![]() So, watching this movie that was about sex work that was really boring was awesome, and I laughed through the whole thing. I didn’t ever think that I was doing this sex-positive thing. I think of it as a way to, you know, put food in your mouth and be an artist and pay for college. People would say, “Oh, you were a sex-positive stripper,” and I was like, “It doesn’t have anything to do with sex, to me.” It’s really boring and pathetic and embarrassing to everyone, and I don’t think that it’s sex-positive to be a stripper. And I sat there laughing and loving how really boring it was, because I’ve been a stripper and I’ve been asked about it a lot. It basically shows this woman who seems like a high-price call girl who works out of a fancy apartment, and her job is really boring. It’s just as amazing in a totally different way. Oh, and the movie Working Girls that she made - not the Melanie Griffith one. That was huge for me - like, monstrously huge. Were there any other films that made an impact?ĭefinitely Born in Flames by Lizzie Borden. I kind of understand that world a little bit more now, and how things can go kind of wonky. I mean, films are such long processes that all kinds of weird sh-t happens during them that are too complicated to go in to. It’s odd how her original intent survives in the movie, even though it was directed by a guy and mishandled by the studio. It has such an interesting history that movie, too, with the writer Nancy Dowd having her name taken off it ’cause she was worried about the final product. But I remember that being the first film that I heard the term “sellout,” and I saw this feminist band being like, “Well we don’t care of you call us that - we’re gonna do whatever we want.” And that was a really powerful message for me and Kathi and Tobi, who were watching it on laser disc at Tobi’s parents’ house. Which is completely some random high-school way of thinking about things. You know what I mean? It was like, “This band’s first EP was so great, but then everybody got into them,” and because everybody got into them that made them sellouts. I mean, in high school we would say stuff like, “Oh, they’re sellouts now” and we didn’t really know what that meant. I didn’t really realize that at the time. And it was also talking about this commercialization of things, and kind of going in the direction that the ’90s would go in - like, “You’re a sellout” and all that kind of stuff. It was kind of interesting because it was kind of like what happened to Madonna - you know, with everybody copying how she dressed and showing up at her concerts. I like all of them! I like both of them. Which version of “Professionals” do you prefer? ‘Cause there’s that one over the end credits where they’re all dolled up to do the MTV-style version. And their song is “We’re the pro-fess-ionals! Join the pro-fess-ionals!” It’s actually really good. They’re in a punk band called The Fabulous Stains, and there’s members of The Clash that play kind of the rival boy band, called The Professionals. Kathleen Hanna: Well, a really big movie for Bikini Kill was Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, starring Diane Lane and Laura Dern. We’re always asking about people’s favorite films and I’m really curious as to some of yours, or perhaps some of the ones that were influential on you. I was hoping we could start by talking a little about movies. Here, Hanna chats about the movies that inspired her, sexism in media, reconciling the past, the future of riot grrrl and more. Featuring interviews with the likes of Joan Jett, Kim Gordon, Carrie Brownstein and Hanna’s partner, Adam Horowitz, the movie offers an intimate portrait of the musician, and allows Hanna herself to speak frankly about her life and her recent battle with an undiagnosed case of Lyme disease. Hanna is the subject of Sini Anderson’s new documentary The Punk Singer, a biopic of sorts that charts the singer’s rise from performance art through punk rock and beyond, and doubles as a mini-history of the riot grrrl era. Along the way she’s inspired countless female (and male) musicians, gotten infamously punched by Courtney Love, and coined the phrase “Smells like teen spirit” (the latter incidents are unrelated, as far as we know.) She’s also one of the coolest (and nicest) people you could talk to. ![]() As one of the founding members of Bikini Kill, Hanna was at the epicenter of the ’90s “riot grrrl” movement and a key music figure in radical feminism, a role she carried on into her dance pop outfit Le Tigre and her new band, The Julie Ruin. Though she’d probably hate to admit it, Kathleen Hanna is a punk rock icon. ![]()
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