The El Duce Tapes (2019)

 

Directors: Rodney Ascher, David Lawrence and Ryan Sexton

Ephemeral Waves

 

Starting with intent, this documentary on the controversial musician El Duce, lead singer of the shock rock group the Mentors, begins with an intertitle from D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), appealing for the right of art. This is provocative to begin with, but in itself is a perfect way of starting this subject, the film (if you know of that film and its history) subconsciously drawing one to think carefully about the figure we are going to encounter in various contexts, as a film whose offensiveness was tragically more wider reaching asks for freedom of speech, ironically used to refer to a figure Griffith would have been appalled by. The film by Rodney Ascher and David Lawrence compiles footage from a young actor named Ryan Sexton that, stored over twenty five years and recorded in 1990-1, follows a figure who in the modern day requires a trigger warning for the type of subject he was deliberately provoking. That the Mentors or at least El Duce said their type of music was called "rape rock" is something from a different era, a deliberately crass and misogynistic tone to the lyrics meant from a provocation.

El Duce would have been cancelled today immediately, although the likelihood is that he would have still been able to make music, which is something in itself that, when looking back on a late figure like this, causes one to ask whether the modern world of "cancelling" figures really does work at all. It asks whether it is very slight and ineffectual as a concept in dealing with these sorts of questions of transgressive speech and the freedom to speak one's thoughts, even the offensive ones. This has obviously become more an issue as, whilst Duce is a complicate figure but also a marginal underground musician, more politically loaded use of the notion of "freedom of speech" has rightly made us be wary of anyone who argues for it. To let the writer of this piece put his own politics into the text, with you the reader to think of your own ideas in contrast, the side which speaks of homophobic/misogynistic/racist/etc, rhetoric is obviously morally wrong, with myself only throwing in too that those types of ideas, not the people but the ideas themselves, which support hate are inherently illogical and examples of complete lack of common sense. The problem for me also includes that the guards who wish to speak for progressive ideals have tragically taken on the same unsubtle, crass and sledgehammer graced tones as their enemies. Cancelling something does not really work for me, when the only way to kill the beasts of illogical thinking (hating another person) is to realise they stem from fears, bias and lack of connecting to others in dialogue.

El Duce, to completely deflate my little piece of soapbox standing, also is an example outside of the issues of modern political incorrectness which is more difficult to tackle in a simplistic black and white moralising. Simply because the subject, alongside making music which was only likely to be heard by a few, is also shown here to be a complicated, psychologically damaged figure also as much influenced by alcoholism as he was deliberately being offensive. It is weird, when the documentary says Duce was a predecessors to the modern day issues of political incorrectness, that they include footage of Milo Yiannopoulos, a figure some people may have completely forgotten about by 2019, and for me is an entirely different sort of figure to El Duce even if the filmmakers do link the pair (and South Park) for a reason.

If anyone remembers Yiannopoulos, the irony was that it was only when he shot his own foot off, saying something which even offended people on his wavelength, which blipped him out of pop culture into obscurity. Duce, in comparison, deliberately prodded the bear of controversy to anger people but at a time where he would still have been considered obscure, and never with the added insidious nature, with Yiannopoulos connected to the alt-right movement in the 2010s, of Duce ever being at a time where he could influence people beyond listening to really crass and offensive songs at concerts. Certainly, the concerns we have in the modern day are not new, as the documentary in its various clips posits the Mentors' rise at a time of highly provocative work from various sides of politics. Roseanne Bar was butchering the Star Spangled Banner to a chorus of boos at a baseball game, as George Bush. Sr. wanted the American family to be closer to The Waltons than The Simpsons, and plenty of other shock rock figures were around such as G.G. Allen and GWAR. And there were too Wally George and Jerry Springer, who both had El Duce on their shows and in themselves were deliberately provoking people by having him on their shows, for a larger audience, even if from different political sides and still condemning him.

GWAR in comparison to El Duce are humble, admitting they thought he was insane. Even GWAR were disturbed by the rape comments. Even Duce's own band members were. There is a lot with this figure which is distasteful. The homophobia is offensive, and then white supremists wanted to book the band. However, you also have the image of someone who declined extremists, awkwardly talking of having non-white friends and with knowledge a member of the Mentors on the side who is black, and whose homophobia (including explicitly at glam metal's poodle hair singers) was unfortunately common in a lot of culture too. Ironically referencing Fascism and anti-immigration dangerously veering into real opinion is the one truly scary moment of El Duce (real name Eldon Hoke) as a figure here, rather than anything that comes off as merely distasteful or crass, in one of his many rants where the line between provocation and intent do blur. A lot of what he says in jest or deliberate is going to make many viewers uncomfortable, but one of the most prominent things learnt throughout is that, for someone who I had only known as a cartoonish figure of offensiveness in his black executioner's hood, he was tragically complicated, something else which could easily be lost in merely damning him.

