Posts Tagged ‘girls

22
Jun
11

Listening to Daisy Chainsaw records in my room with Darlene Conner

By Alyx Vesey 4 Comments
Categories: Feminist Music Geeks Turn on Their TVs
Tags: , , , , , ,

I fell in love with a girl for the first time in the sixth grade. I didn’t conceptualize it as a crush at the time, because I was supposed to be having those on some white boy in Tiger Beat. My taste in men was influenced by Spin and Rolling Stone—Dave Gahan, Jeff Buckley, Damon Albarn, Beck. I got it up for Christian Slater and an androgynous Leonardo DiCaprio, couldn’t get it up for Tom Cruise, and had an alarming (and mercifully brief) infatuation with Robin Williams.

The feminine masquerade that comes naturally to Becky confuses and annoys Darlene; image courtesy of taylorcolemiller.com (click on image to read Miller's piece on reading Darlene as a rebuttal to postfeminism)

My affections turned toward Darlene Conner, Roseanne‘s jaded middle child. In high school, I would more likely have palled around with her honor student older sister Becky (or at least until she started dating Mark, because Becky’s totally the kind of girl who has girlfriends when she’s single and his friends when she’s in a relationship). But through junior high, I was enamored. She was unimpressed and angry and also had a mischievous smile and killer delivery. I didn’t know Bikini Kill existed until Roseanne and Jackie picked up Jenna Elfman’s riot grrrl hitch-hiker in season seven. But I wanted to take Darlene home, try on her clothes, dye her hair black, and play her Daisy Chainsaw tapes. Ughn!

Darlene and I met some time in Roseanne‘s second season when my parents started watching it. No doubt the Conners’ doomed entrepreneurial spirit spoke to my parents, who ran a fledgling print shop. Roseanne became a site of multi-generational female bonding, as did many feminists and like-minded women on prime-time network television at the time, including Dorothy Zbornak, Khadijah James, Murphy Brown, Clair Huxtable, and life partners Mary Jo Shively and Julia Sugarbaker. All these women, including my mother, contributed to my insistence that I bellow the 19th Amendment at my fifth grade open house. But Darlene was the first girl character on television who really resonated with me. I had intermittent cable access, so Clarissa Darling and Alex Mac weren’t always around. Plus they were plucky and blonde. I was not, and neither was Darlene.

Apparently a friend of a friend wrote "Sara Gilbert forever" in her copy of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse--I concur; image courtesy of tumblr.com

I began to relate to Darlene when I caught season two’s “Brain-Dead Poet’s Society” in syndication. This is the episode where she begrudgingly read “To Whom It May Concern” at her school’s culture night. It’s a major turning point. Prior to that, Darlene was a gifted athlete who was quick to defend herself against the world with a joke, usually at Becky’s expense. Season one hints at Darlene’s interiority when she gets her period and has her appendix removed. It was clear that Darlene was far brighter than her below-average grades indicated, much to the bemusement of her parents and sister. I was famously useless in athletics, so we couldn’t play horse together. Instead, I was my room drawing or writing something for myself. So I felt this moment in my bones. I wanted to give her a hug and my diary.

Once Darlene started high school, she stopped playing sports and returning her friends’ calls. She started wearing black, writing comics, and refusing meat. Luckily she found someone who pulls her out of her existential crisis. No, it wasn’t David Healy. It was Karen, a local bookstore owner, with whom the Conners have misgivings.

I forgot that Karen isn’t a lesbian. I sublimated that Darlene’s parents don’t like their daughter hanging out with her because of what it might suggest about their daughter’s sexuality. They just think it’s weird that their daughter would spend so much time with an adult. Still, I think there’s queer anxiety embedded into Roseanne and Karen’s meeting in season four’s “Santa Claus.” Roseanne is hurt that Darlene found another mother figure in whom to confide. But she’s also uncertain about who her daughter is. So Karen and Darlene could still scan as mentor and baby dyke to me.

