Pussy Riot and the Holy Foolishness of Punk

Pussy Riot and the Holy Foolishness of Punk* Kerith M. Woodyard Department of Communication, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, USA Mailing Address: Department of Communication Northern Illinois University 1425 W. Lincoln Highway DeKalb, IL 60115 [email protected] *This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Rock Music Studies on 22 August 2014, available online at http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/19401159.2014.949555. Pussy Riot and the Holy Foolishness of Punk Pussy Riot's surprise punk prayer at the altar of Moscow's Cathedral of Christ Our Savior instigated significant controversy in Russia and resulted in the conviction of three Pussy Riot members on the charge of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred." While the Russian Orthodox Church swiftly condemned the performance as blasphemous, Pussy Riot has contended that its punk prayer is consistent with the message of the Gospels. This study investigates the punk prayer controversy in relation to the figure of the holy fool, a radical behavioral model canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church and secularized in Russia's literary and artistic traditions. Keywords: Pussy Riot; punk; holy fools; Russia; feminism For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last, as men condemned to death; for we have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are distinguished, but we are dishonored! (New King James Bible, 1 Cor. 4.9-10) On February 21, 2012, while commandeering sacred space before the altar of Moscow's Cathedral of Christ Our Savior, five anonymous members of the all-female Russian punk group Pussy Riot staged an abbreviated performance of "Mother of God, Put Putin Away," a punk prayer petitioning the Virgin Mary to become a feminist and remove Vladimir Putin from power. Wearing brightly colored dresses, tights, and balaclavas, the women hurriedly danced a brief choreography that combined kicking, punching, and genuflecting as they dodged attempts by Cathedral security personnel to remove them. Within forty seconds, the performance was prematurely stopped and the women fled the Cathedral chanting the lyric: "Shit, shit, the Lord's shit!" Hours later, Pussy Riot had posted a two-minute remixed video of the punk prayer on YouTube that quickly went viral. The video combined the Cathedral footage with a prerecorded soundtrack and additional video footage shot two days earlier at the Cathedral of the Apparition in Moscow (Gessen 114-21).1 For its chorus, the soundtrack borrowed from Sergei Rachmaninov's "Ave Maria," the sixth movement of his famous AllNight Vigil, and adapted the standard lyrics used in the Russian Orthodox Vespers service. Pussy Riot's lyrical adaptation, a feminist appeal to Mary to intercede on behalf of Russia and "put Putin away," alternated with hard-edged punk verses criticizing Putin and Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church and vocal Putin supporter. Although Pussy Riot viewed its punk prayer as a form of dissident performance art condemning the Church's close political ties with Putin, the group's surprise Cathedral performance was viewed by many Russians as both blasphemous and criminal. Several witnesses reported being traumatized by Pussy Riot's immodest dress, "devilish jerkings," and profane singing (Gessen 174-78). Meanwhile, Patriarch Kirill denounced the punk prayer as the work of the Devil and called for the harshest possible punishment. Within four weeks of the Cathedral performance, Pussy Riot members Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were arrested and indicted on the charge of felony hooliganism, a violation of Article 213 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. Found guilty by the Khamovnichesky Court in Moscow, the Pussy Riot defendants were soon sentenced to two years in a penal colony.2 Presiding over the case, Judge Marina Syrova ruled that the women "were motivated by religious enmity and hatred, and acted provocatively and in an insulting manner inside a religious building in the presence of a large number of believers" (qtd. in Malik). Despite the verdict, Pussy Riot strenuously denied that its performance was motivated by religious hatred. Alyokhina, for example, stressed that the group's motivations were best expressed in the Gospels (Gessen 214) while Tolokonnikova maintained: "We are jesters, jokers, holy fools and we bear no ill will towards anyone" (Pussy Riot). The attribution of malevolent intent aside, the characteristics of hooliganism as operationally defined in the legal case against Pussy Riot bear a striking resemblance to the features of Russian holy foolishness ("yurodstvo"). A deeply rooted and enduring cultural tradition with Orthodox origins, holy foolishness is typified by a provocative act that is "a violation of the protocol of the time and place" (Murav 1). Like hooliganism, holy foolishness is a gross violation of the public order that, through its willful unruliness, shocks and offends its audience. For the purpose of providing a kind of "comical, paradoxical form of spiritual instruction," holy fools deliberately take on the appearance of insanity (Ivanov 1). In addition, as with Pussy Riot's inflammatory punk assault on Putin and Kirill, holy fools play a central role in challenging authorities (Ivanov 285-310). However, holy foolishness is not motivated by religious hatred but is instead driven by what Patrick Laude has called "utter spiritual sincerity" (160). Asserting Pussy Riot's earnest participation in this distinctly Russian tradition, Tolokonnikova stated before the court: "We were searching for real sincerity and simplicity, and we found these qualities in the yurodstvo [the holy foolishness] of punk" (Tolokonnikova, "Closing" 92). In this essay, I use Pussy Riot's self-identified holy foolishness as a point of departure for considering the relationship between the punk group's performance of "Mother of God, Put Putin Away" and Russia's longstanding tradition of holy foolishness. As I explain below, by situating Pussy Riot's punk prayer in its broader cultural context, particularly respecting its connections to Russian Orthodox history, this analysis assists in illuminating the patterns of culture that inform Pussy Riot's distinctly mixed reception among Russian audiences. Moreover, through attention to the patterns of culture in which Pussy Riot participates, this study encourages a reevaluation of Pussy Riot's place in the history of punk music (and of punk music's place in the history of Pussy Riot). The Neglected Contexts of the Pussy Riot Affair Western media and public responses to the Pussy Riot controversy have suffered from an absence of key contextual knowledge necessary for understanding Pussy Riot's punk prayer and its complicated reception among religious and secular Russian audiences. Frequently, as Kevin M. F. Platt