As the first time actually hearing the music, the Mentors are crude, making the suggestion by his fellow band mate Steve Broy almost absurd when El Duce is compared to Van Gogh. It also however says a lot that most of those around him do not really bat an eyelid at many of his provocations. His girlfriend Missy was only offended by the lyrics of 'On the Rag" and downplays him being evil; their erotic dancer on the stage shows downplays him, also referring to the fact that he and the rap group NWA, who were notorious for lyrics about shooting cops, were probably smarter by not actually doing either in real life but merely writing lyrics about them to shock; and there is the fact that, for anyone like myself with a little knowledge of Duce, he was also tragically a figure crippled by alcoholism who eventually died due to being crushed on train lines, whose sister here paints the image of a psychologically damanged man and also downplaying his comments.

Compiled as a documentary based on Sexton's footage, and pop culture material (films, even wrestling) to match the grubby VHS shot material, The El Duce Tapes is a very conventional documentary in terms of showing a snapshot of a troubled figure as much as their downfall. Said downfall was captured by a person named Steve Bray, the later "the Grunge era" of El Duce which gets uncomfortable as he is seen drunk to the state of pure disarray and barely existent onscreen. Even the one bizarre pop cultural thing Duce got involved with, when inexplicably documentarian Nick Broomfield captured him on film saying Courtney Love paid him to kill Kurt Cobain, was stated to have been not long before his untimely death, which really adds to the reality of what could either be a broad parody of a man or the deeply offensive figure few would defend. Even in the internet age, Duce would have likely not become a figure being clambered at to be cancel as, whether his real beliefs, he was also a man who couch surfed homes rather than own his own apartment, and whose alcohol consumption, as his own sister states, eventually even affected his ability to play music. The documentary has to streamline a bit, even if its structure, but the irony is knowing the little notoriety the Mentors got can a) be blamed on the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) and Tipper Gore for getting them more sales, and b) blamed on glam metal, which led to so many bands in the underground, both innovative genres like death metal and other metal subgenres, and shock rock bands like the Mentors, being created by people who wished to be less commercial. (Something you could forget when, seeing a little of the Mentors touring, they had slots next to Saint Vitus, innovators of doom metal, and inexplicably Killing Joke, which causes me to wonder what that band would have thought of El Duce).

The one moment the mask seems to slip does also show the horrible influence his father had, one whose strict punishments for his children lead to him considering his dad being a sadist. This is coupled with said father designing the bouncing napalm bomb for the Vietnam War which deliberately could cause more death and agony, Duce seeing his Dad as the insane one of the family. That his father's porn collection, an actual collection carefully acquired, is said to have influenced Duce's lyrics really adds to the complicated psychological framework too.

As a snapshot of the time period too, this is definitely a compelling document too, just for the sight of GWAR unmasked which is startling to see. Seeing Dave "Oderus Urungus" Brockie out of costume, in particular, is a rare yeti sighting for a music fan like me. Knowing too the Duce was a talented child drummer, obsessed with the drummer of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Keith Moon and jazz fusion drumming really does open up the provocative and now-problematic image of this hooded figure in itself too, especially once you learn of an alternative world of the Mentors as a jazz fusion band. If anyone above those already mentioned is to be blamed for the Mentors and songs like "Golden Shower", it is that no one would literally book jazz fusion so these musicians went "fuck it" and came up with the Mentors, "jazz fusion into perversion"'. It also says so much, even if you are on the side that this is just tasteless music that he produced that is not acceptable nowadays, that there is the Womentors - the all female Mentors tribute band who even have a gender reversed dancer on stage too - which emphasises that any art, problematic or otherwise, is subjective to the interpretation and should not be simplified. It is also hilarious knowing that the band KISS inspired The Mentors too, if only because as if anyone has watched Martin Scorsese's Rolling Thunder Revue (2019), another documentary based on pre-existing footage from Dylan's 1975 titular concert titular tour, Dylan took inspiration from the band's makeup for his own white face paint during that tour. The strange connection between musicians of all types in it at least offers a light touch to end the review on.