Movable Type Spring 2017 - Edition 4.2 by MovableType UVA

IDENTITY, AMPLIFIED

MOVABLE TYPE EDITION 4.2 SPRING 2017

IDENTITY, AMPLIFIED

The following pieces explore the ways in which identity is brought to the forefront in film, television, and music. Writers raise questions about topics ranging from the representation of women in contemporary sitcoms to the authenticity of popular hip-hop artists, analyzing how gender and race are presented and amplified through the media.

ANATOMY OF A CLASSIC: WEST SIDE STORY AS A PROJECT OF INSIDIOUS AMERICAN VALUES Cameron Leventen, Class of 2018

CONFINING CONSTRUCTS: ON CHILDISH GAMBINO, AUTHENTICITY, AND BLACK MASCULINITY Juliana McCormick, Class of 2018

A SENSE OF CONTROL IN A WORLD OF CHAOS: ANALYZING THE MALE GAZE AND FEMALE AGENCY IN CLUELESS EricaJoy Oliverio, Class of 2017

RECLAIMING BLACK FEMALE POWER: SELF REFLECTION IN ISSA RAE’S INSECURE Natalie Beam, Class of 2018

REALLY REAL? THE POST- TRUTH AUTHENTICITY OF BEYONCE’S LEMONADE Bailey Jarriel, Class of 2018

EXECUTIVE TEAM CAMILLE SIDES

Executive Editor Media Studies and American Studies Major, Leadership Minor, Class of 2018 Favorite song on Lemonade: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Hold Upâ&#x20AC;? Name your spirit media: Snapchat stories Name a piece of media you think has been revolutionary in conversations of identity: Moonlight

GEORGIA ADAM

Executive Editor Media Studies Major, Class of 2017 Name your spirit media: Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous Last thing you watched on Netflix: Mad Men Name a piece of media you think has been revolutionary in conversations of identity: This American Life

DYLAN BEDSAUL

Assistant Editor Media Studies and American Studies Major, Class of 2018 Name your spirit media: Film reviews on The Onion Last thing you watched on Netflix: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt Name a piece of media you think has been revolutionary in conversations of identity: Moonlight

PEER REVIEWERS: Olivia Cannell, Madeline Speirs, Allison Elder, Janine Docimo, Mehar Virdi 04

ASSISTANT DESIGNER: Madeline Speirs

MARTHA GILL

Designer Media Studies, Class of 2017 Favorite song on Lemonade: “Freedom” Last thing you watched on Netflix: Sherlock Name a piece of media you think has been revolutionary in conversations of identity: Get Out

CARRIE WEST

Submissions Coordinator Media Studies DMP and Politics (Government Track), Class of 2018 Name your spirit media: NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast Last thing you watched on Netflix: The Great British Baking Show Name a piece of media you think has been revolutionary in conversations of identity: Get Out

NATALIE BEAM

Social Media Coordinator Media Studies DMP, French Minor, Class of 2018 Name your spirit media: Girls on HBO Last thing you watched on Netflix: Jiro Dreams of Sushi Name a piece of media you think has been revolutionary in conversations of identity: This American Life podcast

The Executive Team would like to thank our Media Studies Faculty Advisor Professor Jack Hamilton for providing us with guidance and support throughout the semester. 05

West Side Story as a Project of Insidious American Values BY CAMERON LEVENTEN, CLAsS OF 2018

he 1961 musical West Side Story is a film with cultural significance that continues to reverberate through time. It is a piece passed on within families in such a ritualistic way that to partake in its time-honored, collective viewing is as if to access some sort of American, familial tradition. Historically, it is a film that resides within a constellation of other mid-century Hollywood musicals that also revel in the American landscape — romantic works sustained by a whimsical formula that takes pride in their American heritage such as Oklahoma!, Carnival!, and Meet Me in St. Louis, to name a few. And yet among this litany of classics, West Side Story continues to captivate specifically for the way in which it is a distinct aberration from the other studio-era musicals of its time, instead depositing its viewers in a sinister world, replete with abject violence and the certainty of doom. Considering the vast accolades the film received, including 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture, the effect of its various messages cannot be underestimated. Though West Side Story’s narrative is loosely informed by William Shakespeare’s eminent tragedy Romeo and Juliet, it is the way in which the film adapts the starcrossed trope to an American context that reveals its frontier mythology, replete with racist discourse and settler-colonial sentiments.

Viewing the film through both historic and aesthetic lenses, I seek to expose West Side Story as an aperture into nativist American identity. The film positions itself within the

American zeitgeist by participating in a project of racial othering, central to the social primacy of whiteness. Through intra-geographical allusions, the film relocates the western frontier back east to the urban sprawl of New York City, figuring Puerto Rican emigrants as the “internal other” within our borders. In reading the film through its depiction of bodies and spaces, we see reflected the anxieties of a white America attempting to respond to a shifting, “darkening” American body politic, using the theatre of the illusory frontier to communicate the “west side” as a battleground against a savage other. Through this mode of analysis, I attempt to deconstruct the reasons why this film has become central to the American canon, and express why such a work gestures to larger truths about American identity— and therefore appeals to an imagined sense of Americanness that has endured since the nation’s frontier beginnings. West Side Story’s bravura opening sequence establishes a singularly forlorn portrait of New York City, both jarring viewers and forcing them to readapt their preconceived notions of what this urban center truly represents. The camera blatantly violates the typical conventions for establishing a metropolis, upending the notion that this is even a cityscape to begin with and rather some vast and hollow unknown. The sequence commences with a series of aerial shots of the greater Manhattan area, peering down directly from up above. The lofty point of view glides across the city landscape methodically, scanning

Manhattan from a distant and extremely disorienting height. Oddly unsure of where we are at any given moment, the calculated altitude of the camera frustrates the viewer with its baffling subjectivity, enacting us as restless explorers in a foreign land. At such an altitude, the camera strips our ability to discern the organized grid system upon which the city is mapped, concealed by dense masses of buildings, like some impenetrable forest. The thick tangle of wrought iron structures is carved by dark rivers of traffic, flowing streams of cars bisecting the canyon. Shot in early morning, the ambiance of this landscape as some hallowed frontier is heightened by the sheer emptiness of the streets below, completely absent of human bodies, whelming the space in a cold loneliness. Evocative of early Western cinema, a solitary whistled tune accompanies this sweeping series of shots, so subtle in pitch it could even be mistaken for the wind. This soundscape feels reminiscent of the old western film motifs made famous by filmmaker Sergio Leone, linking the city with some inhospitable and unexplored territory. The opening montage serves to captivate and confuse the audience, creating deep dissonance between what is seen and what is sensed. Though it is a city by all conventional markers, there is a brutally quiet presence that lingers in the air, and feeling of emptiness and impenetrability lingering just below — the streets harrowingly empty like some unsettled frontier territory. In effect, the sequence reveals an alternate reality: presenting the city as frontier — a surreal combination of images.

This articulation of urban and wild, a city occupied yet vastly uninhabited, denotes the West side of New York as the site of imminent struggle. This esoteric rendering of New York City — the western side of Manhattan to be precise — allows us to gain insight into the individuals who occupy this space before they are even revealed to us, feasibly frontiersmen who, like their historical/western counterparts, reject bureaucratic identity and are fiercely individualistic. We are driven further into this bizarre domain, the camera guiding us in fact to its epicenter on an empty asphalt playground. It is here that we finally make contact with the inhabitants of this rugged land, our contemporary frontiersmen. Surveying the playground as if it is some sovereign territory, an assemblage of young Anglo-American boys crouch against a broad chainlink fence, looking outwards, cool and calculating. Through a distinct choreography, we quickly come to the understanding that this group of boys comprise the neighborhood’s prevailing gang, “The Jets.” The Jets “constitute an anthology of the Americans” as Latino historian Alberto Sanchez suggests, consisting exclusively of the descendants of white European immigrants.1 He goes on to emphasize that the Jets have an “ideological and political consciousness of their nationality and imperial superiority.”2 Theirs is a socio-political arrogance that leaves no room for other racial groups to display power or in effect be represented — a claim further substantiated by the Jets opening musical sequence, Jet Song in which the boys express their compet-

itive spirit to remain “number one!” Their white identity naturalizes their assumptions of superiority, eliciting not disgust or antipathy from neighbors and passers by, but rather compliance and a certain reticence. They are perceived not as a threat to order but rather exercising a natural restlessness, a spirit that cannot be contained by institutional order and rigor. In such a fashion, they emblematize the “All-American Boy,” a contemporary term that could be seen as a spirited re-fashioning of the rugged frontiersman, revolting against the preconceived establishment. The organization of their gang appears a full time project and activity, rejecting both traditional labor and the adoption of normative social roles in the real world. Rather than be castigated for their refusal to take on jobs or other basic forms of participation in in an urban system, The Jets’ juvenile delinquency is exonerated due to the inherent Americanism of their personas. They are lauded for their solitary behavior, their vested gang redressed as cool, perceived as righteous regulators rather than aggressors against peace, taking care of “their” streets while simultaneously rejecting interventionist institutions, like police forces and high formal educations. The triad of frontier legend is effected with the debut of the Puerto Rican gang, “the Sharks” who demonstrate our nation’s savage others in this historical moment. Following a scene of bombastic choreography displaying their power, the Jets ebb and flow of dance and physicality is suddenly disturbed when Bernardo, the leader of the Sharks forces his body into frame

— stepping in assertively from some off-screen and unanticipated periphery. This moment serves as a simulacrum for the greater settler colonial concept so hyper-present in American society: the essential truth that what we have is an ongoing colonial settler society, where physical space (and the battle over it) is central to this imagined US frontier and concept of America. This process of settler colonialism transforms more into a structure rather than a single historic event, adapting itself over different eras to encompass the varying “outsiders” who must be imperiously suppressed, as they threaten white Anglo power stability. A moral geography and binary is therefore established, where the white Jets embody the geopolitical center and Puerto Ricans remain the perpetual foil, encroaching from the periphery. Through varying discursive modes, the Puerto Ricans’ otherness and therefore inferiority is crystallized, while the social disharmony and logical elimination they engender are impressed upon the audience. The following scenes of the film establish the essential conflict, as we are introduced to more of the Puerto Rican gang and the two crews contend with one another for exclusive control of social-public domains. The bipolarity between the two gangs symbolically materializes in each group’s respective looks and nomenclature. A close reading of their titular identities discloses the inherent hierarchy between both groups: The Jets versus The Sharks. Throughout the film, graffito scrawl in the form of white chalk covers much of this updated frontier, varying between

either reading “THE JETS” or “THE SHARKS.” In one scene, several Puerto Ricans are chasing a member of the Jets, and on a wall in the background appears a drawing of a Shark with a gaping mouth full of sharp, daunting teeth. Such an archetypal representation of ferocity as shark teeth represent the barbaric and criminal potential of Puerto Ricans — ostensibly predisposed to savage instincts and cruelty. To be entitled “Sharks” proves their innate hostility, a threat to the progress of a civilized and humane empire. In opposition, the title “Jets” can be read as a brand encompassing superiority, one of technological excellence. Exacting the advanced power of military/aerial technology, they are steeled against the inhumanity of the savage other. Moreover, the Jets represent an armed force, a militia protecting territory against primitive forces and therefore rightfully enacting violence in the name of justice. In this context, we see an imperialist discourse begin to form, one which consciously favors the amputation of Latinos from the American body politic, and thus favors settler’s complete control of the streets. The Anglo-American’s establishment of command is furthered by the pejorative way in which the Sharks are framed through mise-en-scene. As Sanchez points out, “most of [the Jets] are blonde, strong, dynamic, and healthy, and so embody the ideologeme: ‘All-American Boy.’”3 Soft and inviting with their cherubic features and irrepressible grins, they seem to represent a ready-made Aryan ideal.

