The Symbolic Rape of Representation- A Critical Analysis of Black Musical Expression

ISBN-13: 9783836419024 / Angielski / Miękka / 2007 / 184 str.

Richard Koonce

Opis

This study supports the argument that the majority of hip-hop music, withinthe context of what is defined as popular music, reinforces stereotypes andthe ideological concept of "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" referredto by bell hooks (1981). By interpreting the rhetoric of lyrics through a lensshaped by black feminist and critical theories, this analysis focuses upon asite, Billboards Hot 100 Singles, where popular music produced and performedby recording artists of different races and represented by variousgenres can be analyzed and compared. It becomes glaringly apparentthrough the use of rhetorical criticism that no other popular music genre iscomparatively similar in its oppressive representation of any other group ofpeople than hip-hop music is to Black people, especially women. Overwhelmingly,declining morals and values of society are represented bypopular black musical expression. As a communication study, this analysis hasfar-reaching implications for the various ways that the rhetoric of music helpsdefine and shape beliefs, values and attitudes about a particular group orrace of people. The target audience includes media scholars, urban educatorsinterested in teaching self-respect and dignity among youth, and a widerange of other professionals and lay people concerned about the currentdirection of popular music and its impact upon children.