Fluent Essays

Initial Post Respond to one of the two prompts below. Your initial post should be about 200 words and directly respond to the prompt. Each initial post must make at least one reference to a reading, including the page number. Note that the 200-word limit is intended to keep your responses concise and focused on the topic. Verbosity will not be rewarded. Choose a favorite celebrity. What about them do you find authentic? What revelant fantasy or symbolic resources do they provide you? What is an example of multiculturalism? How does it apply to Croteau and Hoynes re: power and representation? Response Post Respond to a classmate's initial posts with an additional thought or question. This response should run about 75 words. If you're not sure where to start, consider responding to one classmate you agree with or you disagree with, explaining your point of view or posing a genuine question to better understand a classmate's point of view. Look for ways to push the conversation forward. As you engage in the discussion, maintain a respectful, collegial tone. the response material i give you after you give me the initial post. Post 1 I don't keep up with pop culture and the lives of celebrities much these days, and I don't consume media in the same way that I did when I was younger. However, when I think back a couple of years, one celebrity is brought to mind, and that is Lorde. Lorde is an incredibly popular indie-pop singer/songwriter who rose to fame in 2013/2014 with the release of her album Pure Heroine, which discusses life as a teenager in today's day and age. Her unique perspective on growing up allowed massive amounts of people to relate to her lyrics, including myself. I find her entire personality, story, and character to be authentic, and it's because of that that I was able to form such a connection and appreciation for not only her work but her herself. I got to see her in 2014 at the Greek Theatre for her debut tour, and she seemed genuinely interested and appreciative of her audience and the city of Berkeley. This made my appreciation for her grow deeper and stronger, almost as if I knew her on a personal level. Lorde provided me and many other people with a means of escape, a way of finding comfort and appreciation in and for your current situation, while simultaneously striving for something new and better. "Images of celebrities can be ‘used by audiences as sources for their own meaning-making processes, offering sites of identification or dis-identification with the values embodied by celebrities’ (Meyers 2015, p. 74)." (Sobande pg. 403) I related to Lorde and the struggles she discussed in her lyrics, and this made me appreciate her. To this day I still enjoy listening to her discography, as it brings me back in time and conjures up a state of nostalgia. Post2 According to the article written by Sobande, “Images of celebrities can be ‘used by audiences as sources for their own meaning-making processes, offering sites of identification or dis- identification with the values embodied by celebrities(Meyers 2015, p. 74)”(403). One of my favorite celebrities is Emma Chamberlain, who is an American Youtuber reaching over 9 million subscribers. Even though she is only 19 years old, she is not only a Youtuber but also running her own company as well. She has made so much money from Youtube and other businesses, but she still shows us being one of the ordinary teenagers. One of the reasons why she has a huge number of subscribers is that her videos make us feel like having a chit chat with a best friend. Relevant fantasy can be clearly seen on her Youtube videos. Although many popular YouTubers create videos for the ideal type of lifestyle such as morning routine, Emma only exposes her daily life and nothing seems special. But her natural appearance attracts many teenagers because they feel close to herself and her lifestyle. While many people enjoy watching the naturalness, some viewers are critical of her appearance.  223 THE SPECTACLE OF THE'OTHER' Stuart Hall Contents INTRODUCTION 225 226 I. I Heroes or villains? ; 1.2 Why does 'difference' matter? 234 2 RACIALIZING THE 'OTHER' 239 2.1 Commodity racism: empire and the domestic world 239 2.2 Meanwhile, down on the plantation ... 242 2.3 Signifying racial 'difference' 244 3 STAGING RACIAL 'DIFFERENCE': 'AND THE MELODY ' LINGERED ON ... 249 3.1 Heavenly bodies 254 4 STEREOTYPING AS A SIGNIFYING PRACTICE 257 4.1 Representation, difference and power 259 4.2 Power and fantasy 262 4.3 Fetishism and disavowal 264 5 CONTESTING A RACIALIZED REGIME OF REPRESENTATION 269 5.1 Reversing the stereotypes 270 5.2 Positive and negative images 272 5.3 Through the eye of representation 274 6 CONCLUSION 276 REFERENCES 277 READINGS FOR CHAPTER FOUR READING A: Anne McClintock, 'Soap and commodity spectacle' 280 READING B: Richard Dyer, 'Africa' 283 224 READING C: Sander Gilman, 'The deep structure of stereotypes' 284 READING D: Kobena Mercer, 'Reading racial fetishism' 285 CHAPTER 4 THE SPECTACLE OF THE 'OTHER' 225 Introduction How do we represent people and places which are significantly different from us? Why is 'difference' so compelling a theme, so contested an area of representation? What is the secret fascination of 'otherness', and why is popular representation so frequently drawn to it? What are the typical forms and representational practices which are used to represent 'difference' in popular culture today, and where did these popular figures and stereotypes come from? These are some of the questions about representation which we set out to address in this chapter. We will pay particular attention to those representational practices which we call 'stereotyping'. By the end we hope you will understand better how what we call 'the spectacle of the "Other"' works, and be able to apply the ideas discussed and the sorts of analysis undertaken here to the mass of related materials in contemporary popular culture - for example, advertising which uses black models, newspaper reports about immigration, racial attacks or urban crime, and films and magazines which deal with 'race' and ethnicity as significant themes. The theme of 'representing difference' is picked up directly from the previous chapter, where Henrietta Lidchi looked at how 'other cultures' are given meaning by the discourses and practices of exhibition in ethnographic museums of 'the West'. Chapter 3 focused on the 'poetics' and the 'politics' of exhibiting - both how other cultures are made to signify through the discourses of exhibition (poetics) and how these practices are inscribed by relations of power (politics) - especially those which prevail between the people who are represented and the cultures and institutions doing the representing. Many of the same concerns arise again in this chapter. However, here, racial and ethnic difference is foregrounded. You should bear in mind, however, that what is said about racial difference could equally be applied in many instances to other dimensions of difference, such as gender, sexuality, class and disability. 1' Our focus here is the variety of images which are on display in popular culture and the mass media. Some are commercial advertising images and magazine illustrations. which use racial stereotypes, dating from the period of slavery or from the popular imperialism of the late nineteenth century. However, Chapter 4 brings the story up to the present. Indeed, it begins with images from the competitive world of modern athletics. The question which this comparison across time poses is: have the repertoires of representation around 'difference' and 'otherness' changed or do earlier traces remain intact in contemporary society? The chapter looks in depth at theories about the representational practice known as 'stereotyping'. However, the theoretical discussion is threaded through the examples, rather than being introduced for its own sake. The chapter ends by considering a number of different strategies designed to intervene in the field of representation, to contest 'negative' images and transform representational practices around 'race' in a more 'positive' 226 REPRESENTATION: CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS AND SIGNIFYING PRACTICES direction. It poses the question of whether there can be an effective 'politics of representation'. Once again, then, visual representation takes centre stage. The chapter sustains the overall theme by continuing our exploration of representation as a concept and a practice -the key first 'moment' in the cultural circuit. Our aim is to deepen our understanding of what representation is and how it works. Representation is a complex business and, especially when dealing with 'difference', it engages feelings, attitudes and emotions and it mobilizes fears and anxieties in the viewer, at deeper levels than we can explain in a simple, common-sense way. This is why we need theories -to deepen our analysis. The chapter, then, builds on what we have already learned about representation as a signifying practice, and continues to develop critical concepts to explain its operations� 1.1 Heroes or villains? Look, first, at Figure 4.1. It is a I picture of the men's 100 metres final at the 1988 Olympics which appeared on the cover of the Olympics Special of the Sunday Times colour magazine (9 October 1988). It shows the black Canadian sprinter, Ben Johnson, winning in record time from Carl Lewis and Linford Christie: five superb athletes in action, at the peak of their physical prowess. All of them men and - perhaps, now, you will notice consci01,1sly for the first time -all of them black! ACTIVITY I How do you 'read' the picture - what is it saying? In Barthes' terms, what is its''myth' - its underlying message? One possible message relates to their racial identity. These athletes are aH from a racially-defined group -one often discriminated against precisely on the grounds of their 'race' and colour, whom we are more accustomed to see depicted in the news as the victims. or 'losers' in terms of achievement. Yet here they are, winning! In terms of difference, then - a positive m�ssage: a triumphant moment, a cause for ce�bration. Why, then, does the caption say, 'Heroes and villains'? Who do you think is the hero, who the villaini? Even if you don't follow athletics, the answer isn't difficult to discover. Ostensibly about the Olympics, the photo is in fact a trailer for the magazine's lead story about the growing menace of drug-taking in international athletics -what i�side is called 'The Chemical Olympics'. Ben Johnson, you may recall, was found to have taken drugs to enhance his performance. He was disqualified, the gold medal being awarded to Carl Lewis, and Johnson was expelled from world athletics in disgrace. The story suggests that all athletes -black or white - are potentially 'heroes' and 'villains'. But in this image, Ben Johnson personifies this split in a particular way. He is both 'hero' and ..:.;;:-�===·=-���,-���-��;:-��r.:-� -� -��-:�. :· ----=-= '. ----:----0.., CHAPTER 4 THE SPECTACLE OF THE 'OTHER' 227 FIGURE 4.1 'Heroes and Villains', cover of The Sunday Times Magazine, 9 October 1988. 228 REPRESENTATION: CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS AND SIGNIFYING PRACTICES 'villain'. He encapsulates the extreme alternatives of heroism and villainy in world athletics in one black body. There are several points to make about the way the representation of 'race' and 'otherness' is working in this photo. First, if you think back to Chapters 1 and 3, you will remember the work of Barthes on the idea of 'myth'. This photo, too, functions at the level of 'myth'. There is a literal, denotative level of meaning - this is a picture of the 100 metres final and the figure in front is Ben Johnson. Then there is the more connotative or thematic meaning- the drug story. And within that, there is the sub-theme of 'race' and 'difference'. Already, this tells us something important about how 'myth' works. T he image is a very powerful one, as visual images often are. But its meaning is highly ambiguous. It can carry more than one meaning. If you didn't know the context, you might be tempted to read this as a moment of unqualified triumph. And you wouldn't be 'wrong' since this, too, is a perfectly acceptable meaning to take from the image. But, as the caption suggests, it is not produced here as an image pf 'unqualified triumph'. So, the same photo can carry several, quite different, sometimes diametrically opposite meanings. It can be a picture of disgrace or of triumph, or both. Many meanings, we might say, are potential within the photo. But there is no one, true meaning. Meaning 'floats'. It cannot be finally fixed. However, attempting to 'fix' it is the work of a representational practice, which intervenes in the many potential meanings of an image in an attempt to privilege one. So, rather than a 'right' or 'wrong' meaning, what we need to ask is, 'Which of the many meanings in this image does the magazine mean to privilege?' Which is the preferred meaning? Ben Johnson is the key element here preferred meaning because he is both an amazing athlete, winner and record-breaker, and the athlete who was publicly disgraced because of drug-taking. So, as it turns out, the preferred meaning is both 'heroism' and 'villainy'. It wants to say something paradoxical like, 'In the moment of the hero's triumph, there is also villainy and moral defeat.' In part, we know this is the preferred meaning which the magazine wants the photo to convey because this is the meaning which is singled out in the caption: HEROES AND VILLAINS. Rol�nd Barthes (1977) argues that, frequently, it is the caption which selects one out of the many possible meanings from the image, and anchors it with words. The 'meaning' of the photograph, then, does not lie exclusively in the image, but in the conjunction of image and text. Two discourses - the discourse of written language and the discourse of photography - are required to produce and 'fix' the meaning (see Hall, 1972). As we have suggested, this photo can also be 'read', connotatively, in terms of what it has to 'say' about 'race'. Here, the message could