Here are bits and bobs from the first of the last 3 essays, which ended (for now) my academic career. The essay was supposed to be case study illustrating importance of visual phenomena for sociological analysis. I will spare you the argument, don’t worry. However my subject, Hunter S Thompson, is rather interesting in himself. I was writing about the most recent documentary about him, “Gonzo: the life and work of dr Hunter S Thompson” arguing that we recall certain figures (myths) at particular times when there is a need for certain type of nostalgia. Ergo – documentary biopics can tell us what it is, that we are missing as a culture.

In the 2008 film biography entitled “Gonzo: the life and times of dr. Hunter S Thompson”, Jann Wenner, editor-in-chief of the Rolling Stone and long-time friend of Thompson’s recalls the moment when the writer was embarking on the trip that was to result in his most famous book “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”. In order to drive to Las Vegas Thompson rented a Cadillac, which he demanded Wenner paid for – that Wenner didn’t agree to. “He says ‘well I can’t cover the American dream in a goddamn Volkswagen, what the fuck is wrong with you?!’” – Wenner recalls – “And, you know, of course that is quite true”. This story is a typical anecdote about Thompson. As A. O. Scott wrote in a review of the film for The New York Times: “Even if Alex Gibney’s new documentary, “Gonzo,” were not subtitled “The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson,” there would be little doubt about its subject. Thompson, who committed suicide in 2005, survives to some degree in the popular imagination because of his self-burnished reputation for wild excess.” (The New York Times, July 4, 2008). Both this description as well as the story told by Jann Wenner is indeed fitting the popular image of Thompson, one that he, due to his suicide in 2005, is no longer able to attempt to correct. The combat with one’s own myth is a curtail part of any depiction of Thompson’s story, but there seems to be much more to him than outrageous persona of a drug-fuelled, hectic fantasy-journalist. He is also portrayed as a morally compelling figure, deeply patriotic and socially concerned person; a eye witness of the events of late 1960s in the United States of America, uncompromised critic of the state of the nation, it’s culture and it’s politics; the man who saw through cheap political propaganda and foresaw the long lasting war which was to be the result of the events of 11^th of September 2001 in New York.

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Any film, as a communicative event needs to be analysed in relation to the broader context of discourse practice – which, in turn, is a part of broader socio-cultural practice (Marris P and Thornham S, 2006: 313). “Traditionally”, writes Stuart Hall, “mass-communication research ha conceptualised the process of communication in terms of a circulation circuit or a loop”. However, as he proposes the circulation of a message is a much more intricate process, one that involves the message enter different passages of forms. Hall identifies four of them: “production”, “circulation”, “distribution/consumption” and “reproduction” (Marris P and Thornham S, 2006: 51)… Communicative event takes place when not when the meaning reaches the viewer but when the viewer ‘decodes’ it. “If no meaning is taken”, writes Hall, “there can be no ‘consumption’” (Marris P and Thornham S, 2006: 52). Between the meaning being intended by the producer and ‘taken’ by the viewer it needs to take a form of a message, it needs to become a ‘story’ – and that doesn’t take place at random. The coding always takes place in the discursive context of production: “knowledge-in-use concerning the routines of production, historically defined technical skills, professional ideologies, institutional knowledge, definitions and assumptions, assumptions about the audience”. The audience also influences the message through the process of decoding. This takes place within the context of viewer’s cultural knowledge and practices – which obviously need not be the same or even similar as the context in which the meaning was coded.

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However film, as not only expression of certain political culture, but also a work of art and therefore medium of subliminal messaging, has several means at its disposal that allow articulation of a “feeling”. As mentioned before Thompson is quoted to reminisce about the feeling and energy of the social movements in the Bay Area in the 1960s. It is a sentiment shared by man, that he cam to personify in a way. The scene in which “Gonzo…” discusses 1968 police riots in Chicago use archival TV footage of the event with the accompaniment of Janis Joplin singing “Another piece of my heart” – a version in itself famous and often associated with the spirit of the 1960s. Over that combination, Thompson’s first wife describes writer’s reactions when he arrived home after witnessing the monstrosity of the violence that took place during the riots. “He only cried twice during our 19 years together”, she recalls. This combination of three signifiers – the visual content, the music and the spoken word could only be utilised in a film. What it does, through emotionally charged message, is allowing the viewer to “feel” not only the horror but also the historical significance of the events…

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Personally I think that Hunter S Thompson evokes the same nostalgia as the 1960s do – our longing for peace and justice, for personal freedom that is not acquired by spreading terror and need to understand turbulent times. After 1968, “the year that changed the world” saw the Chicago riots, Massacre at the Square of 3 Cultures in Mexico, assassinations of Martin Luter King Jr and Robert Kennedy, student protests in Prague and tragic events in Prague and Budapest. “Looking back 40 years on it seems to have a strange 3-dimensional quality. These events took place more than a generation ago, yet they seem incredibly immediate, astonishingly relevant to our lives today” (Tusa J, 2008: pt 1). And Thompson appears to have such strange relevance as well. Perhaps we are searching for the feeling that he remembered from the mid 1960s: ” that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense, we didn’t need that. Our energy will simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were running the crest of a high and beautiful wave”. And we are searching for this man as much as for that feeling that in 1971 he saw to be over: “now, less than 5 years later, you can go on a steep hill in Las Vegas North-West and with the right kind of eyes, you can almost see the high-water mark – the place where the wave broke and rolled back” (as quoted in “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson”, 2008, dir. Alex Gibney).

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