Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music (Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender) 3030651886, 9783030651886

Table of contents :
Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Unpacking the Title
Misogyny
Toxic Masculinity
Heteronormativity
Concluding Thoughts
References
Chapter 1: Should Real Love Hurt? The Eroticisation of Dominance, Submission and Coercive Control in Contemporary Pop Music
Introduction
Autobiographical Note
Literature Review
Domestic Abuse and Coercive Control
Existing Research on Pop Music Lyrics, Gender and Sex
Methods
Findings
Pleasure and Pain
Ignoring the Advice of Others
Attempting to Re-assert Power
Cycle of Violence
Control Complete
Discussion
Voluntary Masochism
Female Empowerment
Looking Forward: Thinking in New Ways
References
Chapter 2: Featuring…Nicki Minaj
Biography, Message, and Voice
Shared Responsibility?
Control?
Body Ideals
Objectification?
Conclusion
References
Songs
Chapter 3: Misogyny and Erotic Pleasure in Bollywood’s “Item Numbers”
Introduction
Analyzing Women’s Representation in Films
Globalization and Changes in Women’s Representation in Bollywood Cinema
Item Numbers: A Hybrid Global-Local Site for Gender Performance
Method
Findings and Discussion
Themes Within the Lyrics of Item Numbers
Sexual Objectification of Women in Item Numbers
Women in Cameo Roles
Single Woman, Ogling Men
Uncovering Women, Covering Men
Fragmented Bodies: Gyrating Hips, Undulating Navels, and Heaving Bosoms
White Bodies as Objects of Desire
Sexual Objectification Through the Use of Earthly Elements
References
Chapter 4: From Pimpology to Pimpologia: A Comparative Analysis of Pimp Rap in the United States and Italy
Introduction
The Rise of the Pimp Myth in American Rap
A Comparative Analysis of Pimp Rap in Italy and the United States
Conclusion
References
Discography
Filmography
Chapter 5: How Female is the Future? Undoing Sexism in Contemporary Metal Music
A Note on Methodology, Definitions and Limitations
Act Like a Man: Adaptations of Masculine Metal Personas
Adding a New Voice: Tribute Bands and the Digital Sphere
Adapting Drag: Transforming Clichéd Notions of Femininity
A Female Future? Gender Evolution in Metal Music
References
Chapter 6: See the Signs—Justin Timberlake and the Pretence of Romance
References
Chapter 7: Immortal Technique and the Radical Reimagining of Masculinity on the Street
Background Context: Toxic Formations of Masculinity in Urban Contexts and Representations in Mainstream Hip-Hop
A Notable Exception: Immortal Technique and Alternative Masculinities
Resisting the Pull of the Mainstream
Conclusion
References
Chapter 8: The Initiation: Re-negotiating Masculinity in Queer Music Video
References
Chapter 9: Let It Enfold You: Screaming, Masculinity, and the Loss of Emotional Control in Post-millennium Emo
Introduction
A Little Emo-tology: Marking the Subordinate
Screaming as a Loss of Emotional Control
Screaming and the Symbolic Gendered Power Dynamics of Emo
References
Chapter 10: The Power of Boy Pussy: The Dichotomy Between Liberation and Objectification in Queer Hip-Hop/Rap in the 2000s
Liberation Identity and Hip-Hop
The Tools of MAN
MISSY
Bounce Music, Male ownership, and Shakin’
Shakin’
Dichotomy of Visibility and Objectification
The dark side of liberation
Deep Dickollective from 2001 to 2007
Conclusion
References
Chapter 11: “All Of My Life, Just Like I Was One Of Them”: Trans itioning Punk
Introduction
The Obnoxious Punk
A Stifling Orthodoxy
New Wave
True Trans Soul Rebel
Trans Romance
Conclusion
References
Chapter 12: Lady Lazarus: The Death (and Rebirth) of a Gender Revolutionary
Questions of Identity
The Great Pretender
Famous Last Words
Lines of Succession
Straight Outta Brixton
Lines of Resistance
Looking Backward
References
Chapter 13: Like a Lollipop: Toxic Masculinity and Female Sexual Pleasure in Hip-Hop
Sexual Scripts
Sex Positivity
Narratives Around Cunnilingus
Misogyny and Toxic Masculinity
Cunnilingus in Hip-Hop
Women Rappers
Shifting the Narrative
Media as a Script Changer?
Conclusion
References
Afterword
Index

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN (RE)PRESENTING GENDER SERIES EDITOR: EMMA REES

Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music Edited by Glenn Fosbraey · Nicola Puckey

Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender Series Editor Emma Rees Director, Institute of Gender Studies University of Chester Chester, UK

​ he focus of Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender is on gender and T representation. The ‘arts’ in their broadest sense – TV, music, film, dance, and performance – and media re-present (where ‘to represent’ is taken in its literal sense of ‘to present again’, or ‘to give back’) gender globally. How this re-presentation might be understood is core to the series. In re-presenting gendered bodies, the contributing authors can shift the spotlight to focus on marginalised individuals’ negotiations of gender and identity. In this way, minority genders, subcultural genders, and gender inscribed on, in, and by queer bodies, take centre stage. When the ‘self’ must participate in and interact with the world through the body, how that body’s gender is talked about – and side-lined or embraced by hegemonic forces – becomes paramount. These processes of representation – how cultures ‘give back’ gender to the individual – are at the heart of this series. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/16541

Glenn Fosbraey  •  Nicola Puckey Editors

Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music

Editors Glenn Fosbraey Faculty of Arts University of Winchester Winchester, Hampshire, UK

Nicola Puckey Faculty of Arts University of Winchester Winchester, Hampshire, UK

ISSN 2662-9364     ISSN 2662-9372 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender ISBN 978-3-030-65188-6    ISBN 978-3-030-65189-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65189-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Olaf Herschbach / EyeEm This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

Introduction  1 Nicola Puckey  Chapter 1: Should Real Love Hurt? The Eroticisation of Dominance, Submission and Coercive Control in Contemporary Pop Music 15 Natasha Mulvihill  Chapter 2: Featuring…Nicki Minaj 37 Glenn Fosbraey  Chapter 3: Misogyny and Erotic Pleasure in Bollywood’s “Item Numbers” 55 Suman Mishra  Chapter 4: From Pimpology to Pimpologia: A Comparative Analysis of Pimp Rap in the United States and Italy 73 Margherita Angelucci and Wissal Houbabi  Chapter 5: How Female is the Future? Undoing Sexism in Contemporary Metal Music 95 Coco d’Hont

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Contents

 Chapter 6:  See the Signs—Justin Timberlake and the Pretence of Romance113 Racheal Harris  Chapter 7:  Immortal Technique and the Radical Reimagining of Masculinity on the Street131 Heather Stewart  Chapter 8:  The Initiation: Re-negotiating Masculinity in Queer Music Video155 Ryann Donnelly  Chapter 9:  Let It Enfold You: Screaming, Masculinity, and the Loss of Emotional Control in Post-millennium Emo167 Ryan J. Mack  Chapter 10: The Power of Boy Pussy: The Dichotomy Between Liberation and Objectification in Queer Hip-Hop/Rap in the 2000s187 Kenneth Norwood  Chapter 11: “All Of My Life, Just Like I Was One Of Them”: Trans itioning Punk205 Gareth Schott  Chapter 12: Lady Lazarus: The Death (and Rebirth) of a Gender Revolutionary233 Alec Charles  Chapter 13: Like a Lollipop: Toxic Masculinity and Female Sexual Pleasure in Hip-Hop253 Apryl Alexander Afterword271 Chris Mounsey Index285

Notes on Contributors

Apryl  Alexander  is an associate professor in the Graduate School of Professional Psychology at the University of Denver. She received her doctorate in clinical psychology from the Florida Institute of Technology with concentrations in forensic psychology and child and family therapy. Alexander’s research and clinical work focus on violence and victimization, human sexuality, and trauma-informed and culturally informed practice. She is an award-winning researcher and her work has been published in leading journals. Recently, she received the 2019 APA Early Career Award for Outstanding Contributions to Benefit Children, Youth, and Families and the 2020 Michele Alexander Early Career Award for Scholarship and Service from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. Alexander enjoys bringing psychology to the public through popular culture. She is a frequent presenter at Denver Pop Culture Con and has previously contributed to The Joker Psychology: Evil Clowns and the Women Who Love Them and Black Panther Psychology: Hidden Kingdoms. Margherita Angelucci  is an award-winning journalist, her areas of interest are multilingualism, slang, transculturality and Hip-Hop music. Alec Charles  books include Interactivity: New Media Politics and Society (2012; 2nd edition 2014), Out of Time: The Deaths and Resurrections of Doctor Who (2015), Political Animals: News of the Natural World (2016) and Underwords: Re-Reading the Subtexts of Modernity (2018).

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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Coco  d’Hont  is currently working on her monograph Extreme States: The Evolution of American Transgressive Fiction 1960–2000, to be published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis in 2018. Ryann Donnelly  research includes work on radical bodies in music videos, incorporating feminism, queerness and subversive performances of gender. Glenn Fosbraey  has published chapters and journal articles on the critical study of song lyrics and has co-written the book Song Lyrics: Creative and Critical Approaches, to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2019. Racheal Harris  has contributed chapters for several edited collections on pop-culture and is currently writing a monograph on the relationship between animal tattoos and memento mori. Wissal  Houbabi  is an illustrator, spoken word artist, activist and she writes about rap music for the online publication moodmagazine.org. Ryan J. Mack  doctoral research explores the performance and reception of “gender dissonance” in rock music. Suman Mishra  is an Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Department of Mass Communications, Southern Illinois University. Her research focuses on global media, strategic communication, visual communication consumer culture, and race, class and gender identities in the media. Chris  Mounsey  worked for several years in theatre before an accident and four months of immobility, in which reading was the only possible occupation, led to an academic career. Degrees in Philosophy, Comparative Literature and English from the University of Warwick followed, and a doctorate on William Blake founded an interest in the literature of the eighteenth century. He now teaches at the University of Winchester and is the author of the monographs Christopher Smart: Clown of God (2001), Being the Body of Christ (2012) and Sight correction (2019). He has also edited Presenting Gender (2001), Queer People (2007), The Idea of Disability in the Eighteenth Century (2014), Developments in the Histories of Sexualities (2015), The Variable Body in History (2016) and Bodies of Information (2020). Forthcoming collections of essays include, Reconsidering Extinction, and Medical Education in the Routledge Advances in the History of Bioethics series, which he also edits.

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Natasha Mulvihill  work has focused on prostitution and sex work policy as well as sexual violence and abuse, domestic and ’honour’-based abuse. Kenneth  Wesley  Norwood primary academic concern is the role of Black Queer Art and its disruption of historical narratives through film. He has written extensive work in the area of the African Queer Diaspora. Nicola Puckey  research covers gender and sexuality, including representations of these in alternative music. She also works on transgender identity constructions. Gareth Schott  current research interests are focused on personal experience transmedia storytelling, encompassing different forms and articulation of loss. Heather Stewart  is currently involved in a research project that aims to improve clinical experiences for Trans and gender non-conforming patients in medical settings.

List of Figures

 hapter 1: Should Real Love Hurt? The Eroticisation C of Dominance, Submission and Coercive Control in Contemporary Pop Music Fig. 1 Coercive control/abuse ‘category mistakes’

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 hapter 9: Let It Enfold You: Screaming, Masculinity, C and the Loss of Emotional Control in Post-millennium Emo Fig. 1 Senses Fail, ‘One Eight Seven’ (2003)—from coda, 2:51–3:09 177 Fig. 2 Dashboard Confessional, ‘This Bitter Pill’ (2001)—from coda, 2:25–2:58179 Fig. 3 The Early November, ‘Everything’s Too Cold… But You’re So Hot’ (2003)—from coda, 6:00–6:08 179

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List of Tables

 hapter 1: Should Real Love Hurt? The Eroticisation C of Dominance, Submission and Coercive Control in Contemporary Pop Music Table 1 Sample of tracks for analysis

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 hapter 3: Misogyny and Erotic Pleasure in Bollywood’s C “Item Numbers” Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 Table 5

Location and purpose of the item song Themes in lyrics of item numbers Roles of actresses in item numbers People around “item woman” Levels of nudity for men and women

65 65 66 67 68

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Introduction Nicola Puckey

Popular music is by no means an understudied phenomenon. Indeed, there is a significant back catalogue of work in this area covering gender, sexuality, race, culture, musicology, psychology and philosophy, just to name a few. In particular, the area of popular music and gender and sexuality includes many significant and influential works. This focus on popular music is not unwarranted; it percolates into all aspects of our lives, from soundtracks in shows and films, to celebratory events such as parties, weddings and bonding ceremonies, funerals, christenings and naming ceremonies, even as a backing track while writing the introduction to a book on popular music. As an area of academic investigation, it has not reached saturation point, and in our view this point is unlikely to come as popular music is ever-changing and being updated and adapted to fit with the time it is produced within. It is both a mirror to our times and cultures, and a semiotic tool shaping our times and cultures; consequently, it continues to be relevant to all of us—whether we like it or not. The study of popular music must keep up with this ever-evolving and shifting phenomenon.

N. Puckey (*) University of Winchester, Winchester, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Fosbraey, N. Puckey (eds.), Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65189-3_1

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This introduction can’t offer an extensive consideration and literature review of all significant works in the field of popular music studies—that in itself could be a several volume encyclopaedia. However, it is still important to consider how academic research into popular music is often a reaction to important moments in time, whether these are moments within the music and its associated subculture or wider cultural movements such as feminism. These moments and movements offer a different lens through which we view popular music, but all the while building on the work of previous scholars. Each shift in culture and time allows popular music researchers to reinforce, reconsider or disrupt earlier works on the topic; an important and necessary process to avoid a stagnated approach to the study of something so fluid and dynamic. The 1970s saw the start of what we would still recognise today as popular music research. Rooted very much in sociology and social sciences, it began considering the interactions between popular music and class, race, culture, gender and sexuality. All of this coming to be rooted in the nexus of subcultures with the seminal work of Stanley Cohen and his 1972 book Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers and the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (often referred to as either the Birmingham School or the CCCS). In particular, Hall and Jefferson’s (1976) iconic work Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain housed chapters by the likes of Angela McRobbie, a leading voice in gender, sexuality and popular music (McRobbie and Garber 1975; Frith and McRobbie 1978); and Dick Hebdige, whose work on mods, punks, Rastas and Rudies (1976a, b) led to a wider understanding of music subcultures and the subsequent adoption of the concept of ‘bricolage’ in subcultural identity and performance as presented in 1979’s Subculture: The Meaning of Style. The influence of these works continued through the following decades, and saw the expansion of the term ‘popular music’ to incorporate wider and more varied genres within it. The 1980s represents a decade in which the study of popular music continued and drew from the highly influential works in the 1970s with research on genres popular within western Europe and North America (i.e. heavy metal, rock, punk, ska) but also beginning to include global perspectives on genres from outside of the affluent West, for example Peter Manuel’s 1985 article on Cuban popular music and his 1988 book Popular Musics of the non-Western World: An Introductory Survey. This decade also saw Philip Tagg produce influential works on the connection

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of musicology to the semiotics of popular music (1982, 1987), complementing the previously largely sociological focus of music research in this area. The 1990s saw an explosion in academic work on popular music, reactions to social, cultural and national developments in relation to race, gender and sexuality politics and fights for equality, through to global events such as the ‘HIV/AIDs crisis’ through the 1980s, the release from prison and subsequent election of Nelson Mandela, and not ignoring the technological advances in music production that led to various dance genres of popular music. However, we note that the ethnographic turn in research in the 1990s also paved the way for researchers to consider how they are part of the research field, as consumers of popular music. As a result, and particularly relevant to this edition, is the significant increase in works focusing on women and popular music which started to present a more holistic view of women and popular music. Sheila Whiteley’s 1997 edited book Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender is still considered part of the canon of research into gender and popular music. Research into popular music and gender in the 1990s considered women performing various forms of popular music (e.g. Mavis Bayton’s 1997 and 1998 works on rock music; Lucy O’Brien’s 1995 book on wider genres of female popular music performance), women’s place alongside performers (see Sara Cohen’s work, 1991 and 1997), and their role as the ‘adoring audience’ in Lisa Lewis’ edited collection (1992). Susan McClary also took musicology and gave it a feminist edge with her work (1992). The late 1990s and into the 2000s also saw more overt critique of the 1970s work of the CCCS and their representations of subculture; in particular, Andy Bennett (1999, 2002, 2004) and his edited book with Keith Kahn-Harris (2004) pushed back against the notions of subculture as set out by the CCCS.  They considered the concept of neo-tribes (Bennett 1999; Sweetman 2004), the influence of the internet (Bennett 2004), and Sian Lincoln (2004, 2005) updated the idea of the female bedroom as a fan space. They considered liminal spaces and problematised the notion of a single subcultural space. A considerable body of work throughout the first and second decade of the 2000s has continued developing this consideration of liminality and incorporates and embeds a focus on intersectionality and popular music, with more work exploring the multiple ways of engaging with popular music. This work is represented in the edited collection by Susan Fast and Craig Jennex (2019) Popular Music and the Politics of Hope: Queer Feminist Interventions.

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This brief consideration of some aspects of popular music studies is not intended as a potted history of the field, it would be deeply inadequate if that were the case. Rather, it is intended to demonstrate how academic research into popular music is continuously responding to both what is in the music and its subculture, but also to what is happening beyond the music. It explores the myriad ways that popular music intersects with wider culture and politics. This edition seeks to speak to a moment in time, a time of the rise of the millennials and more recently generation Z, feminism and post-feminism, and the rise of social justice. We are interested in the reaction to the increasing media attention focused on gender and sexuality in music and accusations of virtue-signalling with regard to sexual and gender identity. Controversies such as the song Blurred Lines containing lyrics that suggest sexually predatory behaviour have brought these ideas to the fore as never before and have triggered discussions about music and songs reinforcing and reifying gender stereotypes in subversive and hidden ways. The chapters in this edition have been brought together to consider the multitude of ways that post-2000 popular music impacts on our cultures and experiences. The focus is on misogyny, toxic masculinity, and heteronormativity; we consider how these are maintained and reified, challenged and pushed back. We also seek to expand the idea of popular music as understood by many in the West to include popular music genres from outside western Europe and North America that are often ignored (e.g. Bollywood and Italian hip-hop), and to bring in music genres that are inarguably popular, but also sit under other labels (e.g. rap, metal, punk). We will explore what all of this means below and throughout the book.

Unpacking the Title If we were to take a person off the street and ask them if they know what pop music is, they would undoubtedly reply with an affirmative, likewise if we asked them the same question with popular music. However, if we were to ask them to give us a definition, we may start to see some internal conflict. What exactly is pop/popular music? These tensions in defining the terms pop music and popular music are problematic. Chart companies such as Billboard have several classifications of music genre presented distinctly from pop music, but these are certainly popular music genres (i.e. rock, R&B/hip-hop, Latin, dance/electronic are all featured in separate charts on the Billboard website (Billboard 2020)). Popular music in academic literature often includes all of these genres, alongside a few others

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(i.e. rock, [heavy] metal, punk). In this edition, we take popular music to include all genres of music that are considered popular within their global and local settings, and have allowed the individual authors to use their own definitions of what makes a genre of music popular. The remaining three key concepts are not so easily separated from each other; there are elements of all of them in each other. Without misogyny there would not be toxic masculinity, and vice versa. Heteronormativity is not necessarily misogynistic, but it often is and is also used by those supporting traditional/toxic masculinity. However, it is still important to unpack these terms and explore the concepts. Misogyny Misogyny in popular culture and popular music is a worthy area for investigation; popular culture and popular music are complicit in reinforcing and normalising misogynistic actions and attitudes. It is often conflated with sexism, but the term’s etymology offers us some insight; it is taken from the Greek misein (to hate) and gynē (woman). Sexism and sexist behaviour doesn’t necessarily come from a place of hate and can be applied to any gender or sex. Sexism also relates to more practical and institutional practices. Misogyny results in physical, emotional, and symbolic violence—all of them traumatising and damaging at an individual level, but also at a macro level. Therefore, these two terms do intersect, but are not the same. Misogyny is oriented towards women. By ‘women’ we include all who identify as female, as all women can experience misogyny and sexism, we also want to make it clear that some men are also victims of misogyny; notably, transgender men and non-binary individuals are also often at the receiving end of misogyny when their gender identity is dictated and misrepresented as female by someone else who may then behave in a misogynistic manner. That doesn’t mean that the term misogyny needs to be altered, but we can expand a definition to include a consideration that misogyny is damaging and negative feelings towards women, or those that the misogynistic individual/organisation believes to be female. We also don’t reduce misogynistic individuals to only being men. Importantly, as Levy (2005) makes clear, women can be complicit in reinforcing and normalising misogynistic tropes. Contemporary culture, as dealt with in Levy’s ‘raunch culture’, has adopted misogyny to the extent that “[p]opular misogyny […] uses the concept of women as sexually desiring subjects, as sexual agents, as a way to justify practices that end up solidifying misogyny” (Banet-Weiser 2018: 63). This idea is picked up by

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Natasha Mulvihill in this book, whose chapter considers how popular music, featuring highly influential female artists, normalises coercive control and presents it as both female empowerment and willing masochism. While Glenn Fosbraey’s chapter focuses on the work of Nicki Minaj, exploring how her lyrical content changes when she collaborates with male artists. These changes suggest that Minaj is complicit in normalising misogynistic language and behaviour. Fosbraey finds that she targets other women, and uses misogynistic language traditionally adopted by men. We mustn’t ignore the impact of intersectional identities when considering misogyny, as evidence shows that women with other marginalised aspects to their identity suffer misogyny more detrimentally (Collins and Bilge 2016). BAME women/women of colour, women with disabilities (visible and hidden), transgender women and non-binary individuals, queer, lesbian and bi-sexual women—each layer exacerbates her experiences of misogyny adding up to considerably more than the sum of their parts. Misogyny is not experienced equally. As Manne (2018) argues, a consideration of misogyny must understand that “the targets of this [misogynistic] hostility should […] encompass particular women and particular kinds of women” (p.  33). Suman Mishra’s chapter takes Bollywood’s ‘item numbers’ and considers their nature as erotic spectacles, spectacles which reduce the female characters to sexual objects. Mishra shows that while the female characters may have professional roles (such as doctor), their real purpose in these films is to be a love interest of a male character. The dominance of men, and misogyny is well-documented in some popular music genres. Rap and hip-hop music have been explored as avenues for misogyny (see: Adams and Fuller 2006; Quinn 2000; Weitzer and Kubrin 2009). However, Margherita Angelucci and Wissal Houbabi’s chapter relocates the focus of misogyny in rap and hip-hop music to consider the impact of US rap/hip-hop on the Italian rap/hip-hop scene. They demonstrate the influence so-called pimp language features have as they have been integrated into a culture with its own distinct sexist and fascist history. The metal music industry has also not come out unscathed of research into misogyny and sexism (see: Arnett 1991; Kahn-Harris 2007; Rafalovich 2006; Walser 1993). Coco d’Hont’s chapter looks to movements in the overtly male-dominated metal music industry. Here, there is some hope for the future; there has been positive action from above in breaking down misogyny—but d’Hont acknowledges that there is still a long road to run here.

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Toxic Masculinity Toxic masculinity is probably the most contentious of the concepts explored here. It polarises people in extraordinary ways—even amongst those who agree it exists and is damaging to men (du Bois 2019). However, pinning down exactly what toxic masculinity is is challenging, especially when we also have terms like ‘traditional masculinity’ (American Psychological Association 2018) and ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Baker 2008) which are sometimes used interchangeably. The APA has begun to pathologise ‘traditional masculinity’ but avoid using the more hyperbolic term ‘toxic’. Hegemonic is also more neutral than toxic and places the blame front and centre on society, and the hegemonic, rather than individual, ideals of masculinity are blamed. It suggests that problematic masculinity is not the fault of the individual but rather the society they exist within. However, toxic masculinity, as a concept, does what neither of these other terms achieves. In its very name it problematises this type of masculinity, there is no hiding from it. It also achieves this without laying the blame, certainly in the name of the concept, at the feet of individuals or even one gender. As du Bois (2019) highlights, “toxic masculinity seems to suggest that it is certain gendered constructs which are a problem rather than men in general. Indeed, this was the initial promise of separating ‘masculinity’, conceptually, from ‘men’” (p. 147). It takes from both concepts of traditional and hegemonic masculinity, but explicitly and unapologetically presents it as negative. All of this still doesn’t tell us what toxic masculinity is though, and this is the rub—there is no real hard and fast definition that everyone agrees with. However, The Good Men Project provides a solid definition that covers the generally accepted ideas of what toxic masculinity is: Toxic masculinity is a narrow and repressive description of manhood, designating manhood as defined by violence, sex, status and aggression. It’s the cultural ideal of manliness, where strength is everything while emotions are a weakness; where sex and brutality are yardsticks by which men are measured, while supposedly “feminine” traits—which can range from emotional vulnerability to simply not being hypersexual—are the means by which your status as ‘man’ can be taken away. (2020)

The connections to misogyny and heteronormativity here are clear to see, with toxic masculinity behaviours reinforcing and being reinforced by both of those other concepts. Importantly, toxic masculinity has also been

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shown to cause men psychological and physical harm (Kirby and Kirby 2019; Kupers 2005) and increases the risk of violence against women and others (Banet-Weiser 2018; Haider 2016; Kilmartin and Allison 2007). What does this mean then when we see toxic masculine behaviours in popular culture? Popular culture, including popular music, can be used to both normalise and challenge these notions of masculinity, and by extension normalise or challenge misogyny and heteronormativity. Racheal Harris’ chapter considers how an artist as influential as Justine Timberlake, whose (predominantly) young, female fans who have grown up with him, represents not only heteronormative practices in his music and videos but also presents subtle, embedded toxic masculinity. His audience is groomed to expect, accept, and even desire that men will commodify them, and that they should perform their gender and sexuality in a way that is considered attractive and enticing from a toxic masculine perspective. We stated earlier that new academic research in this field should disrupt earlier works, to question to what extent their findings are still relevant today. Heather Stewart and Ryann Donnelly, in their respective chapters, do this. Stewart takes Immortal Technique as a case study and explores how she challenges ‘normative forms of urban masculinity’; through her research Stewart offers a counter point to the majority of academic research which labels rap and hip-hop as misogynistic and emblematic of toxic masculinity. Complementing this, Donnelly’s chapter explores the increasing presence of queer, cis-gendered male and gender fluid performers who are challenging traditional/hegemonic/toxic masculinities. Artists such as Frank Ocean, Le1f and Mykki Blanco adopt and reject various aspects of traditional/hegemonic masculinity and therefore subvert the notion of toxic masculinity, and heteronormativity, by demonstrating that masculinity can be fluid and intersectional. This fluidity of what it means to be masculine is also picked up in Ryan J.  Mack’s chapter, where the link between toxic masculinity and heteronormativity is made clear. This chapter takes the visceral screaming and crying of post-2000 emo music to demonstrate that the perceived loss of emotional control suggested through screaming and crying is not automatically feminine behaviour, and therefore can offer a challenge to traditional/hegemonic masculinity. Mack shows that within rock genres of popular music, these screams and cries are still viewed as masculine, even when performed at times of emotional intensity within the songs. This demonstrates that controlling and suppressing emotions does not have to be a fundamental element of traditional/hegemonic masculinity.

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Heteronormativity As Baker (2008) expresses, heteronormativity covers a range of beliefs—that human beings fall into two (different but complementary) categories: male and female, and that sexual relations are normal only when they occur between two people of the opposite sex. One of the main heteronormative arguments in society is that because a woman and a man are (normally) required for procreation, heterosexuality is normal. (p. 109)

Heteronormative practices are around us all the time, from the assumption that a cis-gender man referring to another (unnamed and ungendered) person as a ‘cute biologist’ must be referring to a female (real example). Heteronormativity is inherently connected to misogyny, toxic masculinity, sexism, homophobia and transphobia; there is no getting away from just what an impact this hegemonic view of gender and sexuality has on all of us, whether we are straight, gay, bisexual, asexual, queer, cis-gendered, non-binary, transgender, female, or male. However, popular culture including popular music, is really a hot bed of heteronormativity— to the extent that non-heteronormative practices make headline news, even in an industry that has traditionally been associated with pushing and challenging the boundaries of gender and sexuality performance. Motschenbacher (2011, forthcoming) calls for more critical heteronormativity research, an argument supported by King (2015) and Milani (2015). Research in this area needs to move away from identifying and researching phenomena that present a binary. In this book, Kenneth Norwood’s chapter explores how the heterosexual male gaze is challenged through the use of the term ‘boy pussy’ alongside male dancers performing and enacting hegemonically and heteronormatively female, sexualised dance performances. Norwood compares how this relates to earlier female rappers entering this hegemonically masculine space in order to carve out their own space within it. Gareth Schott also considers how spaces can be adapted to allow for more consideration of gender. Schott explores how Laura Jane Grace, singer of punk band Against Me!, and her coming out as transgender has offered an opportunity for punk to once again be a space for marginalised voices, for those voices exposing and challenging hegemonic and heteronormative identity practices. Finally, Alec Charles’ chapter uses David Bowie’s famous play with androgyny, both in his own performance of gender and other characters he incorporates, to anchor a

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chapter which considers the multiple ways musicians adopt and express androgyny in their gender and professional performances, and considers where we go after Bowie.

Concluding Thoughts This edition concludes with an insightful chapter by Chris Mounsey, who grounds the work in this book through his own lived experiences and demonstrates that there is still a need to continuously reinvestigate, reanalyse and reconsider popular music, and with regard to misogyny, toxic masculinity and heteronormativity. This book has taken an interdisciplinary approach to the topic, covering the breadth of popular music and the multitude of ways that gender and sexuality are at play, how they are being reinforced but also challenged. As we expounded at the start of this introduction, academic literature on popular music must speak to the time in which it is conducted, and the researchers in this book have done this. They also look to the future, suggesting where popular music genres may be going in terms of misogyny, toxic masculinity, and heteronormativity.

References Adams, T.M. and Fuller, D.B. (2006) ‘The Words have Changed but the Ideology Remains the Same: Misogynistic Lyrics in Rap Music’ Journal of Black Studies 36 (6): 938–957. American Psychological Association (2018) APA Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men. Retrieved from: https://www.apa.org/about/ policy/boys-­men-­practice-­guidelines.pdf Arnett, J. (1991) ‘Heavy Metal Music and Reckless Behaviour Among Adolescents’ Journal of Youth and Adolescence 20 (6): 573–592. Baker, P. (2008) Sexed Texts: Language, Gender and Sexuality. London: Equinox. Banet-Weiser, S. (2018) Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny. Durham: Duke University Press. Bayton, M. (1997) ‘Women and the Electric Guitar’, in Whiteley, S. (ed) Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender. London: Routledge. Pp. 37–49. Bayton, M. (1998) Frock Rock: Women Performing Popular Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bennett, A. (1999) ‘Subculture or Neo-Tribes? Rethinking the Relationship between Youth, Style and Musical Taste’ Sociology 33 (3): 599–617. ———. (2002) ‘Researching Youth Culture and Popular Music: A Methodological Critique’ British Journal of Sociology 53 (3): 451–466.

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———. (2004) ‘Virtual Subculture? Youth, Identity and the Internet’, in Bennett, A. and Kahn-Harris, K. (eds) After Subculture: Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Pp. 162–172. Bennett, A. and Kahn-Harris, K. (eds) (2004) After Subculture: Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Billboard (2020) Charts. Retrieved from: https://www.billboard.com/charts Cohen, S. (1972) Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. London: MacGibbon and Kee. Cohen, S. (1991) Rock Culture in Liverpool. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ———. (1997) ‘Men Making a Scene: Rock Music and the Production of Gender’ in Whiteley, S. (ed) Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender. London: Routledge. Pp. 17–36. Collins, P.H. and Bilge, S. (2016) Intersectionality. Cambridge: Polity Press. du Bois, S. (2019) ‘Editorial: Is Masculinity Toxic?’ NORMA International Journal for Masculinity Studies 14 (3): 147–151. Fast, S. and Jennex, C. (eds) (2019) Popular Music and the Politics of Hope: Queer Feminist Interventions. London: Routledge. Frith, S. and McRobbie, A. (1978) ‘Rock and Sexuality’. Reprinted in Frith, S. and Goodwin, A. (eds) On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word. London: Routledge. Pp. 371–389. Haider, S. (2016) ‘The Shooting in Orlando, Terrorism or Toxic Masculinity (or both?)’ Men and Masculinities 19 (5): 555–565. Hall, S. and Jefferson, T. (eds) (1976) Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. London: Harper Collins. Hebdige, D. (1976a) ‘The Meaning of Mod’, in Hall and Jefferson (eds) Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. London: Harper Collins. Pp. 87–98. ———. (1976b) ‘Reggae, Rastas and Rudies’, in Hall and Jefferson (eds) Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. London: Harper Collins. Pp. 135–153. ———. (1979) Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge. Kahn-Harris, K. (2007) Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge. Oxford: Berg. Kilmartin, C. and Allison, J. (2007) Men’s Violence Against Women: Theory, Research, and Activism. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. King, B.W. (2015) ‘Reclaiming Masculinity in an Account of Lived Intersex Experience: Language, Desire, and Embodied Knowledge’. In: Milani, T. (ed) Language and Masculinities: Performances, Intersections, Dislocations. Abingdon: Routledge. Pp. 220–242. Kirby, R. and Kirby, M. (2019) ‘The Perils of Toxic Masculinity: Four Case Studies’ Trends in Urology & Men’s Health: 18–20.

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Kupers, T.A. (2005) ‘Toxic Masculinity as a Barrier to Mental Health Treatment in Prison’ Journal of Clinical Psychology 61 (6): 713–724. Levy, A. (2005) Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. New York: Free Press. Lewis, L.A. (ed) (1992) The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media. London: Routledge. Lincoln, S. (2004) ‘Teenage Girls’ Bedroom Culture’ in Bennett A. and Kahn-­ Harris, K. (eds) After Subculture: Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Pp. 94–106. ———. (2005) ‘Feeling the Noise: Teenagers, Bedrooms and Music’ Leisure Studies 24 (4): 399–414. Manne, K. (2018) Down Girl: The Logic of Masculinity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Manuel, P. (1985) ‘The Anticipated Bass in Cuban Popular Music’ Latin American Music Review/Revista de Música 6 (2): 249–261 ———. (1988) Popular Musics of the non-Western World: An Introductory Survey. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McClary, S. (1992) Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. McRobbie, A. and Garber, J. (1975) ‘Girls and Subcultures: An Exploration’, in Hall and Jefferson (eds) Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-­ War Britain. London: Harper Collins. Pp. 209–222. Milani, T. (2015) ‘Theorizing Language and Masculinities’. In: Milani, T. (ed) Language and Masculinities: Performances, Intersections, Dislocations. Abingdon: Routledge. Pp. 8–33. Motschenbacher, H. (2011) ‘Taking Queer Linguistics Further: Sociolinguistics and Critical Heteronormativity Research’ International Journal of the Sociology of Language 212: 149–179. ———. (forthcoming) ‘Language and Sexual Normativity’. In: Barrett, R. and Hall, K. (eds) Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, in press. O’Brien, L. (1995) She-Bop. New York: Penguin. Quinn, E. (2000) ‘“Who’s the Mack?” The Performativity and Politics of the Pimp Figure in Gangsta Rap’ Journal of American Studies 34 (1): 115–136. Rafalovich, A. (2006) ‘Broken and Becoming God-Sized: Contemporary Metal Music and Masculine Individualism’ Symbolic Interaction 29 (1): 19–32. Sweetman, P. (2004) ‘Tourists and Travellers? ‘Subcultures’, Reflexive Identities and Neo-Tribal Sociality’ in Bennett A. and Kahn-Harris, K. (eds) After Subculture: Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Pp. 79–93. Tagg, P. (1982) ‘Analysing Popular Music: Theory, Method and Practice’ Popular Music 2: 37–69.

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———. (1987) ‘Musicology and the Semiotics of Popular Music’ Semiotica 66 (1–3): 279–298. The Good Men Project (2020) The Difference between Toxic Masculinity and Being a Man. Retrieved from: https://goodmenproject.com/featured-­content/ the-­difference-­between-­toxic-­masculinity-­and-­being-­a-­man-­dg/ Walser, R. (1993) Running with the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Hanover, New England: Wesleyan University Press. Weitzer, R. and Kubrin, C.E. (2009) ‘Misogyny in Rap Music: A Content Analysis of Prevalence and Meanings’ Men and Masculinities 12 (1): 3–29. Whiteley, S. (ed) (1997) Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender. London: Routledge.

Chapter 1: Should Real Love Hurt? The Eroticisation of Dominance, Submission and Coercive Control in Contemporary Pop Music Natasha Mulvihill

Introduction A recurrent cultural trope in Western culture is that ‘real’ love hurts. Great love affairs are tempestuous: they can involve suffocating intensity, emotional and perhaps physical pain. The giddying see-saw of highs and lows can hollow out one or both partners, yet, it is believed, also makes them whole. In 2015, the UK enacted legislation to criminalise ‘coercive control’. Drawing on the foundational work of Stark (2009), the term refers to the use of coercion, isolation, threats or similar behaviours to control an

N. Mulvihill (*) University of Bristol, Bristol, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Fosbraey, N. Puckey (eds.), Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65189-3_2

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intimate partner or family member. There are wider societal shifts too in challenging both sexual harassment and abuse (#MeToo, Everyday Sexism Project) and constraining gender norms such as toxic masculinity (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Kupers 2005) or indeed toxic femininity. It is interesting then that dominance, submission and coercive control continue to be eroticised in the lyrics of contemporary pop music. This may on the one hand reflect the steadfastness of patriarchal thinking and practice (MacKinnon 1989; Millett 1970), or it may signal a social and cultural resonance in dominance and in submission, which does not equate simply with abuse or coercion. These varying accounts in part mirror the fault lines between current feminist narratives on the nature of empowerment and agency. This chapter presents an analysis of five recent Top 20 UK tracks and draws on Ryle’s (1949) concept of a ‘category mistake’ to argue that coercive control and abuse are mis-labelled as ‘willing masochism’ or ‘female empowerment’. I argue that castigating the writers and performers of such music neglects how we are all subject to, and potentially co-creators of, the patriarchal practices which eroticise dominance and submission.

Autobiographical Note As any parent of pre-teen children will know, there comes a point where you seem to lose control of the car radio. While I had a few good years listening to stations and CDs of my choice, now I have to listen to ‘banging tunes’ compered by inexhaustibly jocular DJs, pre and post school run. Being a criminologist and researcher in gender and violence (and an English teacher in an earlier life), I cannot help but listen with different ears to the lyrics that we sing along to en route. In particular, I am fascinated by how in this era of resurgent feminist activism and awareness of ‘healthy relationships’, a significant segment of pop world seems to be ploughing the same furrow about love being possessive, controlling and miserable. The proposal for this book gave me permission to put those thoughts to paper.

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Literature Review Domestic Abuse and Coercive Control Domestic violence and abuse (DVA) is “an incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening, degrading and violent behaviour, including sexual violence” (Women’s Aid 2019). It is usually committed by a male partner or ex-partner against a female partner and occurs across the lifespan. Research in the United Kingdom and United States has identified high levels of abuse in young people’s relationships, where the terms ‘dating violence’, ‘intimate partner violence (IPV)’ and inter-personal violence and abuse (IPVA) are sometimes used (Barter et al. 2017). DVA may also occur in same-sex relationships (see Donovan and Hester 2015) and women may perpetrate DVA against their male partners. Nevertheless, gender markedly structures the perpetration of DVA, the experience of victimhood and help-seeking behaviours. Developed in the 1980s by the Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs (DAIP) in Duluth, Minnesota, The Power and Control Wheel documents the most common abusive behaviours or tactics used by perpetrators. These include using emotional abuse (“making her think she’s crazy”, “calling her names”), isolation (“using jealousy to justify actions”, “controlling whom someone talks to”) or minimising, denying and blaming (“making light of the abuse”, “shifting responsibility for abusive behaviour”) (DAIP 2019). These non-violent elements of domestic abuse have received increased attention in recent years. Stark’s (2007) theorisation of ‘coercive control’ has been particularly important in identifying: …the micro-regulation that occurs within everyday life to control women; the ways in which gendered roles underpin coercive techniques and act to make coercion appear normal; and the impact of coercive control on women’s sense of self and personhood. (Williamson 2010, p. 1413)

Stark (2007) argues that when coercion and control occur together, the result is entrapment. This in part explains why abusive relationships can be difficult to recognise, and difficult to leave. In 2015, Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 made it possible for the first time for victims of coercive control to seek prosecution. Victims are required to provide evidence of at least two occasions where the perpetrator’s behaviour caused considerable distress or harm, or evidence of

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a substantial adverse effect on the victim’s usual day-to-day activities. While the form and implementation of the law continues to be scrutinised by academics (Robinson et  al. 2018; Bishop and Bettinson 2018; Stark and Hester 2019), the political and media spotlight on coercive control has raised public awareness that intimate partner abuse is more complex than the traditional characterisation of a wife with a black eye. There are a number of micro-level (such as psychological analysis or social learning theory) and macro-level accounts (such as feminist theory or subcultural theory) offered to explain why DVA occurs (Jasinski 2001). Feminist theorists identify DVA as an outcome of unequal gender and power relations (Dobash and Dobash 1979). Violence against women, it is argued, has been the means by which men have maintained social control over women within patriarchal social systems. My interest in this chapter is an idea taken from the work of feminist Catherine MacKinnon (1989), who claims that sexuality is the “dynamic of control” in society (p.  137). Specifically, she links masculinity to the eroticisation of dominance and femininity to the eroticisation of submission (1989, p. 130). As well as maintaining the political and social dominance of males, this ‘dynamic’ has profound implications for the performance of gender and sexuality: [M]ale and female sexualities are socially conditioned: men have been conditioned to find women’s subordination sexy and women have been conditioned to find a particular male version of female sexuality as erotic—one in which it is erotic to be sexually submissive. (Mikkola 2017)

My observation while sitting in the car listening to contemporary pop is that there is an eroticisation of dominance and submission in the form of coercive control. Psychological abuse and threats of violence are represented as troubling, but also edgy and sexy. While Kate Millett (1970) critiqued the offensively sexualised imagery of women in novels written by male authors, today the writers and performers of contemporary pop are as likely to be women; some within the lyrics may be exercising the control. Existing Research on Pop Music Lyrics, Gender and Sex With advances in digital technology and the continuing expansion of the music industry (Bloomberg 2018), daily exposure to music is significant. Research in 2017 by Nielsen suggests that Americans on average listen to

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32 hours of music a week–a figure driven up by teens and millennials, who are listening across an average of four devices. In February 2019, Radio Joint Audience Research released data showing that 88% of the UK population over the age of 15 tune in each week to a radio station. Clearly, many people consider music an important part of their life (Greitemeyer 2009). There have been several systematic content analyses of song lyrics (more recently, North et al. 2018) and a particular preoccupation with the objectification of women lyrically and in music video (Andsager an Roe 2003; Aubrey and Frisby 2011; Cougar Hall et  al. 2011; Glantz 2013; Flynn et al. 2016). Of particular concern to the study authors, given that adolescents and young adults listen to music at a higher rate, is whether the explicit sexual content of much contemporary pop (and other genres) is affecting young people’s conceptions of sex, of gender roles, and of intimate relationships. While it is difficult to establish any causal relationship, Carpentier et al. (2007) use the ‘media priming’ model to argue that suggestive lyrics can affect individual decision-making around romantic partners. They claim that “because popular music without video accompaniment is funnelling into millions of ears” (op cit., p.4), we ought to pay attention to its content. Greitemeyer (2009) suggests we use such research to empower young people through media literacy work. It appears few studies have focused specifically on the representation of abusive relationships in pop music. Fleetwood’s (2012) analysis of Rihanna and ‘erotic violence’, explored further below, is a notable exception, and Collins and Carmody (2011) offer an interesting analysis of how dating violence is represented, but in the televised Twilight Saga, rather than in contemporary music. This study therefore aims to address this gap and situates this analysis both in the context of MacKinnon’s (1989) work and the recent UK policy and criminal justice interest in ‘coercive control’. Collins and Carmody (2011) and others suggest that young people are particularly prone to exaggerate gender roles and that violence and love can both be found in adolescent relationships (Lavoie et al. 1995). While this is of course troubling, I make no claims here to establish a causal link or correlation between lyrical representations that eroticise domination and submission and partner behaviours in adolescent relationships. Rather, my interest is in how contemporary pop music offers a cultural resource through which patriarchal and abusive practices are both affirmed and resisted. This should matter to us all.

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Methods This study draws on a purposive sample of tracks, identified through the autobiographical experience outlined above. All of the tracks are by well-­ known artists and all but one reached the Top 10. It was after I had compiled this list that I realised all were sung by, or featured, female artists: an observation I return to in the Discussion section. For comparison, I searched online for suggestions on songs about ‘coercive control’, which yielded little of note. There are, however, a number of web lists for ‘songs about toxic love’ or songs about ‘toxic relationships’,1 generally compiled before 2018. There was some overlap with the sample for this study (and often a number by the same singer, such as Rihanna or Lady Gaga), as well as less well-known tracks by rock and punk artists, for example. The merit of the sample chosen here is that they have received considerable airplay in recent years, indicating significant audience reach and listening figures. As discussed in the literature review, this is not with a view to making claims of causation or correlation between listening to these tracks and seeking to reproduce or normalise the behaviours heard. But it is to argue that their popularity and airplay suggest they hold some cultural significance, resonating musically or emotionally with radio, venue and music consumers (Table 1). The text of the lyrics for each track was obtained and cross-compared between three web-based sources (www.azlyrics.com; www.genius.com and www.lyrics.com). The lyrics for each song were also corroborated against the music video or audio recording to ensure consistency (following North et al. 2018). The original version was used in each case, which seemed to differ from the radio edit only by the inclusion of expletives. My epistemological approach here could be described as critical realist (Bhaskar 2013) or contextual constructionism (Burningham and Cooper 1999). This means that while I recognise the agency of individuals to author, negotiate and disrupt power through discourse and other social practices, I believe that power structures weigh heavily on social life, which individuals have varying resources to challenge (over their own life course, and in comparison to others). Although I recognise discourse as a social practice, and have used critical discourse analysis in other work, for this study I was reluctant to be boxed in by too strict a method, nor was I clear that the purpose was simply to ‘expose’ the patriarchal foundations of the chosen tracks. I therefore chose thematic analysis.

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Table 1  Sample of tracks for analysis Year

Artist

2018 Ava Max

Track

Chart position

Released on 1 November 2008, No.1 UK Chart 28 December 2018 and stayed there for 4 weeks. 2018 Zara Ruin Released on 1 Larsson My Life November 2008. Highest position No.9 in UK Single Chart, on 10 January 2019. 2016 Dua Lipa Hotter Released on 19 May than 2016. Highest position Hell No.15 in UK Singles Chart on 7 July 2016, where it remained for 3 weeks. 2013 Lady Do Released 21 October Gaga What 2013. Reached No.9 in feat. U the UK Singles Chart R. Kelly Want 23 November 2013.

2010 Eminem feat. Rihanna

Sweet But A Psycho

Track synopsis Singer talks of others warning her partner that she is attractive but crazy. Towards the end of the song, she teases him that he enjoys the drama. Singer talks of how she misses her partner, and even though the relationship was difficult, she would rather him back to ‘ruin her life’, than be without him. Singer is goading her partner/ ex-partner about how no-one makes him feel as ‘hot’ as she can. Describes his pain with her, and pain without.

Duet where Lady Gaga talks ostensibly of being tired by media hounding, saying they can do what they want with her body, but not have her heart and mind. R. Kelly enters the duet, picking up and switching the refrain to, ‘I can do what I want with your body’. Love the Released on 3 July Duet between Eminem and Way 2010. Spent 14 weeks Rihanna describing a highly abusive you Lie in Top 10 in UK relationship, which is described by Singles Chart, reaching both as painful and pleasurable. The No.2 for 4 weeks track ratchets up lyrically through between end of July the cycle of violence. and early September 2010.

Chart position date taken from: https://www.officialcharts.com/

A theme is “a pattern found in the information that at the minimum describes and organises possible observations or at the maximum interprets aspects of the phenomenon” (Boyatzis 1998, pp. vi–vii). Thematic analysis can therefore move beyond descriptive analysis to engage critically

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with implicit as well as explicit themes. This makes it an appealingly flexible framework. The thematic approach employed in this chapter was informed by the feminist perspective outlined in the literature review and by the tactics identified within the Duluth Power and Control Wheel2 as well as Lenore Walker’s (1979) Cycle of Violence model3 (see Collins and Carmody 2011, for a similar approach). In analysing song lyrics (or any text), we might attempt to discern the author’s intention or meaning in the lyric or offer our own reading. This links to Barthes’ (1970) notion of ‘readerly’ and ‘writerly’ texts: the ‘readerly’ text is signed, sealed and delivered; the ‘writerly’ text lies unwrapped, engaging us to pick up and turn over the ambivalent lyric in our hands, to try and make sense of it. Treating the tracks first as readerly texts, I did watch the music videos, where available, as well as read some interviews with the artist where they referred to the sample track or to their song-­ writing in general (I include some reflections on the latter in the Findings section below). This was important in checking for irony and tone (Wright and Qureshi 2015). Pink’s (2009) track Don’t Leave Me for example, is ostensibly a chilling meditation on coercive control: “I can’t be without, you’re my perfect little punching bag”. The music video is a disturbing yet also deliberately grotesque short screenplay of a relationship where Pink is the abuser, seemingly drawing on Annie Wilkes in King’s 1987 book Misery. Therefore, unlike the tracks chosen for analysis here, Pink appears to be deliberately spoofing, rather than eroticising, domination. While it felt important to select tracks which seemed ‘authentically’ to be exploring dominance and control within relationships, it is also the job of the analyst to move beyond the writer’s intentions and explore critically the relationship between texts and wider society (see, e.g. Wodak and Meyer 2009). The Discussion section develops this wider analysis. The six song transcripts were read and coded inductively. The relevant lyric excerpts, track and singer were noted in a table, together with the code. Once this first stage was complete, codes were then clustered and merged, where appropriate. This process led to the identification of twelve distinct codes, which were organised into five themes: pleasure and pain; ignoring the advice of others; attempting to re-assert power; cycle of violence; control complete. These codes are used to structure the Findings section that follows.

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Findings This section summarises the findings of the thematic analysis of the sample tracks. The Discussion section below assesses the implications of these findings in answering how and why dominance is eroticised in contemporary pop. Pleasure and Pain A recurring theme through the selected tracks is that troubled relationships are painful yet pleasurable, or at least addictive in some way. The partner is emotionally threatening, yet also enticing, for example: She’s poison but tasty (Sweet But A Psycho, Ava Max)

Central to this dynamic is the sense that the abusive partner—or the abusive relationship—sensitises one or both partners in a way that draws them in to a hyper-real space, which is exhilarating. As a consequence, being out of the relationship creates an unmanageable emotional comedown, drawing the partner back in: You set fire to my world, couldn’t handle the heat Now I’m sleeping alone and I’m starting to freeze. (Ruin My Life, Zara Larsson)

Also within this theme is the positioning of the dominated partner as in some way masochistic, as willingly seeking out the pain or chaos which characterises the relationships: Just gonna stand there and watch me burn But that’s alright, because I like the way it hurts (Love the Way You Lie, Eminem feat. Rihanna)

Through these lyrics, therefore, the emotional pain of abuse has been reimagined as a sensual escalation of feeling that intoxicates both the dominator and the dominated, such that they ‘keep coming back for more’.

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Ignoring the Advice of Others In two of the five tracks, the couple are warned by others that the relationship is unhealthy or that one of the partners is bad news. Yet this only fuels the pleasure–pain nexus outlined above and can enable one or both partner to portray the relationship as them against the world: they don’t understand what we have together. As R. Kelly asserts: No invitations, it’s a private party. Here, he is positioned as the rescuer: You’re the Marilyn, I’m the president (Do What U Want, Lady Gaga feat. R. Kelly)

Attempting to Re-assert Power Linking back to the idea of the relationship as painful yet intoxicating, the dominated partner adopts different responses. First, they can seek to ‘fix’ the abusive partner: If you make it all wrong, then I’ll make it all right, yeah (Ruin My Life, Zara Larsson)

Or second, they can yield to the abuser but they can seek re-­ empowerment by putting in emotional boundaries. Emotional dissociation or clinging to the belief that the abuser can change are both common experiences of victims of coercive control. Cycle of Violence Walker’s (1979) Cycle of Violence model identifies how tension builds in a relationship, leading to an outburst/crisis event, followed by expressions of remorse by the abuser and a period of calm. Hope for change (or of ‘fixing’, as in above) emerges, until the tensions begin to build once more. Eminem’s narrative in Love the Way You Lie is a master class in the cycle of violence, where he talks of the repeated violence, regret and broken promises. But here fault is not located with individuals, but with feelings: It’s the rage that’s the culprit, it controls you both (Love the Way You Lie, Eminem feat. Rihanna)

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In a similar way, in Sweet But A Psycho, one partner tries to persuade the other that they are really both the same: not both victims here, but both perpetrators: You’re just like me, you’re out your mind (Sweet But A Psycho, Ava Max)

Both strategies link back to the discussion above of trying to represent the abuse as evidence for a special bond: of a shared experience within the intimate world of the couple that no-one else can really understand. Control Complete As confidence in control increases, the dominator seeks to proscribe the course of the relationship and may seek to stop any attempts at exit: If she ever tries to fucking leave again I’m a tie her to the bed and set this house on fire (Love the Way You Lie, Eminem feat. Rihanna)

Attempting to leave an abusive relationship is known to be when violence and abuse escalate, sometimes with fatal effect.4 Yet the victim may at this point be emotionally in deep and trying to negotiate the sensory conflict produced by the relationship. You’ll be saying, “No, no” Then saying, “Yes, yes, yes” (Sweet But A Psycho, Ava Max)

Taking us back to the pleasure–pain narrative outlined at the start, the dominator is seen as coercive yet seductive: control is complete.

Discussion The findings above appear to offer good evidence that dominance and control are eroticised in contemporary pop music. In MacKinnon’s (1989) analysis, the dynamics of eroticism must be understood in relation to gender and sexuality: masculinity is prefaced on sexual dominance and femininity on sexual submissiveness. Yet here the picture appears to be less clear: in our lyrical relationships, we have examples of both male and

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Fig. 1  Coercive control/abuse ‘category mistakes’

Coercive Control/Abuse

Voluntary Masochism

Female Empowerment

female being dominant or dominated—sometimes at the same time. However, I identify through this analysis the persistent salience of gender. In his book The Concept of Mind (1949), Gilbert Ryle introduces the idea of the ‘category mistake’. This is where someone commits the logical error of mixing up one category (or logical type of concept) with another. So for example, once when the toaster set off the fire alarm in our kitchen, I opened the front door to let out the smoke. When the noise stopped, and I went to close the door, my toddler looked outside and said brightly, “The noise has gone out!” A category mistake can also occur when things or practices, which seem to have similar properties, are assumed to be part of the same category. It is this idea that I want employ here to describe how practices of coercive control and domination are being mis-labelled in the sample tracks as something other: either (1) voluntary masochism and/or (2) female empowerment (Fig. 1). Voluntary Masochism First I turn to what I term ‘voluntary masochism’. The idea that ‘love hurts’ has been a recurrent theme through popular music, from Cat Stevens’ 1967 song The First Cut is the Deepest, or Hurts So Good by Philip Mitchell 1971, to Culture Club’s 1982 track, Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? The ‘hurt’ here can refer variously to the intensity of feeling, to difficulty within the relationship or to breaking up. Explaining the origins of the Leona Lewis 2007 hit Bleeding Love, songwriter Jesse

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McCartney said that, “I was away from my girlfriend for fourth months at the time and I really wanted to throw in the towel and fly home. I was so in love that it was painful. It was like bleeding: it cut me open” (Contactmusic 2008). In other words, his inspiration was a pain of longing. Such pain is part of the human experience and a natural subject for art. There is undoubtedly a cathartic element too in wallowing in sorrow: like Bridget Jones imbibing red wine and lip-syncing wretchedly to All By Myself in the film Bridget Jones’ Diary (2001). However, the Bleeding Love track in final form became something darker: the protagonist needs her lover in order to bleed—metaphorically, to feel something—and she shuts out the warning voices of others, a direct echo of the themes identified in the analysis above. This representation of emotional and physical masochism can eroticise submission and serves also to identify the submitting partner as willing and desirous. There is another element to masochism that links to the huge commercial success of the ‘Fifty Shades’ trilogy by female author E. L. James. In a thought-provoking critique of the series, van Reenen (2014) notes that sex ‘experts’ such as the Kinsey Institute in the United States have consistently identified (with scant reflection, it seems, on the gendered assumptions and implications) that a key fantasy among women is to be taken against their will or being unable to resist their partner. Van Reenen identifies the Fifty Shades books as consistent with the cultural trope of an “aggressive male needing to be placated by the enduring love and devotion of a heterosexual female” (2014, p. 228). She also distances the representations of discipline and submission in the books from established BDSM practices, where: … some form of SSC (Safe, Sane, and Consensual) or RACK (Risk Aware Consensual Kink) [is generally endorsed]. The controlling, coercive behaviour of the male protagonist is not representative of these ethics. (Van Reenen 2014, p. 223)

Therefore, I suggest that within the tracks analysed for this study, the representation of voluntary masochism and dominance as pleasurable, or as merely play, can be considered a category mistake. Under the veneer of sensuality, is the simple anguish of abuse. Interestingly, Fleetwood (2012) identifies how pop stars, including Madonna, Lady Gaga and Rihanna have incorporated “sado-masochistic aesthetics and enactments […] as a

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mode of performing a type of female rebellion” (Fleetwood 2012, p. 427). This leads us to the second and related category of ‘female empowerment’. Female Empowerment I noted in the Methods section above that I realised once I had identified my tracks for analysis, that they were all performed by women or, in one case, featured a prominent female artist. Since this was a purposive sample, I cannot make any claim that female artists disproportionately perform songs that eroticise dominance or submission. A systematic content analysis of recent Top 20 tracks would be required to posit any link (see, e.g. North et al. 2018). However, in terms of the tracks analysed, my second observation is that seeking to dominate or embracing submission are both signalled as acts of female empowerment. Interviews with three of the artists featured in the sample reveal consistent motivations. Speaking to music blog Idolator in October 2018, Ava Max reveals that Sweet But A Psycho is “basically about a girl who’s not afraid to show all of her sides and her dualities, and about a guy loving all those sides”. So rather than being a story of controlling behaviour, it is claimed to be a celebration of being yourself, ‘warts and all’. This resonates particularly given the weight of behaviour expectations that have characterised women’s experience through history (McRobbie 2009). Discussing Ruin My Life with PlanetRadio in the same month, Zara Larsson recognises the potentially anti-feminist message but in true post-­ modern style, asserts the value of individual interpretation: “I was debating with myself whether it’s good for me as an artist, especially a woman, to talk about a relationship that was not great—but you want back”. She continued, “I don’t want to promote that, but at the same time I want to speak my ‘truth’. I’ve been in a really bad relationship that’s not good for me or the other person and we’re just really bad for each other, but after you break up you’re like, ‘I want nothing more than to get back with this person, I know it’s going to ruin my life and break my heart but I still want it’”.

Explaining the motivation behind Hotter Than Hell, Dua Lipa told Digital Spy in 2015 that she was:

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…in a relationship that really fucked me over. In the song, I twisted it so that I was in the better position and I was the one going “fuck you”.

She describes as “very therapeutic”, the chance to rewrite the scenario placing herself in the dominant position. So, common to all these narratives is this idea of the female artist venturing into the dark heart of toxic love. Rather than finding it a place of discomfort, she claims to use it as a touchstone to signal her empowerment and to communicate that she understands her listeners’ contrary relationship with dominance and submission. This has been contested ground for cultural commentators. Women in pop are frequently castigated for self-objectifying (Glantz 2013; Levy 2005) or for being complicit with patriarchy (an idea explored by Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; and Bordieu 1992). Fleetwood (2012) looks critically at the commentary on US artist Rihanna who, in 2009, was herself a victim of intimate partner violence with singer Chris Brown, and who has also spoken publicly about her father’s violence towards her mother. Explicit references to sadism–masochism (Rude Boy 2010; S&M 2011) and the seeming eroticisation of abuse outlined in the analysis above (Love the Way You Lie, Eminem feat. Rihanna 2010) seem to jar against her ‘victim’ status. In a Rolling Stone interview around this time, Rihanna acknowledges: I do think I’m a bit of a masochist… It’s not something I’m proud of, and it’s not something I noticed until recently. I think it’s common for people who witness abuse in their household. They can never smell how beautiful a rose is unless they get pricked by a thorn. (Rolling Stone 2011)

In January 2019, Lady Gaga spoke out in response to the allegations of sexual abuse against collaborator R. Kelly on the 2013 track, ‘Do What U Want’, saying on Twitter that she had wanted to: create something extremely defiant and provocative because I was angry and still hadn’t processed the trauma that had occurred in my own life [as a victim of rape] … I think it’s clear how explicitly twisted my thinking was at the time.

In this way, the claim to female empowerment can again in such circumstances be described as a category mistake. Rather than

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empowerment, it is a legitimate attempt to regain control, within a context of, or emerging from, a history of abuse. One of the insidious effects of patriarchy is its tendency to divide women (e.g. sex-positive feminists (Queen 1997) are pitted against anti-­ pornography feminists (Dworkin 1981), such that the struggles of all women (and men) to negotiate patriarchy are overlooked. In a similar way, Bonomi et al. (2013) note that social concern with the Fifty Shades series centred on its semi-pornographic content, “rather than to the underlying […] abuse” (p. 742). Instead of holding pop artists responsible, the real issue is surely the eroticisation of dominance, violence and abuse, through which we are all simultaneously both subject and potentially co-creators. Looking Forward: Thinking in New Ways There are of course many examples of artists challenging abuse in song-­ writing: Ms Dynamite’s ‘Put Him Out’ (2002); Jamelia’s ‘Thank You’ (2004) or Tracy Chapman’s ‘Behind The Wall’ (1988). But the issue here is less about challenging abuse explicitly (who would not?) but interrogating this dynamic, as MacKinnon terms it, of eroticising domination and submission. In her exploration of sexual violence and humiliation, Taylor (2018, p.  447) puts faith in “feminist innovation” to mine, create and experiment with new practices to challenge the current socio-cultural order. Similarly, Snapes (2018) charts recent changes in pop music, concluding that, “people will start exploring eroticism in ways we can’t imagine…”. It is difficult to know whether the ‘new erotica’ will be the preserve of small vanguard of artists (across media) or whether this signals a broader change in society. For the time being at least, I suggest that there continues to be lyrical leitmotif within pop music which eroticises dominance and submission, rather than calling out coercive control and abuse for what it is.

Notes 1. See, for example: https://culturacolectiva.com/music/songs-­about­toxic-­love; https://www.yourtango.com/2017301921/10-­b est-­l ove-­s ongs-­ about-­toxic-­love-­express-­exactly-­how-­you-­feel; h t t p s : / / s p i n d i t t y. c o m / p l a y l i s t s / S o n g s -­A b o u t -­To x i c -­L o v e ­Relationships;

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https://naibuzz.com/25-­s ongs-­a busive-­t oxic-­l ove-­r elationships/ [Accessed 12 April 2019]. 2. These tactics are: Using Intimidation, Using Emotional Abuse, Using Isolation, Minimising, Denying and Blaming, Using Children, Using Male Privilege, Using Economic Abuse, Using Coercion and Threats. All but Using Children, Using Male Privilege, Using Economic Abuse, emerged in the coding. 3. There are four elements to Walker’s model, which repeat in circular motion: Tension Building, Incident, Reconciliation, Calm, and so on. 4. In England and Wales, two women are killed each week by a current or former partner in England and Wales (Office for National Statistics, 2016). Around 30 men a year are killed within a domestic abuse context (Domestic Violence London).

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Moore, A.B. [known as ‘Pink’] and Martin, M., 2009. Please Don’t Leave Me [sound recording] Performed by Pink on the album Funhouse. Atlanta, US: LaFace Records. Nielsen, 2017. Time With Tunes: How Technology Is Driving Music Consumption. [online]. Available at: https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/ 2017/time-­with-­tunes-­how-­technology-­is-­driving-­music-­consumption.html North, A.C., Krause, A.E., Kane, R., and Sheridan, L., 2018. United Kingdom ‘Top 5’ pop music lyrics. Psychology of Music, 46(5), pp. 638–661. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0305735617720161 Planet Radio, 2018. Zara Larsson reveals the dark inspiration for new track ‘Ruin My Life’. [online] Available at: (https://planetradio.co.uk/hits-­radio/entertainment/celebrity/zara-­larsson-­ruin-­my-­life-­inspiration/) Queen, C., 1997. Real Live Nude Girl: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture. New Jersey: Cleis Press. Radio Joint Audience Research, 2019. Data Release Infographic Q4 2018. [online] Available at: https://www.rajar.co.uk/docs/news/RAJAR_DataRelease_ InfographicQ42018.pdf Robinson, A., Myhill, A., and Wire, J., 2018. Practitioner (mis)understandings of coercive control in England and Wales. Criminology & Criminal Justice, 18(1), pp.  29–49. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/ 1748895817728381 Rolling Stone, 2011. Excerpts from Rihanna’s Rolling Stone Cover Story. [online] Available at: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-­lists/excerpts-­ from-­rihannas-­rolling-­stone-­cover-­story-­10381/pain-­102584/ Ryle, G., 1949. The Concept of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Presss. Snapes, L., 2018. From Blurred Lines to New Rules: how sex in pop has changed forever. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/ jan/18/from-­blurred-­lines-­to-­new-­rules-­how-­sex-­in-­pop-­has-­changed-­for-­ever Stark, E., 2007. Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stark, E., 2009. Rethinking Coercive Control. Violence Against Women, 15(12), pp.  1509–1525. Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/ doi/10.1177/1077801209347452 Stark, E. and Hester, M., 2019. Coercive Control: Update and Review. Violence Against Women, 25(1), pp.  81–104. Available at: https://journals.sagepub. com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1077801218816191 Taylor, D., 2018. Humiliation as Harm of Sexual Violence: Feminist Versus Neoliberal Perspectives. Hypatia, 33(3), pp. 434–450. Available at: https:// onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/hypa.12427

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Chapter 2: Featuring…Nicki Minaj Glenn Fosbraey

This chapter refers to the 35 official singles released under Nicki Minaj’s own name and the 74 official singles where she is listed as a ‘featuring artist’ to analyse to what extent Minaj behaves differently when appearing with male artists, and who the ownership, control, and responsibility lies with when there is more than one artist on a track where misogynistic, sexist, or violence-endorsing lyrics or images occur. Minaj has been selected as the focus for this project due to her ‘identification as a feminist icon’ (Segal and Demos 2019: 78) and the amount of source material on offer. The objective of this chapter isn’t to determine whether or not Minaj IS a feminist or not, but to observe Minaj’s behaviours in conjunction with her male co-artists, and to examine whether these vary from her behaviours on tracks where males don’t feature.

G. Fosbraey (*) University of Winchester, Winchester, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Fosbraey, N. Puckey (eds.), Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65189-3_3

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Biography, Message, and Voice To begin with, I will look at the function of biography, message, and voice in relation to pop music in general (popular in its broadest term, encompassing ‘popular’ music, rather than the more usual use of the term to describe a specific ‘pop’ genre) before focusing the discussion on the Minaj tracks mentioned above. Pop music differs from other art forms like literature and film due to the frequency of ‘commentators read[ing] the lyrics literally, as transparent disclosures of the singer’s biography’ (Hopps 2009: 9). One only needs to look at the ‘Becky with the good hair’ line in Beyonce’s song Lemonade to see to what extent fans and critics immediately attach a singer’s utterances to their biographies. Why, though, do we immediately assume there is weight and meaning and reality to the line in ‘Lemonade’, instead of thinking that Beyonce may simply have been floundering for a rhyme with ‘there’ and plumped for ‘hair’, then worked in a random female character to fill the line? Beyonce certainly has form when using perfect rhymes in songs, so it’s not too much of a leap. (Fosbraey and Melrose 2019: 9)

We wouldn’t go applying such ‘meaning’ to an utterance if a character in a novel said this, or an actor in a film, so why do we assume such an immediate link with truth and biography in song? ‘Ours is a world in which great numbers of people look to pop music… for guidance that conventional religious observance does not provide. This is not to impute religious value or power to the recordings of, say, Radiohead or OutKast; it is, however, to lay claim to pop music’s ability to serve a portal for the transcendence we seek’ (Frisicks-Warren 2006: 228). It’s important to note here that such links seem only to be applied to the person singing the songs, rather than the songwriters themselves, suggesting we react like this upon hearing or seeing the words leave a person’s lips. ‘A common associational linkage suggested by the voice sends us towards the person and the biography of the singer’ (Bennett et al. 2006: 13), and it’s likely this physicalisation of language which causes us to make the connection between artist and reality, both through the original singing or rapping voice on the audio track, to the miming in the music video. The 2013 song Blurred Lines, where Robin Thicke repeatedly states ‘I know you want it’ (2013a) as he ‘and two male collaborators, fully clothed,

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sing in the company of three female models who are topless’ (Heep 2014: 19) received widespread criticism ‘as misogynistic and demeaning’ (ibid: 19) and for appearing to endorse ‘“Rape Culture”… the idea that violence—especially sexual violence—is considered normal and sometimes even glamorous’ (Finley and Gordon 2017: 116). It is interesting, however, that nearly all of the criticism was aimed squarely at Thicke, rather than a share of it going to co-writer and producer Pharrell Williams, who also starred in the music video. One can only presume this is because the problematic lines ‘I know you want it’ came from the mouth of Thicke himself. Worth noting is that the controversy didn’t seem to impact upon the commercial success of the song, with it being ‘named the best-selling single of 2013 by the UK Official Charts Company after shifting close to 1.5 million copies’ (Denham 2014). In pop music, a great deal of the time we want the artist to be present: we want to hear the person behind the music’ (Fosbraey and Melrose 2019: 53–54) and the artist themselves has the opportunity to use this to play with an audience, flitting between fiction and what we perceive as truth. Although associated mostly with theatre, the ‘breaking of the fourth wall…can also be present in music… in song [this] means that deliberate attention is drawn to the fact that we are listening to a song’ (Fosbraey and Melrose 2019: 53–54), cutting through any fictional narrative that has been built up. Minaj frequently uses such a technique, most often through saying ‘Young Money’ in the songs she features on (she does this on 20 tracks, usually apropos of nothing, and often completely outside the song’s narrative) but also in guest verses where she namechecks herself, the lead artist, or the fact she’s getting paid to deliver a verse in a song (rather than a sub-narrative or co-narrative in a storyline), or introduces some kind of biographical information.

