{"id":167,"date":"2019-01-03T01:03:26","date_gmt":"2019-01-03T01:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gendersexualityandmedia\/?p=167"},"modified":"2020-04-20T15:34:14","modified_gmt":"2020-04-20T15:34:14","slug":"dancing-as-political-intervention-comparing-this-is-america-and-this-is-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gendersexualityandmedia\/2019\/01\/03\/dancing-as-political-intervention-comparing-this-is-america-and-this-is-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Dancing as Political Intervention? Comparing &#8220;This Is America&#8221; and &#8220;This Is Me&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>In the following post, I draw upon popular works from two distinct genres for analysis of dance as both a narrative form and as a political intervention. Childish Gambino (a.k.a. Donald Glover) released &#8220;This is America\u201d in May 2018, the official video for which has received 454 million views on YouTube at the time of this post.<a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a> In December 2017, Michael Gracey, with assistance from Tony Award-winning songwriters,<a href=\"#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref2\">[2]<\/a> directed <\/em>The Greatest Showman<em>\u2014&#8221;a kaleidoscopic [on-screen] musical about P.T. Barnum\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn3\" name=\"_ftnref3\">[3]<\/a>\u2014which features a track called &#8220;This is Me\u201d (Keala Settle).<a href=\"#_ftn4\" name=\"_ftnref4\">[4]<\/a><\/em> <em>While the blog posts we have written so far have focused primarily on a work we have looked at in class, I would like to do a comparison between &#8220;This Is America,\u201d which we watched as a group, and &#8220;This Is Me,\u201d which we did not<\/em>. <em>I believe that contrasting the messages and effects of these two productions strengthens analysis of Gambino\u2019s piece, and was a way of putting into practice critical viewership in my own consumption of<\/em>\u00a0The Greatest Showman <em>recently<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Greatest Showman Cast - This Is Me (Official Lyric Video)\" width=\"525\" height=\"295\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CjxugyZCfuw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Childish Gambino - This Is America (Official Video)\" width=\"525\" height=\"295\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VYOjWnS4cMY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The titular similarity between \u201cThis is America\u201d and \u201cThis is Me\u201d was a determinant for the entrance of these two works into dialogue. It is their likeness only in name that underscores a juxtaposition in form and message, and problematizes white conceptions of individual agency backed by glorified self-reliance. \u201cThis Is Me,\u201d despite its performance by a collective of \u2018freaks,\u2019<a href=\"#_ftn5\" name=\"_ftnref5\">[5]<\/a> obediently projects white (particularly male) expectations of command over his station, positing independence and oppression as mindsets rather than embedded features of institutions. Indeed, Jennifer Lind (Rebecca Ferguson) toasts P.T. Barnum with a summation of his character\u2019s arc: \u201che is proof that a man\u2019s station is limited only by his imagination.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn6\" name=\"_ftnref6\">[6]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This message is far more empowering for some than others. I thoroughly adore this movie, despite the criticism it has received, because a) I think the singing, choreography, costumes, and \u201ccelebration of humanity\u201d are wonderful; and b) because I find Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron very handsome. While it is meant to be a fantastic and historically inaccurate montage of anthems, its major shortcoming is not in its depiction of P.T. Barnum and the circus as having positive social power. Rather, it is more the extent to which the movie simplifies (or omits mention of?) constraints on social mobility by persons deemed abject. By overemphasizing the power that an individual\u2019s pride in their own existence has to provide escape velocity from a socially stratified orbit, the power of the musical ensemble\u2014and therein the sociopolitical collective\u2014to \u201cflatten everything within a 50-mile radius\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn7\" name=\"_ftnref7\">[7]<\/a> with their voices is unfortunately undermined.<\/p>\n<p>If one were to deal with the pieces chronologically, \u201cThis Is America\u201d can be read as a racial-political rejoinder to \u201cThis Is Me\u201d\u2014an empowerment anthem within a populist film. While an appealing celebration of visual diversity\u2014along axes of identity like gender, race, body shape, etc.\u2014the non-abject, white viewer is subtly but suddenly abdicated of democratic responsibility to \u2018other\u2019 countrypeople as members of the freak collective assert: \u201cI won\u2019t let the shame sink in.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn8\" name=\"_ftnref8\">[8]<\/a> This works as part of a feel-good narrative for a largely white, socially enfranchised audience, as the individuality conveyed by the lyric assigns the marginalized the task of inwardly negotiating terms of their existence\u00ad\u2013\u201cwho [they\u2019re] meant to be\u201d as individuals. Speaking to the vocal power of the ensemble in <em>The Greatest Showman<\/em>, one critic noted,\u00a0 \u201cthese are refrains configured to flatten everything within a 50-mile radius.\u201d While sonically the chorus may be greater than the sum of its individual vocalists, depicted are marginalized people merely articulating internal negotiations simultaneously, not collectively interrogating the social conditions that define \u201cwho [they\u2019re] meant to be.