Wake Up Punk: Railing against the commodification machine

First-time feature director Nigel Askew chronicles Joe Corré’s 2016 protest, in which he burned £5 million worth of memorabilia to decry the commodification of punk. Corré, an activist and the co-founder of lingerie label Agent Provocateur, is part of punk’s first family. The son of British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, the late former manager of Sex Pistols, his chats at the kitchen table with his mum and brother Ben make for the most affecting and lively scenes in this documentary.

The family’s collective dismay at seeing a “punk” Mastercard is echoed by such appealing contributors as Eddie Tudor-Pole, who sits incredulously at a punk-themed afternoon tea (“Anarch-tea in the UK”). The late Jordan Mooney bemoans the use of the term punk, a word that found its way into the tabloids following the Sex Pistols’ notorious TV appearance with Bill Grundy. The word, reasons Jordan, killed the rebellious movement of disaffected youth it described.

Askew “punks” his documentary with inserts depicting Dickensian urchins raging against the system in a steampunk workhouse. The effect, as with watching a group of squabbling punks at a 40th anniversary gathering, is off-key but not lacking in ramshackle appeal.

Depicted at rallies and at home, Vivienne Westwood still cuts a fiery figure, even if, as her sons observe, she is currently embraced as a “national treasure”. She characterises Julian Assange as the spiritual inheritor of the subculture she helped to forge. Watching her dusting down decades-old garments, once lovingly embellished by hand with swastikas and anything that might shock, it’s easy to forget that this woman designed the sold-out wedding frock for the Sex in the City movie. She amusingly recalls a police raid wherein all t-shirts emblazoned with swear words were removed, while t-shirts demonstrating how to make a bomb were left unmolested on the shelves.

There are obvious omissions – notably John Lydon – in this mad mash-up of documentary and fantasy and whatever you’re having. Still, if Askew’s film is formally jagged and uneven in content, it compensates with attitude. And isn’t that the true meaning of punk?