Roundtable Discussion
Moderator:
Deborah Willis
My
name is Andrew Liccardo, I’m from Texas Tech University.
My
name is Heike Liss and I’m from Mills College, Oakland.
I’m
Henry Tsang from University of California, Irvine.
I’m
James Holland, I’m from Visual Studies Workshop.
I’m
Sheila Pree from Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia.
Phuong
M. Do from NYU.
Myra
Greene from the University of New Mexico.
Ron
Witherspoon from Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia.
I’m
Mark Slankard from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.
I’m
Deborah Jack from the State University at Buffalo.
Danny
Yahav-Brown from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore,
Maryland.
Jessica
Kaufman from Massachusetts College of Art.
Helen
Lee from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
I’m
Lalla Assia-Essayd from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
I’m
Carla Cioffi from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
I’m
Paul Anthony from Long Island University.
Glenn
Kawabata from the University of New Mexico.
Christopher
Di Ciocco from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
I’m
Sonya Lawyer from the University of Florida, Gainesville.
Roundtable: That’s
great. It’s interesting
that you’re from all the different locations. And,
I want to say, “Oh, I know Kathy Wagner and I know Bill Larson,” so
that’s great. I’d like to open up the round table.
Audience: Yes,
I have a question. You
talked about the initial representation of African-American women
in the media of that time. Do
you see a continuation of those same basic themes in some contemporary
media, and can you point out two or three?
Roundtable: First, if we do see them? So you definitely think that we should see them, right? You want us to point them out. Yes. One, we talked about images on BET and MTV, images, and we
look at women, like Fosse Brown who basically have that same perception
as seeing themselves as objects and also seeing themselves as the
subject, to explore and exploit their own image, so we have that
discussion in the book.
Audience: I’m going to pass, actually because I can’t think
of any other ones.
Roundtable: You mean like Pam Greer? Is she still working? There’s
a big conference on Pam Greer in Newark in July.
Roundtable: I can actually see that I think a parallel in film is the continued
invisibility of black women, and that’s something I’ve
noticed. In particular,
the example I can site is the actress, she was then called Arne Nichole
Parker, who’s on that Showtime series, Soul Food, and she was
one of the actors in Boogie Nights, that movie starring Mark Wahlberg
several years ago. Well, I didn’t see it when it first
came out, but I had heard all the press because I like Hollywood
and I real all that stuff, and for years I read about that movie,
and I never realized there was a black woman in it as one of the
principal characters until I saw it, because no one mentioned. There
was no mention of her name when they gave the short synopsis of the
cast, the director. Her
name wasn’t included. For
years of press about that film, and it garnered a lot of press, she
didn’t exist. It
was as though she was never on the screen. That’s
an example of just the opposite, not of a specific image that continues
that same discussion, but a specific lack of images that continues
the discussion of black women being invisible within the frame. One of the points of reference to that in our research was
finding images, particularly the images in which the 19th century
images in which the black women is shown in the frame with a white
woman, usually a white woman, usually not with a male, and in photo
history historians had spent a lot of ink talking about images in
which two people appear, and they would speak only about the model
as though the black person were not in the frame. That was a very
common thing we encountered. So I think if anything, that has continued,
that there still remains a persistent invisibility when it comes
to the black presence in a lot of media representations.
Roundtable: Just to follow up on that, with Roshini’s piece, there
was “If I Were a Black Woman,” someone said fulfilling
the desires of white men, which was amazing to see that as a continuation,
an honest narrative in terms of that discussion. But
also, what I could see within the work--I thought we were going to
have one more person? What
I felt about the work we discuss today mainly had a lot to do with
personal narrative and not only with the image-makers but also with
the people who Roshini has been in touch with through her Virtual
Exile and the fact that they overlapped in terms of the notion
of witness and I think that Carla and I, as people looking at history,
and looking at the text as witness, and photographs as witness, and
then having that discussion, I thought it was pretty interesting. With Stephen yesterday you talked a lot
about the history of your family and you’ve witnessed several
aspects of it. Do you
want to talk about that at all? About
some of the images you created?
Stephen
Marc: Well, they
vary from personal images to actually some images that are more
general added in. And
then more recently looking at sights where I’m actually looking
more at a more general history but trying to make it visible.
Roundtable: This
is what I’m finding a lot, where a lot of artists are re-visiting
images and really re-telling or expanding the story. There was a question?
Audience: Yeah,
this is for Carla. In
your talk about Vanessa Williams and the Penthouse magazine, I’m
wondering about the covers. Because
when it was first projected and you were talking about Vanessa Williams,
I thought I was looking at a white woman on the cover. Both times. I’m assuming those are from the same shoot. But that
brought to mind the thing with Time magazine and O.J. Simpson on
the cover and the alteration, I’m assuming it is something
about the way it was photographed or printed, either production of
the photograph or the post-production. I’m
just wondering if you could address that presentation on the cover
versus what’s inside. Like
pairing her with George Burns. If
you could address that, I don’t know what to think about that,
it’s kind of strange.
