so i am going to the pet shop, then i'm going out for a drink with, wait for it, A FRIEND.
i may have made a friend.
after the last 2 posts you will notice that i was starting to get a little bit annoyed by my essay, this always happens with essays.
and then it clicks in my brain and i stop worrying and start working, so for all of you who ave been wonderful enough to read through my mini ordeal i have a little treat for you.
below is my essay, i am proud of it. i hope you have fun reading it.
Nat.
Come for the music, stay for the fun.
Riot Grrrl is often misunderstood in the media and consequently the general public but what was the movement actually like and was it due to the media that it remained underground?
To put it very simply Riot Grrrl was a feminist movement. The subculture was partly a catalyst for the 3rd wave of feminism, though this is debateable, that happened in the early 1990’s. Its epicentre was Washington DC, USA and the movement has spanned an impressive 21 years although, even at its height in 1992, it has remained largely underground despite the fact that many members of the general public have heard of the movement even if they have not heard any of the music that came out of it, or participated in the subculture.
This is partly because of the way the movement was written about during its 4 year peak. The general media did not take kindly to the subculture or its music and so the Riot Grrrls were given a reputation equivalent to having a dark markŒ
Where Did Riot Grrrl Come From?
BECAUSE us girls crave records and books and fanzines
that speak to US that WE feel included in and can understand in our own ways.
- 1st Rule, taken from the Riot Grrrl Manifesto
Riot Grrrl finds its origins as far back as the late 1970s and 1980s from women who were members in punk or rock bands such as Siouxsie Sioux, Patti Smith and The Runaways. During the early 1980s New York City produced a number of female folksingers that wrote and sang about feminine issues while also addressing current social and political issues in a immensely personal way that the future riot grrrls, and anyone, could understand and relate to.
In 1987 the teen magazine Sassy launched, the magazine covered tough subjects that other teen magazines did not. The Riot Grrls will have been teenagers at the time of Sassy ‘s publishing. In 1989 Women, sex and rock and roll was published in the magazine Puncture and became one of the first manifestos of the movement.
In 1991 Your Dream Girl, a radio program hosted by Lios Maffeo debuted on the Olympia, Washington radio station KAOS. The program was aimed at angry young women.
During the early 1990s the Washington/Seattle/Olympia trio had adapted and embraced the ‘do it yourself’ punk ethos when it came to its music and the women participating in the underground music scenes took advantage and did it themselves, self publishing their feministic views in punk rock fanzines and forming garage bands. The punk movement at the time used fanzines, made out of printed and Xeroxed A4 sheets of paper, to activate underground music, leftist political views and alternative subcultures. However women in the area found that while they identified with the larger music orientated subcultures they did not have a voice in their own areas, so they became the voice by creating fanzines, music and art that got their views across. When riot Grrrl began female punks tended to be either lead singers in bands or groupies, this lead to the belief that women could not play music, they were only good as sex symbols. The women needed a way to show the men they were wrong, add this feeling with the DIY ethos and you can understand that the girls needed their own ways to be heard.
However it was a political event that was the starting point for Riot Grrrl. In 1990 there were 2 specific political events that caused the feminist young women of Seattle, Washington and Olympia to get mad, and speak out about it. In what was the unofficial response to the Christian Coalitions Right To Life attack on the right to legal abortion and the Senate Judiciary Hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas$ many young women’s voices spoke out in protest to the events through organised protests, actions and events, that later became part of a larger organized consciousness. In late 1991 this consciousness and understanding and anger over women’s rights and issues snowballed, it came together and grew tall and became Riot Grrrl.
There has been wild arguments as to who actually came up with the name for the subculture, the most believed argument is that in the summer of 1991 Allison Wolfe, Molly Neuman, Kathleen Hanna and Tobi Vail collaborated together to form a fanzine called Riot Grrrl however the term Grrrl had first appeared in Vail’s fanzine in the phrase “Revolution Grrrl Style Now”. Its true origins are from early Bratmobile member Jen Smith. It was the Mount Pleasant race riots in the spring of 1991 that prompted Smith to write Allison Wolfe a letter stating that ‘this summer is gonna be a girl riot’, shortly after Wolfe, Neuman, Hanna and Vail started Riot Grrrl.
