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What’s this got to do with media?“…media representations of ‘race’ and ethnicity are constructed in accordance with dominant ideological positionings which serve to shape and control how individuals understand others’, and their own, identities.”Fatimah Awan

Stuart Hall proposes that the media, as a principal form of ideological dissemination, produces representations of the social world via images and portrayals.Fatimah Awan

We must also consider Hall’s (1990) notion that identity is not necessarily ‘fixed’, but a fluid phenomena; ‘Perhaps instead of thinking of identity as an already accomplished historical fact … we should think, instead, of identity as a “production”, which is never complete, always in process…Fatimah Awan

Establishing that the media have the power to dictate which representations of ethnic minorities are chosen and circulated in the public arena, research into minority representation has revealed two fundamental issues underlying the area: underrepresentation and stereotypical representation. It is suggested that through such representations, ethnic minorities continue to be subordinated in accordance with white ideological hegemonyFatimah Awan

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Ethnic minority viewers commented that an ethnic individual alone (for example, a solitary black character in a soap) cannot represent the richness of an entire community.Channel 4, Race, Representation and the Media 2007, Research Report

The repetitive framing of particular images in certain ways eventually leads to those images being seen as the definitive statement on ‘those’ people and the groups to which ‘they’ belong .http://www.newinfluencer.com/mediapedia/black-and-white-media/

Various characters within “Kidulthood” are shown to be involved in criminal activities such as drug dealing and gun making. It can be said that “black people, particularly Afro-Caribbeans are portrayed in the media as criminals” as “the media are highly selective in the way in which they construct and represent the world back to us” Kruger, Stephen. Rayner, Philip. & Wall, Peter. (2004). Media Studies: The Essential Resource

Joseph Harker wrote that “when it comes to imagery surrounding black people; I’m used to relentlessly negative - knife crime, underachievement representations” http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/05/london-black-children-awards

What’s this got to do with media?

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“The hegemonic model acknowledges that much of the media is controlled by a relatively small group of people (who are generally male, middle class and white) and that the viewpoints associated with these groups inevitably become embedded in the products themselves.” This suggests that these small groups of people use their own views of ethnic minorities in order to represent them, due to the fact that they may not know how to represent them if they are not part of that social group themselves. This shows that audiences are being provided with already established views on a social group thus reiterating the hypodermic needle theory. http://jaleesadenton-mest4.blogspot.com/ & Baker, James. Clark, Vivienne. & Lewis, Eileen. (2003). Key Concepts & Skills for Media Studies

It can be said that the media choose to represent ethnic minorities in ways which reinforce stereotypes in order to maintain a hegemonic society relating to how “a dominant class or group maintains power by making everyone accept their ideology as normal or neutral, through cultural influence rather than force.”http://jaleesadenton-mest4.blogspot.com/ & Williams, Kevin. (2003). Understanding Media Theory

What’s this got to do with media?

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• Define the social category Black British• In the past what did it mean to be Black British?• Hypothesise what it means to be part of the collective

group ‘Black British’ in contemporary Britain • How do the media represent contemporary ‘Black Britain’?• How can music artists be seen as anti-hegemonic in their

representation of ‘Black Britain’?• How can the music industry been seen as hegemonic?• How do people use the media to help form an sense of

collective identity?

Get thinking?

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Black British collective identity

• “The creation of a supposedly multicultural society has created a situation where it’s increasingly difficult to define what it means to be British. There is no longer any clear distinctive about being British…” http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A809895

• Why is this quote useful to explain contemporary ‘Black British’ collective identity?

