Original Message
Dave C: point of follow up from Posts below re: JD
Posted by Sordidman on September 20, 2008 at 09:26:51:
You were there, I was too, a little later, and largely missed out.
Do I have any REAL insight? Maybe, maybe-not. You had a touring company?
My point about "Control" was that Debbie Curtis was a jilted, bitter, young housewife who neither understood the significance of the music, nor Ian.
That movie, although it may have been her "take" on that time period is not particularly interesting, - nor do I believe it accurate.
I will concede a certain amount of romanticism.
I will also concede that the gestalt of the band, and what they were doing in that incredibly perverse, and apocalyptic, event was much bigger, and less understood, (like Hooky for example), than at times they and many people realized.
Sometimes analysis is not OVER analysis, and sometimes perceptive hindsight reveals more than what is present at the time....
Of course, the story of JD is much more complicated, filled with even more than a Kafka-esque pathos. One would think that watching that film, that Joy Division were simply a northern England rock band. WTF??
I really am angry at these movies, like Control and Amadeus that play at, and get close to, a "documentary-like" feel. That is what I call the "lie." People watch these things; and BELIEVE them to be a documentary. This superficial washing over of the fundamental perversity, oppressive socialization, evil, and overwhelming, futility of a bureaucratic nightmare society and life was completely untouched by the film and by Debbie, and it makes us dismiss and reduce her to a stupid, insipid, whiny, stereotypical northern English housewife.
I agree with you and RC about Ian's suicide. I want to stay clear of that, and should, cause again, no one knows anything at all...
But I prefer to think of it as this young Kafka with epilepsy who was stuck. He was writing these lyrics as therapy to keep himself alive. He felt an obligation and responsibility to his excited friends, bandmates, who were his business partners: JD was their way out of this miserable, dull, life. He was in love with two women and felt obligated to them both, one of which may have actually understood him. But, most importantly, he was keenly aware of Herzog, and Stroczak. And the aforementioned, subtle, evil, socialized oppressions that prevent anything from ever changing. If you seen the movie, (about an autistic homeless guy and a prostitute trying to escape a gang of inept-low-grade-small-time thugs to the USA, and the disasters that happen once there. Herzog's POV on the USA is more dead-on than can scarcely be imagined: especially for a non-native), one can see where watching it in the evening, after a fight with his wife, on the eve of their USA tour, could be the "straw" that brings down Ian's world..
If you think you're going to faint, go out in the hallway
