Monday, November 30, 2009

Hooks tells it like it is...

To be totally honest, I was really taken back by Hooks title and I was dreading reading the article. After I did, I was really glad that I read it and even shared some of Hooks thoughts with my boyfriend. Being black, I don’t think I realized just how much black women specifically are over-sexualized which is kind of ironic but so true. I appreciated how honest Hooks was about how black women are depicted even though it had me sitting at the edge of my seat most of the time. I agreed a lot with Hooks when she was talking about the black “butt” specifically. I have never fully appreciated this fascination and the more and more it’s glorified by the media, the more I cover up or shy away from everything associated with it including the all too common, “black pride.” An example of "butt" pride is below.

I have always been a fan of the underground “love your body” campaign but it seems so hard to do when you’re a black woman. You’re automatically classified in the “she loves her butt” campaign, especially if you have the curves to support what they’re saying, which has always been a personal problem. When Nelly first came out with his “Apple Bottom” jeans, I was really happy that they had begun making jeans for women who are a little curvier on the bottom. I went out to the mall and went into “Against all odds” and tried on a pair of Apple Bottoms. I was disappointed because it over emphasized the behind more than it did accommodate my curviness. As I soon realized, the goal of these jeans was to do just that, over emphasize the glorified “butt.” One of my favorite performers of all time is Beyoncé because I believe she is the ultimate performer, but I must say every now and then I question if she really needs to be “bootylicious” in all her songs. Somehow along with other black female performers, she believes she needs to do as many butt shakes as she can in order for people to like a song. I, particularly, am tired of this and don’t think it’s necessary. Not because I don’t appreciate curvy bodies, but because I think that the mentality behind it is distorted.


It makes me sad that I can’t think of one black female artist who hasn’t over the course of their career been overly sexualized except for people like India Arie. Just look at the array of pictures below. It really is the total distortion of the black female.
Alicia Keys above...and Rhianna below.

How about this surprising picture with Serena Williams as she poses nude in the ESPN magazine. It’s not enough that they highlighted her butt enough during her tennis matches. I’m particularly upset because of this image though because it just seems like a way to put her back in place because she has so many successes. It seems totally unnecessary and for me she just went from hero to complete zero.

I agree with Hooks that we need to come to that place where our system provides new and fresh representations of women’s bodies that aren’t overly sexualized and this may mean crossing traditional boundaries. Yes, we are sexual beings as created by our creator but we’re certainly not objects.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Black TV


Christine Acham’s article on “Prime time television and the struggle for Black Power” was very interesting. It was interesting first of all to hear that after all the misrepresentations or poor integration of blacks and whites on TV during the years of The Jefferson’s and Polly among a few, The Cosby’s was still criticized. It’s true, it did show a family that seemed pretty content as if it were a perfect world for them, but perhaps that was a first step in helping the black populations realize their potential. For years black had been “put in their place,” with stereotypes that didn’t quite represent black life or didn’t have much integration and it was time for a more positive view of blacks.


Another interesting thing in the article was the fact that many TV stations on cable refused black sitcoms and dramas. I didn’t really realize the extent of this. Looking at today, what is it like now?

I found this article online from the Washington Post with the same topics Christine Acham was talking about in her article. It comments on how black shows are being pulled from prime-time television…even in 2009. The article features people who have observed and worked in black TV with different views. One believes that in black shows, one doesn’t see the suburban black but my more of the urban. It’s an interesting article and fits into what we’re talking about today.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/06/tv-casts-diversify-as-black-shows-dwindle/

Monday, November 2, 2009

Race representation

I pondered on the thought Barker brought up…that race is a social construction and that without its representation it doesn’t exist. I believe there is a lot of truth in this. The very families we grow up in are the representations we need that shape our social constructions of race. It then makes me question how we come to define who we are within that race. Surely the people who look like us and are then represented on TV must have some kind of influence in how we end up viewing ourselves. I remember growing up and my dad loving the show “Sanford and Son” which really was about black unemployed men acting buffoonish. I would sit and watch attentively at the way everyone acted, how the black men were portrayed.

Surely this represented a notion of the black race and how they were seen. Without representation such as this along with many others, I probably wouldn’t have begun the thought process that some black people are ignorant, which is sad. This can also be seen as stereotyping which more than not Barker states is often negative. African amer icans have for a long time been represented as “naturally incapable” and lazy.
The sitcom Sanford and Son showed that exact negative stereotype of blacks.

Fast forward to now, and you have Tyler Perry with his black comedies like Meet the Brown, House of Payne and even the Madea series. Spike Lee recently stated that he thought Tyler Perry’s shows were a whole bunch of “coonery and buffoonery.” He thought that it brought him back to the days of “Amos n’ Andy,” another sitcom involving black men behaving badly. Though I know many people were outraged by this, I wonder how much of this is true. The black population back when Sanford and Son came out generally liked the show too and found it quite funny. It took a while for them to seen the negativity involved because it was “entertaining.” This is Tyler Perry’s claim to fame for his plays and comedies…they are entertaining and funny. One need only youtube any of the Tyler Perry shows to see what I mean. But how much of that goes a little too far?

The posted video is Tyler Perry’s response after the criticism made by Spike Lee on 60 minutes: