Bell Hooks does not like that Time Magazine cover of Beyoncé. When pushed back with the assertion that Beyoncé probably used her own stylist and had final approval of the photograph that Time used, Bell Hooks said:
But then you're saying, then, from my deconstructive point of view that she's colluding in the construction of her self as a slave. Are you still a slave? It's not a liberatory image.Here's the image in question for reference. How that's supposed to remind anyone of a little girl or a slave, I do not know. But congratulations to Bell Hooks for getting her name to rise in the new media morass, and I am happy to do my part in bringing this message forward. I don't particularly like seeing photos of pop singers looking inexplicably grouchy while wearing granny panties. But little girl/slave isn't what I'm seeing. If anyone's doing a "predatory gaze," it's Beyoncé.
Via Metafilter, where somebody says Beyoncé looks like she's wearing "very chaste beachwear" and somebody else says says:
Keep in mind the context, the title of the panel was "Are You Still A Slave? Liberating the Black Female Body."... If the assertion is that [Beyoncé is] one of the most powerful people in America, then it's worthwhile to deconstruct the Beyonce imagery and machine. She's not off limits, she's THE person to talk about.... [W]hatever bell's comments are, they are NOT "crazy ragey hyperbolic shit." She has clearly thought a lot about this and does not use her words lightly.
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Sweet Heaven, is this what colleges are turning out? No waonder we have to rely on the Russians to send our astronauts to the space station, and everything in every store says "Made In China"
The lefties can't get over Woody Allen. They are sick, just like that Duke student porno actress with all the scars from cutting herself. Nauseating.
I'm so glad I cancelled Time way back, when the second cover featuring Madonna was delivered to my house. What a rag.
Everything induces racial/white male hegemony reactions in so many talking heads that the cacophony amounts to babbling hacks crying wolf...
And, sadly, another thread becomes a Crack theatre.
Who is Bell Hooks and why should anyone care about her opinion on this or any other topic?
bell hooks seems to want Beyoncé to conform to what hooks thinks is appropriate behavior for a black entertainer. Oddly she is making a somewhat similar argument that Bill O'Reilly made, which is that Beyoncé is somehow hurting young black women. We need to stop blaming the media for the mistakes that people make. It's a scapegoat that doesn't tackle the real problems.
But then you're saying, then, from my deconstructive point of view
She said her "deconstructive point of view", and I think she really means it in the best academic tradition.
Don't read her article as if it's trying to marshal "the facts". She's riffing, trying to tie together multiple trains of thought into a performative piece of rhetoric. For her, there are just competing discourses, there are no facts, and certainly no eternal moral verities. She's just trying to cut her discourse into the front of the line.
I see a part of Beyoncé that is in fact anti-feminist — that is a terrorist, especially in terms of the impact on young girls.
'nuff said.
I say to my students: Decolonize. But there's also that price for decolonization. You're not gonna have the wealth. You're not gonna be getting your Genius award funded by the militaristic, imperialist MacArthur people. And I'm not saying anything negative about the people who receive those awards, but there is a price that comes with decentering, decolonizing, and part of what has to happen for us to be free is that we have to create our own standards of how to live.
This is a confusion wrapped in rage inside a victim.
Apologies to Mr. Churchill.
"Who is Bell Hooks and why should anyone care about her opinion on this or any other topic?"
Well, you can Google it yourself, but I will point out that she's #8 (sharing #8 with Audre Lorde) on this list of "Stuff White Feminists Like":
"Ask many white feminists to list their favorite writers and inevitably these two will crop up in the top ten list. The backbone of many Women’s Studies programs and often the two women of color that white feminists have heard about, bell hooks (”ain’t I a woman”) and Audre Lorde (”the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”) are also quite popular because name-dropping them in mixed-race company sends the signal to women of color that white feminists do not spend all their time watching Buffy, they care about the “other” issues, too!
"Perhaps a slightly more controversial reason for this is the plain fact (coming from a person who did not major in Women’s Studies) that, unlike the old soldiers of many early feminist texts, Audre Lorde and bell hooks’ books are actually captivating reads that deal with the things that most women who are not FriedanSteinemBrownmiller face day in and day out. You know, like fair housing and childcare and working, rather than pissiness about our husband’s Playboy magazines and resentment of Downy commercials."
Here's "Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black." I read that.
Fart Noises
[W]hatever bell's comments are, they are NOT "crazy ragey hyperbolic shit." She has clearly thought a lot about this...
Thinking a lot about something often goes hand-in-hand with crazy ragey hpyerbolic shit.
Hooks is even more of a hateful lunatic than I ever imagined.
Janet Mock: "I would argue she chose this image, so I don't want to strip Beyoncé of choosing this image — of being her own manager."
bell hooks: "Then you are saying, from my deconstructive point of view, that she is colluding in the construction of herself as a slave."
Trans.: "I'm so far gone in this bullshit that I'm incapable of hearing contrary points of view as anything but insufficiently-deconstructed variants of my own opinions."
"[W]hatever bell's comments are, they are NOT "crazy ragey hyperbolic shit."
I concur. You can tell the difference between crazy ragey hyperbolic shit and tiresome stupid grievance-studies shit by the fact that it's much harder to tell the difference between the latter and some unfortunate lunatic conversing with the voices in his head.
I don't like the picture either.
I think she looks like a tranny all the time.
When she dances, it looks like a linebacker.
Well, you can Google it yourself, but I will point out that she's #8 (sharing #8 with Audre Lorde) on this list of "Stuff White Feminists Like"
In other words, no one that I could possibly care less about.
