This is Part 3 out of Part 5 of “Women In Resistance Through The Means Of Music” thesis written by Jamie Alvis.
CHAPTER III
THE RIOT GRRRLS
Now that I have elaborated on the start of women in resistance through the means of
music, I will now discuss the next generation of women in resistance. In this chapter I
will be looking at the Riot Grrrl movement. I shall highlight the symbolic bands and
key figures involved in the initial beginnings of the movement such as Bikini Kill and
Bratmobile and thus discuss why such a female-centric movement was relevant and
where it obtained its influences. I shall be drawing from a range of relevant texts as
these figures have been written about quite widely. Interestingly enough, during my
research into the Riot Grrrls, I established that the ‘Riot Grrrl’ phenomenon actively
continues here in 2008, perhaps in a much more commercial sense than when it began
in 1991, nevertheless I shall briefly discuss this later on and introduce one of its
members who contributed to one of the leading internet sites which is used by
women and adolescents who consider themselves as ‘Riot Grrrls’ as well as follow
some of the traditional ethics. I will also elaborate on the work of Hebdige (1979)
who proposed that subcultures are predominately working class. So therefore by
incorporating Hebdige’s ideas, it will provide some exceptional theoretical
background with past debates in the field of arts and thus subcultures. It is essential to
discuss Riot Grrrl in relation to the late 1970’s Punk as it follows similar principles of
women’s feminist rebellion against patriarchal norms through music, as well as
potentially being understood as including tropes from the Avant Garde and
situationist style/approach, essentially a Punk ‘Do-It-Yourself’ aesthetic and ideology
predominately for women in this context. It would also be beneficial to note here that
the ‘Riot Grrrl’ concept was predominately active within the Indie and Punk genres, it
did not quite reach out to the mainstream Pop world back in its initial form and this is
what was intended by the principle ethics of the movement. I shall then look into how
the media intervened with the Riot Grrrl ideology and exploited and thus disrupted
the
movement through bad publicity in which their small and meaningful community
eventually became known as a subculture for feminist man-haters. It would also be
sufficient to note here and thus discuss later on that the Riot Grrrls have been
arguably understood within the framework or values of second wave of feminism as
their practices are underpinned by a similar set of ideas. Driscoll argues that “Riot
Grrrl thus re-articulates the tension between group identity and individualism which
characterises twentieth-century feminism more widely” (Driscoll. 1999:211).
However ‘waves’ will not be a priority field of study in this dissertation. Although I
must emphasise the words of the University of the West of England lecturer Mark
Bould “The problem with defining feminism by waves is that, it tends to assume there
are clear breaks between them, so there’s a lot of second wave feminism still going
on…clearly the dominant forms of feminism or at least the ones that circulate in most
obviously academic circles and popular circles are varieties of third wave feminism”
(Bould, M. 2008). Bould clearly rejects categorisation of feminist waves and certainly
in the context of Riot Grrrl 1991.
BIKINI KILL
Initially discussing how Riot Grrrl was conceptualized and thus categorized it would
be invaluable to give an explanation of what it entailed before the term came along.
The key figures to mention here are Kathleen Hanna, Kathi Wilcox and Tobi Vail
who worked together to produce the fanzine entitled Bikini Kill. This documented and
thus provided detailed information on the local bands that were circulating in Oregon,
the same location in which these figures attended University to read photography and
film (Vail had no formal education, but was an experienced musician and feminist
theorist in that she placed ideas and personal theories within the lyrics of Bikini Kill).
The general idea of the fanzine was to publicize their political ideals in a low-tech and
low-cost fashion. Aesthetically the ‘zine’ was constructed to demonstrate its rawness
and Punk-like montage of pictures and cuttings. The consumers of Bikini Kill and
indeed the writers belonged within a small Punk and Indie subculture community but
had no voice being women, in terms of music, so the ‘zine’ essentially acted as
medium in which their vocalization could be heard and thus create a community of
like-minded women. Many ‘zines’ circulated such as My Super Secret in which
messages and stories of rape would be placed, so it wasn’t just predominately Bikini
Kill that adolescents and women read. Hanna, Wilxcox and Vail would eventually
name their influential band Bikini Kill after their ‘zine’.
Example of the ‘zine’ low-tech production
“The most influential Riot Grrrl band is Bikini Kill” (Driscoll, 1999:209). They also
created the slogan “Revolution Girl Style Now” which was also the title of their first
album/demo on cassette tape, which was an evident political message that suggested
that women were frustrated by the male-centric music industry, they simply wanted to
be heard and thus recognised as important people just like men, rather than objectified
and represented as inadequate people which is how the media would destroy them.
