RuPaul Charles, the professional drag queen whose speech style I examined, is one of the more famous drag queens – both in terms of public consciousness and in sociolinguistic research. Sarah Jenkins’s analysis (2013) explores her use of falsetto and intonation changes, the use of empty adjectives and crude sexual humor, and references to gay icons. Findings include the “use of pronouns to titles in order to indicate and support the fact that she [the drag queen] is, indeed, passing as a woman” (Jenkins 2011:11). Interestingly, Jenkins also found instances where the aesthetic transformation from man to woman is directly referenced: “RuPaul first refers to the drag queens who are contestants on the show as “gentlemen” and then later calls the winning drag queen a “woman”.” (Jenkins 2011:12). This draws attention to the transformation, and also rewards the authenticity of the winning drag queen; that she is able to pass as a woman. Jenkins’s analysis is largely discursive, and there is little analysis at the phonological level. Rusty Barrett (1998) also examines RuPaul’s speech styles, particularly the way in which she style shifts to index her racial identity, her sexual identity and her drag queen identity. Barrett compares RuPaul’s speech styles on two talk shows: the Joan Rivers Show and the Arsenio Hall Show “On the Joan Rivers Show, which had a predominately European-American female viewership, RuPaul used predominately White Women Style features, some Gay Men Speech Style features, and no African America Vernacular English features. Conversely, on the Arsenio Hall Show, which attracted a young, mixed audience (mixed in terms of race and gender), RuPaul switched frequently among all three styles.” (Mann, 2011:797).
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...Recognizable phonological characteristics include a wider pitch range than in the speech of straight men, hyper-extended vowels, and longer onset /s/ and /l/ duration than in straight male speech (Crist, 1997). Like in the speech styles of stereotypically gay men, hedges, empty adjectives and hypercorrectness are all features in Lakoff’s definition of WWS. Rising intonation in questions, tag questions, the intensive use of “so” and the avoidance of coarse language and jokes also feature (Lakoff, 1975).
The notion that women do not tell jokes or use explicit language is particularly interesting when examined in the context of drag queens; although a drag queen may try to sound like a woman, a key part of their humor and performance style is to use innuendo, jokes, and coarse language. Barrett (1998) cites an AADQ from Texas, introducing a male stripper in a gay bar:
In his most recent album, Kanye West raps, “Now if I fuck this model/ And she just bleached her asshole/ And I get bleach on my T-shirt/ I 'mma feel like an asshole.” He suggests that it is the girl’s fault for getting bleach on his tee shirt, which she only did to make herself more sexually appealing. This misogyny in hip-hop culture is recognized to bring about problems. For instance, the women around these rappers believe they can only do well in life if they submit themselves to the men and allow themselves to be cared for in exchange for physical pleasure. In her essay, “From Fly-Girls to Bitches and Hoes”, Joan Morgan argues that the same rap music that dehumanizes women can be a powerful platform for gender equality if implemented correctly.
In The Venus Hip Hop and the Pink Ghetto, Imani Perry argues that the over-sexualized, unattainable bodies of black women in popular culture will lead to the breakdown of feminism and the positive body image of the everyday black women. As hip hop music continues to become more popular, the sexist messages presented in lyrics and music videos are becoming more common to the everyday public, including young black girls developing a self-image. Instead of these girls being exposed to healthy, positive role models who encourage individuality and that there is more to a woman than her body they are given hip hop video models whose only purpose is to look sensual on screen. The strong women that do exist in the hip hop genre are pushed to sexualize themselves or their lyrics to sell records or stay relatively unknown. Although Perry’s arguments are logical, I believe that she is creating a slippery slope of logic. A genre of music cannot destroy the self-image of black women that has existed for generations.
Queen Latifah played a big role in the hip hop industry as a female MC, and still is relevant to this day. She influenced millions of people especially in the black community for equality between women and men. She’s an American song-writer, actress, fashion producer, model, female MC, feminist, television producer, record producer, and talk show hostess. The Hip-hop culture began around the 1970’s in Bronx, New York and it was mostly amongst the Black and Latino community at that time. Hip Hop emerged out of an atmosphere of disappointment, anger, hate, discrimination, and disillusionment which; made it easy for the audience to comprehend and enjoy the music not as a song, but as a public personal message for each person to understand. Hip-hop was born in numerous places: in the neighborhoods, in the parks, playgrounds, bedrooms, bathrooms, a broken home, and even on the street corners. MC-ing and DJ-ing were at the center of this emerging culture, but hip-hop was always bigger than just the music, it was also break dancing and graffiti. The hip-hop fashion was very popular back then and some materials are coming back in today’s fashion as well: kangol hats, big bright jackets, gold jewelry chains, brand name sneakers like Adidas, established sportswear, tracksuits, large eyeglasses, big waist belts, jumpsuits, and any kind of over-sized clothing. The graffiti was a new form of expression that employed spray paint as a story on walls as the canvas. The police called that vandalism; but the people of hip hop called it art: a form of self-expression. Hip hop has been largely dominated by male artists, but there have been some notable exceptions. Queen Latifah was one of the few early female exponents of the styl...