Carla
Williams: Actually,
that hadn’t occurred to me although it had occurred to me
in the layout of her with the other woman, especially after listening
to James last night because those were images very specifically
where their skin--there really was no differentiation in the tonality
of their skin, they were meant to kind of mirror each other, her
hair was straightened, so she didn’t appear to be African-American. You know, Vanessa Williams is a fair-skinned woman and her
appearance and that aspect of her beauty was a large part of why
she was the first black woman to win the Miss America crown. So those pictures with George Burns, George Burns was sort
of a popular figure, I think he was then in his 90s, he lived to
be 100 or 101, and so the headline too was a reference to probably
his most famous film roles, the “Oh God” movies because
he played God, but what I noticed in the pictures was the way in
which she sort of lost her Miss America status on the covers. She
starts out smiling next to him. The
second time she appears to have a lascivious look and in the third
picture they just use one of the nudes on the third and fourth
covers, they just used the nudes on the cover. I
saw that progression, the way she sort of fell from grace, and
you’re right, she gets progressively darker on those covers,
so by the time they publish that final cover in 1993, it’s
one of those really grainy black and white images in which she
is very clearly African-American in her representation. So I don’t think that back in the 1980s, I never saw
any discussion that they had specifically altered them but I’m
virtually certain that when she was photographed with George Burns
she was photographed and lit so that she adhered to a European
ideal of beauty because that’s one of the reasons she won
that crown.
Younger: Do
you know if she made any money for that at all?
Williams: I
don’t think she was paid. The
first photographer, she was his assistant. She was his studio assistant, so that’s how she came
to pose for him. The
second guy I don’t remember what the story was, how she came
to pose for him.
Audience: I’m
going to ask the whole panel. I sit here and I wonder, especially when you talk about repeated
images of African-Americans, and Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown are
brought up, and it’s always a complicated question in modern
media, like who really has control, is it their companies, is it
them, who’s telling them what wigs to put on. But
I know that I personally gained pleasure from those and there’s
a certain level of enjoyment, I enjoy the music or the model or the
fashion of that, so I pose to the panel, all of you, in looking at
all of this work as a group, there seems to be a sense of history
but there doesn’t seem to be a lack of pleasure. I’m
not going to say enjoyment but can you see what I’m hinting
at? Can you perchance talk about contemporary
artists who deal with pleasure or maybe if you think I’m totally
off base, tell me why? Just
a little conversation about that. Like I have this feeling sometimes that African-American artists
feel like they can’t use pleasure, that there must be a turn
to this history and a recognition of history instead of utilizing
another sense of their humanity, I guess.
Roundtable: I
don’t think that’s necessarily true. I think we’re the exception. I don’t think there are many people
who are actually critically dealing with the issues we’re talking
about. I think most
people are dealing with pleasure. It’s about love, desire,
and it’s not in terms of a critical discussion about it, and
that we’re hoping to do is not place judgment on the images,
we want to see a creative discussion because they haven’t been
done. And when we look
at Renee Cox’s images, Renee is about pleasure and she enjoys
the whole aspect of sexuality and also enjoys the aspect of fashion,
so she talks about this, and the same thing with Carrie. I just made selected images of Carrie’s work. Carrie does the same thing. So I can’t see that many--this
is just a selection from some of the work that we’re showing
and I see that when I look at, you know, I love to look at Lil’ Kim
because there’s a sense of empowerment that she has. Kathy Sandler gave me a piece, who’s here in the audience,
gave me a piece about Mary J. Blige and just to hear her talk about
her body and then for women, like Lynn Marshal-Linnemeier said earlier,
just about how women as we age, our body changes, and there’s
a sense of how do we still love our bodies when the muscle goes away
or when things change. So
I think we’re talking about them for the first time but I hope
you don’t think we’re just, you know, the whole negative
aspect of it because I think we’re giving you the critical
discussion because we were in Oakland last week and there was an
older woman in the audience who was really upset with us because
we talked about certain photographs and she said, “they were
my heroes, these women are beautiful,” and we were like, “okay,
great, you think they’re beautiful, we have a different take
on some of the images.” So
it’s just an exchange of ideas.
