Can Kim Gordon's self expression pass Bechdel test?
Kim Gordon’s book Girl in a Band, published in February 2015 could have been written as a therapy. It has given rise to interesting feelings in me and there are ambiguities to be questioned after book’s promotion event in Manchester…
Text by Gözde Naiboğlu, Illustration by Duygu Topçu
“Do you think a general tendency towards violence lies under American people’s subconscious?”
Dave Haslam tells timidly before he invites Kim Gordon on the stage during the promotion tour of her book Girl in a Band, published in February 2015, how he asked the exact question 30 years ago on the same day when he was interviewing Sonic Youth. He talks proudly about how he hosted Sonic Youth in his place and how Kim Gordon doesn’t remember it… The mood has been lightened with jokes and compliments coming from a fan, before the weird and unsettling feeling that will characterize the event.
However, the tone of Haslam/Gordon interview seems to have almost the same downbeat feel after 30 years. The questions feel restrained, and seem to come from someone that leafed through the book quickly. Gordon doesn’t say a single thing in addition to what she wrote in the book and seems quite disturbed. On book’s back cover, she mentions how shy, sensitive and vulnerable she is under her cold, mysterious and reserved look – who knows how many times she had to repeat this simple self-analysis to people. Even so, it doesn’t seem like Gordon on stage is in peace with the looks on her and questions she’s asked. As if this is all from necessity. She lets it slip out at one point: “These tours and book sales are my main income at the moment”… Kim Gordon must be experiencing another level of difficulty in expressing herself with each interview since Sonic Youth officially disbanded in October 2011 after 30 years. Girl in a Band seems to be the rushed product of Gordon’s rejection of this notion and pressure for self-expression.
Gordon, in an interview she gave to a fashion magazine in 2013, told with an uncharacteristic frankness, considering her reticent image, about how she and her ex-husband Thurston Moore, whom she founded Sonic Youth with, called the band and their marriage quits after Moore cheated on her. After this interview, feminist blog Jezebel and Thurston Moore got into a brawl on Twitter and the whole thing was sensationalized. It wouldn’t be incorrect to say the book focuses on this separation even though Moore and the famous break up weren’t mentioned on stage. It’s not hard to guess Gordon’s rage hasn’t diminished yet, and she wrote the book as some sort of a therapy. In the first chapter, Gordon tells in a poignant tone about how hard the last tour of Sonic Youth in South America had been for her and how lonely she felt there. As she talks openly about how Moore’s saucy attitude on stage during the final concert in Buenos Aires annoyed her and she even thought of saying something to the audience about it at some point, she compares him with Courtney Love (by criticizing Love) who often acts similarly on stage. “What good would it have done to make such a personal statement on the stage?” she says and apparently keeping it for the book.
The first half of the book and the interview focuses on Gordon’s childhood and her relationship with her older brother Keller, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Gordon, both on stage and on the page, articulately (psycho)analyzes this relationship and occasionally compares the painful relationship between she and her brother, who passed away few years ago, with her relationship with Moore. When her similar previous works are considered, it doesn’t come as a surprise that Gordon as a woman focuses on her relationship with men, especially with two men who take space in her life the most. In her 2014 book Is It My Body, a compilation of her earlier works, when Gordon analyzes what playing in a rock band means to her, she addresses the importance of feeling closer to male musicians she has idolized and admired for years and forgetting even for a second she’s a woman on stage.
In Girl in a Band, as the title also refers, Gordon frequently points to these kinds of gender issues, especially matters of sexism in the musical community, yet the book is full of problematic thoughts on this topic. Gordon’s sharp tongue is more directed at women. The book is so filled with insults against “that woman”, Moore’s girlfriend Eva Prinz, making for a very challenging final 50 pages. In particularly the parts where she uses Richard Kern quotes, who is an expert of sexual exploitation in photography, to bad mouth Prinz is horrible. Furthermore, she goes on at length about the various reasons behind her dislike of Courtney Love, by giving her sisterly love for Kurt Cobain as the biggest reason. Lydia Lunch, who got flirty with Thurston Moore in the past according to Gordon, is also mentioned in a similar way by the writer, whose sharp tongue also attacks Lana Del Rey and Isa Genzken.
Although Gordon cites her feminist stance at some points, it seems pretty unlikely the book would pass Bechdel test*. Gordon’s main trouble with most of the women she criticises is clearly about men. The most touching parts of the book are where she talks about her relationship with her friend artist Dan Graham, her daughter Coco and Julie Cafritz, with whom she formed Free Kitten. Additionally, chapters named after Sonic Youth tracks are also full of touching memories. Parts written with a sincere language on topics such as Kurt Cobain’s death, the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York, pregnancy/motherhood and how Sonic Youth tours were handled are maybe the most enjoyable parts of Girl in a Band.
Interestingly enough, my reading experience mostly matches with feelings I have when I’m listening to Kim Gordon talking about her book on the stage. Both have the same strangeness, angst, feeling of an unexpected dive into privacy of people whom I know through their music. And, importantly, an over-arching disappointment of experiencing a Gordon so zealous to accept and reproduce current gender roles, when she’s the one inviting us to debate about sexism in music.
*Bechdel test: Asks if a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man.
(Translation by Cihan Uzunoğlu)
