Towards a Feminist Analysis of "Women in Rock Music": Patti Smith's "Gloria"

Abstract

Within contemporary social theory, there is a developing literature which analyzes the position of women within various cultural practices such as literature, film, and the visual arts, and the beginnings of a critical cultural analysis of rock music. However, there are very few discussions of the position of women within the rock music industry. The goal of this article is to attempt to articulate one way feminists can understand rock music, women's participation in the genre, and the relationship of this cultural practice to the ideological production of gender. This paper is divided into two sections. First, I examine how even a critical feminist content analysis forecloses interrogations of "entertainment industries" or popular culture because of its uncritical assumption of a referential theory of language. To demonstrate this, I analyze one of the few articles on women in rock music: Deborah Harding and Emily Nett's "Women in Rock Music," which appeared in Atlantis in 1984.1 conclude with a reading of Patti Smith's version of the rock and roll classic "Gloria" to emphasize the need for more detailed analyses of the subject positions assigned to women within rock music lyrics using feminist deconstructive and psychoanalytic theories of subjectivity. Contrary to Harding and Nett's position, "Gloria" demonstrates that it is possible for women to participate in rock music without acting as "male-identified women."