I was at lovely SUNY Cortland over the weekend, co-chairing a panel with Kristen about Girls Rock Camp. We met some awesome scholars/activists from fourteen different countries, shook hands with enthusiastic coordinator Caroline Kaltefleiter, heard some great papers and talks on a variety of subjects, made contacts with several GRC organizers (including our roommate, who runs Girls Rock Denver and is working on her PhD in Communication Studies at Michigan), did an interview with a PhD student at OSU, and have lists of things we need to read. Here are just a few things I learned.
1. There’s a world of difference between youth organizing and organizing youth. We should strive for the former. This is a difficult process, but listening is of the utmost importance. Thinking of girls as agents of change is another.
2. My former thesis adviser Mary Kearney was present, as was keynote speaker Sharon Mazzarella. Kearney participated in the plenary and presented new research on how to fix the dropout rate amongst female production students. She managed to ask at least one transformative question in each panel we both attended. She also made several smart comments in the plenary, calling out the normalization of students’ upper-class backgrounds in the academy and hoping that the field of girls studies never achieves total legitimacy in the academy so that groundbreaking work can continue to happen outside the top-tier schools and across disciplines. Mazzarella stressed the strength of girls’ studies emphasis on an interdisciplinary approach as well. I want to be these women when I grow up.
3. Marilee Salvator’s “Moo Goes the Cow” was featured at the “Girl” exhibit that coincided with the conference. It was a series of embroidery loops with silk-screened images of anatomical diagrams of genitalia, needlepoint, cartoons, and menstrual blood serving as a commentary of recalling repressed memories of child abuse. It blew my mind.
4. I made contact with someone who works at the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University. Their holdings look amazing, particularly their zine collections.
5. Brock University’s Shauna Pomerantz and Rebecca Raby presented work they’ve done on nerdy girls, bridging representations with ethnographies. I’m interested in how this work will evolve, and hope they continue to challenge the racial dimension of female nerds, speak to girls who fit the profile of the nerd but don’t always make straight As, and address nerdy girls who engage in delinquent behavior.
6. The wave metaphor alienates many feminists and womanists of color, many of whom were excluded from its formations. White feminists should move away from using it. Also, speaking for myself, it’s always seemed like a problematic construct that doesn’t speak much to me as a feminist.
7. Regrettably, I could not attend Sunday’s film screening, which featured girl-made projects that came out of a workshop Kearney co-facilitated with Cortland’s Cynthia Sarver. I wish I had, though, as we should always include actual girls in girls’ studies conferences. We regret being unable to get girls to speak at our panel. We put out a call on the GRC listserv, but imagine that financial and parental concerns speak to their absence. As always, something to work on.
Kristin Hersh's Rat Girl (Penguin, 2010); image courtesy of citypaper.com
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I am stoked about Throwing Muses’ leader Kristin Hersh’s new memoir, Rat Girl. I don’t have time at the moment to read it, but hope to get to it and review it around the holidays. Between it and my late grandmother’s correspondence from Belgium in the early 1970s, I anticipate a late autumn full of interesting recollections.
Rat Girl follows a smart impulse by detailing one monumental year in the singer-guitarist’s life. So often, memoirs have a compelling start but then slog their way toward the present, leaving whole stretches of time unexplored. At 18, Hersh was diagnosed as bipolar, became pregnant, and found critical success with the band she co-founded with stepsister Tanya Donelly. Geez, and I thought my 18th birthday signaled upheaval. Also, dig Gilbert Hernandez’s cover, which makes Kristen at Act Your Age wish Rat Girl were a graphic novel. If only.
I’m somewhat new to Throwing Muses, having only a peripheral awareness of them before this year. I’ve since gotten into them and their big hit “Not Too Soon” (a Donelly song) will always be with me since it’s the first song I learned to play on guitar.
But I’m struck by Hersh’s crackly alto, assured guitar playing, off-kilter dynamics. I’m especially struck by her abstract lyrics, which often deal with mental anguish, desire, and femininity in ways both disorienting and ingenuous. Between Throwing Muses and the Breeders (which Donelly formed with Kim Deal between her exit from Throwing Muses and founding of Belly), I see no reason why you’ll ever need the Pixies.
The brief summation of plot alone warrants attention. However, I’m especially interested in reading about unlikely Throwing Muses fan Betty Hutton, a former singer and musical film star from the 40s and 50s. Hersh elaborates on it in a recent interview for NPR’s All Things Considered. For those unfamiliar, Betty Hutton is probably best known through Björk, who introduced me and many others to Hutton through “It’s Oh So Quiet,” which was a renamed cover of Hutton’s “Blow a Fuse.” I profess only a perfunctory understanding of Hutton, but can’t wait to learn more about her and the affinity she shared with Ms. Hersh.
Riot grrrl artifact from Experience Music Project's Riot Grrrl Retrospective; image courtesy of grrrlsounds.blogspot.com
First, an admission: like several feminist friends in my age group, riot grrrl didn’t make a profound impact of me until college. I was 10 in 1993, the year Sara Marcus claims as pivotal for the movement in her book Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution. I was moving away from Mariah Carey and getting into the Pet Shop Boys. Riot grrrl was first on my radar through mainstream distortion in the pages of Spin and in the Spice Girls’ defanged “girl power” message. In high school, I started listening to post-riot grrrl bands like Sleater-Kinney, who were in rotation on the local university radio station. But it wasn’t until hearing about bands like Bikini Kill and Huggy Bear in women’s studies courses, reading essays that connected riot grrrl with queercore, and programming a weekly show as a college deejay that I came to have any relationship with the movement. Marcus’s book is a great reintroduction and a valuable entry point for folks who have only a cursory knowledge of riot grrrl.