I might be assuming network imperative here. It’s been reported that actress Sara Gilbert, who came out privately during the show’s run, wanted Darlene to be a lesbian. ABC was reticent. To Roseanne‘s credit, alongside its consideration of working-class angst, the show forged a space for queer visibility before Ellen DeGeneres came out on the network and Will and Grace skyrocketed on NBC. It could have done a lot more for people of color, though I’d attribute the success of Friends and Seinfeld on NBC’s Must See Thursday line-up, a marketing construct that rose to popularity with The Cosby Show, to the whitewashing of the sitcom in the second half of the 90s rather than blame Roseanne exclusively. But for a show that featured a bisexual female character, a lesbian character, and a gay male character in the supporting cast (along with the reveal of a gay principal character in the series’ finale), it’s vexing that the one queer person in the main cast played straight. At least we had Sandra Bernhard.

Nancy (Sandra Bernhard), with Anne-Marie (Adilah Barnes); image courtesy of ilovecatparty.com

A friend made a convincing argument for why it’s okay that Darlene was straight. She pointed out that there aren’t many heterosexual masculine women on television. Fair point. She may have pointed out that queer actors shouldn’t be relegated to playing queer characters, which is also true. But if Darlene had to be straight, couldn’t she have had some female bonding? Her mom and aunt were tight and had several lady friends. They started a restaurant with Nancy. They hung out with childhood pal Crystal. They reconnected with high school friend Anne-Marie (one of the few women of color on the show). When Roseanne waited tables at a diner, she brought coworker Bonnie over for girls’ nights. And in a regrettably truncated season two narrative arc, Roseanne befriended young newlywed Debbie, refugee Iris, and haunted widow Marsha when she briefly works at a hair salon. Seriously, Pedro Almodóvar could have turned those few episodes into a feature.

I knew I loved Darlene when she started dating David in season four. Yes, I was jealous. No, this isn’t why I haven’t watched Gilbert reunite with Johnny Galecki on The Big Bang Theory (credit creator Chuck Lorre, who was on Roseanne’s writing staff for a few seasons). At first, I thought it was cool that they made comics. But as their relationship developed, it was apparent that he was manipulative and insecure over Darlene’s talent. David was a textbook emosogynist. As the series focused on Darlene and Becky’s relationships and growing resentment, it never recovered.

Season five is when the show falters. After Becky elopes with Mark (an Amy Sherman-Palladino masterstroke that so totally informs Rory’s romantic trajectory on Gilmore Girls that it’s pretty surprising Roseanne didn’t hail her in her New York Magazine essay), sexpot neighbor Molly Tilden (Danielle Harris) is the token good girl gone bad. Darlene is threatened by her boyfriend’s attraction to her. When Molly strands her at the Daisy Chainsaw concert, any possible good will between the two is gone. Then Darlene goes to art school in Chicago. We hear some talk of friends, but never see them. Ultimately, she marries David and has a daughter. I watched all of this, and rooted for Darlene to complete school and help her mother live through her dad’s heart attack. It’s revealed in the finale that Darlene paired up with Mark, but this seemed incongruous with Roseanne’s vision for her daughter, so she fictionalized a romance between her and David. Sadly, this felt disingenuous to me too. I hoped she kept in touch with Karen.

02
May
11

Bone Boatwright, Kitty Wells fan

By Alyx Vesey Leave a Comment
Categories: Feminist Music Geeks Open a Book
Tags: , , , ,

Earlier tonight, I finished Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina. This was probably not the best book to complete while viewing the second season of Twin Peaks for obvious reasons, but nonetheless I’m glad I read it. Far gladder than I am to be watching Twin Peaks, which I may abandon after Laura Palmer’s killer is revealed mid-season. Actually, I could devote an entire post to believing David Lynch’s work to be ”good in theory.” Why bother? Flow recently ran a great column about media studies and the neoliberal academy, which addresses concern about scholars privileging quality programs like The Wire over other shows. This is the same field that killed many trees for the aforementioned cult TV series. 

But back to Allison’s novel. Most people know going in that the semi-autobiographical accounts of sexual assault and child abuse Glen Waddell inflicts in his stepdaughter Bone Boatwright are horrifying, and that the casual racism demonstrated by many of the protagonist’s family members in a pre-civil rights South Carolina is appalling. But if Allison didn’t have an ear for dialog and unsettling way with words, it wouldn’t be classic feminist literature alongside Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues, Audre Lorde’s Sister/Outsider, Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Feminist Thought, Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa’s This Bridge Called My Back, and many other important works I recently saw discarded at a local used book store. Undergrads! Pack them when you move.

