All posts tagged "Riot Grrrl"

If you haven't yet, I can't recommend enough the recent Sound Opinions episode on Riot Grrrl, featuring an interview with the marvelous Sara Marcus, who wrote Girls to the Front, a history of the brief period where Riot Grrrl grew, made an impact, and then flamed out dramatically, fueled by juvenile, over-the-top identity politics that had come to replace any thing like thoughtfulness or complexity.  (Draw your own parallels to recent struggles in the feminist blogosphere.)  While Sara does reming the hosts Greg and Jim that Riot Grrrl was about far more than music---that it was also and in some ways primarily about zines, political actions, and community organizing---most of the episode is about the music.  And I think that's about right.  My feeling is the best part of Riot Grrrl, the most interesting and lasting part, was the music.  Part of that is because the rest is ephemeral by nature, but it's also because music, being art, was able often to rise above the purity rituals and in-fighting that tends to eat up feminist movements.  The politics of Riot Grrrl may have turned into a holier-than-thou fest, but the music often embraced ambiguities and complexities, ironically exactly the sort of thing that makes feminism so compelling to many of us.