Friday, August 24, 2012

From Pussy Riot, a lesson in the power of #Punk | The Guardian

From Pussy Riot, a lesson in the power of punk

Putin may have more serious critics, but Pussy Riot have shown the west how artistic dissent can still make a difference

Members of Pussy Riot sit in a glass cage during their trial in Moscow
'Pussy Riot are an object lesson in what cultural provocation can do, while orthodox politics and protest too often remain impotent'. Photograph: Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images

The heritage of protest and provocation on which Nadezhda Tolokonnikova was drawing was confirmed as soon as I saw her picture. The hair cut into a functional bob, the "No Pasaran" T‑shirt with the clenched-fist logo, her leading place in a band-cum-collective called Pussy Riot – it was as if she had been plucked from the Anglo-American subculture known as riot grrrl circa 1992, and dropped into modern Russia.

This time, though, the surrounding contexts had been changed beyond recognition. As with their antecedents, Pussy Riot are young feminists with a scattershot critique of their society, but their chosen target and awful predicament place them almost in a different universe – as proved when Tolokonnikova and her two co-defendants laughed as they were given their two-year sentences. You could call such behaviour "cool", but in this instance, another word is surely required: one that mixes jaw-dropping bravery with impossible insouciance, and has – as far as I know – yet to be invented.

In the west, we seem to have forgotten that popular culture once produced people who thought it was their duty to decry some of the most ingrained aspects of their societies, and thereby become lightning-rods for dissent. But the rise to prominence of Tolokonnikova et al proves that outside the UK and US, old ideas can assume new shapes and actually take on even greater power (and survive even an endorsement from that cause-squashing menace Madonna, which takes some doing).

To be a mohican-wearing punk in London is to be a kitsch throwback – but in Indonesia or Burma, it can put you on the receiving end of heinous treatment from the authorities. Similarly, in London or Los Angeles, the legacy represented by Pussy Riot can perhaps only be glimpsed in an abiding strain of female fashion you can buy on any high street, whereas in Russia it will soon be on display in a penal colony.

So, some history. Riot grrrl was the work of a handful of people in Olympia, Washington, and Washington DC, who sought to update punk rock – and, with the US religious right in full cry and women's rights under attack, apply its noise and fury to the politics of gender. Initially, Riot Grrrl was the title of a fanzine put together by four women who would soon form two bands, Bikini Kill and Bratmobile. The former remain a byword for what followed: the aggression and power of what its makers called "boy rock" being rechannelled by proud feminists, and unapologetic celebrations of the worldview of the female adolescent (hence "grrrl").

In the UK, the torch was carried by a mixed-gender band called Huggy Bear, who made one unimpeachably brilliant record – Her Jazz, released in 1993 – and gained brief renown for protesting on-screen against the moronic sexism of the woeful Channel 4 show The Word, before they quickly disappeared. For a brief moment, they had the music industry terrified that they knew the shape of the future but had no intention of giving it away.

Obviously, compared with Pussy Riot, these people's targets were almost comically modest and their supposed subversion often reducible to radical chic, but the lines that link the two upsurges are obvious. Pyotr Versilov – Tolokonnikova's husband, and thanks to his fluency in English, one of Pussy Riot's key spokespeople – acknowledges that the collective's name "is a reference to the riot grrrl movement that arose in the United States in the early 1990s, based on a concept of feminine strength, not weakness".

In an interview published by Vice magazine five months ago, a Pussy Riot member who identified herself as Garadzha said that "a lot of credit certainly goes to Bikini Kill and the bands in the riot grrrl act [sic] – we somehow developed what they did in the 1990s, although in an absolutely different context and with an exaggerated political stance". Listen to the new Pussy Riot song they have titled Putin Lights Up the Fires – premiered by the Guardian last Friday. All screeched vocals and granite-hard guitar, it's a product of exactly the same aesthetic.

Such comparisons, however, shrink next to a much more powerful point. Like the original proponents of riot grrrl, only a thousand times more so, Pussy Riot are an object lesson in what cultural provocation can do, while orthodox politics and protest too often remain impotent – a point always lost on those who would restrict dissent to the usual staid norms. On last Friday's Radio 4 Today programme, the historian Robert Service played his part to perfection, pompously advising the BBC to "get some sense of proportion". On he grumped: "There are really serious critics of Vladimir Putin in Russia who deserve our attention much more than these three misguided young feminist rock musicians who have desecrated a cathedral."