Kitty Wells; image courtesy of cmt.com

Also, I’d imagine we’ll one day be putting Feminism FOR REAL: Deconstructing the Academic Industrial Complex of Feminism on this list. Can’t wait for my copy to arrive in the mail. For now, I’ll direct you toward editor Jessica Yee’s response to mainstream feminism’s lack of commentary on it, as well as Elevate Difference’s book review.

One thing that surprised me about Bone is how deeply she identifies with female country singers. Having read Skeeter Davis’ memoir, Bus Fare to Kentucky, and witnessing the strength many southerners draw from Christianity, Bone’s love of gospel music made sense. But I was touched by how Bone finds her voice by listening and singing along to heroines like Patsy Cline and the immortal Kitty Wells. Bone identifies with Wells’ “Talk Back Trembling Lips” and “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” which steel her resolve and provide catharsis. 

April was Sexual Assault Awareness month. However, these forms of violence devastate throughout the year. Thus, make sure to donate to the rape crisis centers that serve Cleveland, Texas or support organizations like Girls Educational and Mentoring Services or share information on other groups that need our help. Remember, it’s never too late to help women and girls reclaim their voices.

01
May
11

Why I didn’t like Palindromes

By Alyx Vesey 2 Comments
Categories: Feminist Music Geeks Go to the Movies
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Based on conversations with friends, there appear to be two divergent opinions on director Todd Solondz. One camp thinks he’s brilliant. The other thinks he needs professional help. There may also be a contingent within the “Todd Solondz Godhead” faction that thinks the scene where Dawn Wiener is forced to use the bathroom in front of a schoolgirl bully is comedy gold, but I didn’t laugh. I’m of the belief that Solondz is troubled by how people treat one another and uses his films as catharsis. The final product tends to make most people feel worse.

I’ve seen three of Solondz’s movies–Palindromes; his initial masterpiece, Welcome to the Dollhouse; and his half-great, half-insufferable Storytelling. I’ll wait for Life During Wartime‘s Criterion release and catch the musical adaptation of its prequel when it finally hits Broadway with an exclamation point adjoining its title. Maybe Duncan Sheik can write a song about how pedophiles are just regular people. I smell a Tony! 

I caught some of Palindromes in passing, but was interested in watching it after Caitlin at Dark Room’s essay that links the movie to the death of Dr. George Tiller. But if it’s polarization Solondz seeks, I’ll take the bait. I didn’t like Palindromes.

Poster to Palindromes; image courtesy of wikimedia.org

We’re off to a bad start in the opening credits. For no reason beyond asserting authorial control, Solondz kills off Dawn. Sure, she was also cousins with Aviva, Palindromes‘ chameleon-like protagonist. But really, her death only serves as a way for Solondz to close the casket on his breakthrough film. Dawn’s brother Mark (Matthew Faber) gives a sadistic eulogy that enumerates all of Dawn’s humiliations before a seemingly inevitable suicide. Sure, it may have been wishful thinking to imagine Dawn’s life improves somehow at the end of Dollhouse, but I mainly appreciated that the movie didn’t offer a tidy resolution. This movie, however, begins by confirming that not only did things deteriorate considerably for Dawn, but that she became obese, stopped bathing, got pregnant (possibly by a rape), and killed herself while away at college. Wow.

Oh, Mark does have another purpose. At a family event at the end of the movie, Mark stands in for Solondz to rather artlessly deliver the film’s central thesis: people are incapable of change. That he’s telling this to a girl whose name is a palindrome that means “spring” in Hebrew and is longing to be a mother further discredits viewers’ intelligence. It’s even more insulting than cluing us into Aviva’s accidental sterilization after an abortion procedure run afoul while she’s under anesthesia and apparently too stupid to understand what is obvious to us. This will turn her thwarted attempts at conception when she leaves home because mommy didn’t let her keep the baby into “dramatic irony.” It’s also lazy screenwriting, which is the essence of insulting viewers’ intelligence. 

