As a rule, I try not to give degenerate low culture such as the "Booty Pop" video a broader platform than it deserves. I am also breaking a second rule in that I usually do not use profanity: this video featuring six-year-old Albert Roundtree Jr. is pure fuckery.
The past ain't even past, it remains alive long into the present. Booty Pop is a 21st century version of the centuries old racist archetype known as the picaninny.
Picaninnies as portrayed in material culture have skin coloring ranging from medium brown to dark black -- light skinned picaninnies are rare. They include infants and teenagers; however, most appear to be 8-10 years old. Prissy, the inept and hysterical servant girl in Gone With the Wind (Selznick & Fleming, 1939) was an exception.
She was older than the typical picaninny, but her character was functionally a picaninny. Picaninny girls (and sometimes boys) have hair tied or matted in short stalks that point in all directions; often the boys are bald, their heads shining like metal. The children have big, wide eyes, and oversized mouths -- ostensibly to accommodate huge pieces of watermelon.
The picaninny caricature shows black children as either poorly dressed, wearing ragged, torn, old and oversized clothes, or, and worse, they are shown as nude or near-nude. This nudity suggests that black children, and by extension black parents, are not concerned with modesty. The nudity also implies that black parents neglect their children. A loving parent would provide clothing. The nudity of black children suggests that blacks are less civilized than whites (who wear clothes).
The nudity is also problematic because it sexualizes these children. Black children are shown with exposed genitalia and buttocks -- often without apparent shame. Moreover, the buttocks are often exaggerated in size, that is, black children are shown with the buttocks of adults. The widespread depictions of nudity among black children normalizes their sexual objectification, and, by extension, justifies the sexual abuse of these children.We have a black President, but we also have a global popular culture in which the most debased images of black humanity are a type of currency that stands in for our personhood.
The black superpublic is made real...again. If anyone would like to defend the Booty Pop video as innocent, harmless entertainment, please do so. I need the laugh.
15 comments:
I've already asked Cierra to get her girl Kirstin and post their reactions...,
CD's hypocrisy strikes again he issues a disclaimer about WARN not being a conduit for degenerate low culture yet he posts the very garage he rails against...WTF
Of course there is reason for his duplicity it allows CD and his sycophants like CNu to posture and flex their hollow elitist personas...Tired old fucks....Yawn
"Booty Pop" is so wrong on so many different levels. I don't even know where to begin.
This is horrifying. I have a six-year-old son. I can't imagine letting him do something this degrading.
That is horrifying on so many levels, one hardly knows where to begin. One useful way to begin to deconstruct the racism and misogyny is to imagine the reaction if it were a 6-year-old white girl singing a song with black men dancing around her in bikini bottoms.
Ugh. Horrible. Not only for the child CHILD who was "singing" (um, parents, are you insane?) but how awkward for the the "dancers". Gyrating in front of a 6 year old is freaking creepy as all fuck. No wonder they looked miserable. How disgusting.
@CDV
So I just finished struggling through some of that Iton-age.
If that's representative of the way in which afrodemic publications are written, it explains why these have so little influence on the popular culture. What ever happened to?
We want to talk right down to earth in a language that everybody here can easily understand. We all agree tonight, all of the speakers have agreed, that America has a very serious problem. Not only does America have a very serious problem, but our people have a very serious problem. America's problem is us.
anon:
get a spine and post an identity, you pig-scum.
Some one has to be the adult here. As a woman, why would you find it acceptable to shake your butt in a six year old's face? And where exactly was the six year old leading this woman to at the end of the video? The implication is that he was going to make her booty pop, which is not far from degradation of a minor.
Apparantly, blcaks see debasing their race as a surefire way to make money. And in the society that is all that rules. Sadly, there is always an ignorant audience will to throw a dollar at them.
I don't know if you saw, CD, but Herman Cain has taken his minstrely to another level. His video promoting his new online TV show, greces us with a toothless, loud mouth and another shuffling to banjo music and yelling 'I is coming boss' .
If we will not have respect for ourselves, how can we ask others to do so.
@Comrade. Do we have to imagine? Fox News would have had a crew on their butt already.
@Madison. The girls got their chance at five minutes of shameful fame.
@Cnu. Iton is the real deal. Nice guy too. His book takes some time to get through. His central contribution there, if you had to take one thing away, is that technology has redefined the boundaries of the black public--thus his idea of the black "superpublic."
Blackness, as it always has been, is globalized. But, the distinction between private and public black spaces have been expanded and compromised in some pretty large ways. Thus, my allusion to these moments in popular culture where blackness is put on blast--in degenerate ways, thus the video above--for a worldwide audience. In turn, how does this impact how black folks see themselves?
@Sabrina. He has a bunch of slave catcher videos out. I am afraid to look at that newest one.
His central contribution there, if you had to take one thing away, is that technology has redefined the boundaries of the black public--thus his idea of the black "superpublic."
I get it, and gather that hip-hop has been the dominant cultural trope profitably propagated via the new media (technological) channels.
Given that hip-hop and the profits it has engendered were largely and dominantly appropriated by Madison Ave. decades ago, one wonders at the inability or unwillingness of folk apart from that world to call it out and criticize it as ruthlessly as it has deserved to be criticized.
Methinkst the inherent conflict is similar to the one facing black intellectuals who aspire to becoming public intellectuals. If the desire is so strong to be a handsomely compensated part of a world engineered by others, then one is loathe to harshly critique said world(s).
What percentage of your colleagues would you estimate operate under such aspirational enthrallment?
When it comes to fame and fortune, such as it is, we would become a stereotype even if that fame is temporary. It's times like this that make me wonder why I don't put a gun to my head.
The internet is furious by this video already. And the director, whom I just found out is a white guy, is making excuses. Still, what the hell were the parents of this kid thinking? Why the hell would grown-ass women shake their asses in front of this child?
I already answered my own questions (up top) which leads me to ask more: Is our dignity as black folks worth nothing compared to a few clicks or some 15-minutes of fame? Is this the case of the colonized telling us to sick to humiliating levels just to get visible? Is this the same kind of problem we see in the entertainment industry own by white males?
Anybody remember Sgt. Waters from "A Soldier's Story," played by the great Adolph Caesar?
Well, my inner "Sgt. Waters" came out once I viewed that nonsense. You are witnessing collective auto-destruction, in full effect. Damn.
"Is our dignity as black folks worth nothing compared to a few clicks or some 15-minutes of fame?"
It seems so.
" Is this the case of the colonized telling us to sick to humiliating levels just to get visible?"
That's the only thing that is selling. People love gawking at a train wreck.
"Is this the same kind of problem we see in the entertainment industry own by white males?"
I don't know why I'm surprised the producer is white. Why should they care if they can get someone willing to make a buck. C. R. E. A. M.
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