Their uniformly white features highlight their parity with hegemony and convey a general harmony amongst themselves. The presentation of their bodies also seems to communicate their docility, with their clothes and streetwear awash in faint palettes: light greens, blues, and yellows — generally warm textures. The Jets are also often seen in broad daylight, bathed in sun and often positioned center-most of frame, foregrounding both their control of space and commanding the attention of the viewer. In this fashion, the Puerto Ricans are depicted in stark opposition: with inkblack hair and sharp, dusky features which rarely elicit a smile, they remain antithetical to a hegemonic vision of America and are therefore ascribed a certain baseness. Their exoticism and otherness is expressed sartorially, as they don rich and intense hues of purple, black and red. These tones become a dark meridian to which their malevolence can be attached. Scenes involving the Sharks occur exclusively under the cloak of night, suffusing their presence with dark shadows and an otherworldly, sinister quality. The physical behavior of the Sharks is also disparate from that of the Jets. The Sharks often perch high above on walls or scale chain link fences, the civil society unable to contain their energetic difference. The cinematography also communicates the Sharks’ villainy. When occupying the same frame, the Puerto Ricans are almost always on the fringes of the shot, pushed to the shadowy corners in a way that

highlights the moral geography of the Sharks as de-centered and Othered. In such a way, the Puerto Ricans are treated as savage intruders, constantly lurking in the shadows waiting to inflict themselves on white America. Puerto Ricans function as savage others whose elimination is validated by their wrongdoing, and at the very least prove a natural disharmony with American ethos, and can be violently acted upon with great justification. The dance scene in the gym is crucial in visualizing this divisive frontier line between the two gangs. The scene is a simulacrum for Victor Villanueva’s “American trope of imagined nationhood...rendering itself as Anglo-American (and Protestant), allowing for a conception of the enemy at the gate, the invading horde.”4 The sharp performative difference between the two quasi-nations prove the impossibility of living harmoniously. The established tones, dancing/body language, and skin color articulate a dichotomy between the two worlds; where the Puerto Ricans are an imposition and assault on the civil, Anglo sensibilities. The futility of any nation-unity is made concrete by the first encounter between Tony and Maria inside the gym. Tony steps out from the Anglo group and towards the dividing line that separates the two gangs. By stepping into this limbo territory, Tony mutates into frontier hero, symbolically mediating the liminal space between civility and savagery. “The camera captures Tony and Maria as they exchange glances, and these glances erase ethnic and racial

differences...duplicated in the camera focus.”5 In that moment, the space and people surrounding them are completely blurred, effaced by the camera. The optics situate the couple on a utopic mental plane, displacing them from their immediate reality. From then on, the film’s narrative seeks to find a place in which their interracial marriage can succeed, clearly not on this frontier and in fact not in this America. Such a realization can only suggest that their relationship will end in tragedy. The project of West Side Story in generating a full-fledged frontier mythology is consummated by the revelation of the New York Police Department as corrupt. Lieutenant Schrank and his crony Officer Krupke are clearly mouthpieces for the regulatory state, and in their defection from any sense of morality we are shown the debasement of the state in its entirety. One evening, having agreed to a “war summit,” both the Sharks and Jets convene after-hours in a neutral zone to discuss the details of their so-called rumble. Soonafter it is decided that the losing party must relinquish their respective territory-claim on the West side, Lieutenant Schrank slithers in. His only presence in the film up until this point has been to trail behind each gang, giving both a verbal slap on the wrist each time tensions visibly rise. However, we sense a critical juncture at this moment, Schrank’s sinister plan revealing itself even as his visage is submerged in shadow. He descends into a rant on his ambition to “clean up the beat” by any means possible,

but by his definition, cleaning is code for blanching. He too, would like to eliminate what he calls the “cockroach ‘Ricans” who have “turned the whole town into a stinking pig sty.” The Lieutenant’s statement indicates abuse of power by an agent of power, where his individual racism reflects the explicit reprobation of the political apparatus. He consciously favors Latino expulsion, announcing that, “If I gotta put up with them, then so do you,” refusing to even entertain the notion of acceptance or integration. To prove his maladaptation, Schrank even provokes the Jets in an attempt to find out where the rumble will take place. He proudly asserts that his only intent in finding out the location of the gang fight is so that he may provide his superiors with intel that will enable his promotion within the task force. Not only is Schrank explicitly racist, he has no interest in establishing peace... just moving up the ladder. Krupke, his oafish second-in-command, engages with the trope of the common “bumbling officer.” His blank stare, gauche accent, and overweight frame all suggest he is helpless as he drags behind Schrank. The Germanic etymology of both the officers’ last names heighten the sense of eurocentric nativism they stand for, searching to restore an imagined anthology of white Americana to power in the ‘Rican-infested space. In addition, the police department is located on New York’s “East side,” substantiating the claim that there is a mythological geography in place; coding east as the incarnation of corrupt institution, and west as political hinterland, and therefore frontier.

The way in which the Jets and the corrupt police judge the Puerto Rican migration to the urban center as an invasion of cockroaches conceive of Puerto Ricans exclusively in their criminal potential. In such a way, the Jets skillfully transfer the issue of deadly weapons onto the Puerto Ricans. Following the war summit, a member of the Jets proclaims, “They might ask for blades, zip guns...but if they say blades, I say blades.” By using such an ideological strategy of transference, it displaces the sense of barbarism exclusively onto the Puerto Rican gang, absolving the Jets of any wrongdoing. In perpetuating stereotypes about Latinos and their naturally debase way of doing things, the Jets feel they have no choice but to match their savagery, absolving them of any atrocities they commit. The Puerto Ricans are defined only through their criminal potentiality, as if the Jets are victims who have no choice but to face them in response. Time and again, the ethnic minority is defined in terms of hatred and violence, while the Anglo-Americans are only forced to respond with equal fury as a means of protection. In this way, the Anglos carefully take no responsibility for their discrimination or racial oppression, hoisting themselves up as champions of righteous violence. To their benefit, the Jets invent and emulate an American innocence, transposing a discourse of violence onto the racial Other. Just before the fight, when Tony the Jet attempts to make peace, Bernardo refuses reconciliation, allowing the blame for all wrongdoing

to easily fall on the Puerto Ricans. The Sharks are effectively framed as agitators of peace. “When Chino first assassinates Tony in revenge for Bernardo’s death...it is then that the Sharks initiate a chain reaction of provocation,” observes media scholar Richie Perez - relieving the Jets of any wrongdoing.6 The perceiving spectator readily dis-identifies with Chino, as he is clearly the one to blame for the tragedy. What is more, Tony’s unconditional love for the saintly Maria allows any murder he commits to be done so with absolution, as his passion vindicates his violence: “When love comes so strong/There’s no right or wrong/Your love is your life!” croons Tony. Even as Tony kills Maria’s brother Bernar-

do, Maria cannot stop adoring Tony, chanting “Te adoro Anton” over and over while rocking his dead body. Tony dies at the center of the playground, the heart of this imagined frontier, and the original site of contention between the two gangs. Holding her shot lover in her arms, Maria summons the imagery of La Pietà: Michelangelo’s famed Renaissance statue depicting the crucified body of Jesus strewn across his mother’s lap. “This image indulges in a Christian cultural repertoire dependent on woman as submissive and suffering mother... and female as bearer of sorrow.”7 Such a moment relies on heavy-handed sentimentalism in order to soften its deeply racist discourse. The scene openly pronounces the catastrophe of miscegenation and impossibility of racial integra-

tion, camouflaging irreparable racial/ cultural difference as “star-crossed.” Through her uncomplicated love, Maria willingly assumes the skin of the noble savage: the idealized Other. She is within, yet apart from her own, a Christian symbol among the mongrels. Rather than indulge in an amoral appetite of violence, she appeals to her more “civil” side, the moral reasoning of love. Uncomplex is her adoration of the white man, unconcerned with the heinous crimes committed against her own. In siding with Tony, Maria agrees with the attempted genocide committed against the Sharks, re-legitimizing a colonial discourse. The Puerto Ricans are seen as an obstruction to the romantic destiny of Tony and Maria, and a larger Anglo manifest destiny of conquering the frontier of the West (side). Victims to their own primitivism, Puerto Ricans appear as an anathema to fate and civil society, and are rendered inherently un-American. Wandering the streets at dusk, several of the Puerto Rican Sharks pass through the night sarcastically whistling the melody to My Country ‘Tis of Thee, mocking nationalist zeal and proving their resistance to assimilation. The sarcastic delivery of the tune by the Sharks is meant to validate an alarmist discourse of immigration; showing Puerto Ricans as these wayfarers who wandered into the US, only to callously mock its patriotic traditions and therefore disturb an Anglo-imagined sense of nationhood. The unintended significance behind this moment has compounded meaning

when looking at historical context, as many of the Sharks were potentially more American than members of the Jets: “The 1917 Jones-Shafroth Act,” writes Victor Villanueva, “which granted Puerto Ricans [US] citizenship, was indeed military in its passage. Two months after the 1917 Jones Act...US Congress pressed eighteen thousand Puerto Ricans into service for World War I.”8 Following the logic of an accurate historic timeline, some elder family members of the Sharks would have likely been drafted to fight for the US during the Great War. With the film’s emergence in 1961, Puerto Ricans had already been US citizens for almost 5 decades, potentially making some of the Sharks more “American” than any Anglo Jets like to be the sons of recent European immigrants during WWII. The score to West Side Story is also relevant here. In America, arguably the musical’s most popular song, Puerto Ricans refer to the US as “America” again and again. Michael Brunet emphasizes that this is a significant fallacy, as “no Puerto Rican ever refers to the United States as ‘America’...as Latin peoples in the Southern Hemisphere believe that they are Americans too, since the New World settled the Antilles more than a century before the English Colony was established in America.”9 West Side Story’s famed composers, Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim also assume that Mexican and Puerto Rican are essentially the same, “channeling the motifs of a Mexican sound rather than a Puerto Rican one for the music”, and in turn flattening the rich

and individual musical tradition of Puerto Rico according to Sanchez.10 With all the Oscar accolades the film received, it succeeds in generating a suspended reality that America continues to conjure — a total erasure of Puerto Rican identity by figuring them as vague pan-latino immigrants. The counter-narrative that West Side Story creates sees the immigrant as part of a large, brown, monolithic bloc. Part of an alarmist threat of a rapidly “browning” US including aliens which seek to overthrow nationalism. This threat underscores how faithful the film was in delivering a subliminal nativist agenda. By erasing the historical present of Puerto Ricans (in the time of the movie), the plot is able to sustain and establish the hazard of the Other. The larger cultural process of frontier mythology and nativism the film partakes in can also be read through the construction of the 1949 original play. Initially titled East Side Story, “the play was supposed to take place in the Lower East Side as a love story between a Jewish girl and an Italian Catholic boy. However, with Puerto Rican immigration, the idea became dated.”11 Arthur Laurents, a key member during script development wrote that “at the time, the papers were full of stories about juvenile delinquents and gangs...I suggested blacks, and then the Puerto Ricans in New York... it started to work...”12 The writers seemed to move comfortably from Jews and Italians to blacks and then finally to Puerto Ricans. Such a script process reveals how ethnic and racial

minorities easily substituted one another, becoming stock symbols of abject poverty and delinquency. By the same token, the scripting process also proves the enduring relevance of a central/periphery binary. In some ways it manages to revive it, understanding that the lore of America is deficient without the menace of the encroaching Other. Through the massive success of West Side Story, a violent American mythology and the negative stereotypes that accompany it are given “eternal life.” This takes on added significance when we consider how those with little to no direct contact with people of color may conceive of them exclusively through their onscreen depictions. America is truly a unique arena that loves to depict an ongoing struggle between white superiority and its corollary, the inferiority of people of color. This struggle is one entrenched in the valuation of our most familiar protagonist: the frontier hero. The American mythology that is carved out to include both institutional corruption and a savage other give our protagonist meaning. So essential to American identity is this triptych: Frontier Hero, Savage Other, and Corrupt Society, that it can mutilate a story of romance into a threatening and bitter commentary on how we respond to those outside the hegemony. In effect, we have an American self-image that prides itself on exclusionary principles and imagined innocence, one with insidious repercussions that continue to be felt today more than ever.