be - blac_k people shown being good at something, winning at last! But in the light of the 'preferred meaning', hasn't the meaning with respect to 'race' and 'otherness' changed as well? Isn't it more something like, 'even when black people are shown at the summit of their achievement, they often fail to carry it off'? This CHAPTER 4 THE SPECTACLE OF THE 'OTHER' 229 FIGURE 4.2 Linford Christie, holding a Union Jack, having won the men's I 00 metres Olympic gold medal, Barcelona 1992. having-it-both-ways is important because, as I hope to show you, people who are in any way significantly different from the majority - 'them' rather than 'us' - are frequently exposed to this binary form of representation. They seem to be represented through sharply opposed, polarized, binary extremes - good/ bad, civilized/primitive, ugly/excessively attractive, repelling-because-different/ compelling-because-strange-and-exotic. And they are often required to be both things at the same time! We will return to these split figures or 'tropes' of representation in a moment. But first, let us look at another, similar news photo, this time from another record-breaking 100 metres final. Linford Christie, subsequently captain of the British Olympics squad, at the peak of his career, having just won the race of a lifetime. The picture captures his elation, at the moment of his lap of honour. He is holding the Union Jack. In the light of the earlier discussion, how do you 'read' this photograph (Figure 4.2)? What is it 'saying' about 'race' and cultural identity? ACTIVITY 2 Which of the following statements, in your view, comes closest to expressing the 'message' of the image? (a) 'This is the greatest moment of my life! A triumph for me, Linford Christie.' (b) 'This is a moment of triumph for me and a celebration for black people everywhere!' (c) 'This is a moment of triumph and celebration for the British Olympic team and the British people!' (d) 'This is a moment of triumph and celebration for black people and the British Olympic team. It shows that you can be "Black" and "British"!' There is, of course, no 'right' or 'wrong' answer to the question. The image carries many meanings, all equally plausible. What is important is the fact that this image both shows an event ( denotation) and carries a 'message' or meaning (connotation) - Barthes would call it a 'meta-message' or myth - about 'race', colour and 'otherness'. We can't help reading images of this kind 230 REPRESENTATION: CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS AND SIGNIFYING PRACTICES as 'saying something', not just about the people or the occasion, but about their 'otherness', their 'difference'. 'Difference' has been marked. How it is then interpreted is a constant and recurring preoccupation in the representation of people who are racially and ethnically different from the majority population. Difference signifies. It 'speaks'. In a later interview, discussing his forthcoming retirement from international sport, Christie commented on the question of his cultural identity - where he feels he 'belongs' (The Sunday Independent, 11 November 1995). He has very fond memories of Jamaica, he said, where he was born and lived until the age of 7. But 'I've lived here [in the UK] for 28 [years]. I can't be anything other than British' (p. 18). Of course, it isn't as simple as that. Christie is perfectly well aware that most definitions of 'Britishness' assume that the person who belongs is 'white'. It is much harder for black people, wherever they were born, to be accepted as 'British'. In 1995, the cricket magazine, Wisden, had to pay libel damages to black athletes for saying that they couldn't be expected to display the same l9yalty and commitment to winning for England because they are black. So Christie knows that every image is also being 'read' in terms of this broader question of cultural belongingness and difference. Indeed, he made his remarks in the context of the negative publicity to which he has been exposed in some sections of the British tabloid press, a good deal of which hinges on a vulgar, unstated but widely recognized 'joke' at his expense: namely that the tight-fitting Lycra shorts which he wears are said to reveal the size and shape of his -genitals. This was the detail on_ which The Sun focused on the morning after he won an Olympic gold medal. Christie has been subject to continuous teasing in the tabloid press about the prominence and size of his 'lunchbox' - a L euphemism which some have taken so literally that, he revealed, he has been approached by a firm wanting to market its lunchboxes around his image! Linford Christie has observed about these innuendoes: 'I felt humiliated ... My first instinct was that it was racist. There we are, stereotyping a black man. I can take a good joke. But it happened the day after I won the greatest accolade an athlete can win ... I don't want to go through life being known for what I've got in my �harts. I'm a serious person ... ' (p. 15). ACTIVITY 3 What is going on here? Is this just a joke in bad taste, or does it have a deeper meaning? What do sexuality and gender have to do with images of black men and woinen? Why did the black French writer from Martinique, Frantz Fanon, say that white people seem to be obsessed with the sexuality of black people? It is the subject of a widespread fantasy, Fanon says, which fixates the black man at the level of the genitals. 'One is no longer aware of the Negro, but only of a p·enis; the Negro is eclipsed. He is turned into a penis' (Fanon, 1986/1952, p. 170). ./ : =----: =-=-= -=---- - ---�--- •�< .. � ...... �:-;�-_,,�:�.:ai-��--�- �tt'.i.'�«� -_'it?;..-7 _ ... _ -- - - -�-; l CHAPTER 4 THE SPECTACLE OF THE 'OTHER' 231 What, for example, did the French writer, Michael Cournot, whom Farron quotes, mean when he wrote that 'Four Negroes with their penises exposed would fill a cathedral'? (Farron, 1986/1952, p. 169). What is the relationship. of these fantasies of sexuality to 'race' and ethnicity in the representation of 'otherness' and 'difference'? We have now introduced another dimension into the representation of 'difference' - adding sexuality and gender to 'race', ethnicity and colour. Of course, it is well established that sport is one of the few areas where black people have had outstanding success. It seems natural that images of black people drawn from sp&t should emphasize the body, which is the instrument of athletic skill and achievement. It is difficult, however, to have images of bodies in action, at the peak of their physical perfection, without those images also, in some way, carrying 'messages' about gender and about sexuality. Where black athletes are concerned, what are these messages about? ACTIVITY 4 Look, for example, at the picture from the Sunday Times 1988 Olympic Special, of the black American sprinter, Florence Griffith-Joyner, who won three gold medals at Seoul (Figure 4.3). Can you 'read' this photo without getting some 'messages' about 'race', gender and sexuality - even if what the meanings are remain ambiguous? Is there any doubt that the photo is 'signifying' along all three dimensions? In representation, one sort of difference seems to attract others - adding up to a 'spectacle' of FIGURE 4.3 Florence Griffith-Joyner. 232 REPRESENTATION: CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS AND SIGNIFYING PRACTICES otherness. If you're not convinced, you might think of this in the context of the remark by 'Flo-Jo's' husband, Al Joyner, quoted in the text next to the photo: 'Someone Says My Wife Looked Like A Man'. Or consider the photo (which was reproduced on the following page of the article) of Al Joyner's sister, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who also won a gold medal and broke world records at Seoul in the heptathlon, preparing to throw a javelin, accompanied by text quoting another observation by Al Joyner: 'Somebody Says My Sister Looked Like A Gorilla'(Figure 4.4). �\ FIGURE 4.4 Jackie Joyner-Kersee. There is an additional point to be made about these photographs of black athletes in the press. They gain in meaning when they are read in context, against or in connection with one another. This is another way of saying that images do not carry meaning or 'signify' on their own. They accuJ.1!.ulate meanings, or play off their meanings against one another, across a variety of texts and media. Each image carries its own, specific meaning. But at the broader level of how 'difference' and 'otherness' is being represented in a particular culture at any one moment, we can see similar representational practices and figures being repeated, with variations, from one text or site of representation to another. This accumulation of meanings across different texts, where one image refers to another, or has its meaning altered by being 'read' in the context of other images, is called inter-textuality. We may inter-textuality describe the whole repertoire of imagery and visual effects through which 'difference' is represented at any one historical moment as a regime of representation; this is very similar to what, in Chapter 2, Peter Hamilton referred to as a representational paradigm. FIGURE 4.5 Carl Lewis, photographed for a Pirelli advertisement. CHAPTER 4 THE SPECTACLE OF THE 'OTHER' 233 An interesting example of inter-textuality, where the image depends for its meaning on being 'read' in relation to a number of other, similar images, can • be found in Figure 4.5. This is Carl Lewis, one of the sprinters you saw in - Figure 4.1, taken from a Pirelli advertisement. At first glance, the image summons up echoes of all the previous images we have been looking at - superbly-honed athletic bodies, tensed in action, super-men and super­ women. But here the meaning is differently inflected. Pirelli is a tyre firm with a reputation for producing calendars with pictures of beautiful women, scantily clad, in provocative poses - the prototypical 'pin-up'. In which of these two contexts should we 'read' the Carl Lewis image? One clue lies in the fact that, though Lewis is male, in the ad he is wearing elegant, high­ heeled red shoes! ACTIVITY 5 What is this image saying? What is its message? How does it 'say' it? This image works by the marking of' difference'. The conventional identification of Lewis with black male athletes and with a sort of 'super­ masculinity' is disturbe·d and undercut by the invocation of his 'femininity' - and what marks this is the signifier of the red shoes. The sexual and racial 'message' is rendered ambiguous. The super-male black athlete may not be all he seems. The ambiguity is amplified when we compare this image with all the other images - the stereotypes we are accustomed to see - of black athletes in the press. Its meaning is inter-textual - i.e. it requires to be read 'against the grain'. 234 REPRESENTATION: CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS AND SIGNIFYING PRACTICES ACTIVITY 6 Does this photo reinforce or subvert the stereotype? Some people say it's just an advertiser's joke. Some argue that Carl Lewis has allowed himself to be exploited by a big corporate advertiser. Others argue that he deliberately set out to challenge and contest the traditional image of black masculinity. What do you think? In the light of these examples, we can rephrase our original questions more precisely. Why is 'otherness' so compelling an object of representation? What does the marking of racial difference tell us about representation as a practice? Through which representational practices are racial and ethnic difference and 'otherness' signified? What are the 'discursive formations', the repertoires or regimes of representation, on which the media are drawing when they represent 'difference'? Why is one dimension of difference -e.g. 'race' -crossed by other dimensions, such as sexuality, gender and class? And how is the representation of 'difference' linked with questions of power? 1.2 Why does 'difference' matter? Before we analyse any more examples, let us examine some of the underlying issues posed by our first question. Why does 'difference' matter -how can we explain this fascination with 'otherness'? What theoretical arguments can we draw on to help us unpack this question? Questions of 'difference' have come to the fore in cultural studies in recent decades and been addressed in different ways by different disciplines. In this section, we briefly consider four such theoretical accounts. As we discuss them, think back to the examples we have just analysed. In each, we start by showing how important 'difference' is -by considering what is said to be its positive aspect. But we follow this by some of the more negative aspects of 'difference'. Putting these two together suggests why 'difference' is both necessary and dangerous. 1 The first account comes from linguistics - from the sort of approach asso'ciated with Saussure and the use of language as a model of how culture works, which was discussed in Chapter 1. The main argument advanced here is that 'difference' matters because it is essential to meanfog; without it, meanlng could not exist. You may remember from Chapter 1 the example of white/black. We know what black means, Saussure argued, not because there is some essence of 'blackness' but because we can contrast it with its opposite -white. Meaning, he argued, is relational. It is the 'difference' between white and black which signifies, which carries meaning. Carl Lewis in that photo can represent 'femininity' or the 'feminine' side of masculinity because he can mark his 'difference' from the traditional stereotypes of black masculinity by using the red shoes as a signifier. This principle holds for broader concepts too. We know what it is to be 'British', not only because of certain national characteristics, but also because we can mark its 'difference' CHAPTER 4 THE SPECTACLE OF THE 'OTHER' 257 of the Dust) or John Singleton (Boys 'n' the Hood)- to put their own interpretations on the way blacks figure within 'the American experience'. This has broadened the regime of racial representation - the result of a historic 'struggle around the image' - a politics of representation - whose strategies we need to examine more carefully. 