modern send-ups of blues tunes transformed into dancing ditties
April 15, 2016 12:01 PM   Subscribe

Black Trauma Remixed For Your Clicks
In viral videos, the real-life pain of black people is repurposed into fun, catchy songs for popular consumption. But at what cost?
posted by andoatnp (24 comments total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
 
That put into words something that's been bugging me for a long time. Great article and timely considering the other threads about appropriation and privilege going on right now. It is awful in particular the way the Gregory Brothers insert themselves into the videos, through chroma key, as if to put a fine symbolic point on how unrelated their reality is from that of their unwitting subjects.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:27 PM on April 15, 2016 [5 favorites]


Huh, I never considered this or these remixers to be a problem. Lots to think about, lots of awesome links in that article to people criticizing this kind of viral video jokery. Good post!
posted by Potomac Avenue at 12:36 PM on April 15, 2016


I know BuzzFeed is not a monolith but multitude, but it's interesting to see this coming from the home of Anything For Your Clicks, like 27 Questions Black People Have For Black People, which was conveniently turned into a text list and ranked least to most terrible by The Root, and from NPR: "in the spirit of Let Me Google That For You, I'm going to take a crack at answering BuzzFeed's 27 questions for black people with all of this in mind." ("This" being the fact that "The vast majority could be addressed by a 15-second Internet search or reading a Wikipedia page on structural racism").
posted by filthy light thief at 12:43 PM on April 15, 2016 [7 favorites]


That put into words something that's been bugging me for a long time.

Me too. I think I first noticed this sort of thing when the whole Mobile Leprechaun thing happened, which seemed to me like a crowd of people just having fun (and, honestly, seemed to be borrowing from the Leprachaun movies, which had a large black audience), and many on the web treated like "here's a group of crazy black people."

I just don't think there is any way about the fact that some of the frisson of these videos come from white viewers getting a kick out of black people behaving in a way they find ridiculous, and then mocking them further by autotuning it. It may not be all of it, but at core of it there is this sort of constant surveillance of blackness that the author writes about, and curating it to find the moments of cliched absurdity. That these moments happen at time of tremendous stress or pain for the person who is being mocked just makes it that much crueler.
posted by maxsparber at 12:50 PM on April 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


One interesting thing about the Kimmy Schmidt theme song is that the character who's been autotuned (Walter Bankston) does make an appearance later in the season to warn a main character of the perils of viral fame, as discussed in this Slate article.

I side-eyed the theme song for a long time (and I might still be side-eyeing it now), but when they brought the character back, it made me slightly more willing to believe that even though the show's creators' used the Gregory Brothers to remix the song, it's still supposed to serve as a pointed commentary on the news culture instead of simply a novelty repurposing of it.
posted by redsparkler at 12:51 PM on April 15, 2016 [5 favorites]


The term viral, in one reading of these responses, has a double meaning. It suggests black pathology, or black people’s innate dysfunction.

Oh come on now - other parts of this are good I'm just saying. The core questions here are really interesting and important and just, uh, big ones. I don't tend to think one can always assume these days that white appreciation (or appropriation) of black vernacular is laughing at but is it exoticizing? Yeah, probably. (This is just from my perspective trying to figure out what it means to be a white fan of black music and art.)
posted by atoxyl at 12:54 PM on April 15, 2016 [4 favorites]


Eric Lott's Love & Theft is a great book that deals with minstrelsy and blackface. It's one of those books where upon finishing, I wanted to instantly reread it because there's just so much that's relevant. Here's his opening paragraph to the book (emphasis mine), which I think is as relevant as ever:
The current consensus on blackface minstrelsy is probably best summed up by Frederick Douglass's righteous response in the North Star. Blackface imitators, he said, were the "filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied to them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow citizens," a denunciation that nicely captures minstrelsy's further commodification of an already enslaved, noncitizen people (October 27, 1848). From our vantage point, the minstrel show indeed seems a transparently racist curiosity, a form of leisure that, in inventing and ridiculing the slow-witted but irrepressible "plantation darky" and the foppish "northern dandy negro," conveniently rationalized racial oppression. The culture that embraced it, we assume, was either wholly enchanted by racial travesty or so benighted [...] that it took such distortions as authentic. I want to suggest, however, that the audiences involved in early minstrelsy were not universally derisive of African Americans or their culture, and that there was a range of responses to the minstrel show which points to an instability or contradiction in the form itself.
posted by yaymukund at 12:59 PM on April 15, 2016 [7 favorites]


What I'm trying to say I don't think the reaction is necessarily "haha this guy is dumb" so much as "haha what a character this guy is awesome." But that's hardly un-problematic. It's still arguably flattening a person and a real story into a moment of exotic and entertaining caricature.
posted by atoxyl at 1:03 PM on April 15, 2016 [2 favorites]


It's still arguably flattening a person and a real story into a moment of exotic and entertaining caricature.

