Turkish Skies

One of my most favorite female artists.  I’m inspired by dj lynnee denise’s work across all platforms. By the content, how she presents it, and what she decides is possible. Enjoy and visit her page to listen to some of her brilliant mixes.

 

And the Beat Goes On: Chris Brown, Too $hort, and the Disposable Conscience of Consumer Society (repost)

by Lisa Guerrero, reposted from NewBlackMan

Last week while still reeling from the controversy put into motion by Too $hort’s avuncular primer for young black boys on how to violate young black girls, people momentarily paused to consider, and by “consider,” I mean “rush to judgment,” on Rihanna’s decision to collaborate with Chris Brown, her former abuser, on a remix of her song “Birthday Cake.”

As one of my friends on Facebook put it:  “Rihanna needs to sit down and have a talk with Tina Turner.”  I can’t say that I necessarily disagree.  The idea that a woman would choose to invite her abuser back again to play a role in her life after having broken free from his abuse is seemingly unfathomable to many people, men and women alike.  What seems ungenerous in many of the criticisms of Rihanna circulating around this decision is that she isn’t the first woman to make such a choice, and sadly, won’t be the last.  The cycle of codependency isn’t one that is neatly broken, not even by the act of the dissolution of the relationship, which is “getting away” only in terms of physical proximity.

I can say to myself that I would never make such an obviously silly choice, but then, it’s only “obviously silly” to me because I’m not in that situation. However, what I do know of Rihanna’s situation, and why I feel that her decision is more complicated than people assume that it is, is this: much of the rest of the world seems to have forgiven Chris Brown his trespasses, if they ever held him accountable in the first place.  So why is it the sole responsibility of Rihanna to withhold her forgiveness and force his accountability?  Why should she be anymore forceful than a legal system that apparently felt that his domestic violence merited no jail time?  Or a fan base that apparently feels his talent far outweighs a little thing like beating his girlfriend?

Yes, she is his victim.  Yet she is no less his victim than she is the victim of a society who so cavalierly and quite systematically ignores, dismisses, and erases the violence enacted by the day, the hour, the minute against black girls and women.  Chris Brown violated her.  But she has since been continually violated ideologically and discursively by an excessively self-centered consumer public who has never demonstrated a sustained outrage against Chris Brown long enough to stop buying his albums, but has enough outrage to go around for Rihanna that she would ever choose to collaborate with him.

This latest flap over Rihanna and Chris Brown comes on the heels of the furious flurry of ever more outrageous manifestations of a problematic performative black masculinity that anchors itself in the unapologetic denigration of, and dominance over women generally, and black women in particular.  Let me say upfront that this critique is not a new one.  The ongoing critical narrative around the misogyny and homophobia of, for example, the singular arena of hip hop is, on its own, a media and scholarly cottage industry, and not without good reason.  But my interest here is not necessarily to rehash this well-trodden and well-deserved critique of commodifiable black masculinity.  My interest is in thinking critically about the relationship between the discursive moves within media culture that work to serve consumerist desires while ideologically and materially sacrificing the safety and subjectivity of black women.

Read the rest at NewBlackMan.

 

Kenya’s Workspace

You need to watch this. Some of the videos are chilling, others are funny. (And maybe chillingly funny?) You can even create your own online art gallery experience and play a few of them at the same time to find out what the viral expressions of female identity look and sound like in unison.

(thank me later)

 

Teaching White Boys to Dance and Other Solutions to the Black Marriage Crisis (repost)

This was, hands down, one of the most brilliant, spot-on, and engaging pieces I’ve seen on a topic that happens to be the flavor of the moment. (Quickly being surpassed by the Sh*t _______ Say explosion) Read on and check out the Crunk Feminist Collective’s site.

This morning, while reading Kate Weigand’s 2001 book Red Feminism in preparation for a book I’m writing, I ran across a fascinating story in her chapter on Black women’s participation in the Communist Party.

In 1934, Black female communist organizers asked the Party leadership to outlaw interracial marriages in the Party ranks. Many of the Black men in the Party had married or begun dating white women, and white men were not showing comparable interest in Black women, which severely restricted Black women’s dating options.

In response, the Party asked a Black leader named Abner Berry to deal “with the problem.” Berry, himself married to a white woman, was staunchly opposed to outlawing interracial marriages on the grounds that this move would be “counterrevolutionary,” but he did institute some sessions on Black women’s triple oppression of race, class, and gender. Apparently, they also tried to teach some of the white male communists how to dance so they would be more comfortable approaching Black women at parties. Seriously. Lol.

