'Suedehead': Paving the Pilgrimage Path to Morrissey's and Dean's Fairmount, Indiana

Erin Hazard

Introduction

In January of 1992, as a 16 year old on the heels of Morrissey, I made a pilgrimage to Fairmount, Indiana, home of James Dean and site of Morrissey's first "promotional film" (or video) for the single 'Suedehead'. Filmed in Fairmount in February of 1988 and directed by the late Tim Broad, 'Suedehead', as Melissa Connor demonstrates elsewhere in this collection, solidified Morrissey's reputation as a solo artist distinct from The Smiths.

Drunk from witnessing Morrissey's triumphant Kill Uncle US tours, I managed to convince my parents to make the drive from our home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Fairmount, Indiana, about eight hours each way. By this point, they recognized Morrissey as a surrogate member of the family whose voice could always be heard in my bedroom and whose image dominated the family television. In my imagination, Fairmount was as much Morrissey's as Dean's. Upon arriving, we visited the record store on Main Street where we found a homespun bulletin board with several amateur photographs of the 'Suedehead' shoot. It read: "Morrissey was here [...] the video [...] the equipment [...] crew [...] star" (Figure 1.1); I documented this documentation of Morrissey's visit with my Kodak disc camera and purchased two photographs taken during the filming of the video, one a rear view of Morrissey's hat and overcoat and another of a shivering Morrissey next to the Indian motorcycle used in the shoot. The presence of this display and the hawking of these paparazzi-esque snapshots attest to the numbers of travellers like me, who came to Fairmount seeking some cocktail of Morrissey and Dean, heavy on the Morrissey.

As a teenage pilgrim, I intuited that Morrissey must understand my obsession with seeking out all the books, films and figures to which he alluded. Morrissey, after all, shared a similar attitude towards his cabinet of heroes, in which Dean occupied a privileged position. In 1981, before forming The Smiths, Morrissey (then Steven Morrissey) had published a short book on Dean, James Dean is Not Dead. As Morrissey's star rose, he maintained communication with his idols, transparently weaving them into the worlds of Smithdom and eventually Morrisseydom. In 1984, Morrissey was photographed with his framed photograph of Dean for Smash Hits and explained his fascination with the actor: "His entire life seemed so magnificently perfect. What he did on film didn't stir me that much but as a person he was immensely valuable [...] Even though he was making enormous strides with his craft, he was still incredibly miserable and obviously doomed [...] That kind of mystical knowledge that there is something incredibly black around the corner. People who feel this are quite special and always end up in quite a mangled mess." In 1986, Dean was featured as the cover star for The Smiths' single 'Bigmouth Strikes Again'. Dean's presence continues to inform the iconography and mythology of Morrissey, as Dean and his East of Eden co-star Dick Davalos have appeared in recent pre-concert show reels. Morrissey's sustained and studied reverence for Dean, and his many other heroes, not only elicited a similar attitude towards Morrissey from me, but also convinced me that in order to understand Morrissey, I must also study those he had worshipped.

The double layers of associations at Fairmount – those of Dean's upbringing and Morrissey's subsequent 1988 pilgrimage to the site – thus inspired my 1992 pilgrimage. Now, nearly 20 years after the trip, I am interested in how 'Suedehead', the video, remade Dean's Fairmount into Dean's and Morrissey's Fairmount, allowing me to visit the town first for its associations with Morrissey, and then for those with Dean. 'Suedehead' casts Morrissey as a pilgrim to Dean's Fairmount. Receiving a parcel containing Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince from a golden-haired visitor to his house, Morrissey travels to Fairmount. There he visits a series of sites associated with Dean, sites which had entered the Dean canon when Life magazine photographer Dennis Stock photographed Dean in Fairmount in 1954. Morrissey's trip not only borrows its stations from Stock's photographs, but the trip is also visually presented using a series of images that directly borrow Stock's photographic compositions with Morrissey in the position of Dean. Thus, 'Suedehead' takes Stock's photographic exploration of Dean's 1954 homecoming and transforms it into Morrissey's pilgrimage to Dean's Fairmount. 'Suedehead's telling of Morrissey's pilgrimage, however, paves the way for a reception that would remake Dean's Fairmount into Dean's and Morrissey's Fairmount; it accomplishes this through the aesthetic strategy of allegory.

Allegory and the doubling of meaning

Allegory refers to a text, whether a piece of literature, a painting or even a video, that communicates a double meaning. Angus Fletcher writes that "In the simplest terms, allegory says one thing and means another" (1964: 2). Fletcher also points out that a singular...