Beyonce is well-versed and familiar with breaking pop culture. This summer was no different for her.
Beyonce and Jay-Z released their collaborative album this past summer and the accompanying music video “APESHIT” was pretty incredible. The video features Beyonce and Jay-Z in front of various iconic pieces of art in the Louvre, as well as placing various bodies of color throughout and in front of the building. This music video has a lot to dissect but to begin, I will look to Nina Cartier’s “Black Women On-Screen as Future Texts: A New Look at Black Pop Culture Representations”.
Cartier explains future texts “representing the opportunity to encode African diasporic vernacular culture and create a tangible repository of black experience . . . by mining a usable, living past which retains the present and carries into the future,” (Cartier, p. 151). Future texts serve as a representation of the past, present, and future of African culture and black experiences. Beyonce and Jay-Z create such a representation in their music video APESHIT.
In the video, Beyonce and Jay-Z position themselves in front of various iconic Western art pieces. This, as well as displaying various bodies of color, acts as an act of defiance and counter framing to the rhetorical messaging done by Western institutions. They are subverting and defying western art institutions and norms and instead injecting images relating to the experience of people of color. The Louvre, as well as almost all Western art institutions, have clearly not placed a value on this their histories and personal experiences. By setting their music video in the Louvre, they are both reclaiming that narrative and establishing a new one.
They are reframing the historic traditions of Western art by injecting their own culture and lived experience, thus enacting a form of future text. These images are grounded in the histories of black communities, creating a connection to past histories and future interpretations. By doing so, they are also creating original and novel narratives surrounding the black identity.
References:
Cartier, Nina. Black Women On-Screen as Future Texts: A New Look at Black
Pop Culture Representations. Cinema Journal, Volume 53, Number 4, Summer 2014, pp. 150-157 (Article)
“She doesn’t even go here!” From Damian’s lips to God’s ears, actor Daniel Franzese spoke the truth in Tina Fey’s 2004 hit Mean Girls. And yes, you read that right; this movie was released 14 years ago. For those who have not seen Lindsay Lohan’s career highlight, the movie surrounds an exclusive clique of young women in high school. When Cady (Lohan) first joins the new school, outcasts Janis and Damian take her under their wings. Rejected from the mainstream high schoolers, Damian and Janis have established a strong friendship outside of the high school populars. From the start, the character of Damian was an instant classic, spouting iconic one liners like it was his job. And in a way, it sorta was. Damian exists as a one-dimensional gay stereotype, perpetuating the idea that feminine gay men exist as complementary sources of comedy for the heterosexual female and nothing more.
The gay-sidekick is a well-trodden trope, sprouting up in classics like Sex & The City, Will & Grace, and Lena Dunham’s Girls. Mostly employed in female-led comedies, the Gay Best Friend acts as an alleviation of heterosexual male ideals, showcasing feminnine attributes in every dose of fashion tips or sex advice. Through these actions, effeminate gay men further Mulvey’s ideas surrounding symbolic castration. “The woman as icon … always threatens to evoke the anxiety it originally signified,” (Mulvey, p. 35). It is in effeminate gay men that women see an alleviation of this anxiety from men in power as effeminate gay men could also be seen as castrated. By not possessing and exhibiting traditional aspirational male attributes, effeminate men are seen as a threat to male pleasure and identity.
This is so clearly showcased in Damian’s performance of “Beautiful” at the school talent show.
According to Billboard of December 14, 2017, the UK LGBT rights activist group Stonewall named Christina Aguilera’s anthem the most empowering song for LGBT individuals in the past decade. This song and accompanying music video offer words and images of LGBT affirmation so it makes sense Damian would perform this song two years after this song was released. In the scene, Damian is situated against a group of presumably heterosexual masculine males in the audience who quite literally throw a show at his head.
This shared theoretical castration offers a unique opportunity for a kinship to be shorn between gay men and straight women. But the secondary representation of the Gay Best Friend produces an unequal relationship in which gay men function as little more than comedic breaks and sources of advice. We can see this idea play out in the aforementioned talent show. Damian’s performance at the talent show is played for comedy. His song choice and performance style could be interpreted as parody, an exaggeration of a classic gay sterotype. It is important to look at why this is funny and what function this scene serves. It is one of the only times Damian is shown without direct relation to a female and this song and his performance is used as a punchline.
In Mean Girls, Damian is introduced straight-away (no pun intended) as too gay to function. His femininity and gayness are inherent to his identity in the movie, which is not necessarily a bad thing. My condemnation towards this representation is not that his sexuality is showcased and primary, but rather that is only exists in relation to the heterosexual womanhood showcased in the movie.
Damian does not exist beyond a sidekick, coming around and touting instantly quotable catchphrases. He does not transcend the stereotype he is representing; we see nothing truly human about him. And this is absolutely not to say that a feminine man is bad representation, but one must look at the power that is being employed and why. His interests are not inherently bad but they are positioned as a complement to straight womanhood; Damian knows everything about fashion so he can help Cady with clothes, he knows everything about the Plastics so he can help Cady fit in, he knows exactly the nuances of female politics in the school so he can help Cady take down Regina.
We hear a lot about how representation is important. But how exactly? “Identification can only be made through recognition, and all recognition is itself an implicit confirmation of the ideology of the status quo,” (hooks, p. 251). In a lot of ways, I identify with Damian. The majority of my friends are girls and you can bet your bottom dollar I notice when they dye their hair or wear a new shirt. But through this identification with the character, I am simultaneously acknowledging the status quo and internalizing the norms presented in this form of media representation.
It is hard to criticize media that has a positive takeaway message that was created by a well loved public figure (Tina Fey). The central lesson in Mean Girls is feminist solidarity, building women up instead of tearing each other down. This noble message can make it hard to criticize aspects of the movie. “If you let go of the notion that the filmmaker is trying to convey a message, then the activity of viewers is to interpret the film according to their lives, their experiences, their tastes—not the filmmaker’s,” (Smith, p. 130). Our viewpoint and criticism of the movie is not less valuable than what the director or screenwriter is trying to say. Yes, Tina Fey was great on SNL and 30 Rock is potentially the best sitcom ever created, but that does not mean we can absolve her of any wrongdoing.
Damian and other Gay Best Frienders marked a significant step forward in represenation. We were seeing mainstream portrayals of gay men, many of whom were effeminate, in a way we had never seen before. But we must work to make these gay men central to the story, not just in service to the straight female lead. Because Damian deserves better.
Bell Hooks (1992). “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectator”. The Feminism and Visual Cultural Reader. New York: Routledge, 2003: Amelia Jones. ISBN9780415543705.
Greg M. Smith; “It’s Just a Movie”: A Teaching Essay for Introductory Media Classes, Cinema Journal, 41, Number 1, Fall 2001 (Article) Published by University of Texas Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2001.0025
Hey everyone! My name is Harry Steffenhagen and I’m a junior majoring in Strategic Communications with double minors in Sociology and Public Health. My favorite part of watching movies is talking about it afterwards so you could say I’m in the right class! I’ve taken some GWSS classes before and I’m excited to combine these skills with my love of movies!
My all time favorite show is Gilmore Girls and YES I realize how bad it might be and YES I will rewatch it every year. Otherwise I enjoy pretty much every rom com ever made and that is a point of pride for me. Catch me at @HStefff!
Feminist Film Studies Fall 2018 