There are a few morals in this somewhat comic story:

At least the CP had enough sense to talk about the social causes of Black women’s singleness, rather than blaming the sisters for being loud, attitudinal, too independent and unattractive. (Perhaps some preachers, comedians, and alleged scholars could get a clue; and perhaps some sisters should stop blaming themselves for a problem that began before we got here and will probably outlast us all.)

Continue reading at Crunk Feminist Collective

 

I can’t cut them…yet

Every year, I swear I’m cutting my hair. Last year, when I turned 30, I thought it was finally going to happen. I was wrong. The academic reason why I can’t quite pull it off has to do with all sorts of things like femininity, desirability blah blah. And the goofier reason is that I keep finding some kind of yummy product that makes washing, twisting, and caring for my dreds fun again. While shooting for my current project about black women and hair, (go figure), one of my subjects put me onto Oyin Handmade.

You get Oyin’s goodies a couple of weeks later in the mail. So, it feels like Christmas when they arrive! How am I supposed to cut my hair with fun products like these:

So…yeah. Maybe I’ll cut them six months from now. Emphasis on maybe.

 

On John Mayer (And Apologies That Don’t Really Offer Clarity)

Upon a few hours of trying to process reports of offensive remarks that popular musician John Mayer made in the current issue of Playboy magazine, I tried coming up with a few clever Facebook status-updates, my favorite being that Mayer sorely needed a Racism and Sexism course. (I didn’t publish that, but I still think it’s true) Though a pornographic magazine is the (very overlooked) context for all of his statements about who he’s had sex with, how it was, and who he won’t–there remain key issues in this media event.

Jessica Simpson

Superficially, it’s another example of a celebrity making a “gaffe” on race, (which never gets old) getting caught up in it, “apologizing” for it, melting down, having a moment of “clarity“.

But on another level, it’s a particularly vivid example of the freedom, if you will, afforded him, as young, white, heterosexual, and male, to freely espouse his sexual proclivities, debase women period, race be damned, claim identification with black people, promptly get hated on, have a breakdown, and in the end, remind us that he “just wants to play his guitar.” And in a span of 48 hours, no less.

Kerry Washington

The racism of his sexual aversion to black women, I’d argue, is coupled with the sexist entitlement abound in his retelling of the sexual details of his relationships with Jessica Simpson and Jennifer Aniston, who as blonde-haired white women, already receive a particularly stifling type of media treatment. That entitlement helps explain why he was able to candidly explain the types of black women he’s attracted to, and even debase women, like actor Kerry Washington, whom he’s never had a sexual relationship with.

Without even reading his entire Playboy interview, the widely-publicized excerpts are textbook examples of intersections of racism, sexism and male domination–comparing his penis to white supremacist David Duke, crude as it is, is simultaneously as clear as many of Mayer’s most popular songs.

Global media culture has long thrived off of narrowly defined notions of who’s racist (white men only) and who’s sexist (black men only) vis a vis characters like a Don Imus or Ludacris. So when Mayer, someone outside of those types, who has built a career and image solidly as a non-threatening and introspective artist, acts out, we take notice. For those paying any attention, it’s an important moment that should have us recognize the myriad of ways that domination can be made visible.

Part of what’s critical about Mayer’s moment is that even after speaking as he did, he will be allowed to use that image as his cover. This is where nearly all public “apologies” are rendered useless–as a comedian once remarked, “He’s just sorry he got caught.” What’s really evident is that the entitlement of racism and sexism will enable John Mayer to “breakdown”, come to “terms” with his transgressions and return to modest guitar-playing.

But will Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Aniston, and Kerry Washington be allowed a (public) breakdown? I doubt it.

 

Good Hair: About Us but Not For Us

Documentary films are often powerful in doing what typical mainstream media outfits can’t: accidentally reveal truths. There’s a moment in comedian Chris Rock’s Good Hair when a group of young black women discuss the realities of having straightened hair in order to secure work. When her friends express their concern for her, the lone woman with naturally styled hair has a look on her face that says more about the underlying tensions of the issue of black women and hair than do the other two hours of film. But before the viewer can fully engage in the moment, there’s a cut.

The filmic cut is emblematic of a truth evident in both the form and content of Good Hair: a practice of simultaneously exploiting and promoting black women all for a bottom line—be it in the male-dominated black female hair care industry or in a mainstream film about black women that doesn’t have women of any race in principal production roles.

