#i know this is kathleen not bk sorry :(

[bikinikillarchives]

an article by Jill Reiter from Outpunk Magizne, about her 1994 film “In Search of Margo-Go”, that starred Kathleen Hanna.

“ In 1994, Jill Reiter began a feature starring Kathleen Hanna, called IN SEARCH OF MARGO-GO. Her playful synth-punk romp re-envisioned NYC club culture as an acid-hued comic book, equal parts LIQUID SKY and THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI. Reiter recently collaborated with animator Katie Bush to finish the film after two decades. “

transcript under cut !

1 : 

In Search of Margo-Go

The idea for the movie came about when Kathleen Hanna (of Bikini Kill) was visiting NYC a year and a half ago. We got dressed up like total freaks and called ourselves neo-new romantics and ran around the streets of NYC. We were discussing this zine that my friend Iraya Robles had done about the early punk days of the Go-Go's (Mark's in Time). I mentioned that Margot Olavarria, the original bass player for the Go-Go's, lived only three blocks away from my apartment. The title “In Search of Margo-Go” at first was a really random title, but as the movie idea developed, it came to mean: searching for role models that aren't the obvious ones – digging deeper and uncovering information about women who did a lot of cool stuff in the early punk and nu-wave scenes but weren't recognized because they didn't get famous, or maybe just cause they were women. A lot of their contributions are buried or lost because the records or zines are out of print. Some of the music wasn't documented at all, (i.e – film, recorded, written about.) We were all really into the Go-Go's as teens. But there is a lot we never knew about them. They were originally part of the late seventies punk scene, and Margot was the Go-Go that didn't want to sell out, so they kicked her out of the band and became “America's Sweethearts.”

The movie pays homage to a lot of things from the eighties that we were inspired by, such as totally wacked out do-it-yourself low budget music and fashion, and the comic book Love and Rockets. It also references the movies “Liquid Sky” and “The Hunger”. Those two movies were some of the few movies that had actual lesbian images of werido people we thought we could identify with more that those in “Desert Hearts”, but even those movies were sadly lacking in many [?]. In Search Of Margo-Go is also an antidote to the John Hughes movies like “Sixteen Candles”, “Pretty in Pink”, that so many freaky queer youth in the eighties watched, looking desperately to see themselves reflected in the media, but never quite feeling legitimized because on the lack of queers in films at the time. Imagine “Pretty in Pink” with Molly Ringwald as a dyke.

This movie is important to do because I want there to be movies for dykes that reflect my lesbian sensibility, which is quite different from mainstream lesbian culture. There are hardly any lesbian movies that are campy a la John Waters. I am really into kitschy aesthetic and it is really fun to make a movie about dykes that is crazy and colorful.

In Search of Margo-Go

is part tragicomedy, part costume drama, part queerpunk porno.

I wanted to talk about the idea of collective film-making that we are creating as we make the film. The whole film, from the writing to the planning and filming is a collaborate effort of many amazing woman (and a few cool boys). Most of the people involved other than some of the tech crew have never made a film before. We were into the process of learning by doing with women who had access to film school or have certain skills teaching other women on the set. It's Punk Rock film-making, proving that you don't have to be a film school graduate to make a film.

The Soundtrack.

Myself, Iraya Robles of the band Sta-Prest and Kathleen Hanna are contributing to the soundtrack. The soundtrack is exciting, because all these cool people are going to Nu-Wave music for the soundtrack, no matter what their normal music style is. Potential contributors so far are Kicking Grant, Cheesecake, Phranc (was in a punk bands Nervous Gender and Catholic Discipline). We want to expose unsung heroes in punk music by having a lot of all-female Nu-Wave bands that inspired us (Bound and Gagged, The Inflatable Boy Clams, and The Varve), on the soundtrack. We'd like to re-release their music from obscure out of print singles or albums. We also wanted to have some of these people do some new music for the soundtrack (Josie Cotton- who did “Johnnie Are You Queer” and was in the movie “Valley Girl”) and Robin Johnson (from the movie “Times Square), and others too exciting to mention.’

2: Kathleen and I did a little self interview about the movie, but I didn't have a tape recorder, so the stuff she says isn't in her exact words...

Kathleen – When I saw the John Hughes movies as a teen, it was really frustrating because the same sex characters always gave each other these longing looks, and so many of them appeared to be gay, but then at the end of the movie it was a total mindfuck and letdown, cause the boy and girl always ended up together. There was never any passion between the male/female characters, and it always seemed wrong that they ended up together.

Jill – Movies are a fantasy outlet to escape into and many mainstream movies have happy, ‘feelgood' endings. But Hollywood's idea of a happy ending is my idea of a horrible one – i.e the fag boy ends up with the tomboy girl. One reason to make this movie is to finally have control and to be able to make a movie end the way we want for once, and have the girl get the girl . It was so frustrating as a teen. I was really isolated from other gay people and I really looked to movies for role models and a legitimization of my freaky lifestyle. It was bad enough that I was surrounded by straight people and I could never end up with the girl, but to see these characters in movies that gave off gay signals or just that I was all crushed out end with a character of the opposite sex just made me feel even more isolated

ON MOLLY RINGWALD Kathleen – When I used to see all the John Hughes movies with Molly Ringwald in them, I had to totally displace my emotions. I had this boyfriend and I was all jealous cause in my head I thought that he wanted to fuck her. Really I did, but I was too unconformable and anxiety ridden about queerness so I had to describe it internally in a het way.

