Abstract Images of Girlhood and Doll Figures, Especially, Occupy Central

Getting All Dolled-up: An introduction an annual peer-reviewed international multimedia A naked doll with splayed legs and exposed genitals is grasped Karen Keifer-Boyd & Deborah Smith-Shank, editors. Published by Hyphen-Unpress by an ominous hand that pinches in vice-like fashion at its vulnerable head (Figure 1).1 A limp and motionless figure reminiscent of a GRRRLS AND DOLLS : Degas ballerina is passed through a raucous crowd who rips and tears at APPROPRIATED IMA G ES OF G IRLHOOD IN THE WORKS OF her gauzy dress.2 A limbless jumble of doll parts sits pressed against a HANS BELLMER AND RIOT GRRRL BANDS harshly lit wall, topped with a decapitated head sporting Shirley Temple 3 ME G HAN CHANDLER curls and a Minnie Mouse bow (Figure 2). While the artists behind these respective images vary, a provocative common denominator unites them: images of girlhood and violent (re)interpretations of doll-like bodies that have been reappropriated for counter-hegemonic agendas. From the surrealist photographs of German artist Hans Bellmer (1902-1975), to the Abstract Grung-era music videos and album covers created within the Riot Grrrl music movement (1990-present), images of girlhood and representa- Images of girlhood and doll figures, especially, occupy central positions tions of doll arise within each as dominant modes for expressing cultural within social, cultural, and even political thought. While unlikely parallels, resistance. Surrealist photographer Hans Bellmer and Riot Grrrls bands each utilized images of little girls and representations of doll bodies as political tools; through these reappropriated images and refashioned figures, they each leveled counter-hegemonic resistance against their respective patriarchal social orders. Bellmer and Riot Grrrl artists perversely reimagined girls and dolls, especially through acts of violent sexualization and subversive frag- mentation, and in doing so found a similar voice through such appropriated bodies. While Bellmer and feminist Riot Grrrls are chronologically sepa- rated by decades, contextually divided by national borders, and have been interpreted along disparate scholarly planes, they are nevertheless provoc- Figure 1: Bjelalld, K. atively united in their subversive redeployment of girlhood imagery. This and L. Ranaldo (co- article analyzes the ways in which images of girlhood and dolls have been producers), C. Sher- reappropriated and re-presented within select works from Bellmer’s oeuvre man (album cover and Riot Grrrl music/art production. It launches an investigation into how photographer). (1992). Bellmer and Riot Grrrls have similarly utilized girlhood and doll bodies as Fontanelle. [CD album political mouthpieces. It aims to present a new reconsideration and re-read- cover], Image© Reprise ing of Bellmer’s work in relation to the similar manipulations of girlhood and Records. doll bodies as they were later re-presented within the Riot Grrrl movement. 1. Babes in Toyland, Fontanelle (1992, CD cover) 2.Hole, “Violet” (1994, music video) 3.Bellmer, H. La Poupée, Seconde partie (circa 1934, photograph). Grrrls and Dolls MEGHAN CHANDLER 31 in Toyland, Bikini Kill, and Hole (amongst others), are undoubtedly compelling in their own right yet become especially striking when considered alongside the artwork of Hans Bellmer. The uncanny similarity between Bellmer’s infamously grotesque dolls and the later renditions of abused, sexualized girl/doll bodies produced by Riot Grrrl artists incite a new line of questioning: how can these images and artists can be contextualized, analyzed, and put into conversation vis-a-vis each other? Do they similarly use dolls as vehicles for political and anti-patriarchal critique, even Figure 2: Bellmer, H. (photog- though separate by decades and political contexts? Historically, these rapher). (circa 1934). La Pou- bodies of works have been considered along separate and even opposi- pée, Seconde partie. [Gelatin- tional lines: Bellmer—a male, Surrealist photographer with a colorful Silver Print], Image© 2007 history of personal preoccupations, fantasies, and sadistic drives towards Artists Rights Society (ARS), little girls—is reviled as a misogynist (Suleiman, 1998, p. 135). New York / ADAGP, Paris. Conversely, Riot Grrrls like Kathleen Hannah, Kat Bjelland, and even Courtney Love are praised as champions of feminism, even though Bellmer’s photographic oeuvre of grotesque, dismembered female their violent images and depictions of girls and doll bodies essentially dolls has historically been demonized as a misogynistic assault against mirror Bellmer’s work. Using key examples drawn from Bellmer’s pho- femininity. However, when recontextualized within Bellmer’s adoles- tographic oeuvre and biography along with Riot Grrrl music