Two Views of Le Tigre
Urgent and alive
By Jimmy Draper
 IN TYPICAL LE Tigre style, From the Desk of Mr. Lady (Mr. Lady) opens with an all points bulletin regarding the current state of feminist politics: "It feels so '80s or early '90s to be political ... Nothing has changed." Sung Stepford wives-style over an electro-aerobics beat, the trio's zonked-out monotones are an apt metaphor for the band's disappointment with unchanging public reaction to political women in the decade since riot grrrl. It's a disillusionment shared by anyone today who, after witnessing the blatantly sexist response to that early-'90s feminist-punk movement, hoped that 10 years down the road our society would have overcome such retrograde gender biases.
When riot grrrl brought sexual politics to punk's forefront in '91, one intent was to critique our culture's intense hostility toward women, especially those demanding rights and respect. While male bands such as Fugazi and Nirvana garnered respect for their politics, women rarely received anything but condescending skepticism. So when Bikini Kill rallied for "Revolution Girl-Style Now!" and Bratmobile tsk-tsked cool-boy cliques, many dumbshit, dimwit guys – who were too comfortable with the status quo to acknowledge their scene's misogyny – indignantly cried reverse sexism. Others responded with physical threats and assaults, or by putting pen to paper and using zines to dismiss riot grrrls as fakers, "whores," and, most incredibly, comparable to Hitler.
Along with the insta-sexist reaction from so many of riot grrrls' punk peers, the mainstream joined the fray in '92, all but outright declaring a backlash ripped from the pages of the media's antifeminist free-for-all of the late '60s and '70s. In publications from USA Today to Spin, riot grrrl was ridiculed, infantilized, and criticized as a cutesy fashion statement, with journalists declaring the bands incompetent, the politics absurd, and the movement DOA. All of this despite chapters forming worldwide and countless women starting zines, bands, and activist groups.
Political women have always faced harsher criticism than their male counterparts, and musicians are certainly no exception. Remember the reprimands Sinéad O'Connor received after ripping up the Pope's photo? What about the numerous uproars surrounding Yoko Ono? Madonna? The list is endless and endlessly growing: both Pearl Jam and the Beastie Boys have been praised extensively for their political efforts (Ticketmaster and Free Tibet, respectively), yet ex-Bikini Kill member Kathleen Hanna is still dismissed in some quarters as hysterical or paranoid for asserting that sexism exists.
In fact, it was Hanna – now one-third of Le Tigre – who received the brunt of the backlash against riot grrrl, becoming another example of how our culture treats women who are "too vocal." Such sexist, antipolitical hostilities weren't left in the early '90s, either: not only has blatant musical misogyny recently returned to the top of the pops, but journalists continue ridiculing women making feminist music. In Hanna's post-riot grrrl days, for instance, Robert Christgau criticized Hanna's messages, saying, "She's 29, and she needs to move on"; likewise, Seattle's The Stranger accused Hanna of acting "like your ass is too precious for the subway." Compare such nasty criticism with the rhetoric surrounding riot grrrl, and it's disturbing to see just how little the responses to political, musical women have changed.
All of which makes Le Tigre's new seven-song EP even more exciting, necessary, and urgent. While it's considered "hip" these days to claim that feminism is passé and that art should "transcend" gender, this New York City trio – Hanna, Johanna Fateman, and new member J.D. Samson – makes politics refreshingly explicit by directly addressing our society's gender-based reactions toward feminist art and activisms. Opening with a call to arms to repoliticize friends and fans, the 17 jittering, skittering minutes of From the Desk confront the ever present misogyny that many people claim was eradicated years ago. Never stopping to catch its breath or watch its back, the trio indicts everyone from well-intentioned assholes ("Yr Critique," "Mediocrity Rules") to oblivious sexists ("Gone B4 Yr Home") with an off-center, on-target precision that's both fun(ny) and unjaded.