Roundtable: I think I’m in agreement with what you said earlier. I
don’t think it’s an issue about pleasure. I
think most of what I’m seeing today is quite pleasurable to
look at, the images that are out there of black women. I’m just amazed by some of them, actually, at just the
openness of it. I think
that in many ways, black women are doing daring things, or this whole
media is doing some daring things that no one else is doing. I think probably the issue for me is economics and exploitation,
based on money, and I often wonder whether at the core of it, do
they really have control? Who’s
controlling the images? I think that a lot of them are being controlled by men. In fact, I know a lot of them are being
controlled by men because a good friend of mine, Sheila Turner, who
does a lot of shoots for record companies, especially young people
that are upcoming in music, and she came to me a few months ago,
just really disturbed by how the guys that were sending them the
packets for these two girls to New York, just how they were being
treated in order for her to photograph. She said, “I shot it but it wasn’t
comfortable for me to sit there and listen to how they were talking
to the women.” It
goes back to the “Hottentot Venus.” It’s real interesting
because I found it and looking at a guys work but she was saying
that it was basically about showing your butt. We
do have beautiful butts, there’s no question about it. Black women have butts like no other
women in the world. (Laughter)
But
I often wonder if the women are controlling that. What
Renee does, what Carrie does, me taking off my clothes, I’m
in total control of that camera. I’m
in total control of those images, and I’m not so sure whether
that’s happening now. And
I’m also real concerned with what’s going on with the
children that are viewing these images and how little black girls
are looking at themselves in terms of their sexuality, whether they
are being objects, whether that’s coming across, and I’m
seeing a lot of that where I live with the billboards that are going
on, and I’m seeing a lot of little girls that I feel are really
too young to be dealing with something that is that heavy, sexuality
at eight or nine--I’m from the old school. I think kids that age should be playing
with dolls. It
could be Barbie dolls with big butts but I really think they should
be playing with dolls and not trying to be sexual objects.
Roundtable: I
agree with what both of you said. I think there’s something interesting about the pleasure
and seduction that’s around popular images like the one that
you see on that TV. There’s
something very hard in working against that aesthetic or critically
engaging with that aesthetic and still working within it, it seems
to me. Because I think what Lynn was referring
to about who’s behind the camera and how it conforms to that
kind of conventional visual structures and formations that we’re
all familiar with, and we take pleasure in it. So
for me, some of the work that I’ve seen today has been about
a different type of pleasure, which is actually seems to be more
complex and sophisticated. It
seems to me that there is something around popularized popular cultural
take which is very frivolous. It’s
very seductive, but it’s very frivolous. It’s
about selling a record or whatever. So it’s about looking beyond that and deconstructing
that image and asking, what is that about and why are we so seduced
by it? I think that Deb’s and Carla’s
has that stopping point.
Roundtable: When we think about the whole aspect of agency, my son who
is an assistant on a Victoria Secret shoot and it was really fascinating
because we talked about the image in a classroom setting and no one
realized that there were six men in the room and the model was the
only woman and the way she was placed on the bed, everything had
to do with the male perspective. And my son told me that the woman was
silent the entire time and he was disturbed about the way she was
presented, but of course, the director and the photographer knew
what angle, which was her on her stomach and you can see part of
her cheeks through the panties and it was mainly through the male
perspective although they were selling panties to women.
Audience: I just wonder if it isn’t all about the male’s
view of women. No matter
what color you are or how old you are. It
doesn’t have to do with us or how we want to be viewed or anything
about us. It has to
do with the male perspective. I
wonder how much we play into that or we don’t play into that. I don’t know.
Roundtable: I
think we play into it both . . .
Roundtable: And we want to attract them, so let’s hang a thing up
here to attract them, but something weird about that is that it doesn’t
have to be about us . . .
Roundtable: .
. . they attract women too. You
know, I know women who are really interested in these ads also.
Roundtable: Some
of the other things where it becomes a little disturbing also is
it’s hard to have all the entertainment aspects associated
with, but it’s also hard to separate the public and the private
and some of the things that are acceptable in a home or behind closed
doors that might be seductive or ironic or whatever, takes on a whole
different--it’s a whole different thing with all of a sudden
it’s a billboard in a neighborhood. What’s the company that’s
making the thong underwear for ten-year-olds now?
Roundtable: I
think that’s a good point because I think the whole culture
seems so sexualized. Everything
is about sex. Sex is
used to sell absolutely everything and what is it in your bedroom
anymore if it’s absolutely everywhere?
Audience: It’s something that you hinted at, it is the empowerment
versus the sexualization and that’s all I can really say. It’s
like you’re saying all these things but there’s still
this empowerment to the fact that--I mean, I’m not saying that
eight-year-olds need to be sexualized but perchance knowing of a
different sexuality that I had at a younger age might be a better
thing. I was raised
very Catholic and very pure and didn’t really understand sexuality. I
was raised well and raised smart, but sexuality wasn’t a discussion
and it wasn’t in a medium for me in any way, and now I’m
older and I’m educated so it’s different but I see this
interesting empowerment. Yes, it’s complicated, but it still
is an empowerment where a 13-year-old knows the meaning of lesbian. There’s a lot embedded in all of
these images and a lot of them go beyond race. Rap music has it’s own homophobic tendencies so there’s
a lot more embedded but it brings a lot more conversations to the
table that maybe we are too academic to see sometimes. I’m not sure. I just keep going back and forth on it.
