The movie that inspired Kathleen Hanna’s career: “I got a lot of confidence”

Posted On May 21, 2025May 21, 2025

The punk movement, simply put, was something that needed to happen. The gap between the working class and upper class was growing, the country was in ruins, and the frustrated majority were having their voices drowned out by the spoiled minority. Rebellion has always existed within music, but the punk movement, spearheaded by bands like the Sex Pistols, brought this rebellion into the spotlight and encouraged people not to hold their tongue any longer.

“Early 1970s Britain was a very depressing place. It was completely run-down, there was trash on the streets, total unemployment – just about everybody was on strike,” said John Lydon. “Everybody was brought up with an education system that told you point blank that if you came from the wrong side of the tracks… then you had no hope in hell and no career prospects at all. Out of all that came pretentious moi, and the Sex Pistols, and then a whole bunch of copycat wankers after us.” 

A lot of rebellious music has been less about providing solutions and more about asking questions. The issues have to be highlighted for people to be able to find solutions, but it’s a big ask to expect artists to be able to convey the solutions to the problems they raise in a three-minute song. A lot of people thought that the Sex Pistols song ‘Anarchy In The UK’ was the band saying the only solution is anarchy, but that’s not what the band were getting at.

“I have always thought that anarchy is mind games for the middle class,” Lydon declared. “It’s a luxury. It can only be afforded in a democratic society, therefore kind of slightly fucking redundant.” While he admitted that he liked the idea of people finding answers in his writing, most of the band’s music highlighted issues instead of solving them.

This set the foundation for a lot of the punk movement, and indeed a lot of protest music that has been released since. The majority of bands don’t give you a solution; they highlight problems and ask questions. It took Kathleen Hanna to rise up in the face of the punk movement and ask an important question that should have been posed much earlier, “Where are all the female bands?” 

While the punk movement was something that needed to happen, it didn’t come without its flaws. A lot of it, especially in the early days, was dominated by male-fronted bands. They produced some good music, but given the point of punk music was providing a voice to those who often can’t speak up for themselves, the evident gender divide seemed somewhat problematic. Hanna was behind the riot grrrl movement, which allowed for a lot more female-led bands to get involved in the punk movement.

She already knew she wanted to introduce more women into the punk movement; however, she wasn’t sure how that would manifest. It wasn’t until Hanna saw the feminist movie Born In Flames that she developed a better appreciation for the fact that rebellions should pose questions. This is what the film did, which combined real-world activists and images with tales and footage from a fictionalised society to show an alternative United States after a revolution has taken place.

“I think I got a lot of confidence from that film. The thing was, it’s about asking questions, not creating answers. She was asking a lot of questions, and that’s how I felt,” explained Hanna. “It’s not okay a lot of times to ask questions, because people, especially journalists, are like, ‘What’s the answer? What’s the answer? What’s the answer? What’s your message?’ There is a message that we should learn about the history of activism, but there’s no, ‘You should be a feminist, and this is the kind of feminist you should be, and this is the outfit you should wear’.” 

She concluded, “We were always really confused when people would ask, ‘What’s your message?’ We’re like, ‘Just listen to our records and watch us play, and what you get out of it is [the message]’. We thought we were asking questions about whether the punk scene could expand large enough to include radical feminism within it. That was the question.”

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