Throughout the nineties corporations embarked on an exhaustive search for subcultures to exploit. A giddy mania for co-option reigned as cool hunters sought out the crudely Xeroxed gig flyers and artlessly stapled zines that might lead them to the next underground goldmine. They were searching for Nirvana, literally and figuratively, and were willing to shell out big bucks in their quest for the next big thing.
MGM/UA felt they'd found just that in Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett's Tank Girl, a playfully post-modern, pop-culture-obsessed British cult comic strip/book/graphic novel about a girl, her mutated kangaroo boyfriend and giant metallic phallus of a tank. The character quickly became an icon in the burgeoning riot grrrl movement, though I strongly suspect that the term "Riot Grrrl" is one of those annoying buzzwords that are considered ludicrous, insulting and reductive mere seconds after first being coined. Apparently the nineties created a massive groundswell of women so enraged by the corrupt patriarchy that they took to emulating the linguistic quirks of noted feminist icon Tony The Tiger. Needless to say, these riot gals found sexism, impossible beauty standards and gender inequality to be far from "grrreat".
Tank Girl director Rachel Talalay set out to make "the ultimate grrrl movie" though it's unclear whether she meant riot grrrl flick or Girl-Powered joint. Girl-Power, of course, is like feminism, only with fewer ideas and more push-up bras. Where the Riot Grrrl movement was identified strongly in the media with bands like Bikini Kill and Bratmobile, Girl Power was embodied by those lovable harlots in The Spice Girls, at least three of whom auditioned unsuccessfully to play Tank Girl in the inevitable film adaptation. Talalay instead cast Emily Lloyd, one of those strange "It girls" more famous for the roles they won, then lost (the Juliette Lewis role in Husbands And Wives, Winona Ryder's part in Mermaids and the lead in Tank Girl) than the parts they ended up playing. Lloyd parted ways with the filmmakers after refusing to shave her head for the role, which is a damned shame for her and for the film. Instead of rocketing to Lori Petty-like super-stardom she was resigned to a career of Emily Lloyd-like obscurity.
A quick digression on labels: they suck. They're insulting. They're reductive by definition. They're cynical ploys by the media to reduce complex movements and sophisticated ideas into catchy little categories and obnoxious buzzwords. Yet as a writer I find labels to be a necessary evil. Also, as a longtime member of the media I share your withering contempt for the Fourth Estate. Fucking media. Always with their silly labels.
As Petty's in-your-face, totally studio-mandated opening narration informs us Tank Girl takes place in a desolate future in which water is such a precious, rare resource that the company that controls it functions as an ad hoc Fascist state, complete with dispiriting work camps where Lori Petty's sassy agent provocateur meets her mousy sidekick, Naomi Watts.
Petty and Watts eventually bust out and end up at an elaborate future-brothel where, with deadening predictability, an elaborate song and dance number set to Cole Porter's "Let's Do It" breaks out and Petty prevents a pre-pubescent pal from being molested by weasel-faced john Iggy Pop.
Then Tank Girl heads in an even more predictable direction when the gals fall into the hands of The Rippers, an aggregation of loopy misfits who remind me a lot of my housemates back in my collegiate co-op days except for the whole part about the Rippers being genetically modified kangaroo super-soldiers. For the record my housemates were genetically modified koala super-soldiers. Big difference.