4 Stereotyping as a signifying practice Before we pursue this argument, however, we need to reflect further on how this racialized regime rof representation actually works. Essentially, this involves examining more deeply the set of representational practices known stereotyping as stereotyping. So far, we have considered the essentializing, reductionist and naturalizing effects of stereotyping. Stereotyping reduces people to a few, simple, essential characteristics, which are represented as fixed by Nature. Here, we examine four further aspects: (a) the construction of 'otherness' and exclusion; (b) stereotyping and power; (c) the role of fantasy; and (d) fetishism. Stereotyping as a signifying practice is central to the representation of racial difference. But what is a stereotype? How does it actually work? In his essay on 'Stereotyping', Richard Dyer (1977) makes an important distinction between typing and stereotyping. He argues that, without the use of types, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to make sense of the world. We understand the world by referring individual objects, people or events in our heads to the general classificatory schemes into which - according to our culture - they fit. Thus we 'decode' a flat object on legs on which we place things as a 'table'. We may never have seen that kind of 'table' before, but we have a general concept or category of 'table' in our heads, into which we 'fit' the particular objects we perceive or encounter. In other words, we understand 'the particular' in terms of its 'type'. We deploy what Alfred Schutz called typifications. In this sense, 'typing' is essential to the production of meaning (an argument we made earlier in Chapter 1). Richard Dyer argues that we are always 'making sense' of things in terms of some wider categories. Thus, for example, we come to 'know' something about a person by thinking of the roles which he or she performs: is he/she a parent, a child, a worker, a lover, boss, or an old age pensioner? We assign him/her to the membership of different groups, according to class, gender, age group, nationality, 'race', linguistic group, sexual preference and so on. We order him/her in terms of personality type - is he/she a happy, serious, depressed, scatter-brained, over-active kind of person? Our picture of who the person 'is' is built up out of the information we accumulate from positioning him/her within these different orders of typification. In broad terms, then, 'a type is any simple, vivid, memorable, easily grasped and widely recognized characterization in which a few traits are foregrounded and change or "development" is kept to a minimum' (Dyer, 1977, p. 28). 258 REPRESENTATION: CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS AND SIGNIFYING … CHAPTER Sa Madonna Madonna, who has been a major phenomenon of popular culture throughout the late 1980s, is a rich terrain to expiore. Her success has been due at least as much to her videos and her per�onality as to her music-about which most critics are disparaging. It is also significant that her fans and her publicity materials, along with journalistic reports and critiques, pay far more attention to what she looks like, who she is, and what she stands for than to what she sounds like. In this chapter, then, r concentrate on Madonna's appear­ ance, her personality, and the words and images of her songs, for these are the main carriers of her most accessible meanings. Thisisnotto saythat hermusicis unimportant, for it is the music that underpins everything else and. that provides the emotional intensity or affect without which none of the·resfwould matter to her fans. But it does point to the fact that the,:pleasmes of music are remarkably resistant to analysis, and are ·equally difficult to express in the words and images that are so imporlant in the circulation of culture. Before her image became known, Madonna was not a success: at the start, at least, her music was not enough on its own to turn her into a major resource of popular culture. In the autumn of 1984 she was signed to Sire Records, which is "where Warner' Brothers put people they don't think will sell" (Countdown Magazine Special Annual 1985: 2). She got some dance club play for "Borderline" and "Holiday," but the Madonna LP was selling only slowly. Like a Virgin, her second LP, had been made but not released. Warner Brothers then gave Arthur Pierson a tiny budget to make a rock video of "Lucky tar." He shot it in an afternoon against a white studio 96 Reading the Popular backdro}?, and the resultingvideo pushed the song into thetop ·: ten. The Madonna album's sales followed suit, and Like a; Virgin was released for the Christmas market. Both LPs held the number one position for a �umber of weeks. The film ' Desperately Seeking Susan was released in March 1985, which added an adult audience to the teenage (largely female) one for the songs and videos. The film worked to support the videosin establishing the "Madonna look," a phrase that the media repeated ertdlessly in 1985 and one that Madonna capitalized 011 by establishing her Boy Toy label to sell crucifix earrings, fingerles� lace gloves, short, navel-expqsing blouses, black lac�y garments, and all the visual symbols she had made her own. A concert tour started in April (in the foyers, of course, items of the Madonna look were for sale) and an old film, A Certain Sacrifice, that never made cinema release was dug up for the home video market. Also dug up and published in Playboyand · Penthouse were old art school nude photos, and at the end of 1985, her wedding to Sean Penn became a world wide multimedia event, despite its "secret" location. In other words, she was a fine example of the capitalist pop industry at work, creating a (possibly short-lived) fashion, exploiting it to the full; and making a lot of money from one of the most powerless and exploitable sections of the cqmmunity, young girls. But such an account is inadequate (though not necessarily inacc.urate asfaras,it goes)because it assumes that theMadonna fans are merely "cultural d opes," able to be manipulated at will and against their own interests by the moguJs of the culture industry. Such a manipulatio� would be not orly economic, but also ideological, because the economic system requires the ideology of patriarchal capitalism to underpin and naturalize it. Economics and ideology can never be separated. And there is no shortage of evidence to support this view. Madonna's videos exploit the sexuality of her face and body and frequently show her in postures of submission (e.g., "Burning Up") or subordination to men. Her physical similarity to Marilyn Monroe is stressed (particularly in the video of "Material Girl"), an intertextual reference to another star commonly thought to owe her success to her ability to embody masculine fantasy. In the Countdown 1985 poll of the top 20 "Sex/Lust Objects" Madonna 97 Madonna took third place and was the only female among 19 males ( Countdown, December 1985:35). All this would suggest that she is teaching her young female fans to see themselves as mert would see them; that is, she is· hailing·them as feminine subjects within patriarchy, and as such is an agent of patriarchal hegemony. But, if her fans are not "cultural dopes," but actively choose to watch, listen to, and imitate her rather than lmyone else, there must be some gaps or spaces in her image tliat escape ideological control and allow her audiences to make meanings 1 that connect with their social experience. For many of h�r audiences, this social experience is one of powerlessness and subordination, and if Madonna as a site of meaning is not to naturalize this, sh�_must offer opportunities for resisting it. Her 1 image-becomes, then, not a model meaning for young girls in patriarchy, but a site of semiotic struggle between the forces of patriarchal control and feminine resistance, of capitalism and the subordinate, of the adult and the young. The fiel&of cultural studies, in its current state of develop-· ment, t>ffer� two overlapping methodological strategies that need to be combined and. the differences between them submerged if we are to understand this cultural struggle. One derives from ethnography, and requires us to study the . meanings that the fans of Madonna actually do (or appear to) make of her. This involves listening to them, reading the letters ·. they write to fanzines, or observing their behavior at- home or in public. The fans' words. or behavior are not,· of course, empiricai'facts that speak for themselves; rather, they are texts that need "reading" theoretically in just the same way as the "texts of Madonna" do. This brings us to the other strategy, which derives from semiotic and structui:alist textual analy�is. This involves a close reading of the signifiers of the text-that is, its physical presence-but recognizes that the signifieds exist not in the text itself, but extratextually, in the myths, countermyths, and ideology of their culture. It recognizes that the distribution of power in society is paralleled by the distribution of meanings in texts, and that struggles for social power are paralleled by semiotic struggles for meanings. Every text and every reading . has a s ocial and therefore political dimension, which is to be 98 Reading the Popular found partly in the structure of the text itself and pai:tly in the social relations of the reader, and the way they are brought to bear upon the text. It follows that the theory that informs any analysis also has a social dimension thati&�a necessary part of the "meanings" the analysis reveals. Meanings, therefore, are relative and varied: what is cbnstcl1lt is the ways in which texts relate to the .social �system: }rcult_µral analysis, then, will reveal both th� wccy the dQmi.1w1�fldeology is structured into the text and h;1to the .:refmlitlgsubj�ct,-and those textual features that enable negotiated, " T��isting,:. or oppositional readings to be made. Culturale analysis reaches a satisfactory conclusion when the ethno­ graphic studies of the historically and socially located meanings that are made are related to the se111iotic analysis of -tl\e text. Semiotics relates the structure of the text to the social system to explore how such meanings are made and the part they. play within the cultural process that relates meanings both to social experience and to the sociai system in general. So Lucy, a 14-year-old fan, says .of a Madonna-poster: Shers tarty and seductive .. -. but it looks-a.liigh-Pwhen she does it, - you know, what I-mean, if ·anyon�.else "did it it would Jookright tarty, a right tart yoakn_o�lwtwithner its OK, it's acceptable .... with any01w �l��J�Qlll�{>e�lr.,Qhltely outrageous, it sounds �illy, .but u:,ttOKwitJfh�11:y6u know what I mean. (November 1985A_ ·: -W�_ ..dlJ. "�dte :a number of points here. Lucy can .only finde patriarchal words to describe Madonna's sexuality-"tarty" and "seductive"-but she struggJes against the patriarchy inscribed in them. At-the same time, sb.�struggles against the patriarchy inscribed in her own subjeetivity. The opposition between "acceptable" and "absolutely outrageous" not only refers to representations of female sexuality, but is a,n.externali­ zation of the tension felt by adolescent girls w henJrying to come ..to terms with the .contradictions between a positive feminine w.i�of tneir sexuality and the alien patriarchal one that appears t�/ue�the."-only one offerec;l ,by the available linguistic ande symbolk systems: Madonna's "tartyn sexuality is "acceptable" -but to wh�m? Certainly to Lucy, and to .girls like- her whoe are experiencing the_ -problems of establishing- a satisfaetorye ......._ Madonna -IJ9" sexual identity within an oppressing ideology, but we need further evidence to StJ.pportthis te!l�ative conclusion. Matthe"Y, \ aged 15, not a particular fan of Maclorma, commented on her marriage in the same discussion. He tho}lght it would last only one or two years, and he wouldn't like:.fQ_;Qe married to her "because she'd give any guy a hard time.'t,Lucy·agreed that Madonna's marriage would not last long, buH9und it difficult to say why, except that "marriage didn't seem to snifh�r," eyen 1 though Lucy quoted approvingly Madonna�s desire'"to:_mak� it an "open marriage." Lucy's problems probably stem from ,._, h�r recognition that marriage is a patriarchial institution and �s such is threatened by Madonna's sexuality; the threat of course is not the traditional and easily contained one of woman ·as whore, but the more. radical one of woman as independent of masculinity. As we shall see later, Madonna denies or mocks a masculine· reading of patriarchy's conventions for representing women. This may well be why, according to Time (May 27, 1985), many boys find her sexiness difficult to handle and "suspect that theyare being kidded" (p. 47). Lucy and Matthew both recognize, in different ways and from different sociaJ 1 positions, that Mad9nna's sexuality can offer a challenge bi a threat to dominant detfnifions of femininity and masculinity. "Madonna's Best Friend/' writing to Countdown Magazine, also recognizes Madonna's resist�i)� tq patrjarchy: I'm writing to I complain about all the people wh,o �{e)p �I).�say what a tart and a slut Madonna is because she tall<s openJ.y.ii],out .. sex and she shows her belly button and she's not ashamed to say she thinks she's pretty. Well I admire her and I think she has a lot of courage just to be herself. All you girls out there! Do you think you have nice eyes or pretty· hair or a nice figure? Do you ever talk about boys or sex with friends? Do you wear a bikini? Well according to you, you're a slut and a tart!! So have you judged Madonna fairly? Madonna's Best Friend, Wahroonga, NSW. (Countdown December:. 1985: 70) Praising Madonna's "courage just to be herself';' i; .... furt;er evidence of the felt difficulty of girls in finding a sexual identity that appears to be formed in their interests rather than in the 1 DO Reading the Popular interests of the dominant male. Madonna's sexualization of her navel is a case in point. The most erogenous part of my body is my belly button. I have the most perfect belly button':.