maintains, these western responses have focused on "abstract principles activated by the Pussy Riot affair," including freedom of expression, feminism, and antiauthoritarianism (par. 9). While these and other preoccupations are areas of legitimate concern and relevance, they often have come at the expense of more substantive contextual analyses that would help explain the meaning and significance of the Pussy Riot controversy within Russia's own cultural frame of reference. Both Elianna Kan and Yngvar Steinholt suggest that western media have neglected the religious context informing Russian interpretations of Pussy Riot's punk prayer as well as the tradition of dissident art-activism from which Pussy Riot itself sprang forth. In the remainder of this essay, I address both of these areas of neglect at once by examining Pussy Riot's punk prayer as an exemplar of Russian holy foolishness, a radical behavioral model canonized in the Russian Orthodox Church and replicated throughout Russia's literary and artistic traditions, including in the culture of dissident art-activism that informs Pussy Riot's own feminist punk project. An explication of Russian holy foolishness, in particular, is essential to recovering the religious context informing Russian interpretations of Pussy Riot's punk prayer. Western audiences tend to be unfamiliar with both holy foolishness and Eastern Orthodoxy, the context which gave rise to this distinct mode of cultural expression (Hunt 5). Consequently, they are unaware of just how ubiquitous the holy fool figure is in Russian culture. As I explain later, holy foolishness pervades Russia's theological, literary, and artistic traditions. In fact, the cultural impact of holy foolishness on Russian society is so great that Ewa M. Thompson writes in Understanding Russia: The Holy Fool in Russian Culture that "The society's perception of itself has been influenced by its perception of holy fools" (185, emphasis in original). Thus, an understanding of Russian society's ambivalent perception of the holy fool figure—as sinner and saint, lunatic and prophet, hooligan and helper—will help account for its decidedly mixed reactions to Pussy Riot's adoption of this unique persona. Moreover, Nicholas Denysenko finds the issue of whether or not Pussy Riot assumed the role of holy fool "in the pattern of Christian prophets" to be a promising line of inquiry, suggesting that they do indeed seem to display characteristics of the holy fool figure" (20-22). A focus on Pussy Riot's relationship to holy foolishness also invites a more complicated reading of Pussy Riot's relationship to the history of punk. Quite understandably, Pussy Riot's global visibility as an all-female Russian punk band has generated interest in how its music "fits" into the larger history of punk. Schwartzman and Maillet argue that Pussy Riot is "a current incarnation of an earlier version of feminist activism through female-fronted punk-style music known as Riot Grrrl" (180). Inviting the comparison, Pussy Riot has acknowledged the 1990s Riot Grrrl movement, especially Bikini Kill and the Guerrilla Girls, as an influence on its own aggressively feminist punk (Gessen 61). Not unexpectedly, therefore, journalists writing for western audiences have been quick to underscore the connection between Pussy Riot and its American punk forerunners. For example, the New York Times and New Yorker dubbed the group "Russian Riot Grrrls" and "Pussy Riot Grrrls," respectively,3 while the Chicago-based music webzine Pitchfork praised Pussy Riot's ability to "bottle the spirit of riot grrrl but also transpose it into a whole new context" (Zoladz, par. 14). Nevertheless, the suggestion propagated by western media that Pussy Riot is merely Riot Grrrl adapted to a Russian context is a gross oversimplification that overlooks Russian cultural influences on Pussy Riot,4 especially the tradition of holy foolishness (which includes the holy foolishness of dissident art-activism). Because, as I argue, the Russian cultural antecedents influencing Pussy Riot precede the 1990s Riot Grrrl movement and certainly even the first wave of British and American punk rock, this study joins Lane Van Ham's efforts to "extend[ ] the history of punk backward" (319). Tracing affinities between British punk performance from 1976 to 1979 and "sacred clowning," Van Ham argues: "Punk discourse may be partially explained by reference to popular music, avant-garde bohemia, political protest, and subcultural style. But it also seems justified to position punk as one of the many successors to an ancient lineage of contrarian performance" (329). For Van Ham, the legacy of the "sacred clown"—a broadly inclusive term for cultural archetypes that perform paradoxical symbolic inversions of the sacred and profane (318)—appears in the punk rock aesthetics of groups such as the Sex Pistols and The Damned. The line Van Ham draws from early punk to sacred clowning encourages scholars to "think about the ways in which punk's underlying spirit is consistent with but not necessarily directly inspired by more timeless and persistent inversive practices" (329). Likewise, the line I draw from Pussy Riot to holy foolishness extends the history of Pussy Riot backward, well beyond Riot Grrrl, while also encouraging scholars to consider how the Riot Grrrl movement (and perhaps even punk music more generally) displays characteristics consistent with holy foolishness or other similar ancient forms of contrarian performance. Next, I expound upon the tradition of Russian holy foolishness, providing a brief history of this cultural phenomenon, defining its central features, and clarifying its role in Russia's theological, literary, and artistic traditions. With this contextual foundation in place, I will then turn to an analysis of Pussy Riot's punk prayer and its reception, demonstrating how this guerrilla performance functions as a contemporary exemplar of holy foolishness. The Russian Tradition of Holy Foolishness Holy foolishness ("yurodstvo"), a radical and distinct mode of cultural expression in Russia, has persisted throughout the society's entire history (Hunt 5). The yurodivyi ("holy fool") is a Russian adaptation of the Hebrew prophet (Kobets, "Paradigm" 17). Like the Old Testament prophet who summons the Hebrew people to abide by God's covenant with Abraham (Gen. 17), the holy fool in Byzantine and Russian traditions is a purveyor of moral knowledge (Thompson 9-10). Yet, paradoxically, the holy fool communicates through a guise of insanity and images of sin (Heller and Volkova 153-54). Creating the appearance of madness, the holy fool adopts excessively confrontational modes of expression which, in defying conventional morality and basic standards of decorum, often provoke hostility and persecution (Ivanov 1-9; Lasser 260-62). At the same time, the figure of the holy fool is venerated by those who see the fool's "unconventional and bizarre" behavior as motivated by legitimate