Fireworks

So far, all of the moves I have written about have been large-scale Hollywood productions, made with expensive budgets and released in theaters to mass audiences.  It's doesn't take backing from a major production company to make a movie that changes the world, though. All you need is a camera, a vision, and a house to yourself for the weekend.  That's all that Kenneth Anger needed in 1947 to make Fireworks, a sexually charged short film that propelled the seventeen-year-old into the center of the burgeoning world of independent American cinema.  The innovative piece of cinema drew as much wild praise from the film community as it did controversy from sources that sought to suppress it's abstract, sensual depiction of homoerotic relationships, as homosexuality was still a crime under sodomy laws punishable by imprisonment and hard labor.

The surreal film opens with Anger waking up from a dream of being held by a sailor.  He then proceeds to get dressed, look in a mirror, and then open a door labeled "GENTS" that leads to the world of his fantasies.  Inside he meets a shirtless Navy sailor, who offers him a drag from a ciagrette.  The situation soon goes from idyllic to terrifying when a gang of sailors approach Anger from behind and begin to brutally beat him to the ground.  The men rip open his chest to reveal a ticking clock located deep inside his guts.  A thick white liquid is poured over his body, a roman candle erupts from a sailor's crotch, and Anger turns into a massive burning Christmas tree.  The movie ends with Anger lying in bed with a man whose face is obscured a flickering white doodle.  Interspersed throughout are montage-like flashes of burning photographs, blowing newspapers, and city lights at night.


Fireworks is an deeply personal piece of art created by Anger as a way of dealing with and understanding his outlawed sexuality.  The dreamlike, stream-of-consciousness structure allows him to explore depths of his mind that would not be possible to express through traditional narrative.  Inspired by nightmares about  race riots between white navy soldiers and Mexicans he witnessed in L.A., Fireworks explores  Anger's confusion over his attraction towards violence and sado-masochism.  The movie's rape scene contains a powerful shot of fingers being jammed up Anger's nose, resulting in a massive flow of blood.  It is contrasted later by the white liquid, which has a dual meaning as a both a sexual release and a spiritual cleansing.  Through the course of the movie's events, Anger directly confronts his taboo desires by way of looking through the mirror, a symbol lifted from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass: it stands for the world beyond, a dark and alluring world that only existed for him in his fantasies.  The dreamworld of his desires is examined by through archetypal American images.  The sailor is a representation of Anger's conflicted feelings towards sex as both a source of protection and a threat.  The phallic image of the tree with a star on top is a celebratory symbol, as by enacting his sexual fantasies he feels an experience of happiness comparable with the familial holiday love cherished by hetero-normative American culture, a kind of feeling he can never truly experience due to his sexual orientation. As the director and star has said himself, "This flick is all I have to say about being 17, the United States Navy, American Christmas and the fourth of July."

Reception to Fireworks in France was wildly positive.  Two of Anger's heroes, Jean Cocteau and Jean Genet, were floored by the film's innovative cinematic style and jarring sexual metaphors.  Cocteau hailed the teenager as one of the most important new filmmakers, and awarded Fireworks the title of Best Poetic Film at the 1949 Festival de Film Maudit in Biarritz, France.  Its first American screening was in Los Angeles, where a variety of art-world members were in attendance, including playwright Tennessee Williams, who called it "the most exciting use of cinema I have ever seen."  Authorities, however, were less enthusiastic.  Anger was arrested for the shocking nature of the film's content on obscenity charges.  The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, who in a landmark ruling deemed worthy of artistic merit rather than an illegal piece of pornography.  The case set a precedent for the avant-garde in America, and gave Anger free reign to continue making provocative films.  His work would continue to push boundaries, climaxing with his 1967 magnum opus Scorpio Rising, a bikesploitation fantasy notable for being one of the first films to incorporate pop music in the soundtrack.  It was cited as a large influence on Martin Scorcese's Mean Streets and David Lynch's Blue Velvet, as well as being credited as one of the first music videos.  A true American original, Kenneth Anger is a revolutionary filmmaker whose exploration of sexual representation elevated his work to mythic status at a time where such frank depictions of sexuality were unheard of.

Works Cited:
Hays, Matthew. "Kenneth Anger, Director: Fireworks at Sixty." The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide 14.2 (2007): 46-47.
Hutchison, Alice L. Kenneth Anger: A Demonic Visionary. London: Black Dog Pub., 2004. 
Sitney, P. Adams. Visionary Film: The American Avant-garde, 1943-2000. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.