Hadley Robinson had never heard of Bikini Kill before being cast for Moxie. Directed by Amy Poehler and based on the 2017 young adult novel by Jennifer Mathieu of the same name, the Netflix film follows Vivian de Robinson, a shy 16-year-old who sparked a rebellion at her school when she anonymously started publishing a feminine zine. Vivian is inspired, in part, by her discovery of a box in her mother’s closet full of paraphernalia riot grrrl – and the moment she hears the initial cry of feedback in the band’s iconic anthem “Rebel Girl”, followed by the characteristic howl from Kathleen Hanna, she struggles around her room as if it were 1993. As Robinson says, acting was not very important.
“The first [Bikini Kill song] I heard it was ‘Rebel Girl’, and something very similar to what happened to Vivian happened to me, ”she says. “I watched a video on YouTube of Kathleen Hanna singing and completely dominated me. It was a visceral reaction. I immediately fell in love with music. ”
Robinson, who is in his twenties and is no stranger to activism, delved deeper into riot grrrl and found himself “really surprised” for never having heard of the feminist punk movement created in the early nineties by Hanna and her contemporaries. “It is a pivotal moment in history in terms of feminism,” she says. This is exactly the kind of awakening that Poehler and Mathieu hope to inspire in a younger generation – as well as the motivation to build their principles and take the movement into a new era. And Hanna, for example, is totally in favor.
“I would love to see the kids taking the good stuff from riot grrrl [and] promulgate intersectionality better than us [did], and that the punk scene becomes less straight, white, cis male, ”she says. “I hope that children will criticize and create better and more interesting things as a result.”
Moxie the film is very close to Mathieu’s book. Vivian is fed up with the sexist treatment of girls at her school: harassment at the hands of athletes, unfair dress codes, an accessibility classification list, etc. Although she usually operates off the radar, she decides to take action when a new student, Lucy (Alycia Pascual-Pena), becomes the target of the boys’ ire. After finding her mother’s old zines, she secretly starts her own, which she titled Moxie, to denounce the injustices he sees in the corridors. Quickly, your pet project turns into movement, something that belongs to all the girls in your school.
Mathieu’s love for riot girrrl started, strangely, with a very 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 rebel grrrls 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 a very conservative Catholic school, and I remember reading the article and being intrigued. “
When she started college in Chicago, Mathieu plunged even deeper into the scene, making his own zine, Jennifer, and find kinship in the music of Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney. Now she is pursuing her mission as an author and teacher, sponsoring the feminist club at the college in Texas where she works. “I see young feminists in action and what they care about,” she says. “For me, feminism – since I discovered it through riot grrrl – the words that come to mind are ‘joy’ and ‘liberation’. It is freeing ourselves from prepackaged social norms – and what a better world it would be if we could all be ourselves. “
Poehler, who plays Vivian’s mother in the film, found himself a lot on the pages of Mathieu’s book. And she came to music and movement in the same way. As a young student and comedian, she used to browse music stores in Chicago in search of zines and found strength in the music of Hanna and her companions. “That song was the soundtrack to a time when women in the music industry were figuring out how to find their voices and talk about what mattered to them in a really activist way,” she says. While she was editing the film, she knew that sound would be a fundamental part of the story. “[In the film] music is used as a bridge, ”says Poehler. “We wanted to capture that feeling from that moment when you are a young man and you listen to music for the first time and you really understand it in a much broader sense.”
But it was also essential, as Mathieu’s book states, for Vivian and her colleagues to develop the idea of what feminism can be. As Poehler explains, his character, who is in his forties, “learns from his daughter that there is still a lot to learn”.
And this is the crucial point of Moxie: It’s not just about going back to riot grrrl, playing dress up with leather jackets and making zines (although this is definitely a really big and fun part of it). It is about discovering the flaws of this initial type of feminism: mainly, that it was a movement adopted by white women. In the context of the film, Lisa represents that 90’s version of riot grrrl, while Vivian is something of a midpoint. As a young white woman, her first attempts at protest are limited to her own worldview: boys harassing girls, double standards. Along the way, she comes to see the flaws in that way of thinking – that is, that excludes the unique issues that non-white women (and trans women, in this case) have to contend with, including her new friend Lucy, who is black and her best friend Claudia, who is Asian. Vivian’s whiteness protects her from many of the consequences of her rebellion; the same cannot be said of your friends.
“I think this film is important because it is not just about sexism, but it is about racism and privilege,” says Robinson. “It addresses so many different topics. 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 in it for a long time. “Still, she gives credit to her feminist ancestors:” I left with the feeling that I really had not only been on set, but as part of a master class where I learned from everyone around me. “
“The idea of Moxie it becomes bigger than Vivian, and other people start to own it ”, adds Poehler. “And it symbolizes activism. It is to recognize the people who name things, the access that people have, the privilege that people have. And I think that our generation, feminists of the early 90s, did not take this into account. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. We have a lot to unlearn. A character in Moxie talks about not being intersectoral enough and misappropriating terms and appropriating culture, all the things we know now and that we should do better – what the young generation instinctively understands ”.
As for what Hanna expects young viewers to get out of the film – and her music as it exists in this context? “I love that children can be interested in Bikini Kill and other feminist bands during the film. Hopefully, some kids will say ‘This sucks’ and write their own songs. “