Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature “This Is America”: Racism and Violence in Modern
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Pavlína Poláčková “This Is America”: Racism and Violence in Modern Music Videos Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A. 2019 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author’s signature I would like to thank my supervisor Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A. for his patience, my mother for her un- dying love and care and my grandparents for their moral support even through their hardest times. Table of Contents 1 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 5 2 RACISM AND VIOLENCE IN MEDIA ...................................................................... 8 2.1 RACISM AND VIOLENCE ON SOCIAL MEDIA ................................................................... 8 2.1.1 THE BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT .................................................................. 9 2.2 RACISM AND VIOLENCE IN MUSIC ............................................................................. 11 3 INTRODUCTION TO VIDEO ANALYSIS ............................................................... 13 3.1 PROBLEMS WITH VIDEO ANALYSIS ............................................................................. 13 3.2 VIDEO ANALYSIS AND ETHNOGRAPHY ........................................................................ 15 3.3 VIDEO HERMENEUTICS ............................................................................................... 16 4 MUSIC VIDEO ANALYSIS ....................................................................................... 18 4.1 CHILDISH GAMBINO – “THIS IS AMERICA” ................................................................ 19 4.2 BEYONCÉ – “FORMATION” ......................................................................................... 23 4.3 USHER – “CHAINS” .................................................................................................... 26 4.4 KENDRICK LAMAR – “ALRIGHT” ............................................................................... 30 4.5 FINAL COMPARISON OF THE VIDEOS ........................................................................... 34 5 EFFECTS ON THE VIEWER ..................................................................................... 36 6 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................ 38 7 WORKS CITED .......................................................................................................... 41 8 SUMMARY ................................................................................................................. 45 9 RESUMÉ ..................................................................................................................... 47 1 Introduction The topic of racism and violence between Caucasians and African-Americans in the United States has been an issue from the times of the first European colonization. Ever since the colonization and expansion of slavery to the Americas, African-American people have been oppressed, used and humiliated by whites. Despite the contemporary society being increasingly more pro-equality in all senses of the word - from the equality between men and women to racial equality to equality between LGBQ and heterosexual population - there is still noticeable tension between the two races. In the sense of racism and violence towards African Americans, the tension is visible, for example, in the many reports of police brutality, injustice and shootings at African-Americans. As much as the mainstream media and authorities are underreporting these problems, the truth always surfaces. The advantage of contemporary society in comparison to the early 20th century is that media now have much greater reach and information can be spread all over the world in just a couple of seconds. The mass media such as news channels, radio stations are now standing against a more alternative source of information - social media offering a platform to many influencers such as musicians, filmmakers and other public figures who now have the power to reach out to even broader audiences than ever before. Precisely for this thesis is relevant one of the less obvious yet still somewhat important media of sharing information and ideas in art – art in the form of music and video. This thesis focuses on racism and violence in African-American communities in the United States through the eyes of African-American artists and their music videos. Particularly the ways they use in the sense of visual imagery and symbolism to portray these aspects of contemporary society and significant events in the fight of African-Americans against injustice and stereotypes. To do so, I will analyze several 5 music videos created in the last decade to demonstrate how are the problems with brutality and violence towards African-Americans seen through the eyes of the artists growing up in the world of injustice against their race and how these videos might affect the audience overall. The goal is to show that despite the artistic approach, those videos can be used as a way to forward information about contemporary issues that are continuously failing in being covered by mainstream media and raise awareness of these issues in the general public. Before analyzing the music videos, I will also briefly look into the history of hip hop and R&B music and political movements such as #BlackLivesMatter. This movement used social media as its platform and helped to shape the current situation of African-Americans in society by pointing out some of the significant issues that African-Americans have and still regularly can encounter. After the formation of the “Black Lives Matter” movement and its growth on social media, many artists joined others in creating music to support the cause of the project by sharing their experience and point of view to support raising the awareness of the discussed subjects. Among those artists one can find, for example, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Chris Brown and many more. This thesis takes an interest in four music videos of several of those artists incorporating the issue of racial discrimina- tion and violence into their music and music videos. The chosen music videos for this thesis are “This is America” by Childish Gambino, “Formation” by Beyoncé, “Chains” by Usher and “Alright” by Kendrick Lamar. The reason for choosing these particular artists are their different styles of music and backgrounds that can either offer different points of view on the same situation or bring out the unity in the African-American community and their desire to resolve the problem of racial inequality. To provide thorough analysis, I will draw information from publications focusing on an introduction 6 to visual media analysis such as Video Analysis: Methodology and Methods by Knoblauch, Schnettler, Raab and Soeffner (eds.) or Analysing Musical Multimedia by Nicholas Cook as well as publications focusing on the effect of media on the viewer such as “Dynamics of Media Hype: Interactivity of the Media and the Public” by Ik Jae Chung. As mentioned before, racism and unnecessary violence is an ongoing issue and raising awareness towards it is essential for overcoming continuous unfairness and discrimination. Finding ways to seize the attention of a wider audience and highlight current political and social issues in a thought-provoking way is crucial aspect during the process, especially now, when people are exposed to countless stimuli, and it is difficult to indicate the most important ones. Music is one of those ways that is used to effortlessly and virally spread a creative vision of specific situation to a worldwide audience and by that influence people to engage themselves into what is happening in the world and maybe even actively participate in making the world better place. 7 2 Racism and violence in media Historically, racism and violence have always been an issue which could not be completely ignored by the mass media. However, mass media does not always have enough space to cover all the issues happening in the world regarding this topic, and thus many events would remain unnoticed by the general public. Nevertheless, thanks to the alternative sources of information in the form of social media and more symbolically speaking even song lyrics and music videos many important political and social events have been recognized this way. 2.1 Racism and violence on social media Social media play a rather important role in contemporary society by creating a space where anyone can freely express their opinion on any topic that comes to mind. Websites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter had become one of the primary sources for sharing. People on these sites can now share important moments from their personal lives or their opinions on various topics not only with their acquaintances and family members but also with anyone in the world who has a working internet connection. Thanks to the freedom of speech on the internet, social media soon became a means for spreading news and information on events that mass media does not consider necessary to give enough attention. One of these often-overlooked issues is the very violence towards people of color. One of the most significant push factors to start discussions on the topic of racism and excessive