Five years ago, filmmaker Zune Kwok made a dystopian film about a cabal of pro-Beijing politicians in Hong Kong who plotted the enactment of a dreaded national security law to crack down on pro-democracy activity in the former British colony. This, as it turns out, is an eerie case of art predicting life. Extras, a short story which forms part of the critically acclaimed 2015 anthology flick Ten Years, paints a bleak vision of Hong Kong in 2020. In reality, this is the very year Beijing imposed a draconian national security law on Hong Kong, a move that has shocked the world.

The coincidence is freaky. How should I put it? Im still digesting what is happening, the 35-year-old Hong Kong filmmaker says. When the film came out that year, some people said the plot was too exaggerated to be real. Others said it could happen. Now the law has arrived. Perhaps we filmmakers are a little more sensitive to whats going on around us.

The national security law, which came into force in Hong Kong on 30 June 2020, is widely seen as a political bombshell dropped by the Chinese government, apparently to restore order and stability following a months-long, sometimes violent, pro-democracy movement last year that plunged Hong Kong into its biggest crisis in decades. It is believed the legislation will deal a devastating blow to freedoms in the semi-autonomous Chinese city, an otherwise freewheeling financial hub whose sovereignty was returned to Communist China from Britain in 1997. Vaguely written, the law criminalises subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, punishable by a maximum term of life imprisonment. It was fast-tracked by Beijing, which circumvented Hong Kongs elected legislature to push the enactment within merely several weeks.

Equally astonishingly, the law doesnt only cover Hongkongers: one clause specifies that it can be applied to anyone, including people who are not permanent Hong Kong residents and those who violate the law even when they are outside of Hong Kong.

Since the legislation came into effect, events in Hong Kong have been taking place at breakneck speed. In a mass protest on 1 July, just hours after the law was passed, over 370 people were arrested by police, including 10 for violating the new law with acts such as holding a Hong Kong independence flag. Public libraries removed books penned by pro-democracy activists. The rallying cry Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times!, heard at almost every protest over the past year, is now banned. Worried about breaching the sweeping legislation, some renowned writers have stopped publishing their long-time newspaper columns, and key opinion leaders and ordinary protesters have deleted their Twitter accounts. Many lawyers and academics now decline journalists interview requests about the legislation. An atmosphere of fear is pervasive.

Independent filmmakers like Kwok, however, have decided that despite the chilling effect of the law, fear has to take a back seat to art. They believe it is now more important than ever to speak up and tell Hong Kongs stories through their lens.

Today, everyone is seizing the first chance to push their own narratives of events in Hong Kong. The authorities for sure are doing that. Storytelling is powerful. This is a time when we should tell the Hong Kong stories, the director remarks. I cant pretend the law doesnt exist, but until something happens to me, I prefer doing what Ive been doing.

Chan Tze-woon, 33, another indie filmmaker currently shooting a film about Hongkongers from different generations fighting for freedom at different times, concurs. Around the time news broke of the law, I suddenly felt a strong creative urge. I turned down odd jobs and focused on filmmaking. We should make as many films about Hong Kong as possible. This is an important time in history. Miss these moments and your thoughts and feelings will not be the same later.

In recent years, a new crop of indie filmmakers have emerged in Hong Kongs struggling film industry, once celebrated as the Hollywood of the Far East. These creatives, some experienced and many others relatively young, have a penchant for making films in tune with the zeitgeist of contemporary Hong Kong and its history. This is a trend intimately linked with the wider political and social landscape of Hong Kong. Over the past two decades, as perceived encroachment by Beijing into the autonomy of this westernised city has become more real, a sense of local cultural identity has been growing among many Hongkongers. This sense was further reinforced in 2014 during the Umbrella Movement, a protest-occupation demanding greater political freedom, and in the 2019 anti-government protest movement, which was sparked by a controversial bill on extraditing Hong Kong fugitives to mainland China. All of this helped to lay the groundwork for the rise of local indie movies with a political and social relevance.