It would seem as though my biggest problem here would be with the film’s politics regarding abortion rights or, rather, its concerned effort to sling mud at vigilante anti-choice (right)wing nuts and callous, class-aspirant liberals. I’ll get to that in a moment. But first I have to parse out who pubescent runaway Aviva Victor is. Frankly, I don’t think Solondz has a clue. None of the eight actors in the leading role seem to have a handle on her. Thus, most of them play her as a set of parentheses with nothing to encase–vague, pouty, dim. 

Aviva is little more than Solondz’s allegorical vessel. This is offensive to me. I don’t have a problem with a pregnant girl or teen mom character out of hand, provided I’m given ample understanding of why a girl wants to be a mother. You know, when she’s rendered as complex and interesting. However, all we’re given is that Aviva is under the misapprehension that having a baby means she’ll always have someone to love. You know, like a puppy. As a former twelve-year-old girl, this is just insulting. I’m pretty ambivalent about having children at 27, primarily because I gathered well before I was 12 that having a baby required providing financial and emotional support. Sure, children are our future. But they’re not miracles. We make them, and we (as a parent, community, governmental entity) have a responsibility to care for them. Romanticizing motherhood on such inchoate terms and assuming other girls do too without providing a contrast is sexist and ageist of Solondz.  

As much as I can tell, Aviva’s unformed but ardent desire to bear children stems from her class background. Like many of Solondz’s families, the Victors are Jewish, suburban, and middle class. They’ve also inculcated their only daughter, catering to all of her creature comforts–’N Sync tickets, Gap membership cards. In these unchallenged trappings of privilege, a baby seems to be just another thing to want. Aviva–who, to abide the gender stereotype, derives no joy from sex itself–gets knocked up by a family friend’s misogynist brat (Robert Agri, later John Gemberling) who hopes to be a porn director and loudly announces this by wallpapering his room with nudie pix. Naturally he exaggerates his sexual prowess and blames her inexperience when they get down to it, but the seed is sown nonetheless. In her effort to dissuade her daughter’s plan to carry the child to term, mother Joyce (Ellen Barkin) brings in the class politics by admitting to a prior abortion. Joyce was pregnant with a son when Aviva was younger but she and her husband Steve (Richard Masur) decided they couldn’t afford to keep the boy and maintain their lifestyle. This is presented as the ultimate sacrifice, even if it’s in the service of their daughter’s mallrat existence.

One of the major plaudits Solondz receives that I don’t buy is that he’s nonjudgmental about his characters. I think he’s in total contempt of Joyce, who blithely admits that having the abortion was a huge relief. I’m certain there are women who feel this way upon making that decision, and I’ve heard women (myself included) come to that conclusion in hypothetical situations. But I’ve never actually witnessed an expectant mother dismiss her abortion so coldly. Even if she believes the fetus is nothing more than a bundle of cells. Even when she knows it was the best choice. But to represent Aviva’s mother in such a gross fashion plays directly into many anti-choice lobbyists dangerous assumptions about the gender and sexual politics of the pro-choice movement.

Solondz attempts to have it both ways when Aviva stumbles onto a foster home run by Christian fundamentals who have even less regard for human life than the Victors. The house is run by Mama Sunshine (Debra Monk, the stage mom in Center Stage who makes allowances for her daughter’s bulimia). The home is peopled by kids who perform in a Christian rock band. Many of them are disabled, some saved from abortions. I saw this sequence out of context several years ago. Now, the queasy mix of sentimental pap, sitcom staging, pitch-black humor, disturbingly cheerful musical numbers, and freak show exhibitionism play like an episode of Glee. Have disabled feminists written about this segment? If so, please direct me toward their commentary.

Casting is pretty important with Palindromes and I have so many questions for Ann Goulder and Addison McQuigg. As mentioned earlier, eight actors portrayed Aviva. When the part is played by a white woman or girl, it seems selected at random. However, when Will Denton assumes the role during a wordless sequence where an adrift Aviva floats the river, I began thinking about silencing and trans marginalization. When we first meet Aviva, she’s played by Emani Sledge, a guileless black girl. She is in a scene with Barkin, talking about her concerns over Dawn’s death and her own committment to being a mother. Her innocence is othered when put in contrast to Barkin’s age and race. Sharon Wilkins imbues the role with a childlike sweetness as well during her scenes in Mama Sunshine’s house. I cannot tell if I’m overreading Wilkins’ segment, but Mama Sunshine’s offering her fatty foods and reports from the crazed family doctor who examined her while she was unconscious that she exhibits promiscuous behavior certainly don’t seem accidental. They play like empty race baiting. If Solondz is challenging our cultural assumptions, then he could do that while still presenting us with a realized girl protagonist and not a symbol. With this clumsy execution, I’m left wondering where the fuck he gets off.

