Tag Archives: sexuality

The Portrayal of Various Forms of Masculinity

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Golden: This reading explores the over interpreted representations and codifiable images of the Black male and Black masculinity in various forms of media that denies the truth of the black male identity.

Mercer: Kobena Mercer illustrates Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s use of erotic fantasy, ancestral spiritual values, and European elements to create cultural mixing and explains the influence that migration and separation from his Nigerian homeland had on his artistic production of photography.  

Looking for Langston: This black and white film portrays the collision of race and sexuality in the queer community.

This week’s film and readings explored the role that sexuality, gender, and race plays in reinforcing and reinventing the various types of Black masculinity, an identity that Ralph Ellison deems as “invisible and overinterpreted” in media. Considered as invisible in society, the Black male is fetishized and given visibility in art, films, and music.

Thelma Golden’s article was of particular interest to me because her exhibition serves as an umbrella to the Mercer article and the Langston film by portraying different stereotypes, cultural-defense mechanisms, and (mis)representations of the Black male as “ultra-violent [and] ultra-romanticized” (22). Golden’s project draws together artists that display the five signposts: 1) the transition from Civil Rights to the Black Power era; 2) blaxpoitation films; 3) the endangered Black male; 4) the death of rhythm and blues; and 5) real life drama. With the exception of the first signpost, the other categories signify the negative perceptions of the Black male and how they are used to create and circulate ill images of Black masculinity. Despite the artists’ attempt to negotiate identity and educate the audience of common racist assumptions, I am skeptical about the reception of outsiders, or non-Black audiences because instead of negating the negative generalizations, these images can reinforce and confirm them. With that being said, I would have liked to see positive images of Black men without the presence of stereotypes.

On a positive note, I do appreciate the diversity in the “Black Male” exhibit because it brings to light how Black culture is commodified through the portrayal of the Black experience both with and without the use of the body. For example, Mel Chin and David Hammons use objects, such as guns, sneakers, and the construction of basketball hoops to critique the commonly portrayed stereotypes of crime and sports within the Black community. Given the absence of the body in these pieces, the audience is still able to interpret the relationship between society’s ills and generalizations about Black masculinity. I wonder if the absence of the body in art offers a more critical critique of the pieces because the presence of the body can draw attention away from status detail, which is significant in identifying characteristics that are not as obvious.

Rotimi Fani-Kayode

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Kobena Mercer’s assertions that Rotimi Fani-Kayode “created a photographic world in which the body is the focal site for an exploration of the relationship between erotic fantasy and ancestral spiritual values”(283) and that in his work it is “hard to tell where sexuality begins and spirituality ends”(283) served as guides to me when looking at the work of Fani-Kayode. Fani-Kayode was not interested in finding or expressing one simplified identity but instead created a complex and multifaceted view representative of his gay, African, multi-national, spiritual identity. Thus it is important to consider all of these biographical and personal elements as one when viewing Kayode’s work and stop trying to fragment and dissect the images in terms of their influences. To try to identify any divides or boundaries between the sexual and the spiritual would rob the images of much of their weight and power. Fani-Kayode’s multi-faceted explorations are all located in the image of the black male body. The body “becomes a site for translation and metaphor”(Mercer 284) bridging the divide between differences in race, culture, and sexuality. One way that Fani-Kayode situates the body as the intersection of material and spiritual worlds is through the use of African masks. In his 1987 photograph Ebo Orisa the unclothed artist bends over towards the viewer obstructing his face so that only the back of his head shows as he holds a wooden African mask upside down below his head. Firstly, I find this photograph to be very striking in its formal elements. The posture of the subject and the inversion of the mask transform the figure into an otherworldly creature. Mercer argues that Fani-Kayode’s images like Ebo Orisa are the result of the play of condensation and displacement (288).