CONFINING CONSTRUCTS

on Childish Gambino, Authenticity, and Black Masculinity

By Juliana McCormick, Class of 2018

fter graduating from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2006, Donald Glover began writing for NBC’s satirical television sitcom 30 Rock, where he’d soon start to — in his words — “poop Emmys.”1 In response to the work’s great success and stability, he left, moving on to focus on stand-up, acting, and music under the alter ego “Childish Gambino.” When asked if people thought his decision to leave 30 Rock was insane, he responded with a resounding “Yeah definitely. My mom more so than anyone.”2 But he proved his mother and fellow doubters wrong by experiencing acclaim across the disciplines. That said, his transition into the world of hip-hop was never seamless, hindered by the genre’s construct of authenticity, a narrow cultural definition of black masculinity, and his own hypocrisy. For years, “realness” ruled hip-hop and an artist’s exposure as inauthentic marked a career’s end. Real was exclusive: to be authentic was to be a black, hyper-masculine, hardened member of the urban poor. Though authenticity has always functioned as a construct — its founding rests in image cultivation and its interpretation varies depending on the receiver — artists deemed “inauthentic” faced significant barriers to entry in the genre. As hip-hop transitioned from a subcul-

ture to the mainstream, space would emerge for those outside of traditional realness. It’s in this space where Glover, a self-described “blerd” (black nerd) who dons short-shorts and owns middle-class roots, can achieve. But all the while he’s been met with mixed reviews. While no longer vital for hip-hop success, respect for traditional authenticity lingers and Glover has lamented its confines in his tracks. In “Outside” he comments on being both “too black for the white kids he went to school with” (“And I hate it there/ they all make fun of my clothes and wanna touch my hair”) and insufficiently black for hip-hop (“Rap is for real blacks”).3 Too, he claims the construct has impacted his success. In “All the Shine” he raps “My n***a like, “I’d get you MTV if I could, man/ But Pitchfork only likes rappers who crazy or hood, man.” These rhymes were met with opposition; Pitchfork critic Ian Cohen claimed that the most “insidious aspect” of Glover was the interpretation of all insults as products of “gangsta rap still being the predominant aesthetic version of hip-hop” in spite of success experienced by Lil B, Main Attrakionz, Curren$y, Kendrick Lamar, Odd Future, Danny Brown, and Das Racis.4 Supporters of traditional authenticity could well take issue with Glover’s stage name. Beyond the flack he’s caught for its origin — the Wu-Tang Name Generator — “Childish Gambino” establishes his music as other.

Though countless rappers utilize aliases, few were known professionally by their real names. Thus, in first acting and writing as Glover, himself, and then creating music as Gambino, his “alter,” he leaves listeners assuming his tracks are devoid of honesty. Hypothetically this shouldn’t much matter, given that Glover strives for difference. But he fails to fully commit, vacillating between presenting as traditionally “real” and as an “outsider.” Heteronormative masculinity dominates American culture and is heightened in hip-hop, where historically demanded authenticity has been synonymous with misogyny. Hyper-masculinity in commercial rap equates to “‘real’ blackness,” resulting in pervasive “claims to dangerous ghetto experience, sexual power, and conspicuous consumption” across the genre.5 This “‘racial’ authenticity” relies upon a “particular version of dominating manhood.”6 Attempting to comply with hip-hop’s traditional notion of the authentic, Glover rampantly sexualizes, fetishizes, and objectifies women throughout his work. In Camp’s “You See Me,” he raps, “And I’m cumming on her face, have I gone too far?/I don’t know, who cares, I don’t love that broad.” Suggesting that it’s acceptable to disregard consent simply because one doesn’t love a sexual partner is inadmissible.7 “Respect for women’s bodies should never be conditional” and Glover’s lack of care perpetuates a culture where female desire and issues of consent

are rendered unimportant.8 “Freaks and Geeks,” from his 2011 extended play EP, features equally problematic lyrics: “F*ck a b*tch to pass the time,” “E.E. cummin’ on her face, now that’s poetry in motion,” and “We the illest, need a nurse, here’s the check, grab your purse/Unless we f*ckin’, then I’ll pay for all the food on the Earth, man.” And in “F*ck it All,” from his 2010 mixtape Culdesac, he paints women as villainous and dishonest, rapping “Ex-girlfriend on my mind, she really f*cked me up/Doing shots of whiskey ‘til my friends are saying that’s enough,” “I used to be a sweet dude, now I’m so angry/Look at what these girls and these fake n****s made me,” and “I’m scared they wanna trap me, these all h*es are all liars/I double bag my sh*t and never cum while I’m inside her.” The aforementioned lyrics came as a shock to the many who hoped that Glover would bring a new voice, given his experience working in the company of inspiring feminists like Tina Fey. Because “Glover didn’t fit the profile of your typical rapper,” his work was “expected to offer different perspectives than mainstream hip-hop”— specifically, a reprieve from the genre’s tired misogyny.9 Instead, Glover rejects hip-hop’s hyper-masculinity where it harms him and preserves it where detrimental for others. In an interview with The Guardian’s Roy Fitzpatrick, Glover complained: “People still call me f****t, because I wear tight jeans and don’t like the stuff black guys are meant to like.” But it’s hard to pity him when he embraces “masculine”

misogyny, labeling women as p*ssies, gold diggers, status symbols — “anything but actual human beings.”10 He consistently conforms to the genre’s constructed masculinity, falling short of the outsider persona he so desperately hopes to present. Glover also attempts realness by using “hard” language. “Critical to claiming ‘real’ black hip-hop identity” is “demonstrating command” over the correct use and pronunciation of the word “n***a” by substituting the sound “ah” for the “hard r.”11 He repeatedly uses this word while calling out those who question his authenticity; for example, in “All the Shine” he raps “N***s keep asking on whether this dude’s for real or not.” Additionally, he uses it to declare dominance — in “Freaks and Geeks” he raps “Told all you n****s I’m in it to win it cause havin’ an Emmy just wasn’t enough” and “I’m dominant, n****s call me f****t cause they closeted.” Because Glover’s discussed his discomfort with the casual use of the n-word publicly, his repeated use of it suggests a calculated attempt to fit the construct of real blackness in hip-hop. These actions may stem from a desire to compensate for a privileged background. In the genre, lingering “pressure to ‘keep it real’” can be attributed to the “encroachment of the music business on the mythically pure music of the urban poor.”12 Hip-hop has historically been a vehicle for combating poverty; Glover acknowledges this, pointing out that as it’s shifted to popular music it’s no longer done

“the thing it was originally set up to do…help young blacks get money.”13 Still, Glover’s anxiety surrounding his socioeconomic background has shined through — evident in contradictory interview responses. To Huffpost Music he suggested he lacked wealth: “People I guess assume, because I’m me... that I’m some black kid who is really lucky and has rich parents. I grew up in Stone Mountain...but even if I was rich…”14 More, he tried to appear “street” in a Hot 97 radio interview: “I go see my grandma in the Bronx. Who lives in a sh*tty neighborhood. My cousin just got shot and stabbed twice hustling there.”15 But with Complex Music he spoke of his distance from the streets (“Not every rapper is from the streets...I can’t tell that story”) and with The Guardian he admitted a comfortable background (referring to himself as a “middle-class black kid”).16 He’s owned neither comfort nor hardship, rewriting his history depending on his mood. So he’s Glover and Gambino, rich and poor, actor and rapper, effeminate and masculine. In the words of Pitchfork Associate Editor Matthew Strauss, he “has always been harder to pin down.”17 And though much of this essay has addressed Glover’s clumsy attempts to mesh with the traditional construct of authenticity, he’s at times stayed valiantly true to himself. Like when he was asked if he was gay during an interview with The Breakfast Club and boldly answered, “Maybe I am…I don’t know. I never tried”— a brave answer given hip-hop’s entrenchment in heteronormativity.18 More,

he’s had fresh moments where he fuses comedy and music; in Sober’s video he embraced his so-called “blerdiness,” dancing dorky and practicing cheesy magic tricks. Ultimately, he’s jumped from successful project to more successful project. At the very least, it says something that he’s devoted the most time to the one that’s been the most harshly received. This demonstrates a genuine love, leaving me inclined to appreciate him. In “Awaken, My Love!” which dropped early December, Glover abandoned rap for psychedelic funk worship. It’s unclear whether this shift was born of his child’s birth or of a realization that his prior work wasn’t cutting it. Regardless, people like it. Pitchfork gave the album a 7.2 out of 10 (strides from Camp’s 1.6), commending Glover for “paying homage to heroes” and hitting “upon some of the genuine emotional connection that [had] often been missing” in previous works.19 Feeling less performative and more soulful, “Awaken, My Love!” suggests a shift in Glover’s maturity. Importantly, he swaps misogyny with awareness; in “Baby Boy,” he acknowledges the perils of being a black man in America with the line “Though these bodies are not our own,” referencing Ta-Nehisi Coates’ novel Between the World and Me. This change is critical in light of recent months, where a vastly different Donald has created an urgent need to fight for social justice. I’m optimistic that Glover’s exhausted his tiresome pursuit of constructed authenticity and will continue using his platform to highlight inequality.

