I’ve been living life as a Runaway. I saw the movie three times, I read the books Neon Angel and Joan Jett, watched Foxes, and cut my hair. This narrative has a pull over me, a grown lady who should be done with slouching and greasy hair. The Runaways, the books, and the interviews, especially of Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning, are texts that clarify and complicate the meaning of child actors and musicians growing into adulthood.
Kristen Stewart is amazing. In interviews she’s not coy and cute, she’s weird and rude and awkward, defying the script of normal behavior. Her Internet lovers and haters seem obsessed with her nervousness and stuttering. Nothing seems to be a pose and that seems to piss people off, as if she should posture, stand straight and smile. The truth is in the YouTube commentariat, mean, gracious, and otherwise. One detractor says, “Kristen looks more like a hobo than a star.” That’s a good thing! Girl, meet me in the desert and we can be friends.
As Joan Jett and as herself, she’s sarcastic and tomboyish in hoodies and leathers, unselfconsciously saying “pussy to the wood!” Her Joan is sexy with an almost predatory TV eye. Male interviewers seem uncomfortable and excited to be talking about sex and drugs with teenage girls. And yet they always ask the actors about their responsibility to their fans, as if they constructed the text. Fanning always says enthusiastically that she loved wearing the outfits, especially the corset. She cannily focuses on the difference between herself and her character; her delight is in the freedom of opposites. The interviewer leeringly asks these questions about sexy wardrobe and lesbian kissing and they laugh it off, knowingly. And they are young people in this gross machine and they are fumblingly discovering music and power.
These are child actors transitioning to womanhood portraying girls being exploited on film, transforming themselves. Kristen resists the exploitation narrative. When she is pressured into slut shaming in one interview, she refuses. When she is supposed to evince horror at doing coke in an airplane bathroom, she basically says it’s nothing she hasn’t seen before. She’s no coquette. She resists when an interviewer wants her to say The Runaways were corrupted. Instead she says they were all crazy and abusive, because really, aren’t people drawn to glamour and fame fucked up and selfish—“I always wanted to be somebody and here I am.” Of course we Americans know that a teenage girl-kiss is of more consequence than the systemic gender oppression shown in the movie, or the refreshingly casual huffing and coke.
The policing of child actors is interesting to me and it can be seen in the paparazzi photos of the actors, the publicity materials, and the film itself. When bloggers compare photos of Lohan, (now an elderly 23) Taylor Momsen, Stewart, and Fanning, they express mumsy concern for the girls who wear torn tights and dishevelment and fear that virginal princesses will be “sullen and sleep-deprived and blurry and greasy and braless and develop trouble getting out of cars while keeping your crotch hidden.” Because the real enemy is sartorial choice and experimentation, not patriarchy!
Talking about kid blogger Tavi Gevinson, Zeitgeist Footpath says, “I feel it’s sinister to welcome children prematurely into the adult world, and I think that attitudes of ‘we shouldn’t patronise the genuinely gifted, they want to do this’ are the worst kind of relativism. We view these children as novelties to be our own images.” Reading Neon Angel, you can’t help but agree. The reality of being a child star is so weird that I don’t understand the distinction between dressing conservatively or punk. The exploitation of individual actors is more concerning than the cultural influence of images. Fanning (16) and Stewart (20) express two different modes of being a child actor and their characters stand in for two opposing views of womanhood, failed and successful. The end of the film shows Cherie folding towels and smiling into the distance (fondly remembering Joan? Is she happy for her? Is she reminiscing about her unhappy career?) while Joan seems to be planning her rock domination. This ending is ambiguous. To me it’s significant that Cherie is still working for a man at the wedding shop. She has traded one boss for another. She is victimized womanhood.
For the first ladies of rock, freedom is in bypassing altruism and self-sacrifice, traditional feminine traits, and wresting gratification NOW. However, freeing yourself from the feminine often means throwing yourself into capitalist domination, into what is male and what is destruction. There’s millions of ways to be, but I tend to think of three, the feminine, the masculine, and the third that says to hell with them all. Punk kept saying fuck ‘em all, but I thought that meant fuck those who oppress and marginalize. Really, it was more nihilist than anarchist, saying fuck you and you and you. Can a non-objectifying feminist spirit be applied to this dangerous world? The film is built on the narrative of female empowerment through the performative arts and while there are glimmers, only the androgynous Joan seems to have power. As Peggy Phelan says, “If representational visibility equals power, then almost-naked young white women should be running Western culture.” A young blonde in a corset does not a confident empowered girl necessarily make. I do find it transgressive that the star of a huge teen hetero romance franchise plays a sexy-tough girl/girl kiss that normalizes lesbian attraction.
