Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Where Are The Women?: SNL's Problem with Black Comediennes
I am not ashamed to admit that at this point in my life, I consider watching Scandal to be one of the highlights of my week. I had a lot of false stops and starts with the show initially: friends tried to convince me "this is a must-see show" or "you'll love it" but each time I tried, my commitment-phobia to the show re-emerged. For whatever reason earlier this spring (obviously, at the exact same time I was meant to be working on my dissertation), I got into it again and stuck with it. Stuck with it so much, in fact, that within three days I had seen every episode. Go figure.
Unlike many others, though,I do not watch Scandal for Olivia Pope. I watch it for Mellie (played by Bellamy Young) and her one liners. I watch it to see what creative, stomach-churning new plot twists producer Shonda Rhimes has created or overseen. The drama is all there, the show has the capacity to make you root for an adulterous couple, and of course, there is the ever present question "what the hell is wrong with Olivia Pope's father?" The show's a treat, if not one that is almost too complex at times for me to truly appreciate.
Kerry Washington's portrayal of Olivia Pope as a steadfast woman who's vulnerability is not wrapped up in the stereotypical trope of black women's victimization is refreshing and enticing. That's why I could hardly have been more disappointed in the way she was compelled to perform as the host of Saturday Night Live on November 2nd. Now, I have been a devotee of SNL for about 15 years and part of me believes I watch it either because I'm masochistic, because I'm nostalgic for earlier days of the show during "the era of the woman" (performers like Ana Gasteyer, Maya Rudolph, Cheri O'Teri, Amy Poehler, and Tina Fey were all on fire from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s), or for both reasons. In any event, I recognize that the show's writers and producers have a limited scope of blackness in American society and of how to involve black comedians in the framework of their sketches. They have had an even harder time incorporating black female comedians into their show.
In fact, in the shows thirty-eight year history, as The Huffington Post has pointed out, SNL has only ever had four black female cast members and Washington was just the 9th black woman ever to host the show. Of the four regular cast members, Danitra Vance and Yvonne Hudson each only performed for one season in the 1980s. Comedienne Ellen Cleghorne fared slightly better (1991-1995) and Maya Rudolph lasted even longer (2000-2007). Let's not also forget that they were four out of 137 cast members the show has ever had, a measly 3%. When asked by The Associated Press about this issue, Lorne Michaels, the show's producer, simply replied "You don't do anyone a favor if they're not ready...It's not like it's not a priority for us...It will happen. I'm sure it will happen."
This lack of concern is nothing new, nor am I shocked by it. When Washington got up on stage and was asked to participate in an insufferable attempt to make fun of the controversy surrounding this topic during the show's opening sketch, it became clear that this episode was not gonna go very far. Washington had to help SNL writers parody themselves by switching from Michelle Obama, to Oprah, to an offstage portrayal of Beyonce while a message streamed about how they don't have a black female cast member who can play majorly popular figures in the American public and about how the two black male characters of the cast have enough seniority now to refuse to dress in drag.
The show ran a series of sketches in which Washington played a "hoodrat" assistant, a jealous girlfriend searching her boyfriend's phone for texts from another woman, a righteous sociology professor who blindly supported Barack Obama, a clown, and a Ugandan beauty pageant who shouted "I keep this dress." Yes, she was versatile. Yes, she could adapt to any character thrown her way. That's a sign of a talented actress and to anyone who's ever seen the woman, it's clear that she has honed her skills and her craft. The reason this episode concerns me is because it demonstrates how much old values about minorities' ability not just as performers but as human beings still remain static.
As evidenced by Washington's performance and in every other episode of SNL, black actors or actresses in recent years have only ever appear on screen to reference the fact that they are black. As if the only thing black people ever do is speak in 1970s blaxploitation jive. As if they have no other concerns. Whether Kenan Thompson is playing Steve Harvey, LL Cool J, Cee-Lo, or Whoopi Goldberg (he has since given this character up), the tone and cadence of his voice remains the same. Even if he is playing a Joe-everybody, a regular guy, his same stereotypical persona seeps into the sketch with the punchline of his jokes primarily being "isn't it so funny that I'm black?"
I wish Washington could've escaped a show that treats black actors (I would say black actresses, but they don't have any at the moment) this way in 2013. As Rhimes has shown, there is room on American TV to have black characters who are rich and complex and funny and vulnerable. She has had two major hit shows, Grey's Anatomy and Scandal, which have managed to include black characters who don't lapse grotesquely into brutal stereotypes about their inability to see anything in the world other than their own color and to be overtly preoccupied by it at every last turn.Why is this issue still a roadblock for many producers in the entertainment industry? Why don't they realize that they are so behind in their view of the world that they may soon become obsolete and that more Shonda Rhimes's will be cropping up in the near future? What's up with that?
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Tough Love on the Subject: A Call for a Different Perspective on Black America
After watching CNN presenter Don Lemon's points about the state of the black family and of black masculinity in America, I had a strong reaction to his summary of the problems that many African Americans face. Lemon was bold enough (and some may say stupid enough) to align himself with comments made by Bill O'Reilly earlier in the week. O'Reilly is possibly the epitome of reptilian, conservative, and backwards-leaning principles. This does not mean, however, that his voice, in a democratic society like the U.S., ought to automatically be ignored (it should, in my opinion, be heavily picked apart and criticized but not devalued). In this clip, lemon outlines his stance and his particular points of agreement with O'Reilly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCASEL9mUxM Having had the experience of being called an Uncle Tom while in high school, I'm well aware of the pitfalls of a middle class black woman calling attention to the troubles of the black community at large and the negative reaction it might engender. I won't make my arguments, though, as a means of criticism for criticisms sake. Instead, I'll charge others to think about the ramifications of accepting the suffering of blacks as a marker of black life in a white society that isn't built for them or to support them.
Many people are aware of the debate about the issue of structural problems vs agency as a running theme in African-American history. The idea behind this debate is that structural problems such as limited education and voting rights for black are written into the racist policies of the United States whereas questions of agency charge black individuals to take responsibility for their own predicaments in spite of whatever world order has been pre-established for them by white society. Lemon makes points, for example, about sagging pants as a problem of low self respect (some critics might say he's bought into a notion of respectability fashioned by white, European standards of proper dress) and of the use of the N-word as a tool to "re-claim" the word. As Lemon points out, though, when he mentions a mother admonishing her son and calling him a "nigger" after the child got upset, the question of whether such a hateful term really gives black people power back is often dubious when looked at in a pragmatic sense. Blacks have, for many centuries, focused on education as a tool for progress and have done so particularly in the forcible practice in the past illiteracy amongst slaves. Somehow, however, as Lemon points out, some black people have, in the post-Civil Rights era, turned the process of education and seeking it out into a measure to doubt one's authentic blackness. By buying into the education system, which most of us can agree is largely flawed in and of itself (a separate question altogether, it should be noted), blacks who are ambitious as scholars encounter, at one point or another, criticism both from within and from outside of the black community that suggests that studious individuals are somehow less than black. They are sell outs....oreos...nerds....not authentic. I don't say this an observer: I say it as a person who's directly experienced this practice both in high school and college.
