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Hadley Robinson had never heard of Bikini Kill before she was cast Moxie. Directed by Amy Poehler and based on the 2017 young adult novel of the same name by Jennifer Mathieu, the Netflix film follows Robinson’s Vivian, a shy 16-year-old who sparks a rebellion at her high school when she begins anonymously posting a zine. feminist. Vivian is inspired, in part, by her discovery of a box in her mother’s closet filled with riot gear – and the moment she hears the opening scream of comments in the band’s iconic anthem “Rebel Girl, ”followed by Kathleen Hanna’s signature yell as she struggles in her bedroom like in 1993. As Robinson says, acting wasn’t very interesting.
“The first one [Bikini Kill song] I listened to “Rebel Girl,” and a very similar thing happened to me in Vivian, ”she says. “I watched a YouTube video of Kathleen Hanna singing, and it got over me completely. It was a visceral reaction. I immediately fell in love with music.
Robinson, who is in his twenties and no stranger to activism, dived deeper into Riot Grrrl and found herself “really surprised” that she had never heard of the feminist punk movement created in the early 1970s. 90s by Hanna and her contemporaries. “It’s such a pivotal moment in history in terms of feminism,” she says. This is exactly the kind of awakening Poehler and Mathieu hope to inspire in a younger generation – as well as the motivation to build on its principles and bring the movement into a new era. And Hanna, for her part, is all for it.
“I would love to see the kids take the good stuff from riot grrrl [and] embrace intersectionality better than us [did], and that the punk scene becomes less straight, white, dominated by cis men, ”she says. “I hope the kids criticize it and build better, more interesting things.”
Moxie the film is quite close to Mathieu’s book. Vivian is fed up with the sexist treatment of the girls in her school: harassment from jocks, unfair dress codes, classified list of bangability, etc. Although she usually operates under the radar, she decides to take action when a new student, Lucy (Alycia Pascual-Pena), becomes the butt of the boys’ wrath. After finding her mother’s old zines, she secretly launches hers, which she calls Moxie, to denounce the injustices she sees in the corridors. Fairly quickly, her pet spreads in a movement, something belonging to all the girls in her school.
Mathieu’s love for riot girrrl began, oddly enough, with a fairly popular source: “I remember reading about riot grrrl for the first time in Seventeen magazine [in the early Nineties],” she says Rolling stone. “Looking back now I’m sure the riots didn’t like it [being in that kind of magazine], but for girls like me, who didn’t have access to this scene, it was exciting. I went to this very conservative Catholic high school, and I remember reading the article and just being puzzled.
When she started college in Chicago, Mathieu immersed herself even deeper into the scene, creating her own zine, Jennifer, and find kinship in the music of Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney. Now she continues her mission as an author and teacher, sponsoring the Texas High School Feminist Club where she works. “I see young feminists in action and what they care about,” she says. “For me feminism – ever since I discovered it through riot grrrl – the words that come to mind are ‘joy’ and ‘liberation’. It’s freeing ourselves from prepackaged societal norms – and what a better world it would be if we could all just be our full and complete selves.
Poehler, who plays Vivian’s mother in the film, saw himself a lot in the pages of Mathieu’s book. And she came to music and movement the same way. As a young college student and actress, she used to troll Chicago music stores in search of zines, and found strength in the music of Hanna and her cohorts. “This music was a soundtrack at a time when women in the music industry were looking to find their voice and talk about what was important to them in a truly activist way,” she says. As she was preparing the film, she knew the sound would be a key part of the story. “[In the film] music is used as a bridge, ”says Poehler. “We wanted to capture that feeling of that moment when you’re a youngster and you are listening to music for the first time and you understand it in a much broader sense.”
But it was also essential, as Mathieu’s book suggests, for Vivian and her classmates to evolve the idea of what feminism can be. As Poehler explains, his character, who is in her forties, “learns from his daughter that there is still so much to learn.”
And this is the knot of Moxie: It’s not just about going back to Riot Grrrl, dressing up in leather jackets, and doing zines (although that’s really a really big and fun part). It is about unearthing the faults of this first form of feminism: mainly that it was largely a movement adopted by white women. In the context of the film, Lisa replaces this’ 90s version of riot grrrl, while Vivian is kind of a midpoint. As a young white woman, her first attempts at protest were limited to her own worldview: guys harassing girls, double standards. Along the way, she comes to see the flaws in this way of thinking – namely that it excludes the unique issues that non-white women (and trans women, for that matter) face, including her new one. friend Lucy, who is black. , and her best friend Claudia, who is Asian. Vivian’s whiteness protects her from much of the fallout from her rebellion; the same cannot be said of his friends.
“I think this movie is important because it’s not just about sexism, it’s about racism and privilege,” says Robinson. “He touches on so many different subjects. I think this is the new wave of feminism. And it’s going to be a long journey, but I think the girls who are involved now are long term. Yet she pays homage to her feminist ancestors: “I left with the feeling that I had not only been on the set, but that I was part of a master class where I learned from all the people around. of me.
“The idea of Moxie becomes bigger than Vivian, and other people own it, ”adds Poehler. “And that symbolizes what activism is. It’s about recognizing the people who can name things, the access people have, the privilege people have. And I think our generation, the feminists of the early 90s, ignored that. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. We have a lot to unlearn. A character in Moxie talks about not being intersectional enough and twisting the terms and making the culture our own, all of which we now know we should be doing better – which the younger generation instinctively understands.
As for what Hanna hopes young viewers will take away from the film – and its music as it exists in that setting? “I love that kids look to Bikini Kill and other feminist groups through the film. I hope some kids will like “that sucks” and write their own songs. “
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