A SENSE OF CONTROL IN

A WORLD OF CHAOS

Analyzing the Male Gaze and Female Agency in Clueless

By EricaJoy Oliverio, Class of 2017

n “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” feminist film critic Laura Mulvey argues that traditional narrative cinema allows spectators to experience two types of pleasure. The first is scopophilic pleasure, or the pleasure in looking at a sexual object, and the second is the pleasure of identifying with the object on the screen. Since the film industry has, historically, been financially and creatively dominated by men, these two types of pleasure have been further gendered with the object of scopophilic pleasure. Often, the love interest is coded as feminine and the object of identification and the protagonist is coded as masculine. When the object of scopophilic pleasure is the female love interest, as is most often the case, both the protagonist and the spectator are encouraged — through the narrative structure and the director’s cinematographic choices — to look at the woman as a sexual object. The protagonist and spectator’s looks are aligned in gazes that are, regardless of the gender of the cinematic audience, definitively male. Thus, both within the narrative and within the theater, pleasure in looking is “split between active/male and passive/female” — men are the active gazers and women are the passive objects of their gaze.1 As passive objects, these female characters do not seek the male gaze but rather are subjected to it:

The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.2

Regardless of their narrative, in both their character design and their cinematographic representation, women are treated as objects to be looked at — as sexual spectacles for the pleasure of the cinematic audience. Part of the traditional spectacle of cinema, then, is the performance of femininity for the scopophilic pleasure of the male characters and the male audience. This is, according to Mulvey, the norm for a medium that is dominated and directed by men. But what happens when a female director is at the helm of a film with a female a protagonist, a film that is intended for a female audience? In the several decades since the publication of “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” dozens of feminist film critics have responded to Mulvey’s thesis. However, some of the best responses to Mulvey’s thesis have come from content creators themselves — from the women who, as marginalized figures working within a medium that has historically objectified their sex, have the opportunity to challenge the traditional tropes and sexist structure of the medium through the content they’re creating. Writer-director Amy Heckerling takes up this immense task in Clueless, her 1995 cult classic adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma.

With Clueless, Heckerling, a female writer-director, presents an adaptation of a female-written text with a female protagonist to a largely female audience. However, instead of ignoring or eliminating the male gaze, Heckerling uses the male gaze for her own gain. In Clueless, Heckerling uses the male gaze not only to challenge the gendered power structure in cinema but also to address male threats to female agency in contemporary society. Cher Horowitz, played by Alicia Silverstone, represents an ideal female beauty. She has blonde hair, blue eyes, and pale skin, she’s naturally thin, and her incredibly fashionable wardrobe — the best that money can buy — serves as a constant visual reminder of her wealth and purchasing power. The characters, camera, and audience love to look at Cher, just as Knightley “love[s] to look at” Emma.3 Cher is not clueless to the effect that she has on her adoring audience. She understands her position as an object of the male gaze, and she uses that understanding to her advantage in her daily interactions with men and her negotiations with authority figures. In the beginning of the film, Cher struts through her high school campus contemplating, in voiceover, her lack of attraction to her male peers: “I don’t know why Dionne’s going out with a high school boy. They’re like dogs. You have to clean them and feed them. They’re just nervous creatures that jump and slobber all over you.”4 As she muses, two male figures — two “dogs” — enter the frame. Their eyes immediately fix on Cher, and they gaze

LET’S DO A MAKEOVER!

at her retreating figure with lewd looks that clearly express their sexual desire. Another man’s eyes dart towards Cher as he skates past on a skateboard, deliberately cutting her off in her path, while a fourth man sidles up to Cher and forces an arm around her shoulders. She immediately pushes him off, and her voiceover switches to dialogue as she exclaims: “Get off of me! As if!”5 Cher is an object of scopophilic pleasure for her male peers, but, while these gazes and physical advances are unsolicited, they are not, entirely, unwanted. One of Cher’s most prized attributes is her popularity. She has crafted and maintained her popularity, in part, by being a coveted yet unat-

tainable paragon of femininity. While Cher assuredly and assertively rejects her male peers’ physical advances, she welcomes their gazes because she can use them to her advantage to achieve one of her primary goals—asserting her dominance in the school’s social scene. Cher’s ability to manipulate the gazes of her male peers for her own advantage is further illustrated in Cher’s early attempts to attract Christian’s attention. In her first attempt, Cher “accidentally” pushes her pink feather pen off her desk. Christian kneels down to grab it, and the camera cuts to a closeup of the fallen pen, which is fore-

grounded by Cher’s shoes. The camera pans up — lingering over the image of Cher’s long, bare legs, delighting in her ideal and perfect representation of femininity. The camera invites the viewer to find scopophilic pleasure in Cher’s appearance, but only because Cher has deliberately invited its gaze.6 Cher purposefully uses the male gaze to advance her own romantic agenda. Later, Cher outlines, in voiceover, her tactics for attracting Christian’s attentions: CHER. I did what any normal girl would do. I sent myself love letters and flowers and candy, just so he’d see how desired I was, in case he didn’t already know. And anything you can do to draw attention to your mouth is good. Also, sometimes you have to show a little skin. This reminds guys of being naked, and then they think of sex.7 Cher, aware of the presence of the male gaze, deliberately directs that gaze to the features of her choices — her mouth and bare shoulders. Although Cher is the object of the gaze, she is also actively directing the gaze. This challenges the active/male and passive/female binary of traditional narrative cinema, and it even aligns Cher with the role of the film director — a role that, as aforementioned, is held by a woman. While Cher’s manipulations of the gaze are, ultimately, fruitless due to Christian’s sexual orientation, her very ability to manipulate the male gaze challenges the traditional power dynamic in narrative cinema by coding Cher as active instead of

passive. Cher also manipulates the male gaze in her negotiations with authority figures by altering her actions and appearance to give herself “an aura of gendered innocence.”8 This is perhaps best illustrated in her interactions with her father. When Cher’s father yells at her about her driving tickets, Cher is able to diffuse the situation by feigning innocence and “cluelessness.” She pretends to be unaware of the first warnings, her white blouse and quizzical brow lend a carefully constructed appearance of innocence, and she uses the word “Daddy” to underscore her childish naiveté to the realities of the adult world. Additionally, in their discussion of Cher’s report card, Cher is able to convert his anger at her subpar academics into praise of her stellar negotiation skills: MEL. You mean to tell me that you argued your way from a C+ to an A-? CHER. Totally based on my powers of persuasion. You proud? MEL. I couldn’t be happier if they were based on real grades.9 In the course of each negotiation, Cher is able to convert her father’s anger into sympathy and even praise. By appealing to the sensibilities of authority figures, she can manipulate their gaze and improve their “image” of her. However, Cher does not possess total control over the male gaze, and Heckerling uses the moments in which

Cher loses this control to begin to address some of the male threats to female agency in contemporary society.10 The first of these moments is Cher’s interactions with Elton. Cher attempts to manipulate Elton’s gaze to make him consider Tai as a potential romantic partner; she gives Tai a makeover, discusses Tai in front of Elton, and even stages situations so that Elton and Tai can interact one on one. However, Elton only has eyes for Cher — a fact that Cher is dangerously clueless too. In every conversation and every setting, Elton keeps his eyes glued to Cher. His obsessive gaze peaks after the Valley party when he insists on seeing Cher home. He physically forces Cher into his car despite her objections and then physically forces himself onto her. Cher immediately and repeatedly objects until she is able to escape the confines of his car. Rejected, he speeds away, leaving Cher alone and abandoned in a parking lot in the middle of nowhere. This abandonment leads to the most threatening scene in the entire film — the scene in which Cher is robbed at gunpoint. Although Heckerling does use this scene as a source of comedy, this scene and Elton’s unwanted advances in the scene prior illustrate incredibly real threats to Cher’s safety and agency. Both Elton and the robber view Cher a commodity that can be used to fix their individual troubles — Elton’s loneliness and the robber’s dire financial straits. Though this image of Cher as a commodity is one that she, perhaps, self-perpetuates through her designer wardrobe, it is an image of herself — an image held by male gazes — that she does not fully control or

comprehend.11 Even Josh, the male hero and love interest of this teenage romance, poses a threat to Cher. Both the source material and the conventions of the romantic comedy genre demand that Clueless end with a marriage or, at the very least, a committed heterosexual coupling. However, such a demand inherently limits and even threatens a female protagonist’s individual agency.12 Josh looks at Cher several times throughout the course of the film, but one of the first looks that suggests the possibility of a courtship narrative between Josh and Cher is when Cher descends the staircase before her date with Christian.13 As she makes her descent, a sweeping orchestral score replaces all of the diegetic noise in film, and the shot of Cher is immediately followed with a reverse shot of the only person in the room who is watching her descent — Josh, his expression clearly one of awe and devotion. The non-diegetic orchestral music fades when Cher breaks Josh’s fantasy by saying Christian’s name instead of his. Clearly upset by Cher’s burgeoning relationship with Christian, Josh turns to Mel, asking him if he is going to let her leave the house dressed “like that.”14 After Cher and Christian leave, Josh decides to follow them to the party, promising Mel as he leaves: “I’ll watch her for you.”15 Josh’s gaze is important in this scene for two reasons. First, it establishes Cher as a figure of scopophilic pleasure in his eyes — as a romantic interest and potential sexual partner instead of an asexual stepsister. Second, it establishes Josh’s jealousy

that Cher isn’t the object of his scopophilic pleasure alone. His “protective” conversation with Mel is actually threatening because it suggests that Cher is already, without her consent, the object of a proprietary male gaze — a gaze that has coded her sexuality as dangerous and that refuses to allow her to make her own decisions. Perhaps the most poignant threat to Cher’s agency, though, involves driving. In one of the first scenes in Clueless, Cher is seen participating in the ultimate act of teenage agency — driving a car. However, subsequently, Cher’s father informs her that, since she only has a permit, she is not allowed drive without a licensed driver. This mandate restricts Cher’s mobility along gender lines because “she relies on getting rides home from parties with men,” because she can only learn how to drive under the watchful gaze of licensed driver Josh, and because her license is dependent on a male driving instructor’s approval.16 Cher is forced into a position of dependence on men, and her illicit driving can be read as “an anarchic self-assertion” of her own female and teenage agency in a limiting patriarchal society.17 Dionne makes an astute comment about her best friend in the opening of the film: “Cher’s main thrill in life is a makeover, okay? It gives her a sense of control in a world of chaos.”18 While makeovers might seem to lend power to the male gaze, for Cher makeovers and the conscious construction of her visual appearance actually function as a means of controlling the male gaze

for her own purposes. However, Heckerling makes a point of acknowledging that Cher’s control of the male gaze is not complete. This balance between Cher’s ability and inability to control the male gaze makes Clueless an adaptation that is incredibly faithful to its source material, Emma: [Austen] grant[s] [her] heroines narrative space for exploring their perception, consciousness, and individuality—a subjectivity that is set against the entrapping and homogenizing female profile dictated by social convention. But [she] does not, according to traditional readings, make them transcend the patriarchal limitations. Austen’s…heroines distinguish themselves by frequently challenging rigid male expectations of female excellence, but in the end cannot help acknowledging the marketability and objectification they undergo.19 Both Cher and Emma, the character in whose image she’s modeled, are marked by a degree of agency, but their agency is not complete because of the patriarchal societies in which they live. Heckerling addresses this tension through the visual medium of cinema by crafting a character that both manipulates and is subject to the “threat” of the male gaze. As Dionne says, Cher loves makeovers — she loves crafting an image — because they give her “a sense of control” and agency that, while not absolute, serves as the primary thrill in her heavily controlled life.