Shared Responsibility? Nicki Minaj is one of the most successful and revered hip-hop artists of all time and has ‘the most Billboard Hot 100 hits (106) among women of all genres and, with 17 top 10s, sets the mark for the most by any female rapper’ (Ramirez and Anderson 2019). Although not promoted as an official single, Minaj’s ‘“Yikes” is now, according to Billboard, the first song pushed by a female rapper to reach No. 1 on the Digital Song Sales ranking without any other features. In other words, no woman in hip-hop has

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sent a track to the top of the tally entirely on her own before, which, in 2020, is somewhat hard to believe’ (McIntyre 2020). A large percentage of Minaj’s total output, however, is either as a ‘featured’ artist herself (67% of her singles output), or by having a featured artist on her lead tracks (51%), with 79% of the single releases she’s involved in having a ‘featuring’ credit of some sort (not including ‘with’ collaborations). The most important statistic for the purposes of this chapter, however, is that 66% of the total single releases Nicki Minaj is involved with contain a male voice, and of the songs where she is the featured artist, 77% are male leads. To what extent does each artist take responsibility of the entire song? Along with a shared songwriting credit comes shared ownership, validation, and endorsement of the overall product, regardless of which section which artist appears on. If we consider a song as a single entity, the sum of all of its parts, from production to lyrics to performance, then the performers take a shared responsibility. ‘The appearance of songs on the music charts featuring other artists has increased exponentially in the past two decades’ (Ordanini et al. 2018), and Nick Minaj’s back catalogue is an example of this ‘We find songs featuring other artists actually have a greater likelihood of making it into the top 10 than songs not featuring other artists [meaning] …a featuring collaboration reflects a deliberate decision by two artists to combine their talents to create a conspicuously hybridized product’ (ibid 2018). Dual or multiple narratives can vary from the ‘call and response’ like Sonny and Cher’s I got you babe or Elton John and Kiki Dee’s Don’t go breaking my heart, to telling two sides of the same story like Gotye’s Somebody that I used to know or Weezer’s Go Away, to multiple narrators contributing to a same linear narrative, a la Nelly and Kelly Rowland’s Dilemma. Some hip-hop tracks, however, can introduce what appear to be a series of somewhat disjointed narratives when they have employ featured artists, and this can mean that the central narrative can become somewhat harder to determine when we are faced with more than one narrator on a song. It is widely remarked that ‘In a career-making verse on Kanye West’s Monster, Nicki Minaj annihilated her male peers…’ (Snapes 2019) but is that what’s required of a ‘featuring’ artist? Is it a battle between them and the main artist, a jostling for attention/accolades and central theme? If one artist says the most memorable lines, does that change how we view

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the overall narrative, including the parts from the other artist(s)? And does this lead, therefore, to a shared responsibility and ownership of the song? The verbalisation of the words in the music video extends the idea that lyrics are connected directly to the performer and serves only to reinforce the image that the words are being endorsed by the artist. This is, perhaps, why most of the criticism for Blurred lines was aimed at Robin Thicke: not only did he sing the controversial lines on the track, but he then saw fit to mime to them (presumably over repeated takes) in the video. ‘Endorsement’ also appears to occur when an artist is pictured with someone in a photograph or video. As The Manic Street Preachers’ James Dean Bradfield said regarding a photograph of the band with Fidel Castro: ‘Without saying ‘I endorse everything you do, Mr Castro, the picture says that’ (No Manifesto: A Film about the Manic Street Preachers 2015). By appearing on the front cover of the Young Money album We are Young Money which contains Every Girl, a song considered the most misogynistic song in a 2013 analysis on audience perceptions of misogynistic lyrics (Cundiff 2013). And then there are the music videos. By appearing in the music videos with rappers who are uttering misogynistic phrases, objectifying women and reinforcing ‘textual signs of patriarchal discourse, reproducing coded images of the female body, and positioning girls and women as the objects of male voyeurism’ (Shuker 2008: 114) is Minaj then endorsing such activity? For example: In You da Baddest as Future raps, ‘Percocets and molly make you touch your toe/Snapchat that pussy, don’t you take too long’ (2017d), for the third time, in the music video, Minaj mouths the word ‘toe’ then bends down, positioning herself as the object of this statement, and, more worryingly, appearing to endorse a statement that strong prescription painkillers and ecstasy make women more sexual. In Get low during an objectifying statement which reduces women to body types and the dehumanising word ‘it’, Tyga reduces women to be simple objects of what he finds to be sexually attractive. In the music video, we see clips of Minaj interspersed with such utterances. In Y.U Mad Birdman raps ‘I’m old school, and I’ll smack a bitch’ (2011a), as, in the music video, Minaj stands side-by-side with him as they both mime slapping. The camera also cuts to her miming the words ‘old school’ before this. In Bedrock Minaj appears in the music video seven seconds prior to Lil Wayne rapping that he’s going to ‘knock her lights out’ (2009a).

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Control? If we look at the wording of Minaj’s biography from officialcharts.com, the few lines it offers by way of an introduction to an artist frequently cited as the highest selling and most influential female rapper of all time are: ‘Born Onika Tanya Maraj in Trinidad & Tobago, this rapper/singer was discovered by rapper Lil Wayne before breaking through with her 2010 debut studio album Pink Friday’ (officialcharts.com). With regard to Lil Wayne, founder of record company ‘Young Money’, there does seem to be a history of Minaj looking to impress her fellow rapper and label boss, beginning with the song Letter to Little Wayne, ‘…released on September 22, 2012 as a part of a mixtape called Pink Friday: The Lost Tape’ (Nicki Minaj Fandom), ‘…[w]here she writes a letter to Young Money’s Lil Wayne. Over his “something you forgot” instrumental’ (Camacho 2012), Minaj raps lyrics about how she is nothing but ‘a broad with some metaphors’, and how every other rapper needs to bow to Lil Wayne (2012d), and the song runs as a plea for him to sign her to Young Money. Minaj’s 20 shouts of ‘Young Money’ compared with only 3 male uses of the name in the same songs (and all of these in the song Bedrock, which served as an introduction to the label) give the uncomfortable impression that Minaj is working for the record company rather than being a true part of it. Minaj even identifies herself as a ‘Young Money bunny’ in the song Fefe. Much of hip-hop’s lyrical content ‘relies on repetition’ (Bradley 2009: 91); for example, a lot of the lyrics involve ‘braggadocio’, and the inevitable ‘rags to riches’ authenticity stories. ‘Rap is… a constant discussion of what the rapper is about to do, his credentials for doing it, “shout-outs” to the crew with whom he intends to do it and “disses” to members of enemy crews who propose trying to prevent him’ (Leith 2012: 86) (note the use of male pronouns there in a classic unconscious example of hip-­ hop being a male-dominated world). ‘And, of course, a lot of rap talks about a particular lifestyle, much of which involves casual sex with willing female participants. When a female artist like Minaj enters such narratives on the tracks she features on with male leads, it’s worth noting how she tailors her own language to meet with the content expectations. The word ‘pussy’ (in its slang use for female genitalia rather than ‘coward’) is used 57 times in the 54 male-led singles Minaj features in, with 27 of these from Minaj herself, but only 3 times in the 18 songs where females are the leads, all of which are from Minaj herself (17%). In Minaj’s own

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singles, it is used on 14% of tracks where there are no male artists present, but on 43% of tracks where male artists feature. Minaj is, therefore, more than twice as likely to use the term when male artists are present. Perhaps just as importantly, the ‘Featuring’ songs suggest the ideal woman needs to be sexually available and willing to ‘put their ass on’ the male leads, or ‘make it clap’, or ‘shake it/twerk it/drop it, etc., evidenced by Minaj’s male co-artists in the songs Dance A$$, Clappers, Throw some mo, Twerk it: mek it clap, Fefe, and Minaj herself using similar language/ imagery on: Don’t hurt me, Welcome to the party (remix), Get low, and Big Bank. She also mirrors the male use of ‘busting open’ in reference to ‘pussy’. One of the most obvious examples of Minaj deliberately mirroring the male usage comes via the song Dance A$$, which was remixed with her as a featuring artist. In the original version, in the second verse, Big Sean raps ‘they bust it open like yaya is a pinata’ (2011b) and in Dance A$$ Remix featuring Minaj, Minaj’s verse replaces this, but she mirrors the original language with ‘bust this pussy open’ (ibid). The term is also used by Minaj’s male co-artists in Tapout, Clappers, You da Baddest, with Minaj using the term herself in Low, and Rake it up. This kind of phrasing is only used once in the singles where Minaj is lead artist (on Barbie Dreams) and even then she says ‘I ain’t tryna bust it open in the trailer park’ (2018b) with ‘ain’t’ being the focus here. In the songs where she features on male lead tracks, it appears she must seem available and willing. In her solo tracks, it doesn’t seem she feels the need to appear the same. Minaj also raps about ‘threesomes’ on the singles where males are present, but doesn’t allude to them on singles where males aren’t present. The Independent newspaper listed ‘having a threesome’ at the top of its list of most common sexual fantasies (Young 2018) and it’s a common theme in the tracks Minaj features on, with Tre Songz, Usher, Tyga, Juicy J, Young Thug, 6ix 9ine all rapping about it, and Minaj herself doing so on 4 songs (Monster; Lil Freak; Get Low; and Only). ‘Critics argue that Minaj expresses bisexuality as titillation for straight male fantasy. She perpetuates a hetero-­ patriarchal project that co-opts lesbian longing to produce heterosexual male fantasy’ (Oware 2018: 166) and as she is rapping about this subject on tracks involving men who also rap about how threesomes are something they want, it appears she is doing so for their titillation. Perhaps, as Lieb suggests ‘As near-nakedness has become the norm among pop stars, some…have escalated their sexual propositions and widened their

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perceived sexual availability by pretending to be open to things they are not’ (Lieb 2013: 147). Minaj also appears uncharacteristically submissive on the David Guetta tracks Hey Mama and Turn me on, rapping in the former that she does the cooking and the cleaning, and keeps the ‘na-na real sweet for your eating’, and saying that the male subject is the ‘boss’ and that she will do whatever he tells her (2015), and in the latter saying that she needs saving and rescuing and that her body needs a ‘hero’ (2011c) (a statement which doesn’t align with Minaj’s assertion that ‘I always feel it’s important for me to show females that they can be in charge of their own situation’) (Beaudoin 2015). In the singles Minaj features on with a male artist present, women are also referred to as ‘freaks’ (‘A girl who is most likely very innocent-­ looking and often shy, but when it comes to sex likes to be kinky, etc. (Urban dictionary)); and ‘bad bitches’ (‘describes a girl that is sexy and you wanna fuck her’ ((Urban Dictionary)), both of which suggest that the female role in these male-driven narratives is to make themselves available as sex objects.

Body Ideals Pop music is rife with everyday sexism that is seemingly accepted by both artists and fans. One doesn’t need to look far to uncover these things, from the constant sexualisation of women in music videos, to the apparent pressure for female artists to dress a certain way or be a certain shape. Una Healy, formerly of The Saturdays, once remarked that ‘the thing she won’t miss about performing with her bandmates is having to totter about in stage in towering shoes’ (Stitchbury 2017: 12). A throwaway article that is written in a joking, informal manner, but this could just as well be focusing in on the words ‘having to’ in order to create a more serious commentary on the industry. Instead of discussing who is responsible for such controlling behaviour, however, Stitchbury ignores the bigger picture and keeps things ‘light’, as that’s what’s expected. Would a story about a male performer being placed under such restrictions be treated with equal joviality, I wonder? ‘Ex Fifth-Harmony member Camila Cabello felt uncomfortable with the band being sexualised. “Unfortunately, sex sells,” the 19-year-old singer said’ (Harmsworth 2017: 12). ‘In many societies, women are seen to embody the concept of sex. Think about how the phrase “sex sells” is used to defend marketing a product with images of naked women… and

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how women are encouraged to express their sexuality predominantly through display and exhibitionism…when men aren’t’ (Redfern and Aune 2010: 52–53). On recalling a situation where her weight was questioned by a record executive, Claire Richards from Steps says: ‘“We want you to be in the band, Claire”, said Tim. “We think you’ve got a great voice and everything but, if you want to do it, you’re going to have to lose weight”’ (Richards 2012: 48). Conforming to a certain image or beauty standards highlights the music industry as ‘an industry…where female musicians are expected to go along to get along’ (Zeisler 2016) and the trend in popular music for the last few years has been for female artists to flaunt ‘big asses’. 2014 was coined ‘Year of the Booty’ by a number of publications (including MTV online, Vogue, New York Times, e-online, Capital FM, Billboard) ‘from Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda,” to Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass,” and of course Jennifer Lopez and Iggy Azalea’s appropriately titled track, “Booty”’ (Garibaldi 2014). Indeed, in a case of the real world imitating the entertainment world ‘Butt augmentation with fat grafting was the most popular cosmetic surgery for the buttocks in 2015’ (Cherney 2019). This is, perhaps, a reflection that ‘…music has the potential to “make people feel bad about themselves” if one does not conform…. Katy Perry, Iggy Azalea, Nicki Minaj have massive boobs, tiny waist and massive arse…’ (McCallum and Dzidic 2019: 405), and although it has been argued that Anaconda succeeds in ‘co-opting a canonized hip-hop tune concerning the triumph of the male gaze and inverting it into a declaration of femme supremacy’ (Time Out editors and Amy Plitt 2018) and establishes Minaj as ‘a ‘feminist icon’ (Emelife 2015), Minaj features on a number of songs and stars in a number of music videos (particularly with male co-artists) where women are ‘reduce[d]…to body parts, with numerous close-ups of buttocks and breasts’ (Shuker 2008: 115). ‘They are seen, but not as a whole—rather, as body parts or animals’(McCallum and Dzidic 2019: 406), and in such videos they ‘are used as symbols of power, status, or sexual prowess, not of themselves but to validate status in others, and are thus objectified’ (McCallum and Dzidic 2019: 406) and ‘…cast as the object of a male gaze…’ (Hunter and Cuenca 2017). On the songs where Minaj is a featured artist, the male rappers frequently list their preferred features in a woman, from: Skin colour: mocha—Tyga in Roger that (2009b) Eye colour: light—Wacka Flocka in Get low (2012c)

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Hair: long—Waka Flocka in Get low (ibid) and Tyga in Get low (ibid) Ass: ‘big’—Tyga in Get low (ibid); ‘fat’—Juicy J on Clappers (2013a) and Young Thug on Low (2014c); ‘colossal’—Big Sean in Dance A$$ (2011b); ‘round’—Big Sean on Dance A$$ (ibid) Waist: ‘anorexic’— Big Sean on Dance A$$ (ibid); ‘little’—Tyga on Get low (2012c)—perhaps achieved by Drake’s assertion on Make me proud that running on treadmills and only eating salads sounds ‘smart’ (2011d) Breasts: ‘perfect’—Juicy J on Clappers (2013a); ‘bouncin’—Future in You da baddest (2017d); ‘jiggling’—Lil Wayne in Tapout (2013c); ‘whole heap’—Busta Rhymes on Twerk it (2013b) General body type: ‘thick’ and ‘BBW’—Drake in Only (2014d) Smile/teeth: A ‘shining smile’—Waka Flocka in Get low (2012c) Minaj herself describes her body parts as follows: Breasts: ‘big fat’—I’m out (2019a) and ‘flawless’ on Flawless (2014e) ‘Ass’: ‘fat’/‘big fat’—I’m out (2019a), Anaconda (2014f) and Throw some mo (2014b); ‘for days’ on Fefe (2018a), and ‘thick’ on Monster (2010a). Collating all of these together: mocha skin colour, light eyes, long hair, big ‘ass’, big breasts, small waist, bright smile (suggesting perfect teeth), we have a description of Nicki Minaj herself. ‘Several authors have observed that the male address in music videos activates ‘textual signs of patriarchal discourse, reproducing coded images of the female body, and positioning girls and women as the objects of male voyeurism’ (Shuker 2008: 114), and Minaj, in her position as object of male fantasy with her ‘ideal’ appearance is often leered at by the men in her videos. These include Only where as Drake delivers the line ‘She was sitting down on that big butt/But I was still staring at the titties though’(2014d), he looks at Minaj’s backside on the word ‘butt’ and her breasts on ‘titties’ as she stands motionless, clad in underwear, sheer bodystocking, and heels, and Get low where, in the music video, as Tyga’s raps ‘So what’s up, to the bad bitch/In the corner, with her ass big/And her hair long, I’mma grab it’ (2012c), the camera cuts to shots of Minaj, suggesting she is the owner of the ‘long hair’ and ‘big ass’ and thus the object of Tyga’s ‘affections’. It is odd, therefore, that Only is listed as one of the ‘8 of the Most Empowering Nicki Minaj Songs and Verses’ (Riotta 2016) in a Yahoo! News article. It seems that ‘Objectification keeps reinventing itself as empowerment (but never for men)’ (Redfern and Aune 2010: 54).

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‘In our culture, not one part of a woman’s body is left untouched, unaltered. No feature or extremity is spared the art, or pain, of improvement. Hair is dyed, lacquered, straightened, permanented; eyebrows are plucked, pencilled, dyed; eyes are lined, mascaraed, shadowed; lashes are curled, or false—from head to toe, every feature of a woman’s face, every section of her body is subject to modification, alteration’ (Dworkin 1974: 112). This extends to Minaj’s feet. Tyson suggests that ‘… women wear pointy shoes with high heels not because they have pointy feet and need help reaching the top shelf of the cupboard, but because patriarchy tells them such footwear is feminine’ (Tyson 2001: 88) and Rossi suggests that ‘men gain a sadistic pleasure in “observing women in high heels” which comes from “viewing the insecurity and discomfort of women in these heels, forcing them to be more dependent upon masculine support (Rossi 1989; 121 in Jeffreys 2005) and that the ‘“erotic magic” of high heels comes from the way in which they “feminize” the gait by, “causing a shortening of the stride and a mincing step that suggests a degree of helpless bondage. This appeals to the chivalrous or machismo nature of many men” (Rossi: 121 in Jeffreys: 139). Nicki Minaj wears heels in 38 out of her 40 ‘featuring’ music videos where her feet are visible, and 23 out of the 25 solo videos where her feet are visible (94% of the time in total). ‘Whether through make-up, clothing, camera angles, computer animation, or cosmetic surgery, Minaj has exaggerated, dismembered, or completely erased many features of her body’ (Hunter and Cuenca 2017: 32). Various online sources suggest that Minaj has had a series of procedures, including teeth whitening, breast enlargement, and buttock augmentation, and it’s clear that she wears coloured contact lenses to lighten her eye colour. Whether or not such rumours are true (and it’s important to note that there isn’t any compelling evidence either way), comparing pictures of Minaj in the early to mid-2000s to how she looks now shows that she has styled herself according to the ideal body type/appearance outlined by the male artists on the tracks she features on. In Did it on ‘em (featuring male rapper Safaree Samuels), Minaj even comments on the appearance of other women and how their hair should be styled: ‘You nappy-headed son of a bitches!’/‘I’ma start throwing Just for Me Perm at your heads!’ (2010b) with ‘Just for Me’ being a product which makes ‘the hair easier to straighten and manage’ (Greene 2018) perhaps to achieve the long hair that Waka Flocka and Tyga prefer.

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Objectification? Of ‘the 200 most streamed Hip-Hop artists of 2018’ (Nicolas 2019) only 8% involved a female voice (subjects). Even Minaj’s own Cash Money/ Young Money label has 9% female rappers on its books (Pearce 2017) and yet females appearing in hip-hop music videos (objects) tells a different story, with female dancers appearing in 70% of the music videos where Minaj features with a male lead. It seems, then, that hip-hop has no issue in including women, as long as they stay objects rather than subjects. ‘The new millennium brought a new role for women in hip-hop: the video dancer, pejoratively referred to as the “video ho”. Women who dance in rap videos are cast as the object of a male gaze and usually serve as props to enhance the performance of masculinity by the male rapper in the video’ (Hunter and Cuenca 2017). Kaplan notes that ‘the “classical” mode of music video…is narrative-­ driven, made for the male gaze, with the male as subject, and female as object’ (Kaplan 1987: 55) and there is a notable difference in the way female dancers are depicted in Minaj’s videos where there is a male artist present. In the (professionally produced) music videos where Minaj is named as the lead artist and there are female dancers present (50% of her videos), she is dancing at the centre of them 80% of the time, but (professionally produced) music videos where Minaj is named as FEATURED artist on a male-led track and there are female dancers present (70%), she only dances at the centre of the others on one occasion (3%), on Major Lazer’s Run Up. This suggests a distancing of herself from other women, further enhanced by the amount of times she throws insults at unnamed female parties in her guest verses. In the male-led videos, she is positioning herself with the men, who are often objectifying the other female characters. A standout example of this is in the video for Throw some mo, which features a number of women twerking and pole dancing in roller skates (often with objectifying shots of buttocks and breasts without faces) as Minaj and her male co-artists throw money at them. In a way, it’s positive in that it’s showing Minaj as an equal to the male artists and this underlines her achievement in succeeding in such a male-dominated world, but from a negative point of view, it suggests that she’s only allowed to participate in this patriarchal world if engaging in stereotypical male objectifying activities: in this case throwing money at faceless women who dance joylessly for them. ‘…It’s not clear whether these activities [visiting strip clubs, watching porn] are really pleasurable for [women] or whether they

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are just simulating desire because the media tells them it’s what men find sexy’ (Redfern and Aune 2010: 53–54) and although Minaj appears to be enjoying the activity in the video, it can’t be ignored that she is performing, semi-naked with four men (whose only skin on show is their faces and hands), in a video whose director, producer, production manager, director of photography, production designer, editor, first assistant director, key grip, and colorist were all men on a song produced, mixed, and mastered by men, released on record labels run by men. In her own videos where she is the main artist and males aren’t present, there is significantly less objectification of women. To begin with, where female dancers are present, Minaj situates herself among them as opposed to outside them (as an equal rather than superior), and there are less gratuitous, faceless shots of female breasts and buttocks and examples of where the male gaze is overturned. For example: Super Bass: A series of shirtless men with chiselled torsos. One shot is a pan down a man’s chest before we even see his face. This is a subversion of the patriarchy, with objectification overturned. Starships: A similar focus on mens’ chests. An overturning of the patriarchy as there are a group of male dancers with their shirts off. Freedom: no males at all. Looking A$$: The male character is reduced to a body part (his eyes) whilst Minaj is very much the subject. Anaconda: ‘In “Anaconda,” there are almost no men in the entire video, decentering the male gaze. (Hunter and Cuenca 2017: 39) Where a male character IS present, via a seated Drake receiving a lapdance from Minaj, ‘she admonishingly slaps his hand away when he tries to touch her’ (ibid: 39) suggesting she is in control of her body, her sexuality, and the situation.’ Anaconda is a success in ‘co-opting a canonized hip-hop tune concerning the triumph of the male gaze and inverting it into a declaration of femme supremacy’ (Plitt 2018).

Conclusion ‘Given the level of her success, Nicki Minaj has become a figurehead for female rappers and much-discussed topic of critical debates on gender politics in contemporary Hip Hop’ (Trier-Bieniek 2015: 51), and whilst it is clear that her own music (sans male artists) can be seen as empowering, it is apparent that Minaj’s lyrical content, and visual and verbal behaviours change when a male artist is involved with her songs. It is, perhaps, a

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damning indictment on the music industry when a ‘feminist icon’ like Minaj thus adheres to the patriarchal stereotypes of the hip-hop genre, to the extent where she appears to endorse misogynistic, objectifying, and often violent utterances.

References Beaudoin, Kate (2015) ‘17 Times Nicki Minaj Perfectly Shut Down Sexism’ accessed March 22, 2020 https://www.mic.com/articles/114458/17-­powerful-­ feminist-­quotes-­from-­nicki-­minaj Bennett, Andy, Shank, Barry, and Toynbee, Jason (eds.) (2006). The Popular Music Studies Reader. London: Routledge Bradley, Adam. (2009). Book of Rhymes. New York: Basic Civitas Camacho, KnaLedge (2012) ‘Nicki Minaj—Letter to Lil Wayne’ accessed March 20, 2020 https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/nicki-­minaj-­letter-­to-­lil-­wayne-­ song.1007157.html Cherney, Kristeen (2019) ‘Everything You Need to Know About Butt Implants’ accessed March 24, 2020 https://www.healthline.com/health/butt-­implants Cundiff, G. (2013). “The Influence of Rap and Hip-Hop Music: An Analysis on Audience Perceptions of Misogynistic Lyrics.” Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications, 4(1). Retrieved from http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/a?id=792 Denham, Jess (2014) ‘Robin Thicke Scores Best-Selling Single of 2013 with ‘Blurred Lines’’ accessed March 25, 2020 https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-­ entertainment/music/news/robin-­thicke-­scores-­best-­selling-­single-­of-­2013-­ with-­blurred-­lines-­9034479.html Dworkin, Andrea (1974). Woman Hating. New York: E.P Dutton Emelife, Aindrea (2015). ‘‘She’s a Wild Woman, She’s a Shaman’: Nicki Minaj becomes a Feminist Art Muse’ accessed March 26, 2020 https://www.theguardian.com/ar tanddesign/2015/sep/01/nicki-­m inaj-­a naconda-­ camille-­henrot-­feminist-­art Finley, Laura, and Gordon, Nickesia (eds.) (2017). Reflections on Gender from a Communication Point-of-View: GenderSpectives. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing Fosbraey, G, and Melrose, A. (2019). Writing Song Lyrics: Creative and Critical Approaches. London: Macmillan International Frisicks-Warren, B. (2006). I’ll Take You There: Pop Music and the Urge for Transcendence. London: Continuum Garibaldi, Christina (2014) ‘Jennifer Lopez on the Year of the Booty: ‘It’s about time’ accessed March 28, 2020 http://www.mtv.com/news/1949743/ jennifer-­lopez-­year-­of-­booty/

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Greene, Sydney (2018) ‘Hair Relaxers: What You Should Know’ accessed March 28, 2020 https://www.naturallycurly.com/curlreading/transitioning/ hair-­relaxers-­what-­you-­should-­know Heep, Hartmut (2014) ‘“Blurred Lines”: Robin Thicke and Madonna Ciccone between Madonna and Whore’ in Cultural and Religious Studies, ISSN 2328-2177 January 2014, Vol. 2, No. 1 Hopps, G. (2009). The Pageant of His Bleeding Heart. London: Continuum Hunter, Margaret, and Cuenca, Alhelí (2017) ‘Nicki Minaj and the Changing Politics of Hip-Hop: Real Blackness, Real Bodies, Real Feminism’ in Feminist Formations, Volume 29, Issue 2, Summer 2017 Jeffreys, Sheila. (2005). Beauty and Misogyny. Sussex: Routledge Kaplan, E.A. (1987). Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism, and Consumer Culture. London: Routledge. Leith, S. (2012). You Talking to Me? London: Profile Books Lieb, Kristin J. (2013). Gender, Branding, and the Modern Music Industry. New York: Routledge McCallum, Jessie F., and Dzidic, Petra L. (2019) ‘Unblurring the Lines: A Qualitative Exploration of Young Women’s Opinions on Popular Music’ in Feminist Media Studies 2019, Vol. 19, No. 3 McIntyre, Hugh (2020) ‘Nicki Minaj Makes History With Her New No. 1 Single’ accessed March 28, 2020 https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2020/02/24/nicki-­m inaj-­m akes-­h istor y-­w ith-­h er-­n ew-­n o-­ 1-­single/#2d15a9764748 METRO—Thursday January 12, 2017, page 12—Andrei Harmsworth ‘Dis-­ Harmony over sexy label’ Nicki Minaj Fandom ‘Letter to Lil Wayne’ accessed March 26 2020 https://nickiminaj.fandom.com/wiki/Letter_to_Lil_Wayne Nicolas, Niels (2019) ‘Women & Hip-Hop’ accessed March 12, 2020 https:// deezer.io/women-­hip-­hop-­e00fb19cc885 No Manifesto: A Film about the Manic Street Preachers. (2015). [Online] Amazon Prime ‘Official Charts: Nicki Minaj’ accessed March 10, 2020 https://www.officialcharts.com/artist/6414/nicki-­minaj/ Ordanini, Andrea, Nunes, Joseph C., and Nanni, Anastasia (2018) ‘The Featuring Phenomenon in Music: How Combining Artists of Different Genres Increases a Song’s Popularity’ Published online on 17 December 2018  in Marketing Letters https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-­018-­9476-­3 Oware, Matthew. (2018). I Got Something to Say: Gender, Race, and Social Consciousness in Rap Music. London: Palgrave Macmillan Pearce, Shelodon (2017) ‘Rick Ross Isn’t the Only Rap Label Head Not Signing Women’ accessed March 23, 2020 https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/ rap-­label-­gender-­breakdown-­by-­the-­numbers/

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Plitt, Amy and Time Out editors (2018) ‘The Best Feminist Songs for Any Playlist’ accessed March 23, 2020 https://www.timeout.com/newyork/ music/10-­great-­feminist-­anthems Ramirez, Erica and Anderson, Trevor (2019) ‘Nicki Minaj’s 20 Biggest Billboard Hits’ accessed March 24, 2020 https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/chart-­beat/6406562/nicki-­minaj-­20-­biggest-­billboard-­hits Redfern, Catherine, and Aune, Kristin. (2010). Reclaiming the F Word. London: Zed Books Richards, Claire. (2012). All of Me. London: Sidgwick & Jackson Riotta, Chris (2016) ‘8 of the Most Empowering Nicki Minaj Songs and Verses to Bring Out Your Inner Diva’ accessed March 26, 2020, https://uk.news.yahoo. com/8-­m ost-­e mpowering-­n icki-­m inaj145000594.html?guccounter= 1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_ s i g = A Q A A A G O 8 g n a Z G m N e v P 2 g Te l b s Z L e 8 s X y w o w p 7 x h y 0 hCK-­JhmLJCAairHXj0jfHsT7gJMjaDw86b_gLj-­nxV8TQ5x6lbTx6bzWF93 phYBv7YQzMbHzlcZC2AvD2Bz2ZhgnMvkZGjP7WPnSMoYk8935x4ZIYBr4eOurV0bpsoOc8o3zw0o Robin Thicke (2013a) ‘Blurred Lines’. In: Blurred Lines [CD]. Star Track. Interscope. Rossi, William A. (1989). The Sex Life of the Foot and Shoe. Ware. Hertfordshire. Wordsworth editions. Segal, Marcia Texler and Demos, Vasilikie (eds). (2019). ‘Gender and the Media: Women’s Places.’ Advances in Gender Research volume 26. Bingley: Emerald Publishing Shuker, Roy. (2008). Understanding Popular Music (third edition). Oxon: Routledge Snapes, Laura (2019) ‘New Rules: The Destruction of the Female Pop Role Model’ accessed March 19, 2020 https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/ nov/25/destruction-­of-­female-­pop-­role-­model-­decade-­in-­music Stitchbury, Tom (2017). ‘Una kicks off solo career… and her killer heels go too’. Metro—Thursday January 19, 2017, page 12 Trier-Bieniek, Adrienne (ed.). (2015). Feminist Theory and Pop Culture. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers Tyson, Lois. (2001). Learning for a Diverse World. NewYork: Routledge Urban Dictionary “Bad’ Definition’ accessed March 25, 2020 Urban Dictionary ‘‘Freak’ definition’ accessed March 25, 2020 https://www. urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Freak Young, Sarah (2018) ‘The Seven Most Common Sexual Fantasies, Revealed’ accessed March 26, 2020 https://www.independent.co.uk/life-­style/common-­sexual-­ fantasies-­threesomes-­bdsm-­public-­american-­a8438566.html Zeisler, Andi (2016). ‘Music Business ‘feminism’ is Little More than Branding. Just Ask Kesha’ accessed March 21, 2020 https://www.theguardian.com/ music/2016/apr/26/feminism-­music-­business-­branding-­beyonce-­kesha

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Songs 6ix9ine, Nicki Minaj, and Murda Beatz (2018) ‘Fefe’. In: Queen [CD]. Young Money. Cash Money Ariana Grande featuring Nicki Minaj (2016) ‘Side to Side’. In: Dangerous Woman [CD]. Republic B.o.B featuring Nicki Minaj (2012) ‘Out of my mind’. In: Strange Clouds [CD]. Grand Hustle/Rebel Rock/Atlantic Beyoncé featuring Nicki Minaj (2014) ‘Flawless’. In: Beyoncé: Platinum Edition/ More Only [CD]. Parkwood/Columbia Big Sean featuring Nicki Minaj (2011) ‘Dance A$$ (remix)’ (iTunes). GOOD Music/Def Jam Birdman featuring Lil Wayne, Mack Maine, Nicki Minaj and Future (2013) ‘Tapout’. [Spotify]. Cash Money/Young Money/Republic Birdman featuring Nicki Minaj and Lil Wayne (2011) Y.U Mad’. [Spotify]. Cash Money/Universal/Republic Busta Rhymes featuring Nicki Minaj (2013) ‘#Twerkit’ [Spotify]. Cash Money/ Republic Ciara featuring Nicki Minaj (2019)‘I’m Out’. In: Ciara [CD]. Epic David Guetta featuring Flo Rida and Nicki Minaj (2011) ‘Where them girls at’. In: Nothing but the Beat [CD]. What A Music/Virgin/EMI David Guetta featuring Nicki Minaj (2011) ‘Turn me on’. In: Nothing but the Beat [CD]. What A Music/Virgin/EMI David Guetta featuring Nicki Minaj and Lil Wayne (2017) ‘Light my body up’. [Spotify] What a Music/Parlophone/Atlantic David Guetta featuring Nicki Minaj, Bebe Rexha and Afrojack (2015) ‘Hey Mama’. In: Listen [CD]. Parlophone/Atlantic DJ Mustard, Nicki Minaj, Jeremih (2016) ‘Don’t Hurt me’ (Google Play Music). Roc Music Drake featuring Nicki Minaj (2011) ‘Make me proud’. In: Take Care [CD]. Young Money/ Cash Money/Republic Future featuring Nicki Minaj (2017) ‘You da baddest’. [Spotify]. A1/ Freebandz/Epic Juicy J featuring Nicki Minaj, Lil Bibby and Young Thug (2014) ‘Low’ [Spotify]. Kemosabe/Columbia Justin Bieber featuring Nicki Minaj (2012) ‘Beauty and a Beat’. In: Believe [CD]. Island/RBMG/Schoolboy Kanye West featuring Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj, & Bon Iver (2010) ‘Monster’. In: My Beautiful Twisted Dark Fantasy [CD]. Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam Katy Perry featuring Nicki Minaj (2017) ‘Swish Swish’. In: Witness [CD]. Capitol Little Mix featuring Nicki Minaj (2018) ‘Woman like me’. In: LM5 [CD]. Syco

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Major Lazer featuring PartyNextDoor and Nicki Minaj (2017) ‘Run up. [Spotify]. Mad Decent/Because Nick Minaj featuring Drake, Chris Brown, Lil Wayne (2014) ‘Only’. The Pinkprint [CD]. Young Money/Cash Money/Republic Nicki Minaj (2010) ‘Did it on ‘em’. In: Pink Friday [CD]. Young Money. Cash Money Nicki Minaj (2012) ‘Letter to Little Wayne’ accessed March 29, 2020 https:// www.last.fm/music/Nicki+Minaj/Pink+Friday:+The+Lost+Tape Nicki Minaj (2018) ‘Barbie Dreams’. In: Queen [CD]. Young Money. Cash Money Nicki Minaj (2014) ‘Anaconda’. In: The Pinkprint [CD]. Young Money; Cash Money; Republic Pop Smoke featuring Nicki Minaj (2019) ‘Welcome to the party’ [Spotify]. Republic Records Rae Sremmurd featuring Nicki Minaj and Young Thug (2014).‘Throw some mo’. In: SremmLife [CD]. Ear Drummer/Interscope Robin Thicke (2013b) ‘Blurred Lines’. In: Blurred Lines [CD]. Star Track/ Interscope. Usher featuring Nicki Minaj (2014) ‘She came to give it to you’. [Spotify]. RCA Waka Flocka Flame featuring Nicki Minaj, Tyga and Flo Rida (2012) ‘Get Low’ [Spotify]. 1017 Brick Squad/Brick Squad Monopoly/Asylum/Warner Bros. Wale featuring Nicki Minaj and Juicy J (2013). ‘Clappers. In: The Gifted [CD]. Maybach Music/Atlantic YG featuring 2 Chainz, Big Sean and Nicki Minaj (2018) ‘Big Bank’. In: Stay Dangerous [CD]. 4Hunnid/CTE/Def Jam Yo Gotti and Mike WiLL Made-It featuring Nicki Minaj (2017) ‘Rake it up’. [Spotify]. Epic/EMPIRE Young Money (2009) ‘Roger that’. In: We are Young Money [CD]. Young Money/Cash Money/Universal Motown Young Money featuring Lloyd (2009) ‘Bedrock’. In: We are Young Money [CD]. Young Money/Cash Money/Universal Motown

Chapter 3: Misogyny and Erotic Pleasure in Bollywood’s “Item Numbers” Suman Mishra

Introduction India has a robust regional cinema, but it is Bollywood, India’s Hindi cinema based in Mumbai, that dominates the national and international scene with its high box office numbers and overall audience size. Bollywood’s cinematic dominance dates back more than a century. Its popularity has been steadily growing overseas in countries of Southeast Asia, Africa, Middle East, Europe, North America, and Oceania. Bollywood’s popularity and its reach make it a powerful carrier of messages including those related to gender. With Bollywood’s growing popularity, Bollywood’s representation of women deserves particular scrutiny because several decades of film and media research show that media representation matter and that they can reinforce and legitimize existing problematic cultural ideas of gender (Cole and Daniel 2005; Thornham 1999)

S. Mishra (*) Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Fosbraey, N. Puckey (eds.), Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65189-3_4

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and impact women self-perception (Fredrickson and Roberts 1997; Gina Davis Institute Study 2014). In India, men’s privileged position within the patriarchal system has negatively influenced women’s lives at home and outside. Deeply held beliefs regarding men’s superiority have led to myriad social problems including sexual harassment, domestic violence, rape, and female feticide, all of which continue as major problems today. Bollywood’s power and cultural significance within Indian society are well documented (Dudrah and Desai 2008; Ganti 2013; Gina Davis Institute Study 2014). Songs and dances have been a popular and identifiable feature of Bollywood films and these have now also become popular in other parts of the world (Gopal and Moorti 2008). However, in the last two decades, there has been a growth in a particular kind of song and dances within Bollywood films that have been colloquially called the “item numbers.” These risqué songs and dances have been controversial for their portrayals of women (Mandhai and Gautam 2018). Item numbers have received some scholarly attention in the form of critical essays (see Brara 2010; Mubarki 2016), however, there hasn’t been a larger systematic examination of its content to understand how they portray women and how prevalent are the misogynistic themes within item numbers. Misogyny is defined as sexualizing women and the dominance of men over women (Sommers-Flanagan et al. 1993). This study fills in this gap by thematically analyzing the content of 133 items numbers produced between 2000 and 2018, a period when the item numbers became more prevalent in Bollywood cinema.

Analyzing Women’s Representation in Films Cinema plays a critical role in social construction of gender and other identities. Film theories drawn from many different traditions such as European structuralism and semiotics, American approach to reflection of or distortion of reality, and Marxist concepts of ideology and psychoanalysis have highlighted cinema’s critical role in identity, culture, and representation (Thornham 1999; Cole and Daniel 2005; Mulvey 2009). Mulvey’s (1975) seminal work, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” for example, uses the psychoanalytic theory to explore the relationship between cinematic pleasure of male spectators and women’s bodies as fetishized objects of desire. Other scholars like Haskell (1987, p. 39) have argued in their work that images of women are essentially “vehicle[s] of male

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fantasies” but they can also be a complex text where competing voices can also be found. Thornham (1999, p. 12) explains, Films are ‘texts’—complex structures of linguistic and visual codes organized to produce specific meaning. They are not merely collections of images or stereotypes…Films are bearers of ideology. Ideology is defined here as that representational system, or “way of seeing”, which appears to us to be universal and ‘natural’, but which is in fact the product of the specific power structures which constitute our society. The ‘sign’ woman, then has acquired its meaning within a sexist, or patriarchal, ideology.

There is a large body of research particularly related to Hollywood and British films that show the male gaze in film production, stereotyping, and sexual objectification of women in films (Cole and Daniel 2005; Mulvey 2009; Thornham 1999). Sexual objectification occurs when women’s body or body parts are singled out and separated and women are treated as a physical object and valued only for their use in fulfilling male sexual desire (Fredrickson and Roberts 1997; Bartky 1990). Similar problematic representations of women have also been noted in Bollywood films (Chatterjee 2016; Dudrah and Desai 2008; Datta 2000; Geena Davis Institute Study 2014; Mubarki 2016; Ramasubramanian and Oliver 2003; Schaefer and Karan 2013). In the following paragraphs, a brief summary of women’s representations in Bollywood films has been provided, which over the decades has evolved from a passive wife to a “liberated woman” (Datta 2000) but overall continues to be problematic as women continue to have secondary and less powerful roles in films.

Globalization and Changes in Women’s Representation in Bollywood Cinema Bollywood from its inception has been male dominated. This is partly because the Indian patriarchal society for long deemed the film industry to be an inappropriate place for women to work. This perception kept many women out of the industry, especially at the beginning. But over time, women joined the industry and began to make their presence felt. In spite of greater presence of women today, the industry continues to be male dominated (Gina Davis Institute Study 2014). Men dominate off-screen as writers, directors, and producers, and on-screen, as actors and “heroes,” hence Bollywood continues to be a place where patriarchal and

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misogynistic culture prevails. This culture comingles with business and economic interests of the film producers resulting in various forms of exploitation including those of women and women’s bodies for commercial gains. In Bollywood films, post Indian independence, the period between 1947 and 1960s has been considered the golden age (Gokulsing and Dissanayake 2004). During this time period many female actors such as Madhubala in Mughal-E-Azam, Nargis in Mother India, Nutan in Seema, Vyjayanthimala in Devdas, Meena Kumari in Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam, delivered powerful and memorable performances which helped make these women household names. This was in spite the fact that these women had roles primarily as men’s love interests, passive wives, and mothers. Leading actresses’ roles, often written by men, reflected the idealized notion of a woman within the patriarchal system: docile, desexualized, supporting of men, upholding cultural norms, and sacrificing self for the good of the family. As Datta (2000) notes, there was particular valorizing of the mother figure and its symbolic association with the new nation’s struggles. Women’s bodies were thus a site for ideological struggle and meaning over what it means to be a woman in Indian society. The cinema of 1970s and 1980s differed slightly from the previous two decades because of the growth of women’s movement and later advent of television. Television was a major change that now brought global images directly into Indian homes. In the wake of wider societal changes, Bollywood began to incorporate the dualistic themes of tradition versus modernity and Indian versus Western. In the process, the industry used women’s bodies to convey how tensions between two opposing phenomena expressed themselves in society and both created and resolved personal and social conflicts. These often-conflict-ridden themes had already started to emerge in the late 1960s but became more prominent thereafter. In these narratives, the traditional was usually underscored as desirable, but while reasserting the worth of conservative values, Bollywood also clearly understood the power of women’s sexualized bodies to provide novelty, voyeuristic, and erotic pleasure to its essentially conservative audience. During the 1970s and 1980s “angry young men,” keen on saving damsels in distress, came to dominate the screen. Somewhat contradictorily, this heroism came with a greater incorporation of cinematic images of violence against women that, although problematic, was emphasized because it provided audiences with sadomasochistic and voyeuristic pleasure (Datta 2000; Gopalan 1997).

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The transformation could be seen in costuming. Leading actresses were dressed in revealing blouses with saris, padded bras, and underwear that accentuated their breasts and hips. Modified traditional dress also increasingly gave way to entirely Western outfits such as swimsuits and other revealing costumes. Sexy and seductive dance numbers and subtle sex scenes were also incorporated for entertainment. “Vamps” usually playing the role of cabaret dancers or prostitutes further added to this entertainment and erotic pleasure. They wore more revealing outfits than the leading actresses and took on roles that would be considered too risqué for leading actresses who had to be alluring while maintaining a wholesome, virginal, girl-next-door image. One of the popular vamps of this time was Helen, who possessed a Western name to match her exotic appearance, and often performed cabaret on screen. Her seductive songs and dances such as Piya Tu Ab to Aaja from the movie Caravan (1971), Mehbooba Mehbooba from Sholay (1975), and Yeh Mera Dil from Don (1978) are essentially earlier version of item numbers. In the 1990s when India began adopting economic liberalization policies opening doors to foreign companies and investment after years of nationalist policies, Bollywood began incorporating themes of a more modern and “globalized India” into its storylines. Film plots began to be set in the West more often, particularly in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Switzerland. Non-resident Indians (NRIs) began to appear in the storyline, as demand for Bollywood films increased overseas because of the growing Indian diaspora. In many films produced during this decade, the Indian patriarchal expectation of women remained the same even when the plots were played out in the Western settings. In films like Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gum, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, and Dil to Pagal Hai, women’s roles still revolved around male protagonists. At this time even though more women had begun to work outside their homes and had professional careers, Bollywood films rarely depicted them in such roles. Instead of reflecting the changing social reality, women continued to be bearers of an imagined traditional femininity enshrined in the superiority of Indian traditional culture albeit in a setting that was now mixed with the Western consumer culture that had begun taking root in Indian society. The 1990s was also the period when MTV entered India, and American and British music videos began to be incessantly played on Indian television. Bollywood’s musicals provided readymade content for MTV which

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incorporated these in their programming to better connect with local audiences and reach a larger Indian audience that still preferred Bollywood songs over Western music. MTV amplified the use of hybrid “Hinglish” language and fast-paced video that appealed to the youth. Bollywood, influenced by MTV, began to also create up tempo music and dance sequences and incorporated several Western styles (Gokulsing and Dissanayake 2004). “Item numbers” thus emerged as an Indian answer to MTV music videos, one that contained all the intense energy of concentrated music and dance but usually had very little to do with the overall film plot or narrative. The item numbers were instead inserted purely for their entertainment value. Not coincidentally, it is around this period, one begins to see a trend toward greater and more explicit sexualization of women’s bodies in Bollywood cinema. The use of item numbers has continued to grow since then and have become somewhat a regular feature in Bollywood films produced after 2000 (Gokulsing and Dissanayake 2004). Since the year 2000, women’s roles in Bollywood films have not changed substantially even though global influences in terms of Western clothing, settings, use of English language, and musical and dance styles seem to have increased (Rao 2010). Women on screen appear in fictional careers as police officers, doctors, and teachers but the professional aspect of their roles still remains secondary to their romantic relationship with the leading male actor. There has also been a growth in “period films” like Padmavaat and Baajrao Mastani which tend to valorize and glamorize old problematic cultural practices and patriarchal conception of a woman. There are however different types of films being made in Bollywood today, and there is an increase in women film directors and producers who are telling a more complex women-centric stories. This is beginning to change the images of women on screen in very small ways, but the larger representation of women still remains problematic and one that is embodied in 1000-year-old Sanskrit Shloka (Geena Davis Institute Study 2014, p. 29) Karyeshu Dasi, Karaneshu Mantri; Bhojeshu Mata, Shayaneshu Rambha, Roopeshu Lakshmi, Kshamayeshu Dharitri, Shat dharmayukta, Kuladharma Patni. Translation: She works like a slave, she advises like a minister, she feeds you like a mother, she is skilled in bed like the divine courtesan Rambha, she is as beautiful as the goddess Lakshmi, and she forgives your transgressions like the earth. These are the six qualities of an ideal wife. From Neetisara (Aphorisms)

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Item Numbers: A Hybrid Global-Local Site for Gender Performance Songs and dances have been a hallmark of Bollywood cinema since its earliest beginnings. Their significance in everyday life of Indians cannot be over emphasized. They are very much a part of the fabric of culture and every day celebration. Globalization and global cultural flow have had an influence on song and dances in Indian cinema which has been borrowing and mixing ideas, images, and music and indigenizing them for local consumption for several decades now (Ganti 2013; Rao 2010; Gopal and Moorti 2008). Desai and Dudrah (2008, p. 11) explain, “the song and dance enable and incorporate multiple forms of performance and viewing within the film, for example non-normative or transgressive sexualities within the context of courtesan dance scenes or same-sex desire or intimacy.” “Item numbers” emerged among Bollywood’s song and dance sequences in the late 1990s (Brara 2010). These were high-energy racy performances incorporated within the film but had very little to do with the narrative of the plot. The colloquial word “item” means “a thing” or “an object,” and in the song and dance sequence the “item” is usually a female actor. Thus, one can see misogyny and objectification of women in the very articulation of these cinematic bits. However, the story of the item numbers is more complex. Item numbers have not emerged in a vacuum, they are a product of a complex system which includes India’s patriarchal culture, economics, legal environment, and globalization. India is largely a conservative country where traditional patriarchal norms, misogyny, and sexist attitude toward women are still quite strong. It is also a country where gender segregation in everyday life is common, and where interacting with people of opposite sex, public display of affection, and sexual expressions are frowned upon. Directors and producers of films are a product of this patriarchal culture. Thus, the images they create reflect the ideology and desires of men within Indian patriarchal culture. With globalization, of course, Indian culture itself has been changing and so has the cinematic content including representation of women as noted before. Item numbers for some Indian film producers are an economic necessity in an environment where filmmaking continues to be a very risky business due to lack of a well-developed financing system, and intense local and global competition. Item numbers help boost ticket sales by drawing

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more audiences particularly from smaller cities and rural areas for whom sexually charged item numbers, cinesexuality, and other transgressions on screen are likely to offer even more freedom from conservative sexual mores of everyday life, provide secret joys, fulfill desires, and provide erotic pleasure (Brara 2010; Mulvey 2009). Item numbers help in movie promotion, and beyond cinema, they act as stand-alone music videos for television, as catchy songs for radio and other media, and as party and dance songs for clubs. All these help to generate more money for film producers and provide both profit and financial stability to the producers. Item numbers exist in a culture where laws such as the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act 1978 and the Cinematograph Act of 1952 provide guidelines to the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) which reviews every film and classifies and rates them. They also censor what they find to be objectionable. Thus, filmmakers who for long have avoided overt sex scenes instead have relied on more suggestive sex scenes and other sensual depictions particularly in songs and dances to pass the censorship board and get a universal film rating that will help in a wider distribution of their films. In addition to these, considering the controversy around “items numbers,” it is also important to highlight Bollywood actresses’ views on “item numbers” which tend to vary widely. Interviews given by actresses in popular press show that some actresses see these cinematic bits as just another form of acting. They see the criticisms of item numbers as “hypocritical” and “ridiculous” arguing that they are “fun” and “catchy” and are produced only because the public loves and wants them (Indian Express 2014). Some prominent female actors like Kareena Kapoor have said that they enjoy doing the item numbers because it makes them feel sensual, and that they like the high-energy music and dance aspects of these sequences (Magoo 2012). Kareena Kapoor also demands high price for doing these bits, though lesser known actresses make much less for these performances. Other female actors like Shabana Azmi have been more critical noting that “item numbers” objectify women and normalize sexual harassment and sexual violence of women (TimesNowNews 2018). Actresses like Kangana Ranaut have gone even further in refusing to do item numbers and calling for their ban (Chaturvedi 2018). Another recognized function of the item number has been to introduce new actresses to audiences. They are important to “new faces” struggling to find a competitive place in a crowded cinematic field. Item numbers have also been used to revive the careers of some established actresses who

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have faded from the public consciousness for various reasons. Item numbers for this group have been career lifesavers in providing actresses the publicity that they seek. Item numbers are thus a complex cinematic site where global entertainment culture meets local culture, law, ideology, and economics to give rise to peculiar images for public consumption. Thus, these item numbers are the subject of current exploration which is guided by the following research questions: RQ1: What themes dominate the lyrics of item number videos? RQ2: How are women portrayed in item number videos?

Method For this study, item numbers produced between 2000 and 2018  in Bollywood films were examined. The initial plan was to sample the top five item numbers from each year for the study. However, due to lack of reliable data, it proved extremely difficult to exactly gauge the popularity of an individual item number. The problem of accuracy was further complicated by the fact that an item number is a part of a film, and not just an individual music video. Item number views on YouTube are also not a reliable measure as an individual might view a particular item number several times based on their interest. Thus, in order to select the sample for the study, item numbers were chosen based on their write ups in the popular press in articles that ranked them as top ones for a certain year. A total of 133 item number videos were gathered through this search process. The sample contained a variation between one item number for years 2000 and 2001 and 16 for years 2012 and 2013, perhaps some indicative of a trend in production. The item number videos for the study were accessed through YouTube. After the collection of the sample, thematic analysis (TA) was conducted. Thematic analysis (TA) is a commonly used method for analyzing qualitative data (Boyatzis 1998; Terry et  al. 2017). In the first stage of the analysis, all item numbers were viewed to obtain a holistic impression of what was in them. The second reading involved identifying codes or important features of the item numbers. After that, data were collated into broader patterns of meanings or themes. Themes were further reviewed against the data and named, and the final phase involved putting together the analytic narrative and contextualizing the analysis.

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Findings and Discussion Examining Bollywood’s item numbers produced between 2000 and 2018, one can observe global influences. Item numbers are clearly a hybrid site that incorporate music, lyrics, visuals, and people from all over the world. One can see influences ranging from Middle Eastern belly dancing to American hip-hop, from African and Latin American drumming to Euro-­ style techno music. Indian producers are borrowing images and cultures to create what can best be described as an “erotic spectacle” (Mulvey 2009). Item numbers, like other film texts, use linguistic and visual codes that convey certain and specific meaning. The message expresses a masculine ideology of powerful men not only of Indian society but globally whose “way of seeing” is being incorporated in Indian cinema, whether it is playboy bunnies or sexual bodies of belly dancers with their faces covered but midriff exposed. There is a “pornographic imagination” (Sontag 1969), homo and hetero-eroticism, and even sexual orgy observed in the construction of item numbers. Globalization and spread of pornography seem to have provided Indian producers with a new visual language for sexual objectification of women, which is dominant in the production of “item number” videos. The visuals drawn from abroad are often indigenized, sometimes in odd ways, so as to remain appealing to the conservative Indian audiences and perhaps also to avoid censorship. For example, in one of the shots, one can see men in short leather pants, an imagery clearly drawn from the gay culture abroad, but these men are also wearing “ohm” necklaces, a Hindu religious symbol. These men are shown to be heterosexual men as they are visualized having sex with women. Songs and dances in Bollywood films have been sites of transgression (Dudrah and Desai 2008). Romance and public display of affection have been included in songs and dances as transgressive acts in the past, however in the last two decades, visually the transgressive acts have become more pornographic and misogynist. They now seem to be a patriarchal man’s imagined world in which he is successful and in control, where numerous women from all over the world are vying for his attention through seductive dance and songs. In item numbers, men do not simply pursue women, but women are also frequently shown enticing and seducing men who are irresistible to fulfill their own desires. Seduction thus, in this imaginary view, satisfies the woman as much as the man.

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Item numbers often show “item women” pictured outside the domestic context entertaining a crowd or dancing at a beach party, bar/pub, casino, at a wedding or bachelor party, or at village celebration (see Table 1). These new sites allow viewers to enter into a fantasy world of lavish parties and celebration with a lot of women around them, which ordinarily is not common in a middle-class gender-segregated society. Women’s representation in item numbers seems to have shifted from patriarchal protection in the domestic arena to a sexual object in the globalized public arena.

Themes Within the Lyrics of Item Numbers The dominant theme in the lyrics of item numbers observed was that of sexual desire and lust (48%, n = 64), followed by love (25.6%, n = 34) and partying (12.8%, n = 17) (See Table 2). While some of the lyrics of the item numbers are quite problematic such as when Kareena Kapoor sings Table 1  Location and purpose of the item song

Location and purpose

Frequency (percentage)

Entertaining at a bar, club, or casino 47 (35.3%) Entertaining a village crowd 19 (14.3%) Entertaining a house or pool party 24 (18.0%) Intro, title credit song 13 (9.8%) Promo, end credit song 10 (7.5%) Other 20 (15%) Total 133 (100%)

Table 2  Themes in lyrics of item numbers

Themes in lyrics Sexual desire/lust Love Partying Beauty Freedom and happiness Other (power, alcohol, separation, angst) Total

Frequency 64 (48.1%) 34 (25.6%) 17 (12.8%) 9 (6.8%) 3 (2.3%) 6 (4.5%) 133 (100%)

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“I am a piece of meat, so swallow me with alcohol” in Fevicol Se from the movie Dabangg 2, a quarter of the song (25.6%, n  =  34) appear to be about love, which is more in line of Bollywood’s earlier song traditions.

Sexual Objectification of Women in Item Numbers Women are central to item number videos; however, they are portrayed as sexual objects to fulfill male fantasy. Women in these videos are sexually objectified in several different ways. They appear in cameo roles, they are often placed as the center of lusting men overtly ogling their bodies, they wear very revealing outfits, camera angles used often focus on their body parts, and various elements of nature such as mud, water, fire are used on or surrounding women’s bodies to provide greater titillation, and there is selection of white women as “items” and exploitation of their bodies for brown man’s gaze.

Women in Cameo Roles Majority of women in item number videos appeared in cameo roles (n = 87, 65.4%) (see Table 3), where an attractive woman appears only as an object for male gaze and does not have a larger role within the film. Even though item numbers are primarily performed by women in cameo roles, we do see 26.3% (n = 35) of the leading actresses also performing these cinematic bits, which shows greater acceptance of these among the actresses now than before when only “vamps” performed these risqué numbers. However, these still remain largely in the domain of lesser known actresses who appear just for a single dance and music sequence and have no presence beyond that in the film. Table 3  Roles of actresses in item numbers

Actress’s role

Frequency (percentage)

Cameo Leading actress Supporting actress Total

87 (65.4%) 35 (26.3%) 11 (8.3%) 133 (100%)

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Single Woman, Ogling Men Another way in which sexual objectification of women takes place in the item numbers is through women’s central role as seductress in the performances. In a majority of the item numbers women are the main focus of attention, they are the “eye candy” (77.4%, n = 103). In 22.6% (n = 30) of the item numbers there were no central male character on screen. In majority of the item numbers, a woman is seen surrounded by a large group of people both men and women (n = 81, 60.9%) who are dancing behind her as her backup dancers, or a woman is surround by a group of just men (24%, n = 32), which is second highest or a group of just women (n = 14, 10.5%) (see Table 4). It is common to see a group of men ogling at the female performer in very overt aggressive ways; she is the center of their attention as well as the camera’s gaze. She appears to be seducing the hero or dancers around her (and also the audiences outside in the theaters). We also see lot of men handling women, that is either lifting her or touching her. Given India’s problematic and pervasive culture of “eve-­ teasing” or sexual harassment, the inclusion of this kind of lecherous look toward woman is particularly concerning as it reinforces and normalizes what is already a serious problem in India where women feel unsafe outside and are frequent targets of stalking, groping, and cat-calling on streets.

Table 4  People around “item woman”

Item woman surrounded by

Frequency (percentage)

Mixed group of men and women Group of men Group of women Lead actor Villain Actress alone Total

81 (60.9%) 32 (24.1%) 14 (10.5%) 3 (2.3%) 2 (1.5) 1 (0.8) 133 (100%)

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Uncovering Women, Covering Men Sexual objectification of women also takes place through clothing or lack thereof. In the item numbers one observes that a majority of the women are partially clothed while a majority of the men are fully clothed (see Table 5). In very few of item numbers men appear without their shirts or take them off at the end of the song. In contrast, women almost always seem to be wearing significantly revealing clothes whether they be Western or traditional Indian outfits which expose their backs, belly, and legs. Sexualization of male bodies and male stripping can be also seen but these are infrequent compared to women.

Fragmented Bodies: Gyrating Hips, Undulating Navels, and Heaving Bosoms Objectification also takes place through camera angles. In all the item numbers (100%) there were at least on shot of the camera angle lingering on a woman’s fragmented or individual body parts—the midriff and navel, bosom, naked back, legs, lips, or hips. These are the objects that come in to focus for special attention. It is common to see dance moves that look like sex moves, and include thrusting pelvises, lip smacking, undulating navels, spread legs, gyrating hips, and heaving bosoms. The emphasis is on the women’s gym toned beautiful body, which is a fetishized object of desire for male titillation and sexual pleasure (Mulvey 2009).

Table 5  Levels of nudity for men and women Clothing Fully dressed Partially dressed Semi-mude (shirtless for men and bikini or similar revealing clothes for women) Other (no men in the video)

Women

Men

16 (12.0%) 112 (84.2%) 5 (3.8%)

98 (73.7%) 0 (0.0%) 5 (3.9%)

0 (0%)

30 (22.6%)

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White Bodies as Objects of Desire One observes sexual objectification of women, particularly white women, in the item numbers, a point also highlighted by Mubarki (2016) in her essay. Globalization seems to have opened new avenues of exploitation not only of domestic women for local men’s fantasy but also global women for men’s erotic pleasure. In the item numbers we see the frequent use of white women’s bodies which are indigenized so as to not look too European when they are the central character, and at other times their Europeaness seems to be exploited when they are background dancers. Model/actresses such as Yana Synkova/ Yana Gupta (Czech), Natasa Stankovic (Serbian), Claudia Ciesla (PolishGerman), Katrina Kaif (British), and Natalia Kapchuk (Russian) were prominent in the item numbers examined. Women from mixed racial and cultural heritage such as Jacqueline Fernandez, Amanda Rosario, Nora Fatehi, and Sunny Leone also feature frequently in the item numbers. The social historical relationship between the white female’s sexuality and its circulation in Hindi films is not completely new. Mubarki (2016) has noted that representation of white women as “promiscuous and sexually available” existed within the nationalist discourse during the colonial times. This discourse seems to have resurfaced in the neoliberal globalized India, where white bodies are once again available for fetishization. It is not just the European models who are objectified and sexualized, fair-skinned Indian actresses who have Eurocentric look like Kareena Kapoor and Aishwarya Rai also appear prominently in item numbers. India’s fascination with fair skin has deep and complicated history. Fair skin has been culturally desired even though a vast majority of Indians have a darker skin tone. Dark skinned women face many kinds of discrimination in society; we see this cultural preference being highlighted through fair-skinned women on screen who are presented as objects of beauty and desire.

Sexual Objectification Through the Use of Earthly Elements Another way in which sexual objectification of women was done was through the frequent use of earth (sand and mud), smoke, fire, and water. Women’s glistening wet bodies with wet clothes clinging to their bodies can be frequently seen in the item number videos. In the item numbers, fountains seem to magically appear on the stage or in the spot where

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women are dancing making them wet, or women (or someone else) are pouring water or frothy alcohol on their bodies. Fire and smoke in the scenes or around female actors can also be observed. These help to ignite passion, danger, and excitement both literally and figuratively. Lyrics of the songs also make frequent reference to fire, for example, “I have sparks in my eyes, my fair body is like a chain of embers” (Babuji Zara Dheere Chalo, Film Dum, 2003). In addition, one can also see visuals of women covered in mud or touching sand. The use of all these elements are purposeful, they help to sexualize and eroticize the scenes while also objectifying and sexualizing women’s bodies. In conclusion, “item numbers” use linguistic and visual codes that convey women are sexual objects for male pleasure. Item numbers are a site of male domination, misogyny, sexual objectification, commodification, and exploitation of women bodies. In item numbers, female power comes only through the use of her exposed body. These kinds of depictions can have an impact on men and women in India and their expectation of each other. In a society where gender equality is still a distant dream, and women face many problems that affect their equal participation in society, these kinds of images are likely to add to the problem. Sexual objectification of women results in internalization of such messages by women who see sexuality as one of the few assets they have (self-objectification) and also contributes to mental health problems (Fredrickson and Roberts 1997). Examining item numbers there is no doubt that Bollywood needs major transformation when it comes to representation of women in films and more specifically in item numbers where pornographic lens on women’s bodies turn them into mere commodities for global consumption and circulation. This means there is a need for major “transformation in film-making practice, an end to oppressive ideology and stereotyping, and the creation of a feminist critical aesthetics” as noted by Thornham (1999, pp. 9–10). Lastly, there is also much to say about male dominance in item number and how directors construct masculinity and femininity for audiences, which can be a subject of a future study.

References Brara, R. (2010, June 5). The Item Number: Cinesexuality in Bollywood and Social Life. Economic & Political Weekly. Bartky, S. L. (1990). Femininity and domination: Studies in the phenomenology of oppression. New York, NY: Routledge.

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Boyatzis, R. E. (1998). Transforming qualitative information: Thematic analysis and code development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cole, E. & Daniel, J. H. (2005). Featuring females: Feminist Analyses of Media. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Chatterjee, S. (2016). ‘English Vinglish’ and Bollywood: what is ‘new’ about the ‘new woman’? Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 23(8), 1179–1192. Chaturvedi, A. (2018, April 4). Kangana Ranaut: I have been analysing myself…how amazing I have been, but how stupid also! The Times of India. Retrieved from: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hindi/ bollywood/news/kangana-­r anaut-­i -­h ave-­b een-­a nalysing-­m yself-­h ow-­ amazing-­i-­have-­been-­but-­how-­stupid-­also/articleshow/63597141.cms. Datta, S. (2000). Globalisation and Representations of Women in Indian Cinema. Social Scientist, 28(3/4), 71–82. https://doi.org/10.2307/3518191. Dudrah, R.  K. & Desai, J. (Eds.) (2008). The Bollywood reader. Maidenhead, Berkshire, England; McGraw-Hill. Fredrickson, B. L., & Roberts, T. (1997). Objectification theory: Toward understanding women’s lived experiences and mental health risks. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21, 173–206. Ganti, T. (2013) Bollywood: A guidebook to popular Hindi cinema. London: Routledge. Geena Davis Institute Study (2014): Cinema and Society: Shaping our Worldview Beyond the Lens Investigation on the Impact of Gender Representation in Indian Films. Retrieved from: https://seejane.org/wp-­content/uploads/ cinema-­and-­society-­investigation-­of-­the-­impact-­on-­gender-­representation-­in-­ indian-­films.pdf. Gokulsing, K. M. & Dissanayake, W. (2004). Indian Popular Cinema: A Narrative of Cultural Change. Trentham Books Gopalan, L. (1997). Avenging women in Indian cinema. Screen, 38(1), 42–59. Indian Express (2014, December 31). I think it’s ridiculous: Malaika Arora Khan on item song debates. Retrieved from: https://indianexpress.com/ar ticle/enter tainment/bollywood/i-­t hink-­i ts-­r idiculous­malaika-­arora-­khan-­on-­item-­song-­debates/. Magoo, S. (2012, December 22). I love dancing and doing item numbers: Kareena Kapoor Khan. The Hindustan Times. Retrieved from: https://www.hindustantimes.com/bollywood/i-­love-­dancing-­and-­doing-­item-­numbers-­kareena-­ kapoor-­khan/story-­aiQ8xKsta5zgni22K4ZkJO.html. Gopal, S. & Moorti, S. (2008). Global Bollywood: Travels of Hindi song and dance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Ramasubramanian, S. & Oliver, M.  B. (2003). Portrayals of Sexual Violence in Popular Hindi Films, 1997–99. Sex Roles, 48(7), 327–336.