You may wonder why I wrote about Palindromes, particularly for a feminist music blog. My initial interest came from Cardigans’ singer Nina Persson’s involvement with the film’s music. Her old band was invested in giving dark subject matter a pop sensibility, which seemed to fit here. Without drawing much attention to it, I was also interested in Persson working with her husband Nathan Larson, a veteran film composer perhaps best known as the former lead guitarist of Shudder to Think.

I haven’t pieced together the significance of Nathan Larson’s childlike score any more than I have a handle on Belle and Sebastian’s contributions to Storytelling. My guess is that aligning Solondz’s work with indie musicians further establishes his credibility as an underground filmmaker in a country where film production culture is almost entirely overground. I’d imagine Solondz financing Palindromes with his own money after studios refused to touch the subject matter weakens this point. However, Solondz’s films are largely about supposedly polite, seemingly normal white people committing a variety of transgressions and societal taboos but deriving little pleasure out of their actions. Indie rock cares a lot about these sorts of folks. Nonetheless, Larson and Persson’s work here illustrates themes of innocence and regression far more deeply and disarmingly than anything this movie tries to accomplish. No wonder Aviva hums some of it to herself at one point–Solondz clearly wanted his protagonist to be associated with the best part of the film.

26
Oct
10

Things I learned at the Reimagining Girlhood Conference

By Alyx Vesey Leave a Comment
Categories: Feminist Music Geeks Take to the Streets
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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.

18
Oct
10

Willow whips, I cheer

By Alyx Vesey 1 Comment
Categories: Feminist Music Geeks Turn on Their TVs
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Willow Smith; image courtesy of huffpost.com

I returned from lunch and saw that Kristen at Dear Black Woman, posted the music video to Willow Smith’s “Whip My Hair.” Ya’ll, it’s delightful. I’ve been into her look for a while and am happy that she’s making music. We can search for nefarious doings involving her family’s alleged relationship to the Hubbard cult, but I don’t have any problems with the Smiths. They seem like nice famous people who are trying to maintain their careers while raising their children and encouraging them into creative endeavors without buying them fame or foisting it upon them. Here’s what I like about the song and the clip.

1. The song’s catchy.

2. The video takes place in a school. Willow turns ten this month, so it’s where she and many in their peer group spend their time.

3. The school isn’t depicted as a sex dungeon or a sweaty club. Put it differently, I’m glad Willow isn’t hyper-sexualized. This seems like good parenting and image control, something the fathers of Jessica Simpson and Miley Cyrus might want to have worked on. Kudos to director Anthony Mandler, who is best known for his work with Rihanna, for being sensitive to this as well.

4. Her hair makes the environment change colors. How cool is that?

5. Importantly, her surroundings are white before she whips her hair around. As her hair is braided into long cornrows or styled in puffs for the video, I have to read race into this. The video and song are obvious celebrations of hair, but not a white lady’s sleek ponytail or wavy tresses. I could potentially read it as a reclamation of the whip from its treacherous Antebellum context. Regardless, bringing color into the setting is a charged act. It’s no coincidence that people are pairing this song with Sesame Street’s “I Love My Hair” segment. Here’s the original, which Snarky’s Machine clued me into.

And here’s a mash-up.

6. Whipping hair is something I always associate with headbangers. Even if video vixens, Beyoncé, and that regrettable episode of Glee make it acceptable, the subjects of Heavy Metal Parking Lot still come to mind. But Willow’s actions make me think of her mom Jada, who fronted metal band Wicked Wisdom. Not a lot of women of color are associated with metal, which makes Laina Dawes writing on the subject exceptional before one even takes the quality of her work into account. Thus the video and clip also destabilize how we relate women and girls of color to genre.

7. If items #5 and #6 sound heavy, they don’t play out that way in the video. This looks like such a fun shoot.

8. Can more videos please have babies break-dancing?

Good on you, Willow!

