Representations Of Black Masculinity Research Articles

Do the Marriageable Men want to Protect and Provide? The Expectation of Black Professional Hybrid Masculinity

Gender ideologies are embedded in intersecting race, class, and gender systems. Yet Black masculinity is often defined one-dimensionally, without attention to class variation in gender enactment. Particularly, with regard to heterosexual partnering, representations of Black masculinity most often involve men enacting compensatory displays to account for having too little masculine capital to meet the dominant culture’s protector–provider prerequisites for accomplishing marital masculinity. Drawing from interviews with 42 never-married Black professional men, I explore their ideas about how masculinity ought to be done within the marital relationship—a critical site for the reproduction of gender inequality. Findings reveal that these men construct “Black professional hybrid masculinity” around a simultaneously racialized and classed compensatory strategy of masculine protection and equitable spousal sharing, resisting simple classification as either hegemonic or counterhegemonic. Rather, it is a distinctly hybrid masculine strategy. These men cherry-pick hegemonic gender norms to reconstruct gender identities that reaffirm their sense of manhood and idealize their future wives as symbols of hybrid femininity—work-devoted women who are also femininely in need of masculine protection. This research offers an intersectional extension of hybrid masculinity and illustrates the need for heterogeneous and context-varied theories of how Black men do gender.

Scripted parallels: the paradoxical audacity of Scandal’s Papa Pope as the “Black fantastic”

ABSTRACTI theorize Rowan “Eli” Pope’s performance of Black masculinity on Scandal as a portrayal of what Iton terms the “black fantastic” (Iton, 2008. In search of the Black fantastic: Politics and popular culture in the post civil-rights era. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, p. 16). As a Black fantastic character, Rowan represents a material improvement in televised representations of Black masculinity; however, his character is theorized as paradoxical because he remains always already entrapped by the Black male as beast caricature. Although Rowan’s storylines and monologues do indeed refuse absolute foreclosure into the caricature—thereby signifying progressively deviant Black fantastic sensibilities (Iton, 2008)—ultimately his mitigated emancipation is dependent upon White male characters opposed to his own autonomy. As White male characters who lie, swindle, and murder, Fitzgerald Grant, Cyrus Beene, and Jake Ballard offer the primary assurance through scripted parallels that Rowan’s evil is not inherent to his Black masculinity. Ergo, I argue that Rowan simultaneously transforms and stagnates the television landscape by challenging and legitimizing the Black male as beast caricature. While the steadily increasing visibility of Black fantastic characters across multiple media genres is commendable, ideologically catering to Whiteness does not reflect innovative twenty-first-century television. Rather, such practices are tired and cliché—even in Shondaland.

Representations of Black Masculinity in the 2010's Hip Hop

Representations of Black Masculinity in the 2010's Hip Hop

Richard Wright's Native Son and Paul Robeson's Othello: Representations of Black Masculinity in Contemporary Adaptations of Othello

Richard Wright's Native Son and Paul Robeson's Othello: Representations of Black Masculinity in Contemporary Adaptations of Othello

Is Quentin Tarantino Calvin Candie?: The Essence of Exploitation in Django Unchained

This essay argues that Quentin Tarantino’s use of African American cultural history as a cinematic tool is similar in exploitation to the actions of his own slave-owning villain Calvin Candie in Django Unchained. Through the close examination of two key scenes, it will be shown that Tarantino’s stylistic use of slavery and African American characters is deeply problematic in its white savior arrogance to revise black cultural history through the cultural production of a film. Tarantino’s postmodern pastiche exploits signifiers from many areas of popular culture for entertainment, but it is his use of slavery, hip-hop, and representations of black masculinity as tools for audience manipulation that are particularly troubling. Tarantino’s cultural appropriation is an inherently derogatory creative choice that warrants examination by film scholars.