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Mandhai, S. & Gautam, V. (2018, March 26). Does Bollywood have a women problem? Critics say depictions of women in Indian cinema normalise misogynistic ideas and sexual harassment. Aljazeera. Retrieved from: https://www. a l j a z e e r a . c o m / i n d e p t h / f e a t u r e s / b o l l y w o o d -­w o m a n -­p r o b l e m -­ 180325060304877.html. Mubarki, M. A. (2016). Brown gaze and white flesh: exploring ‘moments’ of the single white female in Hindi cinema. Contemporary South Asia, 24(2), 164–183. Mulvey, L. (2009). Visual and Other Pleasures. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. 2nd Edition. Rao, S. (2010). “I Need an Indian Touch”: Glocalization and Bollywood Films. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 3(1), 1–19. Schaefer, D. J., Karan, K. (Eds.) (2013) Bollywood and Globalisation: The global power of popular Hindi cinema. New York: Routledge. Sommers-Flanagan, R., Sommers-Flanagan, J., & Davis, B. (1993). What’s happening on music television: A gender role content analysis. Sex Roles, 28, 745–753. Sontag, S. (1969) “The Pornographic Imagination,” in Styles of Radical Will. New York: Anchor Books. Terry, G., Hayfield, N., Clarke, V., & Braun, V. (2017). Thematic analysis. In The SAGE Handbook of qualitative research in psychology (pp. 17–36). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. TimesNowNews (2018, Mar 5). Shabana Azmi has some major issues with Kareena Kapoor Khan’s Fevicol Se. Retrieved from: https://www.timesnownews.com/ entertainment/news/bollywood-­n ews/article/shabana-­a zmi-­k areena-­ kapoor-­khan-­item-­numbers-­salman-­khan-­sunny-­leone-­zoya-­akhtar/204903. Thornham, S. (1999). Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. Edinburg: Edinburgh University Press.

Chapter 4: From Pimpology to Pimpologia: A Comparative Analysis of Pimp Rap in the United States and Italy Margherita Angelucci and Wissal Houbabi

Introduction The figure of the pimp is a central icon in commercial Hip-Hop (Rose 2008). Since the rise of gangsta rap in the United States in the late 1980s, many rap artists have borrowed the pimp language and style and transformed it into a commercially successful musical and stylistic trope. While Hip-Hop is embedded in a wider culture surrounding gender relations in the music industry, where only a minority of genres distance themselves from hegemonic ideas of masculinity (Lay 2000), the theme of pimpin’ seems to be a distinguishing characteristic of rap music,

M. Angelucci (*) Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] W. Houbabi Independent Researcher, Bologna, Italy © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Fosbraey, N. Puckey (eds.), Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65189-3_5

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practically non-­existent in other music genres. As we will further explain in this chapter, this can be partially attributed to the social environment where Hip-Hop originated and to the history of Black American oral practices from which rap music borrowed its language. Our focus, however, will be to explore why the pimp style has also been widely adopted by rappers who do not share the social and cultural background of the American originators, concentrating specifically on pimp rap within the Italian Hip-Hop scene. In this chapter, we argue that, while the figure of the pimp-rapper was imported from the United States, the sexism already present in the Italian social context has allowed for this misogynist figure to flourish in Italian Hip-Hop without ostracism and, on the contrary, to be promoted by the mainstream music industry. The history of Hip-Hop merits a short digression here as the origins of this cultural movement deeply influenced its themes and its language. Hip-Hop was born in the South Bronx, New York, in the 1970s (Toop 1984; Rose 1994; Chang 2005) as a source of entertainment for disenfranchised Black and Latinx youth and as a response to a situation of urban decay, poverty, marginalisation and gang violence. Elements of gang culture like competitiveness and masculinity continued to be present in Hip-­ Hop (Larsen 2006) but were channelled into its various artistic expressions: DJing, rap music, graffiti, and breakdancing. From the Bronx, Hip-Hop spread globally and became both a powerful vehicle of self-expression for many young people across the continents and a multi-billion-dollar industry spanning beyond the entertainment sector. The notion of global Hip-­ Hop has been recognised since the 1990s (Rose 1994; Potter 1995) and the publication, in 2001, of Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA, edited by Tony Mitchell, can be considered the starting point of a codified area of research that came to be labelled “global Hip-Hop studies” (Alim et al. 2009), which we use as a framework for this chapter. The history of Hip-Hop is one of globalisation as much as one of localisation, a phenomenon that has been labelled as “glocalisation” (borrowing the terminology coined by sociologist Roland Robertson 1995). On the one hand, we find the notion of Global Hip-Hop Nation, which, drawing from Benedict Anderson (1983), Alim defines as “a diverse, imagined community whose members (known as heads) practice and/or appreciate Hip Hop’s expressive culture” (Alim 2015, 850). Hip-Hop heads go to great lengths to fashion themselves as members of the Global Hip-Hop Nation, through the clothes they wear or the language they use. Hip-Hop influences the values they give importance to and it also informs the attitude that Hip-Hop heads from all over the world have towards gender roles. On the other hand, Hip-Hop remains to this day “music

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about where I’m from” (Potter 1995, 146), anchored to the specificities of the places where it is created. Hip-Hop practitioners outside the United States adopt linguistic elements and stylistic features of their American counterparts but they also incorporate local elements in their productions and distance themselves from certain aspects of American Hip-Hop that they deem inappropriate in their own cultures, such as the use of profane language as well as the expression of violence or explicit sexuality (Pennycook 2007). This means that global Hip-Hops can be highly critical of dominant themes in American Hip-Hop, in particular features of violence, consumerism, and misogyny, especially when confronted with very different local conditions (Pennycook and Mitchell 2009). A testament to the global spread of Hip-Hop culture, the pimp rap subgenre expanded its reach to countries well beyond the United States. In Italy, many rappers have described themselves as ‘pimps’ or, using the Italian equivalents, as ‘papponi’ or ‘magnaccia’. In his song Higuain (2016), Enzo Dong states: “I’m the P.I.M.P.—B.I.G./On the streets you call me D.O.N.G”;1 while in his track Soldi e Mignotte (“Money and Hoes”, 2016), Hyst claims that he is “full of whores/the illest pimp”.2 In the lyrics of both American and Italian rappers, the image of the pimp is commonly associated with images of street smarts, monetary and sexual success and, in general, with a romanticised idea of the pimp as a film character, a ‘cool guy’ living on the edge with beautiful cars, women and large amounts of money at his disposal. Presenting oneself as a pimp is a performance and a roleplay. “[Someone like me] plays the pimp”,3 as Milanese rapper Mondo Marcio puts it in his song Make Money Money (2004a), released soon after the global hit P.I.M.P. (2003)  by 50 Cent reached number 10 in the Italian top singles chart4 despite the lull in popularity that rap music was experiencing in the country at the time (Zukar 2017). 50 Cent’s song was so popular in Italy that rappers Primo, Tormento and Ibbanez used the instrumental of P.I.M.P. to produce a remix in Italian, which was published in a mixtape around a decade later (2013). In his verse, Tormento references the spelling style typical of Snoop Dogg (who appears in the remix of the original 50 Cent’s song): “P.R.I.M.O. and T.O.R.M.E.N.T.O./Be good and give head to these two MC’s, just like that”, and he adds: “If this rap shit doesn’t work out/We’ll buy a couple of bitches and open a strip club”.5 The word ‘pimp’ was also popularised in Italy through programs such as Pimp My Ride, which was broadcasted on MTV Italy, and its Italian spin-off Pimp My Wheels, presented by Italian rap duo Gemelli Diversi between 2005 and 2006. However, as Tricia Rose pointed out, “[d]espite the cuddly, fuzzy-hat image of pimps in some

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mainstream outlets […] that attempt to generate sympathy for pimps, pimp ideology and its expression in popular cultural are fundamentally exploitative to women” (Rose 2008, 168). This chapter is divided in two sections. In the first part, we explain the rise of the pimp myth as a social mobility icon for African-American males and a symbol of linguistic dexterity, and how it re-emerged within the context of gangsta rap. In the second part, we carry out a comparative analysis of the pimp style in American and Italian rap music, highlighting their specific characteristics as well as their commonalities. The methodology used for this study is based on qualitative content analysis of the lyrics from a selection of 15 Italian rap songs released after 2006, a year which we chose as a watershed because it was the first year of the new millennium that saw the release of Italian rap albums under major record labels. We then identified thematic parallels between these Italian songs and American rap songs belonging to the pimp subgenre. We chose this approach taking into consideration that, contrary to most classical and pop music where the composer and the performer are two separate entities, in the majority of cases, in Hip-Hop music the composer is the performer (Rose 1994). Lyrics analysis is, therefore, paramount to understand how the performers position themselves within society and mainstream culture. All translations from Italian, both of rap lyrics and academic works, are ours. They are intended for explanatory purposes only, and they might contain some standardisation of vernacular language.

The Rise of the Pimp Myth in American Rap The Oxford English Dictionary defines a pimp as “a man who controls prostitutes and arranges clients for them, taking a percentage of their earnings in return” (Pimp n.d.). In the context of rap music, however, the word ‘pimp’ (used both as a noun and as a verb) has moved beyond indicating the profession of someone who manages prostitutes and has taken on the meaning of being cool, flashy, trendy or popular with women. The figure of the pimp entered Hip-Hop through popular culture. Snoop Dogg, one of the biggest purveyors of pimp rap, said he was inspired by 1970s Blaxploitation films:

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When I started seeing those movies in the 70’s, like The Mack and Superfly, that helped me to more or less pick who I wanted to be in life, how I wanted to live my life, how I wanted to represent me. (Moody 2003)

Los Angeles gangsta rapper Ice-T, on the other hand, cited Iceberg Slim’s autobiography Pimp: The Story of My Life (1967) as a source of inspiration for his music (and his stage moniker): Ghetto hustlers in my neighbourhood would talk this nasty dialect rich with imagery of sex and humor. My buddies and I wanted to know where they picked it up, and they told us, ‘You better get into some of the Iceberg stuff! (in Quinn 2000, 123).

The language of Iceberg Slim’s works, also quoted as an inspiration by other gangsta rap artists such as Too $hort and Ice Cube, is extremely explicit and brutal in the description of his life as a pimp on the streets of Chicago in the 1940s and 1950s. As explained in the preface of his autobiography, Slim’s pitiless accounts were meant to have an educational purpose: The account of my brutality and cunning as a pimp will fill many of you with revulsion, however if one intelligent valuable young man or woman can be saved from the destructive slime then the displeasure I have given will have been outweighed by that individual’s use of his potential in a socially constructive manner. (xxiii)

The language, style and attitude of pimp culture will instead be the part of Iceberg Slim’s inheritance that will capture the imagination of the future protagonists of gangsta and pimp rap. “The Mack and Pimp furnished […] aspiring gangsta artists with narrative initiations into pop-­ cultural production rather than actual pimping” (Quinn 2000, 123, emphasis in original). The pimp aesthetic that we see in rap videos (for instance, in the already quoted P.I.M.P. by 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg, 2003, or in Nelly’s Pimp Juice, 2002), rich with expensive cars, furs, flashy suits and hats, gold jewels, diamonds, perms, sceptres and goblets, directly references these previous cultural productions that were popularised around the 1970s. The myth of the pimp, however, has deeper roots in African-American culture. In the Hughes Brothers’ documentary American Pimp, a procurer from Los Angeles, Danny Brown, explains the rise of this profession

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in the context of the post-slavery period. Slave masters had always sexually exploited women slaves but, upon liberation, the pimp came along to make this exploitation profitable, convincing Black women to ask the former slave owners for money in exchange for their favours: For years, prostitution wasn’t a bad thing […] When it became a known thing that black men were actually getting a lot of money from this particular vice, that they weren’t paying any taxes, that’s when it became such a dreaded thing (American Pimp 1999, 9’22”).

This argument put forward by Brown is at the core for the subsequent reframing of the pimp as a respected social mobility symbol for Black men (Quinn 2000). The qualities inherent in the highly patriarchal figure of the pimp, which is founded on the control of the female body and mind, and on the sexist assumption that women are not capable of self-management, both from a financial and an emotional point of view, came to be portrayed as positive. The qualities that were most respected in a pimp were his ability to make money without being exploited by ‘The (white) Man’; his ability to provide and his clever use of language (Quinn 2000). The pimp embodied the pater familias who was financially successful without having to be humiliated by doing a menial job. Concurrently, the figure of the Black pimp is proof, as feminist author bell hooks points out, that a large majority of black men took as their standard the dominator model set by white masters. When slavery ended these black men often used violence to dominate black women, which was a repetition of the strategies of control white slave-masters used. (hooks 2003, 4)

The notion of patriarchal manhood, with its need to control and provide for women, was adopted by many Black men as the only way to emancipate themselves, to be fully part of the American society, and as a response to slavery and racism. In this context, the pimp—a controller and a provider—became an anti-racist symbol, “an icon of upward mobility for black working-class males” (Quinn 2000, 123), at the expense of women, who were exploited, but also of men, hindering the formation of alternative Black masculinities. Many stereotypical notions surrounding Black masculinity are linked to forms of self-empowerment and survival strategies in the context of a

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racist society (George 1998; Larsen 2006). For instance, arrogance, normally seen as negative, is transformed into a positive attitude for Black men; “it becomes an expression of masculine identity in that it can both be seen as an articulation of defence, and also a way of turning negativity into something positive, for instance in the encounter with racism” (Larsen 2006, 31). Being ‘cool’ is often described as another coping mechanism (see, for instance, Schulz 1969 and Rainwater 1971) that simply works by putting up a front of success. This is an essential part of the “pimp logic”, according to which “in order to get something you need to look like you’ve already got something” (Quinn 2005, 123, emphasis in original), an attitude that also explains the excessive displays of material wealth typical of the pimp style. Language plays a crucial role in the performance of ‘cool’ masculinities and is also a key element of the pimp mythology and, subsequently, of the pimp rap subgenre. A pimp’s verbal skills, his wit and manipulative language are essential to his profession based on the control of women, to the point that the verb ‘to pimp’ is used as a synonym for “talk someone into something” (Ice-T 1994, 198). The pimp is also a recurring character in the Black oral tradition of toasting (Quinn 2000) and is linked to other characters of the African-American folklore, such as the trickster and the Signifying Monkey, all hip and manipulative figures, characterised by their persuasive and dissembling language. Like the Monkey, the pimp uses the characteristic features of signifying: exaggerated language; mimicry; proverbial statement and aphoristic phrasing; punning and plays on words; spontaneity and improvisation; image-making and metaphor; braggadocio; indirection (circumlocution, suggestiveness) and tonal semantics (Smitherman 1977, 94). And he does so to express the superiority of his masculinity: The pimp tends to “play the dozens” (the black practice of verbal duelling and braggadocio) on the female because verbal mastery is equated with sexual dominance (Quinn 2000, 118). The same verbal techniques will be later employed in rap music, another oral practice of African-American origin imbued with the linguistic features of signifying. As we will see in more detail in the next section, lyrics that are boastful, violent or demeaning towards women become a way to affirm a strong masculinity. It is important for the aim of this chapter to frame rap music in the context of signifying practices as this can help to explain the struggle many critics face to recognise the subtle line between factual representation and fictional storytelling in the lyrics. Because of the Hip-Hop mantra “keep it

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real” (Mcleod 1999), many people are induced to think that everything that is said in rap songs corresponds to reality. However, when we look at rap in the wider context of African-American oral tradition in which it is included, we realise that this is not the case. The language of rap is often exaggerated, provocative or humorous—its meaning often widened and reversed. The fact that what is said does not correspond to reality does not undermine the rappers’ credibility or authenticity as, in the signifying use of language, words are in fact deeds (Smitherman 1977). Rappers are not real-life pimps, but they perform a pimp image, borrowing the mythical aura that popular culture has attributed to it. The same happens with Italian rappers who, sometimes without even knowing the intricate web of cultural references behind the pimp icon, are inspired by the ‘coolness’ of their American counterparts and refer to it in their songs and in the way they stylise their bodies. Like Too $hort learned the rules of pimpin’ through Iceberg Slim’s novels, to the point of presenting himself as a teacher in his song Pimpology (1990), Italian Mondo Marcio learned from US gangsta rappers like Too $hort, whom he references directly in the track Sweet Pussy (2004b): “Ho un corso di pimpologia meglio se ti iscrivi” (“I run a pimpology class, you’d better sign up”). However, as we will explain further in the next section, sexism in Italian rap cannot be regarded as a simple translation from an American “pimpology” to an Italian “pimpologia”. In order to be successfully localised, some aspects of “pimpologia” had to be local already.

A Comparative Analysis of Pimp Rap in Italy and the United States Between the late 1980s and the early 1990s, gangsta rap became the most lucrative subgenre of Hip-Hop. The perspective of easy profits led record labels to limit rap music to a formula of sex, drugs and violence, exploiting certain historical stereotypes about Black men as violent individuals, cause of both fear and fascination among the predominantly white audience. In 2008, Rose identified the “gangsta-pimp-ho trinity” (5) that pervaded the rap discourse, noting that these three street icons, which had always been present in traditional Black ghetto mythology, had been elevated to dominant narratives (at least in mainstream circuits), overshadowing the other narratives that were part of Hip-Hop music (Quinn 2005).

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The early 2000s were successful years for pimp rap with the releases of 50 Cent’s worldwide hit P.I.M.P. and David Banner’s Like a Pimp in 2003. From a marketing perspective, pimp rap worked like a charm. On the one hand, the sexualised female body was used as a lure to increase the predominantly masculine audience and, consequently, the profits. On the other, faced with concerns about a growing fluidity in gender roles, “[m]en’s increasing anxiety about proving their manhood [was] discovered as a marketing device” (Lay 2000, 229). The entertainment industry’s focus on this very profitable subgenre was visible also in the official recognition attributed to rap songs that followed the stylistic canon of pimp rap. In 2006, the track It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp by Three 6 Mafia  (2005), composed for the film Hustle & Flow (2005), won the Academy Award for Best Original Sound despite containing misogynistic lyrics. In the same year, the music industry gave praise to songs that objectified women or portrayed them as opportunistic beings. Candy Shop (2005) by 50 Cent was nominated for the Best Rap Song Grammy Award and Gold Digger (2005) by Kanye West won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance. For Italian rap, the first years of the twenty-first century were a period of retreat into underground circuits (Zukar 2017). The lack of interest from major record labels did not mean sexism was absent. In songs like Gonfio Così (“This Hard”), released in 2004 by independent label Vibrarecords, rapper Fabri Fibra talks about meeting a girl in a nightclub and then sexually assaulting her in her sleep. However, it was when Italian Hip-Hop went mainstream that sexism became more widespread and visible. In 2006, major record labels began to invest in rap artists. Fabri Fibra’s first mainstream album Tradimento (2006c), released for Universal Records, reached double platinum and was on heavy radio rotation despite the presence of songs like Su le Mani (“Hands Up”, 2006b) containing rhymes such as “If you don’t give it to me, I cut it off you like Pacciani”.6 The reproduction of stylistic tropes coming from across the Atlantic, which Italians rappers used in order to style themselves as ‘authentic rappers’, together with the complicity of record labels that saw the shock value of explicit lyrics as a selling point, led to the birth of Italian pimp rap. The access to the mainstream fuelled a stereotyped idea of gender, which was already present within Hip-Hop, that requires women to be sexualised and men to be hypermasculine. Men who do not correspond to this idea of masculinity are negatively labelled as homosexuals or girls: in his battle rap track D.F.W.U. (2017), Nerone raps “You sound like a fag, crying

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miserably. You’re not much of man”,7 while in Bassa Marea (“Low Tide” 2016) Ketama126 asserts that he “doesn’t fight with a little girl”.8 For Italian rappers, even more so than for their American counterparts, being a pimp is solely a matter of style. Our lyrics analysis shows examples of Italian rappers who present themselves as pimps as a way to emphasise their ‘coolness’ and their masculinity, defined both by myths surrounding Black male culture in the United States (for instance, the positive connotation of arrogance discussed above) and Italian patriarchal models, which the long-lasting influence of Catholicism and Fascism contributed to shape (Everhart 1998). These models emphasised, in particular, the subordination of women, the normalisation of male control over women’s bodies and sexuality, and the exaltation of virility. During Mussolini’s regime, women were relegated to the position of submissive wives and devoted mothers, considered as a gift given by God for the sole purpose of sexual intercourse and reproduction […] Men were in charge of earning money to support the family. This created an image of male authority, which extended to authority over female sexuality. (Everhart 1998, 677)

Often young men were initiated to sex with prostitutes, accompanied by their fathers who raised them to ‘vent’ their masculinity in brothels and use it for its ‘sacred’ reproductive function at home. Whether mothers or prostitutes, women were regarded as subordinated to the ‘needs’ of men (Mantello 2018). Data show that a culture of sexism is still widespread in Italy. Italy was ranked 70th in the 2018 World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report, the lowest of all EU countries, ahead only of Greece, Malta and Cyprus (World Economic Forum 2018). The 1996 rape law reform introduced a broad definition of sexual violence, including non-consensual marital sex, and replaced the fascist law that regarded rape as a crime against public morality and not as a crime against a person (Cadoppi and Vitiello 2010). However, despite the legislative and social progress of the past two decades, many Italian men and women still consider a wife’s ‘marital duty’ to provide sex on demand to her husband (Maisto 2018, despite the comical nature of the book, is a sad example of this) and victim blaming is still widespread (Giuffrida 2018). According to an Italian Senate inquiry, in 2016, 149 women were victims of feminicide (more than 1 every 3 days), 75% were killed by a family member (Senato della

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Repubblica 2018). The large number of ‘conscientious objectors’ among Italian gynaecologists (68.4% nationally, according to the Italian Minister of Health data on voluntary termination of pregnancy, Ministero della Salute 2017) prevent women from accessing their right to abortion. Feminist author Gwendolyn Pough discussed “[t]he plight of young black women who often mistake male violence and abusiveness as an expression of ‘gangsta love’” (2004, 190) but this phenomenon is not restricted to African-American women. Many Italian women also consider abusiveness to be a normal characteristic of masculinity. ‘Gangsta love’ is also a common theme in many rap songs, both in the United States (e.g. Snoop Dogg’s  Gangsta Luv, 2009) and in Italy (e.g. Guè Pequeño’s Guersace, 2017). The lyrics analysis shows that violence is sometimes justified through the perpetuation of “rape-supportive attitudes” (Burt and Albin 1981). Many of the views around sex role stereotyping, adversarial sexual beliefs, sexual conservatism, and acceptance of interpersonal violence that Burt (1980) used in her analysis of rape myths are traceable in pimp rap lyrics. For example, the belief that “Being roughed up is sexually stimulating to many women” (222) emerges in Cam’ron’s verses: “She like it when I’m nice but she love it when I’m rude” (Kiss Myself 2017). The conviction that “Many times a woman will pretend she doesn’t want to have intercourse because she doesn’t want to seem too loose, but she’s really hoping the man will force her” (222) can be retraced in Fabri Fibra’s Ogni Donna (“Every Woman”, 2006a), where he raps “Every woman dreams of a pimp”,9 and in Guè Pequeño’s Pappone (“Pimp”, 2015): “Soon you’ll have a baby with your real boyfriend/But secretly you want an outlaw”.10 Songs like Kanye West’s Gold Digger (2005) disseminate the idea that a woman is only interested in a man because of his money and fame, corresponding to the adversarial sexual belief that “In a dating relationship a woman is largely out to take advantage of a man” (Burt 1980, 222). Some Italian rappers also perpetuate this idea: in Ce L’Hanno Con Me (“They Blame Me”, 2016), Guè Pequeño raps: “She fucks famous rappers and soccer players from Bayern”,11 while in Ogni Donna (2006a) Fabri Fibra accuses women of being materialistic by saying that “Half of my charm is due to the phone I’ve got”.12 Both American and Italian rappers, however, are willingly participating in this game, bragging about their ability to ‘provide’ material things, usually in exchange for sex (e.g. T.I., Whatever You Like, 2008, and NUMI, Coincidenze, 2017). In other instances, the pimp-rapper is portrayed like someone so ‘cool’ (or so controlling) that he does not need to pay women to receive sexual favours: “She’d cost a grand

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but I swear she loves me, she calls me and then fucks me for free”13 (Guè Pequeño, Ce L’Hanno Con Me, 2016). The themes of money and women are often linked in the lyrics of pimp rap. The dominant discourse, directly drawn from the patriarchal social model, is that money can buy everything, women included. Pimp-rappers complain about women trying to gain access to their wealth but, at the same time, they seek women who they perceive as purchasable. Like other commodities, these women are something to possess, the ability to buy them a symbol of masculine power and success. Mistrust towards women is another recurring theme both in American and Italian pimp rap: since the era of classic gangsta rap (Krims 2000), lyrics such as “How could you trust a ho?” (Dr Dre, Bitches Ain’t Shit, 1992) have implied that men always need to be suspicious about women, who are seen as naturally inclined to deceive, cheat, exploit and ruin men, including by lying about their age to get them incarcerated for assaulting a minor (Mase, I Need to Be, 1997). Italian rappers express similar feelings of distrust in lyrics such as “You said your name is Mine but that’s a lie”14 (Guè Pequeño, Pappone, 2015). This negative conception of women leads to the negation of romantic love and the idea of sex as a mere commodity and financial transaction: in Ce L’Hanno Con Me” (2016), Guè Pequeño raps: “I never gave a woman a fucking bunch of flowers/But I come with my dick out and they suck it like a Yakitori”,15 which echoes Jay-Z’s verses “Me give my heart to a woman? Not for nothin’, never happen/I’ll be forever mackin” (Big Pimpin’, 1999). Both adhere to “Lesson 1” from Too $hort’s “Pimpology” (1990): “Never love a bitch or a hoe”. In pimp rap, women are often dehumanised, presented as bits of bodies rather than as individuals: 20 years since Devin The Dude’s 1998 song Show ‘Em, where women were defined through their ‘pussy’, the objectification of women remains an effective commercial strategy often used by record labels. In  Jake La Furia’s song MMHH, (2018) released by Universal Music Italia, for example, a mix of uncomplicated lyrics, catchy sounds, and softcore images work in unison to appeal to the most basic insticts of a predominantly male audience.  In the chorus, Jake La Furia raps: “Under the pants I can see the mmhh/The first thing I look at is the mmhh”.16 In the music video, a series of female buttocks dance, skip ropes and pedal for the enjoyment of the male rapper (and audience). The faces of the women they belong to are never shown; they are unimportant elements in the sexual game that is being staged for the cameras. Some rappers have explicitly discussed about how the music industry encourages and rewards verbal violence towards women (Too $hort,

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Thangs Change, 1995). The image of the mainstream rapper surrounded by ‘bitches’ is so engrained that it is taken for granted that becoming famous means having access to women. As Italian rapper Jesto asks in his song I Miei Soldi e Le Mie Puttane (“My Money and My Bitches”, 2015): “If I’m really mainstream/Where are my money and my bitches?”17 As discussed earlier in this  chapter, it is important to remember  that these lyrics need to be read in a signifying frame rather than understood in their literal meaning. Part of the demeaning language of pimp rap can be ascribed to braggadocio and other characteristics of Black vernaculars that are typical of rap language and that Italian rappers have also adopted, appropriating African-American stylistic models. However, the signifying frame should not be used as an excuse to justify the misogyny present in the lyrics. Misogyny is not an intrinsic part of verbal games (for example, the ‘dozens’) that make use of signifying. On the contrary, research has shown that women are active participants in these games and active users of signifying (Smitherman 1999). The presence of misogynistic language in rap lyrics, we argue, cannot therefore be dismissed as a case of vernacular language and, in order to understand the sexist attitudes displayed in pimp rap lyrics, one needs to take into account the models of masculinity that exist in the social environment in which the artists operate. “[1] The contempt for women [as well as] [2.] the hegemony of a form of masculinity that puts emphasis on power and domination [combined with] [3.] an environment that supports gender violence” (Connell 2013, 6) can trigger a use of language that shows no regard for women’s dignity, that sees women not as peers but as objects to dominate. A language of domination and violence becomes synonymous with masculinity and part of the self-celebratory register of pimp rap. The performance of highly constructed Black masculinities in American gangsta rap, vehiculated through the global spread of Hip-Hop, has proven appealing also for white males looking to reaffirm their masculinity in the face of evolving gender roles: “The ostentatious display of manly vigour and self-­confidence inherent in HipHop must look like a relief to men who feel challenged in the very basis of their gender identity” (Lay 2000, 236). Let us consider, for example, how, to boast about his sexuality, in the  song Attrazione Fisica (“Physical Attraction”, 2014), Jesto talks about sending a woman to the hospital (“I fuck her so hard that afterwards she is resting in a clinic”18). The previously quoted line from Fabri Fibra’s song Su le Mani (2006b), “If you don’t give it to me I cut it off you like Pacciani”,19 mirrors the ferocity expressed in certain American gangsta rap tracks (“If she make my

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nuts itch/I kill that slut bitch”, Ma$e, I Need to Be, 1997), where violence is presented as a suitable punishment for women who are not readily available to satisfy men’s sexual appetites. The fact that the pimp style has been imported straight from US rap, an instance of globalisation of Hip-Hop music, is apparent from the language used in Italian pimp rap songs, which commonly feature English terminology. At times, Italian rappers explicitly admit to their will to “recreate American atmospheres”. When asked in an interview about the music video for his song Rodeo (2014), featuring porn actor Rocco Siffredi and a series of porn-inspired images, Fred De Palma explained that “the aim was to recreate transgressive American atmospheres” and that “only in Italy people complain about seeing beautiful half-naked women” (Nera 2014). However, while De Palma’s direct source of inspiration might have been pimp rap music videos from the United States, his country of birth probably had a bigger impact on his attitude towards the objectification of the female body than he realises. Italian visual media is all but free from “beautiful half-naked women”. Anyone who grew up watching Italian television after the rise of Silvio Berlusconi’s Mediaset channels from the 1980s has experienced many programs where women are  reduced to mere  decorative bodies. Examples are found  on both commercial TV channels (the Veline on satirical news program Striscia la Notizia on Canale 5) and on public TV channels (the Professoresse on quiz show L’Eredità on  Rai 1). Lorella Zanardo’s documentary Women’s Bodies (2009) addressed the representation of the female bodies on Italian television in these terms: Faces and bodies of real women have been hidden and replaced with the obsessive, vulgar and manipulative display of mouths, thighs and breasts” (2:21) […] The displayed women seem to satisfy and pander to the presumed male desires, under every aspect, relinquishing completely the possibility to be the Other (3’26”).

So, while the adoption of the street-icon of the pimp, with his flamboyant style and language, can be ascribed to a sign of globalisation within the Global Hip-Hop Nation, Italian rappers have been able to connect it with the local perception that a man surrounded by many women is an image of power and success, as exemplified by the world-famous bunga-bunga scandal that exposed the sex parties organised by then prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. Investigations revealed the large cohort of ‘pimps’ that encircled Berlusconi, scouting the girls (including minors) who

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participated in dinners and parties with him and his close entourage and were rewarded with money, gifts, parts in films and TV series or even political roles. These themes have entered Italian pimp rap, resulting in further localisation. For instance, the idea that a woman can build a career in politics through sexual favours is reflected in Guè Pequeño and Fedez’s song Pensavo Fosse Amore… (“I Thought It Was Love…”, 2013), in which the two rappers discuss being misled by a woman who works as an escort. Guè Pequeño ends his verse by saying: “Carry on like that and you’ll end up in Parliament”.20

Conclusion Pimp rap is a case of “glocalisation”. While its sexist tropes were ‘imported’ from the United States, they would not have taken root without enabling local conditions. Pimp style is used as an expression of authenticity within the context of Global Hip-Hop. However, the misogynistic lyrics that characterise this subgenre of Hip-Hop also represent a reproduction of the sexist gender roles inherent in the society where it is adopted. In addition, they also stand as a “recuperation of hegemonic masculinity” (Lay 2000) as a response to men’s anxiety in the face of emerging alternative models of masculinity. Our lyrics analysis shows how, from a gender perspective, the pimp rap subgenre subverts the role of rap as an anti-­ hegemonic art form and perpetuates instead conservative values and hegemonic ideas of gender roles. Moreover, pimp rap is the fruit of commercialisation logics present within the music industry that disseminate these hegemonic ideas of masculinity for monetary gain. In Italy, like in the United States, repression and commodification of women has been continuously rewarded by the music industry. This has fed into a system that does not allow different articulations of masculinity to express freely, causing long-lasting damage to women and men alike. As Pierre Bourdieu recognised, “[m]ale privilege is also a trap” for every man who is pressured “to assert his manliness in all circumstances” (Bourdieu 2001, 50). Lately, signs of a cultural shift are emerging in the context of both American and Italian Hip-Hop. In the wake of global feminist movements such as #MeToo, for example, New York group Wu Tang Clan decided to omit sexist lyrics during their Tiny Desk performance in December 2018.21 In Italy, the feminist movement Non Una Di Meno compiled the first manifesto for anti-sexism in rap music (Non una di meno 2018), which

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was signed by several Italian rappers, such as Kento, Kaos One, and Assalti Frontali. Misogynistic rap lyrics are no longer routinely accepted as forms of masculine boasting, nor is homophobic content, as proven by the backlash against Eminem’s use of a homophobic slur in his 2018 song Kill Shot. However, a look at recent rap productions demonstrates that sexism in rap music has all but disappeared and is in fact ubiquitous in the most popular Hip-Hop subgenre at present: trap. The drug-inspired atmospheres of trap are very different from the violent, controlling style of the pimp-rappers; however, women are still often presented as a commodity to buy and possess. As trapper Lil Pump puts it: “Got a new car, got a new bitch” (“ESSKEETIT”, 2019). An analysis of sexism in trap music goes beyond the scope of this chapter but it could be the object of future research on the developments of sexism in Hip-Hop music, to find out if and how a cultural shift leading to a more inclusive representation of gender roles is really underway.

Notes 1. “E sono il P.I.M.P.—B.I.G/Per le strade you call me D.O.N.G”. 2. “Sono pieno di mignotte/Sono il peggio pappone”. 3. “Un marcio gioca a fare il pappone”. 4. https://italiancharts.com [Accessed on 1 February 2021]. 5. “P.R.I.M.O. e T.O.R.M.E.N.T.O./Spompina questi due MC’s da brava, così”. “Se questa merda del rap non va/Compriamo due puttane e apriamo uno strip club”. 6. “Se non me la dai io te la strappo come Pacciani” (This is a reference to Pietro Pacciani, one of the serial killers collectively known as Monster of Florence who, between 1968 and 1985, carried out eight double murders, and in some cases excised sex organs from the bodies of the female victims, in the Italian region of Tuscany). 7. “Tu suoni frocio e piangi mogio, tu c’hai poco di uomo”. 8. “Non litigo con una femminuccia”. 9. “Ogni donna sogna un pappone”. 10. “Col tuo fidanzato vero, tra poco farai un bambino/Ma di nascosto vuoi un bandolero”. 11. “Si scopa dei rapper famosi e dei calciatori del Bayern”. 12. “Metà del mio fascino è data dal mio cellulare”. 13. “Costerebbe un millino, ma giuro che mi ama, mi chiama poi mi chiava gratis”. 14. “Hai detto Mia, ma è una bugia (ma come ti chiami?)”

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15. “Non ho mai regalato a nessuna un cazzo di mazzo di fiori/Ma arrivo con il cazzo di fuori, me lo sucano come un Yakitori”. 16. “Dai pantaloni si vede il mmhh/La prima cosa che guardo è il mmhh”. 17. “Se davvero sono commerciale/Dove sono i miei soldi e le mie puttane?” 18. “La scopo così forte che dopo riposa in clinica”. 19. “Se non me la dai io te la strappo come Pacciani”. 20. “Continua così che poi arrivi in Parlamento”. 21. Wu-Tang Clan: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert, 12 December 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALUKDkOxVPo [Accessed on 1 February 2021].

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Giuffrida, Angela. “Italy’s highest court accused of victim blaming over rape case”. The Guardian, 18 July 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ jul/17/italian-­court-­retrial-­two-­men-­who-­raped-­woman hooks, bell. We real cool: Black men and masculinity. New York: Routledge, 2003. Ice-T (with Heidi Siegmund). The Ice Opinion. London: Pan Books, 1994. Krims, Adam. Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Larsen, Jane Kathrine. Sexism and Misogyny in American Hip-Hop Culture. MA Thesis, University of Oslo, 2006. Lay, Frank. ““Sometimes We Wonder Who the Real Men Are”—Masculinity and Contemporary Popular Music”. In R.  West and F.  Lay (Eds.), Subverting Masculinity: Hegemonic and Alternative Versions of Masculinity in Contemporary Culture, 227–246. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 2000. Maisto, Vincenzo. I segreti dei nostri mariti [Our husbands’ secrets]. Vincenzo Maisto, 2018. Mantello, Maria. “Stereotipi sessisti: dal mito mariano al fascismo” [Sexist stereotypes: from the Marian myth to fascism]. MicroMega, 21 September 2018. http://temi.repubblica.it/micromega-­online/ stereotipi-­sessisti-­dal-­mito-­mariano-­al-­fascismo/ McLeod, Kembrew. “Authenticity within Hip-hop and Other Cultures Threatened with Assimilation.” Journal of Communication 49(4), 134–50, 1999. Ministero della Salute. Interruzioni volontarie di gravidanza, 2017. Available from: http://www.salute.gov.it/imgs/C_17_pubblicazioni_2807_ulterioriallegati_ulterioreallegato_0_alleg.pdf Mitchell, Tony. Global noise: Rap and hip-hop outside the USA. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2001. Moody, Nekesa Mumbi. “Pimps: The New ‘Gangstas’ of Rap”. Associated Press, 21 July 2003. https://www.iol.co.za/entertainment/whats-­on/durban/ pimps-­the-­new-­gangstas-­of-­rap-­898664 Nera, Francesca. ““Ecco la mia Lettera al Successo”, le rime più fresche dell’estate nel nuovo album di Fred de Palma”, Il Giorno, 18 June 2014. https://www. ilgiorno.it/milano/spettacoli/musica/2014/06/18/1080292-­f red-­d e-­ palma-­lettera-­successo.shtml Non una di meno. Manifesto per l’antisessismo nel rap italiano, 10 July 2018. Available from: https://nonunadimeno.wordpress.com/2018/07/10/ manifesto-­per-­lantisessismo-­nel-­rap-­italiano/ Pennycook, Alastair. Language, Localization, and the Real: Hip-Hop and the Global Spread of Authenticity. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 6(2), 101–115, 2007. Pennycook, Alastair and Tony Mitchell. “Hip hop as dusty foot philosophy: Engaging locality.” In H.S. Alim, A. Ibrahim and A. Pennycook (Eds.), Global

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linguistic flows: Hip Hop cultures, youth identities, and the politics of language, 25–42. New York: Routledge, 2009. Pimp. In Oxford English Dictionary. https://www.lexico.com/definition/ pimp. n.d. Potter, Russell A. Spectacular Vernaculars—Hip-Hop and the Politics of Postmodernism. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. Pough, Gwendolyn. Check it while I wreck it: Black womanhood, hip hop culture, and the public sphere. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004. Quinn, Eithne. “Who’s the Mack?”: The performativity and politics of the pimp figure in gangsta rap. Journal of American Studies, 34(1), 115–136, 2000. Quinn, Eithne. Nuthin’ but a “G” thang: The culture and commerce of gangsta rap. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Rainwater, Lee. Behind ghetto walls: Black families in a federal slum. London: Allen Lane, 1971. Robertson, Roland. “Glocalization: Time-Space and Homogeneity-­ Heterogeneity.” In Mike Featherson, Scott Lash and Roland Robertson (Eds.), Global Modernities, 25–44. London: Sage Publications, 1995. Rose, Tricia. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1994. Rose, Tricia. The hip hop wars: What we talk about when we talk about hip hop—And why it matters. New York: BasicCivitas, 2008. Schulz, David A. Coming up black; patterns of ghetto socialization. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1969. Senato della Repubblica. Femminicidio, March 2018. Available from: https:// www.senato.it/application/xmanager/projects/leg18/Focus_femminicidio_1.pdf Slim, Iceberg. Pimp: The Story of my Life. Los Angeles: Holloway House Publishing Co., 1967. Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2009. Smitherman, Geneva. Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1977. Smitherman, Geneva. “‘If I’m Lyin’, I’m Flyin”’: The Game of Insult in Black Language.” In Geneva Smitherman (Ed.), Talkin That Talk: Language, Culture and Education in African America, 223–230. New York: Routledge, 1999. Toop, David. The Rap Attack: African Jive to New York Hip Hop. London: Pluto Press, 1984. World Economic Forum. The Global Gender Gap Report 2018, 2018. Available from: http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2018.pdf Zukar, Paola. Rap. Una Storia Italiana. Milano: Baldini & Castoldi, 2017.

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Discography 50 Cent. “P.I.M.P.”, Get Rich or Die Tryin’. Shady, Aftermath and Interscope Records, 2003. 50 Cent feat. Olivia. “Candy Shop”, The Massacre. G-Unit, Shady, Aftermath and Interscope Records, 2005. Cam’ron. “Kiss Myself”, The Program. Killa Entertainment, 2017. David Banner. “Like a Pimp”, Mississippi: The Album. SRC Records, 2003. Devin The Dude feat. KB. “Show ‘Em”, The Dude. Rap-A-Lot Records, 1998. Dr. Dre. “Bitches Ain’t Shit”, The Chronic. Death Row Records, 1992. Eminem. “Kill Shot”. Shady, Aftermath and Interscope Records, 2018. Enzo Dong. “Higuain”. 2016. Fabri Fibra. “Gonfio Così” [This Hard], Mr. Simpatia. Vibrarecords, 2004. Fabri Fibra. “Ogni Donna” [Every Woman], Tradimento [Betrayal]. Universal Music Italia, 2006a. Fabri Fibra. “Su le Mani” [Hands Up], Tradimento [Betrayal]. Universal Music Italia, 2006b. Fabri Fibra. Tradimento [Betrayal]. Universal Music Italia, 2006c. Fedez feat. Guè Pequeño. “Pensavo Fosse Amore…” [I Thought It Was Love…], Sig. Brainwash—L’arte di accontentare [Mr. Brainwash—The Art of Pleasing]. Sony Music, 2013. Fred De Palma feat. Guè Pequeño. “Rodeo”, Lettera al Successo [Letter to Success]. Roccia Music, 2014. Gemitaiz feat. Guè Pequeño. “Ce L’Hanno Con Me” [They Blame Me], Nonostante Tutto [Despite Everything]. Tanta Roba, 2016. Guè Pequeño. “Pappone” [Pimp], Vero [Real]. Universal Music Italia, Def Jam, 2015. Guè Pequeño. “Guersace”, Gentleman. Universal Music Italia, Def Jam, 2017. Hyst. “Soldi e Mignotte” [Money and Hoes], Come Non Fare Rap EP [How Not To Rap EP], 2016. Jake La Furia. “MMHH”. Universal Music Italia, 2018. Jay-Z feat. UGK. “Big Pimpin’”, Vol. 3… Life and Times of S. Carter. Roc-A-Fella Records, Def Jam, 1999. Jesto feat. Fred De Palma. “Attrazione Fisica” [Physical Attraction], Supershallo 2 [Superchilled 2], 2014. Jesto. “I Miei Soldi e Le Mie Puttane” [My Money and My Bitches], Supershallo Zero [Superchilled Zero], 2015. Kanye West feat. Jamie Foxx. “Gold Digger”, Late Registration. Roc-A-Fella Records, 2005. Ketama126 feat. Carl Brave. “Bassa Marea” [Low Tide]. 126/CXXVI— Lovegang—Soldy Music, 2016.

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Lil Pump. “ESSKEETIT”, Harverd Dropout. The Lights Global, Warner Bros, 2019. Ma$e feat. Monifah. “I Need to Be”, Harlem World. Bad Boy Records, 1997. Mondo Marcio. “Make Money Money”, Fuori di Qua [Out of Here]. Sano Business, 2004a. Mondo Marcio. “Sweet Pussy”, Fuori di Qua [Out of Here]. Sano Business, 2004b. Nelly. “Pimp Juice”, Nellyville. Motown, 2002. NUMI feat. Sedato Blend. “Coincidenze” [Coincidences], Falene [Moths]. 3Tone Studio, 2017. Primo feat. Tormento and Ibbanez. “P.I.M.P.”, Rap Nelle Mani Volume 3 [Rap in Our Hands Volume 3]. Machete Empire Records, 2013. Snoop Dogg feat. The-Dream. “Gangsta Luv”, Malice N Wonderland. Doggy Style Records and Priority Records, 2009. Three 6 Mafia. “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp”, Hustle & Flow: Music From and Inspired by the Motion Picture. Grand Hustle, Atlantic, 2005. T.I. “Whatever You Like”, Paper Trail. Grand Hustle, Atlantic, 2008. Too $hort. “Pimpology”, Short Dog’s in the House. Jive Records, 1990. Too $hort. “Thangs Change”, Cocktails. Jive Records, 1995. Vacca feat. Nerone. “D.F.W.U.”, Poco di Buono 2 [Troublemaker 2]. Produzioni Oblio, 2017.

Filmography American Pimp. Dir. Albert Hughes and Allen Hughes. Underworld Entertainment Production, 1999. Hustle & Flow. Dir. Craig Brewer. MTV Films, 2005. Il Corpo delle Donne [Women’s Bodies]. Dir. Lorella Zanardo, Marco Malfi Chindemi and Cesare Cantù, 2009.

Chapter 5: How Female is the Future? Undoing Sexism in Contemporary Metal Music Coco d’Hont

Metal music does not have a good reputation when it comes to gender equality. Female performers are relatively rare (Heesch and Scott 2016, p.  3), particularly on the more extreme end of the genre’s spectrum (Berkers and Schaap 2018, p. 10). Ever since its first incarnation in the late 1960s metal music has promoted toxic masculinity, female exploitation, and aggressive heteronormativity. In her account of female metal fans and performers, Rosemary Lucy Hill describes the common image of metal music as “glaring, massive, warrior-like men in black” singing songs “about war, gore and rape” and causing women to be “sidelined in this male-dominated and hypermasculine genre” (2016, p.  1). Some bands, particularly the most extreme ones, simply seem to have little interest in women as fans or performers. Others promote the “groupie” archetype as

C. d’Hont (*) Independent Scholar, Norwich, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Fosbraey, N. Puckey (eds.), Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65189-3_6

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the only role available for women within the metal community. In his seminal analysis of the genre Robert Walser even claims that “[t]hese representations [of women] primarily serve the interests of the male musicians who dominate heavy metal performance and the male fans who until recently were their primary constituency” and that “male power and female subordination” are metal music’s main concerns (1993, p. xxvi). A quick overview of the genre appears to confirm this rather pessimistic statement. Songs such as AC/DC’s “Whole Lotta Rosie” (1977), while appearing to celebrate female sexuality, offer women no form of musical participation beyond the role of the groupie. During the 1980s hair metal bands such as Mötley Crüe reached the peak of their popularity. “Girls, Girls, Girls” (1987), one of the band’s biggest hits, narrates the band’s experiences with female strippers. The accompanying video features the band, dressed like a biker gang, invading a strip club and spending the night with a group of scantily clad women. During the 1990s and beyond, bands such as Combichrist and Marilyn Manson reinvented the archetype of the notorious rock star who consumes women like he consumes drugs. Titles of Combichrist songs include “You Will Be the Bitch Now” (2003) and “Fuckmachine” (2010) and the violent lyrics of these songs are often directed at women. In “Fuckmachine”, for example, vocalist Andy LaPlegua announces that “You’re a filthy slut / You are my fuck toy / You get what you deserve”. All in all, metal often appears to be a hostile place for women where they are either excluded or included as mere “sex toys” or objects of abuse. Some metal bands and individual performers have disrupted this narrative of toxic heterosexual masculinity, but they have largely remained an exception to the rule. This is not to say that female performers have not contributed to the development of metal music at all. Performers such as Lita Ford, all-female bands such as Girlschool, and feminist movements such as Riot Grrrl have all left their mark on metal music. In recent years female-fronted metal has become a subgenre of its own, with the now-defunct Metal Female Voices Fest as an indication of its popularity. However, the very fact that “female-­ fronted” is used as a genre indicator suggests that female performers are somehow unusual and exceptional. It also suggests that the number of female musicians and producers is even smaller, a suspicion confirmed by Pauwke Berkers and Julian Schaap in their exploration of gender equality within metal music (2018, p.  15). Women are more often singers than musicians and frequently create more melodic forms of metal,

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characterized by clean singing and a visual image of “long flowing dresses and tresses” (Weinstein 2016, p. 20). A difference between more “masculine”, harsher styles of metal and “feminine”, or romantic, styles appears to persist, despite more and more women finding their voice within the metal genre. This distinction maintains “the sexist presumption among many members of the [metal] community […] that women are attracted to less-heavy music and more to power ballads” (Phillips and Cogan 2009, p. 3). After the turn of the century, both the participation of female performers in metal music and their representation in the media seem to have improved. Bands such as In This Moment and Halestorm have attracted increasing amounts of press coverage as well as commercial success. Many of these bands contest the traditional image of the female metal performer as a romantic heroine with a classically trained soprano voice. Halestorm’s co-founder Lzzy Hale, for example, adopts the persona of the guitar hero, a traditionally masculine archetype. At the same time some of the band’s songs, particularly “Dear Daughter” (2017), explicitly deal with feminist subjects. This appearance of increased female participation is confirmed by recent research (Heesch and Scott 2016, p. 3). Furthermore, contemporary female metal performers play with gender, perhaps more so than their twentieth-century predecessors. Deena Weinstein argues that “[t]he new century’s women are clearly distinctively feminine in appearance, but not in the ‘bitch-goddess’ micro-miniskirt and stiletto-heel sense of so many 1980s music videos” (2016, p. 20). As a result, she claims, “female performers incorporated the excluded by invading a traditionally masculine cultural form” (2016, p. 14), suggesting that gender play is at the heart of female metal participation. This chapter explores how twenty-first-century female metal performers negotiate gender boundaries in and through their music. If metal music is indeed a genre that permits a playful approach to “deconstructed masculinity” (Weinstein 2016, p.  14), what shapes does this playfulness take? And what are its effects? While tentative connections can be drawn between metal music, popular culture at large and the social context it is produced in, it remains to be seen to what extent metal music’s changing gender profile is the result of socio-political changes or whether it facilitates those changes in return. Whereas metal music could be said to challenge some gender stereotypes, and create opportunities for female performers to carve out their own space within the genre, it also maintains

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some of the problematic connotations that have historically made metal an inaccessible space for women. This chapter questions to what extent the increased visibility and diversity of female performers signifies more thorough changes in attitudes towards gender, both within metal music and in its larger cultural context.

A Note on Methodology, Definitions and Limitations When describing any genre, designating its boundaries is one of the most arduous tasks. Particularly for metal music, genre boundaries are often a source of heated debates among fans and critics alike. “Fans are notoriously possessive about metal”, William Phillips and Brian Cogan write in their introduction to their Encyclopaedia of Heavy Metal Music, “to the point where the most minute distinction or error is seized on as indicative of someone not having sufficient knowledge of metal or one of its subgenres” (2009, p. 2). Deena Weinstein’s exploration of the genre offers one of the most complete overviews of what she calls the “metal code”, which incorporates “[h]igh volume, a wailing guitar, a booming bass drum, a heavy bass guitar line, and screaming vocals” (2000, p.  27). Together these sonic qualities create a sense of “power, expressed as sheer volume” (2000, p. 23) and communicate themes that are predominantly “Dionysian”—celebrating “the vital forces of life through various forms of ecstasy” (2000, p. 35)—or “Chaotic”—“all that challenges the order and hegemony of everyday life” (2000, p. 35). Metal music’s relationship with popular culture takes the shape of a continuum, with Kahn-Harris (2007) and Hjelm et  al. (2013) offering in-depth explorations of the extreme, underground end of the spectrum. In line with the focus of this volume, this chapter concentrates on more popular examples of metal music, drawing from Rosemary Lucy Hill’s choice of music magazine Kerrang as the main corpus for her research. The analysis zooms in on bands and performers who feature regularly in mainstream music publications such as Kerrang and Metal Hammer, play in larger metal festivals such as Download or venues such as Wembley Stadium, and occasionally cross over into the more general field of popular culture when their singles or albums do well in commercial charts. If contemporary female metal performers indeed play with gender, as Deena Weinstein claims, what forms does this playfulness take and what

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are its effects? From its very inception metal music has incorporated gender play, albeit not always with radical intent or effect. The make-up worn by 1980s hair metal bands such as Poison, for example, “was designed not to call masculinity into question so much as add an air to excitement to proceedings” (Waksman 1999, p. 6) and has done little to problematize metal music’s hegemonic, and often toxic, masculinity. While Robert Walser argues that “one of the most important items on the heavy metal agenda has long been to deal with what patriarchy perennially perceives as the ‘threat’ of women” (1993, p. 110) and that “[t]he greater the seductiveness of the female image, the greater its threat to masculine control” (1993, p. 116), this perceived threat appears to be a discursive construction rather than an actual undermining of patriarchal ideology. Regardless of its intentions or outcome, the blurring of gender boundaries that has shaped so much of metal music’s imagery can be put to good critical use. Defining the concept of female masculinity, Jack Halberstam has argued that “the unholy union of femaleness and masculinity can produce wildly unpredictable results” (1998, p. 29), suggesting that masculinity can be dissected “when it leaves the white male middle-class body” (1998, p. 2). Studying how female metal performers negotiate the limitations of gender stereotypes in addition to male metal performers’ adaptation of supposedly feminine characteristics not only highlights metal’s hegemonic masculinity, it also problematizes its apparent coherence. Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity is a particularly useful concept to explore how female metal performers interact with gender boundaries. Her exploration of gender as fabrication and drag as a practice that “reveals the imitative structure of gender itself – as well as its contingency” (2006, p. 87) is well-suited to disrupt the monolithic masculinity of traditional metal imagery and to trace the fluid femininities that emerged, and are still emerging, in twenty-first-century metal music. Arguing that “the substantive effect of gender is performatively produced and compelled by the regulatory practices of gender coherence”, Butler concludes that “gender proves to be performative — that is, constituting the identity it is purported to be. In this sense, gender is always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to preexist the deed” (2006, p. 34). This conceptualization of gender as a perpetual act, or series of acts, of (re)construction, rather than a fixed identity, is helpful when exploring how contemporary female metal performers construct and criticize their own “genderedness”. This chapter explores three distinct ways in which

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twenty-first-century female metal performers play with gender boundaries and stereotypes. First of all, it looks at how some performers adopt traditionally masculine metal personas such as the guitar hero. Secondly, it turns to the phenomenon of tribute bands and their use of the digital sphere. Thirdly, it analyses the use of drag to transform gender stereotypes. Together, these three strands paint a picture of twenty-first-century metal as a fluid genre where old stereotypes persist but where new gender conceptualizations can also be imagined and enacted.

Act Like a Man: Adaptations of Masculine Metal Personas Jack Halberstam’s statement that “[m]asculinity in this society inevitably conjures up notions of power and legitimacy and privilege” (1998, p. 2) can easily be applied to metal music. Sexism and misogyny, although certainly not ubiquitous, are rampant within the genre. In this respect metal differs little from popular music at large. As recently as 2007 Ian Spero, curator of the exhibition Born to Rock: The Life and Times of the Electric Guitar, claimed that “it’s a fact that there aren’t so many great women guitarists” (qtd. in Brown 2007) to justify why a guitar exhibition billed as the largest in Europe did not feature a single female guitarist. In recent years the #MeToo movement has drawn attention to the sexist undercurrent of metal music, with initiatives such as Safe Gigs for Women now campaigning against sexual violence and for safe music experiences. Although changes appear to be occurring, and the gender (in)equality debate dominates popular culture at large, it remains to be seen to what extent metal music will succeed in catching up. Metal music’s sonic qualities such as grunting and guitar playing, for example, are still inherently connected with the masculine in popular interpretation (Berkers and Schaap 2014, p. 105). Their continued importance suggests that masculinity, or a specific imagination thereof, is still a major feature of the genre. Grunting, a vocal technique also known as “cookie monster vocals” (Phillips and Cogan 2009, p.  54) that sounds like “guttural growling, screeching, screaming, grungy sorts of manipulations of the throat and stomach” (Netherton qtd. in Purcell 2003, pp. 9–11), is one such gendered aspect of the metal code. It is by no means the only vocal technique used by metal singers—screaming and clean singing are also popular—but it is often used to categorize music as metal due to its instant

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recognizability, even for listeners who have little understanding of or affection towards the genre. Many female vocalists tend to shy away from grunting, preferring to stick to clean vocals instead. The melodic voices of singers such as Liv Kristine (Leaves Eyes), Tarja Turunen (formerly Nightwish), or Simone Simons (Epica) are a far cry from the guttural growls of many of their male counterparts. Some female vocalists, however, disrupt this gendered vocal distinction by adapting a grunting singing style while maintaining feminine looks. A particularly apt example is the Swedish band Arch Enemy, which has had not one but two female vocalists, both of whom use growls instead of clean singing. After former vocalist Angela Gossow stepped back to a managerial role in 2014, new singer Alissa White-Glutz has performed on the band’s most recent albums, War Eternal (2014) and Will to Power (2018). The musical result contradicts conceptualizations of grunting as essentially masculine. As was the case with Gossow, White-Glutz’s vocals are virtually indiscernible from those of her male colleagues. In true grunting fashion her singing voice sounds harsh, visceral and guttural. At the same time her appearance maintains a more feminine aesthetic. White-Glutz flaunts her long hair and usually wears tight corsets during performances. However, just as the use of make-up by bands like Mötley Crüe reinforces rather than undoes their masculine machismo, White-Glutz’s vocals do less to disrupt gender and metal conventions than they may appear to do at first sight. While having a female vocalist who uses a traditionally masculine type of vocals sets Arch Enemy apart from many of its peers, in most respects the band conforms to existing metal aesthetics. The band’s guitar playing and musical melodies are more melodic and accessible than the songs produced by its more extreme peers, but its videos are of the traditional rock video variety in which musicians “imitate the spectacle of an arena concert” (Walser 1993, p. 114). Videos such as The Eagle Flies Alone (Century Media Records 2017) depict the band playing in a mountainous landscape and offer little critical commentary on metal’s genre conventions. A female presence, in other words, does not automatically make a metal band feminist or gender-critical. A similar ambiguity is found in the female adaptation of the guitar hero trope. Guitar playing is another key characteristic of metal music, especially in the form of the electric guitar solo (Weinstein 2000, p. 24). Many metal bands have branched out in recent years and have used keyboards (Nightwish), accordions (Korpiklaani), or even a hurdy gurdy (Eluveitie) to individualize their sound, but the electric guitar remains an iconic

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instrument that defines both metal music’s sound and visual image. Virtuoso guitar players such as Eddie Van Halen (Van Halen), Slash (Guns N’ Roses/Velvet Revolver), and Tony Iommi (Black Sabbath) have gained an almost mythical status. This is evidenced, and to a certain extent parodied, by Guitar Hero, a successful series of video games that offers players the opportunity to step into the shoes of their idols and try their hand at playing classic rock and metal songs on a plastic guitar-shaped controller. Just like the Guitar Hero experience, which revolves around guitar performance rather than guitar playing, the guitar hero persona appears to be as much about its image as it is about actual musicianship. Ever since rock ’n’ roll made the electric guitar into one of its key components, the instrument has been gendered to the point where “[p]laying guitars was once a masculine preserve, an activity for men” (Millard 2004, p. 11). Simon Frith’s characterization of certain forms of rock music as “cock rock”, a genre which features “an explicit, crude, ‘masterful’ expression of sexuality” through the use of guitars as “phallic symbols” (1983, p. 227), suggests that raucous masculine sexuality and electric guitars have become inextricably intertwined in the popular imagination, even if the more ambiguously gendered reality of metal music history somewhat contradicts this monolithic image. Steve Waksman goes on to call the electric guitar a “technophallus” that “works to affirm a phallocentric, male-­ dominated sexual order [and] works with equal vigor to produce the appearance that this order is unquestionably sexual” (1999, p.  244). Despite, or perhaps because of, its shape vaguely resembling the female physique—emphasized by Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry when he had one of his guitars decorated with an image of his wife’s body—it has become associated with a sexualized expression of masculinity as a token of power and control. Perhaps due to these associations with volatile masculinity, female guitar heroes are comparatively rare. In recent years, however, female guitar players such as Lzzy Hale have risen to fame and used their gender to play with the clichés that surround the traditional conceptualization of the guitarist. Hale, who co-founded Halestorm together with her brother Arejay in 1997 and doubles as the group’s lead singer, was pronounced the “Hottest Chick in Metal” by Revolver magazine in 2009 but has also received critical acclaim for her musical abilities and songwriting skills. In recent interviews Hale has been vocal about her belief that music should

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be “gender-less” (Whitmore 2018), pointing out that Halestorm’s concerts attract at least as many female as male fans and expressing the hope that her gigs are spaces where women and LGBT+ people can feel safe and free. At the same time Hale has taken ownership of the popular connection between guitars and sexuality, speaking openly in interviews about her own sexuality and its impact on her music. Announcing that “I like to come from a position of power in sex” (Hudak 2018), she has shared details of her sexual adventurism in interviews and songs such as “Do Not Disturb” (2018). In “Do Not Disturb”, which narrates the progression of a threesome and is loosely based on Hale’s personal experiences, Hale sings that “I love your accent / I wonder what it’ll sound like when you cum”, reinventing lyrics such as Mötley Crüe’s declaration that “Yankee girls you just can’t be beat / But you’re the best when you’re off your feet” in “Girls, Girls, Girls”  (Mötley Crüe 2010). While Hale’s openly sexual lyrics can be interpreted as female ownership of sexuality, it also runs the risk of perpetuating the problematic myth of the guitarist as a sexual predator. Rather than problematizing the connections between the guitar, gender, and sexuality, Hale adapts the cliché to use it for her own pleasure. Even though the adaptation of female metal performers of traditionally masculine parts of the metal code, such as grunting and guitar playing, can be read as evidence of “their increasing ability to identify with constructions of power that had previously been understood as inherently male” (Walser 1993, p. xxvi), it also suggests that female performers, intentionally or not, may perpetuate problematic forms of gender inequality that come with these masculine “constructions of power”. Although increased visibility of female guitar players may empower women and girls to take on this “sign of leadership” (O’Brien qtd. in Brown 2007), the guitar does come with a range of problematic gendered connotations. Simply copying patriarchal rock star behavioural patterns and presenting them as female empowerment may achieve little when it comes to undoing the social structures of gendered inequality these musical myths represent. However, female explorations of masculine metal tropes that are more geared towards a deconstruction of these tropes and creating space for female performers to be heard in their own right may offer more exciting critical possibilities.

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Adding a New Voice: Tribute Bands and the Digital Sphere Tribute bands have long been an important feature of metal culture. From small bands who merely enjoy pretending to be their idols in their local pub to acts who have successfully toured the club circuit, fans playing their favourite music instead of merely listening to it are an important characteristic of metal music, and are perhaps even more closely linked to it than to any other genre (Phillips and Cogan 2009, p.  234). In recent years technological developments and the rise of the internet have had an undeniable impact on tribute culture. First of all, it is now much easier for non-­ professional musicians to record their creations without access to a professional studio. Even mobile phones can now double up as recording equipment, despite the quality not being up to a professional standard. Secondly, platforms such as YouTube and Soundcloud have made it much easier for tribute acts to share their music with audiences across the world. No longer do musicians need to invest time, money, and energy into the production and distribution of physical records: uploading a video on YouTube will suffice, especially if the goal is merely to show off one’s guitar skills and admiration for one’s favourite band. In short, the financial and technological barriers that have historically kept fans from becoming more actively involved in the scene have significantly lowered in recent years, despite wealth and superstardom still being only achievable for a very small minority. Almost inevitably these developments have made it easier for women to share their love for their favourite metal bands. The female tribute band has become an unlikely musical niche, with some performers and bands achieving moderate success. Bands with inventive and often comical names such as AC/DShe (AC/DC), Misstallica (Metallica) and Lez Zeppelin (a supposedly lesbian tribute to Led Zeppelin) may not be as commercially successful or critically acclaimed as their heroes but are still able to draw significant crowds. One of the most intriguing examples are The Iron Maidens, an Iron Maiden tribute band, whose members have adopted feminized nick names such as Bruce Chickinson (lead singer Kirsten Rosenberg). Lez Zeppelin, on the other hand, have received critical acclaim for their performance of Led Zeppelin classics, even if some fans tend to turn up mistakenly believing to have bought a ticket for the original band (Petrusich 2011). Music critic Chuck Klosterman has called the band “the most powerful all-female band in rock history” (2005, p. 25)

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despite its choice not to play or record original material. This type of praise suggests that female tribute bands are a creative force to be reckoned with and that their success may change the way gender is “done” within metal culture. However, female tribute bands are often characterized as a more or less faithful copy or imitation of male originals, instead of a reimagination or transformation of a musical legacy. Phillips and Cogan warn that the success of bands like Lez Zeppelin may indicate “the misogyny inherent in much of the metal culture, as many male bands who cover Zeppelin are assumed to be musically competent, as opposed to a female cover band, who are often seen as a gimmick” (2009, p.  147). Although The Iron Maidens were honoured with a positive review by the influential publication Metal Hammer, and reviewer Holly Wright argues “that these performers are female is irrelevant”, she carries on to stress how unusually good the performers are for a female band (Wright 2016). On their own website The Iron Maidens brand themselves as “The World’s Only Female Tribute to Iron Maiden” and, while also emphasizing the talent of its members, stress how their gender offers a distinct edge to their performance (The Iron Maidens n.d.). The same goes for Lez Zeppelin, who proudly state on their website that “the thing that sets Lez Zeppelin apart is the seamless and unique way they inject their gender-bending performance into the original material” (Lez Zeppelin n.d.). Despite their obvious talent, many female tribute bands cannot seem to shake off the novelty factor of their performance and some actively court the audience’s interest in this aspect of their musicianship. The gendered imbalance this practice perpetuates is underlined by the fact that whereas there are several high-­ profile all-female tribute bands who play songs by all-male bands, the reverse is extremely rare. Female tribute bands can be very entertaining, many of them feature talented performers, and they certainly increase the visibility of female performers. The same goes for female cover artists on YouTube, who can reach a much larger audience without leaving the house. Recent research reached the slightly unexpected conclusion that female cover artists receive limited gendered abuse and criticism (Berkers and Schaap 2014, p. 110), a finding which suggests that the web could be a productive space for female performers to develop and showcase their musicianship. However, with female musicians such as Myrkur routinely receiving online death threats (Mikkelson 2016), this is clearly only part of the picture. Even when they are not abused outright, female cover acts on YouTube

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continue to draw attention to their gender, whether on purpose or not. Cowgirls from Hell, an all-female Pantera cover band whose most popular YouTube videos have been watched over two million times, attract both praise for their musicianship and comments that “the Girlbag Darrell is sexy”, a somewhat cryptic comparison between the band’s guitarist and Pantera’s axe man Darrell Lance Abbott, also known as “Dimebag” Darrell (Cowgirls from Hell 2015). Not only does this quote focus on the guitarist’s “sexiness” and femininity, it also positions her as nothing but an imitation of an extremely successful male artist. Gender, in other words, continues to be important and significant, rather than a characteristic that is irrelevant when considering a performer’s musicianship. While many female cover artists stress that they are talented musicians in their own right, a statement evidenced by the critical and popular acclaim received by some of them, and while their act can be read as reclaiming a traditionally masculine type of musicianship, a fine line between maintaining the perception of female performers as a derivative or artists in their own right continues to exist. No band should have a feminist agenda forced upon them or be blamed for the gendered misconceptions of their audience, but female tribute and cover acts are still at risk of being considered as nothing but novelties. As a result, they do little to problematize the connection between metal music and masculinity and could even be argued to reinforce the misconception that women cannot be metal performers in their own right. Despite theorists such as Judith Butler emphasizing the critical potential of drag, and Jack Halberstam claiming that female masculinity is more disruptive than masculine femininity (1998, p. 6), a different mechanism appears to be at work when it comes to female tribute bands. These bands play songs as women, without questioning the connection between gender and their source material and perhaps even reinforcing the misconception that women playing metal are entertaining for their unusualness in the same way that Mini Kiss, a Kiss-­ tribute band whose members all have dwarfism, are entertaining. Even though new media and technology offer exciting opportunities when it comes to bringing female performers to a wider audience, this increased visibility does not automatically equate to greater gender equality within the genre.