• Black Britain defines itself crucially as part of a diaspora. Its unique cultures draw inspiration from those developed by black populations else-where. In particular, the culture and politics of black America and the Caribbean have become raw materials for creative processes which redefine what it means to be black, adapting it to distinctively British experiences and meanings. Black culture is actively made and re-made. (Paul Gilroy ‘Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’ )

Black British Collective Identity

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Film

HISTORICAL CONTEMPORARY

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MUSIC

HISTORICAL CONTEMPORARY

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RACE MUSIC

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MUSIC – Historical - Reggae

Music was seen not merely as a form of entertainment, but it also functioned as a vehicle for social and political aspirations. Reggae music, which originated among the working classes in Jamaica in the late 1960’s, was a mode of expressing the collective struggles of the black poor.

In its initial stages the British reggae market was dependent on the Jamaican one. The political situation in Jamaica, which was reflected in the reggae tradition, had special significance for the black community in Britain.

Simon Jones wrote that 'the 1970’s as a whole were characterised by an extraordinary degree of synchronisation between the political ideologies expounded in Jamaican popular music and the conditions of race and class oppression experienced by Blacks in Britain'.

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MUSIC – Historical - Reggae

Music by the Wailers affected the black British community, especially with their first two albums, Catch a Fire (1973) and Burnin' (1973). In them subjects concerning anti - imperialism and racial solidarity were raised, thereby creating a sense of race and class consciousness. http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/bob+marley/concrete+jungle_20021669.htmlhttp://www.shmoop.com/concrete-jungle/lyrics.html

‘Marley combined social comment on the life and conditions of the dispossessed classes in the Kingston ghettoes and political

commentary on Jamaican society with invocation of Rasta philosophy’Public Lecture on Popular Culture as a Factor of Intercultural

Understanding: The Case of ReggaeBy Professor Stuart Hall

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MUSIC – Historical - Reggae

‘That music, and wider message which it bears, has nowhere taken such profound roots as amongst the alienated black youth in English cities – the children of those of Jamaican unemployed who came to Britain as immigrant labour in the 1950s and 1960s, who have become in their turn alienated from white society and from the racism of the ‘home country’*

In the late 1970s Black British reggae groups such as Aswad, Steel Pulse and Matumbi, emerged, and Britain developed its own unique brand of reggae, characterized by a merging of soft soul and reggae.

‘the formation of a black counter-culture of resistance among second and third generation blacks in Britain… An additional irony is the degree to which this specifically black counter-culture has influenced and inter-penetrated the sub-cultures of white-youth’*

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MUSIC – Historical - ReggaeThese bands connected with disenchanted youth all over Britain. They sang about isolation and rejection from a society that didn’t understand them.http://www.lyrics007.com/Steel%20Pulse%20Lyrics/Drug%20Squad%20Lyrics.html

These bands were formed by first generation, British-born blacks who eloquently voiced the fear and anguish of growing up in a predominantly white society. Brought up on British pop and their parent’s records, they combined a punk attitude with a Jamaican reggae sound.

Their efforts to become successful mirrored thousands of young black kids across the UK who were coping with right-wing backlash to the influx of Caribbean immigrants. The National Front were stirring up racial hatred and he governments SUS law resulted in hundreds of black people stopped and searched on the mere suspicion of committing a crime. It wasn't long before there was rioting in the streets. The British reggae bands provided the soundtrack to that struggle.

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• The assimilation of blacks is not a process of acculturation but of cultural syncretism (Bastide, 1978).

• The Specials can be used as a symbol

of this process

• It is impossible to theorize black culture in Britain without developing a new perspective on British culture as a whole.

• (Paul Gilroy ‘Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’ )

• Assimilation - the social process of absorbing one cultural group into harmony with another

MUSIC – Historical – 2Tone

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• Smiley Culture - what was he representative of?

MUSIC – Historical – Smiley Culture

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• Acculturation = modification of the culture of a group as a result of contact with a different culture

• Syncretism = fusion of differing belief systems - the result is heterogeneous.

• Fusion = style of cooking that combines ingredients and techniques from very different cultures or countries.

• Heterogeneous = consisting of elements that are not of the same kind or nature

MUSIC – Historical – 2Tone

How does this relate to our hypothetical collective identity?