Is Quentin Tarantino Calvin Candie?: The Essence of Exploitation in <em>Django Unchained</em>

This essay argues that Quentin Tarantino’s use of African American cultural history as a cinematic tool is similar in exploitation to the actions of his own slave-owning villain Calvin Candie in Django Unchained . Through the close examination of two key scenes, it will be shown that Tarantino’s stylistic use of slavery and African American characters is deeply problematic in its white savior arrogance to revise black cultural history through the cultural production of a film. Tarantino’s postmodern pastiche exploits signifiers from many areas of popular culture for entertainment, but it is his use of slavery, hip-hop, and representations of black masculinity as tools for audience manipulation that are particularly troubling. Tarantino’s cultural appropriation is an inherently derogatory creative choice that warrants examination by film scholars.

‘I Am A Man’: Performing black masculinity in Shirley Clarke’s The Cool World

Abstract The work of American film-maker Shirley Clarke has been largely ignored by feminist film history and criticism. Yet, the three feature films she completed between 1961 and 1967 are pioneering examples of the way feminist issues can be engaged with outside of the gender specific framework of feminist film theory. Her film The Cool World (1963) presents an examination of the construction and representation of black masculinity as determined by a racist normative patriarchal order. This article analyses the film’s exploration of the question of black masculinity in relationship to the Black Power Movement and the persistence of a phallocentric patriarchy that ultimately renders any attempt to subvert the racist determination of masculinity, a failure.

Naturalizing Male Authority and the Power of the Producer

Hip-hop videos have for some time inspired a substantial amount of academic work investigating how ethnicity and gender is represented. Much has been written about the problematic representations of African-American women in hip-hop videos and how they are reduced to props for the male star (Pough et al., Home Girls Make Some Noise: Hip Hop Feminism Anthology, 2007; Rose, The Hip Hop Wars, 2008). Recently several scholars have also examined the representations of black masculinity, and the limited negative stereotypes African-American male artists are offered to embody in these videos (Forman and Neal, That’s the Joint, 2012; Perry, Prophets of the Hood, Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop, 2004). A currently under-studied area is the power structures present in the relationship between a male producer and a female artist. In this article I will explore how gender and ethnicity is represented in the relationship between the male producer and the female artist in folk/rock singer Nelly Furtado’s video Promiscuous. In this video the famous Miami producer Timbaland shows up alongside Nelly Furtado. After her second album flopped, Furtado retained Timbaland to produce her third album, Loose, which became her bestselling effort; the single “Promiscuous” became her first number-one US single as well. In the video for the song, Timbaland and Furtado rap and sing a flirtatious dialogue together, and in this article I will compare their professional histories with the video’s representation of Timbaland’s masculinity. Are Furtado and Timbaland presented as equal partners here? How is their potential partnership referred to through the music, lyrics, and images, respectively? As the female star of the video, how is Furtado contrasted with her producer/co-performer? Most importantly, how is the relationship between Furtado and Timbaland presented in this video? I will supply a brief historical background for the relationship between female performers and male producers to shed light on the interaction depicted in Promiscuous. Using audiovisual analysis as my approach, I will identify several strategies in Promiscuous that appear to naturalize male authority in this particular context.

Growing Up Where ‘No One Looked Like Me’: Gender, Race, Hip Hop and Identity in Vancouver

This paper examines how youth whose parents came from sub-Saharan Africa negotiate racialized forms of masculinity and femininity in Vancouver, Canada. The study is based on interviews with second generation African-Canadian men and women, and explores gendered and racialized dimensions of growing up in neighbourhoods where they were usually the only African and Black children. In this context, the second generation engages with representations of Black masculinity and femininity widely circulated through American popular culture, especially through hip hop, constituting a dominant frame of reference among adolescents that contributes to the great popularity of African-Canadian teenage boys, while girls find it much harder to fit in.

Representations of Black Masculinity in Brazil

Representations of Black Masculinity in <scp>B</scp>razil

Made, laid and paid: photographic masculinities in a black men's magazine

Glossy men's magazines are frequently vilified for their overt visualising of gender stereotypes. This article tenders that as a niche publication, founded by and targeted at upwardly mobile black men during the early stages of democracy in South Africa, the aspirational photographs of black men in BL!NK magazine are a justified form of visual short-hand. The argument is made here that although the photographic representation of black masculinity is entangled in stereotypes associated with (white) Western, hetero-normative manhood, the images offer just enough differentiation from the norm that they may be deemed seditious within the particular historical context. This article comprises an analysis of the photographs of black men in one sample issue of BL!NK and thereby positions this magazine as an archive of South African identities that both endorsed and challenged staid gender tropes. By naming, analysing and historically situating three specific photographic typologies of black manhood typically found in BL!NK, the author hopes to underscore the importance of such niche publications as points of intersection between global and vernacular culture, and powerful platforms for the visceral trying on of new selves.