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Adapting Drag: Transforming Clichéd Notions of Femininity Female tribute bands and cover artists can be interpreted as “copying” male bands, but they do not normally try to pass as men. The adaptation of (seemingly) feminine characteristics such as high heels and make-up by male musicians, on the other hand, has long been a familiar feature of metal music. With Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry concluding that bands like proto-metal artists New York Dolls “pushed the boundaries of androgyny but were as macho as marines” (2015, p. 103), this practice appears to function as a reinforcement rather than a disruption of metal’s strict gender boundaries. However, contemporary female metal performers have used characteristics of drag to build their image and question the gender stereotypes that inevitably haunt their musicianship and popular perception. Judith Butler’s conceptualization of drag as a practice which “mocks both the expressive model of gender and the notion of a true gender identity” (2006, p.  186) explains how the exaggerated femininity of some contemporary female metal performers disrupts rather than maintains stereotypes. “As much as drag creates a unified picture of ‘woman’ (what its critics often oppose),” Butler argues, “it also reveals the distinctness of those aspects of gendered experience which are falsely naturalized as a unity through the regulatory fiction of heterosexual coherence” (2006, p. 187). According to Butler drag does this by functioning as a form of parody which “deprives hegemonic culture and its critics of the claim to naturalized or essentialist gender identities. Although the gender meanings taken up in these parodic styles are clearly part of hegemonic, misogynist culture, they are nevertheless denaturalized and mobilized through their parodic recontextualization” (2006, p. 188). In practice, this parodic type of gender-bending takes many different shapes within metal music. Some female metal performers choose to embody an exaggerated version of the femininity ideal found in many metal songs and videos, with one important difference: instead of submitting to the role of groupie or “pretty face” they take ownership of their own sexuality and use it to overpower their male counterparts. In This Moment’s singer and frontwoman Maria Brink, for example, embodies the archetype of the singing bombshell to the point where it becomes a parodic drag-like performance. With her long platinum-blonde hair, porcelain skin and heavy make-up Brink bears a striking resemblance to Lady Gaga. She also does not hesitate to court pop sensitivities, both in her

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external appearance and in her songs. Although she occasionally screams or growls, Brink’s vocals are largely clean and In This Moment’s sound is decidedly more “poppy” than that of many of its peers. Surrounded by her male band members and female dancers, Brink often dresses in revealing leotards or short skirts, seemingly embodying the ultimate male metal fantasy. In its very outrageousness, however, her performance also questions its own gender parameters. In the video for “Whore” (Century Media Records 2013), for example, Brink appears as a burlesque artist who performs for her one-man audience consisting of Chris Cerulli, the androgynous male singer of fellow metal band Motionless in White. Throughout the video Brink goes through various costume changes, at times rocking a school uniform or bunny ears, but always adding a sinister edge. Just like the school uniform’s skirt is too short, and her head gear is covered in brown-red grease that resembles dried blood, her over the top performance questions as much as it perpetuates gendered clichés. Proclaiming that “I could be your whore”, seemingly submitting herself to the male gaze of her audience, Brink quickly proceeds to tell her listeners that “I am the dirt you created” and assures them that “You love me for everything you hate me for”. Some listeners may of course overlook this criticism of female objectification, but Brink clearly resists the role of mere pretty face and instead confronts her audience with the unsavoury elements of involuntary sexualization. In the video for “Whore” she appears to sexually please Cerulli, but the final shot suggests reversed roles with Cerulli sitting half-naked and gagged on the stage where we first encountered Brink, wearing the “whore”-inscribed dunce cap she was wearing in the opening shot. Rather than allowing male gazers to objectify her, Brink uses the video to make a statement: she owns her own image and is keen to revert the power imbalance that has historically submitted women to (dis)approving looks. A very different type of gender play comes from a band whose skyrocketing rise to fame is one of the more surprising developments in recent metal history. Japan’s Babymetal, consisting of three young female singers and an all-male backing band, does not only undermine gender expectations but also metal’s western cultural dominance. Wearing its roots in the Japanese “kawaii” movement firmly on its sleeve, the band openly flirts with their own status as a pop act. With the band carefully put together by mastermind Key Kobayashi, also known under his pseudonym Kobametal, it also contradicts the familiar metal narrative of bands as organic growths

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rather than the result of a calculated commercial plan. Babybones, the group’s original backing band, used to mime playing their instruments while a recorded backing track was used, although they have since been replaced by a live band. If an important part of the metal code is the demonstration of technical proficiency (Weinstein 2000, p.  24) Babymetal consistently breaks this rule. Predictably, the band has been received with mixed responses but has achieved considerable commercial success, notably beyond Japan’s borders. Having supported Metallica and Guns N’ Roses, Babymetal appear to have absorbed at least some metal credibility by osmosis. Unlike In This Moment’s Brink, Babymetal’s singers embody a far more innocent image of femininity: that of the cute girl. Singing in high voices and performing perfectly choreographed dance routines, the band’s singers wear their hair in ponytails and are usually dressed in frilly dresses and petticoats. The themes covered in their lyrics are also more innocent than usual for a metal band, with song titles such as “Gimme Chocolate” and “Ijime, Dame, Zettai” (literally: Bullying, No Good, Absolutely) suggesting a far more mellow focus. These diversions from the metal code arise from the band’s rootedness in Japanese kawaii and idol cultures, which revolve around cuteness and vulnerability rather than empowerment. Sarah Keith and Diane Hughes define this musical genre as obsessed with very young female performers who embody “characteristics such as cuteness, charm, ‘girl-next-door’ approachability, humility, comedic talent, or sex appeal” (2016, p.  475). While Babymetal’s harsher musical sound diverts from the accessible pop melodies of most idol groups, the band maintains their constructed nature, emphasis on the youth and sweetness of its members, and their high-pitched singing. Whereas In This Moment’s Maria Brink parodies the image of the femme fatale or “whore”, Babymetal’s members reveal how girlhood functions as “a cultural construct, capable of being performed or voiced at will” (Keith and Hughes, p. 485). Many critics have pointed out the gendered complications of power that emerge from conceptualizations of girlhood as mere sweetness and vulnerability (Driscoll 2002), and Babymetal highlight the artificiality of the construct even if they subsequently do little to contradict it. They also serve as a useful reminder of metal music’s white and western bias, as well as the cultural specificity of its gender norms, and encourage both fans and critics to reconsider the boundaries of their scene. Of course most metal fans will simply enjoy—or not

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enjoy—the music created by female metal performers whose parody of gender characteristics verges on drag. For the critic, however, the exaggerated nature of their image puts gender stereotypes under a microscope and encourages in-depth reconsiderations of how femininity and girlhood are constructed and performed in popular culture at large.

A Female Future? Gender Evolution in Metal Music Many recent developments in metal music suggest that the position of female performers has changed for the better. Not only have they become more visible, their image has also become more varied, and many performers actively choose to play with gender conventions in their music and/or image. For some performers their focus is on invading traditionally male domains such as grunting and guitar playing, letting their talent largely speak for itself. For others, it is more about reclaiming clichéd stereotypes of femininity or creating their own feminine version of metal classics. Many female performers have acknowledged the importance of branding and the use of new media for promotion and use these opportunities to further undo metal music’s masculinity. Compared to the days where women had little choice beyond playing a stripper in a Mötley Crüe video, the image of the female metal performer has gained considerable variety. However, a lot of work remains to be done. Despite the increased visibility of female performers they remain a minority. Female singers are becoming more common but female musicians or all-female bands are still comparatively rare. Occasionally female musicians are still considered a novelty or a mere derivative of classic masculine bands, an image some female tribute bands actively play with even if they may not fully agree with it. It remains a struggle for many female metal performers to be recognized as talented artists in their own right and Lzzy Hale’s desire for “genderless” music remains, at least for the time being, a distant dream. No matter how exciting and encouraging the increased visibility of female metal performers may be, it does not add up to true gender equality, especially when initiatives such as Girls Against and Safe Gigs for Women are still needed to fight against sexual violence occurring during gigs. The move towards gender equality remains an ongoing project, particularly when taking a more intersectional view and considering the relations between gender, race, and class. Despite these cautions, contemporary female metal performers do demonstrate that metal’s hegemonic

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masculinity can be disrupted through artistic playfulness. Through their performances they create many opportunities for critical analysis and suggest that exciting developments lie ahead as the twenty-first century approaches its third decade.

References Berkers, Pauwke and Julian Schaap. 2018. Gender Inequality in Metal Music Production. Bingley: Emerald. Berkers, Pauwke and Julian Schaap. 2014. Grunting Alone? Online Gender Inequality in Metal Music. Journal of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music 4.1: 101–116. Brown, Helen. 2007. Waiting for Women to Take the Lead. Telegraph, 3 February. Butler, Judith. 2006. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Century Media Records. 2017. Arch Enemy  – The Eagle Flies Alone (Official Video). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjF1rmSV1dM. YouTube. Accessed 26 Nov. 2018. Century Media Records. 2013. In This Moment  – Whore (Official Video). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GurkREc-­q4I. Accessed 26 Nov. 2018. Cowgirls from Hell. 2015. Cowgirls from Hell - All-female PANTERA Tribute Band. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdHi05CaC1o. Accessed 26 Nov. 2018. Driscoll, Catherine. 2002. Girls: Feminine Adolescence in Popular Culture and Cultural Theory. New York: Columbia University Press. Frith, Simon. 1983. Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure and the Politics of Rock. London: Constable. Halberstam, Jack. 1998. Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press. Heesch, Florian and Niall Scott. 2016. Introduction. In Heavy Metal, Gender and Sexuality: Interdisciplinary Approaches, ed. Florian Heesch and Niall Scott, 1–10. Abingdon: Routledge. Hill, Rosemary Lucy. 2016. Gender, Metal and the Media: Woman Fans and the Gendered Experience of Music. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Hjelm, Titus, Keith Kahn-Harris and Mark LeVine. 2013. Introduction: Heavy Metal as Controversy and Counterculture. In Heavy Metal: Controversies and Countercultures, ed. Titus Hjelm, Keith Kahn-Harris and Mark LeVine, 1–16. Sheffield: Equinox. Hudak, Joseph. 2018. Halestorm Talk Owning Sex on Their New LP and Why Heavy Music Is “Genderless”. Rolling Stone, August 2.

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The Iron Maidens. n.d. https://www.theironmaidens.com/. Accessed 23 Nov. 2018. Kahn-Harris, Keith. 2007. Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge. Oxford: Berg. Keith, Sarah and Diane Hughes. 2016. Embodied Kawaii: Girls’ voices in J-pop. Journal of Popular Music Studies 28: 474–487. Klosterman, Chuck. 2005. She’s Got Big Balls. SPIN, June 1. Lez Zeppelin. n.d. https://www.itcouldbereal.net/. Accessed 23 Nov. 2018. Mikkelson, Jill. 2016. It’s Time to Stop Making Excuses for Extreme Metal’s Violent Misogynist Fantasies. Noisey. https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/ rb8bnd/death-­metal-­misogyny. Accessed 26 Nov. 2018. Millard, André. 2004. Introduction. In The Electric Guitar: A History of an American Icon, ed. André Millard, 1–16. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Mötley Crüe. 2010. Mötley Crüe  – Girls Girls Girls (Official Music Video). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2XdmyBtCRQ. Accessed 26 Nov. 2018. Perry, Joe and David Ritz. 2015. Rocks: My Life in and out of Aerosmith. New York: Simon & Schuster. Petrusich, Amanda. 2011. Flowing Hair? Tight Pants? Women Can Rock That. New York Times, July 21. Phillips, William and Brian Cogan. 2009. Encyclopaedia of Heavy Metal Music. Westport: Greenwood Press. Purcell, Natalie J. 2003. Death Metal Music: The Passion and Politics of a Subculture. Jefferson: McFarland & Company. Waksman, Steve. 1999. Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Walser, Robert. 1993. Running with the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press. Weinstein, Deena. 2000. Heavy Metal: The Music and its Culture. Boston: Da Capo Press. Weinstein, Deena. 2016. Playing with Gender in the Key of Metal. In Heavy Metal, Gender and Sexuality: Interdisciplinary Approaches, ed. Florian Heesch and Niall Scott, 11–35. Abingdon: Routledge. Whitmore, Laura B. 2018. Exclusive Interview: Lzzy Hale Talks Halestorm’s New Release, ‘Vicious’ out July 27. Parade, July 27. Wright, Holly. 2016. The Iron Maidens live review – London, Islington Academy. Metal Hammer, May 24.

Chapter 6: See the Signs—Justin Timberlake and the Pretence of Romance Racheal Harris

A defining part of the musical landscape in the 1990s, boy bands not only became the object of the female gaze, their images adorning the walls of teen and pre-teen bedrooms the world over, but were a lucrative revenue spinner for record companies globally. Unlike the rock band, which focused on musical accomplishment and the lyrical competency of their members, the boy band was a pantomime in which idyllic ideas of romantic love and infatuation were played out for the predominately female fan base that worshipped them. With a focus on intricate dance moves and sugary lyrics, the boy band was defined by the way its (usually white) members constructed a safe space in which heteronormative relationships were discussed within the framework of three-minute musical narrative, the accompaniment of which was generally a punchy synth-driven loop. It was through these types of ballad that many young people (overwhelmingly women) constructed their idea of romance. This was, of course, far

R. Harris (*) Deakin University, Geelong, VIC, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Fosbraey, N. Puckey (eds.), Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65189-3_7

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removed from the financial interest of the record companies who controlled these groups and, frequently, at odds with the attitudes of the young men that were at their centre. For boy band members, the payoff for their participation in this fantasy was instant fame. Although wealth and artistic autonomy were largely illusionary, the celebrity image was one that could not be rivalled and thus throughout the period several aspiring male musicians appeared, some enjoying more success than others. The downside of fame for the boy band member was the relatively short shelf life which the career offered. As quickly as they had emerged in the pop-­ culture vernacular, the interest of their fanbase began to shift, perhaps as a mirror of the maturation of that fan base, and thus many boy bands slipped into cultural obscurity, although the relationship ideals portrayed in their pop lyrics have endured. For listeners who grew up with this genre of music, the romantic imagery which had played such a prevalent role in the teen and pre-teen ideas of what a loving and romantic partnership should look like was somewhat harder to shake. Lyrical content of the traditional boy band ballad frequently draws on the concept of an idyllic romance in which the female is adored and cherished by the male singer. This is keeping in line with what Kathleen L. Endres found in her study of pop music lyrics from the 1960s through to the 1980s (1984). In her findings, Endres highlights that the majority of pop music songs speak from the first-person perspective, which is usually that of the male singer. In doing so, the audience to the song is exposed not only to the male-centred narrative, in which the relationship (overwhelmingly pop songs within Endres’ study were concerned with romantic relationships gone awry) is seen purely from the masculine view, but to a narrative in which the female party is two dimensional and underdeveloped. Another interesting element which Endres’ highlights is the fact that women are also often discussed negatively with reference to their deceit and duplicity within the relationship. In taking this approach, pop music conditions listeners to expect and seek out these tropes within pop songs. Despite Endres conducting this study over thirty years ago, similar conclusions can be applied to the present. Recent comebacks by Take That, New Kids on the Block and the Backstreet Boys have proven to be hugely successful for former group members, indicating that despite a proliferation of contemporary pop acts, a yearning for the pop narratives of yesteryear continues into the current day. This return to the spotlight has been constructed on the back of a nostalgia wave, signalling the end of a long period of time in which the

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boy band was not only out of vogue with contemporary audiences but a punchline for pop-culture references. In the case of many highly successful boy bands like the Backstreet Boys and the British band Blue, reunions have also come about in response to financial decline.1 As part of a celebrity-­making machine, many individual members of the boy band saw little of the enormous revenue which their music produced. In the years after their fall from grace, financial peril and eventual bankruptcy have been the price for their fifteen minutes of fame. While in some instances legal action has been taken against the record labels and managers that reaped the fiscal rewards of these artistic outputs, by and large such suits have failed to offer suitable recompense to the performers.2 Rather than focusing on the re-emergence or reunion of boy bands, this chapter considers the alternate route which many members of once successful groups embark upon: the solo career. Still something of a rarity, as boy band members experience difficulty in shedding the wholesome image which membership within the genre dictates, precious few have managed to transcend the label of their early careers to become fully fledged pop icons. Perhaps the most recognizable among contemporary examples is Robbie Williams. Williams commenced his career with Take That and has been the only member of the band to strike out on his own to experience worldwide superstardom. This initial success in pop music was born from his collaboration with Bernie Taupin, previous co-writer of many of Elton John’s most successful pop classics. In America, a similar story has been true of Justin Timberlake. Unlike Williams, Timberlake has been primarily responsible for writing the lyrical content of his own songs, although throughout the production process he has come to lean heavily on established artists Pharrell Williams, The Neptunes and Timbaland.3 My analysis examines not only how Timberlake discusses romantic ideas with his listeners, which are comprised predominately of females, but also how his ideas about love and romance have evolved in his transition from boy band member to pop superstar. Deeply entrenched within his romantic ideology are expressions of toxic masculinity. This is evident not only in his lyrical narrative but the content of his music videos as well. This is not always immediately conspicuous to audience members but has been pivotal in Timberlake’s image construction as a solo artist, specifically as it relates to the coming-of-age story that his career reflects. Themes of the same are similarly noticeable in his costuming and collaborative partnerships. While Timberlake has worked with female as well as male artists, the role he performs within these collaborative dynamics has been central to

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embedding the masculine character that he portrays within his celebrity persona. As such, I will consider the different forms of collaborative partnerships in which Timberlake has partaken. These partnerships, for the most part, are focused on working with rap musicians. As such, scholarship on rap music and the unique issues it highlights about toxic masculinities has also been drawn upon in my consideration of how Timberlake constructs his celebrity persona. Rather than an attack on Justin Timberlake, my intention here is to use his work as a case study to examine issues around the construction of masculine identities and how these, when performed by celebrity figures, are detrimental to the way that younger audiences view relationships. Specifically, in presenting himself as a new-aged Lothario, Timberlake’s celebrity persona grooms young female audiences not only to expect that they are the instigators of deception in interpersonal relationships but to expect that men will treat them as commodities or cast them aside if they fail to meet a particular set of sexual requirements. In relation to sexuality, Timberlake portrays the perfect female as someone that can be trusted, someone that is “good” but also sexually provocative. Her exterior exudes many of the enduring traits which are synonymous with femininity (softness, virtue and honesty), though her inner nature is closer to the sexually aggressive behaviours which have historically been associated with men. As the female is imagined from the male perspective, she becomes a contradiction, a confusing avatar with which young women are hopelessly unable to identify. While we can say that there is a new feminist agenda in which women aim to behave more like their male counterparts, at least in the realm of dating, this idea too is largely rooted in the popular culture texts which have had a seminal influence on how younger generations of women have come to construct a gender narrative not only around what it means to be a female in the current day but also around the type of relationship which they imagine to be ideal. This style of relationship too is frequently one sided and relies heavily on the kinds of gender tropes which are common to texts that are written explicitly for women. Although he presents the image of the caring and loving partner, Timberlake’s narrative of the romantic relationship is one in which domestic disharmony is the yardstick against which personal torment and suffering is measured. This has a detrimental impact both on how his female audience picture themselves as the avatars of his lyrical romances and on how they approach their own relationships with young men.

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The overwhelming majority of Timberlake’s work is focused, in some sense, on heteronormative relationships. Looking at his catalogue retrospectively, it is evident that there are examples on each of his studio albums which seem to comprise one part of a larger, overarching narrative of romantic love and betrayal. For instance, the songs “Cry Me a River” (Justified, 2004) and “What Goes Around… Comes Around” (FutureSex/ LoveSounds, 2006) have a great deal in common thematically, despite being from separate albums. Comparatively, “Amnesia” and “TKO” which appeared on Timberlake’s 2013 release, The 20/20 Experience – 2 of 2, also demonstrate identical themes, which speak to the insidious recurrence of toxic masculinity in both his lyrical content and celebrity persona. The narrative of “Cry Me a River” establishes the tone for much of his following work, with Timberlake reflecting on the hurt which has been caused to him after his partner’s infidelity. Although being cheated on is not typical of the alpha male identity with which the present-day Timberlake identifies, in this case it was the perfect bridge for him to cross over from the romantic idealism of the boy band into more adult territory. The chorus of the song “you don’t have to say/what you did/I already know/I found out from him” established him in the victim role, at the same time making him a sympathetic target for female listeners. His later refrain “now there’s just no chance/for you and me/there’ll never be…” speaks to an unwillingness to move on through the betrayal. Within popular culture, the song is thought to be a semi-autobiographical account of his relationship with Britney Spears, which ended after accusations of her infidelity and signified the end of one of pop music’s most famous pairings. In the aftermath of their break-up, Timberlake gave a graphic interview to Barbra Walters, in which he discussed intimate details of their relationship. This interview was notable as it would dispel the long-held myth that Spears was a virgin. Just as Timberlake built his career from the success of *NSYNC, Spears rose to fame through her bubble-­gum pop image, a large part of which focused upon her as the virginal “good-girl.” Despite the celebrity attention that was given to the pair as a power couple, Spears was the bigger star. In destroying her image, by discussing their sex life with the press, Timberlake irreparably damaged her reputation while also establishing himself as the morally superior party and the perpetual victim. Spears’ career would go on to be plagued by scandal, mental illness and a highly publicized breakdown. Her numerous marriages and divorce from Kevin Federline (father of her two children) continue to plague the star. Although she has seen something of a return to the

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spotlight in the last five years, with a successful Las Vegas residency, she has never quite retained the fame which continues to follow Timberlake. While I am not suggesting that he is the reason behind Spears’ publicity woes (he actually came to her aid after her mental collapse), it is interesting to note the way in which male and female behaviours will impact the longevity of the career. Where Spears has been maligned for her promiscuity, Timberlake’s brand, which has been embedded since this incident, would essentially become a celebration of his own. Much like “Cry Me a River,” (Timberlake 2011c) “Amnesia” (20/20 Experience—2 of 2, 2013) details a relationship breakdown although in this instance he describes his tendency to chase a specific kind of woman. Using the name “Eve” to describe her makes the female in the song applicable to every woman, while the description of her “beautiful smile with those sad eyes” as being his “type” is also indicative of a relationship pattern in which attraction is based on Timberlake’s idea that his love interest is troubled. Similar elements are evident in the woman he discusses in prior hit “Like I Love You” (Justified, 2002), although in that instance, the promise of his love and attention was thought to have the power to turn her unhappiness around. In this later iteration, however, it is her sadness which makes her impossible to satisfy. Still, Timberlake is drawn to the kind of woman that will punish him with emotional distance. In pursuing such relationships, his celebrity persona all but guarantees his own heartbreak—from which new hit songs can be written. Taking this approach suggests to audiences that it is normal to feel distant from a romantic partner and that, like a romance novel or rom-com, it is the role of the woman to be emotionally damaged while the role of the man is to try (and fail) to fix this. As the female never articulates why she behaves towards her male lover in this way, there is no opportunity for genuine loving bonds to be established. Timberlake is doomed to perpetually suffer through the implosion of one love affair after another, becoming the tragic hero. As he matures, this persona becomes linked to his sexual identity, with sexual liaisons often taking place in parallel to emotionally oppressive situations and episodes of casual violence. “TKO” (20/20 Experience—2 of 2, 2013) is demonstrative of this, as Timberlake shows a more pronounced interest in the sexual/physical elements of the heterosexual relationship. In this example his entire relationship is framed in boxing terminology, while the video clip, which will be discussed in more detail below, portrays a level of psycho-­sexual aggression which is not only

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suggestive of female to male domestic violence but normalizes behaviour which, were gender roles reversed, would be unacceptable. Visually, Timberlake’s music videos also promote thematic elements which are present in modern-day seduction techniques expounded by the male subculture which embraces toxic masculinity (O’Neill 2018). While evidence of Timberlake’s role as the scorned man will be discussed in further detail below, it is important to consider his evolution in relation to his music video persona. It is here, more so than in his lyrical content, that the transition from boy band member to solo artist takes place. This begins with his first album Justified (2002) and the singles from it, which echo techniques displayed in *NSYNC videos. The music videos for “Like I Love You” (Timberlake 2011b) and “Senorita” (Timberlake 2011a) are suggestive of Timberlake’s boyishness. Each focuses heavily on a chaste idea of romantic infatuation, in which Timberlake attempts to woo the woman away from her current lover by promising that he will be a superior boyfriend to her. A similar theme is present in the *NSYNC song “Girlfriend” (*NSYNC 2009). In these examples, rather than framing his seduction in the discussion of physicality, his technique focuses on his emotional superiority and the ability this gives him to focus on the emotional aspects of the relationship, which females are stereotypically believed to value more highly than the physical. In contrast, physical intimacy is the realm of male infatuation. By appealing to the emotional needs of the woman, Timberlake not only creates the idea of himself as the “safe” and caring boyfriend but promotes the idea that he understands what a woman desires from her partner. This becomes problematic in his subsequent songs, in which he chastises the female partner for failing to understand his emotional or physical needs and/or discusses her as an object. This will become fully realized in his following album. A stand out track from Timberlake’s second album FutureSex/ LoveSounds (2006) was “What Goes Around… Comes Around,” (Timberlake 2011e) a song that is generally thought to relate to “Cry Me a River” and in which Timberlake is again lamenting the infidelity of the woman in his life. The video for the song is an eight-minute short film, directed by Nick Cassavetes, which details a romantic narrative between Timberlake and a woman he meets at the club at which he works. In the story Timberlake is essentially playing himself, with Scarlett Johansson playing the Spears role. In this instance her infidelity, which occurs with his best friend, is also shrouded in the idea of him as the victim. Although Timberlake frequently objects to Johansson when she tells him she is not

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interested in a relationship with him, over the course of their tumultuous love affair, it is she who is cast as emotionally unavailable and cold. In contrast, Timberlake is shown constantly trying to mould her into his ideal love. At points, the relationship verges into verbally abusive territory, with Johansson being told to “shut up.” She responds to this by challenging Timberlake, asking him “why don’t you make me shut up?” The exchange is typical of a relationship which is imbalanced and in which one party is trying to assert dominance over the other. An interlude in which lesbianism and group sex is touched upon is also cliché of the way that men often think about women and their sexual drives. Johansson is portrayed as working in some type of burlesque role. She is frequently scantily clad, with heavy make-up which embraces the look common to the traditional femme fatale. Frequent close ups of her face, particularly in scenes where she appears to be play acting drunk, foreshadow her duplicity. For his part, Timberlake plays the role of the blissfully unaware victim. This is highlighted in the chorus to the song, in which Timberlake stands singing, alone on stage, his arms outstretched in a kind of crucified pose. This creates an impression of him as the hapless victim of the female. Despite the fact that she has never expressed a romantic infatuation with him beyond the physical, he is portrayed as the fool in the relationship. The “it’s breaking my heart to watch you run around/cause I know that you’re livin’ a lie” refrain is also emblematic of the male despair at the idea of female promiscuity, while the end of the refrain “but that’s okay baby/cause in time you will find/what goes around comes around…” is indicative of the idea that the woman will be punished for these actions. For his part, Timberlake absorbs none of the blame for the failed relationship. Although he exhibits possessive behaviours, like watching his girlfriend as she sleeps and asking his friend (with whom she will eventually commit the infidelity) to keep an eye on her, he is the victim because his seductive techniques, including pressuring Johansson into a relationship, fail to achieve the desired result. At the end of the song he goes so far as to explicitly state “girl, you got what you deserved.” The video concludes with the pair involved in a high-speed car chase. After having caught her in the arms of his best friend, Timberlake manhandles her, though stops short of striking her. She runs off, jumping into a sports car with Timberlake on her heels. He too leaps into his own car and the chase through the night time city scape ensues. It is Johannsen that is involved in a fiery car crash, which takes place as Timberlake looks on. Leaving his car, he approaches the inert body of his former lover,

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which has been thrown from the wreckage. The video finishes before the fate of the woman is revealed. Although the scene adds to the dramatic imagery which has been present throughout the narrative, what it ultimately suggests is that the woman has died because of her deceit. The video for “TKO” shows a similar scene of domestic disharmony, in which Timberlake and his lover seem to constantly be at odds with each other. A physical disagreement in the kitchen of the home ends up in a strange sexual encounter, after which Timberlake is hit in the head with a frying pan and knocked unconscious. Somehow the woman is able to string him up to the back of a truck and, when he comes to, he is being dragged through the desert. Eventually the truck to which he is tied goes over a cliff, taking him with it as his lover watches on, seemingly without much emotion. Again, in this example, Timberlake is clearly the victim. In the lyrical narrative he describes the woman as having something inside that makes her evil, and when he sees this side of her, he cannot understand what is going on. The Jekyll and Hyde persona echoes that of Johansson’s character in “What Goes Around…Comes Around.” It seems that once the woman enters into a relationship she transitions from the “good girl” whom Timberlake described in his wooing style songs (“Senorita,” “Like I Love You,” “My Love” and “Love Stoned” are some examples) into the deceptive villain. While I am not suggesting that women are incapable of infidelity, heartlessness and betrayal, the overarching theme in many of Timberlake’s romance-themed songs is of him as the scorned boyfriend. In these scenarios, it is always the woman that has shunned his affection or blindsided his love with her cruelty. Over the course of his first three albums “Cry Me a River,” “What Goes Around… Comes Around,” “Amnesia” and “TKO” all appear to be part of the same, running story. In the case of the first two songs in particular, we see work that is amongst Timberlake’s most popular. The female love interest in the video for “TKO” is played by Riley Keough, granddaughter of Elvis Presley. Elvis, who is still largely considered the King of Rock, is not only the favoured son of Timberlake’s hometown Memphis but is another influence on Timberlake as a musician. That Timberlake uses his granddaughter in the video, which is sexually explicit and degrading in certain scenes, can be read as a challenge to the masculine legacy of Elvis. This would not be the only parallel between Timberlake’s performance persona and that of the late Presley. Much like Elvis, a style icon, Timberlake has also employed different fashion styles to assert his masculinity and establish his approach to

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relationships. This has been evident since the start of his career with the band *NSYNC. Part of the golden era of boy bands, *NSYNC used fashion in order to establish their personas. “It’s Gonna Be Me” implements costuming and dance moves to suggest that the band are one body, one man. In the video for this and “Bye, Bye, Bye” it is, again, one girl to the five band members (*NSYNC 2000). Casting five men into the persona of a single boyfriend ensures that the band is seen as a cohesive unit. From a marketing perspective, this does not privilege any one member over another and ensures that fans are able to envisage their own relationship with any one of the members because none of them seem to have their own distinct personality. In retrospect, we might also attribute this direction to the fact that two of the band members have since come out as homosexuals. While this has little impact on the status of the band now, had the disclosure been made at the height of their fame it would have been damaging to record sales. When we consider other prominent boy bands of the era, particularly The Backstreet Boys, who were perhaps the direct competition of *NSYNC, it is interesting to note that they did not adopt this technique. In their music videos, notably for chart toppers “As Long as You Love Me” (Backstreet Boys, 1997) and “I Want it that Way” (Millennium, 1999) each member of the band appears to be singing about their own relationship to an individual woman. These experiences, while specific to the individual members of the band, come together lyrically to represent love and romance in the general context. In the aesthetics of the video, the fact that each of the male band members carries on a relationship with a different woman in turn gives them their own sense of individuality. After leaving the band, Timberlake adopted a similar wardrobe to that which he wore while with *NSYNC. This assisted in audiences relating him back to their love of the band while also bridging his transition into an established solo artist. To fully divorce himself from this image, however, it was necessary for him to transition into a more mature form of costuming. The suit is an expression of masculinity and sexuality (Miller 2011). In “SexyBack” (Timberlake 2011d) the lead single from FutureSex/ LoveSounds, Timberlake is clearly stating that he has matured since his previous album. The cover art for the album shows Timberlake in a suit and dress shoes and with an older, sleeker appearance. He claims his new persona and new career direction with the claim that he is bringing sexy back, because those other boys don’t know how to act. The use of the word boys over men is important here, as it sets Timberlake apart from his

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contemporaries. In the music video for “SexyBack” Timberlake appears as a James Bond-type character. Moving through a densely populated night club, he is pursued by a woman, who is similarly sleek and sophisticated. This theme is conveyed, albeit to a higher level, in both albums which comprise the 20/20 Experience. Although Timberlake is again presented in a suit, this is a more sophisticated, mature look and one which recalls a more traditional glamor. The lead single from the initial album, “Suit and Tie,” has a distinctly big band feel and, shot in black and white, it recalls the bygone era in which crooners like Frank Sinatra were at their peak. The video also features rapper Jay-Z, whose presence on the track is an example of the collaborative partnerships which have been an integral part of Timberlake’s solo career and important to establishing his celebrity persona. Timberlake has collaborated with a large number of artists over the course of his career. When we look at these artists, however, with the exception of Madonna (2009) and Chris Stapleton his contributors are always black. In the relationship which Timberlake establishes with them throughout these songs, there is always a specific racial dynamic at play. The collaborator will invariably be cast as the sexually dangerous male, while Timberlake parlays his whiteness into the figure of the good man or the safe (white) male (Hawkins 2007). The use of rap music within these collaborations is also important. By juxtaposing himself alongside the stereotype of the black rap musician, Timberlake is able to further establish the whiteness and safety of his male character. In songs where he appears alongside a black collaborator, he is invariably posed as the softer of the two men, his lyrical narrative and delivery providing the more romantic ideal (Hawkins 2007). As an example, in the song “My Love” Timberlake talks about walks on the beach, holding hands and lying in fields, looking up at the sky. This presents a romantic and idyllic picture of what romance with him will be like for his beloved. During the rap interlude, T.I. frames his own liaison in a harsher context, his is based on wooing the female with his money and stealing her away from another man. This is punctuated with the epithet “if you don’t come/I ain’t gonna die” (Timberlake 2009) which is in strong opposition to what Timberlake has been saying, specifically that the object of his affections is like no other girl. For listeners this creates a problematic message. On the one hand, the female is made to feel special while on the other she is being reminded that she is not special at all and that failure to

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comply with the desire of the male party will see her replaced with someone else. The choice of rap is also important to establishing the celebrity persona because of the long history which the genre has had with misogynistic views towards women. Academic studies on how rap portrays women and violence against them can be found in the early 1990s, when rap was first entering mainstream culture (Barongan and Hall 1995). What these studies have demonstrated is a correlation between male listeners and violence against women or misogynistic ideas about women (White 2011). Traditionally, studies of the impact of rap music on audiences have focused on their influence on male listeners (Treat et  al. 2014); however, it is increasingly important to consider how the style is being implemented by mainstream artists and the effect which its associated lyrical content can have on younger audiences. While these audiences might not identify as rap fans, the fact remains that their exposure to themes and ideas commonly found in rap music alters pre-existing concepts about heteronormative gender relations. In the case of Timberlake, for the female listener, the inclusion of the rap artist makes him seem like the safe and romantic lover. In many instances, however, his message about ideal romantic partners is as detrimental as the overt misogyny present in the stereotypical rap lyric (Adams et al. 2006). For male listeners, the presence of the rapper gives Timberlake a new audience who might not be interested in his songs otherwise. The use of the rap interlude or counternarrative provides male listeners with a hook that appeals to them specifically because it is not focused on saccharine ideas of romance, but in doing so, it enforces a toxic idea of masculinity in its assumption that women are replaceable commodities. In this way, Timberlake is performing in accordance with longestablished racial tropes (Bachechi 2015). T.I. is not the only rap artist with whom Timberlake has collaborated and certainly not the only rap artist with a dubious catalogue of songs which highlight his lapse attitudes towards society, the law and women. In real life, T.I. has served time in prison for drug charges and much of his celebrity persona reflects the thug lifestyle (Billboard 2009). This is far removed from Timberlake’s own upbringing, which was spent in the family home, in middle-class Memphis (Timberlake 2018b). Another rapper with whom Timberlake has collaborated on two occasions is Nelly. The pair first worked together when Timberlake was with *NSYNC, with Nelly providing vocals on a Neptunes remix of the *NSYNC song “Girlfriend.” Following this, the pair collaborated again after Timberlake went solo, this

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time on Nelly’s single “Work It,” (Videospromoonly 2009) which introduces the male duo into the Playboy Mansion, where they are surrounded by a bevy of beautiful women as they describe numerous sexual escapades. Although the song details encounters with various women, at no point are these suggestive of romantic relationships. Nelly has the lead vocal, with Timberlake’s interludes providing harmony, though his attitudes about women echo those discussed by Nelly, specifically his desire for the kind of woman that wears stiletto heels, thong underwear and various tattoos. This is a far cry from the “good girls” which Timberlake commonly describes in his own music. Similar themes are used in other collaborative works, such as “Signs” (Snopp Dogg R&G (Rhythm & Gangsta): The Masterpiece, 2004) in which Timberlake appears alongside Snoop Dogg. In this song and the accompanying video, Timberlake is critiqued because his whiteness seems to eliminate him from the status of being a “G” (gentleman), which is an American colloquialism denoting a black man of status. In “AYO Technology” (Curtis, 2007) he appears alongside rapper (50 Cent 2009). This song is about pornography and the use of the female body explicitly to give pleasure to the man. While 50 Cent’s rap narrative is explicit, Timberlake contributes a marginally softer approach to the content in his chorus in which he laments having to rely on (pornographic) technology, wishing that a real woman was there to “sit down on top of me.” The video for the song splices soft-porn alongside images of Timberlake and Jackson, who appear to be watching the scenes from a distance. In this video, like the video for “Signs” (Davo 2013) women are shown in degrading and derogatory ways, specifically as strippers and prostitutes. Not only does this convey a confused message about relationship power dynamics but it also glamorizes the sex trade industry. Of the female artists with whom Timberlake has collaborated, perhaps his most divisive performance was alongside Ciara in the song “Love Sex Magic” (Fantasy Ride, 2009). In the video, Ciara and a posse of female dancers perform a review for Timberlake, before a solo Ciara offers him a private dance. The clip culminates with Timberlake licking the side of her face. Although she also licks his ear at the start of the video, the fact that she is wearing a collar around her neck, which he is gripping when he licks her in the closing moments, is suggestive of a dominant/submissive relationship (Ciara 2009). This gesture, despite only lasting for a split second, was enough to cause the video to be banned in Middle Eastern countries (Yackley 2009). Ciara is the lead artist credited on the track, which is taken

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from her album; however, in using Timberlake in this way, she makes herself the object of her own video. Although the concept is framed as an authoritative game, in which she attempts to seduce Timberlake using her femininity, it is he that is in control of the situation. In the scene where he licks her then, the act is demonstrative of a clear message of ownership. Although we might discuss the video as an example of female empowerment or of the female taking control of her own sexual agency, this is ultimately surrendered in allowing Timberlake to control the direction of the sexual back and forth, by, as the lyrics suggest, allowing him to take her heat and push it right back. Timberlake is also credited as featuring on Rhianna’s song “Rehab” (Good Girl Gone Bad, 2007) although he does not sing on the song, only providing a brief vocal interlude in the final minute (Rhianna 2009). Although the song does provide the oppositional view to that which Timberlake has described in all of his betrayal songs, the fact that he appears in the video but does not sing removes him from the story. It could be any man partaking in the gender role, in which Rhianna describes losing herself to the relationship and feeling like she is a drug addict because she cannot leave a romance which she identifies as being bad for her. In this song, like in “Love Sex Magic,” his presence promotes relationship toxicity as the norm. Rather than appearing as the tender-hearted and empathetic lover which he embodied early in his career, these later collaborative efforts, combined with his later solo work, take a more direct turn towards highlighting relationships which are not only unhealthy but in which emotional distance and abuse are the standard. For female listeners in particular, it becomes increasingly difficult to sympathize with Timberlake once one puts herself in the position of his love interest. Whereas his early persona sang serenades of love, harmony and emotional equality, the Timberlake of the current era is far removed from this romantic ideal. Timberlake’s latest album, Man of the Woods, presents a completely different version of Timberlake. A concept album, it is a meditation on Timberlake’s new-found role as husband and father. In promotion of this image, he incorporates the vocals of his wife and son throughout the album, while in publicity material, he discusses it as being close to his roots, a true reflection of who he is as a person and where he is from. His 2018 book Hindsight and All the Things I Can’t See in Front of Me develops this idea further, though it walks a fine line between an autobiographical account of Timberlake’s career and a piece of promotional material for

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the album. The book, which touches on highlights from previous releases, says little about collaborations with other artists or how Timberlake has navigated his path through stardom as a solo performer. Instead, it is a loose recounting of how he became famous, the close relationship he shares with his mother and the importance of family and place in his identity. It references his wife (actress Jessica Biel) and their son Silas repeatedly, stating that since he has become a husband and father his ideas about life and music have undergone drastic transformation. This shift in persona creates a distance between the present version of his celebrity persona and the previous, from which he has built his empire. In the latest album, for instance, there is a clear shift away from the overtly sexual material which made him popular with audiences. Of the tracks from Man of the Woods (2018a), “Filthy” is perhaps the only one which harkens back to Timberlake’s previous sound, seeming almost like a twin to “SexyBack” in its delivery. In the post-MTV age of digital streaming and multi-channel marketing, music is no longer purely about songwriting capabilities, the aesthetics of voice or the genius of sound production. That is, making the assumption that it ever was. In the modern day, a musician is no longer just a musician, they are a celebrity, with a celebrity persona and accompanying endorsement deals. When we look at Timberlake’s celebrity persona, like that of any popular musician, it is important to consider that in the consumer culture it is not enough just to make an album; an artist is only as great as their latest single, only as popular as their last movie role, only as relevant as their last appearance on TMZ. Thus, the construction of the celebrity persona as paramount is a reflection on the society which idolizes it. Before we can demand more of pop musicians like Timberlake it is essential to address the pervasive grip which toxic masculinity has on current ideas on the male/female relationship dynamic and to determine a clear difference between actual romance and toxic ideas of the same.

Notes 1. All members of the British boy band Blue have filed for bankruptcy. Citing a variation of reasons, many of them centre on the celebrity lifestyle being at odds with the fiscal rewards of record contracts and song royalties. 2. *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys have both lodged appeals against former managers in relation to revenue. From the female perspective, groups such

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as the Pussycat Dolls similarly discussed the lack of revenue which group members reap from their hectic work and tour schedule. 3. Pharrell Williams was the lead sound engineer on Timberlake’s debut album, on which The Neptunes also appear. More recently, he worked with Timberlake on his 2018 release Man of the Woods. Timbaland is perhaps best known for his work on Timberlake’s sophomore album, FutureSex/ LoveSounds, although he also played a role in the production of Justified and appears alongside Timberlake in the music video for “Cry Me a River.” He is also present in the music video for “SexyBack.” In both of these examples he appears in the role of Timberlake’s co-conspirator, responsible for orchestrating the revenge which Timberlake takes on his lover in “Cry Me a River” while assisting Timberlake in his seduction of the woman in “SexyBack.”

References NSYNC. 2000. No Strings Attached. CD. Jive Records. NSYNC. 2009. Girlfriend. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=saxnXiBKEaY. 50 Cent. 2007. Curtis. CD. Interscope Records. 50 Cent. 2009. Ayo Technology ft. Justin Timberlake. YouTube Video. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RDSkR8_AQ0. Adams, Terri M. and Douglas B. Fuller. 2006. The Words Have Changed but the Ideology Remains the Same: Misogynistic Lyrics in Rap Music. Journal of Black Studies, 36:6, 938–957. Barongan, Christy and Gordon C.  Nagayama Hall. 1995. The Influence of Misogynous Rap Music on Sexual Aggression Against Women. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 19, 195–207. Bachechi, Kimberly. 2015. Our icons: ourselves. Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Kevin Federline, and the construction of whiteness in post-race America. Celebrity Studies, 6:2, 164–177. Billboard. 2009. T.I. Begins Federal Prison Sentence in Arkansas. https://www. billboard.com/articles/news/268537/ti-­b egins-­f ederal-­p rison-­s entence-­ in-­arkansas. Ciara. 2009. Love Sex Magic ft. Justin Timberlake. YouTube Video. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=raB8z_tXq7A. Davo. 2013. Snoop Dogg ft. Charlie Wilson and Justin Timberlake. Signs. YouTube Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5H3HQIRkSM. Endres, Kathleen L. (1984). Sex Role Standards in Popular Music. The Journal of Popular Culture, 18:1, 9–18. Hawkins, Stan. (2007). [Un]Justified. In Freya Jarman-Ivens (Ed.), Oh Boy! Masculinities and Popular Music, (197–212). New York: Routledge.

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Madonna. 2009. 4 Minutes to Save the World (Official Video). YouTube Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mEx9FtuN0k. Miller, Janice. 2011. Fashion and Music. New York: Berg. O’Neill, Rachel. 2018. Seduction: Men, Masculinity and Mediated Intimacy. Cambridge: Polity Press. Rhianna. 2009. Rehab ft. Justin Timberlake. YouTube Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJYcmq__nDM. Snoop Dogg. 2004. R&G (Rhythm & Gangsta): The Masterpiece. CD. Geffen Records. Timberlake, Justin. 2004. Justified. CD. Jive Records. Timberlake, Justin. 2006. FutureSex/LoveSounds. CD. Jive Records. Timberlake, Justin. 2009. Medley: Let Me Talk to You/My Love ft. T.I. YouTube Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjpe7EGyiw8. Timberlake, Justin. 2011a. Senorita (Official MusicVideo). YouTube Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJHYDkvRB2Y. Timberlake, Justin. 2011b. Like I Love You (Official Music Video). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ3slUz7Jo8. Timberlake, Justin. 2011c. Cry Me A River (Official Music Video). YouTube Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DksSPZTZES0. Timberlake, Justin. 2011d. SexyBack ft. Timbaland (Official Music Video). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gOHvDP_vCs. Timberlake, Justin. 2011e. What Goes Around… Comes Around (Official Music Video). YouTube Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unzWJWiCALA. Timberlake, Justin. 2012. The 20/20 Experience—2 of 2. CD. Jive Records. Timberlake, Justin. 2013. TKO (Official Music Video). https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=FyXtoTLLcDk. Timberlake, Justin. 2018a. Man of the Woods. CD. Jive Records. Timberlake, Justin. 2018b. Hindsight & All the Things I Can’t See in Front of Me. Treat, Teresa A., Coreen A. Farrris, Richard J. Vikens and Jodi R. Smith. 2014. Influence of Sexually Degrading Music on Men’s Perceptions of Women’s Dating-Relevant Cues. Applied Cognitive Psychology. 29, 135–141. Videospromoonly. 2009. Nelly ft. Justin Timberlake. Work It. YouTube Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrOcmcJrCHQ. White, Miles. 2011. From Jim Crow to Jay-Z: Race, Rap, and the Performance of Masculinity. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Yackley, Ayla Jean. 2009. Turkey slaps ban on Timberlake video ‘Love Sex Magic’. News.com.au https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/music/turkey-­slaps-­ ban-­on-­timberlake-­video-­love-­sex-­magic/news-­story/870c24ea5ba9f5abdc59 25c90c1516a5.

Chapter 7: Immortal Technique and the Radical Reimagining of Masculinity on the Street Heather Stewart

I’d rather be proud of what I am, rather than desperately trying to be something I’m really not just to fit in. —Immortal Technique, “The Poverty of Philosophy,” 2001

The hip-hop genre tends to get a bad rap,1 particularly among many feminist scholars who insist—often in the form of sweeping generalizations about the genre—that hip-hop music is necessarily degrading to women, perpetuates particularly toxic formations of masculinity, and, as such, should not be listened to and enjoyed, especially by those who are sympathetic to feminist aims.2 Such generalizations about what is, of course, an overwhelmingly diverse, complex, and wide-ranging genre largely ignore

H. Stewart (*) Western University, London, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Fosbraey, N. Puckey (eds.), Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65189-3_8

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the many glaring counter-examples, namely, instances of hip-hop which have intentionally subverted misogynistic attitudes and celebrated women or otherwise bolstered female empowerment—whether such hip-hop was made by and for women or not.3 Some fairly obvious examples of hip-hop that achieves one or more of the latter aims include the work of Missy Elliott,4 and, of course, some of the lyrical canon of the late Tupac Shakur.5 But even these seemingly obvious examples are not without critique, in particular, critiques that these artists are “too mainstream” to fully resist hegemonic notions of gender, class, and so on or to legitimately achieve female empowerment.6 Hip-hop seems doomed to never catch a break in this regard. Enter Felipe Andres Coronel, more widely recognized by his stage name, Immortal Technique. Immortal Technique is a Peruvian-American independent hip-hop artist,7 activist,8 and revolutionary. He is best known for his sharp, powerful lyrics, which offer listeners a critical interrogation of the corrupt workings of the American government and its influence on the global political order, poverty and class warfare, institutionalized racism, and police brutality, among other serious and often difficult topics or subject matter. The themes covered in Technique’s musical canon lend themselves to lyrical content and stylistic delivery that give off an intensity and sense of urgency that could easily be misinterpreted as a paralysing form of anger. However, the message underneath the surface of Technique’s songs remains one of optimism throughout; the message is one of hope about the possibility of social change when fuelled by knowledge, understanding, and indeed properly channelled anger.9 His music communicates a belief in, as it were, the truly revolutionary power of hip-­ hop. He believes in speaking truth to power and using music to inspire solidarity, action, and ultimately change for the better. In this way, the revolutionary hip-hop of Immortal Technique functions as a counterexample to the universalizing claims that hip-hop is necessarily misogynistic or always promotes or contributes to toxic formations of masculinity. In what follows, I examine some of Technique’s musical canon,10 to argue that his music flips the normative representation of urban masculinity that is often presented in mainstream hip-hop music on its head, pushing the young men who listen to his music to examine and take responsibility for their behaviour, attitudes, and emotions and to represent a more complex version of masculinity than is typically portrayed in and endorsed by most mainstream hip-hop. This chapter offers an important contribution to hip-hop scholarship, insofar as it complicates

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oversimplified narratives about the genre, and does so by appealing to an important, yet often overlooked, independent hip-hop artist. Despite what I see as being incredibly powerful lyrical content and artistically important music in general, the lyrical canon of Immortal Technique has not been given much scholarly attention.11 This chapter intends to rectify that oversight, shining a well-deserved light on the valuable contributions of Immortal Technique to the world of hip-hop.

Background Context: Toxic Formations of Masculinity in Urban Contexts and Representations in Mainstream Hip-Hop In order to make the claim that the music of Immortal Technique represents a contrast to more mainstream hip-hop with respect to representation(s) of “toxic urban masculinity,” it is important to first set out what is meant by “toxic masculinity” in these contexts and further make the case that a significant portion of mainstream hip-hop music tends to reinforce it. Educator and activist Jackson Katz is known for his provocative and informative work on the concept of “toxic masculinity.”12 In this work, he describes the ways in which social- and media-driven pressures encourage and incentivize men to adopt a particular sort of masculinity, which involves the need to demonstrate one’s “toughness,” especially through displays of violence and aggression. Young men adopt this specific persona of masculinity (and the associated attributes and behaviours), in order to gain social standing or status and to avoid ridicule in the form of being called “weak,” “gay,” “girly,” or some other insult or slur intended to mark their failure to perform masculinity appropriately, that is, in the socially preferred or dominant way. In order to be accepted in social contexts marked by these norms of masculinity, and especially to become socially powerful within them, young men must routinely perform toughness and aggression and actively avoid attitudes or behaviours characteristically deemed “weak” or “feminine.” The pressure to gain social status or the illusion of power through acts of violence or aggression tends to be more pronounced in poverty-stricken, urban areas in which there are few, if any, real opportunities for individuals to gain actual power or status or to improve their life chances through academic or professional means. In such social contexts, where tangible

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options for obtaining power or status are stifled by the economic and material realities of the environment, the toxic form of masculinity—that which uses violence and aggression to try to “get ahead”—can become the norm. In this way, this particularly violent and aggressive (read: “toxic”) form of masculinity becomes hegemonic. This is to say it becomes the dominant or mainstream way of “acting like a man” in these contexts, where there are limited alternatives for feeling “masculine,” “manly,” or “powerful.”13 Various forms of media (music, cinema, advertising, and video games, among others) reproduce and further normalize these toxic norms of masculinity. Furthermore, these forms of media conform to those particular narratives and norms because they are what sells—because this formation of masculinity that centres “toughness,” violence, and aggression has become normative (and thus popular), those producing media for sale and consumption primarily in urban contexts play on the tropes or stereotypes associated with that which has become socially normative. As such, many types of media that target urban men highlight and accentuate violent and aggressive attitudes and behaviours, often (and perhaps especially) those which are directed at women.14 Insofar as the hegemonic form of masculinity in these areas tends to objectify and subordinate women, and subsequently derogate men who opt to treat women with respect, media tends to fall in line and represent gender relations accordingly, glorifying misogynistic attitudes and behaviours in the process. And while many forms of media prey on the norms associated with this toxic form of masculinity to sell their respective products, the form of media that tends to get highlighted disproportionately in these conversations is rap and hip-hop music.15,16 Rap and hip-hop music emerged as aesthetic cultural expressions of urban youth (often, though not exclusively, youth of colour), who often feel overlooked or cast aside by society as a result of their marginalized race or class status, or some combination thereof (Adams and Fuller 2006). Rap/hip-hop music is generally assumed to mirror (and indeed celebrate) urban life, reflecting realities of a certain form of cultural existence and, particularly, the struggles associated with economic and other instabilities as well as violence in impoverished urban settings. However, it is important to recognize that this music does far more than merely mirror urban life; rather, it also plays an active role in shaping or constructing it. In other words, young people in urban environments who consume rap/ hip-hop music regularly attempt to model or embody what they hear in

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the lyrics, whether consciously or unconsciously; young urban listeners attempt to live like the celebrities and stars of the mainstream hip-hop genre, whom they idealize and idolize. This tendency to try to model what one hears in mainstream rap/hip-­ hop is particularly problematic once we acknowledge just how much of this music contains misogynistic content. In a content analysis that assessed the portrayal of women in a representative sample of 403 rap songs, George Washington University sociologists Ronald Weitzer and Charis E. Kubrin (2009) found that there were heavily recurrent themes across the songs that contained messages regarding “essential” male and female characteristics and which espoused a set of conduct norms for how men and women ought to behave. More specifically, they found that rap/hip-­ hop lyrics, when aggregated, tend to demonstrate five central themes. First, many of the songs engage in “naming and shaming,” that is, the lyrics engage in a ritualistic destruction of women (usually women in general, rather than a specific woman) through shaming by way of derogatory name-calling. Second, the lyrics often involve significant sexual objectification or suggestions that women are only to be valued insofar as they are sexual beings and can be used for sexual pleasure or gratification. Third, the lyrics have an overwhelming message of generalized distrust directed at women, connected to the assumption that women are “golddiggers” or otherwise are prone to entrap, betray, exploit, or otherwise harm men. Fourth, the lyrics have a theme of legitimating and condoning violence against women, and indeed often encouraging it. Finally, the lyrics often contain a theme of “women as prostitutes, men as pimps,” and reify the associated power dynamics inherent to that sort of relationship, where she is under his control and he can use her for his own financial gain or other ends. Taken together, these themes represent a normative message that is overwhelmingly in service of the toxic form of hegemonic masculinity at work. It constructs men and women as inherently different and supports the notion that men can obtain power, status, and even wealth by objectifying, dominating, controlling, and exploiting women. Noticeably, the themes of misogynistic attitudes and behaviours directed at women in rap and hip-hop music are tightly connected to the desire for money, power, and status, in social contexts that often lack more positive or productive ways of obtaining them. You might be thinking that the above analysis is misguided; that these are just elite scholars using fancy jargon to describe a phenomenon and social context they know little about, and generally missing the mark.

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However, what is striking is that Immortal Technique makes virtually the same argument about mainstream hip-hop, albeit in slightly different language and without the empirical data behind him (or at least without appealing to it directly). In a 2008 interview for The Village Voice, Technique explains that a primary reason people in poorer, urban contexts generally try to dominate others at all costs is to gain a sense of control that they otherwise feel they lack. Technique contends that people who feel relatively powerless in their social, political, and economic contexts (that is, people who feel unable to exert any real control over their lives) might attempt to establish a feeling of control at the hands of others that they assume are less powerful, very often women. Similarly, Technique argues that people have a difficult time contending with the possibility that things really are outside of their control—that they are predetermined by some force or perhaps preordained by some higher power. On this, he states, “That would mean that… no matter what we pick at the end of the day [it is irrelevant], because if God is limitless and infinite, then He would know every infinite possibility that we could possibly choose from. And I think, because we don’t have the ability to deal with that, and because we haven’t come up with a way to conquer ourselves, we overcompensate by trying to control other people, our women, and other lands that don’t belong to us” (Immortal Technique quoted in Cepeda 2008). In either case, whether it is the result of our social reality or the predetermination of some higher being, Technique contends that people do not like feeling out of control of their own destiny or, worse, powerless. When they are made to feel that way, they seek control of something—whatever it is that they think they can control—often at the expense of others, especially women. Immortal Technique is no stranger to the impulse to commit crime (and violent crime in particular) when one feels like they lack better alternatives—he spent a year in jail as a teenager for aggravated assault (Vito 2014), and before that, he was a self-described “very violent teenager” (Freleng 2019). However, Technique does not take pride in this history of violent behaviour or try to glorify it as evidence of his own “street credibility.” Rather, he has chosen to learn from this and other parts of his past and channel his experience into a more positive message that he hopes will reach others. As we will see in what follows, the hip-hop music of Immortal Technique offers us something importantly different than what mainstream hip-hop does, namely, a different message about what it means

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to be a man in an urban context, without relying on toxic norms and expectations and, indeed, issuing a warning about allegiance to them.

A Notable Exception: Immortal Technique and Alternative Masculinities In what follows, I want to examine some of the work of Immortal Technique in order to show how he represents an important deviation from mainstream hip-hop, insofar as he has a message which encourages the pursuit of alternative masculinities—that is, alternatives to what is sold to young men by mainstream rap and hip-hop as the only way of being masculine in situations of poverty and urban life. His lyrics offer young urban men a more positive message—one that takes into account various hardships of life on the street but calls upon listeners to use the knowledge and strength they have to turn it into power: power to resist norms of misogyny, power to resist class domination, and power to resist a corrupt state that seeks to hold particular people down on the basis of their identities (and, in particular, their race and class).17 Technique’s career as a hip-hop artist formally began in 2001 with the release of his first album, Revolutionary Vol. 1. He released this album without a record label or distributor, instead using money won in rap battles. It was the success of the eleventh track on that album, “Dance with the Devil,” which largely launched his career, allowing people to truly see his depth, his seriousness with respect to social issues facing urban centres, and his ability to talk bluntly about them. In the song, Technique tells the story of a 13-year-old young man named William who was consumed with the prospect of making money and living a lush lifestyle like those of celebrities. In the story, William himself is impoverished; he never knew his father and his mom is an addict, and his obsession with material objects drives him to begin committing petty crimes in an effort to obtain those things. Over time, William realizes that money isn’t enough to “buy respect,” so he “felt like he had to prove to everyone he was [really] evil”—a classic feature of the toxic formation of masculinity described above. In order to “get his respect back in the eyes of his crew,” William (now referred to as “Billy”) becomes increasingly violent, “startin’ fights over little shit up on the block” and “sellin’ mothers and brothers the crack rock.” But even as he committed more (and more violent) crimes, those around him treated him the same and “showed him no love.” They

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suggested that anyone could do what Billy was doing, but only real men could commit the most violent offenses: (“But only a real thug can stab someone ’til they die, standin’ in front of them, starin’ straight into their eyes”). Billy’s crew ultimately suggest that he rape a woman to prove he is cold-hearted enough to earn social clout—to be initiated into their crew. Billy contemplates the options of either going back to his old life or having a chance for money and the respect of his peers, and over time his “dreams about cars and ice made him agree.” So, as the story goes, he “met them Friday night at a quarter to three” to commit this most violent misogynist crime. I won’t provide a detailed account of the remaining events here, but in short, as the narrative progresses, Billy and the crew capture a woman walking alone home from a late shift at work and ultimately take turns gang raping her, upon Billy’s lead. Afterwards, one of the men pulls out a gun and tells Billy that if he kills her, he is guaranteed a spot in their crew. Before Billy pulls the trigger, he thinks about the lavish lifestyle he will have if he follows through: “He thought about the cocaine and the platinum and ice, And he felt strong standin’ along with his new brothers.” He decides to finish his task, but when Billy pulls back the shirt cover that had been over the woman’s head to complete his final violent act—the one that would finally prove his manliness and strength to his peers—he realizes the woman before him is his own mother. The powerful section of the verse that details this realization is as follows: But what he saw made him start to cringe and stutter ’Cause he was starin’ into the eyes of his own mother She looked back at him and cried ’cause he had forsaken her She cried more painfully than when they were rapin’ her His whole world stopped, he couldn’t even contemplate His corruption had successfully changed his fate

Upon realizing that this act of violence—again, an act that was undertaken in order to gain social clout or respect—was targeted against the woman who raised him, Billy reflected on how she had been the person who had really been there for him. He takes a moment to reckon with the respect he truly has for his mother and how he had forsaken her to try to gain social power or standing. The verse continues: And he remembered how his mom used to come home late Workin’ hard for nothin’, because now what was he worth?

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He turned away from the woman that had once given him birth And cryin’ out to the sky, ’cause he was lonely and scared But only the Devil responded, ’cause God wasn’t there

In this moment of awareness and acknowledgement, Billy is overcome with guilt and regret, and a recognition that he has been overcome with the worst sort of evil—that which would allow him to commit such a heinous act, against the woman who had sacrificed so much for him, in pursuit of “cocaine, platinum and ice.” He is overtaken by this guilt and ultimately takes his own life: And right then he knew what it was to be empty and cold And so he jumped off the roof and died with no soul.

The story told in “Dance with the Devil” offers a paradigm case of toxic masculinity (i.e., the desire for power and status, the obsession with displays of toughness, the association of manhood with violence) and how it plays out in impoverished urban contexts, where young men who dream of material objects, and the power and status they are assumed to represent, take to violent crime to try to obtain them. Immortal Technique makes this point clear in the song itself, as the narrator states that William (referred to in the lyrics above as “Billy”) was “projecting [his] insecurities on other people” and acknowledges that William and his tragic fate are the unfortunate “product of a ghetto-bred capitalistic” mentality.18 In “Dance with the Devil,” Technique is issuing a warning to young urban men not to get consumed in this lifestyle but rather to recognize that these toxic norms are being fed to them by capitalist enterprises that will ultimately destroy them. The end of the song calls on young men to recognize the (capitalist and misogynistic) “demons” around them and resist them, to refuse to fall into the traps of toxic masculinity that mainstream, capitalist messaging sets.19 When asked in an interview for NPR why this song (which is admittedly difficult to listen to and digest, given its explicit depiction of sexual violence) became the song that effectively got his career as an artist off the ground, Technique bluntly points to the honesty of the messaging and the reality that this is a familiar story within urban contexts—one many urban listeners will recognize. He responds to the interviewer’s question with what he refers to as the “ugliest answer,” namely, that “everybody either knows someone, or has been sexually assaulted themselves,” but yet,

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hip-hop music has largely ignored and failed to discuss the serious and pervasive issue of sexual assault and rape (Freleng 2019). He acknowledges that he knows survivors personally, and while theirs is not his story to tell, he feels an obligation to draw attention to the disgusting nature of rape and sexual assault and call on young men to recognize how it destroys all of the lives involved—the one assaulted and the perpetrator—by allowing such evil into their lives (Freleng 2019). This destruction of multiple lives is not worth the illusion of power one is attempting to achieve by causing it. In the final track for Revolutionary Volume 1, “Caught in the Hustle,” Immortal Technique makes clearer his point about how the structures that guide the norms these men follow are designed to destroy them: We still look at ourselves through the eyes of the people that hate us But I’m going to make it regardless of the trumped up charges And semi-automatic barrages that empty the cartridge Post-traumatically scarred kids that try to be brave Because n*ggas backstab each other just to try to get paid

These lines remind the listener that the young men Technique is addressing are trained to view themselves through dominant eyes—through dominant scripts—set by those in power, who are ultimately against them. These scripts set the norm for the men Technique is addressing as one of inevitable incarceration (on “trumped up charges”) and the tendency to “backstab” each other to try to “get paid”—instead of working together against the systems that keep everyone stuck in place. He continues: Turn cannibal, like knights during the crusades Afraid of responsibility, addicted to greed Beatin’ their girl, purposefully losin’ a seed As if we were bound to the destiny we used to receive

Here, Technique calls on the listener not to see themselves through those dominant eyes, and particularly how the capitalist-driven, mainstream media would have them see themselves. He pushes the listener to question the greed that drives them to turn violently against those close to them (and the women in their lives in particular) in the service of some predetermined destiny (or toxic script) that they are expected to stick to. Instead, he wants listeners to see the larger game and begin to play outside of it.

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Beyond calling attention to the ways in which normative gendered scripts and expectations pigeonhole young urban men into narrow ways of being (often with tragic consequences), Immortal Technique also begins to develop possibilities for an alternative vision of what masculinity could look like in these contexts, particularly with respect to women. In his second album, Revolutionary Volume 2 (released in 2003), a track titled “You Never Know” offers a glimpse of how to truly respect a woman, as opposed to trying to possess her. Through the song, Technique describes how toxic masculinity influences the way other men treat the female subject of the song, but the way he is able to attract her is by treating her differently, namely, with respect. Technique is unapologetic in describing her in positive ways, which centre not on her physical attributes but primarily on her “intellectual beauty.” He also describes how he interacted with her in a way that centred on respect: On her birthday I gave her a poem with flowers Then I took her out to dinner after her cousin’s baby shower We talked about power to the people and such We spent more time together, but it was never enough

He was more interested in nurturing her, celebrating her, and exploring her mind than he was trying to initiate sexual contact: I never tried to sneak a touch or even cop a feel I was too interested in keepin’ it real

Notably, in contrast to a lot of descriptions of women in mainstream hiphop music, Technique focuses on the strength of their conversation, not on their physical intimacy or his own fleeting sexual gratification. He later describes doing things with her that make it clear he is not concerned with sticking to the toxic masculine scripts, instead describing taking her on romantic dates: “Instead I took her out to the Apollo and the Bronx Zoo, Museo del Barrio, and the Metropolitan too.” Throughout the song, he reflects on his emotions (a taboo considering toxic masculinity!) and doesn’t hesitate to mention that he cried in her absence. At the end of the song, he calls on his young male listeners to truly begin to respect women, encouraging them to: Hold the person that you love closely if they’re next to you The one you love, not the person that’ll simply have sex with you

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Appreciate them to the fullest extent and then beyond ’Cause you never really know what you got until it’s gone

“You Never Know” offers a stark contrast to “Dance with the Devil.” In the latter, women are treated as a mere object, to be used in the service of one’s own greed and desire for status or power. In the former, Technique is comfortable with himself and his emotions; he is willing to acknowledge that he feels strongly about the woman in the song and offers a different sort of narrative about how women deserve to be treated. By offering a counter to toxic masculinity, Technique is resisting the deep-seeded misogyny of mainstream hip-hop and trying to offer young urban men something different—a more positive and constructive way of approaching their own manhood as well as their treatment of others, particularly the women in their lives. Despite the fact that Technique does construct and celebrate this alternative picture of what it means to be a man and to treat a woman with respect, it is important to acknowledge that he is acutely aware of the way that structural realities of stress and poverty in urban contexts can make reimagining masculinity incredibly difficult.20 In “Harlem Streets” (Revolutionary Volume 2), Technique describes the social and economic realities of life for many in Harlem: Check to check, constant struggle to make the payments Workin’ your whole life, wonderin’ where the day went The subway stays packed like a multi-cultural slave ship

There are race and class-based struggles here, again, rooted in capitalist notions of productivity—the people Technique is describing are working all day but barely getting by. The image of a subway packed with poor labourers in likened to a “multi-cultural slave ship.” He continues his description: It’s rush hour, 2:30 to 8, non stoppin’ And people comin’ home after corporate sharecroppin’ And fuck flossin’! Mothers are tryin’ to feed children But gentrification is kickin’ them out of their buildin’ A generation of babies born without healthcare Families homeless, thrown the fuck off the welfare

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This part of the verse further analogizes the working-class struggle to a contemporary form of enslavement, in which workers are generating profit for corporations but can barely generate the means to survive and ensure the survival of their families. Mothers are struggling to provide food for their children, gentrification is raising housing costs and leaving people homeless, many children and families do not have access to health care, and social supports are inadequate. Yet, people continue to work all day to feed the capitalist machine, losing some of their humanity in the process. In these conditions, it is hard to be imaginative about an alternative way to live, nevertheless, to make that alternative a reality. As Technique is clear throughout his lyrical canon, knowledge is the means for true power— the way to understand the systems that structure our lives and begin to challenge them. However, in impoverished urban contexts, achieving that sort of knowledge is often difficult, if not impossible, and likely by design. Denying or withholding knowledge from people keeps them ignorant, and thus stripped of power to challenge or change the systems that hold them down. As Technique notes: Tryin’ to escape from the ghetto with your ignorant ways But you can’t read history at an illiterate stage And you can’t raise a family on minimum wage Why the fuck you think most of us are locked in a cage?

When the social context young urban men often find themselves in denies them the opportunity to obtain knowledge, Technique contends that this sets them up for failure—they don’t have the necessary tools to challenge their position in society or the forces that are designed to keep them there. This remains a consistent theme for Technique, namely, the revolutionary power of knowledge and the resistance of manufactured ignorance. In an interview, Technique describes reading everything that he could get his hands on in order to fully understand the struggles of Black and Latino people in a way that lends itself to real change (see Cepeda 2008), and this is evident in his intellectually sharp and historically thorough lyrics. He is also self-reflective about this commitment to knowledge, noting that “Stupidity is not allowed by me, ’cause I ain’t got time to play” (“Dominant Species,” Revolutionary Volume 1) and that “I drop knowledge so heavy it leaves the world unbalanced” (“Dominant Species,” Revolutionary Volume 1). Technique wants to spark thinking with his lyrics and encourage the

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sort of knowledge which lends itself to real social change. In “The Poverty of Philosophy,” Technique states that: N*ggas talk about change and working within the system to achieve that. The problem with always being a conformist is that when you try to change the system from within, it’s not you who changes the system; it’s the system that will eventually change you.

And later in the track adds: Many of us are in the same boat and it’s sinking, while these bougie Mother-­ Fuckers ride on a luxury liner, and as long as we keep fighting over kicking people out of the little boat we’re all in, we’re gonna miss an opportunity to gain a better standard of living as a whole.

Again, Technique is connecting the importance of knowledge to understanding the way the system oppresses and to realizing that the struggle is shared. Instead of turning on each other out of anger at the system, that anger must be turned towards understanding how to deconstruct that very system and the institutions (including the mainstream media) that perpetuate it.

