Maram Awadh Media Share #11

In the text “Beyoncé, Sex Terrorist: A Menace for Conservatives and Liberals Alike” by Noah Berlatsky, the author discusses Beyonce and how she isn’t a feminist because of her music video titled “partition.” He says that she isn’t a good role model for young girls and that she’s a anti-feminist. I chose this photo because I think it represents what women consistently go through in society. Women are constantly being ripped apart and judged about everything they do, especially celebrities. Beyonce has always been a role model for young girls and women and once she does something “controversial” she gets judged by men for being too sexually or anti feminist. They ignore all the things she’s done for women and how much confidence she gives these young girls, especially young African American girls. Beyonce will always be judged regardless of what she does, whether she does something good or bad people are always going to point out something.

kamille’s media share

In the text “Beyoncé, Sex Terrorist: A Menace for Conservatives and Liberals Alike” by Noah Berlatsky, the author makes a response to O’Reilly’s claim about how he believes Beyonce portrays a bad image to teenagers and the society today than what she used when she was younger. For example O’Reilly states that “Teenage girls look up to Beyoncé, particularly girls of
color. Why would she do it when she knows the devastation that unwanted pregnancies. … Why would Beyoncé do that?”it also states “I see a part of Beyoncé that is, in fact, anti-feminist—that is, a terrorist—especially in terms of the impact on young girls,”. I personally disagree with this statement, yes I do agree that a lot of people especially teenagers look up to Beyonce as a role model, but I don’t believe that her actions is intentional or would influence peoples actions. Over time the different trends pop up and as a celebrity Beyonce has to keep up and make the trend her own. Many singers and rappers do the same thing in our society today such as Megan Thee Stallion, Cardi B, City girls, and many more in which they are not getting banished or called “anti feminist” because of the way they dress or the image they portray, these rappers all wear revealing clothes and also have teenage girls who look up to them.  I feel like if parents have a problem with the way Beyonce dresses or portrays her-self it’s their responsibility to not let their kids dress the same way. I also feel like in our generation today this is typically what singers and rappers wear, which relates to my point about new trends. Yes Beyonce never dressed like that before but people need to understand that this is not the 90s or early 2000s, trends changes over time. I feel like Beyonce and these other celebrities are just embracing their bodies which does not seem anti feminist at all. If people are going to talk about the way female rappers dress they should also talk about how male rapper constantly call women “thots”, and “hoes” in their song constantly in this generation, which seems very anti feminist to me.

11. For Friday 11/13

For Friday 11/13

Watch Zoom 11 if you missed it. It may help you with the below:

Connecting Details (from Song to Research to Song)

Points from Zoom lecture on Sanneh’s text about Jay-Z, pp. 9-11

  • Connecting Jay-Z’s biographical details (research) to his lyrics: the Glock
  • From content to style (connecting Hip Hop website research to the style of Jay-Z’s words. Comparing his style of “everyday speech” to historical lyrical styles in rap.
  • Close reading and walking us through Jay-Z’ “D’evils”

Reading & Writing Assignments:

1. Read one of the articles you found in your research for last Friday’s assignment using one of our Research Resources. Following Sanneh’s example (above, explained in Zoom), write 1-2 paragraphs where you connect a single detail from your Essay 2 song to a single detail in your research source.

2. Beyonce and the Politics of Listening and Interpretation

When we listen to a song, we are already interpreting it. Even if we listen to a track and say “this is totally meaningless”, this is an interpretation. One of the historical problems in the interpretation of popular musics (from rock and roll to rap to hip hop) has been the tendency to interpret such music in a moralizing way (“are the values espoused in this work good or bad?” “will the children listening to this music be negatively affected?”). In my view, this problem continues to get in the way of listeners’ ability to appreciate the full breadth of meanings available in popular musics. The series of texts on Beyonce we’ve read for this week (by Bell Hooks, Bill O’Reilly, and Noah Berlatsky) highlight this problem:

Below I’ve summarized the background of the three Beyonce commentators and the what they’ve claimed about her work. Then, I’ve posed a question asking you to provide more detail. For Part 2 of your response, I want you to choose A, B, or C and respond to the question I’ve provided and use a quotation from the text to support your response (so, for instance, if you choose “A”, you’ll explain WHY Bell Hooks thinks Beyonce is harmful to young girls and find a quote from her text/interview where she talks about this).

A. Bell Hooks is a self-proclaimed radical intersectional feminist (meaning her politics are very far to the left); she finds Beyonce’s work to be harmful to young girls: why?

B. On the other end of the political spectrum is Bill O’Reilly, a far-right former TV show host for Fox news; he too finds Beyonce’s work to be harmful to young girls: why?

C. Noah Berlatsky is a journalist who cares about Beyonce’s work as a form of art; he notices that although Hooks and O’Reilly are on opposing sides of politics that there are similarities in how they interpret Beyonce’s work: what similarities between them does he notice? What alternative, non-moralizing way of interpreting Beyonce does Berlatsky offer us?

