Bob Rafelson’s 1968 film, Head, opens appropriately on a head. In particularly, it opens on a
figure of white authority: a policeman. While the shot follows the roaming
policeman, denying any substantial establishing composition, we eventually see
a film crew and some sort of staged celebration experiencing technical
difficulties. Cue pop stars The Monkees. The young male pop idols abruptly
interrupt the proceedings and completely usurp the film. This opening serves as
a useful metaphor for not only the film at hand, but cinema as it approached a new era: a film crew centered on flawed (as marked by
logistical difficulties) dominant white masculinity, clearly symbolizing the Hollywood studio system, disrupted by young and careless
figures like The Monkees and filmmaker Rafelson.
As the opening continues, the stars jump off a bridge to a
song of theirs with the chorus, “Goodbye.” The idea of opening the film with a
literal descent is the physical flipside to The
Graduate’s opening of a voiceover describing a “descent into L.A. ” the year before.
The Monkees’ leap and ensuing swim in the water is shown in a series of jump
cuts through the lens of colorful film negatives. All of the film’s opening
elements work together to characterize the film as an attempt at total
subversion of the Hollywood system. In fact, it
might be useful to consider the opening as the antithesis of the famous opening
credits theme of the 007 film franchise, which was enjoying its critical heyday
during the decade in question.
It soon becomes quite clear the film is interested in
satire. Head immediately consumes
itself with images of violence, war, sports, and the media as they all
intertwine and make comments about each other. Perhaps the most visceral of
which is the juxtaposition of aforementioned war images seemingly being received
by overjoyed young white girls, the latter of which assumingly taken from
concerts of The Monkees. While shocking and abrasive, it serves as a reminder
that everything in the film must be put into the context of pop stars, as this
is The Monkees in a film as The Monkees. In other words, Head is more interested in demystifying pop stars, pop stardom, and
such prefabricated Hollywood icons than it is
in making mere political statements.
Though satire is the driving comedic tool, the film is
almost overbearingly and certainly unapologetically steeped in formalism and
farcical humor. Such a mode seems appropriate considering Head’s obsession with the ridiculousness of their targets: a Coke
machine (the ultimate pop icon) appears in the desert before being destroyed by
a tank; authority figures are constantly parading and dancing around; a girl in
a bikini almost commits suicide on a Hollywood
studio. Meanwhile, The Monkees move in and out of every conceivable Hollywood genre (i.e. Action, Western, Melodrama, etc.) breaking
the apparent narrative over and over again, as if to question what a film is
and what it can be. Head is opening
the conversation on film.
Along with the film’s tone, Head’s aesthetic should be mentioned. I’m not quite sure of the
genealogy of the “trippy” film and where this falls into play, though surely it
must be near the origin. The “trippy” film has become synonymous with an
attempt to recreate a drug trip and exploring the relationship between said
trip and reality. However, Head doesn’t
seem overtly interested in drugs. Instead, the “trippy” aesthetic and scenarios
comment on the relationship between our fascination with film and pop idols and
our realities. The most prominent tool aiding this confusion over real life,
what’s the making of the film and what is
the film, is the fact that The Monkees are playing themselves, not to mention
sly scenes like the inclusion of writer Jack Nicholson. How the “trippy”
aesthetic and overall formalism of the film work together feel similar to the
seminal postmodern tome from 1966, Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. Though there
is no obvious connection, perhaps the novel informed the overall narrative
shape of the time.
Just as Pynchon’s book is rife with key motifs, Head’s second half introduces a
recurring “black box.” Sometimes The Monkees are in it; sometimes they’re only
talking about it. The box, which figures to be a repackagable item, keeping
with the questioning of the film medium, makes a clarifying appearance in the
film’s dénouement. Head appears to
end with its subversive beginning; The Monkees once again interrupt the cutting
of a ribbon before diving off the bridge. Rafelson’s final ironic stab is that
the boys are all the while in the black box, and we watch as they get pushed
out of the studio, like any box distributed from a factory. As exhausting as it
sounds, the film subverts its originally subversive opening. In fact, the film
goes so far as to liken its opening sequence to blunt Fordist imagery: a mass
consumed box. I can’t think of anything less subversive than that.
