The Grammys As White Nostalgia?
Courtesy Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images
By Guest Contributor David Kline
Reviewing the outcomes of this year’s Grammy Awards, Jon Caramanica of the New York Times described how, “for the umpteenth time, the Grammys went with familiarity over risk, bestowing album of the year honors (and several more) on an album that reinforced the values of an older generation suspicious of change.”
For Caramanica, the issue is not the quality of Adele’s musical offerings, but that her spectacular success at the Grammys – her album 21 brought her six awards, including Album of the Year and Song of the Year for “Rolling in the Deep – represents a particular cultural refusal of progressivism, a nostalgic clinging onto the safety and familiarity of a tried and true musical conservatism. What I want to suggest is that this nostalgia might also be understood as certain kind of white nostalgia for cultural dominance that is perceived as threatened within what is now known as the “post-racial.”
Within the post-racial, which names the illusion that race has been dissolved as a meaningful aspect of social discourse, there is a great tension inside whiteness itself, because while it certainly continues to exercise its power of social dominance, it has had to give up certain privileges of visibility that it once enjoyed. The reality is that whiteness no longer enjoys the full and unencumbered access to the spotlight of cultural influence that it once did. For example, where a televised show like the Grammy Awards was once dominated by images of white bodies (with the occasional black body), the racially diverse performance lineup represented by this year’s Grammys has become commonplace. The reality is that white bodies no longer dominate as the primary images of the show and others like it. At first glance, it would appear that the Grammys have entered into a “post-racial” moment.
Yet, when “post-racial” is understood for what it really is, the racial dynamic of this year’s Grammy Awards becomes much more complex. For in reality, this year’s awards show represents quite clearly that whiteness still can maneuver itself as the apex of cultural iconicity. In the end, this year’s Grammys was nothing more than an exercise in white nostalgia for a bygone era when white music (much of which was a mirrored version of black creativity) enjoyed its place at the top of the music industry’s most privileged spaces.
Such white nostalgia becomes conspicuously evident when this year’s Grammy performances are surveyed. Despite the provocative and flaccidly controversial performance of Nicki Minaj’s “Roman Holiday”(for an ongoing discussion see this thread) and a few other younger acts including Jennifer Hudson’s tribute to the recently deceased Whitney Houston, most up and coming artists exemplifying what might be described as a more progressive stream (i.e. music that doesn’t simply recycle old forms and sounds) within mainstream pop music were accompanied by more traditional acts. It was as if these artists were only being made legitimate by being allowed to perform with more established, authorative, and, most importantly, white figures.
For example, Rihanna’s performance, starting off with the sexually charged and sinister dance theme “We Found Love,” was met and quickly stifled with a bland duet with Chris Martin and then the clichéd anthems of Coldplay’s calm aura of non-threatening white British rock. In the end, the electric energy of Rihanna’s black body is literally overshadowed by four white men playing very conservative rock n roll. In contrast to these pairings, as Caramanica notes, “more traditional artists like Adele, Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, and Paul McCartney got to perform unencumbered.”
Another moment that might be interpreted under to rubric of the post-racial happened when former Nirvana drummer and current Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, accepting the award for best Rock album of 2011 at this year’s Grammy Awards, had this to say:
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