Author Sara Marcus; image courtesy of riotgrrrlbook.com
I especially appreciate that, despite the book’s monolithic title, Marcus incorporates the shared experiences of many girl participants. Riot grrrl tends to be defined by its adult-aged bands, with Bikini Kill and Bratmobile representing the movement. But many teenage girls were inspired by these bands. Some formed ‘zines and bands of their own, like Girl Friend founder Christina Woolner and Heavens to Betsy’s Tracy Sawyer and Corrin Tucker. Not all of their contributions were preserved or recorded, so the book’s intervention is all the more important. Some of these girls also came from working class or single-parent households or did not attend college. Furthermore, while much is made of the movement’s Pacific Northwest origins and identification with liberal arts colleges like Evergreen, Marcus is quick to refute essentializing class assumptions. Riot grrrl’s class heterogeneity becomes more pronounced when Bikini Kill and Bratmobile relocate in Washington D.C. and contend with the hardcore scene, which was primarily peopled by diplomats’ children.
Bikini Kill, sisters (and brother) in the struggle; image courtesy of jessalynnkeller.squarespace.com
Cover of Allison Wolfe and Molly Neuman's Girl Germs 'zine -- the duo would also found Bratmobile; image courtesy of wikimedia.org
By dialoging band members’ and movement participants’ shared experiences, Marcus challenges the notion that riot grrrl was sustained exclusively by white, middle-class, college-educated women. She also points out the movement’s aspirations toward queer inclusiveness were complicated by the efforts of predominantly straight or bi-curious cisgender females. Previous interpretations of riot grrrl represent it as a celebration of white girls challenging gender politics in a vacuum. Marcus points out how some girls created ‘zines, formed organizations, chaired panels, and created conferences challenging feminism’s inherent white privilege, racism, heteronormativity, and class politics, often causing contention and defensiveness from within.
Thus, I also liked reading that riot grrrl was an imperfect, discursive movement comprised of many conflicting opinions, belief systems, and identities. Despite third wave feminism’s investment in the fragmented female self, so often riot grrrl is depicted as a halcyon period for a then-nascent third wave. While it’s sad to read about in-fighting and rivalries, it’s refreshing to read differing opinions on philosophies and movement imperatives. As someone who’s participated in collective and politically-minded non-profit organizations, it seems a more honest representation.
Furthermore, the presence of male oppression from within informs riot grrrl in interesting ways. Riot grrrl formed in response to the right wing’s attack on feminism’s political gains as well as the cultural silencing of incest, sexual abuse, intimate partner violence, poor body image, and low self-esteem. It also opposed punk and hardcore’s exclusionary, homophobic, and misogynistic tendencies, best symbolized by the mosh pit, and implemented “girls in front” or “girls only” policies at shows. So it was really interesting to read about how bands like Fugazi aligned with riot grrrl, but were less willing to cede control over their audience. In 1992, Fugazi and Bikini Kill played a Supreme Court protest. Frontman Ian MacKaye bristled at the idea of sharing the bill out of concern that the event would be misunderstood as a concert. He was also unable to reign in the aggressive inclinations of his predominantly white male fan base, and blamed the women in the audience who defended their space in the pit.
Marcus also does a good job addressing controversial figures like Jessica Hopper. Now an established music journalist who penned The Girls’ Guide to Rocking, Hopper was associated with the St. Paul/Minneapolis scene and came to notoriety as the girl who sold out riot grrrl by speaking out of turn to Newsweek, whichhit newsstands in November 1992. Many riot grrrls, who already witnessed message dilution in other mainstream publications, interpreted her interview with Farai Chideya as an attempt to further her own media career. By her mid-teens, Hopper launched a successful ‘zine, Hit It And Quit It, interviewed Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna, and corresponded with Courtney Love. Marcus honors the opinions of girls who knew and felt betrayed by Hopper, but also tries to represent the writer’s viewpoint as well.
Girls to the Front suffers a sad ending, as many believed fell riot grrrl. Like Hanna, some riot grrrls were strippers but had difficulty negotiating theoretical rebellion against capitalism and conventional sexual politics with adult entertainment’s regressive market imperatives. More of them disbanded local chapters after internal struggle and lagging membership. Bratmobile disbanded after a major blowout on stage. Girl love is revolutionary, but it can be hard to sustain.
Marcus concludes by outlining riot grrrl’s cultural contributions and documenting the late-90s trend of commodifying girlhood and the mainstreaming of post-feminism. She mentions riot grrrl-influenced bands like Gossip, as well as the influence figures like First Lady Michelle Obama hold. I would like more of a discussion about the cultural significance of Girls Rock Camp, as well as Ladies Rock Camp. The many-armed non-profit is carving space in several cities in the U.S., Canada, Western Europe, and is catching on in countries like Argentina. Founded in Portland, Girls Rock Camp counts Hanna, Bratmobile’s Erin Smith, Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein, and Gossip’s Beth Ditto as champions. The organization is perhaps the clearest indication of riot grrrl’s influence. It certainly borrows from riot grrrl’s reliance on regionalism to spread its larger message. More importantly, it provides space for girls’ actualization and self-empowerment through music and DIY media production, which were riot grrrl’s main imperatives. As both organizations are still quite young, I understand wanting to wait and see what these organizations will become. Also, they should get their own books.
Splash!, a band formed at the Bay Area Girls Rock Camp and a part of riot grrrl's legacy; image courtesy of alwaysmoretohear.com
However, Marcus does something valuable with Girls to the Front. In representing riot grrrl’s imperfections and contradictions, as well as its relevance, she argues at once for its historical significance while challenging how we understand it. Make sure to check it out when it hits stores in October. Maybe it’ll convince you form a band with your best girlfriend and kick off a new revolution.
