The Films of Kenneth Anger, Class Imagery, and the Thelemic New Aeon
Nicholas Laccetti
Abstract
The independent cinema of American filmmaker Kenneth Anger (1927–2023) has long been scrutinized for its experimental cinematic techniques, links to the history of American counterculture, and influence from occult theory and practice, especially Anger’s own esoteric religion of Thelema—whose founder, English occultist Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), provided much of the philosophical and theological underpinnings. Indeed, a number of Anger’s films dramatize the ascendency of the Thelemic New Aeon of Horus. Yet the trappings of youth culture, counterculture, and homoeroticism which abound in Anger’s films—bikers, car customizers, rock and roll soundtracks, psychedelia—also have a class component: these aesthetic and cultural trappings are not merely signifiers of social rebellion, but also historically coded as working-class, a status utilized by the counterculture in its reaction against repressive midcentury American values. Through the mediation of Anger’s films, then, class as a category, along with its signifiers in American culture, enters the dynamic of Crowley’s New Aeon, and the rise of the Crowned and Conquering Child takes on a rebellious class component.
Keywords
Anger, Kenneth; Cinema; Crowley, Aleister; Economic Class; Thelema; 1960s