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The dissonance between the palatable, familiar message of individualism and the subversive vocal and corporeal performance by a freak collective is shocking. Negotiating shame-inducing experiences and making meaning for oneself\u2014quietly, inwardly\u2014is significant here because of the threatening possibility of its opposite. Collective negotiation, assertion, and action does not look like a bearded lady-led troupe in <em>The Greatest Showman<\/em>; it looks like Ferguson, Missouri. Baltimore, Maryland, Dallas, Texas. It also looks like Charlottesville, Virginia. Indeed, this is America.<\/p>\n<p>Gambino\u2019s embodiment of America, as \u201cboth the caricature and the ring-leader,\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn9\" name=\"_ftnref9\">[9]<\/a> acts as a noteworthy backdrop to the political moment in which <em>The Greatest Showman<\/em> was so well-received. First, dancing functions very differently in Gambino\u2019s work. When done by him, dancing historicizes blackness as other, simultaneously internationalizing<a href=\"#_ftn10\" name=\"_ftnref10\">[10]<\/a> oppression of black people and calling to the fore the double-bind of living as black in America (e.g. being held responsible for comparatives shortcoming in a system laden with intentionally oppressive socio-economic and cultural structures<a href=\"#_ftn11\" name=\"_ftnref11\">[11]<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Violence is not merely a running theme in Gambino\u2019s video, but more so a constant. The jarring execution of the guitar-soloist-turned-shackled-prisoner early on and the massacre of the church choir (both alluding to real incidences of violence against black people) show direct interaction between American [ring]leadership and victims. Between those two flashpoints, however, the video relies on mise-en-sc\u00e8ne to create layered relationships, an example of which are the schoolchildren dancing behind Gambino. <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-168 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gendersexualityandmedia\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/87\/2019\/01\/Gambino.Pretty-300x169.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" \/>I read the schoolchildren\u2019s performance as a means of survival in a hostile environment\u2014a metaphor for most marginalized Americans\u2019 patterns of consumption and labor in a socio-racially stratified system. Only possible to grasp with the long shots is the situation of the schoolchildren between [ring]leadership and the violence constantly unfolding in the background; as a collective, they are an enabler of violence caused by leadership\u2019s behavior. Thus, their dancing extends commentary on the aforementioned double bind with which (especially racial) minority groups are faced: survival in an oppressive system renders one complicit in the oppression of other minoritized groups, even one\u2019s own people. As if it were not obvious, \u201cThis Is America\u201d sonicizes and visualizes the shattering of individualism as a potentially defiant force (as in \u201cThis Is Me\u201d), implicitly calling for a collective politics.<\/p>\n<p>As riddled with entendre as Gambino\u2019s body expressions are, the mise-en-sc\u00e8ne of \u201cThis Is America\u201d both repeats and varies the meaning of Gambino\u2019s choreography, erecting visual\/sonic structures of feeling which recognize societal systems as paramount. With the choreography for \u201cThis Is Me\u201d being its only source of meaning, the potency of asserting pride and place is not understood by any on-screen characters beyond those using trying to use it as a tactic. In making the spectacle the only point of emphasis, \u201cThis Is Me\u201d actually undercuts the power of pride as a factor in social progress by making it the only one considered. In spite of criticisms that Gambino\u2019s failure to make (black) social dance the point of the video,<a href=\"#_ftn12\" name=\"_ftnref12\">[12]<\/a> I argue that it is precisely this choice\u2014deploying dance as a tool of visual interruption rather than as a cohesive research method\u2014that makes the video profound portrayal of blackness in America.<\/p>\n<p>Just as Nguyen argues the \u201cvisual logic\u201d of viewer identification with the top (in gay male pornography) is \u201cstaged from the bottom\u2019s point of view,\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn13\" name=\"_ftnref13\">[13]<\/a> \u201cThis Is Me\u201d encourages identification with historically white, individualist agency narratives from the perspective of the minoritized. \u201cThis Is America,\u201d through its acknowledgment and recreation of the social conditions under which blackness is lived, confounds the binary of victim and perpetrator. Avoidance of such a binary negates the possibility of existing an inverted privilege\/identification scheme (i.e. through the oppressed, the viewer still identifies with the already privileged oppressor). Gambino presents a counterexample to a privilege-reinforcing identification scheme and, therefore, creates an effective political intervention where \u201cThis Is Me\u201d does not. The presence of a privilege-reinforcing identification scheme can thus be used by viewers as a litmus test for a failed political intervention in other media.<\/p>\n<p>Popular media, especially that coming out of Hollywood, is dealing increasingly with themes of identity, diversity, and representation. This makes such media inherently political. Like in formal politics, messages must be crafted to address and resonate with varied constituencies. On the production side, the inclination is to interlace visual conversations of political themes with \u201cshared\/American values,\u201d which may work to unintentionally reinforce privilege rather than create new spaces for representation of minoritized identity categories. On the consumption side, I call for more widespread use of the previously described litmus test for political intervention effectiveness among media\u2019s viewership, and encourage critics to incorporate such arguments about films\u2019 messaging into discussion of structural elements.