstasy (but arguably not his last). The cIub night was started by Beer alongside Wakefield buddy Ali Cooke who, alongside Ralph Lawson, was also resident DJ (they later added James ‘Boggy‘ Holroyd and DJ Huggy to the roster). 26 years later, Basics somehow lives on, despite constant competition from younger promoters and DJs, driven by maniacal devotion and the words of Hunter S Thompson (“There were no rules, fear was unknown and sleep was out of the question”). Sadly, the defining moment in Basic’s history occurred on 11 March 1993, when Ali Cooke and Lawson’s girlfriend Jocelyn Higgins were both killed in a car crash travelling up to play at Glasgow club Slam (Beer and his wife survived the crash).

They had just won Club Of The Year in Mixmag. “it was absolutely iife-changing for everyone,” recalls Lawson. “Firstly, for the families, the Cookes and the Higgins, it’s just a really bad thing. As far as the club’s concerned it’s the reason we’re here all these years later. I’m absolutely sure of it. Every time we’ve had a bad patch, the memory of those people has kept it going. We would not be here now if it wasn’t for us trying to find ways of respecting the memories of Joss and Ali.” These days, backtobasics is as well known for the excesses of Dave Beer as it is one of the best and most enduring club nights in the north of England. Its iconography, completely influenced by punk rock and the work of Jamie Reid (they once organised an exhibition for Reid, in exchange for use of his queen’s head design), is unique in Clubland for bringing a harder, more political edge, to proceedings. Beer has been collaborating with designer Nic Gun since the first night. “The anarchy of punk imagery was (and still is) a massive thing for Dave,” says Gun. “I’ve been able to interpret that for him over the years and I’ve always liked differing styles -so i enjoyed the cut and paste element and, of course, the subversiveness.” Two steps further than any other fucker? That’s backtobasics.

Banks, Rick. Brewster, Bill.

“Clubbed: a visual history of UK club culture” Face37 Bolton 2018

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Neville Brody.

Cabaret Voltaire cover 1984

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uk club culture

After graduating, Brody began work as a designer of record covers, freelancing for independent labels such as AI McDowell’s Rocking Russian Designs (set up by McLaren and the Rich Kids, an offshoot from the Sex Pistols), Stiff Records, already ‘over-commercialised’ for his taste, and Fetish. He was attracted by the idea of ‘using someone’s living room as a gallery’, and found that in this way he could reach some ‘10-15,000 intelligent people, outside the self-elected gallery audience.’

It was by chance that, five years ago (and some 15 months after the inception of The Face), he ‘fell into’ magazine design, attracted by the ‘idea of taking the signs and symbols of advertising, the corporate logo, and using them out of context’ and by the possibility of minimalist experiment, of ‘stripping right down to basics, and then rebuilding; what does a magazine really need?’ He was interested in the idea that people don’t actually read words any more so much as recognise them, and would experiment with running words and headlines as far as possible off the page, using them rather as symbols, or streetsigns, to direct the reader around what he calls the ‘townplanning’ of the magazine.

It wasn’t just rule-breaking for its own sake. Brody’s work as he happily admits, bears witness to the many other ideas and sources of imagery that have influenced him-all feeding into this central concern; agitating, questioning, stripping-back towards what is really necessary, really ‘real’ underneath it all.

The ruthless dynamism of Futurist and Constructivist imagery, for example - in particular the work of Alexander Rodchenko - the restless energy of Schwitters’ Merz bildern, and the powerful if perplexing attempts of the Dadaists to ‘redefine a role for art which had become inverted and self-seeking’: all of these, says Brody, had ‘a massive influence on me at college, and what I drew from it was threefold: the idea of challenge, of breaking-down established orders, the idea of the importance of movement, dynamism, change, and the idea - it was almost a slogan for me then - of “putting man back into the picture” , which the technological obsessions of the ’70s had completely lost.’

E.M. Farrelly.

“An Interview with Neville Brody, Art Director of The Face” Architectural Review August 1986

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Peter Saville Associates (studio).

First FAC51 birthday poster 1983

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uk club culture

“We looked at the UK. around us and despaired of it,” Saville recalls, “and we looked at our Bauhaus books and Tschichold books and thought, ‘It can be so cool. And it isn’t.

Why doesn’t the world look cooler?’ What normally happens is that you think that, but you don’t get an opportunity to express it. You go into the machine and you get locked down and finally you wise up, shape up, do what’s necessary, take the income. Well, we avoided the machine, and we got to do what we wanted. I had a vision of what contemporary pop could be like, whether it was a record label, or a sign on the door, or a club. or whatever. That was my contemporary vision and I was at liberty to just do it.”

