Kim Gordon, Coco Gordon Moore, and Dazed 100 photographer Clara Balzary talk the cathartic visual accompaniment to Kim’s seething #metoo-inspired track
In a dusty parking lot outside a hardware store, Coco Gordon Moore is scraping congealed globs of chewing gum off a wall. A man in a black car pulls up behind her. Leering out of its rolled-down window, he looks her up and down, and asks the question: “You hungry, baby?”. She doesn’t react, and he moodily throws his milkshake at her feet and speeds off into the night – while she’s left to clean up the mess. As the opening riffs of her mother Kim Gordon’s 2019 track “Hungry Baby” kick in, what happens next is something akin to catharsis.
Directed by Dazed 100 photographer Clara Balzary, the rest of the video sees Gordon Moore release the pent-up rage and exhaustion that comes from dealing with these all too relatable moments all too often. Sticking her headphones in her ears, she begins to dance across the parking lot, moving her body intuitively as she goes. Swinging her arms, stamping her feet, and at one point throwing herself to her knees and rolling around on the ground, it’s as if she’s trying to physically shake the experience – and countless others like it – out of her being.
“It’s all about tapping into the rage that builds up over time when you’re being ‘harassed’ in these really minor, mundane ways, whether that’s guys honking their horns and catcalling you, or through working in a shitty job where you’re not paid enough to pay the bills but just kind of have to keep going,” explains Clara. “There are a lot of things happening at once in the film – rage of course, but also the feeling of joy from making yourself big, moving your body, and releasing it all. Women aren’t really afforded the chance to express themselves in this way, but there’s a lot of power and beauty in it.”
The concept behind the project mirrors the themes of the track itself, which sees Kim step into the psyche of a sexual predator. According to the musician, she was thinking about the #MeToo movement and the endless stream of stories it brought to light when she wrote it.
“I remembered I wrote a song about sexual harassment in 1990 called “Swimsuit Issue” and I just thought to myself ‘wow, in 30 years, nothing’s changed!’” Kim reveals. “I thought it would be interesting to write (‘Hungry Baby’) from the point of view of the harasser and use their voice. I actually took some quotes I read in an article from one person in particular – I can’t say who – and then combined it with the ultimate rage back against it using the emotions of the victim.” That white-hot anger manifests in the unrestrained, thrashing guitars that drive the track forward, shrieking and reverberating in competition with the Sonic Youth musician’s seething vocals.
Filming took place in the suburban Los Angeles neighbourhood of Tujunga last August. Coco recalls the physical release beyond the frustration that comes from endless sexist, misogynistic, and predatory encounters she felt in the process. “It was the middle of the summer, so it was really hot out when we made it,” she explains. “I’d spent the whole of lockdown in New York in a small apartment building, protesting and doing a lot of mutual aid work, so it was amazing to be outside and moving my body after being indoors for months on end.” Although she worked alongside movement specialist Sadie Wilking on ‘certain steps and moves’, a lot of it was intuitive. “The mood of the song is so intense – it felt really good to just let go.”
“There are a lot of things happening at once in the film – rage of course, but also the feeling of joy from making yourself big, moving your body, and releasing it all. Women aren’t really afforded the chance to express themselves in this way, but there’s a lot of power and beauty in it” – Clara Balzary
The palpable tension that underscores the video was further heightened by the unrest of the summer – namely the ongoing, opposing protests of the Black Lives Matter movement and Trump’s rabid, white supremacist supporters.
“Tujunga is kind of a conservative, Republican neighbourhood, and there was a Trump rally going on down the street (when we were filming),” recalls Kim. “In the lead up to the election, you could feel there was a lot bubbling up,” adds Clara. “There’s a huge concentration of pick-up trucks and this tailgate culture here – and the rallies are obviously always super fucked up and racist.”
Trump’s four-year-stretch in the White House and the culture of toxic masculinity he continues to perpetuate is a big part of the reason Kim is still tackling these issues through her music, four decades on from when she first started exploring them. The seething poignancy that her daughter is now exploring these still urgent, driving issues creatively, too, is not lost on Kim.
“It’s interesting because technology is moving forward, but as far as human evolution goes we’re really not advancing,” she says. “It’s the same as the civil rights movement. I grew up in the 60s and 70s and I think you just kind of took it for granted things were moving in the right direction, but it really feels like they’ve stalled, or you know, gone one step forward, three steps back in an ongoing process.”
With our interview taking place just a few days before Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s inauguration, I ask the three if they’re feeling hopeful for the future now Trump is out. Coco laughs and makes a dismal klaxon noise that suggests… not so much. “It’s the same old thing, it’s not really anything different. Obviously Trump’s the worst, but Biden’s bad too. I feel like we’ve rewound four years, but it’s the same old bullshit: nothing’s changed,” she says. “It’s kind of like opening a door and behind it there’s a wall,” adds Clara.
Kim, on the other hand, points to Bernie Sanders, who she long campaigned for, becoming chair of the Senate’s budget committee. “I do feel hopeful – maybe now the progressives will have more opportunity to use their power with him at the top. We’ll see.”