BLOG #4: Black Popular Culture (Question 1)

Gina Dent's introduction to "Black Popular Culture" sheds light on Afro-centrism, feminism, sexuality, and identification in explaining what (Black) Popular Culture is. In one passage, she quotes Stuart Hall, "popular culture...... is where we discover and play with the identification of ourselves, where we are imagined, where we are represented, not only by the audiences out there who do not get the message, but ourselves..." ("BPC", pgs. 2-3) Popular Culture is what we identify with as a people. What we identify with via mainstream media, entertainment, etc. BLACK Popular Culture is what black America identifies with. What pieces of their culture, traditional or not, are accepted and spread throughout mainstream America. How I tie this into Bell Hooks' video clip is her mentioning that she uses movies, music, different media sources in general to teach popular culture. Having something relevant for a student or even someone that's just interested in the study of Popular Culture to reference when they're learning is a lot easier when it comes to explaining what it is.

Another point that Gina Dent plays with is the attitude and critical thinking of the black community when it comes to their culture and moving forward with what they know. Dent even quotes Hooks' when she remarks that "Black Americans in the United States now have unprecedented access to cultural and economic capital..." (p.15) Bell Hooks mentioned in her video clip that having taught at both predominantly white colleges as well as inner-city, urban campuses, she notices that both sets of students were equally as intelligent. Each group had her specific curriculum and teaching style available. However, the students in the urban setting were less enthusiastic to use what they had. (and my guess is that they were black students seeing as though she was in Harlem and was hesitant with her choice of "politically correct" wording). I connect this with Black Popular Culture based on the fact that what black Americans, especially adolescent to young adult, are exposed to our culture through mainstream media. Granted we as a people could always do our own research, but how easy is it to turn on the TV or listen to a song and see examples of what "black" should be? How blacks should act, speak, dress...

Dent and Hooks, both touched on this point very well in each piece and I can't wait to dive further into the subject.

BLOG #4: Black Popular Culture (Question 2)

As I watched "Bamboozled"-- a movie that I've seen quite a few times, yet is still quite eye-opening each time-- a few things stuck out to me in particular. One, Damon Wayne's character, Pierre Delacroix/Peerless Dothan, was what many in my culture refer to as a "sellout". He was indeed, a product of a middle/working class, black family, yet he wanted to be accepted into the white demographic. You see that in the fake accent, the "OVER-professionalism", the shunning of anything to do with anything "black", etc. Another scene that ties very well into Pierre Delacroix' somewhat "Uncle Tom" persona, was the scene where Michael Rapaport's character, Thomas Dunwitty, was giving Delacroix flack about his Cosby Show-type scripts and pilots he kept writing. In that scene Dunwitty remarked that he was "more black than Dela" and that he "knows black people better that Pierre knew his own". He went on to say that "Black people ARE culture. They define what's hot and what's not." In this same scene, if not then the scene immediately after, Delacroix states that "Everyone wants to be black... But nobody wants to BE black."

One last theme that correlates with the "popular black culture" focus surrounds the character collective, "The Mau Mau's". That group somehow managed to refute everything "black" (all the stereotypes, everything that was accepted into mainstream culture) with what they believed to be real or traditional African culture, but still falling into those EXACT SAME stereotypical qualities. While hating everything that the white man pushes on to their people, The Mau Mau's seemed to subconsciously accept it with the clothes they continued to wear, their dialect, the malt liquor they drank in every scene, the over-the-top Afro-centric behavior. They were one big contradiction going back and forth between what they believed to be "black" and what the media defined as "black".

Those themes connect very well with what Stuart Hall touched upon in the "What Is This "Black" in Black Popular Culture?" He mentions how at one point Europe was the center for everything high culture and how soon after the African diaspora, the engagement between the lesser European culture and the more dominant African cultures created an American culture. He says, by my own understanding of the passage, that whether or not people acknowledge and adhere to the fact, American culture was and still is influenced by African culture. With the language, music, etc. Just as the Thomas Dunwitty character in "Bamboozled" said that what blacks do is what everyone finds "cool".