That may be so, but history suggests that it's the allegedly "misguided" who often make the biggest waves. There were critics of De Gaulle's France who may have had a greater claim to serious attention than the enrages of May 1968, and republicans who had a more coherent take on the toxicity of 1977's jubilee celebrations than the Sex Pistols, who so gloriously spoiled the celebrations with a single titled God Save the Queen. But in both cases, it took the daring and creativity of cultural outsiders to crystallise the sense that their societies were not just hopelessly conflicted, but in no shape to go on as they were.

Politics is about increment and compromise; in the cultural sphere, you are free to be as exacting and impossiblist as you please, and thereby say and do things that the moment actually demands. And look what can happen: as the aftershocks of the Pussy Riot case ripple on, even some of Putin's allies do not know where to look. "Our image in the eyes of the world is getting closer to a medieval dictatorship, though we are not that," says one of the president's loudest media cheerleaders: the mask that covers power at its most cynical looks to have slipped, at least.

What does all this tell us? That the Anglo-American world still sleeps, having sent forth cultural archetypes that have exploded all over the world. That in some places, culture actually still matters. And that in the macho dystopia of Putin's Russia, where everything cultural is political and vice versa, three remarkable women have gone to prison to prove it.

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  • farga

    19 August 2012 7:33PM

    What does all this tell us? That the Anglo-American world still sleeps, having sent forth cultural archetypes that have exploded all over the world. That in some places, culture actually still matters

    this really tells us nothing!
    The reason why "Pussy Riot" doesn't teach us in the west much, is because we don't lock people up in jail for several years for making political statements in churches!

  • angelinterceptor

    19 August 2012 7:40PM

    As an non British outsider I don't recall the celebrations of 1977 being spoiled by the Pistols. You were 8 years old at the time or was that the received wisdom at your alma mater, Keble College Oxford?

  • davidabsalom

    19 August 2012 7:41PM

    So, what change did the Sex Pistols effect? The Queen's still there. Youth unemployment is worse. There are more public schoolboys in the government than there were 35 years ago.

  • Objectify

    19 August 2012 7:44PM

    ...the Sex Pistols, who so gloriously spoiled the celebrations with a single titled God Save the Queen.

    Erm, they didn't. In fact, the street parties round my way completely forgot to consider them.

  • christichun

    19 August 2012 7:44PM

    Another event, another writer displays their cognitive bias

    John, talk us through the sex pistols spoiling the 1977 jubilee please.

  • JohnnyNunsuchReborn

    19 August 2012 7:47PM

    Similarly, in London or Los Angeles, the legacy represented by Pussy Riot can perhaps only be glimpsed in an abiding strain of female fashion you can buy on any high street,

    They're selling hippy wigs in Woolworths,man.

  • AlPanto

    19 August 2012 7:47PM

    Steady on now, you can be sent to chokey for four years in UK for improper use of the word riot.

  • Arapas

    19 August 2012 7:49PM

    Tolokonnikova and her two co-defendants laughed as they were given their two-year sentences.


    Does that count as contempt of court? In the UK it definitely does and gives a six month top up as a reward.

    That in some places, culture actually still matters.

    Very much so ! That is why after the war, when colonies asked for their freedom, we could not understand their culture from London and they had to fight to achieve it.

  • Foster6the6imposter6

    19 August 2012 7:50PM

    I agree with the thrust of this article...

    Sadly too many of the original generation of punks would rather protest for more CCTV in the UK than anarchy! Funny how so many who claim the credentials of the class of 77 now fear any new wave spreading rebellious wings....

    Yet dissent is essential for a healthy society...but it seems its expression is becoming ever more intolerable for the rump of reactionaries and vested interested now at the helm...

  • tomnugaret

    19 August 2012 7:52PM

    This is interesting. I wonder if it is because they are part of the cultural set. I think that when the conditions are right nearly anything unusual and shocking can have a bigger effect than might have ordinarily expected.

    In Algeria the vegetable seller self-immolated at the right time and others had the presence of mind to use his action to stir people up. In Russia the discontent has been growing beneath the surface for some time now, so that even such people as Kseniya Sobchak realised that it was worth it to take a risk and become activists of a sort (some people will say it is not opportunism, she truly believes in what she is doing, maybe they are right).

    These girls have just done something controversial and shocking, but they just happen to be pop musicians, the same effect could have been achieved by nearly any other person or group of people doing something unusual and shocking.

