Bilge Ebiri explores his relationship with the films of Kenneth Anger.
Why is it that [Anger's] films feel so
urgent today, when a decade ago I found them unwatchable?
Celebrities have outpaced the roles
they play; their work as actors now seems incidental to their fame. This
phenomenon has been fueled by media ventures designed to reflect the glamour
back onto itself, be it through TV (see: Entourage, every celebrity reality show), well-funded gossip websites
like TMZ and an ever-expanding tabloid universe.
More than any other filmmaker, Kenneth Anger depicted
this trend half a century in advance.
Anger's work doesn't exist in the
experimental, far-off edges of the cinematic empire. It straddles — and crosses
— a very thin line between the conventional and the insane. His cinema is the
dark, deranged runoff from Hollywood's
dream factory: crazed, breathless nightmares of glamour, ritual and tough-guy
iconography.
