Book review: ‘Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot’

Photo by Vincent CoscolluelaaIt’s early in the day of February 21, 2012 and 5 women in neon-bright dresses, stockings, and pastel balaclavas are practicing a protest song in an undisclosed location.

It’s a punk song with loud verses, distorted guitars, and a lilting chorus not unlike a hymn that petitioned: “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, chase Putin out.”

They’ve pre-recorded the riffs and music so the guitars are really just for show. By the end of the day they had crashed the gates of Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior and performed up on the dais, the area nearest the altar and had been stopped by church security as well as some of the church goers.

Photo from Amazon

The same evening, they had turned footage of the performance into a music video titled “Punk Prayer: Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!” and posted it online.

The next morning the video had gone viral and was on almost every news outlet in Russia and Europe. A few days later it had reached America and Asia, and the group Pussy Riot was famous, celebrated – it was also wanted by Russian authorities.

The description in the video stated that the women of Pussy Riot acted the performance in protest against the vulgar show of the Orthodox Church leader’s support for Putin during his election campaign.

By the first week of March, three of the five girls on the video had been arrested. A week later the world exploded with support in reaction to their incarceration, including a scrawl on Madonna’s back during a concert in Moscow, and a Peaches song.

Looking back

What do I know of Russia in 2012? That Putin had been handed back the Presidency from his buddy Medvedev; that three women got arrested for performing inside that cathedral; and feminist punk in Russia just gained a quantum leap in fame and perspective.

This is the arc and coverage of Words Will Break Cement by Masha Gessen (also the author of the anti-Putin biography The Man Without a Face), who narrates the story of Pussy Riot from its gestation in the performance art collective Voina, up to the first versions of the band (called Wee Wee Riot), honing shock performance as Pussy Riot, jail time, a show trial, and more jail time.

A few things to remember while reading Gessen’s work or even watching the 2013 documentary by HBO Pussy Riot –A Punk Prayer.

• Pussy Riot is not just composed of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (Nadya), Yekaterina Samutsevich (Kat), and Maria Alyokhina (Masha in the HBO docu), the three girls who were arrested and later gained international media attention. The collective has a variable membership of around 11 women, including some men (like Nadya’s husband Petya, or Peter).
• Although they describe themselves as a feminist punk band, Pussy Riot isn’t an actual band, nor are the members (at least none of the three girls were) actual musicians. They just play a fictional band, like the embodiment of an idea, to “perform” political protests through music and metaphor. The women in balaclavas are thus rendered as characters and their motto: Anyone can be Pussy Riot, is emboldened by this symbolism of anonymity.

Gessen’s work delves deeper into the histories of the three girls who were imprisoned, through exclusive letters and interactions she got from Nadya, Kat, and Maria (but mostly Kat and Maria) while in jail, and through interviews with the rest of the Riot members, their families, and their friends.

While the HBO documentary presents a vivid albeit quick portrait of how Pussy Riot came together, Gessen works on her own mural and traces how the quirky art group Voina and its members were eventually left dissatisfied with the shocking, albeit fairly shallow and obscurantist methods of that collective, like kissing cops and holding an orgy at a biology museum.

This of course eventually led to the formation of the punk “band” that made pointed artsy, insta-performances in public places with distorted riffs and anti-administration lyrics for a more immediate, less tangential, and arguably tighter kind of show to get their message across.

Acts of courage

Like I said, they aren’t really musicians in the sense that they would have used any other creative means that would best carry their opinions and beliefs across (hence the visual symbology for anonymity – hence inclusiveness – of the bright neon/pastel balaclavas, stockings, and dresses accompanying the music), but they ARE punks in that their playing expressed two middle fingers, really fast riffs, and often the deficiency of actual musical skill that has come to be associated with the genre.

That a collective of women has embraced the punk aesthetic and used it as both weapon and fuel for protest because there is nothing of creative dissent in contemporary Russian culture just bowls me over. It’s an astounding act of courage. Makes you appreciate a democracy where you can sing and march in protest without getting sent to a gulag the day after.

Gessen’s work is nuanced, layered, and complex, just like the context that birthed Pussy Riot. It’s also rambling and often prone to muse on branching stories that weigh down the action of the narrative. Boy, you can really feel the boredom of the girls in jail and those parts I could have really skipped over.

Here though I must draw a parallel to the Taqwacore movement in North America, where a loose collection of Muslim musicians were inspired by a book to form real punk and bands and eventually culminated in a tour across the USA.

Like the Taqwacores, Pussy Riot concluded that “punk” was a blank canvas – an empty banner with which to rally those who share the same idea – and an umbrella to huddle under as you paint the aegis of refusal to do battle in the realm of ideas.

