2004
27 April 2004
I have been consumed lately (surprise) with this discussion of the representation of black women so I put this on the site's What's New page:
I don't know how many of you have been following the whole Nelly "Tip Drill" video (in which Nelly apparently runs a credit card through the crack of a black woman's butt, among other things) vs. Spelman women debate, but here's a good perspective on it by Jelani Cobb, who teaches at Spelman. It's titled "Past Imperfect: The Hoodrat Theory."
I think the one that really started me thinking about the reality of the perception of black women and girls is "The Height of Disrespect" by Thulani Davis which was in the Village Voice. I'm really glad to see this discussion of the representation of black women's bodies brought into the forefront (obviously) but where is the voice of the women who performed in the video? Does no one want to speak with them? It's a serious oversight that everyone wants to talk around them and about them but no one wants to acknowledge that these women have names, opinions, choices, and voices that are just as valid as every other black woman's in this discussion.
Relatedly, I've also been hooked on the Kanye West song "All Falls Down," and since I don't have a television or the CD I went online to see if I could watch the video. As the kids say, I've been feelin' him. I'm really interested in this whole "college dropout" thing because I find the lyrics really smart and evocative, and there's been condemnation of his anti-college rhetoric on the Black Ivy listserv I'm on (yeah, I am). Nobody really seems to want to engage the hard truth of the lines highlighted below in the first verse. On top of that, doing the web search I came across at least two people who were looking for the sunglasses Stacy Dash wore and the Louis Vuitton purse she carries, truly, it seems, missing the point of the song.
Man I promise, she's so self conscious
she has no idea what she's doing in college
That major that she majored in don't make no money
But she won't drop out, her parents will look at her funny Now, tell me that ain't insecurrre
The concept of school seems so securrre Sophmore three yearrrs aint picked a careerrr
She like fuck it, I'll just stay down herre and do hair
Cause that's enough money to buy her a few pairs of new Airs Cause her baby daddy don't really care
She's so precious with the peer pressure
Couldn't afford a car so she named her daughter Alexus (a Lexus) She had hair so long that it looked like weave
Then she cut it all off now she look like Eve
And she be dealing with some issues that you can't believe Single black female addicted to retail and well
Man I promise, I'm so self conscious
That's why you always see me with at least one of my watches Rollies and Pasha's done drove me crazy
I can't even pronounce nothing, pass that versace! Then I spent 400 bucks on this
Just to be like nigga you ain't up on this! And I can't even go to the grocery store
Without some ones thats clean and a shirt with a team It seems we living the American dream
But the people highest up got the lowest self esteem The prettiest people do the ugliest things
For the road to riches and diamond rings
We shine because they hate us, floss cause they degrade us We trying to buy back our 40 acres
And for that paper, look how low we a'stoop
Even if you in a Benz, you still a nigga in a coop/coupe
I say fuck the police, thats how I treat em
We buy our way out of jail, but we can't buy freedom We'll buy a lot of clothes but we don't really need em Things we buy to cover up what's inside
Cause they made us hate ourself and love they wealth That's why shortys hollering "where the ballas' at?" Drug dealer buy Jordans, crackhead buy crack
And the white man get paid off of all of that But I ain't even gon act holier than thou Cause fuck it, I went to Jacob with 25 thou Before I had a house and I'd do it again
Cause I wanna be on 106 and Park pushing a Benz I wanna act ballerific like it's all terrific
I got a couple past due bills, I won't get specific I got a problem with spending before I get it
We all self conscious I'm just the first to admit it
Now, I'm used to the edited version because I listen to the radio. Instead of hearing:
Drug dealer buy Jordans, crackhead buy crack
And the white man get paid off of all of that
I get:
buy Jordans, buy
And the white man get paid off of all of that
So I found the video and watched it and was really surprised to hear the following edit:
buy Jordans, crackhead buy crack
And the man get paid off of all of that
Now, since when did it become an obscenity for a black man to say "white man?" Or is it that's it's "obscene" to associate white men with drug dealing and crack? It's more than a bit odd and troublesome. (I just found out that apparently Viacom-owned MTV and BET both edit out "white man" but since I don't have a TV I didn't know that. I learned it from an article on this very subject that I would give props to but for the homophobia expressed in it.) Is this the post-Janet breast scandal world we live in? Is this where censorship is headed, even though on any given day I can turn on the radio and hear lyrics like "I ain't a punk, man, I don't sweat vaginal fluid" or "...and love to get her p***** (barely bleeped) licked/[by another bitch]'cus I ain't drunk enough to do that?" But we can all see what's going on there, the double standard, the fear of critical voices making any kind of mainstream inroads.
