Photograph: Misha Japaridze/AP
This morning I’m sitting here over coffee following the Guardian’s Shiv Malik as he live blogs the verdict for Pussy Riot and right now it doesn’t look particularly good for them. Unfortunately, this is straight as it happens so the translations are a bit slow in coming but there is to be sure a lot of rubbish being tossed out by the judge about the group’s “religious hatred” based around them being “feminists.”
For us in the states this is all particularly bizarre as we tend to kind of shrug this kind of stuff off. Someone will put a cross in a jar of urine and the church folks will be offended, maybe some funding for the NEA will decrease, and maybe some talk shows and Op Ed writers will get some mileage out of it but soon some Hollywood star will be caught with their plink in the wrong place and everyone soon forgets. But despite the Judge’s words this wasn’t about religion, it was about Putin so that argument is a just a big sack of balls. If Pussy Riot had pulled the same stunt at say the national cathedral or some similar Christian house of worship, they might simply get a fine trespassing, a stern finger-pointing from a minister, and a lot of chatter for a week…maybe.
I say maybe because the thing about the Punk Prayer is that, as performance, the bit wasn’t particularly interesting or good for that matter. To us here in the states, this would just be innocuous, silly, and humorously bratty sure but hardly the stuff of legend. I would imagine that is likely the case in most places because what has elevated the performance is not the act itself but the reaction by Russian authorities – which is so overreaching, so out of proportion, and so completely incapacitated as to what to make of it that it almost reminds you of the raging frustration of the Dean in Animal House (“as of this moment, they’re on DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION!”). For my buck, there is nothing funnier than to watch the Russian state thrash over such harmless nonsense. The only problem here is the Russian state can match that frustration and moral impotence with a harsh sentence and from the sound of the Judge, the hammer is going to come down hard on the trio which is shameful.
Let’s make one thing horribly clear, here in the states “fucking with The Man” as a respected and time homored avocation is largely gone and protest and political action has been reduced to mere shopping. One sad sack of shit will drive up in his pick-up and shout, “I am buying greasy artery clogging fried chicken! WOO!” while some bougie in their BMW will shout, “Oh no, I buy my food from an overpriced grocery store!” Can you feel The Man shaking in his boots? Yeah, me neither.
That’s why, despite the two-year sentences just handed down, there is a bright side to the Pussy Riot scandal and that is that the spirit of punk still lives somewhere on this earth and it’s not coming at you on the Vans Warped Tour, it’s coming from three Russian Girls. These women knew that their fucking with The Man was gonna likely wind up with them on the wrong end of the stick and, knowing they were fucked from the get-go, they did what any good Punk would do – they thumbed their nose at the authorities and had a good laugh during the whole trial. But Punk is all about confrontation and the irony of all this is that by the state behaving in the manner it did, Pussy Riot comes out the victor and it’s the Russian state that looks weak. That’s a Punk victory in my book!
There is one line from the Guardian’s live blog of the sentencing that sums it all up perfectly for me. Shiv Malik writes, “The three woman Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23; Maria Alekhina, 24; and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29, are laughing.” Awesome!
Cheers ladies.
Long Live Pussy Riot!
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