In the article “ From Fly to Bitches and Hoes” by Joan Morgan, she often speaks about the positive and negative ideas associated with hip-hop music. Black men display their manhood with full on violence, crime, hidden guilt, and secret escapes through drugs and alcohol. Joan Morgan’s article views the root causes of the advantage of misogyny in rap music lyrics. In the beginning of the incitement her desires shift to focus on from rap culture condemnation to a deeper analysis of the root causes. She shows the hidden causes of unpleasant sexism in rap music and argues that we need to look deeper into understanding misogyny. I agree with Joan Morgan with the stance that black men show their emotions in a different way that is seen a different perspective.
In an excerpt from Janell Hobson’s “Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture” Hobson argues that the “image of black women’s bodies in culture are distorted in a way resembling the morphing of a person’s figure in a carnival mirror,” a term she coins as “un-mirroring.” She continues this metaphor by saying black women artists must “fight against this process by challenging dominant culture’s representation of black women’s bodies as being grotesque and changing the discourse to being one of beauty.” One may argue that black women are too diverse to be represented by one image, rather that they should fight to be regarded as individuals devoid of stereotypes and negative historical connotations. Stereotypes, which are too broad to be accurate, have negatively affected the image of the black female body in culture. To change the trajectory of this idea in the future, the discussion must be aimed towards persuading society that stereotypes are superficial judgments, and that black women should be regarded as a diverse group of individuals, not individual elements of a stereotype.
Craig, Maxine Leeds. Ain't I a Beauty Queen?: Black Women, Beauty, and the Politics of Race. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Print.
Drag exploded in the 1990s, which was very different from how it was look at in the 70s (Brinkley). Drag had become more popular in LGBT+ community and in American culture (Miller). RuPaul was in high interest in the early 1990’s because his album “Supermodel of the World” that came out in 1993.He was the first drag queen ever to get onto the pop charts. When asked to comment about being a drag queen he said, “Drag Queens are like the Shamans of our society, reminding people of what’s funny and what’s a stereotype”. Many drag movies also got national attention. Some of these movies were “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” in 1994 and “Too Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar” in 1995 (Miller). One of the most famous drag movies to come out of the 1990’s is Jenny Livingston’s “Paris is Burning” which features African American drag ball culture and showed what goes into transforming into drag
Historically, the representation of gay, African-American men on television has fallen short of the mark . We have seen “sissies, faggots and finger-snapping queens” sashaying across the screen, feminizing and marginalizing African-American men by these racially insensitive and homophobic caricatures. In this paper I examine the characters: Keith Charles of HBO’s Six Feet Under, Omar Little of HBO’s The Wire, Lafayette Reynolds of HBO’s True Blood, and Julien Lowe of FX’s The Shield and how their characters manifest their masculinity. The three characters that appear on HBO shows are portrayed as strong, masculine, openly gay men. Only Lowe, the sole African-American gay man who has appeared on a basic cable hour-long television drama is a closeted gay character. Since the “out” characters appear on HBO and the closeted character appears on basic cable, is it possible that an audience who can afford to pay for HBO is tolerant of the representation of masculine gay men while an audience watching on basic cable is not tolerant of that representation? Or is HBO’s marketing campaign, “It’s not TV, it’s HBO” an experimentation with “genre, coupled with their strategy of distancing themselves from broadcast television culminating in a distinguishable brand name and a noticeable schism between pay cable and broadcast television” (Jaramillo 60). Or rather, is the HBO audience one that is able to pay for a subscription to HBO, just gazing at these characters? Are these characters just a twist on the “big black buck” stereotype for a post-modern audience – one comfortable with explorations of masculine, racialized, gay desire? HBO’s marketing certainly attempts to position itself as a step above broadcast TV, airing programming that is de...