I don't even think that's arguable.
posted by maxsparber at 1:05 PM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


I don't even think that's arguable.

In an example like that, no not really. There are all kinds of scenarios that bring up similar questions with different shades though.

Like (again I'm kind of pulling in a lot of loosely related ideas here, sorry) this made the rounds in a couple of my friend groups some time ago, white and Asian friends. Now that's obviously meant to be a funny video. But does it get a viral boost from the way it happens to line up with certain stereotypes? Probably, right?
posted by atoxyl at 1:23 PM on April 15, 2016


Or the whole fucking "Black People Twitter" subreddit.
posted by atoxyl at 1:27 PM on April 15, 2016


I followed Antoine Dodson's FB page for a while, but the dude worried me seriously. He got religion -- a fringe Christian cult -- became "ex-gay" and married a woman. That's been a couple of years, and it can't have had a happy ending.

Accidental viral fame is terrifying. I wouldn't wish it lightly on anyone.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:36 PM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


Think of it as a modern-day use of a blue song as a dance ditty, they say. Like you could never dance to ANY blues. Then the links in the sentence contrast Big Mama Thornton and Elvis versions of "Hound Dog," a song written by Leiber and Stoller, a songwriting duo consisting of two non-black (Jewish, specifically) New York who wrote many a theatrical version of a blues number and who later went on to write "Jailhouse Rock" for Elvis (although they say they didn't like his version of "Hound Dog," but liked Elvis). Their last songwriting hit was "Stuck in the Middle With You."

Otherwise, highly interesting article.
posted by raysmj at 3:16 PM on April 15, 2016


I think that the author is off-base by centering around the remixes of these videos as problematic. The focus on the Gregory Brothers seems particularly strange, because when you look at their oeuvre it's pretty clear that they will use just about whoever as source materials. I actually first heard of them through Songify the News -- so I don't think it's fair to say that they are going out looking for black folks talking funny to make fun of.

redsparkler also did a good job explaining how well Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt lampshaded the Walter Bankston character -- I'll admit to be a little squicked out by the theme, but in context of the whole season (which was released all in one day, in order to encourage binge watching, which therefore amplified the viral ear-worminess of the theme) it's pretty perfect.

What's problematic to me is how the original videos themselves turn viral. These local news stations that head into poor black neighbourhoods and point their cameras at the "craziest" black folk they can find know that they are doing -- black folks acting the fool gets eyeballs -- including black eyeballs. And the videos do go viral all on their own without the need for remixes because "haha, funny black guy." So, for me, it's not the remixers that bug me, it's the fact that the videos exist and go viral in the first place.

One thing I noticed when looking over the Gregory Brother's youtube page for examples is that their videos featuring regular black people come from the news, but the videos that could be seen to mock regular white people are things that the white people uploaded themselves. I wouldn't be surprised if that was a trend overall for viral videos, I might have missed it in the article, but I don't think that's a trend that the author picked up on.

All told, I'm not sure that I love the Gregory Brother's remixes of regular people videos, regardless of the subject, because they seem kind of mean.
posted by sparklemotion at 3:41 PM on April 15, 2016 [8 favorites]




Thank you for this article. There is a related type of phenomenon that makes me really uncomfortable, which is white consumption, as viral humor, of random low-budget content by or featuring black people. I feel equally uneasy calling these videos problematic across the board, because many of them are made by black creators who are intending comedy either obviously or subtly, and I don't want to simply reduce someone's creative output to racist fodder. (By way of example here, I'm thinking of stuff like that video of the woman doing the cinnamon challenge, or that vlogger riffing on her apartment being too hot and not having an air conditioner.) Almost none of these videos are problematic in their own right, but when I see white people I know consuming them one after another, a pattern starts becoming clear that the videos' humor is wrapped up, for these viewers, in the subjects' perceived blackness. It coercively inverts someone's attempt at creativity into minstrelsy.
posted by threeants at 5:11 PM on April 15, 2016


There's also a troubling thing where I frequently see white people misinterpreting intentional humor or hamminess by a poor or poor-seeming black person as unintentionally comedic.
posted by threeants at 5:14 PM on April 15, 2016 [5 favorites]


I immediately thought of Wesley Willis when I read through the comments here. I imagine that he is an early example of this phenomenon. (Songs may be NSFW) My first exposure to Wesley Willis was Rock n' Roll McDonalds and Cut the Mullet, which was an example of a huge gray area of artistic exposure/appreciation meets making fun of a homeless guy. Outburst and Chronic Schizophrenia are powerful songs, and helped me to empathize with Mr. Willis, while teaching me about mental illness in a meaningful way.

