Review of Rock of Ages (2012) by Shiira — 12 Jul 2012

When it comes to explaining rock and roll, only Pete Townshend, according to Jeff Bebe, lead singer of the fictional band Stillwater, can articulate its essence with any intellectual rigor. He believes in all earnestness that the poetry of sex and drugs will save the world.

So did the filmmaker, once upon a time, as a cub reporter for Rolling Stone in his 2000 bildungsroman Almost Famous. By the 1980s, the seasoned journalist probably knew that mom was right: rock and roll was indeed the poetry of sex and drugs, but at least those artists stood for something; they wanted to end the war, unlike, for instance, Def Leppard, who probably had no aspirations of, for starters, ending the cold war.

Ultimately, the music of the sixties was the poetry of social consciousness. Stacee Jaxx, however, we can reasonably conclude, has no thoughts on the Falkland Islands crisis, the closest thing to Vietnam, concurrent to his epoch in time.

Rock of Ages is Lester Bangs' worst nightmare. This jukebox musical plays like a paean to The Industry of Cool, the label Bangs affixed to a music biz he saw that was, to his chagrin, being commodified.

Still, despite whatever reservations one may have about the artistic bankruptcy of a banal hair metal band such as Arsenal, who in Rock of Ages, comes under attack by the mayor's wife, you still had to, as the Beastie Boys so eloquently put it, "fight for [their] right to party.

" Jaxx has the right to pour sugar on whomever he pleases. Patricia Whitmore, unmistakably, is modeled after Tipper Gore, who in 1984 formed the P.M.R.C., the organization responsible for labeling records with potentially offensive lyrics, after the almost First Lady caught her daughter singing along to a Purple Rain album track, the incendiary "Darling Nikki".

Aaaah, Prince. When it came to explaining rock and roll during the MTV age, nobody defended it better than Jello Biafra, who on an early episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, faced Gore down, and charged the religious right-funded organization with "play[ing] on the fear of parents too chicken to talk to their own kids.

" Being, supposedly, a liberal democrat, Gore's conservative agenda seemed at odds with the party's ideals, and her own roots. Coming of age in the late-sixties, it would seem inconceivable that Tipper had never experimented with drugs, or put the needle on the groove of The White Album.

There had to have been a skeleton, similar to the osterological frippery in Rock of Ages, when the truth comes out about Patricia, who turns out to be a former groupie, hidden in plain sight within the gatefold sleeve of Arsenal's debut album, posing alongside Stacey, practically naked.

Patricia, however, differs slightly from Gore, in that she may not necessarily be a Christian. A sort of veiled commentary, at the outset, is made on the Bourbon Room marquee, where it publicizes Bad Religion as the club's headlining act for the night.

On a subtextual level, what foretell could that bad religion be? If Patricia's rendition of Pat Benatar's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot", in a church, no less, provides any indication, the bad religion must be Christianity.

The couplet: "You're a real tough cookie with a long history/Of breaking little hearts like the one in me," on the surface, shows the moral crusader addressing her long ago fling with Jaxx, but the lyrics can also easily be construed as a rebuke against God.

Even more blasphemous than singing a secular song in a house of worship, is the application of the sadomasochistic theme inherent in the Benatar "classic" to Jesus' crucifixion at Golgotha. She's a Scientologist, just like the man who plays the archetypal headbanger.

During Foreigner's Christian-sounding "I Want to Know What Love Is", Cruise sings to Malin Akerman's ass, then vagina, as they pantomime sex in a dressing room. The hyper-carnality of Stacy Jaxx, more than overcompensates for the Abba-fying of REO Speedwagon, when Dennis and Lonny out themselves, thereby appeasing Cruise's church, known for its promotion of reparative therapy.

Christopher Hitchens was right. Religion does poison everything. Wasn't Rock of Ages supposed to celebrate rock and roll as a religion in its own right, a salve for the broken soul, like when Sherrie tells Jaxx, "When my hamster died, your music really helped me through?" Lester Bangs must be rolling in his grave.

As a retort to the proselytizing activists cries of "We're Not Going To Take It", the film uses Starship's "We Built This City"(a band, and song, reviled by many) as an unlikely anthem that embodies the bacchanal genre's so-called spirit.

Rock of Ages gets its history wrong. Boy bands didn't kill hair metal bands like Arsenal, and their real life contemporaries. Nirvana did. While Jaxx belts out "Don't Stop Believin'" to a sold-out crowd, in the real timeline, Kurt Cobain was checking out Green River at some tiny Seattle club.