Who Were the Riot Grrrl’s?
BECAUSE we wanna make it easier for girls to see/hear each other's work so that we can share strategies and criticize-applaud each other.
- 2nd rule, taken from the Riot Grrrl Manifesto
BECAUSE we must take over the means of production in order to create our own moanings.
- 3rd rule, taken from the Riot Grrrl Manifesto
Perhaps the biggest misconception of the genre is not the picture painted by the media, it’s the idea that Courtney Love was at the epicentre of the movement. Courtney Love is famous for a handful of things and one of them is the band Hole, for which she is the singer. She did make angry music and she did dress in the Kinderwhore style that became popular with certain people and bands during the movement, probably because of Love. She is also famous for marrying grunge icon Kurt Cobain, she is thought to have killed him. She has been a drug addict and she is still making waves and music today but Riot Grrrl she is not.
‘Look, you've got these highly intelligent imperious girls, but who told them it was their undeniable American right not to be offended? Being offended is part of being in the real world. I'm offended every time I see George Bush on TV! And, frankly, it wasn't very good music’ – Courtney Love, Spin Magazine October 2005
Love went on record several times and slandered the movement, saying that the Riot Grrrls were hypocritical is what they believed and what the practised, she also went on record about her non existent and rocky relationship with Kathleen Hanna.
‘I still don't like her. She bugs me. Kathleen Hanna runs that ship [her relationship with Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz] in a way that is far more Yoko than I would be. I envision her being in a decked-out loft with a little corner for a desk that look like it belongs in a poor person's East Village apartment, with her battered-women's stuff and her Ms. magazines and all her communication with leading feminists. I really liked [drummer] Tobi [Vail] and Kathleen in the beginning, and then I just thought they were hypocrites’. – Courtney Love, Spin Magazine, October 2005
Love also never participated in any of the subculture ‘requirements’, she never produced or even wrote for any of the zines involved and she never set up events or protests, she was part of the genre, but not part of the movement.
So who was the sugar mama of the Riot Grrrl movement?
Kathleen Hanna was born in Portland, Oregon and attended college in Olympia. It was here that she first encountered activism and censorship on a personal level. Hanna studied photography and her first exhibition dealt with sexism and aids, however the school took down the exhibition before it was viewed, this prompted Hanna to set up an art gallery where she, and other people could show their work without fear of being censored. To keep the gallery running she would let bands plan shows there before exhibitions opened, it was during this time, in the late 1980’s that Hanna formed her first band with gallery partners Heidi Arbogast and Tammy Rae Carland called Amy Carter. It was around this time that Hanna started to participate in spoken word shows, speaking about sexism and violence againt women, an area of interest to her after volunteering at a domestic violence organisation but it was counterculture icon Kathy Acker that told Hanna it was easier to get the message across through music, rather than spoken word so Hanna sought out the help of Punk Zinester Tobi Vail after seeing The Go Team, an early band that Vail was in, and recognising that Vail was the mastermind behind the popular zine Jigsaw, which she admired.
Hanna and Vail made a fanzine before they made a band, the fanzine was called ‘Revolution Girl Style Now’ and let to a later zine called Bikini Kill’. Which was a response to the sexist views of punk. Bikini Kill featured writings from Hanna, Vail and their partner Kathi Wilcox. The 3 eventually formed a band, taking the name of the band directly from the name of their now popular fanzine. Bikini Kill soon became a very popular band in Olympia and so in the summer of 1991 the band travelled to Washington DC to meet up with like-minded people and show off their band.
Kathleen Hanna is one of the true icons of Riot Grrrl, protesting, campaigning and empowering women to this day and sharing this spot is fellow band mate Tobi Vail.