RECLAIMING BLACK

FEMALE POWER Self Reflection In Issa Rae’s Insecure

By Natalie Beam, Class of 2018

cquiring small-screen fame, a sort of fame made somewhat conventional by the ubiquity of reality television, can be as simple as the click of a computer mouse. That is essentially what thrust actress and co-creator of HBO’s Insecure, Issa Rae, into the limelight. Two years ago, HBO hired Rae based on the success of her YouTube series, “The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl,” which she wrote, directed, and starred in.1 Initially inspired by a Clutch Magazine call for a “Black Liz Lemon,” Rae set out to diversify the cultural archetypes reinforced by contemporary media and to transcend the cultural establishment’s expectations about femininity and blackness.2 With that, Insecure joined the impressive ranks of well-established, witty female-driven comedies on HBO, notable less for the novelty of its protagonist’s identity as a woman (audiences had seen that in Sex and the City and Girls), but instead for its protagonist’s identity as a black woman. And not the sort of black

women viewers were already watching in Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder, whose plots center around their black protagonists’ struggles to be taken seriously as black women in their respective fields. Instead, Insecure’s young black female protagonist is notably un-notable. The star of the show, Issa Dee (aptly named after the shows’ creator and the character’s inspiration), is a millennial black woman living in South LA working at a nonprofit. Like a black female Larry David, the character’s utter regular-ness, the absence of any features that distinguish her from someone we might expect to meet in real life, is intentional on Rae’s part. In creating the show, she set out to depict what she knows best — her own life. Rae’s creative mission for her character mirrors that of Girls’ creator Lena Dunham, who, on many occasions, has argued that she didn’t set out to depict anyone’s life but her very own, a mission that has been

seen by critics as problematic for its exclusion of varied racial and sexual representations.3 Dunham’s devoted adherence to her own life and perspective has excluded the possibility of minority representation from the show. Rae’s status as the black female star of Insecure confronts the representational deficiency presented in Girls, but also convolutes the discussion of black female representation and feminism. Rae’s goal with the show was not to speak to and for all black women. She makes it clear when speaking about the show that it was never intended to be read as an embodiment of female black life; it is simply a version of female black life, one rendition of the countless black female identities that deserve to be depicted on television as they appear in real life. Although media producers insist that the mass media are mirrors, reflecting to audiences images of reality, such an assumption is dangerous.4 Susan Douglas argues that the media’s overrepresentation of women as “having made it” is a fantasy of power that misleads audiences into believing that women have achieved gender equality.5 Insecure’s uniquely relatable and down-to-earth black female protagonist runs the risk of provoking audiences to jump to the conclusion that black women have achieved their goals for just representation on television. Rae’s show certainly opens the door for broadening of identities of black women on television, but in no way implies that this black woman, the black woman on Insecure, is the real black woman.

The danger of promulgating an assumption of a generalized black female

identity is one that is likely unavoidable in the early-stage development of proper televisual representation of a minority. Despite such a danger, Dee’s repeated habit of rapping to her own reflection in the mirror, a common thread throughout the first season and one of Dee’s most quirky and endearing tendencies, serves as a framework that represents the black female oppositional gaze and combats and dispels traditional portrayals of black female characters on television.6 The convoluted nature of the show as a text that strives for black female representation in the broader context of female representation on television situates it at a difficult juncture. For this reason, I will focus on the mirror-rapping scenes as a representation of the show’s conscious deviation from traditional depictions of black women on television and as a primary example of the show’s status as a text that moves back and forth between feminism and postfeminism. In striving to uniquely represent the black female protagonist, the show straddles the line between feminism and postfeminism, ultimately positioning Issa Dee as an embodiment of the conflict between the two fields. How do scenes of Issa Dee rapping in the mirror serve to represent a black female oppositional gaze and dispel stereotypes about black females on television? Is the show postfeminist? I engaged in a close reading of Season 1 as new episodes were released over the past month and I focused specifically on scenes throughout the show in which Dee raps to her reflection in the mirror. I looked closely at the portrayal of the protagonist through

“We do more than resist. We create alternative texts that are not solely reactions.”

her unique medium of journaling her thoughts and emotions to herself, analyzing her embodiment of the black female oppositional gaze and the corresponding dismissal of traditional racial stereotypes of black women on television. Dee’s habit of mirror-rapping consistently reappears in all of the episodes, giving the show an underlying journalistic quality and reminding the viewer that the show is meant to be a personal and intimate depiction of the black female protagonist’s life and perspective. I focus on this particular detail about Dee because the repeated depictions of her in various bathrooms unloading her emotions to herself in the form of raps serve as a prime example of the show’s representation of the black female oppositional gaze as described by bell hooks. hooks asserts that historical attempts to repress the black gaze have produced in black film viewers a “rebellious desire, an oppositional gaze,” by which black viewers assert their power to change reality, to

deconstruct a particular presentation of reality in an oppositional manner.8 Such oppositional viewings are provoked by film and television that tend to marginalize black characters or fail to represent them altogether. Robin Means Coleman studies the misrepresentation of black people in film and television, which tend to perpetuate the very power dynamics that hooks discusses, the power dynamics that, time and time again, render the black viewer subordinate.9 On the whole, black Americans are rarely seen in sitcoms, and when they do appear, they are frequently relegated to roles as perpetrators or victims of violent drug-related crimes.10 More specifically, when black female characters appear in the context of the sitcom, they tend to be hyperbolized characters, labeled as loud, unintelligent, and highly sexual.11 Black women then become trapped in televisual representations of themselves, “virtual prisoners,” as Rhonda and Devair Jeffries argue, “to the negative performances

of themselves regardless of the measures they take in in lived experiences to disrupt these common misconceptions.”12 Through varied representation and increased visibility, black women can work to break the negative molds so often perpetuated on television by transforming and nuancing images of themselves on television and critiquing and exposing destructive stereotypes of black women.13 “We do more than resist,” hooks similarly argues of black female spectators and the capacity for resisting negative representations. “We create alternative texts that are not solely reactions.”14 Insecure certainly embodies the mission for increased, varied representation in that it fills a void in representational diversity of black female millennial characters on television today. Insecure, as Rae has repeated in various contexts, was never meant to be a representation of all or even a group of black women. Rather, the show’s protagonist was merely intended to represent Rae’s own, personal, intimate perspective as a contemporary black woman. Still, in creating such a character, Rae performs the exact sort of representational advancement that Jeffries and Jeffries propose.15 These scenes in the bathroom, in which Dee looks at herself and recites raps from her journal, comprise the only instances in the show in which Dee has complete control and freedom to both cast a gaze and receive it. The gaze has become a site of resistance for black people as a form of reclaiming power and asserting agency, and Dee’s performances in front of the mirror are a manifestation of this reclamation,

embodiments of oppositional viewership and black female resistance of the male gaze in practice.16 Her defiant dedication to her own reflection is a reclamation of power from those who traditionally hold the power of the gaze in situations of performance, the overwhelming identity of whom tend to be white males.17 hooks aptly cites the film Passion of Remembrance as a representation of black females’ struggles with the issue of subjectivity. In the film, the two main characters, Louise and Maggie, claim the gaze through an interaction with a mirror. Staring at their reflections, they focus entirely on their own black femaleness and force the viewer to do the same, a dynamic that is similarly presented in Dee’s interactions with mirrors. What is most important in the mirror-rapping scenes is how Dee sees herself, not how others see her. Dee exists in the mirror not as an object of the voyeuristic gaze, but instead as her own spectator, who, after empowering herself by sharing her innermost thoughts and emotions in the intimate confines of the bathroom, and more specifically in the frame of the mirror, is able to confront the public gaze outside.18 Such manipulation of the viewer’s perspective invites the viewer to see the show less as a mirror held up to reflect an unchanging reality, and more as a constitution of a new subject, the continuous discovery of a dynamic and changing reality rather than a rigid, decisive, and unchanging representation of something as it already exists.19 hooks argues that black women see their history as “counter-memory” and use it as a method of understanding the present and inventing the future.20

Taken literally, Dee’s use of rapping specifically as the medium by which she unloads her innermost thoughts can be read as an adoption of a historically black art form and its utilization as a form of mental processing and organization. Quite literally, Dee takes an important component of black history and uses it to explain and express her present situations. Laura Mulvey also utilizes the object of the mirror to support her arguments about the film spectator’s illusion of looking in on a private world.21 She posits that cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking, a wish that is manifested in a child’s psychological development in what is referred to as the “mirror phase.”22 The child recognizes herself in the mirror and experiences joy in imagining that her mirror image is a more complete, more perfect version of her own body.23 Mulvey argues that, in the mirror phase, spurs the love affair between image and self-image, a notion that is certainly represented in Insecure.24 Dee’s performances in front of the mirror serve as an outlet by which she is able to confront and experiment with potential identities, and the interactions represent the conflict between real and imagined self. In one scene in particular in Episode 1, Dee prepares to go to a club with Molly. As she gets ready in her apartment bathroom, she begins to talk to her reflection as if she is talking to a man — Daniel, her ex-boyfriend whom she is anticipating running into at the club. What ensues is a humorously uncomfortable experimentation of varying acts as Dee plays around with identity. She tries several differ-

ent shades of lipstick and, with each, adopts a different character. With a loud, red lipstick she pairs a boisterous, ditzy valley girl accent. With a swipe of black, she becomes an aggressive, overtly forward tough girl, and with a coating of magenta, she takes up a patchy British accent. In the end of the scene, she rolls her eyes and wipes it all off, opting ultimately for her natural lip color and some clear lip balm.25 The scene encompasses hooks’ notion of black female resistance in that Dee makes various stereotypes of the black female evident as potential options by which viewers can choose to see her and then explicitly rejects those projections by opting to go out with no lipstick at all, a physical and figurative rejection of societal restraints placed on women. Not only does she reject lipstick altogether, but she rejects the implications of the lipstick as well, its nature as a representation of oppressive beauty ideals and its infliction of an expected, stereotypical black female identity over her natural self.26 In opting for no lipstick at all, Dee renounces the strict beauty standards represented by the lipstick, a makeup item that typically serves to shift social awareness from women’s competencies to more superficial aspects of their appearance and ultimately reduce them to sex objects,27 while also rejecting the stereotypes of black women that are so frequently played out on television.28 While the rapping in the mirror is undoubtedly an embodiment of the oppositional gaze in practice and a representation of Dee’s seizure of her own identity and rejection of beauty

ideals, it also could be read as an alignment with a form of self-surveillance, a defining characteristic of postfeminism according to Rosalind Gill.29 In effect, the mirror rapping asserts a black female resistance to the white male gaze, but also, by constructing a typically public activity in the context of a self-reflecting mirror, implies a form of self-surveillance. Dee literally performs for herself. In the lipstick scene in particular, Dee spends a significant amount of time debating each shade along with its accompanying silly persona. The frustrated rolling of her eyes and huff of at the end of the scene when she opts for lip balm instead of lipstick indicate that she is not completely satisfied with her final look in the end.30 The scene’s general emphasis on Dee’s scrutiny of her own appearance draws attention to the body, raising questions as to Dee’s opinions of her own physical appearance and how it pertains to her power as a woman. The fact that she spends such a long

period of time figuring out her makeup (or lack thereof) and then appears frustrated with herself before leaving the house implies that Dee may not be completely free from the influences of postfeminism, which heralds femininity as a bodily property.31 Though we see Dee through what is clearly her own perspective given her embarrassing silliness in the privacy of her bathroom, her preoccupation with what her ex-boyfriend will think of her when she sees him later that night reintroduces the power dynamic of the male gaze. Suddenly Dee sees herself as an external, judging male might, which is not such a surprise considering the show’s title.32 However, ultimately, Dee’s rejection of lipstick, despite such thorough self-surveillance, rejects the broader postfeminist notion that femininity is a bodily property rather than a social, structural or psychological one. Therefore, through a manifestation of postfeminism (the self-surveillance) and despite her insecurities, Dee