Roundtable: I
think you should think about everyone in terms of the question, you
grew up catholic, and the catholic girls when I grew up were the
loose girls. They weren’t
the good girls. They
used to pull them up as soon as they got out of the school. So
it’s interesting when you think about the structure, when you
decide to talk about the structure, the environment.
Audience: This
question is obviously posed to everyone and it has to do with the
issue of projection in a certain way and I’d like to bring
up the issue of the Academy Awards this past year. It
occurred to me when I was looking at the images of Vanessa Williams. She’s the light skinned woman and
she won the Miss American pageant and being maybe an acceptable place
for an erotic charge in the American Diaspora, like it’s okay
to say that you find a light-skinned black woman attractive. I’m wondering, with Halle Berry, for example, winning
the first black woman to win an academy award, it’s a big huge
step but is that still an issue that’s lingering.
Roundtable: The
issue of color?
Audience: The
issue of relative blackness, tonality of skin color. Would somebody with a darker skin color
have won this year? Is
that an issue? It seems
to me that to even discuss the issue is to question whether or not
she deserved and I’m not trying to suggest that, she did an
amazing job and I really though her performance was amazing but it
brings up questions to me. I don’t see a lot of white people out there really celebrating
really dark African-identified performers as they’re celebrating
her.
Roundtable: But
she’s not celebration.
Audience: But
I also want to bring up Denzel Washington. He won his for playing a very stereotypically violent role
and it just brings up a lot of issues. I
was wondering if you guys could respond.
Roundtable: I’ll
be the first to jump on that one (Laughter) because that’s
not the first time Halle Berry has given an outstanding performance
in a movie. She’s
just an amazing actress and the same thing with Denzel. I question just the content of the movie. I
thought it was a good movie, there’s no question. I
just question why in those two scenarios we get the awards and not
for some of the other pieces.
Roundtable: Do
you think it was linked to the content? It seemed to me it had nothing to do with the content of the
film, it had to do with--at this point in time there were issues
raised about it and the judges keeled over.
Audience: It might have been a little bit of
all of that, but it just made, you know, it’s stuff that wandered
across my mind. (Laughter)
Willis: We
have a film person in the audience. I’d like to ask you to respond because there has been
a lot of discussion about that. Color
was important.
Kathy
Sandler: My name
is Kathy Sandler. I’m
an independent film maker and I did a film about skin color in
the African-American community regarding skin color, hair texture,
and features, called A Question of Color, so I think that’s
why Deborah wanted me to respond to this conversation. I
have to admit, I may seem like I fell off the planet but I am one
of these people where I was just sitting watching the Academy Awards
and I hadn’t seen Monster’s Ball and I didn’t
expect to get swept up in this, “Oh my God! She’s winning!” but I was sitting in a room full
of black women and we were cheering! I
watch the documentary section because I’m a documentarian. But is Halle Berry sexualized? Is her image sexualized in a way that’s
more acceptable to the American mainstream to white America and
you might add some parts of black America? Because if you look at those music videos, I think you see
a tremendous amount of color consciousness on the part of the male. The men are typically brown-skinned and
dark-skinned but you don’t see a lot of men who are the complexion
of the women. So is
she sexualized in some ways and put forward as sexual?
Audience: Did she win because she was light-skinned or because of the
content?
Sandler: Here’s the question that I couldn’t separate about
Halle Berry is, is she having a career that would be harder to have
if she were dark-skinned? Just
that she’s being put forward into different roles. She’s had a hard, tough way to go and I don’t
think she’s a stronger actress than Angela Bassett or Alfre
Woodard but neither one of them have been--they’re both already
in their 40s I think and they haven’t had the opportunity to
be sexualized in the same way. This
is all going to sound weird but this is the opportunity to be sexualized,
you know? (Laughter) But I think it is so jaded and problematic. I’m
an African-American woman and I’m a part of something called
the Black Documentary Film Collective and there was an email going
around the country after the awards that was just slamming Halle
Berry for having won. I think Deborah sent it to me and I had
already seen it and I was so sick. It
was slamming Halle Berry for having gotten this award because “she’s
one of our great beauties,” is what the email said. It’s
an American man writing, “she’s one of our great beauties
and how could she allow herself to be defaced by this white man,
white trash, and that’s why she got the award,” and yada-yada-yada.
