Media and Music: BIPOC Empowerment in the Punk Soundscape of “Wendell & Wild”
In the dark, quirky claymation universe of “Wendell & Wild,” feminine punk melds with eerie hums and chilling orchestrations. A year after its release, let’s dive into the film’s dynamic depth and exemplary, spine-tingling, and BIPOC-led soundtrack.
In Media and Music, our writers take a deep dive into how movies use scores and songs to engage viewers, give new meaning and tone to some of our favorite scenes, and establish themes. It almost goes without saying, but there are spoilers abound.
Written by Heather Stewart
Images courtesy of Netflix
The twisted comedy “Wendell & Wild” has a uniquely immersive soundtrack, invoking viewers to experience white-knuckled anticipation at points and carefree head-banging at others. The quintessential punk-rock attitude is embodied in more than just the movie’s music. Real-life punk enthusiasts often explain that it’s about more than the edgy sound — it’s about independence, community, and freedom of expression. With anti-authoritiarian themes, BIPOC representation, and the punk fashion aesthetic of protagonist Kat, this film fully embodies the rebellious spirit of honorary punk — all while managing to introduce and explore doofy demons, dead-raising hair cream, complex family dynamics, and the cycle of grief.
This emotionally layered film is a collaboration between filmmakers Jordan Peele and Henry Selick. Unlike his counterpart, Selick has worked on the Tim Burton film “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” which has caught flack for featuring mostly white characters. (Burton only casted one Black actor to voice the villain, who has a historically derogatory name.) Similar to Peele’s Us, “Wendell & Wild” centers people of color without making the characters racial stereotypes or focusing only on their racial trauma. Protagonist Kat is a multi-faceted, emotionally intelligent character whose personality is reflected in the film’s brooding, angsty soundtrack.
“Wendell & Wild” opens with fusion rock band Fishbone’s “Ma and Pa,” in which cheerful trumpets and soulful, punchy vocals sing, “There was once a ma that wanted her / There was once a pop that wanted her / … She’s a problem child now.” These lyrics foreshadow the untimely death of Kat’s parents, along with her violent misbehavior (she pushes a kid down the stairs at her school) that lands her in juvie. Her parents turn up the car radio, which plays “Germ Free Adolescence” by X-Ray Spex. Over groovy instrumentals, Poly Styrene’s unique, raspy voice echoes the emotional turmoil that’s to come.
If punk music is at the forefront of the Wendell & Wild soundscape, composer Bruno Coulais’ haunting compositions serve as musical background that carry the film’s storyline. Each song title on the film’s original soundtrack references a moment in the film (“Kat And The River,” “Magic Cream,” “You Saw The Future,” “Your Personal Demons,” etc.), evidencing Coulais’ intentionality. In the car, Kat bites into her candy apple and gruesome worms pop out and scare her into a scream. This causes her dad to swerve. Tension-building orchestrations replace Styrene’s emotional crooning as the family’s car crashes into the bridge’s guardrail and flings into a river. Devastating ethereal hums ring as Kat floats to the surface and watches her parents sink to their deaths.
In the years after her parents’ death, Kat goes to juvie. Once released, the stinging vocals in French power duo Ibeyi’s “River” reintroduce the 13-year-old to her hometown of Rust Bank. Miss Hunter, who is a juvenile justice worker taking Kat to the Rust Bank Catholic School for Girls (RBCS), drives her over the bridge where Kat’s parents died. The gentle beat pairs with melancholy operatic vocals and woodwind instrumentals to represent Kat’s anxiety and Miss Hunter’s attempts to ease it as they drive past her boarded-up childhood home. Any remnants of Kat’s old life with her parents have deteriorated.