achieves a feminist ideal. I argue that Insecure, which may on the surface read as a postfeminist text, cannot so easily be pigeonholed into such a category. The show certainly walks the fine line between feminism and postfeminism, a characteristic that Gill might argue makes the show postfeminist given what she calls “the contradictory nature” of postfeminist texts that entangle both feminist and anti-feminist themes within them.33 However, I argue that Insecure’s nature is more complex than a mere intertwining of feminist and anti-feminist ideals that in some way cancel each other out. Postfeminism’s association with a rejection or “othering” of feminism necessarily detaches it from goals of the traditional women’s rights movement; therefore, using the term postfeminism as a blanket label to define a text robs the text of any feminist merit it may have.34 Adhering closely to Kyra Hunting’s arguments about the nature of what she labels “Chick Lit TV,” I propose that Insecure, a text that, at first glance, might appear postfeminist, resists classification as a strictly regressive or strictly progressive text.35 Instead, the show emphasizes dialogue about evolving gender norms while negotiating with elements of earlier feminist movements, a feature of the show that troubles the very definition of postfeminism.36 The show’s presentation of discursive ambiguity, which intellectually provokes viewers to consider, debate, enact, and redefine gender dynamics aligns more closely with Amanda Lotz’s definition of postfeminism, which places an emphasis on a multiplicity of expressions of

activism.37, 38 Insecure seems to exemplify the postfeminist ideals of self-surveillance and empowerment through physical appearance, but it simultaneously deconstructs them by opening a dialogue about the very same ideals. Ultimately, through an analysis of Issa Dee’s mirror-rapping scenes in Insecure, it becomes evident that the show functions as a manifestation of the black female oppositional gaze as outlined by hooks, who is ironically mentioned in Episode 3 (fittingly titled “Racist as F**k). “Bitch, I’ma call bell hooks on you…”39 says one black woman at a party in response to one of her friend’s sexist comments. The verbal hooks reference indicates that hooks’ theoretical arguments are embedded throughout the show, explicitly in the case referenced above, but also more implicitly in the mirror scenes. The scenes also serve to dispel negative stereotypes of black women while simultaneously confronting the show’s identity as feminist or postfeminist, raising questions as to the mutual exclusivity of feminist and postfeminist ideals. While some definitions of postfeminism render it mutually exclusive from feminist goals,40 I align my arguments about the status of Insecure more closely with those of Hunting, who suggests that there is a middle ground, where the line between progression and regression is not so clear.41 Dee’s behavior of self-surveillance can certainly be read as postfeminist, but when she ends up rejecting objectifying beauty standards her behavior comes to a feminist fruition.

Really Real? The Post-Truth Authenticity of Beyoncé’s Lemonade Bailey Jarriel, Class of 2018

REALLY

REAL?

THE POST-TRUTH AUTHENTICITY OF BEYONCEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S LEMONADE By Bailey Jarriel, Class of 2018

he notion of authenticity is more than just a checked box for hip hop artists; it would be more accurate to say that hip hop is essentially authentic. In 1979, hip hop purists cracked down on the Sugar Hill Gang for their use of live drumming in their track “Rapper’s Delight.”1 Even one of the most iconic songs in the history of hip-hop was not exempt from the genre’s golden rule: that background tracks should be sampled and reassembled, not fabricated. It is a rule that most modern emcees abide by, but when broken, artists are quick to call one another out. The undiscerning consumer ear often can’t tell the difference between a drum track made in Garage Band or one painfully gleaned from 40 hours of record diving to find that one immaculate beat. Yet, as with funk and rock and roll, hip hop has been appropriated, knocked off, encroached upon by mass popularity and consumption, and — sometimes with great results — bent, mixed, and commoditized with and by other genres. It’s created a complicated divide, once again split along the lines of authenticity, as the popularity and obscurity of a piece of music become associated with its “realness.” On the other hand, in a culture that is as digitally aware as ever, we find ourselves in a time of heightened consumer obsession with the very

authenticity that was synonymous with hip hop in its late 1970s-roots. Pseudo-hip hop artists find themselves at this crux of commercial authenticity in an unprecedented and conflicting way. Beyoncé’s Lemonade embodies perfectly the feigned realness of modern celebrity culture, with the unshakeable consumer associations of authenticity and hip hop propping up its charade. Though not a hip hop album, it commercializes the very techniques of hip hop that underscore its realness, in effect invalidating the very authenticity it sells itself on. Lemonade debuted exclusively on Tidal as a narrative musical film on April 23, 2016 and shook up the music world somehow even more surprisingly than the 2013 self-named visual album “Beyoncé.” Other artists across genres have experimented with the visual album, in hip hop most notably — Childish Gambino’s Because The Internet, Kanye West’s Runaway, and even R. Kelly’s now parodied-to-death Trapped In A Closet.2 Lemonade was warmly welcomed into this canon; Rolling Stone gave it five stars, remarking, “Lemonade is her most emotionally extreme music, but also her most sonically adventurous.”3 Beyoncé has undoubtedly released other tracks that are closer to the genre of hip hop.

“Partition,” “Drunk In Love feat. Jay Z,” and “Bow Down/I Been On” all feature verses of Bey rapping, while her collabs with other pop/hip hop artists like Nicki Minaj on “Feelin’ Myself” underscore her transition toward a rap identity.4 But not all were quick to laud Queen Bey for her soon-to-besixth album to soar to the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100.5 After receiving backlash for releasing Lemonade on a subscription-only service that her husband co-founded, the album punctuated already tense discussions around the future of streaming services and the ethics of collusion between artists and platforms. The controversial subject matter of the album had people talking, but also called into question the authenticity of releasing an undeniably hype-generating, conversation-starting, intimate look at celebrity lifestyle as what may have simply been an in-depth promotion scheme for Jay Z’s once failing business. Post-Lemonade release, Tidal jumped 148 spots on the top selling app iOS list, surpassing both Pandora and Spotify.6 Many feel this success alone is enough reason to doubt the authenticity of Lemonade. Pitchfork reviews the album’s show of realness that perhaps best summarizes its suspended reality: “For a perfectionist who controls

her image meticulously, Beyoncé is obsessed with the notion of realness. That’s the biggest selling point of an album like Lemonade, but there’s a quality to it that also invites skepticism: That desire to basically art-direct your own sobbing self-portrait to make sure your mascara smears in the most perfectly disheveled way. But who cares what’s ‘real’ when the music delivers a truth you can use.”7 To critics and consumers alike, though, Lemonade gave heartfelt, gut-wrenching lyricism; unprecedented honesty; poetry; celebratory and cross-cultural Black history; stunning visuals; digestible hip-hop; revolutionary collaborations, sampling, and genre bending — its realness was at once the reason we were drawn to it and the reason we empathized with it. It made accessible the inner-workings of the marriage and mind of the indisputable queen of modern feminism and hip hop in a way that both shunned and relied upon the deification of Bey, a God leaning down and granting a glimpse into her foreign and fascinating life. The form, in its use of fundamentally hip hop elements like sampling, historical reference, and honesty, is celebratory and authentic in a way that makes its content seem real. At the

“The form, in its use of fundamentally HIP HOP elements like sampling, historical reference, and HONESTY, is celebratory.” 43

same time, the content and the way it was released demand its listener to question the realness of Beyoncé’s narrative. It is a complicated toying with authenticity that, regardless of the truth behind Lemonade’s narrative, calls into question what we can really believe or truly know about the lives of pop culture icons and artists. Whether drawing in listeners who think they’re getting an inside look into Beyoncé’s marriage or those who are fascinated by the dupe of it all, Lemonade operates on a perversion of authenticity that is essentially inauthentic, a red herring of truthfulness for the sake of sales that rests upon its associations with the genre of hip hop.

Hip hop’s fascination with authenticity has been around since the genesis of the genre in the 1970s, long before realness was a selling point for artists or Beyoncé was claiming it. This introduces the first element of authenticity: a relative level of obscurity of disinterest in popularity. It’s an identity of counterculture that arises largely from the long list of the assimilation of historically black musical genres. In his song “And This Is For…” rapper Murs addresses the complicated identities that artists face as their work becomes mainstream.8 First, he relays the history of this assimilation: “Used to feel I should be silent, I was scared to do this song/But I want everyone aware of what is going on/Yes it is jazz and yes it is the blues/And yes it is the exact same way they did rock.”9 He continues, this time even more impassioned: “But I refuse to watch the same thing happen to hip-hop/I refuse to watch that bullshit.” Hip hop, learn-

ing from the outcomes of other genres before it, essentially defies this appropriation and popularity. Here, we see the second element of authenticity coming into play, as artists sought distinction between the seemingly mutually exclusive “popular” and “real” categories of hip hop. At this border: production. Hip hop is an art form that stubbornly relies on the truth of its production process; it was this reason that something as small as a drum machine left many purists destroying Sugar Hill Gang for the commercialization and phoniness of “Rapper’s Delight.” In this way, hip hop became authentic as a means of “draw[ing] clearly demarcated boundaries around [its] culture,” by ensuring that only

those emcees who created music the hard but right way were able to claim authenticity.10 Thus, our third element of authenticity in hip hop comes into play: struggle. There is something uniquely difficult and poetic about the exclusive use of repurposed music for a track. Rather than taking the easy route of mainstream labels and fake rappers, “real” rappers spent countless hours finding and recombining samples into new amalgamations of musical content. These recombinants invoked far more authentic emotion and history; they were selected from film scores, like Quincy Jones’ “Kitty With a Bent Frame;” from genres like jazz and blues and rock, reminders of

the popularization and degradation of black forms of expression.11 The process of this production served as a reminder for its creators that struggle and adversity create more powerful results, making short-cuts or cheats all the more deplorable. As a genre that arose in the US from the socioeconomic neglect and oppression of black communities like the South Bronx, there is a relatively high expectation that its producers understand what it means to struggle, to hustle, to survive.12 It is a definition best racially supplemented by the words of Professor Mark Neal, who says work that is “deemed more authentically hip-hop” is “by extension, more authentically black.”13 In

defining this characteristically black history of struggle, Professor R.A.T. Judy conceptualizes “n*gga realness,” a concept that is, in its definition, “for African American society. It is an expression of this society’s utterance.”14 This is the reason why Judy believes “rap is obsessed with the question of its historical and ideological significance for African American society.”15 Thus, we see four distinct elements of realness in hip hop arising: those of counterculture, production, struggle, and in some ways, blackness. So where does Beyoncé fit into this realness? In some ways, particularly in her production on Lemonade, she operates essentially as a hip hop artist would. She is credited as the sole executive producer on the piece, and a writer and producer on every single song on the record.16 Her collaboration with industry greats remarks the same authenticity-by-association phenomenon that seems to surround her work with husband Jay Z on songs like “Drunk in Love.” She features Kendrick Lamar on “Freedom” and The Weeknd on “Six Inch.” She shares production credits with “hip hop kingpins” Diplo, Mike Will Made It, and Mike Dean. But Beyoncé also collaborates with producers and artists who far less directly relate to

hip hop: James Blake sings alone on “Forward” before Beyoncé joins him for a haunting refrain in the last few seconds of the song, Jack White shreds on “Don’t Hurt Yourself,” and tracks are produced by genre-defying greats like Ezra Koenig and Dannyboystyles. What all of these big names have in common, though, is that they are all artists born of authenticity. Some are authentic in their closeness to hip hop, others in their closeness to classically assimilated rock and roll, and others in their ability to recombine and transcend genre as hip hop did and continues to do. Hip hop, after all, has always been about operating in a real, abstract space that defies definition, opting instead for truth. And if these collaborations do not make a case enough for seeing Lemonade as new age hip hop, Beyoncé’s orchestration of samples, visual elements, and historical allusion rivals that of producer-rapper fame, Kanye West. Apart from genre-defying writers, Bey samples and credits Animal Collective on “6 Inch;” Father John Misty, Soulja Boy, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs on “Hold Up;” and Led Zeppelin’s “When the Levee Breaks” on “Don’t Hurt Yourself.” She uses spoken word poetry and speeches from black cultural icons as interludes. Somali-British poet Warsan Shire adapts and creates poetry that Beyoncé

