Queen Latifah Rhetorical Analysis

U.N.I.T.Y addresses Queen Latifah’s learned experiences of sexual harassment, domestic violence, and the music industry by placing the responsibility squarely on men’s shoulders for perpetuating stereotypes of the “hoe, bitch” culture. In the first stanza, she reflects that most 90’s hip-hop almost always promotes one black woman’s narrative. Judith Butler states that “various cultural discourses converge into a prevailing understanding of what it is a girl or a boy”. (where is this from) This idea of establishing identities as a learned process is important in dissecting this hoe-bitch culture that Latifah condemns. This hoe, bitch culture absorbs into our muscles and brains because of media representation and evolves into our gender norms

and social practices. However, through her song U.N.I.T.Y., Queen breaks free of these sexist gender norms. With the line “ I punched him dead in the eye” and her other lyrical content, Latifah highlights misogyny rooted in our bodies, presumed “natural.” Latifah speaks of "being too blind” to see the true pain of an abusive relationship: she critiques the patriarchy “ I’m not your personal whore, that's not what I'm here for…and nothing good gonna come to ya til you do right by me.” She identifies that this “whore culture” is an embodiment of the patriarchy “daddy smacks mommy”, and is used to discipline and turn women into docile bodies. In connection with Foucault, he states that what we take as our freedom to creatively express ourselves is instead the rise of the carceral society, a form of prison, which turns us into docile bodies closely disciplined by institutions. In U.N.I.T.Y, the 90’s hip-hop music industry and media institutions produce certain types of bodies, for example “the whore”, the “hoe, bitch” identities. Those who step out of the normal way of disciplining are punished, in the context of U.N.I.T.Y, with physical and verbal abuse by the hands of men.
However, there are critics of this feminist “hip-hop”, most of whom believe that …… (summarize paragraph).

In one such critique, the author likens Queen Latifah stance to eliminate the widespread use of “hoe, bitch” to “Christian squares who rallied against rock and roll. “ (O'Neill) Brendan O’Neill of The Telegraph is one of those critics, arguing that there is always someone campaigning against evil lyrics in hip-hop. He states that the anti-hop hop baton has passed to feminist and black activist’s new edgy and radical campaign to excise words such as hoe and bitch. Muskogee-battling activists are to O’Neill “swore wives of late 1980’s American parental advisory strike” on every album and moves. He critiques Queen Latina and feminist hip-hop as a patronizing movement to protect fans from their own worst instincts. Feminists have an allergy to free speech, as drab people made uncomfortable by popular music. He believes black women hip-hop artists such as Queen Latina; want to quell lyrical content within popular music for the sake of preserving decency and

morality.
This genre of music has always given way to “black female body…is especially visible in the public imagination” (Durham 65) Particularly, in physicality, movement, dress and in languages, black female artists can talk about deviant black sexuality as well as talk back to demining popular hip hop culture. Furthermore, Judith Butler advocates that drag is an important function in distorting the boundaries of gender expression. Latina’s main aim is to instill urgency within her own drag in flow and gestures. To undo the perpetual violent and sexist drag of black men in the hip-hop industry, her body and gestures “challenge the hegemonic construction of beauty, feminism, and blackness.” Herr gestures are aggressive, pointing at the audience on the rigged platform critiquing the viewer and listener: how you are perpetuating these stereotypes in gender performance? In coordination with the beat, she touches her head and the camera moves forward in a shot-reverse shot close up of her face and mouth shouting the words “who yak calling a bitch.” In her confrontational style, she punches the air while aloes simulating hands in handcuffs, and guns going off into the air. Furth more, in all motorcycle scenes, she leads the pack mocking threads hoards of people, as she leads the songs and perfumes the verses. This strong, powerful, independent performance of female black body is night and day to her portrayal of the abused wife. In these scenes, her hands frantically move about covering her head, her body flung about by the man who sits in the driver’s seat, and she wears no hat or hood. Furthermore, in previous scenes dealing with sexual harassment from men of the street, she too wears no hat and short cutoff shorts. Latifah definitely chooses her wardrobe based on which narrative she is speaking to. In narratives that are not speaking to empowered, feminist anthems, she Queen Latifah in her non-gendered specific clothes, gold jewelry, sunglasses, and hats are the norm. However, in scenes showing sexual harassment, and domestic assault she decides to dress in softer, muted colors, less jewelry, and less disguise. In those clothing choices, she is not depicted as Queen Latifah, the independent, aggressive rapper, rather the typical black woman dealing with effects of stereotypes furthered by male performances of gender. However, in the phone call to her significant other, she speaks intensely into the phones, leaning on the telephone box, asking questions in her fast flow gesturing upwards with her hands. In these gestures, She depicts a journey whether her own levied experience or of another black women’s toward becoming a badass, aggressive woman who fights back against perpetual marginalization the hands of black men. Her final scenes bookend with her looping upon the city, expecting something more from black men in the hip hop industry.