White girls Ellen Page and Zooey Deschanel; image courtesy of blogs.citypages.com
Yesterday, I gave a lecture with Kristen at Act Your Age, a friend and colleague since we got to know one another as masters students in the media studies program at UT. We actually didn’t become friends until our second semester with the program, as I was pretty shy during the first semester and was working full-time. But I knew I liked her from the moment we met at a department mixer when she said that she hoped grad school wouldn’t be like that scene in Ghost World where one of protagonist Enid’s classmates shows off her “found object” tampon in the teacup art piece. I’d estimate that our friendship really developed during the thesis process, as we shared an adviser and second reader. Of course, working at the same 9-to-5 keeps us close, as does working with Girls Rock Camp Austin.
I may never have admitted this to her before, but I heavily relied on her as motivation when we started collaborating. The first time we worked together on a project was for a Flow column we wrote about 30 Rock‘sLiz Lemon and her negotiations with power. Earlier that summer, I was asked by a friend who worked at Latinitas to give a talk about how girl pop stars are represented in music videos. I accepted the offer, which I later bailed on when I had a bout of depression and felt like I couldn’t possibly put together a valuable educational resource. I’ve always been ashamed that I let my friend down and had such little faith in my abilities at the time. So I figured if I worked with Kristen, maybe we could maximize each other’s potential. I’d like to think we have.
I should note that we also work well separately, though I ask for her feedback on my projects and am available as a springboard for her. That said, I really like to work with her, less so now because I feel like I need her as motivation, but because 1) we like to model that women can successfully come together and share responsibilities on projects and 2) we like proving that “important” work doesn’t have to be done in isolation. Also, I just like her.
So we’ve worked together for a while, both on GRCA stuff and on other academic pursuits. We wrote a column together, moderated a roundtable discussion for the 2008 Flow conference, and put together a panel for SUNY Cortland’s Reimagining Girlhood conference this fall. Thus, when our friend Curran invited us to give a guest lecture for his race and media course at UT (a class that transformed me when I took it as an undergrad), we of course accepted.
This was a bit out of both of our comfort zones. Kristen never gave a college lecture before. I delivered one for my thesis adviser’s undergrad class on gender and rock culture when she was presenting at SCMS. But that was a very different set of circumstances, for even though I organized the screening materials, I lectured on a reading she assigned. Kristen and I created this lecture entirely on our own, picking the topic, readings, and presentation materials.
We selected the intersection of race and girlhood as our topic, paying particular attention to the exnomination of whiteness and the cultural construction of hipster girls and appropriations of girlhood in contemporary American film. Our case studies were Juno and (500) Days of Summer.
Curran (wearing a Shonen Knife shirt because he’s awesome) generously introduced us to his class, plugging our blogs and referring to us as experts. As humbling as it is to be called an expert by a friend whose academic work you admire tremendously, I recognized that we do know a lot about our topic. Kristen wrote about two of the films we discussed in the last chapter of her thesis. I wrote about a few of the films for conference papers. We’ve talked about many of these texts on our blogs and have seen most of them.
The lecture represented both of us well. Kristen studies mediated representations and sociological surveys of girlhood. I look at convergent music culture from a feminist perspective. Add to the fact that we’re both white women who were both white girls and heavily problematize white privilege and class in our work, and this lecture was basically as close to a scholastic mash-up as you can get. Add our PowerPoint to the mix and you can even listen to it like Girl Talk or The Hood Internet or play it like X-Men Vs. Street Fighter. Plus we call shit on patriarchy and white privilege. Here’s what I learned.
1. I like building PowerPoint presentations. As Kristen created the one we use for GRC, I wanted to give it a shot and it’s a really effective tool when used properly.
1A. Of course, it was not news to me that I would stay up until 2 a.m. futzing with layout design. I know myself.
2. It’s exciting and weird when people write down what you have to say.
2A. As a result, I’m always going to have to remember to slow down when I talk.
3. It’s great to watch a colleague be in total control of herself when presenting information. Kristen’s a clear, succinct conveyor of ideas. She’s also patient and calm and clearly has a lot of personal investment in the process, which will make her a great professor.
4. No bullshit, but I’m great at it too. It feels natural to me. I have much to learn, but I’ll be a great professor.
5. It’s fun to volley. I kinda knew this from GRC workshops, but sometimes I worry that she carries my weight when I blank or get flustered. This time, I feel like the back-and-forth was breezy and perfect.
5A. I need to be kinder to myself and recognize that we both share the work and bring out the best in each other. I definitely did that yesterday.
6. It’s delightful to apply complicated theories from the readings to the lecture topic, especially when the students nod along and seem to get it. It lets you know that you picked the right material and make sense explaining it.
7. Revisiting essays when selecting readings is fun, as well as a good yardstick for what you’ve learned during the interval between now and the last time you read the piece.
8. Clips and images really help illustrate points and trigger related ideas.
9. We forgot to talk about Ghost World! Oh well. Next time. We didn’t talk about TV at all, but have so many texts to discuss.
10. This was a quiet group, but I think a lot of the students were into the topic and got something out of the lecture. They may have, in fact, actually learned something. To be witness and have a part in that process is the best part of all.
