Subaltern Memory Essay

In her essay, “Embodying Subaltern Memory: Kinesthesia and the Problematics of Gender and Race,” Cindy Patton argues that Madonna’s cultural appropriation of Afro-Caribbean drag queen kinesthetics (and said community’s restylization of extensively choreographed posing for the fashion elite, of which Vogue belongs) perpetuated and reinterpreted the “memories of resistance” (Patton …) from the civil rights revolution exploding from the Stonewall riots, although in a necessarily muted form. Patton describes Madonna’s video as an example of “cultural imperialism” (86) in which Madonna co-opted voguing from black and Latino drag queens who used the dance-form which confronts the “realities of intragroup violence among men… Vogue is a ‘challenge’

It opens a physical space—on the dancefloor— to facilitate kinesthetic dialogue regarding “important material for the reconstruction of histories for subalterns [in this case, Black and Latino drag queens] coming to grips with their pace in their new nation” (89). Furthermore, it exposes a dichotomy between Madonna’s plead for the ‘freedom of movement’ as she sings, “‘Just let your body free’” (94) and the ‘framed,’ “stylized movements in fashion shows” (95).

In this context, Madonna’s “Vogue” video restylizes a strict, gendered physicality into a representation of the significant nuclei of cultural change within the distinct homosexual Afro-Latin community—a community which exists as an “oppositional identity” (87) in juxtaposition with the rigid definitions of appropriate gender expression. This both redefines and reinforces the

The audience becomes privy to everything Farrah was forced to give up to take care of her new baby, including cheerleading, friends, and a love life, to her stormy relationship with her mother, a first date and a fight with Cole—a ‘kid’ who was ‘totally cool with people having a kid,’ in Farrah’s words—after he sees another girl over the weekend (Teen Mom S. 1 Ep. 1). Amber is shown at home with her partner, Gary, taking care of their newborn daughter, going to lunch with a friend, and visiting a doctor to receive prescriptions for anti-anxiety medication and anti-depressants. Catelynn and her partner, Tyler, discuss the adoption of their daughter and the return of Tyler’s father (and Catelynn’s stepfather) from prison. Maci is shown planning her wedding to her current beau and father of her child, Ryan, as he leaves her to take care of their child on a month long business trip to Kansas. The chapters last a few minutes each, often layered with shots of the infants over the off-screen screaming matches the girls’ have with their parents, their friends, or their significant