"You run this hard just to stay in place": representations of Black masculinity in contemporary US popular culture productions
Date
2021
Authors
Dunn, Sherredine
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Abstract
NTRODUCTION: The past decade has seen an explosion of prominent Black pop culture icons dedicated to representing everyday experiences of Blackness in their work. Such figures include the likes of Jay-Z (Shawn Carter), Kendrick Lamar (Kendrick Duckworth), Ava DuVernay and J. Cole (Jermaine Cole) who, across a number of art forms and genres, have displayed a commitment to telling the stories of Black American males’ lived experiences in various forms of diversity and adversity. In addition to documenting these experiences, these figures often highlight matters of racial discrimination in a modern society where many consider racism a painful and shameful legacy, but do not always a present reality. They include issues such as police brutality and racial profiling, amongst others, which are often universal qualities of life for individuals who inhabit Blackness in America. We have recently seen an increase in reporting of issues such as the killing of Black men by American police officers in a number of media forms, embodied by the Black Lives Matter movement. Specific instances, such as the deaths of Trayvon Martin (2012), Michael Brown (2014), George Floyd (2020), and a host of other killings of Black people have sparked nationwide protests in the USA as well as many similar protests in a number of countries outside of the USA. These protests have often been bound by the use of the rallying cry “Black Lives Matter”, used to draw attention to the persistence of racial inequality and violence enacted upon Black bodies as a result...
Description
A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by Research (English), 2021