Academic texts/books
Beverly Guy-Sheftall "Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought" (1995)
Bell Hooks: "Ain't I a Woman?" (1981)
“ Kimberlé Crenshaw: "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” (1989)
Darlene Clark Hine: "Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia" (1993)
W. EB DuBois "The Damnation of Women" (1920)
Internet Links
Newspaper websites
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11826051/Black-feminism-is-sadly-still-necessary.html
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/09/black-feminist-movement-fails-women-black-minority
http://www.factmag.com/2016/04/27/lemonade-beyonce-meaning-visual-album/
http://www.ebony.com/news-views/lemonade-taught-me-black-girl-magic#axzz4I53Oo7hA
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/08/beyonce-formation-black-american-narrative-the-margins
University websites/academic papers online.
· Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics:http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1052&context=uclf
· Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1229039?seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents
· A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society
Other relevant sites/articles
9. http://metro.co.uk/2016/04/24/were-going-nuts-over-all-of-the-cameos-in-beyonces-lemonade-5838344/
Relevant Theories
Semiotics: The cinematography, mise-en-scene and so on of the visual album
Gender and ethnicity 1): http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-rol6.htm 2)http://www.slideshare.net/MissOzzy/theory-theorists
Paul Gilroy: Black music articulated diasporic experiences of resistance to white capitalist culture. Employs the notion of ‘diaspora’ and how ethnic minorities (particularly black people) experience dislocation from their homeland. E.g. feeling as if you do not totally belong in Britain but you also are considered ‘English’ in the Caribbean, Africa or Asia etc
Post-colonialism (Feminist version): A response to the fact that feminism seemed to focus solely on the experiences of women in Western cultures. Postcolonial feminism seeks to account for the way that racism and the long-lasting political, economic, and cultural effects of colonialism affect non-white, non-Western women in the postcolonial world. How does Beyonce represent this view?
Audience theories: Uses and Gratifications of Lemonade etc.
Genre theories: Style of the visual album, the music itself and how Beyonce is breaking boundaries and conventions within music, more political
Other related theories:
Intersectionality theory: Kimberle Crenshaw created the Intersectionality theory to describe the fact that it is difficult for black women to diffrentiate race from class and sex oppression, because they experience them simultaneously. Black feminism is more than just trying to empower women, as its roots lie in the struggle black women have been facing for centuries.
Blaxploitation: The exploitation of black people, especially with regard to stereotyped roles in films/media. (Could Lemonade just be an aesthetic for black struggle as many claim?)
Misogynoir: misogyny directed towards black women where race and gender both play roles in bias. It was coined by queer Black feminist Moya Bailey, who created the term to address misogyny directed toward black women in American visual and popular culture.[
Womanism: Womanism is a social theory deeply rooted in the racial and gender-based oppression of black women. There are varying interpretations on what the term "womanist" means, and efforts to provide a concise and all encompassing definition have only been marginally successful. The ambiguity within the theory allows for its continuous expansion of its basic tenets, though this ambiguity is also widely considered its greatest weakness. At its core, womanism is a social change perspective based upon the everyday problems and experiences of black women and other women of minority demographics, but more broadly seeks methods to eradicate inequalities not just for black women, but for all people
Alvarado: Representation of ethnicity
The Exotic: Ethnic Groups are seen as exotic or represented as being the “other person” and unusual or strange.
The Dangerous: Minority groups can be represented as a threat to society. They can be called criminals, rapists, drug dealers, or people who take advantage of society’s benefits.
The Humorous: In the 1970’s race was a major vehicle for comedy. Programs removed the threat of different races by making them the butt of the jokes.
The Pitied: The representation of ethnic groups may be seen as deprived victims or groups that experience natural disasters or sometimes even conflicts.
Fanon: ___
Media Magazine 36 (Page 16): Music and Politics Steph Hendry explores the long relationship between music and politics, and the role of changing technologies in promoting activism and alternative voices (article news mag)
Article linked to:
· Beyonce managing her own record label
· Examples of music being controlled to appeal to a mass audience, does Beyonce have an advantage of controlling her own music? Benefits of it, does it allow messages to be sent to the mainstream?
· Social media and its impact on music, tidal, the impact that Lemonade had on social media such as twitter?
Peterson and Berger saw musical culture as being cyclical, with pop music beginning on the street as a genuine artistic creation acting in resistance to dominant culture and the alienation or oppression felt by those outside the mainstream. They observed that, as new music gains an audience, it is taken by the recording companies, repackaged and sanitised to create music with mass appeal. The origins of the music are often lost in this ‘repackaging’. Blues and Jazz were musical forms that were developed by a black culture which was actively excluded from white mainstream culture. Elvis Presley was a white man who took black music to a white audience in the 1950s. Elvis depoliticised the music that influenced his performances although, compared to the other mainstream white artists of the time, his version of Rock and Roll seems radically. Rap began as a social commentary created by young urban artists who spoke of the hardships of life in a still largely racist environment. The work of NWA for example was confrontational dealing with issues such as racial profiling and police brutality, unlike the rap designed to have broad appeal, epitomised by the chart-topping success of Vanilla Ice in the late 1980s. Facebook and Youtube allow voices from outside the mainstream access to audiences bypassing the traditional music industry gatekeepers. However, these social networks are often diverse and fragmented, and go largely unnoticed by the majority. Recording companies maintain their focus on artists with mass mainstream appeal, so, ironically, the current e-media age may make accessing resistant pop music easier in many ways; but the volume of distribution sources can dilute its impact.
