Black Monsters/White Corpses: Kanye’s Racialized Gender Politics
One aspect to this distrust was the vaulted position of white women – placed on pedestals, all other women were seen as lower beings compared to this perfect ideal of whiteness. To this day, this idea plays out time and time again, on fashion catwalks, in horror films, and in music videos.
I’ll return to this idea in the third section – but for now, it’s fascinating to see who is interpreted as “monster” and who is interpreted as “woman.”
Nicki Minaj’s Dual Sexualized Selves
Nicki Minaj plays what appears to be a dungeon dominatrix, torturing her alter-ego. The two Nickis are like night and day, using the typical white/black clothing dichotomy to symbolize good and evil.
However, its interesting to watch Nicki add another element to her performance – not only is she tormenting herself, she also acts against herself sexually, fulfilling a long held trope – female suffering is sexy. By writhing and grinding on her captive self, Minaj is playing into the visual imagery that has fueled horror movies for quite some time – a woman in peril should also operate as an object of sexual desire. Minaj subverts this a bit – her pink haired self appears openly defiant, before she is re-covered with the hood.
Despite the imagery in Nicki’s set, I have to admit to some satisfaction here – while women here are casually tossed aside and used as decoration throughout the entire video, it is only Nicki’s section that brings a bit of interest to the horror movie concept. (Well, that and the zombies skipping rope.) Nicki Minaj owns this track and has the most interesting concept in the video. (Think about it: a very easy thing to do would have been to make her the severed head Kanye is holding, or pose her beautifully in a grave.)
But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the intent and response are very different things. While Nicki Minaj is easily the woman with the most agency in the video, she is still reduced to being the target of a simplistic male gaze. I’ve written about this before, noting that hip-hop’s visual culture has (d?)evolved to the point where female rappers are also required to serve as eye candy in their own music videos, an action not required of men in a similar position.
The bleed over has even pulled over to neo-soul and R & B. Now there was always some element of sexual allure boosting sales – but when Erykah Badu’s artistic statement in “Window Seat” was passed around on the merit of “her perfect three baby booty,” one has to wonder if anything is enough to overcome the male gaze.
Minaj is a master of playing to the male gaze while disrupting certain expectations as a way to assert her artistic individuality. So it was not surprising, but still somewhat jarring that at the height of Nicki’s dominance of the track, the person who uploaded the YouTube video inserts a little note that pops up saying “WHAT a ASSSSSS!”
Even at her moment of lyrical greatness, the perception of her body trumps all.
White Womanhood and Black Women
Kanye’s images were meant to both disturb and titillate, to intentionally contrast the beautiful with the profane. And it is this ongoing dynamic that troubles me more than the images of dead women or Kanye’s lyrics.
Andrea Rubenstein coined a very useful concept a while back: the usual amount of racism. She explains that this is the type of racism that becomes generally accepted practice – for example, shows with all white casts and workplaces in areas as diverse as New York City. It is so insidious, it becomes expected – therefore things that exceed this threshold are either applauded or condemned depending on how far they stray away from the “usual” amount.
This frame is also fascinating to explore what appears to be a violation of the usual amount of sexism in this video in particular. Women draped around as decorations in music videos isn’t new or uncommon. Lyrics about sexual dominance involving specific sexual acts also aren’t new or uncommon.
Page 2 of 3 | Previous page | Next page