It may look violent, it may sound harsh, but punk endorses a peaceful revolution of the mind. Three minutes to change the world and your stompbox as spiritual armor, enacted via metaphor, powered with courage, and a one-two-three-fo’!

From a music critique standpoint, Pussy Riot’s repertoire of subjects were pretty limited, with lyrical themes that never strayed out of Russian feminism, LGBT rights, and their fave pet topic: opposition to the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

As a piece of local culture, they were novel but they said nothing new in the greater history of punk rabble rousing that The Clash or Bad Religion haven’t already gone over.

It’s also of interest to note that Gessen is a Russian lesbian who moved to the US with her partner and their children because of the anti-gay laws in Russia.

Where it shines

Pussy Riot has used punk to re-imagine a better Russia, and to endeavor to shape their world without demagogues, cultural rot, and political static. A Russia free from Putin. Of course they got arrested and put through a show trial.

This is where Gessen’s work shines with revelation. Riot had, previously, already performed in a lingerie store, on a roof top, and in the Red Square near the Kremlin.

But it’s the cathedral gig that really got the government’s and the Orthodox churchgoers’ goat.

Their accomplishment can’t be overlooked at all, however. With the cathedral performance, jail time, and the coverage of the trial, Pussy Riot has done more to shine a light on Russian life’s ills and corruption than any news agency has in years.

With the Taqwacore movement in America and Pussy Riot in Russia, punk rock has unexpectedly become the empowering force it’s long hankered for, the dreamer who can almost literally enact change by shouting at the ills and social dystopia surrounding him.

To enact crisis and release static through attention was the impetus, a strategic consistency of shock; with the Pussy Riot performances the three jailed women and their comrades have made punk bigger than the system it’s trying to bring down, like a giant looking over its own shoulder.

Gessen’s work is at its best when she simply recounts action and leaves herself out of the narrative (which happens more often than a reportage/biography book should normally allow).

This happens in the prison scenes, the lull during the trials and at transfers, and in the communiques between Nadya, Maria, Kat and their friends and loved ones. All these in-betweens happen off-camera, without a camfone or journalist to record the event.

Where it stumbles

It is, sadly or likely with forethought, Gessen herself who trips up her own writing when she shows her politics, coloring her reportage and her narrative powers and often surprising the reader with such seething rage. At least it did for me, when I read parts like these: “Medvedev, a tiny man who looked like a cross between a third grader and his favourite stuffed toy, had been anointed Putin’s successor; the day after the action, he was elected to the office of president so he could keep the chair warm for Putin for four years.”

There’s a lot of these scattered throughout and though I applaud going gonzo, getting side tracked like this should go into another piece of work, not when you’ve already got access to your subjects no matter how limited.

All in all the book is at its core an entertaining documentation of Russian judiciary processes in reaction to what five women did at a cathedral, what it meant to Russian liberals, and what it meant to the world, and why it motivated musicians and celebrities to assemble support on social media and other methods.

The book stops while Maria and Nadya are still in prison, but the great epilogue off-book here is that, having served 21 months, Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were released on December 23, 2013 after the State Duma approved their amnesty.

By early this year though, they were up to their old antics trying to perform a song at the Sochi Winter Olympics site. The Cossacks, atraditional and ultra-conservative militia, were also there to greet these punk women in their own fashion. Welcome back, Pussy Riot. – Rappler.com

Karl R. De Mesa is the author of the book of reportage Radiant Void, now available in major bookstores in Metro Manila

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Elle Macpherson is getting better with age

ELLE MACPHERSON, all 6ft of sun-kissed long lean limbs and a tumbling mane of blonde hair, is earnestly telling an audience of women in Selfridges, London, what it felt like to struggle with a muffin top, fatigue, and finding herself so irritable she shouted at the kids.

Frankly, it’s hard to believe the former supermodel’s ever had a muffin, let alone struggled with the resulting flab of pigging out on them, and it’s even more difficult to believe she’s 50 — she had her milestone birthday in March.

The big difference between Macpherson — once known globally as “The Body”— and the rest of us poor middle-aged mortals who just accept being sleep-starved and stroppy as the norm is that, in true celebrity style, she countered her slump two years ago by creating her own solution, an alkalising greens food supplement.

“I just wasn’t feeling my super self and I’d lost the spark which keeps you feel energised and motivated. My skin was dry, I was gaining weight around my waist, feeling moody, and my joints ached,” confides Macpherson.

“I put it down to ageing but then I thought, I don’t like that feeling whatever the cause and knew things had to change. So I got help with nutrition, threw out the tonne of tablets I’d been taking daily, and helped create this brilliant alkalising supplement instead.”

Without a hint of irony she describes it as “my birthday present to women”.

