Ideologies often breed strange bedfellows, and feminism is no exception, but Pratibha Parmar's The Righteous Babes, an examination of feminism in contemporary female rock, reminds us, more than anything else, that contemporary feminist philosophy is rife with contradiction and splintered into factions. Here, hardcore feminist Andrea Dworkin offers her standard anti-pornography soundbite, accompanied by her most recent rape statistics (apparently adjusted for inflation, since the 1-in-4 ratio has now jumped to 1-in-3). We also hear Gloria Steinem praising Madonna's feminist (!?!) sensibilities and see a video clip of Modern Rock's Most Powerful Woman doing a bump n' grind for men in a peep show booth. For anyone who actually listens to a lot of female rock (and, to quote Lisa Loeb, I do), the feminist claims which Steinem and Camille Paglia marshal for their rock idols seem slightly absurd (Paglia's gushing over Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders sounds more like a crush than any realistic appraisal of Hynde's furtherance of women's rights, while her interpretation of Madonna's sexual antics on MTV as a demonstration of "power" struck me as a willfully naïve take on the music television formula). Other women held up as sterling examples of the "intersection of feminism with popular music" include Hole's Courtney Love, Garbage's Shirley Manson, Sinead O'Connor, Tori Amos (the worst interview subject of the bunch and--I think--one of the most musically gifted women in rock today) and the delightfully unpretentious, effervescent Ani DiFranco. With females comprising 40% of today's rock concert audience and women musicians virtually commanding the lion's share of critical attention, there's no question that women have literally changed the face of rock in the past decade. Unfortunately, The Righteous Babes neither really tells us the story of that evolution, nor what it means for women (or men) today. Optional. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)
The Righteous Babes
(1998) 50 min. $295: colleges & universities; $99: public libraries. Women Make Movies. PPR. Vol. 14, Issue 5
The Righteous Babes
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