AFRAM Blog Post #3

Gianni Landby

            During this week's readings, a main theme that really spoke to me was the empowerment of women through music. Described in the genre “Riot Grrrls”, females take back their power in the punk scene and represent/exemplify women as rebellious and independent. The articles “The Great Indie Debate” by Emily White and “Violence Girl” by Alice Bag work with one another to describe the message behind this genre of music and the meaningful existence to both the artists and their fans.

            The scene of the “Riot Grrrl” genre was mainly created from the free notion of the do-it-yourself punk motto and a culture that wanted to stray away from the mainstream labels. This was very important for many musicians, and especially around the 90’s, this was seen to be very successful in the case of Nirvana. Punk being primarily dominated by men around this time, forced females to create a new genre that would differentiate themselves and create and avenue that reimagined the public's image of women. Exemplified in Liz Phair’s “Ranting against the sexism of the boy underground, they nevertheless coopted punk’s antiglamour ethic to powerful effect” (White 476), shows the careless and empowering nature that female artists wanted to protrude to their audience.  

            Primarily these artists wanted to utilize energy, noise, and violence in their performances. This can be shown when Bag recalls a story of stomping on a rude man’s glasses while belching the lyrics “She’s a violence girl, she thrives on pain, she’s a violence girl, you can’t restrain!” (Bag 7). I believe this is important to the feminism movement by taking an immediate stance and showing the world the capabilities of these strong women. Females have primarily been taken for granted during shows, pushed around and abused, where these artists wanted to do everything to change that. This included sending men to the back or even “bands [that] gave self-defense demonstrations between songs” (White 476).

Madonna – Die Another Day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlbaJA7aO9M

7 Year Bitch – 24,900 Miles Per Hour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaNbYUGPmdc

            For the first song I chose Die Another Day by Madonna due to its punk-ish elements that are presented in the modern-day pop era. I believe this connects to the readings because Madonna is taking a very independent and embodied stance shown in both her music and tone. Specifically in the video there is the pronounced use of violence in regard to male figures, which I believe connects to the nature that created the Riot Grrrl genre. The second song I chose was an actual Riot Grrrl band called 7 Year Bitch, and their song 24,900 Miles Per Hour. I mainly chose this one because I believe that it showcases the elements of strength and resilience that both of these readings were explaining. In addition, I feel that this video perfectly represents the era of the 90’s in which punk was started to grow into the mainstream.