The client who gave Saville that liberty was Tony Wilson, founder of Manchester’s highly influential label Factory Records. In the early 19808. under Saville’s direction, Factory rapidly achieved an unequaled level of design and production quality in sleeves for bands such as joy Division, New Order, and Section 25. (A recent feature about Factory’s rise and fall, 24-Hour Party People -itself a measure of the label’s cultural legacy-depicts Saville delivering a concert poster to a bemused Wilson after the gig has ended.) As the decade progressed, the label’s design lust extended to its world-famous club, the Haçienda; its bar, Dry; and its own crazily expensive offices.

For many young people in the 19805, Factory’s record covers were among the most effective delivery systems in graphic design.

Poynor, Rick.

“Return of the Rebel Nomad” Print vol. 57 no. 3, May 2003, p. 48–55.

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Mark Farrow.

Fifteenth FAC51 birthday poster 1997

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uk club culture

Design Week: How much do you think designers were influenced to create surreal graphics based on the rise of “club drugs” like MDMA? Rick Banks: This was definitely a factor. The acid house era was dominated by a yellow smiley face. Pantone, fluorescent inks were massively overused, so that posters would stand out on streets. And yes, garish, bright colours would probably look way more alluring when someone is off their face rather than sober.

One of my favourites that jumps on this trend, is an advertising poster Mark Farrow designed for a club night called Fac51 at the Haçienda. It used reflective inks to contain the code “51 15 25 05 97”, which meant that the club night was 15 years old on 25 May 1997. It was invisible in daylight and only visible when a light was shone on the poster in the dark, like from car headlights. The point was that the club was only important to people who were out after dark.

Dawood, Sarah.

“Fabric to Ministry of Sound: the new book on the graphics of clubbing” Design Week 30 January 2018

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Thomas McCallion.

Ministry Of Sound poster 1994

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uk club culture

Autoprodotto.

Ministry Of Sound flyer 1993

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Nic Gun, Dave Beer. backtobasics posters (anno ignoto)

Matt Dixon.

Move flyers 1999

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uk club culture

John Macklin, Graham Newman.

Shine banknote 1993

John Macklin, Graham Newman.

Overleaf logo 1993

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8vo (studio).

Seventh FAC51 birthday party flyer 1989

Chris Howe.

Renaissance poster 1992

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uk club culture

Mark Farrow.

Cream flyer 1993

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Subcultu

CINEMA HISTORY 52

ure in cinema

1996

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Anonimo.

Trainspotting DVD cover 1996

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subculture in cinema

Trainspotting is a very tartan contribution to the genre [films about illegal drugs].

It resembles nothing so much as a younger version of Rab C. Nesbitt where the hero swaps the bottle for the needle. And indeed the author of the book of the same name (1993), Irvine Welsh (who seeks to imitate Burroughs by appearing himself briefly in the film), is one of a growing number of people who believe that many youngsters today use illegal drugs basically as an extension of alcohol.

True to the book the film is set in Edinburgh, actually Leith, and one of its strengths is its brutal portrayal of poverty and its consequences in Scotland’s douce capital in a way that has not been done since R. L. Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). The reasons for Edinburgh’s remarkable achievement in becoming the AIDS capital of Europe are seldom discussed. Glasgow, a mere 40 miles away and with a much bigger drug using population has practically no drug related HIV infection. In the film a connection with the annual Festival is hinted at. In the book Welsh dismisses the more common allegation of an association with the Capital’s up front gay scene.

Much of the action is centred on pubs and it will have been some time since cinema goers have seen so many cigarettes consumed on screen. It depicts lives full of booze, fags, pills and bingo. It is a sharp description of the fate of part of the ex-working class.

And it accurately places illegal drug use in its proper context which is as a small though lively stream in the sea of drugs generously licensed and heavily taxed by Her Majesty’s Government. This serves to remove much of the hype and hypocrisy around illegal drugs which in Britain some otherwise rational people feign to see as a great mystery.

The film ridicules the government’s crude anti-heroin propaganda and sees the more subtle health slogans -Be all you can be’- as offensive to the impoverished giro generation who would most certainly like to be other than they are. Indeed the film ends with the main character finding the means to be all he would like to be through a successful drug deal which enables him to join all the other greedy people in London who do not believe either that there is any longer such a thing as society.

Despite this there has been an effort by the media to conduct a debate as to whether Trainspotting -and of course other drug related cinema and television productionsÐmakes drugs more interesting or more off- putting to viewers. Certainly the publicity surrounding the film has been guilty of exploiting a certain voyeurism.