Fluttery flutes and an echoing church bell welcome Kat to Rust Bank, where she meets some of her new schoolmates (Siobhan, Sweetie, and Sloane, or “the RBC girls”). Kat experiences a futuristic vision foreshadowing a brick falling onto Siobhan, and subsequently, Kat is able to push her out of the way before it hits her in real life. Raul had accidentally knocked it over while looking down from the bell tower; he’s an awkward, artistic, and friendly boy who later befriends Kat. The music’s inquisitive and mysterious tone quickly changes to cheerful with bouncing piano playing under an emphatic French chorus of nuns as Kat meets the quirky principle, Father Level Bests, in his office. Kat quickly reads between the lines and realizes that RBCS only accepted her as a student because, as a part of the “Break the Cycle” program, the state gives funds to the run-down school. After the nuns give Kat her school uniform, she establishes her anti-authoritarian stance by walking through the halls with her dad’s cyclops stereo on her shoulder, blasting X-Ray Spex’s “I Am a Poseur.” Styrene exclaims, “I am a poseur and I don’t care / I like to make people stare.” Her raised voice mirrors the young protragonist’s loud yet surface-level confidence. The quickened guitar and crashing drums cause the nuns to plug their ears. Just as Styrene yells on the riotous track that plays from the young teen’s boombox, Kat makes it quite clear that she doesn’t care.
The film’s setting abruptly shifts with a descent into the underworld. Two goofy, purple demons (Wendell and Wild) are immersed in the Screame Faire, which sits on their father Belzer’s boisterous belly. The reggae “Ghost Town” by The Specials makes Hell that much scarier (and quirkier) with its deep, breathy vocals and eccentric background hums and whistles. The music turns trippy with Coulais’ “The Soul Jockeys” as Wendell and Wild get high on Belzer’s hair cream. They soon realize the hair cream can raise the dead after it revives a crushed beetle.
A similar alien-like synth melts into a gentle orchestral twinkle, and then a low angelic hum when Kat realizes that she has a mark on her hand after an otherworldly creature her instructor brought in for observation seemingly attacks her in class. However, it was actually Bearz A Bub, a terrifyingly cute teddy bear that was in the desk drawer. Her teacher, Sister Helley, warns her not to tell anyone about the mark — but Kat rushes away after accusing her of just trying to protect her job.
Coulais’ uses jazzy bongos in “Bests and Klaxons” to introduce the slimy dynamic between the titular characters as they meet on a golf course. Irmgard and Lane Klaxon are a wealthy couple trying to build a private, for-profit prison in Rust Bank (they’re also the parents of Siobhan, Kat’s schoolmate whom she saved). The film’s soundtrack embraces fleeting silence to highlight the tension between the characters as the Klaxons are obviously envious of the state money that Father Bests is getting for RBC thanks to Kat. They want that money for their prison. The three get into a back-and-forth argument until Father Bests brings up the brewery fire. Enraged, Irmgard bashes Father Bests over the head with her golf club. A stark contrast to the dead silence, menacing organs pound on as the Klaxons drag the priest to a nearby body of water, subsequently drowning him.
A power imbalance between the rich and the regular is made clear by the film’s music. The night after the Klaxons killed Father Bests, Raul creates an art project on the roofs of Rust Bank’s homes. The guitar-ridden track “The Wolf” by Chicano-punk band The Brat plays. Vocalist Teresa Covarrubias proclaims, “Living off the poor man’s labor / Sucking all our spirit dry / We say this democracy / Is laced with their hypocrisy.” In the escalated chorus, she screeches, “The wolf and the lamb / We are the lamb.” Covarrubias’ empowered timbre embodies the tenacity of the “Wendell & Wild” protagonists.
That night, the demonic pair visits Kat in a dream and she makes a deal with them. The new mark on her hand means she is a Hellmaiden, and as a Hellmaiden, she’s able to summon the demons to the land of the living. The mischievous duo lies and tells her that if she does this, they will raise her parents from the dead with Belzer’s hair cream. They also tell Kat that she needs Bearz A Bub to do this. Kat awakens from her dream-state and sneaks through RBCS to retrieve the magical teddy bear.
The next day, the RBCS student body takes a trip to the Rust Bank cemetery to mourn Father Bests. In Coulais’ “Super Pére Cemetery,” an all-women chorus engages the audience with a hauntingly-captivating harmony of French lyrics. This song eventually dwindles into ominous church bells. Kat stays at the cemetery, convincing Raul to stay to act as her required witness. Vampiric organs drone as Kat performs the necessary ritual to bring Wendell and Wild to Earth out of desperation to see her parents again, but the demons leave Kat with nothing but disappointment.
On the other side of the cemetery, where the demons ended up, “You Sexy Thing” by Hot Chocolate acts as comedic relief while the demons test out if their hair cream can bring humans back to life. The person they raise happens to be Father Bests. The upbeat, airy congas and summery bass guitar vibrato rise as lead singer Errol Brown soulfully emotes, “I believe in miracles.”
