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ABSTRACT
This article examines the politics of pop music in Céline Sciamma’s Bande de filles (Girlhood, 2014). Responding to feminist readings of Bande de filles’s most striking musical sequence (in which the protagonists lip-sync to Rihanna’s ‘Diamonds’) as an expression of the protagonists’ joyous defiance of the raced and gendered oppression that they face growing up in the Parisian banlieue, this article will instead situate it within the context of neoliberal resilience discourse. Easily mistaken for resistance, resilience is a neoliberal value that demands bodies ‘bounce back’ from the damage inflicted upon them by white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Resilience, and its counter-resilient inverse melancholy, are political affects that operate through contemporary aesthetic forms. Following Robin James’s reading of ‘Diamonds’ as a melancholic anthem that sonically circumvents resilient musical formations, this article suggests that this melancholic political affect complicates the joyous, resistant function that has been emphasised in other feminist readings. Contextualising this sequence within the musical landscape of some of the film’s other musical moments, this article suggests that the critical over-emphasis on the resistance staged by the affective musical moment in Bande de filles overlooks the web of politically ambivalent meanings that music constructs in the film.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Filmography
Bande à part, 1964. Jean-Luc Godard, France.
Bande de filles, 2014. Céline Sciamma, France.
Boyhood, 2014. Richard Linklater, USA.
Boyz n the Hood, 1991. John Singleton, USA.
La Haine, 1995. Mathieu Kassovitz, France.
Les Quatre Cents Coups, 1959. François Truffaut, France.
Videography
Diamonds, Rihanna, 2012. Anthony Mandler, USA.
Sweet Nothing, Calvin Harris featuring Florence and the Machine, 2012. Vincent Haycock, United Kingdom.
Notes
1. See reviews by William Brown (Citation2015) and James Mottram (Citation2015) which compare the film to La Haine. Brown also notes the film’s similarity to Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014), Boyz n the Hood (John Singleton, 1991), Bande à part (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964) and Les Quatre Cents Coups (François Truffaut, 1959).
2. The tension between the names Marieme and Victoire crystallises the tension between resilience and melancholia that I have suggested pervade the film. The reference to triumph and victory implied by the name ‘Vic’ (which is bestowed upon Marieme by the girl gang) highlights the resilient decisions she makes in the film. Whilst it is not my intention to erase the former, resilient, resonance by erasing the name ‘Vic’, in this article I have chosen to refer to the main character as ‘Marieme’ throughout, in order to redress the preference for adopting the name ‘Vic’ (and its connotations of resilient overcoming and victory) in readings that understand Marieme as a resilient heroine.
3. James’s thinking here is informed by Naomi Klein’s theory of ‘disaster capitalism’ (Klein Citation2008) and David Harvey’s notion of neoliberalism as ‘creative destruction’ (Harvey 2007).
4. James updates bell hooks’s term ‘white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’ to ‘multi-racial white supremacist patriarchy’. In the interests of both brevity and clarity, I have employed hooks’s better-known term.
5. James adopts the definition of ‘soar’ popularised by Dan Barrow (Citation2013).
6. It is worth noting here that queer disorientation and counter-resilience are not opposing affective registers.
7. Rihanna’s interview with Diane Sawyer on ‘20/20’ has since been reposted on the YouTube channel Popular Music World. In this interview Rihanna performatively denounces Brown and asserts her individual responsibility to other domestic violence victims.
8. Evidence of Brown and Rihanna’s continued professional relationship in the early 2010s is their collaboration on the 2011 song ‘Birthday Cake’.
9. See for instance Tina Turner, whose overcoming of abusive partner Ike Turner manifested itself in musical terms: ‘The blues can bring you down a little. I like to be a little bit up, and as soon as I left Ike, I never sung heavy, heavy rhythm and blues anymore’ (Turner Citation2018).
10. James describes how ‘stereotypical thug-like black masculinity’ is rendered as ‘exception’ in neoliberal resilience discourse.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Alice Pember
Alice Pember is a PhD candidate in the Department of Film Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. Her research examines the politics of the dancing girl in contemporary cinema. She has published articles and film reviews in Arty and Garageland magazines, the Iris Murdoch Review, Film-Philosophy and MAI (forthcoming). She has presented her research at BAFTSS, Film-Philosophy and SCMS. She recently co-organised a symposium on Robin Campillo’s film 120 BPM.