The foundations were laid for the importance of Burroughs in the field of sound in the 60's experiments, but it was not until the following decades that this influence was picked up by his contemporaries. The reason for this was the advent of punk, which was actually pre-empted by the already anarchistic Burroughs in the 1968 interview with Jeff Shero:

"Just think about the Queen for a moment. That is what is holding the whole of England back…the subservience on the part of a great majority of the English people to this bitch…I say there's no hope for them until we have five thousand people out in Trafalgar Square screaming 'bugger the Queen.'"

This forward thinking meant that he was already anti monarchy and anti establishment when the punk movement came around and understood the rebellious ethics of their music. However, Burroughs concerned himself with a deeper and more intellectual sonic rebellion:

"Just think about the Queen for a moment. That is what is holding the whole of England back…the subservience on the part of a great majority of the English people to this bitch…I say there's no hope for them until we have five thousand people out in Trafalgar Square screaming 'bugger the Queen.'"

"One aspect of Burroughs armoury against 'Control', alongside weapons ranging from homemade guns to Deadly Orgone Radiation, is the tape recorder, a machine which Burroughs has suggested in various essays and interviews, could be utilized as a magical tool, a viral device, and a sound weapon." (Sargeant, 2001)

He believed a far greater insurgence could be created through sound by recording the sounds of control to use against it:

"Recorded police whistles will draw cops. Recorded gunshots, and their guns are out." (Electronic Revolution, Burroughs, 1966).

This concept was issued as a call to arms by Burroughs in such essays as the aforementioned Electronic Revolution and The Invisible Generation as well as the book The Revised Boy Scout Manual and eventually fell into the hands of the punk generation. Experimental musical groups highly influenced by Burroughs ideas emerged in the late 1970's. At the forefront of these was Throbbing Gristle whose founding member, Genesis P-Orridge, became friends with Burroughs when he was spending some time living in England in the late 1970's and was a great promoter of his little known works, from the collaborative films (coined 'Thee Films' by P-Orridge) to the tape recorder cut-ups undertaken by Burroughs at this period.

It was these ideas that coerced the creation of Decoder, a German low-budget feature based on the concept of an attempt at revolution created by sound. It is not directly associated with the punk film (or para-punk) genre, yet it can be allied to this in its similar themes:

"Its narrative emphasis on the omnipotent and oppressive nature of 'Control', and the opportunities presented by 'punk' sub-culture for re-negotiating and transgressing the hierarchy of the social order." (p.201, Sargeant, 2001)

Decoder is a more conventional film work than Burroughs own as the theories explored are encased within a conventional narrative format. It embraced the Beat film notion of casting people of relevance into their work and both P-Orridge and Burroughs himself feature in the film, joined by Mufti as the main protagonist, a member of the pioneering German experimental music group influenced by Burroughs, Einsturzende Neubauten. Once again one can observe the direct juxtaposition of fiction and reality as the theorist who inspired the themes of the piece is encased within it in physical manifestation as well as conceptually. Burroughs not only acts in the film but provides voiceover in the form of his own tape recorder cut-ups, imprinting his direct influence into the sound as well as the image. He is clearly depicted as the guiding force of the protagonists rebellion.

The script, written by Klaus Maeck, contextualises Burroughs theories within the time period (1980's). There is a recurring motif of the television screen in the film, a devise to highlight the concern of "cultural colonization and control" (p.200, Sargeant, 2001). But it is the sonic concepts underpinning the narrative that are most important.  The main character FM Einheit (Mufti) experiments with sound to provide an alternative to the hollow muzak piped into burger bars reflective of the increasingly consumerist society, "gorging themselves on one hamburger after another"*. By replacing the hypnotically soothing muzak in 'H. Burger', (Decoder's representation of 'control', connoting ideas of the Board in Towers Open Fire), with his own experiments, FM creates large-scale riots of tape recorder wielding punks. The exact revolution against the establishment Burroughs conceived of in Electronic Revolution.

Also there are connotations of Burroughs in the title itself, 'Decoder', meaning a devise to decode the complexities of Burroughs revolutionary thinking through film.

Decoder is a good example of Burroughs continuing and international influence in film, an amalgamation between punk aesthetics and a more intellectual thematic vision. As the peak of the punk movement had passed the rebellious minority who were looking for more than the limits of the movement could provide turned to the industrial music experiments and films influenced by writers such as Burroughs.

It was during this period that Genesis P-Orridge rescued the 1960's film collaborations from destruction when Antony Balch died, at a time when they were all but forgotten. Knowing that there was now an audience for these "incredibly significant and monumental" (P-Orridge, 1997) films, he was responsible for storing and distributing them. His valuable actions have preserved Burroughs film origins and made them available to influence the following generations. I would argue that these influences are still very relevant.

* From Decoder, quoted in Naked Lens Beat Cinema, Sargeant, 2001

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