No future.

Evolution is a process too slow to save my soul

But I've got this creature on my back

And it just won't let go

If I am only an animal

Then I can do no wrong

But they say I'm something better

So I've gotta hold on

Manimal

Darby Crash (The Germs)

But Darby Crash, did not hold on. After disbanding earlier in the year, the seminal punk-rock band, The Germs, got back together to play--what would end up being--their last show, on December 3rd, 1980. Then, four nights later--on the eve of John Lennon's death incidentally--Darby Crash killed himself with $400 worth of heroine, in the poolhouse of his friend's mother's home (the girl who was supposed to die along with him, but survived).

The Germs were part of the "first generation" of punk-rock (the mid to late 1970s)--and a vital part of the Los Angeles contingent of the...uh...movement. Darby Crash's performances, as singer of the Germs, were often marked by bleak gestures such as self-mutilation, and showering the audience in food and blood. Crash (like Sid Vicious) was the epitomization of the fatalistic nihilism and disillusionment that summarily defined that particular generation of punk-rock--before of course, pockets of positivity and revolutionary vitality started forming later in the 1980s.

I begin my discussion of Jean-Luc Godard's ingeniously "alienating" (as the truth often is) and non-linear, Masculine Feminine, by talking about the fate of Darby Crash, for one primary reason. And it lies deep within the fate of a generation defined by the utterly irreconcilable paradox of "Marx and Coca Cola." Darby Crash is the tragic poster-child for the fatalistic nihilism and existential torment, of the generation that was the aftermath of Godard's "Children of Marx and Coca Cola." I do indeed believe that the generation that Godard's "Children of Marx and Coca Cola" embody, was a profound watershed. Not only had the Marxist revolution failed (as the ultimate inconsequentiality of France's student/labor uprisings of 1968 illustrates), but the essential ethics of struggle and sacrifice, that are necessary for such a revolution, were buckling under the sheer gravity and pervasiveness of the gospel of possession, convenience, and leisure, that was/is Western consumer culture. 

Which was no big deal, if you were a child of the bourgeoisie and upper classes. But if you were a child of the vast majority--or the lower classes--which did not get to enjoy any of the comforts and conveniences, terminal disillusionment inevitably followed the realization that the war was over with, and they won. And within a decade, came the nihilistic desolation of punk-rock.

Godard efficaciously illustrates the confusion of ideals and motives of France's youth of the time, in a number of different ways. For instance, the polling-interview that Paul (Jean-Pierre Leaud) does with "Miss 19." She has won a bit of a prestigious status that has given her the benefits of consumer culture. She knows little--if anything--about the wars occurring at that moment in the world, she owns a car, she doesn't know what "socialism" is, and doesn't care. But more importantly, she has been to the United States, and loved it. She is very attracted to what she feels it means to be an American--or as she says, it's like "Being somebody [and] having lots to do."

On the other hand, one particularly odd scene seems to convey--presciently--the forthcoming nihilistic tide. This is the scene where Paul is chased out of the arcade by the young man with the knife, who then illogically commits suicide, by stabbing himself. Another suicide occurs when a man lights himself on fire in front of the American Embassy to protest the Vietnam War (but I guess that suicide is noble, although that is a whole other discussion in and of itself). But in general, the male characters in this film, seem to be struggling to reconcile the irreconcilable--like Paul attempting to act like he cares about the labor or class struggle, and at the same time, get along with Madeleine (Chantal Goya) and her acutely narcissistic desires for fame and success.

Which brings us to the girls in Masculine Feminine. Enough has been said about Godard's misogynistic tendencies. There's no sense in going on about them here...but...considering the roles that women play in this film, it seems quite...uh...fitting that Elisabeth (Marlene Jobert) is eating an apple throughout her whole interview scene. The apple, of course, being a rather universal symbol of the--allegedly--inherent proclivities of women, towards such regrettable tendencies such as betrayal and desire and covetousness. Whether we buy that whole original sin crock or not, and despite her aspirations and moderate level of success as a pop-singer, Madeleine leaves us on as much of a dismal and doomed note at the end of the movie, as any other character or occurrence. After all, the last thing we hear her say--after indifferently agreeing with Elisabeth's version of Paul's death--is that she considers "a curtain rod" to be her most viable option in dealing with the life growing inside of her...

...no future indeed. 

...Dragged on a table in a factory

Illegitimate place to be

In a packet in a lavatory

Die little baby screaming

Body screaming fucking bloody mess

Not an animal

It's an abortion

Body! I'm not an animal

Mummy! I'm not an abortion...

...Fuck this and fuck that

Fuck it all and fuck a fucking brat

She don't wanna a baby that looks like that

I don't wanna baby that looks like that

Body, I'm not an animal

Body, an abortion

Bodies

The Sex Pistols