Erotic Capital During Crisis: How the Medium Shapes the Message
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15PMSC033 Qualitative Research Methods Content/Textual Analysis Assignment Erotic capital during crisis: How the medium shapes the message Introduction The night of 14 November 2019, during the Latin Grammy’s red carpet, Chilean singer Mon Laferte stopped walking, faced the photographers and silently uncovered her chest. While millions of Chileans marched in the streets of her country in the biggest social uprising since the return of democracy, Laferte decided it was time to show her discontent with the police brutality happening back home and showed a message written in Spanish on her chest: “In Chile they torture, rape and kill”. A few hours later – and after having won best alternative album for Norma – she posted the red-carpet image along with the text “My free body for a free country”. By now, her picture and message were all over the social media and made the headlines of all major news outlets around the world (The Guardian 2019, Billboard 2019). This paper attempts to outline a qualitative content analysis of the extent Mon Laferte’s appearance in the Grammy’s red-carpet helped visualise the social uprising taken place in Chile at a global scale. Corpus construction and methodology Being a Chilean journalist and a sympathiser of the opposition myself, I have a deep interest towards the anti-government demonstrations that have been developing back home. Although the country has been considered a model of economic growth and stability, political exclusion and economic inequality have caused historic demonstrations. By the time this paper has been written more than 25 people have died and over 200 have been blinded after being shot with pellet guns by the police. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other organisations have denounced indiscriminate violence, torture and rape by the riot police (Amnesty International 2019). The appearance of Laferte – with whom I worked with 8 years ago in the Chilean version of The X-Factor – gave the protests an unprecedented impulse. Instagram was forced to censor the hashtag #MonLaferte in order to avoid showing female nipples, with Google throwing more than 11,5 million results when searching “Mon Laferte Grammy”. It is this worldwide impact that made me study this case, which will be addressed using content analysis, an approach that should deliver an “educated guess” at some of the interpretations that might be made of this subject (McKee 2003:3). Considering that Laferte’s image was received by audiences all around the world, this might be interpreted in several different ways. The use of content analysis is, therefore, crucial, as it may help us understand why certain texts are “successful or subversive or popular” (Bainbridge 2011:224). This text in particular has been chosen using purposeful sampling (also known as purposive or judgment sampling), as it happens with “information-rich cases from which we can learn a great deal” (Patton 2002:230). In short, this study will analyse the 36-year-old Mexico-based artist’s message in order to understand its impact, implications and possible interpretations. Initial findings Utilising Bainbridge’s terminology, what Laferte does by writing the message on her chest is delivering a “closed text” (Bainbridge, 2011), a phrase which encourages a specific meaning and reduces space for different interpretations. The words chosen are simple and direct: rape, torture and kill. And all of this happens in Chile, she denounces, and it is taking place at this very moment. Although these words anchor the message in a way that it leaves little room for interpretations, the fact that they are written on her chest works metaphorically, as it implicitly tells us, with the exposure of such a vulnerable part of her body: there is no fear. This is not the statement of a woman who feels threatened by the Chilean state. It is instead that of an artist who is profoundly irritated and who has very little to lose. Rather than “enacting nakedness as an ethical performance of vulnerability” (Alaimo 2010:15), she transforms herself into an easy target for a pack of photographers who shoot their flashes at her. And it is because of her fearlessness that it is feasible to argue that this represents not vulnerability but rather strength. While her fellow citizens die in the hands of the police, Laferte – in the peak of her career – employs her erotic capital and privilege as a public persona and invests it in a political movement that goes beyond her own popularity. In fact, the rictus on her face differs from all the poses we normally see on red carpets. For Laferte this is not a moment of celebration, but rather of exposure of an ugly truth. Nevertheless, the artist is not only raising her voice to speak out for Chileans in general. The fact that she’s wearing a green bandana on her neck means she is representing women in particular. This symbol of sorority became popular in Argentina in 2018 when the Senate was debating a controversial bill to expand abortion rights and was quickly adopted in Chile with the same purpose. Bandanas have been linked to activism in Argentina for almost 50 years, after the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo who fought to find their disappeared relatives started wearing them, and this has extended to its neighbouring country. Laferte could have chosen many different ways to denounce the Chilean situation. It could have been a banner, it could have been a message on her clothes, it could have been a message written on her arms. However, she decided to write it between her breasts, showing them for the first time in her 17 years as a public figure. Topless activism, once again, proves to be an effective way of delivering a message (Williams 2019), facilitating “spreadability” (Jenkins et al., 2013:4). And it was the inherent sought-after nature of her action that made her saturate all headlines worldwide. In fact, the focus of most media outlets was that she showed her breasts over the message itself. In a classic example of “mediatised activism”, a combination of a topless woman and a situation of conflict (Reestorf 2014:483), Mon Laferte proved to nail it on the head. Paraphrasing Marshall McLuhan, it was the medium what became the actual message. Context In the attempt to understand the meaning of Laferte’s message, it is key to focus on the context, as it is the only way to make guesses about the likely interpretations of the elements in this text (McKee 2009:11). In this case, the artist chose the Grammy’s red carpet, a solemn moment in which celebrities display expensive dresses and jewellery. There was no glamour in the message she wanted to convey. Behind her, the background image of the 60-year-old gilded gramophone, symbol of one of the four major American entertainment awards. Laferte stayed still keeping a stiff upper lip and didn’t say a word, as she wanted her image to be portrayed in photos rather than videos. This fact should be interpreted as an essential part of her message, considering she is a singer with a very loud voice who normally moves frenetically on stage. By stripping off her clothes she made herself the centre of attention, but instead of dancing and singing she was silent and still. Because when she stripped herself from her main assets, she gave the spotlight to the conflict rather than to herself and what has historically defined her as an artist. Reflections and conclusion Two factors explain Mon Laferte’s worldwide phenomenon at the Latin Grammys. The first one is the fact that she decided to send a message through the exposure of her breasts, a bait too irresistible for global media. The second one refers to the context in which she displayed this message, disturbing a moment of solemnity, glamour and political correctness. In Laferte’s image there was message for almost every target group: men, women, those political engaged and Chileans of all ages. Were I to continue this project, I would like to research more thoroughly the aftermath of Mon Laferte’s action on the media. I also found fascinating how the different artistic representations of the picture (paintings, memes, drawings, etc) quickly started to circulate online, and I believe this might also be worth analysing. Bibliography Alaimo, Stacy. 2010. The naked word: The trans-corporeal ethics of the protesting body, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, 20:1, 15-36. Amnesty International. 2019. “Chile: Deliberate policy to injure protesters points to responsibility of those in command”. Available at https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/11/chile-responsable-politica-deliberada- para-danar-manifestantes/. [Accessed 22 Nov. 2019]. Bainbridge, J. 2011. “Textual Analysis and Media Research”. In Media and Journalism. Oxford University Press. The Guardian. 2019. “Chilean singer Mon Laferte exposes breasts at Latin Grammys to back protesters. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/15/mon-laferte- chile-latin-grammys-protest. [Accessed 25 Nov. 2019]. Jenkins H, Ford S and Green J. 2013. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York and London: New York University Press. McKee, A. 2003. “Textual Analysis: A Beginner's Guide” Metro Magazine. Patton M. Q. 2002. Qualitative research and evaluation methods. Thousand Oaks, Calif.; 3rd Sage Publications. Perasso, Valeria, 2018. “The women protesting in the Argentina abortion debate”. BBC. Available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-45110492. [Accessed 25 Nov. 2019]. Reestorf, Camilla. 2014. “Mediatised affective activism: The activist imaginary and the topless body in the Femen movement”. In Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 2014, Vol.