We Are All Pussy Riot, We Are All Waiting To Happen

By Ryan W. Bradley 

 

Pussy Riot’s battle in Russia has revitalized the political backbone of the punk community, but it has also transcended punk.

I came to punk music in an era where the word “punk” had broadened, proliferated itself into culture in a million different ways. Unlike the era in which punk was born the scene had become less about political activism and more about the sound of the music and other, less significant, aspects of life. Punk was being used to describe any number of counter-culture aesthetics. Seeing the word used in a JC Penney was just as likely as on some photocopied poster for a show in a dive bar.

The band stood at the front of the church, bowed at the altar, crossed themselves and began to play a song imploring Mary, the mother of God, to drive Vladimir Putin out of Russia.

I didn’t bemoan this shift. The band I sang in for nearly five years did not resist this sea change. The sound was what I was interested in, and the lyrics I wrote were rarely political. Sure, there were political movements happening that angered me, George W. Bush’s elections being chief among those. But I showed my anger about that in non-musical ways. I wore a white t-shirt for days after we invaded Iraq and carried a Sharpie with me so people could sign the shirt, making me a living petition against the war.
The punk scene and I didn’t always co-exist on an obvious level. In my years of actively participating in the making of punk music I was criticized or ridiculed by other members of the community for not looking like a punk. I wore cargo pants and button-down plaid shirts. I had tattoos, but my ink did not include skulls or classic symbols of the scene.
This is exactly where the broadening definition of punk meant the most to me. Punk, in my opinion, has always been about doing things your way. Being true to yourself as a person whether aesthetically, musically, or politically. I wore the clothes I liked, got ink that meant something to me, and played the music I enjoyed: loud, fast, and sloppy.
Bob Dylan, in my opinion, is one of the greatest punks of all. He has always made the music he wanted to make. He didn’t allow himself to be pigeonholed into writing political folk songs. He went electric when the world didn’t want him to, and Christian when it couldn’t have alienated a casual audience any further. He made a Christmas album. The guy does what he wants.
Johnny Cash’s career revival was another great moment in punk music that will never be defined as such. He made some of the most powerful and lasting music of his career in his collaborations with Rick Rubin.
But politics will always be ingrained in punk, even when it is hidden below the surface. There will always be resistance and revolution. Contemporary punk bands have found their own ways to exemplify this. In 2004 pop-punk trio, Green Day re-invigorated politics in the scene with their magnum opus, American Idiot, a reaction to Bush’s election and the Iraq War.
In 2006 The Thermals released their third album, The Body, The Blood, The Machine. It is a scathing concept album that reflects on religiosity and fascism, and I would argue, one of the best punk albums of the last twenty years.
And punk bands have remained political through their actions if not their music. They are consistently partaking in benefit concerts and albums. They speak out for causes from veganism to voter registration. The bands with the most political messages in their music have remained below the mainstream, but they are there, too. They hustle to stand up for what they believe in.
But politics was always bound to find its way back to the forefront of punk music. And the Bush era certainly made strides. But while politics in the United States are divisive as ever, it has always seemed obvious to me that the loudest political statement in punk music in decades would come from outside the U.S., just as it once did during the 1970s in the United Kingdom.

In a move worthy of an article in ‘The Onion,’ the three were charged with “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” The indictment ran nearly 3,000 pages.

On February 21, 2012 a day that will forever live in punk lore, Pussy Riot, a feminist punk collective in Russia, staged a performance protest in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. The band stood at the front of the church, bowed at the altar, crossed themselves and began to play a song imploring Mary, the mother of God, to drive Vladimir Putin out of Russia. The band danced spastically in their “uniforms”: colorful tights, dresses, and balaclavas (ski masks). Within a minute they were escorted from the church by security guards.
In the United States this act would have passed for nothing more than a comical flash mob protest that failed to attract more than a few members and hadn’t practiced long enough to synchronize its eager scissor kicks. In Russia, where the line between church and state is deteriorating, it has been called blasphemous and witnesses of the protest have said they were physically disturbed by the display. And in a move reminiscent of China’s censorship of its citizens, three members of Pussy Riot were arrested in March, after a video of the protest was released.
Russia has long tried to cement its place among the world’s greatest countries. Unfortunately, more often than not they have done so in the least progressive, backward ways possible. In a move worthy of an article in The Onion, the three were charged with “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” The indictment ran nearly 3,000 pages.
The trial didn’t even begin until the end of July, and on August 17 the trio were found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison for having “crudely undermined the social order.” Two years of imprisonment for one minute of highjacking a church for a political protest.
The Pussy Riot case is not simply about music; in fact, it is barely about music at all. Pussy Riot has released barely more than a handful of songs. While they draw inspiration from the Riot Grrrl movement of the Nineties, their purpose is more focused on performance and new media protest of the Russian government. They do not have a record label, nor have they released any albums.
The collective contains at least ten members and has shown a great understanding of using new media for garnering attention for their message. Even the arrest and subsequent trial and conviction have done much to call attention to Pussy Riot’s cause, which the the three imprisoned members have acknowledged as a mixed blessing.
Pussy Riot’s battle in Russia has revitalized the political backbone of the punk community, but it has also transcended punk. Like the original wave of punk, the case has shed light on political and humanitarian injustice. Will that translate to a new wave of punk bands garnering attention for their political causes, for lyrics and actions that reflect those social concerns? Perhaps it will, but punk has become part of an assimilated vernacular, with a shapeshifting definition to fit everything from the actual music to Hot Topic stores in malls, flying in the very face of everything punk ever stood for.
Maybe we had forgotten what punk meant to the world the way people forgot what folk music once meant. Where folk was once the protest music of the people punk took up the cause decades after the Civil Rights Movement ended and Baby Boomers took to career tracks. The evolution of a generation can’t help but grow out of these movements. Those who held the Sex Pistols closest to their hearts may still enjoy the music but they have likely grown out of the anger and defiance.
Perhaps what is happening in Russia will remind those of all generations of what they once rose to protest. All of us have breaking points. All of us have limits of what we are willing to tolerate. All of us have a point where we are driven to action, to belief, disbelief, enragement, and defiance. This is why deep down we are all Pussy Riot, and why we have been waiting, unwittingly, for their arrival.