The Sex Pistols at Disney: but what is this?

The Sex Pistols series is coming to Disney+. What will be next? A new Disneyland Paris attraction inspired by Ian Curtis’s epilepsy? The Eskorbuto ‘biopic’ produced by FAES? Or, perhaps, an anthology with the best lyrics by GG Allin with a prologue by Tamara Falcó? The world is not that it is not what it was (which is its thing), it is that it is a total singod. And ‘Pistol’ opens on September 8 in our country. Directed by Danny Boyle , the one from ‘ Trainspotting ‘ or ‘ Slumdog Millionaire ‘, a big fan of the London band, and based on the memoirs of its guitarist Steve Jones (‘ Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol ‘), the miniseries has disgusted deeply to its singer, Johnny Rotten (Juanito Rotten), who has described it as “a middle-class fantasy” apart from cracking everyone involved, including his former teammates: “It is totally against everything we once stood for. Are you going to cheapen the only thing you have of value in your life to gain an extra five pounds? », He told ‘The Guardian’. From wanting to bring down the ‘establishment’ to dancing glued to Mickey Mouse, the vocalist who laughed at everyone (“Have you ever felt cheated?” he said at his last concert) also feels very offended because, he explains, they put him together everything behind his back until his wife was very ill: «They chose the right moment to stick the knife. My weakest point. I couldn’t focus on this nonsense.” And seeing only the trailer, he settled: «It’s karaoke. The voices, the way they talk… it sounds like a group of children. Disney has stolen the past and created a fairy tale that bears little resemblance to the truth.” The real Sex Pistols, in 1978, during their turbulent tour of the southern United States ABC “We don’t want you to like it,” Craig Pearce, the ‘showrunner’, tells ABC. “We would like him to see her and secretly like her. But don’t let him say it, it’s not his thing. He shines through his bravery and provocative nature of him. That’s how it was and that’s how it is, ”replies the creator almost between laughs. For his part, Danny Boyle agrees: “I don’t want her to like it, I want her to attack her.” Rotten replied in the British press: “Oh, what a guess! It’s disgusting. How can you be honest when you don’t involve the leader who wrote the songs and had to hide, put up with the kicks and the public admonitions? Anarchy or Mickey Mouse Second half of the 70s, a time of peak unemployment, strikes and no future in the United Kingdom, ‘Pistol’ narrates the fire that the young band caused with its incisive nihilism, sarcasm and chaos. A rise of the transgressive rung and self-destructive despair in which the industry and the media collaborated with their censorship by amplifying a message, a single album, ‘Nevermind the Bollocks’ (‘We sweat our eggs’), and a human meeting propelled by the tension between the agitating demiurge, Malcolm McLaren , and Rotten, two alpha chess players, and with guitarist Steve Jones, played by Toby Wallace , nailed, by the way, to our ‘black punk’ Cecilio G , as a badass hinge. “Rock and roll is finished. We killed him,” Rotten boasted. Isn’t it shocking that Disney is behind it? “It’s pretty amazing, I know. But they are a great company and it is produced by FX, but Disney itself, of course, is incredibly supportive. They are a very large church. Even in the way they try to structure their offer, they know that people have different tastes. On the same platform you can watch series like ‘ Dopesick ‘ (of opiate addicts) and ‘ Pam and Tommy ‘ (addresses the worldwide scandal behind the Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee sex tape). We are in a brave new world.” No subversion without swallowing We wanted to ask seasoned punks like Julián Hernández (Total Sinister), Jorge Navarro (Bisnaga) and Tomás González Lezana, doctor in Physics and author of ‘Punk, but what punk? ‘, if they see any conflict in the Sex Pistols-Walt Disney affair. The leader of Siniestro confesses that «the biopics of musicians interest me little or not at all, even when the artist or the group is the host, as is the case with the Sex Pistols. These guys have a problem: their only album is a masterpiece, they have 100% masterpieces in their discography, something no one can boast about. As if that weren’t enough, his ‘Filthy Lucre Live’, recorded during his 1996 Indecent Profit Tour, is one of the best live shows in rock history. And if his turn-of-the-century reunion tour was already called that, what are the accusations of ‘sold out’ that Rotten makes to his former teammates now? Either way, I’m sure he’s right that the series isn’t going to suck, because the supply of biopics is never going to match that unbeatable awesomeness.” For his part, the lyricist and bassist from Biznaga believes that «what really bothers Rotten (Lydon now) in this whole matter is not so much that the group’s legacy is tarnished, as that he has not been counted on. I suspect it’s more of an ego thing than anything else, because this burst of ‘authenticity’ isn’t believable when the Sex Pistols heritage is already more than dilapidated. You can’t be a pop antichrist and end up advertising butter without your ‘public image’ (wink wink) suffering.” Having said this, he believes that the Disney factory is the one who puts the series into circulation «I find it ironic and even grotesque, but I can’t say that it really surprises me. It is a ‘mainstream’ production, aesthetically well cared for, with a renowned director and whose aspiration is obviously commercial, so it could not happen in any other way than through a mega entertainment corporation. Whether it’s Disney, Netflix or HBO is the least of it.” González Lezana considers that «the system has a commendable capacity to engulf and swallow everything that could be subversive. Punk is not exempt from this process of assimilation. After the very appearance of the Pistols on the scene, with their provocations and scandals on television, the structures end up being readjusted and the provocative images are adapted and integrated as fashion. From there to the sale of Ramones t-shirts in department stores or the use of punk songs in advertisements for pants. The good thing is that the vein of protest and criticism persists, of questioning everything that many groups and collectives still maintain. What the Pistols, the Clash, the Dead Kennedys and a very long etcetera represented and provoked served, of course it served».