Gwendolyn Pough, a popular academic and writer, has spoken to the immense power black female rappers hold in contradicting popular expectation.

Queen Latifah can be both public in rap culture and critical as “black female rappers can maintain a public presence while they counter negative presentation of black womanhood that exist within hip hop culture.” (Pough 279) However, in mainstream hip hop culture, black women exist as visible non-speakers who garner attention as sexual spectacles as “black rappers affirm pleasure and privilege through expressions, style choices, and subject matter.” Media and pop culture are importance spaces where black girls and women are most visible, however, hip-hop is a cultural space where black women can navigate. Black women only enter the masculine world as rap video vixens, or as rappers: Queen Latifah taking up the former. The ho, bitch culture off the rap video vixen is the controlling image that is part of dominant vernacular. To pass that image off as merely popular music does not let us analyze and unpack how images becomes popular and important to hip hop success. Hip-hop feminism extends black feminist thought by looking at hip-hop self-representation to talk about everyday experience and the operation of power. Everyday life includes the practices, spaces, and worldviews in which black women participate. Honoring the lived experience of black women over the “bitch, hoe” objectification is formidable in rethinking hip-hop and

expanding how we imagine culture.
According to scholar Hebdige, hip-hop has been dismissed as noise and music, as large fast paced pounding genre. He states that culture typically can be defined in two ways, one in classical and conservative terms as pieces appreciative of classical forms, such as “opera, ballet, literature, and art.” U.N.I.T.Y does not fit into the hip-hop’s classical forms of exploitative images of women, in so doing, O’Neill does not consider it a worthwhile product. In establishing a moral and aesthetic criteria, Hebdige states we can subjectively define worthwhile products based on deviation from the classical norms. However, it is important to notice to O’Neill that all aspects of culture, whether ‘worthwhile’ or not, possess a semiotic value as “a sign does not simply exist as part pf reality, it reflects and refracts another reality…whenever a sign is present, ideology is present too.” (Hebdige 1973) It is faulty to dismiss feminist hip hop art as “patronizing” when it, in fact, brings to light the commodification of culture and larger questions of how culture is situated within the hip hop industry.
Bell-hooks on multiple occasions has written upon the subject of gangsta-rap In Z Magazine, she analyzed the “hoe, bitch culture” as the sexist, patriarchal view sustained by white supremacists and capitalist patriarchy. The proliferation of “hoe, bitch” culture is a misogynistic attitude portrayed by the dominant culture as an expression of male deviance. We cannot answer the question of how this attitude and drag performance came to exist, without placing accountability on the hierarchy who produced it. The culture has disseminated from the belief that a black man makes more money producing lyric sporting sexism and misogyny. There are massive rewards for producing and proliferating this stereotype into mass media: the unprecedented material of power and fame. This world of hip hop culture’s ‘material’ excess and consumption has emerged from this belief and system. Other examples from around the release date of U.N.I.T.Y, was Snoop Doggy Dog’s video featuring a dog sign with a naked black female head. This desecration, and destruction of black women’s value and being is seen as the expression of Snoop Dogg’s manhood, and success. Would one consider black men patronizing in disseminating the objectification of black female bodies in the hip-hop mainstream, or do we blame the commodification of culture? Women’s rap since the mid 80’s have been unilaterally against this act of ‘patronizing’ and demeaning characterization of black women in the music video; only beginning in the 199s0s did record companies began to promote their work, and sign them to labels. Black women rappers are not just the latest in cries of censorship in a radical attempt to call arms again popular music. It’s just in the 90’s; their voices were now heard in lyrical content, semiotics, and message because of access to the hip-hop platform.