“Love it or hate it, Lemonade has both authenticity and the lack therof at the center of its contradictive.” 46

speaks during intermissions in the film; “Don’t Hurt Yourself” samples Malcom X’s iconic “Who Taught You To Hate Yourself?” speech; and in a more intimate move, Jay Z’s grandmother, Hattie White, has her 90th birthday party speech memorialized in the film. “I was served lemons,” she smiles toward the crowd, “but I made lemonade.”17 Finally, in her visual references, Bey harkens to black empowerment and history, especially for women of color. Nigerian-born, Brooklyn-based artist Laolu Senbanjo designs the face paint that Beyoncé and her dancers wear throughout and a black girl squad is assembled including the likes of Serena Williams, Quvenzhané Wallis, Winnie Harlow, Amandla Stenberg, Zendaya, and sister duo Ibey.18, 19 Thus, Beyoncé seems to accomplish at least to some degree all four elements of authenticity in her work. She is executive producer and employs a staggering use of reference and multi-genre, multi-media sampling; she “counters” mainstream music culture by defying genre and sonically morphing rap, R&B, rock, pop, jazz, reggae, and country;she invokes struggle in her own rocky marriage and her husband’s infidelity and in her historical reference to black power movements; and above all else, she celebrates blackness and its history.20

On the other hand, under the lens of commercial success, many of Beyoncé’s claims to authenticity fall short. Despite producing a piece that samples and references hip hop and similarly disenfranchised or appropriated genres, Beyoncé ends up appropriating the genre herself in her claims of authenticity. Though she assembles many rappers and hip hop producers, she herself is not a hip hop artist; she raps only for short interludes on “Hold Up” and “Sorry,” while “Partition,” though rap-heavy, is more of a single-turned-closing credits song in the context of Lemonade’s arc. Despite empathizing with and feeling the struggles of her race, Beyoncé is not a quintessential “South Bronx” artist from the streets, working day to day to make a living.21 She is a pop icon. She will never be able to be a hip hop artist by the most purist of definitions because of the other identities that surpass her blackness: her wealth, her influence, her celebrity, and her mass reception. She is in her essence a commoditized and commercialized realness and blackness. Without being able to separate Beyoncé from her popularity and celebrity, it is nearly impossible to claim her authenticity. However, there is an interesting development in this element of struggle that seems to have surpassed the need for authentic hip

hop to be socioeconomically disenfranchised in some way. After all, artists like Drake and Childish Gambino still find immense applause despite their relatively wealthy or privileged upbringing. Thus, factors like wealth and even writing have taken a backseat to a new kind of realness: the authentic personal struggle and the intimate sharing of this struggle through music, especially in a confessional style.22 In this regard, Beyoncé finds herself among the likes of Frank Ocean and Kanye West, who are both considered revolutionary for their emotional honesty in representing their respective sexuality and mental illness through their music. In this way, her success becomes a sec-

ondary factor to the nondiscriminatory nature of struggle, that it affects us all regardless of our wealth or celebrity. It makes her somehow relatable “Love Drought” a universal portrait of the trials of love. She concedes, “Ten times out of nine I’m only human/Tell me what did I do wrong?”23 In this way, though Beyoncé may be disparaging the legitimacy of her work by using truth as a means of selling music, she is attempting to share a deeply honest narrative, one that marks the change in the way hip hop and authenticity work together. Yet, there is something oddly poetic about the fact that the most powerful moments in the film, the most intimate glimpses into Beyoncé’s

mind and heart, are penned by another woman, Shire. She writes: “My father’s arms around my mother’s neck, fruit too ripe to eat. I think of lovers as trees … growing to and from one another. Searching for the same light.” There is not a hierarchy of factors determining realness in hip hop, nor a real jury for what it means to be “authentic” in the modern landscape of music. With changing politics behind the industry, it may be that no artist of any critical mass will ever be able to perfectly abide by every rule of realness. But perhaps this is the very dou-

ble-edged sword Beyoncé attempted to wield in Lemonade. It is deceptive, celebratory, intimate, historical, integrative, multi-disciplined, engaging, and, perhaps, entirely made up for no other purpose than to sell records. Yet, at the end of the day, Lemonade gets us talking about authenticity in music, and particularly hip hop, in a way that harkens to the late 1970s. Love it or hate it, Lemonade has both authenticity and the lack thereof at the center of its contradictory content and form. And if it’s able to act as the consumer gateway to rap, sharing the beauty of hip hop, black culture and history, marriage, music, and more with the masses, is the sacrifice of realness

WORKS CITED ANATOMY OF A CLASSIC

Sanchez, Alberto Sandoval. “West Side Story: A Puerto Rican Reading of ‘America’” Jump Cut (1995): n. pag. Web. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 Couture, Barbara, Patti Wojahn, and Victor Villanueva. Crossing Borders, Drawing Boundaries: The Rhetoric of Lines across America. Logan: Utah State UP, 2016. Print. 5 Perez, Richie. “From Assimilation to Annihilation: Puerto Rican Images in US Films.” Latin Looks: Images of Latinos and Latinas in US Media 23.4 (1997): 143-65. Web. 6 Perez, 148. 7 Negron-Muntaner, F. “Feeling Pretty: West Side Story and Puerto Rican Identity Discourses.” Social Text 18.2 63 (2000): 83-106. Web. 8 Couture, Wojahn, and Villanueva, Ibid. 9 Brunet, Michel. “Origine Des Hominidés: East Side Story… West Side Story….” Geobios 30 (1997): 82 . Web. 10 Sanchez, Ibid. 11 Palmer, C. “’What Tongue Shall Smooth Thy Name?’ Recent Films of Romeo and Juliet.” The Cambridge Quarterly 32.1 (2003): 65. Web. 12Sanchez, Ibid. 1

Images: (1) “‘West Side Story’ remake might be in the cards for Steven Spielberg.” Digital image. Red Carpet Refs. March 5, 2014. www.redcarpetrefs.com.

(2) “24. West Side Story (1961).” Digital image. Wordpress. September 3, 2014. www.wordpress.com. (3) “Natalie Wood: Su vida y su misteriosa muerte.” Digital image. Globedia. July 22, 2012. www.globedia.com.

CONFINING CONSTRUCTS

Koski, Genevieve. “Donald Glover.” The A.V. Club. March 19, 2010. Accessed December 04, 2016. http:// www.avclub.com/article/donald-glover-39348. 2 Ibid. 3 Fitzpatrick, Rob. “Donald Glover: how Childish Gambino faces down rap stereotypes.” The Guardian. December 08, 2011. Accessed December 04, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/dec/08/ donald-glover-childish-gambino-camp. 4 Cohen, Ian. “Childish Gambino: Camp.” Pitchfork. December 02, 2011. Accessed December 04, 2016. http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16074-camp/. 5 Jeffries, Michael P. “Drake, Childish Gambino, and the Specter of Black Authenticity.” The Atlantic. November 22, 2011. Accessed December 04, 2016. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/11/drake-childish-gambino-and-the-specter-of-black-authenticity/248929/. 6 Ibid. 7 Farro, Katie. “You See Me.” FEM. December 04, 2016. Accessed March 03, 2017. http://femmagazine. com/you-see-me-childish-gambinos-racially-fetishizing-lyrics-at-ucla/. 8 Ibid. 9 Pate, Caroline. “Here’s Why People Think Donald Glover Hates Women.” Bustle. May 12, 2014. Ac1

cessed December 04, 2016. https://www.bustle.com/ articles/6971-heres-why-people-think-donald-gloverhates-women. 10 Ibid 11 Jeffries, Michael P. “Drake, Childish Gambino, and the Specter of Black Authenticity.” The Atlantic. November 22, 2011. Accessed December 04, 2016. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/11/drake-childish-gambino-and-the-specter-of-black-authenticity/248929/. 12 Ibid. 13 Schumacher, Stefan. “The Racial Politics of Childish Gambino.” Medium. December 04, 2014. Accessed December 04, 2016. https://medium.com/ cuepoint/the-racial-politics-of-childish-gambino-baf1f79c1961. 14 Ostroff, Joshua. “Donald Glover (Childish Gambino) On Being Racially Profiled, Seeing Someone Killed And Trayvon Martin.” The Huffington Post. October 30, 2013. Accessed December 04, 2016. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/10/30/donald-glover-childish-gambino-race_n_4174682.html. 15 Steiner, Amanda Michelle. “Donald Glover Throws Shade At Drake: ‘I Really Grew Up In The Hood’.” Hollywood Life. September 10, 2014. Accessed December 04, 2016. 16 Fitzpatrick, Rob. “Donald Glover: how Childish Gambino faces down rap stereotypes.” The Guardian. December 08, 2011. Accessed December 04, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/dec/08/ donald-glover-childish-gambino-camp. 17 Strauss, Matthew. “Childish Gambino: ‘Awaken, My Love.’” Pitchfork. December 06, 2016. Accessed December 06, 2016. http://pitchfork.com/reviews/ albums/22671-awaken-my-love/. 18 Schumacher, Stefan. “The Racial Politics of Childish Gambino.” Medium. December 04, 2014. Accessed December 04, 2016. https://medium.com/ cuepoint/the-racial-politics-of-childish-gambino-baf1f79c1961. 19 Strauss, Matthew. “Childish Gambino: ‘Awaken, My Love.’” Pitchfork. December 06, 2016. Accessed December 06, 2016. http://pitchfork.com/reviews/ albums/22671-awaken-my-love/. Images: (1) “Childish Gambino Discography and Downloads.’” Digital image. Forever Childish. 2015. www. foreverchildish.com/music (2) “Childish Gambino Announces ‘Pharos’ Shows for Upcoming Album, Adds Additional Shows After Tickets Sell Out’” Digital image. Billboard. June 6, 2016. www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hiphop/7408987/childish-gambino-pharos-shows-joshuatree-new-album