spiritual concerns and enacted for the purpose of "teaching those around them some kind of moral lesson" (Thompson 9-14). In Russian Orthodox theology, holy foolishness is identified as an expression of the Gospels, especially Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians (Heller and Volkova 154; Hunt 2; Ivanov 18-20; Laude 133-34; Murav 27-28). Identifying the apostles as "fools for Christ's sake" (1 Cor. 4.9-10), Paul proclaims that worldly folly is an instrument of divine wisdom and ultimate salvation. He writes, "Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe" (1 Cor. 1.21). In Paul's formulation, worldly wisdom is foolishness before God whereas worldly foolishness is wisdom before God. The yurodivyi, the inheritor of the Pauline concept of holy foolishness, acts for "Christ's sake" in calling others to Christ "by confronting them with a shocking holy foolish instantiation of the Cross" (Hunt 2). Imitating the life (and death) of Jesus by bearing shame, humiliation, and persecution for the greater good of humanity, the holy fool heeds Jesus' call: "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me" (Matt. 16.24). Thus, in the Russian Orthodox tradition, the holy fool voluntarily rejects reason and sanity as conventionally defined, and masquerades divine wisdom as worldly folly (Heller and Volkova 158; Hunt 2). In feigning insanity and displaying sinful behavior, the holy fool is often confused with those who are truly insane or sinful (Ivanov 2; Kobets, "Lice" 16; Laude 160). Because of their inherent ambiguity, practitioners of holy foolishness are often rejected as fraudulent fools for Christ's sake and are persecuted "on a par with real madmen and hooligans" (Kobets, "Lice" 16). Despite the Russian Orthodox Church's hesitancy to fully accept yurodstvo as a legitimate form of Christian devotion (Thompson 51-96, 197), an estimated thirty-six Holy Fools (or Fools for Christ's sake) make up a special category of canonized saints in the Church (Campbell and Cilliers 94 note 103).5 The canonized holy fools are credited with "appear[ing] briefly on the scene in order to denounce the tyranny and evil of the tsars" (Murav 2). For Orthodox Christians in Russia, the holy fool has been among the most celebrated of saints (Ivanov 2). Perhaps the most widely venerated is Basil the Fool (or Vasily the Blessed), a sixteenth-century saint whose foolishness included barking at the brutality of Tsar Ivan IV ("the Terrible") and walking the streets of Moscow naked in winter (Lasser 262). His namesake, St. Basil's Cathedral, is Russia's most recognizable cultural landmark and, perhaps not accidentally, was chosen as the backdrop for Pussy Riot's January 2012 performance in Red Square, "Putin Has Pissed Himself."6 When the cathedral was erected at the behest of Ivan the Terrible (circa 1554), the Russian Orthodox Church (which had been critical of Basil during his life) named it Cathedral of the Intercession (Thompson 78). Shortly thereafter, however, Church authorities yielded to the public of Moscow, who had taken it upon themselves to rename the cathedral after Basil (Thompson 78). Popular reception of Basil and other holy fools reflects the extent to which holy foolishness has permeated Russian culture and national identity. Indeed, the substantive and stylistic features of holy foolishness are a vital component of Russia's heritage (Thompson 185), providing what Hunt identifies as a rich and ongoing "behavioral and literary paradigm" (5). As Hunt explains: Holy foolishness has been relevant throughout Russia's entire history. It has persisted despite the divide between ancient and modern Russia. Appealing to the conservative faithful of all social classes, it survived the post-Petrine cultural divide between a Westernized elite and the people. It reentered the cultural mainstream as a meaningful phenomenology during the nineteenth century, when it was evoked by writers such as Pushkin and Dostoevsky, and then in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by the sophisticated avant-garde, by Russian dissident poets facing the Soviet regime, and by postmodern thinkers, artists, and writers. (5) Fyodor Dostoevsky's development of holy-foolish characters such as Prince Myshkin in The Idiot and Alesha Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov (Murav 26-27) derives from hagiographic literature and, along with other literary exemplars, provides additional cultural touchstones for future imitators of the holy fool paradigm. For example, as Mikhail Epstein points out in his study of contemporary Russian culture, avant-gardism unquestionably exemplifies the characteristics of holy foolishness codified elsewhere. "The avant-garde is a holy fool's art," writes Epstein, "consciously going for its own humiliation, to the mutilation of its own aesthetic face. . ." (52). Comparing the avant-garde artist to Basil the Fool, who desecrated an icon of the Virgin Mary to reveal a drawing of a devil behind it (54), Epstein defends the sanctity of the avant-garde artist's foolishness. He argues: "This 'foolishness' is not the negation of faith, but negation by means of faith. Even blasphemous statements that are often made in the avant-garde milieu can find a parallel in the deeds of holy fools" (54). Contemporary performances by Russian dissident art-activists also often parallel the blasphemous utterances and jarring spectacles of canonized holy fools. For example, reproducing the public nakedness and extremism of Basil the Fool and other canonized saints, performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky nailed his scrotum to the cobblestones in Red Square in a November 2013 display protesting "the apathy, political indifference and fatalism of contemporary Russian society" (qtd. in Walker). Additionally, the high-profile art collective Voina ("War"), in which Tolokonnikova and Samutsevich were highly involved prior to Pussy Riot's formation in November 2011 (Gessen 34-53), staged several holy-foolish contrarian performances. In one such performance, "Cop in a Priest's Cassock," a member of Voina walked into a supermarket wearing a Russian Orthodox priest's cassock and a police officer's hat and left without paying for a full cart of groceries (Gessen 41). Displaying what the Church and State would respectively designate as sinful and illegal behavior, the Voina performer deliberately defied conventional morality and rule of law and, like the holy fool, used worldly folly as an instrument of "divine" wisdom. In this case, the wisdom intended to be revealed by the performance was recognition of the hypocritical thievery of both priests and police officers (Gessen 41). In short, although holy foolishness originated largely as a religious phenomenon and remains a celebrated (albeit marginalized) tradition in the Russian Orthodox Church, it displays a firm hold on the Russian popular imagination. Extending from its earliest descriptions in