The reason I'm thinking about these topics is not to simply say that black people need to stop blaming outside society and larger racist influences for the problems that many (but not all) African Americans face. I could count hundreds if not thousands of ways that white society and black internalized self hatred have shifted and halted black progress in American society. I don't doubt for one second, for example, that the results of the Trayvon Martin case weren't heavily skewed by Florida's horrendous racial past and present. I don't doubt that the topic I've studied for 3 years, the prison industrial complex, isn't affected by America's ugly racial history. What I do want to ask, however, is how black Americans want to forge a new path for themselves? Yes, Billy Cosby made complicated and problematic claims about blacks being more concerned with their Air Jordans than with their education a couple years ago. And yes, Don Lemon is simplifying the issue of littering in black vs white neighborhoods in NYC as a signal of low self worth in the black community. But when we will we accept the fact that white America, as some people have pointed out, has no regard for our advancement? It's ok and reasonable and right to blame structural forces for the troubles we face and I do this daily. But unless black Americans rally around means to actually change their predicament (whether through education, parenting styles, etc)., what is the point of endless criticism of those who want to direct the challenge for a better future for the black state in America towards black people themselves?
These discussions, while rich and deep, don't change the way African Americans experience every day life.While we are victimized, it doesn't give us strength to wallow in that reality. It's an important fact to acknowledge, yes, and to grieve it. I applaud people, though, who, though it may not seem like it, are optimistic enough to hope that 100 years down the line, blacks in America are not simply limited to a discussion of how America has always failed them and wasn't intended for them but who instead pray that through means of self advocacy (again, no white Congressman can do this for us), black people can heal some of the wounds that have too often defined us. It's tiresome to look purely at the causes for some of the problems in the black community. It is more useful and helpful, at this stage, to call for practical and realistic solutions. Call me privileged, call me stuck up, call me naive: at the end of the day, I don't want African Americans to be purely defined as a culture who haven't had the ability to establish a better predicament for themselves in spite of the obstacles that they have faced. We have too much depth, creativity, strength,and power (if and when we choose to apply it) to be reduced to simplistic charges that we are nothing more than a suffering group of people. Change has been accomplished before, it can happen again, and I believe it's time to stop focusing on non-black interruption of progress and to instead turn our discussion to a question of how we can make our world more bearable on our own terms. --
Many people are aware of the debate about the issue of structural problems vs agency as a running theme in African-American history. The idea behind this debate is that structural problems such as limited education and voting rights for black are written into the racist policies of the United States whereas questions of agency charge black individuals to take responsibility for their own predicaments in spite of whatever world order has been pre-established for them by white society. Lemon makes points, for example, about sagging pants as a problem of low self respect (some critics might say he's bought into a notion of respectability fashioned by white, European standards of proper dress) and of the use of the N-word as a tool to "re-claim" the word. As Lemon points out, though, when he mentions a mother admonishing her son and calling him a "nigger" after the child got upset, the question of whether such a hateful term really gives black people power back is often dubious when looked at in a pragmatic sense. Blacks have, for many centuries, focused on education as a tool for progress and have done so particularly in the forcible practice in the past illiteracy amongst slaves. Somehow, however, as Lemon points out, some black people have, in the post-Civil Rights era, turned the process of education and seeking it out into a measure to doubt one's authentic blackness. By buying into the education system, which most of us can agree is largely flawed in and of itself (a separate question altogether, it should be noted), blacks who are ambitious as scholars encounter, at one point or another, criticism both from within and from outside of the black community that suggests that studious individuals are somehow less than black. They are sell outs....oreos...nerds....not authentic. I don't say this an observer: I say it as a person who's directly experienced this practice both in high school and college.
The reason I'm thinking about these topics is not to simply say that black people need to stop blaming outside society and larger racist influences for the problems that many (but not all) African Americans face. I could count hundreds if not thousands of ways that white society and black internalized self hatred have shifted and halted black progress in American society. I don't doubt for one second, for example, that the results of the Trayvon Martin case weren't heavily skewed by Florida's horrendous racial past and present. I don't doubt that the topic I've studied for 3 years, the prison industrial complex, isn't affected by America's ugly racial history. What I do want to ask, however, is how black Americans want to forge a new path for themselves? Yes, Billy Cosby made complicated and problematic claims about blacks being more concerned with their Air Jordans than with their education a couple years ago. And yes, Don Lemon is simplifying the issue of littering in black vs white neighborhoods in NYC as a signal of low self worth in the black community. But when we will we accept the fact that white America, as some people have pointed out, has no regard for our advancement? It's ok and reasonable and right to blame structural forces for the troubles we face and I do this daily. But unless black Americans rally around means to actually change their predicament (whether through education, parenting styles, etc)., what is the point of endless criticism of those who want to direct the challenge for a better future for the black state in America towards black people themselves?
These discussions, while rich and deep, don't change the way African Americans experience every day life.While we are victimized, it doesn't give us strength to wallow in that reality. It's an important fact to acknowledge, yes, and to grieve it. I applaud people, though, who, though it may not seem like it, are optimistic enough to hope that 100 years down the line, blacks in America are not simply limited to a discussion of how America has always failed them and wasn't intended for them but who instead pray that through means of self advocacy (again, no white Congressman can do this for us), black people can heal some of the wounds that have too often defined us. It's tiresome to look purely at the causes for some of the problems in the black community. It is more useful and helpful, at this stage, to call for practical and realistic solutions. Call me privileged, call me stuck up, call me naive: at the end of the day, I don't want African Americans to be purely defined as a culture who haven't had the ability to establish a better predicament for themselves in spite of the obstacles that they have faced. We have too much depth, creativity, strength,and power (if and when we choose to apply it) to be reduced to simplistic charges that we are nothing more than a suffering group of people. Change has been accomplished before, it can happen again, and I believe it's time to stop focusing on non-black interruption of progress and to instead turn our discussion to a question of how we can make our world more bearable on our own terms. --
Sunday, July 24, 2011
1983-2011
My dad was the first one to hand me an article about her in the spring of 2007. I kept hearing her on the radio. “They tried to make me go to rehab and I said ‘No! No! No!’” What a catchy song, I thought. She looked like nothing I’d ever seen: sporting a raven beehive, 8 mile long winged eyeliner and the striking face of a young woman who’d somehow already seen to much. She seemed mythical. “Who sings like that?” I wondered. My adoration of Amy Winehouse has spanned the past four years in a major way. Her albums “Frank” and"Back to Black" got me through my summer in South Africa. My rollercoaster of a senior year in high school. My loneliest of nights throughout college and my happiest of times while I lived in the UK. She was my all-purpose safeguard wherever I found myself and in whatever situation I encountered. When my friend texted me the simple but devastating phrase “Amy Winehouse is dead” my brain went blank.