Usually made on a low budget and supported by a cast of C-list or amateur actors, these indie pictures tend to reflect, subtly or artfully, a desire for freedom and justice, as well as a critique of the unequal power relations between mainland China and Hong Kong. Themes include the demolition of a rural village to make way for a rail route linked to mainland China, the story of a young activist, and protesters-police clashes in the 2019 uprising. These stories are refreshing for local audiences who have had enough of Hong Kongs big-budget movies co-produced with mainland Chinese partners; its a business model that enables local filmmakers to access the lucrative Chinese market, but which comes with content restrictions that can make these films seem formulaic and detached from the reality of Hong Kong society.

Attention, applause and sometimes accolades come their way, but the path for these politically conscious films is rarely smooth.

While fundraising is a hard nut to crack for many filmmakers around the world, Hong Kongs indie directors face an extra challenge: they stand no chance with mainstream investors, many of whom have business ties or are associated with mainland China in some way and, therefore, would steer clear from politically charged projects.

Even after funding is secured and a whole project completed, getting an indie film to see the light of day is no straightforward matter.

Vincent Chui, 55, a veteran filmmaker and programme curator of the Hong Kong Independent Film Festival, says that ever since Ten Years high-profile success (it was named Best Film at the 2016 Hong Kong Film Awards) major cinemas have avoided screening films they consider to have sensitive content. Most indie films with a political dimension released after 2016 have barely made it to the big screen and have to rely on screenings at one or two arthouse cinemas and local community film events. Chans Yellowing, a 2016 documentary about Umbrella, was nominated for Best Documentary at the 53rd Taiwan Golden Horse Award. However, it was screened just four times, at a theatre funded by South Korean money.

These films have been approved by the authorities. Its not illegal to show them. But cinemas wont screen them. This genre has been pushed to the fringe, Chui explains. This is something we had been experiencing before the national security law. If anything, this law would only aggravate the self-censorship problem.

Those practising self-censorship are not confined to cinemas. Shortly before the law was enacted, a studio rented by an indie film crew cancelled the rental on the spot when some actors chanted the slogan Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times! as part of the script. Many showbiz figures are also walking on eggshells. Since Umbrella, Hong Kong actors and musicians vocally supportive of pro-democracy causes have been shunned by the mainstream entertainment industry, lost sponsorship deals, and have been blacklisted in mainland China in a sort of reverse McCarthyist witch-hunt. The suppressive atmosphere forces many celebrities to either keep quiet on even marginally social issues or loudly declare their pro-China position. Neither option favours indie film production.

Nevertheless, compared with their mainland Chinese counterparts, Hong Kongs indie filmmakers are in a relatively fortunate position. In January this year, the China Independent Film Festival, a leading festival of its kind in China, decided to shut down indefinitely after 17 years. The organiser said it was now impossible to host a movie festival in China with a purely independent spirit. Mainland directors, mainstream or offbeat, can find themselves in hot water if they cross certain unwritten red lines. For example, in 2006 acclaimed director Lou Ye was banned from making films for five years after shooting a feature that touched on the Tiananmen student movement in 1989.

Will Hong Kongs film sector meet a similar fate soon? Chan, who recently managed to raise half of the funds needed for his latest project through crowdfunding, is ever the optimist. He reckons while self-censorship will continue, there is still room for his films, and that from now on, politics is inseparable from the art of filmmaking in Hong Kong.

Nowadays you can hardly avoid Hong Kongs wider social or political context even when you make a romantic comedy. Foreign audiences may also expect to see something specifically Hong Kong from a Hong Kong movie, he says.

For Chui, it is rather tragic when a new movie genre is borne out of people fighting for freedom for their city. But for the sake of Hong Kongs film industry and the city as a whole, no filmmaker with a voice should tone down their stories despite the changing political climate, he emphasises.

Ive been in the industry for 30 years. Self-censorship is definitely not my way, Chui adds.

This resolve echoes veteran film producer Derek Yees subtle message when he announced Ten Years as the winner of Best Film at the Hong Kong Film Awards in 2016. Addressing a star-studded audience, Yee said that prior to the award-giving ceremony, a young scriptwriter for the event sheepishly asked him if the script could mention the words ten years. Yee then told him: Young man, President Roosevelt once said: The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.

