I keep thinking about our discussion of Beyoncé and Formation as my thoughts begin to shift from initial reactions to reading and hearing others’ voices on the video and performance. Her performances seem indicative of portions of Brook’s texts that discuss how “the iconography of the black female body remains the central urtext of alienation in transatlantic culture” and that “women might put their own figures to work for their own aesthetic and political uses and ‘image their own bodies’ in such a way to ‘set up a constructive dialogue between…views of identity”(Dissent, 7-8). I like that the song and performance seem to have positive reactions, as well as critiques. We can enjoy parts of it while still not assuming it is without flaws. I do think there was something to what was brought up in class about Black people being able to use money as a form of power, when they were once only considered able to produce labor, and this makes me feel slightly less prickly about the song ending with “the best revenge is your paper,” because it speaks to a sort of specific, historic and racialized revenge. I also want to highlight the line “If he hit it right, I might take him on a flight on my choppa, drop him off at the mall, let him buy some J’s, let him shoppa.” This line not only makes me chuckle, but Beyoncé is doing a lot of work to subvert gender rules and affirm (black) female power, which shouldn’t be overlooked amidst other discussions of what she should or shouldn’t be doing in the video. I also think that the Griffin text helps me understand a possible source for the level of outrage by certain people and outlets like Fox News: “historical examples of how black women’s voices…soothed white children with lullabies” (110) and became a symbol of sort for healing and nationalism. Griffin talked about how it’s possible that “voices create an aural space where listeners can momentarily experience themselves as outside of themselves, as ‘home’ or as ‘free’”(111) and Beyoncé’s particular performance of Formation during the Super Bowl challenged this notion for white audiences.
Throughout the week, I’ve kept going back to our conversation regarding Beyoncé’s performance at the Super Bowl. Particularly, I’m thinking about it in relation to Griffin, her point that “The recognizably black woman—singing rather than speaking—is a familiar sight for American audiences” which, one the one hand, serves as a symbol of “nurturing, healing, life and love giving” but on the other “poses a challenge to the United States revealing its democratic pretense a lie” (Griffin 103-104). It’s interesting to think about this with regards to Beyoncé given, as discussed in class, this was her second performance at the Super Bowl over a four-year span and the backlash she’s received regarding this year’s performance from numerous sources ranging from Rudy Giuliani to different police organizations and even people who are planning to “protest” against her outside of NFL headquarters. Beyoncé certainly demonstrated the latter this year in performing “Formation”—just a day after the video dropped, ensuring viewers (or at least those who watched the video) would have the imagery of post-Katrina New Orleans and police violence in their heads—while paying homage to the Black Panthers. It would be hard to watch this performance without having to think about the long history of and current violence towards Black people (something that has proved motivator behind both criticism and praise of the performance).
And yet what’s most interesting to me is the fact that Beyoncé also served as the former of these two figures Griffin presents, the healing figure, in her first Super Bowl performance. Her performance at Super Bowl XLVII three years ago functioned for many as a healing of Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl performance (which opens up a number of issues itself on America’s relationship to the Black female body), post-Katrina New Orleans (the site of the game) once again coming into play, this time noting its progress rather than highlighting how America has continued to fail and perpetrate violence against Black bodies. It’s interesting to me how one pop star could evoke such different reactions in Super Bowls not too far apart. I’m especially interested in how this all played out in a year where much of the focus in the NFL went to Cam Newton, quarterback of the Carolina Panthers, and America’s infatuation with the entertainment he provided and inability to cope with the blackness he performed on (and off) the field. I’m left wondering how much those two things have built off of each other in reactions to both Newton and Beyoncé.
This week's class definitely had a lot going on and it's given me a lot to respond to! But what I keep thinking about is the relationship between written text and performance--a relationship that Malcolm brought up again this week, in particularly as it pertains to Hughes's inventive poems with marginalia (I'll stick with that terminology, since that's what we used in class).
As we discussed the performance of Hughes's poem which Malcolm provided us, I remember thinking that a performance is a reading both in the sense that the performer is literally reading the words of the text and in the sense that it provides us with an interpretation--a reading--of the poem being performed. This understanding of performance is, I think, fairly uncontroversial. We talk about it all the time when we talk about drama. The director gives the audience her own personal vision of the story/play/text.
However, Imani brought up that various audience members viewing a performance will also have their own unique experiences of the performance, which becomes a "text" itself--please pardon the terminology, but I've spent the last several years of my life coming to understand everything as a text and it's hard to break the habit now that I realize that my discourse is privileging the written word even as it attempts to "legitimize" other cultural artifacts.
It's the same problematic ideological approach to studying music, magazines, web sites, etc. as "texts" that led me to think of performances as readings or interpretations of a poem. That understanding of performance privileges the "original" written poem in the very way that Weheliye cautioned us not to.
