The “Crossover” Effect (Core Post #3)

CORE POST #3: BLACK MASCULINITIES & POPULAR CULTURE

The “Crossover” Effect

Michael Jackson, one of the best selling music artists in history, was a pop icon and a sex symbol, but in an unusual sort of way. Michael Jackson is known for his androgyny. After years of surgery, Michael transformed from a seemingly normal looking African American man to a slightly atypical androgynous looking Caucasian. Not only did he change his race from black to white, but he also changed the appearance of his gender from masculine to feminine. It is the crossover between genders or the crossover between races which makes Michael stand-out.

Kobena Mercer, author of Monster Metaphors, mentions that this crossover, ambiguity and androgyny have its own sexual appeal. Mercer analyzes Michael’s music videos and claims that there is a “sense of neutral eroticism in Jackson’s style.’ Many other stars have had an ambiguous sexual image, which has added to their appeal and become a signature of their star image.

Fred Astaire was compared to Michael Jackson in Monster Metaphors because of similar sexual ambiguity. Was he heterosexual, homosexual, asexual?... Fred Astaire rarely played strong male leads, yet he sometimes did play romantic interests. Some may suggest however that he projects an air of femininity through his dance. In any regards, his dancing made women swoon all over the world. He presumably also made men’s jaw drop and stare. His dancing was incredible, and it was for this reason that he had sex appeal. Fred Astaire resembles Michael Jackson in this sense, because they were both desired for their talent. Despite being neither the typical masculine figure nor a total feminine figure, it didn’t matter; these stars were praised, admired and sexually desired for their incredible dance moves and charming appeal.

Crossovers have since become more common. And despite what one would expect, some of these “crossover” stars have the biggest sex appeal. Adam Lambart is a current star who embraces his androgynous look. He wears heavy eye make-up, glitter and nailpolish, yet is considered unbelievably sexy. It is his music which has a killer beat, great lyrics, and gets the room up on their feet. If the talent is good, the audience wants to like them. When a star’s music is high quality, people’s admiration can quickly turn into obsession, which can turn into sexual desire.

I think that these case studies reflects positively on our culture. It says that we don’t stereotype masculinity and femininity as much anymore. Or at least there are other reasons why we obsess over a star, namely their talent. For many of the above-mentioned stars, it is questionable whether there would be as much sexual appeal without their outstanding talent.

House of Cards Event (supplemental post #2)

I totally forgot to post about this event when it happened a few weeks back. I went to a screening of the first episode of the newest season of Netflix's House of Cards (even though I had already finished the entire season).  Both director James Foley (Glengarry Glen Ross) and actor Michael Kelly (who plays Doug Stamper on the show--my favorite character) were there and held a Q&A session after the screening. I got to meet them both, which was cool except that I am the most star struck person to ever live although I am trying to grow out of this (because it's as impractical as it is embarrassing).

(the most terrible selfie ever, I cringe)

Michael Kelly is nothing like his character, (not that I thought  he would be) but it got me thinking about how a lot of times it is difficult to extricate the person from the character they play or the persona they embody.

Deja Oliver Core Response #3--Michael Jackson and Paul Robeson

The first reading touches on how people view not only masculinity in general but masculinity especially as it pertains to blackness. If a black man is not the hypermasculine aggressive stereotype (or any variant of that) then he is sexually ambiguous and androgynous. “Jackson’s sexuality and sexual preferences in particular have been the focus for such public fascination” as the sexuality of black men often is. People are literally obsessed with the black body in an aggressively sexual paradigm. In the reading about Paul Robeson “by the end of the play “Othello ceased to be a human and became a gibbering primeval man’” in the 1930 performance, but in the later performances Robeson’s emphasis on Othello’s humanity and dignity weren’t well received by white critics.

Robeson as Othello

One such critic lamented the absence of the “vision of Chaos come again” in Paul Robeson’s Othello performance which is exemplary of how people view black men. During the course of the play Othello is never “chaos” but we expect him to “revert” to an innate brutality present in all black men (and black people in general) or else the “savagery is not believable”, as stated by another Robeson critic. 

Dyer was discussing Paul Robeson as Yank in The Hairy Ape in when he stated “black stands for animal vitality and white stands for frayed nerves”, this statement can also explain Michael Jackson’s perception as Peter Pan or “the lost boy”. When the Thriller album was released, Jackson’s complexion had lightened and his hair texture was considerably altered. While in hindsight this seems like a minor difference, audiences then were used to Jackson with deep brown skin and a large afro—he looked like all the other Jacksons. Seeing whiteness on a black man could only serve to heighten people’s anxieties about his emotional stability as a black man. If whiteness means “frayed nerves” on white people than what does it mean for black people?