hagiographic writings to its evocations in various forms of literature and art, holy foolishness has evolved to include particular types of unconventional secular behavior to such an extent that "the values and attitudes of holy foolishness are no longer perceived as characterizing holy fools alone" (Thompson 185). Yet, in theological and secular contexts alike, holy foolishness always involves performance carried to an extreme. Canonized holy fools and inheritors of their behavioral model voluntarily renounce reason, taking on the appearance of insanity, and deliberately provoke spectators through disruptive, indecorous behavior. By this foolishness, the holy fool bears witness to a divine ideal, using paradoxical inversions of the sacred and profane in an attempt to change the status quo. Owing to the inherent ambiguity of the holy fool's performance, however, the holy fool is only sometimes venerated and is very often reviled and persecuted. The Discernment of Holy Foolishness The problem posed by Pussy Riot, and indeed by all holy fools, is the problem of discernment. Because holy foolishness involves a confrontational disruption of the status quo which is experienced as an act of hostility by those to whom it is directed (Ivanov 9), observers of these incendiary modes of expression are apt to respond with disdain rather than praise. By definition, the holy fool is what Victor Turner would call a "transitional-being" or "liminal persona"—one who assumes the space "betwixt and between" two states of being (93-95). For all impractical purposes, the holy fool voluntarily resides "at the center of a clash of viewpoints" and inevitably presents an interpretative challenge to his or her auditors (Hunt 1). As Laude argues, "The marginal and ambiguous nature of the yurodivye [holy fool] may easily give rise to deviations or perversions that sometimes make it difficult to distinguish the grain from the chaff, the reality from the parody" (160). Consequently, the capacity to distinguish between holy foolishness and ordinary sinfulness or sheer madness requires "a kind of bifocal vision that sees the wisdom in the folly or the gospel in the scandal" (Campbell and Cilliers 102). This "bifocal vision," which allows holy foolishness to become something other than deviance or sacrilege, concentrates on the liminal spaces occupied and created by the holy fool. In the remainder of this essay, I focus on the clash of viewpoints embodied in Pussy Riot's punk prayer, "Mother of God, Put Putin Away," and argue that Pussy Riot's performance, through its instigation and sustenance of liminality, provides a paradigmatic exemplar of the Russian tradition of holy foolishness. Punk Prayer as Holy Foolishness A Pussy Riot detractor, conveying her absolute disgust at the punk group's performance in the Cathedral of Christ Our Savior, opined: "They walked into the heart of Russia and took a shit" (Pussy Riot). With the larger history of Russian holy foolishness in mind, this reaction is fittingly reminiscent of the revulsion experienced by sixth-century witnesses to Symeon the Fool's literal acts of public defecation.7 In the case of Pussy Riot's intrusion into the "heart of Russia," the nature of the defilement in question is understood only in relation to precisely what the Cathedral symbolizes and for whom. The Cathedral is a symbol filled with symbols. The meanings signified remain open and contested. The trial and conviction of Pussy Riot members Alyokhina, Samutsevich, and Tolokonnikova on the charge of felony hooliganism privilege a particular set of meanings connected to the Cathedral space that designate Pussy Riot's punk prayer performance as a blasphemous spectacle which jarred painfully upon the feelings of many devout Orthodox believers. As one witness testified: "They [Pussy Riot] caused huge moral damage to me. The pain will not go away" (qtd. in Gessen 174-75). Inciting this response, the women had pushed open the gate leading to the pulpit and stepped onto the soleas, a sacred area reserved for male clergy and in close proximity to the sanctuary's most holy relics (Gessen 172-74). Wearing "vulgar" clothing that did not conform to the conservative Orthodox dress standards for female parishioners (Gessen 173),8 Pussy Riot proceeded to sing part of the punk prayer's lyrics, which included several words considered profane in an Orthodox setting. At the same time, the defendants performed crass bodily movements. As explained to the court: "They were jumping and skipping and making arm movements with their hands in fists. They raised their legs so high that you could practically see everything below the waist" (qtd. in Gessen 174). In short, the defendants had defiled the Cathedral and were guilty of blasphemy, a violation shoehorned into Article 213 of the Russian Criminal Code by Judge Syrova, who ruled that a charge of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred could be sustained "when a defendant has expressed open disrespect and defiance against the communally expected norms and the tastes of others" (qtd. in Malik).9 Yet, an assessment of the situational elements motivating Pussy Riot to bring their guerrilla-style punk aesthetic into the Cathedral reveals a creative purpose contrary to the State's alleged motive of religious hatred. For Pussy Riot and many other Russians, the Cathedral had already been defiled before the group staged its punk prayer. In fact, the punk prayer itself was a political response to that perceived defilement—namely, "the Putin government's merger with the Russian Orthodox Church" (Pussy Riot, "Art" 15), of which the Cathedral had become a potent symbol. As rector of the Cathedral, Patriarch Kirill had used his pulpit to call upon Orthodox Christians to vote in the March 2012 presidential election for Putin, a politician whose actions Pussy Riot regarded as "far removed from God's truth" (Pussy Riot, "Letter" 26). Distressingly for many, Kirill indicated that "a true Orthodox believer would be obliged to vote for Putin's political party and forbidden to attend the earthly and un-holy rallies of the opposition" (Pussy Riot, "The History" 23). Highlighting one aspect of the dilemma posed by Kirill's endorsement of Putin, Alyokhina wondered: "I am an Orthodox Christian, but I hold other political views, and my question is: What should I do?" ("Opening" 38). Thus, in part, Pussy Riot's punk prayer was a protest against Putin's own encroachment on the Cathedral space, an intrusion that functionally displaced Orthodox believers who did not support Putin. As Alyokhina noted, "I thought that the church loved its children, but [. . .] the church loves only those children who believe in Putin" ("Opening" 38-39). Though extremely offensive to the Orthodox believers who testified in court, Pussy Riot's most pointed lyrical attack in the punk prayer ("Shit, shit, the Lord's shit!") was intended as a commentary on the relationship between Kirill and Putin and its