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• In the period leading up to his death [Marley], it was a space filled primarily by the ‘two-tone’ cult. In this movement, earlier Caribbean form, particularly ska, which had been exposed by the serious reggae fans’ search for musical authenticity behind Marley’s obvious comprises, were captured and rearticulated into distinctively British styles and concerns

• (Paul Gilroy ‘Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’ )

MUSIC – Historical – 2Tone

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Mix of British and Jamaican music

Combined white and black styles

First multicultural racial music

Fusion of Ska and Punk

The coming together of

politics and youth

1979

The Specials, Madness, The Selector, The

Beat, The Bodysnatchers

First time blacks and whites played

together in the same band

Had it’s own style – Pork pie hat,

black and white dress code

The Rude Boy character exuded

cool, more appealing to

British working class audience

Lyrics reflected contemporary Britain –

and young people’s lives irrespective of colour

The movement allowed blacks and whites to

share experiences

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• …the cultural institutions of the white working class were hosting an historic encounter between young black and white people. This meeting precipitated not only fear of the degeneration of the white 'race' in general… but also the creation of a youth sub-culture in which black style and expertise were absolutely central. (Paul Gilroy ‘Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’ )

MUSIC – Historical – 2Tone

Music rooted in black culture was a distinct vehicle through which black and white youth were able to have a voice and be heard

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MUSIC – Historical – 2Tone

Consider the differences between the collective identity represented through Reggae and the collective identity represented through 2Tone

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• In his egalitarianism Ethiopianism and anti-imperialism, his critique of law and of the types of work which were on offer, these young people found meanings with which to make sense of their lives in post-imperial Britain.

• The two-tone bands appreciated this and isolated the elements in Marley's appeal that were most appropriate to the experiences of young, urban Britons on the threshold of the 1980s.

• They pushed the inner logic of his project to its conclusion by fusing pop forms rooted in the Caribbean with a populist politics. Marley's populism had been focused by die imperatives of black liberation and overdetermined by the language of Rastafarianism.

• Theirs was centred instead on pointing to the possibility that black and white young people might discover common or parallel meanings in their blighted, post-industrial predicament.

• (Paul Gilroy ‘Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’ )

MUSIC – Historical – 2Tone

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• The experience of living side by side in a ‘ghost town' had begun to raise this question. The Specials' song, which topped the chart as the rioting of 1981 was at its peak, asked, 'Why must the youth fight against themselves?' and cleverly entangled its pleas against both racism and youth-cultural sectarianism. The two-tone operation depended on being seen to transcend the various prescriptive definitions of 'race' which faced each other across the hinterland of youth culture.

• (Paul Gilroy ‘Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’ )

MUSIC – Historical – 2Tone

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• How does the legacy of 2 Tone relate to the multicultural landscape of today and contemporary Black Britain?

• Culture is not a fixed and impermeable feature of social relations. Its forms change, develop, combine and are dispersed in historical processes. The syncretic cultures of black Britain exemplify this. They have been able to detach cultural practices from their origins and use them to found and extend the new patterns of metacommunication which give their community substance and collective identity.

• The defensive walls around each sub-culture gradually crumble and new forms with even more complex genealogies are created in the synthesis and transcendence of previous styles. The effects of this can be seen not only where the cultural resources of the Afro-Caribbean communities provide a space in which whites are able to discover meaning in black histories, style and language, but also where a shared culture, overdetermined by its context of the urban crisis, mediates the relationship between the different ethnic groups that together comprise black Britian.

• (Paul Gilroy ‘Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack’ )

‘RACE’ ETHNICITY, SYNCRETISM AND MODERNITY

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MUSIC – Contemporary

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MUSIC – Grime and UK Rap

• Discuss how Grime and UK rap artists are continuing where 2 tone left off

• Think about who they’re talking to and who they ultimately represent

• Think about the roots of the music

• Think about why this music comes under the genre ‘urban’ and also how it can be seen as anti-hegemonic