Laura Parnes

Riot Grrrl, Trump, Consumerism, Outsiders, and Rave Culture: Talking with Laura Parnes

Laura Parnes has been pushing artistic boundaries since her time as an installation and performance artist in the early 1990’s to the current day as a filmmaker and installation artist. A focus for Parnes is the mainstream portrayal of teenage girls, their realities, identity, and experiences. She warps that portrayal within her own work to expose and confront the bigoted foundation of an audience’s expectations. Parnes also looks at what we, as consumers, and those of us with minority identities, are being fed and what we do with that information in an increasingly digital world. We had a fantastic conversation and I am happy to present the transcript for it.

I’ll begin this transcription with the artist statement Parnes gave to me:

Laura Parnes (LP): I am an experimental film and video art maker but I’m using a lot of historical, literal, and popular culture-based references. In the end, I create these mini feature films for a gallery setting. A really big focus of the work is the romantic vision of a teen peering in on a culture that they haven’t personally participated in and how this holds potential for criticality. But, it’s really tempered by a desire to gain status, power, and agency.

When you think of Catcher in the Rye: Holden Caulfield is horrified by the hypocrisy of the adult world. My characters are often fueled by our culture’s ambivalence towards the adolescent female. My teen characters tend to see the absurdity of contemporary culture as a given. Their access to power requires constant self-objectification and often the power they access is painfully predictable and even boring in the end. So, what’s a girl to do but manufacture drugs or accidentally kill and mutilate your favorite rockstar? It’s an ambivalence fueled by a cruel obsession with youth and beauty combined with a dismissal of young women in regards to their intellect. They’re symbols of desire, yet their desire is often of little interest. I’m also interested in the predictable nature of these power dynamics and the clichés and stereotypes that those in power often play out. Like, the sadistic, self-involved rockstar or the lascivious and judgmental preacher or the condescending, perverse professor. These are kinds of acts that we play out over and over again whether it’s what we’re seeing in terms of cultural production or what we’re experiencing in real life.

Aliya Hunter (AH): Have you ever read Girls and Sex by Peggy Orenstein?

LP: No.

AH: In the first one or two chapters, she talks about having noticed teenage girls, the way they dress, and how they feel it’s empowering to wear revealing clothing. Orenstein counters that with ideas like “being attractive is not a feeling” or “looking good is not a feeling that can empower you” which I thought was really interesting because that’s something I’ve noticed among my age group. That’s what I was thinking of when you were talking and how there’s a limited choice for women…what choice do you have, you know?

LP: It’s a complicated experience because you’re driven to feel that you’ll be empowered by being able to present yourself in this sexual way. And, there is power in that! Owning your own sexuality is important. But, there’s also a way to access power through your sexuality that plays back into all the power dynamics under this patriarchal structure. A lot of the time, my characters are caught in that loop. How do you get out of that?

AH: This is getting a little into themes of your earlier work that I wanted to touch on; I wanted to ask about the theme of disengaging from sex that I noticed a few times in your earlier work, specifically No is Yes and Performance. Was this something you were intentionally touching on?

No is Yes chronicles a night during which two young women accidentally kill a rockstar they admire, Jimmy, and their subsequent mutilation and attempted concealment of his body.

LP: The title of No is Yes does play off of ideas about consent, obviously. But, it’s also about transgression or negation. It’s the idea of being in this punk, transgressive movement that gets co-opted by the dominant culture. So, it has a double-meaning. The sex scene itself in No is Yes is not as if it’s not consensual. But, when Jimmy throws the money at Tess, this humiliation poses this question of “What does that mean?” With that kind of power dynamic, where is the consent? Again – those power dynamics that play out are predictable and abhorrent. In that case, it is drawing attention to the double meaning of the title.

It’s also a way to negate the possibility of allowing people to enjoy her humiliation. There’s a way to film that scene where it could be voyeuristic and pleasurable; this is the problem when you’re working with young people. They are attractive, they are beautiful…it would be easy to make this sensationalist in a predictable way.