Mayim Bialik on the cover of Sassy is a good as any image of girlhood that I had growing up; image courtesy of fashionista.com
Hello everyone. So, I’m giving a lecture on Friday with Kristen at Act Your Age for a friend’s class at UT on race and the media. We’ll be talking about whiteness and girlhood in contemporary American film, primarily because girls are often assumed or represented as white. We’re paying particular attention to Ellen Page and Zooey Deschanel’s turns in Juno and (500) Days of Summer, the latter text being held up as an instance of girlhood appropriation. After reading through Spin‘s 1997 Girl Issue and putting together clips and our PowerPoint presentation, apart from being overwhelmed by the whiteness, I was reminded of my girlhood.
In the interest of sharing, here are some clips from my youth, many of which we’ll be discussing. Please feel free to share. Also, as we’ll obviously be problematizing the exnomination of whiteness with regard to girlhood in our lecture, I’d also encourage people to challenge it themselves and offer mediated images of girls of color.
Miley Cyrus at the 2010 Grammys; image courtesy of harpersbazaar.com
Today begins the last week of my “Tuning In” series for Bitch. This post is about Miley Cyrus, the upcoming final season of Hannah Montana, and her transition into “adult” stardom.
Hayley Stark, girl vigilante and Goldfrapp hater; image courtesy of nytimes.com
A few weeks back during lunch, I was sweating some things. I start blogging for Bitch tomorrow and will also be attending a conference later this month. While these are wonderful developments, I didn’t have any shorter entries in the queue for this blog. Ever helpful, Kristen at Act Your Age offered up the question “why doesn’t Ellen Page’s character like Goldfrapp in Hard Candy?” As she discussed this movie in her thesis on girl heroines in rape-revenge movies, I hope she’ll revisit it some time for her blog. But this was a question I had when I saw the movie and seemed like one I could answer here.
I saw this movie, apart from the star and subject matter, because it was English filmmaker David Slade’s directorial debut. While he may become a household name with Twilight: Eclipse, he caught my attention as a music video director. His moody aesthetic and high-contrast color palette in clips like Tori Amos’s “Strange Little Girls” indicate his style, as well as suggest that his interest in retelling Little Red Riding Hood preceded Hard Candy.
I didn’t like this 2006 psychological thriller when I first saw it. Upon review, some things caught my attention that were interesting. And I like the idea of a smart, resourceful girl vigilante tricking an older man she met in a chat room into a compromising situation so she can punish him for his pedophilic actions. However, I still maintain:
1. Hayley Stark seems too articulate, preachy, and savvy for me. She reads like a psychotic caricature of a PSA spokesperson instead of a complex, relateable 14-year-old girl. Page does a fine job with an essentially two-dimensional role, but the part is just as responsible for cultivating her self-aware persona as Juno would be later in her career.
2. Her personal motivations for torturing photographer Jeff Kohlver (Patrick Wilson, the actor who is almost Will Arnett) are never made clear, thus making her seem even more crazy.
3. The torture in this movie was — as Manohla Dargis pointed out in her review — unfortunately poignant upon its release. It’s also pretty boring, and makes up much of the movie’s content.
4. The movie’s use of violence in the service of its political message isn’t nearly as shocking as the hype led it to be perceived. Page’s character never commits any physical violence on her captive beyond repeatedly drugging him. Most of her abuse is psychological, ultimately culminating in him killing himself for her. However, this could be a really smart move for Stark — by having Kohlver off himself, it may remove her from implication.
But what does it mean that Stark’s character hates Goldfrapp? Earlier, before the torture begins at Kohlver’s swanky apartment, the two meet at a coffeeshop. Here and at his place before Stark drugs him, the two mention the Scottish electro outfit several times. Stark regrets not having seen them at their latest show, which Kohlver attended. He also swiped a bootleg mp3 of the concert, and promises to share it with Stark. Stark also talks about Zadie Smith and Jean Seberg, and Kohlver mentions her affinity for John Mayer and Coldplay.
In other words, Kohlver uses Stark’s demonstrative love of popular culture as a means of creating an illusory bond of shared preferences that he actually uses for the purposes of seduction and for holding power over her. But Stark is smart enough to pick up on this, suggesting that he faked an interest in these things during their online exchanges. She notes that he would often stop chatting with her for several minutes, possibly to look up these people who he may have pretended to know so as to impress her, and would copy and paste Amazon reviews into his messages to her.
When posing Kristen’s proposed question to our co-worker Rebekah, she suggested this might be a way for Stark’s character to impose authority over him by seeming more fluent in indie music culture than her victim. In other words, Stark is so cool that she already knows Goldfrapp well enough to find them outdated. This would certainly sync up with Ellen Page’s star persona as a hipster darling.
Alison Goldfrapp, who Haylee Stark and Ellen Page may or may not be "over"; image courtesy of idolator.com
I want to add a wrinkle. Because one thing that struck me upon revisiting this movie is how clearly queer Stark’s character is. I’d even go so far as to read Stark as a lesbian, though speculations of Page’s sexuality and Stark’s resemblance to lesbians who look like Justin Bieber may inform this reading. It’s very clear in Stark’s stilted delivery of faux-sexy verbal solicitations that she is faking an attraction for a man and possibly an entire sex category.
Of course, seduction is performative. This is evident in Kohlver’s transparent, predatory flirting style. But there’s an edge to Stark’s performance that suggests she does not embody it and will reject it. This reading is problematic, as it links her militancy with negative stereotypes about lesbian radicalism. And I’ll also point out the irony in Stark’s disdain for Goldfrapp, as the duo has a big gay following. Remember their gig at The Planet on The L-Word?
But I also think that Stark may be saying that by hating Goldfrapp, she hates Kohlver and all of the things with which he professes to identify. While her hate assuredly encompasses pedophilia and sexual abuse, her disdain may also extend to the act of heterosexual sex, as the cultural value placed upon it also oppresses people, including queer girls. If compliance with heterosexism involves using erotically-charged electro-pop to seduce or assault, it makes sense why some girls hate Goldfrapp too.