"Where My Girls At?": Negotiating Black Womanhood in Music Videos
The 1990s witnessed the emergence of Black women performers, producers, writers, and musicians who have also made the music video into a site for promotion, creativity, and self-expression. Black women performers, songwriters, and producers, including Erykah Badu, Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott, and Lauryn Hill, have profoundly affected hip-hop culture as well as the wider sphere of popular culture. While most music videos, including those of some Black women performers, exacerbate the exploitation of the Black woman’s body and perpetuate stereotypes of Black womanhood, Badu, Elliott, and Hill depict themselves as independent, strong, and self-reliant agents of their own desire, the masters of their own destiny.
The medium of the music video, the primary promotional vehicle for the recording industry today, is an especially rich space to explore the ways in which race, gender, class, and sexuality intersect in the construction and proliferation of ideologies of Black womanhood in the mass media and popular culture.
Video Analysis
In these videos, Blackness does not carry a negative connotation. Instead, it is the basis for strength, power, and a positive self-identity. Darker skin is privileged among Black women artists, actresses, models, and dancers in the videos. Thirty of the videos featured women with darker complexions or a combination of lighter and darker skinned women. This was an especially interesting finding after the controversies of the 1980s and 1990s about the frequent use of light-skinned women in music videos, which was criticized for valuing a white standard of beauty (Morgan 1999). In contrast, the videos examined in this study evinced a Black aesthetic in which standards of beauty, while problematic in themselves, were nevertheless based on a more African aesthetic. The prevalence of a clear hip-hop sensibility supports the valuation of Black culture. Twenty of the videos were coded as being vocative of an urban hip-hop style. What emerges from these observations is the construction of a clear Black aesthetic.In fact, it becomes obvious that these videos exhibit an essentially Black universe. Although this was not specifically coded, white people appeared rarely if ever in the videos.
Erykah Badu’s On and On is an excellent example of the construction of a Black context and a Black world. It highlights the specificity, difference, and particularity of the Black experience. On and On is a “Colour Purple”-style version of the Cinderella fairy tale. It is set on a farm in the rural south during an unspecified time period that appears to be the 1940s. Badu, as the protagonist of the narrative, is left to clean, to tend the farm animals, and to watch the children who are running around the house with their hair undone. then follow Badu as she performs her chores while singing. After tripping and falling into the mud of a pigsty , and as shots are interspersed of well-dressed Black people going to some unspecified destination, Badu realizes that she has nothing to wear. As she glances at the green tablecloth, she looks into the camera with a “why not” expression. “Cinderella” triumphs as we then see her performing in a “juke joint” to an enthusiastic crowd, wearing the tablecloth. At the end of the video, Badu jumps into the crowd, and as they lift her up, her beat-up work boots are revealed. We, the viewers, are left with the impression that we have emerged from an emphatically southern Black context that affirms the validity of the Black experience.
Despite the predominance of traditional gender roles in the music videos, Black women performers are frequently depicted as active, vocal, and independent. This vocality is most frequent within the context of traditional relationships, where the performers express discontent with, and contest, the conditions faced by Black women in interpersonal relationships. Instead of exhibiting representations of physical violence and aggression, sometimes found in men’s videos, this sample of videos demonstrates the significance of verbal assertiveness. Speaking out and speaking one’ s mind are a constant theme. Through the songs and videos, Black women are able to achieve voice and a space
for spoken expression of social and interpersonal commentary. A video by Erykah Badu, Tyrone, is the most conspicuous example of this theme. The lyrics, in which Badu dismisses a neglectful lover who prefers the company of his shiftless, unemployed friends, demonstrate her ability to get out of a bad relationship in which her sexual, emotional, and financial needs are not being met. Her words are underscored by her performance style. Badu is at center stage wearing African attire, including her signature headdress, and standing next to an ankh, an ancient Egyptian symbol of life. As she sings, her gestures, inflections, and facial expressions underscore the meaning of the song and increase her rapport with the very enthusiastic women in the audience
Despite the potentially limiting aspects of the frequently contradictory and stereotypical themes in music videos, a more nuanced and complex depiction of Black womanhood emerges in the representations of Black woman performers.
Link to Beyoncé’s Lemonade:
· Is Beyoncé attempting to recreate the black experience through her music/narrative? Influence of artists such as Erykah Badu
· Representation of blackness, what connotations does it carry in Beyoncé’s Lemonade? Is there an aesthetic to it?
· How is race, gender, class, and sexuality intersected to Lemonade? Does the audience get a message based on these topics?
· Artists in the past and their influence today, did they inspire Beyoncé’s work?
· Women empowerment in the past vs. today
· Black music created by men vs. women. Do women such as Beyoncé give out a better message? How has this changed since the 80’s/90’s? Are artists such as Kendrick Lamar influential?
Artist links today:
Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly
Solange – A Seat at the Table
Visual Analysis of Lemonade