Dom Padon Media Share 10

For Media Share 10, I decided that the piece of media that I felt closely resembled the points detailed in Kelefa Senneh’s “Gettin Paid” is the results of the 2020 Presidential Election results:

Although Senneh’s article wasn’t really a topic of politics, I found that the similarity in the article and the elections is change. Just as the Executive branch of the United States’ leadership is shifted, so has the approach of industry behemoths like Jay-Z. From being a rapper to a businessman to a man who adheres to trends, the accounts of Jay-Z shifting his approaches to rap and business resemble the shiftings brought about by Presidential elections, whether they be political shifts, primary ideologies within a country, social shifts, or whatever shift may occur.

Alexandria Dorato Media Share 10

Hip Hop History: From the Streets to the Mainstream

Rap music is still to this day judged. Whenever I’m in the car with my mom and I put my playlist on, she isn’t the biggest fan of it. This is because most boomers only like the music that they grew up with which is classic rock. Hip-Hop has evolved a tremendous amount and my age group is who mostly listens to it. One of the social issues that Jay Z discusses is drug use. “Jay Z returned to Brooklyn, where, he says, he spent his early twenties selling crack cocaine”.  I chose to use the article above for my media share because it discusses the advancements of Hip Hop throughout history. Back then, it wasn’t “cool” to be a rapper but now, rappers embrace it and like to talk about their lives. Eminem is a perfect example. If you have noticed, he frequently raps about his struggles in life but he found his passion and started to rap and became successful.

Maram Awadh Media Share #10

https://www.google.com/amp/s/theconversation.com/amp/the-healing-power-of-hip-hop-81556

I chose this article for my media share because it discusses the evolution of hip hop and how people looked at this genre back in the day. When hip hop first came about, many people in the United States hated it and used to talk down on this genre of music. I find this ironic because in this day and age hip hop is one of the most popular genres and it’s looked up too. In the text, the author mentions some artists that are known in hip hop, one being jay z and the Infamous 2pac and biggie smalls. There all really famous rappers that paved the way to this genre. In the article it states “Hip Hop culture and rap (a method of vocal delivery popularised through hip hop music) have for more than four decades been bundled with a range of negative connotations, leading many like Bratton to equate them only with profanity, misogyny, violence and crime. Prosecutors in the US have labelled rap lyrics a criminal threat, and numerous studies have been undertaken on the harmful influence of hip hop on kids.” This quote demonstrates what people thought of hip hop when it first began. Hip hop came a long way, too being the most hated to the most loved/popular.

10. For Fri 11/6

Close-reading & Asking Questions about Lyrics, linking to Social Issues…

  1. In the two brief close-readings of songs we read for last week—Reese Okyung Kwon’s “There Must Be More” (an analysis of Christian rock musician David Ruis’ track of the same name) and Jeremy Schmidt’s “The Full Retard” (a dissection of Jaime Meline’s eponymous track)—the writer tunes in quite carefully to something puzzling in the song’s lyrical content, opening up a series of questions about the artist’s lyrics that the writer then tries to answer:

Kwon wonders about Ruis’ awkward use of the word “because” in the chorus of his song: “Why not employ and or as or for or since?” She wonders, adding “any one of which would better suit the song’s metrical requirements” (Kwon).

Meanwhile, Schmidt questions Meline’s use of the phrase “you should pump this shit like they do in the future,” asking: “What does it mean to pump, promote, or even love something right now, knowing that it—the song or the idea or the meme—will be ubiquitous in the future?”

Using these texts as inspiration, return to the lyrics from your song that you shared on 10/23, and read them in search of something baffling, confusing, or otherwise questionable.  Write a series of questions—that is, a paragraph of 3 or more sentences that are questions—about one or more lyrical choices in your Essay 2 song that you find questionable.

  1. Re-read the lyrics and your questions. List 2-3 social issues you notice in the lyrics and/or your questions.
  2. Play around with several of the Research Resources I’ve shared (see link in menu above). List one article or source you’ve found on your song and/or social issue that you might read. Include the author, title, publication and resource in which you found it (e.g. Genius.com, Google Scholar, etc).

kamille media share 10

In the article the author mention a social issue involving “corporate rock”. Which is a pejorative term for AOR type bands that played commercially acceptable songs. Many people take this as an insult because it gave the 70s-80s music a bad name. Many people take this as a their music is the type of music that should be planned in the elevator, due to the fact that it lacks creativity and results in heavy marketing. In the article it states “What’s funny about the insult is how old-fashioned it seems. The term “corporate rock” is a relic of the nineteen-seventies, popularized by critics who felt that the big record companies had coöpted a rebellious, authentic genre for mass consumption.”

Lubna Mojumder Share Media 8

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