Vail was born in Washington and came from a musical family so she started to play music early in her childhood, it was not until she started college in Olympia that she started to write, sing and protest about a number of womens rights. She started a zine called Jigsaw which led to her mmeting with Vail and Wilcox and starting the band she would become best known for, Bikini Kill.
‘When Bikini Kill first started people reacted to what we did very strongly - either they really loved it or they really hated it, and a lot of times that was kinda hard to deal with, especially just starting out. I thought we would just be asking questions, and people saw us as 'dogmatic'...I didn't see it that way. Maybe our presentation was sort of dogmatic because every show we played was like a war, cos guys would try to beat us up and stuff, it was really violent...we had a lot of fans and we didn't have any crowd control, we didn't have a manager, we'd just play these crazy places like bowling alleys and then cram like 600 people in there, you know, no security’
- Tobi Vail, The Riot Grrrl Retrospective
Riot Grrrl was not just for girls though and many of the Riot Grrrl bands included male members, however the movement was mostly followed by white females aged between 18 – 25, the majority of the followers were from middle class backgrounds, normal families and normal worlds but many of them had secrets in their past, or views on the world that they could not share in a normal society. Many of them had been brought up in Christian families, thought there is no comment on whether religion was a defining factor it is understood that religion was neither a bad thing or a good thing and no real lyrical content from the genre contains religious comments. Fashion was not a huge thing in the movement, many of the girls wore jeans and baggy t-shirts often with whimsical things screen printed onto them, though there is a style of dress called Kinderwhore that is thought to have emerged out of Riot Grrrl. The style is part traditional schoolgirl, part Japanese Lolita, part prostitute and part thrift store chic. Kinderwhore is mostly candy colours with bitten nails, knee high socks, ripped baby doll dresses, Mary Jane’s, messed up hair and smeared make up, a style popularised by Courtney Love. Riot Grrrls were thought to use this style as a way of sexing up a little girl image, which correlates to some of the lyrical content used that speaks about experiences that the artists had as a child.
For some it was about finding sister musicians, for some it was a place to process and talk about experiences of rape of violence and for others it provided a channel to respond to the countries conservative backlash with guerrilla art projects and shared resources.
Dragging Feminism into the Mosh Pitð
The media did not take too kindly to Riot Grrrl, turning everything written about it and by it into a joke. The general consensus is that the movement was too radical and took on subjects that popular publications would not touch with a barge pole and so the wonderful zines of Riot Grrrl were treated as nothing but a joke.
There were a lot of very important ideas that I think the mainstream media couldn't handle, so it was easier to focus on the fact that these were girls who were wearing barrettes in their hair or writing 'slut' on their stomach.
- Sharon Cheslow, EMP’s Riot Grrrl Retrospective
It was the media that eventually spelled out Riot Grrrl’s demise and the attention rose to its peak in 1992 with many of the pioneering women of the subculture calling for a press block after their personal lives were thrust into front page news with false headlines, the press relied on either false or speculation when it came to the personal lives and motivations of the Riot Grrrls.
It was not just the personal lives of the girls involved that became a national newspaper plaything, the entire ethos of the movement, the idea that women could and would speak about whatever they wanted, wherever they wanted, without fear of being laughed at or ignored was taken unfairly by the press and many people felt that the cultures message was being marginalized by the press.
A lot of times we have been asked why we don’t do interviews very often if we are so concerned with being misrepresented. To us this seems obvious... it is mostly based on our experiences. As a rule we don’t do interviews with maninstream newspapers or magazines. In the few cases where we did do them we fell like we were totally fucked over by the way our words were framed to back up ideas that weren’t our own.
- Taken From Jigsaw #5 ½
The press coverage of the genre got so bad that bands like Bikini Kill, L7, and Bratmobile refused to do any kind of interview, which was counter productive when it came to the ethos of the movement. This coupled with resignations from people like Jessica Hopper spelled the demise for the movement.
What did it sound like?