Catherine Driscoll briefly summarizes the main objective and aspiration of Riot
Grrrls. “The Riot Grrrls interrogate dominant discourses on femininity – they aim to,
as they put it, ‘smash the mask’. They interrogate patriarchal and feminist gender
roles and both American society and international recording industries” (Driscoll,
1991: 213). A Riot Grrrl manifesto was released to the community and explained
what the movement required to make significance, although I have not included
further information on this as the original manifestos are rare to come by and
certainly in the United Kingdom. “The Riot Girl manifesto (a rushed, two-page
document that’s constantly being revised) declares, “We seek to create revolution in
our own lives everyday by envisioning and creating alternatives to the bullshit
Christian capitalist way of doing things.”. They urge their members to “resist psychic
death” and “cry in public” … “all girls to be in bands”… “girls rule all towns.” …even
encourage women to arm themselves” (McDonnell and Powers, 1995:397).
So as McDonnell and Powers suggest here the Riot Grrrls sought to completely
challenge men in everyway possible. The authors argued that their aim was “to form a
life away from men and invent girl culture” (McDonnell and Powers, 1995:397). The
Bikini Kill audio cassette itself was produced by Calvin Johnson who operated an
independent record label named K Records. The ‘K’ motto is “Exploding the teenage
underground into passionate revolt against the corporate ogre since 1982”. As the
motto suggests the idea of commercialization in music should be fought against.
Johnson produced many demos of bands based in Olympia that offered a political
message and for the bands who wanted positive cultural and social change, artists that
he recorded ranged from Hole, Bratmobile and Pansy Division, the former band here
established the ‘Queercore’ genre, which ultimately entailed a social and cultural
movement that was pro-gay and lesbian.
Bikini Kill in 1991 recording their demo tape
So just by this example and of course Bikini Kill, it is evident that Johnson was a
significant character in the early days of what is now known as ‘Riot Grrrl’
movement an obvious supporter of nonmainstream and politically inflected music.
“The Label has been so influential in anti-corporate independent music and
underground DIY punk culture” (K Records Online). The early 1990’s was a struggle
for women’s vocalization that had potential to change society. Bikini Kill’s ‘Rebel
Girl’ track openly discusses that there is indeed an urge for a revolution and that
women alone are able to establish a social and cultural transformation with no
indication of men taking place in this desire.
“When she talks, the revolutions coming
In her hips, there’s revolution
When she talks, I hear the revolution
In her kiss, I taste the revolution”
Rebel Girl is also known as the anthem of Riot Grrrl. “While Riot Grrrls war over
representing themselves in any way, the track ‘Rebel Girl’ by Bikini Kill is often
discussed as the Riot Grrrl anthem” (Driscoll, 1990: 209). As the lyrics suggest in
verse two of Rebel Girl it is predominately a female-centric desire for revolution. The
final lines of verse two “In her kiss, I taste the revolution” opens up a potential arena
for discussion on lesbianism and Riot Grrrl as there has been work published on this
such as the work of Mary Celeste Kearney and her essay entitled “The Missing Links:
Riot Grrrl – Feminism – lesbian culture” (in Sexing the Groove, Whiteley, 1997).
However in the context of this chapter I shall not be discussing that field. The lyrics
to
Rebel Girl indicate as a critique of heteronormativity sexual relations and sexual
desires that is present in ‘Pop’ music, where lyrics are bounded around the
heterosexuality relationship ideology or of course lust. For example Kylie Minogue’s
1991 single Better the Devil You Know. This heterosexual ideology is evident here in
verse two:
“Woh woh woh
Our love wasn’t perfect I know
I think I know the score
If you say you love me, oh boy
I’ll come if you should call”
The music video that accompanied Minogue’s Better the Devil You Know reinforces
this argument over the heterosexuality ideology as it features Minogue ‘in love’ with
a man. Whereas Bikini Kill’s ‘Rebel Girl’ accompanying music video features no sign
or indication of this, but rather a critique on what ‘Pop’ music entailed around this
time. Rebel Girl is resisting this by applying some kind of female revolution at work,
where each female portrayed is in military-type uniform and have complete control, it
is also of interest as it has colonial content, where the native women are being
dominated by this all-female army.
HEBDIGE AND SUBCULTURE SOCIAL CLASS
Dick Hebdige in his book Subculture: The Meaning of Style discusses specific
subcultures of the post World War Two period and their resistance against the
existing power structures – “the challenge to hegemony which subcultures represent
is not issued directly by them. Rather it is expressed obliquely in style” (Hebdige,
1978: 17). Hebdige imposes this ambiguous idea on every subculture that he surveys,
rather than researching into each subculture in depth, he is announcing this as a
general point that he believes to be relevant to them all. The Riot Grrrls were of
course a ‘subculture’ but they focused more on lyrical content and political activism
rather than strictly ‘style’, although they did have a ‘style’ it was not as radical as
Punk was, it was a basic ‘style’ that worked on desexualising sexual objectivity.