So I thought that was an interesting moment because the idea of her
as one of our great beauties also has to be looked at too, in terms
of how she has been cast by black filmmakers early on. Like
when she did, what was the film? It
was directed by a black director? The
idea that she’s one of our great beauties has to be interrogated
too. I hope I haven’t been talking in
a rambling way. I think
it’s a very complex discussion and there’s racism, colorism
and sexism all rolled up in this question. I
think she is a good actress. It
don’t know if I think she’s as good an actress as Alfre
Woodard but I think she’s a very good actress and she deserved
to win. And Denzel is an excellent actor, you
know, but at the same time you cannot separate out how these people
have careers. For instance,
the black male actors, some of whom are having fantastic careers,
are being sexualized as black men. Like
we were talking about Wesley Snipes or Lawrence Fishburne, that their
coloring is not disproportionately light-skinned, in fact, I don’t
think any of those men are considered light-skinned. On
the other hand, so many of the black women who are sexualized are
light-skinned. All of
it needs to be discussed.
Roundtable: Belle Hooks talked about that in Atlanta recently with her
new book, and I can’t remember, I’m having another senior
moment, they’re coming more frequently now, but she discussed
that, about the invisibility of black women in the media and on television
and I think inevitably now we definitely have seen a wash-out. I
see it anyway. I have
to with my grand-daughter who’s dark-skinned, just really make
her aware of what is going on in terms of these images that are being
put out there in the media and whether we would like to say it or
not, children really are affected by what they see on TV. I
don’t care what anybody says, you can come up with any argument
that you would like to put out there and I will still stand by my
point that children are still affected by this. When
she’s watching TV, and I’m very frank with her, here’s
a little black girl, she’s a very pretty little black girl
but does she look like you? How
many little dark skinned little black girls do you see on television? You need to be aware of that because
this is media; you get washed out. It’s
as simple as that. It’s
basically the way that we, you know? It’s one of those things that we
deal with within our community.
Audience: Have
you thought about the images of the black female can affect to other
races, like Asian people? Because
I’m originally from Korea and when I was growing up in Korea,
all the Korean girls are influenced by western culture. So for us, our ideal was white, tall. But
three years ago I had the chance to go to Japan and then I was culture-shocked
because every girl looked dark, their skin was so dark, they tried
to be dark, and their hairstyles were like sexy or beautiful, so
I want to know what you think about that.
Roundtable: I think that’s a very important question because when
we talk about projecting images, when we look at movies, because
movies influence society, and when I traveled to Japan I was a “soul
sister.” When
the last time you heard “soul sister,” right? (Laughter) It shocked me but they also, the aspect of when
we were doing research for this project, we were conducting the research,
we found a lot of images, looking at Asian women that were in a very
similar sexualized pose as the African women. This
is in terms of 19th century and in the European archives. And
the same aspect when we looked at the World Fair images, that the
Asian women were placed in the cages the same way but the more exotic,
the more the desire, in terms of the lighting in some of the images. It’s
an interesting aspect because I taught a class at Yale or Temple
Hill last year, both places last year, and the class was called “Visualizing
Culture,” and one woman was from Korea, the other was from
Vietnam and they talked about growing up, and wanting to be blonde. Wanting to be white, because they wanted
to be desired. They
couldn’t ignore what was on TV because they wanted to be part
of that desired “other.” That’s
something they were trying to write about and ask questions critically
about. I think it’s
a constant and will continue to be a discussion but I think it’s
something to be aware of.
Audience: In
thinking about what James was talking about in terms of “slumming
it” last night in relation to going out to Harlem. When I look at what’s going on
in London, for example, one of the interesting things is, and you
talked a little about this taking-over of people’s places and
doing them up and selling them and displacing the whole black community,
that’s certainly happening in London in relation to Brixton,
for example. One of the interesting things that happens with this idea
of “slumming it,” is that the tourists passing through
go to Brixton in order to enjoy that cultural mix and I think that’s
one of the issues that I see as being a nuance that runs through
. . .
Roundtable: Why
don’t we talk about your project because it’s very similar
to what her question is about?
Roundtable: I’ll
talk about it briefly. It’s
a project that was based in the red light district in Amsterdam and
it was trying to look at ways in which sexuality was portrayed in
that and the construction of the black woman through that process. Of course, it was a place where you couldn’t
actually take photographs, so it was quite interesting, the place,
the positioning of the digital environment to that, but the area
itself, the prostitutes, in terms of talking to them and interviewing
them, and chatting with them, you had a real sense of how they were
perceived culturally, they were culturally defined based on race
in relation to how they could work the system and how the system
works for them. That was very interesting to see that kind of complexity,
and also the waves of new, different groups of women who are being
brought in to work as prostitutes in that area, and the latest wave
that was there, moved from Koreans to a kind of Eastern European
at the time. It was fascinating stuff, because that
is where the issue of race begins to become exoticized. The other thing that’s happening
in London, I’ll mention briefly, is that there is an incredible
increase of mixed-race kids that’s happening within their environment. Again, nobody’s necessarily written
about it, but it’s just escalated in the urban cities. So there’s something quite interesting
happening there, that’s certainly relevant and relates definitely
to this kind of sexualized impression.