Rotimi Fani-Kayode The Golden Phallus, 1989

Rotimi Fani-Kayode The Golden Phallus, 1989

I feel that Fani-Kayode’s 1989 image The Golden Phallus is a wonderful example of the artist’s intertwining of the spiritual and the sexual through the use of the body and elements from his native culture. The image approaches the idea of the fetishized and mythologized black phallus using Yoruba mythology. The artist wears a bird-like mask that recalls the ororo bird of thought an inspiration present in Yoruba myths but the image also invokes the Yoruba god of indeterminacy. Fani-Kayode describes Esu as “The Trickster” and “Lord of the Crossroads” and underscores his importance in Yoruba carnival. The image is both theatrical and supernatural which foregrounds the bridging of man and spirit. The image also foregrounds the subject’s sexuality while critiquing fetishization instead of fetishizing.

Senzeni Marasela

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In Barbara Thompson’s chapter “Decolonizing Black Bodies: Personal Journeys in the Contemporary Voice” my attention was drawn to the work of South African artist Senzeni Marasela.  Marasela uses a variety of media to explore her painful relationship with her mentally ill mother who was absent most of Marasela’s childhood.  She also explores collective memory and colonial perceptions of the black female body in her series of embroidered scenes from the life of Sarah Baartman, a former South African slave who toured Europe as “The Hottentot Venus.”  Sarah Baartman’s body was exoticised and fetishised as embodying the form of a black Venus.  Her body became a site of Western attraction and repulsion and became a representation of racist western imaginations of the back female body.  After she died, her body was dismembered by Napoleon’s physician and her gentiles and brain were put on display at the Musée de l’Homme until Nelson Mandela requested that her remains be returned to South Africa and respectfully buried in 2002.  Thompson discusses the dismantling of the black Venus image and stereotype but doesn’t mention Marasela’s Baartman series (she talks about Marasela’s work in relation to motherhood) which is why I thought I’d highlight it here.  This series both in subject and in medium connects the stereotype of the black Venus and the story of Sarah Baartman with the artist’s relationship with her mother.  The images evoke the ideas of collective consciousness and collective memory by making these connections.  She uses a technique traditionally labeled as “women’s work” and associated with female relationships and tradition.  I think that because of needlework’s history and cultural associations it has the ability to transmit elements of the female experience in a much more intimate and personal way than other mediums are able to.  Additionally, the associations of needlework being a skill passed down through generations of women makes visible the artist’s connection to her mother and to the subject of the series Sarah Baartman as well as to all women who came before her.  In this series Marasela relates the dismembering and scrutiny of Baartman’s body to her own experience as a black woman in a Western urban environment.

 

 

 

Pariah: An Alternative Representation of Black Femininity

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For this response I will focus on the film Pariah.  Pariah follows the tribulations that Alike, a young African American teenager who identifies as a lesbian, experiences as she becomes more comfortable with her sexuality in a predominately heteronormative society.  Pariah, defined as a rejected member of society or a person without status serves as the perfect word to depict the isolation that she experiences upon coming out to family and friends.  More importantly, the film’s depiction of Alike’s experience and its diverse representations of black femininity contests traditional views of black female sexuality.  This is done through Pariah’s relationships with other black women like her mother and sister who identify as heterosexual, and Abina and Laura who identify as homosexual.

With images of male dominance and female subordination pervading the African American community throughout the film, there is a sense of exclusion associated with identifying as queer.  The film also brings issues of the black female body to the forefront through Alike and her best friend Laura’s butch demeanors – something that was discussed in our reading from Black Womanhood.  Alike’s mother views this outward portrayal of masculinity as a disruption to social norms, and tries to impose heteronormative ideas of what a woman should look like upon her daughter.  Her refusal to acknowledge Alike’s lifestyle choices ultimately results in violence and leaves Alike in a state of homelessness after being rejected as a member of her own household.

Thompson:  Thompson contests distorted representations of the black female body through exploring and debunking the European stereotypes responsible for the misrepresentation of the black female body in art.