Narrative Structure in Velvet Goldmine

[scvdder]

 

For my film theory class, I wrote & presented a speech on the narrative structure of Velvet Goldmine (1998), and the way Todd Haynes explores history. It's a film I'm very fond of (from my favourite director) and I'm honestly a little proud of what I presented, so I thought it'd be worth putting here —

Velvet Goldmine is a 1998 musical drama film directed and written by Todd Haynes (Carol, I'm Not There, Safe). It stars Jonathan Rys-Myers, Ewan McGregor, and Christian Bale, amongst others.

In 1984, journalist Arthur Stuart (played by Bale) is writing an article on the career and staged assassination attempt of glam rock legend Brian Slade. As he interviews people who were close to Brian Slade (namely his producer, his ex-wife, and his creative partner Curt Wild), we see Brian Slade’s life play out in the 60s and 70s in the trajectory of his career from a teenager with big dreams to an international superstar, his fall into addiction, and inability to cope with the twilight of his glam rock itself. Concurrently, we see how empowering it was for Arthur Stuart in his youth to see Brian Slade and other rockstars freely explore gender and sexuality, as Stuart came to terms with being gay himself.

This provides three simultaneous narratives (the journalist's quest, the journalist's youth, and the rising popstar), told in vignettes through the 1950s to the 1980s; and through this triptych, Haynes creates a fairytale of the ill-fated glam rock genre, and the 1970s gay community.

Glam Rock itself was a subgenre of rock from the UK in the 1970s. Outside of the music alone, the movement was characterised by platform shoes, liberal use of make-up, and plenty of glitter. It was flamboyant, camp, and extravagant, and pushed the boundaries of gender expression. In many ways it was the predecessor to punk and new wave.

The lead two characters closely mirror prominent musicians of the time: Brian Slade’s androgyny and alter ego, "Maxwell Demon", resembles Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust incarnation. In staging his own death in a live performance and disappearing from the scene, he echoes Bowie's own disavowal of glam rock in the late 1970s and his subsequent re-creation as an avowedly heterosexual pop star. Meanwhile, Curt Wild’s character takes inspiration from Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, both of whom were close to Bowie. Curt Wild has a flashback to being forced into electric shock treatment as a teenager, in an attempt to cure him of homosexuality; which actually happened to Lou Reed.

Though these specific elements were lifted from the mythos of glam rock, Haynes still had a loose attitude to reality —

“I always wanted the film to be a dream of glam rock, not a biopic or an official history where you're going to get the dirt on what happened to David Bowie behind closed doors.”

Early into the project, he sought Bowie out to license his music, but was ultimately rejected; and Haynes later expressed relief at this for it allowed him a much more elastic relationship to Bowie. He wasn’t tied down to making a David Bowie.

Meanwhile, the structure of Velvet Goldmine quite closely mirrors that of Citizen Kane. After a brief introduction to Brian Slade’s fame and the world of glam rock to commence the film, it cuts to a projector room where Arthur Stuart’s boss assigns him with investigating Brian Slade’s life. The narrative continues in the same fashion: through the interviews Arthur Stuart makes, Brian Slade’s life is narrated by others.

“Citizen Kane is the classic example of a film that sets out to tell you who this guy -- Charles Foster Kane -- is and fails brilliantly. What you're left with instead are all the contradictory reactions to him from all the people he touched or destroyed. That was the way I felt comfortable approaching this subject, because I just don't believe in films giving you the right answer. They can ask the right questions, but the answer is your job.” [Todd Haynes]

Appropriating the hallmark of conservative classical hollywood to create a film about gender divergence and transgression is an act of subversion in of itself. It uses a lot of gay mythology that contributes to the fantasy of the story. After the titles sequence, the film actually opens with Oscar Wilde as a baby being delivered to Dublin in 1854 by a UFO. Baby Oscar Wilde has an emerald brooch which ends up being passed down for 100 years until it eventually ends up in the hands of Curt Wild, who passes it on to Arthur Stuart. This motif represents the legacy of LGBT history itself; and a reminder that any shred of dignity that we as LGBT people are treated with, any human right that we have, was fought for tooth and nail by the activists and martyrs and artists that have come before us.

Similarly, there’s a scene where two minor characters have an exchange in Polari, a form of gay slang in the UK that was born out of the need of survival. It was a code so that eavesdroppers wouldn’t clock the speakers as gay--a very real threat as homosexuality was a punishable crime in England until 1967. Though stray words have been adopted by contemporary gay culture and even by English at large (naff, zhoush, fairy), it isn’t spoken anymore and is something of a lost language. This highlights the mythical nature of the film. It is built around nostalgia and something that has been lost.

The flashback structure highlights the marked cultural difference between the 1970s and 1980s. The opulence of the 1970s makes the colour scheme of muted blues and greys of the 1980s all the more stark. Before Arthur Stuart gets the job to investigate Brian Slade he was going to cover the tour of president Reynolds (the stand-in for Reagan), who is mentioned numerous times. At the end of the film, Arthur Stuart finally realises that Brian Slade has literally become someone else, and produces music under the name of Tommy Stone — a totally palatable superstar. The only time we see the real Brian Slade (and not some version filtered through the press or anecdotes) is in 1984 as Tommy Stone is interviewed after a performance, where he openly endorses president Reynolds. I think it’s also worth noting that this takes place in 1984, a year with its own political connotations. Brian Slade may not be dead, but the genre is, and so is that attitude of rebellion and joy, replaced now with neoliberalism.

It is almost impossible for any LGBT film made at the end of the 20th Century to not reflect on the AIDS crisis, so even though it is not mentioned once in the movie; it is nevertheless in a viewers conscience. This is consistent with the 1980s sequences; if nothing else then in tone alone, the threat of the AIDS crisis is present.

Ultimately, Todd Haynes hasn’t just made a movie about killer music and its musicians, but about a brief period of freedom for the LGBT community before the backlash of the 1980s and the oppression of the AIDS crisis and neoliberalism. It’s a story that needs telling because many haven’t survived long enough to tell it. It’s not a biopic, or historical, but a fairy-tale.