Colonialism, Race, and the French Romantic Imagination by Pratima Prasad

learn, said nothing of the sort, only that Voltaire wrote (or perhaps revised) Zadig, Babouc, and other tales during his stay at Sceaux. Other less dramatic incidents include the “broken axle story” in which Voltaire and Mme Du Châtelet, stranded on a wintry night, contemplated the starry cosmos propped up on cushions and wrapped in furs: “Ravis du magnifique spectacle déployé au-dessus d’eux, ils dissertaient, en grelottant, sur la nature et le cours des astres, sur la destination de tant de globes immenses répandus dans l’espace” (178). We now know that none of this took place; that the mise en scène was entirely invented by Decroix. In short, this first edition of Longchamp’s manuscript constitutes a major and refreshing breakthrough in Voltaire studies; it demonstrates how an idea floated many years ago by Barber has inspired a new generation of scholarly investigation. St. Francis Xavier University (NS, Canada) Édouard Langille PRASAD, PRATIMA. Colonialism, Race, and the French Romantic Imagination. New York: Routledge, 2009. ISBN 978-0-415-99467-5. Pp. xii + 192. $103. Prasad looks at six authors: Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Chateaubriand, Claire de Duras, Victor Hugo, Prosper Mérimée, and George Sand. She analyzes both canonical and little-known texts; even much-studied works, Paul et Virginie, Indiana, and Atala, are discussed from fresh points of view—such as Chateaubriand ’s nostalgia for France’s lost colonies: “Chateaubriand’s Indian is a product of the author’s remorse over the lost possibilities of a French America” (74). Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie has been examined by numerous scholars, but his La chaumière indienne, with its contrasting relationship of exogamy , remains largely unstudied. While Atala is one of Chateaubriand’s most analyzed texts, Les Natchez has received relatively little critical attention. Mérimée’s Tamango provides a rich comparison, in terms of slave revolt, with Hugo’s better-known Bug-Jargal. In her discussion of Duras’s Ourika, Prasad includes what she calls the “Ourika archive,” with unfamiliar spin-offs, La nouvelle Ourika and La négresse. The study shows how the Romantics built upon ideas of the Enlightenment as well as on those of their contemporaries (Prasad has selected her texts from one revolution to the next, from 1789 to 1830). She cites historians, race theorists, ethnographers, abolitionists, biological scientists, and travel writers. Five character types provide the book’s organizing principle: the White Native, the Métis, the Disciplined Savage, the Black Aristocrat, and the Rebellious Slave. Within the five chapters, Prasad has grouped her analyses to reveal the differences between colonial policy in areas of North America where intermarriage was encouraged, and the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean, where miscegenation could undermine slave society. The volume explores many topics, such as the Romantic obsession with incest (the ultimate endogamy, as Prasad points out), the development of the concept of “race” in the natural sciences, the evolution of French colonial policy, and the representation of black masculinity “within the customary Romantic conceptualizations of masculine subjectivity” (128). Equally important, however, are what Prasad terms the “furtive, awkward, and roundabout allusions as they express the full range of postures toward racial mixing” (48). This inclusion of the “furtive, awkward, and roundabout”—and the gaps, the silences—has produced 562 FRENCH REVIEW 85.3 a thoroughly fascinating study where all literary scholars, not just those of French Romanticism, will find much to appreciate. One important additional aspect deserves mention here. I would also recommend this book to undergraduates beginning their study of literature, above all for its limpid writing. Prasad incorporates theories of various types with ease, but she carefully avoids jargon. She guides her readers with useful signposts, defining her terms (e.g. miscegenation), signaling transitions to future sections of a chapter, or justifying her choices. Because a reviewer must consider even minor questions, however, I should point out some inconsistencies in the capitalization of both English and French titles in the bibliography. Such quibbling aside, this splendid essay cannot but be considered exemplary. Occidental College (CA) Annabelle M. Rea REED, CHRISTOPHER. The Chrysanthème Papers: The Pink Notebook of Madame Chrysanth ème and Other...

