Beyond Good and Evil
We need to disabuse ourselves of the idea that Damon Packard doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
Of course it seems utterly random and perhaps even a bit ill-fitting to begin an analysis of one of America’s most truly independent cine-anarchists with a paraphrase by Marco Rubio, one of America’s most craven, obsequious politicians. Then again, why not? There’s an exhilarating randomness, a magpie’s collection of materials that characterizes every Packard film, bits and pieces from the ugliest corners of the media landscape and the deepest recesses of a pop-addled memory. But more than this, someone like Rubio exemplifies the repugnant machine-world that is constantly bearing down on Packard’s world like an all-enveloping fog. Whether it’s made manifest as corporate capitalism, our militarized über-state, or just the stifling normalcy that threatens to crush anyone who isn’t able to conform, there is always a Force permeating Packard’s filmic universe, and it only has a dark side.
This primacy of paranoia, together with Packard’s emphasis on cultural detritus and human abjection, have all led to a frequent misunderstanding of the man and his work. Autodidact and free agent though he may be, Packard is sometimes perceived as a kind of primitive artist, someone making films from and for the