Audience: That
was actually part of my next question. As half-Japanese, I kind of float in and out of any set racial
category. For me it’s
been not only the fact of where I’ve lived has played an effect,
so I’ve been in places where I’ve been in the majority,
then in places where I was the minority, and I was wondering, I guess
you actually started that conversation. Oddly
enough, because of the various places I’ve lived I honestly
haven’t had that much contact with other people that are of
mixed ancestry, so I was wondering how it’s addressed within
your communities would be the right way to phrase it, but I guess
that’s what I’m thinking about.
Roundtable: I
think what’s going to happen in England and I’m very
positive about it actually since you’ve got a whole generation
of kids who are actually going to demote themselves as being black
and who are actually, then, coming from mixed parentage, where if
he’s of multicultural, it’ll absolutely have to be directly
addressed through an educational system, but at the moment it seems
to me that that’s not the case. That
in some ways there’s a reaction happening of where you’ve
got this separation of autonomy that’s trying to manifest itself. So for me there’s something very positive about that
situation that has occurred, which is about people being, regardless
of their race. People
are transcending their race and color in relation to that and I think
that’s something that’s out of that--that there should
be some very interesting debates that are about trans-culturalism
and trans-nationalism. The migration process is massive.
Roundtable: I’ll just say something briefly in reference to the earlier
question. Halle Berry
is of mixed race; she’s not 100% African-American and I think
that’s an interesting part of that whole discussion about her
and her image. The same with Alicia Keyes and different
figures because there’s been some discussion that she won more
Grammy’s while India.Arie did not because she is dark-skinned. So I think that our culture hasn’t
begun to address that issue in any way. You still have to choose and if there is blackness in you,
you still fall in that category. The
same with Tiger Woods. When
he became very popular he made a point of acknowledging his Filipino
mother because the media wanted him to be black, regardless of what
other ethnicities he was made up of. I
just think that for whatever reason, it’s something that our
culture is still not dealing with, it’s still not addressing. Even though statistically there are more
and more mixed race people in this country, we’re becoming
more and more conservative about it as a country.
Roundtable: There
are a number of contemporary artists that are using writing and creating
stories about their experiences. I
know a number of Korean artists and I know from the Korean and Vietnamese
in terms of their stories that that’s what they’re creating
art about, as well as African-American and white artists--they’re
doing the same. And
it’s been really political because they’re deciding not
to be, what is it? The
one-drop rule in America? They’re
making a conscious decision not to be. This
whole recent, I can’t remember the artists name, but in terms
of using the census this last census, that they decided that they
were going to check this and continue to check this, and she created
a piece about it. Also, photographing and painting and
using color photography with skin color and looking at the family. This was an artist who was of mixed race,
Japanese and white American. He was one of three children and because
his skin was darker than his brothers and sisters, his grandmother
basically denied him his existence, so they’re dealing with
a lot of ideological and very difficult things now, in terms of addressing
race within their worlds. You had a question.
Audience: Actually I have a comment and question. The comment goes to Lynn. I had asked earlier about photographs
that you use in your work and I have been thinking about your answer
ever since you gave me the answer, and I know you’re going, “What
the hell, I don’t know what I said to this guy,” but
essentially what I heard from you was the idea that you had appropriated
these negative stereotypes and you had transformed them to something
very beautiful and I thought that the degree of empowerment that
you have given to yourself by doing so is just one of the wonders
of art, it’s a thing that art can do, that you can recreate
the world. I feel like
Carla should take her stack of offensive images and just give them
to you, correct them for us. But
my question, which is a separate question, it’s not necessarily
directed at Lynn, has to do with individual freedom versus social
responsibility. We were talking a little bit about Lil’ Kim
before and her individual freedom or desire, let’s say, to
act and dress and carry herself the way she does, and I won’t
suggest that she has total control, I’m not sure anybody has
total control. I moved out of my parents’ house
to get total control and found my landlord dictating my life. But there’s this idea of individual
freedom, which is very much tied into the African-American experience
because we didn’t have individual freedom, we didn’t
have freedom over our bodies, which is the most sacred thing that
a person has. And now that we do, people are choosing
to use that body the way they want to use that body. In some cases we attach a kind of negative social responsibility
to the way they choose to use their body, although in the example
I heard before that you go to Asia and you see all these Asian kids
who want to be black kids, and even here in American you see a lot
of white kids in my community who have dreadlocks. I
don’t know how you do that but they have dreadlocks and they
listen to rap and reggae music and they act, you know . . . You could
question whether or not is it socially irresponsible what these artists
and musicians are doing, or is it opening up our culture and ourselves
to others and making ourselves beautiful in ways that other people
can be attracted? So I don’t have a position one
way or another on this issue except to say that for me it is a very
big question that I ask. Which
is more important to myself? My
freedom to do and choose and act and be what I want to be? Or, the social responsibility that comes with being an African-American
male with a stigma attached.