The movie is a feminist piece that adhers to the Bechdel rule—at least two girls have conversations about something other than men. Girls express their nascent power, love each other, and forge family apart from their natal one. And Joan expresses my favorite dictum: Stop fucking around. Get off your ass and make art. She has preternatural confidence and unwavering stamina in black leather and studs, shaggy hair and jumpsuits, not frilly dresses.
After I read Neon Angel I struggled not to see the film as fraudulent. Cherie Currie’s book, while poorly written and edited, vividly portrays the horrors of her life, and in one scene, repulses the reader with a description of Kim Fowley, who should be in jail right now. Joan was pissed at Cherie for leaving the band, Cherie was pissed at Jackie for leaving the band, and everyone seems to have brutalized each other unsurprised in a culture of fear-discipline and excess, the culture of too many drugs and rape. The girls were victims and the adults were at fault, but it’s disappointing that The Runaways couldn’t have acted differently, with more sister solidarity than girls against girls, ditched Fowley and played local shows until they were able to tour. In Joan Jett, a book of beautiful photos and elusive colloquial text by Jett, the rock experience is reason for being, “raw power…raw pent-up coil,” and she was in control of it. There are at least three truths here (four if you count Edgeplay, one-time bassist Vicki Blue’s documentary.)
It’s very strange to think of Joan and Fowley being friends and one wonders how Currie could be friends with her after the shit Fowley pulled. In Neon Angel Currie is not very nice—she does not like Lita Ford and will call her fat if she wants to— but doesn’t really have reason to be. The seductive glitter world took her out of a miserable life into something much worse. Cherie says that women tell her they were inspired by The Runaways and she’s sorry to shatter their illusions but it was not a good experience. At the end of Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains we see this too, the idea of a failed band whose primary importance is in its influence and the history, its subversion of the heterosexual intimacy fantasy of a man singing to women. So rarely do I see girls on film acting wild that this movie felt like a revolution.
Fowley is a proxy for a perverted audience (“death cats and masturbators” he says) and an industry that abuses for capitalist gain and packages in the most convenient and salable way. For all Fowley’s control, The Runaways look like greasy tomboys with homemade shags. “Guys don’t like girls who are tough. Guys like girls who are soft and flirty.” These girls were flinty, not flirty. Joan wanted to look like Suzi Quatro and Cherie wanted to look like Bowie and I cut bangs and put on some dirty kicks and corduroys when I got home from the movie. The body is a project in the image of your idols. The false promise a rock show has, that it is your home away from hostility of school and family, is such a tease, that even I at my advanced age wished for wasted glory.
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When asked “How will library school change your life?” Kati Nolfi responded “Well, I’ll be a librarian.” Five years later her wit still sparkles in Washington, D.C. She writes for Bookslut and can be found at katiismagic.blogspot.com
Tags: Kati Nolfi, Neon Angel, The Runaways
“First ladies of rock” Really?
Well I’d take issue with the fact that Neon Angel is “poorly written” but then again, I was the co-writer, so i guess you’d expect that.
Amazingly we didn’t set out to produce a post modernist dissertation on feminism in America as viewed through a prism of 70’s rock and roll and post ww2 male dominated power structures, or whatever it was that you were expecting. It was meant to be – and is – a fast paced, dirty, in your face look at what it was like to be a 15 year old girl in an era / culture were safe sex meant locking the closet door before you got down to it, and drugs were both fun, free of consequence, and often all that bands could expect to get paid with by their crooked record labels. Nobody wanted the book to be some dull dissertation on post feminist politics – not Cherie, not me, and I’d wager not 95% of the people who have or will read the book. So on it’s own terms I’d say that the book is well written. But then again I would, I suppose. i could have written this comment under some stupid assumed name, but fuck it, I’m happy to put my name out there defending anything I had a hand in writing. Except for bum checks that is, and there have been a few of those.