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In Hong Kong, politics is inseparable from the art of filmmaking - Equal Times

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Since the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the word terrorism in the United States has been nearly synonymous with a specific kind of terrorismSalafi jihadism. In other words, even though terrorism is politically and/or ideologically motivated violence, Americans and the U.S. government were almost wholly consumed by and narrowly focused on the threat posed by groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and concerned with those Americans living on U.S. soil who were motivated by these organizations to conduct attacks.

The focus on al-Qaeda and Salafi-jihadist more broadly was understandable, as the United States was caught off guard on 9/11, Americans were shocked and traumatized, and the nation subsequently mobilized to launch the (poorly named) Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). Less than three years after invading Afghanistan in an effort to destroy al-Qaeda and topple the Afghan Taliban, the United States invaded Iraq, overthrew Saddam Hussein, and soon became mired in a bloody counterinsurgency that gave rise to al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the predecessor organization of ISIS.

The United States scored some impressive victories fighting against transnational terrorist organizations. A relentless drone campaign decimated the ranks of al-Qaedas leadership. And a sustained, multilateral coalition helped to destroy the ISIS caliphate, although the group continues to rebuild itself as a decentralized network across swaths of Syria and Iraq.

[beautifulquote align="full" cite=""] The United States scored some impressive victories fighting against transnational terrorist organizations. A relentless drone campaign decimated the ranks of al-Qaedas leadership. And a sustained, multilateral coalition helped to destroy the ISIS caliphate, although the group continues to rebuild itself as a decentralized network across swaths of Syria and Iraq. [/beautifulquote]

Domestically, the United States was left to contend with attacks by violent extremists and Salafi-jihadists inspired by al-Qaeda and ISIS propaganda. In April 2013, two brothers learned to build bombs from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsulas (AQAP) Inspire magazine and went on to attack the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 264 others. In December 2015, a husband and wife pledged allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi before killing 14 people and injuring another 21 in San Bernardino, California. Approximately six months later, an individual pledged allegiance to Baghdadi before slaughtering 49 people and wounding dozens more in an attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Several other attacks took place over the years, including a vehicle ramming attack in New York City that killed eight and injured eleven more. The perpetrator showed no remorse and gleefully flaunted his admiration for IS.

But as American citizens became fixated on the very real and difficult to counter threat from Salafi-jihadists, something else was happening in parallel. It was occurring against the backdrop of the GWOT and even though it was clearly terrorism, it was dismissed, overlooked, and explained away because it wasnt considered the real threat that Osama bin Laden had so ingrained on the psyche of the nation.

This other threat was that posed by far-right extremists, including violent white supremacists. At the so-called Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, hundreds of torch-bearing white nationalists marched through the city in a show of force that surprised many Americans. During the protests and counter-protests, a neo-Nazi drove into a crowd of people and killed one, a young woman named Heather Heyer. In the aftermath of the melee, U.S. President Donald Trump drew sharp criticism for his portrayal of events, noting that there were very fine people, on both sides, after being pressed to condemn neo-Nazis and white supremacists. As terrorism expert Daniel Byman has noted, in the United States right-wing terrorism is potentially worse than other form, because it taps into broader political tensions and because Trumps reaction exacerbates the problems.

There were several other high-profile incidents involving far-right extremists, including a shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue by a white supremacist targeting Jewish worshippers in October 2018. That attack, which incidentally took place in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where the author lived for ten years (including at the time of the attack), left eleven dead and six more injured. An attack in El Paso, TX by a person targeted Hispanics killed 22 people and injured more than two dozen more.

Moreover, U.S.-based neo-Nazis and white supremacists maintain international connections to groups based overseas, including those in Scandinavia, Ukraine, and Russia, among other places. In April 2020, for the first time ever, the United States Department of State labeled the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity, slapping its leadership with sanctions. Other far-right extremists groups such as The Base, the Azov Battalion, or the Atomwaffen Division could be next to be sanctioned.

