“Miley, What’s Good?”
My topic for this paper is about Nicki Minaj and how she, as a popular icon, is considered “lowbrow” due to the fact that she represents an active and a subversive threat to certain idea that a “power bloc” promotes. She represents a threat because she exhibits and acknowledges explicit female sexuality, is a successful female artist in a male-dominated enterprise, and is a black artist. Minaj utilizes her body in a way that is considered “inappropriate” and “out-of-control” by the establishment and as an attempt to minimize the threat she poses, Nicki Minaj is discredited and marginalized as “low-brow” culture. Nicki projects aggressive sexual imagery that defies the established notions of a complacent, female, black…show more content… In a recent twitter “fight” with Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj expressed her disapproval over the MTV video-of-the-year award by tweeting and alluding to the fact that the media idolizes and celebrates conventional white bodies, especially over black, nonconventional bodies (Minaj). It should be noted that, it wasn’t a “fight” so much as misunderstanding between black appropriation and “white” feminism. Minaj also notably called out Miley Cyrus at the VMAs after Cyrus, earlier in the month in a previous interview, said some disparaging remarks about Minaj’s music and essentially implied that rap music, but specifically Minaj, was a “trashy” form of music. “Miley, what’s good?” instantly became a meme and created a divergence in the media. The notable theme that these examples demonstrate is Minaj’s assertive demeanor. Whether or not she was justified in calling out Miley on such a televised and public format is arguable, however, it did allow Minaj bring to light an underhanded narrative about hip-hop that media tries to promote about being aggressive and or “rude” to the way people should carry themselves in the public…show more content… While the lines of the constituents of the power bloc are a bit blurry, the presumed members of the power bloc can fit two categories 1) those who do not approve black media and 2) those who do not approve explicit female sexuality. Conversely, those that support Minaj as a popular icon is limited to those who understand how race may affect females of different backgrounds, understand a varied view of female sexuality, and the media. On the other hand, the media can also be part of the power bloc, depending on the forces behind that form of media. Minaj herself is a popular icon, so she can be also considered a part of the media, however, she is a controversial popular icon that isn’t necessarily promoted by traditional, established, “high-brow” media. An important concept to understand is that despite how sexual or aggressive a persona Nicki exhibits, she’s not representative of the “debasing” of culture. To say this would be a misnomer and ignoring the fact that there is already extreme sexualization of females in the media, and an underlying cultural aesthetic that does not promote black beauty or representation
