a black girl

Crank that Black Girl

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Ok, I got caught up. And every once in a while I might crank that souljah boy out of the sheer fact that the song has been drilled into my psyche by WPGC 95.5 and even Ellen's daytime show. Its an interesting whole body experience that reminds me of my college days in the south, that allows me to take part in a dance with multiple steps, to reinforce to me my Blackness, hipness, my youth. My feminist self always lurks in the shadows, sure that there is something awry here, something painful and something with which I must be ideologically opposed.

But the shit is soooo damn catchy. And here comes the age old Black feminist dilemma of inclusion, investment in hip hop culture but also a fundamental opposition to ideologies which seek to do women harm. So I began to think about how the dance and the song intersect at a moment in which Black women's embodiments are a source of release, agency, yet also shame. (And reinforced with m shame in enjoying it as a feminist.) How the dance itself is agency, how it is expression, but how ultimately is a source and location of shaming within black women's bodies.

The problem of the jovial:

This all lies within the dialect. The ways in which we can hear without listening because language can be rendered meaningless coming from particular bodies especially as we tie certain bodies to geographic areas which are culturally shamed. I'm talking about the u.s. south. The ways in which--within the context of U.S. American history the south has been a site of shame and shaming. This shame and shaming involves the ways in which the South has been a symbol of active and violent racism via slavery and jim crow, of evangelical religiousness via the southern baptist church, and overall backwardness via the poverty of the Black Belt South and Appalachia. This shame/shaming has been characterized by racist ideologies that have been able to hold true in the south. The south has become a site of pathological spectacle wherein the racist, morally corrupt and violent psyches of a more industrious north can find release and a simultaneous sense of scientific and moral erudition.

All of this is caught up in the ways in which vernaculars, certain ways of speaking can be rendered meaningless via the ways in which U.S. America looks to the south for sites of poverty, backwardness, and illiteracy. We can listen to Souljah Boy and not hear what he says--not because we all don't understand it (Because many of us do.) but because it comes from his Mississippi Delta drawl. Catchy hooks render his words even more meaningless. As meaningless as a jingle, but just as powerful as both are marketing tools for capitalist goods and dominant ideology. Souljah Boy, at 17 is a caricature. One who has been made familiar to us by representations of Black men in the south via 'Lil John, Three Six Mafia, and the minstrel characters of the early 20th century. The psychic slack jaw of his drawl is the ironic aspect of what is thought to be understood of him that there is nothing heavy in his mouth but his bottom lip.

Its such a dubious lie. Especially for Black women.

There is something powerful coming from this 17 year old's mouth about Black women and shame--particularly around Black women's embodiment and their sexuality.

Crank That/ The head nod vs. The boogie

I think we can break down the dance itself to talk about the ways in which it offers a particular kind of agency, a different kind of Black masculinity. Which is where I will start.

Thugs don't dance--they rock, they lean back, the mad dog, mean mug, they lean against a wall so they can survey a crowd or have a woman break a sweat in front of him. The "cool pose" and Black masculinity have been linked for a very long time now. Dancing is far too expressive, music and dance is a kind of chaos which may lead to loosing control. And control is masculinities #2 thing (the domination of women being #1). The surge of music in the south that encourages dancing and even offers steps, reveals the ways in which Black masculinities in the south have formed differently. These masculinities had to do to particular realities of racialized violence in the south. Now I haven't quite formulated to myself how this exactly happens, but I think a trip to a hip hop club in the south versus one in the north will reveal that this actually happens. The shame around particular embodiments of Black men in the South makes it impossible for Black men to perform masculinity in a "southern" way. If Black men in the shameful and shamed south allow themselves certain embodied releases through gestures, postures, and even dance, Black men in the north must embody and perform an evolved sense of being something aggressively masculine, controlled, and cool.

But masculinity is as masculinity does and this is heavily revealed through Souljah Boy's performance.

"Superman that Hoe": Affirming Masculinity and Transferring Shame

The issue of shame and Black (and white, although differently represented) bodies in the south mirrors itself to the ways in which gender and sexuality play themselves out in southern rap. For the southern rapper, masculinity must be affirmed in the face of the ultra cool stoic of the northern Black male. The most accessible and historically consistent way of doing this? Dominate Black women.

And what a more poignant way of doing with it than within Black women's very embodiment.

We who know the catchy tune Souljah Boy are incredibly familiar with the part of the lyrics, and the dance that are as follows:

"Watch me crank that souljah boy and superman that hoe."

Ok, for those who didn't know... (because I didn't until very recently) to "superman that hoe" can be described as the following:

*if you aren't sitting down, please do so now.*

The action of ejaculating on a woman's back during intercourse and leaving a towel or sheet on her back so that in the morning the dried semen will have made the towel or sheet stick to her resulting in her waking up with something that will resemble a cape.

*breathe*

Other definitions here, and here, and here.

The moment I've described is imbued with shame as it is dependent upon the woman being caught unawares, of having bodily fluids spewed and left on her body to dry, and then, literally carrying evidence of that moment on her back. The moment is ultimately summed up in an ironic cartooning of her complete lack of power over her body (via dried cum where she can't see it) to the fictional symbol of superhuman strength and power--Superman. The very moment of sexual intercourse is then reduced to a childish prank that reveals power, and misuse of trust.

Within the embodied moment described in the lyrics and then again the embodied moment in the dance which is reduced for popular consumption to imitating the fictional superhero in flight there is again a moment of shaming wherein a woman must either ignore the implication of the term, embrace the term and/or replace it onto a woman who she would consider a "hoe," or remain ignorant of its meaning and consider it a cute homage to the late Christopher Reeves. All but the last are in recognition of the embodied shame that is doubled by the dance itself and the sexual act it describes (the last simply hopes to remain ignorant of the shame).

What results is a way in which a dance which includes multiple steps, that requires whole body movements reinforces masculinity available for consumption by Black males nationwide. Even Queens native, Nas is feeling it. Could the song have been successful without this particular reference? Possibly but not probably. The moment of dancing (i.e. cranking that souljah boy) must be followed up with this misogynist and heterosexual act:

"Watch me crank that souljah boy then superman that hoe."

But the song would have not been possible without the rhythmic and catchy repetition of the word "hoe." (In cleaner versions it is heard as Oh!) And the rapper would have not successfully presented himself as masculine and heterosexual without that reference.

After all the song is just about a black boy who likes to dance.

Right?