Many will go to see the drug scenes in the same way that the more explicit sexual activity is on screen the more likely box office success will follow. Presumably a similar number of people would feel inspired to take drugs after this film as might feel the need to take their clothes off in public after a particularly steamy cinema sex scene.

Slavin, Willy.

“Film Review” Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology Vol. 7, Issue 2, April 1997, pag. 171-172

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Trainspotting (1996) Produzione: Regno Unito Soggetto: omonimo romanzo di Irvine Welsh Regia: Danny Boyle

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subculture in cinema

Sceneggiatura: John Hodge Attori Principali: Ewan McGregor, Robert Carlyle, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, Kelly Macdonald, Peter Mullan.

Nomination Premio Oscar 1997; Premio BAFTA 1996; Premio Efebo D’Oro 1997.

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trama: Trainspotting è ambientato a Edimburgo e racconta la storia di cinque ragazzi eroinomani scozzesi: Mark Renton, Sick Boy, Spud, Francis Begbie e Tommy. A parte Begbie e Tommy, tutti sono eroinomani e vivono di truffe e furti per guadagnarsi la loro dose giornaliera.

Quando Renton decide di disintossicarsi, incredibilmente riesce nella sua impresa, ma l’assenza di droga riporta a galla le sue voglie sessuali, rimaste fino ad allora sopite a causa dell’eroina. È così che, durante una serata in un night club, Renton conosce Diane con cui trascorre una notte di sesso. Nella stessa notte Tommy viene lasciato dalla fidanzata, Lizzy, sprofondando in una logorante depressione.

La noia di una vita senza l’eroina spinge Mark, Sick Boy e Spud a tornare a drogarsi.

Tornare all’eroina vuol dire tornare a commettere piccoli crimini e così Renton e Spud, sorpresi a rubare, vengono processati: al contrario dell’amico, Mark riesce a evitare la prigione con la promessa di ripulirsi. In preda all’astinenza, però, finisce di overdose.

Scampato alla morte, i genitori del ragazzo lo costringono a disintossicarsi definitivamente e, dopo una serie di deliri e orribili incubi, Renton ne esce vincitore.

Ormai pulito, fa visita a Tommy, malato di AIDS. Trasferitosi a Londra, lavora come agente immobiliare ma la sua vita tranquilla viene stravolta da Begbie, ricercato per una rapina a mano armata, e Sick Boy. Tornati in Scozia, il vecchio gruppo di amici si riunisce e cerca di mettere a segno un colpo: comprare una partita di eroina e rivenderla a un prezzo più alto. L’affare riesce, ma Renton vuole liberarsi del suo scomodo passato e avventurarsi verso un futuro normale; scegliere la vita al posto dell’eroina, però, ha un costo davvero elevato...

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subculture in cinema

La prima osservazione da fare su questo film è l’uso del grandangolo che dà una forte impronta visiva al film; viene usato sui primi piani, cosa che abitualmente con questo tipo di obbiettivo non si usa fare. L’uso del grandangolo è una scelta abbastanza radicale dal punto di vista della regia e della fotografia. In Trainspotting si usa un grandangolo molto spinto, ed inevitabilmente il risultto è una deformazione dell’immagine. Questo uso così forte del grandangolo fa riferimento all’esperienza dell’espressionismo tedesco.

Dal punto di vista dello stile utilizzato, le immagini sono spesso manipolate e questo tipo di intervento è giustificato dall’aspetto allucinogeno provocato della droga: tutta una serie di improvvisi sbandamenti che ci sono nel comportamento dei ragazzi, sono giustificati dalla particolarità di questa storia.

Da notare il fortissimo richiamo al linguaggio dei video musicali. Tecnicamente è un film molto ricco di scene, proprio perché grazie alla voce fuori campo e alla musica, spesso siamo tempestati da tantissimi passaggi, molto più che in un film normale e questa è proprio la caratteristica dei video musicali.

Questo film è interessante proprio perché ci mostra come il genere musicale, da un certo punto in poi prende molta ispirazione, dal punto di vista del linguaggio, proprio dal video musicale che esiste (nel 1996, anno di realizzazione del film) ormai da un bel po’ di tempo, ma che il cinema fino ad allora aveva utilizzato poco.

underground

| pietro martina | quaderno di ricerche

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Underg Pietro Martina matr. 891345 c.p. 10620262 Design Della Comunicazione 3° anno Storia delle Comunicazioni Visive A.A. 2019/2020

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