17
Aug
10

Add Girls to the Front to your shelves

By Alyx Vesey 3 Comments
Categories: Feminist Music Geeks Open a Book
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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, which hit 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.

29
May
10

“Girl,” please

By Alyx Vesey Leave a Comment
Categories: Feminist Music Geeks Go to the Movies
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Girl; image courtesy of wikimedia.org

A few weeks back, I watched Jonathan Khan’s 1998 feature Girl for the first time with my friend Erik, who loved Blake Nelson’s young adult novel of same name as a teenager. He had the great idea of doing a grunge movie night, screening this one with Singles and Bodies, Rest & Motion, though I’d also like to through in Gas Food Lodging, as I haven’t yet seen it. Apparently, Girl suffered considerably as it transitioned into another medium.

Cover to "Girl" (Simon and Schuster, 1994); image courtesy of nogoodforme.filmstills.org

For one, it was released about four years too late, not accounting for a fickle market that, by 1998, tired of grunge and was starting to cultivate a backlash against The Spice Girls. It also drew obvious narrative parallels and stylistic similarities with ABC’s My So-Called Life, which made it feel all the more dated. For another, David E. Tolchinsky’s screenplay appoarently lost much of the novel’s singular tone that rallied many fans around the book. I worry that this may happen with Stephen Chbosky’s screen adaptation of his 1999 novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower, though my concerns also stem from finding the source material derivative and unworthy of much of the praise it recieved.

Finally, the end product itself was terrible, lacking especially in terms of writing, directing, and acting. Starring many B- and C-level actors like Portia de Rossi, Selma Blair, Tara Reid, Sean Patrick Flannery, Channon Roe, and Christopher Masterson, the film rests on Dominique Swain’s incapable shoulders. Remember when Swain beat out thousands of young actors for the title role in Adrian Lyne’s Lolita? How did that happen, exactly?

I almost thought about not writing an entry on Girl, as there was hardly anything positive to write about it. Privileged white girl Andrea Marr (Swain) inexplicably has everyone fall in love with her, including Brown University, square frenemy Darcy (Blair), rebel girl bassist Cybil (Reed), music journalist (Roe), and rock god Todd Sparrow (Flannery), even though she’s shallow, narcissistic, and not especially bright. The movie follows her last semester of high school, as she plants her freak flag to follow Sparrow and his band, The Color Green. She becomes his groupie for a while, but ultimately decides she’s putting his needs before her own and breaks up with him before starting college. Since I just read Pamela Des Barres’s I’m With the Band: Confessions of a Groupie for a Bitch entry on Zooey Deschanel’s efforts to adapt the memoir for an HBO series, groupies are on my mind.  

Also, I’ve decided to write a post on the movie because Kristen at Act Your Age and I were recently asked to give a guest lecture for an undergraduate class at UT Austin this summer. Since the course is on race representations in media culture, we’ll be focusing on whiteness and girlhood and movies and television shows that feature young cisgender female characters who are interested in music. Thus, Girl needs to be considered, if not for its individual merits, but to provide further context for the evolution of hipster girls and manic pixies dream girls during a period where post-riot grrrl was becoming post-feminist in teen movies. 

Summer Phoenix, center, with Jennifer Garner and Liv Tyler; image courtesy of instyle.com

An interesting contribution the movie provides is sidekick character Rebecca Fernhurst, played by Summer Phoenix. Intellectual, deadpan, more obsessed with records than boys or fashion, and already over the next big thing, Fernhurst in some ways recalls Daria Morgendorffer and anticipates Juno McGuff and Norah Silverberg. A running joke in the movie is that Fernhurst is the girl always out of frame in a picture while Marr is in the center. For this music geek, she’s the only character in focus.

18
May
10

My thoughts on Chloe Angyal’s Miley Cyrus post for Tiger Beatdown, or why I fight

By Alyx Vesey 4 Comments
Categories: Feminist Music Geeks Demand Political Action
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Betty Friedan; image courtesy of windycitymediagroup.com

Five days ago, Chloe Angyal wrote a piece for Tiger Beatdown entitled “Miley Cyrus < Betty Friedan: On the Search for a Feminist Pop Star.” Springboarding off The Frisky’s Jessica Wakeman’s assessment that Miley Cyrus’s new single and accompanying music video for “Can’t Me Tamed” is empowering for girls, Angyal chided some critics’ need to claim female celebrities who project even the slightest sense of self-empowerment as feminist. She also called into question whether or not feminism and pop culture can ever really go together. As a fan of the site (it’s on my blogroll), I of course read it and RTed (follow me @ms_vz).

