Great Moments in Hilariously Reductive Misrepresentations of Black Popular Culture
Hey you guys,
As my office mates will wearily attest I am unhealthily obsessed with reductive and insulting generalizations of rap music and hip hop culture in the media. Well, Keith recently forwarded me what I consider to be the single most astonishing, mind-bending and hilarious misrepresentation of hip hop culture in the history of the universe (but I don't wanna oversell it).
The following is excerpted from a Liz Smith column that touches on the venerable columnist's fondness for "Dreamgirls": ""And if you lived, as I did, through the spectacular rise of Diana Ross and the Supremes, if you had known her as I did, during and after her tempestuous relationship with Berry Gordy, her stunning success in "Lady Sings the Blues" and the iconic presence of African-American talent stunning the world in the '60s and '70s, you will love this movie.
"If you are too young and you didn't live through that – well, you are going to be blown away anyway. You will have the choice surprise of learning that black singing, dancing and musically cultural ethnic American talent doesn't just have to do with the current craze of break dancing, tattoos, hip-hop, rap and loading yourself down with bling before you go to jail to be great!"
Where to begin? Was this even written in English? "musically cultural ethnic American talent"? WTF? Was this poorly translated from Mandarin or something? Apparently Liz Smith's column is where barely coherent run on sentences go to die an undignified death. Smith's comments (or insane ranting as it were) beautifully, insanely embodies a maddeningly persistent phenomenon I like to call The False Dichotomy.
The False Dichotomy works thusly: a clueless (generally) white writer condescendingly praises a black musical act by contrasting their work favorably to a grotesque generalization of rap culture. In this instance Smith praises the movie "Dreamgirls" by delineating it from the music made by tattooed, prison-bound breakdancing rap hip-hop bling enthusiasts. The False Dichotomy is fundamentally moralistic and paternalistic in its division of the sprawling, complex universe of black music into two discrete camps: "positive" artists who wear expensive clothing and make nice, inoffensive music white people can enjoy (like those nice singers in that "Dreamgirls" movie) and "negative" artists who advocate selling drugs, throwing pregnant women out windows and clubbing baby seals with spiked bats while smoking crack cocaine.
As hip hop becomes even more of an institution the False Dichotomy has become less ubiquitous but it still pops up all the time in places that really should know better. Earlier this year there was an article in the New Yorker about a guy who taught teenagers how to rap that contained a passage that basically said "Unlike most rap music, which advocates violence against women, gang warfare and selling drugs, MC Positivity's lyrics…." You see it all the time: "In sharp contrast to the blinged-out thugs dominating hip hop Rhymefest's album…."
Of course theses categorizations of rap as the exclusive domain of serial killers and virulent misogynists don't come out of nowhere. There is alot of violence, nihilism and misogyny in rap music, especially in the kind that gets played on MTV and top-40 radio. But rap is a diverse, sprawling and eclectic genre with thousands of different strands and sub-genres. Hip hop is not an either/or proposition. It's a million different things travelling in a million different directions.
I don't really expect the Liz Smiths of the world to "get" hip hop. Hip hop has done more to fuel and deepen the generation gap than just about anything else. I don't suspect that Liz Smith will find rap to be a silly, ephemeral fad for criminals at seventy-four and a rich, dynamic and influential indigenous American art form at seventy-five. I hate to get all Hobbesian but people generally don't change. What I do find hilarious and telling is that Smith's conception of hip seems derived entirely from seeing a trailer for "Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo" in 1984 and maybe a long-forgotten "Quincy" episode about breakdancing bank robbers. Seriously, Liz, what's your beef with breakdancing? Don't make me bust out the hellicopter and funky worm on that geriatric ass.
I'm also amused that Liz Smith seems to see hip hop as a fad that'll disappear imminently. Let's see. Hip hop has been around for around thirty-five years. It's been a national musical force for twenty six. It's been a dominant commercial genre for at least fifteen. I'm sorry L.S but it ain't going away any time soon.
Then again I suspect that the Liz Smiths of the world (and there are many, even among those who work in the media) never got hip hop and never will. It's too foreign and jarring. Its values are not only different from those of most septugenarians but downright antithetical. The Liz Smiths don't have to like hip hop or even respect it. But treating it like the musical equivalent of Pet Rocks is insane and delusional.
There is a final irony to Smith's comments. In "Dreamgirls" (which incidentally succcckkkkkksssss) Eddie Murphy's James Brown/Little Richard/every other black icon who ever lived pastiche is driven into a harrowing downward spiral by the demands of having to make watered-down pop music for the masses. In other words having to make nice, crossover-friendly music for the Liz Smiths of the world is literally destroying him, note by note.
What do you guys think? Are there any other hilariously reductive/insulting takes on hip hop you'd like to share? Any other glaring/jaw-dropping/hilarious instances of the False Dichotomy you'd like to single out? Will the Liz Smiths of the world ever learn? Or are they a lost cause? Or is hip hop ultimately just about shooting pregnant women with machine guns and loading down with bling before you go to jail? Discuss.