[fdnkjfnlfjf]

regardless, i feel the need to apologize.

i have a trans little brother. i am involved in an LGBT community full of trans women, i'm headlining pride w them this year. and that's not to say i'm incapable of transmisogyny, if i'm aware of it, i never ever will support it. i would never sacrifice my integrity within my irl - and online - trans community for a fucking band. especially one that is actively hurting their community. this goes same for the racism/antiblackness they displayed that i will not go into details about because it's violent and upsetting. i have so so many poc in my family, my girlfriend is black, my niece and nephews are black, and lots more. i would never ever support a band over them. i would never give the message to them that a few hashtag feminist statements are more important to me than protecting and uplifting them. neither of those things make me incapable of transmisogyny or racism, as i am white and not transfem, but i 100000% put their trust and feeling safe around me over a band. and that's why i stopped listening to bikini kill. because i owed it to them. because it's not for me to decide. because i'm not going to fight tooth and nail for a fucking band when they are hurting communities that i am very close to and that i want to support. no band is worth that. i DON'T support bikini kill and i HAVEN'T since what ... mid april is when that happened? early april? so please don't go around telling everyone i do. i am deeply, deeply sorry to anyone who was hurt by my actions and felt they weren't safe around me because they were under the impression i supported BK. in the beginning when i tried to explain it, i should've realized that wasn't my place. like i honestly should have, it's something i regret especially because it gave off the impression that i was defending them. i didn't know what kathleen said was terf rhetoric. but i think- if you're going to be talking about feminism and women's rights and center around that and LGBT issues, you have to do research. you have to break down your own barrier of learned ignorance and support everyone. that's also why i dug into every single article i could find to make sure they weren't hurting people. but they were. so i stopped supporting them.

being an ally to trans women and poc is more important to me than a band. 100%. showing the trans girls in my life and the woc in my life that i stand with them is more important than a band. i do not support bikini kill, and i haven't for a while. please don't spread lies about it when i denounced them a while ago, and am doing it again now.

[rgr-pop]

rem0tecontrol replied to your post:

thoughts on bikini kill?

You are probably not interested in elaborating further but I love when you break down why things suck

hah! as a band I don’t think there is anything in my statement worth defending, I personally just don’t think they hold up musically compared to their peers but it’s okay if you do think so. like just for example, I always liked bratmobile more because I thought they got more mileage out of politics by using humor and irreverence but that is very obviously about my personal taste! even when kathleen is trying to be funny or irreverent she isn’t funny or irreverent--this is another aesthetic judgment i make that it is okay to disagree with. like my dislike of bikini kill has always come down to, even beyond the more obvious substantive criticisms!, a) they never were funny in their life imo b) they weren’t irreverent enough--I always always always felt like their songs felt more like obsessive self-conscious idol worship and insecurity re: the critique of “masculinist expertise” or whatever it was that they said. it’s boring hardcore + Good Singer crammed into a critique box--big not my taste. (in a lot of ways the great counter to this is babes in toyland! who were doing the newest and most expansive thing in america kinda, outside of “expertise,” while also lodging some of the exact same critique.) I’d be wiling to hear otherwise, but even the greatest kathleen shills  defenders of our time can’t make any claim that bikini kill did anything important or new or particularly good with the form of music. which is an okay thing not to care about but... i care about it more than other stuff i guess. 

(Looking at that piece again I am reminded of a Breeders pfork review that made the same kind of claims about “coolness” re: Kim Deal, and although the latter had plenty to say about the forms of songs and I don’t disagree, it is just such a wild thing to get hung up on, to me. In the case of Kathleen, it’s like, I thought that was the critique being mounted in the early nineties? Like is this Lifestylism or is it not Lifestylism what is the truth? Are we rehabilitating cool?? But the case of Kim Deal is a great contrast because, as I have said many times before and am in a mood about again, no single person made a bigger contribution to the way that alternative music actually sounds than Kim Deal!) 

this is very naive of me to say, but over the past year I found myself surprised a) to witness another riot grrrl revival and b) to learn that the critiques of riot grrrl that comprised idk half of “women’s music writing” over the past decade were, in fact, the phase! now we have professional Women Writers TM who ascended via Did You Know Riot Grrrl Actually Was Racist writing, Actually, It Was Good Politics All Along, which actually looks in practice like erasing all the things that made Kathleen specifically THE WORST (she is!) and being like “no one will shame me for liking Kathleen Hanna,” like it was only a couple of years ago that she got interviewed about collecting primitive vagina art?? it’s okay to like someone who is the worst but it is weird how we are burying it all over again while arguing that not only are the politics of bk’s music good and fine and something that you have never heard before VERY relevant to 2019 but on those grounds alone they are good music... which is, again, personal taste! this post turned into more grievances against writers, lol sorry...writing is the true enemy.