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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMiley's mistake one of race and not racey?: The 2013 VMAs Were Dominated by Miley’s Minstrel Show
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Cyrus has spent a lot of time recently toying with racial imagery. Weve seen Cyrus twerking her way through the video for her big hit We Cant Stop, professing her love for hood music, and claiming spiritual affinity with Lil Kim. Last night, as Cyrus stalked the stage, mugging and twerking, and paused to spank and simulate analingus upon the ass of a thickly set African-American backup dancer, her act tipped over into what we may as well just call racism: a minstrel show routine whose ghoulishness was heightened by Cyruss madcap charisma, and by the dark beauty of We Cant Stop by a good distance, the most powerful pop hit of 2013.
A doctoral dissertation could (and will) be written on the racial, class, and gender dynamics of Cyruss shtick. Ill make just one historical note. For white performers, minstrelsy has always been a means to an end: a shortcut to self-actualization. The archetypal example is in The Jazz Singer (1927), in which Al Jolsons immigrant striver puts on the blackface mask to cast off his immigrant Jewish patrimony and remake himself as an all-American pop star.
Cyruss twerk act gives minstrelsy a postmodern careerist spin. Cyrus is annexing working-class black ratchet culture, the potent sexual symbolism of black female bodies, to the cause of her reinvention: her transformation from squeaky-clean Disney-pop poster girl to grown-up hipster-provocateur. (Want to wipe away the sickly-sweet scent of the Magic Kingdom? Go slumming in a black strip club.) Cyrus may indeed feel a cosmic connection to Lil Kim and the music of the hood. But the reason that these affinities are coming out now, at the VMAs and elsewhere, is because its good for business.
http://www.vulture.com/2013/08/jody-rosen-miley-cyrus-vmas-minstrel.html?mid=facebook_vulture
'ratchet culture' :
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ratchet
Last December, when Beyoncé posted a picture on Instagram wearing doorknocker earrings inscribed with the word ratchet, the Internet exploded with speculation: It would be the title of a new single; she and Lady Gaga were collaborating again; she was shaking up her image; it was the name of her next album. Fueling the fires were comments Azealia Banks made to MTV Brazil that she and Lady Gaga were working on a song called Ratchet. Because Lady Gaga had posted a picture with earrings similar to those in the Beyoncé photograph in September, it was thought that the two megastars, and perhaps Banks, too, could be working on a follow-up to their hit single Telephone. Eventually, Beyoncés representative told the Cut: There is no confirmation on any song titles.
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Ratchet can be traced back to the neighborhood of Cedar Grove in Shreveport, Louisiana. You talk to working class black people [down there], says Dr. Brittney Cooper, a co-founder of the Crunk Feminist Collective. Ratchedness comes out of that. And some of that particularity gets lost when it travels. The first appearance of ratchet in a published song was in 1999, when Anthony Mandigo released Do the Ratchet on his Ratchet Fight in the Ghetto album. Mandigo introduced me to the word, He got it from his grandmother, remembers Angela Nichols, who goes by Angie Locc and rapped on the track. In 2004, Earl Williams, a producer known as Phunk Dawg, recorded a new version of the song, featuring the better-known Lil Boosie (currently incarcerated), from Baton Rouge, as well as Mandigo and another Shreveport rapper named Untamed Mayne. This version, and the associated dance, caught on and Mandigos Lava House Records began making a name for itself.
In the liner notes of the CD, Phunk Dawg wrote a definition of ratchet: n., pron., v, adv., 1. To be ghetto, real, gutter, nasty. 2. Its whatever, bout it, etc.
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That doesnt mean all black women have reclaimed the term. Theres an emotional violence and meanness attached to being ratchet, particularly pertaining to women of color, says Michaela Angela Davis, an image activist and former fashion editor of Vibe. She sees the ratchet phenomenon as related to a larger problem of how black women are portrayed in media. Were only seen through this narrow sliver, and right now that sliver is Ratchet. We dont get to be quirky and fun and live in Williamsburg. Wolves dont fall in love with us. Instead, Davis only sees groups of black women fighting on TV in shows like The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Basketball Wives, and Bad Girls Club. The only interest that pop culture has in black women is this ratchet world. Later this April, at a symposium at Georgia State University, Davis will launch a campaign called Bury the Ratchet. It will look to reduce the negative depictions of African-American women in media, and especially target their affects on bullying.
But there is more than the harsh side to ratchet, argues Dr. Cooper. While she recognizes that the expression, when used to describe a person, is often pejorative, she has also sees women embracing ratchet as an attempt to de-pathologize it and to celebrate both its edginess and its roots in the southern working class.
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http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/04/ratchet-the-rap-insult-that-became-a-compliment.html
Posted without comment. Still thinking about this view.
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)I'll provide a link but not without a warning for anyone tempted to watch the embedded, which includes women twerking.
You all have been warned: NSFW.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=twerk
As to the broader subject. Are we becoming more and more uncivilized, or am I just getting old?
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)I can't take on another discussion right now!
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)Either way, yes, you're getting old!
one_voice
(20,043 posts)explain 'twerking' cuz I knew what it was.
I think with each generation there's a segment that pushes the envelope.
There's a line in a song by Chris Brown ft. Nicki Minaj: Til we get it right we gonna fuck some mo.
All the lyrics here: just as over the top: http://rapgenius.com/Chris-brown-love-more-lyrics#lyric
Chris Brown used to be played on the radio, now he's all about BIG TIME parental advisory. He's horrible. It's all about shock value. There's no reason for those lines except for shock.
It's not the same as 'gansta rap', where some, are actually rapping about what it's like growing up hard. Whether you agree with the lyrics or not. It's kinda like country, it tells a story, just with really bad language.
No, we're not getting old. I love all music, including some gangsta rap. I don't like shock value crap. And that's what we're getting, and that has nothing to do with being old. imo.
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)I don't know.
I love the music, much of it, including the nasty songs like Snoop's Lay Low and others.
OTOH, there's some awful shit out there, too. Always has been:
Great message but this one has a horrible and simplistic melody.
one_voice
(20,043 posts)I'm afraid if I start twerking I'll throw out my back or dislocate my hip. Uh, maybe I am getting a little old, or I'm a tad outta shape or both.
NYC_SKP
(68,644 posts)one_voice
(20,043 posts)I'll get right on it.
arcane1
(38,613 posts)TlalocW
(15,389 posts)If Kanye West ever needed to interrupt a skinny, blonde white girl, Miley's performance was the time to do it.
On a secondary note, it's nice to know that Beetlejuice remains enough in society's consciousness that her co-singer has been constantly referred to as, "That Beetlejuice guy."
TlalocW
agreed on all counts.
The one highlight of the show was Macklemore's pro-gay acceptance speech. I'm constantly astounded at how quickly the gay rights movement has become mainstream. I never thought this would happen in my lifetime - and now I'm engaged to my partner of 11 years, and we're legally marrying next year.
And Taylor Swift REALLY needs to learn how to let go. The spurned girlfriend thing, year after year, is ugly.
TlalocW
(15,389 posts)The daughter of a friend excitedly showed me an online article showing the 20 semi trucks that carry her show, and I told her, "You know, only one of those semis hold her entire show of props, instruments, and costumes."
"What do the others carry?" she asked.
"The rest are loaded with notebooks and notebooks filled with songs about her ex-boyfriends."
TlalocW