After reading Imani Perry and Rana Emerson’s pieces on womanhood in hip-hop, I immediately thought back to a music video that was produced by a group of kids I knew in high school: Starting Six. The group is comprised of (you guessed it) six members all two years my senior. Their lyrical content usually revolves around alcohol, sex without a condom on, and general partying. The initial video that I wanted to discuss was one called “Thirsty” (see below), a party song that focuses on the members all trying to get the same woman’s number with the chorus “your bitch is thirstaaay.” Thirsty, as Starting Six uses it, has a dual meaning of 1) thirsty for alcohol and drinks, and 2) a desperation for sex/the men of starting six. I thought I had plenty of material to use, what with the spraying of alcohol on the video girls, specific angle shots of a the main woman in a shower, etc. Though, when I was looking for the video I came across their most recent production, aptly named: SOD (Sit up On a Dick).
To begin, the camera follows
Aliky’s (the female guest star) behind as she walks up to Nic Nac’s house and
knocks on his door. The opening dialogue goes as follows:
Aliky: Nic you invited me over here
there’s nowhere to sit. You have no furniture…
Nic Nac: Yeah, uh, about that. You
could sit on this dick?
Aliky: Ok
The rest of the video, as Nic Nac, Goose, Bread, and Big Steve rap, shows scenes of women in thongs, being covered in alcohol, being shot with toy guns, being violently spanked, sucking and playing with dick-shaped lollipops and dildos, miming use of said dildos; biting of women's underwear, mock humping of sex doll--the list goes on and on...
This video seems to me like the very epitome of the heterosexual male gaze—rivaling Nelly’s “Tip Drill.” The female behind is the largest central focus in the camera’s gaze.
As Imani Perry states: “Even the
manner in which the women dance is a signal of cultural destruction…The women
who appear in [this video] are usualy dancing in a two-dimensional fashion…
more reminiscent of symbols of pornographic male sexual fantasy than of the ritual,
conversation, and sexual traditions of black dance” (137). The women in this
video exist for one purpose only: to act as visual representations of asses of
which the male viewer can imagine to “sit up on his dick.”
What’s interesting about “SOD,”
though, is that most of the women exhibiting these seductive and
two-dimensional dance moves are in fact not
black women. In fact, the “blackest” woman in the video (in strictly terms
of pigmentation), would be Aliky herself, who’s arguably showing the least
amount of skin the 3 minute shoot. Aliky starts off her verse with: “I’m a bad
bitch/ you a bad boy/ got a fat ass/ I’m like your play toy.” Aliky is not only
complicit in the oppressive narrative being constructed, she is one of the main
actors in creating it! “The video is an apt metaphor for her
self-commodification…” and is a explicit form of internalized sexism.
If you're interested in more, here's "Thirsty."
Enjoy....
Woah. I went on the blog this morning when I woke up to read some posts and this was the first thing I saw. That video is overwhelmingly misogynistic in almost every aspect. And interestingly enough, like you said the female part of "Starting Six" she seems to be seamlessly submitting herself to the overly sexually oppressive narrative...and find nothing wrong with it.
ReplyDeleteAs much as I don't want to reference that damn "Bitch Bad" track, I cannot hold back. As Ailky's verse represents everything Lupe Fiasco was attempting to combat in "Bitch Bad." Not only does she call herself a "bad bitch" which I feel like has become a normative identifier for female participants in the rap game, but I feel like by referencing herself "like a play toy" she is personally giving up all of her power to the overly-sexualized, hyper masculine, male narrative. She is conforming to what she believes a female has to look and act like to be successful in contemporary hip-hop...and it appears that she has experienced success because of it.
As an avid hip-hop lover and fan of countless female MC's from past and presents, it quite frankly disturbs me that instead of moving to more conscious progressive images in hip-hop, many females are continuing to subject themselves to fulfill the male counterparts images.
Crazy these guys went to your high school though. It makes me wonder if they personally acted different in person, than they do when recording hip-hop.