In “YouTube, Twerking & You: Context Collapse and the Handheld Co‐Presence of Black Girls and Miley Cyrus”, Kyra Gaunt explores the many aspects of “context collapse” and their consequences for black girls (Gaunt 243). She uses the socio-cultural uproar surrounding Miley Cyrus’ 2013 “We Can’t Stop” performance and appropriation of twerking as a case to examine this issue. In Gaunt’s opinion, twerking is a form of digital self-presentation for black girls. Yet, however “liberating” the ability to curate one’s own personal online narrative may seem, this narrative is nevertheless molded and transformed by the audience and “the larger white-supremacist and patriarchal economy of the music industrial complex” (Gaunt 263).
As I read Gaunt’s piece, I was immediately reminded of a similar topic I researched a while ago – “digital blackface”. It’s a new and nuanced topic, one concerning the always-evolving realm of digital expression. I assert that we can apply Kyra Gaunt’s mode of understanding Cyrus’s appropriation of a form of black cultural expression into a discussion of “digital blackface” in 2019. Let’s dive in, shall we?
If you own a smartphone or frequent social media, you're probably familiar with the following moving image...
and this one…
and this one…
and this one.
Right?
It makes sense, as these were some of the most used gifs of 2016, 2017, and 2018. The common denominator between all of these GIFs is that they feature a black person expressing some pretty specific but weirdly universal emotion or reaction. The fact that the most popular and most used reaction GIFs typically feature black people is not a coincidence.
For example, if you search “twitter reaction gif” in Google, the following results appear.
“Digital blackface” is a term used to describe the phenomenon of white people and non-black people of color using digital renderings of black people in order to express their emotions. It is rooted in the perceived “animatedness” of black people, a racist belief that traces back to “blackface minstrelsy” and caricatures of the 19th century and finds purchase in many stereotypes we observe today (Jackson). Think of common media tropes of the “angry black woman”. Examine the language of “aggression” surrounding many young black victims of police brutality.
In her text, Gaunt describes how Miley Cyrus used black culture as a means to transform her personal brand identity. We can apply a similar lens of understanding to the fact that there is a disproportionate reliance on the mannerisms, actions, and language of black people to express emotions in our digital landscape. With each decision to react with a gif of Oprah waving her arms vigorously in glee; or Denzel Washington shedding a solitary tear; or Beyonce strutting confidently down an empty city street, in a flowing sunflower-yellow dress, swinging a baseball bat; a non-black person has subconsciously decided to use not only black culture, but a digital manifestation of a black person, to embody their own emotions. I might argue that this reliance is so often placed onto black people because it is a long-practiced social norm to hyperbolize our emotions and our behavior.
Overall, Gaunt’s research and the topic of digital blackface remind me of recurring sentiment in our class discussion. The digital landscape and virtual world offer exciting new benefits, but they also bring challenges. In many cases, these digital spaces – Second Life, predictive technology, Artificial Intelligence – simply perpetuate or intensify the systemic biases and patterns of oppression visible in the physical world.
TL;DR?
Watch this video about blackface, published by the New York Times.
Works Cited
Gaunt, Kyra. (2015). YouTube, Twerking & You: Context Collapse and the Handheld Co-Presence of Black Girls and Miley Cyrus. Journal of Popular Music Studies. 27. 10.1111/jpms.12130.
Jackson, Lauren Michele. “We Need to Talk About Digital Blackface in Reaction GIFs.” Teen Vogue, 2 Aug. 2017.
Thorne, Will. “The Most Popular GIFs of 2016 Include Barack Obama, 'Zootopia'.” Variety, 7 Dec. 2016, https://variety.com/2016/digital/news/most-popular-gifs-2016-obama-zootopia-1201936090/.
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