I’m always trying to question and make the audience question their own motivations when watching film and to challenge what they’re experiencing . I don’t allow them that enjoyment of her humiliation. But later, I do allow them the enjoyment of his. There’s pleasure in playing with that. The scene after the sex scene is actually a take-off on the makeover scenes of these coming-of-age films. Instead of them getting changed, they’re dressing his corpse up. It also plays off of rape revenge films. And, at that point, I don’t think any women had done rape revenge films.

Within rape revenge, there is first the trauma and then the revenge itself and a certain pleasure in that. Often, my characters don’t do the right thing. This is really confusing for some people looking for didactic work. We can’t really follow their example to find out how to live.

And then, with Performance, it again comes down to not allowing the audience to engage with or view the work in a way that is too pleasurable. I really want that distance. In particular for Performance, it’s about the distance between how teens present themselves to the world versus their actual experiences.. In order to create that distance, it had to be a dead-pan reading.

Performance is one part of a series of installation videos that dissect teenage sexuality. It uses footage of tween and young teen girls practicing a dance routine for a talent show while the dead-pan narration of a sexual experience is heard.

So, I really want to play with audiences’ expectations. I’m using all these references of youth culture, products, or things that are marketed to youth culture, whether it’s horror movies or coming-of-age films. I want to challenge how people view them and make them see them in a different light.

AH: You did get into my next question concerning fantasies about violence. This is something I’ve been exploring a lot recently and you did talk about the pleasure the protagonists of No is Yes take in killing Jimmy as well as mutilating his body and doing all sorts of horrible things to him. The way I’ve been viewing it, there are violent impulses that can be expressed after trauma, and usually sexual trauma, because it’s such a bodily experience. There’s a real bodily satisfaction of watching someone enact that kind of violence. Was that physical sensation something you were looking at or examining?

LP: That definitely plays a serious part. In No is Yes, it’s not the actual rape revenge fantasy but it’s still this experience of humiliation. Boundaries were drawn and they were crossed and it becomes a highly charged negative experience. This allows for a kind of release. Why don’t we see this in films? Why can’t we have the experience of the fantasy of revenge or the pleasure of that? So, that’s definitely a part of it but then it’s the unsettling question of “What do we gain from that revenge?” All of it becomes a reflection of the culture that we live in. It’s hard to take yourself into a place where you want to experience a revenge that’s more thoughtful and is about changing the culture for the good of humanity. I don’t know what that revenge would be because I don’t profess to have those answers. But, it does feel good to see a scene that we don’t often see and be able to have that experience.

AH: More about No is Yes, which I really enjoyed, if you couldn’t tell. I feel like I have met Jimmy! Which is horrible.

LP: We have all met Jimmy.

AH: This is a film that came out around twenty years ago and I’ve had conversations with men like that in the past couple of years and within the punk scene, at least as far as I’ve interacted in it. Have you had similar experiences with men, nowadays, that reflect experiences you’ve had twenty years ago and within the punk scene? Do you think there’s any sort of change taking place?

LP: I hope. The power dynamics have not changed that much; there’s been a huge backlash against women’s liberation and we’re seeing that with Trump. Granted, a lot of people hate Trump but that doesn’t mean that they hate him for being a serial assaulter of women. There are all different kinds of reasons. I think Jimmy’s still out there.

And, as much as I’m saying Jimmy’s out there, when I was shooting Tour Without End, there were all these amazing women-led, queer, and trans performers performing every night at different places to crowds of pretty enlightened people. That is progress. But, there’s still a subset of people who are engaged in thinking in a way that’s very patriarchal and they’re maybe not self-aware or they don’t question it.