Resisting the Pull of the Mainstream As I have been noting throughout, an overall theme of Technique’s lyrical canon involves a resistance to the mainstream media (including mainstream hip-hop) and the messaging it sends to young men in urban contexts, which reinforces toxic and violent stereotypes about what it means to be manly or strong in those environments. The reason Technique is so well-equipped to have this unique message is because he has gone to great lengths to resist mainstreaming, which he contends gives him the upper hand over mainstream hip-hop, insofar as he isn’t constrained by catering to the demands of the media conglomerates and can instead share the message he thinks people need to hear: one that resists the celebration of misogynist violence and, consequently, is far more positive. As he notes in his own reflection of rising above the ignorance of mainstream hip-hop: “Rappers try to serve me with disgusting incompetence, but I keep it positive with ultimate dominance” (“Positive Balance,” Revolutionary Volume 1).

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While working on his second album, Technique noted that record labels were not able (or were not willing) to see the direction and purpose of his music, which led him to stick with his tried and true “hand to hand out the trunk hustle” (Viper Records 2019). Importantly, he has refused to restrict the content of his message in pursuit of capitalist gain, a point he takes up directly in his song “Freedom of Speech” (Revolutionary Volume 2, 2003). In a paper on Immortal Technique, University of California—Riverside sociologist Christopher Vito (2014) argues that it is precisely Technique’s commitment to remaining independent from the corporatized mainstream media that allows him the freedom and flexibility to resist both corporate and class domination. I think this is exactly right, and I think the logic extends to other forms of resistance that Technique takes up in his music, including resistance to toxic masculinity and misogyny. This is because, as Weitzer and Kubrin (2009) note, the increased tendency towards misogynistic representations in rap and hip-hop have clearly coincided with the mainstreaming of those genres. In their analysis, they quote former president of Def Jam Records, Carmen Ashhurst-Watson, on this trend, who notes: “The time when we switched to gangsta music was the same time that the majors [record companies] bought up all the [independent] labels. And I don’t think that’s a coincidence. At the time that we were able to get a bigger place in the record stores, and a bigger presence because of this major marketing capacity, the music became less and less conscious” (Ashhurst-Watson, quoted in Hurt 2007). They note that the empirical research bears this out—as rap and hip-hop became primarily produced by major record labels, the content became more violent, aggressive, and misogynistic to encourage sales.21 As Vito (2014) notes, hip-hop has become less of the site of resistance it originated as and has now become a mass administrated culture created by the more dominant members of society to reinforce the status quo and distract the masses. To the extent that Technique resists this sort of mainstreaming, he simultaneously resists the need to conform to the messages and themes that trend in mainstream hip-hop. His focus isn’t on what sells and makes money, but rather remains strictly on the content—on the message of his music and the power it has to inspire and incite change.

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Conclusion While Immortal Technique’s lyrics often acknowledge the genuine hardships of life on the streets (especially those of his own city of Harlem, where he grew up after leaving Peru22), his songs have a continuous thread—at times explicit, at times more implied—that constitutes a sustained critique of the toxicity of urban masculinity, and especially in the form that is thrust upon impoverished young men of colour, often by mainstream media. To that end, Technique recognizes the pressures of the street and how those pressures often manifest in violent acts, particularly directed at women. As a young man himself in this sort of context, Technique recalls using violence “as a tool to deconstruct other people’s issues,” but notes that he now realizes he was only causing more problems for himself. And while he notes that at the time he was constantly driven to fight with people, and pretend he liked that “tough” persona, deep-down, he recalls being aware then that he didn’t actually like being like that. He notes, “It wasn’t something that I enjoyed, it was something that I saw as a necessity” (Freleng 2019). He hadn’t yet learned how to challenge the norms that tend to govern urban life and find a way to be a more thoughtful, knowledgeable, emotional, concerned man. Technique sees his music as a tool from which young men can begin to learn how to live differently—to question, and ultimately challenge, their surroundings and the structures designed to keep them complacent within them. He recognizes that not everyone wants this message getting out. In a 2012 interview, Technique described how some in the industry see what he does as “a threat to the status quo of hip-hop.” This is because, he continues, “They don’t want people to hear about Palestine, slavery or torture. They want us to just dance and sing and smile and pretend that the world is OK.  They believe hip-hop is sheer entertainment. Entertainment can be used for many things: to inspire and educate but also to pacify, to keep people stupid and preoccupied with things that aren’t important” (Shahid 2012). Technique wants to make hip-hop that has a positive message and that inspires people to think, to learn, to grow, and to do and be better. The music of Immortal Technique and Immortal Technique himself as an artist and visionary offer a challenge to the normative messaging of mainstream rap and hip-hop which sell young urban men a picture of masculinity that is tied to violence and aggression and which offers no

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critique of why their situation is as it is. Technique offers sustained challenge and critique, both to these misogynistic and violent ideologies and to the systems and structures which propagate them. His music is a site of resistance and revision, and it pushes listeners to be more critical, to obtain knowledge, and to turn their knowledge into power. Hip-hop has roots in contestation. Technique has chosen to contest the right things.

Notes 1. Some pun intended. 2. Consider, for example, Black feminist filmmaker and distributer Ava DuVernay’s response to the NWA biopic, Straight Out of Compton, of which she remarked, “To be a woman who loves hip hop at times is to be in love with your abuser” (Boone 2015). She went on to speak of the film approvingly, though with the added claim that the hip-hop culture represented in the film involved undoubtedly misogynistic elements. A similar argument is made in a 2018 article for Beat, in which writer Quyaisha El-Bey notes that while she is a music lover, it is difficult for her to listen to the urban radio stations because she does not want to “hear lyrics that both degrade and objectify women.” She further argues that today’s popular hip-hop and rap music are riddled with objectification, messaging about normative beauty standards and other sorts of gender bias. In a 2018 article for Afropunk, a writer by the name of Gender Bent argued that hip-hop (even more so than other genres of music) is known for its treatment of women as objects and that this is not limited to the mainstream but also extends to so-called socially conscious artists. While I have only noted a few here, such arguments are pervasive on websites and blogs that cover feminist issues, Black life and culture, and analyses of rap and hip-hop music. There is at least a strong voice of hip-hop critics who worry about the messaging of even the most socially conscious artists with respect to their treatment and representation of women. 3. In a 2011 article, writer Jonathan T. acknowledges the apparent contradiction that some see between being a feminist and enjoying the artistry of hip-hop music. Yet, he argues quite convincingly that “there is no reason why one cannot appreciate a particular form of art while also lending it a critical eye.” Hip-hop, like all art forms, he contends, is a product of a certain cultural and historical backdrop. Rejecting hip-hop on the grounds that it carries with it the pervasive sexism and misogyny of our cultural and historical moment means one might as well also reject “the majority of other forms of music, and some of the best-known works of literature and

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­ hilosophy, and most movies and TV shows.” I find this point compelling p and the general sentiment convincing, namely, that we ought to always contextualize art within its relevant social and historical backdrop and not reject it all in one broad stroke. There are relevant discussions to be had regarding “cancel culture,” though I will not take those up here. 4. Noting the contributions of female artists is particularly important, as they are also up against misogyny as female-identified artists in a male-dominated field (see Addawoo 2017). The contributions of women in hip-hop are particularly important to pay attention to insofar as they have the unique ability to empower Black and Brown women and girls through their work. In the words of Callia Hargrove (2015), artists such as Missy Elliott and Aliyah were inspiring insofar as they entered a man’s world, “played with the boys and dressed like them,” yet, “owned their femininity.” They “stood up for themselves” and were “ultimate boss ladies.” Missy Elliott in particular has an over-25-year career, during which she has spread a clear message that “women, whether conforming to heteronormative gender binaries or not, are equal to men, as important as men, and as powerful” (George 2016). 5. Some obvious examples of a feminist social consciousness in Tupac’s lyrical canon include the likes of “Brenda’s Got a Baby,” which focuses on the difficulties of teen pregnancy and lack of social support for young mothers; “Dear Mama,” which celebrates and honours the struggle and perseverance of his own mother; and, most notably, “Keep Ya Head Up,” which is dedicated to the beauty and strength of Black women and calls for a greater love and appreciation for Black women. 6. Pearce (2017) and Williams (2018), for example, have attempted to complicate the generally positive image of Tupac as a revolutionary and change maker and highlight his more tenuous past with misogyny and violence. I acknowledge these critiques as a recognition that my above point is not straightforward and that songs such as those mentioned in footnote 5 were written and recorded within a background context that is more nuanced and complicated. 7. Independent hip-hop, broadly construed, includes hip-hop music produced and released by artists outside of the three major record labels and concordant mainstream outlets (Perry 2004). 8. One striking example of his activism involves his decision to partner with Omeid International, a non-profit human rights organization, to build an orphanage/clinic/school in Kabul, Afghanistan, with proceeds from his record sales (Vito 2014). In more recent years, he has been spending much of his time working with human rights organizations, including the Border Angels, the group which leaves water and food drops to support migrants crossing the desert (Freleng 2019), as well as holding shows to raise funds

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to support various causes (e.g., he took the stage at a benefit concert aimed at raising funds to support the on the group find to stop a proposed pipeline through Minnesota that would threaten the lakes, rivers, and wildlife of Indigenous territory; see Juhn 2019). 9. For more on the role of anger in combatting injustice, and particularly racial injustice, see Cherry 2019. 10. For the sake of brevity, I have narrowed the scope of my analysis to looking at Immortal Technique’s first two album releases, namely, Revolutionary Volume 1 (2001) and Revolutionary Volume 2 (2003). This means I am not examining the tracks on his third album, The 3rd World (2008), or his fourth album, The Martyr (2011). There are, of course, excellent tracks on both and I recommend the reader listen to those as well! 11. The two academic publications of which I am aware that focus on the work of Immortal Technique are Khan (2011) and Vito (2014). 12. See Katz (2011, 2013). Also see Kivel (2007) for a description of what he calls the “Act like a Man Box,” which young men feel pressured to conform to. The box contains those attitudes and behaviours socially constructed to be properly “masculine,” namely, violence, strength, anger, aggression, and confidence, among others. 13. Some important points to note: in claiming that this toxic formation of masculinity becomes “hegemonic,” I am not claiming that it becomes the singular, or universal, way of presenting or performing masculinity. Rather, in becoming hegemonic, it becomes the dominant form of masculinity— the way of performing masculinity that is celebrated or rewarded and which other formulations of masculinity are compared to. When one falls short of this norm, they face social sanction (i.e., name-calling and ridicule from their peers or those in their social network). In the words of theorists Connell and Messerschmidt (2005), hegemonic masculinity represents the “currently most honored way of being a man, it requires all other men to position themselves in relation to it, and it ideologically legitimates the global subordination of women to men.” Additionally, in making the point (following Katz and Kivel) that this sort of masculinity involves pressures to act “tough” through violence and aggression, I am not claiming that there is anything natural about this or that men (any men) are inherently or naturally violent. Rather, the claim is that the social context (and various dimensions of the media that target people in those contexts) incentivizes this particular way of being (viz., it glorifies aggression, violence, and misogynistic treatment of women) to the point that it becomes normalized and thus feels natural. 14. See, for example, Wood (1994), Easteal et  al. (2015), and Arriaga et al. (2016).

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15. See, for example, Adams and Fuller (2006), Armstrong (2001), and Weitzer and Kubrin (2009). 16. While some scholars and/or musicians may likely attest to meaningful differences between rap and hip-hop, for my purposes I will be referring to them synonymously throughout. 17. It is important to issue a content warning before the reader progresses through this section: there will be discussion of sexual violence and suicide. 18. This theme of the role that capitalism plays in corrupting young urban men through distraction and the reinforcement of toxic norms of masculinity is present throughout Revolutionary Volume 1. For example, in the song “Dominant Species,” Technique notes that “The matrix of entrapment is socioeconomic.” He also draws attention to class struggle under capitalism in Revolutionary Volume 2, including in “The Point of No Return,” in which he highlights how poverty breeds violence (“My people are so hungry that they attack without reason”), and in “Harlem Streets,” which contains lines such as “Check to check, constant struggle to make the payments, Workin’ you whole life, wonderin’ where the day went.” 19. For a discussion of “Black Masculinity Under Racial Capitalism,” see Malton (2019). 20. Technique also recognizes that the norms governing masculinity often make it impossible for young men to express pain or grief or to ask for help when they need it. In a podcast interview, he notes his respect for the strength of these young people in light of their circumstances: “Those kids… the reason I have so much love for them, is because they’re the fighters… the bad kids on the reservation, the bad kids in the hood, those are people who are fighters… those are victims of extreme physical violence, extreme sexual violence, of psychological torture, emotional abuse… and they don’t talk about it because it is taboo in our country, especially for men” (Immortal Technique quoted in Breakdances with Wolves 2018). 21. See, for example, Lena (2006). This is likely because, Weitzer and Kubrin argue, there is a perceived consumer demand for stereotypical representations of urban life, and specifically of young men and woman of colour who reside there (Weitzer and Kubrin 2009). In particular, these sorts of lyrics resonate with those who are structurally and systematically denied opportunities for constructing and affirming more positive iterations of masculinity—in particular, Black men are systemically denied access to the institutional routes for obtaining power and status through academics and employment, a problem in serious need of structural change. 22. For a discussion of Technique’s childhood in Peru and his family’s move to Harlem, see his interview feature on NPR (Freleng 2019) in which he describes his experiences as a child in his own words.

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References Adams, T.  M. and D.  B. Fuller. (2006) “The Words Have Changed but the Ideology Remains the Same: Misogynistic Lyrics in Rap Music.” Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36, No. 6: 938–957. Addawoo, L. (2017) “How Black Female Emcees Changed the Conversation Through Hip-Hop.” Vice. https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/yp9kx5/ how-­b lack-­f emale-­e mcees-­c hanged-­t he-­c onversation-­t hrough-­h ip-­h op. (Accessed November 2018). Armstrong, E. G. (2001) “Gangsta Misogyny: A Content Analysis of the Portrayals of Violence Against Women in Rap Music, 1987–1993.” Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 8(2): 96–126. Arriaga, P., D. Zillmann, F. Esteves. (2016) “The Promotion of Violence by the Mainstream Media of Communication.” The Social Developmental Construction of Violence and Intergroup Conflict. Boone, J. (2015) “You Need to Read Ava DuVernay’s Emotional Review of ‘Straight Outta Compton,” ET News, August 18, 2015, https://www.etonline.com/news/170210_ava_duvernay_emotional_review_of_straight_outta_ compton (Accessed November 2018). Breakdances with Wolves. (2018). “The Immortal Technique Interview.” https:// soundcloud.com/breakdanceswithwolves/the-­immortal-­technique-­interview. (Accessed November 2018). Cepeda, R. (2008) “The Visible Man.” The Village Voice. Cherry, M. (2019) “Love, Anger, and Racial Injustice.” The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Love (A. Martin, ed.) Routledge Press. Connell, R.  W., and J.  Messerschmidt. (2005) “Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept.” Gender and Society, 19: 829–59. Easteal, P., K. Holland, and K. Judd. (2015) “Enduring Themes and Silences in Media Portrayals of Violence Against Women.” Women’s Studies International Forum. Volume 48, pp. 103–113. El-Bey, Q. (2018). “Misogyny & Sexism in Hip-Hop.” Beat. https://beat.media/ misogyny-and-sexism-in-hip-hop. (Accessed November 2018). Freleng, M. (2019). “Portrait Of: Immortal Technique.” NPR. January 11, 2019. https://www.latinousa.org/2019/01/11/immortaltechnique/. Gender Bent. (2018). “Even ‘Conscious’ Rappers Have Problematic Lyrics About Women: It’s Time We Addressed This Pervasive Misogynoir.” Afropunk. https://afropunk.com/2018/05/even-­conscious-­rappers-­have-­problematic-­ lyrics-­a bout-­w omen-­i ts-­t ime-­w e-­a ddressed-­t his-­p ervasive-­m isogynoir/. (Accessed December 2018). George, T.  K. (2016) “Why Missy Elliott’s Feminist Legacy is Underrated.” Dazed. http://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/29353/1/why-­missy-­ elliott-­s-­feminist-­legacy-­is-­criminally-­underrated. (Accessed November 2018).

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Hargrove, C. (2015) “What Hip-Hop Taught Me About Feminism.” Racked. https://www.racked.com/2015/3/5/8155311/what-­hip-­hop-­taught-­me-­ about-­feminism. (Accessed November 2018). Hurt, B. (2007). “Hip hop: Beyond beats and rhymes,” Independent Lens series, PBS. Immortal Technique (2001a) “Caught in the Hustle.” Revolutionary Volume 1. Immortal Technique (2001b) “Dance with the Devil,” Revolutionary Volume 1. Immortal Technique (2001c) “Dominant Species.” Revolutionary Volume 1. Immortal Technique (2001d) “The Poverty of Philosophy,” Revolutionary Volume 1. Immortal Technique (2003a) “Freedom of Speech.” Revolutionary Volume 2. Immortal Technique (2003b) “Harlem Streets,” Revolutionary Volume 2. Immortal Technique (2003c) “The Point of No Return,” Revolutionary Volume 2. Immortal Technique (2003d) “You Never Know,” Revolutionary Volume 2. Juhn, C. (2019) “Immortal Technique Raises the Roof for a Worthy Cause.” Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder. http://spokesman-recorder.com/2019/01/04/ immortal-technique-raises-the-roof-for-a-worthy-cause/. (Accessed March 2019). Katz, J. (2011) “Advertising and the Construction of Violent White Masculinity: From BMWs to Bud Light.” Gender, Race and Class in Media: a Critical Reader. 2nd Edition. (G.  Dines and J.  Humez, ed.) Sage Publications. Thousand Oaks, CA. Katz, J. (2013) “Tough Guise 2: Violence, Manhood, and American Culture.” Media Education Foundation. Khan, K. (2011). “The Content of Form in Immortal Technique’s Musical Oeuvre.” Muziki, Vol 8, 2: 113–122. Kivel, P. (2007). “Act Like a Man Box.” http://paulkivel.com/wp-­content/ uploads/2011/09/actlikeamanbox.pdf. 2007. Lena, J.  C. (2006) “Social Context and Musical Content of Rap Music, 1979–1995.” Social Forces 85:479–95. Malton, J. (2019) “Black Masculinity Under Racial Capitalism.” The Boston Review http://bostonreview.net/race/jordanna-­matlon-­black-­masculinity-­under-­ racial-­capitalism (Accessed August 2019). Pearce, S. (2017). “The Flawed Ways We Remember Tupac.” Pitchfork. https:// pitchfork.com/thepitch/tupac-biopic-the-flawed-ways-we-remember-pac/ (Accessed November 2018). Perry, I. (2004) Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics of Hip-Hop. Duke University Press. Shahid, O. (2012) “Immortal Technique: “I’m Seen as a Threat to the Status Quo of Hip-Hop.” The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/ oct/25/immortal-­technique-­hip-­hop-­status-­quo (Accessed November 2018). T, J. (2011) “The Feminism of Tupac.” Evanston Public Library https://www. epl.org/the-­feminism-­of-­tupac/. (Accessed November 2018).

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Viper Records. (2019) “Immortal Technique.” https://www.viperrecords.com/ artists/immortal-­technique/. (Accessed December 2019). Vito, C. (2014) “Who Said Hip-Hop Was Dead? The Politics of Hip-Hop Culture in Immortal Technique’s Lyrics.” International Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol 18, Issue 4: 395–411. Weitzer, R. and C. E. Kubrin. (2009) “Misogyny in Rap Music: A Content Analysis of Prevalence and Meanings.” Men and Masculinities, Volume 12, 1: 3–29. Williams, A. (2018). “More Lucky Than Bishop: Revisiting Tupac’s Misogyny Both On-Screen & Off.” DJ Booth. https://djbooth.net/features/201706-27-tupac-misogyny-revisited. (Accessed 2018). Wood, J.  T. (1994) “Gendered Media: The Influence of Media on Views of Gender” in Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture. Wadsworth Publishing.

Chapter 8: The Initiation: Re-negotiating Masculinity in Queer Music Video Ryann Donnelly

This chapter considers several recent case studies where masculinity has been re-negotiated through queer performance strategies. It observes music videos by gay cis-male artists who appropriate the hypermasculine aesthetics historically aligned with heterosexual, often homophobic, cisgender male culture. These works subvert and contest the historical stereotype of gay men as effeminate and weak. In these works, stereotypical images of masculine characters dominate, despite lyrical content or video narrative which pronounces the artists’ homosexuality. Until 2016, Frank Ocean, a cisgender, queer male artist, avoided queer imagery in his work. In a confessional narrative posted to social media site Tumblr in 2012, Ocean detailed his unrequited love and desire for a male friend. This preceded the release of his album, Channel Orange, where Ocean references his romantic interests with masculine pronouns. In “Thinkin Bout You,” he croons, “My eyes don’t shed tears, but boy they

R. Donnelly (*) Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Fosbraey, N. Puckey (eds.), Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65189-3_9

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pour when I’m thinkin’ ’bout you” (2012), and in the confessional, “Bad Religion,” he laments, “This unrequited love, to me it’s nothing but a one-man cult and cyanide in a Styrofoam cup, I could never make him love me” (2012). Ocean revealed his sexuality only after signing with a major label and having an established fanbase with rap collective, Odd Future. This is to say, he was not an artist consciously signed and marketed with the interest of selling to an LGBTQ+ fanbase. Rather, his public outing subverted the image Odd Future had constructed of the boyish and vaguely violent, if still artistic, indie skateboarding rap clan from Los Angeles. As the first and one of the still very few mainstream rappers to be out as queer, Ocean’s importance to defying the homophobic norms associated with rap culture cannot be overstated. I have specified that homophobia is widely associated with rap culture, rather than asserting that rap culture is homophobic, for as queer rapper Mykki Blanco has stated, “let’s not be racist and target hip-hop! Why is the music business in general so homophobic?” (2016). Blanco makes a strong point supported by the lack of queer artists in mainstream music, though perhaps it is encouraging to note emerging rap artists such as Young Thug, who seem to be of a generation whose relationship to gender norms has shifted. Young Thug maintains a fluid gender style, sometimes wearing feminine clothes, such as the Alessandro Trincone couture dress worn on the cover of his album Jeffery. He has also stated, “You could be a gangster with a dress or you could be a gangster with baggy pants. I feel like there’s no such thing as gender” (2016). He makes no clarification if someone might uphold the status of “gangster” regardless of sexuality rather than dress, though if Young Thug believes that gender does not exist, then presumably sexuality stands to be unhinged from the gender norms which have historically policed it. Rap and hip-hop have also seen a plethora of emerging queer artists changing the scope of the genres: Zebra Katz, TheeSatis-­ faction, Big Freedia, Brooke Candy, Angel Haze, Psycho-Egyptian, Le1f, Cakes da Killa, and Mykki Blanco. However, as Carrie Battan (2012) points out, the support for these rappers may only be part of a specific enclave whose perspective may not be shared by mainstream audiences: Acceptance for queer figures in rap outside of a New  York underground bubble are still flimsy at best. When it comes to a culture that caters almost exclusively to heteronormative sensibilities, it’s easy to applaud topical gestures of gay acceptance without demanding to see them applied on a

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t­ angible, more mainstream level, be it in the form of live bills shared between gay and straight rappers, co-signs, radio play, or label deals.

Above, Battan makes the point that mainstream rap has yet to put its supposed acceptance into more visual practice and to incorporate queer acts more significantly into its economy. She also notes the persistence of a homophobic mentality among top rap acts, such as A$AP Rocky, who, despite claiming acceptance, structures it around precariously worded caveats: “Man, if you’re gay we can be friends… as long as you’re a great person and, y’know, you don’t bother me and make me uncomfortable, then let’s be friends, dude” (2012). In light of such quotes, Battan (2012) concludes: For most heterosexual rappers, treatment of gays seems to go something like this: Cherry-pick gay culture for things you can use to enhance your own brand, fly your fashionable freak flag high, grandstand your anti-­homophobic statements, if the spirit moves you, and wait for the applause (it will come). But make sure to keep the gay men at a fearful arm’s length at all times.

Battan’s suggestion that rappers flirt with queerness to the edge of its marketing potential and reserve collaboration and business for their “safe” hetero counterparts is what makes Ocean’s latest video work a significant step towards queering mainstream rap and re-signifying masculinity within it and other genres. Though gender subversion was not thematically prevalent in the images of Ocean’s videos for songs from Channel Orange (2012), the Nikes (2016) video—the first video released in promotion of his next album, Blond (2016)—experiments with the queer representation of subjects in the video and Ocean’s own queer identity. The video opens with a shot of Ocean alone on stage. Lit by bright white lights from several angles, this first image of Ocean presents him as both ethereal and exposed. His face is covered in glitter and his white ensemble is feminized with heavy pearl embellishments. Ocean’s angelic appearance is both highlighted and juxtaposed by a devil character that appears later in the video, dancing in the upper balcony of the theatre. The pairing reflects much of the video’s concern with duelling sides or versions of the self. What follows is a series of low-quality screen tests that show alternative-­ looking young people, perhaps auditioning for the video as later scenes suggest. The images’ underproduced, unpretentious quality allows

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tattooed and pierced bodies to appear effortlessly natural. Their subtle queerness is expressed by a gentle refusal to produce gendered aesthetics and presumably their behavioural norms or to exert similar energies on the cultivation of an appearance which directly contests them. These figures appear later at a party, which is revealed to be staged. At various points in the video, elements of the production itself—cameras, lighting rigs, clapperboards, footage from dress rehearsal—are exposed, maintaining an awareness of Ocean’s lack of boundaries between personal and performative space, as well as the construction of performance and identity in both realms. Following footage of the screen tests, Ocean is shown sitting outside in the dirt, leaning against the back of a numbered and branded race car. His casual, masculine dress of jeans, Nike trainers, and a heavy, army green coat, and the rugged environment around him, contrasts the softer image of Ocean previously shown in established artistic space. However, the masculinity of the image is also subverted by his dramatic eye makeup, which suggests he is of the same alternative enclave as the group pictured in the screen tests. He drinks from a disposable cup, then stumbles, presumably from inebriation. As if an effect of the alcohol, the song’s vocal is slowed to the point of distortion. He repeats, “I’ve got two versions,” again reinforcing the sense of a split self he has introduced by pairing angelic and satanic images and exploring a sense of his on- and off-stage self. Two statues of the Virgin Mary are shown in the back seat of a moving car, suggesting we are meant to hear, “I’ve got two virgins,” in Ocean’s looped, effected vocal. Two young, Asian women, wearing stereotypically fetishized school uniforms, displace the statutes. Are these the virgins he references? The continual reference to “two versions” proposes a dichotomy between Ocean’s personas, which is further highlighted by the interplay of images such as these “two versions” of virgins. On stage, he appears glowing, safe, and calm under theatre lights. Off stage, we see him stumbling, drunk, somewhat desperate, perhaps seeking to reconcile his queerness with a masculinity historically aligned with male heterosexuality. In the subsequent shots, Ocean’s reality becomes distorted and pieced together as if recalling a dream, or perhaps constructing a queer fantasy. Perhaps these are the images Ocean sees when he closes his eyes on stage, while putting forth the persona of the seraphic star. The camera moves up the legs of a black body laid on a floor of dollar bills. The shot moves overhead at such a distance that the gender of the figure remains obscured. With this shot, Ocean plays with our established notions of desire. Is

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attraction to this svelte, oiled, erotic figure to be withheld until their gender is confirmed? The scene shifts with the addition of a second body. A black man’s manicured red nails are shown caressing his chest, subverting masculine norms. His head rests on the belly of his female doppelganger. We are again presented with the concept of “two versions”—one male, one female, with similar, and equally eroticized, bodies. It remains unclear which figure we were first introduced to, but the image suggests gender as an irrelevant factor in producing desire. Later scenes continue to conflate satanic and angelic imagery with sexuality and gender roles, consistently abiding by the video’s sense of duality. A black male stripper is shown holding onto a pole in black angel wings. The figure may actually be Ocean. He wears the same heavy black eye makeup shown in the earlier outdoor scene. Perhaps this is his second, sexual, queer version of himself: a darker foil to the angelic version of Ocean first presented. The video concludes with Ocean setting himself on fire, as if suggesting he is in hell. The moral entanglements of gender and sexuality are further evoked when Ocean appears in a rare shirt designed by artist Jenny Holzer for her Truisms series in 1987. Among the phrases printed on the shirt are, “raise boys and girls the same way,” “salvation can’t be bought and sold,” “nothing upsets the balance of good and evil,” and “random mating is good for debunking sex myths.” These images do not clarify the specific queerness of Ocean’s sexuality. Rather, the video hints at his struggle to navigate the moral perceptions of sexuality between public and private life, or the absence of such boundaries at his level of visibility. Ocean has remained fairly ambiguous about his sexuality since his Tumblr post, despite drawing consistent media attention. Nikes seems to address a period of inner turmoil—a somewhat expected, or unsurprising, subtext given Ocean’s public scrutiny. In the less commercial rap world is Le1f, an artist formerly signed to a subsidiary label of the independent XL Recordings. Homosexuality and a masculine expression of homoerotic desire are Le1f’s focus in much of his work, including in the video Soda (2012). In the video, two men confront each other in a stare-down wearing casual black outfits. One man’s shirt is open and the other’s is made of diaphanous mesh, suggesting the sexual nature of their encounter. Two fake products—a large bottle of soda and a tube of candy—are respectively marked “Le1f” and “Boody” (the name of the track’s co-producer). The two men combine the soda and candy, causing the soda to fizz. The effect is exaggerated in the video, as soda spouts and flows in slow motion over the two men’s faces, who relish in

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the moment, alluding to ejaculation with closed eyes and open mouths. The assertion here is that, when combined, Le1f and Boody will make you cum. Before proceeding, I will note that my reading of this work differs slightly from that of Stan Hawkins, who makes the following claim in his book, Queerness in Pop Music: Le1f negates the concept of rap being straight and macho, challenging gender structures by destabilising norms and conventions…he denigrates the character and iconography of the tough, worked-out masculine rapper. In this way his brand of queer hop represents a significant initiative to contest the homophobic tendencies in hip hop… Hyperbolically the performance strips down the rigid structures of masculinity with the aid of exclusive haute couture. (Hawkins 2016, 274–275)

I agree with Hawkins that Le1f differs in appearance from certain stereotypes of “straight, macho, worked-out” rappers, perhaps alluding to artists such as Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, or Eminem. However, I do not agree that Le1f’s clothes obscure or dismantle his masculinity. This simple difference in our observation of gendered aesthetics bares significant implications for the argument of this chapter. I view Le1f’s use of masculine aesthetics in this work as an intentional play to unhinge masculinity from the heterosexual male figure to which it has historically been anchored, from which it has been falsely thought to have been produced, and from whom it has often required a toxic masculine performance. It is precisely the un-fixed nature of masculinity that I seek to establish in this reading of Soda. Le1f’s high fashion costumes seem to draw inspiration from Andre 3000 (of rap duo Outkast), share a sartorial attention to some of Kanye West’s more elaborate tour ensembles designed by Maison Martin Margiela, and be considerably less flamboyant than the costumes of performers such as Gnarls Barkley singer Ceelo Green. Though Hawkins might also interpret these artists’ appearances as unmasculine, or threatening to masculinity, his failure to contextualize Le1f among these or similar artists implies that Le1f’s unmasculine appearance derives from his queer identity. My assertion that Le1f’s masculine appearance expresses the un-fixed nature of masculinity might be further supported by an observation Hawkins fails to make. One of the dancers with whom Le1f is shown throughout the video is Juliana Huxtable, a transgender artist, author, and member of New York arts collective House of Ladosha. Huxtable Vogues in a high-fashion, structural ensemble of iridescent bustier and skirt. Her

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placement highlights Le1f’s comparable masculinity, despite the fact that Huxtable’s trans identity and representation also further serves the overriding thesis that gender is neither fixed nor inherently tied to a masculine or feminine aesthetic. I also agree with Hawkins that Le1f destabilizes norms and contests homophobia, though I see the homoerotic scenes of the video that follow as better examples to support such claims. Le1f re-visits the soda imagery in another shot where three figures stand over a feminine, bearded man with long hair, pouring soda on him. As with the video’s opening encounter between two men, this shot is again in slow motion, adding drama to the ritualistic scene. The shot references a golden shower. With the exception of Huxtable, whose dress is readably “femme,” Le1f and the other characters are styled in avant-garde fashions that appropriate masculine garments. Le1f wears two pieces of an American football uniform—spandex pants padded at the knees and thighs and a cropped sports shirt, which has been made of denim. Sex is the subtext of Soda, specifically gay sex and deviant sex acts, which Le1f manages to align with masculinity through costuming and a juxtaposition with feminized queer counterparts. Le1f uses the same tactic in the video Hush Bb. In this work, he shares a moody and romantic room filled with candles, a vanity, blue roses, and a bed covered in dark satin sheets with a young woman with long blonde hair, wearing a leotard. The camera subtly displaces the characters into the other’s position throughout the video, highlighting a masculine/feminine exchange. They prepare themselves while seated in front of the vanity or grind and gyrate slowly over the satin sheets in the background. The sexualized actions are levelled as neither specifically male or female, despite the clearly defined masculine and feminine aesthetics of Le1f and his female counterpart respectively. As in Soda, Le1f makes further reference to ejaculation and insemination. He pours honey into a cup, holding one receptacle high above the other to exaggerate the act. The woman repeats the motion when she is placed in Le1f’s position at the vanity, again marking sexual desire as independent of gender. Le1f reinforces his gay identity through his indifference to the girl’s sexual, bodily display, yet his masculinity is highlighted in juxtaposition with her femininity. Mykki Blanco is another gay rapper whose inclusion in this category is somewhat tenuous for their historically fluid gender identity. But before exploring Blanco’s work, I must refute another alignment drawn by Hawkins, who claims:

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Within a changing landscape of greater social acceptance, especially in networking communications, the coming out of mainstream Black hip hop artists, such as Frank Ocean and Azealia Banks, has inspired a new generation of performers. Directly influenced by ball culture, this new wave of performers have acquired the label queer hop as a replacement of the older ‘homo hop’. For the purpose of this part of my study, the focus falls on two New York artists, Mykki Blanco and Zebra Katz. (Hawkins 2016, 266)

I see little correlation amongst the artists Hawkins draws together. Hawkins views Blanco’s open expressions of queerness as inspired by the more mainstream figure of Frank Ocean. This is a marginalization of Blanco on several fronts. By the time Ocean released the letter online which delicately, if not ambiguously, addressed his sexuality in 2012, Blanco was living as a transgender woman, was a published author, and was emerging as a buzzworthy artist, touring with established rap/noise act Death Grips. Hawkins (2016) also maintains that Blanco’s identity stems from ball culture, which Blanco directly refutes: I did not start in the drag community. Mykki Blanco began because I was actually, for the first time, having a bit of my own sexual revolution—I started cross-dressing and living a transgender lifestyle. Mykki Blanco came out of that, but it wasn’t a lineage of drag performance. (266)

In addition to the above assertion that Blanco does not identify with the drag community, Blanco further distances themselves from ball culture and identifies the cultural movements with which they do identify by saying, “You can’t tag me as the rapping transvestite. I never Vogued in my life. I’m from a punk and Riot Grrrl background” (2015). Hawkins aligns Blanco’s success with Ocean’s despite their highly discrepant musical styles and the fact that Blanco was gaining notoriety even before Ocean publicly addressed his sexuality. Hawkins also wrongly asserts that Blanco was inspired by ball culture, whose foundations of drag and glamor starkly contrast the subcultural dogma of punk and Riot Grrrl, whose tenets are rooted in DIY politics and non-conformity. Hawkins does later mention Blanco’s ties to punk movements but in the same passage again asserts that Blanco is inspired by mainstream artists: Blanco’s identity is inspired by mainstream artists such as Rihanna, Lauryn Hill, and Lil’ Kim, as well as the entire Queercore and Riot Grrrl movement. There are also overt references to the drag queen, Vaginal Davis, and the

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controversial Canadian director and writer, Bruce LaBruce. (Hawkins 2016, 266)

In this passage, Hawkins has conflated several artists and subcultures, only categorically unified as queer, black, and performative. Though this passage notes Blanco’s interest in Riot Grrrl, which Blanco has directly affirmed, attributing influence to pop stars such as Rihanna contradicts Blanco’s punk ethos. In several other interviews, Blanco has also said that they wanted to be “the next Yoko Ono” (2016), reinforcing their desired identity to be a performance artist, rather than one of the more commercial and glamorous figures which ball culture emulates, and which Rihanna simply is. And while Blanco does share an aesthetic with Davis, Hawkins calls Davis a “drag queen” without elaborating on the fact that Davis, like Blanco, critiques drag culture (and the culture it imitates) rather than participate in its conventional lineage. Reinforcing this interpretation of Davis’ work, José Muñoz has called Davis’ performances “terrorist drag,” “insofar as she is performing [America]’s internal terrors around race, gender, and sexuality” (Munoz 1997, 91). Because drag performance typically imitates established standards of beauty and femininity, Muñoz’s quote suggests the fear of those standards being appropriated and corrupted by a figure whose doubly marginalized status as black and queer confronts the racist, hetero-sexist infrastructure of those standards. Hawkins also draws no specific examples from LaBruce’s oeuvre in order to affirm his connection to Blanco. In clarifying the subcultures and artists with whom Blanco most closely identifies, it is my intention to read accurate motives within the work. In the video Wavvy (2012) Blanco meets a drug dealer in downtown New York wearing a backwards baseball cap, no shirt, and slim cut jeans. The jeans are a feminine pastel pink, but are wealthy and ripped at the knee, signifying a masculine grit (again, and as ever, not a male grit. Masculinity and femininity remain unhinged from sex). Blanco’s nails are painted, but chipped. They rap half the song in masculine street attire before switching to a posh club scene, wearing a wig, bikini-style underwear, layered rhinestone belts, and heels. Blanco leaves their chest bare, not attempting to hide their male physique. The party is filled with other guests in formal attire and men in full drag and makeup. The cut-away shots of Blanco in masculine dress, rapping in the back of a large truck, highlight issues of class—that it is essentially safe to cross-dress amongst an upper-class, art party crowd and not

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acceptable within lower-class street culture. This is supported by Railton and Watson, who point out the commonly argued idea that “it is precisely the commodification of feminism […] that recasts the image of the modern feminist from a political identity into a consumer choice […] Postfeminism becomes […] reduced to images of successful women” (Railton and Watson 2011, 200). Railton and Watson critique an image of a postfeminist world where designer clothes or other expensive goods express power and position, and are indicative of a feminist approach, or that feminism has succeeded in opening male-dominated industries where women might now compete. Railton and Watson suggest that feminism is essentially for sale: transformed from a belief and practice that combats exclusionary politics based on gender into its own exclusionary politics based on class. Blanco’s relegation of their feminist persona to the upper-­ class milieu reinforces this. This is further echoed by Blanco’s inclusion of an obese woman in her underwear at the party, who, like Blanco, does not meet conventional standards of feminine beauty but who can express freedom of sex and sexuality in a world of pre-existing privilege. In the video The Initiation (2013), Blanco abandons feminine aesthetics entirely, with the exception of a shot of their painted nails in the opening. The video is intensely violent, with a dark, masculine aesthetic. Blanco wears black jeans and a ripped black T-shirt, and crawls towards the camera. Video of Blanco’s face has been superimposed onto their forehead, so that they retain eye contact with the camera while their actual, non-­ digitized face is lowered to the ground. Blanco arrives at a bunker after passing through an industrial landscape. After entering a room sectioned off with cage wire, they remove their shirt and re-assume their crawling position. Blanco is matched with a shirtless black, cisgender male, who has the same facial animation on his head. The two brawl, and Blanco is shown bludgeoning the man while blood spouts towards the camera. Blanco is paid for the victory and throws cash upon the victim in an act of disrespect. Blanco subverts the perception of gay men as effeminate while also tapping into the homoeroticism of sweating, aggressive, wrestling bodies, further suggesting the broader homoeroticism of organized male sport. For those already familiar with Blanco’s oeuvre, or those who pick up on the artist’s painted nails as an establishment of their queer identity, the video’s violence subverts the idea of gay men as weak. The video otherwise mocks the audience who misses these elements—a parody of how violence has been thought to authenticate heterosexual manhood.

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Comparable to Le1f’s and Blanco’s subversive strategies, gay, male, solo electronic, and pop artist SSION appropriates masculine rodeo or “cowboy” aesthetics in his video Earthquake (2012). In this work, SSION exaggerates and glorifies his specifically gay masculinity while directly attacking hetero-conventions, aesthetics, and roles as limited and boring. The video begins with a long shot of a house on an open plot of green land. Its classic suburban appearance is symbolic of both the typical American model of family and security, as well as the mass-produced uniformity of that model. A red pickup truck circles the house and is shown driving directly over a rose bush. The camera pans up to show SSION singing into a red landline receiver from the truck while directly addressing the camera. The pickup truck acts as a symbol of his masculinity, compounded by its crushing of another symbol of femininity and love. SSION also wears a masculine cowboy ensemble, subverted by his made-up face with lipstick and eyeshadow, painted nails, and rhinestone jewellery. The image of him talking on the phone is shown streaming into the bedroom of a character who we presume is speaking to SSION, as he is also shown holding a landline receiver in bed. The boy wears an outlandish outfit of a slightly acid house aesthetic, with checkered pants and a black-and-white tube top over a long-sleeved yellow shirt. He is bald, with a thin moustache that draws comparison to iconic gay filmmaker, John Waters. This character plays the homoerotic object of SSION’s desire throughout the video. His maudlin demeanour symbolizes the difficult navigation of boundaries imposed by conventional binaries and social structures as he tries to unite with SSION.  After his father is shown nodding off while watching television, the boy is driven by his mother and her friend, who exemplify stereotypes of frumpy housewives, through a nondescript suburban neighbourhood. He is dropped off at a school where mythical characters such as Cupid, Santa Claus, The Wicked Witch of the West, and the Easter Bunny are shown watching SSION videos, shaving in the bathroom, or mopping the floor, as if to assert that high schools, America, and the suburban ideological landscape at large are where social myths and stereotypes are housed and likely created. The exaggeration of gender stereotypes in the video suggests that such myth-making might extend to gender and sexuality as well. The boy enters two double doors with the word “Come” on the outside, subversively referencing ejaculation. He enters to find SSION performing in front of large letters that spell out “H-O-M-E.” This moment has a three-fold effect of pairing with the sign on the door to say “come home,” implying safety, and SSION’s invitation

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to the boy, and also referencing the words “Homme”—“man” in French— and “Homo”—a reiteration of their sexuality. This video, like those above, makes violent attacks on hetero-masculinity, revealing how easily it is performed regardless of sexuality and that it is in fact a crucial element of the identity of the above-mentioned artists’ queer sexual allure.

References Battan, C. (2012). ‘We Invented Swag: NYC’s Queer Rap’, Pitchfork, 21 March. Available at: http://pitchfork.com/features/article/8793-­we-­invented-­swag/ (Accessed: 7 January 2017). Breaux, C. and Taylor, S. (2012). Thinkin Bout You. New  York: Def Jam Recordings. Bulut, S. (2016). ‘Young Thug Says There’s No Such Thing as Gender’, Dazed, 6 July. Available at: https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/31936/1/ young-­thug-­says-­there-­s-­no-­such-­thing-­as-­gender (Accessed: 2 March 2017) Gambetta, C., Breaux, C., Risto, K., and Nugent, W. (2012) Bad Religion. New York: Def Jam Recordings. Hawkins, S. (2016). Queerness in Pop Music. New York: Routledge. Lynskey, D. (2016). ‘Mykki Blanco: I Didn’t Want to be a Rapper, I Wanted to be Yoko Ono’, The Guardian, 15 September. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/sep/15/mykki-­blanco-­i-­didnt-­want-­to-­be-­a-­ rapper-­i-­wanted-­to-­be-­yoko-­ono (Accessed: 25 February 2017) Munoz, J.E. (1997). “The White to be Angry”: Vaginal Davis’ Terrorist Drag. Social Context, 52/53. pp. 80–103. Parker, H. (2015). “‘I’ve been HIV Positive since 201l’: Transgender Rapper Mykki Reveals Health Secret Because He Doesn’t Want to ‘Hide in the Dark’”, Mail Online, 15 June. Available at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/ article-­3124870/Mykki-­Blanco-­talks-­health-­condition-­break-­stigma-­pride. html (Accessed: 25 January 2017). Railton, D. and Watson, P. (2011). Music Video and the Politics of Representation. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Chapter 9: Let It Enfold You: Screaming, Masculinity, and the Loss of Emotional Control in Post-millennium Emo Ryan J. Mack

Introduction Within the rubric of hegemonic masculinity, a great deal of emphasis is placed on emotional restraint. This is one of the primary ways in which the legitimacy of hegemonic masculinity is forged (Connell 2005: pp. 186–187). Young boys and men, of course, have emotions; however, A draft of the chapter was presented to the 2018 Popular Music Study Group of the American Musicological Society’s Junior Faculty Symposium at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to each of the organizers for inviting me to participate and to Dr Lori Burns, Dr Andy Flory, and the workshop participants in particular who provided invaluable feedback. Thanks, of course, goes to Dr Nicola Puckey and Glenn Fosbraey for their insightful comments. R. J. Mack (*) Western University, London, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Fosbraey, N. Puckey (eds.), Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65189-3_10

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they are taught to regulate them rigorously under the culturally constructed guise of acting ‘manly’ (Kivel 2010). Intense emotional expressions, such as screaming and crying, are rigorously dejected from the realm of dominant and rational masculinity and into a caricaturized version of hysterical femininity that, Nitza Yarom (2005) argues, is internalized by women and men. From the perspective of hegemonic masculinity, then, the loss of emotional control symbolizes femininity in cultural consciousness. This association is routinely used to subordinate men whose comportment deviates from the hegemonic norm. This directs us to look towards not simply the existence of multiple masculinities but also the relations among them (Connell 2005). Subordinate masculinities are marked by and in contrast to hegemonic norms, and the cultural construction of femininity plays a substantial role in legitimizing this relationship. Gendered ideologies construct and inform what constitutes masculine and feminine behaviour, and their ritualistic citations bring masculinity and femininity into being through performative codes. This is to say, men presumably ‘do’ masculinity and women presumably ‘do’ femininity through a repetition of acts (Butler 1990). However problematic, losing emotional control is a feminine phenomenon as much as practising emotional restraint is a masculine one. And when men violate this binarist logic they open themselves up to being marked subordinate by those for whom such transgressions threaten the legitimate position of hegemonic masculinity. Not only does this logic perpetuate ideas about hysterical femininity, it also works to secure the truism that the loss of emotional control is unmasculine. Losing emotional control and its association with femininity, then, serves as a proxy for relations between hegemonic and subordinate masculinities. One of the most distinct auditory manifestations of the loss of emotional control is the scream. A non-verbal, paralinguistic burst of expression, the scream often connotes frenzied femininity, and for Marie Thompson (2013) ‘[t]he association of the scream with an “out of control” emotional state, or with a lack of affective regulation, has garnered “feminine” connotations, supplemented by notions of corporeal excess, irrationality and chaos’ (p. 151). Such screams circulate routinely in cultural texts, such as early radio drama as well as film and some new wave rock (Yoko Ono’s haunting 1981 track ‘No, No, No,’ e.g.). In doing so, these vocal bursts construct an axiomatic association between screaming and losing emotional control as a distinctly feminine phenomenon.

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From death and black metal, hardcore and post-hardcore, punk, grunge, and nü-metal to countless other rock idioms, however, screaming plays an integral role in the paralinguistic realm of vocal performance in male-dominated rock. Often, such screams are aligned with expressions that reinforce dominant constructions of masculinity, such as anger and rage (Harrison 2010), or used to heighten sexual prowess in the interest and fortification of male power. And while such highly controlled screams occupy both verbal (i.e. lyrics) and non-verbal realms, they are rarely heard as auditory cues for the loss of emotional control. Post-millennium emo, though, challenges the scream’s normative function in rock music. Its vocalists habitually emit screams that are affected by deeply emotional lyrics. These lyric screams often break and crack at moments of emotional intensity, and they are symbolic of the loss of emotional control for which emo has been mocked and ridiculed. Despite the moniker’s continued use for nearly thirty years, emo’s association with emotional vulnerability and masculine comportment has yielded surprisingly scant critical attention. To be sure, some productive work has been done in this vein, and most studies about emo focus on four primary areas in relation to masculinity:1 first, emo lyrics as reflective of an emotionally vulnerable side of masculinity that emphasizes the personal as politically relevant (Anastasi 2005; Tongson 2006); second, emo lyrics as indicative of a form of ‘beta male misogyny’ (de Boise 2014); third, as a site for queering masculine gender identity through the stylization of the body (Peters 2010); and fourth, as representative of a ‘crisis of masculinity’ (Williams 2007; Ryalls 2013). These approaches provide fruitful exegeses of emo masculinity as a site of performative contradiction—one that simultaneously challenges and ultimately reinforces dominant conceptions of masculinity from an initially peripheral position before its mainstream popularity (Carrillo-Vincent 2013). Curiously, however, the pervasive use of screaming in emo has remained inaudible. This chapter first offers a brief chronology of the discourse around emo. I explore how the term originated in the early 1980s to identify an emotionally charged variant of hardcore punk performed exclusively by men. Thinking through Connell’s definitions of hegemonic and subordinate masculinities, I address how this identification was rooted in stereotypical conceptions of femininity, sparking a violent backlash against not only the term but also the men who failed to adhere to a rigid definition of dominant masculinity. I then turn to the act of screaming. I describe the gendered complexities of this vocalization as a culturally ‘feminine’

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phenomenon that paradoxically operates as a normative expression of masculinity in rock. By way of two examples, I demonstrate that screams pushed to the point of breakage in post-millennium emo are affected by the emotional intensity of the lyrics, acting as a sonic cue for the loss of emotional control for which emo has been marked a subordinate masculinity. In the final section, I reflect on how such screams violate the truism that men must practice emotional restraint. While these affected screams challenge the legitimacy of hegemonic masculinity, I ultimately contend that they also do the symbolic work of maintaining emo’s androcentricity, and in doing so, the affected scream in emo also functions as sonic expression of male dominance from its own subordinate position.

A Little Emo-tology: Marking the Subordinate Emo seemed to appear almost out of thin air during the early years of the millennium. Suddenly, it seemed to many, emo had taken over radio and music television. It quickly became the topic of much discussion on the Internet, and it was infiltrating both entertainment and news media across the globe. As it landed on the doorstep of popular culture, it brought with it a suitcase filled with emotional sensitivity. For its exclusively male performers, and for its largely male fanbase, such emotional expressivity violated the rigidity of hegemonic masculine comportment. Subsequently, many emos were ridiculed, mocked, and even physically attacked by those for whom emo posed a threat to the legitimacy of hegemonic masculinity. In contrast to the popular perception that emo is a distinctly millennial phenomenon, it did not simply appear out of nowhere, and neither did its male performers’ deeply emotive expressions. Rather, at the turn of the twenty-first century, emo had already been around for a decade and a half. Since its origins in the mid-1980s, the emo moniker has been used to describe an emotionally lucid hardcore punk performed exclusively by men. A deeply expressive music, ‘emo’ became common verbiage at this time, ultimately deployed by hardcore purists to mark a subordinate form of masculinity rooted in stereotypically feminine-normative behaviour. Before addressing the affected screams of emo’s sonic landscape, it is important to briefly explore how the genre arrived on the doorstep of the millennium already constructed as a music where men could cast the shackles of hegemonic masculinity and embrace the loss of emotional control for which they were widely criticized.

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Most scholars and emo aficionados date the genre’s origins in the mid-­1980s (Greenwald 2003; Tongson 2006; Williams 2007; de Boise 2014). Emerging from sleepy Reagan-era suburbs surrounding Washington, DC, ‘emo’ was first used as shorthand for emotional to identify local ‘emo-core’ groups like Rites of Spring, Embrace, and Soulside. Musically, these groups shared with their hardcore contemporaries a barrage of heavy-driving and fast-paced rhythms amid a sonic landscape of distorted guitars, relentless drumming, and screamed vocals, each of which do the symbolic work of maintaining sonic expressions of hegemonic masculinity in rock music. Lyrically, however, emo-core stood out among its contemporaries. In contrast to the angst-laden, socio-political commentary of hardcore punk, emo-core lyrics, like Rites of Spring’s ‘Deeper than Inside’ (1985), for example, were more solipsistic, turning inwards to express and make relevant personal feelings, emotions, and anxieties from a male perspective. These emotive lyrics affected the emotional responses of both performers and audiences. It was not uncommon for vocalists in particular to be overcome with emotion and surrendering to tears during performances (Gubbins 1995). Emotive outbursts like crying are not without precedent in histories of popular music, yet among the macho-posturing men in DC’s hardcore scene, this loss of emotional control was indeed an aberrant expression that deviated from conventionally hegemonic norms. Audiences expressed equally emotional responses. In 1986, Thrasher skateboard magazine reported that DC’s emo-core shows ‘[left crowds] in tears from the[ir] emotional intensity’ (p.  75). While male performers’ ability to leave crowds in tears was certainly not unique by the mid-1980s, the sound (and image) of an emotionally drained and weeping crowd was, for the most part, unheard of at hardcore shows. The emotive landscape of emo-core lyrics combined with the loss of emotional control thus destabilized the scene’s normative expressions of masculinity, which were quickly marked subordinate by the scene’s purists. Although a number of groups gained some local success, a fervent backlash against the ‘emo-core’ moniker itself, and by extension to those who performed it, was unfolding. Michael Azerrad (2001) writes that ‘everyone’ in the DC hardcore scene adamantly opposed the emo-core label (p. 380). For example, Ian MacKaye, one of emo-core’s central performers and, paradoxically, one of the most outspoken voices against the term, remarked that ‘“emo-core” must be the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life. As if hardcore wasn’t emotional to begin

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with.’2 On the surface, MacKaye’s contempt for the term is rooted in his perception that hardcore was already emotional music, rendering the ‘emo’ prefix superfluous. On a deeper level, however, we might read his reaction to ‘emo-core’ as a threat to the legitimacy of hegemonic masculinity, and that the deeply emotive lyrics and the tearful outbursts they provoked were unmasculine for they were too closely aligned with stereotypically hysterical feminine behaviour. Taking this line of thought might help us further understand additional comments he made about the term in 2002: ‘emo-core’ was a disparaging one that stemmed from a comment someone made about us saying we didn’t play hardcore punk, we played ‘emotional hardcore,’ so we immediately rejected it because we were aware that it wasn’t complimentary. It was like the term ‘punk rock’—it was originally meant as an insult but then kids adopted it and turned it into their own thing. But I never referred to Embrace or Rites Of Spring as emo-core. Ever. That’s just insane. (Myers 2002)3

In the same interview, MacKaye aims to assure readers that Rites of Spring were ‘bold and seriously bad-ass,’ not the ‘cry babies’ their critics thought they were (ibid.). Echoing Azerrad’s assertion that ‘emo-core’ was indeed objectionable in the DC scene, MacKaye decrees the term uncomplimentary because it was used as an insult. Conventionally, insults are utterances designed to call attention to an act or behaviour that departs from the cultural norm. A colourfully toxic vocabulary is often deployed to mark and thus expel men from legitimate hegemonic masculinity, and this language used to subordinate them is often symbolically blurred with femininity (Connell 2005: p.  79). Like other insults, then, ‘emo-core,’ and its first cousin ‘cry baby,’ drew attention to stereotypically feminine attributes that were not perceived to fit within the rubric of hegemonic masculinity.4 Objectionable and uncomplimentary, ‘emo-core’ was thus insulting to MacKaye and others because it explicitly drew attention to the act of being emotional—a conventionally unmasculine trait. Accordingly, throughout the 1980s being labelled ‘emo-core’ was used to mark groups whose emotive lyrics and outbursts violated the axiom that it was unmanly to express a broad range of intimately personal emotions. This not only worked to frame emo-core as subordinate, but it also helped maintain the hierarchical organization of masculinity with the DC

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scene—groups that were hardcore and holding hegemony over those who were not. By the mid-1990s, however, the term was shortened to ‘emo.’ This change in nomenclature severed ties with the politics and poetics of being or not being ‘hardcore punk,’ establishing the performance of emotional masculinity in emo as more multifaceted than the typically toxic forms associated with the scene. This separation coincides with increasing debates about the cultural validity of traditionally masculine comportment. The doxa that decreed men to repress their emotions was becoming undone as many American men were confronted with the reality that the generic cultural icons (Rambo, e.g.) they had grown up with no longer provided a fully adequate referent for masculinity. This broader cultural phenomenon also manifested in hardcore music scenes, where the machismo of performers like Henry Rollins failed to provide what Michael Kimmel (1992) calls an ‘adequate mechanism’ for a more self-aware masculinity (p. 675). To this end, 1990s emo provided a potential template for men to experience and express emotions for which they were ridiculed in the scene’s formative years. It supplemented the heavy-driving rhythms of emo-core with more melodic riffs, gently strummed acoustic guitars, a pervasive use of dynamics, and minor chords, each of which further emphasized the emotive lyrics and voice. Bands like Sunny Day Real Estate typified this expanded sonic landscape and captured the attention of Sub Pop founder Bruce Pavitt. Pavitt was impressed by the emotional intensity of emergent emo groups. In 1994, for instance, Cynthia Rose questioned Pavitt about the label’s current interests, to which he responded: Sunny Day Real Estate! Who are a young group, guys who have played in a lot of regional hard-core bands. This [Diary] is their debut album, and I haven’t seen this kind of excitement since the first days of Mudhoney and Nirvana. They’re real sincere—I think some critics might say ‘EMO’, [’]cause their music is very emotional. It’s hard to perform music like that, when you bare our soul but you’re not distancing yourself with the use of irony. And they succeed at it; they’re really incredible. (Rose 1994)

For Pavitt, the emotional intensity of emo was not only sincere, it also generated more widespread excitement. Multiple groups were signed by emergent indie and major labels alike. Dashboard Confessional and Jimmy Eat World, for example, signed with Fiddler and Wooden Blue Records respectively, and Weezer signed with DGC, all within the five years leading

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up to the millennium.5 By the end of the decade, emo was being lauded for its emotional intensity by industry personnel as opposed to being vehemently criticized for it. While emo surely still had its critics, as Pavitt notes, it had become its own thing, distanced from the hardcore scene from which it emerged and, by extension, from the machismo of normative masculinity. While emo moved into the twenty-first century and garnered some semblance of credibility as a mechanism for a more self-aware masculinity, criticism of the 1980s and 1990s was further mobilized by its backlash against emo’s appearance as a visual signifier of its emotional availability. As media coverage of the scene intensified, emo was subject to this new wave of criticism, which was buttressed by its stylistic turn towards androgyny. This shift is exemplified by post-millennium bands like Panic! at the Disco and My Chemical Romance, who combined emo’s eclectic sonic milieu, deeply emotional lyrics, and impassioned performance styles with a more feminized aesthetic. News and entertainment media outlets fixated on this generation’s proclivity for highly stylized hair and sweeping bangs, tight clothing, heavy eye makeup, and nail polish. These visual cues were culturally constructed as distinctly emo in popular consciousness, lending the scene an identifiable appearance that further associated it with subordinate masculinity. Young men were labelled ‘effeminate’ or ‘gay’ by those for whom emo’s androgynous style challenged hegemonic norms. For example, ‘anti-emo’ groups formed and attacked young men in Queretaro and Mexico City for dressing ‘effeminately’ (Red 2014). The policing of male bodies by emo critics also took to the Internet in America, whereby Matthew Carrillo-Vincent (2013) remarks, ‘social media sites circulated innumerable videos documenting bullying, fights, and parodies of emo kids, and “National Emo Beatdown Day” had been informally established online as a coordinated response to the scene’ (p. 49). These responses are ultimately symbolic of the extent to which hegemonic masculinities are reliant upon culturally constructed codes of femininity codes to subordinate other masculinities. Emo’s tendency towards the loss of emotional control—and the post-millennium visual codes associated with it—has routinely violated the axiom that legitimate masculinity decrees emotional inexpressivity. And it is in the breaking and cracking lyric screams of emo’s sonic landscape where singers lose all emotional control.

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Screaming as a Loss of Emotional Control Emo was thrust through the door of the millennium screaming more than it was kicking. Curiously, though, those screams have only been explored in relation to audience reception.6 Sarah Williams (2007), for example, writes that it is common for fans to overpower emo icons like Chris Carrabba at concerts as they ‘scream the catalogue of [his] lyrics, word for word, like a cathartic musical group therapy session’ (p.  154). In their study of emo, Trnka et al. (2018) observed that ‘the main philosophy of emo subculture is “to experience and express your actual emotions without any restraint,” and that at public events emos outwardly expressed such emotional unguardedness through crying and angry screaming’ (p. 340).7 Yet what do we make of those vocalists who also let their guards down and unleash their own screams? A sonic and material phenomenon, screams are something we learn to produce and something we learn to listen for (Weidman 2015: p. 232). The Oxford English Dictionary defines a scream as the following: scream, v. 1. a. intransitive. To utter a shrill piercing cry, normally expressive of pain, alarm, mirth, or other sudden emotion. Also, to produce unpleasantly loud and shrill upper notes in singing. Also with out, away.8

Shrill and piercing brings us into the auditory and physiological realm of the scream.9 Here, the scream is a sound characterized by the body pushing the voice to its limit, a high-pitched timbral distortion produced in the wake of sudden emotion. Like the voice itself (Barthes 1977), there is a body in the scream—we hear the lungs swell before the diaphragm helps thrust air over the vocal folds, vibrating the materiality of the throat and glottis, bubbling spit and mucus. Yet this definition makes no reference to language. We can thus discern that it captures the sonority of a pure scream, one that exists on the periphery of the symbolic order of language. Such screams are ‘a presymbolic manifestation of the voice’ (Dolar 2006: p. 27), as produced by infants, for instance.10 To be sure, one can, of course, have acquired the signifying power of language and still emit a pure scream. This type of scream occasions everything from childbirth to torture, and from sexual pleasure to heated arguments (Khan 1999: p. 345). The pure scream also serves a communicative function, a call to an other from someone yearning to be heard—something we then listen for.

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From the Golden Age of radio drama to film and onwards (Porter 2016; Chion 1999), the screaming woman has demanded an addressee. The overrepresentation of this trope, however, has led to an axiomatic association between screaming and femininity.11 Moreover, we have learned to hear her scream as a pathologically hysterical mode of communication. This association, however problematic and outmoded, has reinforced the idea that the pure scream is a paralinguistic phenomenon that signifies femininity. Like voices, we learn to hear screams in gendered terms as a result of enculturated ideas about the ontology of sound rooted in categories of difference (Eidsheim 2014). Rarely are we as inundated with screaming men in cultural texts as we are with women. In large part, this is because of the scream’s intimate association with emotional expression. Thus, because screaming expresses deeply intense emotions (LaBelle 2014), and because men are socialized to repress their emotions, the auditory presence of screaming men in cultural texts contradicts the logic of rational hegemonic masculinity. But the historical and cultural context within which we hear screams is fundamental to how we interpret them (Weidman 2015). In the context of popular music, Susan Fast (2001) observes that screams are characteristic of male-dominated rock singing and they ‘point very strongly to an emotional landscape that has traditionally (and also essentially) been associated with femininity’ (p. 194). In this sense, male rockers who scream violate the auditory cultural norms of masculinity. Such violations lead Robert Walser (1993) to associate screaming in heavy metal with acts of transgression and transcendence (p. 9). As such, the scream not only pushes the voice to its timbral limits, it also flouts gendered cultural norms. And while screams signify multiple emotions, in rock music they are frequently deployed as expressions of anger and rage or are used to heighten sexual prowess. They are not generally heard as frenzied and hysterical sonorities; rather, they are rigidly controlled expressions of power associated with dominant masculinity. The pure scream is a non-lexical and feminized vocalization, though male singers across rock genres also unleash screams to heighten lyric impact. Lyrics are rooted in the structure and signifying power of language, and their communicative capacity is intimately tied to the voice that delivers them.12 To be sure, screaming might render lyrics and even vocal melody indiscernible, as in the case of some heavy metal music (Khan-Harris 2007). Lyric screams are often, though not universally, used to underscore some of rock’s most toxic lyrics. These screams do appear in

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emo. In Senses Fail’s ‘One Eight Seven’ (2003), for example, lead singer Buddy Nielson lets loose a violent scream that correlates with the equally misogynistic imagery of the lyrics (Fig. 1).13 Highly controlled and raspy, his scream is rife with anger, frustration, and rage, taken to toxic extremes in the interest and fortification of hegemonic male power. The intersection of control, rasp, and power are important to his expression of hegemonic masculinity, particularly when taking the lyrics into consideration. Nielson’s screams are produced at the back of his throat, with minimal recourse to the resonating chambers of his chest and head. In this sense, his screams reflect the conventionally ‘macho’ sonority of male rock singing (Shepherd 1991: p.  167). Moreover, isolating the scream to this location requires a great deal of restraint over the body, and the control he asserts over the material and auditory elements of his screams are symbolic of the power and control he seeks to hold over the body of his (presumably) female victim in the lyrics.14 In post-millennium emo, however, unrestrained lyric screams are cited by countless singers.15 Suddenly breaking and cracking, these screams lack the vocal (and bodily) control for which male rock singers are often lauded.16 In emo, their delivery is more hysterical, defying logic and rationality: they do not correlate with cultural notions of hegemonic masculinity and they are antithetical to normative expressions of dominant masculinity in rock. Ordinarily, such screams occur when emo singers are at their most self-reflexive and vulnerable; and in these instances, they emit screams that break and crack as they lose control of their voices, their emotions, and their identifiably masculine normative comportment. The broken and cracked screams that populate emo’s sonic realm are affected by the emotional intensity of the lyrics. Dashboard Confessional’s

Fig. 1  Senses Fail, ‘One Eight Seven’ (2003)—from coda, 2:51–3:09

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Chris Carrabba, emo’s post-millennium poster boy, is a case in point. Known for grabbing an acoustic guitar and singing intimately into a microphone, his first two full-length albums, The Swiss Army Romance (2000) and The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most (2001), wallow in emotional intensity and introspection. Wayne Hoffman’s review of The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most, for example, identifies Carrabba’s multivocality as alternating between ‘quietly breathy on the low notes and straining at full volume in the upper register.’17 Though Hoffman appears ambivalent about the originality of such singing, noting that Carrabba’s voice could be ‘plucked from any number of pop/rock bands,’18 he misses the opportunity to hear the intensity of the broken-voiced lyric screams on tracks like ‘This Bitter Pill’ (2001), where Carrabba issues a barrage of disparaging screams. In his review of the album, Pitchfork reviewer John Dark is attuned to Carrabba’s breaking voice, however belittling the overall review. Dark waxes nostalgia for a time when self-reflexivity and emotional confessions were repressed and confined to private journals.19 After commenting that Carrabba’s ‘drama club hysterics and 10th grade poetry’ wears thin, he remarks that by the end of the album ‘Carraba’s [sic] sincerity has apparently overwhelmed him. His voice cracks, then crumbles on each of the last two tracks, as he strums that guitar like it’s the lover who jilted him.’20 Dark recognizes the cracking and crumbling of the voice as the point of emotional breakage affected by the lyrics, expressions that he mocks emo for throughout his review. Woefully self-reflexive, ‘This Bitter Pill’ wallows in despair. In the verses, Carrabba’s voice has the breathy and low timbre that Hoffman identifies. In the choruses, his voice has an adenoidal timbre that is strained as he sings ‘only equalled.’ The chorus also provides a lyric anchor for his loss of emotional control in the coda. Carrabba’s ‘angry mouth that’s void of all discretion’ produces the ‘awful tearing sound’ of his frenzied and unrestrained screams. Cracking and breaking, he pushes his voice beyond its physiological limits. As he repeats ‘wearing out’ for nearly the last forty seconds of the song, Carrabba’s voice is brazenly out of control (Fig. 2). Similarly, The Early November’s ‘Everything’s too Cold… But You’re so Hot’ (2003) features a scream that is symbolic of the loss of emotional control. Lead singer Ace Enders shifts between modal and head-produced vocalities, punctuating the song’s sonic environment with an airy falsetto. The song carries the listener on an emotional rollercoaster, as Enders recounts his adoration for, and failure to meet, an unnamed lover’s

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Fig. 2  Dashboard Confessional, ‘This Bitter Pill’ (2001)—from coda, 2:25–2:58

Fig. 3  The Early November, ‘Everything’s Too Cold… But You’re So Hot’ (2003)—from coda, 6:00–6:08

standards. It is again in the coda where we are confronted with a broken-­ voiced scream that is deeply affected by the self-reflexive lyrics (Fig. 3). Screams such as those produced by Carrabba and Enders recall the out of control screams associated with hysterical femininity (Thompson 2013). They are not the rage-filled and highly controlled screams associated with more toxic iterations of hegemonic masculinity in rock, nor are they auditory cues that connote the control and rationality of legitimate masculinity in culture more generally. By contrast, their screams are as intimate as they

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are bodily, affected by moments when the self-awareness of lyrics become too much to repress. And while emo does flirt with multiple vocalities in ways that sound out different masculine subjectivities (Williams 2007: p. 155), it is in those fractured screams where singers sound out the loss of emotional control.

