Examining manhood, sexism, and homophobia in hip-hop culture
by Carmen Van Kerckhove
I missed this when it was on PBS, so it’s great to catch at least a bit of it on YouTube. Here’s the description:
“Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes” provides a riveting examination of manhood, sexism, and homophobia in hip-hop culture. Director Byron Hurt, former star college quarterback, longtime hip-hop fan, and gender violence prevention educator, conceived the documentary as a “loving critique” of a number of disturbing trends in the world of rap music. He pays tribute to hip-hop while challenging the rap music industry to take responsibility for glamorizing destructive, deeply conservative stereotypes of manhood. The documentary features revealing interviews about masculinity and sexism with rappers such as Mos Def, Fat Joe, Chuck D, Jadakiss, and Busta Rhymes, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, and cultural commentators such as Michael Eric Dyson and Beverly Guy-Shetfall. Critically acclaimed for its fearless engagement with issues of race, gender violence, and the corporate exploitation of youth culture.
[If you’re reading this in an RSS reader or Feedblitz email and can’t view the video, please click on the post title.]
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Kaywil wrote:
These rappers are just employees for the music industry and American masculine culture. We would not walk up to a McDonald’s employee and start harassing them for making food that contributes to heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, and other health ills.
Rap music is just another way for young white males to escape stereotypical messages about themselves and their masculinity (when compared to black men) and so they get to pretend for one day that they have the (romanticized) big black male penis.
Jackson Katz, who was interviewed in this clip, has done his own movie “Tough Guise” which examines hyper-masculinity and takes a look at some of the root causes.
http://www.mediaed.org/videos/MediaGenderAndDiversity/ToughGuise
Posted 10 Apr 2007 at 8:24 am ¶
Neil wrote:
in response to Kaywil:
we’re all employed to someone higher than us. that doesn’t take away our accountability in the ideologies and beliefs we perpetuate.
a mcdonalds employee is hardly the spokesperson for the company, but when you have milllions of adolescents of color looking up to you and listening intently to every word you spit, then yes, there is a very real responsibility that the individual has to own up to.
you mention what rap is to young white males, but what message does it send to the young black community? most underground mc’s that DO tackle subjects like homosexuality don’t last very long, and this is before they even break big into the music industry. frankly i only ever heard of 2 of them.
Posted 10 Apr 2007 at 9:14 am ¶
Kai wrote:
I caught this documentary on PBS Independent Lens a couple months ago on some insomniac late night and was totally riveted. Highly recommended, especially for male hip hop fans. Good find, Carmen.
Posted 10 Apr 2007 at 12:46 pm ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:
I caught this documentary as well with my boyfriend and I adore it. I can’t wait until it is available on DVD (it’s currently sold out and backordered).
Neil & Kaywil raise excellent points – some of which were touched upon in the documentary. Like Chuck D said, there comes a time when the people in the industry have to say no. They have to say they aren’t going to participate in this kind of culture anymore, and put forth a different image.
One of the things I want to explore about hip-hop culture is WHY these messages resonate so heavily. A lot of people take the time to denounce the messages hip-hop sends, but does not seek to understand why those messages became popular in the first place.
Personally, I wonder if hip-hop fills a need for the rest of society. This is completely unscientific, but my theory is that other genres do not need to spew out misogyny or defeatist mentalities – hip-hop does it for them.
As more and more music heads begin to listen cross-genre, they start to compartmentalize what they listen to. So if they want to party and floss, they listen to hip-hop. If they want to feel introspective, they listen to emo rock. And the music industry has resonded to those trends by pushing more of what works. Again, still trying to figure out how to prove that, but that is my two cents…
Posted 10 Apr 2007 at 2:17 pm ¶
Kaywil wrote:
Neil, it’s ideal to believe that an “individual” rapper can stop the systemic racism/sexism that’s occurring in rap music. But that’s impossible. People can be accountable all they want, at the the end of the day, the people at the top of the food chain who stand to benefit the most should be held accountable before we go after the individual black male rapper that you think is influencing young black kids.
