Latest news with #BikiniKill
CBC
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
How the '90s girl power movement turned into marketing
The phrase "girl power" was coined by Bikini Kill in the early 1990s, but its meaning was watered down later in the decade when angry radical women in music were followed by younger, less opinionated pop stars. But how did this happen? Culture critic at The Atlantic and Pulitzer Prize finalist Sophie Gilbert takes a deep dive into 1990s and 2000s pop culture in her new book, Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves, to find out. Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud speaks with Gilbert about her new book, how this pop culture shift happened and how its effects continue to shape our current moment. WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube:
The Guardian
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
A moment that changed me: I was an excruciatingly shy teenager. Then Courtney Love roared into my life
I had no tribe during my first three years of high school. Desperate to be accepted by the in-crowd, but sick with anxiety if I was invited to one of their parties, I had no idea who I was. I had spots, wonky teeth and my hair was lank. I was kind of gangly and excruciatingly shy. I didn't fit the mould, and I had no idea you could carve out your own space in the world. Bombarded with TV shows such as Beverly Hills 90210 and Baywatch, while poring over teen magazines, I compared myself with the glossy, wholesome models that I saw – and felt that I was failing. Everything changed when I first heard Courtney Love. I was kneeling on the floor next to my cheap 90s stacker system, aged 14. My boyfriend had lent me his copied tape of Hole's debut album, Pretty on the Inside, and nothing prepared me for what I felt when I first heard Love scream. Pressing play, the lyrics 'When I was a teenage whore' roared from my tinny little speakers. It sounded rebellious and raw – and like nothing you'd encounter in the 90210 district. I'd never heard a woman sing like that – and knowing that Love played guitar and wrote her own music and lyrics made it even more real. I played Garbadge Man over and over – the lines about 'letting the darkness up inside' felt strangely comforting. I didn't fully understand it – but I knew I wanted more. This was not female perfection; this was messy, undone and unfinished. Love's tights were ripped and her hair was unkempt, with dark roots given space to breathe. She made me realise that our flaws should be celebrated, not shamed and hidden. Hearing that album opened the door to more incredible female musicians – Babes in Toyland, the Breeders, Bikini Kill; women who were unafraid to turn themselves inside out and bare their chaotic souls. I fell acutely and chronically in love with all of them. Of course, I was still me – I wasn't Love, Kat Bjelland, Kim Deal or Kathleen Hanna, the frontwomen in these bands. I was never going to stand on stage and scream like that, and my teenage poetry was beyond cringe. But as I started becoming bolder, I found my own means of self-expression. I stopped hiding under baggy jeans and loose T-shirts because I was scared to be noticed. Instead, I made my fashion choices stand out more than my teeth and my spots ever did, swapping drab and boring clothes for charity-shop nightdresses, white fishnet tights and Mary Janes similar to those worn by my punk rock heroes. I smothered my lips in black cherry lipstick and lightened my hair with Sun In. It made me feel invincible. I realised that Love didn't sing because she had it all sussed; her lyrics were often about injustice, trauma and torture, not to mention misogyny and sexual violence. She sang about how women are expected to be, and about how we really are. She was proud to be a work in progress, and it made me realise that I didn't have to have it all figured out in order to say what I felt. My confidence grew year on year as I began to form my own opinions and speak up for myself. When I was younger, I was deemed 'difficult' for speaking out against the toxic culture at my workplace – but I refused to apologise, eventually walking away from a well-paid job in order to carve out a career as a freelancer. It wasn't easy but I no longer felt like I was compromising myself. I'm not perfect at being imperfect, either. I still panic about how I look and how I think I should look. I saw a play recently – Mary and the Hyenas, about the 18th-century writer and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, and there was a song about being a 'fully formed fucked-up woman', which struck a chord. I still listen to Hole, and all the bands I first fell in love with in the early 90s. They serve as an ongoing reminder that I needn't apologise for being angry. I know that, sometimes, I will get it wrong. Even now, 30 years later, Love remains the antithesis of beige. I don't agree with everything she has said, or sung about, or posted on social media, but her unapologetic spirit can never be called bland. I'm all for loud, imperfect women. They keep the world turning, the music blasting – and they help shy girls, as I once was, to find their voice. When Sally Killed Harry by Lucy Roth, the pseudonym for Lucy Nichol, is published on 27 March (Avon Books, £9.99). To support the Guardian and the the Observer, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