“Tour Without End is an experimental fiction/doc hybrid that casts real-life musicians, artists, and actors as bands on tour, and expands into cross-generational, Trump-era commentary on contemporary culture & politics.” - https://www.tourwithoutend.com/

AH: Speaking of general change and progress: what do you think has changed the most from when you started making art to now?

LP: I guess there’s a million ways I could answer that. There are some interesting questions that you’ve brought up that would not necessarily be the ones asked at the time I made this work. It’s interesting to see how the work gets thought about differently or re-contextualized as time goes on. It’s encouraging. There was a point where young women didn’t want to identify as feminists. And, there’s the question of intersectionality that’s so central today. A lot of my work was centered around: “how do you access power without playing into dominant culture power dynamics?” How do you engage with consumer culture and the marketing happening towards you? All of these societal dynamics are in relationships whether you’re thinking about race, LGBTQIA, and economic questions. Your interview questions have all that stuff embedded in them in a complex way and that impresses me. At the time when the work was made, it was hard to have a nuanced conversation about these issues. So, I think there’s been some real progress.

On the other hand, there was a white riot in the Capitol just a couple weeks ago. It’s a very bizarre time. There are several different bubbles that exist: there’s huge progress being made with a small group of people and then the backlash is so insane, fierce, and terrifying. I don’t know what to say about it. It’s a very strange time.

AH: I watched Tour Without End and it was horrible to watch the beginning of that administration at the end of 2016, having just come out of the end of it in 2021.

LP: It’s really interesting how they use this footage at the [impeachment] trial and what they uncover, the timeline, and the whole thing. From the beginning, thinking about where it led…being at that Republican convention in 2016, I knew where it was heading. That was pretty clear.

AH: I wanted to touch back on what you mentioned concerning the punk scene and connect it with the work you've done with Kathleen Hanna. I love Bikini Kill. They’re a huge part of my feminism and my life. As a fangirl, I want to know how you met and how collaborating with her has been.

LP: Back in 1998 when I was doing No is Yes, I showed it at Thread Waxing Space which was a gallery but they also had a lot of bands playing. Johanna from Le Tigre was working there. I met Johanna and then I met Kathleen and JD. Johanna did the soundtrack for County Down. Now she’s a writer for The New Yorker which is really interesting. Le Tigre had their big release – I think it was supposed to be their “TKO” song which I was going to direct – and there were complications, a conflict with the label, so it didn’t work out. Eventually, I did the “I’m Done” video for The Julie Ruin. It was very collaborative. Kathleen Hanna wanted to do this thing where she does karaoke to her own song. She’s very critical and the work is very feminist and strong but she also has a great sense of humor.

We both love B-movies and the cheese factor of the karaoke video which I really wanted to embrace for this. I had her wear a lot of iconic outfits from her different bands so she’s like the icon from these different periods referencing herself and doing karaoke to her own music. I thought that was very fun and meta. The shooting almost feels like live action animation which is something I love and did for County Down. I’m really interested in that question of what is real and where you can’t quite find those edges. I like to bring that to the music videos, too.

And, Kathleen was so fun in Tour Without End. It was such a pleasure to be able to take some of my favorite performers and put them together and have them engaged in conversation. It was really hard to not interrupt them when I was shooting with my fan questions.

AH: That’s really cool that you work together and know each other. That just made me very happy, so thank you! You mentioned County Down as well as “I’m Done” and something that really did strike me was the contrast between something very human and something very fake or computerized. For example, in County Down, I felt like I could almost see the actor but then I couldn’t which I thought was a really interesting effect. Is that something you started thinking about more as we moved into the twenty-first century?