According to a recent report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), right-wing extremists were responsible for more than two-thirds of attacks and plots in the United States in 2019, and in roughly the first half of 2020 (up to early May), right-wing extremists have accounted for an estimated 90 percent of attacks and plots. When people ask the question, how did the United States finally come to recognize the threat posed by violent white supremacists and far-right extremists operating within its borders as terrorism, and not a local issue to be handled by law enforcement, the answer is: it became far too deadly for policymakers to ignore, try as they might.

Domestically, the terrorist threat posed by far-right extremists is perhaps more diverse than ever before, comprised of an eclectic mix of neo-Nazis, anti-government militias, and conspiracy theorists. The so-called Boogaloo Bois represent the new generation of domestic terrorism in the United States. Less a group than an ideology connected by a shared antipathy for law enforcement, there have been a number of attacks and plots by self-described members of this movement in the first half of 2020, and many of those arrested have ties to the U.S. military.

To its credit, to account for the changing nature of the threat posed to the U.S. homeland, the Department of Homeland Security created a new label for the threat posed by far right extremists and others motivated by race or ethnicity racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists, or REMVE. One commonly cited critique of the category is that it lumps together white supremacists with Black Identity extremists, including the so-called Black Israelites, and thus distorts the severity of the threat posed by the latter.

The COVID-19 crisis and coronavirus pandemic have been somewhat of an extremists buffet, offering groups across the ideological spectrum the opportunity to push propaganda and fit the crisis into their existing worldviews. White supremacy extremist groups in the United States have been actively recruiting new members during the pandemic, including members of increasingly younger ages.

The nationwide protests against police brutality in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis, Minnesota police officer has reenergized the Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement. Across the United States, BLM protests have been targeted by vehicle attacks, including an attack in Richmond, Virginia by the leader of a local Ku Klux Klan chapter. Discussions about banning the Confederate flag, renaming U.S. military bases long named after Confederate generals (e.g. Fort Bragg, Fort Hood), and removing statues and monuments tied to Americas racist history are almost certain to evoke a reaction from white supremacists who see the countrys political and cultural zeitgeist shifting and are desperate to prevent change.

Too often in the United States, the knee-jerk response to questions about what to do about neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other far-right extremists (after all, the United States lacks an official domestic terrorism law) is what about Antifa? in reference to the decentralized collective of anti-fascist activists known for vandalism and the destruction of property. Sadly, President Trump and his allies have politicized the domestic terrorism debate, pushing for Antifa to be designated as a domestic terrorist group, while mostly remaining silent on the growing threat posed by violent far-right extremists.

What can the debate about terrorism the United States tell us, if anything about the debate elsewhere? Unfortunately, the lesson seems to be that when terrorism is perpetrated by the majority group against a minority (racial, religious, ethnic, etc.), for the issue to be properly recognized, it needs to become so large that its impossible to ignore. And that takes a long time and is no guarantee. A lot of people will die in the process and during that time, movements may congeal into more coherent groups and organizations, especially if there is a sense of tacit acceptance by the state.

Other countries including India that have been plagued by a particular type of terrorism should take heed. Focusing on one specific threat at the expense of others could result in the threat growing so severe that it can no longer be managed. Indeed, it is possible to consider all threats, rank them according to how dangerous they are, and begin taking the necessary measures to ensure that they do not threaten the lives of civilians and the stability of the nation.

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The US has finally acknowledged the threat of violent white supremacy: What took so long? - Observer Research Foundation

It is hard to think of a major sector of the culture-shaping industries and institutions of American lifeHollywood, news media, universities, arts, publishing, music, advertising, and so onthat isnt thoroughly absorbed into the intersectional zeitgeist of the American left. There are pockets of conservatism, of course, such as Fox News, talk radio, some publishers, and various online publications and communities. But for various reasons, they can neither balance nor meaningfully compete with the cultural and social throw-weight of progressivism and the left.

Given this imbalance, it is worth reflecting on how the right has chosen to exercise the cultural power it does have. Rather than securing the broadest possible coalition against the illiberal left, the right has decided to mimic the lefts strategies and tactics to conduct a purity campaign. In short, the right is canceling itself.