I’m right with Angyal on most of this. I had just read Rachel Fudge’s essay “Girl, Unreconstructed: Why Girl Power is Bad for Feminism” that a Girls Rock Camp Austin volunteer forwarded, so I was certainly in the right headspace. The line “It’s tempting, but ultimately misguided, to try to make feminist mountains out of girl power molehills” particularly spoke to me. Also, I was also frustrated by Wakeman’s piece, as it assumed that pop music and MTV were the portals through which all girls take their cues, thus absenting girls who don’t have access, reject these offerings, or perhaps find some middle ground. Also, I thought the clip was a blatant attempt to reinvent a girl pop star into an “adult” artist who equates edge with wearing lingerie and smudged eyeliner.

However, I took issue with some of Angyal’s argument. Kristen at Act Your Age left a great comment outlining the lack of actual girls’ perspectives in feminist criticism. She also pointed out that pop music is still often assumed as the bad object against which punk and riot grrrl fought and superceded, a bias we confront in our work with GRCA by trying to dialog musical genres with one another in our music history workshops. But I thought I’d add a few additional concerns. Originally, I was going to post them as a comment to the article. However, it’s been nearly a week since the article was published — a lifetime in the blogosphere. Plus, I figured I could work through some of these issues here and reassert this blog as a communal space for feminist exchanges about music culture.

1. Angyal’s major critique seems to be less about who gets labeled a feminist role model and more toward who does the labeling. To me, she was lobbing her complaint at writers who want to argue the progressive powers of pop music with minimal consideration for enlightened sexism, capitalism, division of labor, corporate enterprising, branding, media saturation, and taste engineering cultivation. I say “here here.” But then I also do this sort of analysis myself. What’s more, I’d like to think I do it on both sides of the mainstream/underground divide, where the lines continue to blur. I know I don’t have the clout or name recognition of more prominent feminist bloggers, and perhaps I’ll cultivate it with time. But I’m here, and so is this blog.

I think Angyal might also be frustrated with how quick writers are to jump on Tweeting trends and topics that guarantee high SEOs. I may be projecting, as this is something that bothers me and I rebel against. Often, I find myself recalling and revisiting bygone or obscure texts to argue their historical merit or dialog them with the present. If I do write about current popular texts, I don’t have much interest in covering them quickly at the expense of evaluation time. I’m not sold on the idea that trends = cultural relevance any more than I am that Sleater-Kinney is inherently better than Nicki Minaj. While I have upon occasion covered a person or topic that was popular and got me some hits, I only did it when I felt I had critical insights to lend. Thus, it can be frustrating when I get traffic because a bunch of people were Googling Megan Fox, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Taylor Momsen, or Miley Cyrus, as has happened to Kristen. On the one hand, hits are great. But those figures are bloated and misleading and may misrepresent my work, because this blog has only sporadic concern with what’s of the moment. But when it does, I hope I treat it with a consistent critical rigor. After all, there truly is no perfect text.

2. Since there is contention between mainstream and indie culture, I’d like to point out that the matter of identifying as a feminist is just as much a concern in the underground and on the fringes of music culture as it is under the mainstream’s spotlight. As a feminist music geek who tends to root for the underdog, I’m often faced with the reality that many of the artists I love — indeed, many of the artists who pointed me toward feminism — don’t identify as feminists. Björk and PJ Harvey don’t, nor does Patti Smith. Rappers like Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, and many others don’t either, though for reasons that perhaps speak more to racial exclusion, as feminism tends to be a white women’s domain. There are many artists I like whose feminist politics I don’t have a grasp on, including forward-thinking women like Kate Bush, M.I.A., Joanna Newsom, and Janelle Monáe.