It’s no surprise to anyone who’s ever heard of the woman or at least knows she popularized a song called “Rehab” that Amy had been troubled for years. She faced every issue one could imagine: not only was she addicted to hard drugs and alcohol but she suffered through eating disorders, self mutilation, and bipolar disorder. While many dismissed her as a wreck, I never could. I’ll admit that sometimes I wondered if her distress was all part of a tortured artist act that she’d made herself believe was a necessary part of being a famous singer. But whether she tricked herself into it or would’ve been as self-destructive had she stuck to small jazz shows in London, her work itself was incredible because it hit so deeply.
When she said “I brought you downstairs with a Marlboro Red” or “Yea, you know I’m no good” it made sense. Or “you should be stronger than me” and that “I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself” I got it. In spite of not having gone through many of the things she wrote about or having felt exactly as she did, her voice and her lyrics managed to transcend that disconnect between her experiences and my own. How could a person’s voice move you to hear them out in spite of not having been where she has?
Amy’s now a member of the “27 Club” of infamous and amazing artists like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Kobain who all died at this young age. As soon as I learned she died, I thought about her age and I thought back to my fear from a few years ago that she would die at this age either accidentally or deliberately (as I suspect in this case) because it’s a perverse part of being known as one of the greats who are gone too soon.
Aside from the great loss I feel for her as a human being and as an artist, I feel most troubled by the fact that this is all the result of addiction and mental illness. Her death, in some ways, serves as a reminder of the power of substance abuse and the constant struggle that Winehouse and millions of others face. What is it about brain chemistry, life circumstances, and cultural attitudes that destroy lives and leads people to early graves? Is there anything that could’ve been done to help this bright, talented and innovative young woman before it came to her being carried away in a body bag a few years prior to her 30th birthday?
It always seems to me that part of the issue surrounding the link between mental illness and addiction is that aside from the genetic predispositions people have towards these conditions, there is little social recognition of the seriousness of these topics. It’s obvious that there’s got to be a societal shift in the way we understand these issues. That instead of throwing the word “crazy” around regularly (which I’m guilty of) and seeing being unstable as laughable, we learn to alter our language and educate ourselves more generally about what these diseases mean. They don’t mean that Amy (or anyone in a remotely similar situation) is weak. It’s not a question of willpower alone or toughening up. No one wants to be dependent on a substance to get him/her through the day. We need to realize that shaming someone doesn't fix the problem, either.Though I don’t know enough about non-Western societies’ attitudes towards addiction, it does seem to be an unfortunate international trend to assume that this disease is a moral failure.
If Amy’s death can illustrate anything, it’s that substance abuse is a devastating thing that can destroy those with promise at any time. I don’t believe for one second that people shouldn’t learn to take accountability for their actions and that they shouldn’t seek help from others when they need it (as she often tried to through her multiple rehab stints), but it’s clear that one way to avoid losing people is to open up a social dialogue about where addiction comes from and about how to respect the challenges that people like Amy face. If any of us looked around, we wouldn’t have to look for very long to find someone close to us who’s hooked on something. It could even be you. Why haven’t we found a way to be more socially responsible about these issues? What’s up with that? R.I.P Amy Winehouse 1983-2011.
It’s no surprise to anyone who’s ever heard of the woman or at least knows she popularized a song called “Rehab” that Amy had been troubled for years. She faced every issue one could imagine: not only was she addicted to hard drugs and alcohol but she suffered through eating disorders, self mutilation, and bipolar disorder. While many dismissed her as a wreck, I never could. I’ll admit that sometimes I wondered if her distress was all part of a tortured artist act that she’d made herself believe was a necessary part of being a famous singer. But whether she tricked herself into it or would’ve been as self-destructive had she stuck to small jazz shows in London, her work itself was incredible because it hit so deeply.
When she said “I brought you downstairs with a Marlboro Red” or “Yea, you know I’m no good” it made sense. Or “you should be stronger than me” and that “I can’t help you if you won’t help yourself” I got it. In spite of not having gone through many of the things she wrote about or having felt exactly as she did, her voice and her lyrics managed to transcend that disconnect between her experiences and my own. How could a person’s voice move you to hear them out in spite of not having been where she has?
Amy’s now a member of the “27 Club” of infamous and amazing artists like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Kobain who all died at this young age. As soon as I learned she died, I thought about her age and I thought back to my fear from a few years ago that she would die at this age either accidentally or deliberately (as I suspect in this case) because it’s a perverse part of being known as one of the greats who are gone too soon.
Aside from the great loss I feel for her as a human being and as an artist, I feel most troubled by the fact that this is all the result of addiction and mental illness. Her death, in some ways, serves as a reminder of the power of substance abuse and the constant struggle that Winehouse and millions of others face. What is it about brain chemistry, life circumstances, and cultural attitudes that destroy lives and leads people to early graves? Is there anything that could’ve been done to help this bright, talented and innovative young woman before it came to her being carried away in a body bag a few years prior to her 30th birthday?
It always seems to me that part of the issue surrounding the link between mental illness and addiction is that aside from the genetic predispositions people have towards these conditions, there is little social recognition of the seriousness of these topics. It’s obvious that there’s got to be a societal shift in the way we understand these issues. That instead of throwing the word “crazy” around regularly (which I’m guilty of) and seeing being unstable as laughable, we learn to alter our language and educate ourselves more generally about what these diseases mean. They don’t mean that Amy (or anyone in a remotely similar situation) is weak. It’s not a question of willpower alone or toughening up. No one wants to be dependent on a substance to get him/her through the day. We need to realize that shaming someone doesn't fix the problem, either.Though I don’t know enough about non-Western societies’ attitudes towards addiction, it does seem to be an unfortunate international trend to assume that this disease is a moral failure.