Screaming and the Symbolic Gendered Power Dynamics of Emo Sensitive and self-reflexive, the affected broken and cracked screams in emo’s sonic landscape violate the truism that men must remain emotionally closed off. In doing so, these sonorities challenge the legitimacy of hegemonic masculinity. It is important to recall, however, that the gendered connotations of such screams are firmly rooted in cultural representations of hysterical femininity. Screaming, like being emotional in general, does not have gender in any ontological sense. Rather, screaming is gendered. Judith Peraino (2006) reminds us that ‘relationships of power are implicated in the assignment of meaning to abstract sounds and symbols’ (p. 110). The correlation between hysterical screams and femininity thus sounds out as the marked other to reserved, controlled, and logical masculinity. That which is culturally feminine is routinely subordinated and devalued in contrast to that which is culturally masculine. What is more, constructions of femininity are often deployed by harbingers of dominant masculinity to subordinate men who do not conform to gendered norms. Emo’s penchant for feminine markers, such as self-reflexivity, sensitivity, and emotional earnestness, in combination with wildly out of control screams has rendered it a subordinate form of masculinity. The screams that permeate emo music might suggest a changing dynamic of masculinity, but they also do the symbolic work of re-affirming male hegemony, albeit from its own subordinated position. Ryalls (2013) observes that ‘[w]hen emo masculinity incorporates feminine characteristics, it colonizes them, leaving nonincorporated femininity as a devalued other’ (p. 94). In doing so, emo masculinity is ‘illustrative of the ways in which masculinity is redefined in order to remain hegemonic’ (ibid.). Emo screams do not perform hegemonic masculinity so much as they perform the hegemony of masculinity. Moreover, as Norma Coates (1997) observes, ‘[m]ale rockers who literally appropriate “feminine markers” do so in order to assert power over them, and over the “feminine” or the

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female’ (p. 56). We might think of the out of control screams in emo as doing just this. They are indeed hysterical, and they are incorporated into emo’s own subordinated rubric of masculinity in the interest of securing power over the symbolic. In emo, women and girls occupy very few roles. While they play a large role in emo fandom, they are typically represented as muses and femme fatales by the genre’s nearly exclusively male performers. Michelle Nolan is a notable exception. She was featured on two tracks from Taking Back Sunday’s Tell All Your Friends (2002) before sharing lead vocals in Straylight Run in 2004. Yet we do not hear her scream, nor do we hear the screams of the few female back-up vocalists featured on albums such as Armor for Sleep’s What to Do When You Are Dead (2005). Screaming is decidedly done by the boys in emo. Affected by lyrics, the screams that occasion the loss of emotional control in emo are also for the boys. Aaron Anastasi (2005) writes that emo lyrics offer young men the language to name the woes that haunt them (p. 317). Like other rock and pop songs, they offer listeners the tools to, as Simon Frith (1987) identifies, ‘articulate and so experience their emotions’ (p. 234). Likewise, broken-voiced and out of control screams provide the sonic material to sound out intensely emotional expressions. Such screams are not necessarily for emo’s female fanbase, nor are they necessarily directed at the female muses or femme fatales that often inspire such woefully self-reflexive and heartfelt lyrics. Rather, they are for the young men who do not identify with conventionally hegemonic masculinity. These screams thus do the symbolic work of forming bonds between young men through the shared expression of losing emotional control. In doing so, they perform the hegemony of masculinity. In 2007, Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance exclaimed, ‘I think emo is fucking garbage, it’s bullshit.’21 Twenty-one years after Ian MacKaye declared emo-core to be the ‘stupidest fucking thing [he’d] ever heard in [his] entire life,’ Way’s remark echoes the anxiety ‘emo’ has routinely symbolized for young men. But what underscores such reactions? Much like Dark’s disparaging comment that Carrabba’s music was made for ‘sensitive, gender-role-enlightened, bedwetting emo boys,’ Sarah Williams (2007) also connects negative reactions to the ‘emo’ label, such as Way’s and MacKaye’s, to its gendered implications (p.  156). This chapter has demonstrated that the emo moniker was not only used to describe an emotionally charged music but also to subordinate a form of masculinity that typically signifies femininity in popular consciousness and was used as

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a proxy for such identifications. While scholars have used visual and lyric analyses to interrogate emo’s feminine connotations, the screams that fill emo’s sonic environment have heretofore been inaudible. Screams such as those emitted by Chris Carrabba and Ace Anders recall the sonority of the hysterical female. Out of control and deeply affected by lyrics, these screams buttress emo’s association with subordinate masculinity, as it is rooted in cultural ideas about femininity. Though such vocal outbursts such as breaking and cracking provide the sonic material for men to violate the axiom that they should remain emotionally closed off, they also colonize distinctly feminine characteristics—however problematic that association might be. And while emo has been routinely subordinated among masculine relations, the scream does the symbolic and auditory work of reminding listeners that it is made by and for the boys. With their hearts on their sleeves, emo vocalists perform the hegemony of masculinity through screaming, however effeminate it might seem to outsiders.

Notes 1. Emo has also been linked to broader issues about suicide and self-harming behaviour (Trnka et al. 2018). Media tend to frame such issues around a moral panic, and this discourse often focuses on young women. This topic deserves more space than I am able to give it here. For more, see Phillipov (2010). 2. MacKaye made this remark during an Embrace show in 1986, following the Thrasher publication. At the time of drafting this chapter, the video can be accessed on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=mbdh0Qm_5A0. 3. See interview question 11 for this comment. This was a short-lived British music publication founded by Everett True and Steve Gullick, which was published between January 2002 and November 2003. True’s given name is Jerry Thackray, and he had previously written for New Musical Express, served as assistant editor for Melody Maker and editor for Vox before founding Careless Talk Costs Lives (Myers 2002). 4. Connell identifies a number of other terms that are used as verbal assaults, such as ‘wimp, milksop, nerd, turkey, sissy, lily liver, jellyfish, yellowbelly, candy ass, ladyfinger, pushover, cookie pusher, cream puff, motherfucker, pantywaist, mother’s boy, four-eyes, ear-‘ole, dweeb, geek, Milquetoast, Cedric, and so on’ (2005: p. 79). 5. As Emily Ryalls (2013) notes, Weezer’s ‘emo’ designation seems to be hotly contested by some. However, the group’s Pinkerton (1996) album is

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routinely listed on greatest/top emo album lists such as Rolling Stone’s. See https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/40-greatest-emoalbums-of-all-time-23526/weezer-pinkerton-1996-3-163405/. 6. de Boise (2014) notes that emo-core vocalists did in fact scream (p. 227). However, he identifies its sonic presence but does not interrogate it further. 7. On screaming, fandom, and gendered rebellion, see Rohr (2017). 8. Oxford English Dictionary Online. 9. Screams do not always have an aural dimension in cultural texts. For a discussion on the functionality of mute screams in film, see Luko (2016). 10. For more on the scream/cry as a demand through a Lacanian lens, see Dolar (2006). 11. I am aware of the idea of the ‘Primal Scream’ (Janov 1970) and the inhumanness of screams as a ‘common fact’ between human and animal (Deleuze 2003). For a succinct overview of these topics, see Thompson (2013). 12. See Brackett ([1995] 2000) for a discussion on the relationship between the voice and lyrics in recorded music. 13. . All transcriptions found in this chapter are my own with the help of Dr James McGowan. 14. . I would like to qualify my ‘presumably’ parenthesis here. Sam de Boise (2014) offers a detailed and apt account of emo lyrics as representative of beta male misogyny. He arrives at this conclusion through and in-depth lyric analysis of post-millennium emo songs. While I am inclined to agree with his analysis, de Boise places a great deal of emphasis on the ambiguous and genderless ‘you’ pronoun and ‘your’ possessive determiner. In doing so, he renders other sexualities and genders unrepresentable as well as the possibility that ‘you’ and ‘your’ might also operate as alternatives to the first person singular I,’ characteristic of punk lyrics from which emo is partly derived. On ‘you’ and punk lyrics see Laing (2015). 15. On citationality and genre convention, see Brackett (2016). 16. For a discussion about vocal control and dominant masculinity in rock and pop see Cusick (1999). 17. Wayne Hoffman, ‘Dashboard Confessional: The Places You Have Come to Feat the Most,’ Billboard, January 12, 2002, 20. 18. . Ibid. 19. John Dark, ‘Dashboard Confessional: The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most,’ Pitchfork. https://web.archive.org/web/20021204083523/ http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-­r eviews/d/dashboard-­ confessional/places-­you-­have-­come-­to-­fear-­the-­most.shtml. 20. Ibid. By ‘last two tracks’ Dark is referring to ‘The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most’ and ‘This Bitter Pill.’

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21. Quoted in ‘My Chemical Romance’s Way Taps Another Nail into “Emo” Coffin,’ Rolling Stone, September 20, 2007. https://www.rollingstone. com/music/music-news/my-chemical-romances-gerard-way-tapsanother-nail-into-emo-coffin-101867/.

References Anastasi, A.P. (2005) Adolescent Boys’ Use of Emo Music as Their Healing Lament. Journal of Religion and Health 44 (3), 303–319. Azerrad, M. (2001) Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981–1991. New York, Back Bay Books. Barthes, R. (1977) Image—Music—Text. New York, Hill and Wang. Brackett, D. (2000) Interpreting Popular Music. 2nd ed. Berkeley, University of California Press. Brackett, D. (2016) Categorizing Sound: Genre and Twentieth-Century Popular Music. Berkeley, University of California Press. Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London, Routledge. Carrillo-Vincent, M. (2013) Wallflower Masculinities and the Peripheral Politics of Emo. Social Text 31 (3), 35–55. Chion, M. (1999) The Voice in Cinema. New York, Columbia University Press. Coates, N. (1997) (R)evolution Now? Rock and the Political Potential of Gender. In: Whiteley, Sheila (ed.) Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender. London, Routledge, pp. 50–64. Connell, R.W. (2005) Masculinities, 2nd ed. Berkeley, University of California Press. Cusick, S. (1999) On Musical Performances of Gender and Sex. In: Barkin, & Hamessley, Lydia (eds.) Audible Traces: Gender, Identity, and Music. Zürich, Carciofoli Verlagshaus, pp. 25–49. de Boise, S. (2014) Cheer Up Emo Kid: Rethinking the ‘Crisis of Masculinity’ in Emo. Popular Music 33 (2), pp. 225–242. Deleuze, G. (2003) Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. London, Continuum. Dolar, M. (2006) A Voice and Nothing More. Cambridge, The MIT Press. Eidsheim, N.S. (2014) The Micropolitics of Listening to Vocal Timbre. Postmodern Culture 24 (3). Available from: https://doi.org/10.1353/pmc.2014.0014. [Accessed 17 March 2016]. Fast, S. (2001) In the Houses of the Holy: Led Zeppelin and the Power of Rock Music. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Frith, S. (1987) Why Do Songs Have Words? In: White, A.L. (ed.) Lost in Music. Culture, Style and the Musical Event. London, Routledge, pp. 77–106. Greenwald, A. (2003) Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo. New York, St. Martin’s Griffin.

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Gubbins, T. (1995) Core Course Here’s A Guide To Musical Styles That Are Splintering Off as Fast as You Can Say ‘Name That Core’. The ­Spokesman-­Review. Available from: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1995/mar/19/core-­ course-­heres-­a-­guide-­to-­musical-­styles-­that/ [Accessed 20 August 2015]. Harrison, C. (2010) American Culture in the 1990s. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. Janov, A. (1970) The Primal Scream. New York, Dell Publishing. Kimmel, M. (1992) Issues for Men in the 1990s. University of Miami Law Review 46 (3), 671–683. Khan, D. (1999) Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts. Cambridge, The MIT Press. Khan-Harris, K. (2007) Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge. Oxford, Berg. Kivel, P. (2010) The Act-Like-a-Man Box. In: Kimmel, M. & Messner, M. (eds.) Men’s Lives, 8th ed. Boston, Allyn & Bacon, pp. 83–85. LaBelle, B. (2014) Lexicon of the Mouth: Poetics and Politics of Voice and the Oral Imaginary. New York, Bloomsbury. Laing, D. (2015) One Chord Wonders: Power and Meaning in Punk Rock. Oakland, PM Press. Luko, A. (2016) Sonatas, Screams, and Silence: Music and Sound in the Films of Ingmar Bergman. London, Routledge. Myers, B. (2002) Ian MacKaye: Inventing Hardcore. Careless Talk Costs Lives. Available from: https://www-­rocksbackpages-­com.proxy1.lib.uwo.ca/ Library/Article/ian-­mackaye-­inventing-­hardcore [Accessed 21 August 2015]. Peraino, J.A. (2006) Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig. Berkeley, University of California Press. Peters, B.M. (2010) Emo Gay Boys and Subculture: Postpunk Queer Youth and (Re)thinking Images of Masculinity. Journal of LGBT Youth 7, 129–146. Phillipov, M. (2010) ‘Generic Misery Music’? Emo and the Problem of Contemporary Youth Culture. Media International Australia 136, 60–70. Porter, J. (2016) Lost Sound: The Forgotten Art of Radio Storytelling. Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press. Red, M. (2014) Who Are the “Emos” Anyway? Youth Violence in Mexico City and the Myth of the Revolution. Journal of Popular Music Studies 26 (1), 101–20. Rohr, N. (2017) Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Sixties Screamscape of Beatlemania. Journal of Popular Music Studies (29). Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/ jpms.12213 [Accessed 12 January 2018]. Rose, C. (1994) Sub Pop: See Label for Details—An Interview with Bruce Pavitt. Dazed & Confused. Available from: https://www-­rocksbackpages-­com. proxy1.lib.uwo.ca/Library/Article/sub-­pop-­see-­label-­for-­details%2D%2Dan-­ interview-­with-­bruce-­pavitt [Accessed 12 January 2018].

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Ryalls, E. (2013) Emo Angst, Machoism, and Masculinity in Crisis. Text and Performance Quarterly 33 (2), 83–97. Shepherd, J. (1991) Music as Social Text. Cambridge, Polity Press. Thompson, M. (2013) Three Screams. In: Thompson, M. & Biddle, I. (eds.) Sound, Music, Affect: Theorizing Sonic Experience. London, Bloomsbury, pp. 147–162. Tongson, K. (2006) Tickle Me Emo: Lesbian Balladeering, Straight-boy Emo and the Politics of Affect. In: Whiteley, S. & Rycenga, J. (eds.) Queering the Popular Pitch. London, Routledge, pp. 55–68. Trnka, R, Kuška, M, Balcar, K, & Tavel, P. (2018) Understanding Death, Suicide and Self-Injury Among Adherents of the Emo Youth Subculture: A Qualitative Study. Death Studies 42 (6), 337–45. Walser, R. (1993) Running the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. Hanover, Wesleyan University Press. Weidman, A. (2015) Voice. In Novak, David & Sakakeeny, Matt (eds.) Keywords in Sound. Durham, Duke University Press, pp. 232–245. Williams, S.F. (2007) A Walking Open Wound: Emo Rock and the ‘Crisis’ of Masculinity in America. In Jarman-Ivens, Freya (ed.) Oh Boy! Masculinities and Popular Music. London, Routledge, pp. 145–160. Yarom, N. (2005) Matrix of Hysteria: Psychoanalysis of the Struggle Between the Sexes Enacted in the Body. London. Routledge.

Chapter 10: The Power of Boy Pussy: The Dichotomy Between Liberation and Objectification in Queer Hip-Hop/Rap in the 2000s Kenneth Norwood

In 2014 when Young Fly Red’s video for “Throw that Boy Pussy” was released onto the web, a tidal wave of publicity flooded the rapper’s page (currently sitting at 3.1 million views on YouTube). His lyrics were enough to turn the heads of Vice (Bassil 2014), Huffington Post (Nichols 2014), and Paper, but what made many viewers flock to it was the army of fem-­ male twerkers featured in the video. From splits to handstands, these queer men of colour, along with Red, turned the table on a familiar Hip-Hop/ Rap tableau—it was decisive amongst the Hip-Hop community. Scrolling through the comments offers some insight into the reception of the song

K. Norwood (*) University of Southampton, Southampton, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Fosbraey, N. Puckey (eds.), Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65189-3_11

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and video; certainly, homophobic comments are present, but there are also those who attempt to point out the hypocrisy of this targeted homophobia: Jetoye Andrews says: “The only difference between this and other rap songs these days is that it’s the word ‘boy’. Literally. I love how uncomfortable this makes all these guys in the comments [laughing emoji].” Comments calling for this kind of new Black queer male representation are in abundance. There is, however, more nuanced ones, thoughts that appear in the depths of the comment box like this one from a Claudine Monaghan: “I love how when males are objectified and twerking everyones mad but when women do y’’all are drooling and don’t find any problems with it lmao double standard much.” With the framework in mind that approaches Hip-Hop/Rap as a “vehicle for promoting messages of dissent for culturally, socio-politically, and economically alienated communities” (Elezi and Toska 2017), it is understandable to engage with tracks, such as Boy Pussy, on a deeper critical level then man butts in swim trunks. Red is employing a set of tools that have been well established and put into circulation by other disenfranchised identities before visible Black queer participants in Hip-Hop/Rap: the tools of the Black woman within Hip-Hop. From Big Freedia (a Black trans rapper from New Orleans) to Fly Young Red and in between, visually and lyrically, these Black queer rappers are using tools of “reverse” objectification and (hyper)masculinity to subvert this heavily gendered genre of music. This is the same strategy that female rappers have employed in the past to gain access into the heteronormative male-dominated Hip-Hop/ Rap arena and to create space in this field for others to follow. This is agreeable when we stick to Gwendolyn Pough’s academic model as well, that Rap—particularly for Black women—has historically been an autobiographical medium to convey one’’s own story but it has also been a medium for proclamation of “selfhood” and space creation (Pough 2015). What Black women did with Hip-Hop under Pough’s frame of thought, queer people of colour (POC) have taken on the mantel to perform the same action. But these tools create a conundrum, a dichotomy of liberation and oppression. Through both objectification and (hyper)masculine behaviour, they both empower their queer agency and marginalize and subjugate others to prove their point in order to gain access to the heteronormative space of Hip-Hop/Rap.

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Liberation Identity and Hip-Hop To understand Hip-Hop as an artform and avenue that creates both agency and visibility for marginalized identities, its mode of operation must briefly be understood. Starting with the overt political visibility that it offered to Black males in urban American environments in the mid-­1980s to early 1990s, then with Black women and the establishment of feminist tools from the 1990s and 2000s, and lastly with queer beings in the 2000s and the appropriation of said feminist tools, a better understanding of how queer POC’s operate and reinforce the dichotomy of liberation and oppression within Hip-Hop/Rap will be understood by the end of this section. Starting in the mid-1980s to early 1990s of the US, some of the most overtly political commentary in Hip-Hop/Rap manifested with groups like Public Enemy and Boogie Down Production (BDP) & KRS-One in albums like It Takes a Nation to Hold Us Back (1988) and By All Means Necessary (1988). These works offered a voice and visibility to a historically marginalized group: the Black urban male. This Black male image was often framed through a Pan-Africanist, Afrocentric view, with imagery that invokes the political actions of Black nationalism in the 1960s, the Nation of Islam (“Fight the Power,” Public Enemy music video), and Malcolm X (the inspiration for the theme to KRS-One’s By All Means Necessary album). This moment in Hip-­ Hop/Rap helped to craft a Black urban male mainstream aesthetic. The new image amalgamated Afrocentric, Pan-Africanist, and Black nationalist male narrative that would penetrate various forms of expression, offering even more visibility for a frustrated and marginalized Black group. Characters in films like Buggin Out from Do the Right Thing (1989) and Scotty Appleton from New Jack City (1991) are cinematic manifestations of this Black urban male aesthetic. The respectability politics (Higginbotham 2005) of the Civil Rights movement were abandoned for Black berets with turtlenecks and Kente cloth patterns that would refuse to assimilate or forget the stolen “motherland,” of the global African descendent. Concurrently, N.W.A. (Niggas with Attitude) offered a similar voice of visibility through the tool of Hip-Hop but theirs differed in terms of their geography and aesthetic. The Black berets and Kente cloths were swapped out for Dickie suits and Raiders caps and the goal was not an African-centred revitalization or homecoming throughout the diaspora like their eastern counterparts, but rather, the goal was survival and proclamation of their American

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identities through the ongoing fight against racial discrimination and injustice—particularly police brutality. Within this timeframe (1988–1992) of mainstream Hip-Hop/Rap, the genre acts as a voice of agency and visibility for the Black American urban males. But where were Black women in this male-dominated narrative? Patriarchy is constantly operating during this time as well as blatant misogynoir (Bailey 2013). More so, speaking of the west coast Hip-Hop movement—most notably groups like N.W.A. and the overall development of Gangster Rap (Baker 2018)—the overt objectification and sexist acts of Arabian Prince, DJ Yella, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, and MC Ren were well noted and highly flaunted within their music and lifestyle. From Dr. Dre’s public beating of Dee Barnes in 1991 (Sharpley-Whiting 2008) to tracks like “One Less Bitch,” in which Dr. Dre walks his listeners through how he killed a hooker that steps “out of line” (Darby 2011), Black women were left out and behind in this time of Black manhood. In the midst of Black males gaining an identity and public visibility by using Hip-­ Hop as a tool of agency, an arguable trade-off was that of the domination over Black women by reinforcing patriarchy in numerous ways (misogyny/ misogynoir and hypermasculinity). This dichotic relationship of liberation through means of oppression in Hip-Hop/Rap will prove—as this work will later show—to be a recurring theme when it comes to marginalized groups that struggle to gain access and navigate the Hip-Hop/Rap mainstream space, starting with males, women, and, lastly, queer beings.

The Tools of MAN Female artists like Queen Latifah take the main stage in the late 1980s and early 1990s, to offer a Hip-Hop rebuttal for the Black “urban” American woman in albums like All Hail the Queen (1989), Nature of a Sista (1991), and Black Reign (1993). Songs like ““Ladies First”” and ““U.N.I.T.Y.”“ charged and challenged Black males, patriarchy, and misogynoir. They demanded seats at the table, both metaphorically and visually (Stop the Violence movement—““Self Destruction”“ (1989) music video featuring both MC Lyte and Ms. Melodie) and were just as critical of the racist and classist establishments as their male counterparts had been. Before exploring examples of feminist tools—briefly before queer artist use in the millennium—in Hip-Hop/Rap and tracing Black women’s navigation within the space and retaliation to a male-dominated industry, it should be clear when talking about women who use tools familiar with

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patriarchy (particularly objectification) that their use of the tool is not deemable as sexist behaviour. “Second sexism” (Benatar 2003), or “reverse sexism,”—going against the ideas of scholars like Warren Farrell—more specifically sexism against men, by women, is not a “meaningful phrase” (Bearman 2009): despite the fact that there are individual women who may discriminate against beings on the single idea of them being men, these isolated incidents are interwoven into a system that is dominated and controlled by men and for men. In short, women cannot be sexist against men whilst in a patriarchal system. This leads to the first tool, and arguably the most obvious one, which is that of reverse sexual objectification (RSO): the act of objectifying the dominant sex and gender in order to critique the inadequacies of sexual and gender-based politics. This tool of perceived reverse objectification was used in the 1990s by, but not limited to, female rappers like Lil’ Kim, Salt-N-Pepa, and, especially, Missy Elliott.

MISSY From 2000 to 2009, Missy Elliott was the only female rapper to have a top Hip-Hop/R&B Billboard song that was not a feature. She accomplished this with “Hot Boyz” at the beginning of the decade in 2000. Other female rappers like Remy Ma, Lil’ Kim, and Da Brat reached top spots on the Hip-Hop/R&B Billboard charts too but only as a featured artist. This means that for the span of a decade in the modern millennium, only these four female rappers were able to obtain top songs on the charts. How was this accomplished? There is no one proven format that yields access to success for any female rap artist. Missy Elliott’s style of music is vastly different from that of Lil’ Kim and others, but one of the ideas that binds them all is the practice of second- and third-wave feminist sexual liberation: the idea that women should embrace their sexuality as a way to take back their power (Harnois 2008). This plays a major role when one explores the feminist tools used by female rappers—and later on by queer rappers—in order to gain access to these mainstream circles. With “Hot Boyz,” Missy’s lyrics denote a need for gratification both sexually and financially from the prospective male counterpart. Give me no reason, I know that you treatin’’These diamonds I’’m needin’’ make you believe it…

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Through a critical analysis of the songs text, her audience is given a front-row seat to her vigorous vetting session of the male, as if it were a checklist to meet criteria. In this bridge of the song, she exemplifies the expectation she wants met by her sexual counterpart by stating that she needs “no reason” to spend her own money and that “diamonds” and other forms of monetary compensation are needed from the man if he wishes to go any further with her. If Hip-Hop/Rap creation and practice are a direct reaction and product of structural racism (Codrington 2009), the Black female rapper that operates within this institution both confronts and is affected by other institutions like sexism. Missy conveys a reality where her goals are capital gain and sexual gratification; if these terms are not met, then the man is not fit to satisfy her. He is a two-­ dimensional tool and serves specific functions to Missy and other women like her—the functions of sex and money. This is reverse objectification in action. She, the historically objectified, has now turned the tables and made an object out of him, the historical objectifier. Once again, to refer back to the central claim of this chapter, these set of tools will be explored later by queer rappers of colour to gain access and visibility throughout the institution of American Hip-Hop. For the second tool, Marlo Azikwe (2011), in the examination of “how Black women navigate the conflicting, inconsistent grey areas of Hip-Hop to stand up and be heard,” provides critical insight. Referring back to the mid-1980s, early 1990s period of Hip-Hop/Rap, a common consensus of racial inequality is voiced unanimously with slight modifications (i.e. N.W.A. vs Public Enemy narratives of Black manhood). But with regard to the subjects of gender inequality, the consensus becomes skewed. For example, Sister Souljah, being a past member of Public Enemy, did offer a female voice but it was often constructed to benefit issues of Black males and their political discrepancies, not those of females. In Buck Whylin’’, featuring Sister Souljah and Chuck D, Souljah vocals play intermittently between the course of her going to “war” for the Black man—asking questions like “What’s America’s Beef with the Black man?” and stating that “Every brother and sister has got to be a soldier in the war against the Black man.” Souljah, in this moment, is not concerned with gender inequalities but is rather taking charge for the Black male and creating agency for him. Although Souljah is very vocal about gender in her writing and music, in this moment she helps to construct a cohesive front defending the Black male. This is one view of the Black female voice in Hip-Hop during the time: an eastern urban, Pan-Africanist view. An alternative

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feminine voice is that of one that does not seek to rebuild or defend the Black male. This voice is more concerned with the agency of the Black woman both politically and sexually, and as Azikwe states, the voice tends to “defer to the power of masculinity to carve out [a] space of empowerment for the female Hip-Hop audiences.” Artists like Queen Latifah, Mc Lite, Foxy Brown, and Lil’ Kim, and the group Salt-N-Pepa, all implemented this tool of defaulting to masculinity in the 1990s and 2000s: the strategic attempt, by female rappers, of employing tools of hypermasculinity (i.e. equating violence with womanhood, emphasizing physical strength or sexuality) in order to gain access into male-dominated spaces and counteract notions of submissive femininity. A more obvious example of a female rapper that employs this tool is that of Remy Ma and her extensive mixtape library which can be juxtaposed to her mainstream recorded album work. Of course, throughout her career with Terror Squad, her incarceration, and release and public feud with Nicki Minaj, Remy Ma, a Bronx native, has produced both mainstream albums and a number of mixtapes which are more geared to a hardcore, underground, audience and have a more hypermasculine (defaulting to masculinity) approach. Songs such as “Conceded” and “Take Me Home,” which both appeared on her mainstream studio albums, presented a more traditional Hip-Hop/Rap image of femininity: over sexualized, sultry and seductive, and not very violent. However, Remy Ma’s image is much more masculine, aggressive, sexually assertive, and violent, with underground mixtape tracks such as “Tek 9,” “Loadin’’ Clipz,” and “Where My Bitches,” just to name a few. In one mixtape track titled “Fuck the Weatherman,” Remy Ma presents this alternative image that utilizes the tool of Hip-Hop hypermasculinity through her heavy emphasis on violence and gun play. (Chorus)Fuck the weatherman with that desert I make it rainFuck the weatherman with that AK I make it rainFuck the weatherman with that Uzi I make it rain on em’

She names all kinds of artillery that she will use to “make it rain” on her enemies which means to shoot. Of course, violence is not privy to the male sex and should be thought of as a non-binary gendered form of expression. However, in the realm of Hip-Hop and gender representation, Remy Ma’s mainstream versus her mixtape image highlights a shift between female rappers who must learn to play both sides of the fence–traditional

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ideas of both masculinity and feminity. It is not enough to encompass traditional Hip-Hop/Rap femininity but one must also be able to “run with the boys.” Remy Ma’s use of excessive violence in her mixtapes opposed to her commercial studio albums is a testament to this idea of using masculine tools to gain access to certain male-­dominated realms. This is not to say that this is not Remy Ma’s natural authentic personality or Hip-Hop persona, but in order to package her to a larger audience, she, or her record executives or peers, made sure to separate the mainstream traditional Rap feminine Remy Ma versus underground Hip-Hop masculine Remy Ma. Missy and Remy Ma are core examples to understand the implementation of both Hip-Hop feminist tools of RSO and defaulting to masculinity. But how are these feminist tools utilized in queer HipHop/Rap? And how does this dichotomy between visibility/liberation and objectification of others play out in the queer Hip-Hop space? Exploring this is key to understanding the conundrum that queer rappers of the millennium face. Queer Black rappers like Sissy Nobby, Katey Red, Young M.A, and Big Freedia were, and still are, carving out spaces for queer identities through the use of Hip-Hop music, but they often rely on these tools of feminist Hip-Hop which often objectify others.

Bounce Music, Male ownership, and Shakin’ One of the more vibrant, cohesive, and well-established forms of queer Rap during the millennium was, and still is, that of the New Orleans bounce subgenre. Though its roots are not inherently queer, with foundational artists in the early 1990s being heterosexual men like D.J. Jubilee and Kevin ““MC T. Tucker”“ Ventry (Tucker most notably mixing the foundational trigger man beat while reciting “Fuck David Duke,” former Louisiana State Representative and Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan), its queer-fem hijacking and mainstream national queer identity offered a global stage to the millennium’s premier Black , queer, and trans rappers such as Sissy Nobby, Katey Red, Big Freedia, and more. Dubbed as “Sissy Bounce,” by major media outlets, bounce music is not just a simple recital of rhymes amidst the background of distinctive beats. Bounce music employs “call-and-response,” a foundational element of Hip-Hop, even though it is not commonly used today. Bounce music, as Hip-Hop has been shown to do in the past, acknowledges the barriers of class, race, sex, but also gender and its expression, creating visibility in a more nuanced fashion opposed to the previous case studies discussed in

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early segments. Katey Red is a trans-identifying rapper that is credited as one of the forerunners of Sissy Bounce and has commercially been releasing music since 1999 starting with Melpomene Block Party, her debut album. But, well before then, Katey was producing music locally at a more underground level. In terms of the queer liberation and visibility that Katey offers, she not only often discusses her identity as a “sissy” but also subjects around trans-POC life like sex work and homophobia/transphobia. Rather than the “conscious” Hip-Hop/Rap style similar to artists like the Deep Dickollective, which will be discussed later, Katey uses party tools such as the call-and-response technique to talk about these issues. Two tracks, “Punk Under Pressure” (Black queer men in New Orleans are referred to as “punks” sometimes) and “Niggaz out there (Playa’ Hatin’),” demonstrate an acknowledgement of the real-life navigation of trans POC identities that border both racial and gender-based oppressive systems. In “Punks” the course repeats: (Chorus) I’m a punk under pressure! When you’re finished put my money on the dresser! (The dresser, the dresser, the dresser) …

This acknowledgment of sex work and financial gain (“put my money on the dresser”) amongst herself and trans women, once more, speaks to Hip-Hop’s motif of offering visibility to marginalized identities. This is one, if not the first, trans Black female rapper to assert her role as a sex worker by demanding both power and agency in an often-stigmatized identity. Katey Red not only speaks on issues of sex work but also explores the theme of transphobia and shame in the space of Black relations between cis and non-cis beings. In “Niggaz Out There (Playa’ Hatin’)” she exposes the hypocrisy of men that she deals with sexually: Niggas out there trying be They out here fuckin’ with the sissy They round here stuntin’ trying to put on a show But on the fuckin’ slick they say I’m they hoe

This idea of stuntin’ (showing off) resembles critical gender tools of performance. In this case, Katey understands the performance of masculinity and the “show” that men put on. She knows that on the “slick” or

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on the down-low these men who overperform masculinity do it as a form of overcompensating for their self-perceived deviant desires to trans women like herself (“I’m they hoe”). Katey later in the song delves into topics of sex work and the idea that men think her “body is free” but how they are then caught off guard “when [she] give [them] a fee.” Being officially released in 2000 on “2000: Y2 Katey Millennium Sissy,” “Niggaz Out There (Playa’ Hatin’)” was explicit in some realities of being a trans Black woman in the south from a lower-income background. The “Melph,” referring to the Melpomene Street Housing Development, is indicative of bounce and New Orleans culture of creating common slang from historic housing projects in the city. This class identity, intersecting with her gender and race, offered a voice in Hip-Hop at the time that had never been experienced or heard before. Katey also, in a bulk of her music, uses the Hip-Hop feminist tools that had been established before by her predecessors: both the defaulting to masculinity and reverse objectification. In “Niggaz Out There (Playa’ Hatin’),” from the reference of men giving her a “mill” to charging men a “fee,” Katey’s use of RSO is rooted in her role as a sex worker who refuses to be short changed. The client is rendered into a two-dementia entity just as Missy did before her in “Hot Boyz”; he is only good for capital and sex. The result of Katey’s voice and that of others like Sissy Nobby and Big Freedia is that they offer both a space and a level of freedom of experience for Black queer youth in New Orleans that is not so common in the south—comparable only to places like Atlanta, another Black gay metropolitan haven.

Shakin’ As a brief digression to the testament of the power of queer visibility that bounce music offers, outside of the literal sense, bounce has offered queer visibility not only in its musical content but also in the form of its presentation. One of the main identifiers of this subgenre is that of the dance, what is known as “shakin.” Just as breakdancing made up one third of the holy trinity of Hip-Hop (graffiti, breakdancing, and MC-ing) and its identity (Dalzell 2012), in bounce, shakin’ in not only a dance style, it also feeds into the formation of the overall Black queer identity within the culture of New Orleans. To put it simply, shakin’ is a purer, uncommodified, non-­ mainstream, and more native form of “twerking”—it should also be mentioned that New Orleans is credited with the creation of the terminology of “Twerk” as well (Miller 2012). Similar to West Indian Dancehall

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music’s notion of “Windin,’” shakin’ is performed by women but, most queerly, men too. This includes the bounce artist at shows, parties, and second-lines (traditional brass band parades in New Orleans, Louisiana) (Turner 2017). A clearer, and more well-known, example of shakin’ is demonstrated in Mr. Ghetto’s bounce video “Walmart/ Wally Wally World,” which went viral in 2010–2011 and featured Mr. Ghetto and two female “shakers,” shakin’ through the aisles of Walmart with baskets. As mentioned before, the way in which breakdancing helped to form the identity of Hip-Hop and the people within the culture of New York in the 1970s and 1980s, shakin’ does the same with New Orleans bounce. Although on the surface the dance to many may lack the perceived complexity to autonomously build its own institution that is separate from the genre of music (i.e. things like breakdance, Voguing, crumping competition; names for moves (death drops in Voguing); etc.), its complexity, arguably, lies not in the technique but within the queer context it offers. Boys and girls of all ages, minors, shake in both traditional and non-­ traditional settings. This feeds into the visibility that shakin’ and bounce creates because something that was once reserved for women is hijacked by Black queer rappers in New Orleans and then it is distributed throughout the city and therefore makes it much more acceptable for all sexes and races to do.

Dichotomy of Visibility and Objectification The dark side of liberation Paulo Freire’s groundbreaking Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2018) offered not only a theoretical framework to engage with the institution of education and structural institutionalized oppression but a definitive rubric to understanding the nature of the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed in said institutions. Because it is a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so. In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both (p. 44).

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In the struggle for humanization in the midst of being dehumanized by the oppressor, Freire offers a preemptive warning that the oppressed party must not “become in turn oppressors of the oppressors.” This red flag of “fighting fire, with fire,” is a pitfall that male, female, and—most pertinent to the conversation—queer rappers of Hip-Hop often fall into. As we explored before with the late 1980s, early 1990s Rap and the friction between race and gender politics, queer rap does the same in many cases. As it was with feminist Rap, both a reliance on RSO and defaulting to masculinity are prominent tools throughout queer rap in the 2000s. Two central artists shall be explored within this section to display the queer modification of these tools: Young Fly Red and Young M.A. Songs such as “Throw that Boy Pussy” and ““OOOUUU”“ offer visibility but also walk a thin line of objectification, in the forms of both misogyny and misandry across the sexual identity spectrum. To begin, one perspective of Young Fly Red’s “Throw that Boy Pussy” is that it creates a broader acceptance of Black Hip-Hop homosexual desire and visibility for the queer rappers and those whose desires also stand outside of the heteronormative identities. Red uses RSO just as others have before him but what brings the use of the tool into question is his objectification of the fem-queer male body. To offer greater depth, the video subverts Hip-Hop/Rap’s use of the woman’s body by inserting fem men in their places. Familiar angles, such as the low kneeling shots that look up to the subject, convey sexual dominance as Young Fly Red is surrounded by men in red tank-tops and Black shorts twerking. He points and slaps their butts as they perform astounding feats with their bodies, creating a sense of motion to the whole project that would arguably be lost without them. His lyrics go even further in terms of making an object out of the Black fem-male form: Let me see you clap that ass like a bitch Cause I’’m nastier than him, and I got more cash than him And I was trying to fuck your friend, but you got more ass than him…

The explicit language, like “Clap that ass like a bitch,” is a blatant method of comparing the fem-queer male’s status to that of the female in male-dominated Rap culture; hence, they are objectified just as women have historically been before them. His reliance on tools of masculinity, or hypermasculine behaviour, is emphasized by his descriptions of his own sexual phallic power (“I hit your ass with this dick, Send that ass home

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limping…” “nastier than him”). Red is performing the gender role that needs to be played in order for his sexual identity, once ostracized in the Hip-Hop realm, to gain access to the sacred spaces of Hip-Hop acceptance: the dominate male. However, the possibility of misogyny, or in this case misandry, and true objectification is arguable and must be engaged. In the format of systemic oppression (patriarchy), can men objectify other men? And does Red’s objectification critique a larger institution? Or is it just a normal operation of patriarchy? No. This is indeed a critique of a larger institution and it is not a normal operation of patriarchy as we have discussed in our previous examples of feminist Hip-Hop and their retaliations. What makes this so is that Red’s feminization of the Black male is an overall act of rebellion within the world of heteronormative Hip-Hop. Red’s objectification of the Black fem-queer and his comparison of them to a “bitch” naturally inherits all ideas around the loaded relationship between women and men in heterosexual Hip-Hop. But who loses in this relationship? Who exactly is being objectified or furthermore oppressed in this dichotomy? The fem-queer form holds the answer. Returning to N.W.A.’s and Freire’s idea, of the oppressed becoming the oppressor, N.W.A. offered agency but also marginalized and subjugated the female sex at the same time—the dichotomy of visibility and objectification. Young Fly Red’s impact may fall short of N.W.A.’s moment in the 1990s, but in this instant, he embodies the same tactic; he offers agency to masculine Black masc-queer males but subjugates and marginalizes the queer Black fem form. It should also be noted that Young Fly Red is also a product of New Orleans, as he was born there in 1991 but relocated to Houston after Hurricane Katrina, which devastated and dispersed a large population of the city’s population in its wake. The rapper’s influence, therefore, is derivative of the queer rap form of bounce; songs like “Throw It” include identifiable bounce tones, similar to “In My Feelings” by Drake. This dichotomy of visibility and objectification is a common theme amongst queer rap in the 2000s and even today. Young M.A., a lesbian female-identifying rapper from Brooklyn, NY, also creates queer spaces– particularly for studs and more masculine-identifying lesbians–but, once more, envokes one’s own visibility at the cost of another’s subjugation through the use of feminist Hip-Hop tools. A culmination of this feminist rap tools of masculinity and objectification is put on display in one of her most notable hits, “OOOUUU”:

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I ride for my guys, that’’s the bro code (That’’s the bro code)Baby gave me head, that’’s a low blow (That’’s a low blow)And she make me weak when she deepthroatI need a rich bitch not a cheap hoe (Not a cheap hoe)

Her alignment with the male gender identification is an important aspect of her work and its ability to be queer. She often switches pronouns and is never stationary in their gender expression. The “bro code,” and the loaded meaning that this offers, begins to lean towards feminist tools of RSO and reliance of masculinity, which come later in the song. Sexual terms such as “deepthroat” indicate even more how M.A.’s embrace of phallic imagery shows dominance over her partners the same way Young Fly Red did with the fem-male form and wanting them to “clap that ass like a bitch.” However, M.A. takes it a step further by putting her ability to dominate the female form over that of her cis-hetero-male counterparts, stating things like “When you tired of your man, give me a call (Give me a call)–Dyke bitches talking out they jaw (Yo what you say?) Next minute calling for the law….” From hetero-males to dykes, M.A. dominates them all through displays of sexual and violent behaviour. In a Fader interview, in response to her music being misogynistic and problematic, M.A. states, “At the end of the day, men can be described the same way as men describe women.” She says, “A man can be a ho, just as much as a woman can be a ho. And I’m a woman myself! I respect women. I respect my mother” (Shepherd 2017). Young M.A.’s basic defence for this act of objectification against women is her, often fluid, identity as a woman and that of the respect for her mother. Her argument of “if men can do it, so can I” evokes the act of playing a role in order to be accepted as “one of the boys”; she is, in this moment, gaining access into a space of Hip-Hop sexual acceptance just as Red did before her. Her ability to take a man’s girl (“If that’’s ya chick, then why she texting me?”) plays on her employment of hypermasculine behaviour: a reliance of masculinity. M.A.’s objectification of the woman gives her access to the power of masculinity, whether it be perceived as authentic or not, in regard to her personal belief. M.A., like Remy Ma, also in terms of defaulting to masculinity or hypermasculine behaviour, emphasizes violence in her rhymes from time to time but mixes it in a more sexual nature in this moment. Comparing the female orgasm (“when she bust”) to the kickback of a Glock is one of many moments where she emphasizes violence with sex as an avenue of acceptance in the Hip-Hop circles. Even if M.A.’s display of violent behaviour is an authentic form of expression that is not based in both gaining

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access into Hip-Hop mainstream spaces and mimicking the hypermasculine models, her employment of violence and the way in which she talks about it falls in line with a hegemonic narrative that better facilitates and benefits her, rather than discussing violence in a so-called unpopular or alternative fashion. Young M.A.’s unintended use of Hip-Hop as an avenue of visibility for marginalized queer POC identities in the Black community, coupled with her reliance on hypermasculine tools and misogynistic behaviour towards women, mimics the cannon of this conundrum that has existed in Hip-Hop and, more importantly, now in queer mainstream hip-­ hop. This model of fighting patriarchal fire with patriarchal fire is a side effect of the ever-present methods of navigating a male-dominated territory. To gain both access and visibility in these rap spaces, one often must play into the roles—whether they are aware or unaware of the role—in order to gain a platform.

Deep Dickollective from 2001 to 2007 So, what is the answer? Are there exceptions to this dichotomy of liberation and oppression? Who, as Freire stated, are the “restorers of the humanity of both” the oppressor and the oppressed in queer Rap? No Hip-Hop/Rap artist is perfect at avoiding the political pitfalls of the industry but one collective from 2001 to 2007 came close: the Deep Dickollective. It would be irresponsible to explore queer rap and visibility in the 2000s without exploring the work of the homo-hop scene and the Deep Dickollective from 2001 to 2007. Where bounce, Young Fly Red’s, and Young M.A.’s music lies in the realm of party, upbeat, gangster Rap/ Hip-Hop, the Deep Dickollective’s work could be characterized as more “conscious rap,” with an emphasis on lyricism and more politically charged content that is led by queer theory. Based out of Oakland, California, they were active in the homo-hop scene of openly queer/LGBT artists during the 2000s. Initially coined by Tim’’m T.  West of Deep Dickollective, homo-hop “was not meant to signify a distinct genre of music, but simply to serve as a community building tool and promotional hook for LGBT artists” (West 2013). Dickollective consisted of about 12 members and they have released 6 studio albums under Sugartruck Recordings. Their tracks range from the serious to playful, but this plays into their overall model of presenting a dynamic Black American male image. In one track entitled “I Am,” on The Famous Outlaw League of Proto-Negroes (2004), they presented a multifaceted image of what Black men are. Other tracks

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like “Straighttrippin”‘ (featuring Doug E.), “Negrolosophy,” “Protonegroes Theme,” and “Colored Boys” deal with the complexity of Blackness and queerness and explore how these identities exist through subverting Rap/Hip-Hop’s heteronormativity via the conscious rap genre.

Conclusion Queer identities that operate within the institution of Rap/Hip-Hop still struggle to find a definitive mainstream voice. Just as women have and still are navigating this space, the Hip-Hop/Rap arena is still extremely tumultuous for queer artists to navigate, being that it is structured, historically, for a heteronormative male model. This difficulty in navigation is apparent due to queer rappers that lie between the dichotomies of liberation through visibility and oppression through marginalization. Artists like Katey Red and Young Fly Red best display this dilemma as shown in this chapter. Both artists break the narrative of male heteronormative Hip-­ Hop/Rap and offer a voice and insight into how people, with similar queer identifications, operate in the music industry, and also in communities of queer colours which they are a derivative of; but both artists also use tools established by their female Hip-Hop/Rap predecessors. The political power and visibility that Hip-Hop has granted to marginalized groups in the past has not changed when it comes to queer beings, but these queers must make it an imperative mission to reorient the space, rather than just integrate into it, lest they run the risk of becoming oppressive in some form themselves. Artists such as the Deep Dickollective are important in this aspect. Their mixture of queer theory-led thoughts with rhymes acts as a possible case study to how the spaces in Hip-Hop can be reoriented. Horton-Stallings (2007) states perfectly how queer (alternative) rap’s education from feminist rap form plays into the legacy of reorienting the space. [Queer] Hip-Hop groups such as Deep Dick Collective and Rainbow Flava have learned that if Queen Pen and Lil’ Kim can manipulate Queen B(?) strategies for themselves, then homohop can too. If lesbian artists such as Miss Money and Mizz Platinum out of Atlanta can follow the philosophies of early rap Queen B(?)s and manipulate this fear of sexuality, then perhaps the closed doors of the music recording industry will matter less than the social good that can come from their trickster efforts.

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This manipulation of fear is a powerful act that all queer artists discuss: from Katey Red’s trans work empowerment to Deep Dickollective’s political theoretical mash-up to Young M.A.’s stud imagery to Young Fly Red’s boy pussy trope, all of these artists are aware of the homophobic spaces that now occupy but refuse to back down from entering it.

References Azikwe, M., 2011. More than baby mamas: Black mothers and hip-hop feminism. In: Gender, race, and class in media: a critical reader. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Publications. Bailey, M. Z., 2013. Race, Region, and Gender in Early Emory School of Medicine Yearbooks. s.l.:s.n. Baker, S., 2018. The history of gangster rap: from Schoolly D to Kendrick Lamar: the rise of a great American art form. New York: Abrams Image. Bassil, 2014. Is this Rap Song about Fucking “Boy Pussy” what Hip-Hop needs?. [Online] Available at: https://www.vice.com/en/article/ryg79y/is-­this-­rap-­ song-­about-­boy-­pussy-­what-­hip-­hop-­needs-­fly-­young-­red [Accessed 06 October 2020]. Bearman, S., 2009. The Fabric of Internalized Sexism. Journal of Integrated Social Sciences, 1(1), p. 10–47. Benatar, D., 2003. “The Second Sexism.”. Social Theory and Practice, Issue 29. 2, p. 177. Codrington, R., 2009. New Forms: The Political Potential of Hip-Hop. In: New Social Movements in the African Diaspora: Challenging Global Apartheid. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US, pp. 247-262. Dalzell, T., 2012. Flappers 2 Rappers: American Youth Slang. Springfield (USA): Newburyport: Dover Publications. Darby, D. T. S. a. W. I., 2011. Hip-Hop and Philosophy: Rhyme 2 Reason. New York: Open Court. Elezi, G. & Toska, E., 2017. RAPPING INTO POWER: The Use of Hip Hop in Albanian Politics. In: Hip Hop at Europe’s Edge: Music, Agency, and Social Change. Bloomington; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Freire, P., 2018. Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Harnois, C., Spring 2008. Re-Presenting Feminisms: Past, Present, and Future. NWSA Journal. Higginbotham, E. B., 2005. Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920. New York: ACLS History E-Book Project. Horton-Stallings, L., 2007. Mutha’ Is Half a Word: Intersections of Folklore, Vernacular, Myth, and Queerness in Black Female Culture. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

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Miller, M., 2012. Bounce: Rap Music and Local Identity in New Orleans. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press. Nichols, J., 2014. ‘Throw that Boy P***y’ Released By Gay Rapper Fly Young Red. [Online] Available at: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/throw-­that-­ boy-­pussy_n_5035214?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3c uZ29vZ2xlLmNv [Accessed 06 October 2020]. Pough, G., 2015. Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture, and the Public Sphere, s.l.: University Press of New England. Sharpley-Whiting, T. D., 2008. Pimps Up, Ho’s Down: Hip Hop’s Hold on Young Black Women. New York: New York University Press. Shepherd, J. E., 2017. Young M.A Still Isn’t Compromising. [Online] Available at: https://www.thefader.com/2017/02/07/young-­ma-­cover-­story-­interview [Accessed 14 Oct 2020]. Turner, R. B., 2017. Jazz religion, the second line, and black New Orleans: after Hurricane Katrina. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. West, T. T., 2013. Homo Hop is dead, Queer hip hop is the real deal. [Online] Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20130317020626/http://dot429.com/ articles/1645-­homo-­hop-­is-­dead-­queer-­hip-­hop-­is-­the-­real-­deal [Accessed 14 Oct 2020].

Chapter 11: “All Of My Life, Just Like I Was One Of Them”: Trans itioning Punk Gareth Schott

Introduction Today, the irreducible core attitude of punk has spread considerably beyond its initial sneer, license to be outrageous and commitment to self-­ definition to broadly describe any musician (Hildegard Von Bingen), artist (Tracey Emin), filmmaker (Mary Harron) or fashion designer (Rei Kawakubo) that operate(d) on their own terms in ways that have little connection to trends or commerciality. Punk serves as an acknowledgment of individuals who deconstruct or challenge established codes. As punk provocateur John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) has famously commented: “Punk became a circus didn’t it? Everybody got it wrong. The message was supposed to be: Don’t follow us, do what you want!” The roots of, and currency gained by, British punk emerged from a blend of working-­ class heroes and exposure to art school thinking1—from Jamie Reid (cover

G. Schott (*) University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Fosbraey, N. Puckey (eds.), Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65189-3_12

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designer of Never Mind the Bollocks by The Sex Pistols), Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood (SEX), Linder Sterling (cover designer of “Orgasm Addict” by The Buzzcocks), Viv Albertine (The Slits), Penny Rimband (Crass), Gina Birch and Ana da Silva (The Raincoats) to Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon (The Clash). A similar permutation is noted among west and east coast punk in the US, but much less concentrated amongst first-wave punk bands. For example, punk pioneers Penelope Houston (The Avengers), Alicia “Alice Bag” Armendariz (The Bags) and Tina Weymouth (Talking Heads) appear to have shared a similar level of assemblage thinking in combining art, politics and punk. Recalling the birth of UK punk, Westwood signalled her original intent: “I was messianic about punk, seeing if one could put a spoke in the system in some way.”2 Consistent with Sabin’s definition of punk as “part youth rebellion, part artistic statement,”3 this chapter treats punk as a cultural movement in order to deal with the manner in which its music manifestations have today been overtaken and defined by stylized punk-pop ersatz. As Alice Bag, from first-wave Los Angeles punks The Bags, has noted: “certain parts of the media would just play the white boy bands, and people started to believe that punk rock is for, like, white suburban males … Look at your punk history.”4 Despite the eventual corporatization and absorption of punk into the mainstream, sub-genres of punk have continued to embody and advance its founding ideologies—centred around inclusivity, resistance, challenge and transformation of the established order of things. Five albums into the existence of Gainesville Florida anarcho-punks Against Me!, their founder, creative driving force and frontperson publicly came out as transgender in 2012 in an interview with Rolling Stone. Up to that point the band’s liberal-activist politics were archetypally delivered and performed under a macho aesthetic. This chapter argues that Against Me! singer Laura Jane Grace’s political reorientation of the band has served to highlight the negotiated and processual nature of punk performativity, reclaiming punk as a platform for marginalized groups through its DIY ethos and spirit of self-invention and empowerment. Against Me!’s cultural contribution to the “critique of normative aesthetics”5 represents a return to expressions of identity politics that were once foundational to key movements and practice of punk.6 As swiftly as punk surfaced, it dispersed, diversified and transmuted so that it never really promulgated coherent and consistent politics. However, as Gunckel

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notes, “debates surrounding key categories and issues, including race, gender, and sexuality were fundamental to conceptions of punk operating at the time.”6 As Steve Ignorant, lead singer of Crass, recalls: “Punk had a purpose. Every gig would benefit something: a rape crisis centre, a donkey sanctuary, an old people’s home. It was positive.”7 Politics of rejection and dispute were found in punk albums such as the Au Pairs’ Playing with a Different Sex, on which Lesley Woods sang about violence against women, challenged sexism, patriarchy and gender roles, and presented female sexuality with candour. The Slits too poked holes in masculinity and societal expectations. On “Typical Girls,” singer Ari Up asks: “Who invented the typical girl? / Who’s bringing out the new improved model? / And there’s another marketing ploy / Typical girl gets the typical boy.” Analogously, on X-Ray Spec’s “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” Poly Styrene contests whether “little girls should be seen and not heard,” while The Raincoats addressed rape culture on 1979s “Off Duty Trip” and Vivien Goldman connected insecure toxic masculinity with violence on “Private Armies.” Within the broader movement, “sartorial agitprop artist”8 and fashion designer Vivienne Westwood’s rebel fashion aesthetics was challenging both what women and men should look like.9 When Linder Sterling replaced a porn star’s head with an iron for her collage cover art for The Buzzcocks’ single “Orgasm Addict” she not only claimed collage as an apposite punk art practice but also employed it in a “raw, violent attack on media images”10 that fuel the perception of women as decorative objects. In order to understand the tactics employed by punk practitioners and their (cultural) impact, this chapter begings with the reflections from first wave punks. Individuals who were the first to resist hegemonic, mainstream cultural values11 under punk, and articulate community of practice invested in an ideology of DIY culture of social transformation and cultural production that signalled egalitarianism. A founding member of The Raincoats, Gina Birch, recalls how punk “wasn’t shocking, it was a great time for women … There was a kind of genderlessness. It was the most genderless time that one could imagine … the boys had short cropped spiky hair, and the girls had short cropped spiky hair, and you could wear the same clothes, and you could have your hair the same.”12 Likewise, Alice Bag cites: “The DIY ethic, the challenge to the status quo, the confidence to pick up an instrument, a paintbrush, a camera or any other tool that you have not been trained to use and to discover your power for yourself without feeling intimidated are all part of having a punk attitude.”13 Recollections of the

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inception of punk appears to validate that an “egalitarian, non-hierarchical social structure”14 emerged from the scene’s championing of “musical amateurism.” As Penelope Houston of San Francisco band The Avengers recalls: “The early scene embraced all comers, be they female, gay, non-white or even older. There was no dress code. Women were pioneers along with everyone else involved. I noticed no separation. I knew women who were musicians, bookers, managers, photographers, visual artists, film makers, journalists, label owners… etc.”15 Despite the positive impetus and effect of punk in terms of the accessibility of its ingenuous practices, participation in the scene carried greater risk and held greater implications for some more than others. As political activist, music journalist (Melody Maker) and artist (The Clash) Caroline Coon observes, male participation in punk can be perceived as developmental “fulfilling [of] a rather orthodox, rite of passage male youth rebellion … [in which] young men are allowed to get drunk, destroy, create anti-social havoc—and then they settle down, and they are absorbed back into adult male patriarchal culture.”16 However, the perceived level of punk contravention was heightened by female punks as they also rebuffed traditionally reinforced gender-coded behaviours. The perceived vulgarity of punk oppositional behaviours and acts of self-expression found in its tattered, dishevelled, protruding and confronting dress code (from binbags and appropriation of bondage aesthetics to images of naked breasts as seen on Vivienne Westwood’s infamous trompe l’oeil T-shirt, worn by Siouxsie Sioux) and modes of expression (spitting, pogo and two-fingered salutes) automatically contravene the rules of “ladylike” behaviour—conventions that reflect gendered mechanism of social control.17 As feminist writer, music historian and former keyboard player of post-punk band Catholic Girls Lucy O’Brien recalls, young women were “duty-bound to hold yourself back and not be vulgar, and not be too obvious … the great thing about punk was [that it] ran counter to all those things.”18 However, this made female punks vulnerable to violence both within and outside the punk scene. During its highpoint of cultural authenticity, The Slits singer Ari Up was stabbed in public. As she recalls, it “was hard enough for the boys, but for the girls it was a witch hunt. People saw us walking down the street, and if they could have put us on the stake they would have done it. I got stabbed in ’76: This disco guy walked up behind me and said, ‘Here’s a slit for you!’ My huge, dirty old coat saved my life.”19 Overt resistance to societal policing of the female body via body technologies such as fashion may have seen female punks employ clothing as a “site of resistance,”20 but

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in doing so they switched the impetus for assault or confrontation based on female passivity and compliance21 to a perceived incitement of violent encounter.

The Obnoxious Punk Jamie Mullaney has argued, with particular reference to straight-edge hardcore music scene, “even a subculture deliberately carved out to oppose mainstream norms and values ends up reinforcing masculinist ideals and male-defined gender expectations.”22 To this effect, research has delineated different levels of intent to channel punk ideologies amongst its practitioners. Indeed, William Tsitsos has discussed the “apolitical (drunk) punk” whose participation and punk practices, via slam-dancing for example, is centred around a release of aggression rather than a conscious embodiment of ideological principles.23 Greg Tate has also described the “obnoxious energy”24 associated with punk that principally functioned as an affront on the parent community. Indeed, the seminal moment in which the mainstream gained its first introduction to punk certainly lacked overt political articulation of its challenge and desire to “escape the restrictions of normalising categories and labels”25 but instead attracted “vehement disapproval”26 for the disruption it caused to the cultural hierarchy. Here I refer to the infamous live television appearance of the Sex Pistols in December 1976, in which the band together with members of the Bromley Contingent (a label coined by journalist Coon)—Siouxsie Sioux, Simon Barker, Simone Thomas and Steve Severin—were interviewed on the British chat show Tonight, hosted by Bill Grundy. The obscene language, impertinent behaviour and outrageous appearance of the punks sent the “populace into a frenzy.”27 For some punk transgressors the licence to undermine through “playfulness and discomfort”28 has placed it on a collision course with the corollaries of punk evolution that have taken it deeper into marginal political (anarcho-punk; taqwacore), racial (afro-punk) and gender (queercore; riot grrrl) territories. A recent case involving US veteran punks The Dickies is a case in point. Formed in 1977 the group continue to perform their particular brand of camp humour and theatrics to this present day. Escalating and amplifying the Ramones use of stage props (1932 film Freaks-inspired “Gabba Gabba Hey” sign and masks), The Dickies too became known for their use of giant clown costumes, inflatable dolls, phallic puppets and a giant, talking penis called Stuart. In 2017, whilst performing on punk’s

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largest, longest running (1995–2018) and most commercial travelling music festival, The Warped Tour, Dickies lead singer Leonard Grave Phillips reacted to the presence of a female crew member who stood facing the crowd clutching a sign that read: “Teen girls deserve respect, not gross jokes from disgusting old men! Punk shouldn’t be predatory!” Phillips responded with a sexually aggressive and abusive rant, “kiss it, kiss it, kiss it you bitch. I have fucked farm animals that are prettier than you.” He then incited an amused crowd to chant “blow me, blow me, blow me” before asking the apparent dissenter: “How does it feel? How does it feel to get shouted away you cunt. C.U.N.T. Can you spell? You’re a fat cunt.” The incident coincided with The Dickies’ scheduled departure from the tour, a point that was vehemently reinforced by the tour organizers in order to avoid any public misconception that the band had been asked to leave as a result of the attack. Furthermore, influential high-profile musicians, such as Eagles of Death Metal’s singer Jesse Hughes and The Offspring guitarist Kevin “Noodles” Wasserman, took to social media to defend The Dickies. Hughes considered the need or call for punk to become nontoxic and nonviolent as an affront on the essence of punk rock. He used Instagram to comment that: “a safe zone is a place that exists in your home not at the place you voluntarily drive to and walk into and sit in an audience of that exists in a public place.” The Offspring guitarist took a similar stance, interpreting the attack as reaffirming The Dickies’ punk credibility: “Who would’ve thought that, in 2017, The Dickies would become ‘The Most Dangerous Band In America?’ I’d like to congratulate The Dickies on finally achieving this great honor and distinction.” However, Shawna Potter of War on Women identified the arguments defending Phillips as merely “waving the ‘punk/rock/metal means free speech’ flag as an excuse to put others at risk”29 and nothing more than misogyny. Leonard Phillips’ response to the video footage going viral showed little remorse, defending himself and the definition of punk: “It appears the audience and myself were to be lectured about common decency as well as the very raison d’être of Punk Rock by this woman and her friends during the entire set.”30

A Stifling Orthodoxy As Stinson has argued, the punk mainstream continues to be represented by white males focusing on “stale, homogenized social politics and a rote ‘punk’ stance and style.”31 To this effect, what began with inventive artists’

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and provocateurs’ dalliance with music has sparked a lasting musical resolve that endures both in contemporary underground and mainstream punk scenes. Attempts to describe the principal components of its musical style are made difficult by the way punk quickly dissipated to blur “across a diversity of genres and sub-genres, often obscuring more than it reveals.”32 It is nevertheless possible to locate a musical foundation within fast-paced, loud, distorted guitars repeating simple chord patterns that defiantly oppose musical excess and virtuosos that even today remains associated with an “aesthetic challenge to the popular music industry.”33 However, for some originators of the punk scene aesthetic doggedness represents mimicry. John Lydon has drawn attention to a distinction between the inventive nature of the first-wave punk bands and the impressionistic quality of those that followed, emulating their approach. As he puts it, bands like: The Raincoats offered a completely different way of doing things, as did X-Ray Spex and all the books about punk have failed to realise that these women were involved for no other reason than that they were good and original. It’s a million miles away from the blancmange that is Green Day, where you have a Johnny Rotten first verse, a Billy Idol chorus and a Sham 69 second verse. Preposterous!34

Lydon’s typical acerbic denunciation of punk-by-numbers might highlight a lack of inventiveness from repeating the formula, but it also downplays punk’s “call to arms” and the invitation to participate in its accessible practice. It is this aspect of the musicality of punk that was effective in attracting female musicians in the first instance. As Gina Birch, who acknowledged The Slits as a major inspiration, commented: “When I saw them play … It seemed so extraordinary, and so… doable somehow. I mean … I didn’t know if I could do it, but I just thought … Suddenly the possibility was there, and it was so, so amazing to see them, and I so wanted to be part of it.”35 Rather than establish a cohesive or consistent politics of gender or sexuality, the punk scene became characterized by a “discursive fixation” on “distinction” and “contestation.”36 Additionally, with its crossover to the mainstream, punk’s non-hegemonic standing as a performance of resistance37 waned, as did its categorization as an inventive mode of cultural production. Counter to the visibility achieved by mainstream punk, sub-­ genres such as anarcho-punk split off to pursue a belief in the “politics and

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practice of punk ‘as it was always supposed to have been’—autonomous, subversive and free from commercial corruption.”38 Goshert has made similar observations, noting that punk is often articulated as a “resistance to working within the usual terms of commercial success and visibility. In other words, it is precisely when punk becomes popular culture that it ceases to be punk”39 (p. 85). In the face of the marketability of the classic archetype of punk, its oppositional nature naturally responded via musical evolution and widening of its blueprint (e.g. via post-punk, 2-tone and the infusion of reggae and dub). The lack of recognition given to the “sub-­ cultural resistance”40 performed by bands such as The Slits, in the critical histories of punk, can, in part, be explained by an authenticity that made them difficult to exploit and “sell in the commercial mainstream.”41 Cogan’s work in particular highlights The Slits’ contribution to punk’s restrictive and retrograde attitude and, in doing so, addresses their “glaring omission” from punk literature.41 While The Slits forged their own path, Nehring has argued that one time punk bands, like the Go-Go’s and Bangles, received make-overs to become “glamorous fodder for MTV,”42 “stymieing” female punk and contributing to its invisibility. In a discussion of the rise post-punk, Julia Downes charts the fragmentation of punk in the late 1970s, outlining how working-class identities in Britain became expressed by Oi! Punk,43 a “street-level expression of revolt”44 that sought a “reaffirmation of punk values”45 separate from its original art school influences and consequent music industry varieties. Oi! was represented by bands such as The 4-Skins, Cockney Rejects, Angelic Upstarts, The Business, and The Exploited. Initially “a medium for working-­class protest,” Oi! was however exploited as a “recruiting ground for fascism” by the far right,46 tarnishing its primary intent and principled disaffections. In this compromised cultural space, there were little opportunities for a bi-gender mode of expression. Contrastively, anarcho-punk became a broader platform for promoting political change, headed by bands such as Crass and Poison Girls. Musically challenging and confrontational, Downes identifies how anarcho-punk “reproduced a masculinist music culture as feminist content” characterized by “nihilistic and bleak sonic assaults that focussed on issues of anti-capitalism, animal rights, and nuclear disarmament.”47 While political issues were also central to US hardcore punk (war, social inequality and capitalism48), it embodied body politics, employing anger, violence and machismo in its fascination with physicality. As Sandford surmises: “hardcore kids chose so fervently to act within the realm of the corporeal. They relished in physicality, a relish that

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manifested itself as fighting, as moshing, and as adherence to a straight edge lifestyle.”49 Indeed, Gottlieb and Wald attribute the 1990s revival of feminine punk by riot grrrl, a decade later, to the “blatant misogyny” and “aggressively masculinist” attitudes and behaviour of hardcore.50

New Wave Contemporary punk bands offer an entry point to punk sensibilities beyond the confines of the annals of history. Its cultural legacy is instead embodied within an active cultural force within a new generation releasing music and live performances. Far from the cultural epicentres of punk in Gainesville Florida, anarcho-punks Against Me! entered the story of punk long after youth culture had prompted the reinvention of capitalism and turned subversive practices into business plans.51 The band evolved from Laura Jane Grace’s adolescent DIY solo project (1996s self-produced and released Demo Tape), through which she cultivated her craft over a series of lo-fi and limited releases on local labels (Misanthrope Records, Crasshole Records, Plan-It-X Records and Sabot), resulting in the eventual release of the band’s first long-player album in 2002—Reinventing Axl Rose (No Idea Records). From 2002 to 2009 an established line-up released five albums that took them from DIY self-reliance to industry sell outs, resulting in intense rejection by the anarcho-punk community. Their persistence and calling saw them progress from playing basements to larger venues and eventually stadiums, and from an independent (Fat Wreck Chords) to a major label (Sire Records) and back again with the formation of their own label (Total Treble) after being dropped by Sire in 2010. In their efforts to sustain a punk band, to uphold a strong set of ideological beliefs and to strive to advance their audience beyond the enclaves of basement punk, Against Me! were violently rejected by a resentful anarcho-punk community (with their advancement onto Fat Wreck Chords), failed to find a home in mainstream punk scene and lost the backing of a major label. In 2012, an interview with mainstream music magazine Rolling Stone reaffirmed Laura Jane Grace’s commitment to education, criticism and socio-political defiance and changed the trajectory of her punk agenda. Grace spoke openly for the first time of her struggles with gender dysphoria and growing up closeted, announcing her decision to live as a transgender woman. As Cogan concluded with reference to the contribution of first-wave punk band The Slits: “punk rock, needed to be reminded that rebellion was not simply a boys club, but was open for interpretation and

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reinvention from a female perspective.”52 As suggested by Against Me!’s 2005 album title Searching for a Former Clarity, in revealing her authentic self, Grace signalled a political realignment with the ideologies of punk that first gave her the impetus to express resistance and reject oppressive assumptions with relation to gender.53 As she has commented in interviews: you know, one of the very appealing things to me about the punk rock world when I was, like, 15, 16, especially stumbling onto, like, anarchist punk rock and activist punk rock. And, you know, a scene that was really strongly feminist and anti-racist and anti-homophobia, anti-transphobia, all about body liberation, all about, like, you know, just being yourself. And that’s—you know, those are values I still strongly hold onto.54

Against Me!’s journey through punk’s subcultures revealed a restrictive and often disingenuous scene. In her 2016 memoir, Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout, Grace often portrays punks as rigid in their thinking—a view she reinforces in interviews: “I turned to the punk scene because I thought it would be a more open-minded place, but I found that it was more closed-minded than the church.”55 Having uncovered and experienced the “restrictive conditions set by both in-scene attitudes … and capitalist imperatives about marketability,”56 Grace’s capacity to defy the rules of punk was to a large degree impeded by the power of the codes of masculine identity57—a system within which she was required to operate.58 As she now reflects, the more profound transition for Grace had to do with “smashing the male ego. If you’ve been raised and socialized, as a male, and you’re transitioning to living your life openly as female, then you have to destroy the male ego you’ve been raised with.”59 Indeed, in their 2004 tour film We’re Never Going Home, we see male band and crew members bonding by hanging-out topless, engaging in arm wrestling and general laddish high jinks (stealing beer, exploiting industry hospitality and being ejected from another Warped Tour band’s bus-party for gate-crashing). At the same time, Against Me!’s contribution to, and membership of, the punk scene from underground to mainstream has been charted within lyrics of disappointment and loathing for the systems that undermine its progressive politics and socially constructed “imagined community.”60 A healthy mix of frustration and fervour thus pervades Against Me!’s back-catalogue. In “Those Anarcho-Punks Are Mysterious,” on 2002s Reinventing Axl Rose, Grace’s apparent war cries contain an interpretation

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of political punk as identity formation and personal evolution. When reviewed by punk site Dying Scene, Winter perceptively identified how the album encouraged a “new initiative to look inward for the battlefront and conquer yourself before taking to the streets. In a world where lines are constantly blurred and maps constantly redrawn, knowing yourself can be just as bloody a battle.”61 Likewise, Quietus reviewer Smith recognized Grace’s tendency to conflate political battles with the personal experiences.62 As Grace confirms: “I was so desperate to express myself outwardly, feeling like I couldn’t dress how I really wanted. Punk rock offered a certain extravagance of fashion. It was putting on a costume, and it gave you this armour to face the world. It was also reassuring to set myself apart and let people know, ‘I am not like you. I am fucking different.’”63 Drawn to the purity and conviction of punk as a counterpoise to the turmoil of growing up experiencing gender dysphoria, punk initially offered Grace a platform to address real issues, beginning with politics (e.g. “The Politics of Starving”), violence (e.g. “White People for Peace”) and the music industry (e.g. “Unprotected Sex with Multiple Partners”). The urgent playing style of early releases often served to mask the personal commentary, in which expeditiously delivered lines whizzed by unnoticed, having been given so little emphasis, time and space. In this way, Grace was able to pepper her songs with dysphoric sentiments of imposter syndrome often using the deceptiveness and guile of punk, as a metaphor for her own self-deception. Indeed, released in 2003, Against Me!’s album title Eternal Cowboy is explained by Grace as either “symbolic of the power structure” or “someone forever wandering, lost and alone.” On the song “Turn Those Clapping Hands into Angry Balled Fists” Grace finds fault with the bromide nature of her own meaningless anthems—a theme repeated in her writing on subsequent albums. For example, on Searching for a Former Clarity’s (2005) “Holy Shit” Grace outwardly condemns the potency of punk, stating that “the joke’s on us.” As Spin’s Aaron noted when reviewing Searching for a Former Clarity: “Repeatedly, [Grace] assays the self-importance (and obsolescence) that trails any band presuming to redeem people’s lives. Still, he bullhorns on, even when [s]he can’t remember why, turning up the guitars to cut through the bullshit—especially [her] own.”64 With each new album release Grace dared to drop further clues of her own desire to drop the façade of her masculine punk dialogic. On the title track for Searching for a Former Clarity, Grace embedded an autobiographical revelation, referencing journal entries confiding childhood

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secrets of compulsions to cross-dress (the 2016 memoir, Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout was constructed from Grace’s journals). This was followed by “The Ocean,” on their major label debut New Wave (2007), in which Grace voices a wish to have been born a woman and that, had she, her mother would have named her Laura. On their final major label release, White Crosses (2010), Grace irrevocably called out the scene for its “opportunistic” and “self-serving” politics— terms Grace employed when responding to criticism from the band Rise Against over their song “I Was a Teenage Anarchist.” Album reviews appreciated the “slippage between ideology and fashion.”65 Grace’s criticism was unmistakeably trained on the “close-minded futility of scenester punks.”66 In growing out of simplistic punk politics and an “oxymoronic expectation to conform to a non-conformist norm,”67 Grace was simultaneously beginning the process of redressing the unbalanced gendered spatiality of punk sphere.68 On her last album, under her birth name, Grace parted company with an inchoate punk persona with the words: “What God doesn’t give to you / you got to go and get it for yourself.”

