Chapter 4 “Pop, Queer, or Fascist? The Ambiguity of Mass Culture in Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising” highly regards Kenneth Anger’s film. The objective of the author is to minimize the influences of Scorpio Rising that many associate with European cinema such as the works of Banuel and Eisenstein, and instead to focus on its involvement with popular American youth culture. The ambiguity of the film’s stance on the pop culture is carefully examined as it simultaneously celebrates the freedom of subversion and condemns the life threatening danger and fascist identification that can arise from egocentric pleasure seeking.
    Three approaches the text uses to analyze the films ambiguity are homosexuality, mass culture, and totalitarianism. Though the bikers in the film were not gay, the author contends that Anger clearly presents them as objects of homosexual desire. This is supported by the emergence of the biker aesthetic becoming associated with S&M practices in gay popular culture. The overabundance of masculinity and macho poses blur the line between patriarchical dominance and homosexual fetishism. The concept of overabundance also ties into the rise of mass culture as opposed to high culture. This is accomplished by the juxtaposition of the clips of Marlon Brando and James Dean with films of Jesus which can be interpreted as elevating or diminishing the figures of each. The film also addresses the similarity between totalitarianism and a public subscribing to a uniform iconography through prevalent Nazi imagery and violence; the mimicry the bikers practice is correlated to following fascism.
    Unveiling the homoerotic as well as the connection between eroticism and violence which are subdued in conventional youth culture is one of the more overt effects of Scorpio Rising. On the other hand, the more ambiguous elements of the film can only be resolved though subjective interpretation.

 
    Stevenson’s article contends gay cinema is one of the few subgenres of independent film to flourish in America, especially at a time when mainstream Hollywood ideals and style dominate. The relatively recent acceptance of gay film has been achieved after decades of struggle for the right to create, distribute and have use of homoerotic images, and finally with the right to watch these images in the public setting of the movie theatre.
    Beginning around 1915, gay images first appeared with the first stag films. Male homosexuality in the films was almost nonexistent, and this can be attributed to the lack of an organized homosexual market to sell the product to. Access to gay sexual imagery after WWII became simpler with more affordable, available movie equipment as well as an increase in gay liberalization as seen in openly circulated gay magazines
    The gay cinema of Kenneth Anger and his contemporaries marked the beginning of the American gay underground Avant-Garde movement which was dedicated to the exploration of a deeper psychosexuality. Because homophobia was still widespread throughout society and censorship was rampant, it was difficult for these films to access a larger public, and these films were distributed underground to a small circuit of film clubs and societies. The idea of film as an artistic personal expression struggled to be accepted in a time when film was primarily seen for commercial value.
    In the early 60’s, the gay underground merged with the New York centered Underground movement and the provocative film, Scorpio Rising, produced a huge impact. This work of cinematic art was disguised as porn and distributed in the commercial sexploitation market. The trial in which Scorpio was ruled obscene brought the film great publicity, and increased its reputation, and it finally came to be praised by the mainstream press.  The success of Scorpio helped to reveal the fact that there was an audience for artistic gay film, and this helped to separate it from commercial sexploitation pornography.
    The last of the barriers were broken with the arrival of gay hard-core pornography in 1969. Today, gay film-makers are no longer classified as gay liberation activists, and can be considered as creative artists producing movies, that are not necessarily gay films, for a wider audience.

    Chapter 13 of volume 8 “‘What Went Wrong?’ American Avant-Garde Cinema of the 1960’s” begins with a concern about the meaning of authorship and uses the films of Kenneth Anger, all beginning with the phrase “a film by Anger” as a starting point of analysis. The expression “by Anger” envelops two important aspects of Avant-Garde filmmaking of the 1960’s. It represents both the individual vision, as films were often the product of a single author, and the aggressive style inherent in the movies, which confronted expectations of film and addressed relevant social issues. Anger and his work are not mentioned much after the beginning of the chapter. Instead, a broad and thorough analysis of the Avant-Garde movement of the 1960’s is presented in terms of its emergence and the response of filmmakers to the social context of the 1960’s concerning politics, sexuality, and race.
The changes in American cinema were marked by the failure of Hollywood studios. Therefore, there was a strong influence of European cinema particularly the French New Wave. The new American Avant-Garde was also closely associated with the formation of social bonds. Hence the initial geographic isolation of the movement was principally centered in New York City and San Francisco Bay. However, the text does not fix a narrow concrete definition on the complex movement acknowledging the exception of Stan Brakhage working out of Colorado.
    The chapter contends intertextuality, addressing issues that were larger than those portrayed explicitly in the film itself, connected the experimental films of the 1960’s together, as well as linking some experimental films to the Hollywood’s genre. Parody and rethinking of Hollywood conventions were a recurrent motif of Avant-garde filmmakers, and helped shape the identity of experimental film as a contrast to the repression that lurked in Hollywood.
    While the chapter examines several distinctive directors and their major works, it conscientiously groups them into social and ideological categories. Thus, it bridges the gap between individual vision and universal resonance. Films of the movement were distinguished by individual authorship and a resentment of racial and sexual oppression, which the Avant-Garde filmmakers collectively combated against.