negative implications for parishioners, not as an assault on Orthodox religion itself (Pussy vs. Putin). Attempting to untie the double-bind in which Kirill placed Orthodox believers who did not support Putin, Pussy Riot pronounced that one's faith should be directed toward God, not toward politicians—a scolding sentiment expressed in the punk prayer lyric: "Patriarch Gundyaev10 believes in Putin / Bitch, better believe in God instead!" ("Virgin" 14). But Pussy Riot's punk prayer was not only a fervent appeal for return of the Cathedral to Orthodox believers of all political persuasions; it simultaneously granted legitimacy to the culture of protest enlivened by Putin's controversial bid for a third term. With over 100,000 citizens engaging in Moscow protests in opposition to Putin's announced candidacy in December 2011 (Reitman 50), Pussy Riot's performance claimed the contested Cathedral space on behalf of a vibrant protest community. As Samutsevich notes: "In our performance we dared [. . .] to unite the visual imagery of Orthodox culture with that of protest culture, thus suggesting that Orthodox culture [. . .] could also ally itself with civic rebellion and the spirit of protest in Russia" (89). The unification of Orthodox culture with protest culture, exemplified by Pussy Riot's "newly developed genre" of "unexpected political punk performance" moved into the Cathedral setting (Tolokonnikova, "Opening" 43), is part and parcel of the Russian Orthodox tradition of holy foolishness. By its essential nature, holy foolishness involves the unification of protest and rebellion with a life of religious devotion. The holy fool, as the living embodiment of this union, rebels against oppression and injustice and thereby "share[s] in the spiritual combativeness of the warrior for Christ" (Laude 143). Like the canonized holy fools who "appeared briefly on the scene in order to denounce the tyranny and evil of the tsars" (Murav 2), Pussy Riot operationalizes the behavioral paradigm of the holy fool through its punk prayer. As discussed below, the wisdom in the folly of Pussy Riot's performance is perceptible through an examination of Pussy Riot's feminist appeal to Mary and the group's performative kinship with Jesus. In addition, Pussy Riot's participation in the tradition of holy foolishness is further reinforced by questions involving the group members' appearance of insanity. An Appeal to Mary Imitating the foolishness of the Church's own canonized holy fools, Pussy Riot's punk prayer violated conventional morality and standards of decorum in a series of symbolic reversals that involved feminizing the pulpit area, co-opting a holy relic as a symbol of civic unrest, and deploying Mary as an agent of feminist rebellion. In politicizing the Cathedral space, Pussy Riot sought to draw attention to the ways in which it had already been politicized in the service of patriarchal and undemocratic ends. Prior to Pussy Riot's punk prayer attack on Patriarch Kirill for "allow[ing] the church to become a weapon in a dirty political campaign" (Pussy Riot, "Letter" 26), Pussy Riot had been critical of the Church's patriarchal culture. For instance, in the song "Putin Has Pissed Himself," Pussy Riot issued its verdict: "The Orthodox religion is a hard penis" (qtd. in Gessen 105). In contrast, as was explained by the group in an interview published online by Vice, the punk band calculatingly named itself "Pussy Riot": "A female sex organ, which is supposed to be receiving and shapeless, suddenly start[ing] a radical rebellion against the cultural order, which tries to constantly define it and show its appropriate place" (Langston). Accordingly, in its brief punk prayer at the Cathedral, Pussy Riot broke the doctrinal strictures on women's religious participation and penetrated the pulpit area. Upon invading this liturgical space, Pussy Riot attempted to claim it for feminism. Without a male intermediary, Pussy Riot appealed directly to the Virgin Mary, whose symbolic presence in the Cathedral was heightened by the wellpublicized recent visit of Mary's Belt, an artifact considered by Orthodox believers to be a piece of the Virgin's undergarment (Gessen 76). This holy relic had been venerated by more than three million Russians during a period that coincided with mass protests against Putin (Gessen 76), events that had garnered significantly less coverage by state-controlled media. Lambasting the Church's role in obscuring protest culture through media manipulation, the punk prayer warned Kirill: "The belt of the Virgin can't replace mass meetings / Mary, Mother of God, is with us in protest!" (Pussy Riot, "Virgin" 14). For Pussy Riot, Kirill's alleged collusion with Putin to create a media veneer covering anti-Putin sentiment could not make the protest rallies against Putin dissipate. As reinforcement, Pussy Riot affirmed that Mary, whose belt generally symbolized her elevated status as a healer and protector of the people, stands with the people in protest against Putin. While the Virgin Mary is a highly venerated figure in the Russian Orthodox Church, the religion "espouses values, practices, and social policies that seem to keep women in a subordinate position" (Kizenko 595). Consequently, Pussy Riot's feminist ideology and appropriation of Mary as a feminist icon signifying rebellion and protest were considered a profanation by prosecution witnesses. Following a public statement by the Union of Russian Orthodox Women warning of the corrupting influence of feminism (Zobina 15), one witness testified that even the word "feminist," which Pussy Riot used repeatedly in its petition to Mary, is profane if it is uttered church (Pussy Riot! 50). Another witness clarified that "For an Orthodox believer it is an insult, an obscenity" (Pussy Riot! 50). Further, Judge Syrova ruled that "The court does find a religious hatred motive in the actions of the defendants by way of them being feminists who consider men and women to be equal" (qtd. in Malik). Finding that "Orthodox Christianity, and Catholic Christianity and other denominations do not agree with feminism" (qtd. in Malik), Syrova determined that the punk prayer's chorus was by itself a basis for a guilty verdict in the case against Pussy Riot. Yet, by introducing the profanity of feminism into the sacred Cathedral space, Pussy Riot drew directly from the holy fool's playbook, offending spectators' sensibilities by momentarily making the foolishness of feminism sacred in a traditionally patriarchal context. The perceived sacrilege of Pussy Riot uttering the word "feminism" in church was only intensified by its association with Mary in a melodically familiar yet lyrically foreign chorus. In its lyrically adapted choral rendition of Rachmaninov's "Ave Maria" from the AllNight Vigil, Pussy Riot urged: Virgin Mary, Mother of God, put Putin away / Put Putin away, put Putin away!" and "Virgin Mary, Mother of God, become a feminist / Become a feminist, become