At the root of the colorful, fast-paced filmic spectacle that is Good Hair belies a $9 billion dollar global industry in which men, whether they are in the U.S. or Asia, control production, distribution, and ultimately are the major profiteers of black female hair products. Female workers in Asia comb through the hair, Asian female clerks in the U.S. sell it, and black women pay upwards of $1,000 for hair weave. So when black (male) business owners complain about Asian merchants impeding their “right” to control the industry, one wonders if it matters who’s in control when all scenarios leave black women as the economically exploited.

How does this relate to the production choices in Good Hair? Consider an indie film about the same topic–In Our Heads About Our Hair, a lower budget, work in progress doc from first time filmmaker Anu Prestonia. Within a few minutes of In Our Heads, black female scholar Farah Jasmine Griffin offers a succinct historical context to black women and hair care. Griffin even says the R-word: racism. (Rock has Al Sharpton and Paul Mooney offer up snappier analyses) While Rock relies on a white male scientist to explain the health impact of sodium hydroxide-laden hair perms, Anu actually finds a black woman, environmental activist Majora Carter, to discuss the impact of those compounds on the earth.

You’d need an entirely separate essay to review the misogyny inherent in the level of airtime afforded to the many men in the film (rapper Ice-T being the most prominent) who joke about the multiple costs of love and sex with women who straighten or weave in their hair. In Our Heads provides a rich example of the black female subjectivity that should rightfully be central in a film about black women and hair. And it’s not coincidental that Prestonia worked with a largely female film crew.

Any successes that Good Hair may boast must be underscored by the fact that currently, a famous black male comedian will have a decidedly easier time making a film about black women than likely any black woman will, famous or not (okay, Oprah could do it). The question is, though, can he make it funny and non exploitative? After seeing Good Hair, the answer is Not yet.

I won’t deny Rock’s comedic brilliance—you will laugh often. Nor will I disregard his motives—he starts the film as an ode of sorts to his two daughters. Perhaps Good Hair’s popularity (assumed due to a fairly rigorous promotional campaign) will open the door for films like In Our Heads. But the film remains a sobering example of how a film about black women is not actually for us.

 

Walking Home

I’ve been on a longer hiatus from making movies than I’d like. Got caught up in a month too many of teaching, non-profiting, and Brooklyning it up. But this might be my inspiration to pick up the camera again. My girl Nuala wrote, directed and edited this piece as a response to the casual sexism young women of color encounter during simple walks down the street:

It speaks to me, loudly, on a number of levels. Especially in this week where I (and probably many others) groaned silently when the Hofstra University student, a young black woman, recanted her widely publicized gang rape story.

It’s the kind of event that’s tailor made for people to gloss over its underlying issues. Ones that can’t be limited to being (justifiably) bothered by her lying. I wondered what made her have sex with four (or 5) guys at once. Or why she couldn’t be honest with her boyfriend about her act, for fear of being labeled a slut.

Regardless of whether or not the sex was consensual, that fear of hers is representative of the narrow spaces–be they literally on the sidewalk or figuratively in our minds–that young women, and young women of color in particular, find ourselves in.

These spaces are partially what Nuala is trying to confront with her video. Systems that underlie men casually labeling women as “bitches” are undoubtedly intertwined with the power dynamics implicit in five men having sex with one woman, with one man videotaping it.

And it’s why experimental art like Nuala’s will always be doubly important–a chance for us to use tools like video and through form and content, challenge existing systems of oppression.

Plus, it’s definitely consensual.

 

Casa Bey

Welcome back Mos. Image courtesy of Hiphoparchive.org

Well, welcome back Mos. Kind of…I’ve seen the ads and trailers for the mailroom movie that I’m not sold on, but maybe I’ll catch it on USA next year. But after weeks of my sister nagging me to look at this video, I gotta give it to you. Extreme, extreme close-up, real minimalist and a vintage sound to boot.  All the things I love.

(I realized the directors, Coodie and Chike, are the ones who directed Kanye’s “Through the Wire” video. They’re on to something.)

 

To be Ugly & Gifted…

So, it’s not Susan Boyle’s voice that’s wowing people—it’s that someone that ugly could have a voice that beautiful. Simon Cowell was stunned at the contrast; everyone was. I call her ugly to only say explicitly what is, without doubt, implied every single time someone marvels at how she’s “never been kissed” or has “never been on a date.” Sure, Ms. Boyle volunteered this information.  On continuous replay, however, it’s code for ugly and undesirable. (To men primarily, but all of us ultimately.)

But, lord help me, when she speaks, she seems so herself, so honest, kind of rueful. And in a 7-minute clip, we get a reality contest take on the ugly duckling story.

We like her and she actually is very beautiful—I hope she wins.