-an inny, and there's no fluff in it. ·When I stick a finger in my belly button I feel a nerve in the centre of my body shooJ.up my spine .. If 100 belly buttons were lined up against a wall I wouJq definitely pick out which one was mine. (Madonna: 0Qs.e_ up and Personal, London: Rock Photo Publications, 1985) , What is noticeable here is both her pleasure in her own physicality and the fun she finds in admitting and expressing this pleasure: it is a sexual-physical pleasure that has nothing to do with men, and in choosing the navel upon which to center it, she is choosing a part of the female body that patriarchy has not conventionally sexualized for the benefit of the male. She also usurps the masculine pleasure and power of the voyeur in her claim to be able to recognize her navel, in all-its proudly proclaimed perfection, among a hundred ,others. Madonna offers some young girls the opportunity to find meanings of their own feminine sexuality that suit them, meanings that are "ind�pendent." Here are some other Madonna fans talking: She's sexy but she doesn't need men . . . she's kind of there all by herself. (Time May 27, 1_985: 47) �he gtv�s us•ideas. It's really women's lib, not being afraid of what guy� think. (Time May 27, 1985: 47) The sense of empowerment that underlies these comments is characteristic of her teenage fans. A ·groue of "wanna-bes," fans dressed in their own variants of Madonna's look, were interviewed on MTV in November 1987 during Madonna's "Make My Video" competition. When asked why they dressed like that, they replied, "It makes people look at-us" or "When I walk down the street, people notice." Teenage girls, in public, are, in our, culture, one of the most insignificant and self­ effadng-categorie� of people; the self-assertiveness evidenced here is more·than mere posturing, it is, potentially at least, a source of real self-esteem. The common belief that Madonna's "wanna-bes" lack the imagination to devise their own styles of https://shooJ.up • Madonna 101 dress and merely follow her like sheep ignores the point that in adopting her style they are aligning themselves with a source of power. The "Make My Video" competition showed how frequently the pleasures offered by Madonna to her fans were associated with moments of empowerment. In the competition fans were invited to make a video for the song "True Blue," and MTV devoted ·24 hours to playing a selection of the entries. Many of the videos played with the theme of pow�r,, oft¢n at an unachievable, but not unimaginable, leveLofla11tasy,:such as one in which schoolgirls, overpowered and tied up-a tea�her who denigrated Madonna; only by admitting her brilliance was he able to earn his freedom. Another took power fantasy to its extreme: it began with home-movie-type shots of two toddlers playing on a beach; the girl is suddenly wrapped up in a towel in the form of the U.S. flag, while the boy is wrapped in one in the form of the hammer and sickle. The video shows the American girl and Russian boy growing up in their respective ·countries, all the while telephoning and writing constantly to each other. Eventually she becomes presi�ent of the United States and he .of the USSR, and they prevent an imminent nuclear war by. their lo.ve for each other. Another, less extreme, video made much closer connections between the empowered fan and her everyday life. The heroine sees her boyfri¢nd off at a train station, then turns and joyfully hugs her female friend waiting outside. Th�ydance-"Yalk down the street and shop for clothes in a street rtiarket. At home, the friend dresses up in various Madonna-influenced outfits while the heroine looks on and applauds. Each o�tfit calls up a different type of boy to the door-all of whom are rejected, to the delight of the two girls. The heroine's boyfriend returns, and the final shot is of the three of them, arms interlinked, dancing down the street-then the camera pulls back to reveal one of the rejected boys on the friend's other arm, then continues pulling back to reveal in sequence each of the rejec.ted boys hanging on her arm in a long line. The video shows _girls using their "look" to control their relationships; aJ!d vaµdating girl-girl relationships as powerfully, if not more so, as girl-boy ones. In this video, as with the live "wanna-bes" interviewed in the 102 Reading the Popular same program, control over the look is not just a superficial playing with appearances, it is a means of constructing and controlling social relatio11s and thus social identity. The sense of empowerment that Madonna offers is inextricably connected with the pleasure-qf €x�rting some control over the meanings of self, of sexaaiity, and of one's social relations. But, likeallpop stars, she has her "haters" as well as her fans: �e,n i'sit down on a Saturday and Sunday night I always hear the .,_word Madonna and it makes me sick, all she's worried about is her bloody looks. She must spend hours putting on that stuff and why does she always show her belly button? We all know she's got one. My whole family thinks she's pathetic-and that she loves herself. Paul Young's sexy sneakers. ( Countdown Annual 1985: 109) Here again, the ''hate" centers on Madonna's· sexuality, expressed as her presenting herself in whorelike terms, painting and displaying herself to arouse the.l'>aser side of man. But the sting comes in the last sentence, when the writer recognizes Madonna's apparent enjoyment of her own sexuality, which he (the letter is cl�arly from a masculine subject, if not a biological male) ascribes to egocentricity, and thus condemns. Madonna's 16v�"'Ofherself, however, is not seen as selfish and _egocentric J::,y ·girls;_ �ather, it is the root of her appeal, the Jiigll.ifi�l\tice-0f wnich becomes clear when set in the context of ·mucn ,!ohhe rest of the media addressed to them. McRobbie (1982) has shown how the "teenage press" typically constructs the girl's body and therefore her sexuality as a series of problem�breasts the wrong size or shape, spotty skin, lifeless hair, fatty thighs, problem periods-the lisfis endless. The advertisers, of course, who are the ones who benefit economic- ally from these magazines, always have a product that can, at - -a price, solve the problem. · -_ This polarization of Madonna's audience can be seen in the "19��t�--.-ountdowri polls. She was top female vocalist by a mile (pollinif fo.ur times as many votes as the second-place singer) and was the only-female in the top 20 "Sex/Lust Objects," in which she came third. But she was also voted into second place for the Turkey of the Year award. She's much loved or much Madonna 103 hated, a not untypical positiotu for a woman to occupy in patriarchy, whose inability to unde;�tand women in !eminine , terms is evidenced by the way it polariz�s-femininity into the opposing concepts of virgin-angel andfahore-:devil. Madonna consciously and parodically, exploits these contra- dictions: �,; � "When I was tiny," she recalls, "my grandmotherus�d to beg me not to go with men, to love Jesus and be a good girl. t-�� 1q:r�th two images of women: the virgin and the whore. It was-.c!, lit�l_e scary." (National Times August 23/29, 1985: 9) She consistently refers to these contradictory meanings of woman in patriarchy: her video of ''Like a Virgin'' alternates the white dress of Madonna the bride with the black, sli�ky garb of Madonna the singer; the name Madonna (the virgin mother) is borne by a sexually active female; the crucifixes adopted from nuns' habits are worn on a barely concealed bosom or in a sexually gyrating navel. "Growing uplthought nunswere very beautiful. . . . They never wore any make-up and they just had these really sei:ene faces. Nuns are sexy" (Madonna, quoted in the National Times August 23{2�, 1985: 9). But the effect of working thesf.J?/J',8Site meaninss into her texts is not just to call attention to tb�i:t:..rql�j:(l �al�?�gemony­ a woman may either be worshippea and a-s{Qreci_by a man or used and despised by nim, but she has mean�g _p!}ly from a masculine-subject position. Rather, Madonna,. �Us_ }ntp question the validity of these binary oppositions as-� way of conceptualizing woman. Her use of religious iconography is neither religious nor sacrilegious. She intends to free it from this ideological opposition and to enjoy it, use it, for the meanings and pleasure that it has for her, not for those of the dominant ideology and its simplistic binary thinking: I have always carried around a few rosaries with me. One day J decided to wear (one) as a necklace. Everything I do is sort of tpngµ$ in cheek. It's a strange blend-a beautiful sort of syml?oltsm� the" idea of someone suffering, which is what Jesus-Christ.offii 'Ctucifix stands for, and then not taking it seriously. Seeing ifas an icon with no religiousness attached. ·1t isn't sacrilegious for me. (National Times August 23/29, 1985: 10) 104 Re,sdlng the Popular The crucifix is neither religious, nor sacrilegious, but beautiful: "When I went to Catholic �chools I thought the huge crucifixes nuns wore were really beautiful." In the same way, her adolescent girl fans find in Madonna meanings of femininity that have broken free from the ideological binary oppos"ition of virgin: whore. They find in her image positive feminine-centered representations of sexuality that are expressed in their constant references to her indepen­ dence, her, being herself. This apparently independent, self­ defining sexuality is as significant as it is only because it is working within and against a patriarchal ideology. And the patriarchal meanings must be there for the resisting meanings to work against. Playboy (September 1985), on behalf of its readers, picks up only her patriarchal and not her resistant sexuality: Best of all her onstage contortions and Boy Toy voice have put sopping sex where it belongs-front �nd center in the limelight (p. 122) But even as it recognizes Madonna's patriarchal sexuality, Playboy has to recognize her parodic undermining of it, the control she exerts over the way she uses the dominant ideology but is not subjected to it: _ The voice-anct'the body are her bona £ides, but Madonna's secret may ne her satirical bite. She knows a lot of this image stuff is bullshit: she knows that you know. So long as we' re all in on the act together, let's enjoy it. (p. 127) Some of the parody is subtle and hard to tie down for textual analysis, but some, such as the references to Marilyn Monroe and the musicals she often starred in, is more obvious. The subtler parody lies in the knowing way in which Madonna uses the camera, mocking the conventional representations of femal� s_exuality while at the same time conforming to them. Even one of.her ex-lovers supports this: "Her image is that of a tart, but I believe it's all contrived. She only pretends to be a gold digger. Remember, I have seen the other.side of Madonna" (Prof. Chris Flynn, quoted in New Idea, January 11, 1986: 4). Madonna 105- Madonna knows she is putting on a performance, and the fact that this knowingness is part of the performance enables the viewer to answer a differer\t interpellation from that proposed by the dominant ideology� and thus occupy a resisting subject position. The sensitive. tnan watching her "Material Girl" performance knows, as she dc5es, as we might, that this is only a performance. Those who take·the perform­ ance at face value, who miss its self-parody, either are hailed as ideological subject.s in patriarchy or else they rejecHhe·hailihg, deny the pleasure, and refuse the communication: The National E�quirer, a weekly magazine devoted to prurient gossip, quotes two academic psychiatrists denouncing her for advocating teenage promiscuity, promoting a-h.ist for money and materialism, and contributing to the deterioration of the family. Feminists accuse her of revisionism, of resurrecting the manipula­ tive female who survives by coquetry and artifice. "Tell Gloria (Steinem) and the gang," she retorts, "to lighten up, get a sense of humour. And look at my video that goes with Material Girl. The guy who gets me in the end is the sensitive one with no money." (National Times August 23/29, 1985: 10) Madonna consistently parodies conventional representa- : tions of women, and parody; can be an effective device for1 interrogating the dominartt ideology. It -takes the defining. features of its object, exaggerates ahd rriocks:them, and thus mocks those who ''fall'' for its ,ideological effect. B\l't Madonna's parody goes further than this: she parodies not jqst the stereotypes, but the way in which they are made� She 1 represents herself as one who is in control of her own image and of the process of making it. This, at the reading end of the semiotic process, allows the reader similar control over her own ' meanings. Madonna's excesses of j.ewelry, of makeup, of trash in her style offer similar scope to the reader. Excessiveness invites the I reader to question ideology: too much lipstick interrogates the tastefully made-up mouth, too much jewelry questions the role of female decorations in patriarchy. Excess overspills i��olqgical control and offers scope for resistance. Thus .Madonna's excessively sexual pouting and lipstick can be read to mean that she looks like that not because patriarchy determines that she should, but because she knowingly chooses to. She wears 166 Reading the Popular religioU;s icons ( and uses a religious name) not to support or attack Christianity's role in patriarchy (and capitalism) but because she chooses to see�them as beautiful, sexy ornaments. She makes her own meanings out of the symbolic systems available to her, andJn-,using their signifiers and rejecting or mocking their sig'1ifieqs, she is demonstrating her ability to make her own meaning�. The vid,eo of_"In the Groove" demonstrates this clearly. The �on$is�.the,tpeme song of the film Desperately Seeking Susan, and·the�video is a montage of shots from the film. The film is prjmarily about women's struggle to create and -control their own identity in contemporary society, and in so doing to shape the sort of relationships they have with men. The viewers of the video who have seen the film will find plenty of references that can activate these meanings, but the video can also be read as promoting the Madonna look, her style. She takes it�ms of urban living, prises them free from their original social and therefore signifying context, and comb�es them in new ways and in a new context that denies their original meaning. Thus the crucifix is tom from its religious context and lacy gloves from their context of bourgeois respectability; or, conversely,. of the brothel; the ble�ched blonde hair with the dark roots deliberately displayed is no longer the sign_of the tarty slut, and the garter belt and stocking� nolonge:r signify soft porn or male kinkiness. This wrern;hin.g, 1lt- th� .products of capitalism from their -Ori.W.