videos, al- cence and his adult resistance to the German Nazi regime as well as bum artwork, and song lyrics, this article will not only analyze the ways comparatively re-read against the similar violent images of girls and dolls in which images of girlhood are defined and reappropriated, but will even favored by Riot Grrrl bands in early 1990s U.S. popular culture, a new more provocatively reveal how each of these unlikely oeuvres unite in re-reading emerges and presents a different understanding his work and a shared use of girls and doll as vehicle for anti-patriarchal and political use of girl/dolls images. Under this reclaimed reading, Bellmer can be resistance against their respective hegemonic societies. re-understood as posing a “[r]esistance to patriarchal discourse [which] takes the form of a rearticulation of girlhood” (Wald, 1998, p. 592). Later Riot Grrrls images and agendas will present a similar a resistance Bellmer’s Belles: Hans Bellmer and his use of girlhood imagery through reappropriated images of girls and dolls that provocatively mirror Bellmer’s. Throughout much of his work as a photographer and surrealist Images of sexualized girls marked the works of Bellmer and his artist, Hans Bellmer seized upon young girls and doll images. While his fellow Surrealists in the 1930s, and poignantly resurfaced in the early/ work is predominantly reviled within art historical discourse as mi- mid-1990s as a subversive motif for the outspoken, girl-fronted band and sogynistic, an oppositional reading of Bellmer can be forged through a artists of the Riot Grrrl movement. While representing different historical recontextualization of his work within his Nazi Germany milieu. While moments and cultural contexts, Bellmer and the Riot Grrrls can be put prevailing interpretations of Bellmer read his sexual and violently frag- into generative conversation with each other through their similar re- mented dolls as purely anti-feminine, other theorists such Rosalind appropriated utilizations of girlhood and doll images. The songs, music Krauss, Hal Foster, and Theresa Lichtenstein have sought to push beyond videos, and album covers produced by Riot Grrrl bands, including Babes this surface level reading. These rogue theorists offer a more provocative Grrrls and Dolls MEGHAN CHANDLER 32 and ultimately generative reading of Bellmer’s works—an oppositional ages of girlhood came at the age of twenty-one when he publicly cross- reading that, while marginalized within dominant art history theory, dressed as a young girl in order to embarrass his father, a prominent seems to find compelling resonance and support when not only consid- member of the Fascist party (Taylor, 2000). Bellmer’s cross-dressing ered in relation to Bellmer’s own contextual moment, but also when later antics revealed his keen awareness of the constructed, performative Riot Grrrl images are comparatively read vis-a-vis his work and counter- nature of gender as well as the powerful, subversive effects that could be hegemonic use of girlhood and doll imagery. achieved through manipulated images of girlhood. Particularly, as Sue For Bellmer, and later for Riot Grrrls, girlhood imagery and Taylor describes in Hans doll bodies functioned as political tools. Images of girlhood and child- Bellmer: The Anatomy of hood, as Lauren Berlant (1997) posits in The Queen of American Goes to Anxiety (2000), Bellmer Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship, are indeed iconic and began to appreciate how politically-charged figures. In U.S. society especially, iconized notions subversive manipulations of “children” and the heteronormative reproductive nuclear family that of such childish, girly produces them exist as nexus points around which political policies and images could be utilized standards for appropriate citizenship are formed. Children and images as sites of “aggressive of childhood have, as Berlant argues, historically established themselves hostility” against not within the sociopolitical fabric of the United States as well as the West- only his father, but also ern World; children and objects of childhood have thus been success- “Father” Germany.4 fully charged as loaded figures, ripe for subversive reappropriation and Theresa Lichtenstein the manipulation of their inscribed sociocultural meanings. Through has similarly argued that adopting, undermining, and reversing the aggrandized child figure, dis- Bellmer’s later 1930s senters can directly speak back to the very sociopolitical systems that photographs continue have exalted children, girls, and dolls as normative/normalizing figures. this “attack on the fa- Bellmer’s and the Riot Grrrl’s reappropriations of girls/dolls aimed to do ther by the son” through just this. Speaking through their own bodies

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