Movie poster for The Runaways; image courtesy of fanpop.com
I caught a screening of The Runaways with my dear friends Curran, Masashi, and Kristen at Act Your Age. How do I put this? . . . It was terrible.
It was off to a promising start with the movie’s first image: a drop of menstrual blood. It did a good job establishing the sunny malaise of 70s Southern California, but a hackneyed and incoherent script, weak characterization, and wooden acting were evident early on. Once the band went on their first tour, the movie ran off the rails and never recovered. As a casual fan of the group in question who hasn’t read lead singer Cherie Currie’s Neon Angel (the screenplay’s source material), I didn’t leave the theater with any gained insight. And as someone who teaches rock history to girls, I have no idea what they would get out off this movie. The band’s relevance as musical pioneers is assumed and thus given no context. Furthermore, the actresses are not often shown playing instruments or working as a unit. In fact, the movie mainly focuses on founder and guitarist Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) and lead singer Currie (Dakota Fanning), giving a little time to co-founder and drummer Sandy West (Stella Maeve), but obscuring Lita Ford (Scout Taylor-Compton) and Robin Blakemore (Alia Shawkat), an amalgam of the group’s many bassists.
The stars of the movie (missing is the rest of the band); image courtesy of fanpop.com
In short, I am at a loss as to the function of this movie. Who is this movie for? Why did it get made? Why is this story worth telling? As a feminist music geek, these questions are usually rhetorical. But as a jilted moviegoer two hours later, these were the questions I was left with.
I’ll elaborate more on my criticisms with the movie later in this post, but first I’d like to get in to the limits of the music biopic but why I still like watching them. Curran asked Kristen and me before the movie started what our expectations were. We said we thought there’d be some salvageable moments and maybe some good performances.
To be fair, that’s really all most music biopics deliver (I’m specifically talking about feature films here, but we could easily extend this to made-for-TV movies too). I’m not sure if any film genre scholars have written on music biopics (feel free to share any relevant texts in the comments section — I love a reading list). It seems like a genre worth evaluating, particularly since they’re often disappointing. As with all biopics, there’s always the matter of historical accuracy, warped by legends, differing accounts, flexible realities, and negotiated subjectivities. When these issues are compromised in music biopics, they often result in fans saying the filmmakers got it wrong.
What music fans hope to get out of a music biopic varies. Perhaps there’s hope of being faithful to the subject and source material. As someone who doesn’t mind when biopics play with history, I’m usually more interested in what aspects of their stories get highlighted and how the surrounding era is evoked, because music biopics are also period pieces. Above all, I’m interested in casting. Who is playing the musician in question?
As a film genre, music biopics are foremost star vehicles. The same can be said of biopics in general, as they can guarantee a lock for an Oscar win in the acting categories. Unlike traditional historical biographies though, music biopics tend not be the domain of directors looking to flex authorial muscle. Perhaps this has to do with value judgments placed upon rock music as being less culturally significant than, say, the life of Malcolm X, Lenny Bruce, or Jesus Christ. This doesn’t necessarily extend to concert features, as directors like Martin Scorsese and Jim Jarmusch have them on their résumés. But the majority of music biopics are driven by the star, not the director. Regularly, Oscar nominations are given to actors who play musicians, some of whom have even won the coveted prize. Marion Cotillard won most recently for her turn as Édith Piaf in La vie en rose. It was earned, in my opinion. Her devastating performance saved a movie marred by too many tracking shots of the subject suffering in private, pacing backstage, and then taking that pain with her in performance.
Tangentially related, but opinion varies as to whether the actor should sing. My take is that if the actor can pull off the singer’s style, okay. But in general, I actually prefer hearing the original source material. There’s much to be said for an actor who can do a convincing lip sync.
But music biopics tend to be unsatisfying in execution, even if the actors do a good job. The main reason for this, I think, has to do with the genre abiding by staid storytelling conventions and taking on too much of the subject’s biography. Some music biopics have defied expectations, playing with formal convention and myth as well as pursuing alternate perspectives from folks involved with other aspects of the music industry and fans. I’d credit Michael Winterbottom’s 24-Hour Party People and Todd Haynes’s Velvet Goldmine and I’m Not There with achieving this.
I also think there’s a lot of value in focusing on a key period in a musical act’s life or career and allow this time to give the subject his or her larger sociohistoric context. I liked Stephen Frears’s The Queen in large part because it narrows its sights on the brief period of time between the election of Prime Minister Tony Blair and the death of Princess Diana and resultant grief of her loss and let those events shape the character of Queen Elizabeth II. While I haven’t seen all of Gus Van Zant’s Last Days, I wonder if dwelling on Kurt Cobain’s final moments might say more about his distress than a retelling of the events that led to Nirvana’s meteoric rise.
After the musical act in question starts touring and usually begins tasting some fame, music biopics become boring and predictable. As a result, music biopics take out the electricity from the people who wrote songs to the soundtrack of our memories. They turn their lives into plodding accounts of what become crappy day jobs as routinized and dehumanizing as cubicle-dwelling but with less relateable struggles Behind the Music already exhausted. You can play? I can play too. Hey, we got a record deal! Our song is on the radio! Look, groupies and available drugs! Ugh, touring is boring. All the cities look the same. Oh wait, here come the struggles with fame and the weight of expectations. The fame has driven a wedge between me and my fans. More drugs and probably some questionable vanity purchases. Oh no, the band isn’t getting along. Factions! We can’t replicate the magic anymore. Vices! Overdoses, which result in two outcomes. There is death, and then a celebration of legacy. There is also rehab, which is usually followed by half-hearted reunions or anonymity, often accompanied by middle-aged paunch. YAWN.