-_!lal ·_12Qy-!e,s:t an(! recycling them into a new style is, as Ch��rs·J1986) has pointed out, a practice typical of urban pepulai: culture: Caught up in the communication membrane of the metropolis, with your head in front of a cinema, TV, video or computer screen, between the headphones, by the radio, among the record releases and magazines, the realization of your "self" slips into the construction of an image, a style, a series of theatrical gestures. Between what is available in the shops, in the market, and the imprint of our desires, it is possible to produce the distinctive and the personalized. Sometimes the result will stand out, disturb and shock the more predictable logic of the everyday .... The individual constructs her or himself as the object of street art, Madonna 10-7 as a public icon: the body becom.E!S" the canvas of changing urban signs. (p. 11) In this street-produced bricolage of style, the commodities of the capitalist industries are purified 1-nt_p signifiers: … 223 THE SPECTACLE OF THE'OTHER' Stuart Hall Contents INTRODUCTION 225 226 I. I Heroes or villains? ; 1.2 Why does 'difference' matter? 234 2 RACIALIZING THE 'OTHER' 239 2.1 Commodity racism: empire and the domestic world 239 2.2 Meanwhile, down on the plantation ... 242 2.3 Signifying racial 'difference' 244 3 STAGING RACIAL 'DIFFERENCE': 'AND THE MELODY ' LINGERED ON ... 249 3.1 Heavenly bodies 254 4 STEREOTYPING AS A SIGNIFYING PRACTICE 257 4.1 Representation, difference and power 259 4.2 Power and fantasy 262 4.3 Fetishism and disavowal 264 5 CONTESTING A RACIALIZED REGIME OF REPRESENTATION 269 5.1 Reversing the stereotypes 270 5.2 Positive and negative images 272 5.3 Through the eye of representation 274 6 CONCLUSION 276 REFERENCES 277 READINGS FOR CHAPTER FOUR READING A: Anne McClintock, 'Soap and commodity spectacle' 280 READING B: Richard Dyer, 'Africa' 283 224 READING C: Sander Gilman, 'The deep structure of stereotypes' 284 READING D: Kobena Mercer, 'Reading racial fetishism' 285 CHAPTER 4 THE SPECTACLE OF THE 'OTHER' 225 Introduction How do we represent people and places which are significantly different from us? Why is 'difference' so compelling a theme, so contested an area of representation? What is the secret fascination of 'otherness', and why is popular representation so frequently drawn to it? What are the typical forms and representational practices which are used to represent 'difference' in popular culture today, and where did these popular figures and stereotypes come from? These are some of the questions about representation which we set out to address in this chapter. We will pay particular attention to those representational practices which we call 'stereotyping'. By the end we hope you will understand better how what we call 'the spectacle of the "Other"' works, and be able to apply the ideas discussed and the sorts of analysis undertaken here to the mass of related materials in contemporary popular culture - for example, advertising which uses black models, newspaper reports about immigration, racial attacks or urban crime, and films and magazines which deal with 'race' and ethnicity as significant themes. The theme of 'representing difference' is picked up directly from the previous chapter, where Henrietta Lidchi looked at how 'other cultures' are given meaning by the discourses and practices of exhibition in ethnographic museums of 'the West'. Chapter 3 focused on the 'poetics' and the 'politics' of exhibiting - both how other cultures are made to signify through the discourses of exhibition (poetics) and how these practices are inscribed by relations of power (politics) - especially those which prevail between the people who are represented and the cultures and institutions doing the representing. Many of the same concerns arise again in this chapter. However, here, racial and ethnic difference is foregrounded. You should bear in mind, however, that what is said about racial difference could equally be applied in many instances to other dimensions of difference, such as gender, sexuality, class and disability. 1' Our focus here is the variety of images which are on display in popular culture and the mass media. Some are commercial advertising images and magazine illustrations. which use racial stereotypes, dating from the period of slavery or from the popular imperialism of the late nineteenth century. However, Chapter 4 brings the story up to the present. Indeed, it begins with images from the competitive world of modern athletics. The question which this comparison across time poses is: have the repertoires of representation around 'difference' and 'otherness' changed or do earlier traces remain intact in contemporary society? The chapter looks in depth at theories about the representational practice known as 'stereotyping'. However, the theoretical discussion is threaded through the examples, rather than being introduced for its own sake. The chapter ends by considering a number of different strategies designed to intervene in the field of representation, to contest 'negative' images and transform representational practices around 'race' in a more 'positive' 226 REPRESENTATION: CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS AND SIGNIFYING PRACTICES direction. It poses the question of whether there can be an effective 'politics of representation'. Once again, then, visual representation takes centre stage. The chapter sustains the overall theme by continuing our exploration of representation as a concept and a practice -the key first 'moment' in the cultural circuit. Our aim is to deepen our understanding of what representation is and how it works. Representation is a complex business and, especially when dealing with 'difference', it engages feelings, attitudes and emotions and it mobilizes fears and anxieties in the viewer, at deeper levels than we can explain in a simple, common-sense way. This is why we need theories -to deepen our analysis. The chapter, then, builds on what we have already learned about representation as a signifying practice, and continues to develop critical concepts to explain its operations� 1.1 Heroes or villains? Look, first, at Figure 4.1. It is a I picture of the men's 100 metres final at the 1988 Olympics which appeared on the cover of the Olympics Special of the Sunday Times colour magazine (9 October 1988). It shows the black Canadian sprinter, Ben Johnson, winning in record time from Carl Lewis and Linford Christie: five superb athletes in action, at the peak of their physical prowess. All of them men and - perhaps, now, you will notice consci01,1sly for the first time -all of them black! ACTIVITY I How do you 'read' the picture - what is it saying? In Barthes' terms, what is its''myth' - its underlying message? One possible message relates to their racial identity. These athletes are aH from a racially-defined group -one often discriminated against precisely on the grounds of their 'race' and colour, whom we are more accustomed to see depicted in the news as the victims. or 'losers' in terms of achievement. Yet here they are, winning! In terms of difference, then - a positive m�ssage: a triumphant moment, a cause for ce�bration. Why, then, does the caption say, 'Heroes and villains'? Who do you think is the hero, who the villaini? Even if you don't follow athletics, the answer isn't difficult to discover. Ostensibly about the Olympics, the photo is in fact a trailer for the magazine's lead story about the growing menace of drug-taking in international athletics -what i�side is called 'The Chemical Olympics'. Ben Johnson, you may recall, was found to have taken drugs to enhance his performance. He was disqualified, the gold medal being awarded to Carl Lewis, and Johnson was expelled from world athletics in disgrace. The story suggests that all athletes -black or white - are potentially 'heroes' and 'villains'. But in this image, Ben Johnson personifies this split in a particular way. He is both 'hero' and ..:.;;:-�===·=-���,-���-��;:-��r.:-� -� -��-:�. :· ----=-= '. ----:----0.., CHAPTER 4 THE SPECTACLE OF THE 'OTHER' 227 FIGURE 4.1 'Heroes and Villains', cover of The Sunday Times Magazine, 9 October 1988. 228 REPRESENTATION: CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS AND SIGNIFYING PRACTICES 'villain'. He encapsulates the extreme alternatives of heroism and villainy in world athletics in one black body. There are several points to make about the way the representation of 'race' and 'otherness' is working in this photo. First, if you think back to Chapters 1 and 3, you will remember the work of Barthes on the idea of 'myth'. This photo, too, functions at the level of 'myth'. There is a literal, denotative level of meaning - this is a picture of the 100 metres final and the figure in front is Ben Johnson. Then there is the more connotative or thematic meaning- the drug story. And within that, there is the sub-theme of 'race' and 'difference'. Already, this tells us something important about how 'myth' works. T he image is a very powerful one, as visual images often are. But its meaning is highly ambiguous. It can carry more than one meaning. If you didn't know the context, you might be tempted to read this as a moment of unqualified triumph. And you wouldn't be 'wrong' since this, too, is a perfectly acceptable meaning to take from the image. But, as the caption suggests, it is not produced here as an image pf 'unqualified triumph'. So, the same photo can carry several, quite different, sometimes diametrically opposite meanings. It can be a picture of disgrace or of triumph, or both. Many meanings, we might say, are potential within the photo. But there is no one, true meaning. Meaning 'floats'. It cannot be finally fixed. However, attempting to 'fix' it is the work of a representational practice, which intervenes in the many potential meanings of an image in an attempt to privilege one. So, rather than a 'right' or 'wrong' meaning, what we need to ask is, 'Which of the many meanings in this image does the magazine mean to privilege?' Which is the preferred meaning? Ben Johnson is the key element here preferred meaning because he is both an amazing athlete, winner and record-breaker, and the athlete who was publicly disgraced because of drug-taking. So, as it turns out, the preferred meaning is both 'heroism' and 'villainy'. It wants to say something paradoxical like, 'In the moment of the hero's triumph, there is also villainy and moral defeat.' In part, we know this is the preferred meaning which the magazine wants the photo to convey because this is the meaning which is singled out in the caption: HEROES AND VILLAINS. Rol�nd Barthes (1977) argues that, frequently, it is the caption which selects one out of the many possible meanings from the image, and anchors it with words. The 'meaning' of the photograph, then, does not lie exclusively in the image, but in the conjunction of image and text. Two discourses - the discourse of written language and the discourse of photography - are required to produce and 'fix' the meaning (see Hall, 1972). As we have suggested, this photo can also be 'read', connotatively, in terms of what it has to 'say' about 'race'. Here, the message could be - blac_k people shown being good at something, winning at last! But in the light of the 'preferred meaning', hasn't the meaning with respect to 'race' and 'otherness' changed as well? Isn't it more something like, 'even when black people are shown at the summit of their achievement, they often fail to carry it off'? This CHAPTER 4 THE SPECTACLE OF THE 'OTHER' 229 FIGURE 4.2 Linford Christie, holding a Union Jack, having won the men's I 00 metres Olympic gold medal, Barcelona 1992. having-it-both-ways is important because, as I hope to show you, people who are in any way significantly different from the majority - 'them' rather than 'us' - are frequently exposed to this binary form of representation. They seem to be represented through sharply opposed, polarized, binary extremes - good/ bad, civilized/primitive, ugly/excessively attractive, repelling-because-different/ compelling-because-strange-and-exotic. And they are often required to be both things at the same time! We will return to these split figures or 'tropes' of representation in a moment. But first, let us look at another, similar news photo, this time from another record-breaking 100 metres final. Linford Christie, subsequently captain of the British Olympics squad, at the peak of his career, having just won the race of a lifetime. The picture captures his elation, at the moment of his lap of honour. He is holding the Union Jack. In the light of the earlier discussion, how do you 'read' this photograph (Figure 4.2)? What is it 'saying' about 'race' and cultural identity? ACTIVITY 2 Which of the following statements, in your view, comes closest to expressing the 'message' of the image? (a) 'This is the greatest moment of my life! A triumph for me, Linford Christie.' (b) 'This is a moment of triumph for me and a celebration for black people everywhere!' (c) 'This is a moment of triumph and celebration for the British Olympic team and the British people!' (d) 'This is a moment of triumph and celebration for black people and the British Olympic team. It shows that you can be "Black" and "British"!' There is, of course, no 'right' or 'wrong' answer to the question. The image carries many meanings, all equally plausible. What is important is the fact that this image both shows an event ( denotation) and carries a 'message' or meaning (connotation) - Barthes would call it a 'meta-message' or myth - about 'race', colour and 'otherness'. We can't help reading images of this kind 230 REPRESENTATION: CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS AND SIGNIFYING PRACTICES as 'saying something', not just about the people or the occasion, but about their 'otherness', their 'difference'. 