Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-jr42d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T18:20:38.649Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Welcome to the candy shop! Conflicting representations of black masculinity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2014

Marita B. Djupvik
Marita B. Djupvik*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Agder, Post Box 422, No- 4604 Kristiansand, Norway E-mail: marita.b.djupvik@uia.no
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Mainstream hip hop videos have long been known for their images of scantily clad women, extreme materialism, and misogynist and homophobic lyrics. In this article I focus on how rapper 50 Cent's masculinity is constructed and expressed through music, lyrics and images in his video ‘Candy Shop’ from 2005. This is a classically modelled hip hop video, replete with markers of hypermasculinity: fancy cars, ‘bling’, and lots of beautiful, sexually available women. Several scholars have discussed how women are exploited in videos like this and reduced to props for the male star. However, few have explored how this macho masculinity is constructed. Through a close reading of this video, using socio-musicology and audiovisual analysis as my approach, I propose that the macho masculinity presented here is threatened when the male body is on display, but 50 Cent reassures himself (and his audience) through selective framing, involving both other performers and the music.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , May 2014 , pp. 209 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Butler, J. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London, Routledge)Google Scholar
Collins, P.H. 2005. Black Sexual Politics, African Americans, Gender and the New Racism (London, Routledge)Google Scholar
Fast, S. 2001. Led Zeppelin and the Power of Rock Music (New York, Oxford University Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frith, S. 1998. Performing Rites: Evaluating Popular Music (Oxford, Oxford University Press)Google Scholar
Hawkins, S. 2002. Settling the Pop Score: Pop Texts and Identity Politics (Aldershot, Ashgate)Google Scholar
Hawkins, S., and Richardson, J. 2007. ‘Remodelling Britney: matters of intoxication and mediation’, Popular Music & Society, 30Google Scholar
Hooks, B. 2004. We Real Cool (London, Routledge)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jarman-Ivens, F. 2006. ‘Queer(ing) masculinities in heterosexist rap music’, in Queering the Popular Pitch, ed. Whiteley, S. and Rycenga, J. (London, Routledge), pp. 199–219Google Scholar
Krims, A. 2000. Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity (New York, Cambridge University Press)Google Scholar
Lhamon, W.T. Jr. 1998. Raising Cain – Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip-Hop (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press)Google Scholar
Middleton, R. 2006. Voicing the Popular: On the Subjects of Popular Music (London, Routledge)Google Scholar
Mosher, D.L. 1984. ‘Measuring a macho personality constellation’, Journal of Research in Personality, 18, 150–63Google Scholar
Perry, I. 2004. Prophets of the Hood, Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop (Durham, NC, Duke University Press)Google Scholar
Scott, D. 2003. From the Erotic to the Demonic: On Critical Musicology (Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sieving, C. 2011. Soul Searching: Black-themed Cinema from the March on Washington to the Rise of Blaxploitation (Middletown, CT, Wesleyan University Press)Google Scholar
Vernallis, C. 2004. Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context (New York, Columbia University Press)Google Scholar
Williams, J.A. 2009. ‘Beats and Flows: A Response to Kyle Adams “Aspect of the Music/Text in Rap”’, in Music Theory Online 15 (2) www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.09.15.2/mto.09.15.2.williams.htmlCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woods, A. 2010. ‘Vocal practices and constructions of identity in rap: a case study of Young Jeezy's “Soul survivor”’, in Pop-Culture Pedagogy in the Music Classroom; Teaching Tools from American Idol to You Tube, ed. Biamonte, N. (Metuchen, NJ, Scarecrow Press), pp. 21–34)Google Scholar