For the most part Riot Grrrl sounded angry, dirty, sloppy and badly recorded. The lyrical content used ranges from rape, abuse and sexism to shouting insults at boys.
Speaking about the subcultures feeling towards boys Molly Neuman once summarized: "We're not anti-boy, we're pro-girl”. This was, and still is one of the biggest misconceptions about feminism as a whole, the idea that if you’re a feminist you do not like boys.
The music its self is very simply put together, even Bikini Kill’s record label released songs were of a very poor quality, however on first listen the songs of the Riot Grrrls are not as scary as they seem. The songs may address scary subjects but the recordings themselves are not as thrashy as punk, Riot Grrrl the genre is like Punk rock by FlumpÅ, a little bit lighter on your ears.
Guitars are overdriven, but not to the point of distortion, the vocals are usually growly, but not to the point of thrash metals screaming and the drums are prominent, but they are nothing like the 5 minute drum solo’s of Slipknot. The chords that are used during the songs are very simple, and the song structure generally sticks to the pop song verse chorus verse structure.
Read all about it! Read all about it!
So was it the media’s fault? Did the misinterpretations and the lies of the media kill the scene?
Yes.
The media painted Riot Grrrl in a very grim picture, twisting words that bands said and taking interviews, essays, fanzines and lyrics out of context. The media turned the bands against each other by taking comments from members about other bands and making them sound catty and bitchy, when they were not intended that way. The media also took advantage of these young women by deliberately printing personal things such as real names, places of work and personal experiences that were told to the media in confidence. Riot Grrrls naivety may have been its downfall.
The reason that Riot Grrrl stayed so underground was due to a number of things, its epicentre being one of them. The movement never strayed further than Washington, Olympia and Seattle (although in seattle it was largely overshadowed by its male counterpart Grunge) which meant that the only way the public could really find out about the movement was through the media as the internet was not as big a part of normal life as it is now and because the media painted a grim picture about the movement that’s what the people of the world believed. The publics naivety may also be Riot Grrrls downfall.
There was also Grunge to take into account. Grunge and Riot Grrrl existed around the same time but it was Grunge that won the hearts of the world and Riot Grrrl that stayed in on a Friday night, twiddling its thumbs and reading about women’s rights. Courtney love is also partly to blame, as she was not the media’s favourite person and Love was closely associated with the genre.
There is also the publics feelings about feminism, which even today are a little hostile with most people believing that feminists are butch lesbians who burn their bra’s and don’t shave their legs, Riot Grrrl was defiantly not like that. The Riot Grrrl’s were active, self-riotous women who were creative and ambitious, they paved the way for New Feminism, Girl Power, The Spice Girls and countless current girl bands and female artists, writers, bloggers and women in general who all sight their influences as the angry Grrrls with their Mary Jane’s who stomped around Seattle, pushing their self made tapes, magazines and work shops. Riot Grrrl may have been a short lived thing, but it has indirectly affected millions of lives whether the women of the world, who have a right to abortion, health care, and free speech know it or not. It is this legacy that makes me proud to be a Riot Grrrl.
ΠThe Dark Mark was tattooed onto followers of the character Voldemort who is the bad guy in the Harry Potter series of stories by J.K Rowling.
$During which Anita Hill, a former college and professor of social policy, law and women’s studies, accused Thomas of making provocative and harassing sexual statements while under oath. Hill, as a result of the accusations, was mocked by the media.
, The band L7, who were a popular Riot Grrrl band, hosted the event Rock For Choice in October in 1991. The event is designed for musicians to help support the pro choice movement, however attendants of the concert are encouraged to speak out about a number of women’s issues. The event still runs today.
ð audience members at gigs push and shove eachother around in the name of entertainment, to experience one visit a metal or punk gig in your area and let your anger out.
Å A flump is a type of marshmallow that is usually sold at newsagents and sweetshops, its long and twisty and will make you smile.
(The HTML did not transfer well, its my shoddy copy and paste technique)
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