'Difference' has been marked. How it is then interpreted is a constant and recurring preoccupation in the representation of people who are racially and ethnically different from the majority population. Difference signifies. It 'speaks'. In a later interview, discussing his forthcoming retirement from international sport, Christie commented on the question of his cultural identity - where he feels he 'belongs' (The Sunday Independent, 11 November 1995). He has very fond memories of Jamaica, he said, where he was born and lived until the age of 7. But 'I've lived here [in the UK] for 28 [years]. I can't be anything other than British' (p. 18). Of course, it isn't as simple as that. Christie is perfectly well aware that most definitions of 'Britishness' assume that the person who belongs is 'white'. It is much harder for black people, wherever they were born, to be accepted as 'British'. In 1995, the cricket magazine, Wisden, had to pay libel damages to black athletes for saying that they couldn't be expected to display the same l9yalty and commitment to winning for England because they are black. So Christie knows that every image is also being 'read' in terms of this broader question of cultural belongingness and difference. Indeed, he made his remarks in the context of the negative publicity to which he has been exposed in some sections of the British tabloid press, a good deal of which hinges on a vulgar, unstated but widely recognized 'joke' at his expense: namely that the tight-fitting Lycra shorts which he wears are said to reveal the size and shape of his -genitals. This was the detail on_ which The Sun focused on the morning after he won an Olympic gold medal. Christie has been subject to continuous teasing in the tabloid press about the prominence and size of his 'lunchbox' - a L euphemism which some have taken so literally that, he revealed, he has been approached by a firm wanting to market its lunchboxes around his image! Linford Christie has observed about these innuendoes: 'I felt humiliated ... My first instinct was that it was racist. There we are, stereotyping a black man. I can take a good joke. But it happened the day after I won the greatest accolade an athlete can win ... I don't want to go through life being known for what I've got in my �harts. I'm a serious person ... ' (p. 15). ACTIVITY 3 What is going on here? Is this just a joke in bad taste, or does it have a deeper meaning? What do sexuality and gender have to do with images of black men and woinen? Why did the black French writer from Martinique, Frantz Fanon, say that white people seem to be obsessed with the sexuality of black people? It is the subject of a widespread fantasy, Fanon says, which fixates the black man at the level of the genitals. 'One is no longer aware of the Negro, but only of a p·enis; the Negro is eclipsed. He is turned into a penis' (Fanon, 1986/1952, p. 170). ./ : =----: =-=-= -=---- - ---�--- •�< .. � ...... �:-;�-_,,�:�.:ai-��--�- �tt'.i.'�«� -_'it?;..-7 _ ... _ -- - - -�-; l CHAPTER 4 THE SPECTACLE OF THE 'OTHER' 231 What, for example, did the French writer, Michael Cournot, whom Farron quotes, mean when he wrote that 'Four Negroes with their penises exposed would fill a cathedral'? (Farron, 1986/1952, p. 169). What is the relationship. of these fantasies of sexuality to 'race' and ethnicity in the representation of 'otherness' and 'difference'? We have now introduced another dimension into the representation of 'difference' - adding sexuality and gender to 'race', ethnicity and colour. Of course, it is well established that sport is one of the few areas where black people have had outstanding success. It seems natural that images of black people drawn from sp&t should emphasize the body, which is the instrument of athletic skill and achievement. It is difficult, however, to have images of bodies in action, at the peak of their physical perfection, without those images also, in some way, carrying 'messages' about gender and about sexuality. Where black athletes are concerned, what are these messages about? ACTIVITY 4 Look, for example, at the picture from the Sunday Times 1988 Olympic Special, of the black American sprinter, Florence Griffith-Joyner, who won three gold medals at Seoul (Figure 4.3). Can you 'read' this photo without getting some 'messages' about 'race', gender and sexuality - even if what the meanings are remain ambiguous? Is there any doubt that the photo is 'signifying' along all three dimensions? In representation, one sort of difference seems to attract others - adding up to a 'spectacle' of FIGURE 4.3 Florence Griffith-Joyner. 232 REPRESENTATION: CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS AND SIGNIFYING PRACTICES otherness. If you're not convinced, you might think of this in the context of the remark by 'Flo-Jo's' husband, Al Joyner, quoted in the text next to the photo: 'Someone Says My Wife Looked Like A Man'. Or consider the photo (which was reproduced on the following page of the article) of Al Joyner's sister, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who also won a gold medal and broke world records at Seoul in the heptathlon, preparing to throw a javelin, accompanied by text quoting another observation by Al Joyner: 'Somebody Says My Sister Looked Like A Gorilla'(Figure 4.4). �\ FIGURE 4.4 Jackie Joyner-Kersee. There is an additional point to be made about these photographs of black athletes in the press. They gain in meaning when they are read in context, against or in connection with one another. This is another way of saying that images do not carry meaning or 'signify' on their own. They accuJ.1!.ulate meanings, or play off their meanings against one another, across a variety of texts and media. Each image carries its own, specific meaning. But at the broader level of how 'difference' and 'otherness' is being represented in a particular culture at any one moment, we can see similar representational practices and figures being repeated, with variations, from one text or site of representation to another. This accumulation of meanings across different texts, where one image refers to another, or has its meaning altered by being 'read' in the context of other images, is called inter-textuality. We may inter-textuality describe the whole repertoire of imagery and visual effects through which 'difference' is represented at any one historical moment as a regime of representation; this is very similar to what, in Chapter 2, Peter Hamilton referred to as a representational paradigm. FIGURE 4.5 Carl Lewis, photographed for a Pirelli advertisement. CHAPTER 4 THE SPECTACLE OF THE 'OTHER' 233 An interesting example of inter-textuality, where the image depends for its meaning on being 'read' in relation to a number of other, similar images, can • be found in Figure 4.5. This is Carl Lewis, one of the sprinters you saw in - Figure 4.1, taken from a Pirelli advertisement. At first glance, the image summons up echoes of all the previous images we have been looking at - superbly-honed athletic bodies, tensed in action, super-men and super­ women. But here the meaning is differently inflected. Pirelli is a tyre firm with a reputation for producing calendars with pictures of beautiful women, scantily clad, in provocative poses - the prototypical 'pin-up'. In which of these two contexts should we 'read' the Carl Lewis image? One clue lies in the fact that, though Lewis is male, in the ad he is wearing elegant, high­ heeled red shoes! ACTIVITY 5 What is this image saying? What is its message? How does it 'say' it? This image works by the marking of' difference'. The conventional identification of Lewis with black male athletes and with a sort of 'super­ masculinity' is disturbe·d and undercut by the invocation of his 'femininity' - and what marks this is the signifier of the red shoes. The sexual and racial 'message' is rendered ambiguous. The super-male black athlete may not be all he seems. The ambiguity is amplified when we compare this image with all the other images - the stereotypes we are accustomed to see - of black athletes in the press. Its meaning is inter-textual - i.e. it requires to be read 'against the grain'. 234 REPRESENTATION: CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS AND SIGNIFYING PRACTICES ACTIVITY 6 Does this photo reinforce or subvert the stereotype? Some people say it's just an advertiser's joke. Some argue that Carl Lewis has allowed himself to be exploited by a big corporate advertiser. Others argue that he deliberately set out to challenge and contest the traditional image of black masculinity. What do you think? In the light of these examples, we can rephrase our original questions more precisely. Why is 'otherness' so compelling an object of representation? What does the marking of racial difference tell us about representation as a practice? Through which representational practices are racial and ethnic difference and 'otherness' signified? What are the 'discursive formations', the repertoires or regimes of representation, on which the media are drawing when they represent 'difference'? Why is one dimension of difference -e.g. 'race' -crossed by other dimensions, such as sexuality, gender and class? And how is the representation of 'difference' linked with questions of power? 1.2 Why does 'difference' matter? Before we analyse any more examples, let us examine some of the underlying issues posed by our first question. Why does 'difference' matter -how can we explain this fascination with 'otherness'? What theoretical arguments can we draw on to help us unpack this question? Questions of 'difference' have come to the fore in cultural studies in recent decades and been addressed in different ways by different disciplines. In this section, we briefly consider four such theoretical accounts. As we discuss them, think back to the examples we have just analysed. In each, we start by showing how important 'difference' is -by considering what is said to be its positive aspect. But we follow this by some of the more negative aspects of 'difference'. Putting these two together suggests why 'difference' is both necessary and dangerous. 1 The first account comes from linguistics - from the sort of approach asso'ciated with Saussure and the use of language as a model of how culture works, which was discussed in Chapter 1. The main argument advanced here is that 'difference' matters because it is essential to meanfog; without it, meanlng could not exist. You may remember from Chapter 1 the example of white/black. We know what black means, Saussure argued, not because there is some essence of 'blackness' but because we can contrast it with its opposite -white. Meaning, he argued, is relational. It is the 'difference' between white and black which signifies, which carries meaning. Carl Lewis in that photo can represent 'femininity' or the 'feminine' side of masculinity because he can mark his 'difference' from the traditional stereotypes of black masculinity by using the red shoes as a signifier. This principle holds for broader concepts too. We know what it is to be 'British', not only because of certain national characteristics, but also because we can mark its 'difference' CHAPTER 4 THE SPECTACLE OF THE 'OTHER' 257 of the Dust) or John Singleton (Boys 'n' the Hood)- to put their own interpretations on the way blacks figure within 'the American experience'. This has broadened the regime of racial representation - the result of a historic 'struggle around the image' - a politics of representation - whose strategies we need to examine more carefully. 4 Stereotyping as a signifying practice Before we pursue this argument, however, we need to reflect further on how this racialized regime rof representation actually works. Essentially, this involves examining more deeply the set of representational practices known stereotyping as stereotyping. So far, we have considered the essentializing, reductionist and naturalizing effects of stereotyping. Stereotyping reduces people to a few, simple, essential characteristics, which are represented as fixed by Nature. Here, we examine four further aspects: (a) the construction of 'otherness' and exclusion; (b) stereotyping and power; (c) the role of fantasy; and (d) fetishism. Stereotyping as a signifying practice is central to the representation of racial difference. But what is a stereotype? How does it actually work? In his essay on 'Stereotyping', Richard Dyer (1977) makes an important distinction between typing and stereotyping. He argues that, without the use of types, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to make sense of the world. We understand the world by referring individual objects, people or events in our heads to the general classificatory schemes into which - according to our culture - they fit. Thus we 'decode' a flat object on legs on which we place things as a 'table'. We may never have seen that kind of 'table' before, but we have a general concept or category of 'table' in our heads, into which we 'fit' the particular objects we perceive or encounter. In other words, we understand 'the particular' in terms of its 'type'. We deploy what Alfred Schutz called typifications. In this sense, 'typing' is essential to the production of meaning (an argument we made earlier in Chapter 1). Richard Dyer argues that we are always 'making sense' of things in terms of some wider categories. Thus, for example, we come to 'know' something about a person by thinking of the roles which he or she performs: is he/she a parent, a child, a worker, a lover, boss, or an old age pensioner? We assign him/her to the membership of different groups, according to class, gender, age group, nationality, 'race', linguistic group, sexual preference and so on. We order him/her in terms of personality type - is he/she a happy, serious, depressed, scatter-brained, over-active kind of person? Our picture of who the person 'is' is built up out of the information we accumulate from positioning him/her within these different orders of typification. In broad terms, then, 'a type is any simple, vivid, memorable, easily grasped and widely recognized characterization in which a few traits are foregrounded and change or "development" is kept to a minimum' (Dyer, 1977, p. 28). 