That's ma jaam!

                                  That’s ma jaam!”

The view this video, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl3PLQYg6AE. Fast forward to 1:25 to get to the main part of the video.

This video portrays multiple racial ideologies and sexist commentaries in which degrade the African-American community. Kellner’s piece in Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism, and Media Culture concluded that it is important to analyze the political economy of culture that creates this video because it has been neglected in many modes of recent cultural studies; therefore, it is important to stress the importance of analyzing cultural texts within their system of production and distribution. In “That’s ma jaam”, the distribution of the video is only throughout YouTube and among other websites in which people distribute it through social networks (e.g., Facebook, Tumblr, ect.). It is important to analyze that the distribution of this video is for a limited audience. As Nakamura points out in Cybertyping and the Work of Race in the Age of Digital Reproduction, the internet consists of a limited audience because people who are low in socioeconomic status are deprived of having technology around them. It is not to say that people who have low wages cannot afford computer, but instead one must see that people who work all the time in order to maintain food and shelter do not have time to access the internet. Nakamura also tells us that it not usually that the poor white family does not have internet access, but instead, the poor African-American family who have difficulty in receiving a job that is well paying because of their skin complexion.

It is important to analyze the text in terms of what it is trying to portray to the public. Kellner stated in his article that the semiotics analyzes how linguistic and nonlinguistic cultural “signs” form systems of meaning. After this, the audience create their own notions of what the author of a text is trying to demonstrate. According to Kellner, ethnographic research is frequently used in an attempt to determine how texts affect audiences and shape their beliefs and behavior. For example, one can analyze the video using ethnographic “That’s ma jaam” and clearly see the demonstrations of African-American women are belittled in this video. However, the creator of this video used comedic paths so that one cannot consider what the presentations actually do to the African-American community. Instead of praising African-American women with what they have accomplished throughout the years, the lyrics and graphics of this video represent them under a negative light. The following is just brief recap of how the author used lyrics throughout the video to portray African-American women negatively:

“You wanna get some booty? I want to get some Gucci. Throw some money at me, and ima let you screw me. Jump in front of the bus, kill yoself, f**k yo health, you aint sh**t, now where yo glue be at, wen u got a lose track, glue that sh**t up and stick it right back.”

These lyrics clearly do not demonstrate any respect for African-American women. The promiscuity is presented by the women’s willingness to throw themselves for sex in return for their financial wealth. In addition, the lyrics demonstrate that African-American women value of life should not be valued, since the song suggests that their existence is not worth anything. Although the creator of this video used cartoon characters that are orange and purple, it is very apparent to whom the theme of the song and video in general is directed to. The author most likely understands what perceptions there will be after the video is out in the public, however, still presents it in a comedic way. According to Hartley from A Cultural Studies Approach to Media: Theory, there are seven “subjectivity positions” that are important in cultural reception-“self, gender, age-group, family, class, nation, and ethnicity”-and proposes adding sexual orientation. One does not need a course in media studies to understand that the lyrics and video has imbedded racial ideologies. What this does is forms confirmation biases to those who already have negative notions of women of color.

Earlier I mentioned that Nakamura’s piece is important when it comes to the music videos that are distributed throughout the internet. The perceptions built around “ghetto” women of color are then confirmed by these videos and then people who know little about other ethnic groups build negative notions about these groups because it would come across to them as more than a “joke”. What is unfortunate is that those who do not have access to computers and the internet do not have the ability to produce videos that portray themselves as something better than what society perceives them to be. Hopefully one day there will be a new generation in media in which creators are sensitive to what ideologies they put out that may connote negativity for subordinate groups.

                                                                            References

Kellner, Douglas. “Cultural Studies, Multiculturalism, and Media Culture.” Gender, Race, and Class in Media. Ed. Gail Dines and Jean M. Humez. 3rd ed. Los Angeles: Sage, 2011. 7-18. Print.

Nakamura, Lisa. “Cybertyping and the Work of Race in the Age of Digital Reproduction.”