Earlier this month, I casually asked on Twitter whether the right has a cancel culture analogous to the left. My AEI colleague Stan Veuger dryly suggested checking out this weeks issue of the Weekly Standard for a symposium on the topic. Point taken: Lacking the muscle to compete in the mainstream of American life, the right cancels competing views and their adherents among fellow conservatives. You see the irony? While the left continues its long march through the institutions that guide cultural and social development, the right focuses on stamping out internal differences of opinion. One side steadily adds to and multiplies its influence while the other plays a game of subtraction and division against supposedly heterodox allies.

How did conservatives arrive at this point? The answer lies, I think, in the imbalance between conservative political success and its ongoing and pervasive cultural weakness. The coalition that came to power under Reagan was always far more successful at the ballot box than it was in the broader culture wars. Reaganism succeeded almost in spite of itself. Reagan himself understood this and actively discouraged internecine wars under the auspices of his 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican. He knew lasting change required broad, strong, and occasionally even bipartisan coalitions. Victories were achieved by the steady application of political strength and sound governance; incremental advances could, over time, reshape society and politics.

Without the leavening influence of Reagans personality and political wisdom, however, his platform of smaller government, lower taxes, and stronger defense hardened into pledges and scorecards. Overreach, and the backlashes that accompany it, replaced three yards and a cloud of dust advances. These rigid ideological checks have come to serve as one of the primary mechanisms for internal GOP cancelation. Former senator Jim DeMinthimself eventually defenestrated at the Heritage Foundation as part of another intraconservative fightonce declared that hed prefer 30 Marco Rubios to 60 Arlen Specters in the Senate. His vision is taking shape: the creation of a zealous GOP minority.

What cancel conservatism didnt see coming was Donald Trump. As a completely transactional politician, Trump has been more than happy to become the avatar of longstanding Republican views. He accepted most GOP planks: tax cuts, increased defense budgets, outsourced but conservative judicial picks, and selective social conservatism. (On immigration and foreign policy, the Republican establishment long included a diversity of views.) Free trade has been Trumps one departure from orthodoxy, but it has mainly been a rhetorical one, marked by a spasmodic and ineffectual protectionism that seems to have succeeded mostly in inflicting pain on American producers and consumers. The price among Republicans for these policy victories has been the imposition of the ultimate cancel: an omerta as it relates to the erratic leadership and unsavory character and behavior of Donald Trump himself. All conservative interests, positions, policies, and fidelity measures have been collapsed into an oath of loyalty to Donald J. Trump.

Republican governing identity and support for Donald Trump are now one. People like Mark Sanford (a 93 percent voting record from Heritage Action) and Jeff Flake (85 percent) werent driven from public life over compromises on taxes, judges, or abortion but for active criticism of Donald Trump. Ben Sasse (83 percent) survived cancelation by moving to an undisclosed political location until he finished slogging nervously through his Republican primary. Even Jeff Sessions has been permanently canceled under the barrage of Trumps Twitter siege artillery in recompense for putting the rule of law above his loyalty to the president. And now, in the depths of todays pandemic, economic meltdown, and nationwide protests over police killings, the presidential personnel office is busily conducting loyalty stress-tests on the administrations own appointees that focus on personal commitment to Trump rather than any particular administration policy.

Which brings us to the peculiar case of Mitt Romney, the former GOP blue-state governor, presidential nominee, senator from Utah and bte noire of the Trumpist movement. Famously, he provided the lone Republican vote in either chamber for removing Trump from office during the impeachment proceedings. This brought down the full force of Trumpian cancel-power. Relatives have changed their names. CPAC, engaging in what the late, great Florence King might have called the height of WASP rage, made a point of announcing that it had not invited Romney this year on the theory that this constituted punishment rather than deliverance. Through this fire, Romney has emerged as the political equivalent of Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived. The moral here is that if youre going to state the obvious about Trump, survival depends on having a couple hundred million dollars in the bank, a lifetime of personal achievement, great hair, and a tan of a shade that occurs in nature.

At the moment, polls are pointing toward a presidential wipeout and the possible loss of the GOP Senate majority. Suburban America, having already executed a volte-face in 2018, is withdrawing in horror from the GOP in 2020. Is this a rejection of lower taxes, a strong national defense, or a conservative federal bench? Not in the least. Its a verdict on the character, personality, behavior, and governing incompetence of President Trump. And as long as the GOP anchors its fortunes in Trumpian decadence rather than competent, philosophically coherent leadership, theres little chance of escape.

