IT'S FUN TO LOSE AND TO PRETEND: Kathleen Hanna on the secret history of "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Rough language and imagery, and obviously I don't agree with her re: pregnancy centers, but if you can listen to this without crying then maybe you need to recalibrate. (And some guys in the audience hoot when she first mentions stripping, because... because agony and irony are side by side on my piano keys?)

Here we are now; entertain us.

HEY, JOE, I'M ALREADY THERE: Have you ever wanted to watch a John Hughes movie in which the Sex Pistols are played by Bikini Kill?

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains!

Look, it really is a John Hughes movie at its heart, so there are cartoonish racial/ethnic things which are clearly meant to parallel the class and sexual exploitation the moviemakers really understand, and which are therefore kind of attempts at empathy but which come across as gross funhouse mirrors. The class and sex issues are incredibly heartfelt though--the fluorescent colors are used to paint real, raw emotions. You can see it in the mother's-forgiveness scene but it's present from the very first scene.

It's a morality tale as well, and in no way a subtle one. Chasing fame and money is bad even when it's understandable due to a home life which led you to think that escaping your origins is an immeasurably-valuable and almost-unattainable goal. There's a bit in the liner notes for Chumbawamba's Shhh! album where they say something like, "Poor but honest just meant always having less than everyone else"; you're set up to fail somebody, sacrificing either your own integrity or your family's welfare. I see this a lot at the pregnancy center. People learn to work the system because where else can they work? So yeah... this movie knows why that happens, and also why the zero-sum game of "I've been jerked around so I can do whatever I want" is still cruel and disloyal. Again, it's a primary-colors morality tale, but not an entirely stupid or unsympathetic one. The "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" scene in this movie actually manages to be rawer than the true-life original.

Diane Lane, apparently just 15 when this was filmed, is perfect; actually all the actresses are perfect. The men not so much, but oh well.

The "professionals" song is pretty clearly based on the Raincoats' terrific "Off-Duty Trip."

The final MTV version of the Stains' big, stolen hit is so amazingly perfect that I could almost hear Casey Kacem introducing it. "Q-107, Washington's top 40! That was 'Karma Chameleon'; now here's the Stains!" Absolutely incredible pastiche. About to listen to the first of two commentary tracks.

ALIEN SHE: I'm loving Fragmentation and Redemption, but the first essay does have one premise I'd like to challenge a bit. Bynum writes, "If one looks with women rather than at women, women's lives are not liminal to women--but neither, except in a very partial way, are male roles or male experiences."

That might be entirely true of the medieval women's narratives she's discussing. I certainly don't know enough to challenge her there! But she does seem to be implying that it's true per se--women aren't liminal to women because we are women--and that I think is false.

One of the facts of women's lives in what you can call patriarchy (although I think that term's focus on fatherhood is misleading, both because women-as-mothers do an immense amount to shape and transmit culture and because you can have male domination of culture despite a severe diminution of fathers' status and presence--anyway, let's move on) is that women are alien to ourselves and "other" to ourselves.

There are obvious disadvantages to this fact of emotions. There are perhaps less-obvious spiritual advantages. Self-alienation can be a strong source of insight, self-questioning, and Christian submission. (This possibility is really important w/r/t Bynum's essay, because she's arguing that medieval women's religious narratives generally rested on continuity of identity rather than radical conversion of identity: Because they already identified with Christ-the-suffering or Christ-the-lowly, they could imitate Him without a radical transformation or "reversal" of identity.)

My own perspective on this stuff is really weird because of being lesbian--I talked about gay alienation as a precursor to Catholic conversion here and here, and alluded to it here. I don't know to what extent my personal focus on the benefits rather than the (real, obvious, and painful) drawbacks of self-alienation and viewing women as Other are related to my sexual orientation, and I'd be interested in any comments you all have there. But on the more basic point about women's self-alienation (and therefore, although I know these aren't synonymous terms, self-liminality), I've heard lots of straight women support my position.

Where this goes, I don't know. It does, at least, complicate Bynum's final call to "stand with" women when doing history; how do you "stand with" someone who doesn't entirely stand with herself? (Should we seek to "stand with" ourselves?)

IN MY HEAD, I'M ON MY KNEES: I review Catholic and Feminist: The Surprising History of the American Catholic Feminist Movement in the latest First Things. Subscribers-only for now.

Keep in mind that when I make a statement, I'm standing behind that statement; but when I suggest, or question, it's because I think my questions are a better way to approach the complex truth than any partial or provincial comment I could make.