New York Times
18-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Riot Grrrl Rebellion With Supernatural Cues
The narratively profuse mystery game Lost Records: Bloom and Rage is like living in a Bikini Kill song followed by a Phoebe Bridgers ballad. The four main characters who form the title band, Bloom and Rage, are strong together — even as teenagers, even when one describes herself as meek. Through the highs of anger and the depths of sadness, they search for deeper meaning through self-discovery as they come of age. It's freeing. It's feminist. It's powerful. But the rebellious grit, augmented by the game's mature themes, does more than amplify an energetic liberalism during this 1995 period of revelation. Everywhere the girls go in tiny Velvet Cove, Mich., they rock. Autumn, a spirited young woman of color, sings duets loudly with Nora, a gothy Joan Jett type who likes to push friends' buttons. Music plays an important part throughout Bloom, the first of the game's two episodes. (Rage is scheduled to be released in April.) The D.I.Y. riot grrrl essence here is inspiring, especially for those who lived through the time. And yet, there's a serene, attractive innocence when suburban boredom turns to goblincore-inspired escape. After Swann, the red-haired central character, is called 'fat' by bullies, she turns to filming everything with a video camera. (There's no idealized perfection here, a good, honest thing; every teen has zits, even Swann.) She explores a lurid forest. She sits at the water's muddy edge among the mushrooms, frogs and dragonflies, the height of Zen peacefulness. You can't help but appreciate her outsider essence. Even Thoreau would be jealous. Swann and her friends yearn for more than hanging at the local ice cream stand or watching movies at the multiplex. You can hear it in their words. All they care about is one another, their fleeting summer together, holding hands and making their art. They make fun of condom wrappers and heavy flow days because speaking truth is freeing. Just as in the Life Is Strange series, also by the French studio Don't Nod, the gameplay elements are light and not necessarily new. There's the convention of placing fuses correctly in a breaker box to get power running. But the play isn't the point, not really. It is in service of the story, which feels dramatic when it should be and, at the end, surprisingly melancholy. The game makes mistakes regarding pop culture history. Characters cite the found-footage horror film 'The Blair Witch Project,' though that movie wasn't released until 1999. They repeatedly use the anachronistic term 'bounce' (meaning 'leave'). The Furbys and Tamagotchis seen in Swann's room weren't sold until the late '90s. When the details are right, though, the game approaches perfection. Troll toys sit cute and big-eyed, a Newton's cradle clacks appealingly, and nods are made to films like 'Pulp Fiction.' At the practice garage, there are homemade mix cassettes featuring groups like Hole and Belly. It's here that Kat, an overall-wearing, occasionally furious writer, introduces 'See You in Hell,' the raucous tune that will be the group's anthem. (Unfortunately, you can't access the song to play it again when the episode is complete.) A mix of horror and science fiction becomes revealed when three of the band members reunite at a local dive bar 27 years after their brilliant but tragic summer together. Through snippets of reminiscences, you see that Swann leaves a cabin at midnight to videotape bizarre moths. They're suddenly, supernaturally colorful, surrounded by a fog of luminescent hues. They lead Swann to a seemingly bottomless sinkhole that radiates a purple glow. Then, back in the present day, a shoebox-size package addressed eerily to Bloom and Rage is brought to the bar. A 'Grey's Anatomy'-style cliffhanger is moving because it isn't just the girls who are friends. Invested in their stories and emotions, you've become close to them as well. The game's final episode promises to reveal all mysteries, perhaps violently and supernaturally. True to form, Bloom and Rage sings, 'I can tell I'll mess you up — when I see you in hell.' In riot grrrl fashion, they may indeed live their music.
