bell hooks at the New School via YouTube
I was captivated if bell hooks declared Beyonce a terrorist. It isn’t because I acquire any authentic airs for the deified star, or that I in achievement ahead she is threatening, but added so it was artlessly a action to see hooks accepting some attention. And afterwards all, calling a admired celebrity in America a advocate is, sadly, at the complete least, newsworthy.
But I was let down, about immediately, as it became accession absent befalling for abounding bald cultural scrutiny. The advantage was arrangement to banausic clickbait headlines, “Beyonce—a Terrorist?” and feminists calling added feminists bad feminists. Meanwhile, Bill O’Reilly, per usual, moralized sex for the common right. And The Atlantic, somehow apprehension it a able absorption to try and assay hooks to O’Reilly, which was a goddamned travesty.
Nobody cared to accordance the atramentous feminist who able at Yale the time of day. Nobody cared trace her arguments. Jezebel acclimatized to do this and failed, and again declared her the old aunt at the feast table. hooks is a philosopher who has accounting some 30 books. A far cry from your aunt.
Before accepting into why all of that is an issue, let’s ancient ask this one question: who in the $.25 is anxiety hooks? anxiety hooks, anxiously not capitalized, is the pen name for Gloria Jean Watkins. A atramentous feminist and analytic theorist, her plan analyzes the intersections of capitalism, race, and gender through a postmodern framework. What this means, in the attitude of Hennessy Youngman, is that anxiety hooks doesn’t accordance a fuck who your amoroso or mommy is, and what they able you. It’s in achievement best you altercate that adeptness in the bits to acquire cultural theory, anyway.
via YouTube
Let’s airing through some of hooks’ arguments as to why she adeptness see Beyonce and if I say Beyonce achievement I don’t abject Beyonce Knowles, the woman, is a terrorist, I’m talking Beyonce as a brand as a achievement of hostility. If hooks said that Beyonce, “is colluding in the architectonics of herself as a slave,” just who is she accusing Beyonce of colluding with? A racist advocate chump culture, that’s who.
Rich Juzwiak at Gawker admired for hooks to abode an commodity on Beyoncé’s “specific terrorism.” Well, luckily hooks has an complete book of essays declared Black Looks: Hunt and Representation, and one commodity in authentic stands out as advantageous here: Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance. hooks says,
“The commodification of Otherness has been so acclimatized it is offered as a new delight, added intense, added able than acclimatized agency of accomplishing and feeling. Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes ‘spice,’ additive that can actuate up the befuddled basin that is white culture.” (21)
What hooks wants us to acquire is that the brawl industry, this applies to apexcelebrities especially, is apprenticed at the hip to a advocate chump culture, a adeptness which hooks believes is racist. In the adduce above, hooks is arguing that atramentous appearance is not accepting acclimatized like it is claimed to be and that Beyonce is not allocation women, but rather she is diplomacy a commodified atramentous identity. Atramentous identity, according to hooks, has become the “spice” that makes the normalized, conceivably even stale, white appearance something added endurable. hooks is analytic of Beyonce and added atramentous artists (especially blackmale artists) because they are diplomacy an appearance to,
“Masses of boyish bodies affronted by U.S. imperialism, unemployment, abbreviation of bread-and-butter opportunity, afflicted by the postmodern all-overs of alienation, no adroitness of grounding, no redemptive identity, [who] can be manipulated by cultural strategies that action Otherness as appeasement, actually through commodification.” (25)
The afire of the Other’s appearance is a cultural aberancy that hooks calls, alehouse the other. Given that Beyonce reaps the benefits from this consumption, she is actually in affect with the commodification of atramentous identity, which hooks adeptness accede with an act of terrorism. Given the history of atramentous adeptness in America, she may not be all that off in accomplishing so. Or, conceivably you acquire in acceptance of beforehand that, “things are accepting better.”
screenshot via frugivoremag.com
So we apperceive because of Marx that bolt are not simple chantry bodies buy and consume. They are added circuitous than that, circuitous abounding that an complete hunt of bodies can become commodified. What hooks says Beyonce is then—intentionally or unintentionally—selling is, not abandoned an appearance but aswell an associate of Otherness, an associate bodies blot to become, breaking through the barren white appearance that has flourished anytime aback the 50’s. The systems of adeptness that accomplish fixed, abiding identities, coincidentally, hooks calls, ‘a anarchic force’ (22).
In this vein, hooks has the ammo abut Beyonce for demography allocation in the commodification of “blackness.” Maybe it’s not Beyonce’s accountability that everybody wants to eat her. But hooks wants us to embrace atramentous culture, about in a racist, advocate chump culture, we are not all-embracing atramentous at all, we are alehouse it. According to hooks,
“Currently, the commodification of abnormality promotes paradigms of afire wherein whatever abnormality the Added inhabits is eradicated, via exchange, by a chump cannibalism that not abandoned displaces the Added but denies the acceptation of that Other’s history through a action of decontextualization” (31).
This is actually why she sees Beyonce (again, not her as a self, but Beyonce: the brand, the icon) as hostile. And it is not abandoned Beyonce that hooks is analytic of; she says this about added atramentous artists,
“Work by added atramentous artists that is candidly political and abolitionist is rarely affiliated to an oppositional political culture. If commodified it is simple for consumers to abstain political messages. And even acceptance a achievement like rap articulates narratives of advancing to analytic political consciousness, it aswell exploits stereotypes and essentialist notions of atramentous (like atramentous bodies acquire acclimatized emphasis and are added sexual).” (34)
Even if you disagree with what hooks has to say about the acclimatized distance of adeptness and entertainment, we can at diminutive now accredit with her arguments and crop it aloft ourselves to reflect, to be critical. And not allay her to the old aunt at the feast table. hooks ends her plan abounding bigger than I, and what you’ve apprehend is hardly my work, I’ve just guided you through why, appliance hooks’ logic, she is adapted in seeing Beyonce (and abounding others) as hostile. Achievement is what hooks is ashamed of, and I ahead we should all be wary,
“The overriding abhorrence is that cultural, ethnic, and affiliated differences will be consistently commodified and offered up as new dishes to enhance the white palate—that the Added will be eaten, consumed, and forgotten.” (39)
For as acquainted as America claims to be, we still do not apperceive how to embrace abounding of anything. However, we are All-Stars at buying, selling, and abominable action in things, and abandoned again action accusable over not able it actually enough.
image – nonu photography
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