Love you, Wesley, RIP.
posted by Chuffy at 5:53 PM on April 15, 2016 [7 favorites]


I think the woo woo guy (bubb rubb) eclipses Antoine by quite a few years..
posted by k5.user at 6:09 PM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yeah. I squick at a lot of this stuff (esp. the "pranks" going around a while ago), and I haven't really kept up with the Gregory Brothers (and sister!), but their autotune the news stuff was all over the place, not just viral videos, and ... usually came across as sincere but goofy, not cruel mockery.

a few years ago I came across an old open mic clip of one off them doing the Nas version of Thugz Mansion -- but he _did_ it, it wasn't some cutesy banjo cover or sing-song crap, and it was not from the list of 5 Songs That White People Reference When Discussing Hip-Hop (straight outta compton, rappers delight, 99 problems, good day, and probably whatever the current catchy video is -- drake?).

I mean, it's DEFINITELY a thing that "wacky black people" videos go viral, just like the "crazy radical feminists on tumblr", and whatever the hell else the Status-Quo-Warriors hate on the internet, but ... just seems like a strange target to pick.

Especially from BuzzFeed (yeah, they have some good articles, but that ain't how they paid their dues or pay their bills)
posted by lkc at 9:56 PM on April 15, 2016


I followed Antoine Dodson's FB page for a while, but the dude worried me seriously. He got religion -- a fringe Christian cult -- became "ex-gay" and married a woman. That's been a couple of years, and it can't have had a happy ending.

Jeez, that's heartbreaking.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 10:00 PM on April 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


sparklemotion said: The focus on the Gregory Brothers seems particularly strange, because when you look at their oeuvre it's pretty clear that they will use just about whoever as source materials. I actually first heard of them through Songify the News -- so I don't think it's fair to say that they are going out looking for black folks talking funny to make fun of.

I don't think the article ascribes this sort of malicious intent to the Gregory brothers. The core of the piece, as I read it, was this quote:

Writer Fidel Martinez claimed that the videos “are essentially a modern day minstrel show,” and Aisha Harris, writing for Slate, suggested that the popularity of the videos might be due to “a persistent, if unconscious, desire to see black people perform.”

That summary actually seems quite fair, in my opinion. Minstrelsy was never as simple as "white people going out looking for black folks talking funny to make fun of." Again, from Eric Lott's Love & Theft:

What I have called the social unconscious of blackface suggests that the whites involved in minstrelsy were far from unenthusiastic about black cultural practices or, conversely, untroubled by them, continuous though the economic logic of blackface was with slavery.

I actually enjoyed the article's focus on remixes. Consider:

Black performance itself, first of all, was precisely "performative," a cultural invention, not some precious essence instilled in black bodies; and for better or worse it was often a product of self-commodification, a way of getting along in a constricted world. Black people, that is to say, not only exercised a certain amount of control over such practices but perforce sometimes developed them in tandem with white spectators. Moreover, practices taken as black were occasionally interracial creations whose commodification on white stages attested only to whites' greater access to public distribution (and profit). At the same time, of course, there is not question that white commodification of black bodies structured all of this activity, or that the cultural forms of the black dispossessed in the United States have been appropriated and circulated as stand-ins for a supposedly national folk tradition.

The remix of Dodson seems like a great example of an interracial creation produced for (mostly) white profit under the white gaze where the subject exercised some amount of control.
posted by yaymukund at 12:54 AM on April 16, 2016 [3 favorites]


There's also a troubling thing where I frequently see white people misinterpreting intentional humor or hamminess by a poor or poor-seeming black person as unintentionally comedic.
posted by threeants at 7:14 PM on April 15


Yeah, this is the thing I've never been able to account for, other than that apparently most people just aren't as smart as I try to give them credit for. When I first watched all three of the original new stories, my feelings were the same - admiration that even under such stressful conditions, these people still had a sense of humor. I never thought for a minute that the humor was unintentional. This may be because I'm Jewish, and that's a thing that Jews often do, too. I mean, I cracked a joke while we were filling out my dad's death certificate. My whole family cracked up, but the (not Jewish) funeral director looked completely baffled.

The fact that Blacks and Jews both do this sort of thing may be related to the fact that both have survived generations of the worst kind of discrimination and abuse. It may, in fact, be part of why we've survived. Sometimes, your only choice is to give up, or to laugh and keep going forward.

The other reason I felt admiration for the three of them is because even under stress, they were almost musical. There's a lyrical quality to their speech that to me signifies that these remarks are coming from someone who cares enough about art and who is a fast enough thinker to mentally rearrange their thoughts before they speak, so that they sound poetic. Most of our politicians, who are actually trained to do this, aren't nearly as good at it.
posted by MexicanYenta at 7:26 AM on April 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


Probably the worst part of all this is how it's going to diminish my enjoyment of the Kimmy Schmidt theme song.
*thinks for a bit*
Yep, definitely the worst part.
posted by uosuaq at 2:47 PM on April 16, 2016


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