More Than Music
In the classic award-winning music video, “Waterfalls” featuring Left Eye, Chili, and T-Boz many different cultural messages are being portrayed. The song vividly alludes to drug dealing and promiscuity, it has flashbacks to lives lost from HIV/AIDS and gun violence and links the two to “chasing waterfalls,” aka self-destruction. The video shows the sad norms of many African Americans during this period, as well as today. It shows a young black boy going out to sell drugs and being brutally shot dead in the streets against the begging and pleading of his single mother. The messages being portrayed are of how many African American boys only know one way of life from an early age, drugs, violence, the streets, and also highlights a stereotypical single-parent household, where the mother is left to provide and raise her children all on her own.
I believe that Britney Cooper and Susana Morris would consider TLC all crunk feminists. I think this because they talk about crunk feminism as it relates to hip-hop and state that, “while many of us appreciate the culture and the music, we do not have a blind allegiance to it,
nor is our feminism solely, …. defined by hip hop. Yet our connection to hip hop links us to a set of generational concerns and a community of women, locally, nationally, and globally.” (Crunkadelic, 2010, p. xx)
The group TLC uses their song Waterfalls to draw attention to generational concerns that all black mothers and women have to deal with at some point or another in their lives, worrying about the black male figures in their lives. Their use of hip-hop allows them to connect with other women on a local and global level, by using their song as an outlet for other crunk feminists as well who enjoy hip-hop, TLC is a prime example of how hip hop isn’t a threat to feminism, and I will go as far to argue that it can even help embrace and showcase it, and I think Cooper and Morris would agree.
This music video also relates to the concept Tonia Sutherland talks about of (re)membering. In the video, there are flashbacks to the young boy whose life is lost due to drug and gun violence, as well as flashbacks to the adult male who lost his life due to HIV/AIDS. Sutherland writes (re)membering, like this to show that this isn’t just a one-time thing to remember, but a process that is constantly occurring over and over again, just like how people can watch music videos over and over again. Each time someone replays and rewatches the music video, they are also (re)membering the idea of who the person or persons in their lives that they know or have lost were. I think this is exactly what TLC wanted to accomplish with their viewers every time they saw their video, to get them to (re)member all the lives lost to drugs, gun violence, and HIV/AIDS. To use their memory to do better in life, but to honor and never forget.
Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” music video went viral after he used his song and the different scenes throughout to draw attention to what it's like to be black in America. Gambino wants to call attention to the use of guns and violence in America and how we are so used to the tragedy of it that it becomes entertainment and is a typical part of the national conversation. Gambino dresses in a plain pair of grey pants, with no shirt, and his natural textured hair. This is symbolic because it strips him away from his pedal stool of being a celebrity with fame and stardom, and portrays him as an everyday regular black man in America. He is representing every black man as a whole in America. There is also a scene where Childish Gambino is dancing with a group of schoolchildren while violence and chaos revolve around them that demonstrating that violence is sadly a part of everyone's lives and unavoidable.
This relates to the concept of what Teju Cole was talking about when he wrote about how black deaths were being used in photography to reinforce the power structure of how the powerful continue to dominate the less powerful. Gambino calls upon this concept by forcing his viewers to get uncomfortable with the graphic violence that occurs against African American males and how it has become normalized in society. Gambino’s video forces his readers to continually see different acts and forms of violence which makes them think and dive deeper than simply asking “why is this happening?” but also “why have I allowed this to happen?” (Cole, 2019) as Cole talks about. Gambino poses this form of deeper thinking mainly to white people. I think this because it is clear that African Americans experience this in one way or another. However, he is posing this to whites in America to get them to help make a real change in society alongside the work blacks are doing as well.
This music video also draws upon Sutherland’s concept of (re)membering. In the middle of the music video, a choir of nine black choir kids is gunned down by Gambino, which was to recreate the quickness of the massacre in 2015 Charleston, when white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine black people in a church basement. Gambino uses this scene to make his viewers of all races remember this tragedy that happened so that we don’t forget, move on, and just accept it as a societal norm. I think Gambino also uses this to call out the power structure of politics and the American government with the lack of gun control laws and regulations there are in America and how it disproportionately affects blacks.
Overall, both these music videos related to a variety of different concepts that we have learned about in class, including (re)membering, power dynamics, how photography is interpreted, crunk feminism, and many other topics.
Reference Page
Childish gambino - this is America (official video) - youtube. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYOjWnS4cMY.
Gajanan, M. (2018, May 7). Childish Gambino's 'this is America': Breaking down symbols. Time. Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://time.com/5267890/childish-gambino-this-is-america-meaning/.
Smf, says:, C., & (Optional), N. (2019, April 7). Meaning of "waterfalls" by TLC. Song Meanings and Facts. Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://www.songmeaningsandfacts.com/waterfalls-by-tlc/.
TLC - Waterfalls (official HD video) - youtube. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WEtxJ4-sh4.
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