If Amy’s death can illustrate anything, it’s that substance abuse is a devastating thing that can destroy those with promise at any time. I don’t believe for one second that people shouldn’t learn to take accountability for their actions and that they shouldn’t seek help from others when they need it (as she often tried to through her multiple rehab stints), but it’s clear that one way to avoid losing people is to open up a social dialogue about where addiction comes from and about how to respect the challenges that people like Amy face. If any of us looked around, we wouldn’t have to look for very long to find someone close to us who’s hooked on something. It could even be you. Why haven’t we found a way to be more socially responsible about these issues? What’s up with that? R.I.P Amy Winehouse 1983-2011.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Justice or Skill?: A Perspective on the Casey Anthony Murder Trial
When I was little, I always had a hard time distinguishing between someone being found “not guilty” and being “innocent.” “Guilty” was clear to me: it meant a bunch of random people on a jury all came to the same conclusion that an accused person ought to be punished for his or her crime. The ideas of crime, court, lawyers, and the law itself have always swirled in my head. It might have something to do with the fact that both my parents are lawyers or that I grew up in a household with the nightly news always blaring. While my parents sat on our old gray-checkered couch, I’d do my little girl thing and bounce about on the carpet. But clearly the message that criminals existed infiltrated my mind and it was at this early age that I began to think, in the way a six year could, about the American legal system.
In fact, as I look back on it, one of the most frightening but necessary realizations I came to in second grade was that, unlike I had previously gathered, there wasn’t a 50/50 split between those who died of old age and those who died by gunfire. It took me a long time to realize that gun violence, while a reality, wasn’t a part of daily life for most people in the U.S. With all these things in mind, I can’t help but think now about what major cases mean for American society and for all those who watch them progress. How do we live in a world where a woman can murder her child, a jury can all suspect as much, and she ultimately escape conviction and be found “not guilty”?
I remember hearing about the disappearance of a little girl named Caylee Anthony a couple years back in 2008. At the time, I was wrapped up in college decisions, leaving a school I’d attended for 13 years, and generally just accepted this missing child as another young girl who’d met an unfair ending. Attention is always paid to the deaths of little girls of particular backgrounds (read: non-minority) and the hyper focus on her disappearance seemed no different. It wasn’t until this spring, though, that I began to pay any serious attention to the case. Her mother, Casey Anthony, seemed by all accounts to be at least partially responsible for her child’s death. It’s all too disturbingly perfect: her 2 year old goes missing and she doesn’t bother to call the police for 31 days (which, by the way, is a month for those who might be counting), chooses to go out and party instead (because what better way to help find your kid than downing a couple cranberry and vodkas), pretends the kid is with a nanny named Zanny (c’mon, please get more creative next time, Casey), there’s evidence of searches for ways to suffocate a human being and the child’s body is found with duct tape across her mouth, and the smell of a decomposing body in the trunk of a car is explained away as a bag of rotting garbage. If all of these pieces together don’t make a strong case for this woman’s guilt, what would?
After hearing that she was found not guilty, two things crossed my mind. The first was horror. The second thing I thought of, though, was my experience as a juror last summer. I couldn’t get out of it. I’d been summoned twice since I graduated high school and unlike everyone in the jury lottery who couldn’t serve because they had to stay home to feed their turtles, were 99 years old or couldn’t make it mostly due to disinterest, I had no real excuse. I was gainfully unemployed for the summer and it seemed like a good opportunity to see what court was like. Without breaking my oath to protect the details of the case, I can share that I had to judge whether the accused was guilty or not guilty of second-degree murder. In my head and according to the evidence presented both by the defense and the prosecution, I believed the man was not guilty. But more than that I trusted that he was indeed innocent, that, outside of the limitations of legal framework and binary guilty vs not guilty, he had not actually committed a murder. My peers didn’t feel the same way, though. We ultimately found him not guilty but hardly any of them believed he was innocent and had not killed a man. Here’s the distinction: there are two legal categories that purely access guilt or not guilt. The law requires jurors like the ones on the Anthony case to assume that the only thing that matters is whether or not guilt can be established by the lawyers in court. There’s no room to convict someone or exonerate them based on what they’ve actually done. Instead, jurors must muse about whether the prosecution proved its case.
This irks me because it means that the legal system isn’t designed to handle the truth but rather what representatives (i.e. the defense and prosecution) manage to present to the jury. A man could murder 15 people but if his defense lawyer can wring his or her hands to come up with ways to diminish the strength of the prosecutor’s presentation, the accused can walk free. Doesn’t matter that he’s torn however many communities and lives apart by his violence. The law isn’t concerned with that. It’s about how clever a lawyer is at evading or shaping or even misrepresenting what’s occurred. None of what I’m saying is new or groundbreaking but it’s important to ask if we can call what we have a justice system. If Casey Anthony can, at the very best, be apathetic to the loss of her daughter (as evidenced by her failure to report the kid missing for an entire month) and at the very worst, be responsible for her death and ultimately walk free after serving a few short years jail time, why do we bother with pretending that this is a fair allotment of justice? Why can’t we inquire about innocence and guilt rather than dolling out prison time according to how skillful a lawyer might be at casting or re-casting the accused's role in a crime? Why don’t we have enough room for truth in the American legal system? What’s up with that?
In fact, as I look back on it, one of the most frightening but necessary realizations I came to in second grade was that, unlike I had previously gathered, there wasn’t a 50/50 split between those who died of old age and those who died by gunfire. It took me a long time to realize that gun violence, while a reality, wasn’t a part of daily life for most people in the U.S. With all these things in mind, I can’t help but think now about what major cases mean for American society and for all those who watch them progress. How do we live in a world where a woman can murder her child, a jury can all suspect as much, and she ultimately escape conviction and be found “not guilty”?
I remember hearing about the disappearance of a little girl named Caylee Anthony a couple years back in 2008. At the time, I was wrapped up in college decisions, leaving a school I’d attended for 13 years, and generally just accepted this missing child as another young girl who’d met an unfair ending. Attention is always paid to the deaths of little girls of particular backgrounds (read: non-minority) and the hyper focus on her disappearance seemed no different. It wasn’t until this spring, though, that I began to pay any serious attention to the case. Her mother, Casey Anthony, seemed by all accounts to be at least partially responsible for her child’s death. It’s all too disturbingly perfect: her 2 year old goes missing and she doesn’t bother to call the police for 31 days (which, by the way, is a month for those who might be counting), chooses to go out and party instead (because what better way to help find your kid than downing a couple cranberry and vodkas), pretends the kid is with a nanny named Zanny (c’mon, please get more creative next time, Casey), there’s evidence of searches for ways to suffocate a human being and the child’s body is found with duct tape across her mouth, and the smell of a decomposing body in the trunk of a car is explained away as a bag of rotting garbage. If all of these pieces together don’t make a strong case for this woman’s guilt, what would?