Before venturing an opinion on Ms. Hooks or Ms. -Z, check your privilege.
Beyonce' looks like she's been starving herself.
Bell Hooks said:
But then you're saying, then, from my deconstructive point of view that she's colluding in the construction of her self as a slave.
I'm pretty sure that the person pushing back against Hooks is not saying anything from Hooks' deconstructive point of view. I suspect that they are in fact calling that entire view into question.
She has clearly thought a lot about this and does not use her words lightly.
Yah, That's what I was afraid of.
People want me to hate them, but I refuse to give them that power. I'm just going to look away from this conversation and people who want to have conversations like this.
From the link:
"intellectual giant hooks" - intentional joke?
Suggested variation for a possible Mr. Bell Dicks. "intellectual giant Dicks"
Anyhoo, Time magazine, Beyonce, Intellectual giant hooks, feminist theory, - I can't imagine anything more irrelevant.
Beyonce looks terrible on that cover, but I don't think it rises to the level of terrorism though as a white privileged female, what do I know?? She is part of the entertainment world, she's going to conform to what all singers, actors and actresses of all races do. This basically involves being 50 pounds lighter than the average person and wearing bizarre outfits no one understands, but many emulate.
Unless I missed a memo, bell hooks also doesn't like it when you capitalize her name(s).
IiB: I'm pretty sure that the person pushing back against Hooks is not saying anything from Hooks' deconstructive point of view. I suspect that they are in fact calling that entire view into question.
You're obviously ignorant of the great intellectual advances of the Higher Solipsism. To disagree is to silence and to disrespect. Not to affirm the aggrieved's viewpoint is an act of imperialist aggression, an assertion of colonial ownership, a veritable mind-rape. That is, you're a bully who needs to check his privilege. How can we have a frank and open conversation if you won't agree with everything I say or STFU?
Does this make her the female version of an Uncle Tom?
What does Crack have to say here about us white people? Surely she is only doing this because of white people.
Isn't the whole purpose of deconstruction reconstruction?
Whatever she is constructing, if it doesn't allow for artistic freedom, I reject it.
"Unless I missed a memo, bell hooks also doesn't like it when you capitalize her name(s)."
The memo says: My blog, my stylebook.
"Deconstructive" is incorrect usage. She should have written "deconstructionist."
But her incorrect usage is appropriate,insofar as deconstructionism is pure, unadulterated bullshit.
bell hooks also doesn't like it when you capitalize her name(s).
Really?
That's precious.
And so edgy.
[W]hatever bell's comments are, they are NOT "crazy ragey hyperbolic shit." She has clearly thought a lot about this and does not use her words lightly.
There's not actually a contradiction here -- lots of people spend a lot of time thinking about things, dwelling on things, letting things fester in the recesses of their mind, and in the end talk about those things in words deliberately chosen and utterly mad.
The fact that one has thought about something a lot is orthogonal to whether one has something useful to say. Thinking about something an awful lot also looks quite a bit like obsession and madness. Especially if it's all in the echo chamber of one's own mind -- positions that might have been a trifle aggressive evolve into positions which are extreme, which evolve into positions which are flat-out off-the-wall, like the comments at issue here. That's all fine for late night bull sessions when you're a college sophomore, but a time eventually comes to put away childish things.
On the other hand, this is the internet, so we may as well enjoy our childish things under a threadbare cloak of imperfect anonymity. But only in fun -- not to be taken seriously.
Marxists don't have the first fucking idea what liberty is.
"She has clearly thought a lot about this and does not use her words lightly."
Yeah ---just as the Unabomber did, and Hitler did, and Lenin before him.
What the EFF does thinking "a lot about" something have to do with the output of that thinking---you know, like facts, logic and reasoning?
1. When Bell Hooks writes poetry equal to e. e. cummings', I'll adopt her preferred style for her name.
2. I googled her and found images of a younger and older Bell Hooks. The younger one was attractive, and the older one was . . . older. I intuit that this may have something to do with her criticism of Beyonce (who is a babe, whatever else she may be).
"Well, you can Google it yourself, but I will point out that she's #8 (sharing #8 with Audre Lorde) on this list of "Stuff White Feminists Like".
Your gigantic problem is that you think white feminists, or any feminists for that matter, are important and have credibility.
They aren't, and they don't.
They are foolish, self centered, and indoctrinated people living off the fruits of the brains and sweat of men, mostly white, who have built this cushy world of plenitude and comfort that allows them the luxury of behaving like spoiled rotten, ignorant babies.
Rest assured they and their Marxist fellow travelers have done the work needed to rot away the foundation of the civilization that supports them in their freedom to indulge their lunatic pursuits and when the collapse comes, a matter of when not if, the only females that will survive will be the ones that best please the whims of the cruel, hard men who will run whatever is left.
Bell Hooks meets the Bell Curve - hilarity ensues.
Beyonce is disgustingly rich no-talent. She needs to check her privilege.
The memo says: My blog, my stylebook.
Micro-aggressor!
You have to feel for the students who pay tuition to take hooks class. College is pretty much a waste of money for most students as it is, but studying hooks will not only make you unemployable, it will make you unlikeable.
I think you mean your white supremacist stylebook, Prof.
"bow down bitches!"
You have to capitalize Bell Hooks or it sounds like you're talking about some piece of tower maintenance equipment. Ivory tower maintenance maybe.
She has clearly thought a lot about this and does not use her words lightly.
As Ted Williams said, if you don't think too good, don't think too much.
eric,
"What does Crack have to say here about us white people?"
As this thread proves, most aren't worth talking to,...
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