True Trans Soul Rebel When Grace made her private process public in 2012, coming out as a transgender woman in an interview with Rolling Stone, she tested the genre’s egalitarian resolve in earnest through her neoteric embodiment of punk and its message. In addressing her gender dysphoria Grace also simultaneously gave voice to the experience of transitioning and the “daily threat of rejection, humiliation and violence”69 through her music. Grace’s subsequent songwriting on albums such as Transgender Dysphoria Blues (TGDB) (2014) and Shape Shift with Me (2016) became undeniably trans in its world-view, holding punk to account over its responsibility to inclusivity and questioning its dedication to masculine performativity. Grace’s un-conditioning70 has interjected a queer rebelliousness into punk, bringing trans visibility which transforms punk ideals to challenge gender norms. Grace has principally achieved this through her music first and foremost. Against Me!’s sixth release, Transgender Dysphoria Blues, represented a seminal and potent mix of anthemic self-bolstering (“True Trans Soul Rebel”), continued call to dismantle misogynistic bro culture (“Drinking with the Jocks”) and expressions of the sadness and brutality attached to an enduring dysphoria (“FuckMyLife666”).

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“There’s a brave new world that’s raging inside of me”—Smith’s review of TGDB in The Quietus described the album as a “toast to the worth of one person,”71 drawing comparison to the triumph of Against Me!’s debut album (Reinventing Axl Rose) for the manner in which they both conflate “political battles with the personal experiences that catalyse them.” As Grace has commented in interviews, punk “was about wanting something to be real.”72 Indeed, the outward character of anarcho-punk, “built upon the roots of mainstream punk,” has been a dedication to artistic “integrity, social and political commentary and actions, and personal responsibility.”73 As Grace has stated: “14 years of me building up defences to really protect everyone from who I really was and what I was really going through.”74 In beginning the process of “making yourself up as you go along” (“True Trans Soul Rebel”), Grace drew on the confluence of gender and sexuality in punk, in order to combat her own “internalized transphobia”—“the inevitable result of living in the world I live in.”75 One of Grace’s first acts was to cover up a wrist tattoo that read “Ramblin’ Boys of Pleasure” (a drunken matching tattoo she had gotten with her friend Brendan Kelly) indicative of punk masculinity. In her memoir Grace wrote: “this was my first step; the start of my acceptance that I was going to transition into a woman.”76 On TGDB’s “Black Me Out” Grace pledges to stop engaging in masculine performativity as overcompensation for male insecurities. The song is an obvious pledge to honesty and an undertaking to no longer “be” in way that others expect, drawing on the experience of having to “fake the person that you are and be inauthentic and compromise yourself to people you work with” and the capacity of gender norms to “make you the kind of person that you aren’t, really.”77 Langman has highlighted the sense of personal agency that can be obtained from tattooing, which signals punk’s resistance to domination and its inversion of disciplinary codes.78 Grace has gone on to completely black out her arms, overlaying and erasing former indelible marks of a past lifestyle. As Grace has exclaimed: “To be able to wipe the slate clean is oddly refreshing.” And: “Changing the way my arms look in the past year has completely changed my self-image. It also prepares you for knowing what it’s like to undergo bigger surgeries.”79 In a discussion of transgender politics, Katrina Roen highlights how, for some “transgenderists,” passing for the other sex is considered “complicit with normative gendering.”80 Aesthetically, Grace has remained punk in a way that evokes Cogan’s account of The Slits as a band that were “not just out to create new space for women in punk, but they were willing to

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challenge other female punks to follow their lead.”81 Similarly, Karina Eileraas (1997) has argued how bands such as Hole have rejected traditional notions of femininity as “nice,” “gentle” and “pretty” drawing on punk practices of “uglification,” resulting in punk imagery employing the “body’s uncontrollability.”82 As Grace has stated: there is no such thing as ‘male’ clothes or ‘female’ clothes—there’s only cloth. I’ve had people be surprised when I show up and dress how I dress—a lot of the time I just throw on a pair of dirty black jeans with holes in them and put on my punk-rock T-shirts and go about my day. Because the dysphoria isn’t about that—the clothes are an outward expression, but it’s my body, it’s my mind, and that’s what it’s more about.83

Trans Romance If writing a complete album from a trans perspective was a first for the punk genre, Grace’s writing on Against Me!’s 2016 follow-up album Shape Shift with Me moved beyond excitement at a budding new public identity, body transitioning and concerns over external validation and acceptance to address how: “Trans people should be able to fall in love and sing love songs too, and have that be just as valid” (Grace quoted in Feeny, 2016).84 In her second collection of songs Grace examined different aspects of post-transition negotiation of sex, love and heartbreak. Having successfully presented her battle cry for the freedom to live her truth, Grace has continued to chronicle her personal realization as transgender (McInroy & Craig 2015). In doing so, she has sought to evolve public perceptions beyond “the most popular aspects of transgender representation in the media.”85 As a cultural artefact Shape Shift with Me tackles the social dysphoria caused by ubiquitous hetero-normative mainstream media content and the lack of life experiences represented and explored from trans perspectives. Shape Shift with Me has thus served to generate a new awareness of embodied selves and the social challenges inherent in constructing or consolidating identity. In an article titled “This Band Helped Me Embrace My True Trans Self,” Julie Muncy (2016) attributes her decision to come out publicly as a woman to the influence of Shape Shift with Me. In her first published article as a trans woman, Muncy identifies with the themes of the album, stating: “Rebirth is a clumsy metaphor for my experience; it’s less being reborn than it is learning how to be

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something you always already were … I find myself deeply connecting to Shape Shift With Me for that reason.”86 The universal themes of belonging, longing and love that pervade Shape Shift with Me resonates strongly with the accounts provided by female punk community members, who found subcultural solace in the punk genre, only to find their sense of worth devalued as objects of detestation and animosity or abuse and mistreatment. As Nguyen has commented, punk pop (and its crossover genre emo) provided her with a “blueprint for love … based on a toxic, entitled male point of view.”87 To this effect, pop punk and emo have become a sexual commodity encoded with violently misogynistic harmful lyrics (e.g. Glassjaw’s “Silence …” or “Pretty Lush”). It is also a scene blighted by accusations of sexual misconduct (e.g. Brand New frontperson Jesse Lacey) and rape (e.g. Sorority Noise). Music critic and author Jessica Hopper (2015) has declared her concerns for female audiences that are “wanting to stake some claim to punk rock, or an underground avenue, for a way out, a way under” only to be met with the music produced by “romantically-wronged boys … damning the girl on the other side.” Consider the Brand New song “Jude Law and a Semester Abroad” in which Lacey sings: “even if her plane crashes tonight she’ll find some way to disappoint me / by not burning in the wreckage or drowning at the bottom of the sea.” Hopper (2015) has conveyed her disappointment that punk spin-off genres are not able to achieve what punk was able to do for her, as she puts it, affirming her “ninth grade fuck-you values—music that encouraged me to not allow my budding feminist ways to be bludgeoned by the weight of mainstream, patriarchal culture—I was lucky … I was met with polemics and respectful address; I heard my life and concerns in those songs. I was met with girl heroes deep in guitar squall, kicking out the jams under the stage lights. I was being hurtled toward deeper rewards. Records and bands were triggering ideas and inspiration.”88 The impact on teen music devotees such as Nguyen was: “I accepted less than I deserved when it came to relationships because my blueprint for love was based on a toxic, entitled male point of view. I devalued myself because I thought I had to.”89 As Grace explained in interviews promoting Shape Shift with Me: “the biggest fears a lot of trans people have if they decide to come out, that they’re making themselves unlovable and that they’ll never have a relationship again.”90 Additionally, taking on the themes of relationships and love takes punk away from the natural territory of anti-war and

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violence agitation in a way that breaks down gender-based power dynamics.91 Grace assesses the focus of her current output as questioning how much of who we are in relationships or dating or sex is just purely driven by testosterone or oestrogen. What emotions are exclusive to one or the other? Or are they not exclusive to either? Are certain emotions just there and equally valid for both genders, or genderless? Are some emotions strictly male or strictly female?92

Prior to Shape Shift with Me, Against Me! were more likely to chronicle a relationship break-up over a (“spineless liberal”) partner’s refusal to throw a brick wall through a Starbucks window (“Baby I’m an Anarchist”). Changing tact somewhat, Shape Shift with Me serves to address male normative privilege, the weight of objectification on a woman, whilst emphasizing that all humans should be unidealized and realistic.

Conclusion As a punk musician, Grace has conveyed her devotion to the feasibility of purity and conviction that the punk scene aspires to. As a transgender woman fronting an anarcho-punk band, Grace has opened up the political terrain of punk defiance to scrutinize and expose harassment, stigma, rejection and systemic inequality from a transwoman’s perspective, to add to the band’s treatment of religious hegemony, corporate greed, US foreign policy and left-wing hypocrisy. In doing so, Grace fulfils the punk ethos of demonstrating that music is for everybody by providing anthems which everyone can sing along to. She refuses to be a spokesperson for her own uncertain path but willingly shares her journey and viewpoints. Grace’s art and life intersect to present a reality that embodies and progresses the subcultural politics of punk. Against Me!’s lineage, as identified by Grace herself, is traceable to: British anarcho-peace-punk bands of the 1970s and early 1980s, which had a very strong female presence. That extended over to a lot of things that happened in the Pacific Northwest in the 1990s and the riot grrrl movement. Those were the examples of what I wanted to see in punk. I thought that was a space for me to exist in, because I didn’t feel accepted in other places.93

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This chapter has sought to highlight the potent and emancipatory nature of the themes of Grace’s song writing and outline how she promulgates her raw, honest, transient, multifarious reflections on her shifting and open trans reality. Against Me! have successfully transitioned from proficient practitioners of a genre of music shaped by hierarchies of masculinity working within spaces that were inaccessible for many queer people, to carve out a space in punk for trans perceptibility and queer presence. Reporting on an Against Me! album release show for Shape Shift with Me, Wes Enzinna opted to share how Grace communicates with the crowd, suggesting that there are now “safe spaces” being created in punk: “Whatever your gender identity, your sexual orientation, whatever, I just want everyone to feel at home here.”94

Notes 1. Simon Frith, Sound Effects (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981); Paul Fryer, “Punk and the New Wave of British Rock,” Popular Music and Society 10, no. 4 (2008). 1-15. 2. Vivienne Westwood, “Vivienne Westwood: Disgracefully Yours, the Queen Mother of Fashion.” The Independent, June 2, 2002, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/vivienne-­westwood-­disgracefully-­ yours-­the-­queen-­mother-­of-­fashion-­178866.html 3. Roger Sabin, Punk Rock: So What? The cultural legacy of punk (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 2. 4. Brett Callwood, “Anger is an Energy for Alice Bag.” LA Weekly, March 8, 2018, https://www.laweekly.com/music/anger-­is-­an-­energy-­for-­alice­bag-­9229079. 5. José E. Muñoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), p.95. 6. Colin Gunckel, “Defining Punk,” Journal of Popular Music Studies 30, no. 1-2 (2018): 156. 7. Steve Ignorant, “Never Mind the Bus Pass,” The Guardian, May 7, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/may/07/never-­mind-­bus­pass-­punks-­look-­back-­wildest-­days. 8. Julian Assange, “Vivienne Westwood opens up about punk, politics and McLaren.” The Irish Times, October 14, 2014, https://www.irishtimes. com/life-­a nd-­s tyle/fashion/vivienne-­w estwood-­o pens-­u p-­a bout­punk-­politics-­and-­mclaren-­1.19592932014. 9. Sarah Jaffe, “Why Feminism Needs Punk,” Dissent Magazine, Spring 2015, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/why-­feminism-­needs-­ punk-­viv-­albertine-­slits-­autobiography. (created 2015).

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10. Jonathon Jones, “Linder: The House of Fame Review,” The Guardian, March 26, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/ mar/26/linder-­sterling-­the-­house-­of-­fame-­review-­nottingham 11. Ross Haenfler, Subcultures (New York, New York: Routledge, 2014). 12. Gina Birch, “Women of the Punk Era,” The F Word, April 24, 2010, https://thefword.org.uk/2010/04/women_of_the_pu/ 13. Sharon Becker, “Oh, Pretty Boy, Can’t You Show Me Nothing but Surrender?” Women’s Studies 41, no. 2 (2012), 117. 14. Michelle Phillipov, “Haunted by the Spirit of ’77,” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 20, no. 3 (2006), 384. 15. Penelope Houston, “Women in LA Punk,” Alice Bag, November 24, 2016, https://alicebag.com/women-­in-­la-­punk/penelopehouston 16. Caroline Coon, “Women of the Punk Era,” The F Word, April 24, 2010, https://thefword.org.uk/2010/04/women_of_the_pu/ 17. J. Hagan, J.D. Hewitt, & D.F. Alwin. “Ceremonial Justice,” Social Forces 58, no. 2 (1979). 18. Lucy O’Brien, “Women of the Punk Era,” The F Word, April 24, 2010, https://thefword.org.uk/2010/04/women_of_the_pu/ 19. Ari Up, “The Return of the Slits,” Rolling Stone, February 1, 2005, h t t p s : / / w w w . r o l l i n g s t o n e . c o m / m u s i c / m u s i c -­n e w s / the-­return-­of-­the-­slits-­103572/ 20. Valerie Preston and Ebru Ustundag. “Feminist Geographies of the ‘City,” in A Companion to Feminist Geography, eds. Lise Nelson and Joni Seager (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 220. 21. Lyn Brown, Raising Their Voices (Cambridge, MA: Boston University Press, 1998). 22. Jamie Mullaney, “‘Unity Admirable but Not Necessarily Heeded,’” Gender & Society 21, no. 3 (2007). 387. 23. William Tsitsos, “Rules of Rebellion,” Popular Music 18, no. 3 (1999). 24. Greg Tate, “Hardcore of Darkness,” in White Riot, edited by Stephen Duncombe and Maxwell Tremeblay (London: Verso, 2011). 25. David Beer, Punk Sociology (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 22. 26. Dick Hebdige, Subculture, (London: Routledge, 1979), 106. 27. Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, Please Kill Me, (London: Penguin Books, 1997). 28. Beer, Punk Sociology, 22. 29. Shawna Potter, “Let’s Not Mistake The Dikkies’ Onstage Warped Tour Rant For Anything But Misogyny,” Noisey, July 1, 2017, https://noisey. vice.com/en_us/article/mbaa4q/war-­o n-­w omen-­o n-­t he-­d ickies-­ warped-­tour-­rant.

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30. Leonard Graves Phillips, “The ‘Disgusting Old Man’ Behind the Dick Puppet,” Facebook: The Dickies, June 29, 2017, https://www.facebook. com/notes/the-­dickies/the-­disgusting-­old-­man-­behind-­the-­dick-­pup pet/10155395725655891/. 31. Elizabeth Stinson, “Means of Detection,” Women & Performance 22, no. 2-3 (2012). 276. 32. Bill Osgerby, “‘Chewing Out a Rhythm on my Bubble-gum,” In Punk Rock, edited by Roger Sabin (London: Routledge, 1999) 156. 33. Hesmondhalgh, “Indie,” 34. 34. John Lydon, “Soundtrack of My Life,” The Guardian, November 1, 2009, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/nov/01/sexpistols. 35. Birch, “Women” 36. Hesmondhalgh, “Indie” 37. Naomi Griffin, “Gendered Performance Performing Gender in the DIY Punk and hardcore Music Scene,” Journal of International Women’s Studies 13, no. 2 (2012). 38. Richard Cross, “The Hippies Now Wear Black,” Socialist History 26 (2004). 26. 39. John Goshert, “Punk After the Pistols,” Popular Music and Society 24, no. 1 (2000). 85. 40. Julia Downes, “The Expansion of Punk Rock,” Women’s Studies 41, no. 2 (2012). 41. Brian Cogan, “Typical Girls? Fuck Off, You Wanker!,” Women’s Studies 41, no. 2 (2012). 121. 42. Neil Nehring, “The Situationalist International in American Hardcore Punk,” Popular Music and Society 29, no. 5 (2006). 522. 43. Downes, “Expansion of Punk Rock” 44. Matthew Worley, “Oi! Oi! Oi!,” Twentieth Century British History 24, no. 4 (2013). 45. Gary Bushell, “Oi!—The Debate,” Sounds, January 24, 1981. 30. 46. Worley, “Oi! Oi! Oi!” 608. 47. Downes, “Expansion of Punk Rock,” 206-7. 48. Perry Grossman, “Identity Crisis,” Berkeley Journal of Sociology 41(1996). 49. Tom Sandford, “The Body Politic: Violence and Rebellion in the First Wave of Hardcore Punk,” Pop Matters August 25, 2014, https://www. popmatters.com/183998-­the-­body-­politic-­violence-­and-­rebellion-­in-­the-­ first-­wave-­of-­hardcor-­2495636133.html. 50. Joanne Gottlieb and Gayle Wald, “Smells like Teen Spirit,” in Microphone Fiends, edited by Andrew Rossand and Tricia Rose. (New York: Routledge, 1994). 51. Matt Mason, The Pirate’s Dilemma (London: Simon and Schuster, 2009). 52. Cogan, “Typical Girls?” 134.

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53. Craig O’Hara, The Philosophy of Punk (San Francisco: AKP, 1999); Jessica Rosenberg and Gitana Garofalo, “Riot Grrrl: Revolutions from Within,” Signs 23, no. 3 (1998). 54. Laura Jane Grace, “For Laura Jane Grace, Punk Was A Form of Armor,” NPR, April 4, 2017, https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=522581237. 55. Jim Farber, “Laura Jane Grace: ‘Punk was more closed-minded than the church’,” The Guardian, November 10, 2016, https://www.theguardian. com/music/2016/nov/10/laura-­jane-­grace-­against-­me-­tranny-­memoir. 56. Cogan, “Typical Girls?’ 122. 57. Farber, “Laura Jane Grace” 58. Mullaney, “Unity Admirable” 59. Farber, “Laura Jane Grace” 60. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1991). 61. Carson Winter, “Album Review: Against Me! Reinventing Axl Rose,” Dying Scene, January 5, 2002, https://dyingscene.com/news/ against-­me-­reinventing-­axl-­rose/. 62. Robin Smith, “Against Me! Transgender Dysphoria Blues,” The Quietus, January 24, 2014, https://thequietus.com/articles/14338-­against­me-­transgender-­dysphoria-­blues-­review. 63. Laura Jane Grace, “Punk, Politics, and Trans Love Songs,” Vogue, September 16, 2016, https://www.vogue.com/article/laura-­jane-­grace­interview-­shape-­shift-­with-­me. 64. Charles Aaron, “Searching for a Former Clarity (Fat Wreck Chords),” Spin, September 1, 2005, https://www.spin.com/2005/09/against-­me­searching-­former-­clarity-­fat-­wreck-­chords/. 65. Matthew Cole, “White Crosses,” Slant Magazine, June 7, 2010, https:// www.slantmagazine.com/music/against-­me-­white-­crosses/. 66. Alistair Lawrence, “White Crosses,” BBC Music, June 8, 2010, http:// www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/hrb6/ 67. Griffin, “Gendered Performance,” 70. 68. O’Hara, Philosophy of Punk 69. Petra Davis, “The Body Is Not Gender: Laura Jane Grace Of Against Me! Interviewed,” The Quietus, March 26, 2014, https://thequietus.com/ articles/14834-­against-­me-­laura-­jane-­grace-­interview. 70. Maria Raha, Cinderella’s Big Score (Emeryville, CA: Seal P, 2005). 71. Smith, “Against Me! Transgender Dysphoria Blues” 72. Farber, “Laura Jane Grace” 73. Tim Gosling, ““Not for Sale:” The Underground Network of Anarcho-­ Punk,” in Music Scenes, edited by Andy Bennett and Richard A. Peterson (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004). 168.

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74. Laura jane Grace, “Laura Jane Grace Opens Up About Trans Identity in 2015,” Huffington Post, 10 August, 2015, https://www.huffpost.com/ entry/against-­me-­rocker-­laura-­jane-­grace-­opens-­up-­about-­trans-­identity-­ in-­2015_n_5661ef08e4b072e9d1c61175. 75. Farber, “Laura Jane Grace” 76. Laura Jane Grace, Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock’s Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout (London: Hachette, 2016). 77. Laura Jane Grace, “Tortured Path to ‘Transgender Dysphoria Blues,’” Spin, January 16, 2014, https://www.spin.com/2014/01/laura-­jane­grace-­interview-­against-­me-­transgender-­dysphoria-­blues/. 78. Lauren Langman, “Punk, Porn and Resistance: Carnivalization and the body in popular culture,” Current Sociology 56, no. 4 (2008). 79. Laura Jane Grace, “Gender, Anarchy, & Selling Out,” Out, August 25, 2016, https://www.out.com/out-­exclusives/2016/8/25/against-­me­singer-­laura-­jane-­grace-­gender-­anarchy-­selling-­out. 80. Katrina Roen, ““Either/Or” and “Both/Neither”: Discursive tensions in transgender politics,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 27, no. 2 (2002). 501. 81. Cogan, “Typical Girls?” 131. 82. Katrina Eileraas, “Witches, Bitches & Fluids: Girl bands performing ugliness as resistance,” The Drama Review 41, no. 3 (1997). 123. 83. Laura Jane Grace, “Punk, Politics, and Trans Love Songs,” Vogue, September 16, 2016, https://www.vogue.com/article/laura-­jane-­grace­interview-­shape-­shift-­with-­me. 84. Nolan Feeny. “‘Shape Shift With Me’ and Writing Love Songs,” Entertainment Weekly, September 12, 2016, https://ew.com/article/2016/09/12/against-­m e-­l aura-­j ane-­g race-­s hape-­s hift-­m e­interview/. 85. Nolan Feeny, “‘Shape Shift With Me’ and Writing Love Songs” 86. Julie Muncy, “This Band Helped Me Embrace My True Tans Self,” Wired, September 17, 2016, https://www.wired.com/2016/09/against-­me-­ coming-­out-­trans/. 87. Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen, “How the Pop Punk Scene Became a Hunting Ground for Sexual Misconduct,” The Brag, November 23, 2017, https:// thebrag.com/pop-­punk-­internalised-­misogyny-­brand-­new/. 88. Jessica Hopper, The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic (Chicago: Featherproof Books, 2015). 89. Nguyen, “Hunting Ground for Sexual Misconduct” 90. Laura Jane Grace, “Punk, Politics, and Trans Love Songs” 91. Steve Waksman, This Ain’t the Summer of Love: Conflict and crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009)

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92. Laura Jane Grace, “‘Shape Shift With Me’ and Writing Love Songs,” Entertainment, September 12, 2016, https://ew.com/article/2016/09/12/against-­m e-­l aura-­j ane-­g race-­s hape-­s hift-­m e-­ interview/. 93. Laura Jane Grace, “Tattoos, Transitions and Transgender Dysphoria Blues” 94. Wes Enzinna, “The Making of Rock and Roll’s First Trans Superstar,” Mother Jones, March 5, 2017, https://www.motherjones.com/ m e d i a / 2 0 1 7 / 0 3 / l a u r a -­j a n e -­g r a c e -­a g a i n s t -­m e -­g r e e n -­d a y ­transgender-­rights/.

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Hopper, Jessica. The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic. Chicago: Featherproof Books, 2015. Houston, Penelope. “Women in LA Punk: Penelope Houston.” Alice Bag. https://alicebag.com/women-­in-­la-­punk/penelopehouston. (created November 24, 2016). Ignorant, Steve. “Never Mind the Bus Pass: Punks look back at their wildest days.” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/may/07/never-­ mind-­bus-­pass-­punks-­look-­back-­wildest-­days. (created May 7, 2016). Jaffe, Sarah. “Why Feminism Needs Punk.” Dissent Magazine. https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/why-­f eminism-­n eeds-­p unk-­v iv-­a lbertine-­s lits-­ autobiography. (created Spring 2015). Jones, Jonathon. “Linder: The House of Fame Review: Too Punk for a Turner?” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/mar/26/ linder-­sterling-­the-­house-­of-­fame-­review-­nottingham. (created March 26, 2018). Langman, Lauren. “Punk, Porn and Resistance: Carnivalization and the body in popular culture.” Current Sociology 56, no. 4 (2008). 657–677. Lawrence, Alistair. “Review: White Crosses.” BBC Music. http://www.bbc.co. uk/music/reviews/hrb6/. (created June 8, 2010). Lydon, John. “Soundtrack of My Life.” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/nov/01/sexpistols. (created November 1, 2009). Mason, Matt. The Pirate’s Dilemma: How youth culture is reinventing capitalism. London: Simon and Schuster, 2009. McNeil, Legs and McCain, Gillian. Please Kill Me: The uncensored oral history of punk. London: Penguin Books, 1997. Mullaney, Jamie. “‘Unity Admirable but Not Necessarily Heeded:’ Going rates and gender boundaries in the straight edge hardcore music scene.” Gender & Society, 21, no. 3 (2007). 384-408. Muncy, Julie. “This Band Helped Me Embrace My True Tans Self.” Wired. https://www.wired.com/2016/09/against-­me-­coming-­out-­trans/. (created September 17, 2016). Muñoz José E. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Nehring, Neil. “The Situationalist International in American Hardcore Punk, 1982-2002.” Popular Music and Society 29, no. 5 (2006). 519-530. Nguyen, Giselle Au-Nhien. “How the Pop Punk Scene Became a Hunting Ground for Sexual Misconduct.” The Brag. https://thebrag.com/pop-­punk-­ internalised-­misogyny-­brand-­new/. (created November 23, 2017). O’Hara, Craig. The Philosophy of Punk: More than noise. San Francisco: AKP, 1999. Osgerby, Bill. “‘Chewing Out a Rhythm on my Bubble-gum:’ The teenage aesthetic and genealogies of American punk.” In Punk Rock: So what? The cultural legacy of punk, edited by Roger Sabin. London: Routledge, 1999.

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Phillipov, Michelle. “Haunted by the Spirit of ‘77: Punk Studies and the persistence of politics.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 20, no. 3 (2006). 383-393. Phillips, Leonard Graves. “The ‘Disgusting Old Man’ Behind the Dick Puppet.” Facebook: The Dickies. https://www.facebook.com/notes/the-­dickies/the-­ disgusting-­old-­man-­behind-­the-­dick-­puppet/10155395725655891/. (created June 29, 2017). Potter, Shawna. “Let’s Not Mistake The Dikkies’ Onstage Warped Tour Rant For Anything But Misogyny.” Noisey. https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/ mbaa4q/war-­on-­women-­on-­the-­dickies-­warped-­tour-­rant. (created July 1, 2017). Preston, Valerie and Ebru Ustundag. “Feminist Geographies of the ‘City:’ Multiple voices, multiple meanings. A Companion To Feminist Geography, edited by Lise Nelson and Joni Seager. 211-227. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. Raha, Maria. Cinderella’s Big Score: Women of punk and indie underground. Emeryville, CA: Seal P, 2005. Roen, Katrina. ““Either/Or” and “Both/Neither”: Discursive tensions in transgender politics.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 27, no. 2 (2002). 501-522. Rosenberg, Jessica and Gitana Garofalo, “Riot Grrrl: Revolutions from Within.” Signs 23, no. 3 (1998). 809-841. Sabin, Roger. Punk Rock: So What? The cultural legacy of punk. London: Routledge, 1999. Sandford, Tom. “The Body Politic: Violence and Rebellion in the First Wave of Hardcore Punk”. Pop Matters. https://www.popmatters.com/183998-­the-­ b o d y -­p o l i t i c -­v i o l e n c e -­a n d -­r e b e l l i o n -­i n -­t h e -­f i r s t -­w a v e -­o f -­ hardcor-­2495636133.html. (created August 25, 2014). Smith, Robin. “Against Me! Transgender Dysphoria Blues.” The Quietus. https:// thequietus.com/articles/14338-­against-­m e-­t ransgender-­dysphoria-­blues-­ review. (created January 24, 2014). Stinson, Elizabeth. “Means of Detection: A critical archiving of black feminism and punk performance.” Women & Performance: A journal of feminist theory 22, no. 2-3 (2012). 275-311. Tate, Greg. “Hardcore of Darkness: Bad Brains.” In White Riot: Punk rock and the politics of race, edited by Stephen Duncombe and Maxwell Tremeblay. London: Verso, 2011. Tedder, Michael. “Against Me!’s Tom Gabel on Anarchists, Anti-Abortion Billboards, Alternative Press Magazine.” The Village Voice. https://www.villagevoice.com/2010/06/25/qa-­against-­mes-­tom-­gabel-­on-­anarchists-­anti-­ abortion-­billboards-­alternative-­press-­magazine/. (created June 25, 2010). Tedder, Michael. “Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! on the Tortured Path to ‘Transgender Dysphoria Blues.’” SPIN. https://www.spin.com/2014/01/

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Chapter 12: Lady Lazarus: The Death (and Rebirth) of a Gender Revolutionary Alec Charles

Dame David Bowie—as the popular music magazine Smash Hits used to call him (Burston 2006)—has, in his work’s queer and perverse destabilizations of gender (Galt 2018), perhaps posed a more powerful and influential challenge to the forces of toxic masculinity and heteronormativity than any other mainstream male musician of the postmodern period. This chapter approaches Bowie’s work from an existentialist perspective which emphasizes the performative nature of being, subjectivity and identity. In doing so, it invokes frameworks developed by Michel Foucault and Ruth Wodak as to the inextricable (but reversible) relationships between discourse and power, and aligns itself with feminist theories of performativity which seek to decentre, deconstruct and problematize the illusion of the inexorable naturalness of binary oppositions of gender and sexual identities. It thereby attempts to provoke what Butler (1990) famously called

A. Charles (*) University of Winchester, Winchester, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Fosbraey, N. Puckey (eds.), Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65189-3_13

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‘gender trouble’; and, while observing—as Perrott (2017, p. 528) noted— how Bowie ‘prefigured the complex theory of gender performativity several years before it was theorized by Judith Butler’, enquires where Bowie’s legacy (as imagined in his final album Blackstar) might have left us and might lead us.

Questions of Identity Liz Evans (1994, p. v) has suggested that, traditionally, the roles and images of female performers in the culture of Western popular music have been moulded by the ideological expectations of the media and the music industry into a limited (and limiting) series of stereotypes: ‘helpless victims, dizzy sex queens, earth mothers and femme fatales’. Fosbraey and Melrose (2019, p.  93) suppose that an effective strategy to avoid such clichés is ‘to put ourselves wholeheartedly into songs’. But how might we do so if we find ourselves obliged to admit that there is no essential self— and thereby lose that illusion of intrinsic subjectivity which we might have used to underpin this resistance to patriarchal stereotyping? Each woman in her time plays many parts (and each man too). We are defined by performance and play as much as by ‘real life’ activity—in so far as there is, of course, no difference between these phenomena, except one imposed by the conventions of epistemology. Jean-Paul Sartre (1969, p. 59) famously described the way that a waiter in a café plays at being a waiter: ‘all his behaviour seems to us a game’. The waiter is playing at being a waiter: he is playing at being himself. Sartre’s point is that it is such play which defines identity: as existence precedes essence, the parts we play define our subjectivities. We are all method actors on Shakespeare’s world-­ as-­stage, and, as Camus (1975, p. 75) suggests, the roles we create and perform return to create and perform us: To what degree the actor benefits from the characters is hard to say […] They accompany the actor, who cannot very readily separate himself from what he has been. Occasionally when reaching for his glass he resumes Hamlet’s gesture of raising his cup. No, the distance separating him from the creatures into whom he infuses life is not so great.

The ancient Chinese writer Zhuangzi famously imagined that the man who has dreamt himself a butterfly does not then know if he is not a butterfly who is now dreaming himself a man. Our performed or imagined

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selves become indistinguishable from—indeed become—our original and inherent selfhoods. As Judith Butler (1990) understood, gender—as differentiated from biological sex—is a performative process and therefore a discursive activity. Ruth Wodak (1996, p. 12) has observed that ‘institutional reality is produced and reproduced through discourse’. Wodak et al. (2009, p. 8) argue that ‘discursive practices may influence the formation of social groups and may serve to establish or conceal relations of power between […] social groups and classes, between […] political, cultural and sub-cultural majorities and minorities’. But as Wodak (1989, p. xv) has also supposed, ‘language changes always manifest social changes—but language changes (or changes in language behaviour) can also trigger social changes.’ As Wodak et al. (2009, p. 8) suggest, discourse constructs and legitimizes the social order, but it may also transform that order: ‘discursive acts are employed to maintain and reproduce the status quo [but] discursive practice may be effective in transforming […] the status quo’. The transformative possibilities which this perspective affords allow for discursive-performative practices to foster potentially radical agendas. Gender can therefore be constructed and underpinned—but also subverted and realigned—through the discourse of performance, in so far as discourse, as Michel Foucault (1998, p.  101) suggested, ‘transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but it also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it’. In this sense, the discourse of the performer-artist can reconstruct gender identities (and sexual identities and all other modes of identity). If identity is encultured, then it can also be transformed through processes of cultural metamorphosis. This situation permits the realisation of the fantasy of post-genderedness or meta-genderedness—of moving beyond the conventions of gender by circumventing or transcending them: by embracing the myriad aspects of gender in ways which sever the binds of biology and binary opposition. In the conclusion to her ground-breaking study of Gender Trouble, Judith Butler (1990, p. 146) argues that, by virtue of its performed and constructed nature, the condition or practice of entrenched gender is an ‘act’ that is open to subversion in radical and liberating ways. She suggests that, despite its potential to denigrate difference from a position of homogeneous hegemony, such subversive impulses might deprive ‘the naturalizing narratives of compulsory heterosexuality’ and expose as arbitrary the illusion of a fixed and binary notion of gender identity.

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There seems a close association here, in the history of the arts, and perhaps most particularly in that of popular music, between gender and genre (and indeed generation, for that matter). In this sense, the tendency towards transformation (towards metamorphoses of image and persona, towards translations of identity through ranges of genres) may itself advance transformative impacts (the capacity to transform representations, perceptions and experiences of gender). Such transformative impacts have often been most clearly witnessed through intergenerational perspectives and contrasts. Young men today with their long hair (or make-up, or fashions, or moisturizers)—they might as well be girls. Young women today with their short hair (or lack of make-up, or fashions, or fitness regimes)—they might as well be boys. (Or as David Bowie put it in 1974’s ‘Rebel Rebel’: ‘You’ve got your mother in a whirl because she’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl’.) Polysexuality, sexual ambiguity and gender fluidity are of course anathema to a reactionary patriarchal society dependent upon rigid heteronormative categorizations. It is for this reason that popular culture (and in particular popular youth culture) has in recent decades repeatedly explored and deployed these phenomena as strategically central to its radical responses to the conservatism of that culture. The culture of youth (and in particular student) empowerment and sexual liberation in the latter half of the 1960s was epitomized by the free-loving, flower-powered hirsute hippy (long-haired and unshaven, women and men alike). In the 1970s, this revolutionary icon regenerated into the figureheads of glam rock or camp rock, swaggering, colourful, made-up and tending towards androgyny. Punk further subverted these subversions, and then, in the 1980s, the New Romantics softened and naturalized (yet retained and in the camp splendour of their costumes, cosmetics and coiffure intensified) these ambiguities of gender and sexual identities. During the 1990s, certain cultural conditions (evident in predominantly Western, metropolitan and middle-class communities) accelerated the propagation of such ambiguities and fluidities—ambiguities and fluidities which have become increasingly visible in the youth culture of the early twenty-first century. It was in 1994 that Mark Simpson coined the term metrosexual, noting that ‘the metrosexual man contradicts the basic premise of traditional heterosexuality’ (Simpson 1994). In a 2002 article, Simpson added that, while gay men had provided its ‘early prototype’, the phenomenon of metrosexuality had by the millennium become part of the Western cultural mainstream (Simpson 2002).

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The Great Pretender Towering over these decades of radical change stands the simultaneously titanic and diminutive, overblown and understated figure of David Bowie, at once the iconic trendsetter or influencer and the consummate cultural chameleon, the simultaneous centre and mirror of the zeitgeist: neo-hippy, androgyne, anorexic, new romantic, proto-metrosexual, proto-hipster and pre-deceased—from Memory of a Free Festival (1969), Lady Stardust (1972) and Station to Station (1976), through Let’s Dance (1983) and Black Tie White Noise (1993), to I’m Afraid of Americans (1995) and Lazarus (2016). His career was founded, as Ali and Wallace (2015, pp. 263, 276) suggest, on ‘the very mutability of his artistic identity’—a mutability which radically problematized ‘our preconceptions of identity’. Bowie’s oeuvre and personae (so inextricably linked) were quintessentially performative even when striving for the semblance of authenticity: Usher and Fremaux (2015, p. 56) point out that, even in his more naturalistic moments, he still ‘performs versions of authenticity’. Sharpe (2017) observes that Bowie’s early work promoted a gender ‘undecidability’ and a challenge to heteronormativity—but, though he brought gender experimentation into the mainstream of popular culture (Butler 2016) and deconstructed ‘regulatory masculinity’ (Cinque and Redmond 2017), he did not of course invent androgyny. It might, however, be argued that Ziggy Stardust did more to promote the popular ambiguation of gender than Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, or Oscar Wilde, or even Achilles. Indeed, Bowie as Ziggy moved beyond the implicit binaries of androgyny, and, as Waldrep (2015, pp.  29–31) suggests, took ‘full advantage of the fluidity of gender and sexuality that accompanies any musical performance’ to engender and dynamize ‘a line linking different versions of gender and sexuality together to form one complex, ever-­ changing matrix’. In relation to popular music’s strategies to subvert the conventions of patriarchy, Lesley Rankine has argued that it is important for the artist not to ‘stick with one particular image […] because nobody should be allowed to rest on their laurels as far as stereotypes go’ (cited in Evans 1994, pp.  270–271). No artist seems to embody this metamorphic approach more completely than Bowie as a pioneer and veteran of the promotion of gender fluidity and sexual ambiguity in the popular music—and popular culture—through the past half-century. Indeed, the significance of Bowie’s

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influence can continue to be witnessed across a range of contemporary artists overtly concerned with gender and the potentials of its ambiguation. Elly Jackson, for example, from the synth-pop band La Roux, seems visually endebted to Bowie’s various personae. Her image in the video for In for the Kill recalls Bowie’s Heroes look, while the glam camp of her ‘Bulletproof’ coiffure and couture seems rather Ziggier—and the New Romantic pastel-powered flamboyance of I’m Not Your Toy’ recalls Bowie’s Serious Moonlight phase. Yet these apparent echoes may not represent direct influences at all: the appearances of two such chameleons of pop are bound to coincide from time to time. What nevertheless seems significant in the homologies between these figures is that, if they are chameleons, then they are ones which morph their images not to blend in with their surroundings, but to stand out from them. Jackson’s images may take multiple forms and, like Bowie’s, range from the explicitly androgynous to unambiguous gender specificity (her understated nineties femininity, say, in La Roux’s Let Me Down Gently or her overstated eighties femininity in Kiss and Not Tell); yet, unlike Bowie’s, La Roux’s musical styles remain remarkably consistent. By contrast, Peaches (aka Merrill Beth Nisker) is a contemporary artist—again of some androgynous credentials—whose musical outputs rival Bowie’s for their sheer and unapologetic diversity: from the synth rap of Serpentine to the classic rock of Kick It, her 2004 collaboration with Iggy Pop (with whom Bowie had co-produced Raw Power, The Idiot and Lust for Life and who in return had co-written Bowie’s China Girl and Tonight). Yet her androgyny invokes an aggressive toxicity reminiscent of that of her one-time touring partner Marilyn Manson, a strangely unambiguous portrait of an uncompromising, unequivocal ambiguity epitomized by her bearded image adorning her 2003 album Fatherfucker. In this, Peaches offers an antithesis to the softer gender plays of such contemporary artists as St. Vincent (aka Annie Erin Clark), the subtle surrealism of whose imagery in the videos for her 2017 songs Los Ageless and New York subverts the primary-coloured fifties’ domesticity of the beauty salon and the cake bake, the flower stall and the glitterball, in ways perhaps more resonant than that enacted in the domestic servitude and wedded internment-as-interment of 2011’s Cruel. St. Vincent’s own ‘gender fluidity and sexual fluidity’ refutes ‘gender or sexual absolutism’ (Weiner 2014; Wise 2014). Like Bowie’s, her work offers the paradox of a self-­ consciously feminine androgyny, at once immaculate and immutable in its frisson of fragility, its mere guise of vulnerability—as she sings out (as she

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does in New York) to the ‘only motherfucker in the city’ who could handle her, stand her or forgive her. A similar approach was taken by 2018’s most significant breakthrough queer artist, King Princess (aka Mikaela Straus). King Princess’s androgyny—such as it is—is at its most overt in her stage name; the video for her debut single 1950 (inspired by Patricia Highsmith’s lesbian romance novel of 1952, The Price of Salt) advances her similarly classically (or stereotypically) feminine androgyny—presenting alternating images of the artist with flowers in her hair and sporting a pencil moustache of almost feline subtlety. The explicitly lesbian imagery of the video for her second single, Talia, retains that emphatic femininity. As one of a wave of young artists who ‘speak openly about their sexual identities’ (Jinx 2018)—who prefers to present herself as queer rather than gay in order ‘to be more inclusive’ (Daly 2018)—her identities radically eschew traditional categorizations not only of gender and sexuality but also of progressive responses thereto. When—as Showalter (1977) suggests—the feminist has transformed the feminine into the female, then that femaleness, in its ideologically post-­ genderedness (in its post-patriarchal being), may find itself free to reclaim any qualities of genderedness (from a virtually infinite spectrum of femininities and masculinities) that it may wish.

Famous Last Words John Donne, Sigmund Freud and David Bowie had one thing in common. The early focus of their work was upon sex. Its later focus was upon death. (There may not be anything particularly unique in that.) The title track of Bowie’s critically acclaimed final album Blackstar, released just two days before his death in January 2016, meditates upon the imminence of his death and his artistic legacy. The song Blackstar conjures his death and beatification/reification, and (in a way that might best be described as quasi-messianic) invokes the coming of his successor, imagining the bestowal of his immaculately androgynous mantle. Bowie’s image of the Blackstar epitomizes his own radical embodiment of contraries: supernova and singularity; superstar and (rock & roll) suicide; everyman and noman; human and alien; woman and man; gay and straight; Ziggy and Lady Stardust in one. The start of the song’s video shows his seminal creation Major Tom transformed into a relic worshipped in the ‘Villa of Ormen’. This much-contemplated (and self-consciously Delphic) allusion may—as Rogers (2016) observes—reference the

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Norwegian village of Ormen, a location visited by an ex-girlfriend of Bowie’s in 1969. It might also therein invoke the Norwegian term for ‘serpent’ and therefore perhaps the image of ouroboros, at the moment in which the artist’s life’s work consumes and consummates itself, even as it secures its own continuity. ‘Ormen’ may also signify ‘all men’ (as Rogers notes) or perhaps, simply, ‘or-men’ (as a site of androgyny, of women-or-men). All men are or-men in the way that Bowie’s early androgynous self was a or-man: at once a ‘woman or man’, the universal (yet alien) androgyne. What James Joyce (1939, p. 187) once called a ‘Nayman of Noland’ is now translated into the Or-man of All-land, the ultimate every-wo/man. The video for Blackstar sees an alien girl (a young woman with a tail, a figure at once feminine and phallic, an alien androgyne) discovering the ancient and bejewelled skeleton of a glam spaceman whose skull she then bears in a reliquary to be venerated by her sisterhood (these women of ‘ormen’) in what one may reasonably assume to be the mysterious villa to which the lyric refers. The discovery of this late astronaut resonates with memories of the recurrent character of Major Tom (Egan 2018)—but he is also, in his camp glamour, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and all. This final appearance of Bowie’s Major Tom returns this totem to these androgynous alien mystics; they worship the jewelled skull while the rest of the skeleton, bereft of its spacesuit, floats towards the ineluctable gravity of the eponymous Blackstar—a deathly presence which is in part symbolic of the cancer which would consume the artist (cf. Britton 2016). The otherworldly choreography of these female worshippers is echoed in the spasming movements of the two male dancers who accompany Bowie in the emphatically other place which he occupies in this video (one very much a thin white duke, a pale figure fallen to earth, complete with the striking facial bone structure of a young Bowie). Bowie himself is presented in his final persona: a partially bandaged face with strange puppet-like buttons for eyes, the mask which finally devours the artist of so many masks. These physical constraints reflect the agonizing strains of the first half of Blackstar: the music strains against the inevitable, against insanity, pain and death. Yet, halfway through the song there is a renaissance of hope, a tonal resurrection. It is at this point, midway through the Blackstar video, that Bowie is seen for the first time unmasked, raising in his hand, totemically, a Bible-­ like tome, the book of the Blackstar, an object which appears to conjure a celestial light. The heavenly light which suffuses this scene transfigures the

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tone of the song: ‘Something happened on the day he died, Spirit rose a metre then stepped aside, Somebody else took his place and bravely cried: I’m a Blackstar’, sings Bowie, upbeat, with an almost gospel fervour, his hands clasped in prayer. The song reminds us that, though the queen-king is dead, her/his heirs succeed and her/his art endures. Bowie explicitly invokes this sense of continuity. His lyrics conflate the possibility of his own succession (his transfiguration) with the prospect of his imagined successor. His legacy (or his heir) is not, he declares, to be a ‘pop star’ or a ‘porn star’ or a ‘film star’ or a ‘gangsta’. He is simply ‘the great I am’—recalling in this phrase Coleridge’s notion of the ‘infinite I am’, the artistic imagination’s ‘repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation’ (Coleridge 1834, p. 172). Even as he dies, then, the artist’s vision is immortalized. In the song’s video, three masked scarecrows hang on their crosses in imitation of Christ’s Passion, gyrating their hips to the rhythms of the music. Yet, as the lyrics and the video return to the sisterhood’s ritual in the villa of Ormen—as, ‘on the day of execution, only women kneel and smile’—the ritual and the rhythm collapse, the dying scarecrows writhe upon their crosses, even as the dying singer writhes and collapses in his agonies, and a shadowy, dishevelled and savage figure of death overtakes the scene. Yet the mantle of the Blackstar has been bequeathed, just as Bowie had once taken that mantle himself—perhaps from his hero Elvis Presley, who had himself once sung that ‘when a man sees his black star, he knows his time has come’. There are famous images of Bowie and John Lennon together (they had collaborated on the song ‘Fame’ in 1975); Lennon’s jacket has the name ‘Elvis’ writ large and shiny across its left lapel. The mantle has passed from Presley to Lennon to Bowie to his own successors. Yet this immortalization comes at the cost of the artist’s decline and death. Art’s immortality is bequeathed to the next generation only of the condition of the inevitable fact of their own mortality. Lennon survived the King by only three years. Three months after Bowie’s death, his glamorous and androgynous successor Prince also died. In the video for the song Lazarus—a companion piece on the same album—a similarly half-masked Bowie lies upon a shoddy hospital bed, dying and (like one of Beckett’s moribund protagonists) imagining his own death: ‘Look up here, I’m in heaven […] I’ve got nothing left to lose’. Halfway through the song, the tone again revitalizes, as an unmasked

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and frenetically dancing Bowie recalls that by the time he ‘got to New York’ he was ‘living like a king’. Here he offers a more upbeat nostalgia than his memories of Berlin had three years earlier in the ‘spectral, frail, yearning’ strains of ‘Where Are We Now?’ (Roberts 2013). But where Blackstar ends in a descent into chaos, Lazarus, as its title suggests, offers the possibility, if not of resurrection, then at least of reconciliation, consolation, redemption and continuity: ‘Just like that bluebird, oh I’ll be free, Ain’t that just like me’. The artist is set free, free as a bird, flying high in a transcendent new form of his characteristically flamboyant sense of freedom (that’s just like him); the artist’s legacy continues in the echoes of his work in his successors (that’s just like him). The ‘leper messiah’ of Ziggy Stardust is transformed into the dying lazar; yet the lazar’s spirit proves as prone to resurrection as that of Lazarus himself.

Lines of Succession But—as Bowie’s star recedes into the heavens—who is popular music’s original gender revolutionary’s imagined heir? Do we hear Bowie’s legacy in Ed Sheeran’s boyish sexlessness, in his toxic auto-emasculation and saccharine heteronormativity? Or perhaps in Kanye West’s toxic masculinity and ideological toxicity? West had tweeted in response to the news of Bowie’s death that ‘David Bowie was one of my most important inspirations, so fearless, so creative, he gave us magic for a lifetime’ (Vincent 2016). Indeed such was West’s claim upon (and declared affinity with) Bowie that fans reacted to a rumour that West was planning to produce a tribute album of versions of Bowie songs by starting a petition to stop him (Horton 2016). West’s own fans have, by contrast, suggested that the sign that appears above David Bowie’s head in the image on the cover of his classic 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars—‘K. West’ (i.e., in the context of the album, ‘quest’)—foretells the coming of Kanye West as Bowie’s true heir (Chen 2017). West was born five years (less eight days) after the release of Bowie’s great album—an album whose opening track warns apocalyptically that ‘we’ve got five years, that’s all we’ve got’. Bowie and West both acted as provocateurs; but the purported radicalism of West’s Trump-trumpeting tirades against the liberal consensus appears more often than not to constitute a strategy of offence for its own sake—one which reinforces patriarchal hegemonies and which advances an

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alt-Right historical revisionism which casts slavery as a ‘choice’ (Lee and Beaumont-Thomas 2018). ‘Liberals can’t bully me’, West declared in August 2018 (Gaynor 2018). And he was right: the liberals aren’t the toxic bullies in that relationship. To identify West with Bowie is to equate Kim Kardashian with Andy Warhol. All four may represent the materialist depthlessness of contemporary culture; but Bowie and Warhol represented it with insight, wit, outrage and irony. Might we instead most usefully seek Bowie’s legacy in contemporary pop’s most versatile chameleon and avatar of fluidity of gender and sexuality: Lady Stardust reborn as Lady Gaga? But is Gaga, after all, as radical an innovator and provocateur as she is a popular imitator, one who transforms the torturous schizophrenia of Aladdin Sane into so much candied popcorn? There seem massive moral contrasts between the two figures of Bowie and Gaga. The Blackstar is not, as Bowie stressed, a pop star. While Lady Gaga crowed that none could read her poker face, Lady Stardust ‘sang his songs of darkness and disgrace’. Lady Gaga may have put her name to a perfume brand called ‘Fame’ but in that sense she may seem closer to the fragrance-flogging Ms Kardashian West than to the artist who understood that fame was ‘just the flame that burns your change to keep you insane’.

Straight Outta Brixton The imagined heir to the Blackstar may not be a gangsta, but might perhaps represent a different kind of rap, the conflicted masculinity of the ‘conscious hip-hop’ epitomized by such artists as Kendrick Lamar. Might we therefore witness fruitful affinities to Bowie in the work of Lamar, an artist whose 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly was said to have influenced Bowie and his producer Tony Visconti, an album they repeatedly played as they assembled Blackstar? ‘We loved that Kendrick was so open-minded,’ said Visconti (Hooton 2015): ‘He threw everything on there, and that’s exactly what we wanted to do.’ Visconti later described Lamar as ‘the greatest of them all’—adding that ‘To Pimp a Butterfly broke every rule in the book and he had a number one album glued to the top of the charts’ (Blake 2017). Is Lamar then Bowie’s Blackstar? After all, as ethereal voices sublimely chorus at the start of To Pimp a Butterfly, ‘every nigga is a star’. Has rock’s

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chameleon thus transformed into that other icon of metamorphosis, rap’s butterfly? Originally released in 2014, Bowie and Visconti re-recorded ’Tis a Pity She Was a Whore as the second track on Blackstar. Sandwiched in-between the allbum’s defining tracks—Blackstar and Lazarus—this song echoes the musical tones of the album, but (while reimagining contemporary erotic conflict as Jacobean tragedy) introduces a tone closer to a gentrified pastiche upon Compton than to Bowie’s Brixton roots: ‘Man she punched me like a dude… Black struck the kiss, she kept my cock… She stole my purse with rattling speed…’ ‘This dick ain’t free, You lookin’ at me like it ain’t a receipt’, Kendrick Lamar had complained on To Pimp a Butterfly. To Pimp a Butterfly: in fact, Lamar’s acclaimed album charts the pimping of a moth; the translation of the moth (pictured on the CD’s inner sleeve)—ugly-duckling-like—into a butterfly: a transformation worthy of Ziggy himself, the starman transfigured by the illusion of stardom. Lamar shares Bowie’s perennial anxiety as to the illusory, transitory and ambiguous nature of celebrity (as embodied in Ziggy’s rise and fall). ‘Fame, what’s your name?’ asked Bowie (in 1975’s Fame); while Lamar asks, ‘Are you really who they idolize?’ And: ‘What do you want from me and my scars?’ And: ‘When shit hit the fan, is you still a fan?’ Lamar compulsively repeats this latter phrase during Mortal Man, the last track of To Pimp a Butterfly, a track which considers the legacies of (amongst others) Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Michael Jackson. That track also includes excerpts from an interview with Tupac Shakur, the rapper notoriously shot in a drive-by shooting in 1996. The album had originally been called ‘To Pimp a Caterpillar’—or To-PAC— and at the end of the album Lamar explains that, though ‘the caterpillar is a prisoner to the streets that conceived it’, ‘the butterfly represents the talent, the thoughtfulness and the beauty within the caterpillar’, and, although ‘the caterpillar sees the butterfly as weak and figures out a way to pimp it to his own benefits’, eventually the caterpillar, weighed down by the constraints of its existence, conceives new thoughts of freedom and, in doing so, becomes that butterfly which ‘sheds light on situations that the caterpillar never considered, ending the eternal struggle’. And, yet, as Lamar reminds us, ‘although the butterfly and caterpillar are completely different, they are one and the same.’ The grime, crime and violence of the streets constrain the caterpillar to the point of its emancipation; but the glamour of the butterfly cannot entirely cast off the mental violence which

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forced it into being. Lamar recognizes that the caterpillar’s toxicity endures into the fame-fuelled false apotheosis of its imago state. Lamar may show the toxic caterpillar or ugly, vulgar moth pimped into a butterfly by fluttering and fickle fame, but his art refuses to gild the lily. His album reflects and problematizes the toxic masculinity of its environment; a masculinity counterpointed in To Pimp a Butterfly by the voice of Lamar’s fellow artists and collaborators Anna Wise and Rapsody (‘baby, I’m conscious’), and by Lamar’s explicit portrait of the conflictedness and self-destructiveness of the toxicity of a sexuality based upon aggressive masculinity and material celebrity as he speaks ‘about me abusing my power’ when ‘she fucking on a famous rapper’. Lamar continues: I remember you was conflicted Misusing your influence Sometimes I did the same Abusing my power full of resentment Resentment that turned into a deep depression Found myself screaming in a hotel room

Different versions of this ‘remember you was conflicted’ refrain recur seven times through the course of the album. Lamar relentlessly returns to the inescapable spectre of ‘depression […] resting on your heart’ because, despite the material acquisition underpinned by and underpinning this masculinity, ‘money can’t stop a suicidal weakness’. The harnessing of masculine aggression, in violence, crime and brutal art, offers material benefits (the dream repeated throughout the album of a house, a car, 40 acres and a mule) which promise an escape route; but this spectre of aggression maintains its stranglehold over the artist’s voice. The means by which the boy gets out of Compton seem here to seal Compton ineluctably within the soul of the boy. ‘I didn’t wanna self-­ destruct’, Lamar explains at three different points in the album—but you can’t always get what you want. Masculine aggression perpetuates its own side effects, its own collateral damage: ‘as I lead this army, make room for mistakes and depression’. The ghost of Tupac Shakur haunts Lamar’s album, a constant reminder of the increasingly ubiquitous danger of that toxic masculinity which the album explores. Though Lamar overtly denies the political consciousness of the work (‘I don’t give a fuck about no politics in rap’), that consciousness and the problems thereof repeatedly return to deconstruct the

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rapper’s own macho swagger: ‘I know street shit, I know shit that’s conscious, I know everything […] I know the price of life, I know how much it’s worth, I know what I know and I know it well not to ever forget until I realized I didn’t know shit’. Lamar explicitly posits his work as the heir to the simultaneously inspirational and cautionary tale of Tupac Shakur. As such, there is no discernible line of conscious artistic influence between Bowie and Lamar (he could not be seen as maintaining Bowie’s legacy in that sense); but one might suggest that Bowie’s interest in Lamar’s experimentation might in part reflect a sense in which Lamar’s work represents as radical a reinterpretation of masculinity as Bowie’s once did (albeit coming to that position from completely the opposite direction).

Lines of Resistance There are a few obvious ways to counter misogyny and toxic masculinity. One is to deploy fantasies of ambiguation and meta-genderedness to deconstruct the ideological constructedness of the conventions of binary opposition by which those phenomena are legitimized and naturalized. This utopian feminist position is epitomized, for example, by the écriture féminine of Hélene Cixous (2010, p. 35), an essentially indefinable discourse of liberation, which ‘can never be theorized, enclosed, coded— which doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist’. This transcendent impossibility might be said to represent feminism’s ‘I have a dream’ moment. Another (rather more direct) strategy is simply to call the bastards out. Misogyny and toxic masculinity may be called out either from a position of ideological externality (which we might consider a moral high ground) or from a state of complicity in an act of confession, repentance and atonement. We might characterize this latter position as post-quietist, in a quasi-­ Orwellian sense. George Orwell (1962, p.  17) famously argued for the value of the creative artist working, as he put it, ‘inside the whale’—suggesting that the work of art should simply reflect the horrors of its age— even those horrors of ‘concentration camps […] Hitler, Stalin, bombs […] purges […] and political murders’. Salman Rushdie (1992,  p. 96) suggested that Orwell’s spirit had been broken by the ‘horrors of the age in which he lived’ and argued against Orwell’s quietism by suggesting that, by contrast, the artist should position himself or herself ‘outside the whale’—in direct confrontation with the leviathan of the dominant

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culture, society and state. But, while Rushdie supposes that Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (Orwell 1949) represents the ultimate expression of its author’s quietism, Ian McEwan (1989, p. xiv) has suggested that, in Winston Smith’s quiet and futile act of literary resistance (Smith becomes a writer himself: his seminal act of rebellion is to keep a diary), Orwell chooses to ‘swim way beyond the confines of the blubbery belly’ of the hegemonic beast. By contrast, David Bowie offers what we might depict as a typically utopian response to heteronormative patriarchal hegemony, a ‘utopian project’ as ‘an alternative to gender encoding as it might exist in the future’ (Waldrep 2015, pp. 29–30), a critically utopian fantasy which (like Cixous’s écriture), in imagining the impossible, offers—as Tom Moylan (1986, p. 213) suggested was the province of such fantasies—‘a process that can tear apart the dominant ideological web’—a ‘process of envisaging what is not yet’. (Nor does it seem coincidental that Bowie so often— like so many other artists—employs the visions of science fiction, that most utopian of genres, through which to communicate this meta-­ gendered fantasy.) Others have more explicitly assumed the moral high ground to call the misogynists out. Laura Snapes wrote in 2015 that ‘while male musicians’ misogynist acts are examined for nuance and defended as traits of “difficult” artists, women and those who call them out are treated as hysterics who don’t understand art’ (Snapes 2015). The #MeToo movement has since prompted the mainstream acceptance of Snapes’s argument to the extent that, on 20 February 2019, The 1975’s Matty Healy cited Snapes in a speech at the Brit awards, and—that same day—it was reported that Barack Obama had told male hip-hop artists that ‘if you’re very confident about your sexuality, you don’t need to have eight women around you twerking’ (Legaspi 2019; Cancian 2019). Kendrick Lamar does not himself attempt to assume this high ground. His work might, then, be said to fall into the third category of resistance. As such, he might be seen as a woke incarnation of Winston Smith. If he and Bowie reach the same destination, then it is by a route as radically different as those of Liam Neeson and Martin Luther King. Lamar comes to gender consciousness the hard way.

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Looking Backward What is perhaps most extraordinary about Bowie’s final album is its lack of retrospection. In this sense it remains consistent with the rest of his work, a corpus constantly thrusting itself forward, and thereby transforming itself, into its own future. (And perhaps this is why he affords himself the consolation of that recurrent yet faint trace of Major Tom through his half-century of relentless self-reinvention, a necessarily and intentionally fragile connection to a past otherwise discarded by his ever-evolving personae, a rare but anchoring sense—or illusion—of continuity and therefore of meaningful and purposeful progression: from 1969’s Space Oddity to 1980’s Ashes to Ashes and Hallo Spaceboy in 1995. And that is why he had to kill Major Tom at the opening of his final work, in what amounted to an announcement of his own imminent/immanent death.) Bowie’s work comes into being through its processes of performance: its being is its becoming. Bowie’s work is in this sense fundamentally existentialist. It is also in this way inherently self-creating, in that it creates the self (the identity and the subjectivity) of the artist who creates it. Bowie thus becomes indistinguishable from his work: his work is the invented persona, whether that of Major Tom or the Thin White Duke, or Ziggy Stardust or Aladdin Sane. Even at the end, then, he transforms his own death into his work as the ultimate effort of performance art. Pop’s prince and princess of performative existence, its duchess and duke of Heideggerian Dasein in his prioritization of ‘existentia over essentia’ (Heidegger 2010, p. 42), its queen of queerdom, s/he inevitably becomes her/his own legacy: s/he who was once the Starman is now the Blackstar. Bowie is, finally, no more than a shadow of himself (a spectral image anticipated in the haunting music, lyrics and visuals of 2013’s Where Are We Now?). Perhaps, after all, that is all we had ever seen of him: a shadow projected from an unknown and unknowable self, a shadow whose ethereality underlined the insubstantial nature of the illusions of the naturalness of those conventions of gender and sexual identity which his works and personae so influentially challenged.

References Ali, Barish, and Wallace, Heidi (2015). Out of this world: Ziggy Stardust and the spatial interplay of lyrics, vocals, performance. In: M. Power et al., eds, David Bowie: Critical Perspectives. London: Routledge, 263–279.

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Blake, Jimmy (2017). David Bowie producer: Music needs more young rule-­ breakers. BBC Newsbeat, 30 March 2017. Britton, Luke (2016). Did David Bowie name ‘Blackstar’ album after his own cancer lesion? NME, 13 January 2016. Burston, Paul (2006). The best of Smash Hits. The Independent, 5 November 2006. Butler, Don (2016). David Bowie: Integrating the alien. The Journal of Analytical Psychology, 61(5), pp. 708–711. Butler, Judith (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York, NY: Routledge. Camus, Albert (1975). The Myth of Sisyphus (trans. J.  O’Brien). Harmondsworth: Penguin. Cancian, Dan (2019). Barack Obama: If you’re confident about your sexuality, you don’t need eight women around you twerking. Newsweek, 20 February 2019. Chen, Joyce (2017). Kanye West and David Bowie: music’s most WTF conspiracy theories, explained. Rolling Stone, 2 October 2017. Cinque, Toija, and Redmond, Sean (2017). Intersecting David Bowie. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 31(4), pp. 495–498. Cixous, Hélene (2010). The Portable Cixous. New  York, NY: Columbia University Press. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1834). Biographia Literaria. New York, NY: Leavitt, Lord & Co. Daly, Rhian (2018). King Princess: Meet the gay icon-in-waiting who’s come to wreak glorious havoc on pop. NME, 23 July 2018. Egan, Barry (2018). David Bowie’s 1969 hit Space Oddity still throws up questions about the star and his death. The Independent, 15 October, 2018. Evans, Liz (1994). Women, Sex and Rock’n’Roll, London: HarperCollins. Fosbraey, Glenn, and Melrose, Andrew (2019). Writing Song Lyrics: Creative and Critical Approaches. London: Red Globe Press. Foucault, Michel (1998). The Will to Knowledge (trans. R.  Hurley). London: Penguin. Galt, Rosalind (2018). David Bowie’s perverse cinematic body. Cinema Journal, 57(3), pp. 131–138. Gaynor, Gerren Keith (2018). Kanye west defends his support for Trump: liberals can’t bully me. Fox News, 10 August 2018. Heidegger, Martin (2010). Being and Time (trans. J.  Stambaugh). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Hooton, Christopher (2015). David Bowie’s new album Blackstar was influenced by Kendrick Lamar. The Independent, 24 November 2015. Horton, Helen (2016). Angered David Bowie fan starts petition to stop Kanye West recording a covers album. The Daily Telegraph, 19 January 2016. Jinx, Kate (2018). King Princess: all hail the newest member of queer pop royalty. The Guardian, 8 November 2018.

