Comments on: Pussy Riot vs. The Pseudo Religious of Eastern Europe

By: Tomasz Kitlinski

Tomasz Kitlinski — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 00:10:00 +0000

More on Pussy Rioters: http://www.deliberatelyconsidered.com/2012/09/performing-human-rights-pussy-riot-vs-the-pseudo-religious-homophobic-misogynists-of-eastern-europe/

By: Tomasz Kitlinski

Tomasz Kitlinski — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 12:05:00 +0000

Unfamiliar with Hatebreed (albeit I have read that CNN corrected its mistake of including them among white power bands), I’d rather compare the Pussy Riot trial with the repression against The Plastic People of the Universe in Communist Czechoslovakia — which is what some commentators in the Czech Republic and the U.S. have already done. I cannot be more grieved that Vaclav Havel is no longer with us; he’d surely have supported Pussy Riot. Their music — and great performance art! — is “the power of the powerless in dark times,” if I may intertextually use the Havelian-Arendtian subtitle from Jeffrey Goldfarb’s book: The Politics of Small Things. Poland’s legendary rebel Lech Walesa has just appealed to Putin to pardon the Moscow band; Walesa was talked into speaking out for Pussy Riot by a woman journalist, Monika Olejnik, which confirms the feminist connection in the work of and support for the Russian female artists on which I’ve elaborated in my first article in Deliberately Considered. Countless women in Russia have defended the band — among them, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, foremost dissident in charge of the human rights Moscow Helsinki Group, and Lyudmila Ulitskaya, winner of the Simone de Beauvoir Prize for the Freedom of Women, established by Julia Kristeva. To use the theory of Elzbieta Matynia, Pussy Riot are part of “performative democracy”; accordingly, in my second piece on Pussy Riot in Deliberately Considered, I’ll discuss their Bakhtinian performativity: Nadia, Katya and Maria are punkers who perform human rights. Tomasz Kitlinski

By: Daniyal Khan

Daniyal Khan — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 15:12:00 +0000

Would you say that from a different perspective, maybe the Pussy Riot case is one particular instance in a more general trend of a failure to pay closer attention to and understand dissenting, non-mainstream bands/musicians? I could cite two other recent cases. Case 1: American heavy metal band Lamb of God’s vocalist Randy Blythe was recently arrested in Czech Republic on accusations of manslaughter. Had this been a pop musician, the media coverage would have hit the roof. Moreover, the maturity of Blythe’s statement after his release goes a long way in challenging the stereotypes attached with dissenting punk, rock and metal musicians. It makes it all the more attention-worthy. Case 2: CNN wrongly including metal band Hatebreed in a list of “white power” bands, and then correcting the piece after protests by the band.

References:
Randy Blythe’s statement after release: http://www.metalhammer.co.uk/news/randy-blythe-releases-full-statement-on-arrest-and-release/
CNN and Hatebreed: http://www.metalhammer.co.uk/news/cnn-label-hatebreed-a-white-power-band-hatebreed-quite-rightly-kick-off/