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What the Conservative Version of Cancel Culture Looks Like - The Bulwark

In the video for her new single, Reasons I Drink, Alanis Morissette appears in a group addiction meeting. The song, set to stabbing piano, traces the difficulty of being in recovery when succumbing to addiction feels so freeing. Im such an addict, says the 46-year-old, Grammy-winning firebrand, howling down the phone from her home in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Morissette ticks off her top three addictions: Work addiction, love addiction and food addiction, she says. She traces her work addiction back to when I was single digits (she was always a driven performer), and her eating disorders to her teenage years and 20s, during which she was always yo-yo-ing. In the video, she portrays herself as multiple characters: a businesswoman; the 90s MTV star in the same scarf and hat she wore in the video for her biggest hit, Ironic; a mother; the chairperson holding space for others.

Recovery is a complex, lifelong endeavour, and lockdown has been triggering, says Morissette, who is juggling life at home as a mother of three with promoting her ninth album, Such Pretty Forks in the Road. At 3pm, I might feel: Wow, this is a huge gift, Im so overwhelmed with gratitude. By 3.15pm, Im raging. By 9pm, Im despondent. Isolation is the lighting of the match.

Medication has helped. Most recently she has been dealing with post-partum depression. Her youngest child, Winter, was born last August, a brother to her nine-year-old son, Ever, and three-year-old daughter, Onyx, her children with the rapper Souleye, whom she married in 2010. She has endured the condition after every birth. Previously, she delayed dealing with it; this time, she sought to expose it as it happened, appearing on TV after the birth to tell viewers it is like being covered in tar and underwater.

She also headed to the studio for the first time in eight years to record her new album. Songwriting is an exercise in letting the unconscious out, she says. I live my whole life, then I take 10 minutes to write the story of it. The songs are rooted in guitar and piano-based rock; sometimes anthemic (Smiling, Ablaze), often gentler and pensive (Diagnosis, Her). They are not as abrasive as her definitive early songs, but just as she travelled novel ground back then, foregrounding a young womans anger, she is still covering topics that rarely appear in mainstream rock. The song Nemesis documents the mental gymnastics she faced with an unplanned pregnancy. Im excited yet Im filled with despair, she sings. This metamorphosis closed the door and opened a window.

The album also tackles what Morissette terms financial abuse in the music business. In 2017, her former business manager was sentenced to six years in prison for stealing $7m (6m) from her, a violation that factors in the songs Pedestal (You grabbed my crown and got everything you wanted) and Reckoning (I hope you enjoy these drawings in your jail). They hark back to Right Through You, from her seminal third album Jagged Little Pill, particularly the oft-cited verse in which she addresses a man who took me out to wine dine, 69 me / But didnt hear a damn word I said.

Morissette has been singing about being leeched upon by men, economically and sexually, for 25 years. Thats the most depressing thing in the entire world, she admits, laughing. The themes of pain and division, trust, exploitation, misogyny, lack of integrity, sociopathic personality disorder and narcissism. These are themes I cut my teeth on as a child. To this day, she says, she is still healing from the theft, and from past sexual trauma that she doesnt detail. She feels she could still fall victim to abuse; it is a pattern she wants to break. She is disarmingly fluent in psychology, including the work of Carl Jung and more contemporary academics. If I didnt have a whole team of therapists throughout my life, I dont think Id still be here, she says.

Morissette is from Ontario and started a record label by the time she was 10. After a teenage pop career as the Debbie Gibson of Canada, she ran off to Los Angeles in 1995 and co-wrote the rockier Jagged Little Pill. No label would sign her, then Madonna imprint Maverick did. The album sold more than 33m copies worldwide, making her the youngest artist to achieve diamond-certified status in the US. She moved the needle but felt the drag. I couldnt even leave my hotel room, she says of the claustrophobic spotlight. If I walked by the window and my shadow hit the drapes, people would be screaming outside because they saw movement. She recalls fans rummaging through her room when she wasnt there. Theyd take my underwear. Theyd know it was under my pillow. It was invasive.

