A Display of White Privilege and Ignorance in Pop Music
In the midst of a search for something to write about this week, I decided to Google, “culturally insensitive music”. I expected nothing more than articles about older songs that simply aged poorly in today's world of progressivity. I found a number of articles of this nature; “11 Popular Songs You Didn’t Realize Are Actually Racist” or “16 songs that haven’t aged well”. I wasn’t surprised to find these lists contained songs with titles that pretty much wrote the articles in and of themselves (i.e. “Brown Sugar”, by the Rolling Stones or “Island Girl” by Elton John). While these songs deserve the criticism they’re getting in today’s social climate, I was looking for something a little fresher…
The second strain of articles were directed more toward modern pop music. After reading, there is a clear trend of white pop artists whose lyrical commentary pertains to every culture except for their own… Frankly, discussion of the artist's own whiteness might be a difficult topic to discuss because there isn’t much to discuss- or rather- there’s so much to discuss, especially in the context of their vital errors in content creation.
Meghan Trainor is known for her hit song “All About That Bass”, and it’s been promoted as a song promoting body positivity. When you take a closer look at the lyrics, it becomes pretty shaky. The music video encompasses the full spectrum of content-creation error. Jenny Trout wrote a fantastic analysis of Meghan Trainor’s song, highlighting every contradiction between what the song was meant to be and what it is. The article that Trout wrote truly covers every detail that is needed to understand what's wrong with “All About That Bass,” so if you want a more full dissection, I invite you to visit her website. In summary, Trainor perpetuates a female desire to fit the male gaze, her song attempts to shift the body standard from barbie-slim to “all the right junk in all the right places” (thus, eliminating a feeling of all-encompassing body positivity), and perpetuates stereotypes surrounding “thickness” and “booty” placed on black women’s bodies. One of the standout issues, however, is that Trainor is the center of it all when she is “not fat or ‘plus-size’ by any means” (Trout, 2014). The sexualization and objectification around having “booty” isn’t one applied to white women of Trainor’s size, but to black women. ALSO, the sexualization of bodies in general (but specifically the bodies of black women) throughout the song and music video is cringe-worthy to say the least.
Avril Lavigne’s “Hello Kitty” music video is another example of blatant cultural appropriation. Might I add, first that this song is as annoying as any of the appropriation going on in it. She made the trip to Japan to shoot the video and is surrounded by asian backup dancers, though she’s the only white girl shown throughout the video. Her response to the backlash around the video is equally as naive as the video itself. According to Vulture.com, Lavigne tweeted, “RACIST??? LOLOLOL!!! I love Japanese culture and I spend half of my time in Japan” in response to the outrage. This is on-par with the overused defense of racist actions or statements, “Wait- no- but I have black friends!”. I don’t doubt that Lavigne thought she really was paying homage to Japan and its culture- but that means it had to have been ignorance and naivety that drove the creation of the song and its accompanying video… that makes it worse if you ask me.
“Birthday” by Katy Perry is another song (and music video) that sparked uproar as she plays a number of characters who show up to different birthday parties. She creates a spoof “Bar Mitzvah'' scene in which she plays a B-Mitzvah entertainer, dressed in a suit, wig, and facial prosthetics. It’s implied that she's attempting to fulfill the Jewish Man stereotype; thick, black mustache and eyebrows, larger nose, curly black hair, etc. It’s crass to say the least. When I discovered Perry’s devout Christianity, it didn’t require much thinking to determine the problem with the song, video, and source. The songs lyrics, which contain numerous sexual inuendos and references, are increasingly problematic when paired with the mockery of Jewish culture in the video. The song lyrics are essentially a booty call wrapped in cultural mockery found in the video. Yet again, it seems like ignorance was seated in the driver's seat on this one…
Reviewing these videos, I asked myself, “what gave these white, pop icons the license to comment and use cultures, estranged to their own, in their music?”. The trend around the source of the music is “white artists,” which doesn’t surprise me; the root of cultural insensitivity seems to be privilege. Why would one think twice about their song lyrics when they don't know what it feels like for someone to use and profit off of their own culture? Meghan Trainor gained a lot of popularity from “All About That Bass” using black stereotypes and forcing an image onto herself as plus-size. Avril Lavigne’s “Hello Kitty” is simply childish, and crass, using Japanese culture and people as props. Katy Perry, a devout Christian, you’d think would catch her own mistake of religious mockery before dropping “Birthday”. Beyond the horrid musicality of each of the songs lies an age-old, dark theme of cultural appropriation and white-ignorance. While white ignorance can be used to excuse the individual artists that are the face of these songs, it avoids accountability on the part of music production companies. It’s important to consider the larger scene of the music industry and capitalism in the context of these flawed musics. The pop music scene is run, not so much by the artists, but by teams of writers and boardroom-busies whose job is to help write and review these works. It’s not as if it was written, recorded, and released in one solid effort. The review process takes up a huge amount of the overall “creation process” and it’s inexcusable that every part of the song was reviewed and deemed acceptable for public consumption. If we can’t trust the industry to monetize the contents of different musics, it falls in our hands to monetize our own consumption of content (not just music). Let’s just be a little more careful before we let pop-anthems with such harmful themes like these plague our playlists.