    Chapter 7 “The Forties: Maya Deren and Her Acolytes, Wizards of the Id” discusses the prevalence of Avant-Garde of the 1940’s. While the importance of Kenneth Anger is often stressed during the 1960’s along with the newcomers Jack Smith and Andy Warhol, this text examines the earlier origin of Anger’s career acknowledging the impact of Maya Deren. Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon rejects imposed realism of Hollywood and reveals spatial illusions created by editing, offering a critique of the inherently false nature of Hollywood. Anger’s work matured through this the formula evidenced in 1947 by his film Fireworks as well as his later works. However, in contrast to Deren’s total rejection, Anger held a complex love-hate relationship with Hollywood.
    Anger was very well versed in films of the 1920’s and 1930’s, and grew up with close connections to the studios. His grandmother was a longstanding costume designer who landed him the role of an extra in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He was also a dance partner of Shirley Temple. These childhood experiences instilled a fascination with the mythic qualities of Hollywood. He was also influenced by the philosophies of Aliester Crowley who taught disobedience and subversion as the key to joy. Consequently his films contain both the use and criticism of established modes of Hollywood. Anger’s films provide analysis of the star system by emphasizing importance of the main characters, but rather than invent stars, Anger took the approach of documenting what he recognized as fascinating in his subjects. Another aspect Anger sought to expose was the underlying sadomasochistic quality of submitting to a movie. In doing so Anger forms a recognition that his films exist as a counterpoint to Hollywood films and not as an entity on their own. Anger’s fresh approach helped to reshape mainstream media as the importance of popular music in Scorpio Rising almost serves as a precursor to the contemporary music video. Criticism of Hollywood presented in Meshes of the Afternoon was undoubtedly a driving force in Anger’s films, but not without Anger’s simultaneous homage to the industry he found so captivating.

 
    Interestingly there is not mention of Scorpio Rising in this article, but it does offer insight into the sensationalist modes of biker movies of the 1950’s, 60’s, and early 70’s. The interest in motorcycle gangs arose most significantly with the emergence of the infamous Hell’s Angels in the mid-1960’s. These bikers gained notoriety through the media, and it was press stories that aided in the creation of biker movies. These movies often used other genres as templates, especially the western, and this fusion led to confusion.
    The media gave the group great publicity by making known to the public the sensational exploits of the outlaw bikers. Mainstream media created the public image of motorcycle clubs when they further depicted the bikers as savage brutes threatening civilized society. News coverage presented very deviant actions of the Angels who enjoyed playing up to their immoral reputation against conservative, middle class society, and a Newsweek article even speculated on their homosexuality. These press stories were transformed into biker movies that heavily relied on media coverage for their story. The release of The Wild Angels in 1966 was met by great success, and this began the trend of a cycle of films on outlaw biker gangs continuing up until the early 1970’s.
These exploitation movies often made use of other genres as narratives and templates, such as themes of war, gangsters or cops. The most commonly used template was the western in which overt parallels were drawn between outlaw biker gangs and outlaws of the Old West. The author attributes the failure of exploitation cinema to exist for an extended time particularly to their fusion of news reports and movie genres. This synthesis of two separate, established forms of media, which have their own distinct and independent structures of semantics and syntax, result in conflict and confusion, and lends to the fact that exploitation films failed to develop their own stable structures.
    The outlaw biker film came out of the negative media publicity of biker gangs, especially Hell’s Angels. Exploitation films have failed to make use of the deeper structures of meaning of the genres that they employ, resulting in confusion and leaving biker gangs elusive and contradictory.

(this site times out, but the article can be found by performing a title search on the page the link goes to)
    At least as early as the 1960's, Hollywood and independent cinemas have experimented with conventional popular genres concerning generic, heterosexual masculinity, and fused it with alternative, subcultural versions of masculinity. The author focuses on the psychedelic or popular-modernist films of the late 1960's and early 1970's that utilized the narrative and iconographic structures of established genres to explore and challenge traditional male identity and behavior. The subgenre of psychedelic film contains subjective qualities that cause the film experience to be a "head trip" that both transforms and provides an enjoyable mental journey. Characteristics of psychedelic film include protagonists identified with college students and political protest, pacing and editing in the tradition of European art films, the use of anti-realist formal and narrative elements, and tendencies of art cinema and exploitation film.

    Modernist elements are employed to upset the generic foundations of the male protagonist, which usually reaffirm the privileged position of male characters and spectators. The psychedelic film shares similarities to American experimental film of the 1960's such as Scorpio Rising in the use of modernist elements to challenge major worldview, perception, and representation. Psychedelic film uses experimental form in the alteration of the classic narrative genre with its ideological biases, especially those concerning gender. The level of confrontation and critique achieved by these films are related to that level achieved by Kenneth Anger's radical gay films. Scorpio Rising transformed the motorcycle genre with implicit homoerotic and violent gestures.

    Recent films concerning alternative views of masculinity linked to popular genres have achieved success, but it is only superficially challenging. At the core is the reassurance of stable, heterosexual masculinity. The author notes that the shift from popular modernist cinema to contemporary cinema is evidence of an increase in filmmakers' claims of the significance of privileged male experience.