Being a black woman in 1979, Dana has developed a strong sense of identity; therefore, when people challenge this identity she uses her inner strength to find a calm way to combat the controversy. In the present, her relationship with a white man is mocked by a fellow coworker who mutters, “‘Chocolate and vanilla porn!” [She] close[s] her eyes in exasperation. He always did that. Started a “joke” that wasn’t funny to begin with, then beat it to death. “God, I wish he’d get drunk and shut up!” (56) Dana
Cyrus was the host 2015 VMAs and she did a racist performance of using black culture, a popular, trending culture in America, to promote herself as “wild and dangerous” by using black people as “props” for butt slapping and twerking (Makarechi 2013). Therefore, Manji turned her acceptance speech toward Cyrus by calling her out on her liberalist discussion about her on media a few days earlier. Cyrus had stated that Manji should blame herself for not being nominated as the best music video of the year along with Taylor Swift and other artists (Feeney 2015). Manji pointed out how the entertainment industry chose white artists to win awards and ignored nonwhite artists even though their music was also very popular and well-deserving to received awards as well. Furthermore, Manji pointed out that if Cyrus was going to enjoy black culture, she should care about the black people who created that culture as well. Cyrus, on the other hand, refused to give a response (Feeney 2015). Hence, in summary of what Wiley thinks, she stated, “’[White feminism] thinks twerking is a revolution on Miley but wants to know why Nicki just won’t respect herself though’” (Button Poetry
Comedy often allows for a subversion of the status quo that is not tolerated in more serious genres. Beginning in the 1930s, the subgenre of screwball comedy presented female characters who were active and desiring, without evoking negative characterizations as "unfeminine" or "trampish." Screwball comedies represent a specific form of romantic comedy that features a complicated situation--or more often a series of complications--centered around a strong-willed, unpredictable female. The comedy is generally physical as well as verbal. Screwball and other forms of romantic comedy do not just reverse the masculine/active, feminine/passive paradigm--which as E. Ann Kaplan notes accomplishes little in terms of change--but instead strengthens the female and weakens the male just enough to put them on more equal footing.
The cultural theory helps expand the knowledge of “hip hop” as an idea and influence on society. Mark Anthony Neal discusses the development of the understanding of hip hop by dissecting the layers and complexities of the culture, “Hip-hop music and culture emerged as a narrative and stylistic distillation of African-American youth sensibilities in the late 1970s,” within What the Music Said (Woldu 18). Urban history is a large, yet vital characteristic throughout the study of hip hop and its progression; Russell Potter shows how critical the representation of black musical expression and the “history of vernacular speech” is for the hip hop community in his book, Spectacular Vernaculars (Woldu 19). As decades pass and the hip hop scene expands, the history of this culture becomes influenced by more historical movements and creations. However, that is not the only historical significance that runs deep within the hip hop culture. The history and influence of the black feminist movement within the hip hop scene became a demanding characteristic in the development of the hip hop culture. As the gender divide became an evident aspect through the hip hop generation, women, especially female rappers,
It would be unjust to say that all gay men speak in this manner. To do so would ignore intersectionality. Intersectionality is the interconnectedness of social categorizations (i.e., race, class, gender), and creates overlapping social identities. Language can be influenced by these different social categories. Therefore, different groups of people can speak differently. For example, low-income, white gay male may speak differently that a middle-class, white gay male. Similarly, a gay man of color and a gay, white male may also speak differently. Therefore, we cannot assume that all gay men speak with a stereotypically gay accent, just as we can’t assume that all men who speak in a gay-sounding voice are
The oppressive picture displaying the sexual objectification of women that most hip-hop artists paint while rapping can only be described as appalling. Many artists imply that a woman?s sole purpose is to gratify a man?s every sexual desire. For instance, ?Nelly?s ?Tip Drill? goes as far to portray scantily clad women as sexual appliances? (Weisstuch). Though Nelly is relatively mild when contrasted to other hip-hop artists, his actualization of women cannot be ignored. By calling women ?sexual appliances,? Nelly essentially promotes the idea that it is customary to view all women solely as sexual objects. Moreover, the generic ?sex appe...
The negative perception of women throughout popular culture in the form of music has greatly impacted the portrayal of women on today’s society. This study involves on examination of sexist ideologies in dancehall lyrics that portray women in stereotypical and negative manner. This particular king of music explored in the study is dancehall music, a popular genre in Jamaican culture today. The primarily focus is on the effect of popular songs have on women in society, as well as how song lyrics can cause objectification of women and how are the roles of men and women reflected.