a feminist!" (Pussy Riot, "Virgin" 13-14). While employing melody and a cappella harmonies instantly recognizable to Orthodox audiences (Denysenko 11), Pussy Riot violated listeners' expectations by altering the lyrics traditionally used in an Orthodox liturgical context to lyrics that would be heard as profane. While Polly McMichael suggests that Pussy Riot's use of the choral music used in the Orthodox Vespers service was a "straight-faced adoption of authoritative discourse in order to undermine it" (McMichael 108), viewed against the profile of holy foolishness the chorus represents Pussy Riot's "utter spiritual sincerity" (Laude 160). As Pussy Riot maintained: "A fervent and sincere prayer can never be a mockery, no matter its form" ("Letter" 26). Because Pussy Riot's political orientation included an earnest wish for Putin to be "put away," Pussy Riot co-opted the authoritative discourse of "Ave Maria" in an effort to expose and displace Kirill's use of the pulpit on Putin's behalf. Moreover, the petition to Mary is contained only in the song's chorus, not in the punk-style verses attacking Putin and Kirill. Thus, Pussy Riot directly appeals to Mary in a choral prayer that alternates unexpectedly with punk verses that illuminate the political context motivating the petition. Further, by asking Mary to intercede on behalf of Russia in earnest, Pussy Riot conjures the foolishness of Andrew the Blessed, a tenth-century Fool for Christ who is remembered for his role as witness to the Intercession of the Mother of God, one of the most celebrated feast days on the Eastern Orthodox calendar. A Kinship with Jesus Another aspect of Pussy Riot's perceived defilement of sacred space involved the presence of a different holy relic in the Cathedral sanctuary: a nail believed to have been used in the crucifixion of Jesus. Describing the nail as "God's trace on this earth," one court witness explained that it represented "the demigod who is everything and everyone for us Orthodox believers" (qtd. in Gessen 173). The prosecution argued that the pain inflicted by Pussy Riot's performance was exacerbated by the defendants' apparent disregard for the nail's sanctity as they "turned their rears to the Sacred Nail, danced, moving diabolically" (Volkova 57). In the Orthodox view that prevailed at trial, Pussy Riot's punk prayer disparaged Jesus (Gessen 183-84). However, viewed within the framework of Orthodox holy foolishness (i.e., foolishness "for Christ's sake"), the defendants' irreverent behavior in the presence of the Holy Nail participates in and symbolizes the message of the cross. Writes the Apostle Paul: "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God" (1 Cor. 1:18). Transposing worldly understandings of folly and wisdom as prescribed in Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, Pussy Riot imitates the pattern of fools for Christ whose perceived foolishness reveals divine knowledge to those able to discern it. By engaging in the "holy foolishness of punk" (Tolokonnikova, "Closing" 92), Pussy Riot sought to reveal "the problem of the Putin government's merger with the Russian Orthodox Church" (Pussy Riot, "Art" 15). But, as Pussy Riot argued in a letter addressed to Patriarch Kirill: "The power and truth of our prayer did not shame the faithful, for surely the faith of a true believer, like the feelings of Christ, are too deep and universal— too filled with love—to be shamed" (Pussy Riot, "Letter" 27). Moreover, following the behavioral paradigm of holy fools, Pussy Riot's punk disruption of traditional Orthodox notions of piety and devotion mirrors the life of Jesus, whose "words and deeds interrupt[ed] the conventions and myths and rationalities of his day" (Campbell and Cilliars 103). As Charles Campbell and Johan Cilliars suggest, Jesus represents the ultimate holy fool: Just as he dies a fool, parodying the parodic exaltation of the cross, so throughout his ministry Jesus plays the fool. Like the tricksters and jesters and holy fools [. . .] Jesus is a radically liminal figure, crossing boundaries, teaching and preaching with intentional ambiguity, and calling people to perceive and live at the threshold of the old age and the new—in the reign of God that is breaking into the word. (103) The Gospels are rife with accounts of Jesus' "foolishness." For example, as a "radically liminal figure," Jesus crosses cultural boundaries and breaks social taboos by such acts as eating with tax collectors and sinners (Mark 2.13-17), cleansing lepers (Luke 17.11-19), and coming to the defense of prostitutes (John 8.3-11). Pussy Riot's own boundary-crossing, the bringing of its punk aesthetic into the Cathedral in order to reclaim sacred space that had been co-opted for non-religious purposes, can be read as a reenactment of Jesus' cleansing of the temple (Matt. 21.12-13) . Both Jesus and Pussy Riot enter a sacred space designated for worship and act in a provocatively "foolish" manner that is intended to expose and overturn the hypocrisy of the spectators who, though deeply offended by the display, are complicit in the very sacrilege they protest. The parallels between Jesus cleansing money changers from the temple and Pussy Riot cleansing Putin from the Cathedral are recognized by some Russian observers. This recognition is represented no more starkly than in the example of performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky, who, in a drastic show of solidarity with Pussy Riot, stood outside a St. Petersburg cathedral with his mouth sewn shut while displaying a banner that read, "The performance of Pussy Riot was a replay of Jesus Christ's famous action (Matthew 21:12-13)." Facing a felony hooliganism conviction, Pussy Riot likewise drew direct comparisons between the group's punk prayer and the ministry of Jesus, particularly with respect to the blasphemy charges provoked by both. Asserting that Jesus would be judged to be a hooligan by the State's standards, Tolokonnikova admonished: "If Article 213 [of the Russian Criminal Code] had existed two thousand years ago, Christ would have been charged under it" ("Letters" 21-22). Directing further attention to the Gospel message ostensibly lost in the State's prosecution, Tolokonnikova added: "He [Jesus] called upon our asceticism and selfless devotion but the tsars of the world, not wishing to do without their limousines and flashing lights, have judged him for it" (22). Although Tolokonnikova further clarifies her point ("We are not messiahs"), her rhetorical maneuver makes the State's condemnation of Pussy Riot an indictment against Christ himself and, in turn, suggests that Pussy Riot symbolically partakes in the suffering of the Cross through the State's prosecution.11 Alyokhina, in her closing courtroom statement, also rhetorically aligns Pussy Riot with Jesus using the blasphemy motif, exploiting the irony of Orthodox leadership's use of the Gospel of John to condemn Pussy Riot. "Many of them have