The Punk Singer starts with singer Kathleen Hanna performing at a spoken word event in 1991 — she says, then shouts, "I am your worst nightmare come to life / I'm a girl you can't shut up." It ends with Hanna saying she's fine with people who aren't feminists or who don't believe that her illness — late-stage Lyme disease — exists, but as she states, in the final sentence of the film, "They should have to stay out of my way." Out Nov. 29 in select theaters and on VOD, the film is a portrait of the grrrl who wrote the Riot Grrrl Manifesto.
"It's important to me to tell the stories of especially feminist artists while they're still making work," said the film's director, Sini Anderson, in a phone interview. "Female portraits of female artists mid-career."
Hanna herself saw it a different way: She explained that she agreed to do the documentary because "I thought I was going to die." After years of sickness, she was diagnosed during filming. "I was preparing to be a statue and be gone," she said.
Watching the movie, there are some highly questionable links drawn between first- and third-wave feminism and the struggle for racial equality; there are also, notably, few brown faces, which Hanna linked to a problem with Riot Grrrl itself.
"There were a lot of non-productive discussions of race and class as Riot Grrrl was winding down," she said, describing rooms full of "white girls pointing fingers."
"That was sort of its demise."
Still, it's arresting to see Hanna and the grrrls do all the talking.
"I hope it inspires people, like, even if they totally dislike it, to make something," Hanna said.
So, even if you totally dislike it, here are 13 reasons you should watch The Punk Singer:
1. The documentary was made by an almost all-women crew, and there's only one cisgender man interviewed in its 80-minute run.
2. "Girls to the front" was an actual Bikini Kill policy. The band actively sought to create a physical safe space for women at shows.
As part of this policy, you can see Hanna telling boys "back. Back." Also, "All boys be cool for once in your lives."
3. Hanna lets her guard down.
4. As part of that, you see her struggling with late-stage Lyme disease.
5. Hanna lets her awkward little girl show.
We've all been there.
6. Anderson is a queer filmmaker, and queers get a voice in the movie.
7. Hanna's "Riot Grrrl Manifesto" is somewhat vague at times, but it's a vagueness to live by.
8. Hanna articulates the fear of being honest as a woman.
9. Then, after all that talk, Hanna doesn't ever really specify what happened to her. And that's her choice.
10. Joan Jett is in it, and Joan Jett is a goddess.
11. Hanna and Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz have a really sweet relationship, and selfies are only the beginning.
The two of them worked together to write a speech for the VMAs about the sexual assaults that occurred at Woodstock '99. Using the VMAs to raise awareness of sexual assault? What?!
12. As Anderson said, "All the things that we were fighting for back then are not fixed."
13. There's dancing. A lot of it.
