Pussy Riot Was Carefully Calibrated for Protest
Marcus Brandt/European Pressphoto Agency
Protesters in Hamburg, Germany, participating in a demonstration for Pussy Riot on the day of sentencing.
By MELENA RYZIK
Published: August 22, 2012
Natalia Kolesnikova/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
From left, Yekaterina Samutsevich, Maria Alyokhina
and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot at their sentencing on Aug. 17.
Oleg Sharan/Associated Press
Madonna wearing Pussy Riot’s name on her back as a statement of support.
Sergey Ponomarev/Associated Press
The band trying to perform in Moscow in February.
The name helps. It’s its own form of culture jam, a savvy reference to
feminist and musical history — riot grrrl and Susie Bright, as well as a
wink to women’s appropriation of sexual agency and bodily power.
Madonna has worn Pussy Riot’s name on her bare skin,
a statement both of her support and of her own rebelliousness. (She
still knows how to flaunt it.) The inevitable aesthetic judgment has
found these girls, as they sometimes refer to themselves, on the right
side of cool. For women identified with rock ’n’ roll — and for fans,
especially in the West — Pussy Riot is expertly constructed, perfectly
charged. Plus, it’s fun to say — unless you’re in American network news,
which has been demurely referring to the group as an all-female punk
band.
But for artists and activists around the world the recent travails of
Pussy Riot, founded in 2011, have become a cause célèbre. When its
members, Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda
Tolokonnikova, were sentenced on Aug. 17 to two years each in a prison
camp for staging a flash protest against President Vladimir V. Putin in
Moscow’s main Orthodox cathedral in February, it served as another
rallying point, at a time when many are concerned with government
malfeasance, economic and social equality, and, not incidentally,
women’s rights. The ladies of Pussy Riot are of-the-moment renegades.
That the group is so digestible to Western audiences has been much noted.
Yes, the choppy performance that got its members arrested could have
just as easily taken place at an undergrad art school, where the
corresponding video might’ve been mocked for its low production value
(or turned up in a flashback episode of HBO’s “Girls”). Instead, when it
made the rounds online, it found eager and sympathetic spectators and an instant distribution channel aided by social media.
Punk was never shy about being amateur; DIY spread wide is its
hallmark. And in a country where public dissent is at a neophyte stage,
Pussy Riot’s “Punk Prayer,” a 40-second lip sync, only served to
highlight the discordantly severe punishment its members received.
Supporters — like the hundreds who gathered
at a reading in New York on the eve of the sentencing — viewed the
group members as unfairly judged, less creatively shackled musicians
than oppressed symbols of heroism.
It’s been a long time since music had the whiff of danger, and longer
still since it carried the beat of political change, at least in
democracies. Hardly anyone would’ve expected that to come out of Russia,
where both the songcraft and the messaging seem outdated, vestiges of
retro power-pop and a barely concealed propaganda machine. The women of
Pussy Riot took those tools and used them for their own sophisticated
means. Immediately after their conviction on charges of hooliganism
based on religious hatred — a more punk indictment could scarcely be
invented — Pussy Riot, though only nominally a band, released its first single.
Titled, in translation, “Putin Lights Up the Fires,” it’s defiance set
to bracing guitars and drum kicks. You can’t seal us in a box, the women
shout in a singsong as they demand more jail time. The chorus announces
that the country is taking to the streets, bidding farewell to the
regime, driven by a “feminist wedge.” A few acolytes, complete with
balaclavas, performed it in the courthouse during the sentencing. It’s
pure agitprop, and it’s incredibly catchy.
Paul McCartney, Bjork, Peter Gabriel and many other performers have
expressed solidarity, as has Amnesty International; Kathleen Hanna, a
founder of riot grrrl, saw in Pussy Riot the movement’s future. Although
called a punk band on TV, it’s not quite right to consider Pussy Riot
as musicians yet. Instead, these women belong squarely with art
provocateurs and thinkers like Judith Butler (whose pioneering feminist
influence they acknowledged) and Guerrilla Girls,
the anonymous rabble-rousers who took on the sexist art establishment
only to be welcomed into it (now part of the permanent collection in the
Museum of the Modern Art). Pussy Riot’s unapologetic court statements
revealed an intellectual and philosophical rigor, and its earlier
efforts with the art group Voina offered even more brazen forms of
dissent.
“Pussy Riot are our kind of girls: feminist activists in masks making
trouble,” Kathe Kollwitz and Frida Kahlo, pseudonymous Guerrilla Girls,
wrote in an e-mail. “But,” they added, “we live in a very different
culture where art is not as dangerous, and we can pretty much do what we
want.”**
The Russian response to Ms. Alyokhina, 24; Ms. Samutsevich, 30; and Ms.
Tolokonnikova, 23, has been mixed at best. Russians are generally deeply
distrustful of feminism, even though Russian women are no shrinking
violets.
Yet the stoicism of Ms. Samutsevich, Ms. Alyokhina and Ms. Tolokonnikova
— the latter two, we are frequently reminded, the mothers of young
children — has made a deep impact in both Russia and the West. Their
symbolism as radicals — Ms. Tolokonnikova with her fist raised as she
was led out of the courtroom — has been so successful in the West that
there is now debate
not about whether to support them but on what grounds: as social
agitators, or broad critics of the Kremlin. For its part the group —
along with an unofficial spokesman in Pyotr Verzilov, Ms.
Tolokonnikova’s husband — has made its ambitions plain: revolution.
“One really inspiring thing about Pussy Riot is that they always make it
clear that their actions are political and feminist,” the Guerrilla
Girls wrote. “The world needs more feminist masked avengers. We urge
everyone to make trouble, each in her own way.”
That message was not lost on Aug. 17, when thousands around the world
protested the two-year sentences. A lawyer for the women, Nikolai
Polozov, said they would appeal, though he noted they would not ask Mr.
Putin for a pardon. “Literally this is what they said: ‘Let them go to
hell with their pardon,’ ” he told Agence France-Presse of his clients.
Ms. Tolokonnikova and Mr. Verzilov’s 4-year-old daughter has been making
plans to bust her mother out of jail. “She draws diagrams showing how
we can go about doing this with bulldozers and buses, first by tearing
down the prison walls and then by breaking open the cage,” he told the
German publication Der Spiegel.
In New York, where, as in many other cities, people were arrested as
they expressed their solidarity with Pussy Riot. Marian, a 12-year-old
soon to enter eighth grade, came to the demonstration in Times Square
from her home in Queens. She held a neon drawing of a balaclava, having
been warned that wearing one might get her in trouble.
“It’s cruel — they’re in jail for two years, and they just spoke their
minds; I’m here to support them,” said Marian, whose parents did not
want her last name used. She wore a flowered dress and silver Doc
Martens, explaining eagerly that she considered herself a riot grrrl.
“It was a thing in the ’90s,” she offered, adding that she began to
think of herself as a feminist at the age of 10, learning about it from
her mother, Christine. “Mostly by example,” Christine said. Marian, the
daughter of a Russian father, read about Pussy Riot online, absorbing
its videos and ethos.
“The fact that they’re not apologizing for what they did is really
inspiring to me,” she said. She looked around the sparsely attended
protest. “I feel like if people did this more,” she said, “women would
be more respected.”
** that's because the Arts are viewed today as part of the entertainment/leisure industry...totally irrelevant. Emphasis/italics and comment -me Muse
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