The juxtaposition between music and image within Anger’s Scorpio Rising.

KH: “What is the relationship for you between the sound and the image? Is there a third thing that is produced?”
KA: “It is the fabric on which the picture is woven. To me, it’s as important as the picture itself. It’s an integral part. It replaces what dialogue would be doing. It provides clue to my intent.”

Dick Hebdige notes that Kenneth Anger’s films have the ability to appropriate “’humble objects’ ... which are made to carry ‘secret’ meanings: meanings which express, in code, a form of resistance to the order which guarantees their continued subordination.” It is in this way that Anger’s re-appropriation and juxtaposition of culturally manufactured icons, images and specifically “pop” music subverts moral and social conventions of American society. A systematic analysis of Anger’s 1964 film Scorpio Rising, reveals an understanding whereby every signifier is expunged from its culturally normative position and rather presented as a polemical ...