(Due to my confusion last time, I am doing a little backtracking, hence this starting at page 75 and not 77.)
“This negotiation with popular culture is referred to as ‘the art of making do,’ a phrase that implies that although viewers may not be able to change the cultural products they observe, they can ‘make do’ by interpreting, rejecting, or reconfiguring the cultural texts they see,” (76).
“Another example of oppositional viewing is the affirmation of qualities within genres previously regarded as exploitative or insulting to a group. The blaxploitation ‘B Movie’ film genre, for example, has been widely noted for its negative representations of black culture during the 1970s, with such stereotypes as the black male stud, gangster, and pimp. Yet more recently, this genre has been revived to emphasize the evidence these films provide of valuable aspects of black culture and talent during the 1970s. Not only did these films star black actors, but they also were the first to include soundtracks that featured black music (funk and soul). Pam Grier, the star of numerous prison dramas and blaxploitation films of the 1970s such as the 1974 Foxy Brown (a film that preceded the contemporary rap performer of that name), reemerged in the cinema in the lead role of Jackie Brown, director Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 homage to the blaxploitation genre. We can say, then, that this genre has been appropriated, its meanings strategically transformed to create an alternative view of representations of blackness in film” (78).
*This sounds exactly like my advancements in my raw clean spectrum. So the images of blaxploitation were originally taboo and then became accepted. What I need to discover here is whether Quentin Tarantino is pop or counter-culture. He is raw, but he has become mainstream in the sense that he is well known and has been recognized by the academy more than once (I believe once for Pulp Fiction and a second time for Inglorious Basterds). Okay, so lets say he is mainstream, then I now have an example that I need to research. How did this reappropriation come to be accepted. It will definitely have to do with the modern civil rights movement, the more rights that blacks got and the more equally they were treated, the more their actual talents could be recognized; this is where culture combines with the visual! I am having a light bulb moment and I have a feeling that Mr. Foxman will love this.
—-I think what I would need to do would be to watch both Foxy Brown and Jackie Brown, research blaxploitation and it’s reemergence, and what was going on in history around this time. This sounds like a weekend project.
Even the note about the movie Foxy Brown being different than the contemporary rap artist that adopted that name is evidence of this reappropriation. (I feel like I need to come up with a reappropriation theory. Not that I know enough about it yet, but then again it would only be a theory…). Foxy Brown was originally counterculture and the name was used for someone that was mainstream in the modern rap world. I feel like I am making a real discovery here. I actually think that I am in need of Mr. Foxman’s philosophical “push” to make me think more and take this to the next level.
So I was just explaining this discovery to my mom and she said, “You know if you’re doing blaxploitation then you have to do Snoop Dog, that’s all he ever did.” She brings up a great point. What if I did this: studied. 1. Blaxploitation- blacks exploiting their exploitations as a race for entertainment, possibly almost a reappropriation of the minstrel shows that were put on by whites to ridicule blacks (which I am not sure if this was a mainstream or counterculture activity like the KKK was possibly counterculture), 2. The reemergence of blaxploitation by Quentin Tarantino- Him paying homage blaxploitation; his oppositional viewing recognizes the talents of the blacks, this reappropriation is clean, mainstream. 3. The reemergence of blaxploitation by Snoop Dog- a black man exploiting the exploitation of his race possibly because this has become a pop culture thing and he reaps inspiration from this. This becomes even more mainstream and these images become known as cool to mainstream culture.
And my mother points out, “Just like the word ‘nigger’…we [blacks] have changed [morphed] it to take the hurt out of it”.
Where will this go? I believe that this will be my new project.
After all of this discovery, I just went on to read this in Practices of Looking:
“These forms of making do and appropriation for political empowerment can also be found at the level of language. Social movements sometimes take terms that are derogatory and reuse them in empowering ways. This process is called transcoding” (78).
This (being the fact that “these forms of making do and appropriation” are for empowerment ) is exactly what I was saying to my mom before reading this! I would also say for social empowerment, which may be reflected my political empowerment or vice versa. And that not only social movements, but different groups of society take negative terms and make them positive. No pun intended, but Practices of Looking and I are on the same page! This is what I mean about the beauty in truth of studying culture. If I were to bring up the fact that no matter how taboo it may be, the black community brought their own power to the word ‘nigger,’ I think many people I know wouldn’t be able to discuss such truth. The greatness of Visual Culture is that it encompasses sociology, which I also love. Visual Culture seems to be a concentration in itself, because it is the coming together of so many things.
“Hebdige defined a youth subculture as a group that distinguished itself from mainstream culture through various aspects of its style that are assembled by participants from various ‘found’ items whose meanings are altered,” (78-79).
The text goes on to describe how the shoes Doc Martens were used throughout time for different groups, “Doc Martens, for example, were originally created in the 1940s as orthopedic shoes and sold in Britain in the 1960s as work boots, but they were appropriated to become key elements in various subcultures from the 1970s onward, such a punk, AIDS activism, neopunk, and grunge,” (79). This then brings us to today when Doc Martens are considered ‘hipster’ or ‘pop-hipster’ worn by girls with skirts and dresses and sold at Urban Outfitters.
This part of my reading gets into different aspects of counterculture, this is just what I need. It’s interesting, the wikipedia page of counterculture doesn’t even address Chicano ‘lowriders’.
