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. With Be A Pepsi Punk
Posted by Rob Walker on July 31, 2006
Posted Under: Brand Underground
Posted Under: Brand Underground
A few weeks ago we rented The Great Rock N Roll Swindle, which I’d never actually seen, or had seen so long ago that I had basically no memory of it.
I was working on the “brand underground” story at the time, and I think maybe because of that I noticed these T shirts in one particularly absurd scene. Given the context of the movie, I assume they’re fake, and meant as satirical. But who knows? Anyway, I think somebody should make these now.
Incredibly bad movie, by the by, but some of the live-performance clips are amazing.
Further diversion may be found at MKTG Tumblr, and the Consumed Facebook page.
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Reader Comments
It’s been a long while since I saw the movie, but I remember having the same reaction to almost everything in it as you had to the t-shirts. Which parts were satire and which were real? The movie title indicates it should all be read as satire, but surely the punk aesthetic is built around genuine desire — to make change or to make music, DIY and all that.
I can believe that McLaren pitched it all as satire, but I wonder if he was truly so immune to the desire to do something great. On the whole I had the sense that everyone involved was unsure what was genuine and what was fake also.
But the live performance stuff really is great, and John Lydon was/is magnetic to watch in any form.
I’m surprised no one has made those shirts already.
McLaren and the Sex Pistols were not about changing music or “DIY and all that” – they were put together to cause a splash and make money. They only had 12 songs, only one of two of which most people can name today, and they were never DIY or independent, as opposited to the vast majority of punks that followed in their wake who really did change music. McLaren understood from the beginning that they were making a splash in culture/fashion/politics, and they did it through prime time TV and major labels. Great Rock & Roll Swindle (more McLaren’s movie than anything) is all about this. He understood the media and the corporate world, as you can see by the perfect example of the Pepsi shirt.
Great Rock & Roll Swindle is fantastic compared to the Sex Pistol’s own revisionist telling of the tale in The Filth and the Fury, which is told through their youthful tunnel vision. The same performances are fantastic in both films – not because of great songs, but because there was an idea behind the movement.
“Anyway, I think somebody should make these now” – haven’t they, in many different forms many times over? It took another 15 years, but punk rock finally went mainstream with Nirvana, Green Day, etc. Even the Sex Pistols reformed to do a song for a Mountain Dew commercial in the mid/late 90s. Neither a Pepsi Woodstock or a Pepsi mohawk are ironic anymore, but it was a shrewd statement about the things to come back in the late 70s.