My older daughter was
home early yesterday. Picked her up at
3:00PM which is when any normal American kid would presumably get off school. I like to try to look at the New York Times
with her regularly, but often she gets back she’s too tired and there isn’t time. So we sat down and had a look yesterday. I let her pick whatever article she wants and
let her read it out loud.
Well, she chose to read about how Pussy Riot’s Academy Award
nominated documentary was banned in Russia. The director of the Gogol Center,
where the film was to be shown, received calls from the authorities, threatening
their jobs if they went ahead with the screening. An official ban followed. Maxim Pozdorovkin, who directed the film
with Mike Lerner, suggested he might just show the film on his lap top to
people instead.
My daughter remembered that we’d talked about them
before. I took the time to explain to
her the idea around “all the news that’s fit to print” that while the New York
Times will never print the word “fuck” or “cunt” it was obligated to repeatedly
print “Pussy Riot” on the front page.
So just by their name alone, they had pushed the envelope.
Oddly, though, for someone who claims a punk affinity as my
earliest identity of choice, I had never really seen anything they had done. I’d long been intrigued by the story and after reading the article we thought to go to Youtube to check them out. We had a look at the Punk Prayer piece that
got them imprisoned. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALS92big4TY
Sacrilege, protest, feminism, anarchism, free speech,
Russian history, punk history, Red Square, Tiananmen Square . . . There was
quite a bit to discuss, watching these young ladies with day glow balaclava’s
cut out like hijackers, disrupt a service at a Russian Orthodox cathedral. They are, in fact articulate and attractive
but they perform anonymously, in outfits, 目迷五色[1], that deny any sexuality. If nothing
else, the simple message that they stood behind what they did, and went to
prison for it, conveyed that this wasn’t simply dance music or a boy band. This took courage. And, of course, time. We only got to talk about it
for a while before she was off to rendez vous with a friend.
I dug a bit deeper and found an interview with the directors
of the film that had clips from the documentary. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH4hjg83Mt8.
Check out the clip around 18:13 or so for the Riot in Red
Square. And then later around 25:02 to
see them interviewed after they are arraigned.
They're awesome. The first bit in Red Square has subtitles which make
quite a bit of difference.
The masses rise up and move on the
Kremlin
Explosions set off at security
headquarters
Bitches piss themselves behind red
walls
Riot is here to abort the system
Attack at Dawn? Don’t mind if I do
When we’re whipped for our freedom
The Mother of God will learn how to
fight
Magdalene the feminist will join
the demonstration
Uprising in Russia
The charm of protest
Uprising in Russia
Putin pissed himself
Uprising in Russia
We exist
Uprising in Russia
Riot! Riot!
Take to the streets
Occupy Red Square
Show them your freedom
A citizen’s anger
(2x)
Um, wow. As has been
written, it's been quite a while since punk, let alone popular music of any stripe had a whiff of
anything like real danger. These ladies asked
for trouble and they found it and they paid for it and are still standing,
still pushing to end the Putin era. I
don’t know about you, but I’m Pussy Riot fan.
I don’t need to agree with tactics, ideas, strategy, setting, musical
sound, and on and on and on. But that
is, they are, punk rock.
The short interview with Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, which I
referenced above in the clip on the documentary, is fabulous.
What is
Pussy Riot?
It’s a
feminist punk group
It’s
important for Russia’s development
We need a
group like this
It’s just
one of many groups that should appear
After all
this attention
I hope
others will do similar things
That would
make me happy
I hope to
hear about it in jail
Right on. That is a powerful meditation to consider: Punk rock is:
“Important for Russia’s development.”
It is important, in different ways for any country's development, to
have a civil society and freedoms that can withstand taunting, profanity,
disruption. China, with its history of Red
Guard hooliganism, where teens were clearly manipulated into “making
revolution” is despite the obvious parallels, a different world from Russia.
Tiananmen Square was already “occupied” once by disaffected youth. The country still hasn’t faced up to what happened
as a result. A punk concert in Tiananmen
today would be hard pressed to continue beyond the first bar chord before
everyone would be whisked off. The
mapping from Russia to China, doesn’t fit for a myriad of reasons. Punk will play out differently in China.
But the purpose of punk, of conceptual art, is to shake you
into thinking about something, looking at something, differently. Regardless of whatever else they do, Pussy
Riot have succeeded in that. And, I am happy to report, that they are, as yet, not banned, here in China. The same video of "Punk Prayer" is also available on Youku.
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