[Long aside – While things in the music industry may be more structured now with more oversight and control, allowing musicians to have longer careers and amass fortunes, I dont know if it has much of a positive effect as far as the quality of music being produced. Usually things are more interesting when the whole deal is being run by crackpots, enthusiastic amateurs, drug fiends and social misfits as opposed to accountants in eyeliner like Billie Joe Armstrong. And yes, even someone who ‘should be in jail” like Kim Fowley -who may have been a total prick and certainly not the kinda guy you would ask to babysit – was something of a genius when it came to producing interesting records, and creating gimmicks. Have you ever heard any of his 60s / 70s novelty records? There are a few compilations on the market that are definitely worth checking out see another side of a man who is a lot more than a 2 dimensional pantomime villain.]
Back to my point though. Reading this piece – although it was generally positive and I thank you for the plug – I still felt like I was reading someone complaining about an orange because it didn’t taste like a mango.
I think there is probably a general consensus among readers of this blog that the author’s intent pales in comparison to the reader’s experience, and that reading a text differently than an author intended is in no way wrong. Let’s speculate, perhaps, and assume that Kati began reading the book with no expectations beyond the story of “a fast paced, dirty, in your face look at what it was like to be a 15 year old girl in an era where […]” We can speculate, then, that at some point Kati was not fully enjoying her experience reading the book simply as this. We can assume that while reading it the text itself caused her to begin reading ideas of feminism “through a prism of 70’s rock and roll and post ww2 male dominated power structures.” So now you step in and say that her reading experience doesn’t matter because her reading experience lies outside of what your intention as an author was?
Death of The Author by Roland Barthes
I don’t think he was saying that her reading experience didn’t matter. It seemed more like him simply explaining his intent. Which is fair.
“Let’s speculate, perhaps, and assume that Kati began reading the book with no expectations…”
i have no clue who kati nolfi is, or to be honest, much anything about the runaways.
i will place a $5 wager that kati considers herself a feminist and has written on the subject previously.
would you like to make that bet before i google her name and see if i am right?
or would you prefer to sit in your fantasy tower made of shit?
Tony O’Neill,
I think you’ve made much of a muchness here. There was only one aside that said anything bad about Neon Angel and most of the article isn’t about the book. You seem to think this orange (a brief discussion of the cultural meaning of The Runaways) is a mango (a harsh critique of Neon Angel).
“First ladies of rock” Really?
Maybe i did, but I don’t think so. I was just stating that – in my opinion – calling the book “badly written” is – in my opinion – wrong. I did in fact thank Kati for plugging the book, but just wanted to defend the quality of the writing, which is my right. Since “Neon” is not one of “my” books – i.e. it was a cowriting thing, and is Cherie’ s story and not mine – I guess I feel a little more distance here, so I feel comfortable doing it publicly. That’s something I doubt I would do with one of my novels. If it was one of my novels, I’d probably just mail the reviewer a dog turd in a Cartier box.
That was a reply to voorface, by the way. I have no idea how to make my comments appear in the correct place.
Hey, Tony, I appreciate you weighing in. Cheers, brother.
TO’N,
Fair enough.
Well I’d take issue with the fact that Neon Angel is “poorly written” but then again, I was the co-writer, so i guess you’d expect that.
Amazingly we didn’t set out to produce a post modernist dissertation on feminism in America as viewed through a prism of 70’s rock and roll and post ww2 male dominated power structures, or whatever it was that you were expecting. It was meant to be – and is – a fast paced, dirty, in your face look at what it was like to be a 15 year old girl in an era / culture were safe sex meant locking the closet door before you got down to it, and drugs were both fun, free of consequence, and often all that bands could expect to get paid with by their crooked record labels. Nobody wanted the book to be some dull dissertation on post feminist politics – not Cherie, not me, and I’d wager not 95% of the people who have or will read the book. So on it’s own terms I’d say that the book is well written. But then again I would, I suppose. i could have written this comment under some stupid assumed name, but fuck it, I’m happy to put my name out there defending anything I had a hand in writing. Except for bum checks that is, and there have been a few of those.
