The Performativity of Dylan: Dont Look Back
At any moment in Pennebaker’s Dont Look Back (1967), Bob Dylan’s presence can be felt within the frame. Every torrent to every escape from raving fans is captured. It is influential not only because of Dylan’s folksy music but also his distinctive personality. There is a clear relationship between Dylan’s personality and the act of recording. Dont Look Back is a document of 60s culture and music but is most distinctively a document of Bob Dylan: the person, the enigma. Dylan seemingly moves from mood to mood on a daily basis with Pennebaker’s camera. The question of performativity rises: how much of Dylan is captured in a natural state versus his awareness of being recorded? Is he giving the viewer a performance? Does his showmanship permeate the actual filmmaking? There is a relationship between the camera and Dylan throughout Dont Look Back with his qualities as a performer realized in the film’s most contentious moments.
To understand Dylan’s unwieldy personality is to also understand the cultural landscape of the 1960s. The early 1960s were quiet in comparison to the latter part of the decade. In America, the civil rights movement begins to mount throughout the 60s and comes ahead violently by the end. The youth, which once focused on these issues, were seemingly stripped of power. This created a fissure within the “Left” in the United States. The New Left begins to form in relation to the hopelessness felt within the issues that once bound people together. The youth saw the problems of the civil rights movement as impassable and began to turn to something that could change — individuality. This fissure is directly apparent in the music of the 60s and as Dont Look Back highlights, Dylan’s persona. “Dylan’s ability to shape his image reflects his targeted audience’s ideals of self-realization and mutability” (Hagerman 8). Dylan’s ability to shape shift is firstly evident in his music. He begins his career with folksy music that finds an audience with the “Left”. However ironic and ingenious Dylan’s lyrics may be, his early music is tied to cultural issues happening within the United States. Once pressure begins to mount, an eventual split occurs between the “old” and the “new”, Dylan moves into an arena of rock and roll; of personal liberation.
Dont Look Back documents Dylan on the cusp of this musical realignment. He is touring the United Kingdom in 1965 playing solo guitar sets. His worldview is depicted by a set of interviews he gives throughout and provides more insight in comparison to his actual concert sets. The classic conventions of the rock documentary feature an onstage performance while the backstage endows a sense of relaxation and spontaneity (Hagerman 9). Juxtaposing these two elements, in theory, creates a space where the artist can be intimate and unguarded. These elements are also exposed through Pennebaker’s camerawork. On stage, Dylan is shot at a distance with a calm and collected camera. Off stage, the camera moves with Dylan creating a sense of intimacy. However integral the structure of Dont Look Back, Dylan constantly subverts what is deemed genuine.
Dylan manipulates the subgenre of the rock documentary by simply altering his performance on and off stage. On stage, Dylan composes himself effeminately by standing in the spotlight as an object of affection. Few genuine moments are captured off stage as Dylan’s often virile manner is showcased through various interviews, hotel parties, and competition with folk singer Donovan. The structure of Dont Look Back creates a backstage image of Dylan that tackles interview questions by giving opposite of the expected answer. The image he creates through interviews proves purposeful by subverting the public norm. The media cannot simply pigeonhole Dylan as a “pop” or “folk” artist. “To call Dylan a folksinger…is to deny what it means when he writes these songs, that they give no voice to his experience, that writing and singing is his way of a finding his voice…creating a voice for himself” (Rothman 155). Interviewers test Dylan with their questions of definition. Does he take his music seriously or is he another pop star? Dylan’s answers, although wildly, reveal a sincerity between him and his music. Music and the process of creation is the sole thing he is not dismissive of. These interview segments, containing a boisterous Dylan, prove to be the most enlightening when considering performativity.
The film’s most contentious moments with local music press and an interview with Time magazine find Dylan at his most unwieldy.
“However…offensive and evasive tactics used in various interviews point to his ultimate understanding that, while these words may not carry much weight in his mind, these labels mean something to individuality-minded youth audience attempting to define themselves in the face of a traditionalist America” (Hagerman 11).
The long tirade Dylan provides in each interview allows him to position into youth culture. This symbolically can be seen with Dylan putting down his acoustic guitar for electric. Youth culture is inclusive with music informing their identity. Dylan sought to defy the labels of “pop,” “folk,” “rock,” “communist,” and “anarchist.” Those labels put him into a box and he is working to be seen outside of conventional terms. Dylan evades or fiercely engages with the outside world. His spoken words are cutting and inconsequential to himself but his persona reverberates the tension felt in the cultural landscape.
To believe that Dylan is on his own wavelength and disconnected from pop culture would be naïve. He is constantly aware of his position as an artist as he pours over various newspapers in Dont Look Back. The British press wanted to paint Dylan in a certain light. Being aware of this, Dylan is able to mold his public image. This is a testament to Dylan’s role as an artist by being able to aestheticize himself. Pennebaker comments “They were enacting their roles — Dylan as well as anybody else — but they were enacting them very accurately” (Rosenthal 192). The moody Dylan throughout is not false but rather a heightened Dylan that understands the power of the camera and ultimately his cultural affluence.
Works Cited
Hagerman, Sam. “Walking the Tightrope with Dylan: Cultural Performance in Dont Look Back.” Film Matters, vol. 4, no. 4, Winter2013, pp. 5–11. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1386/fm.4.4.5_1.
Rosenthal, Alan. The New Documentary in Action: A Casebook in Film Making. Berkley: U of California, 1972. Print.
Rothman, William. Documentary Film Classics. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. Print.
