Pussy Riot, a collective of Russian women that formed in 2011, have been flirting with fame in the West ever since being arrested in March of 2012 for something that sounds like you would be arrested for in the 1950s: hooliganism. Being a punk and all, it’s to be expected. And yet, the music of Pussy Riot is so often an afterthought in any discussions of them, particularly after their latest “shenanigan” at the World Cup in Moscow, “invading” the final pitch to make a point about what kind of cops this world truly needs.
While French soccer player Kylian Mbappé might have been down for a high five, everyone else has seen fit to more than lightly slap the four members responsible for the interruption on the wrist. Maybe that’s part of why France won–through the witchery of Pussy Riot, seeing as how defensive Croatian player Dejan Lovren approached one of the intruders with a violent reaction, later commenting, “I just lost my head and I grabbed the guy and I wished I could throw him away from the stadium.” The man in question that enraged him was Pyotr Verzilov, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s (one of the three members of the band jailed in 2012) husband. Because true love means taking risks together, no? This time around, however Tolokonnikova wasn’t in the mix, for Pussy Riot members must alternate turns in enduring prison sentences.
The other three involved in the interruption were Nika Nikulshina, Olga Kurachyova and Olga Pakhtusova. In a display they have dubbed, in true performance art form, “Policeman Enters the Game,” Pussy Riot explained that it was an homage to famed Russian poet Dmitriy Prigov, playing up his philosophy with their statement on the two versions of the policeman described by Prigov. As they wrote on their Facebook page after the disruption, “Today is 11 years since the death of the great Russian poet, Dmitriy Prigov. Prigov created an image of a policeman, a carrier of the heavenly nationhood, in the Russian culture.” It goes without saying that Russian culture has chosen to take on the image of a policeman more in line with the kind inspired by the KGB, of which Putin was once a happy member. Prigov himself was as illustrious for his arrests as his poetry and performance art, eventually being sent to a psychiatric hospital after going “too far” in 1986, silenced by the authorities of an all-powerful Soviet Union. Because you have to be crazy to think the system is fucked, right?
The same has gone for most of the Pussy Riot gang (for is the Soviet Union really gone?), with Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alyokhina arrested and imprisoned for the longest period after their “hooliganism” at Moscow Cathedral when Pussy Riot’s message first came to international attention. This time around, the quartet facing imprisonment has been slapped with fifteen days, having already reported unsuitable conditions in the establishment in violation of any common human rights.
Not one to lose the momentum of the international attention they’ve gained, Pussy Riot chose the morning after the highly meme-able offense to release the synth-heavy track, “Track About A Good Cop,” featuring lyrics in keeping with Prigov’s vision of the police officer, a man (or woman) that protects as opposed to antagonizing or “enforcing” his will onto others as but a “humble” tool of the oppressive state. Imagining this sort of utopia in an almost satirical fashion, Pussy Riot opens the video with a cop shyly dancing as the portrait, “Girls and boys, sugary streets/Cops are kissing under the clouds,” is painted. From the environs of a club, a screen flashing unicorns, stars and vibrant colors transitions us to this good cop now dancing in the snow. The lyrics continue, “Me and you, we are dancing/We are not cops/We’ve turned from enemies into a duo” as though to say, “We’re all just people, you don’t have to treat me like an animal because you think your uniform gives you the power to do so.”
These sentiments are in keeping with the list of “demands” (a.k.a. request of not being treated like property/cattle by their country) the band released to coincide with “Policeman Enters the Game,” which were as follows:
- Free all political prisoners
- Stop illegal arrests at public rallies
- Allow political competition in the country
- Stop fabricating criminal cases and jailing people on remand for no reason
It doesn’t seem like so much to ask. And, once again, for as much as Americans seem to hate their own country now, just watch Sex and the City 2 for proof of how liberated it is. As the song reaches its powerful close, Pussy Riot warns, per the subtitles of the video, “Affairs with the power are not beautiful/There’s plenty of buzz in life without pulling your badge out/Your affairs with power are careless/It will betray you/You will go to Siberia/She will go to eternity.”
Adding a touch of extra drama, the band creates the notion of a reluctant law enforcer, the type who didn’t sign on to be a violent shithead saying things like “Sometimes I regret that it’s not 1937” (a reference to Joseph Stalin’s terror campaign that someone said off-camera as the members were corralled off the field). So they describe a man that might still be capable of good somewhere inside with the lyric: “The cop says into the radio: mom I don’t like correctional service.”
Maybe one day, far into the future (very far, it seems), Pussy Riot and Prigov’s vision of the “heavenly policeman who speaks to God on his walkie-talkie” can be a reality. But considering the type of psychosis that law enforcement attracts in any nation, there’s a long way to reinventing the wheel of what it means to be a cop. And the first step, at the bare minimum, is eradicating a system of government that encourages this abusive behavior. Or maybe the first step is even insinuating that there could be a good cop like the one envisioned in this new song, a bit of marketing brilliance in the spirit of an American. Which has got to be why, in part, they finally made their way to the U.S. for a petite tour earlier this year, seeming to deliberately avoid Trump’s city of New York, representation of all things American capitalist pig (and yet, somehow, they found it in their hearts to grace L.A. with their presence). As Pussy Riot seeps further into American consciousness, their ability to make even bolder statements and more “offensive” gestures will escalate. Because the only thing Americans love more than taking their liberties for granted is getting outraged when famous people are arrested. It is a shrewd marketing plan on Pussy Riot’s part, and hopefully one that will save them from the severe punishment their country might otherwise give them if they (Putin) weren’t so aware of how visible the band is, therefore a full-fledged “expungement” is out of the question.
And is it just me, or is being banned from sports events for three years (the other consequence of their display) more reward than punishment? On a side note, can someone tell me what Pussy Riot does for money while still finding time to be avant-garde freedom fighters with more kick and gumption than any hot borscht?