  • Valten78

    19 August 2012 7:53PM

    Punk had some great tunes and sold allot of T-shirts. But lets not pretend it changed anything outside of the realm of music.

  • Arapas

    19 August 2012 7:54PM

    The reason why "Pussy Riot" doesn't teach us in the west much, is because we don't lock people up in jail for several years for making political statements in churches!

    Obviously you never followed the story. It seems You just joined in.
    This matter has been politicised for whatever reason.

    The fact that they went to jail on a lenient sentence is for blasphemy and nothing to do with Putin as some will have us believe.

  • winningthebigone

    19 August 2012 7:55PM

    But many of us pointed out what was happening in Russia well before this case. The readership of your own paper called us 'American shills' and 'Cold Warriors'. Strangely, it took these girls being sent to a 'penal colony' (work camp) for many others to see it. By the way, the opposition leader was arrrested for trying to attend a protest supporting the group. Then Kasparov was 'detained' and beaten-up.

    Not sure how much difference any of this makes to Western attitudes though. If you check out Cohens piece you will see just how much support and respect Putin has in the West. Ironically most of it coming from leftists.

    More importantly though, attitudes in the West wont shift Russian public opinion or change the view of Putin.

  • SinnAonaichte

    19 August 2012 7:55PM

    Any comment on how Punk is also a favourite amongst the far right? Any comment about not all Skinheads are racist neo-nazis but are influenced by West Indian music? Not really my business but I don't really think it is wise to jump on this Pussy-riot bandwagon because I suspect they aren't political activists that some people want them to be and once released, will milk all the publicity for what it's worth.

  • BenCaute

    19 August 2012 7:56PM

    Britain is not above “disproportionate” sentences for political activity.

    Anti-cuts protester Omar Ibrahim was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for picking up a joke-shop smoke bomb from the pavement during last march's anti-cuts demonstration an tossing it towards Topshop. No-one was harmed, but he was imprisoned for violent disorder.

    Protesters committing the exact same “crime” as Pussy Riot – entering a property and protesting, in this case at Fortnum and Mason's – were arrested (after being told be the police that they wouldn't be if they left without a fuss), charged, and in the case of a number of defendants, convicted of aggravated trespass.

    More recently, British anarchists returning from the St. Imier congress were detained by anti-terror police on the basis of their politics.

    “Disproportion” in sentencing was also a very deliberate policy following last summer's riots.

    Two men were jailed for four years for posting pages on facebook encouraging riots. One, Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, posted a page while drunk encouraging rioting, removed it and apologised when he woke up the next morning. No rioting took place. PM David Cameron defended the severity of the sentence.

    Similarly, one man in Manchester, Anderson Fernandes, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for walking through the open door of an ice cream shop during the riots and taking one lick of ice cream.

    Another North – West case was that of Stephen Carter, who picked up a bag of clothes he found in bushes in Salford. As these had been previously been looted, he was sentenced to 16 months in prison.

    Such sentences are accepted to be enormous by western standards for public order offences.

    The hypocrisy becomes even more galling when we consider the ongoing US practice of indefinite detention without trial, and European collusion in the rendition of terror suspects.

    In the case of the US, UK, EU and other European countries, such criticism is much more likely motivated by geopolitical concerns than anything else.

  • Nicholasfredperry

    19 August 2012 7:56PM

    Political and religious dissent is fine but the Pussy Riot women have invaded the sacred space of a significant religious group. What would the Guardian have to say if they had done the same sort of thing in a synagogue, mosque or a gay club? All these areas - including those belonging to the Orthodox Church - must be protected.

  • thegreatfatsby

    19 August 2012 7:57PM

    All and any authority should be questioned all of the time.
    Authority and or those in it will take you to war. Authority and
    or those in it will deny free speech, attempt to compel you
    to follow their creed and take your basic rights.

    Power always corrupts.

  • Bjerkley

    19 August 2012 8:00PM

    Not really my business but I don't really think it is wise to jump on this Pussy-riot bandwagon because I suspect they aren't political activists that some people want them to be and once released, will milk all the publicity for what it's worth.

    If they're willing to go to prison for two years just to sell their records, they deserve to be the biggest stars in the world...

  • winningthebigone

    19 August 2012 8:01PM

    Wait, is two years in a work camp a 'lenient sentence' for protest?!

    You must be well tough on law and order!