So I'm trying to reconcieve of performances of the poems as their own artifacts (I just had to delete the word "text" and change it to artifact yet again--though artifact still feels wrong, since it seems to imply a permanence which is exactly the opposite of the ephemeral live performance, but what do I call this text/artifact/thing, then!?). Reading the poem on a page silently is certainly a particular kind of experience. I think what makes it special is the simultaneity with which the reader is presented with the marginal notes and the "main" poem. This kind of simultaneity would affect the reader much differently in a performance. Imagine if the marginal notes and the "main body" of the text were read simultaneously. It would be disorienting. Granted,the marginalia itself can be disorienting to a reader trying to grapple with the quest to read the poem in a variety of way, but because of the permanence of the text, the reader can go back and re-read. How do you review a live performance? How do you, as a "reader" of a live performance, separate the musical accompaniment from the words being spoken, then recombine them?
I'm not saying anything groundbreaking here, but I wanted to get down in writing the mental processes I'm going through in my attempt, as a long-time disciple of the written word--particularly the English written word--to understand how to "read" performance as something other than a single person's/group's vision of an authoritative text--as something that requires its own tools of analysis. I suppose I'm working on becoming a critical listener (and viewer), and I feel ill-equipped by comparison.
I'm trying to submerge myself in the "mixtery" that Edwards pointed out in Johnson's works--the mixture of the performed/ephemeral and the fixed/permanent/textual, and the mystery of which ought to be privileged at any given time.
PS: I'd love to hear if anyone has insights into how to "read" performances effectively or how to listen critically. I'd also love to know if anyone else is experiencing/has experienced this difficulty in trying to reevaluate their privileging of written texts.
Following last week's class, I feel as though I have a lot of thoughts that I have not been able to fully articulate especially when it comes to Beyonce. It has been a week of Beyonce overload between her performance and all of the think pieces that have emerged. What appears in the song Formation and throughout her performance are ideas of blackness that can only be read by people who speak the two languages of being black and American. For example, her use of the words Creole, Bama, hot sauce in her bag, and the importance of Red Lobster are all things that have a different meaning when you are able to straddle lines of being both black and American. What I think is missing is the classed element of Beyonce, most people I know are middle-upper class black women who are die hard Beyonce' fans, they have the disposable income to pay for her events and they also understand the importance of keeping hot sauce in your bag because you may encounter a situation or location where the food you are eating is blander than what you normally enjoy. With this, in conjunction with the Muse is Music, I wonder the classed elements of black women and their voices. I feel as though I hear black men talking about music as a way to get out of poverty more than black women, I may be wrong, but it's a thought that came across my mind as well. In general black women are the forefront of many movements, even if their faces aren't seen. It may somehow be related to the fact that black women are in positions where they are often not centered and a Patricia Hill Collins framework may assist in reassessing the ways in which we look at Beyonce and all black women singers.
I keep thinking about our discussion of Beyoncé and Formation as my thoughts begin to shift from initial reactions to reading and hearing others’ voices on the video and performance.
ReplyDeleteHer performances seem indicative of portions of Brook’s texts that discuss how “the iconography of the black female body remains the central urtext of alienation in transatlantic culture” and that “women might put their own figures to work for their own aesthetic and political uses and ‘image their own bodies’ in such a way to ‘set up a constructive dialogue between…views of identity”(Dissent, 7-8).
I like that the song and performance seem to have positive reactions, as well as critiques. We can enjoy parts of it while still not assuming it is without flaws. I do think there was something to what was brought up in class about Black people being able to use money as a form of power, when they were once only considered able to produce labor, and this makes me feel slightly less prickly about the song ending with “the best revenge is your paper,” because it speaks to a sort of specific, historic and racialized revenge. I also want to highlight the line “If he hit it right, I might take him on a flight on my choppa, drop him off at the mall, let him buy some J’s, let him shoppa.” This line not only makes me chuckle, but Beyoncé is doing a lot of work to subvert gender rules and affirm (black) female power, which shouldn’t be overlooked amidst other discussions of what she should or shouldn’t be doing in the video.
I also think that the Griffin text helps me understand a possible source for the level of outrage by certain people and outlets like Fox News: “historical examples of how black women’s voices…soothed white children with lullabies” (110) and became a symbol of sort for healing and nationalism. Griffin talked about how it’s possible that “voices create an aural space where listeners can momentarily experience themselves as outside of themselves, as ‘home’ or as ‘free’”(111) and Beyoncé’s particular performance of Formation during the Super Bowl challenged this notion for white audiences.
Throughout the week, I’ve kept going back to our conversation regarding Beyoncé’s performance at the Super Bowl. Particularly, I’m thinking about it in relation to Griffin, her point that “The recognizably black woman—singing rather than speaking—is a familiar sight for American audiences” which, one the one hand, serves as a symbol of “nurturing, healing, life and love giving” but on the other “poses a challenge to the United States revealing its democratic pretense a lie” (Griffin 103-104). It’s interesting to think about this with regards to Beyoncé given, as discussed in class, this was her second performance at the Super Bowl over a four-year span and the backlash she’s received regarding this year’s performance from numerous sources ranging from Rudy Giuliani to different police organizations and even people who are planning to “protest” against her outside of NFL headquarters. Beyoncé certainly demonstrated the latter this year in performing “Formation”—just a day after the video dropped, ensuring viewers (or at least those who watched the video) would have the imagery of post-Katrina New Orleans and police violence in their heads—while paying homage to the Black Panthers. It would be hard to watch this performance without having to think about the long history of and current violence towards Black people (something that has proved motivator behind both criticism and praise of the performance).