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> Hiro Murai, \u201cChildish Gambino \u2013 This Is America (Official Music Video),\u201d YouTube, 5 May 2018, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMY\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMY<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref2\" name=\"_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> David Sims, &#8220;The Astonishing Success of The Greatest Showman,&#8221; <em>The Atlantic<\/em>, 22 Jan. 2018, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/entertainment\/archive\/2018\/01\/the-astonishing-success-of-the-greatest-showman\/551081\/\">https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/entertainment\/archive\/2018\/01\/the-astonishing-success-of-the-greatest-showman\/551081\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref3\" name=\"_ftn3\">[3]<\/a> \u201cThe Greatest Showman,\u201d IMDb, 2017, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt1485796\/\">https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt1485796\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref4\" name=\"_ftn4\">[4]<\/a> &#8220;The Greatest Showman Cast &#8211; This Is Me (Official Lyric Video),&#8221; Atlantic Records, YouTube, 11 Jan. 2018, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=CjxugyZCfuw\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=CjxugyZCfuw<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref5\" name=\"_ftn5\">[5]<\/a> Sims, &#8220;The Astonishing Success of The Greatest Showman,&#8221; Jan. 2018.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref6\" name=\"_ftn6\">[6]<\/a> Michael Gracey, <em>The Greatest Showman,<\/em> 20th Century Fox, 8 Dec. 2018.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref7\" name=\"_ftn7\">[7]<\/a> https:\/\/wMichael Hahn, &#8220;The Greatest Showman was derided by critics. So why has its soundtrack shot straight to No 1?&#8221; The Guardian, 7 Feb. 2018, <u>ww.theguardian.com\/film\/shortcuts\/2018\/feb\/07\/big-choruses-greatest-showman-soundtrack-top-of-charts-hugh-jackman<\/u>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref8\" name=\"_ftn8\">[8]<\/a> Michael Gracey, <em>The Greatest Showman,<\/em> 20th Century Fox, 8 Dec. 2018.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref9\" name=\"_ftn9\">[9]<\/a> Alana Yzola, &#8220;Hidden Meanings Behind Childish Gambino&#8217;s &#8216;This Is America&#8217; Video Explained,&#8221; Insider &#8211; YouTube, 9 May 2018, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=9_LIP7qguYw\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=9_LIP7qguYw<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref10\" name=\"_ftn10\">[10]<\/a> In addition to many viral dance moves appropriated by the video, the schoolchildren and Gambino perform the Gwara Gwara, a South African dance move, on several occasions, creating room to liken racial hierarchies persistent in the U.S. to Apartheid South Africa. See Yzola, &#8220;Hidden Meanings,&#8221; Insider, 2018; Additionally, in the final bridge, Gambino says: \u201cYou just a black man in this world,\u201d thus broadening the scope of discourses around racism, which typically focus on the features of one nation\u2019s political system, to the international.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref11\" name=\"_ftn11\">[11]<\/a>\u00a0As in \u201cGet your money, black man (black man).\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref12\" name=\"_ftn12\">[12]<\/a> Thomas DeFrantz, &#8220;b.O.s. 7.3 \/ This is America,&#8221; ASAP Journal, 27 Aug. 2018, <u>asapjournal.com\/b-o-s-7-3-this-is-america-thomas-f-defrantz\/<\/u>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref13\" name=\"_ftn13\">[13]<\/a> Nguyen Tan Hoang, A View from the Bottom (Duke University Press: 2014), 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the following post, I draw upon popular works from two distinct genres for analysis of dance as both a narrative form and as a political intervention. Childish Gambino (a.k.a. Donald Glover) released &#8220;This is America\u201d in May 2018, the official video for which has received 454 million views on YouTube at the time of &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gendersexualityandmedia\/2019\/01\/03\/dancing-as-political-intervention-comparing-this-is-america-and-this-is-me\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Dancing as Political Intervention? Comparing &#8220;This Is America&#8221; and &#8220;This Is Me&#8221;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":750,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gendersexualityandmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gendersexualityandmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gendersexualityandmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gendersexualityandmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/750"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gendersexualityandmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gendersexualityandmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gendersexualityandmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions\/169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gendersexualityandmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gendersexualityandmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/gendersexualityandmedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}