The Guardian
15-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
One to watch: Twat Union
UTIs, dating red flags and wardrobe malfunctions aren't just cautionary tales but the inspiration for new performance art meets punk-rock six-piece Twat Union. Following in the feminist footsteps of riot grrrl forebears such as Bikini Kill, the all-female British band have built up a grassroots fanbase around London thanks to their blistering live shows skewering the letdowns and joys of life as women. With members from the Isle of Wight, Wales and London, Twat Union first met in a house-share in south London at the tail end of lockdown. They were united by their need to find a living space that could also accommodate their instruments, so the house soon became a natural jam space where they began playing their tongue-in-cheek tunes live. Newly signed to indie punk label Alcopop! Records, the group are preparing to release their debut EP, Don't Look It in the Eye. 'It's the culmination of two years of theatrical live shows, and we're excited for people to laugh and rage at our shitty, patriarchal and sometimes biological experiences from the comfort of their own homes,' says vocalist Kate Mac. Playing with joyous rage through five songs about sexism, masturbation and post-sex burning sensations, the record is poised to take Twat Union's brand of anthemic confrontation across the country. Don't Look It in the Eye is out on 4 April. Twat Union play the Exchange, Bristol, on 28 March and tour until 27 April
The Independent
06-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Elektra in the West End is haunting, punchily feminist and perverse
Don't be fooled by the presence of shaven-headed Captain Marvel star Brie Larson in a Bikini Kill band t-shirt – this dream-like staging of Sophocles's Elektra is closer to the spirit of ancient drama than anything else you'll find in the West End's current spate of Greek plays. In true classical style, the action takes place offstage, chanting floods the air, and a round revolving stage mimics a stone amphitheatre. It's haunting, punchily feminist and perverse, all at once. Director Daniel Fish's last West End outing saw him needling at fans of traditional musical theatre with his intriguingly weird, post-dramatic take on Oklahoma!. The same determined spirit of non-naturalism is here, too, but Anne Carson's terse poetic translation of Sophocles is substantially harder to follow than a golden-age musical, its words falling in flattened tones across surreal scenes. The weight of the play rests heavily on Larson's shoulders: she laments and rages her way through the story with impressive deftness, echoed by a chorus of six women draped in gleaming folds of satin, delivering their verse in a beguiling, otherworldly plainsong. Her Elektra is a punky rebel, bent on revenge against a family that's stifling her. 'You are some sort of punishment cage locked around my life,' she tells her unrepentantly villainous mother Clytemnestra – played by Stockard Channing with the camp poise of a New York lady-who-lunches, tricked out in a white fur coat stained with symbolic black ink. This matriarch murdered her husband, and Elektra's sister Chrysothemis (Marieme Diouf) is standing by her, so it's up to brother Orestes (Patrick Vaill) to dole out vengeance. Larson's performance doesn't miss a beat, showing an impressive mastery of a box of tricks borrowed from the slam poetry world: a distorting vocoder to mockingly imitate her mother's voice, stamps, spits, and a repeated sung-out 'No!' punctuating her smooth verses. There's still something unpersuasive about it, though – a missing outlet for the terrible grief and rage bubbling through her words. Perhaps that's because although Elektra is a character that's fascinated modern readers with her unfeminine fury, she's also bound up in ancient values. This proto-feminist must still live like a servant in her mother's house and wait for her brother to do her dirty work: all talk, no action. Fish acknowledges this tension by keeping the play's men Orestes and late arrival Aegisthus (Greg Hicks) lingering unobtrusively at the back of the stage – as Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna famously shouted at a gig, 'All girls to the front!' But this decision means that the later, more bloodthirsty scenes fall flat, even though they're supplemented by the recorded voice of a news reporter describing a more contemporary atrocity. Where Brie Larson's screen roles are all action, this staging is full of a mesmerising but near-stagnant stillness. It's an opportunity for her to show (like any number of Hollywood stars recently) that she's not sold her soul to the movie industry's shadowy overlords – without fully demonstrating that she's got a talent that demands to be seen live, either. And it's a chance for Fish to explore urgent questions of action versus inaction, and why we stay silent in the face of atrocity – but in a way that's too oblique to feel fully topical. It's a fascinating experiment, one that's beautiful, but ultimately impenetrable.