said, 'He is possessed by a demon and insane. Why do you listen to Him?' These words belong to the Jews who accused Jesus Christ of blasphemy. They said, 'We are stoning you . . . for blasphemy' [John 10:33]" (Alyokhina, "Closing" 110). Marveling that the Church "did not even bother to look up the context in which 'blasphemy' is mentioned" in the Gospel of John before applying the term to Pussy Riot (110), Alyokhina turned the Church's critique inward on itself, noting: "The Gospels are no longer understood as revelation [. . .] but rather as a monolithic chunk that can be disassembled into quotations to be shoved in wherever necessary—in any of its documents, for any of their purposes" (110). In sum, although Pussy Riot performing the punk prayer in the vicinity of the Holy Nail was described and accepted in court as a desecration of a holy relic (and thereby legal evidence of Pussy Riot's alleged religious hatred), a redemptive reading of Pussy Riot's relationship to the Holy Nail is made available by locating the punk prayer in the tradition of holy foolishness—a reading sizably reinforced by the defendants' own performative and discursive interventions that place themselves, and not the Church, in close kinship with Jesus. Joining Pussy Riot's attempt to reframe the Holy Nail's significance to the proceedings, defense attorney Violetta Volkova summarized its function as a symbol of Pussy Riot's persecution and of the violation of their rights as citizens, concluding: "That nail, which it is sinful to turn your back on, it's now the nail hammered into the Constitution and the law, and they are bleeding, here, in this court of justice" (Volkova 63). A Question of Sanity Prior to Pussy Riot's punk prayer in the Cathedral of Christ Our Savior, the group's surprise performances in locations such as public transit centers and fashion boutiques had garnered mixed reactions from spectators. On the one hand, Pussy Riot found that many witnesses received these punk performances "with humor, cheerfulness, or, at the very least, with a sense of irony" (Tolokonnivoka, “Opening” 44). However, many of those who became unwitting audience members to these loud and colorful displays found them to be utterly confusing and disruptive. Some spectators even concluded that the performers themselves were crazy. For example, Pussy Riot's November 2011 performance of "Free the Cobblestones" atop a Moscow trolley bus—a spectacle that included showering feathers ripped from a pillow onto bystanders below12—prompted one witness to respond: "You belong in the loony bin, idiots!" (Pussy vs. Putin). This layperson diagnosis of Pussy Riot is consistent with professional medical assessments of holy fools in Russian history and prefigures the medical findings of a panel of psychiatrists and psychologists charged with evaluating the Pussy Riot defendants prior to their hooliganism trial. Although Alyokhina, Samutsevich, and Tolokonnikova were found mentally fit to stand trial, the panel of experts diagnosed each of the women with a personality disorder (Gessen 189). Symptoms leading to the diagnoses included "heightened ambitions," "proactive approach to life," "insistence on [one's] own point of view," and "propensity for protest reactions" (Gessen 188-89; Lipman, par. 4). The impulse to pathologize the traits and behaviors of the Pussy Riot defendants is not at all surprising in the larger context of Russian holy foolishness, where the status of the holy fool, much like the identity of the Hebrew prophet, is regularly questioned (Kobets, "Lice" 16). While the feigned or actual insanity of holy fools is well-documented in early hagiographic representations of this special category of saint, the ability to distinguish between holy foolishness and everyday sinfulness or simple madness is central to questions of canonization (Murav 1-4). The requirement that would-be saints pretend to be foolish "for Christ's sake" is fundamental to their legitimacy. Although the bizarre and repulsive behavior of holy fools has been unevenly received in Russian Orthodox culture as a paradoxical embodiment of the Gospels (Thompson 9), the presumed saintly status of holy fools began to face scientific challenges in the late nineteenth century when the burgeoning field of psychology undermined "the very concept of the saint" (Murav 5). With professional psychology's attempts to distinguish between the normal and the abnormal, holy foolishness began to be framed in medical terms. As Harriet Murav notes, "what might have been previously understood to be an ascetic practice, or a sign of charismatic ability, could now be diagnosed as a symptom of a disease. The foolishness of the holy fool could be interpreted as abnormality" (5). In the corresponding history of dissident protest in Russia, the insights of medical psychology were regularly applied in criminal proceedings against dissidents who then "disappeared into mental institutions and prisons" (Tolokonnikova, "Closing" 99). Given this historical precedent, it makes sense that Pussy Riot's provocative punk prayer would bring about some kind of medical diagnosis that could be used to discredit the group's claim to holy foolishness. Although the defendants are not ruled insane and can thereby be held accountable for their hooliganism, their punk prayer and its political message are more readily dismissed when viewed as the actualization of unchecked pathological impulses. Conclusion Reading Pussy Riot's punk prayer in the context of the Russian Orthodox tradition of holy foolishness and within Russia's established culture of dissident-art activism, this essay concludes that Pussy Riot participates in the ancient tradition of holy foolishness while drawing on a punk aesthetic. While this study concedes that the generative influences on Pussy Riot's music include Riot Grrrl and the American and British punk scenes more generally, the culturally ingrained figure of the Russian holy fool provides Pussy Riot with a homegrown model of performance that accommodates punk aesthetics to produce Pussy Riot's distinctive style of politically engaged feminist punk. Refusing to perform in standard venues for ready-made audiences while also constructing secondary audiences through edited performance videos posted online, Pussy Riot distinguishes itself from other comparable punk artists by engaging in planned surprise performances in cosmopolitan locations which are not designed with punk--or any form of popular music--in mind. Yet, the unexpected nature of Pussy Riot's performances compounds spectators' sense of shock at the spectacle produced, a reaction upon which the holy fool depends in order to appear foolish in the eyes of the world. Further, in demonstrating that the history of Pussy Riot predates its Riot Grrrl influences to include (and extend) the Russian tradition of holy foolishness, this study contributes to an emerging view of punk encouraged by Van Ham that seeks to contextualize