When Morissette appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in November 1995, the magazine billed her as the Angry White Female. Then 21, her songs were misinterpreted as combative and pretentious in their fury. She recalls radio DJs looking at her entering stations like they thought I was gonna bite their heads off. Her success meant she was treated as an industry saviour, yet one manager shamed her for asking about money. Oh, youre one of those clients, he responded. Today, she stands her ground. Youre not gonna gaslight crazy-make me when Im on a journey of empowerment.

Two decades before a whimper of the #MeToo movement had even been heard, Morissettes voice allowed listeners to wail louder. But that also backfired as she became a vessel for others projections. If they had issues with an ex-girlfriend or unfinished stuff with their mom or a horrifying divorce, I became that person theyd show resistance to, she says. The discourse around her felt almost physical, as if it was being thrown at her. Even the solace she offered appreciative fans became burdensome to her. She equates the loss of anonymity to grief. I used to sit on park benches and watch people. But when I became the watched it was debilitating.

Her isolation deepened when she found herself pitted against other women. I was sold that fame would be a panacea to solve all problems, that Id be singing Kumbaya with my celebrity friends, she says. Morissette was rejected by her peers. I thought I was gonna phone Bjrk and Tori [Amos] and all of us were gonna love each other. I reached out to a lot of people. Often I was met with: Why are you calling me? She doesnt want to stoke division by naming names.

After Jagged Little Pill, Morissette returned to Canada to work on the follow-up, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, with the producer Tim Thorney. There, supermarket checkout staff would ask her when the album was coming. I wanted to cry, she says. I remember saying: I dont wanna make music any more. When Thorney replied, Sounds good! and took her for dinner, she returned to the studio feeling revived and began writing immediately: His freedom took the pressure away.

Released in 1998, that album debuted at No 1 in the US and broke first-week record sales by a female act, a record previously held by The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Yet the wave of unadulterated 90s female-fronted rock would soon be crushed by teen pop. By 2000, Britney Spears had broken Morissettes diamond record and almost tripled her sales. It was a relief. The white-hot heat of fame waned, which is what made everything OK, actually! she says. Fame is not a circumstance I want to sustain.

Not that Morissette disappeared. Her 2001 single Hands Clean from fifth album, Under Rug Swept, was an international hit, although her next single failed to match its success. She began acting, cropping up in Sex and the City and Curb Your Enthusiasm, and in the movie Dogma, in which she played God. She even had a short stint as an agony aunt for the Guardian. There has been a steady cultural reclamation of the kind of female anger that Morissette was vilified for in the 90s. Seven years in the making, a Broadway musical inspired by Jagged Little Pill has been a huge success. It includes a character who is raped at a high-school party and later gaslit over the experience. The actor Kathryn Gallagher recalls Morissette reminding her that the character was meant to be angry: The thing that Ive taken away from her in her guidance is the importance of feeling everything and going through every single emotion, even the sticky spots, she says.

Queer artists, including Halsey and Perfume Genius, have cited Morissettes importance in their own self-emancipation. This year, Morissettes 90s peer Fiona Apple similarly demonised as an angry girl back then received acclaim for a new album that delved into those formative industry traumas. Curiously, Morissette hasnt heard about it. Shes focused on her own efforts. Having my worth dictated by how relevant I am in the zeitgeist pop culture is a recipe for disaster, she says. I dont ride that rollercoaster.

Despite this cultural course correction, Morissette remains sceptical: she worries about the enduring vapidness that plagues the entertainment world and thinks its foolish to consider that talented women are favoured for reasons beyond marketability. The patriarchy only pays attention when theres a financial shift, she says. It became bankable to have a female artist so it was embraced, and then, off to the races! Yet she acknowledges that some things have improved. In the past, Morissettes desire to understand the human condition was a source of mockery by press and public. I used to feel like a freak in every room I was in, she says. Now I dont feel strange.

Such Pretty Forks in the Road is released by RCA on 31 July

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Alanis Morissette: 'Without therapy, I don't think I'd still be here' - The Guardian