[Long aside – While things in the music industry may be more structured now with more oversight and control, allowing musicians to have longer careers and amass fortunes, I dont know if it has much of a positive effect as far as the quality of music being produced. Usually things are more interesting when the whole deal is being run by crackpots, enthusiastic amateurs, drug fiends and social misfits as opposed to accountants in eyeliner like Billie Joe Armstrong. And yes, even someone who ‘should be in jail” like Kim Fowley -who may have been a total prick and certainly not the kinda guy you would ask to babysit – was something of a genius when it came to producing interesting records, and creating gimmicks. Have you ever heard any of his 60s / 70s novelty records? There are a few compilations on the market that are definitely worth checking out see another side of a man who is a lot more than a 2 dimensional pantomime villain.]
Back to my point though. Reading this piece – although it was generally positive and I thank you for the plug – I still felt like I was reading someone complaining about an orange because it didn’t taste like a mango.
I think there is probably a general consensus among readers of this blog that the author’s intent pales in comparison to the reader’s experience, and that reading a text differently than an author intended is in no way wrong. Let’s speculate, perhaps, and assume that Kati began reading the book with no expectations beyond the story of “a fast paced, dirty, in your face look at what it was like to be a 15 year old girl in an era where […]” We can speculate, then, that at some point Kati was not fully enjoying her experience reading the book simply as this. We can assume that while reading it the text itself caused her to begin reading ideas of feminism “through a prism of 70’s rock and roll and post ww2 male dominated power structures.” So now you step in and say that her reading experience doesn’t matter because her reading experience lies outside of what your intention as an author was?
Death of The Author by Roland Barthes
I don’t think he was saying that her reading experience didn’t matter. It seemed more like him simply explaining his intent. Which is fair.
“Let’s speculate, perhaps, and assume that Kati began reading the book with no expectations…”
i have no clue who kati nolfi is, or to be honest, much anything about the runaways.
i will place a $5 wager that kati considers herself a feminist and has written on the subject previously.
would you like to make that bet before i google her name and see if i am right?
or would you prefer to sit in your fantasy tower made of shit?
Tony O’Neill,
I think you’ve made much of a muchness here. There was only one aside that said anything bad about Neon Angel and most of the article isn’t about the book. You seem to think this orange (a brief discussion of the cultural meaning of The Runaways) is a mango (a harsh critique of Neon Angel).
Maybe i did, but I don’t think so. I was just stating that – in my opinion – calling the book “badly written” is – in my opinion – wrong. I did in fact thank Kati for plugging the book, but just wanted to defend the quality of the writing, which is my right. Since “Neon” is not one of “my” books – i.e. it was a cowriting thing, and is Cherie’ s story and not mine – I guess I feel a little more distance here, so I feel comfortable doing it publicly. That’s something I doubt I would do with one of my novels. If it was one of my novels, I’d probably just mail the reviewer a dog turd in a Cartier box.
That was a reply to voorface, by the way. I have no idea how to make my comments appear in the correct place.
Hey, Tony, I appreciate you weighing in. Cheers, brother.
TO’N,
Fair enough.
Fairly new to the Runaways, I enjoyed the film and this article! Thanks for citing the Alison Bechdel rule! You are right: “Girl, meet me in the desert and we can be friends.”
Fairly new to the Runaways, I enjoyed the film and this article! Thanks for citing the Alison Bechdel rule! You are right: “Girl, meet me in the desert and we can be friends.”
Hey, great post!
I too loved the movie, saw it 2x in the theater, have been blasting my Runaways tapes in my car. I’ve been avoiding the bios and docs, because I want the queer-punk fiction of Joan Jett’s superhero origin story (“I want what he’s wearing…”). But yeah, the reality sounds ugly/complicated.
Too bad a bunch of self-important blowhard dudes took over the comments section, but not surprising. What the riot grrrls used to say? Girls up front!
Hey, great post!
I too loved the movie, saw it 2x in the theater, have been blasting my Runaways tapes in my car. I’ve been avoiding the bios and docs, because I want the queer-punk fiction of Joan Jett’s superhero origin story (“I want what he’s wearing…”). But yeah, the reality sounds ugly/complicated.
Too bad a bunch of self-important blowhard dudes took over the comments section, but not surprising. What the riot grrrls used to say? Girls up front!
I love, love, love, fucking LOVE this article!
“Girl, meet me in the desert and we can be friends.” Hell yes.
I love, love, love, fucking LOVE this article!
“Girl, meet me in the desert and we can be friends.” Hell yes.