I would love to pretend that as a little girl I was exactly
like Palace: A delicate, eight-year-old redhead with style to burn and
the emotional intensity of Franny Glass. But in reality, I was the
little girl who threw up all over herself playing kickball on the first
day of the third grade and had no idea that turquoise culottes were
not, in fact, totally awesome. In other words, I was the sort of girl
who desperately needed a Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls. And also maybe
some Dramamine in my Capri Sun.
Palace is one of the most noteworthy individuals in Girls
Rock!, Shane King and Arne Johnson’s documentary about Portland’s
Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls—a musical finishing school that’s
less about keeping your ankles crossed and more about telling the world
to suck it. King and Johnson have been friends since seventh grade,
when they used a five-dollar 8mm camera King purchased at a Goodwill in
SE Portland to shoot Cala ‘n’ Ala Honeybaked, a short,
Bergmanesque film about (what else?) teen angst. Their first film
together since then, Girls Rock! documents Palace and
three other young ladies—Laura, Misty, and Amelia—as
they’re taught to channel their inner Lennon/McCartneys and compose an
original song to perform. (And even though the end product sometimes
turns out to be a bit more Eastman/McCartney, the results aren’t
necessarily bad. I love you, Wings!) In fact, the camp’s philosophy
seems to be that nothing is ever really bad—so long as the
girls emerge with a bit more
personal insight.
Camp counselors like Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein and the
Gossip’s Beth Ditto teach the girls to scream, sweat, and, possibly,
make wicked hash brownies. (Okay, calm down. Not really on the hash
brownies.) All the girls here are in grave need of some lessons in
societal non-conformity, and Palace, in particular, seems to radiate an
inner rage beneath her ice princess exterior. “All of [Palace’s] day is
very regimented,” Johnson says. “She does ballet, she does karate, she
goes to Japanese immersion school—so much of her time is spent
sitting down, being quiet, and being in control. So she had this dual
thing going on, where it seemed as though the intellectual part of how
she worked was trying to shape [her] band into something amazing, and
the part of her that was being released by rock ‘n’ roll allowed her to
go crazy.” In the process of going crazy, Palace upsets a few people
(namely, her band)—which, once again, is totally fine. It’s just
one more way for the camp to teach girls to become people first, and
examine gender roles second. (Or third, or fourth, or never.)
Making a documentary where the possible message could be interpreted
as mere “girl power!” wasn’t King and Johnson’s objective. “It became
impossible to create that kind of movie when you are looking these
girls in the eye and they’re telling you true, compelling stories about
their lives,” Johnson says. “You can’t sell them out like that. One of
the things the camp was trying to do was remove that shallow idea of
‘girl power’ and elevate it to something only you, as a young woman,
can truly define—which has nothing to do with a T-shirt, or some
kind of fist raised in the air like a cartoon.”
Indeed, by deconstructing the now-clichéd “girl power”
idea—which has become wholly embarrassing over the
years—and building it back up into something meaningful, Girls
Rock! succeeds as both a documentary and entertainment. And to be
fair, it also succeeds thanks to all those scenes with
Palace—mainly because she, unlike me, could totally pull off
turquoise culottes.