Most people in bands in the West (and let’s face it, in our culture, almost everyone is in a band) read the ever-unfurling news about Pussy Riot and turn green with envy. After all, the group got crazy viral international press, even in non-musical circles, after just a few shows. Pussy Riot have succeeded in large part due to the compelling nature of their circumstances, and that isn’t something that Western acts can emulate (without coming across like some Tea Party idjit).
When Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were interviewed by Stephen Colbert on his television show, they were asked why they chose an English language name for their collective. Nadya’s response was succinct and pithy: “We wanted to let English-speaking people enjoy themselves.” And we have, filling this art collective up with our storied rock and roll mythology until they can comfortably fit in with our canonical legends of rock. Maybe if they do three more actions, they will become as iconic as Jerry Lee Lewis or Jim Morrison, etc.
[pullquote align=”right”]The truth is, though, that the Pussy Riot phenomenon is only the latest iteration of the gradual shift in rock and roll from being a Western musical movement to being a global protest symbol. [/pullquote]The truth is, though, that the Pussy Riot phenomenon is only the latest iteration of the gradual shift in rock and roll from being a Western musical movement to being a global protest symbol. Punk has been important in this transition, but so has “emo,” a widely (and justifiably) derided offshoot of 1990s alternative rock that somehow subversively became a blueprint for third world youth rebellion. In the last decade, authorities in places as far-flung as China, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and yes, Russia, have put effort into quelling outbreaks of youth “emo” protest, mostly by putting dress codes into place or allowing the reprimanding of certain agreed-upon displays of “emo”-ness. In a repressive environment, it isn’t necessarily the music that riles feathers — sometimes just holding the guitar is all it takes to make a global statement.
At that New York press conference, Tolokonnikova summarized the Pussy Riot story thusly:
“When we were jailed, Pussy Riot immediately became very popular and widely known and it has turned from just a group into essentially an international movement. Anybody can be Pussy Riot, all you need to do is put on a mask and stage an act of protest against something in your particular country, wherever that may be, that you consider unjust.”
This statement, this concept, is a sea change idea that has the potential to destroy rock and roll, as we know it in the West, once and for all. Because as we all know, but hate to admit, rock and roll isn’t particularly musical, requires little in the way of actual talent, and is only really useful to society at large if it is coupled with some kind of movement of conscience. When the Stones do their 50th anniversary tour, charging a thousand dollars a ticket, are they telling their audience that “Anybody can be the Rolling Stones”? It is a heretical concept that completely deflates the whole precept of rock.
[hr]
The only obstacle currently standing in the way of Pussy Riot’s achieving of their own anti-capitalist demolition of rock and roll is their own celebrity: now that they have been unmasked, will they start to suck like Kiss circa 1980?
Anonymity, as anyone paying attention knows, is the next wave of rock and roll rebellion. Increasingly, bands are deciding to forego revealing their identities in order to retain an air of mystery in an internet age of information overload. Swedish bands like Ghost and Goat, for example, have achieved global success and cult worship primarily from wearing masks and refusing to divulge their true identity. And then of course there’s Daft Punk with their elaborate mainstream prank conflagration of masks, inhuman robots and dance music anonymity. If we don’t know that a band is just made of of some guys from a town or whatever, we can allow our mind to fill in the blanks with all sorts of fantastical scenarios — so it was with Pussy Riot in their salad days, when they were just a faceless collective of women popping up everywhere to cause mayhem.
Their show trial was more than just a farce of justice and an affront to human dignity: it revealed that Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina, as two members of the group, were just people, with lives and pasts and families and backstories. By making the rounds, post-release, at a never-ending cavalcade of interviews with Western press outlets, they humanized their personas but at the same time made Pussy Riot into a mortal entity. Now that they’ve taken the mask off, can they ever put it back on? Worse, will these global celebrities eventually be replaced by younger and more anonymous Pussy Rioters, turning the collective into a protest version of Menudo?
Clearly, the group’s aim is to emulate the ending of the 2005 film version of Alan Moore’s V For Vendetta comic, with crowds of people spontaneously donning Pussy Riot masks to overwhelm authority with anonymous faceless protest. This is leaderless revolution at it’s most idealist, and perhaps naive — but at least it has a practical side, as opposed to Western rock and roll, obsessed with creating a better machine with which to kill theoretical fascists.
And as Karl Marx stated in 1867’s Das Capital, “Machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.” For all of their alleged crimes, at least Pussy Riot intend to turn idle machination into useful action, even if it means taking a pickaxe to one of the West’s greatest tools of individual expression.
