Sex "Pistol"s Show: Female Representation & Why I Hate Vivienne Westwood
Sex "Pistol"s Show: Female Representation & Why I Hate Vivienne Westwood
🎀 an experimental dissertation on Hulu's punk girlies
I rarely watch TV but as an ex-punk who once did very punk things like wear red eyemakeup to school during my Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols phase at fourteen, I *had* to feast on ‘Pistol’ (2022) & write my angry critique. Chronicling an array of ‘70s U.K. iconoclasts like Vivienne Westwood, Pamela Rooke and Nancy Spungen of Sid-Vicious-fame, the show *also* touches on the band sometimes though so uninspiringly it ought to be a CRIME!
In this post I’ll be reviewing some of the notes I scribbled upon viewing the series. Unfortunately I slept through most scenes in which only male actors would appear and so, to the surprise of *no one*, I’ll be solely examining the women. Be warned that for political purposes I’ll intend to channel the style of experimental feminist novelist Kathy Acker so if the structure seems kinda messy, YOU MAY BLAME IT ON MY ANARCHY….
🎀 Part 1: When Shows Try To Be Feminist For Clout
Some may argue that the inclusion of pro-women ideals into mainstream television has vastly improved its quality since the fourth-wave of feminism blossomed on Tumblr, but I digress. What began in 2013 as a flawed-yet-spectacularly-transgressive approach to tackling feminist politics onscreen (see: ‘Orange Is The New Black’ and the cultural shift it sparked) can’t hardly be found in our current unoriginal climate and there’s a sneaky reason behind.
Nowadays when TV shows wish to demonstrate how #progressive they are, they simply add a bunch of scenes that poorly portray female characters as walking slogans for feminism and young audiences uncritically eat them up. The practice of a creator devoting themselves to continuously evolving the subversiveness of their work (different from *pleasing with*) with aid of public feedback has gotten lost; instead, the representation of women in mainstream media has come to be solidified into a banal, Pollyanna-like archetype that challenges nothing yet masquerades as imposing. Take the opening scene for the third episode of ‘Pistol’ as an example. To introduce matron-saint of punk fashion Pamela Rooke, better known as Jordan, she is featured in an overly cartoonish sequence in which she shocks pedestrians and passengers alike by flaunting an ostentatious #FreeTheNipple outfit. Nothing wrong with the exhibitionism itself even if I do not find any disruptiveness in mimicking it nowadays (I think there’s a certain arrogance to the women who do it…) but in the context of ‘70s U.K. it did strike me as somewhat glamorous.
Nonetheless, if I was so infuriated by the rather tame sequence it was due to the soundscape governing the images. Whomever supervised the soundtrack seriously thought no song could match the scene more perfectly than the peppy second-wave anthem “You Don’t Own Me” by Lesley Gore. To me, the whole thing looked so staged and infantile that it resembled an introductory class on “feminism for preschoolers” — like an insult to the integrity and intellect of the mature female spectator at which the show, with its +18 rating, is aimed. I’m almost certain that if the scene had been released around 2015 at least a handful of young, Rookiemag-literate girls would’ve rightfully seen through its feminist façade and called out the show for its stunt — for the fact it’s only one of several maneuvers by the creators to hop on the feminist trend while it’s hot.
An even more absurd example came in the shape of the show’s Vivienne Westwood, the distinguished Miss Jean Broadie of English punk fashion. In the series, she receives a rather cheap treatment with the uninspired lines of feminist dialogue she’s forced to deliver in her depthless, brief moments of screen time. The scene in which she sums up the transgressiveness behind her clothes as being able to “turn the male gaze back on itself” struck me as bizarre — is that really the language of a swanky dame Westwood’s stature, or was it secretly generated by AI?
Now, on a personal level I couldn’t care less if a Sex Pistols show embraces feminist politics or not but what I do denounce and find kind of ironic is that the series originally purported to shed a light on not just the band, but on women’s role throughout the emergence of punk too — which was notably sexist, mind you. The issue is that instead of achieving its forward-thinking goals, ‘Pistol’ somewhat ended up perpetrating the very ‘70s-era misogyny it claimed to criticize. The series is overflowing with that dehumanizing trope of reducing historical ladies into whooping tokens for feminism which, in my view, is even more infuriating for a show channeling the spirit of PUNK.