 

Shelby Adair Response #2

Michael Jackson “Monster Metaphors” in SID by Christine Gledhill

By Shelby Adair

Michael Jackson’s ability to step across racial and sexual boundaries in both his music and iconography is partially what has made him such a successful pop artist. The rumors and talk about his personal life, behavior, sexual orientation, and change of appearances is as popular as his music to the point that he is “more like a movie-star than a modern rhythm and blues artist” (Gledhill 314). There are three aspects that made Michael’s career so appealing: his voice, his dancing, and his image.

Since he began his career with the Jackson 5 on the Tamla Motown label, Michael’s vocal performance was rooted in the “Afro-American tradition of ‘soul’” in his pop music, characterized by “breathy gasps, squeaks, sensual sighs and other wordless sounds” which trademarked his musical style (300). His dancing style has also been part of his stardom and was compared to James Brown and Jackie Wilson even as a child. His image also attracted huge amount of attention of both black and white youth. The most notable elements of Jackson’s image are the physical changes that appeared over time, particularly the lightening of his skin tone and changes to the ‘African’ qualities in his face. When Thriller was released, his nose was less rounded and his lips were less pronounced and his large ‘afro’ hair was now in permed curls (301)—rumored that he was adopting a more white physical appearance. In any sense, his racial ambiguity caused by his new image most likely allowed him to breakthrough the unspoken MTV policy of the exclusion of black artists with his Thriller music video, the first video to cross the racial boundary (302).

In the music video, Michael starts out as an innocent ‘boy-next-door’ on a date with his girlfriend. Then he transforms into a werewolf and chases after the girl, who is now the victim of a traditional horror genre film and Michael is the monster. Gledhill claims that this is related to sexuality and that the monster represents the male sexuality as “naturally bestial, predatory, aggressive, violent” (310). Then when he transforms into a zombie, he is then asexual or even anti-sexual, which then plays with the viewer’s preconceived notions of Michael’s image off-screen and his own sexual vagueness (312). Does Michael have a sexual beast underneath his sweet exterior, or is he actually not interested in sex at all?

He is constantly challenging black African American male stereotypes in his songs and the way he rebels against standards of masculinity and sexual identity. What is most interesting about Michael’s image is the way he does this in the Afro-American tradition of popular music, and since he is a man, but be “used in context black men and black male sexuality.” By changing his physical appearances, seen in real life and the changing characters in the Thriller video, allowed Michael to present a sexual and racial ambiguity to the audience; this allowed him to step outside the existing range of “types” of black men.

Alex Davis - Core Response

Paul Robeson - Show Boat

I found Dyer's critique of Paul Robeson fascinating. To Americans, Paul Robeson embodied every part of black culture. It is hard to imagine a caucasian counter-example. He become so associated as the hero of black culture. Even so, he pandered to the white imagination of black culture (cue Show Boat). 

Show Boat - Ah Still Suits Me 

Paul Robeson carefully treads the line between stereotypes and portraying the courage and willfulness of black Americans during this time. 

He is known for changing the lines of the Showboat song "Old Man River" from the meek "...I'm tired of livin' and 'feared of dyin'....," to a declaration of resistance, "... I must keep fightin' until I'm dying....". This exemplifies his determination to not pander to the imagination of white viewers. 

Dyer notes that Robeson, especially in O'Neill dramas, "plays on the opposition of basic black and white racial/cultural differences" (72). I found this especially true in his character in Show Boat. He sharply congrats with Gay's character - a seemingly refined and proper white American. In the end, it is Joe that displays his character and strength. 

This performance supports his personal views on the differences between what "Negro's feel" vs. the "white man". He is quoted saying that black men "feel rather than think, experience emotions directly rather than interprets them" (Dyer 73). 

The life of Paul Robeson drew an important conclusion for me. The life and experiences of African Americans has always been judged by experiences and expectations of the white majority. As Dyer speaks of Paul's performance as Othello, white critics expected a primitive portrayal and were disappointed when they did not get that. Both expect spontaneity, emotion, and naturalness -  they just expect it to manifest in different ways. 

I do not agree with Dyer's views on "Old Man River". He says that no one ever truly believed that the song was a quinine folk song. I strongly disagree. The song truly speaks to the struggles of Joe's character (and the great struggle for black culture).

The portrayal of Paul Robeson's body in Show Boat is interesting. As Dyer notes, the visual treatment of Robeson reproduces the feeling of subordination of the person looked at. This remains true for his character in Show Boat. The imagery of him holding the heavy bail provides great imagery: the "weight" of oppression and manual labor. 

In general, Paul used his character in Show Boat to call attention to many important questions about race and racial equality. The characters systematic placement in scenes (when Julie is called out as a mulatto) further draws our attention to important social questions. 