Roundtable: I
think something that’s complex about it is when you start looking
at it in terms of a role, and even if you look at what happens in
terms of a type, it’s different if you’re looking at
it in terms of whether or not it’s television, film, sports
or in the music industry. And I think it also gets a little strange
in terms of whether or not somebody should project themselves in
what might be perceived in a stereotypical or negative role. Then
if you start looking at the film industry, then should an actor or
actress play a certain role? Here
it becomes a little strange in terms of who you are versus at what
point you start acting in a public performance. Sometimes
I think I have an answer to that but I’m just tossing that
out in terms of the idea that there is a real sort of a sliding scale
in terms of where you fit in. So
if you’re looking at Lil’ Kim, is that who she is when
she goes home? Is that the way she chooses to project
herself in terms of an audience within that music business? And is that the thing that she’s
doing because it is going to sell the records or is that how she
really feels about herself? I
think it becomes more complex in terms of the different sorts of
entertainment and media roles that are projected out there and that’s
a complexity that I see as a strange sort of a sliding scale that
we’re seeing a lot of individuals trying to figure out where
they fit on that. That’s something I like about the question is . . .
Roundtable: Yes,
because I think it’s an organic question and an organic answer
and I think it’s going to change and grow and expand and diminish
and I think that the aspect of performing blackness in Europe or
Asia or within our communities is, in a sense, a celebration sometimes. I think that’s something that Sheila
Pree has some photographs of: a guy with gold teeth in his mouth. I find it offensive though the guy may
find it beautiful and she’s selling a lot of the photographs
because these guys think that having the gold teeth is a status symbol. So I think we need to when we begin to
perceive beauty and I think this whole aspect of looking at it organically,
we need to keep that open in that sense.
Roundtable: I
think a lot of it has to do with just youth. I’ve probably had this conversation at least once a
month with Natasha, my niece who’s in college, and of course
we’re dealing with this music and these images, and she’s
got me and my sister who’s 12 years older than me, so you can
imagine what that might be like with a 20-year-old in the room with
the two of us trying to explain why this is valid, and here again
I go back to responsibility and social responsibility, but responsibility
on the part of parents. I think that’s when the challenge comes in. When you talk about the social responsibility
of parents, then you’re getting into another set of problems,
especially in the black community with parents being very young,
okay? So then because
they’re watching the stuff and they’re hyped up about
it, then you’ve got little kids that are three or four years
old that are doing the same thing. You
can watch what is it, Showtime at the Apollo? The
other night a little kid came in. He
was about three feet tall, with a big jacket on and the baggy pants
and he’s dressed like a typical rapper and I can’t remember
what it was he was talking about but he was talking about getting
a woman and I’m sitting here going, “Wait a minute! He’s
three feet tall! He’s
a child! A baby! What
is going on here?!” But
clearly his parents had no problem with that even though what he
was saying came from a sexual--I think it goes back to the social
responsibility. Going back to the young lady’s
comment about the women you were talking about Japan and I think
that one of the things that bothers me most about our media is that
there are not enough images of other people coming across the screen,
you know? Because I’m not seeing what I see
on the street every day. I
don’t see my community being reflected back at me and that
is really bothersome to me. That
we don’t have an Asian presence there, there’s not a
Native-American that’s coming across to me--I’m not seeing
that. The only time I get to see that is if
I go to a festival or something. I
don’t see that. I
want to hear, I want to know.
Roundtable: I was going to say in reference to your question, I don’t
think that the two things are always mutually exclusive. I don’t think it’s always
the case that having free will and being who you want to be and representing
yourself in a way that you want means that you’re not being
socially responsible or conscious of irresponsibility or your perceived
responsibility, because I think, particularly hip-hop culture has
proven that so many stereotypes or so many images that were perceived
as negative have just eroded, and maybe for better or maybe for worse,
but they’ve actually changed in our public perception because
of the persistence of individuals who have represented themselves
the way that they wanted to be represented, so I don’t think
it’s always a question of choosing between those things. I
think they can co-exist and in many instances, that is how perceptions
change, is just being true to how you perceive yourself which eventually
influences the way in which your larger culture is perceived.