The EP's most powerful moment is "They Want Us to Make a Symphony Out of the Sound of Women Swallowing Their Own Tongues," in which a clueless male asks what women today struggle against now that "the options are not as narrow as they might have been 30 years ago." When the woman's response begins with "Uh," the band loops her hesitation into a stuttering, sputtering dance beat, creating a chilling example of how society attempts to make women look uneducated and not credible when insisting that life for women ain't as gosh-darned great and liberated as they're told. Faced with such intensely sexist opposition in a increasingly hostile society, Le Tigre's unabashedly feminist perspective is, like riot grrrl's 10 years ago, the sound of a revolution.
Preaching to the choir
By Michelle Goldberg
MAYBE MY HOPES were too high. After all, you can't expect a record to fill some weird hole in your aesthetic life, to be the music that you've yearned for but never fully imagined. Still, I thought the new Le Tigre would be the one, the album that would unite my tastes and politics, speak right to me and make me feel, finally, understood.
Such dreams weren't entirely unfounded. Riot grrrl superwoman Kathleen Hanna came close to delivering the perfect piece of punkish electronic cut 'n' paste feminist agitprop with her 1998 Julie Ruin album. That record contained the same furious political passion that electrified Hanna's earlier work with the seminal riot grrrl band Bikini Kill but substituted clever new-wave production and sly, retro-femme iconography for Bikini Kill's bombastic DIY stridency. While Bikini Kill's fire-breathing rage was cathartic, the band's sound – loud, amateurish, screeching – grew tired far more quickly than its message did. With Julie Ruin, Hanna's style matured, though her politics remained gloriously fierce.
If anything, her emancipating words were more powerful than ever when couched in insinuating, sweet 'n' sour, stick-in-your-head melodies. No matter what your ideological affiliation, it would be hard not to be entranced by the woozy underwater groove and deadpan rapping of "I Wanna Know What Love Is." Lost in the music, the words, a scathing screed against misogynist violence, sneak up on you. The song's ending, delivered by Hanna's pretty crystalline voice, is the ultimate riposte to all the priapic sociopaths, from Fred Durst to the Night Stalker, who would use force to keep girls in their place: "So I'll stay awake almost every night / A pen in my hand and in the other a knife / Cuz I'd rather be scared and fight back / Than be some dick's maid, babe, or wife." The way she sang it, even John Ashcroft would nod along. What made the song wonderfully dangerous is the same thing that makes Eminem's rants threatening: it's so damn catchy you hardly realize you're internalizing the words. The contention that some of Eminem's apologists make, that you can separate the music from the message, belies the power of lyrics to echo in your head and burrow into your subconscious. If propaganda – the drilling repetition of ideas and master narratives – didn't work, why would nearly every government on the planet invest so much money in creating it?
It only works, though, if it's diverting. That's why Hollywood movies about the glories of matrimony and bourgeois consumption (from Pretty Woman to The Wedding Planner) are more effective than old Soviet films about noble peasants and voracious landlords.
Of course, Le Tigre, Kathleen Hanna's new band, isn't just a propaganda outfit. Nevertheless, on its debut in 1999, I was thrilled by the way it brought emancipated awareness to Go-Go's-style synth girlpop, name-checking grad student heroines like Gertrude Stein and Valie Export as well as punk pioneers like the Slits. The record was more personal than Hanna's other work, but its utterly right-on takes on exasperated urban womanhood were similarly liberating. And you could dance to it!
If the first Le Tigre album had a flaw, it was a roughness that never felt wholly intentional. Surely by the second record, I thought, the trio would tighten up and deliver something ferocious, lovely, and entirely innovative. Which, judging from the new EP From the Desk of Mr. Lady, was asking for too much. Le Tigre are what they are – three intensely smart women using music as a platform – not the subversive fantasy pop group I wish they were, one that could sneak into the consciousness of the unconverted. Hardcore Hanna fans will be thrilled by tracks like "Get off the Internet," with its screaming chorus, "Destroy the right wing!" The problem is that only hardcore Hanna fans will really listen to this uneven mélange of turgid beats, tinny keyboards, and offhand vocals. Feminist musicians need to create sounds as invigorating as those backing their enemies. Otherwise, they'll just be singing to the converted.
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