Don’t blame the kid behind the counter handing you the fries. Blame the CEO.
As for those kids that are being influenced, America has more problems than rap. Take it away and we have movies, social conditioning, racism, violence, poverty. The list could go on and on. There are many black men that can attribute the influences in their lives to the examples that they saw around them, not only in rap: the good teachers that taught them, the loving parents that raised them, the neighborhood kids they played with. So tell me, why (you even gave an example) are those people not being employed by record companies to “spread the good word”?
Posted 10 Apr 2007 at 2:37 pm ¶
Kaywil wrote:
…and yes, Latoya, hip hop is filling a social need. Check out http://www.debatingrace.com. It’s on my next-to-read list. He’s also featured in the clip.
Posted 10 Apr 2007 at 2:55 pm ¶
Kimi wrote:
I attended the LA premiere of this film, it is excellent and I would love to get more info on other films like this! There was a panel discusion afterwards that was awesome. Talib Kwali, Yo-Yo, and Mic 1 were on the panel. I am happy that people inside the industry are talking about this.
Posted 10 Apr 2007 at 3:08 pm ¶
merq wrote:
Kaywil wrote:
“These rappers are just employees for the music industry and American masculine culture. We would not walk up to a McDonald’s employee and start harassing them for making food that contributes to heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, and other health ills.”
That, to me, is a major cop-out. The “I gotta eat, and the white man’s making me do it” is played the fuck out.
Plus, I was overjoyed to finally hear someone attack the “he isn’t calling me a bitch” rhetoric in exactly the same way I have for years! With all due respect, Kaywil, that, like your “music industry” argument, is a self-serving form of denial that enables people to continue listening to damaging messages with minimal guilt.
Posted 10 Apr 2007 at 7:53 pm ¶
merq wrote:
Hi. My name is Merq, and I’m a commaholic.
Posted 10 Apr 2007 at 8:01 pm ¶
Kaywil wrote:
Merq –
Although we “choose” our jobs, it’s only the “American Dream” factory that makes a person think they’re so independent from everyone else, that they make their own choices, and have their own free will. We are living in a ’society’ for a reason, not on an island where we can do whatever we want without anyone else’s involvement or input. People may not be forced to rap about garbage, but they do, and someone is employing them.
Your argument has been used by corporations and the media to justify why they should be selling this stuff without guilt (”if you don’t like it, then don’t buy it”…blah blah blah). If they are not accountable for their participation in all of this, then we will continue to see the re-appropriation of black culture continue, without the control of influential black stakeholders, all the while having society blame blacks for the fall out (they use to say this about jazz music not too long ago).
If you watch this movie (in full), along with the links that I have posted already, you will see my argument is reiterated time and time again. Sorry that I don’t have a camera and an editing studio to make my point look more fancy.
Jackson Katz talks about (white) boys and masculinity in the media being driven by the entertainment industry and its accompanying corporations. Is he copin’ out by blaming the ‘man’ when he is the ‘man’? Or is he just examining the power of corporate influence on boyhood? Should we all be blaming Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger for playing those roles as you are trying to do with 50 cent and others? There’s a deeper issue at hand. Don’t cop-out by blaming only the rapper and not the rapper’s boss.
Want fries with that?
Posted 10 Apr 2007 at 10:03 pm ¶
merq wrote:
Kaywil,
Trust me, I’m not nearly as naive as you may think. I’m well aware of the power structure in these industries. My point is that, at some point, you have to ask yourself whether it’s worth denigrating your people to put some food on the table.
Shameless plug, but if you click on my name, you’ll be taken to a(n admittedly poorly-designed) web-documentary I did on representations of blacks in the media.
