Music and the Woman's Film

In the early 1980s, female pop and rock singers such as Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, and Pat Benatar developed a specifically female form of audio-visual “address.” ¹ These were mainstream artists, but they used some of the language of feminism in their lyrics and (especially in the case of Lauper and Madonna) adopted some of the attitude of the 1970s punk movement in their audio-visual stances and mix ’n’ match fashion styles. Yet while mainly female British punk and new wave groups, for example, The Raincoats, The Slits, and The Au Pairs, emerged in opposition to, and in many cases remained outside the mainstream music industry, this attitude was co-opted and diffused in a more mainstream American context during the 1980s and 1990s. ²