‘Teaches of Peaches’: More Than Just Clit-Bait

Nothing screams big clit energy quite like Peaches stalking the stage in a vulva-shaped bonnet, giving audiences full-frontal camel toe, while her backing dancers sport floor-length merkins intimidating enough to trigger your trichophobia. Since Peaches – real name Merrill Nisker – released her now-iconic second album in 2000, titled The Teaches of Peaches, the electroclash musician and performance artist has been hailed as the apotheosis of female-identifying empowerment and libidinous liberation, challenging gender norms and patriarchal structures with each beat of a drumstick and flick of a button. 

In a documentary of the same name, premiered at Berlin International Film Festival this week, Peaches’ ascent from Canadian kindergarten music teacher to international cult sensation is told as a hero’s journey. Co-directors Philipp Fussenegger and Judy Landkammer blend footage from the 2022 Teaches of Peaches Anniversary Tour with Super-8 film of self-directed music videos, archival interviews, backstage antics and anecdotes from collaborators Feist, Chilly Gonzales and Shirley Manson.

Last year, pop audiences were treated to two of the queerest concert films in recent memory: Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour and Beyoncé’s Renaissance, both of which celebrated the profound influence LGBTQIA+ communities have had on the music industry. The Teaches of Peaches, however, proves that mainstream artists are still playing catch-up. Clips of Peaches’ outspoken TV interviews on female self-pleasure, queer allyship and daring fashion choices (does that ‘Thank God for Abortion’ leotard come in other sizes?) vividly illustrate her decades-long commitment to dismantling hetero-masculine privilege.

In the late 1990s, Peaches accompanied Chilly Gonzales on an extended trip to Berlin, a city that catered to her particular taste for post-punk libertarianism. Fuelled by this environment, she returned to her native Toronto with a fresh sound that fused North American garage-band attitude with gritty European electro flavours. Considering that Peaches permanently relocated to the German capital in 2000, the premiere of Teaches of Peaches at the Berlinale acknowledges the city’s pivotal role in her evolution.

Teaches of Peaches is part of the Panorama section of the Berlinale – a division spotlighting films with queer, feminist or political themes. It’s joined by two other documentaries centred on artists who moved to Berlin to live out a truer version of themselves.  Markus Stein’s Baldiga – Unlocked Heart is a tell-all account of the unrepressed life and work of photographer Jürgen Baldiga, who documented West Berlin’s HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s and ‘90s. Meanwhile, Klára Tasovská’s I’m Not Everything I Want to Be delves into the life and artistry of queer Czech image-maker Libuše Jarcovjáková, who moved to Berlin in the 1980s. Spanning decades, all three artists drew inspiration from the capital's sexual progressiveness and political libertarianism, and made enormous contributions to the city’s cultural landscape.

Teaches of Peaches’ focus on preparations for her anniversary tour, however, leaves out many details about the artist's personal domain and public influence. Having worked with visionary artists like Marilyn Manson, Yoko Ono and pop phenoms Pink and Christina Aguilera, Peaches has secretly influenced mainstream culture from the sweaty sidelines. In some respects, I admire the directors’ reluctance to namecheck all her collaborators, choosing not to diffuse the subject’s limelight. But for those well versed in Peaches’ backstory, the film’s omissions are glaring, and it begins to feel as if Fussenegger and Landkammer are more fans than documentarians. Topics concerning Peaches’ sexuality, appetite for hedonism, that career-altering heartbreak, the toll of celebrity and early cancer diagnosis are touched upon but unexplored. Instead, tour footage of an inflatable dildo primed to ejaculate over a thirsty audience cuts across the screen before any conversation gets too deep. 

Politics and representation are, ultimately, what Teaches of Peaches is about. But it’s still mildly exasperating when the lens of fandom fogs up the view of the artist’s private world. But I must remind myself, with a protagonist so personable, it’s easy to demand that a documentary becomes a confessional – I wouldn't expect Taylor Swift or Beyoncé to confess anything at all. Sometimes an incredible archive, laugh-out-loud soundbites and footage of a young Peaches thrusting a microphone down her knickers in front of a crowd of horrified British teenagers tells us everything we need to know: Peaches has always been and always will be a badass raconteur of the crass and clitoral.

_{Main image: Philipp Fussenegger and Judy Landkammer, Teaches of Peaches, 2024, film still. Courtesy: Avanti Media Fiction}