Talk:Can't Hold Us Down

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 * pp. 8-9
 * pp. 8-9

The notion of agency in hip-hop culture has long been debated among race and media scholars, but much of the discourse has focused on repre- sentations of Black masculinity and ownership of the message (Basu, 2005; Negus, 1998, 2004). Female performers in hip-hop have also been accorded a degree of agency in self-representation. As Robin Roberts (1994) and Rana Emerson (2002) have shown, women artists have been able to define themselves within the constructs of male domination, eschewing the ten- dency to play an accommodating role to men. Indeed, many Black women performers have used their Otherness as a weapon of empowerment, as exhibited by the varying degrees of feminism used by Queen Latifah, Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, Missy Elliott, and Lil’ Kim (Emerson, 2002; Railton & Watson, 2005; Roberts, 1994). However, Blackness and sexuality are often presented beyond African American female performers’ ability to self-define. For instance, in the video “Can’t Hold Us Down,” Lil’ Kim’s presence is used as the standard of “primitive” sexuality, which Christina Aguilera seeks to emulate. However, the video shows a striking contradic- tion—namely, that of Black women’s perceived heterosexuality being used not only to liberate White women but to also maintain the social hierarchies that keep Black women oppressed. As Railton and Watson (2005) note, “the fact of the Blackness of Lil’ Kim set against Christina Aguilera’s performance of Blackness” addresses “the differing positions within, and possi- bilities in relation to (re)presentation that Aguilera and Kim occupy” (p. 62). Their textual analysis incorporates the cultural history of female sexuality, particularly for Black women, and how such depictions of het- erosexuality have different degrees of empowerment and, antithetically, disenfranchisement for the female performers.
 * p. 51
 * p. 51

There is a moment during the video for Christina Aguilera’s “Can’t Hold Us Down” in which she appears alongside rapper Lil’ Kim. The scene is notable for a number of reasons which foreground a range of issues concerning the representation of gender and race, and their relationship to sexual behaviour. Situated within a clearly codified black urban space, the women are depicted taunting a group of predominantly black men alongside, and on behalf of, a group of predominantly black women. Their behaviour is both assertive and overtly sexual, and the video links both of these to a narrative of collective female action. The lyrics of the song they perform deal explicitly with the gender politics of heterosexual behaviour. For instance, Aguilera comments on the “common double standard of society” whereby “the guy gets all the glory the more he can score/while the girl can do the same and yet you call her a whore,” a sentiment immediately reinforced by Kim who questions the hypocrisy which sees men able to “give her some head or sex her raw/but if the girl do the same then she’s a whore” (Christina Aguilera featuring Lil’ Kim 2002). However, it is not simply that Aguilera and Kim articulate lyrics which can be read as overtly feminist that makes the scene interesting, nor even the obvious display of “sisterly” solidarity. Rather, the interest lies in the complex and contradictory ways in which raced identity is represented both lyrically and visually. For on the one hand the lyrics refer to a universal female experience (the consistent appeal to “all my girls around the world”), while on the other hand blackness and whiteness are clearly inscribed on and through the bodies of Aguilera and Kim. Indeed, it is the precise nature of that inscription, a process in which Aguilera simultaneously performs blackness and whiteness while Kim is seen to embody “essential blackness,” that not only problematises any straightforward “message” of the video, but more generally serves to highlight the very limited range of ways in which female heterosexuality continues to be represented in popular culture and the way these representations are inevitably raced.
 * pp. 51-2

One of the reasons that these articulations of race and sex appear complex and contradictory is because they are already double articulations, for Aguilera’s appropriation of tropes of blackness set in juxtaposition to Kim’s embodiment of those tropes draws attention to and reinforces her own whiteness. Moreover, the video itself invokes and gets its meaning from familiar patterns of representation of race characteristic of popular culture generally and the pop music video more specifically. And it is these patterns of raced representation that we want to address here. Indeed, it is our contention that the generic codes of pop music videos render them particularly fertile sites for the exploration of the interdependent construction of race, sex, and gender. For race is deployed within pop music videos to not only delimit or sanction sexual behaviour, but also sex and gender signify race in ways which tend to reproduce and shore up existing hierarchical power relations.
 * p. 62

To end, we want to return to the issue we began with: the fact of the blackness of Lil’ Kim set against Christina Aguilera’s performance of blackness. For one way to explain the complexity of that scene—a scene in which racial difference is apparently erased yet which is simultaneously predicated upon a sophisticated knowledge of the codes of racial differentiation—is to address the differing positions within, and possibilities in relation to (re)presentation that Aguilera and Kim occupy. For while Kim literally embodies black hypersexuality, her sexuality produced and defined by the site/sight of her black body, Aguilera is able to produce her sexuality through the selective and playful presentation of tropes of raced identity. Put simply, while Kim can only ever be seen as a black woman, Aguilera is allowed a far more fluid and creative engagement with both raced and sexual identity. Indeed, in presenting an image of female sexuality predicated on representations of raced identity, Aguilera’s whiteness and privilege is reinscribed precisely by the possibility of such a performance in the first place, even if, in the end, that performance is only a pale imitation of Kim.

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