ReplyDeleteAnd yet what’s most interesting to me is the fact that Beyoncé also served as the former of these two figures Griffin presents, the healing figure, in her first Super Bowl performance. Her performance at Super Bowl XLVII three years ago functioned for many as a healing of Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl performance (which opens up a number of issues itself on America’s relationship to the Black female body), post-Katrina New Orleans (the site of the game) once again coming into play, this time noting its progress rather than highlighting how America has continued to fail and perpetrate violence against Black bodies. It’s interesting to me how one pop star could evoke such different reactions in Super Bowls not too far apart. I’m especially interested in how this all played out in a year where much of the focus in the NFL went to Cam Newton, quarterback of the Carolina Panthers, and America’s infatuation with the entertainment he provided and inability to cope with the blackness he performed on (and off) the field. I’m left wondering how much those two things have built off of each other in reactions to both Newton and Beyoncé.
This week's class definitely had a lot going on and it's given me a lot to respond to! But what I keep thinking about is the relationship between written text and performance--a relationship that Malcolm brought up again this week, in particularly as it pertains to Hughes's inventive poems with marginalia (I'll stick with that terminology, since that's what we used in class).
ReplyDeleteAs we discussed the performance of Hughes's poem which Malcolm provided us, I remember thinking that a performance is a reading both in the sense that the performer is literally reading the words of the text and in the sense that it provides us with an interpretation--a reading--of the poem being performed. This understanding of performance is, I think, fairly uncontroversial. We talk about it all the time when we talk about drama. The director gives the audience her own personal vision of the story/play/text.
However, Imani brought up that various audience members viewing a performance will also have their own unique experiences of the performance, which becomes a "text" itself--please pardon the terminology, but I've spent the last several years of my life coming to understand everything as a text and it's hard to break the habit now that I realize that my discourse is privileging the written word even as it attempts to "legitimize" other cultural artifacts.
It's the same problematic ideological approach to studying music, magazines, web sites, etc. as "texts" that led me to think of performances as readings or interpretations of a poem. That understanding of performance privileges the "original" written poem in the very way that Weheliye cautioned us not to.
So I'm trying to reconcieve of performances of the poems as their own artifacts (I just had to delete the word "text" and change it to artifact yet again--though artifact still feels wrong, since it seems to imply a permanence which is exactly the opposite of the ephemeral live performance, but what do I call this text/artifact/thing, then!?). Reading the poem on a page silently is certainly a particular kind of experience. I think what makes it special is the simultaneity with which the reader is presented with the marginal notes and the "main" poem. This kind of simultaneity would affect the reader much differently in a performance. Imagine if the marginal notes and the "main body" of the text were read simultaneously. It would be disorienting. Granted,the marginalia itself can be disorienting to a reader trying to grapple with the quest to read the poem in a variety of way, but because of the permanence of the text, the reader can go back and re-read. How do you review a live performance? How do you, as a "reader" of a live performance, separate the musical accompaniment from the words being spoken, then recombine them?
I'm not saying anything groundbreaking here, but I wanted to get down in writing the mental processes I'm going through in my attempt, as a long-time disciple of the written word--particularly the English written word--to understand how to "read" performance as something other than a single person's/group's vision of an authoritative text--as something that requires its own tools of analysis. I suppose I'm working on becoming a critical listener (and viewer), and I feel ill-equipped by comparison.
I'm trying to submerge myself in the "mixtery" that Edwards pointed out in Johnson's works--the mixture of the performed/ephemeral and the fixed/permanent/textual, and the mystery of which ought to be privileged at any given time.
PS: I'd love to hear if anyone has insights into how to "read" performances effectively or how to listen critically. I'd also love to know if anyone else is experiencing/has experienced this difficulty in trying to reevaluate their privileging of written texts.
Following last week's class, I feel as though I have a lot of thoughts that I have not been able to fully articulate especially when it comes to Beyonce. It has been a week of Beyonce overload between her performance and all of the think pieces that have emerged. What appears in the song Formation and throughout her performance are ideas of blackness that can only be read by people who speak the two languages of being black and American. For example, her use of the words Creole, Bama, hot sauce in her bag, and the importance of Red Lobster are all things that have a different meaning when you are able to straddle lines of being both black and American. What I think is missing is the classed element of Beyonce, most people I know are middle-upper class black women who are die hard Beyonce' fans, they have the disposable income to pay for her events and they also understand the importance of keeping hot sauce in your bag because you may encounter a situation or location where the food you are eating is blander than what you normally enjoy. With this, in conjunction with the Muse is Music, I wonder the classed elements of black women and their voices. I feel as though I hear black men talking about music as a way to get out of poverty more than black women, I may be wrong, but it's a thought that came across my mind as well. In general black women are the forefront of many movements, even if their faces aren't seen. It may somehow be related to the fact that black women are in positions where they are often not centered and a Patricia Hill Collins framework may assist in reassessing the ways in which we look at Beyonce and all black women singers.
ReplyDelete