258 REPRESENTATION: CULTURAL REPRESENTATIONS AND SIGNIFYING … Celebrity Studies ISSN: 1939-2397 (Print) 1939-2400 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcel20 How to get away with authenticity: Viola Davis and the intersections of Blackness, naturalness, femininity and relatability Francesca Sobande To cite this article: Francesca Sobande (2019) How to get away with authenticity: Viola Davis and the intersections of Blackness, naturalness, femininity and relatability, Celebrity Studies, 10:3, 396-410, DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2019.1630154 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2019.1630154 Published online: 23 Jun 2019. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 517 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 1 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rcel20 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rcel20 https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcel20 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/19392397.2019.1630154 https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2019.1630154 https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rcel20&show=instructions https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rcel20&show=instructions https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/19392397.2019.1630154 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/19392397.2019.1630154 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/19392397.2019.1630154&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2019-06-23 http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/19392397.2019.1630154&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2019-06-23 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/19392397.2019.1630154#tabModule https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/19392397.2019.1630154#tabModule CELEBRITY STUDIES 2019, VOL. 10, NO. 3, 396–410 https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2019.1630154 How to get away with authenticity: Viola Davis and the intersections of Blackness, naturalness, femininity and relatability Francesca Sobande School of Journalism, Media and Culture, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK KEYWORDS Race; Black; feminist; authenticity; hair ABSTRACT By focusing on the star image of Viola Davis, this article explores intersecting narratives concerning authenticity, Blackness, celeb- rity, and embodiment, which are revealed as part of media and public responses to famous Black actresses. Discourses of race and fame are unpacked whilst scrutinising overlapping perceptions of naturalness, femininity and relatability. Building upon prior studies of the socio-cultural impact of celebrities’ hair, the analysis focuses on how the hair of famous Black women is read as an aesthetic signifier of the perceived (in)authenticity of their Blackness, which may be entwined with ideas about Black feminist politics. Since the launch of Scandal in 2012 and How to Get Away with Murder (HTGAWM) in 2014, much attention has been paid to Viola Davis and Kerry Washington, the lead actresses in these US television dramas respectively. By analysing online narratives and aspects of interviews with Black women in Britain, this article examines assessments of the authenticity and relatability of famous Black actresses. It contributes to scholarly conversations regarding the contingent nature of impressions of authentic celebrity, including their raced and gendered components. This involves accounting for some of the ways that normative perceptions of Blackness, femininity and feminism operate as part of interracial and intra- racial celebrity discourse. Introduction: authentic celebrity, feminism(s) and natural aesthetics Building upon extant research related to celebrity, race and gender, this article explores the influence of hegemonic discourse regarding fame, Blackness, feminism and norma- tive femininity, amidst ideas about the authenticity and relatability of famous Black actresses. It involves teasing out how ostensibly post-feminist narratives, which have become a relatively ‘marketable commodity’ (Hermes 2005, p. 54), contrast with Black feminist narratives (Emejulu and Sobande 2019), and how this may influence interpreta- tions of the authenticity and relatability of famous Black actresses, such as Davis. This work includes consideration of the socio-cultural symbolic role that such celebrities play, including in relation to the gaze of Black women who are media spectators. The word CONTACT Francesca Sobande [email protected] This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article. © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4788-4099 http://www.tandfonline.com https://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1080/19392397.2019.1630154&domain=pdf&date_stamp=2019-07-03 mailto:[email protected] https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2019.1630154 397 CELEBRITY STUDIES ‘actress’ features throughout this article, in line with its frequent use as part of categories at celebrity awards ceremonies, and in reference to women who act.1 However, there is recognition of the problematic gendered power relations that can underlie distinctions between who is classed as an ‘actor’ and who is classed as an ‘actress’. A celebrity’s appearance, including their physical body, ‘either functions to reproduce dominant culture’s patriarchal, racial and heterosexual gaze, or it allows transgressive, oppositional, and queer feelings and fantasies to emerge’ (Holmes and Redmond 2006, p. 4). In 2015, the iconic blond hair of celebrities, which ‘retain[s] a prominent position as a potent statement of feminine allure’ (Cook 2015, p. 6), was a source of analysis of matters regarding fame, aesthetics, and naturalness (Vincendeau 2015). Such work provokes questions regarding the ways in which different types of hair contribute to a celebrity’s public image and assessments of their authenticity. Thus, this article fore- grounds responses to the hair of famous Black women, a subject that has received comparatively less academic attention and is often treated as a signifier of their gen- dered identity, as well as their ‘racial identity and cultural consciousness’ (Jacobs-Huey 2006, p. 90). Whilst all celebrities may be subject to scrutiny with regard to their authenticity, as Dyer (2005) attests, ‘as long as white people are not racially seen and named, they/we function as a human norm. Other people are raced, we are just people’ (p. 10). Although many white celebrities manoeuvre through a minutia of media without being explicitly racialised, as the words of Dyer (2005) allude to, a Black celebrity is rarely conceived of as being just a celebrity. On the contrary, critiques of their celebrity image are frequently enmeshed with those of their racial identity. This is illustrated in the way judgements of famous Black women may relate to, and deviate from, those of famous white women. Through an intersectional analysis (Hill Collins and Bilge 2016) of facets of celebrities’ identities much may be learnt about ideas concerning authentic Blackness and celebrity, including the interdependent narratives of race and gender that sow the seeds from which these ideas spring. The launch of Scandal in 2012 ended a 38-year period without a Black woman in a lead role in a US television network drama – since the 1974 show Get Christie Love! (1974–1975), starring Teresa Graves. Two years later, How to Get Away with Murder (hereafter, HTGAWM) was launched. For those unfamiliar with both, which debuted on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) network channel, Davis plays Annalise Keating in HTGAWM, a lawyer and law professor embroiled in criminal activity. In Scandal, Kerry Washington plays Olivia Pope, who works in crisis management and is involved in an affair with the President of the United States of America. These shows set themselves apart from an increasing ‘landscape of post-race, post-feminist millennial television’ (Kaklamanidou and Tally 2014, p. 63), which appeared to be ‘lacking racial consciousness’ (Hamilton 2014, p. 49), either by excluding depictions of Black people altogether, or by their stereotypical depiction. The social significance of Scandal catalysed academic enquiry related to topics such as the fandom experiences of Black women and racially diverse audiences (Erigha 2015, Warner 2015). By virtue of the burgeoning body of research on Scandal and Washington, this article will instead principally focus on the celebrity identity of Davis, now firmly established in the public imagination since she became the first Black woman to receive an Emmy award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 2015. There is specific 398 F. SOBANDE emphasis on the responses to a notable scene in season one, episode four of HTGAWM, which depicts the anti-heroine character of Annalise Keating removing her makeup and straight haired wig at the end of a tumultuous day. The close-up scene lingers upon the relatively bare face of Davis, who is seen with very short and seemingly naturally textured hair. As will be elaborated upon later in this chapter, this evocative scene raises questions concerning authenticity, the politics of Black hair, and the self- presentation of Black women. In discussing themes related to celebrity, Blackness, and the social value of images of Black actresses, I will identify how issues related to colourism (hooks 1995) and B(l) ackness (Dagbovie-Mullins 2013) may feed perceptions of the authenticity, relatability and femininity of famous Black actresses. The bracketed term ‘B(l)ackness’ is intended to capture perceptions of the inauthenticity and inadequacy of a celebrity’s discernible Blackness (their alleged lack of Blackness), underscoring how perceptions of race are often caught up with those of aesthetic appearance. Although there have been detailed analyses of some of the ways in which famous Black women are constructed (Arzumanova 2016, Del Guadalupe Davidson 2017, Fairclough 2015, Fleetwood 2015, Kooijman 2014, Royster 2009, Weidhase 2015), there has been less exploration of how Black women themselves engage with such celebrity images. Further consideration of this may elucidate some of the shifting ways that the authenticity and relatability of famous Black actresses is perceived, including when considered by individuals with lived experience of being Black women themselves. In mining matters to do with interpreta- tions of the authenticity of Black actresses, it is not my intention to reinforce the notion that authenticity is a fixed and objective quality (Dyer 2004). Yet, in dealing with such a topic, there is recognition of how people sometimes treat it as such. This analysis opens with observations of how the aesthetic images of Davis and Washington are (re)framed through Twitter activity. It moves on to explore the celebrity image of Davis by recounting elements of her publicised self-narrative, as well as media commentary about her star image. Finally, attention turns towards the words of ten interview participants. This article examines what authenticity and relatability may mean in the context of conversations about famous Black actresses who are rarely equated with normative beauty, feminine or feminist ideals. It includes discussion of how Black feminist narratives contribute to such conversations, which have gained a degree of increased attention within popular culture in recent years. ‘Wrap her hair’: (re)framing the aesthetic image of Black actresses on Twitter Celebrity is the effect of ‘an inter-textual performance practice’ (Usher 2015, p. 306) that cuts across various ‘cultural circuits in many different ways, shaped by a myriad different contexts, technologies and interactions’ (Holmes and Redmond 2006, p. 6), such as those of Twitter users and online columnists. Furthermore, Twitter is ‘central to the formulation and circulation of twenty-first century [celebrities]’ (Usher 2015, p. 306), including inspec- tion of their physical appearance (Horeck 2015). As the lively Twitter activity of Scandal and HTGAWM spectators has been widely noted (Erigha 2015), a degree of Twitter analysis is included in this research. A total of 3189 tweets were collated, all of which were produced between the launch of Scandal (2012) and February 2016. Datasets were 399 CELEBRITY STUDIES generated through Twitter by searching ‘Annalise Keating wig’ (365 tweets), ‘Annalise Keating Black woman’ (462 tweets), ‘Olivia Pope hair’ (1357 tweets) and ‘Olivia Pope Black woman’ (1005 tweets). The higher number of tweets about Washington than those pertaining to Davis can be attributed to the longevity of Scandal in comparison to HTGAWM. There is also acknowledgment that these tweets represent part of a larger volume of tweets that are not accessible without the use of additional software. Each dataset was analysed using NVivo software, and a word frequency test identified the most commonly used words. All tweets were then interpretively analysed to ascertain inter- textual themes. The interpretive analysis of tweets and online articles referenced in this work was influenced by a critical approach to discourse analysis, which is ‘a method for studying text that focuses on interpreting the material with reference to broader patterns and structures in society’ (Humphreys 2015, p. 5 2). Amongst the 15 most frequently used words in both the ‘Annalise Keating Black woman’ and ‘Olivia Pope Black woman’ datasets, were ‘hair’ and ‘wig’. This further evidences how this feature of their embodiment has been a source of public interest. Comments