I posed the “who is to blame” question to everyone from Grammy-winning producer Teddy Vann (Luther Vandross’ “Power of Love”) to bestselling/Pulitzer-winning authors Karen Hunter and Stephan Dweck.
When you get a chance, take a look at the videos on there.
Path: Media > Who Is To Blame
Posted 10 Apr 2007 at 11:21 pm ¶
Kaywil wrote:
Thanks for the link…I’ll be checking it out…
Posted 11 Apr 2007 at 11:42 am ¶
Colin wrote:
“Personally, I wonder if hip-hop fills a need for the rest of society. This is completely unscientific, but my theory is that other genres do not need to spew out misogyny or defeatist mentalities – hip-hop does it for them.”
LaToya-
I’d say heavy metal has long filled that same “void” indeed, not mention its many offshoots, like death metal, thrash metal and gothic metal.
Much of American pop is exploitative of sexist images of women as well, and while not overtly homophobic, its lack of GLBT themes strikes me as complicit at the least in the homophobia in society at large.
What is defeatism, and how is it at play in hip-hop, LaToya? Out of complete honesty, I’ve never thought of “defeatism” as anything more than a simplistic Bush Administration talking point.
Posted 11 Apr 2007 at 2:00 pm ¶
Colin wrote:
I guess the term was “need” not void.
Posted 11 Apr 2007 at 2:08 pm ¶
kristin wrote:
i just think its funny that yesterday my organization, power dynamics awareness club, did a screening of this doc on our campus.
Posted 11 Apr 2007 at 3:33 pm ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:
Colin -
I agree with your points, but I don’t believe that is the whole story.
Yes, metal and some other factions of rock have had misogynistic overtones and portrayals of women…but I do not think it has been to the extent of mainstream hip-hop culture. Rock goes against women too, but normally at an individual level, not with the level of casual reference to bitches and hos as just a general term for female.
And while I am sure there are rock groups that do the same things, they are not nearly as prominent as hip-hop. Or, in the words music listeners I have spoken to “hip-hop is the new pop.”
That being the case, I feel like the gap needs to be examined. Why does hip-hop talk about the collective, and rock talk about individuals?
Both genres serve up sexualized images of women, but commercial hip-hop is fusing words, language, images, and off-screen/out-of-studio actions.
(Along those lines, I use the word commercial intentionally – is this diet of sexual imagery served to us because hip-hop is to be marketed, and the golden rule of marketing is “Sex Sells?”)
I refer to defeatism, more in the sense of a “self-defeating mentality.” As Joan Morgan wrote, a lot of hip-hop is presented as an attitude, but is really “straight up depression.” More sex, more drugs, more liquor, more women…it seems like a life of opulence but isn’t it really just trying to fill an ever widening hole in the self?
Posted 11 Apr 2007 at 3:34 pm ¶
gatamala wrote:
As Joan Morgan wrote, a lot of hip-hop is presented as an attitude, but is really “straight up depression.” More sex, more drugs, more liquor, more women…it seems like a life of opulence but isn’t it really just trying to fill an ever widening hole in the self?
Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted 12 Apr 2007 at 10:10 am ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:
Gatamala –
“When Chickenheads Come Home To Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down,” is the book I reference above.
(I wrote the last sentence, BTW
)
It is a great book, which really examines issues in hip-hop and culture.
Another good one is “Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look At Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation.”
http://deconstructing-tyrone.blogspot.com/
Posted 12 Apr 2007 at 1:44 pm ¶
robthomaseyes wrote:
give me a break. Let’s not blame Don Imus for HIS racism, then. Blame the CEOs. See how STUPID that sounds? Rappers who spew crap ARE crap. They contribute the crap, and CEOs will put it out if they WRITE it. See how it works? Rapper writes filth and misogyny FIRST, then people can buy it. If you don’t write it, they can’t buy it. Take responsibility for yourselves, people, or stop getting angry when Don Imus says things. you can’t have it both ways.
Posted 13 Apr 2007 at 11:16 am ¶