LYDIA LUNCH: THE WAR IS NEVER OVER
Lydia Lunch — “We used to be warriors. Women. How we have devolved. From Medusa to Madonna, from Kali to Courtney Love, from Durga to Uma Thurman.
She’s right, you know. TW: assault and child abuse.
Director Beth B. tells the story of Lydia Lunch’s 40 years in music and performance art, film, and provocation through archival footage. Some of that footage is provided by a friend of mine Lawrence Lewis , a fact I found out later. Then there are interviews with Lunch and her many collaborators, and clips from the films.
The film starts with Lunch recounting a story about power and how she discovered what power really was. Lydia Lunch started her career, like so many do, by moving to New York and watching a band. She didn’t have any money or any one to stay with, so she immediately picked up the lead singer and moved into a loft in the singer’s building. No one was going to say no to Lydia. The documentary then goes through her career in the No Wave Scene of punk in New York with the next stop her current day tour on the road with her band Retrovirus. Beth B. then takes the story into Lunch’s film work, most notoriously the film The Right Side Of My Brain with Richard Kern. The story jumps back and forth from Lunch’s past and the present. I think that kind of disjointed narrative works very well for Lunch and the film.
Lydia Lunch is not just provocative, she is one of the most aggressive women artists in or out of rock music. She is the product of abuse and horror, but instead of “turning the knife inward”, she decided to turn the knife outward. Her art is about inflicting the violence and aggression that is normally wielded by men against women and children (or everyone during an actual war) against the perpetrators of violence and abuse. Her instruments are her own body and her mind.
When I said that Lunch was right about what she said about Madonna, Courtney Love, and Uma Thurman (most likely in her role as The Bride), it is because I wholeheartedly agree with her. With the next generation of women in art who were more aggressive, they seem to have only read part of the memo or understood part of Lunch’s message. They took the part about aggressive sexuality and overlooked using that aggressiveness and the threat of violence to balance the scales of society. Lunch’s feminism is largely unspoken. She shows you examples and leaves you to figure it out. Today’s aggressive women are showing men the T & A that they want, but not calling them out. They’re not standing in the way of male abusers with their fists or their ideas. They are giving men what they want and not aurally punching them in the face afterwards for fear of alienating their very horny audience. That’s called missing the point. Lydia Lunch didn’t make glossy music videos, bur Lunch’s cinematic work made with Richard Kern has been shown at The Museum of Modern Art.
Beth B’s choice of how to tell the story is perfect. Lunch, if you watch the film, jumps to the next idea, the next band, the next frontier not too long after she achieves what she wants with whatever her current project is. By staging a narrative that jumps back and forth, Lunch’s past and then Lunch’s present, Beth B’s direction channels the spirit of the subject of her documentary. One of the bands that Lunch abruptly abandons is given up because they were “too popular”. Lunch seems uncomfortable with spending too much time with a group or an idea and the documentary is the same. Lunch is always at war. She rejects the peace of complacency and safety. I highly recommend watching this documentary because it will make you feel and give you an eye on a great outsider artist, but also reveal some of her secrets, but only if you pay attention. Driven by pain to a kind of artistic madness that she vented on nearly all of mankind, she is that warrior of which she spoke of. She has a great influence on our culture. She dares to throw her pain back into the faces of her tormentors and in doing so she leads the way for women to no longer meekly accept the status quo of sexual politics. She shows you that there’s no reason for a woman not to be as strong as a man. She breaks the cycle of feminine societal training that tells us we are weak and that we are chattel. She shows us that parental and familial abuse of children has consequences, but that even the damaged can use their rage as their greatest strength and that the evildoers can be made to pay. She is the “babyfaced killer” that society created.
She says, don’t do their work for them. “Don’t turn the knife inward. Turn the knife outward”. Indict the people who are responsible, don’t facilitate your own destruction.
Includes interviews with Lydia Lunch, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth; performance artist Kembra Pfahler; Teenage Jesus bass player, Jim Sclavunos; Donita Sparks from L7; famed DJ and musician Nicolas Jaar; Art Critic Carlo McCormick; Filmmaker Richard Kern, musician JG Thirlwell and more.
Now playing at New York at IFC Center and playing select cities nationwide & virtual cinemas through KinoMarquee.com