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"Wigger" consumption of gangster imagery and materiale does not necessarily correspond to some profound sense of ideological dialogue...although I would no rule out this possibility, merely relegate it to a case-by-case basis. To purchase something, or otherwise consume it, is to affiliation one's self-identity with the semantic properties of the object/idea consumed. This is a meta-application of the truism "you are what you eat." Consumption is equal parts wish-fulfillment and social performance.
The below is a very general theory, thrown together only with head references...I'm not walking 2miles back to the library for you guys, it's too damn cold.
Gang members represent a narrow set of inner city residents; predominantly male, predominantly under the age of 30.
But is from this cultural material that the public's image of urban black culture has been formulated, largely as a result of the press coverage of the "Bloods/Crips War" in the 1980s and early 1990s. Why? Because the gang lifestyle is dramatic...it possesses all of the requisite plot points for nighttime telly...violence, sex, music, drugs, death, and violence. It is from this constructed image that we find the first "gangsta rap" artists attaining prominence...in spite of their circulation within the music scene for years, their success beyond their urban localities is directly tied to media hyperbolization, presented to a predominantly white adolecsent male consuming public.
Why? The construction of masculinity inculcated in modern American society, and the strains of racial caricature and stereotype afloat in the US subconscious. The modern adolescent male ideal is an interweave of attractiveness, danger, rebellion, and materialism. The media-generated, record-producer version of the gangster rapper bundles all of these qualities:
1. There is a remaining racist theme in society that associates dark-skinned people, especially young black [African] males, with excessive virility, and a particularly implacable libido. This quality is presented simultaneously as a fetishisation, in both the Marxist and psychoerotic senses, and a social threat. While modern racist organizations still characterize this typing as a potential pathology to "Caucasian society," in the form of rape and miscegenation, the meme has been inverted and liminalized in mainstream thought - yet is still present, in the form of jokes, speculation about penis size, "interracial pornography," etc.
2. "Blackness" and poverty generate a subaltern standing relative to the hegemonic [European] culture of the United States, on top of which can be laid the "sub-subaltern" rebellion of gang membership, simultaneously a defiance of hegemonic, parental, societal standards and mores.
3. In the US, thanks to media representation, Gang membership is inherently tied with extreme violence and more general forms of criminality. The individual gang member is thus viewed as a potential threat, and an uncertain one.
4. In perception, criminality is interlinked with rapid material success, particularly the drug trade. Furthermore, this accumulation of capital is displayed by the consumption of extragavances, thus creating displays...which correspond to social credibility.
Let us now contemplate the picture of the "Stuntaz" again. How is it, and the accompanying website, a sublimation of these young men's fantasies?
And do they realize that "Icy Hot" is that crap you rub on sprains? I can't stop laughing about that. |
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