A SENSE OF CONTROL IN A WORLD OF CHAOS

Mulvey Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Visual and Other Pleasures, 19. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989. 2 Ibid. 3 Austen Jane. Emma, 29. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2012. 4 Clueless. Directed by Amy Heckerling. Hollywood, CA: Paramount Pictures, 1995. 5 Ibid. 6 This invitation to look is apparent even in the opening sequence of the film when the audience sees Cher dressed in her underwear as she prepares for school. This intimate image immediately sexualizes Cher and invites the audience to examine her figure. Cher seconds this invitation when she addresses the viewer via voiceover through the use of the second person pronoun “you.” This suggests that she is aware of and even comfortable with the viewer’s presence. 7 Clueless. 8 Wald Gayle. “Clueless in the Neocolonial World Order.” Camera Obscura 14, no. 42 (1999): 65. 9 Clueless. 10 For example, she cannot fully control Christian’s gaze because of his sexual orientation. 11 The role of commodity culture in Clueless is one that several academics and critics have touched upon in their responses to the film. Wald argues that the film frames Cher within a world of commodities. She is so assimilated with this world that she if often viewed as a commodity herself, especially by teenagers like Elton who have been raised with a materialistic mindset. 12 Wald suggests that while Cher uses her cluelessness to innocently gain power, it also impedes the marriage plot. Cher is clueless to her feelings for Josh, but when she becomes aware of them, she loses any ability she may have had to construct an ending alternative to the ending of romantic coupling that the genre demands. In effect, Cher’s cluelessness is, at times, the very thing that gives her agency and power; when she loses it, she loses her ability to craft an ending separate from the typical ending of the “marriage plot.” 13 It is perhaps important to note that Cher’s outfit in this scene is sexual because of its tightness and shortness but also virginally innocent because of its pure white color. 14 Clueless. 15 Ibid. 16 Thornell Kristel. “Film Adaptations of Emma between Agency and Submission.” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 43, no. 3 1

(2010): 5. 17 Ibid. Thornell notes that this isolation that Cher feels due to her lack of mobility reflects “the isolation of Austen’s Emma, [which is] a function of her sex and membership in the middling classes.” 18 Clueless. 19 Despotopoulou Anna. “Girls on Film: Postmodern Renderings of Jane Austen and Henry James.” The Yearbook of English Studies 36, no. 1 (2006): 117-8. Images: (1) “Clueless costume designer on Cher’s yellow suit: It was so important to choose the first look.’” Digital image. Entertainment Weekly. July 17, 2015.http:// ew.com/article/2015/07/17/clueless-costume-designer-mona-may-chers-yellow-suit/ (2) “Cher Horowitz.” Digital image. Coveteur. Accessed March 26, 2017. www.coveteur.com. (3) “10 Beauty Lessons We Learned From Clueless.” Digital image. Harper’s Bazaar. July 19, 2016. www. harpersbazaar.com.

RECLAIMING BLACK FEMALE POWER

Lynn Respers France. “Issa Rae Goes from ‘Awkward’ to ‘Insecure,’” CNN, Cable News Network, October 20, 2016, http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/07/ entertainment/issa-rae-insecure-hbo/ 2 “Meet the Black _________,” New Republic, February 9, 2015, Accessed October 31, 2016, https:// newrepublic.com/article/121020/issa-raes-misadventures-awkward-black-girl-reveals-real-rae. 3 Terry Gross, “Lena Dunham Addresses Criticism Aimed at ‘Girls,’” Fresh Air, NPR, May 7, 2012, http:// www.npr.org/2012/05/07/152183865/lena-dunham-addresses-criticism-aimed-at-girls 4 Susan J. Douglas, Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism’s Work is Done (New York, NY: Times, 2010), 18. 5 Ibid, 5. 6 Devair Jeffries and Rhonda Jeffries, “Mentoring and Mothering Black Femininity in the Academy: An Exploration of Body, Voice and Image through Black Female Characters,” Western Journal of Black Studies 39.2 (2015): 125, https://content. ebscohost.com/ContentServer.asp?EbscoContent=dGJyMNHr7ESep7A4y9fwOLCmr0%2BeprZSsqy4SLWWxWXS&ContentCustomer=dGJyMPGpsUm0qq5NuePfgeyx847f1d%2BI5wAA&T=P&P=AN&S=R&D=hlh&K=109380556 7 bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,” Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston, MA: South End, 1992), 308. 8 Ibid, 308. 9 Robin Means Coleman, African American Viewers 1

and the Black Situation Comedy: Situating Racial Humor (New York, NY: Garland, 1998), 2. 10 Coleman, African American Viewers, 5. 11 Jeffries and Jeffries, “Mentoring and Mothering,” 125. 12 Ibid, 126. 13 Ibid,131. 14 hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze, 317. 15 Jeffries and Jeffries, “Mentoring and Mothering,” 131. 16 hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze, 309. 17 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Feminist Film Theory: A Reader, (New York: New York UP, 1999), 59. 18 hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze, 319. 19 Ibid. 20 hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze, 319. 21 Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure,” 61. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid. 25 Issa Rae and Larry Wilmore, “Insecure as F**k,” Insecure, Dir. Melina Matsoukas (2016; HBO.), Television. 26 Gordon B. Forbes, Linda L. Collinsworth, Rebecca L. Jobe, Kristen D. Braun, and Leslie M. Wise, “Sexism, Hostility toward Women, and Endorsement of Beauty Ideals and Practices: Are Beauty Ideals Associated with Oppressive Beliefs?” Sex Roles, 56.5 (2007): 265-73, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-006-9161-5. 27 Ibid. 28 Jeffries and Jeffries, “Mentoring and Mothering,” 131. 29 Rosalind Gill, “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility,” European Journal of Cultural Studies, 10 (2007): 155. DOI: 10.1177/1367549407075898. 30 Rae, “Insecure as F**k.” 31 Gill, “Postfeminist Media Culture,” 150. 32 Ibid, 151. 33 Gill, “Postfeminist Media Culture,” 149. 34 Kyra Hunting, “Women Talk: Chick Lit TV and the Dialogues of Feminism.” Communication Review, 15.3 (2012): 188, DOI: 10.1080/10714421.2012.702002. 35 Ibid. 36 Ibid, 188, 190. 37 Ibid, 195. 38 Amanda Lotz, Redesigning Women: Television after the Network Era, (Urbana: U of Illinois, 2006), 21. 39 Dayna Lynne North, “Racist as F**k.” Insecure. Dir. Melina Matsoukas (2016; HBO), Television. 40 Gill, “Postfeminist Media Culture,” 149.

Hunting, “Women Talk,” 188.

Images: (1) “Issa Rae’s Insecure issa Mirror.’” Digital image. Opus Mag Online. Nov. 28, 2016. http://opusmagonline.com/features/insecureseason1

REALLY REAL?

Hamilton, John. “Authenticity.” Speech, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, September 2016. 2 Sommers, Kat. “The Rise of the Visual Album: How ‘Lemonade’ Stacks Up.” Anglophenia. Last modified April 29, 2016. Accessed March 15, 2017. http:// www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2016/04/the-riseof-the-visual-album-how-lemonade-stacks-up. 3 Sheffield, Rob. “Beyoncé: Lemonade.” Rolling Stone. Last modified April 25, 2016. Accessed March 15, 2017. 17. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/ albumreviews/beyonce-lemonade-20160425. 4 Newman, Jason. “Beyoncé Goes Gangsta Rap on New Track ‘Bow Down/I Been On.” Fuse. Last modified March 18, 2013. Accessed March 15, 2017. http://www.fuse.tv/2013/03/beyonce-bow-down-ibeen-on. 5 Mendizabal, Amaya. “All 12 of Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’ Tracks Debut on Hot 100.” Billboard. Last modified May 2, 2016. Accessed March 15, 2017. http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/ chart-beat/7350443/beyonce-lemonade-tracks-debut-hot-100. 6 Ingham, Tim. “Beyoncé’s Lemonade Is a Piracy Smash- But It’s Taken Tidal To No. 1.” Music Business Worldwide. Last modified April 24, 2016. Accessed March 15, 2017. http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/beyonces-lemonade-is-a-piracysmash-but-its-taken-tidal-to-no-1/. 7 Mapes, Jillian. “Beyoncé: Lemonade Album Review.” Pitchfork. Last modified April 26, 2016. Accessed March 17, 2017. http://pitchfork.com/reviews/ albums/21867-lemonade/. 8 Williams, Jonathan D. “’Tha Realness’: In Search of Hip-Hop Authenticity.” University of Pennsylvania Scholarly Commons. Last modified December 14, 2007. Accessed March 17, 2017. http://repository. upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1093&context=curej. 9 And This Is For.... Definitive Jux, 2004, compact disc. 10 McLeod, Kembrew. “Authenticity Within Hip-Hop and Other Cultures Threatened with Assimilation.” Journal of Communication 49, no. 4 (1999): 137. 11 Hamilton, Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Neal, Mark Anthony. “No Time for Fake Niggas: Hip-Hop Culture and the Authenticity Debates.” In 1

That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader, edited by Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal, 58. New York: Routledge, 2008 14 Judy, R.A.T. “On the Question of Nigga Authenticity.” Boundary 2, no. 3 (1994): 216. 15 Judy, Ibid. 16 Aswad, Jem. “Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’: A Deep Dive Into the Star-Studded Album’s Credits.” Billboard. Last modified April 24, 2016. Accessed March 17, 2017. http://www.billboard.com/articles/ news/7341787/beyonce-lemonade-album-features-the-weeknd-diplo-kendrick-lamar-more. 17 Lemonade. Performed by Beyoncé. Tidal, 2016. Accessed March 17, 2017. http://beyonce.tidal.com 18 Kim, Michelle. “Meet The Nigerian Artist Behind the Body Art in Beyoncé’s Lemonade.” Last modified April 25, 2016. http://www.thefader.com/2016/04/24/ meet-laolu-senbanjo-beyonce-lemonade. 19 Dunlap, Kelly. “19 Surprising Facts About Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade.’” Buzzfeed. Last modified April 25, 2016. Accessed March 17, 2017. http://www. buzzfeed.com/kelleydunlap/things-you-didnt-realize-about-beyonce-lemonade?utm_term=.gtgnN4EB2#.qrQl83EG5. 22 Lindner, Emilee. “What Does Beyoncé’s Lemonade Tell Us About Genre?” Fuse. Last modified April 26, 2016. Accessed March 17, 2017. http://www.fuse. tv/2016/04/beyonce-genre-lemonade. 21 Hamilton, Ibid. 22 Ellis, Stacy-Ann. “Mr. Sensitivity and Rap’s Emotional Core.” The Root. Last modified September 26, 2012. Accessed March 17, 2017. http://www.theroot. com/articles/culture/2012/09/emotional_rappers_sensitivity_in_hiphop/. 23 Judy, Ibid. 24 Lemonade, Ibid. Images: (1) “How Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’ Exposes Inner Lives of Black Women.” Digital Image. Rolling Stone. April 28, 2016. http://www.rollingstone.com/ music/news/how-beyonces-lemonade-exposes-inner-lives-of-black-women-20160428 (2) “Get What’s Mine: “Formation” Changes the Way We Listen to Beyonce Forever.” Digital Image. VICE. Feb. 8, 2016. https://noisey.vice.com/en_uk/article/beyonce-formation-op-ed-super-bowl-performance-2016 (3) “Here’s What Critics Are Saying About Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’ Album.’” Digital image. High Snobiety. April 27, 2016. http://www.highsnobiety. com/2016/04/27/beyonce-lemonade-album-review/

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