“Check On It”
2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 12; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14680777.2011.558346
ISSN1471-5902
Autores Tópico(s)Media, Gender, and Advertising
ResumoAbstract Beyoncé Knowles is a hip hop icon. She is known more for her voluptuous body than her body of work that crisscrosses multiple culture industries. Unlike her hip hop contemporaries, Beyoncé successfully performs a range of Black femininities, speaking at once to Black working and middle class sensibilities while fulfilling her dynamic roles as both a hip hop belle and a US exotic other globally. The music video emerges as the celebrity-making medium by which the form and function of the spectacular Black female body is rearticulated. It is the medium that thrusts Beyoncé from a girl group member to a supreme solo Diana Ross-like diva. By interrogating her performances of Black femininity that operate in her Hype Williams directed and MTV award winning video, Check On It, this essay explores the ways her Southern hip hop booty shapes how her iconic body is understood in contemporary popular culture. Keywords: Beyoncé Knowlesmusic videofemininityhip hopgender stereotypesiconicity ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author would like to thank journal reviewers, Joelle Cruz at Texas A&M University, and researchers affiliated with the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities for their theoretical insight and manuscript reviews. Notes 1. Booty refers to the buttocks in African American vernacular and hip hop culture. Similar terms from the African diaspora include: batty within Jamaican dancehall; and culo within Puerto Rican reggaetón. There are a variety of African dance practices that emphasize hip movement. Booty dancing is an umbrella term deployed to categorize one group of dance practices. 2. Stacy Smith (2005 Smith, Stacy L. 2005. From Dr. Dre to “dismissed”: assessing violence, sex, and substance use on MTV. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 22(1): 89–98. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) discusses a Kaiser Family Foundation survey that reported 75 percent of young people between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four watched MTV. 3. Emerson (2002 Emerson, Rana A. 2002. “Where my girls at?”: negotiating black womanhood in music videos. Gender and Society, 16(1): 115–135. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) contends that Erykah Badu, Missy Elliott and Lauryn Hill are feminist artists who defy sexual objectification. These singers are situated within hip hop, and it is possible they can adopt complex personas because they are not rappers exclusively. 4. Hype Williams directed music videos during the glam moment of hip hop music videos when artists, such as Sean Combs and Will Smith, wore bright colors and shiny fabrics. Reiss and Feineman (2000 Reiss, Steve and Feineman, Neil. 2000. Thirty Frames per Second: The Visionary Art of the Music Video, New York: Harry N. Abrams. [Google Scholar]) discuss the videography of Hype Williams.
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