It asks to touch upon different readings in the class so I will give you some reading options and you can choose to use them all or one or two but only these
must be used in comparison to the Beyonce visual album.
Readings (I will upload them for you.)
Theme: Hip Hop’s Gender Trouble: The (Black) Feminine
1. Imani Perry, “The Venus Hip Hop and the Pink Ghetto: Negotiating Spaces
for Women,” in Prophets of the Hood, 155–190. Focus on:
• pp. 155–175, “Negotiating Spaces for Women”;
• pp. 178–180, “A Feminist Response?”;
Theme: Hip Hop’s Gender Trouble: Masculinity
1. Imani Perry, “B-Boys, Players, and Preachers: Reading Masculinity,” in
Prophets of the Hood, 117-154. Focus on:
• pp. 127–142, “Black Women”
• pp. 148–154, “Religious Imagery”
Make sure to use quotes from the reading and from the video/lyrics. I need there to be specific examples in the paper. Please cite which readings you use
and the visual album.
Below are the instructions for the paper from the professor.
The paper must be written in 12 point times new roman font and double-spaced.
You’ve been asked to view Beyoncé’s video album, Lemonade. The cinematography is shot by award-winning experimental film artist Arthur Jafa, who early
on worked with Julie Dash to do the cinematography on her film “Daughter’s of the Dust.” Jafa has also worked with Solange Knowles, Beyoncé’s sister, to do
the videos of some of her work. In short, Lemonade is a video album highly invested in music (with a hip hop edge) and in “representation” or the visual with
themes of sorrow, pain, joy, uplift, in short, an alternate imagination of the sacred or the “holy” and the social or what is of ultimate concern in mind.
Additionally, over Part II of the course, I’ve had you read material addressing identity: race, gender, indirectly aspects of sexuality, and whiteness by way of the
gravitational pull of hip hop on white suburban youth. The work of Professor Iman Perry (of Princeton University) has been a touchstone.
For this longer assignment, please comment on Lemonade (some aspect/s of it) in relationship to some theme/s that has come up in the Part II of the
course. What has grabbed your attention in the lecture, in the readings, in section, etc. That’s probably a good place to start. Ultimately, you have a lot to
choose from, both as regards the video album, Lemonade, and the content of material from Part II of the course. So, let’s state it from jump: you can’t speak
to all of it. So don’t try. You need to make choices on what you want to speak to and how you want to present it around some sort of interesting claim (thesis)
you want to set forth.
Here are a couple of examples of possible approaches to the assignment (and again, these are not exhaustive): (DONT USE THESE EXACTLY)
“I will consider how the figure of the “badwoman,” as Perry has elaborated this, shows up in Lemonade and is in tension with representational moments of
the good “sister.’ Specifically, I will consider how this ambivalent representation of the black woman between “badwoman” and the good sister works in two
(or three or whatever) specific moments of the Album or between XYZ song/s. By considering these moments/scenes I argue that even the moments of the
“good girl” persona in Lemonade has the “badwoman” as Perry talks about in it.“I’m interested in the cinematography of the Lemonade album. Specifically, I see the videos of XYZ and ABC songs on the album as ripe for consideration
next to Perry’s claim that [XYZ in the case in hip hop videos. I see the videos of these songs as challenging that idea in such-and-such specific way. Or I see
them as supporting her claim but only to a point. I will explain what I mean by this in this brief essay.”
These are examples of possible engagements of Lemonade with the material of Part II of the course in mind. I give you here an open field, a long runway, as
it were, to approach both Lemonade and the material from Part II of the course. With this video album as a place sonically and visually to think with, please
engage some aspect of this video album with some aspect of Part II of the course. Again, this is a thesis-driven essay.