The voices of punk rock, at the very least in its British iteration, “Poly Styrene: I Am a Cliché” might be divided into 4 classes: The Sneer (Johnny Rotten), The Mewl (Howard Devoto, Pete Shelley), The Harangue (Joe Strummer) … after which there was The Bellow. The feminine bellow, to be exact, of Poly Styrene, born Marion Joan Elliott-Stated, whose band, X-Ray Spex, threw down like no one had earlier than—or has since—with the debut single “Oh Bondage Up Yours!”
The track wasn’t a kink-shaming anthem. The opening strains are “Some folks suppose little ladies must be seen and never heard/However I feel ‘oh bondage, up yours!’” Adopted by a tumult of blaring sax, grinding guitar, and the same old kit-thrown-down-the-staircase drums. Every X-Ray Spex single that adopted—track titles included “I Am A Poseur,” “Identity” (“is the disaster can’t you see!”), “The Day The World Turned Day-Glo”—felt like a pressing bulletin from the UK division of Youth In Revolt, and Poly Styrene, a lady of color with braces on her tooth and sometimes wearing boxy, neon-colored vinyl, was the last word labor chief for punk rock misfit toys. She, and her band, had been constantly exhilarating. For a few 12 months and a half. Which was arguably a part of the purpose. However …
The voice that kicks off this documentary shouldn’t be a bellow however a tender one. It’s the voice of the film’s co-director Celeste Bell, the daughter of Poly Styrene. Born in 1981, quickly after the top of the clamorous insanity of the punk motion, Bell hardly had a serene upbringing. Was Poly’s mom? Celeste solutions the query by imagining how Poly herself—the singer died in 2011, solely 53 years previous, of most cancers—might need to be responded: “A great mum? How banal. How mundane.”
Bell is a presence all through the film, seated in lotus place in the entrance of a seamless white background, addressing the digital camera instantly. This isn’t a banal or mundane fake-objective music historical past doc: it’s a virtually real-time chronicle of a daughter coming to grips with a mom’s legacy.
This isn’t to say it doesn’t give an account of the time and the motion. The movie is frank in addressing the sexism that Poly endured within the circle of the Intercourse Pistols, and the racism she handled in every single place else. It highlights fellow feminine voices like Pauline Black, Vivian Goldman, and Styrene’s early bandmate Lora Logic, who left the band—not solely amicably—after “Oh Bondage” and reconnected with Styrene years later at a Hare Krishna ashram in India.
Sure—after a residency at New York’s CBGB, Styrene noticed a U.F.O. that suggested her to “quit the electrical and plastic lifestyle.” She modified her residence, her way of life, and her music. Her daughter ultimately balked. The estrangement lasted years.
Beset by psychological well-being points, Styrene was “sectioned” in a hospital the place she was misdiagnosed as schizophrenic; she in truth had a bipolar dysfunction. Her ache was handed all the way down to Celeste. “She pushed me down the steps as soon as, and I by no means let her overlook it. She wasn’t in her proper thoughts in fact. However, I blamed her forever bringing me into the world.” This stressed movie is hardly content material to current a portrait of an icon, as a substitute insisting, with compassion and clear eyes, that icons are all too human too.