-Punk means going against the status quo,
being like, "No, fuck you, like, I'm going to be what I want,
and you're not going to like it, and I don't care."
-I never thought that anybody would, like, me.
Like, "You're acting too white," or, like,
"Why are you trying to dress like white people?"
-Alternative is when you, like, take that,
and you write it on a tissue,
and you wipe your ass with it.
-Like, they wouldn't classify a darker-skinned person
to be alternative.
They would classify you as being ghetto.
Colorism is a big part of why Black people
can't just be expressive of themselves.
And white supremacy as well.
Let's put that in there.
-I don't have to be the best.
I don't have to know all the knowledge to mosh
and fucking punch people in the head
if that's what I want to do.
I feel like there's nothing more goth
or punk or alternative than being Black.
♪♪
-They say the scene isn't about what you look like,
but how you feel.
Black alternative people have always existed,
but it has not been without alienation
and ridicule in whichever scene they inhabit,
even though it's easy to spot how Blackness,
and alternative, goth, and punk style intersect.
My name is Katy.
I am a filmmaker and alternative clown from Brooklyn.
In my formative years,
there were pretty brutal consequences
for not fitting a monolithic Black mold.
So I always identified deeply with feeling like an outsider.
I turned to music and film to know I wasn't alone.
My earliest memory is of Rochelle in the 1996
cult classic "The Craft."
She was frequently bullied and struggled
being a token witch in her coven.
-When I met you, no one could even talk to you.
The only Black girl in an all-white neighborhood.
Do you remember that?
-When I look back at the roles I did in the '90s,
I kind of call them
alterna-Black girl magic chick roles,
you know what I mean?
I did not realize
what a big deal it was to be the person of color
in basically what would have been an all-white movie.
-What was your response that you were getting, I guess,
after the film had,
you know, kind of been out there for a couple of years?
-The thing about a movie like "The Craft" is
it did okay when it was out, right?
But it started to grow and become a cult movie.
So one day I was somewhere random in America
in the middle of the country, and I got off an Amtrak train,
and there's like a 12-year-old Black girl,
and she goes, "You -- You -- You -- You --
You're in the movie."
And I went, "Ohhh.
She's having the same response I had to seeing someone
who looked like me when I was her age in a movie,"
which was very few and far between.
You are, in a sense, part of the pioneers, right?
Part of being the pioneer generation
means it's lonely and painful.
-The past few years have been a new age for Black people
in scenes that may have once seemed inaccessible.
Rappers and artists Rico Nasty, Junglepussy,
Lustsick Puppy, and creative make up artist Raisa Flowers
as they depict self-expression and artistry
that have often been made invisible in the Black community
and usually perceived as sole domain of white social outcasts.
-You know that you're a Black girl, right?
Your hair's supposed to be sewed in, not spiked up.
I did the Mohawk with the braids because that was literally
kind of at the peak when people was like,
"She's trying to be white."
You know, most women of color,
they prefer to wear their hair like this.
And you coming over here with this.
Don't ever tell a Black girl what to do with her hair.
-I listened to a lot of rock when I was younger,
and I felt like I was really judged
by a lot of, like, my Black friends
about what I listened to and how I wanted to be.
I kind of annoyed me that a lot of people
are, like, kind of using the punk and alternative
aesthetic in their everyday now,
when they made fun of people that were like us,
you know what I'm saying?
-And I already lived in Sugarland,
so that was like a really white area.
I felt kind of like a traitor,
even though I didn't do anything except express myself.
I was -- I was made to feel like that's not what we do.
"You're siding with them."
-There weren't, like, a lot of people who were into
the, like, "dark and spooky" stuff that I was into
because it was seen as, like, evil.
There was something that happened on my first music video
where I was, like, just dragged in the comments
by this community of Black people.
It really made me feel like nobody would ever relate.
And that was even scarier, 'cause I'm like,
"Fuck, I already lived my whole life alone
knowing nobody related,
and now I'm sharing it with y'all on the fucking Internet."
It's so sad that we can't even fully express all the things,
just give it all
because everybody is not doing that within their own selves.
-As Black people in the scene, no matter how much we show up,
we are continually confronted by internal
and external gatekeepers.
We constantly have to prove how authentic we are
by unrealistic double standards.
-What is the craziest reaction you've gotten from somebody
for doing something that is considered alternative?