Kathleen Hanna would eventually wear tee-shirts of topless masculine men and
challenge that idea whilst performing (picture available below). The initial Riot Grrrl
meetings would entail women within this subculture looking very basic. “Most are
dressed in Olympia girl style: short-cropped, dyed hair; wadded-up vintage dresses;
bright Woolworth’s lipstick” (McDonnell and Powers, 1995: 398). In terms of what
materialized after the early meetings and into the shows, the fans would wear Riot
Grrrl tee-shirts as indication and identification of what they belonged to and the
ideology they believed in. The claim that Hebdige made here has some relevance to
Punk of 1976, but on the contrary the lyrical content is directly represented by them
as a challenge to hegemony. Hebdige also announced that all subcultures are
predominately working class. This theory has been since proved inaccurate since
Hanna and Wilcox attended University, gaining them a middle-class status, not to
mention the symbolic middle class women in the middle-nineteen-seventies Punk
such as Vivienne Westwood who again had an education and created an avant garde
style/fashion for the London Punk subculture. In relation to Westwood, Hanna and
Wilcox had a neutral idea in using education as a means of change. Below are two
examples of my argument.
Vivienne Westwood (1970s) Kathleen Hanna (1990s)
THE INTERNATIONAL UNDERGROUND FESTIVAL 1991
The International Underground convention was a six day festival in August 1991.
It was a six day event consisting of bands, who wanted cultural and social change,
essentially using the festival to revolt against corporate music. The opening of the
first night was entitled Girl Rock Revolution. It was predominately a girls night, in
which
the women would have complete freedom without being criticised, this was thus a
great opportunity for women with similar ideas and desires to articulate what they
wanted and how to achieve. The activists Allison Woolfe and Molly Neuman (who
also produced the ‘zine’ Girl Germs and wrote a manifesto for the movement)
played the Girl Rock Revolution with their band Bratmobile who played amongst
many other female performers. This, then, was a space to celebrate women’s
collective experience and a space for women to exchange disempowered feelings. The
desired revolution and thus ‘girl culture’ was limited to have events such as this
where
women took control. “Maybe the girl revolution won’t take shape in the public
world,
the world of men – it won’t happen out on the street, where girls aren’t safe. Maybe it
will begin in a private, enclosed space men never enter, that generic space women
enter and leave, often together” (McDonnell and Powers, 1995: 396). Such an event
as this certainly built confidence in women’s voice and gained recognition of what
they were trying to achieve. This event appears to be as important for the movement
as the Punk festival of 1976 that I discussed in chapter two. The Girl Rock Revolution
for some seemed as though the movement was becoming a fact rather than a dream
that these individuals wrote about in their ‘zines’. “Many Riot Girls see that night as a
kind of beginning” (McDonnell and Powers, 1995:398).
MEDIA AND EXPLOITATION
As the Riot Grrrl movement was becoming recognised as a valid entity, the media
intervened and (some say) destroyed the small community that began in Olympia,
Washington. The media misinterpreted the message that the community were trying
to
get across and thus made the movement look less significant and meaningful than it
actually was. “The sense that we all had of something being taken away from us…by
the media or people wanting something from us was really, really terrifying”
(YouTube, Riot Grrrl Retrospective).There was a point that the media exploited the
Riot Grrrls in the sense of using them to make money, not only did the media exploit
but also misinterpreted the message in a very negative way for the public eye to begin
suspicious that this movement was an outrageous and mindless thing. “I think it was
deliberate that we were made to look like we were just ridiculous girls running around
in our underwear. They refused to do serious interviews with us, they misinterpreted
what we had to say, they took our articles and our fanzines and our essays out of
context. We wrote a lot about sexual abuse and sexual assault for teenagers and
women…those were important messages that the media never addressed” (YouTube,
Riot Grrrl Retrospective).
My research into the Riot Grrrl Olympia Washington movement has gained much
more evidence into one of my questions – the music industry has behaved in an
apparently sexist manner working to undermine the radical and political intentions of
this movement. Just like women in Punk in the middle to late nineteen-seventies, the
frustration of women led to resistance against the patriarchal ideologies. Indeed what
the Riot Grrrls aimed to achieve and certainly in Bikini Kill was a complete woman’s
revolution that rejected the help of the male to get there. In some respects this was
contradictory as Johnson of ‘K Records’ was evidently male and indeed placed them
on the music circuit. The help of the festival brought the community of Riot Grrrl into
realization that a movement and thus revolution was achievable. The media was a
significant part of the movement’s downfall and how they represented women and
their apparent hatred towards men. By continuously pursuing their representation of
these figures as ‘men-haters’ they failed to provide a platform from which to
publicise their aims. A similarity also that Punk had created power through small
communities and sought for social and cultural change, the media intervened with
their ideas and represented them as invalid and a bad influence to adolescents. A new
generation of Riot Grrrl (or allegedly) remains here in 2008 which I will discuss in
the final chapter of this dissertation.
