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Subject: Typical Girls: Women in Punk/Post-Punk/Underground Music (Circa 1975-1980s)

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  • From: Steven Ericsson Zenith <steven AT semeiosis.com>
  • To: Larry-bob <larrybob AT io.com>
  • Cc: typicalgirls AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [TypicalGirls] defying conventional appearances
  • Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 11:51:13 -0700

Dear Larry and list,

The impression I have - and please correct me if I am wrong - is that the Punk movement was essentially a movement of the working-classes.  Whereas the people you mention here are all people of the upper class.

I find the comparison between Dadaism and Punk an interesting one.  But I feel the dynamic is very different - the forces against which the movements rebelled have a very different character.

I admit that in 1979 I did not appreciate that dynamic - which was mainly an anti-intellectual male macho movement ... then
Siousxie branched out and I was sold. 

I think generally that male Punk never did leave the old gender stereo types. As witness by McClaren's exploitation of the early-teen sex in Bow Wow Wow.  But then McClaren was an upper class public-schoolboy twit as I recall.

That first year had all the old gender roles despite the bin-bags and extreme make up.  I think women in Punk led in England by Siousxie - came into their own in the following years as a distinct movement as they increasing found new ways to use Punk as a platform - Culminating in the mainstream acceptance of Toyah.

The transformation of women in music was even more significant than the social impact.  But it seems to me that the female movements dynamics are orthogonal and more intelligent than the blunt unthinking male banging of the head against the wall.

Siousxie and the Banshees gender blend as the New Romantics come of age - and I think it is Bowie's bisexual/asexual influence in England that responds to Punk in the most significant way for the male gender (in that it was widely influential). 

Ultimately, in the mainstream, Japan and the Adam Ant reinstate the "pretty boy" and Culture Club end up being a caricature parody or farce of the gender blend.

But I think that, despite Bowie's consistent pressure upon gender through out the 1970s it was the female punk movement as a subculture, intelligently exploiting the anti-intellectual male macho Punk movement as a platform that had the most profound social and musical influence.

Leading all the way to my current favorite punk-blue girl - PJ Harvey :-)

With respect,
Steven

Larry-bob wrote:
Maybe it's being kinda Greil Marcus to conflate Dada with Punk,
but I would cite Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven as a proto-feminist
proto-punk who pioneered extreme dress style half a century before the 
1970s.

Her Leigh Bowery-esque looks included wearing a coal scuttle on her
head as a bonnet and pasting postage stamps on her cheeks.

There is much more material on her now than than was once available,
including books.  There also has been at least one stage play based
on her life.

Photo of Elsa:
http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/oisteanu/oisteanu5-20-1.asp
brief bio: 
http://www.klausmartens.com/elsework.html

books:
Irene Gammel, Baroness Elsa. Gender, Dada, and Everyday Modernity. 
A Cultural Biography. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002

Paul Hjartarson, Tracy Kulba, eds. The Politics of Cultural Mediation. 
Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and Felix Paul Greve. Edmonton: 
The University of Alberta Press, 2003.

Also worth mentioning is Marya Delvard, the German kabaret star who performed
at such venues as "Elf Scharfrichter" (Eleven Executioners) and whose
look, circa 1901, prefigured goth --
http://www.uazg.hr/likovna-kultura/images22/Krizman.jpg
See Lisa Appignanesi's book "Cabaret -- the first 100 years"

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