And when you focus on boys who deal with these pressures through self-medication and illicit sex with women who aren’t their partners, only to seek redemption in a mistress, a second wife, or Jesus, I really have no sympathy. I will laugh at them however, which is why I’ll get around to seeing Walk Hard, a movie that pokes fun at these conventions.
But Floria Sigismondi’s movie proves that an all-girl proto-punk band can be just as boring as any man in rock music. And now, let’s launch into my problems with The Runaways.
1. The script. This is the movie’s biggest problem. Given that this is director Sigismondi’s first feature, it is also her first screenwriter credit. Early into the movie, I had flashes of Mark Romanek’s One-Hour Photo. Like Sigismondi, Romanek proved his mettle as an innovative music video director before he made directorial debut. And while that helped both directors establish an aesthetic style, it didn’t help develop their writing skills. Because . . . oh boy, is Sigismondi’s script marred with clunky dialogue, incoherent tonal shifts, and unfounded character motivation. So often, the movie launches into important developments with little explanation or context. How did the girls discover rock and roll for themselves? Why were there homelives unsatisfying? Why did the girls form a band? How they function as a unit? How did they handle detractors? How did they interact with other bands? What was their relationship with label employees, road crews, journalists, fans, and the number of folks they encountered? How popular were they in the United States? How popular were they abroad? Why were they so beloved in Japan? Perhaps this has to do with a reliance on the movie’s audience to know the band’s backstory. Perhaps this has to do with legal intervention as well, which might explain how little screen time Sandy West, Lita Ford, and the bassists get.
And sometimes Sigismondi’s career as a director encroaches too much on her work in this feature. Bathtubs becoming lagoons? Jett writing a song in a milk bath? Currie calling her sister at an abandoned phone booth in some random abandoned parking lot? It looks cool, but doesn’t really convey any information.
2. The movie isn’t gay enough. Now, to be fair, I was surprised at how gay it was — just like I was happy about Currie’s menstrual blood and Jett urinating on a sexist musician’s guitar. And while I think that Stewart is basically playing Jett as Shane McKutcheon from The L-Word, I believe her baby butch swagger. But a lot is hinted at and insinuated where fan and pro-sex feminist Susie Bright knew there were explicitly gay or queer things were happening at the time. And when Sigismondi pervades Jett and Currie’s sex scene with red lights, slow motion, close-ups on open mouths, off-kilter camera angles, and soft focus, it enforces Currie’s wastedness, thus perpetuating the notion that women and girls have to be inebriated to be intimate with one another. FAIL.
3. The matter of the leads. I don’t want to play the game of pitting one actress against another, as each part has its own demands. And both actresses are at a tenuous point at their career, transitioning from child stars to leading ladies. Interestingly, they’ve also been a part of the Twilight series and seem to be using the money they’ve earned from the franchise to subsidize less commercial fare like this movie.
In truth, I wasn’t wowed by either actress. To their credit, it’s hard to make lines like “I’m thinking with my cock” and “I thought we were your fucked-up family” beat the page. Furthermore, they’re given little motivation for their characters. What possesses Jett to pick up a guitar, much less link up with Svengali Kim Fowley? Why does Currie spiral into addiction and despair? For Currie, a negligent family with a history of substance abuse might be the reason, as might intimations that she was raped while on tour. But the actresses aren’t given much to work with. Jett scowls. Currie rolls her eyes like a Valley Girl. And neither of them convey for me the dynamism their characters possessed onstage.
4. Sexism and misogyny. Again, I was amazed that these issues were acknowledged at all, though they are crucial to the telling of this band’s story. Furthermore, it was interesting to see how the movie dealt with the public and the band’s conflicting feelings about their sexuality and agency over their own objectification as jailbait hellcat rebels. But the script puts too fine a point on how icky and regressive and threatening men were to young girls trying to break into the music industry. At the same time, it provides little context as to why these attitudes were prevalent and if The Runaways changed them at all and how. And why would these girls put up with Fowley’s abuse? Do age and gender have anything to do with it? Assuredly, but the movie doesn’t develop these issues further.
To actor Michael Shannon’s credit, I think he does a credible job with Fowley. As the movie tends to reduce the character to a series of random antics, feel free to watch his interview on Tom Snyder’s The Tomorrow Show. Note to how little Jett talks, how often she is interrupted and cut off, and how often Fowley speaks for her and the band. I think these interjections and silence speak volumes of the sort of industry sexism Jett had to deal with.
Having said all this, am I happy and pleasantly surprised that this movie got made? Yes. Do I wish it could be better? Of course. Do I think the story of The Runaways and a myriad of other bands should be told? Absolutely. I still recommend seeing this movie. And if it gets people interested in the members’ music and their history, along with the careers of the movie’s director and stars, even better. I’ll close with a recollection of a scene from the movie: Jett visits Currie in the hospital following the lead singer’s free-fall into addiction. Jett informs Currie that she read about an all-girl band forming in Korea. “They suck,” Jett maintains, ”but it’s still pretty cool.” My sentiments exactly.
I'm makin' it with a Mako; image courtesy of gamespot.com
When I attended the recent screening of Radical Harmonies, someone asked if I was a musician. I instinctively said “no.” Then I immediately remembered my roughly fifteen years in various choral ensembles and countered aloud, “actually, yes I am. I’m a singer.” Duh, Alyx. You only argue the singer as musician on this blog all the time.