Robeson must have been hesitant in accepting his role in Show Boat. Carrying the burden of representing the entire black culture, it must have been hard to accept a position that was defined by the acceptance of the white majority. Their acceptance of the "black worker", pushing him further from leadership and total inclusion, is a heavy task to be put through. 

The physical representation of black Americans is an important part of understanding race in media. It has been used as a vessel to tell the story of black hysteria. It became a superficial way to "clump" people together based on perceived differences. History has shown the preference of a majority to exploit these differences for individual gains. As such, white majorities capitalized on racism to exploit the human labour of African Americans (ex. the workers of the ship v. the white performers). 

Has the idea of "representing" black Americans improved? Is it still from the vantage point of a white majority? Or is this just matter of perception? 

What do you think? 

 

Annika Feign Core Post 2

Kobena Mercer’s article tracks the metamorphosis of Michael Jackson from being an innocent ‘teeny bopper’ to the sexually ambiguous, almost androgynous image seen in his Thriller music video. Michael Jackson is introduced to the world in an Afro-American central way through the Jackson 5. Their songs like ‘ABC’ evoked a sense of black pride and reassured the younger generations to embrace their color. But as Jackson started to reinvent himself, his look followed a similar suit. 

Jackson adopted an androgynous look, emphasized through plastic surgeries to give himself a sharper nose and tighter lips – features often accredited to Europeans. While Jackson had not yet “crossed over from black to white” (308), his new look allowed Thriller to breach the boundary of race, popularizing black music in white markets. This was done by playing with the imagery and style that was common in the marketing of pop and introducing racial diversity in the video. 

 

Miley Cyrus is yet another pop star who has gone the opposite way by appropriating black conventions. Just as Jackson altered the primarily white pop world by drawing on his race, Cyrus draws from popular dance moves that correlate with black culture. Most obviously her twerking performance with Robin Thicke during the 2013 VMA’s. She drew from a popularized form of black culture that was already familiarized by white society in order to re-launch her career and reconstruct her image from a Disney Star to how she is today. Similar to Jackson who reinvented his Jackson 5 image to being racially and sexually ambiguous in his music video. 

Additionally, Thriller comments on Jackson’s masculinity. The usage of a different monster imagery pulled on horror conventions which “inscribe a fascination with sexuality, with gender identity codified in terms that revolve around the symbolic presence of the monster” (310). So as Jackson metamorphoses into a werewolf, which holds a representation of bestial and predatory. While it implies a sense of masculinity, it does this through the sense of his innate sexuality. But his zombie transformation questions why kind of sexuality he possess as it is purposefully vague. As Jackson has done throughout his music video, “stars have used androgyny and sexual ambiguity as part of their ‘style’ in ways which question prevailing definitions of male sexuality and sexual identity”, which is used through the embodiment of monsters (314).

Core Post #3

Katie Gavin

3/31/15

Paul Robeson, Black Masculinities + Popular Culture

The other day, I was hanging out in the garden next to the Roski School of Art and I stumbled into the garden that commemorates Americans brought to trial at the House of Un-American Activities Committee. I knew that Robeson was one American charged with being a communist, and sure enough, I found his stone and a quote next to it. At the time, Robeson was angry, but un-ashamed to speak out as a communist. I don’t feel like I know enough on the subject to say definitively, but I can imply from Dyer’s reading that it was Robeson’s overt position as a communist, anti-imperialist, and anti-racist to which we can attribute his irrelevancy amongst the youth of America.

The Standing committee for the House of Un-American Activities existed from 1945-1975, which is the period directly after that which Dyer covers in his chapter on Robeson. During the period that Dyer covered, which was roughly from 1924-1945, Robeson was a major star; in fact, he was considered by many to be the “first major black star” and one of the first “crossover artists”, or artist who is grounded in a subculture but who appeals to an audience beyond the confines of said subculture.

I am interested in analyzing, to a certain degree, the ways in which Dyer’s discussion of white views on Robeson might be interpreted. In the chapter, Dyer posits that “Robeson represent[ed] the idea of blackness as a positive quality, often explicitly set over against whiteness and its inadequacies” (78). More specifically, there is a discussion of blackness as being associated with naturalness or “animal vitality” and whiteness being associated with constrained emotions or unnaturalness.

This concept is really intriguing, but if one views it through the lens of Robeson’s eventual turn away from capitalism and towards communism, I would like to think about the ways in which white audiences might have believed in the possibility of acquiring or attaining the desirable qualities that Robeson “embodied” through economic transfer. In other words, I am speaking about the notion that white people might be able to gain access to the internal life of “Negroes” through the consumption of the all-encompassing performances of Robeson.

I think this question is extremely relevant today when one thinks about hip-hop music, particularly the fact that the number one demographic of hip-hop consumers is adolescent white males. Could this be part of the way in which subversive ideologies embodied by powerful Black celebrities are robbed of their revolutionary potency?