Representations of (new) Black masculinity: A news-making case study

Representations of Black masculinity in popular culture remain a focal point of social science and cultural studies research. Yet, research shows that Black men are negatively portrayed in news stories. Therefore, when a series on Black men, conceived and carried out primarily by a Black journalistic team, was published in a national agenda-setting newspaper, The Washington Post, it was important to question if Black masculinity was represented in this same light or represented in other, more positive ways. The purpose of this research was to investigate whether the series succeeded in reshaping the image of Black men and to what extent it exhibited Jackson and Dangerfield’s five factors of Black masculine positionality. The study found that slightly more than 50 percent of the stories presented a counter-stereotype, showing complexity in Black men’s lives. However, some stories left Black men ‘voiceless on the sidelines’. The study illustrates the difficulties even a well-planned series can face when trying to break out of conventional reporting tendencies.

Jim Brown: From Integration to Resegregation in The Dirty Dozen and 100 Rifles

The Dirty Dozen and 100 Rifles marked the beginning and the beginning of the end of Jim Brown's Hollywood stardom. Brown's powerful persona pushed and quickly exceeded the limits of Hollywood's representation of black masculinity, thus precipitating and necessitating blaxploitation.

When the “Good One” is “Baaad”: Modern Racism in John Singleton's Shaft

John Singleton's 2001 version of the blaxploitation film Shaft reinterprets this iconic representation of Black masculinity within an explicit and self-conscious treatment of the problem of racism. The film moves from a powerfully counter-stereotypical opening scene into a nominal indictment of racism that ultimately reinstates overtly racist stereotypes and privileges racist viewpoints. This paradoxical, multivalent representation of race marks an expansion of the trope of “modern racism”: an expansion that articulates with neo-liberal discourses of race.

Constructions of reality on MTV's “the real world”: An analysis of the restrictive coding of black masculinity

This article gives critical consciousness, via a semiotic analytical lens, to the representations of Black masculinity on MTV's THE REAL WORLD. My primary objective is to reveal the problematic nature of how African American male cast members are signified on the show, and how these images work to maintain the “typification “ of Black men as inherently angry, potentially violent, and sexually aggressive. Attention is also given to the uniqueness of the show and the ways that this programming format contributes to the hegemonic power of mediated images in reinforcing a general societal fear of Black men.

King Kong and the White Woman

The demonization by the media of Black men as rapists and murderes has been well documented by scholars interested in film, television, and rap music. Recently, a number of researchers have turned their attention to pornography, specifically, how the codes and conventions of this genre (re)construct the Black male body, especially the penis, as dangerous and as a threat to White male power. These studies focus on the poorly produced, hard-core pornography movies that, because of their explicit imagery, are relegated to the shelves of adult-only stores. What tends to be ignored is the content of the mass-produced, mass-circulated pornography magazines that have a much larger audience. Of the three giants that dominate the mainstream pornography magazine market (Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler), Hustler is the only one that features representations of Black masculinity. Although these representations can only be found in the humor sections, particularly the cartoons, they have much in common with those representations found in nonhumorous media forms. This article will examine how Hustler draws from past regimes of racial representation and articulates a more contemporary myth that Black masculinity, having been allowed to run amok in the post-civilrights era, has finally rendered White men impotent, both sexually and economically.

Knowers, Knowing, Known: Feminist Theory and Claims of Truth

paper. 1 For general arguments against an excessive philosophical preoccupation with epistemology, see Jacques Derrida, Dissemination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); John Gunnell, Between Philosophy and Politics (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986); Mark Krupnick, ed., Displacement (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1983); Paul Kress, "Against Epistemology," Journal of Politics 41, no. 2 (May 1979): 526-42. For specific arguments against foundationalism, see Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979); Richard Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983); Don Herzog, Without Foundations: Justification in Political Theory (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985). It is worth noting the irony that even those most intent on repudiating epistemology on the grounds that traditional epistemological concerns involve claims altogether beyond the possibilities for human knowledge are themselves advancing epistemological claims.