6 - Documenting Scenes and Performers 2: Grunge and Riot Grrrl

Summary

This chapter focuses on grunge and riot grrrl, two modes of punk-inspired indie and alternative rock that emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These movements demonstrate the continuing influence of punk, both in terms of sounds and attitudes, and both connect to issues that have been frequently addressed within indie cultures. In the case of grunge following its commercial breakthrough, questions about retaining anti-mainstream values in a market that was seeking to ‘co-opt’ alternative culture were regularly voiced. Riot grrrl, meanwhile, was a movement that stressed gender issues and sexism within indie music scenes. While it was much more opposed to engagement with mainstream media than many grunge acts were, and therefore at the time of its emergence in the early 1990s was far less popular than grunge, its influence has continued to grow over the years and has inspired a number of films, some of which are discussed in this chapter.

GRUNGE AND MASS MEDIA

While punk continued to influence various areas of music culture throughout the 1980s, the early 1990s witnessed a resurgence of a new form of punk music, grunge, which was commonly perceived as a merging of punk sounds with influences from metal. In this section, I want to focus on how grunge, which would eventually break into the mainstream, led to vociferous discussions around well-worn debates in indie music circles, such as ‘selling out’ and mass media’s detrimental effects upon the integrity of previously niche subcultures. I will commence this discussion through analysis of the independent documentary on grunge, Hype! (Pray, 1996), for even though this book largely focuses on fiction films, this documentary on grunge highlights such issues extremely prominently, albeit in ways that I will argue are problematic.

Hype! focuses on the Seattle music scene, particularly the grunge phenomenon, but it critiques the mass media reporting of the scene and purports to offer a more accurate overview of Seattle’s music culture in the 1990s. As mentioned in Chapter 2, the huge success of Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ single and Nevermind album in 1991 elevated music that had emerged from punk/indie scenes to unprecedented levels, both in terms of sales and media coverage.