Then a whole bunch of women speak in a sequence that evokes the excitement so many felt when they heard the album. One woman talks about "Guyville" helping her survive (though not abandon) an abusive relationship. Another says it helped her deal when her boyfriend found fame in Hollywood and went off the rails.
The documentary mirrors what happened with "Guyville." Phair made it among men -- every significant player involved, from her mentors to her band members, was male. Then it came out, and women claimed it. But the music they seized upon wasn't a statement of sisterhood; it was a map to help navigate the land of boys.
Phair now says that "Guyville" is the work of a confused young woman who wanted to claim power but didn't yet know how. In the reissue's liner notes, journalist Alan Light locates "Guyville" within a transitional time, when a newly empowered generation of women was struggling toward a brighter future. "Guyville" is great, this take on things suggests, but it was just a beginning. Brighter days would come for Phair herself and for women in general.
On one level, this revisionist view of "Guyville" must be true. After all, Phair is putting it out there. She has grown up since "Guyville," producing music that hasn't always been great but never stopped being interesting. Every one of her albums has high points ("Little Digger" from the fourth one, or "Table for One" from the fifth). And her best work always has the outsider's stance her fans loved her for in the first place.
But this is where that gap arises between an artist's intention and the needs of her audience. "Guyville" does matter in a different way than albums usually do. By giving voice to the inner turmoil she felt trying to negotiate a scene where men welcomed her without taking her seriously, Phair tapped into a truth that goes far beyond her personal circumstances. That's something artists rarely have the luck to do. Phair herself saw the connection: She repeatedly has said that she created the album as a track-by-track response to the Rolling Stones' "Exile on Main Street," an artifact of a different countercultural milieu that wasn't as free-thinking about sexuality and gender as its denizens believed.
What Phair and the rest of the world didn't expect was just how many women would hear "Guyville" and think, hey, I live in a man's world too, and it's a problem. In situations where equality is assumed but men still dominate, women occupy a strange space between the center and the margins. They can express opinions, but they're not dictating the terms of the conversation.
