Please watch the video before reading my contextual information below -- I'd like to know your gut response.
Love and Theft from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.
password "otherness"
"Love and Theft," or "the detour through the other defines the self"
While the gender-subverting politics of my earlier study seemed clear enough, I was inspired to take a self-reflexive, critical look at myself and dig deeper into the politics of embodying racial others. On one level, this exploration stems from my discomfort with appropriating the queer women-loving blues in my first study, particularly because this strand of the blues springs out of the lived experience of black American working class women in a post-Emancipation era. It was also informed by my analysis of the German Kabarett readings, where I perceived that -- once again -- white middle-class women were empowering themselves by appropriating an exotic, racialized, and classed other, in particular through the Orientalism of their naked Salome-inspired dances. Thus the twin legacies of blackface minstrelsy and Orientalism inform my study, which correspond to the two movement traditions (jazz and kathak) referenced in my first study.
The title of the study, "Love and Theft," is taken from Eric Lott's book, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, which looks at white working class males' appropriation of blackness. "The detour through the other defines the self" is from psychoanalytical theorist Diana Fuss' Identification Papers. I understand the quotation as suggesting how the very process of identification -- brimming over with desire for the other -- destabilizes identity.
FEEDBACK QUESTIONS
1. What is your reaction to the racial and gendered identity theft performed in this study by my East Asian female body? Does it read as simple appropriation, or do you feel it has a critical edge? If the latter, how might I deepen and clarify that critique further?
2. What parts of the study do you find compelling aesthetically, if any?
3. How might you imagine this study and my earlier one connecting? (Initially I imagined this video would be intercut with phrases from my original study; however, once I started editing, I found this hard to do.)
4. Any other thoughts or suggestions for further development?
PS - Aditee imagined this study as a prequel to my earlier one, so I've cut the two together here. Please answer Feedback Question 3 before watching!
love and theft_prove it on me blues from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.
password "make-up"
Love and Theft from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.
password "otherness"
"Love and Theft," or "the detour through the other defines the self"
While the gender-subverting politics of my earlier study seemed clear enough, I was inspired to take a self-reflexive, critical look at myself and dig deeper into the politics of embodying racial others. On one level, this exploration stems from my discomfort with appropriating the queer women-loving blues in my first study, particularly because this strand of the blues springs out of the lived experience of black American working class women in a post-Emancipation era. It was also informed by my analysis of the German Kabarett readings, where I perceived that -- once again -- white middle-class women were empowering themselves by appropriating an exotic, racialized, and classed other, in particular through the Orientalism of their naked Salome-inspired dances. Thus the twin legacies of blackface minstrelsy and Orientalism inform my study, which correspond to the two movement traditions (jazz and kathak) referenced in my first study.
The title of the study, "Love and Theft," is taken from Eric Lott's book, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, which looks at white working class males' appropriation of blackness. "The detour through the other defines the self" is from psychoanalytical theorist Diana Fuss' Identification Papers. I understand the quotation as suggesting how the very process of identification -- brimming over with desire for the other -- destabilizes identity.
FEEDBACK QUESTIONS
1. What is your reaction to the racial and gendered identity theft performed in this study by my East Asian female body? Does it read as simple appropriation, or do you feel it has a critical edge? If the latter, how might I deepen and clarify that critique further?
2. What parts of the study do you find compelling aesthetically, if any?
3. How might you imagine this study and my earlier one connecting? (Initially I imagined this video would be intercut with phrases from my original study; however, once I started editing, I found this hard to do.)
4. Any other thoughts or suggestions for further development?
PS - Aditee imagined this study as a prequel to my earlier one, so I've cut the two together here. Please answer Feedback Question 3 before watching!
love and theft_prove it on me blues from Cynthia Ling Lee on Vimeo.
password "make-up"