There are also artists who do identify as feminist who give me pause. Courtney Love has used feminism to validate her outspoken persona and rail against industry sexism. She has also used it to justify getting plastic surgery, an argument that I take issue with because it obscures class privilege, ingrained beauty standards, and weakens the political potential of choice. Lily Allen has employed the term at times, though her actions and behavior at times suggest that she extols the supposedly feminist virtues of being a brat. Lady Gaga is only starting to claim any identification with feminism. Even confirmed feminists like Sleater-Kinney, Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, Le Tigre, Gossip, and Yoko Ono — who I admire a great deal for their musical contributions and political convictions — should be subject to scrutiny and considered as individual feminists rather than as a monolithic representation of who a “good” feminist is.

Also, rather than considering pop music as an endpoint or part of a binary, it should be dialoged with other genres and mediums. Recently, Anna at Girls Rock Camp Houston dropped me a line asking about my thoughts on new criticism against Lady Gaga from Mark Dery and Joanna Newsom. As their criticisms questioned her supposed edginess, called out her obvious indebtedness to Madonna, and argued over a lack of musical songcraft, it immediately recalled recent sound bites from Michel Gondry, M.I.A., and Grace Jones deflating the pop star’s artistic inclinations.

I’m of two minds about these detractors’ comments. On the one hand, I still agree. In the year since I first posted about Gaga, I’ve essentially gathered greater nuance for the pop star while still arriving to the same conclusions. Save for a few hits (“Beautiful, Dirty, Rich,” “Bad Romance,” “Monster”), I still think her music is fairly boring and could have much more political bite than it actually does. I thought her American Idol performance of “Alejandro” was overblown. It’s also a fair point to bring up how Gaga lifts from other cultural texts, just as Madonna has throughout her career. And like Amanda Marcotte, I think there are lots of other interesting female musicians doing work we should be following. I mean, is it really a crime not to find Gaga interesting? Does Gaga have to be the female savior of pop music? Can we not look elsewhere? Also, in the cases of Newsom, M.I.A., and Jones, do we have to assume that their criticisms are just examples of female cattiness?

Yet something about these comments smacks of the idealized notion of art vs. commerce, with Gaga imitating one while supposedly embodying the latter. So, I call bullshit, because it’s not like these musicians and this video director don’t also dabble with both. Also, how would they speak of, say, Karen O, another female musician who makes femininity Marilyn Manson grotesque. Would they simply sniff that she did it before Gaga? Would they give her the point because she’s mocked art stars while also being one?

In short, feminism is tricky from all sides. It’s not one thing and it’s never perfect.

3. Finally, I follow commenter Tasha Fierce and take issue with Angyal’s supposition that Betty Friedan is an exemplar of feminism. She penned The Feminine Mystique and founded NOW. She also helped position feminism as a middle-class, college-education, white ladies’ game. She also referred to lesbian separatists as “the lavender menace,” though later recanted. Thus, just as I don’t want Miley Cyrus to be the ambassador for girl power, I don’t believe we should have one (straight, white, middle-class, adult, cisgender, able-bodied) female represent feminism. Let’s encourage discourse, even at the expense of comfort. Consider me a willing participant.

04
Apr
10

Why does Hayley Stark hate Goldfrapp?

By Alyx Vesey 2 Comments
Categories: Feminist Music Geeks Go to the Movies
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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.

03
Apr
10

My thoughts on “The Runaways”

By Alyx Vesey 6 Comments
Categories: Feminist Music Geeks Go to the Movies
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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.

Since music is such a personal thing to people — perhaps more personal than the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, although not for my mother — fandom, with or without its itinerant hero worship, identification, queerable desire, and morbid curiosity, is a critical component of music biopic reception. It’s why I saw Ray, Bird, Walk the Line, Coal Miner’s Daughter, La Vie en rose, Lady Sings the Blue, Impromptu, Sid and Nancy, Amadeus, I’m Not There, and 24-Hour Party People. It’s why I’ll see Control, The Rose, Notorious, Cadillac Records, De-Lovely, Grace of My Heart, What’s Love Got to Do With It?, Last Days, Sweet Dreams, What We Do Is Secret, Bound for Glory and a myriad of others regardless of what reviews they garnered. It’s why I’ll see Elijah Wood’s turn as Iggy Pop in The Passenger if it ever gets released. Ditto for the Jeff Buckley biopic, (preferably) with or without James Franco, should it ever get off the ground.

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.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. BUST's Girl Wide Web
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