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Joyce, James (1939). Finnegans Wake. London: Faber & Faber. Lee, Benjamin, and Beaumont-Thomas, Ben (2018). Kanye West on slavery: For 400 years? That sounds like a choice. The Guardian, 2 May 2018. Legaspi, Althea (2019). The 1975 address misogyny during Brit Awards acceptance speech. Rolling Stone, 20 February 2019. McEwan, Ian (1989). A Move Abroad. London: Picador. Moylan, Tom (1986). Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination. London: Methuen. Orwell, George (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Secker & Warburg. Orwell, George (1962). Inside the Whale. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Perrott, Lisa (2017). Bowie the cultural alchemist: Performing gender, synthesizing gesture and liberating identity. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 31(4), pp. 528–541. Roberts, Chris (2013). David Bowie: The return of the thin white hope. The Quietus, January 2013. Rogers, Jude (2016). The final mysteries of David Bowie’s Blackstar—Elvis, Crowley and the villa of Ormen. The Guardian, 21 January 2016. Rushdie, Salman (1992). Imaginary Homelands. London: Penguin. Sartre, Jean-Paul (1969). Being and Nothingness (trans. H.  Barnes). London: Methuen. Sharpe, Alex (2017). Scary monsters: The hopeful undecidability of David Bowie. Law and Humanities, 11(2), pp. 228–244. Showalter, Elaine (1977). A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Simpson, Mark (1994). Here come the mirror men: Why the future is metrosexual. The Independent, 15 November 1994. Simpson, Mark (2002). Meet the metrosexual. Salon, 22 July 2002. Snapes, Laura (2015). I interviewed Mark Kozelek. He called me a bitch on stage. The Guardian, 4 June 2015. Usher, Bethany, and Fremaux, Stephanie (2015). Turn myself to face me: David Bowie in the 1990s and discovery of authentic self. In: M. Power et al, eds, David Bowie: Critical Perspectives. London: Routledge, 56–81. Vincent, Alice (2016). David Bowie dies from cancer aged 69: Tributes, memories and pictures. The Daily Telegraph, 12 January 2016. Waldrep, Shelton (2015). Future Nostalgia: Performing David Bowie. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic. Weiner, Jonah (2014). The dream world of St. Vincent. Rolling Stone, 23 June 2014. Wise, Louis (2014) St. Vincent: Start making sense. The Sunday Times, 19 October 2014.

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Wodak, Ruth (1989). Introduction. In: R.  Wodak, ed, Language, Power and Ideology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, xiii–xx. Wodak, Ruth (1996). Disorders of Discourse. New York, NY: Longman. Wodak, Ruth, de Cillia, Rudolph, and Reisigl, Martin (2009). The Discursive Construction of National Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Chapter 13: Like a Lollipop: Toxic Masculinity and Female Sexual Pleasure in Hip-Hop Apryl Alexander

There is no justice for Black women without pleasure. —Black feminist scholar and author Dr. Brittney Cooper

In May 2018, an old interview resurfaced with DJ Khaled, a Grammy award winning producer, on The Breakfast Club, a popular morning radio show. In this interview, he mentioned that he does not perform cunnilingus, even on his wife, repeatedly stating, “I don’t do that.” He further explained, “[There are] different rules for men.” The remarks sparked controversy on Twitter (or Black Twitter1), as many believed these were antiquated thoughts about cunnilingus. However, historically female sexual pleasure and cunnilingus were taboos among male hip-hop artists.

A. Alexander (*) University of Denver, Denver, CO, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Fosbraey, N. Puckey (eds.), Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65189-3_14

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Although depictions of oral sex are rampant in media, most focus on fellatio in heterosexual relationships.2 Cunnilingus, the oral stimulation of the vulva or clitoris, is rarely depicted or discussed in media despite cunnilingus being cited as among the most pleasurable heterosexual behaviors reported by adolescent girls and adult women (Bay-Cheng et  al. 2009; Ritchers et  al. 2006). Even in magazine articles dedicated to women’s sexual pleasure, there are few mentions of cunnilingus (Farvid and Braun 2006). In the rare cases when cunnilingus is depicted in media, those depictions still feed into traditional quid pro quo contexts or intended to show off a man’s sexual prowess (Braun et al. 2003; Taylor 2005). This chapter aims to examine the evolution of sexual scripts surrounding cunnilingus in hip-hop. The chapter takes a sex-positive framework and evaluates how toxic masculinity and misogyny negatively affect sex-positive sexual scripts.

Sexual Scripts Sexual behaviors and the ways in which we navigate them are learned from our environment, histories, and interpersonal relationships. Sexual script theory purports that sexual behavior is a result of social constructions about appropriate sexual behaviors (Simon and Gagnon 1986; Simon and Gagnon 2003). Sexual script theory is the premise that all social behavior, including sexual behavior, is socially scripted (Wiederman 2015). Sexual scripts also outline expectations about appropriate sexual partners (including number of sexual partners), relationships, and emotions (Wiederman 2005). These scripts are shared beliefs about sexual behavior experienced at the sociocultural, interpersonal, and intrapsychic levels (Simon and Gagnon 1986; Simon and Gagnon 2003). Social scripts are “mental representations individuals construct and then use to make sense of their own experience, including their own and other’s behavior” (Wiederman 2015, p.  7). Interpersonal scripts “rest on the roles and general circumstances providing by cultural scenarios, yet they entail adaptation to the particulars of each situation” (Wiederman 2015, p. 8). Lastly, intrapsychic scripts “may entail specific plans or strategies for carrying out interpersonal scripts” (Wiederman 2015, p. 8). These scripts include fantasies, memories, and mental rehearsals, and individuals use these scripts to navigate potential difficulties in enacting interpersonal scripts. Ultimately, sexual scripts often are incorporated into and influence sexual behaviors.

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Sexual scripts are highly gendered, providing different expectations for women and men on what is sexually appropriate and how to behave during sex (Masters et  al. 2013; Wiederman 2005). Heterosexual cultural scripts encourage men to think of themselves as entitled to feel sexual desire and act on those desires while simultaneously teaching women to think of themselves as objects and find gratification in being the passive recipient of male sexual desire (Alarie 2019). While men’s sexual scripts are more direct, proactive, highly sexualized, and aimed at obtaining intercourse, women’s scripts are more passive, indirect, and aimed at avoiding intercourse (Morrison et al. 2015). In this sexual script, the male orgasm is more important and valued than the female orgasm (Alarie 2019). These gendered sexual scripts also suggest men are assumed to be highly sexually skilled in order to impress their female partner(s) (Wiederman 2005). Sexual scripts have changed as gender norms change. Few studies have examined men’s perceptions of women’s sexual script deviation. Preliminary research has revealed that women who are high in sexual assertiveness and sexual agency are considered more desirable partners. However, these women are also viewed as more selfish and risky sexual partners (Fetterolf and Sanchez 2015). More recent research also revealed sexually assertive women who deviated from traditional sexual scripts were perceived less positively by some men (Klein et al. 2019). Feminist scholars have suggested traditional, gendered sexual scripts are constraining and serve as barriers to women’s sexual well-being (Ward et  al. 2019). Sexual scripts are changing as women are increasingly becoming sexually liberated. Not all women and men abide by these traditional, gendered sexual scripts (Murray 2018). Over time sexual scripts have become more egalitarian and men are endorsing wanting more egalitarian sexual initiation (Dworkin & O’Sullivan, 2005; Klein et al. 2019). Men have reported feigning a hypermasculine sexual desire in order to appear more masculine and abide by societal sexual scripts (Murray 2018). Men have also endorsed wanting a sex-positive woman who is openly enjoying the sexual aspect of a relationship, which pushes against the traditional male sexual script (Morrison et al. 2015). Mainstream media even incorporates these gendered sexual scripts. For instance, on prime-time television, references to gendered sexual scripts occur 15.5 times per hour (Kim et  al. 2007). Music videos frequently feature women as sexual objects with revealing clothing or provocative dancing (Aubrey and Frisby 2011; Wallis 2011).

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Sex Positivity Sex positivity is another important theory in examining sexual scripts, attitudes, and behaviors in society and media. Although there is no widely accepted definition of sex positivity (Kaplan 2014), sex positivity has been described as when individuals (or groups) emphasize openness, nonjudgmental attitudes, freedom, and liberation from sex-negative attitudes and paradigms (Cruz et al. 2017; Donaghue 2015). This perspective incorporates inclusiveness and diversity in approaches to sexuality (Brickman and Willoughby 2017; Burnes et al. 2017). Sex positivity also moves beyond monogamous, procreation-focused sex (Mosher 2017) and emphasizes the exploration of sexual desire as normative and creative (Williams et al. 2015). The framework also expands the notion that sexual diversity does not only include solely sexual orientation, but also sexual behaviors and identities (Burnes et  al. 2017). Sex-positive feminists have “embrace[d] pornography, polyamory, kink, and prostitution as a means of challenging patriarchal constructs of sexuality; moreover, they centered sex and sexuality within equal rights discourse” (Fahs & McClelland, 2016, p. 493). As a theory, a sex-positive framework integrates “feminist, multicultural, queer, transgender, postmodern, and social justice theoretical threads to build a comprehensive view of sex, sexuality, sexual identity, and sexual behaviors” (Mosher 2017, p. 493). Sex positivity as a theoretical framework acknowledges and embraces pleasure, freedom, and diversity and is composed of eight dimensions (Williams et al. 2015): 1. “Positive” refers to strengths, well-being, and happiness. 2. Individual sexuality is unique and multifaceted. 3. Positive sexuality embraces multiple ways of knowing. 4. Positive sexuality reflects professional ethics. 5. Positive sexuality promotes open, honest communication. 6. Positive sexuality is humanizing. 7. Positive sexuality encourages peacemaking. 8. Positive sexuality is applicable across all levels of social structure. Sex negativity, on the other hand, is rooted in sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism, and ageism when examining sexual behavior (Glickman 2000). Sex negativity may include harboring feelings of shame or guilt around sexuality, the idea of sex as bad or negative, discrimination, power/control of other people, binaries, lack of representation, and the

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idea sex should be for procreation only (Ivanski and Kohut 2017). Many cultures hold a puritanical history marked by sex negativity, including sexism and homophobia (Brickman and Willoughby 2017). Sex-negative paradigms “reduce sex to a series of behavioral skills and functions centered on reproduction, and restrict sexual expression to compulsory heterosexuality, monogamy, and an active man in pursuit of a passive woman…Fluid sexual expressions, experiences of sexual minorities and/or queer individuals, nonmonogamous relationships, people of color, older adults, and asexual individuals are marginalized, pathologized, and criminalized when cast against a template of heteronormativity” (Mosher 2017, p. 488).

Researchers have found that having sex-positive characteristics, such as sexual openness, sexual self-awareness, and sexual assertiveness, are associated with having ever engaged in cunnilingus (Bay-Cheng and Fava 2011). When evaluating sex-negative paradigms in music, misogyny is often underlying those scripts and female sexual pleasure is not centered.

Narratives Around Cunnilingus In examining sexual scripts prohibiting female sexual pleasure, one must examine the stigmatization of female genitalia. Individuals with vaginas are conditioned to believe their vaginas are disgusting, damaged, or a piece of the body that is not to be discussed. The vagina is often represented and depicted as ugly, shameful, smelly, unclean, unkempt, funny looking, and/or disgusting (Braun and Wilkinson 2001). For instance, one-fourth of college women have negative views of cunnilingus, calling the act weird, intrusive, bizarre, dirty, or nasty/gross (Backstrom, Armstrong, & Puentes). Cunnilingus is viewed by some as a “far bigger deal” than fellatio (Braun et  al. 2003; Lewis and Marston 2016). As a result, society and the media also dictates how a person with a vagina should present. Hygiene products (i.e., sprays, scented panty liners, douches), grooming and hair removal, and cosmetic procedures (i.e., vaginoplasty, vajazzling3) are aimed at creating the “perfect vagina” (Braun and Kitzinger 2001; Braun and Wilkinson 2001). Research has revealed that women report their partners having increased enthusiasm for sexual activity after their partner encouraged them to shave or wax (Backstrom

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et al. 2012). Ultimately, this stigma has resulted in individuals of all genders to be reluctant to engage in or receive cunnilingus. During the twentieth century, oral sex became a common component of heterosexual sexual scripts in North America (Gagnon and Simon 1987). At mid-century, 17% of female adolescents had performed fellatio and 11% of males had performed cunnilingus (Kinsey et  al. 1953). According to more recent national US surveys, oral sex has become increasingly more prevalent in younger cohorts, with 75% of men and women aged 15–44 reporting they have engaged in oral sex (Leichliter et al. 2007). In another national probability sample of American participations, more than half of their sample aged 18–49 had engaged in oral sex within the past year (Hebernick et al. 2010). Although studies have indicated the prevalence of cunnilingus among adolescents is roughly equivalent to that of fellatio, in studies examining frequency of oral sex in US students, results reveal fellatio to still be more prevalent than cunnilingus (Bay-Cheng and Fava 2011). In a sample of Canadian university students, of participants who reported having a sexual encounter within the last month, significantly more men than women reported receiving oral sex in their last sexual encounter (63.3% vs. 43.6%) (Wood et  al. 2016). According to a nationally representative sample of US adults, 83% of men reported giving a partner oral sex in their lifetime and 57% reported giving oral sex within the last year (Herbenick et al. 2017). The context of the relationship is also important in examining sexual scripts involving cunnilingus. College women are less likely to receive oral sex in hookups than in relationships (26% vs. 62%) (Armstrong et al. 2009; Armstrong et al. 2010). Many of these results indicate reciprocity when it comes to oral sex is not always guaranteed. Research indicated that women who want cunnilingus, often have to be explicit about their expectations as equal exchange was not an assumption (Backstrom et al. 2012). Among a sample of young men and women in the United Kingdom, a higher proportion agreed that men expect to be given fellatio than agreed women should expect cunnilingus (43% vs. 20%) (Stone et al. 2006). As previously stated, some men view cunnilingus as a “far bigger deal” than fellatio as they have internalized the same negative views of female genitalia (Braun et al. 2003; Lewis and Marston 2016). As society has shifted to more egalitarian sexual scripts, reports of both giving and receiving cunnilingus has increased.

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Misogyny and Toxic Masculinity Misogynistic themes in music are not a new phenomenon. Misogyny is an ideology that reduces women to objects for men’s ownership, use, or abuse (Adams and Fuller 2006). This ideology is prevalent throughout society. Moreover, misogynistic ideology is largely racialized and tied to a capitalist patriarchal system that is based on White supremacy, elitism, racism, and sexism (Adams and Fuller 2006). Intertwined with misogyny is the concept of toxic masculinity. Toxic masculinity is “the constellation of socially regressive male traits that serve to foster domination, the devaluation of women, homophobia, and wanton violence” (Kupers 2005, p. 714). Misogyny in rap music has been defined as the “promotion, glamorization, support, humorization, justification, or normalization of oppressive ideas about women” (Adams and Fuller 2006, p.  940). Women are reduced to objects who are only useful for entertainment, sex, and abuse by men. Scholars have noted that misogynistic rap contain one or more of the six core elements: 1. Derogatory statements about women in relation to sex. 2. Statements involving violent actions toward women, particularly in relation to sex. 3. References of women causing “trouble” for men. 4. Characterization of women as “users” of men. 5. References of women being beneath men. 6. References of women as usable and disposable beings. (Adams and Fuller 2006, p. 940) Misogynistic lyrics perpetuate these stereotypes and tropes, particularly about Black women, and music videos often further marginalize them through treating women as objects or props. Black feminist scholar Patricia Hill Collins has described rap music as a “controlling image” used to subordinate Black women (Collins 2000). Thus, hip-hop and rap has been historically viewed as oppressive toward women, specifically Black women, more than empowering to them. Researchers have examined the frequency of misogynistic lyrics and messages in music, including hip-hop. One study examined 263 popular Chicano rap songs released from 1999 to 2002 and found 37% depicted women as objects of male desire and pleasure and 4% justified violence

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against women (McFarland 2003). Another study examined the prevalence of misogyny in 403 highly successful rap songs (i.e., those that attained platinum status) between 1992 and 2000 and found misogynistic messages in 22% of songs (Weitzer and Kubrin 2009). In those songs with misogynistic themes, significant themes were sexual objectification of women (67% of songs), distrust of women (47%), and justified violence against women (18%). Female rappers accounted for 5 of the 90 misogynistic songs. Finally, another study examined 527 Billboard4 Hot 100 and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop year-end songs in 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010 (Avery et al. 2017). The authors examined these year-end songs for 13 attributes of hegemonic masculinity—competitive, emotionally controlled, risk-taking, violence, anti-femininity, dominance, sex-focused, self-reliance/survivor, provider/bread-winner/hero, aggressive/challenging, homophobia, feminization of men, and status-seeking/material goods as status. It should be noted male artists accounted for 62% of the songs. Results indicated the theme of misogyny occurred in 17% of songs coded. In sum, while misogynistic hip-hop lyrics are problematic, they are no more so than other types (i.e., male-dominated, White-authored) of popular music and media (Weitzer and Kubrin 2009).

Cunnilingus in Hip-Hop In examining for sex-positive attitudes, the above-described constructs and narratives should be considered. Despite there being individual variation, many argue sexual double standards still exist regarding sexual scripts and sexual behavior. This is evident historically in hip-hop as there are numerous references to fellatio, but few references to the reciprocal act of cunnilingus. Perhaps the most famous song about oral sex is Akinyele’s 1999 Put It In Your Mouth (Akinyele 1999). Although the primary focus is on fellatio, she also references cunnilingus; providing a more egalitarian, reciprocal sexual script. Narratives in the early days of hip-hop asserted that rappers (and Black men) did not perform cunnilingus (Lewis 2016). In the early days of hip-hop, many rappers referenced their disgust for cunnilingus and mentioned men who engaged in the act were not masculine enough. For instance, the hook in DJ Quick’s Can I Eat It? (DJ Quick 1995) loops the lyrics “Don’t eat the coochie” on repeat. As women entered the hip-hop industry, making significant contributions, the lyrical sexual scripts regarding cunnilingus began to change.

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Women Rappers Emergence of women in hip-hop has helped to change sexual scripts regarding cunnilingus. Women rappers have asserted their sexual agency regarding cunnilingus. Sexual agency is defined as the power to initiate sexual intercourse and communicate one’s sexual desires (Fetterolf and Sanchez 2015). In Is the Pussy Still Good (BWP 1991) by BWP (aka Bytches With Problems), they state, “Eat my pussy-don’t stop/Sop it up like a pigs eat slop.” Best-selling female rap group TLC in their song Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg (TLC 1992), wrote, “Yeah I like when you (kiss)/Both sets of lips/ Ooh, on the TLC tip.” These women exert their sexual agency through their lyrical sexual scripts. Lil’ Kim entered the hip-hop scene and became one of the most popular female rappers of all time. At the time, her album debuted at #11 on the Billboard 200, which was the highest debut for a female rap album, and this album has sold over 5 million copies worldwide and certified as double platinum. Her artistry was highly sexualized. Her debut album cover for Hard Core (1996) shows Lil’ Kim in a bikini in a squatted position with her legs wide open. Many remarked on how she would discuss sex openly, explicitly, and with confidence “like the boys.” Her sexual lyrics were also sex-positive in nature and there are many examples of sexual scripts involving cunnilingus in her catalogue, including 1996s Not Tonight (The moral of the story is/You ain’t licking this/You ain’t sticking this) (Lil’ Kim 1996)  and 2000s How Many Licks (Designer pussy, my shit comes in flavors) (Lil’ Kim 2000). Probably the most famous song about cunnilingus (and anilingus) by a woman rapper is Khia’s debut song, My Neck, My Back (Lick It) (Khia 2002). The song reached #42 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and #12 on the Hot Rap Tracks chart, resulting in her debut album Thug Misses to become certified gold.5 The hook is straightforward and repeats, “My neck, my back/Lick my pussy and my crack.” There are no innuendos in the lyrics and the verses serve as an assertive tutorial for cunnilingus. Other female rappers followed suit in asserting sexual scripts about cunnilingus over the last two decades. From Missy Elliott’s Work It (Missy Elliott 2002) (“Go downtown and eat it like a vulture”) to more recently, Cardi B’s Money (Cardi B  2018) (“He eat in the car/That’s meals on wheels”), women have adopted more assertive, sex-positive attitudes that take control of their own sexual pleasure. Even in modern R&B and pop

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music, which traditionally takes a subtle, sensual approach to sexuality, singers have incorporated lyrics involving cunnilingus—albeit subtly and via innuendos. Even the often-coquettish Beyoncé joins in on the action with her song Blow (Beyoncé 2013). The lyrics regarding cunnilingus from female artists are mostly sex-­ positive. Many artists still continue to remark on taste, usually referring to their vaginas tasting like candy, which does fall into the “perfect vagina” trope earlier described; however, largely the lyrics center on engaging their partner in the act. Shifting the Narrative More recently, narratives are shifting both in society and within hip-hop regarding female sexuality and cunnilingus. Currently, many male rappers discuss more sex-positive narratives of female sexuality and have incorporated lyrics about cunnilingus into their rhymes. The Notorious B.I.G.’s One More Chance (The Notorious B.I.G. 1995) stated, “Used to lick the clits a lot/But licking clits had to stop/’Cause ya’ll don’t know/How to act when the tongue go down below/Peep the funk flow.” His frequent collaborators Puff Daddy and Mase cited, “Now Puff rule the world even though I’m young/I make it my biz to see that all ladies cum/Get ’em all strung from the tip of my tongue/Lick em places niggas wouldn’t dare put they faces” in their 1997 hit, Been Around the World  (Puff Daddy 1997). Further, Big Pun’s Still Not a Player (Big Pun  1998) noted, “I could go downstairs/little brown hairs everywhere/I don’t care/Round here they call me Big Pun/Hit you with the big guns/Thick tongue/ Known to make the chicks come.” New Orleans multi-platinum artist Lil’ Wayne probably has the most references to cunnilingus in his catalogue. In terms of media sexual scripts and influence, this is meaningful as he is one of the best-selling rappers of all time and well-regarded. It has been noted that these references occur on both songs that are about sex and those that are not (Lewis 2016). In fact, he has an entire song about cunnilingus entitled Pussy Monster (Lil’ Wayne  2008a). He has numerous songs—including Lollipop (Lil’ Wayne  2008b) and a feature on Kelly Rowland’s Motivation (Rowland  2011)—where he discusses his love for cunnilingus, albeit in boastful and hypermasculine manners at times. Researchers have noted men demonstrate competent heterosexual or toxic masculinity through their sexual prowess and ability to master a

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woman’s body (Pascoe 2007). One scholar notes that Lil’ Wayne did not begin rapping about women’s sexual pleasure and cunnilingus until he earned a leadership position and owned his own company—offering him some safety from scrutiny from peers and fans (Lewis 2016). Further, it has been argued that he makes cunnilingus less about the woman’s pleasure and more about his prowess and a mechanism by which women can be controlled (Lewis 2016). Though he has an appreciation for cunnilingus, his other lyrics are still marked by misogyny and misogynoir,6 sexism, and colorism. Some men adhere to traditional sexual scripts by viewing providing cunnilingus as an ulterior motive—a quid pro quo sexual script (Braun et  al. 2003). Further, there must be discussion surrounding the word “pussy.” While used as slang, some view the use of the term as dehumanizing.

Media as a Script Changer? Links between media use and sexual behavior are complex and mediated by multiple variables (Wright 2011; Ward et  al. 2019). Scholars have noted sexual cultural scripts are not necessarily synonymous with sexual behavior (Wiederman 2015). Researchers are beginning to examine the media’s role as a sexual educator (Ward et al. 2019). For example, Black girls may utilize the language, beliefs, values, and attitudes communicated in the music of successful Black female artists to develop an understanding of the behavior expected of her (Avery et al. 2017). Black feminist scholar Patricia Hills Collins notes hip-hop culture fails to differentiate between “representations of Black women who are sexually liberated and those who are sexual objects” (Collins, 2005, p. 126). In 2018, the American Psychological Association Division 46 Task Force published a Sexualization of Popular Music report. The report examined sexualization in music using objectification theory. Objectification theory proposes that recurrent encounters of sexual objectification prompt girls and women to adopt an objectified view of themselves (Frederickson and Roberts 1997). The report notes that women and girls are frequently sexualized and objectified in music and within music videos. Further, the early sexualization influences adolescent behavior. For instance, adolescents who are exposed to more sexual content in media have expressed greater intent to engage in sexual intercourse and activity (L’Engle et al. 2006). One study indicates that watching sexual music videos may increase misogynistic beliefs among adolescents over time (van Oosten et al. 2015).

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Although the APA report highlights an important need to assess misogyny and objectification in music, there appeared to be an absence of research in the document that utilizes a sexual positivity framework. Not all subgenres of rap music are consistently harmful to attitudes toward women and Black feminist attitudes (Bonnette-Bailey and Brown 2019). For instance, political rap, defined as “music that provides political information by detailing political strategies, injustices, and grievances, and most importantly containing a political reference, such as directly or implicitly referencing a political leader, office/institution, activity, or opposition,” may be less likely to promote toxic masculinity (Bonnette-­ Bailey and Brown 2019, p. 84). Moreover, respectability politics may contribute to the absence of sex positivity when examining media. Respectability politics uses methods that also incorporate surveillance, control, and repression, largely directed toward Black women (Durham et al. 2013). Few studies examine how sexual agency among women is developed. The Crunk Feminist Collective, a group of hip-hop generation feminist scholars and activists, have frequently discussed how misogynoir impacts the lives of Black women in interpersonal and institutional ways. The Collective are self-described hip-hop feminists. According to the Collective, hip-hop feminists “take systemic factors such as racism, sexism, heteronormativity, classism, and patriarchy to task through a lens of Hip Hop to showcase the particularity of women’s experiences” (Bonnette-Bailey and Brown 2019, p. 87). This particular analysis lends itself well to what we’ve seen as more women rappers have entered the mainstream—shifts in narratives regarding women’s experiences and pushing against the patriarchy. In sum, further research is needed to examine whether certain sexual scripts in music and media can lead to positive sexual development and scripts.

Conclusion Sex scripts influence sexual behavior and evolve over time. Gendered sexual scripts that focused on prioritizing men’s sexual desire and incorporated toxic masculinity have begun to subside, as both men and women have expressed desire for more egalitarian sexual scripts. As a result of the shift in sexual scripts and the emergence of successful women in hip-hop music, music has changed its sexual scripts, particularly around female

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sexuality and cunnilingus over time. While it is too premature to examine whether sex-positive sexual scripts in music have any prosocial influence, these depictions can generate a much-needed dialogue about misogyny and toxic masculinity in media. Acknowledgment  I would like to thank the hosts and fans of Where’s My 40 Acres? podcast for their support on this chapter.

Notes 1. Black Twitter is a cultural identity consisting of Black Twitter users from around the globe who use Twitter as a platform to connect and discuss issues relevant to the Black community and may communicate via hashtags that center Black issues. 2. This chapter will primarily focus on male-to-female cunnilingus. Depictions of female-to-female cunnilingus are more commonly depicted in lesbian representations in the media, though still small. Further, queer women rappers have discussed cunnilingus in their music. 3. Vajazzle is a form of genital decoration where adhesive crystals are placed on the shaved mons pubis. 4. Billboard is a long-standing national music rating service that compiles music consumption data through integrating data from a combination of consumer sales, digital downloads, radio airplay, and digital streaming. 5. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) represents the recording industry in the United States. Certifications are issued based on record sales and digital sales. Gold indicates an album or single sold over 500,000 units. Platinum indicates an album or single sold over 1 million units. 6. Moya Bailey and Trudy coined the term misogynoir in 2008 to describe the anti-Black racist misogyny and problematic intraracial gender dynamics that Black women experience, particularly in popular culture. They note, “Racism ending without sexism ending does not help Black women” (Bailey and Trudy 2018).

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Afterword Chris Mounsey

I have always been bullied because of my performance of my masculinity. Nevertheless, as an act of defiance against the bullies I started being tattooed and packing my belly with the sole purpose of looking gay, specifically looking like what is called by those who know, a “bear”. I shaved my head and grew a beard too as I wanted to be recognizable immediately for what I was, unmistakeably a gay bear. However, now that I am fully tattooed (all four limbs and back), I am regularly read as a builder, apparently my twin and my hypermasculine oppressor: the white heterosexual male homophobe who whistles at women from the safety of the building site, and bashes gay men after a few bevvies on a Friday evening. I know, I have been the witness and the victim of these behaviours. The reason for my defiance is irreducibly complex, I was bullied all the way through school for being tall, even though it would seem that my large size should have marked me out as a super streamlined hypermasculine male. Or, was it, as I believed, that all men could see straight through me and know that I was

C. Mounsey (*) University of Winchester, Winchester, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Fosbraey, N. Puckey (eds.), Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65189-3_15

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gay? Maybe that was why I had myself tattooed, shaved my head and grew beard and belly, because it was so obvious to others that there was no point in hiding it? Or maybe my performance of my masculinity is actually a process of hiding myself? Maybe my performance of my masculinity is not in accord with my intentions? Yesterday a builder shouted at me as I walked past a building site: “Those tattoos are the dog’s bollocks!” For those who do not know cockney vernacular, I believe that “the dog’s bollocks” meant that the builder liked my tattoos. But what was going on in that encounter? I was undressed for display (wearing shorts and a singlet) expecting to be appreciated by other gay men. Was the builder who shouted at me gay too? Or was he being a stereotypical builder which somehow allowed him to admire my tattoos as though they were not part of my body. Was I being appreciated for a perceived hypermasculinity? But then I have no idea what is going on when a builder admires another man’s tattoos as I am not a builder. It seems to me very un-builderly behaviour: something like the confirmation that I had dressed in the correct way gained from a fashion magazine. What is going on when hypermasculine men admire one another? Coco d’Hont develops this notion in terms of heavy metal music in order to question “to what extent the increased visibility and diversity of female performers signifies more thorough changes in attitudes towards gender, both within metal music and in its larger cultural context”. The heavy metal music scene might easily be read in terms of the encounter I’ve just described, when an adoring (largely male) audience screams its appreciation as a group of players perform their masculinity. And as such, what is going on is not, I would argue, simply an enthusiastic support of an uncomplicated hypermasculinity by other wannabe hypermasculine males. The encounter is irreducibly complex, two-sided and probably different for each person in the arena. Thus, when I saw Led Zeppelin playing Rock ‘n’ Roll on tour in 1973,1 their long tresses, whip-thin bodies and display of skin performed a homo-masculinity that was very pleasing to this fourteen year old bear cub. But then what did I see when I attended the performance of homo-femininity by Lez Zeppelin forty years later.2 The song remained the same, as did the hair, the costuming and the whip thin bodies, and likewise the dance steps. I have to own that I listened to the music with more pleasure in Paris than I did in Madison Square Gardens, but watching the ultra-thin women, I was reminded of the drive to stop the domination of zero size models on the fashion catwalk. Thus, I would argue, that for me, the latter performance did not reduce

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homo-femininity to homo-masculinity, nor though did the former reduce hetero-masculinity to homo-masculinity. I knew I was watching four notoriously heterosexual males perform hetero-masculinity, but in a way that made them attractive to me (then). Likewise, I knew I was watching four homosexual females performing homo femininity to a soundtrack that brought with it a myriad of memories. From these experiences, I would agree with d’Hont that the “picture of twenty-first century metal [is of] a fluid genre where old stereotypes persist but where new gender conceptualizations can also be imagined and enacted”. Working from this initial complication, it is worth thinking of other contemporary performances of metal music which, probably unintentionally, all but parodied bands such as Led Zeppelin. Black Oak Arkansas’ lead vocalist, Jim “Dandy” Mangrum performed forty years ago in tight spandex which did nothing to hide either his penis and testicles or the crack of his arse.3 Exactly what form of masculinity he was performing remains unclear today, when he appears with his once slender belly distended and accentuated by tight black spandex.4 Now only his belly button is clearly visible but the crowd of mostly lookalike men still adore him, but probably not for the same reason that I find him fascinating. To this same point it is worth noting that one of the taunts regularly thrown in my (and other homosexual men’s) direction was and still is “Backs to the wall boys”, which implies that men fear being anally penetrated by a gay man who (presumably) finds all men attractive. Yet even such an imaginary encounter is two-sided and complex. The taunt reminds all men, even gay men, that they are meant to be sexually predatory, at the same time as it precludes being penetrated as a desired outcome of sex. But then why were so many men looking ecstatically at Jimmy Page’s Les Paul sunburst, as he strutted about in a spangled velvet suit, or Jim Dandy strutting his stuff in spandex that looks as though it would be quite at home in a gay fetish bar. It is useful for us to be reminded, as d’Hont does, that gender is a performance, following Judith Butler’s argument, but it is also important to remember that the performance you read may not be the performance that was intended. The problem with this fact is that the rise of social media has privileged and made transparent the reading aspect of performance and thus enacts what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick describes in Between Men: where men are in competition with one another they tend to preen one another (as the builder who called out about my tattoos) or criticize one another (as with the taunt “backs to the wall boys”), but these are both carried out from the point of view of the reader who is

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commenting on the performer. A quick look at the comments (readers) of the Lez Zeppelin video of Rock ‘n’ Roll shows that most of the commentators are billed as being male, and many express sexual desire for the band members,5 or revulsion at their daring to perform such music.6 A number are satisfied with the band’s musical prowess.7 No males and barely any females read that the band are performing female homosexuality. Moving to Kenneth Norwood’s paper, we find that this privileging of the reader has led to some unpredictable outcomes in terms of what is being read as hypermasculinity in popular music and its videos. What we learn is that Young Fly Red, an openly gay male rapper, made the song Throw that Boy Pussy in which femme males twerk, in order that he could present himself as hypermasculine, being the one who would penetrate the boys’ asses. The logic being that if girls twerking make heterosexual males excited, then boys twerking can do the same. Likewise, Young M.A, a lesbian rapper, made the song “OOOUUU” in which she presents herself as hypermasculine, with her references to having sex with rich women who pay her, and also in the way she dresses in tight track suit and tight t-shirt, all of which suggests she’s one of the boys. The message of both seems to be “You read me as this so I can get away with that” (as the builder admiring my tattoos, rather than the abusive “Backs to the wall boys”), yet the interpolation of the homosexuality of Young Fly Red and Young M.A into hypermasculine culture is gained only, argues Norwood: “Through both objectification and (hyper)masculine behavior; they both empower their queer agency but marginalize and subjugate others to prove their power in order to gain access to the heteronormative space of Hip-Hop/Rap.” In the case of Young M.A, this argument is made complex as Nicki Minaj released a freestyle rap to the same backing track,8 welcoming the new rapper to the Young Money company as a “new brand”. While Minaj’s lyrics begin by suggesting that she is heterosexual, by the end of the track it is difficult to know whether this is exclusive, and what the welcome represents. When Minaj raps the line “Me Dorothy and you Toto”, does this represent an acceptance of, or even a participation in, lesbian sexuality? But once again, this is to privilege reading, where the queen of Young Money welcomes a new female act, and suggests lesbian sex acts through various metaphors like this, is her performance wholehearted? Or is it for the pleasure of Lil’ Wayne, the CEO of the company? Thus, where Norwood concludes: “From genealogy, to history, to sexuality, a conversation with multiple voices presents a challenge to the notion of what

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black men are”, one might argue that they are just like Lil’ Wayne, or maybe they are like Nicki Minaj. Ryann Donnelly argues a similar point to Norwood, but, and probably due to the more flamboyant nature of the artists whose works are analysed, the chapter argues that the queer rap videos of Frank Ocean, Le1f and SSION “make violent attacks on hetero-masculinity, revealing how easily it is performed regardless of sexuality, and that it is in fact a crucial element of the identity of the above-mentioned artists’ queer sexual allure”. This latter is a very important point, and in the terms set out for my chapter, it might be understood as follows: if I can believe I am performing being a gay bear, but can be misrecognised as a builder, there must be some shared elements to the performance. And there are, tattoos, belly, shaved head and beard. They are attractive to me, and they were all together in the figure of another builder who laughed “Backs to the wall boys” in my face before hitting me. And that makes me question whether my performance or Ssion’s or Le1f’s performances should be thought of as “violent attacks on hetero-masculinity”. To attack is to be typically hypermasculine. But is there no more we can do, as do Frank Ocean, Ssion and Le1f, than “flirt with queerness to the edge of its marketing potential and reserve collaboration and business for their ‘safe’ hetero counterparts”. It is true that the most popular of Ssion’s videos has only 600,000 views, while the video they made for Kylie’s Sexercise has thirteen million. Must we always pass as straight (dress as builders), or remain cornered within our exclusive spaces, our homes, our sex clubs, our bars and restaurants in order to be who we are. Donnelly makes the vital point that feminism (and by implication all activism for non-heteronormal genders and sexualities) has been “transformed from a belief and practice that combats exclusionary politics based on gender into its own exclusionary politics by class”. What I find problematic with this formulation, though, is that Donnelly defines the exclusion as being based in class, and signifies it with a fat lady (“by Blanco’s inclusion of an obese woman in her underwear at the party”). The most perfect classless space I inhabit is a gay club where the capital lies not in extreme thinness or expensive clothes—we all dress like builders, and some of us are builders, and some of us are bankers. Entry fee £5, less than the price of a pint of beer. But how do we get out of the club and into the media? Do we have to exploit our disguises? There are very few representations in the media of the form of masculinity to which I identify, and a heteronormal friend of mine recently laughed at my suggestion that if Hollywood wanted me to go back to the movies they

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would have to cast an overweight male star in the lead role. My friend thought this was preposterous. It was as though my friend was arguing that I had no place in popular media, but, as Rachael Harris’s and Ryan Mack’s chapters argue by default, I most certainly do. Both of these chapters explore masculinity and the psychological pain of a failed heterosexual relationship, which both point out is marked by the most extraordinarily woman-hating behaviour and toxic masculine language—the sort of language that I, feminists and other activists for non-heteronormal genders and sexualities abhor. But just what has happened to popular music that it reacts now so violently to failed relationships? The hits of the Swedish group ABBA all of whose songs are about failed relationships were packaged up in jolly tunes and expressed in jolting Scandi-English. So why has violence and even murder entered into the commodification of male angst? In his novel, High Fidelity, which explores a broken relationship and expresses the story in the voice of a male record store owner, Nick Hornby writes: Some of my favourite songs: ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ by Neil Young; ‘Last Night I Dreamed That Somebody Loved Me’ by the Smiths; ‘Call Me’ by Aretha Franklin; ‘I Don’t Want to Talk About It’ by anybody. And then there’s ‘Love Hurts’ and ‘When Love Breaks Down’ and ‘How Can You Mend A Broken Heart’ and ‘The Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness’ and ‘She’s Gone’ and ‘I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself’ and… some of these songs I have listened to around once a week, on average (three hundred times in the first month, every now and again thereafter), since I was sixteen or nineteen or twenty-one. How can that not leave you bruised somewhere? How can that not turn you into the sort of person liable to break into little bits when your first love goes all wrong? What came first, the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?

As Rachael Harris might point out, once again we’re hearing the voice of the “wronged” man, and yes, Laura does leave Rob for another man. It can then be of no surprise that in the first chapter where Rob lists his top five breakups with girlfriends (which does not include Laura), as though writing his diary to Laura he sneers: These were the ones that really hurt. Can you see your name in that lot, Laura? I reckon you’d sneak into the top ten, but there’s no place for you in

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the top five; those places are reserved for the kind of humiliations and heartbreaks that you’re just not capable of delivering.

This places Rob in or nearly in the realm of “toxic masculinity”, but adds the interesting question, “What came first, the music or the misery?” Just how much do we learn from the music we listen to, or how much do we choose the music we listen to because it fits our pre-existing mood? But do we even choose the music we listen to? I have discussed the privileging of reading up to this point in my argument, but now it is time to turn the argument towards the performers who produce the material that we read, and to the ethics of the music industry. Natasha Mulvihill draws our attention to this problem—should the music industry be more careful what it sells—in the autobiographical statement that precedes her chapter: “As any parent of pre-teen children will know, there comes a point where you seem to lose control of the car radio. While I had a few good years listening to stations and CDs of my choice, now I have to listen to ‘banging tunes’ compered by inexhaustibly jocular DJs, pre and post school run”. What is fascinating here is the question about who is choosing to listen to the music, which the chapter goes on to argue: “seems to be ploughing the same furrow about love being possessive, controlling and miserable”. It is not Mulvihill, the mother, as she would prefer to listen to something else, but is it her pre-teen children? Are they already “miserable” so they want to listen to music that fits their expectation? Or are they demanding to listen to music that has been marketed to them for some other reason in the school playground? But most important what are children learning about how to comport themselves in relationships from songs such as Justin Timberlake’s Cry me a River or Dua Lipa’s Hotter than Hell and other mass-marketed musics. More urgently, what about the emotional shift in the song 187 by Senses Fail noted by Ryan J. Mack, which begins in the realm of ordinary emotion and a quiet acoustic guitar accompaniment: Sunlight shining through my window Let’s me know that I’m still alive Why did I ever let you inside my heart? I’m such a fool

And ends with murderous rage:

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You ripped my heart out, you tore my eyes out Now you’re gonna pay I’ll stab you one time, I’ll eat your heart out So you feel my pain Don’t you know that I always see you in all of my dreams? I wanna kill you, I wanna kill you now, I’m insane

And here I’m not worried about pre-teen children, but of the teenagers and young adults who might think that these were not simply song lyrics. I would argue that these final words along with the thrashing punk chords of the crescendo, demand to be read as being as metaphorical as the murder scenes in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. What is really worrying is that the lyrics normalize the idea that suicidal thoughts can be traded off against the murder of the woman who has rejected you. Returning briefly to Nick Hornby (spoiler alert), Laura does come back to Rob, but rather than the conventional happy ending of a rom com, we are left on tenterhooks as Rob begins to fall in love with another woman. Once again we hear the masculine voice deciding what to do: … when’s it all going to fucking stop? I’m going to jump from rock to rock for the rest of my life until there aren’t any rocks left? I’m going to run each time I get itchy feet? Because I get them about once a quarter along with the utility bills.

The idea, which is based on the age old sexual double standard of women being “good” (read monogamous) and men being promiscuous, may just account for so many songs being about the misery of a failed relationship. As Rachael Harris tells us, from the hypermasculine point of view, a failed relationship is one in which the woman has been “unfaithful” whereas, as the video for “Cry me a River” shows, in Timberlake making love to another woman on the bed he has formerly shared with Britney Spears, the same standard does not hold for the man. The chapter by Suman Mishra on the “Item numbers” of Bollywood cinema moves the argument in the direction of the universal, suggesting that the dance numbers represent “a fantastic kind of ‘sexiness’ and not anything resembling genuine human sexuality”. Likewise, Margherita Angelucci and Wissal Houbabi explore the derivations and divergences of “Pimp” culture in the USA and Italy. Importantly, this chapter notes how empty such displays of “fantastic … sexiness” can be:

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Being “cool” is often described as another coping mechanism that simply works by putting up a front of success. This is an essential part of the “pimp logic”, according to which “in order to get something you need to look like you’ve already got something”, an attitude that also explains the excessive displays of material wealth typical of the pimp style.

What worries me about such displays is that they can be thought of as “coping mechanisms”: coping for what one might ask? And we might answer, that a coping mechanism is necessary for those who are not successful in their hypermasculinity: those who try to be ‘cool’ by display alone. An artist performing has, by definition of the performance and the adulation of the audience, the success that sales and view numbers turn into money. Those who are merely performing success, failure is the script by which their performance proceeds towards violence as the coping mechanism. In this way we learn how the music industry plays on fears and insinuates to listeners that they are failures unless they pretend (and forget they are pretending) to be like the stars they emulate. Thus, the hypermasculine desperation to succeed is fed with readily available product, easily recognizable signs of conformity, and demands of violent reprisal against those who do not conform, homosexuals and women, all of which are sold as “coping mechanisms” when the hypermasculine male is met with (almost) inevitable failure. Buy the music, dress accordingly, and hit, curse and hurt those whom you think have failed to support you in your story about yourself. Heather Stewart points the finger at the part played by the music industry where she argues that “the increased tendency toward misogynistic representations in rap and hip-hop have clearly coincided with the mainstreaming of those genres”. But again, why does music with a violent core sell? Simply because it is being marketed? In music what is being sold is necessarily a performance, a representation of the world that is therefore unreal, a song or video which can be played and repeated (300 times in the first month, every now and again thereafter), but, as Freddy Mercury suggested, a song should be like a paper tissue, used once and thrown away. The trap into which Rob, in High Fidelity has fallen is, as Glenn Fosbreay explains, the authenticity of performance:

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In pop music, a great deal of the time we want the artist to be present: we want to hear the ‘person behind the music’ and the artist themselves has the opportunity to use this to play with an audience, flitting between fiction and what we perceive as truth.

Although a song is a performance, the performer is expected to sound like they believe it for it to be truly authentic, or “singer/songwriter”. The performer has to live the life created in the song, albeit that they have to play out the unpleasant side of being a gangsta if they’re trying to sound like a gangsta. As early as 1974, Jackson Browne told his audience in his song Farther On: In my early years I hid my tears And passed my days alone Adrift on an ocean of loneliness My dreams like nets were thrown To catch the love that I’d heard of In books and films and songs Now there’s a world of illusion and fantasy In the place where the real world belongs

We, performers and readers have to remember that the world of song is “flitting between fiction and what we perceive as truth”. And in this way, as Alec Charles argues about David Bowie, “the discourse of the performer-­ artist can reconstruct gender identities (and sexual identities and all other modes of identity)”, it does not have to fall back on stereotypes. Well-­ known for his chameleon changes of persona (literally voice-mask), from Ziggy, to thin white duke, to experimental rocker to whatever, David Bowie’s name was the only thing that stayed constant over his lifetime of performances. However, where Charles argues the liberatory aspect of this in terms of existentialism: This situation permits the realisation of the fantasy of post-genderedness or meta-genderedness—of moving beyond the conventions of gender by circumventing or transcending them: by embracing the myriad aspects of gender in ways which sever the bonds of biology and binary opposition.

I would suggest that the argument does not need to forget the essential self, and when we return to the body that can be beaten, torn and even killed, we can go further and argue that when artists reconstruct ideas of

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gender, they should bring in a moral element to how gender is performed. VariAbility, a way of understanding sameness and difference, described at length in my Sight Correction,9 short-circuits the Foucauldian argument because it works from coterminal knowing of the self at the same time the self knows the other: “I am the same only different from you” is the way we learn about our ownmost self. In this way VariAbility sidesteps ideas like “compulsory heterosexuality” and takes away the excuse that a male performer is only “being a man” (coping mechanism) when he writes vile, sexist or murderous lyrics to describe his emotional state at a failed relationship. If a man or a woman exists in relation to that body to which s/ he is attracted, then the ethics of the relationship take on a form something like the Levinasian10 that gives self-knowledge to the loved one, which must therefore be cherished, even when that relationship has gone wrong. In its focus on the unique in relation to the other body, and not the (stereo)type, VariAbility makes demands on all performers to scrutinize their own performance and avoid such things as Justin Timberlake’s videos, and Senses Fail’s lyrics, which encourage violent behaviour towards other people as a “coping mechanism” for the vicissitudes of life. Gareth Schott tightens the focus on Laura Jane Grace’s transitioning as part of their music career in order to explore the way one musician has “highlight[ed] the negotiated and processual nature of punk performativity, reclaiming punk as a platform for marginalised groups through its DIY ethos and spirit of self-invention and empowerment”. Against Me!’s career is long enough to have been typical of any long-lived band, beginning with minor labels, being taken up and dropped by a major label, and beginning again with a self-created label. But it is the beginning and end of their career that is the most salient and which strikes a chord with my own experience of music: the DIY phases. This is not a new idea. Joni Mitchell sang in 1970, “He played real good and for free”, a song about hearing a busker on her way, in a limousine, to a concert venue. Pink Floyd joined in a growing chorus of songs about the alienation of performers within the music industry with Welcome to the Machine of 1975, from the album Wish you were here, which told the story of the demise of Syd Barrett—a victim of the music industry. Thus, when I heard of Neutral Milk Hotel, in David Levithan and John Green’s book Will Grayson, Will Grayson, I was happy about what I found out about them. The band had a huge hit in 1998 with In the Aeroplane over the Sea, but they decided to stay with Merge, the label that had released their first album, On Avery Island, which was recorded on a

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four-track tape recorder. Merge is a record label whose advertising material claims that it has never sold in total as many units as Michael Jackson’s Thriller. They employ three people and are proud to be small. When I first started writing and recording songs I had some idea about a second career blossoming, although I was 58 at the time of the release of Skin Tracks. I began working on GarageBand, a free software package that comes with all Apple computers, and just as I’d taught myself how to use a word processor on Amstrad’s wonderfully old-fashioned PCW 9512, I slowly taught myself how to record, mix and master music. I’m now on my ninth album, and have bought Logic Pro, the grown-up version of GarageBand, and am considering purchasing Ozone 9 to help with the mastering. Along the way I’ve finally bought all the guitars that I desired as a teenager, two Ibanez, two Fenders and two Gibsons, and two hand-­ built guitars, one by Paul Reed Smith and the other by Crimson. A small keyboard is all I can manage, one note at a time, but I have access through Logic Pro to Alchemy, which is an extremely powerful synthesizer and emulator. I make rules for each album (punk, cascade guitars, rock ‘n’ roll, prog rock, quirky). If I get stuck, I use Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies to make decisions for me. I will not use acoustic guitars, and I do not try to play in a virtuoso style. Everything has to be easy enough to be played by a non-musician with a week to learn the song. Pertinent to this chapter, when I began recording, I made a solemn swear to myself that I would never write songs about lost love (I had read Nick Hornby). But what was the point—loves that were ongoing or passed were equally interesting, but not interesting enough to warrant careful study or soul searching about the damage that any had done to me. The gay lifestyle which I embarked upon long before the music, and long before civil partnerships, was one which privileged multiple partners, largely with partners whose names one didn’t know because the sex was so fleeting and also because that form of encounter still being illegal, not knowing a partner’s name was a positive advantage if one was arrested by the police (I never was but many of my friends were). In consequence few have ever documented my lifestyle, and that was enough for me to write songs about, I thought, and that’s what I’ve done for my past nine albums. If that looks as though I’m co-opting promiscuity as a form of hypermasculinity to justify my behaviour, I would argue first that promiscuity was forced upon homosexual men because of the repressive laws against our having sex, let alone forming couples.11 But more importantly, what I am trying to do is to get out in the open some of the sexual practices that

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are not usually part of popular music: check out the lyrics of my songs, you might discover something you didn’t already know. In these songs I am encouraging my audience to experiment with their bodies and remind them that successful sex does not have to be based in a monogamous coupling, and rest on the binary of faithfulness/break-up with its attendant jealousy and rage. My music career guru is Tracey Thorn, singer from Everything But the Girl, whose autobiography, Bedsit Disco Queen introduced me to what I had missed in my youth (we are the same age and attended the same university for a short while): the idea of DIY which came with punk, but which was not limited to punk style, and which has now become unhinged from anything that resembles record labels or a music industry. We can just create, no limits. We can share music for free on Bandcamp and SoundCloud.12 We can make videos and share them on YouTube.13 We can have a music career without the need to conform to “what sells”. We don’t need the music industry anymore. In the DIY world we can give our own music to each other, we can re-interpret each other’s music, and we can celebrate our own capabilities. We can work alone, as I do, or in groups. There is no need for expensive recording studios to get “professional” quality sound or vision. We can find all the expensive equipment, which was the backbone of the music industry’s hold on the product, in our bedrooms. It’s where all bands begin anyway. One treat I’ve been introduced to recently is the Apartment Sessions, which is a loosely associated group of musicians who make music this way, sometimes making versions of well-known songs, such as Neutral Milk Hotel’s In an Aeroplane over the Sea,14 and sometimes their own music, such as Gabriel Kahane’s extraordinary Empire Liquor Mart. What I love about this project is that it does not limit itself to genre: it is made up of all genres and so has no genre expectations.15 We have the equipment to make a music for ourselves, all it takes is starting to make that music. I’ve done it, and I can barely play.

Notes 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbW5K2F1N28. 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCZVOSr6_J8. 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLofQWhuHoA. 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtKynj4a2xg. 5. Ray Webb: Is it me but I was trying to see up the side of her Jean shorts!

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6. Johnny b. Goode: go cook something to eat. 7. Chris M: [THIS IS NOT ME] The guitar player is using the best volume control you can use with a loud cranked Marshall… Better than any attenuation…. She has the cabinet turned around facing the back wall… Bass player ki cks A$$… They all are good !! 8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zP04q2fJp4. 9. This book was retitled by the publishers to encourage readers to have another look at the fundamental ideas they took for granted, such as the Foucauldian analysis. The joke is that the book is about blindness, and was written by a blind author. 10. Totality and Infinity  (The Hague: Martunis Nijhoff, 1961)—section on the Beloved. 11. There is no space to argue this here, but Alan Hollinghurst’s The Swimmingpool Library gives all the relevant history. Although it is a novel, the facts lie just behind the surface of the story. 12. All my music is available for free at: https://bearfffbear.bandcamp.com. 13. I have made four: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szKjR_V-­RGE, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr8e1IMD_II, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TWvBskINk8, https://youtu.be/D0os9V3ErDk. 14. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTlrn376T4w. 15. For example, The Pity Party: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qys5 wR1YFjE&list=PLB6JNRH-­E 1ZElZ0QErliR5ju4r1WROGkJ&i ndex=10.

Index

NUMBERS AND SYMBOLS #MeToo, 16, 87, 100, 247 A Abortion, 83 See also Female feticide Abuse, 16–18, 23, 25–27, 29, 30, 31n4, 96, 105, 126, 150n20, 219, 259 eroticisation of, 29 See also Domestic abuse; Sexual abuse Acting/actors/actresses, 38, 57–63, 66, 69, 70, 86, 120, 134, 168, 170, 234 Agency, 16, 20, 126, 188–190, 192, 193, 195, 199, 217, 255, 261, 264, 274 Aggression, 7, 118, 133, 134, 146, 149n12, 149n13, 209, 245

Androgyny, 9, 10, 107, 174, 236–240 Authenticity, 42, 80, 87, 237, 279 Authority, 82 male authority, 82 B Barthes, Roland, 22, 175 Billboard, 4, 39, 45, 191, 260, 261, 265n4 Blurred Lines, 4, 38, 41 Bodies body ideals, 44–47 fetishized bodies, 56, 68 sexualised bodies, 58, 81 women’s bodies, 56, 58, 60, 69, 70, 82 Body modification, 47 See also Cosmetic procedures Bollywood, 4, 6, 55–70, 278 Boundaries, 9, 97–100, 107, 109, 158, 159, 165 Boybands, 113–115, 117, 122

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 G. Fosbraey, N. Puckey (eds.), Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music, Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65189-3

285

286 

INDEX

C Capitalism, 150n18 Celebrity, 114–118, 123, 124, 127, 127n1, 135, 137, 244, 245 Class, 2, 80, 110, 132, 134, 137, 145, 150n18, 163, 164, 194, 196, 235, 275 Clichés, see Stereotypes Clothes/costuming, 68, 69, 74, 156, 160, 164, 189, 207, 272, 275 Cohen, Stanley, 2 Collaborations, 40, 115, 123, 127, 157, 238, 275 Commodification, 87, 164, 276 and sex, 70 Content analysis, 28, 76, 135 Control, 15–18, 22, 24, 25, 30, 37, 42–44, 49, 64, 76, 78, 79, 82, 99, 102, 126, 135, 136, 167–182, 183n16, 208, 256, 261, 264, 277, 284n7 coercive control, 6, 15–30 Cosmetic procedures, 257 See also Body modification Culture, 1, 2, 4–6, 8, 9, 15, 47, 56, 58, 59, 61–64, 67, 73–77, 80, 82, 97, 98, 100, 104, 105, 107, 109, 110, 116, 117, 124, 127, 145, 147n2, 155–157, 162–164, 170, 179, 196–198, 234, 236, 237, 243, 247, 257, 263, 265n6, 274, 278 D Dance/electronic (music), 4, 272, 278 Dancing, 48, 64, 65, 67, 70, 157, 197, 242, 255 Domestic abuse abusive relationship, 17, 19, 23, 25 partner abuse, 18 psychological abuse, 18

Dominance as pleasurable, 27 sexual dominance, 25, 79, 198 See also Submission Drag, 99, 100, 106–110, 162, 163 Dworkin, Andrea, 30, 47 E Electric guitar, 101, 102 as gendered, 102 Emo, 8, 167–182, 182n1, 182–183n5, 183n14, 219 Emotions emotional control, 8, 167–182 emotional dissociation, 24 emotional vulnerability, 7, 169 loss of emotional control, 8, 167–182 Empowerment, 16, 29, 30, 46, 109, 193, 203, 206, 236, 281 See also Female, empowerment Erotic eroticism, 25, 30 spectacle, 6, 64 submission, 16, 18, 19, 27, 28, 30 Everyday Sexism Project, 16 Exploitation, 58, 69, 70, 78, 95 blaxploitation, 76 F Fans, 3, 8, 38, 44, 95, 96, 98, 103, 104, 109, 113, 114, 122, 124, 175, 242, 244, 263 fandom, 42, 181, 183n7 Fantasy male fantasy, 43, 46, 56 sexual fantasy, 43 Fascism, 82 Fashion, 74, 101, 121, 160, 161, 194, 201, 205, 207, 208, 215, 236

 INDEX 

Female empowerment, 6, 16, 26, 28–30, 126, 132 feticide, 56 gaze, 113 rebellion, 28 Femininity, 16, 18, 25, 59, 70, 99, 106–110, 116, 126, 148n4, 161, 163, 165, 168, 169, 172, 174, 176, 179–182, 193, 194, 238, 239, 273 Feminism anti-feminist, 28 feminist, 3, 16, 18, 22, 30, 37, 70, 78, 83, 87, 96, 97, 101, 106, 116, 131, 147n2, 147n3, 148n5, 164, 189–191, 194, 196, 198–200, 202, 208, 214, 219, 233, 239, 246, 255, 256, 259, 263, 264 post-feminism, 4 Fetishization bodies as fetishized, 56, 68, 69 Films/movies, 1, 6, 27, 38, 55–66, 69, 70, 75–77, 81, 87, 119, 127, 147n2, 148n3, 168, 176, 183n9, 189, 241, 275, 280 G Gangs culture, 74 violence, 74 Gender, 272, 273, 275, 276, 280, 281 cis-gender, 8, 9 fluid, 8, 236–238 genderless, 110, 183n14, 220 non-binary, 5 norms, 16, 109, 156, 216, 217, 255

287

play, 97, 99, 108, 238 post-genderedness, 235, 239, 280 segregation, 61 stereotypes, 4, 97, 99, 100, 107, 110, 165 transgender, 5, 6, 9, 160, 162, 216, 218, 220, 256 Generation Z, 4 Global cultural flows, 61 Globalization, 57–61, 64, 69, 74, 86 Glocalisation, 74, 87 The Good Men Project, 7 Groupie, 95, 96, 107 Growling, 100 See also Screaming Grunting, 100, 101, 103, 110 See also Growling; Screaming H Hair, 38, 46, 47, 96, 99, 101, 107, 109, 161, 174, 236, 239, 257, 262, 272 Hall, Stuart, 2 Hebdige, Dick, 2 Hegemony, 85, 98, 173, 180–182, 220, 235, 242, 247 Heroism, 58 Heteronormativity, 4, 5, 7–10, 95, 202, 233, 237, 242, 257, 264 heteronormative practices, 8, 9 Hip-Hop Global Hip Hop Nation, 74, 86 Italian hip hop, 4, 74, 81, 87 See also Rap HIV/AIDS crisis, 3 Homophobia, 9, 156, 161, 188, 195, 256, 257, 259, 260

288 

INDEX

I Identity, 2, 4–6, 9, 56, 79, 85, 99, 107, 116–118, 127, 137, 157, 158, 160–164, 166, 169, 188–190, 194–202, 233–237, 239, 248, 256, 265n1 politics, 164 Ideology, 56, 57, 61, 63, 64, 70, 76, 99, 115, 147, 168, 206, 207, 209, 214, 259 Imagined community, 74 Infatuation, 113, 119, 120 Insults, 48, 133, 172 The internet, 3, 104, 170, 174 Intersectionality, 3 Item numbers, 6, 55–70, 278 J Jefferson, Tony, 2 L Latin (music), 4 LGBT+, 103 Liminality, 3 Linguistics, 57, 64, 75, 76, 79 Love, 276–278, 280, 282, 283 gangsta love, 83 romantic love, 84, 113, 117 See also Infatuation Lyrics, 4, 16, 18–20, 22, 23, 37, 38, 40–42, 64, 65, 70, 75, 76, 79, 81–85, 87, 88, 96, 103, 109, 113, 114, 124, 126, 132, 135, 137, 139, 143, 146, 147n2, 150n21, 169–178, 180–182, 183n12, 183n14, 187, 191, 198, 240, 241, 248, 259–263, 274, 278, 281, 283

M Male, 6, 8, 9, 17, 18, 25, 27, 37, 38, 40–49, 56, 57, 59, 60, 67, 68, 70, 82–84, 86, 96, 99, 101, 103, 105–108, 110, 114–116, 118–120, 122–125, 127, 135, 141, 155, 158–161, 163–165, 169–171, 174, 176, 177, 180, 181, 188–196, 198–202, 208, 214, 217, 219, 220, 233, 240, 247, 253, 255, 258–260, 262, 271–274, 276, 279 alpha male, 117 gaze, 9, 45, 48, 49, 57, 66, 108 Marginalisation, 74 Masculinity, 271–273, 275, 276 alternative masculinities, 137–144 black masculinity, 78, 85 deconstructed masculinity, 97 hegemonic masculinity, 7, 8, 87, 99, 110–111, 135, 149n13, 167, 168, 170–172, 174, 176, 177, 179–181, 260 heterosexual masculinity, 96, 273 re-negotiated masculinity, 155 toxic masculinity, 4, 5, 7–10, 16, 95, 99, 115–117, 119, 127, 133, 139, 141, 142, 145, 233, 242, 245, 246, 253–265, 277 traditional masculinity, 7 urban masculinity, 8, 132, 146 Masochism, 6, 16, 26–28 McClary, Susan, 3 McRobbie, Angela, 2, 28 Media, 273, 275, 276 literacy, 19 priming, 19 representation, 55 Men, 271–273, 275, 278, 282 of colour, 146, 187 urban men, 134, 137, 139, 141–143, 146, 150n18

 INDEX 

Metal, 272, 273 female-fronted metal, 96 heavy metal, 2, 5, 96, 99, 176, 272 Millennials, 4, 19, 170 Misogyny misogynist behaviour, 5 misogynistic language, 6 Mother figure, 58 Music industry, 6, 18, 45, 50, 73, 74, 81, 84, 87, 202, 212, 234, 277, 279, 281, 283 Musicology, 1, 3 Music video, 19, 20, 22, 38, 39, 41, 44–48, 59, 60, 62, 63, 97, 115, 119, 122, 123, 128n3, 155, 189, 190, 255, 259, 263 N Narrative gender, 116 male centred, 114 O Objectification, 274 reverse sexual objectification (RSO), 191, 196, 198, 200 sexual objectification, 57, 67–70, 135, 260, 263 Oppression, 188–190, 197, 199, 201, 202 P Pain, 278 cathartic pain, 27 emotional pain, 23 physical pain, 15, 276 See also Pleasure Patriarchy, 29, 30, 47, 49, 99, 190, 191, 199, 237, 264

289

Performance, 2, 3, 9, 10, 18, 40, 48, 58, 61–63, 67, 75, 79, 85, 87, 96, 101, 102, 104, 105, 107, 108, 111, 121, 125, 155, 158, 160, 162, 163, 169, 171, 173, 174, 195, 211, 234, 235, 237, 248, 271–275, 279–281 Performativity, 233, 281 gender, 99, 234 Performers, 274, 277, 280, 281 female, 67, 95–98, 103, 105, 106, 109, 110, 234, 272 male, 44, 170, 171, 181, 281 Phallic symbols, 102 Philosophy, 1, 148n3, 175, 202 Pimp, 6, 73–80, 87, 135, 244, 278, 279 pimpology, 73–88 Pleasure, 22, 23, 47, 55–70, 103, 125, 135, 175, 253–265, 272, 274 See also Pain Police brutality, 132, 190 Politics, 3, 4, 49, 87, 162, 164, 173, 189, 191, 198, 245, 264, 275 Popular culture, 5, 8, 9, 76, 80, 97, 98, 100, 110, 116, 117, 170, 236, 237 Pornography/pornographic, 64, 70, 125, 256 Poverty, 74, 132, 137, 142, 150n18 Power, 18, 20, 22, 24, 38, 45, 56–58, 70, 84–86, 96–98, 100, 102, 103, 108, 109, 117, 118, 125, 132–143, 145, 147, 150n21, 164, 169, 175–177, 180–182, 187–203, 207, 214, 220, 233, 235, 245, 256, 261, 274 Promiscuity, 118, 120, 282 Psychoanalysis, 56 Psychology, 1

290 

INDEX

Punk, 2, 4, 5, 9, 20, 162, 163, 169–172, 195, 205–221, 236, 278, 281–283 Pussy, 41–43, 84, 203, 261, 263 boy pussy, 9, 187–203 Q Queerness, 157–159, 162, 275 R R&B, 4, 191, 261 Racism, 78, 79, 132, 256, 259, 264, 265n6 structural racism, 192 Rap, 274, 275, 279 gangsta rap, 73, 76, 77, 80, 84, 85 Italian pimp rap, 81, 84, 87 pimp rap, 73–88 See also Hip hop Rape, 29, 56, 82, 83, 95, 138, 140, 219 culture, 39 Rappers, 41, 42, 45, 47, 48, 74, 75, 77, 80–88, 123–125, 144, 156, 157, 160, 161, 187, 188, 191, 192, 194, 198, 199, 202, 244–246, 260–262, 264, 265n2, 274 female, 9, 39, 42, 48, 49, 188, 191–193, 195, 260, 261 Rebellion, 28, 199, 247 Religion, 156 Representation, 3, 19, 27, 55–57, 60, 61, 65, 69, 70, 79, 86, 96, 97, 132–137, 145, 147n2, 150n21, 157, 161, 180, 188, 193, 236, 254, 256, 263, 265n2, 275, 279

Rock, 2–5, 8, 20, 96, 101–104, 113, 137, 168–171, 176–179, 181, 206, 210, 214, 236, 238, 239, 244, 278, 282 Romance, 64, 113–127, 218–220, 239 S Safety, 271 Safe Gigs for Women, 100, 110 safe space, 113 Screaming, 8, 98, 100, 167–182, 245 See also Grunting; Growling Semiosis/semiotics, 1, 3, 56 Sensuality, 27 Sex, 273–275, 282, 283 casual sex, 42 hypersexual, 7 oral sex, 254, 258, 260 positive attitudes, 260, 261 promiscuity, 118, 120 scenes, 59, 62 scripts, 264 sexual ambiguity, 236, 237 sexual availability, 44 sexual liberation, 191, 236 Sexism everyday sexism, 16, 44 sexist behaviour, 5 See also Everyday Sexism Project Sexual abuse, 29 Sexual harassment, 16, 56, 62, 67 Sexuality asexual, 9, 257 bisexual, 9 cinesexuality, 62 female, 18, 82, 96, 262, 264 gay, 9 lesbian, 6, 202, 239, 274 polysexuality, 236

 INDEX 

queer, 6, 9, 156, 159, 163, 166, 191, 202, 239, 256 straight, 9 See also Queerness Sexual violence, 17, 30, 39, 62, 82, 100, 110, 150n17, 150n20 sexual assault, 140 See also Rape Sex work prostitutes, 59, 82 sex workers, 195, 196 Signification signifying practices, 79 Ska, 2 Slavery, 78, 146, 243 Social justice, 4, 256 Social sciences, 2 Sociology, 2 Songs, 4, 8, 19, 20, 22, 26, 29, 38–43, 45, 49, 56, 59–62, 64, 65, 68, 70, 75, 76, 80, 81, 83–88, 95–97, 101–103, 105–109, 114, 115, 117–121, 123–127, 127n1, 132, 135, 137, 139, 141, 142, 145, 146, 148n6, 150n18, 157, 158, 163, 178, 179, 181, 183n14, 188, 190–193, 196, 198–200, 215, 217–219, 238–244, 259–262, 272, 274, 276–283 Soundtracks, 1, 273 Stalking, 67 Status, 7, 29, 45, 102, 108, 122, 125, 133–135, 139, 142, 145, 146, 150n21, 156, 163, 198, 207, 235, 260 Stereotypes, 4, 50, 57, 80, 97, 99, 100, 102, 103, 107, 110, 120, 123, 134, 144, 155, 160, 165, 234, 237, 259, 273, 280

291

Subculture, 2–4, 119, 163, 175 Submission, 15–30 sexual submissiveness, 25 See also Dominance T Teenagers, 136, 278, 282 Thematic analysis (TA), 20, 21, 23, 63 Toxic femininity, 16 Toxic love, 20, 29 Transgression, 60, 62, 64, 168, 176 Transphobia, 9, 195 Tribute acts, 104 V Victim, 5, 17, 18, 24, 25, 29, 82, 88n6, 117, 119–121, 150n20, 164, 177, 234, 271, 281 Violence cycle of, 22, 24–25 threats of, 18 Visibility, 98, 103, 105, 106, 110, 159, 189, 190, 192, 194, 195, 197–202, 272 queer visibility, 196 See also Representation W Whiteley, Sheila, 3 Women BAME women, 6 colour, 6 disabilities, 6 white women, 69