Even the character based on real-life-rock-star Chrissie Hynde of ‘The Pretenders’ checks off most of the traits of the deplorable manic pixie dream girl archetype. I remember the last time I came across one of these underdeveloped, misogynistic specimens was in a horridly hilarious screenplay by a 21-year-old male film school graduate, but for it to appear on a Hulu production directed by a filmmaking maven like Danny Boyle? Unacceptable and disturbing. In the show, Chrissie serves as a mere deadpan-deliverer of career-oriented reminders and lessons that further support Sex Pistols’ douchebag guitarist Steve Jones on his vapid quest for fame. What’s weird is that she emerges from the literal shadows at the eeriest of circumstances, as if she were available 24/7. Interestingly, the series gets away with this blatant smearing of Miss Hynde’s complexity by occasionally conveying some of her own struggles to break into the punk scene as a woman musician. At the end, however, her character is left to rot on the margins just like the other ladies described above. Not without first exemplifying the consequences of sexism, though.
With that being said, I am not the least surprised with the childish, look-how-woke-we-are attitude that popular programming approaches its pro-women ideals nowadays. Around the time Trump was elected as the U.S. president, I noticed that the once lively exchange of op-eds and ideas on integrating intersectionality into mainstream media somewhat came to a halt. Eventually the diversity of opinions established into one lackluster standard. One that doesn’t advocate for television to continually challenge through its ever-evolving representation of feminist principles onscreen but instead, for a norm aimed at shows to mandatorily echo a ‘politically-conscious’ approach — regardless if the intent is genuine or not — and to never question the liberal status-quo.
🎀 Part 2: Why I Hate Vivienne Westwood
It’s not clickbait (okay, it kinda is — I only dislike her) and it’s not related to Danny Boyle’s ‘Pistol’ either BUT IT’S A FASCINATING PEEK INTO U.K.’s MOVIE HISTORY — In 1977, New Queer Cinema legend Derek Jarman directed the ultimate burlesque statement against the punk youthquake, whom he considered “the same old petit bourgeois art students who a few months ago were David Bowie and Bryan Ferry look-alikes". Fusing a fascist, apocalyptic England with a filthy guerrilla girl gang eager to sell out for fame, ‘Jubilee’ satirically attacked the hypocrisies within England’s commodified counterculture and led to audiences and press to slaughter the film. One of the spectators most enraged by the polemic picture was fashion designer Vivienne Westwood on whom the rather pretentious character of Amyl Nitrate, played by none other than her past-employee Jordan, was based. In the film Amyl is a scholar of sorts, a riot grrrl who fills her journals with world history fanfiction (“Was Churchill a hero?”) and who strives to succeed at something similar to Eurovision. Honestly even *I* feel offended at such an unflattering depiction but it is to *thank* for the iconic drama that it preceded.
Cleverly, Vivienne designed a tee containing her bold, handwritten response to “Jubilee” which she thought was “the most boring and therefore disgusting film I had ever seen” and “an insult to [her] VIRILITY! I am punk, man!”. As much as I love feuds between larger-than-life personalities, I *will* say I 100% stand by Derek Jarman on this and how he viewed Ms. Westwood as a phony, as an artist whose punk qualities were ultimately bruised by ambition, and who built an empire off of ‘pea-brained fashion victims’ — below some more fuel to the fire.
“Vivienne Westwood accepts an OBE [Order of the British Empire award], dipsy bitch. The silly season's with us: our punk friends accept their little medals of betrayal, sit in their vacuous salons and destroy the creative - like the woodworm in my dresser, which I will paint with insecticide tomorrow. I would love to place a man-sized insectocutor, lit with royal-blue, to burn up this clothes-moth and her like.”
-A rather furious Derek Jarman in his ‘Modern Nature’ journals, 1991.
I admit I may be embracing a bit of #toxicfemininity in my dislike for Miss Viv but I’m TOO BIASED and blinded by my admiration for Jarman… and that’s simply how it is.