TabooFall2017.pdf (original) (raw)
Related papers
For Black women in America, the political landscapes of feminism, race, and sexuality have always represented a sensitive balancing act. Considered “other” within the hegemonic structures of white-supremacist patriarchy, Black women have historically confronted and combated a myriad of stereotypes, using the tools afforded to them, as they faced specific challenges that placed them in subordinate position for equity and opportunity. Music, particularly blues, offered a platform unlike any other available as its creation lent itself to the understanding of recurring themes, ideas, and multiple frames of consciousness that existed in both the social and private spheres of politicized Black life. My research makes an intervention by bridging this gap and exploring contemporary manifestations of this legacy. By choosing Diana Ross, Whitney Houston, and Beyoncé, and bringing their art to the forefront of conversation, I am representing almost five decades of musical innovation and creation. With a focus on the role of popular culture in identity politics and cultural formation, I use close readings of their art as well as analysis of music charts, journalism, and reviews, to explore the influence of traditional blues culture, Black feminisms, and contemporary politics on the work produced by the three while providing a frame in which to explore implications of contemporary popular culture on identity formation and representations of racialized womanhood.
Exploring the Uses of the Liberal Arts through Beyoncé’s “Formation”
2019
I first shared this assignment in LaGuardia’s Spring 2017 mini-seminar Introducing Your Discipline in the First Year Seminar. I developed the assignment drawing on both Beyoncé’s 2016 Super Bowl halftime show and her music video “Formation” to initiate a discussion about how the Liberal Arts may inform our readings of popular culture images and performances. Through an analysis of content and form of Beyoncé’s musical performance and the video, students are invited to reflect on the ways in which a Liberal Arts education can contribute to a deeper understanding of the social issues addressed in the work. In our guided discussion, students frequently offer observations on historical and cultural contexts as well as power relations based on race and gender. We then explore the role of a liberal arts education (theatre and performance studies, history, political science, sociology, anthropology, music, etc.) in connecting and deciphering the various discourses that intersect in cultura...
The article examines two recent music videos by Black female artists, Nicki Minaj's Anaconda (2014) and Beyoncé's Formation (2016), and the heated online discussions around them about whether they are feminist or not. The article argues that the epistemic habit of asking this question often works counterproductively and stabilises the boundaries of feminism. Instead, the two music videos are considered as creative works of Black feminist thought, following Patricia Hill Collins (2009). Collins suggests that in order to challenge traditional forms of white male knowledge production, other forms of expression than academic writing should also be considered theory. The key question then becomes: how do Anaconda and Formation participate in, re-imagine and work as Black feminist thought, understood as complex and dynamic? The article outlines three main critiques directed at the videos: selling out to white people and capitalism; promotion of white, heteronormative body ideals while appropriating queer of color culture; and involvement in so-called 'reverse oppression'. Anaconda and Formation can be seen to answer each these critiques respectively, when seen connected to and employing strategies of Black feminist theories of pleasure, queer of color critique, and Black feminist politics of coalition among marginalised subjects.
“Black Parade” Song: How Beyonce Criticized Racism
INTERACTION: Jurnal Pendidikan Bahasa
From time to time, the communication media in order to propose social criticism which is expected to provide better changes are increasingly diverse. One of them is through the delivery of messages in the lyrics of a song. Beyonce is one of the artist who often uses song as a media to propose her social criticism. In the case of the death of George Floyd a black American, murdered by the white Minesotta police (white supremacist) he released an album with one of the song in it entitled "Black Parade" to convey her response to this case. This research aims to reveal the meaning contained in the lyrics of the song. In order to find this meaning, the researchers use a qualitative approach to the type of document studies. There are three findings of meaning implied in the lyrics of this song, there are self-confidence, social criticism (racism) and race emancipation.
Class Formation: Beyoncé in Music Video Production
Beyonce is an image icon who presents three different identities in music videos: the singular self, the hybrid self, and the integrated self. Her representations call attention to class performances of racialized gender and sexuality by Black women. Drawing from hip-hop feminism, the author discusses how the singer's shift in representation signaled a shift in the cultural criticism produced about Beyoncé within a ten-year period.
2019
Throughout history, fictitious constructions of black womanhood have been inherently contradictory and antithetical. Practicing what Gilroy (1993: 100-102) calls an “anti-anti- essentialism”, I argue that while Rihanna and Beyoncé’s “mullatticity” has allowed them to navigate and negotiate a “series of positionalities” (Tate, 2015: 132; Hall, 1993: 112) throughout their careers within popular culture, contemporary media discourses have juxtaposed and dichotomized them along the trajectories nationality, sexuality and class. The constructed Beyoncé/Rihanna juxtaposition serves to recuperate control of their black female identities via rhetorical devices in popular media discourses when they exercise retrievals of personhood — e.g. Rihanna rejecting objectified victim status in the “Bitch Better Have My Money” music video and Beyoncé using her voice to “vindicate her southern black womanhood” in “Bow Down/I Been On” (Bradley, 2013). Neoliberal and postfeminist discourses must re-engineer their narratives along familiar cultural scripts (e.g. virgin/whore dichotomy) in order to recuperate control, in which Beyoncé, Rihanna and their fans are ‘put to work’ through frames of competition which deregulates and dehistoricizes diasporic controlling images of black women (Collins, 2000). Through Critical Discourse Analysis of contemporary media discourses, I analyse this technique of juxtaposition used by media discourses which reproduce antithetical and contradictory constructions of black womanhood.