Indeed I am a singer. I started singing in my church choir when I was around ten. In the seventh grade, I worked up the nerve to audition for the junior high treble choir. I got in on the merit of my performance of Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair),” which I swiped from the Forrest Gump soundtrack. Introduce him to the Monterrey Pop Festival crowd, Mama Cass.
By the end of the school year, the girl in the back of the alto section auditioned for the fall musical, The King And I. I was cast as Lady Thiang, an icky instance of yellow-facing. I got to sing “Something Wonderful,” one of musical theater’s many paeans to patriarchy. Things fared better at the end of eighth grade, when I played the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz and had secured a spot in the varsity treble ensemble for fresh(wo)man year.
Throughout my teens, choir and musical theater were my life. I was in chamber choir from sophomore year on, and also served as an officer. I loved singing, but it didn’t mean success came easily to me. Basic music theory was hard to process, as was sight-reading. I lacked proper breath support and often went instinctively into my chest voice or put my voice in my nose. I never starred in the school musical, though I did garner two supporting roles. I bombed my Region Choir audition junior year, which broke my heart but also gave me a goal.
I started taking voice lessons with a family friend during the summer before senior year. I practiced scales, sight-reading, and built my repertoire. I logged about three hours of practice every day outside my duties as section leader during school rehearsal. You see, I was going to make All-State Choir my senior year. And I ended up being first chair to the Alto I section of the Treble Choir, who killed it at the concert performance. I had a wonderful choir director and voice coach, but there’s really no mystery to how it happened: I worked for it.
That said, these accolades don’t really matter. What counts is that I finally figured out how to read music and locked into my voice. It’s a full-bodied mezzo-soprano when I get it going, and I love how it feels when I do. I also love hearing my voice blend with an ensemble, bolstering chords and enriching my section’s tone, disappearing and reappearing when it needs to. It’s a strong thing, and it lives in my throat. I own it, though sometimes it owns me.
But I never seriously considered being a professional singer. I had fantasies of becoming a Broadway actress or a music journalist, but went to college with no real grasp on who I wanted to be when I grew up. People, I’m still working on it.
Being a singer seemed like a risky, unstable endeavor. Most people don’t get the chance and either train or compromise into becoming a voice teacher or choir director. And there’s nothing wrong with that. My mother decided to become a middle school choir director during my junior year of high school after decades of avoiding a professional career in music. She was happy to funnel her training in piano into being the church organist. I’ve dabbled with choir directing myself, conducting the odd sight-reading clinic for my mom when I’m back home. And I like teaching, but prefer getting up in front of a room or in a circle and breaking down hegemony.
I sang intermittently in college in UT’s Concert Chorale, conducted by the formidable Dr. Susan Pence. I had to quit during my junior year because I didn’t have the time for six hours of rehearsal each week with school, KVRX, and my emerging interests in feminist organizing. I got into Choral Arts Society some time during my senior year and kept that up until I started graduate school, as my screenings always seemed to conflict with Thursday rehearsal. In addition to that, I worked full-time until a month before I got my MA, so it’s not like I had the time anyway. Man, did I miss it.
I finally got back in an ensemble earlier this year as a member of the Austin Civic Chorus. Much to my surprise, my voice held up after years of neglect. But not to my surprise, I find that traditional choruses don’t possess the excitement they once did. I like singing in an ensemble, but my ambivalence toward the canonization of sacred music, the preponderance of male composers in that canon, the ingrained idea of needing to balance an ensemble’s sound so that the bass section is most audible, and the classed nature of concert attire and ticket prices has evolved into full-on discomfort.
So, I decided to pick up a guitar. It seemed overdue, you know? My partner’s father’s Mako was propped against a wall in its case, so I figured it should get some use. Plus it’s only fair that if I teach girls who are brave enough to learn how to play instruments and start bands, I could learn from them too. It’s time to practice what I preach.
Though I’m a singer, I’m embarrassed to not be proficient in any instruments. My dad forced me to take piano lessons one summer against my mother’s wishes, as she didn’t want me to feel that I had to follow in her footsteps. Thus the vast, boxy instrument became a burden, resulting in my rudimentary ability to poke melodies and fetch chords.
In addition, I never liked how a piano tends to disengage a musician from its audience. As Michel Chion points out in “Mute Music: Polanski’s The Pianist and Campion’s The Piano“, there are some interesting filmic elements in this removal and the artist’s inward focus in his assessment of The Pianist and The Piano. But I always liked singing to and at someone. This isn’t to say that a piano can’t be a performative instrument. We just haven’t found a rapport. I feel like I’m talking to a wall. Its physical heft only exacerbates matters.
Tori Amos making the case for the piano as performative instrument; image courtesy of mtv.com
But the Omnichord is a friend. It’s portable, light, and user-friendly. I’ve been playing with it and singing chords at it since my partner bought it for me two Christmases ago. But it has limitations too. It only has so many programmable functions and it’s too easy to play. Hence the guitar, which brings in tension. Like the voice, the sounds made on a guitar come from the player. Specifically, they come from their fingers, arms, shoulders, back, torso, and pelvis. Actually, it makes complete sense why singers often accompany themselves on guitar. With the two in tandem, you can embody your music. Once I acquire a theremin, I’ll be a continuous loop of sound.
Yet I never really considered the guitar until well into my 26th year. I sing. My mom’s a pianist. My stepbrother plays the bass, trumpet, guitar, and drums, but somehow I never thought about it. I know as a teen I was singing and rehearsing stage plays, but picking up a guitar never occurred to me. In fairness, I never really went through a guitar god phase. I never fell in love with the Jims (Page and Hendrix). I didn’t even notice Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker’s contributions to the instrument until I was well into college, after which point I fell in love with the conversational approach and harsh angularity of the post-punk guitar sound.
