In 1996 a film was released that many felt glamourized drug abuse. 8 years later another movie dealing with very similar subject matter arguably did so in a more explicit manner but curiously avoided that debate. The different public and critical reaction to each film tells us something about how society regards Class A drugs, their dealers, those who buy them and the culture in general.
Firstly, about the movies in question. While drugs are central to both, Layer Cake is ostensibly a crime caper and Trainspotting is a character driven human drama and dark comedy. But they have more than just drugs in common. Both had ensemble casts of mostly young unknowns (at the time of production). Both are based on novels. They were made by up and coming young male directors in the shape of Matthew Vaughn and Danny Boyle.
Yet the most compelling aspect they have in common is that they are both narrated by the main protagonist. This method is used throughout for Mark Renton in Trainspotting and briefly for XXXX in Layer Cake. A cinematic trick that has been used in many films – Alfie, Goodfellas, Clockwork Orange – to get the audience onside with the main character usually when their actions are likely to unsettle the viewer. It humanises the protagonists and communicates their motives quickly so that the audience won’t necessarily condemn them solely by their actions. Indeed, without this device, we might have dismissed Michael Caine’s Alfie as merely a cruel womaniser.
The illegal narcotic under the microscope in Trainspotting is heroin. Some in the media and in politics might have been swayed by the hip soundtrack – Iggy Pop, Blur, Lou Reed – in interpreting it as a MTV video glorifying the drug but one need not look far beyond that before this view becomes a fallacy. The symbolism likening a “hit” as potentially sinking into a grave along with the multiple deaths either as an indirect or direct consequence of heroin illustrates the perils of it.
Meanwhile in 2004’s Layer Cake, there are a plethora of drugs involved but the main ones are ecstasy and cocaine. For the most part it portrays the lifestyle of the unnamed chief protagonist XXXX as being glamourous. He is a dealer and lives the high life in London. His home is a smart bachelor pad in a Mews, he wears designer suits and frequents exclusive clubs. His lunchtime sexual liaison complete with champagne room service only underlines how affluent he is.
One might be forgiven for saying that Layer Cake and not Trainspotting glamorises Class A drugs.
The only time where the film shows the pitfalls of taking drugs and not the ones XXXX has been selling is when the dead body of the young man Kinky is discovered by XXXX and his associates. He has perished from a heroin overdose in what might easily be a scene from Trainspotting. The deceased could be a Spud or a Sick Boy.
This loss of life is in a squalid flat in Kings Cross, Kinky’s body passing out on a dirty mattress on the floor of his room. Heroin, during its brief time in this film full of Class A’s, is framed as dangerous, tragic, desperate and dank, associated with poverty and death.
This is exactly how the drug and the culture of it are portrayed in much greater depth in Trainspotting. Many of the protagonists live in empty flats (presumably having sold everything to fund their habit) sleeping on battered and stained old mattresses on the floor. Spud, a good friend of chief protagonist Renton, is a car crash of a man, inadequate and incompetent.
Likewise, the victim’s flat mates in Layer Cake. XXXX and his group interrogate them where they are depicted as nervous wrecks, confused and vulnerable. Interestingly the two who speak are from working class Irish and Welsh areas, the antithesis of the well-heeled Londoners who dominate this movie peddling cocaine. Moreover, it is interesting to study the cast list of Layer Cake where the flat mate addicts are routinely referred to as “junkies”. Societal slang for heroin users not, it is key to emphasise, cocaine takers.
Indeed, in Layer Cake when the Duke’s gang test ecstasy pills they have stolen, the drug and their reaction to it is trivialised as hallucinogenic with the dangers of it not implied nor considered.
It isn’t up to the film industry to market Class A drugs or pontificate about their dangers but it is fascinating as to how they are seen by those involved. Heroin is perceived to be very different from cocaine or ecstasy despite all three being addictive and dangerous.
For it is implied throughout Layer Cake that ecstasy and cocaine are recreational drugs which might one day be legalised and their business is like any other. Their “customer” base are the masses and, given the club culture that comes with these drugs, those in white collars and with privilege. Those in the VIP section of the club that the Duke’s nephew Sidney invites XXXX into for a drink.
Cocaine, the film suggests, is a status symbol as is heroin but in vastly different ways.
There is a view in society that cocaine use is on the increase despite XXXX’s open admission that he and his colleague do weave their magic to blend it with other substances to boost their supply. A dangerous process for the end consumer but nevertheless, while this is a recognised method drug suppliers employ, those who buy them don’t seem deterred yet the idea of sticking a needle in the arm is regarded as infinitely more dangerous.
Danny Boyle, director of Trainspotting, does not shy away from showing the audience what a gruesome affair injecting heroin is but the protagonists, while all harbouring ambitions to quit, are seduced by the effect of it.
Heroin is a drug which needs to be removed from the streets, the root of all evil in society you might say. Layer Cake sends this message when Kinky overdoses but is ambivalent at best about other narcotics.