it within deeper cultural histories. In so doing, this study suggests that at least some of the aesthetic elements common to both Pussy Riot and Riot Grrrl are not necessarily features inherited by Pussy Riot directly from Riot Grrrl but rather are a reflection of their shared linkages to, and affinities with, older and more enduring forms of counter-cultural artistic performance. Despite Russia's cultural ambivalence toward the holy fool figure, this case study of Pussy Riot's punk prayer shows that the tradition of holy foolishness persists in the deeds of contemporary dissident art-activists. Attesting to the adaptability of the holy fool paradigm to various modes of artistic expression, Pussy Riot displays characteristics of holy foolishness through deliberately provocative punk that sustains the holy foolish legacy of challenging political leadership and authority. Although the Russian Orthodox Church condemned the punk prayer, Pussy Riot's performance replicated the foolishness of the Church's own canonized holy fools. In the case of Pussy Riot's "complicated punk adventure" (Samutsevich 90), Pussy Riot railed against the political status quo by feminizing the pulpit area and adopting the Virgin Mary as a potential agent of feminist rebellion against Putin. In their readiness to adopt the ambiguity of the holy fool persona, straddling the boundary between the sacred and the profane to unite religious piety with political protest, Pussy Riot assumed considerable risk. As the punk prayer controversy clearly illuminates, when misunderstood or forgotten as a celebrated tradition within Russian cultural history, holy foolishness can easily be mistaken for blasphemy or mental frailty and even prosecuted as hooliganism. "I believe we are being accused by people without memory," noted Alyokhina ("Closing" 109-10). Yet, despite Pussy Riot's arrest, conviction, and imprisonment for its punk prayer performance, Alyokhina, Samutsevich, and Tolokonnikova have never retreated from the perpetual liminality of the holy fool: "We're always in the danger zone, always on the edge—and we don't care" (Pussy Riot, "Pussy Riot," 12). Notes 1 While scouting out the Cathedral of Christ Our Savior during the prayer’s planning stage, Pussy Riot realized that heightened security at the location would prevent a full performance. As a remedy, Pussy Riot pre-recorded footage at the Cathedral of the Apparition that could be used with a soundtrack to create the appearance of single-location performance in the final video (Gessen 114). 2 Samutsevich’s sentence was later suspended on the grounds that security personnel had prevented her from participating in the performance, immediately removing her from the Cathedral when she attempted to strap on her electric guitar. Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova served twenty-two months in separate penal colonies before being released in December 2013 under an amnesty bill passed to mark the twentieth anniversary of Russia’s post-Communist constitution. 3 For relevant examples of New York Times coverage, see Mackey and also Mackey and Kates. For pertinent New Yorker coverage, see Friedman. 4 Unreservedly applying the "Riot Grrrl" descriptor to Pussy Riot also risks overlooking important differences between the two projects. For example, although Riot Grrrl and Pussy Riot both adopt a do-it-yourself (DIY) aesthetic and identify as feminist, Pussy Riot distinguishes itself from Riot Grrrl by performing only in unsanctioned venues and strictly opposing the commercialization of punk. As the group itself states: "Official stages are of no interest to us. The idea of having concerts in halls [ . . . ] is hopelessly outdated. We categorically disagree with performing in the seedy underbelly of clubs. A musician must actively work within the cosmopolitan space to tap into a new and unexpected audience every time" (Pussy Riot, "The History" 22). 5 Most of the canonizations of holy fools occurred between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries (Murav 4). Although Campbell and Cilliers among others have asserted that thirty-six holy fools have been formally recognized as saints by the Russian Orthodox Church, other scholars have suggested that a precise number is difficult pin down due to ambiguous Church records and vague canonization criteria. Thompson, for one, argues that Church Calendars, the accuracy of which she is skeptical of, indicate a range of thirty to fifty documented holy fools (68). Murav conservatively estimates the number of canonized holy fools at closer to thirty while also maintaining that "large numbers of uncanonized holy fools are attested to" in hagiographies and other sources written between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries (2-4). 6 This song was performed in response to the State’s orders to send armed troops into Moscow to handle mass protests following the controversial State Duma elections in December 2011 that all but ensured Putin’s return to the presidency. The song asserts that Putin became afraid because, as Smyth and Soboleva note, the protests signaled a threat to his margin of victory (4). 7 For enumeration on this point and an in-depth treatment of Symeon’s holy foolishness, see Krueger. 8 Although standards of acceptable church dress vary in Orthodox culture, Kizenko explains that conservative women ensure that their heads, elbows, and knees are covered and that they wear "nothing too tight" (607). The Pussy Riot performers’ clothing exposed their bare shoulders and arms, leaving one observer fearful that the women might strip on the pulpit (Gessen 174) 9 During the trial, Alyokhina unsuccessfully asserted a distinction between a personal affront and an expression of religious hatred (Gessen 178). However, Syrova’s ruling conflated audience reception with performers’ intent so that, in effect, registered offense was prima facie evidence of intent to offend. 10 Patriarch Kirill’s secular name is Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyayev. Pussy Riot’s deliberate informality here may suggest that Kirill, by his endorsement of a political candidate, acts more like a secular citizen than a patriarch. 11 Further, in placing blame on the self-interested "tsars of the world," Tolokonnikova connects Putin to Patriarch Kirill though the signifier of the limousine, a symbol of opulence evoked in the punk prayer lyric, "The church’s praise of rotten dictators/The cross-bearer procession of black limousines" (Pussy Riot, "Virgin" 14). 12 The pillow was used in response to Putin’s references to a "demographic problem" facing Russia. Because Putin held that the birth rate in Russia was too low and because some Parliament members had floated the possibility of banning abortion, Tolokonnikova stuffed the pillow under her dress to create the appearance of pregnancy and then removed it and ripped it open (Gessen 6869). 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