Barbarians at the sound-check

Rating: Null/10 (15 May 2010)

Arguably, the funniest moment on the much-missed NBC sitcom "Arrested Development" was when Jason Bateman and Alia Shawkat(playing uncle and niece) performed a karaoke version of the Starland Vocal Band's "Afternoon Delight" at an office party without realizing how suggestive the lyrics were until it's too late("the thought of lovin' you is so exciting"). The scene works because there's nothing labored about this ill-fated song selection; it's an easy mistake to make, since aurally, the female-half of the Washington D.C. quartet sounds so innocuous, they could be singing about their love for God, or horses, or just about anything, but sex. Vocalists Taffy Danoff and Margot Chapman warbled come-ons like Stepford Wives, in deference to the men, the ones who were supposed to enjoy sex, while they, the ABBA fem-bots, give vocal performances that suggest they feel nothing. That's why a song like "Cherry Bomb" must have been so shocking to people not used to women, children actually, being aggressors with carnal knowledge, in which lead vocalist Cherie Curie(Dakota Fanning) leaves little to the imagination when she shouts "have you, grab you, 'til you're sore," like a proto-Liz Phair, or riot grrl of your choice. Despite the country being liberated by the sexual revolution, Curie's on-stage antics, by rock and roll standards, was still considered a "guy's move", as was Lita Ford's competent guitar solos. But true female empowerment would have to wait awhile, in which the foregrounding of a woman's musicianship over her sex appeal had never occurred to producer Kim Fowley(Michael Shannon), who had no qualms about arranging a softcore porn shoot for Currie with the Japanese press in her backyard. (Similarly, at the bequest of Malcolm McLaren, Annabelle Lwin would pose topless for the cover of the Bow Wow Wow album "Wild in the Country". And lest not we forget Brooke Shield's (still-)shocking nude scenes in Louis Malle's "Pretty Baby") Initially, Currie, who, the film suggests, lacks the rock and roll authority of a Joan Jett(Kristen Stewart), demurs at the impresario's blunt lyrics. Currie played the role of lolita, reluctantly, but grew into it once she got a real taste of rock and roll hedonism. "The Runaways", based on the Cherie Curie memoir "Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway", portrays the lead singer as being exploited by an industry predicated on putting women, just like the infamous Hustler magazine cover, through a meat grinder.
Appropriately enough, Cherie is compared to Linda Lovelace, the star of "Deep Throat", the 1972 adult film that borough pornography into the mainstream, which in all likelihood, paved the way for The Runaways to record on a major label(Mercury Records). (The film makes a case for the "porn-ification" of America taking place well-before Britney Spears was born.) Lita is furious with Cherie, referencing Lovelace in relation to her bandmate's photo spread, just before the band hits the stage for a stirring version of "Cherry Bomb", in which the lead guitarist reprimands the 16-year-old girl for undermining their music by flaunting her crotch around her west coast backyard. (The Runaways, even by today's standards, would cause a commotion.) But it's no wonder that The Runaways were big in Japan, a country whose women are infantilized by a culture that promotes a hyper-femininity that at times encourages a prolonged girlhood well into their late-twenties and beyond. In 1980, Lovelace wrote a national bestseller memoir called "Ordeal", an expose about the adult film industry, in which the actress claimed that her on-screen sexual exploits were performed against her will. Six years later, Lovelace came out with "Out of Bondage", where the anti-pornography advocate wrote that she "was forced into 'Deep Throat'", and was "the prisoner of a madman". Without a doubt, this madman in question which Lovelace alluded to must have been her former husband/manager Chuck Traynor. Like the "Deep Throat" star, The Runaways had a Svengali too, in the form of producer Kim Fowley, who refers to the band as his property, Cherie, in particular, a "prima donna" he instructs to think like a man. As Fowley indoctrinates Cherie in the finer points of being a sex object; at one point, lambasting his protégé for her "lack of rock and roll authority", this assembled piece of "jailbait" cheesecake takes it upon herself to bedeck her adolescent body in peepshow quality apparel, to Joan's dismay, and without Fowley's input. Unwittingly, "The Runaways" makes the case for Lovelace's naysayers that the porn star was indeed in control of her own sexuality. Even though we see Cherie, out of bondage, out from Fowley's control, late in the film, where she ends up working in a bakery, the Runaways' frontwoman, nevertheless, sets the stage for quasi-artists such as Madonna, whose self-promotion of her anatomical wares was made without any male encouragement.