There is a growing underclass of college-educated poor due to the increasing debt that many students graduate with. back.
13 March 2004
I've been having conversations with numerous friends recently about the ungenerous people we know in this relatively tiny field of art/art history/photography. We all know who you are, but I'm not so independent or stupid that I'm naming names. Every one of my friends seems to have had the same experience with them, and we all know the types: folks who you've met a dozen times but who always act like they don't know who the hell you are (to whom I always like to say, 'oh sure, we've met many times before' just to embarrass them, though these types don't seem to get embarrassed); folks to whom you extend generosity or kindness only to be met by an attitude of entitlement or indifference; folks who actively sabotage someone else's success just because they can; folks who are just plain snotty. I've talked about it here before—people I've sent resources and information to only to have them not even acknowledge receipt of it, but they go ahead and use it. This field is too small for that kind of behavior, you think, but more often than not these are the stars, the successes, and they couldn't care less what I and my friends think, anyway.
Now, I admit, I did some kooky things early on in my career, so conflicted was I about being an artist. From the beginning I really hated every aspect of it, but at the time I didn't know how to gracefully reconcile that. I announced my "retirement," which in retrospect must have sounded really pretentious. I told people works had been destroyed in a flood when they hadn't been (to those people in particular, I apologize for my weirdness!) This last week I've spent an inordinate amount of time readying some old work for an exhibition and all of those feelings are resurfacing with a vengeance. But these conversations, and the reality behind them, have been really depressing of late. I often feel like my work and career are one big battle against the tendency toward snobbery and elitism that permeates art history and especially anything remotely associated with higher education, but sometimes, like now, I feel like throwing in the proverbial towel and leaving them to themselves and their insular, incestuous little world. There are more important battles, but then I remember that I love this work, too, and I'll be damned if I let those kinds of attitudes win out. So I keep plodding along.
Another part of the conversations I've been having have to do with black women photographers in particular and why the only two who ever get any attention now are Carrie Mae Weems and Lorna Simpson. I mean, I could rename this site "Beyond Carrie and Lorna...There Are Some Other Black Photographers." Now, I love both of their work, but really there are many more really interesting, important artists to talk about. There was this moment when they emerged in the 1980s and there were many more names discussed along with them— Clarissa Sligh, Pat Ward Williams, Coreen Simpson, Lorraine O'Grady, to name a few—then they entered the art world mainstream and all the others gradually disappeared from the discussions. Multiculturalism had its moment but that's gone now, two representatives were anointed, so no one wants to hear about all that anymore. That's the distinct impression I'm getting, anyway. So again, I keep plodding along, hoping to change a bit of that, hoping to keep a broader discussion—and access to more work—alive.