Roundtable: Just
to continue a bit on that, because my concern usually is in terms
of what gets sent out. It’s
one thing to see the video girls and the rappers and what not, and
we can go out in the street and have that sort of balanced image. But in terms of what gets projected overseas,
and what people soak up because it’s a dominant media culture,
and those videos and rules are what get spread abroad, and I thought
it was only to where I live, but my roommate’s from Egypt and
I have to sit with her every night and dispel all these different
myths because what she saw before she got here, and now seeing it
again on TV, and seeing the majority of the kids from the city, she
has all these ideas about black women, African American women, a
certain kind of looseness, and she’s not necessarily coming
from an overly conservative perspective. She’s open to sexuality and sensuality, but what she
sees, this raunchiness that you get hit with over the head with,
and I’m always concerned with that, for people who can’t
step out in the hood and see that it’s not like that all the
time. (End of tape)
Roundtable: The little thing that I spoke about
today, I actually had printed out a letter, or a series of emails,
that I’ve been sending back and forth to a friend of mine in
Kenya, trying to dispel this myth about black people in America that
number one, everybody’s not rich. We’re not all the Cosby’s. That’s
the first thing--we don’t all come from that. There are a number of people that have money but there’s
also this other side of black America that doesn’t have money. Also
this whole notion about speaking out and especially with regard to
your culture because I think that in Kenya there’s a situation
over there where a lot of their culture is being suppressed and they’re
not--you think of Kenya as being this tribal, rich area, where so
much has happened but what was coming across was not that. He’s
projecting me back to what he’s perceiving. It’s
just very confusing. I
had about a series of ten different letters. When I was in Australia and I was with the aborigines, I went
to this one place and there was this little kid, he must have been
about six or seven-years-old, and he walked up to me and he said, “Are
you a nigger?” and I just looked at him because it took me
back. His second question was, “Do you
know Ice Cube?” (Laughter) Wait
a minute! So it’s
very confusing. I think
that as we move around, with the internet, I think the internet is
going to be one of those things that will really change a lot of
what’s happening.
Roundtable
Discussion Analysis
by
Deborah Jack
This
panel was by far the most diverse in its configuration and yet they
all dealt with the same issue, that is, the projection of images.
Comprised of art historians, artist and youth community activists,
it promised to be at the very least an interesting discussion. The
panel opened up the discussion to issues regarding the projection
of gender, race, culture, and age into the mainstream and the need
for an alternative space in order for these groups to be able to
present themselves instead of being re/presented.
The
first few questions dealt with current projections of the black female
body in contemporary media and what they mean. Are
projections of gender, race and sexuality any different today? How has the so-called “exoticism” of
the black female body evolved since the 19th century? Carla
Williams raised the point that there seemed to be a "persistent
invisibility" in the entertainment industry, especially in movies,
of the black female. The lack of roles and opportunities in
front of and behind the camera creates an absence of positive images
for black women. Is
the image of the Saartje Baartman, the Hottentot Venus, with her
remains returned to South Africa for a proper burial earlier this
year, still with us? Images of headless women still gyrate in music videos and
magazine covers with constructed and modified images of beauty stare
out at us from newsstands. This all leads us to question, who is
in control of theses images? Are the predominant projected images
of women still catering to the male gaze? Has
this male gaze been deconstructed in any way or is it one single
gaze without preference to race, culture, or sexuality? These
are just some of the questions that came out of a part of the discussion.
The
discussion then moved to issues regarding the voices of women in
a book by Deborah Willis and Carla Williams, as well as the voice
of “the other”. The point was raised that the work has
to do with the personal narrative and the overlap of the witness.
What is the role of the witness? How do these personal narratives
weave their way into the mainstream consciousness? How
do they help us deconstruct the hegemonic gaze and the grand constructed
narratives of history and culture in order to make room for a multiplicity
of experiences, representations, voices and stories?
Providing
another perspective was London-based artist Roshini Kempadoo, who
added concepts of colorism, and raised the matter of an increasing
number of children who come from bi-racial and multi-racial backgrounds,
and who will by their very existence, demand a new vocabulary, which
recognizes and validates their multiplicity. It would seem that the
current cannon of art history, theory and criticism is lacking a
space for theorizing the ever-increasing bodies of work that are
not rooted in a Western space, theoretically, historically, nor culturally.
An
analysis of this panel will yield more questions than it will provide
answers. Yet some key questions seem to be most pressing. First
of all, what is our role as artists within this global community? Is
it our responsibility to tell everyone's story or do we just tell
our own? How concerned do we need to be that everyone receives the
messages embedded in our work? Does every piece of art need to be
socially and culturally aware? Do artists need to analyze or produce
their work?