    Strangely though, you seem to be all over the Assange thread saying he should continue the bail jumping and not face his accusers in a court of law....
    The Guardian.

  • NorthMiner

    19 August 2012 8:03PM

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  • smellthecoffee101

    19 August 2012 8:03PM

    That is why after the war, when colonies asked for their freedom, we could not understand their culture from London and they had to fight to achieve it

    I'm no historian, but I'm trying to remember any post WW2 British Empire colonies that achieved their 'freedom' through fighting us?

    Wikipedia tells me ........ on the whole, Britain adopted a policy of peaceful disengagement from its colonies once stable, non-Communist governments were available to transfer power to. This was in contrast to other European powers such as France and Portugal which waged costly and ultimately unsuccessful wars to keep their empires

    Maybe you're getting us confused with the fall of the other European empires.

  • ElisabethArdent

    19 August 2012 8:04PM

    While I am almost stunned ( wih happiness) by the support from this paper in favour for these women, I am equally stunned by the thousands of comments from the readership that they strongly agree with Putin. British men telling these women that they, The women are stupid and attention seeking sluts.

    Same sexist brutes here as there.

    Well done on the Guardian for this campaign mevertheless. It has done nothing but good for the cause, i'm sure.

  • WellmeaningBob

    19 August 2012 8:05PM

    Are the Brits jealous that their punk turned out to be fake subversion, wheresas this might actually be something real?

  • Bjerkley

    19 August 2012 8:09PM

    No, instead we lock them up even longer for defiling secular liberal consecrations.

    Sure, emailing racist messages of hate to the family of a murder victim is not, in fact completely abhorrent on any objective reading, but instead a subversive undermining of PC principles. What a hero.

  • Arapas

    19 August 2012 8:09PM

    but I'm trying to remember any post WW2 British Empire colonies that achieved their 'freedom' through fighting us?

    Ups, Egypt, Cyprus, and of course the MAU MAU who are currently suing us in the high court for torture!

  • angelinterceptor

    19 August 2012 8:10PM

    More recently, British anarchists returning from the St. Imier congress were detained by anti-terror police on the basis of their politics.

    I take it you can prove this beyond reasonable doubt? After all you're all for the rule of law and equity and don't accept unsubstantiated claims, like all good radicals, or do you just "believe it" ?

  • MikeinCambs

    19 August 2012 8:10PM

    Does "Pussy riot" have any traction artistic or commercial traction? Have they performed gigs? or released any MP3's - I do not know? there are very important things to say about Putinand his government , a desperate attempt by a dying autocracy to replace Boris Yeltsen.

    Why a church, why not a public performance - imagine the ire if a "group" performed "A loud rational critique of Royalty" outside Pukingham Palace or the Vatican ?

    The whole thing smells of a "Publicity stunt" - I take it that there are more than the three we are hearing about.

    Putin and his thugs stink, but so does a well known metropolitan armed militia under the ultimate control of our esteemed Home secretary.

    The whole thing stinks - Where in Europe can you go to gaol for possession of pencil with intent to commit terrorism.

  • ElisabethArdent

    19 August 2012 8:11PM

    The boring and ignoranti among British men can't take that women are being rebellious, are being funny and exposing the tedious moralism of men-fundamentalism. I've been told today that Pravda was right in suggesting that "those stupid women" should be sent home to their husbands and children to cook and clean like the true call of women's nature (sic).

    Women can never win, can they? They are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

    Women are not as artistic as men, we are told. But the fact is that women's art does not get the slack that male artists get. Men get the benefit of a doubt and are often being praised for practically anything at all.

  • BurgandyShoes

    19 August 2012 8:14PM

    And members of the band Pussy Riot come with a history of pornographic dissent in extremely public and family orientated places like Supermarkets and Museums.

    Play with fire once too often and you may get burned. Very little sympathy here.

  • Arapas

    19 August 2012 8:15PM

    Wait, is two years in a work camp


    The jails in Russia are different from the UK !
    A work camp is where 60 people share a dormitory, do some work, and of course they have lessons, use the internet, and send letters to the Guardian like Mikhail Khorodovski a few days ago.

    There are not going to be locked up 23/24 and lose their sanity.

