The sexualized, infantilized coverage of Pussy Riot by western media

by Igor Mukhin

Sarah Kendzior, in an article appearing in the Atlantic, points out the well-meaning but ultimately dismissive tone some western writers have adopted when writing about the women of Pussy Riot. The writer provides examples of this attitude, interesting enough from writers for the quasi-progressive blogs, Huffington Post and The New Republic.

Kendzior points out it’s a bigger issue than the frivolous tone that sometimes presents in these two articles, representing something that seeps into more mainstream publications such as the New York Times. To further define this journalistic shortcoming, she refers to a phrase coined by a film critic which can be said manifests itself in the generally capricious nature of the western media towards the three women now serving two years for speaking and acting out against intolerant and totalitarian institutions.

In 2005, film critic Nathan Rabin coined the phrase Manic Pixie Dream Girl to describe a woman who “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” You might say that Pussy Riot are being treated as something like Manic Pixie Dream Dissidents, blank revolutionary slates onto which Westerners are projecting their hipster fantasies.

Unlike Kendzior, I’m happy to give the western media a break. Reading the articles to which the writer links, the hearts of the western media are in the right place. I don’t believe, as the writer seems to suggest, that western writers are merely aping the manipulative ‘sexualized and infantilized’ image of Pussy Riot advanced by the Russian State media.

But Klendzior is right that we in the west need to think of Pussy Riot not in half-clever, teenage Tiger Beat terms (i.e.  Michelle Malkin’s writing style); we should be focusing on what the members of the band have actually said and done. These women are serious. There are not ‘girls’ expressing their wish to just have fun.

The women (and men) who make up the Pussy Riot family present a challenge to our notion of entertainment and activism. Pussy Riot is much more than a ‘girl group’ who are mischievous and plucky. They are not the Spice Girls gone political nor are they Lady Gagas being outrageous for entertainment’s sake. I don’t even know how much of Pussy Riot is rock group and how much is political movement. Perhaps they are neither. They are just humans trying to shake up what needs so badly to be shaken up.

Man, could we use a Pussy Riot or two in the west as well. Can you imagine the condescension and infantile articles that would greet such a band from the likes of Wente, Blatchford or the Kays? Pussy Riot is not just about Putin or the church. It’s a much bigger movement, an unattractive reminder to the west that pointing out hypocrisy, inequality and corruption is a dangerous and brave undertaking.

The Occupy movement, Anonymous, Wikileaks and even blogs have shown resistance to totalitarianism is not an easy concept for our media to grasp. The knee-jerk reaction to such movements and alternative media is to demonize, infantilize and marginalize such anti-establishment forces.

With the media and government we have today in Canada, had Pussy Riot been a Canadian or American band, would their fate under similar circumstances have turned out any differently? Let’s face it, to the people of power both in government and in the media, whether it be Russia or Canada, Pussy Riot is nothing more than another inconvenient group of dirty fucking hippies.

UPDATE: A Globe & Mail story today on Pussy Riot, while trying to be supportive, can not help itself from using words like “girl”, comparing the band to Manson’s ‘girls’ and talking about the group’s fashion sense. *Sigh*

X-posted at Let Freedom Rain