After hearing that she was found not guilty, two things crossed my mind. The first was horror. The second thing I thought of, though, was my experience as a juror last summer. I couldn’t get out of it. I’d been summoned twice since I graduated high school and unlike everyone in the jury lottery who couldn’t serve because they had to stay home to feed their turtles, were 99 years old or couldn’t make it mostly due to disinterest, I had no real excuse. I was gainfully unemployed for the summer and it seemed like a good opportunity to see what court was like. Without breaking my oath to protect the details of the case, I can share that I had to judge whether the accused was guilty or not guilty of second-degree murder. In my head and according to the evidence presented both by the defense and the prosecution, I believed the man was not guilty. But more than that I trusted that he was indeed innocent, that, outside of the limitations of legal framework and binary guilty vs not guilty, he had not actually committed a murder. My peers didn’t feel the same way, though. We ultimately found him not guilty but hardly any of them believed he was innocent and had not killed a man. Here’s the distinction: there are two legal categories that purely access guilt or not guilt. The law requires jurors like the ones on the Anthony case to assume that the only thing that matters is whether or not guilt can be established by the lawyers in court. There’s no room to convict someone or exonerate them based on what they’ve actually done. Instead, jurors must muse about whether the prosecution proved its case.
This irks me because it means that the legal system isn’t designed to handle the truth but rather what representatives (i.e. the defense and prosecution) manage to present to the jury. A man could murder 15 people but if his defense lawyer can wring his or her hands to come up with ways to diminish the strength of the prosecutor’s presentation, the accused can walk free. Doesn’t matter that he’s torn however many communities and lives apart by his violence. The law isn’t concerned with that. It’s about how clever a lawyer is at evading or shaping or even misrepresenting what’s occurred. None of what I’m saying is new or groundbreaking but it’s important to ask if we can call what we have a justice system. If Casey Anthony can, at the very best, be apathetic to the loss of her daughter (as evidenced by her failure to report the kid missing for an entire month) and at the very worst, be responsible for her death and ultimately walk free after serving a few short years jail time, why do we bother with pretending that this is a fair allotment of justice? Why can’t we inquire about innocence and guilt rather than dolling out prison time according to how skillful a lawyer might be at casting or re-casting the accused's role in a crime? Why don’t we have enough room for truth in the American legal system? What’s up with that?
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better
My mother first noticed something was up when I was five. In fact, she knew she had a miniature perfectionist on her hands within the first few days of my kindergarten class. Apparently, we were all meant to draw a picture of a pig and I took the task a little too seriously. As I drew my pig I wasn’t content with my own depiction. What she observed in her little parents’ circle was that upon seeing others’ renderings of pigs, I slowly slid mine under a big pile of papers and began a new one to catch up to my tiny peers. Theirs looked like Cezanne's and mine like Keith Haring's. Within the short five-year period of my life, I had already demonstrated how seriously I took competition. It meant taking cues from others (no matter how small those cues might have been) to learn their understanding of a task so that I could come up with a way both to know their interpretations and to take them a step further.
This attitude and world perspective has led me to many interesting situations in my life, ones which I am both immensely grateful for and ones which I lament everyday. Perfectionism, from the time I was a wee one up until now, has defined a great deal of my life. It compelled me to pursue my academics strongly at Trinity, it pointed me towards Harvard and has landed me ultimately where I am now, studying abroad at Oxford University for the spring semester of my junior year.
The most interesting thing to me about perfectionism, though, is that although the goal is to attain statuses or situations that palliate the human fear of incompetency, they actually breed insecurity with the false suggestion that once you reach a certain goal, you'll feel completely satisfied.
As I wrapped up my final essays at the end of last semester, I decided, both because of peer pressure and out of sheer curiosity that I would go see the movie “Black Swan,” which dealt with these very issues. Disclaimer: I hate thriller movies and I rarely pay for the experience of being made to feel uncomfortable. I get enough of that for free having lived in New York for roughly two decades and having experienced Harvard life since the fall of 2008. I went, though, with the anticipation that this ”visual masterpiece” (as it had been described) would turn me on to a whole new worldview about the sins of perfectionism. Not so.
I can’t quite tell if I hated “Black Swan” because it was too extremist in its portrayal of a very real, common issue that many of my peers grapple with or because it hit too close to home. I do know for sure that within the first 7 minutes, I wanted to escape the theater. It’s always a really dumb idea, though, to sit in the middle of the row in a theater because you most definitely cannot get out and you will have to get your 11 dollar’s worth whether you like it or not.
The thing that got me about that movie was the problematic quality of a lot of American movies: extremism. Rather than tell the story of a repressed young woman who centers her life around dance, it included insanity and excessive personal repression as a means to convey the fact that the main character struggled emotionally. Must a woman live with her mother into her middle 20’s, sleep with full array of Mattel’s stuffed animal collection, speak with the quiet voice of a seven-year-old, self-injure, endure schizophrenia, have suppressed sexual desires for both men and women, and starve herself before the American public can recognize that she’s a perfectionist?
Sitting through those two hours, it felt like the Hollywood industry was insulting the American audience’s intelligence by suggesting that the only way they could “get” the issue of perfectionism is by constantly reminding us just how infantilized, debilitated, and repressed the main character is. Unfortunately, it’s much easier to be a self-destructive perfectionist than people might think and it doesn’t take that many personal/emotional issues to set someone over the edge…as frightening as that might sound.
The thing I’ve found over the past few days of being in England on my study abroad program is that people all over the world regard American media, including movies such as “Black Swan,” as incredibly over the top. The English people giving our orientation meetings repeatedly commented on how loud Americans are and on how they always insisted on making their presence known. It seems like, as a nation, we haven’t figured out how to narrate stories, however serious or inane they might be, in a way that gets to the heart the matters involved without sensationalizing the problems involved.
The film industry seems to suggest in “Black Swan,” for example, that one of the only ways for women to feel repressed is by restricting what they eat. It's true that thousands and thousands of women feel this way but it only taps into one aspect of many that accounts for the way women encounter oppression. It’s more exciting to focus on the extreme demureness and frailty of a thin body in order to get across point that Natalie Portman feels like a weak woman than to grapple with the fact that modern women are constantly torn between performing the standard traditional ideals of passivity and the modern perspective that women “can do anything men can do.”
We need constant visual and social cues (e.g. her inclusion of dolls in her life past the age of 10) to indicate when someone’s feeling oppressed or treated subserviently. Sadly, there’s more to the picture of the damaging effects of perfectionism than we’re comfortable tackling in a two-hour movie screening. Instead, we pretend that the only people who deal with these identity crises are starved women who suppress their sexuality and who hide behind anorexia and their mommies to protect them. Again, not so.