“County Down is a web-based episodic digital film that explores an epidemic of psychosis among the adults in a gated community that coincides with a teenage girl’s invention of a designer drug. One day Angel wakes to find that her exclusive housing development has turned into a haven for madness, excess, and decay in this darkly comedic horror series in which parents suddenly prey on their children.” - http://www.lauraparnes.com/projects/countydown.html

LP: With County Down, in particular, it’s like a live-action animation. What I love about that process, or the visual experience of that, is that it really feels like you’re internally experiencing their over-saturated media presentation of themselves. We don’t really know what’s real. They’re acting out these clichés about who they should be and at the same time, they’re not cliché because they’re actually smart teenage girls which we don’t see, generally. Are we in a video game? Is this real life? How do we center ourselves? How do we experience the sets that they’re in? The specific after-effects image that I’m using is like animation. But in other things, I like to shoot in a really pared down way that feels like you’re seeing the structure of the set as opposed to being taken into an actual world. So, reality is suspect in all the work. Is the narrator reliable? Is this reality to be taken literally? It’s this constant confusion that’s intentional and something I embrace for County Down.

They’re in this incredibly privileged environment. They’ve invented a designer drug that causes a plague. Their obsession with marketing is incredibly destructive but it becomes a metaphor for so many other things we’ve created in this culture that are consuming and making us insane. As those levels of reality get exposed and as they get more detached from reality they draw attention to the failings of consumer culture and lean-in feminism.

When Angel says to Tanya: “I wish I could be Black like you. Then everyone would be scared of me, too.” This clueless microaggression shows that as a white woman, Angel has no understanding of what that fear leads to. Treyvon Martin showed how incredibly dangerous it is for an African American person like Tanya to be in this kind of community. And then it was really made bare for everyone to see but that was after this was shot. It’s really shifted the way audiences look at media and it’s been an important thing to think about in relation to the project.

When I was shooting County Down, I photographed all these gated community homes that were like McMansions. And, the main place I was stationed in was the home of one of the only Black people in that community. It was interesting to hear their view of the dynamic of being in a place of privilege yet their experience was so completely different than their neighbors. So, all these complications about power dynamics as it connects with issues of gender and white supremacy. There are different characters like the one mom who, during an episode of psychosis, spouts anti-Semitic and racist stuff. This fissure happens in the community and the toxic thing that it’s built on starts to ooze out.

AH: At the end, Angel puts Tanya behind bars and chains her but then gets behind the set of bars with her when the authorities come to help.

LP: Right. She pretends to be the victim. This is such a white-feminist moment.

AH: Yes. Also, is there an 80’s wardrobe that you used in County Down?

LP: It’s actually a 90's rave culture wardrobe. Back when people would go to these clubs and drink out of baby bottles, it was very weird. The Party Monster era or the Club Kids, for example, were a part of what influenced the design. It was centered in a late ‘90s obsession with technology and the belief that it was going to bring about some utopian vision. We now see where technology has brought us including a troll Twitter president.

But, in the ‘90s there was a real optimism about technology and there was a very strange youth culture. I mean, I loved it. Visually, it was super interesting. There were great parts to rave culture. There was a lot of art installation and chefs, even, connected with raves. There was a tremendous amount of creativity in that scene aside from the silliness. But, a lot of experimentation and interesting things, too.

AH: To wrap up, feel free to tell me about any projects you have coming up or anything you’re interested in working on.

LP: I’m working on this thing called Surviving Member and it’s about the last surviving member of a suicide cult. It’s a type of masculinity in-crisis project.

AH: Interesting.

LP: It’s going to be fun. I don’t think it’ll be fun. We’ll see.

Laura Parnes’ website: http://www.lauraparnes.com/

Picture credits:

• (Picture of Laura Parnes) Justine Kurland

• http://www.lauraparnes.com/music.html

• http://www.lauraparnes.com/no.html

• http://www.lauraparnes.com/projects/countydown.html

• http://www.lauraparnes.com/projects/tourwithoutend/index.html

Aliya Hunter (she/her) is a fourth and final year Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies major at UC Davis. She is planning on professionally pursuing acting outside of California after finishing her undergraduate degree. She is also a writer, director, musician, and fan of river walks. This interview was conducted through Zoom between Davis and Brooklyn in February 2021.