The Klaxons later make a deal with Wendell and Wild: if the demons resurrect the council members who will vote for their private prison, the wealthy couple will pay to build the demon’s dream fair in Rust Bank. A similarly on-the-nose song, “Raising the Dead” by Coulais, plays as the demons force Raul to help them retrieve the council members’ caskets, subsequently resurrecting and making over their skeletal bodies. The literal lyrics “Raising the dead is what we do / … Raising the dead makes dreams come true,” narrate the storyline over a disco-like synth. Raul then steals the hair cream to revive Kat’s parents on the other side of the cemetery, cloaked by the night’s darkness. Coulais’ organ-heavy “Raul And The Cream” elevates the eeriness of the scene with a female chorus as the young boy opens the parents’ caskets and applies the cream. The domineering track dwindles into a quiet coo of an owl as the newly alive couple awakens.
Kat is walking through the snow-covered Rust Bank when she sees resurrected council members dancing to “Old Guard House,” a jazzy, crackling instrumental invoking nostalgia for the time when these skeletons were in their prime — and their skin. A ringing high note plays as Kat asks herself, “How many dead people have they raised?” Thinking about her parents, she rushes to her family’s old house. She finds them alive in the basement with a full-circle soundtrack moment as X-Ray Spex’s “Germ-free Adolescence” rumbles from a record player. After a heartfelt reunion, Kat’s parents encourage her to go save Raul from Wendell and Wild.
After Kat helps Raul escape from the demons, the two kids run into Sister Helley, who reveals to Kat that she is also a Hellmaiden. She takes Kat to Manberg, the janitor who also hunts and traps demons in jars, and asks him to blood-blind them in hopes to break Kat’s allegiance to Wendell and Wild. Coulais takes viewers on a musical journey with the emotionally heavy and ever-evolving “Guilty” as Kat battles with her traumas. The dynamic track slows and softens to an acapella hum as Kat tells herself, “You’ve tortured me for years, but you’ve made me a survivor. And crazy powerful.” Then, the music grows louder, matching Kat’s volume as she screams, “I’m in control of my life now. Not you!” With this proclamation, she has broken her allegiance to Wendell and Wild as well as processed through some of the darkest parts of her trauma.
The disempowered roles originally established by Brat’s “The Wolf” reverse at the climax of the film. “Wolf Like Me” by TV on the Radio roars on as the protagonists fight to stop the Klaxons’ prison construction. The rebellious lyrics, “My heart’s aflame, my body’s strained / But God I like it,” mirror the tenacity of everyone protesting the corruption. The film’s systematic themes are solidified as Belzer rises from Hell. His rage is emulated with the slamming electric guitars and belting vocals of Living Colour’s “Cult of Personality.” In this moment, Raul’s roof art, in which a warrior mom protects her child from a two-headed dragon, is revealed to the group. Both Kat’s parents and Belzer are moved by the art’s sentiment.
Holy vocalizations saturate the soundscape as Belzer is reunited with all of his missing children, which janitor Melberg had trapped in his jars over the years. Belzer forgives Wendell and Wild for stealing his hair cream and all of his kids for leaving him. The music similarly softens at the end of the movie, mirroring Kat’s healing; but the hair cream doesn’t last, and her parents die again. With a new air of acceptance, Kat experiences a final vision of the future: the rebuilding and success of Rust Bank. A newfound hope has replaced her excruciating grief at the start of the film. She concludes, “I was supposed to hate myself for the rest of my life, but now I don’t have to.”
Kat’s personal journey of grief, vulnerability, and self-love takes the forefront in“Wendell & Wild.” With the confidence of “Young, Gifted, Black, In Leather” by Special Interest and Tamir Kali’s “Boot;” and the raw emotion of Death’s “Freakin’ Out” and “Fall Asleep” by Big Joanie, she navigates death, life, and then death again. Not only is a young, Black, punk-rock girl the center of “Wendell & Wild’s” touching narrative; she’s also supported by a diverse array of characters in the film, Coulais’ immersive, carefully-crafted soundtrack, and the powerful voices of people of color who define punk rock.