  • translated

    19 August 2012 8:15PM

    Contributor

    All of which raises a rather interesting question about the relative invisibility of political protest in the contemporary popular culture of Britain and the US. Maybe it's because,as Northminer says "today's media class were punks in their art school and university days" and for cultural protest to register it has to be both culturally original and politically radical. That's a very high bar. If Pussy Riot were protesting some of the horrors on your list in Britain, one suspects they might get a ten minute slot with Jenny Murray and Laurie Penny on Woman's Hour.

    • Samvara

      19 August 2012 8:18PM

      Tolokonnikova and her two co-defendants laughed as they were given their two-year sentences. You could call such behaviour "cool", but in this instance, another word is surely required: one that mixes jaw-dropping bravery with impossible insouciance, and has – as far as I know – yet to be invented.

      You could try "shock", "embarrassment", or "hysteria". I make no comment about the young women's actions, but to say that laughing at a judge when you are sent down is something so extraordinary that it beggars language and comprehension is plain daft.

      Lots of common crims in UK courts get sent down laughing, swearing, or swaggering. Didn't condemned highwaymen in the eighteenth century wow the Tyburn crowd by fixing their own rope and jumping spectacularly into oblivion?

      Adulation finds its limits when one finds out more about real life....

    • ElisabethArdent

      19 August 2012 8:18PM

      Men who back then listened to punk music are today talking like in a conversation from Carry on or Dad's army.

    • sambeckett2

      19 August 2012 8:21PM

      Punk had some great tunes and sold allot of T-shirts. But lets not pretend it changed anything outside of the realm of music.

      I don't know how anyone can say this. It might be true in terms of politics, but it's certainly not true in terms of culture.

    • SinnAonaichte

      19 August 2012 8:22PM

      Why a church, why not a public performance - imagine the ire if a "group" performed "A loud rational critique of Royalty" outside Pukingham Palace or the Vatican ?

      Or if a group stormed a mosque protesting against multiculturalism? I can't help but wonder would the likes of the Guardian be going on their moral high-horse defending the hypothetical groups right to freedom of speech?

      The whole thing smells of a "Publicity stunt" - I take it that there are more than the three we are hearing about

      Agreed, it does stink of a publicity stunt as they have pressed all the right buttons.

    • WellmeaningBob

      19 August 2012 8:30PM

      Response to Valten78, 19 August 2012 7:53PM
      I don't know how anyone can say [lets not pretend punk changed anything outside the realm of music]. It might be true in terms of politics, but it's certainly not true in terms of culture.

      It didn't change culture. What it did was make sure everyone knew that whatever you did in your attempt to shock or change the system, could be and would be circumscribed, packaged and sold, that punk was not in fact possible.

    • Ricosoavarooski

      19 August 2012 8:31PM

      Arrests made outside the courtroom, including of former World Chess Champion G. Kasparov, are
      up at www.chessbase.com and the video footage of thuggish cops wading through the crowd is
      revealing.

      Shame on those cooking up ideological justifications for this kind of authoritarian tactic --- you are
      little more than creepy fascists.

    • sambeckett2

      19 August 2012 8:31PM

      The whole thing smells of a "Publicity stunt" - I take it that there are more than the three we are hearing about

      Agreed, it does stink of a publicity stunt as they have pressed all the right buttons.

      And pressing the wrong buttons would prove it wasn't a publicity stunt? If this was merely a 'publicity stunt' then I doubt very much that these women would have been so defiant in court in the face of 7 year jail sentences.

      There may be valid reasons for criticising these women's actions, but the whole 'publicity stunt' angle is just sour faced crap.

    • mjhunbeliever

      19 August 2012 8:31PM

      The fact that they went to jail on a lenient sentence is for blasphemy and nothing to do with Putin as some will have us believe.

      Could you elucidate, "a lenient sentence for blasphemy" in a country where only 4% of people are church goers?

    • MikeinCambs

      19 August 2012 8:32PM

      Punk: Noise,fury (mainly err artistic), spilt beer, easy sound bites for radio/tele producers, an unknown number of broken finger nails and about as effective in bringing about meaningful social change as a bag of stale crisps.

      Some great hair styles, BO, a safe little personal rebellion before two weeks in Zermat with "Mummy", "Daddy" and "best of the down stairs staff" then Uni after Marlborough,Rugby, Eaton or Harrow.

      I was a rebellious child/adolescent "Punk" before I discovered LIBOR, the Season and good quality Champagne and the Guardian's voice of social conscience.

      Now where has the Fois Gras gone ? - What do you mean I eaten it all? More champers please - put it on the tab.

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