Since that time, I’ve grown to love electric guitar and listen for it exclusively. Recent offerings from The Dirty Projectors, Marnie Stern, and Noveller really opened me up to the possibilities of the guitar’s dexterity and tone.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ve only completed three lessons with my neighbor, David (of DFI, RATKING, and Moonmen on the Moon, Man). In that time, I’ve learned the open A, C, D, E, and F chords. I’m starting to get chromatics and the C scale down. A and E barre chords are starting to make sense in my hands. I’m learning chord changes and alternate picking. Surprisingly, my hands and ears understand one another pretty well.
But let’s get ahead of ourselves again, because that’s how progress occurs. While I don’t want to be a professional musician, I want to play. I’m planning my summer project and it’s a musical one. I’d like to do it with someone, but may have to get things started on my own. I won’t reveal the name, but basically it’s going to be scary dance music. In my head, it would sound somewhere in between John Carpenter’s film scores and Erase Errata, with the space of Sister Nancy’s “Bam Bam” and the minimalist dread of Suicide’s “Johnny” and ESG’s “UFO.” Ever the choirgirl, there would be room for cacophonous spurts of female voices. Ultimately, I’d like to record and make some music videos and play some shows.
But in the present, I’m still figuring out my guitar. I’m not sold on the sound of my Mako yet. But I’m not discouraged by this process of becoming. Indeed, all of life is that process. I remember that when I feel my age and realize that I’ll be 30 before I’m really good at playing. In truth, a large part of why I’m involved with GRCA and Cinemakids is to heal the psychic wounds of not engaging with media-making as an adolescent and thus spending my adulthood writing criticism upon others’ artistic endeavors.
That doesn’t mean I can’t make music and write about it as both evolve. Strumming a guitar, syncing it to my voice, and typing it out is a start.
In preparation for the Oscars, I’m catching up on my “quality” viewing. I saw The Cove yesterday, which is nominated for Best Documentary and might officially get me to stop eating meat. I also saw An Education, which I previously mentioned having an interest in seeing because protagonist Jenny Miller is shown playing a cello in the preview.
Run away, Jenny Miller!; image courtesy of pastemagazine.com
A lot of people are into this one. And there’s a lot to love. Lone Scherfig directed it. There’s a girl protagonist played by Carey Mulligan. The cast of supporting actresses is substantial. And Peter Sarsgaard mines unexpected pathos in his portrayal of David Goldman, a man who is in essence a sexual predator. I wasn’t so enamored with it, but I thought it was good.
For me, it played out less like a coming-of-age narrative and more like a horror movie, thus enforcing that oftentimes the genres come together. I saw Teeth earlier in the week, but An Education was much scarier. A bright teenage girl succumbing to the dubious charms of a much-older shakedown artist (who, as unfortunate stereotypes go, is also Jewish)? Her parents going along for the ride because he is a man of means that might allow their daughter to bypass going to college though they have no idea who he is or what he does for a living? Aforementioned brainy girl protagonist potentially throwing her life away for the romantic idea of a life with a man who exhibits obvious signs of creepiness (apart from swindling and picking up teenage girls at bus stops, I’m never going to think about a banana the same way again)? That said girl blinds herself to the reality that she couldn’t be the first girl he’s preyed upon (and, we discover later, isn’t)? The fact that all of this is based on Lynn Barber’s memoir and thus “actually” happened? Danger, Will Robinson! I literally said “it’s a trap” and shook my head “no” several times during the screening. And as much as I’d like to think gender politics have changed since the 1960s when the story is set, there are still girls who fall for suspicious men and parents who fall right along with them.
Thus the content of the story has informed my enjoyment of the movie. And while the movie is well-made, I find it more than a little disconcerting how race, class, and gender inform outcomes and expectations for girls. Miller almost throws her life away for a man she knows very little about, but still gets to go to college despite skipping her entrance exams. This has much to do with being a middle-class white girl as it does with her intellectual capability, which of course is nurtured by her private school education. Juxtapose An Education with Precious, another period piece that instead focuses on an illiterate, fat, poor, dark-skinned black girl with an extensive history of family abuse. The disparity between our societal expectations and allowances for white girls and black girls is profound. One girl goes to Oxford despite making poor personal decisions because she’s guided by her heart. Another girl is a single mother living with HIV in inner-city New York because the system is set up against her. These girls are never going to cross paths.
But one thing that I thought was interesting about An Education and wished got more emphasis is Miller’s relationship with music. She does play the cello, though not on her own accord. Her father has her take it up so as to seem well-rounded to Oxford’s admissions board.
That said, she does have knowledge of classical music and is a fan of Maurice Ravel. And in the pantheon of white girls in cinema who use phonographic technology in their bedrooms, Miller is but one more example.
Miller with her record player; image courtesy of vogue.co.uk
It’s especially interesting what she listens to. Miller is a Francophile and loves Juliette Gréco. In the scene highlighted above, Miller is listening to Gréco’s No. 7. The movie also features Gréco’s “Sous Le Ciel de Paris,” an idealized take on the city of lights that was recorded by Édith Piaf in 1954.
Miller’s fandom is much to the chagrin of her father, who believes her love of French chanteuses takes her away from with her studies. As he doesn’t feel the same way about her boyfriend, there’s potential for queer panic. However, I think in her father’s case it’s more consciously informed by the belief that interests and hobbies cannot elevate the social status of girls as much as being paired off with a man. I’m glad Miller ultimately chooses her own livelihood over the wishes of men. I hope she kept the records too.
