Audience, agency and identity in Black popular culture

Audience, Agency and Identity in Black Popular Culture analyses black cultural representations that appropriate anti-black stereotypes. Using examples from literature, media, and art, Worsley examines how these cultural products do not rework anti-black stereotypes into seemingly positive images. Rather, they present anti-black stereotypes in their original forms and encourage audiences not to ignore, but to explore them. Shifting critical commentary from a need to censor these questionable images, Worsley offers a complex consideration of the value of and problems with these alternative anti-racist strategies in light of stereotypes' persistence. This book furthers our understanding of the historical circumstances that are influencing contemporary representations of black subjects that are purposefully derogatory and documents the consequences of these images.

• List of Illustrations p. xiii
• Acknowledgments p. xv
• 1 Race, Racism and Black Popular Culture p. 1
• Introducing the Examples p. 1
• Racial Politics and Black Popular Culture p. 4
• Black Cultural Traditions and Racist Appropriations p. 6
• Conclusion p. 8
• 2 Making the Past Accountable: The Wind Done Gone and Stereotypes of Black Women p. 10
• The Rationale for The Wind Done Gone p. 11
• Ambivalence and Agency in Black Female Sexuality p. 14
• Why Cynara Is Not a Heroic Black Female Slave p. 18
• Randall's Strategic Engagement of Stereotypes p. 21
• The Wind Done Gone and the Contemporary Narrative of Slavery p. 24
• Conclusion p. 27
• 3 Audience Reception through the Lens of a $10 Million Dollar Lawsuit p. 29
• The Battle Over Representations p. 30
• Does Gone With the Wind's Racist Imagery Matter? p. 32
• Should Racist Copyrighted Texts Be Protected? p. 34
• The Effectiveness of Randall's Appropriations p. 35
• An Overall Assessment of The Wind Done Gone p. 36
• Conclusion p. 40
• 4 Unholy Narratives and Shameless Acts: Kara Walker's Side-Long Glance p. 41
• Considering Black Art with Racist Images p. 42
• The Side-Long Glance and Walker's Creative Process p. 43
• The Negress's Role in the Silhouettes p. 48
• Critiques of Walker and Her Work p. 55
• Walker's Racist Appropriations vs. Traditional Black Artistic Strategies p. 60
• 5 Racist Visual Images?: Museum Comment Books and Viewer Response p. 64
• The Usefulness of Comment Books p. 64
• Did Viewers Get It? p. 66
• Emotional Responses to Difficult Images p. 69
• Discerning Truth from Fiction-Did Misreadings Occur? p. 71
• Responding to Sexual Imagery p. 75
• The Silhouettes' Overall Effect on the Viewer p. 77
• 6 Troubling Blackness: The Source Magazine and the Hip-Hop Nation p. 81
• The Sources Dominance in the Print Industry p. 83
• Constructing the Hip-Hop Community as the Black Nation p. 85
• The Role of the Ghetto and Violence p. 89
• Rappers and The Badman Tradition p. 93
• Assessing The Source's Flip-Hop Nation p. 95
• Conclusion p. 98
• 7 The Narrative Disrupted: Reading Letters, Rewriting Identity p. 99
• Hip-Flop Culture and the Public Sphere p. 100
• Critiquing Exclusions from the Hip-Hop Nation p. 101
• Sexism and Feminism in Hip-Hop p. 103
• The Nigga and Black Masculinity p. 07
• Conclusion p. 110
• 8 Conclusion: Reframing Debates and Analyses of Controversial Black Culture p. 112
• Racist Appropriations in Contemporary Black Culture p. 112
• Black Culture as a Site of Strategic Contestation p. 113
• The Politics of Contemporary Black Cultural Production p. 115
• Final Thoughts p. 121
• Notes p. 123
• Bibliography p. 133
• Index p. 141