Inarguably, she looks amazing, dressed dramatically in a black top and leather skirt, and even though you know she’s genetically blessed, has nutritionally balanced meals delivered daily to her home, and regular massage and acupuncture sessions, it’s still tempting to go and buy a tonne of the stuff if it means you might, in a tiny way, emulate her.

Also, while she enjoys a luxury lifestyle, which makes you feel as green as her supplement but with envy, in person Australian-born Macpherson emerges as enormously likeable, unassuming, and endearingly open about her happiness in her recent marriage, motherhood, being a stepmother, and dealing with unwelcome ageing.

“Do I look back to how I looked in my 20s? Yeah, just like most women do and I think, ‘Wow, did I really look like that?’ At the time I didn’t realise I was that big a deal and wasn’t so confident even though I pretended to be so cool,” she says with a smile.

“I feel better now than I’ve ever felt because I’m older, wiser and truly believe that being strong, inspired, and capable is as important as our body shape. That’s why I truly didn’t have a problem with becoming 50, and I wanted to go into it with grace rather than fighting it. At this age, of course, you have to make more effort and being fit and being healthy from the inside is really important — if things are good on the inside, it shows on the outside. I just think women today want to look good at whatever age and realise it’s pointless chasing after youth.”

Her own youth was certainly charmed due to a fortunate combination of beauty and brains. She modelled from the age of 17, after deferring a university place to study law, and survived the demands of the often brutal fashion industry as well as high-octane jet-setting and partying as her success grew through the 1980s.

“I have certainly gone through periods in my life where I haven’t treated myself kindly. I grew up young. I’ve done everything, I’m no angel and haven’t led a sheltered life. In a sense I’ve experienced everything, partying with Andy Warhol, going to New York’s Studio 54, and meeting Michael Jackson and Diana Ross.

“I think I survived thanks to the values instilled in me as a child — a strong sense of family, commitment to what I love, self-discipline, and a desire to methodically work through problems.”

She adorned the much-coveted cover of Sports Illustrated a record five times, and, in 1986, Time Magazine put her on its cover and dubbed her ‘The Body’.

Macpherson, who’d already set up a business so she could profit from her image, dismissed feminists who declared it a demeaning label. “I thought great moniker, brilliant for business, I’ll use that, thanks,” she says firmly.

It’s the name of her hugely successful brand and her lingerie range, Elle Macpherson Intimates, is sold globally. She’s also hosted, and been an executive producer of, fashion reality shows in America and is well-recognised in the UK, which she’s made her home, as a judge on Britain Ireland’s Next Top Model.

She reflects that today’s models are fortunate by comparison with her era. “The world has embraced the fashion industry and it’s not a niche market anymore. Also, they don’t have to endure long photoshoots where photographers took reams of film and hundreds of shots in the hope they’d got the ‘magic’ shot. Now with digital photography they can see everything immediately and edit on the spot, so it may only be necessary to take 10 frames,” she says.

That satisfaction from a 30-year career (“My motto is ‘do what you love, and love what you do’, so that work is a pleasure not a chore”) is patently eclipsed by her personal happiness.

She has two sons, Flynn, 17, and Cy, 10, from her nine-year relationship with financier Arpad Busson, and last year wed billionaire Jeffrey Soffer, a father-of-three. She was married in her 20s to a man 20 years her senior, Gilles Bensimon, a former creative director of Elle magazine, and says she never thought she would marry again.

“I’ve never put much importance on it, but then the love of my life asked me to marry him and I didn’t hesitate,” she says, beaming as she talks of the romance that broke up a few years after they got together but was rekindled after he narrowly survived a helicopter crash in the Bahamas.

“It was meant to be I think. Our paths have crossed over the last 10 years and friends kept saying, ‘You must meet this guy, you’d really like him’, but I was like, ’Whatever’ and then we met and it just all clicked.”

She’s taken time off work to support Flynn, who has just finished his GCSEs, and protests that despite those photographs of her immaculately dressed on the school-run that was “just because I was on my way to work in TV. When I’m not working I don’t feel any pressure to look great or anything — that’s not me. I dress to be comfortable just like anyone else.”

Her anti-ageing tip is drinking three litres of water a day and staying active. She’s a keen skier and off-road cyclist. “I don’t like the word exercise it sounds like a punishment, I prefer to say activity. Just 45 minutes a day is good and it can just be a walk, it doesn’t have to be a gym session.”

But it’s her personal motto which probably reveals most about this woman’s determination: “I believe it all works out in the end and if it hasn’t worked out it isn’t the end. It helps me take one day at a time. I have so many ambitions, new ones every day, and it’s just a question of staying fit and healthy so I can get everything done.”

The Super Elixir is available from www.welleco.com, €90 plus delivery.

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