Girls Against the World: The Rise and Fall of Riot Grrrl

As a musician, I am always looking for different styles and genres of music. While in class, I was briefly introduced to Riot Grrrl. The thought of these all girl bands playing punk rock definitely peaked my interest, so I decided to explore the movement further.
Riot Grrrl experienced its beginnings in the Pacific Northwest in places such as Olympia, WA and Eugene, OR. At first, the movement started out with different DIY zines, such as Bikini Kill or Girl Germs, which would write about and discuss important issues regarding women’s rights, feminism, sexual assault and sexual abuse. In addition to making these DIY zines, many of these groups of girls began to start bands. These bands include Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, and Heavens to Betsy. These bands began to enter the punk scene of Olympia, WA and were, at first, received with mixed feelings. Whenever they played for all girl audiences, the crowds would always be really into it, but when they would play for more male dominated audiences, the bands were not always as well received. In an interview with Bikini Kill drummer Toby Vail, she talked about how when they would play for male audiences, the shows would sometimes get really violent and that sometimes the guys would try and beat them up.
Regardless, the Riot Grrrl movement really began to create its own buzz as a scene in the Pacific Northwest. It gained a lot of notoriety in both a music sense and as advocators of women’s rights. However, with its growth in popularity, the Riot Grrrl movement started to gain attention in the mainstream media. The problems that began to arise from this attention were a lot of misrepresentation in the causes that these bands stood for and a devaluing of the social problems that they addressed. The mainstream belittled the movement by saying it was just an offshoot of the Grunge movement, even though Riot Grrrl began before Grunge. The mainstream would also focus on the fact that these were girls playing instruments and being outrageous, instead of bringing attention to the issues that these bands were trying to bring to the public eye.
For this piece, I decided to combine my skills as a video editor and animator and create what I like to refer to as a video collage. Basically what I did was take different interviews from some of the women who were involved in the movement, along with some live footage and music videos, and mashed them together to create a narrative documentary discussing the beginnings of Riot Grrrl and how it was belittled by the mainstream media. In addition, to add to the narration of the women, I animated what they discussed with the aid of different images I found on the Internet. My goal by making a project such as this was to try and repackage and revamp Riot Grrrl and bring attention back upon the movement in a way that helps it to achieve its original message; women’s rights and playing badass music.