If you thought my LAST post on sex/feminism/gender/whatever was fragmented, wait till you read THIS one. I did it while talking to about 8 different people and getting up and leaving like 40 times. …Its pretty choppy. But there is some good stuff.

The theoretical assumptions in critical
analysis, the notion of an oppositional gaze need to be put into a wider
historical context. We need to remind ourselves of the socio-historical
contexts. A matrix of power is created by race, gender, class, sexuality,
individualism and capitalist in the image and the reading that we do of
hegemony.

We can be complicit or we can take on this
oppositional gaze. We can keep reading the image as the matrix and accepted
these. We can accept that the white man is better than people of color or we
accept that the man should be the provider.

With the oppositional gaze we recognized that we don’t
feel good about the matrix of hegemony. You reveal how there are power
struggles and inequality and challenges this. The two most important of these
hegemonies is race and gender.

But you can’t look at race without knowing
the history. The impact of the history of slavery can not be underestimated in
the way that it constructs race and gender. Slavery has a specific face in North Americaalthough most of the world is built on it.
The male binary opposition of a strong, civil, rational, patriotic is the black
man.

The female binary opposition of virtuous, motherly, sexual, an example is
the black woman. These binary oppositions are put into power by economic and
political power, and one of these is slavery. These binary oppositions help to
justify the use of slavery; the hierarchy of power gives the strong, rational
and civil man the right to take control of the uncivilized.

One of the things that comes up over and
over is the notion of the rounded bottom of black women and how this is such a
cultural construct. It came from the fact that a South African woman, Khosian (Sarah
Bartman) , came to Europe and she was studied
as a freak and toured naked in museums or cages and cartoons were made of her
which exaggerated her rumpus. “ha, how comical is nature”. This is the kind of
objectification and positions of power that the oppositional gaze has to
resist.

This isn’t just our imagination, there is
an ad for shoes which has a white woman dead in the trunk of a car with a black
man digging her grave. There is the normalization of shoes being sold on a dead
woman, and the black man is being the threat to the women who is dead in the
trunk.

This kind of critique is the basis of the
oppositional gaze. “Black people have rhythm. They are by nature better dancers
and singers.” You are denying their intellect by saying they are by nature
dancers and carefree. They don’t have to pay attention to power and politics.
It trivializes the idea that black people can come together politically or gain
economic power. Slaves were not taught to read or write, they could only
express themselves through music, so this behaviour has historical background
by doesn’t need to be normalized by society.

When the images and bodies are put on
television what is seen? When Eve is on TV you can’t see into her mind. So what
kinds of categories are being supported and what racial stereotypes are being shown?
There may be a feminist message, but the visual images shows the watcher
hegemonic discourse and subjugates black women.

Aggressive sexual explicitness does not
mean female empowerment. Just because a female body is taking on subjectivity
does not mean that this is empowerment as a subject of her own sexuality. When
you read the image of aggressive sexuality through the ‘matrix’ you see they
are just inscribing the hegemonic uses of female body. We’re not used to see
women naked, but once you look past the shock value you’ll find that they’re
not challenging anything but reinscribing these hegemonic ideals.

It doesn’t matter what the message of their
song is. But how are these black artists expressing their sexuality?
Transgressing can be okay, but what are we transgressing in the service of? It
is refreshing to see black women being sexual and powerful in a white woman’s
world but how they are doing this is important to look at. At best the image is
ambiguous. The fact that black female sexuality does not go beyond the chains
of corporate power is understandable. One of the reason they are not
challenging hegemony because they want to be successful. We don’t want to blame
or judge, but we want to see that the only way the image becomes meaningful is
by reading the images through the matrix of hegemony with the oppositional
gaze.

Modifying blackness is used in pop culture
as well. White culture is too boring, we can spice it up by adding black people
and make it all exotic. When you use cultural pieces to spice things up you
erase nuance. Being black in North America is being a part of poverty, part of
lower class and violence, and India has poverty. (I’m more or less refering to when Madonna work the hindi like a fashion statement.) When you adopt these parts of the cultures, you’re insulating
these cultures by taking out the complexity of them. Bits and pieces of sexy
things from other cultures for your own economic gain is flat out insulting.

Challenging the status quo is very
problematic, especially if you want to succeed and even more if you are a black
woman trying so succeed.

The most traumatic part of slavery was the
raw power, the coercive power of whips, torment and torture. These are
continuously pressed onto black women. Regardless of artistic intent this
oppositional gaze are only meaningful because of historical grotesque truths.
We have an obligation to understand that the historical memory affects people
even today. This may be complicated to trace, but we can’t deny the
contemporary policing of African Americans is because of slavery.

The rap music that gets the most news is
the music that is pushing misogyny. We think of rap music as a little third
world country that white people can take out of it what ever they want. There
is extreme violence, misogyny and black hate, young men bought this and this
became the top type of rap. If a black guy knows that he can make millions of
dollar by singing about fucking women and hoes then they’re going to do it.

Anti-Feminist and slavery driven rap makes
the most money. Rap and assault are the defining exchange in black youth this
is a fall out because individuals get wealthy off this. They are making
strategic choices to do this music and this should set off a red light. This is
what the country finds appealing. The white middle class suburban boy wants
music about violence, fucking, degradation, blacks as ‘the other’.

Rap videos have reinscribed the female
body in pornographic imaginary. Rap music and black music uses the black female
body making it fall into overly sexual terms. They are the girls who will do
what the nice clean white girls won’t. This is produced in rap videos.

American culture is obsessed with
transgression. Commodified blackness is controlled and altered by the culture
and consumer to how we’ll accept it. White boys who try and be black are still
afraid of the black guys on the street; blackness is still violent and
animalistic. White culture, however, is too wonder bread. Let’s get some of the
endangered species to be hip, exotic and different so that we can keep our
white people conservative and static.

We’re pretending that we’re going somewhere
that we’re not going.