I’m not sure if it’s my short time in a new environment or my pent up frustration with American media culture, but I’m growing increasingly tired of the way United States entertainment denies the complexity of American women and men’s issues by pretending that it’s super rare to face the inherent problems of perfectionism, suffering, anxiety or depression by portraying characters with these problems as social pariahs.
Why do we pretend that these stories of pain are purely for consumption and entertainment value when we know for a fact that they are not fanciful, rare issues but commonplace factors in many peoples' lives? What is it about the nature of perfectionism in American culture that incites our media to embellish its qualities and our societal members to feel ashamed of taking part in its results? And furthermore, what makes us hungry to hear more and more tales about perfectionism, regardless of what end of this workaholic spectrum we fall under? What’s up with that?
This attitude and world perspective has led me to many interesting situations in my life, ones which I am both immensely grateful for and ones which I lament everyday. Perfectionism, from the time I was a wee one up until now, has defined a great deal of my life. It compelled me to pursue my academics strongly at Trinity, it pointed me towards Harvard and has landed me ultimately where I am now, studying abroad at Oxford University for the spring semester of my junior year.
The most interesting thing to me about perfectionism, though, is that although the goal is to attain statuses or situations that palliate the human fear of incompetency, they actually breed insecurity with the false suggestion that once you reach a certain goal, you'll feel completely satisfied.
As I wrapped up my final essays at the end of last semester, I decided, both because of peer pressure and out of sheer curiosity that I would go see the movie “Black Swan,” which dealt with these very issues. Disclaimer: I hate thriller movies and I rarely pay for the experience of being made to feel uncomfortable. I get enough of that for free having lived in New York for roughly two decades and having experienced Harvard life since the fall of 2008. I went, though, with the anticipation that this ”visual masterpiece” (as it had been described) would turn me on to a whole new worldview about the sins of perfectionism. Not so.
I can’t quite tell if I hated “Black Swan” because it was too extremist in its portrayal of a very real, common issue that many of my peers grapple with or because it hit too close to home. I do know for sure that within the first 7 minutes, I wanted to escape the theater. It’s always a really dumb idea, though, to sit in the middle of the row in a theater because you most definitely cannot get out and you will have to get your 11 dollar’s worth whether you like it or not.
The thing that got me about that movie was the problematic quality of a lot of American movies: extremism. Rather than tell the story of a repressed young woman who centers her life around dance, it included insanity and excessive personal repression as a means to convey the fact that the main character struggled emotionally. Must a woman live with her mother into her middle 20’s, sleep with full array of Mattel’s stuffed animal collection, speak with the quiet voice of a seven-year-old, self-injure, endure schizophrenia, have suppressed sexual desires for both men and women, and starve herself before the American public can recognize that she’s a perfectionist?
Sitting through those two hours, it felt like the Hollywood industry was insulting the American audience’s intelligence by suggesting that the only way they could “get” the issue of perfectionism is by constantly reminding us just how infantilized, debilitated, and repressed the main character is. Unfortunately, it’s much easier to be a self-destructive perfectionist than people might think and it doesn’t take that many personal/emotional issues to set someone over the edge…as frightening as that might sound.
The thing I’ve found over the past few days of being in England on my study abroad program is that people all over the world regard American media, including movies such as “Black Swan,” as incredibly over the top. The English people giving our orientation meetings repeatedly commented on how loud Americans are and on how they always insisted on making their presence known. It seems like, as a nation, we haven’t figured out how to narrate stories, however serious or inane they might be, in a way that gets to the heart the matters involved without sensationalizing the problems involved.
The film industry seems to suggest in “Black Swan,” for example, that one of the only ways for women to feel repressed is by restricting what they eat. It's true that thousands and thousands of women feel this way but it only taps into one aspect of many that accounts for the way women encounter oppression. It’s more exciting to focus on the extreme demureness and frailty of a thin body in order to get across point that Natalie Portman feels like a weak woman than to grapple with the fact that modern women are constantly torn between performing the standard traditional ideals of passivity and the modern perspective that women “can do anything men can do.”
We need constant visual and social cues (e.g. her inclusion of dolls in her life past the age of 10) to indicate when someone’s feeling oppressed or treated subserviently. Sadly, there’s more to the picture of the damaging effects of perfectionism than we’re comfortable tackling in a two-hour movie screening. Instead, we pretend that the only people who deal with these identity crises are starved women who suppress their sexuality and who hide behind anorexia and their mommies to protect them. Again, not so.
I’m not sure if it’s my short time in a new environment or my pent up frustration with American media culture, but I’m growing increasingly tired of the way United States entertainment denies the complexity of American women and men’s issues by pretending that it’s super rare to face the inherent problems of perfectionism, suffering, anxiety or depression by portraying characters with these problems as social pariahs.
Why do we pretend that these stories of pain are purely for consumption and entertainment value when we know for a fact that they are not fanciful, rare issues but commonplace factors in many peoples' lives? What is it about the nature of perfectionism in American culture that incites our media to embellish its qualities and our societal members to feel ashamed of taking part in its results? And furthermore, what makes us hungry to hear more and more tales about perfectionism, regardless of what end of this workaholic spectrum we fall under? What’s up with that?
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Big Girl Love? : Immobility in Adele's Music Videos
A couple summers ago, I was one of the most wretched humans this world has ever seen. I wasted what could have been a great summer by taking out my anxieties about my upcoming my college career on my family. At that time, very few things soothed me. One of those things, though, was music by a singer named Adele, a young British songstress who has risen to stardom internationally over the past few years. “Crazy for You” and “Best for Last” were the songs that got me through Summer 2008. Now, two years later, I continue to adore her music but I’ve always wondered one thing about Adele: why does she sit in almost all of her music videos?
In the videos for “Chasing Pavements,” “Make You Feel My Love,” “Rolling in the Deep,” “Cold Shoulder,” and “Hometown Glory,” Adele is seated in a chair while a story (acted out by other people) unfolds around her. Her music videos all express a type of confinement that seems unnatural given the types of songs she writes. She’s only 22 and she happens to be perfectly able of walking and moving. While not everyone her age enjoys that privilege, she does. It makes little sense for her to sit, then, as if she cannot use both her voice and her body to convey her messages like most other singers do nowadays.
Her songs are definitely not dance songs and I don’t expect Britney’s “I’m a Slave 4 U” moves to pop up on the screen when I’m watching Adele sing “Chasing Pavements.” I guess I just find it interesting that, unlike her counterparts both in age and musical style (think Amy Winehouse, Duffy, etc.), she never has the opportunity to move around in her videos. To me, mobility represents not only a certain type of (physical) freedom but also the capacity to express oneself.
