Bourgeoise Black Aesthetics
This is the germ of an idea that I might develop into a full article later, so feel free to let me know what you think.
I was watching In Our Mothers’ Gardens and something about it felt…off. The women’s stories were all interesting, and their mothers had been through a lot. The musical choices were really fun and everything was well shot but there was something uncanny about it. The camera was too sharp. The lighting was too soft. The platitudes felt too practiced. It felt too much like an Oprah interview when the stories here would be much better served as a conversation at the dinner table.
This nagging feeling isn’t something that was new to me. I’d felt it before when I watched clips from Red Table Talk, or any of the wide variety of online talk/panel Black shows that have emerged in the past decade. What forms is a presentable version of Blackness. One that reifies the nuclear family, the hustle and talks about anti-blackness in the abstract or the individual but never meaningfully interrogates the system.
The issue here is not just one of content but one of style. There’s no room for rough edges or unique directorial style because everything must conform to this specific format. You can actually see this specific phenomenon outside of US Black TV/Film as well. The new wave of Nigerian film, particularly those produced by Netflix, falls victim to a similar issue. Everyone has nicer cameras and functional sound now (which is very welcome), but it rings hollow because the shots are largely pretty uninspired. There are films like The Lost Okoroshi and King of Boys which really carve out their own style, but they’re the exception not the rule.
Crucially this is a performance of a (petit) bourgeois form of Blackness. All the women in IOMG who talked about their mothers were some sort of (micro-)celebrity/prominent media figure ranging from Tarana Burke to Yolanda Sangweni. The only real exception was Dr Koko Selaisse - who was easily the most interesting one, unlike the others her interviews were all filmed in her house. The discussions they have here are all important - but there is a clear gap in the focus. The biggest example of this is self-care, when they talk it’s very much about the forms of self-care which are accessible for middle or upper class Black women. They allude to the systemic violences which exclude working class Black women from self-care but never really focus on the specific systems at play and how they can be fought to make self-care accessible for all. When most of these women talk about spirituality it is again through this bourgeois lens, it feels very akin to the way Black Parade invokes African spirituality.
These rich celebrities are elevated to represent all our issues and even those with the best of intentions are incapable of it. So instead we get conversations on race with all the depth of a J.Cole song because people who a) don’t have much knowledge/analysis beyond direct lived experience and b) have the buffer of wealth are having them.
Notably every women here is cisgender and heterosexual - or if they are queer it is never mentioned and it isn’t especially visible (I know that ideas is a little messy but allow me that generalisation here). This isn’t just an issue of representational politics, it demonstrates that there is a very specific version of Blackness being presented here. Black queer/trans womanhood would disrupt the focus on bio-family and blood which is apparent throughout the documentary.
All of this comes together and forms a sort of post-BLM neo-respectability politics where lip service is paid to Black radicalism but those ideas aren’t really materialised in practice. Now this isn’t new. Shows like the Bill Cosby Show or pretty much anything film with Sidney Poitier in it performed respectability politics decades ago. But there is a specificity to this politics which emerges from the neoliberal co-option of the revolutionary energy of the masses. This is something which can be seen in the rise of the pseudo-genre of ‘conscious rap’ where cishet men are treated like revolutionaries for writing lyrics which feel like those vapid political tweets which inexplicably go viral on shiny suit twitter. All the while, the deep and rich politic present in the work of female rappers, queer rappers, or even other cishet male rappers who don’t get that revered status - gets its cultural significance dismissed.
The result of all this is a little sad. The intentions are good but the knife has been blunted and potential squandered. As much as I want to be rooting for everybody Black, and on some level always will do, we have to recognise that there is no future for liberatory Black art in the mainstream. Perhaps a few exceptions will get through every now and then, and the more bourgeoise stuff isn’t completely worthless, but it won’t liberate us no matter how many pro-Black slogans they put in there. We can and must do better.
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I’m less online lately, but whsiper on the winds and maybe you’ll fine me! Always appreciate your support whether that’s verbal, financial (ko-fi.com/tayowrites) or whatever else.