The politics of drugs also arises in both films. XXXX, as implied by the film’s title, is part of a hierarchy that mirrors the British class system or that of any FTSE listed company. XXXX imagines this business one day being legitimate with the film showing pharmacy stores packed with them like big brand colognes or cough mixture.
Perhaps the perspectives of the central characters do change the tone. XXXX is a dealer, Renton is an addict. Both however are united by a deep cynicism about how drugs and their users are viewed by the wider public and media. XXXX is casual in his acceptance of Class A’s and unmoved by the damage they might do or the danger of distributing them. Renton considers drug addiction to be relative, referring to his own mother’s dependence on Valium.
Both movies contain a plot feature whereby the protagonists have come into possession of a large amount of drugs that they want to offload as quickly as possible. For XXXX it is ecstasy while Renton and his mates have ended up with an industrial measure of heroin. In Layer Cake, selling the contraband is done in a professional manner – the negotiations and projections involved are similar to those for a commodity like precious metals or oil. They take place in libraries, around swanky restaurant tables and in huge, brightly lit warehouses surrounded by heavy security. In Trainspotting, they lack such composure or refinery, flogging their illicit haul in some grotty back street hotel to a man with a briefcase.
There is an intriguing aspect in that Layer Cake and Trainspotting share a lead character wanting to get out of the situation they are in. A common movie trope one might say but it does underline how dangerous the culture they exist in is. XXXX wants to do one last deal and be off, leaving behind his lucrative life to live lawfully one presumes. Mark Renton must pocket the ill-gotten gains from his drug deal to flee to another life; one he envisages will be conventional. There is an irony that, during his “choose life” speech before the credits roll that the lifestyle he expects of “the fucking big television” and “three-piece suite” is the one that XXXX has had all along.
Yet, once again, the life of a heroin addict or recovering addict as with Renton is portrayed as residing in an underclass; a substratum. Trainspotting acknowledges this, empathising with it and deploring the state of certain parts of the country that have been neglected. Layer Cake briefly does this in that scene in Kings Cross but virtually champions the other narcotics. Ambivalent at best, worryingly complacent at worst.
The central message of Trainspotting is that being a drug addict is hellish but they are people too. Layer Cake contains an almost Thatcherite 1980’s outlook. There’s money to be made and the only barriers are breaking the law and rival gangs. The question of morality never comes up.
Renton escapes, XXXX is gunned down. The former is a moment of hope for the underdog and is a far more satisfactory look than the one at the end of Layer Cake. For the climax of that film is far too similar to that of crime classic Get Carter where the chief protagonist is about to sail off into the sunset before catastrophe strikes.
But, aesthetics aside, it is troubling because the question as to whether cocaine and ecstasy are wrong and bad for society are never posed let alone answered. The risks of getting involved in crime are, due to the violence, displayed throughout. Yet scriptwriter and novelist JJ Connolly and director Matthew Vaughn seem more concerned with plot twists than facing up to ethics or morality.
One must ask oneself, why do these drugs get a free pass that heroin does not? On many occasions in the United Kingdom it has been reported that young people have died after popping a pill. The contents of the tablet have essentially frazzled them, killing their essential organs. Complacency or ambivalence about “recreational drugs” is not an avenue to swagger down.
Is there a hierarchy within drug culture? A tolerance of one substance but an intolerance of another? One might understand how and why cannabis might be treated differently to heroin or cocaine but when those two go head to head, they both involve criminality in terms of smuggling and distribution. With knife crime linked to drugs gangs who deal cocaine to Britain’s middle class, one might well opine that cocaine wrecks more lives.
Perhaps the answer is in plain sight. A cocaine addict can still function whereas a heroin addict is prone to long periods of being near a comatose state.
But is that a reason to condemn and frame the latter in a picaresque light while the other is seen as a naughty party boy or girl doing it in public toilets in a City bar? Why is one dismissed as a roll your eyes moment and the other as being a “thou shalt not” one?
Trainspotting was unique in that it confronted the subject of heroin addiction head on. Layer Cake was the latest in a long line of movies about cocaine: Scarface, Goodfellas, Carlito’s Way, City Of God…one could go on.
The final analysis is that cinema has lazily demonised one drug but turned a blind eye to the other. Yet is this the result of a society echo chamber?
One suspects it is. There are rumours that the chemist who invented Coca-Cola used ingredients in the white powder. But one cannot help think that many recreational drug users have in mind another soft drink motto “what’s the worst that can happen?” when they shove it up their nostrils.
That tagline certainly seems to be in the heads of filmmakers, politicians, rock stars and City slickers.
What these films show is cocaine will continue to be traded and consumed, however much damage it does and whatever the criminality involved. Heroin is likely to become extinct.
That cocaine is still so relevant in the UK, one can only deduce it is a drug that the monied classes will maintain an economy for. Their sponsorship of it makes it no less dangerous nor difficult than the problems faced by Renton and his mates. They just live in better streets.
Athon 