25 February 2004
This morning, in the midst of a torrential downpour, my sweetie and I went to San Francisco City Hall to be witnesses for her sister and her partner who were getting married. They had already had a commitment ceremony a couple of years ago (before I knew them), but decided (I like to think with our prompting) to make it legal. What a complete thrill and honor it was to be there for them, to participate in such an historically yet personally triumphant moment. We got to City Hall; their officiant met us and explained that they could choose any spot within the rotunda where they would like to get married. I got to choose; I ended up selecting the spot on the 4th floor where, it turned out, the officiant and his partner of 37 years had been married. While we waited for them to get their license, we watched several other marriage ceremonies taking place at various spots below us. To say that it was beautiful, overwhelming, and a privilege to be there to witness these weddings would be an understatement, and we weren't even there at the height of it all, when the rotunda was filled with couples and families and volunteers during that first week or so. Every few minutes two men or two women were being joined together for no other reason than that they loved each other and wanted to make a formal commitment to each other in the eyes of the law. While we waited their officiant married two men who'd come from New Orleans; in the past few days he'd married people who had come from all over the country. I'm not even going to comment on the idiocy of Bush and Schwarzenegger and all the right-wing Christians who want to claim this is wrong and deny gay people the right to marry. Why they're so invested in what someone else does has never made sense to me. Mind your own; is that so hard? Instead I'm going to give mad props to new S.F. mayor Gavin Newsom for making a whole lot of people extremely happy, for making a whole lot of dreams come true, no matter what the ultimate outcome may be, legally. I was extremely honored to be a part of that, to witness it, officially and unofficially.
So were we tempted, my sweetie and I? We've only been together a bit under 5 months now, not very long in the scheme of things, a lifetime by lesbian U-haul standards. We've talked about it, danced around it, acknowledged that it's both way too soon and we don't want to be clichés but, yeah, I would marry her in a heartbeat.
02 February 2004
Oh, what you would change if you could go back! I appeared last night on the ultra-conservative Fox News show The O'Reilly Factor because I had written an article about the whole Janet Jackson/Super Bowl breast scandal and was asked to talk about it. I've gotten a fair amount of feedback mostly from friends and family and a few strangers who are very supportive (thank you all!), and some from strangers who are, well, not. You can read a couple of them on the site's message board, though I have to say it makes me rather glad they didn't mention my URL on air, as I'd asked them to (too late, though).
Not that I don't welcome different opinions, but I suspect that would have created a lot of administrative work for me to keep up with! At any rate, these are my thoughts on the interview with Bill O'Reilly:
I would have made more eye contact with the camera. (This, though, has always been my way and I suspect will be a rather hard habit to break, though, admittedly, I was told not to look too much at the camera.)
I would have disputed his claim that Janet Jackson admitted she'd set up Justin Timberlake. (I think that's what he said. It was something to that effect. I don't really remember, and don't have a tape of it.)
I would have said more about the aggression and violence inherent in Timberlake's action, simulated or not.
I would have said that, in fact, I bet the images that Playboy ran of Naomi Campbell in December 1999 simulating anal sex with a fake leopard were not quite the same as the images they run of white women but, then, I don't look at the pictures in Playboy enough to really say.
I would have said that the footage they ran of a blond Tyra Banks looking whiter than I'd ever seen her was about a whole separate set of issues. (I couldn't see anything or anyone when I was being taped so I had no idea of what images they were intercutting.)
I would have elaborated on his example of Vanessa Williams because, indeed, it was also certainly no coincidence that it was the first black Miss America who also became the first one stripped of her title, and for posing nude, of course.
I would have said that I suspect his African American viewers probably already share his viewpoint on most issues, as my friends and colleagues do with me, so, really, we were both right on that point.
But, you know, I was nervous and I had a finite period of time and I kept getting interrupted and I knew this guy can be wildly rude and combative so I thought it best to just maintain my original position and my poise. What kind of debate or discussion consists of "I think X" and "well, I don't agree," anyway? I'm really not entirely sure why they needed to have me on the show. He could have just mentioned the article briefly and dismissed it for all the dialogue we had. All in all, the anticipation and talking with all of my friends about it was great fun, but the experience itself was kind of boring, though the driver they sent for me, he rocked! I had a much, much better—and more interesting— time talking with him on the way to and from the studio about race and representation than I had on the show.
