Friday, February 3, 2012
A Feminist Debate
Throughout popular culture, images of women, nearly nude, gyrating in performances of "simulated sex" are ubiquitous. Whether it be on music videos or reality television programs, there seems to be a consensus that such depictions are acceptable, despite all the ostensible baggage that they carry. Recently, one such display, in this case Niki Minaj's music video "Stupid Hoe," was actually deemed too lude to display on the television conglomerate BET. J Bryan Lowder, of Slate magazine drew attention to this story in a recent column. The controversy being that "Stupid Hoe" did not appear any more lecherous than the plethora of suggestive videos that preceded it. Although BET has not yet explained what exactly was so offensive about this material, it does raise an interesting debate nonetheless: Should these images be displayed at all? And, why or why not? In her article Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality, Gayles Rubin draws attention to the way in which this very debate has struck a schism in the Feminist movement, thus creating a dichotomy of sorts over the contentious topic of sex portrayals in popular culture. Some Feminists argue that the mere presence of sexual depictions leads to sex violence against women; furthermore, that the act of penetration itself is one of colonization and is, therefore, a violent act. Sexual liberation is condemned as yet another way to cater to the male hegemony. The consequence is a very conservative definition of sex in general. This ontological determination has ostracized many from the Feminist discourse. Those who self identify as sadomasochists are marginalized for having different sexual habits. The fight over what constitutes as "good" or "normal" sex points to a concept Rubin calls the Sex Hierarchy. The idea being that sexual acts are arranged from most acceptable to most deplorable, ranging from heterosexual-procreative-marital sex to the bottom where you find cross-generational love, S/M, and prostitution (among other things). Rubin continues by pointing to another concept she calls benign sexual variation, or lack there of. This concept refers to an inability to recognize that a sex act deemed uninteresting or disgusting to one person may be very appealing and intriguing to another, and that this recognition does not in anyway implicate either party as being abnormal. Partaking in such acts, or viewing such acts, in no way leads to a deluge of debauchery. It could still be though that, especially in pornography and "simulated acts," this kind of liberalism leads to the objectification of women. I, for one, can not find my feet on this particular issue. There seem to be several arguments on both sides. Most people will have noticed though, the female anatomy, considered "quite sacred" in our culture, is displayed disproportionately more than the male anatomy. Why might this be, and what effects does it have? This leads to more questions about how images in our culture are censored, and who is doing the censoring. How is it that we can show a nine year old images of human beings being broken down to atoms by land mines or Jason cutting a co-ed's throat, but not let them see "simulated sex"? These are the kind of inconsistencies that I am interested in speaking about.
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Even though I can't prove it, I have a hunch that BET banned this video because of its images of racialized sexism. Watching the entire video, it's not any more raunchy than any other videos by hip hop artists. In my opinion, there is something horribly wrong with a black female artist, in a position of power, both in terms of the messages her music can convey, and in terms of the messages her body and appearance can convey in the way that she presents herself. Nicki chose to appropriate a racialized stereotype of a black woman who is bestialized, in animal print and in a cage. (Rhianna does a similar thing in the Rude Boy video) http://www.vevo.com/watch/rihanna/rude-boy/USUV71000073 . This reminds me alot of Saartje Baartman, aka Sarah Bartman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Baartman, and if you do not know her story, you should read about it. It also looks like, to me, that Nicki is even assuming some weird kind of 'whiteface' in the video. Notice the part where she has freckles and her hair is either blonde or pink, I can't remember. So, what bothers me, is that here we have a black female artist, with a platform and the talent (though it's hard to hear) to trasmit a message of empowerment and self-definiton, and pride in her identity (a la Queen Latifah) and instead we get this. A black woman who appropriates and reproduces historically offensive stereotypes. A black woman who assumes the role of an animal. And a black woman who assumes whiteface? Now, the other side of this argument is, well it's sexist to pick on the woman. The men do this, all the time. Even the greatest rappers, (or the most famous ones) Pac, Wayne, Rick Ross etc, exploit black women in their videos. But I'm going to play devi's advocate. I believe that as a black woman she has a repsonsibility. It doesn't mean that she can't be sexy. But it does mean that she needs to be aware of historically racialized sexist stereotypes that she is willingly transmitting to a new generation of young black girls.
ReplyDeleteKeyana, that's very interesting that you brought the racial aspect into the discussion. I would agree with your assessment of BET and maybe why they decided to ban it. One question that I always have when I see videos like this, whether they are Nicki Minaj's, Rihanna's or Britney Spears', is how aware these artists are of how they are influencing society and if they are even aware of what stereotypes or negative ideas they are reinforcing. I know that artists like Beyonce have a lot of control over every aspect of their videos, but newer artists might not be the ones who are coming up with these concepts. I'm not saying this to excuse them because they could obviously refuse to do the video but I just wondering what would happen is Nicki Minaj were left to create these videos on her own. I think they would still be sexual since sex sells and let's face it, she wants to make money, but I still wonder. Additionally, it would be interesting to educate female artists on some of the topics we discuss in this class and if that would end up changing their decisions at all. If they are already aware and still create videos like this, I will be very disappointed that they are reinforcing the objectification of women.
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