Maybe I’ve been wrongly indoctrinated with the notion that singers must be mobile in their videos in order to fit into the canon of a typical music video and this might be problematic in and of itself. The thing that’s interesting to me about Adele’s case, though, is that even if that standard about motion is inherently wrong, she is still treated particularly problematically within that unfair paradigm. One of the main things that distinguishes her from all of these other women is her weight. At a US size 14-16, she is not the stereotypical size 0-4 singer who is allowed to walk or dance or even stand in her music videos.
While I am sure Adele does what she finds comfortable and may be designing videos this way because it suits her taste, it’s distressing that her videos have the potential to reinforce the notion that being fuller means you are limited in your capacities to express yourself physically. In the same way that she constantly wears big layers of black clothing to cover up her body, she also hides herself allowing actors in the video to communicate her messages on her behalf in her videos. I see her literal confinement to a chair as a sort of figurative confinement of female bodies: if a woman’s body is bigger than the industry standard, it must remain still and as unnoticeable as possible.
Why would a woman with lyrics as powerful as “think of me in the depths of your despair” and "you were just the filler in the space that happened to be free" be confined to a music video life spent in pretty wooden chairs simply because of her "plus-size" frame? Furthermore, why do recent media and advertising endeavors like the Dove “Love Your Body” campaign pretend that there is size acceptance in our society when women with actual curves feel the need to use multiple methods to cover themselves on a regular basis? There’s no need for Adele to rock a string bikini in order to get her messages across but it'd be nice if she could fully participate in her own music videos. My main question, then, is this: why can’t a curvy woman use her body to express herself, too? What’s up with that?
In the videos for “Chasing Pavements,” “Make You Feel My Love,” “Rolling in the Deep,” “Cold Shoulder,” and “Hometown Glory,” Adele is seated in a chair while a story (acted out by other people) unfolds around her. Her music videos all express a type of confinement that seems unnatural given the types of songs she writes. She’s only 22 and she happens to be perfectly able of walking and moving. While not everyone her age enjoys that privilege, she does. It makes little sense for her to sit, then, as if she cannot use both her voice and her body to convey her messages like most other singers do nowadays.
Her songs are definitely not dance songs and I don’t expect Britney’s “I’m a Slave 4 U” moves to pop up on the screen when I’m watching Adele sing “Chasing Pavements.” I guess I just find it interesting that, unlike her counterparts both in age and musical style (think Amy Winehouse, Duffy, etc.), she never has the opportunity to move around in her videos. To me, mobility represents not only a certain type of (physical) freedom but also the capacity to express oneself.
Maybe I’ve been wrongly indoctrinated with the notion that singers must be mobile in their videos in order to fit into the canon of a typical music video and this might be problematic in and of itself. The thing that’s interesting to me about Adele’s case, though, is that even if that standard about motion is inherently wrong, she is still treated particularly problematically within that unfair paradigm. One of the main things that distinguishes her from all of these other women is her weight. At a US size 14-16, she is not the stereotypical size 0-4 singer who is allowed to walk or dance or even stand in her music videos.
While I am sure Adele does what she finds comfortable and may be designing videos this way because it suits her taste, it’s distressing that her videos have the potential to reinforce the notion that being fuller means you are limited in your capacities to express yourself physically. In the same way that she constantly wears big layers of black clothing to cover up her body, she also hides herself allowing actors in the video to communicate her messages on her behalf in her videos. I see her literal confinement to a chair as a sort of figurative confinement of female bodies: if a woman’s body is bigger than the industry standard, it must remain still and as unnoticeable as possible.
Why would a woman with lyrics as powerful as “think of me in the depths of your despair” and "you were just the filler in the space that happened to be free" be confined to a music video life spent in pretty wooden chairs simply because of her "plus-size" frame? Furthermore, why do recent media and advertising endeavors like the Dove “Love Your Body” campaign pretend that there is size acceptance in our society when women with actual curves feel the need to use multiple methods to cover themselves on a regular basis? There’s no need for Adele to rock a string bikini in order to get her messages across but it'd be nice if she could fully participate in her own music videos. My main question, then, is this: why can’t a curvy woman use her body to express herself, too? What’s up with that?
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Don't Hate Me 'Cause I'm Beautiful
While I spent the past 72 hours writing a paper about the Native American war effort in the World War II, the only, and I mean ONLY, thing that kept me going was Keri Hilson’s video for her song “Pretty Girl Rock.” I mean that and the fact that I had a deadline. Anyway, I must have watched the video roughly twenty times at this point and given the fact that it’s a little over four minutes long, I’d say I’ve spent approximately 116 minutes (that’s like 2 hours for those who are counting) watching this fabulous clip.
In the video, Keri Hilson embodies famous black female figures over the past century. In the 30’s she’s Josephine Baker, in the 40's she's a Dorothy Dandridge type, in the 50’s she’s a Candy Girl ,in the 60’s she’s Diana Ross with The Supremes, in the 70’s she’s either Dina Ross sans the Supremes or maybe she’s Donna Summer, in the 80’s she’s Janet Jackson in her infamous “Rhythm Nation” video, in the 90’s she’s T-Boz from TLC in their “Creep” video, and in the 00’s she’s herself in a t-shirt and jeans. Now tacky as the concept is, it works for me for some reason. Maybe it’s because she fully inhabits the women she imitates or because I have fun trying to discern which female figure she’s embodying at any given moment. Whatever the reason, it’s definitely my new jam.
Actually, I think I do know the reason I adore this song/video so much: the lyrics fit in with a history of black empowerment and the visuals add a unique twist to that notion. If I could list my top three favorite lines in this song, I’d go with the following: “Don’t hate me cause I’m beautiful” (which can either mean "don't be jealous of my beauty" or "don't hate me and,if you try, I'm confident enough not to worry about it"), “Mad cause I’m cuter than the girl that’s with ya” and “all eyes on me when I walk in, no question that this girl’s a 10.” A close fourth might be the line “I know I’m attractive.” Now, normally arrogance is NOT cute but there’s something a little different about this song.
Here we have an attractive black woman not only affirming that she’s beautiful but reveling in it, laughing at it and mocking the fact she ought not be so boastful about it. Furthermore, she’s not saying she’s the first of her kind: as she shifts from one beautiful black woman to the next, she gives a little history lesson, and reminder that our society has encountered black female beauty before and that it’s done so with relish.
Watching this video over and over again reminded me of a talk I went to earlier this semester about Beyonce and Lady Gaga. Yes, Harvard does have a few fun things to offer me every once in a while. On this particular night, the question of the night was whether these two women represented the new faces of feminism. Students were quick to agree that there was an inner feminist in Lady Gaga. As I’ve mentioned before in an earlier post, they all noted that Lady Gaga was a feminist because of her ability to mess with all the rules of proper lady-like etiquette. With this, I wholeheartedly agree.
They all also agreed that in the “Telephone” and “Video Phone” videos, there was nothing particularly feminist about Beyonce’s performance. My heart almost popped out of my chest: I thought I’d finally found people who dug pop culture and who understand it the way I do but I was wrong. If you’ve ever seen the “Telephone” video in which Beyonce poisons her abusive boyfriend or the “Video Phone” video in which men’s heads are transformed into cameras (i.e. in which they embody the problems of Laura Mulvey’s “female gaze”), you might find at least an inkling of feminism in her performance. If these things aren’t the modern, extremist equivalents of bra-burning, I don’t know what is. I’m not directly saying that women should go out and poison those who treat them wrong or that they should look at men as perpetual objectifiers of women…..but those are options.
In any event, the students’ responses during this event frustrated me because I felt they tried to apply the same standards to black and white women and that simply can’t, I mean CANNOT, be done. Black and white women have two very different legacies in American history. While it’s definitely feminist (read: critical of the gender status quo) of Lady Gaga to defy the logic of how blonde artists ought to behave, we have to recognize that she has the flexibility to be a weirdo (and one I adore) because of the fact that she’s white. White women are already assumed to be attractive in Western society. Black women, on the other hand, are still in the position of trying to get their foot in the door on this front. While Hilson notes several famous examples, not enough people have given black women’s beauty due credit overall. Beyonce’s music and her presence as an undeniable sex symbol represents a sort of feminist progress for black women: she invites everyone to consider that black not only can be beautiful but that it IS beautiful.
This message has been lost on plenty of people,though, black men included. Go to any Harvard party on a Saturday night and you’re sure to see every last white girl at a black party pinned up against some black man whether she’s average-looking, elephantine or busted, rusted and disgusted. Beyonce and Keri Hilson, albeit in a pop, silly fashion, de-constructs the notion that being white and female is the only way someone could do the “Pretty Girl Rock.” What’s sad is that it’s taken so long for this to be a popular message that people can rock out to. Or at least one that I can listen to non-stop during reading period. Why aren’t there more songs about how pretty brown skin is? Have we become complacent about reinterating this message since the Civil Rights era has ended? What’s up with that?
In the video, Keri Hilson embodies famous black female figures over the past century. In the 30’s she’s Josephine Baker, in the 40's she's a Dorothy Dandridge type, in the 50’s she’s a Candy Girl ,in the 60’s she’s Diana Ross with The Supremes, in the 70’s she’s either Dina Ross sans the Supremes or maybe she’s Donna Summer, in the 80’s she’s Janet Jackson in her infamous “Rhythm Nation” video, in the 90’s she’s T-Boz from TLC in their “Creep” video, and in the 00’s she’s herself in a t-shirt and jeans. Now tacky as the concept is, it works for me for some reason. Maybe it’s because she fully inhabits the women she imitates or because I have fun trying to discern which female figure she’s embodying at any given moment. Whatever the reason, it’s definitely my new jam.
Actually, I think I do know the reason I adore this song/video so much: the lyrics fit in with a history of black empowerment and the visuals add a unique twist to that notion. If I could list my top three favorite lines in this song, I’d go with the following: “Don’t hate me cause I’m beautiful” (which can either mean "don't be jealous of my beauty" or "don't hate me and,if you try, I'm confident enough not to worry about it"), “Mad cause I’m cuter than the girl that’s with ya” and “all eyes on me when I walk in, no question that this girl’s a 10.” A close fourth might be the line “I know I’m attractive.” Now, normally arrogance is NOT cute but there’s something a little different about this song.
Here we have an attractive black woman not only affirming that she’s beautiful but reveling in it, laughing at it and mocking the fact she ought not be so boastful about it. Furthermore, she’s not saying she’s the first of her kind: as she shifts from one beautiful black woman to the next, she gives a little history lesson, and reminder that our society has encountered black female beauty before and that it’s done so with relish.
Watching this video over and over again reminded me of a talk I went to earlier this semester about Beyonce and Lady Gaga. Yes, Harvard does have a few fun things to offer me every once in a while. On this particular night, the question of the night was whether these two women represented the new faces of feminism. Students were quick to agree that there was an inner feminist in Lady Gaga. As I’ve mentioned before in an earlier post, they all noted that Lady Gaga was a feminist because of her ability to mess with all the rules of proper lady-like etiquette. With this, I wholeheartedly agree.
They all also agreed that in the “Telephone” and “Video Phone” videos, there was nothing particularly feminist about Beyonce’s performance. My heart almost popped out of my chest: I thought I’d finally found people who dug pop culture and who understand it the way I do but I was wrong. If you’ve ever seen the “Telephone” video in which Beyonce poisons her abusive boyfriend or the “Video Phone” video in which men’s heads are transformed into cameras (i.e. in which they embody the problems of Laura Mulvey’s “female gaze”), you might find at least an inkling of feminism in her performance. If these things aren’t the modern, extremist equivalents of bra-burning, I don’t know what is. I’m not directly saying that women should go out and poison those who treat them wrong or that they should look at men as perpetual objectifiers of women…..but those are options.
In any event, the students’ responses during this event frustrated me because I felt they tried to apply the same standards to black and white women and that simply can’t, I mean CANNOT, be done. Black and white women have two very different legacies in American history. While it’s definitely feminist (read: critical of the gender status quo) of Lady Gaga to defy the logic of how blonde artists ought to behave, we have to recognize that she has the flexibility to be a weirdo (and one I adore) because of the fact that she’s white. White women are already assumed to be attractive in Western society. Black women, on the other hand, are still in the position of trying to get their foot in the door on this front. While Hilson notes several famous examples, not enough people have given black women’s beauty due credit overall. Beyonce’s music and her presence as an undeniable sex symbol represents a sort of feminist progress for black women: she invites everyone to consider that black not only can be beautiful but that it IS beautiful.
This message has been lost on plenty of people,though, black men included. Go to any Harvard party on a Saturday night and you’re sure to see every last white girl at a black party pinned up against some black man whether she’s average-looking, elephantine or busted, rusted and disgusted. Beyonce and Keri Hilson, albeit in a pop, silly fashion, de-constructs the notion that being white and female is the only way someone could do the “Pretty Girl Rock.” What’s sad is that it’s taken so long for this to be a popular message that people can rock out to. Or at least one that I can listen to non-stop during reading period. Why aren’t there more songs about how pretty brown skin is? Have we become complacent about reinterating this message since the Civil Rights era has ended? What’s up with that?
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