-The worst reaction I've ever gotten is from a white cis man.
I was wearing a metal band shirt,
and he, like, came up to me and was like,
"Who's the first -- What was their first album,
their first fucking song" or whatever.
And I was like, "Get the fuck away from me."
-So because I have on this shirt
and I probably, like, paid to be here
and I to paid for this merch,
because I don't know the music --
I could be a new fan.
-That challenging aspect is annoying.
Like, once someone like Third Eye Chakra
turned me into a Blink 182 cover,
people were in a comments like,
"Y'all don't even know what this band is."
And I'm like, "Blocked, first of all."
-It's so fucking weird to do that when it's punk music.
It's like, bro, this is supposed to be so anti-
everything that you're doing to me right now.
You're anti, you know?
-[ Speaks indistinctly ]
Why do you guys think it's important in general
to take space within these, you know, subcultures?
-There are very limited platforms
for us to represent ourselves,
especially not for Black women.
For me specifically,
there was definitely a sense of self-hatred.
I didn't want to be Black.
I didn't want to be a Black alternative kid.
I wanted to be an alternative kid,
which means, like, straightening my hair and --
-Yeah. -It was a very dark
part of my identity
because within me trying to understand
the things that I love,
there was also so much self-hatred mixed into it.
-It's about normalizing
seeing all these different kinds of people.
It's about normalizing and respecting
everybody's different journey.
-I get white people together,
I get all types of people together,
I get gay people together, I get straight people together,
and we march together, actually.
But you won't ever credit me that
because it's like then I have too much power.
-It honestly makes me so happy
that I make music in the scene that I make music in
because it is really dominated by white people.
And I really just love to see, like, brown faces in the crowd,
like, fucking shit up.
-Fuck you! Fuck you!
-There's this quote from "The Office"
where Dwight is like,
"If you want to get the white people to do something,
you have to get Black people to do it
to get the white people to think it's cool,
then you have to get the Black people to stop doing it."
And I feel like that is like the thesis of all cultures
and subcultures in this country.
-It's hard to ignore the dramatic new shift
to celebrating alternative Black femmes on the Internet
while the Black Lives Matter movement cuts
through social media and social conversation.
But whilst many more are receptive to imagery
of Black people embracing alternative identities,
it's not without its battles.
-I really hate the fact that, like, after, you know,
like, the whole George Floyd situation,
now all of a sudden everybody's Black lives matter.
All of a sudden, everybody wants to, like, spam posts
like Black women and Black people that are alternative.
But it's like, where was all this energy before?
Like, why does it take somebody to have to die
for you to give a shit or pretend like you give a shit?
Like, that rubs me the wrong way.
-The algorithm is biased,
and if you're not looking for Black punk girls,
like, you're probably not going to see them on your feed.
-People looked down on us,
and then copied us later on. And it's just like...
-Black people create everything.
Black people are the originators of everything.
-Who was the first person to destroy the electric guitar?
A Black lady. A Black woman.
Elvis stole from -- what was it, Chuck Berry?
Chuck Berry was a Black man.
The stretching of the ears culture,
tattoos on the face means something.
The amount of piercings you have in your nose
means how many properties you owned in some tribes.
Like, it all goes back to our roots.
-I used to feel so sorry.
"I'm so sorry I chose to cut my hair off and get piercings,"
but it's like, no, I'm a blessing.
Just, like, having the courage to be like,
yeah, I did that, and I'm not hurting anybody.
And that's what alt means to me.
-I need people to know that Black can look like anything.
I know through my existence that people understand
that Black is expansive.
And that's really beautiful to me.
-Like, when I'm walking around,
I'll see, like, younger girls, younger Black girls especially,
and they're, like, looking at me like,
"Oh, my gosh, I've never seen that before."
And you can, like, they're like, "I want to do that."
You know, it helps open up that imagination.
-Having Black skin, having Black appearance,
stepping out into the world
and facing just, like, any type of racial --
any little type of racial profiling
is bomb as shit, and it is alternative.
Being Black is alternative, because guess what?
Being Black is different.
♪♪
-When I wore my spikes for even Fashion Week,
people are like, "Girl, you blow them a kiss.
You styling." -Right.
-You wink at their boyfriend.
-Yes.
-You got to show these hoes.