made about this aspect of the physical appearance of Washington in Scandal included words and phrases such as: ‘bonnet’, ‘wrap her hair’, ‘relaxed hair’, ‘laid’, ‘cap’, ‘isn’t realistic’, ‘false image’, ‘pre-weave’, ‘fictional’, ‘we all know’, and ‘real black women’. Additionally, there were remarks that referred to the ‘hair laws’ of Black women, in reference to certain haircare practices and products that are perceived as being com- monly adopted and used by them. This includes hair wrapping routines at night, which will be revisited later on in this article. Tweets about the hairstyles and wigs adorned by Davis in HTGAWM included words and phrases such as: ‘natural hair’, ‘wig off’, ‘hair flip’, ‘laid’, ‘wig game’, ‘box braid’, ‘sassy’, ‘snatch’, ‘wig line’ and ‘armour’. Such commentary featured vocabulary that ‘includes in-group hair terms’ (Jacobs-Huey 2006, p. 90) that may particularly reflect the voices of Black women on Twitter, who are aware of both backstage and onstage dimensions of the self-presentation of Black women, including the use of silk or satin ‘bonnets’ to maintain and protect their ‘laid’ hair. Amongst the tweets analysed were the constant appearance of claims of falseness with regard to the aesthetic image of Washington in Scandal – in contrast with that of Davis, who was more frequently framed as being ‘real’. These comparisons included reference to the visibility of Davis’ natural hair, as well as her fictional character’s haircare routines, such as wrapping her hair in a scarf at night to minimise breakage. Such sentiments highlight the distinct way that natural Black hair may be interpreted as signifying the realness and relatability of a Black woman (Banks 2000, hooks 1995, Jacobs-Huey 2006, Tulloch 2004) – impressions of which are dependent upon the eye of the beholder. This stands in contrast with how the primarily straight hair of Washington in Scandal was mentioned as part of claims that insinuate much about perceptions of her inauthenticity and B(l)ackness, such as by referring to her as repre- senting a ‘false image’ that contradicts the experiences of ‘real Black women’. The tension between the relative positionings of Davis and Washington exposes how assess- ments of the authenticity and relatability of famous Black women are influenced by interracial as well as intraracial celebrity dynamics. They may be informed by normative ideas about femininity, which involve the physical appearance of famous Black women being compared to that of famous white women, who are more commonly ascribed the status of being ‘classically beautiful’. Additionally, this authenticating and relational 400 F. SOBANDE activity may be played out as part of public comparisons between the racialised femininity and embodiment of famous Black women (Fleetwood 2015, Royster 2009). Celebrities function as symbolic resources, resulting in spectators negotiating conven- tions concerning identity. Examples of this include how ‘female celebrities are used to determine normative femininity’ (Kanai 2015, p. 322), as well as how famous women whose physical appearance contrasts with such normative ideals, may be subject to ridicule. The embodiment of famous Black women across various arenas has been a source of much derision, as was exemplified by the comments of Fox News host Bill O’Reilly in 2017 (Shapira 2017). When speaking about Maxine Waters, the US Representative for California’s forty- third congressional district, the television host stated: ‘I didn’t hear a word she said. I was looking at the James Brown wig’. This remark is demonstrative of how the hair of Black women may be commonly critiqued in ways that dismiss their femininity. Analysis of tweets about Davis reveal some of the ways in which her authenticity may be affirmed in relation to her aesthetic image, which some view as being ‘more real’ than that of Washington. Conversely, tweets about Davis removing her on-screen character’s wig in HT GAWM (2014) also include those that denounced her femininity and physical attractiveness. Tweets of this nature likened her to famous Black men and cartoon characters, such as Jay Z, Jamie Foxx in the film Django Unchained (2012), and the character of Cleveland Brown in the animated sitcom Family Guy (1999-present). Washington, who is noticeably lighter-skinned than Davis and frequently shown in Scandal with much longer, straight hair, embodies an image that more closely resembles traditional standards of beauty and femininity, which are determined in relation to a ‘politics of representation affirming white beauty standards’ for all women (hooks 1995, p. 124), including ‘one’s closeness to whites in terms of facial features and skin color’ (Dagbovie-Mullins 2013, p. 38). This may have contributed to the noted absence of similar tweets about Washington, as opposed to the number querying the feminine credentials of Davis, for example, by explicitly referring to her as being a man. Online narratives that question the femininity and desirability of Davis, including the visibility of her natural hair, are indicative of how intersecting and normative ideas pertaining to race, gender, and ‘color-caste hierarchies’ (hooks 1995, p. 120) influence how the aesthetic images and femininity of famous Black actresses are outlined. After all, the stigma that surrounds natural Black hair stands in stark opposition to the social capital and potentially ‘aspirational image of white femininity’ (Cook 2015, p. 6) that are associated with the iconic blonde haircuts of famous women, including Grace Kelly and Bridget Bardot (Vincendeau 2015). Whilst such women undeniably negotiate their own set of stereotypes – including those related to being angelic, ditsy, or sultry blonde bombshells – these common tropes fail to call into question their femininity in the same way that famous Black women with natural hair may be subject to. ‘You define you’: agency, authenticity and Davis Despite the glamour that surrounds images of famous women, there is a need for further analysis of how ideas about celebrity may relate to perceptions of their ordinari- ness (Biressi and Nunn 2002). Expanding upon the compelling work of Kanai (2015), this section discusses how perceptions of the authenticity of Davis are bound to narratives that juxtapose postfeminist tendencies, such as ‘performing an anxiety-free lack of 401 CELEBRITY STUDIES concern regarding social norms’ (Kanai 2015, p. 328) and embodying ‘slim, white, youthful standards of beauty’ (ibid.). My argument considers how other discourses frame the realness and relatability that Davis and other famous Black women are ascribed, including those regarding potentially Black feminist tendencies (Del Guadalupe Davidson 2017). The portrayal and pursuit of authentic celebrity is ‘particularly demonstrated through the blurring of the public and private self’ (Usher and Fremaux 2015, p. 58), which may be further interpreted as providing ‘a more natural or unmediated picture of them’ (Holmes and Redmond 2006, p. 4). Celebrities are situated within media landscapes in which ‘the media represent and tend to reinforce normative social values’ (Opoku- Mensah 2001, p. 30). This includes online commentary about celebrities that consists ‘of narrativizing and judging the contrast between the public and the private celebrity image as markers of larger social ideologies, particularly around gender, race, sexuality, and class’ (Meyers 2015, p. 72). Numerous articles about Davis and her role in HTGAWM focus upon issues concerned with her hair and underscore the part she played in developing her on-screen character, including the decision to show her removing her wig. This is emphasised by headlines such as: ‘Viola Davis Wouldn’t Have Played Annalise Keating If Her Wig Didn’t Come Off’ (Gordon 2015), ‘Viola Davis Speaks Out On Societal Pressures and Black Girls’ Hair’ (Campbell 2016), and ‘Her Character Was Only Supposed To Remove Her Makeup Before Bed. Then Viola Davis Made It Real’ (Ramsey 2014). The first of these articles also repeatedly surfaced amongst the tweets that were analysed, which reaffirms the intertextuality of the construction of Davis’ celebrity image. The visibility of a celebrity’s branding strategies can suggest their limited agency, and may conflict with efforts to appear authentic and self-possessed. Articles such as those mentioned highlight the influence of Davis in the construction of her character’s aesthetic image (Davis cited Gordon 2015): Before I got the role, I said, ‘Shonda, Pete, Betsy, I’m not gonna do this unless I can take my wig off’. It’s like Rosalind Russell said, acting is like stripping naked in front of an audience and turning around really slowly. One of the reasons I stopped watching TV was that I didn’t see myself on TV. It is partly a combination of narratives about the agency of Davis and the occasional appearance of her natural hair that develop the celebrity image of a self-empowered Black woman – one who seems to speak candidly about herself, such as when saying ‘like India Arie says, “I’m not my hair”. Well, I am my hair, but there’s so much more to me’ (Davis cited Campbell 2016). Headlines, including ‘Viola Davis Reveals Battle with Alopecia’ (Ramos 2014), that discuss the need to ‘applaud her decision to “come out” with her natural hair at a time when the whole world would be watching because we can only imagine how big a step that was for her’ (Ramos 2014) contribute to an overarching image of self-disclosure with which Davis is often associated. Statements such as ‘she dared to do what we rarely see black women in Hollywood attempt: go sans wig and let the world see her natural, chemical-free [hair]’ (Carter 2014); and ‘my favourite saying in the world is, “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are”. I am telling you, I have spent so much of my life not feeling comfortable in my skin. I am just so not there anymore’ (Davis cited Ramos 2014), reassert the idea that when famous Black actresses wear their hair naturally, spectators 402 F. SOBANDE are ‘being taken “behind the scenes”, “beneath the surface”, “beyond the image”, there where the truth resides’ (Dyer 2004, p. 10). Media coverage of celebrities is ‘a central player in the production and circulation of celebrity precisely because they focus the revelation of the private and “real” individual behind the screen persona through gossip talk’ (Meyers 2015, pp. 71–72). It is both the public revelation of a seemingly private part of herself (her natural hair and her relation- ship with it), and the degree of self-ownership and agency that Davis seems to convey that contribute to certain claims of her authenticity. These ideas are enforced by public declarations, such as when Davis said: ‘I never showed my natural hair. It was a crutch, not an enhancement [. . .]. I was so desperate for people to think that I was beautiful. I had to be liberated from that [feeling] to a certain extent’ (Davis cited Ramos 2014). It is imperative to recognise that what may be viewed as being the self-construction of an allegedly authentic celebrity image on the part of Davis, still requires the involvement of certain platforms, places and people, in and through which such an identity may be projected. As hooks (1995) observes, Black women are subject to the effects of a hierarchy that involves ‘issues of both skin color and hair texture’ (p. 126). When an article in The New York Times by Stanley (2014) caused controversy after referring to Davis as being ‘less classically beautiful’ than other actresses, Davis directly addressed this on US television talk show The View (2014): I think that beauty is subjective. I’ve heard that statement my entire life being a dark- skinned Black woman [. . .]. Classically beautiful is a fancy way of saying ugly and denoun- cing you. It worked when I was younger. It no longer works now [. . .] because it’s like what Ruby Dee said, she wanted that beauty [. . .] that comes from within [. . .]. Strength, courage and dignity, and what you are seeing now is so many Black women came out after that article and they used the hashtag #notclassicallybeautiful and they’re showing their face [. . .] and teaching a culture how to treat them [. . .] at the end of the day, you define you. Davis’ testimony on The View (2014) exemplifies her image as a self-assured Black woman who seems to embrace her Blackness and speaks of embodying ‘her true self’ whilst encouraging others to do the same. Davis’ morale-raising comments often involve her referencing the words of other well-known Black women in the process, including India Arie and Ruby Dee. Perceptions of her authenticity may be linked to notions of conforming (or not) to normative ideas about the embodiment and on-screen depiction of Black women, as well as her embracing of ‘race as an explicit theme in the narrative’ (Hamilton 2014, p. 52) – a theme that Davis projects when speaking about herself. Such commentary may disrupt the possibility of Davis being subsumed by post-racial and post-feminist language (Hamad 2013), such as by being held up as an ‘exemplar of a version of contemporary femininity that supposedly transcends racial politics’ (Cobb 2011, p. 37). Instead, hers is a celebrity image void of ‘ambiguity in terms of the work it takes to be seen as a person in a society bent on denying your agency’ (Del Guadalupe Davidson 2017, p. 95). When disentangling issues related to DIY digital culture and the postfeminist sensi- bilities of famous white women, such as Jennifer Lawrence, Kanai (2015) maintains that such a form of ‘feminine identity must be presented as the result of “free choice” and, accordingly, authentic’ (p. 328). This statement is particularly relevant to how Davis’ 403 CELEBRITY STUDIES celebrity image is conveyed, including her declarations of self-love for her Black embo- diment. However, such actions also situate Davis outside of a postfeminist celebrity locus that overlooks the different racialised experiences of women. Moreover, the actions of Davis possibly position her closer to Black feminist celebrity narratives (Arzumanova 2016), which have gained increased attention amidst popular cultural contexts in recent …