A benefit of studying so-called bad feminine media objects is that the debates around poetics and quality are vacated leaving us to look at it however we would like. And while some are in the business of (rightly) reclaiming the beauty of the bad text, there’s something almost liberating about letting it be, immersing one’s self in that which seemingly disqualifies it from study. In the case of the category Elana Levine borders around “Passions” in her edited collection Cupcakes, Pinterest and Ladyporn: Feminized Popular Culture in the Early Twenty-First Century, the contributors all honed in on examining the pleasures women experience and navigate through commodified texts targeted to them. Levine’s instinct in putting these pieces in conversation with one another was spot-on in the realization that although all of the contributors analyzed different pieces of feminist media, the connecting tether among them was how they all explored how women used these texts to negotiate their own identities and desires in this post-feminist era.

Imagining that an affective response like pleasure that is not purely founded in celebration of a television show or a book series targeted to them but also in the joy that comes from critiquing those very texts is an act rarely allowed women in twenty-first century media. Our hot takes and think pieces easily reduce nuanced conversation down to simplistic binaries of “if this is good or bad for women” with the notion of a woman liking bad things as revolutionary.

But what if women—all kinds of women—have been enjoying the bad all along? And what if, as posited by Melissa Click in her “Fifty Shades of Postfeminism: Contextualizing Readers’ Reflections on the Erotic Romance Series” chapter, the pleasure for women readers of this book franchise emerge after using this text to think through their own behaviors if allowed to imagine themselves as the heroines of this story?

I submit that the goal of the “Passions” category is to answer that very question. Jillian Baez’s “Television for All Women? Watching Lifetime’s Devious Maids,” maintains that depending on if the female viewer is Latina or white, the question of who they imagine themselves to be in the series generates a bifurcated set of pleasures. I like how Baez notes that, “while most female fans are watching Devious Maids as a source of feminine pleasure derived from its similarities to the generic qualities of Desperate Housewives, Latina fans view the series for its Latina cast and storylines that humanize female domestic workers.” Thus the joy for Latina audiences comes from these characters’ specificity as domestics who are also allowed these fantastical moments of power that transgress the servitude so many Latina women must navigate in their own lives.

Similarly, the piece I wrote, “ABC’s Scandal and Black Women’s Fandom,” takes up the question answering how black women identify with a black character also blurred between the stuff of fantasy and the bodily reality of a black woman enshrined in the spirit of colorblindness. The answer I explored was that through a process of gap-filling online labor from discursively making her hair a frequent topic of discussion to rewriting dialogue in the register of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and writing fanfiction around her being the object of desire between two powerful white men, black women fans are able to cultivate a more dimensional and culturally representative version of Olivia Pope.

The final point I make in the chapter ties to the work Erin A. Meyers writes in “Women, Gossip, and Celebrity Online: Celebrity Gossip Blogs as Feminized Popular Culture.” I end the chapter with a small discussion on a “real person” ship within the Scandal fandom—the Terrys (a portmanteau of the two leads Kerry Washington and Tony Goldwyn) and how while the desire around this couple is not wholly based in the need for them to be true but rather in how it helps some black female viewers to strategize ways to keep Washington at the center of the fandom. This coupling, largely the stuff of gossip, tethers to one of Meyers’ central tenets of the importance of gossip as communication: “Gossip is not simply the pursuit of truth. It is a process of narrativizing and judging the contrast between the public and private celebrity image as markers of larger social ideologies, particularly around gender, race, sexuality, and class. While such talk is not inherently resistant to dominant norms, the fact that it offers a space where women’s concerns are negotiated and made meaningful makes it, and celebrity culture, important sites of cultural analysis.” The pleasures of what it might mean for Goldwyn, a name that’s a part of Hollywood history to be coupled with Washington, a type that represents the best of black womanhood are more than can be expressed in this piece.

What’s more, Meyers’ article ties us back to Click’s contribution in that both describe the pleasures that accompany the ways women look at female celebrities in the same ways they may look at Anastasia Steele: models for who they may simultaneously want to be and also reject.

Women’s passion told through the lens of women’s pleasure is still in its infancy as an object of research. But I think the pieces here serve as a wonderful start in the study.

I begin with this truth to discuss Django Unchained because it informs my reluctance to discuss this film. I recognize that my ambivalence belongs to me and that many folks are happy to investigate,  interrogate, segment and contextualize the film to determine if the film is harmful or not or plumb interviews given by writer/director Quentin Tarantino to locate his intent in producing such a film. Excellent pieces by wonderful thinkers have emerged and I would do no service to them to repeat what they’ve already written. Instead, I want to offer a few points about how Django actually makes sense in our Post-Race world and why its “good” fit only cements the confusion about how to understand race contemporarily.

1. A friend told me about a girlfriend of hers who shared her confusion around how Black folks are supposed to feel about Django. Based on all the reviews as well as the interviews Jamie Foxx and Kerry Washington gave I can see how this confusion emerges. When Foxx and Oprah Winfrey discuss the film as a tribute of sorts to our enslaved ancestors and posit that it offers the opportunity to have conversations about the “evolution of freedom” from slavery to present day, it does make me question if I’ve misjudged the film’s mission. The burden of representation is so great for people of color that any reason to support a film with “strong” Black lead characters should be reason enough. That there is the possibility of a revisionist redemptive slave narrative is all the better. However, while Django centers around a newly freed slave and while the horrors of slavery are on display in graphic detail, I would not say it was a commentary on the evolution of freedom because the story uses slavery—its most culturally specific factor—as a conceit while the story of Django rescuing his lady love is the main story—the one that is universal and familiar. While there is nothing wrong with a story people can connect to, making it is easy for the average moviegoer to relate to Django does align with the goals of Post-Race logic where finding “common ground” supersedes the specific historical differences that actually marginalize groups.

2. One of the patterns in the film that struck me was Django’s sole goal of freeing his wife Broomhilda from the Candie Plantation. It struck me because it was such an individualistic objective. One free former slave rescuing one enslaved woman from the horrors of slavery is a lofty goal to be sure; however, it seems antithetical to the ways that slaves functioned as a community system. The conscious choice, for example, to have Django never look back at his brethren–even after he has killed all their captors–and leave them in cages so they can watch him him ride back to the plantation to free his wife seems off. Why not arm them so they can all get their revenge on the evil slave owners? Perhaps it is because he was trained by his mentor Dr. King (ha) Schultz to treat being a bounty hunter as a solo gig. However, I can neither imagine the process of becoming free nor the  disconnecting of emotional ties to other slaves as occurring overnight. Thus I contend that the emphasis on the individual  achieving his aims rather than on the collective is a product of Post-Race logic that is not necessarily interested in slavery as anything other than an elaborate and terrible backdrop. Besides, a gang of enslaved men taking on slave owners in a raid seems far more menacing for a 21^st century mainstream audience than one man in a velvet suit.

3. My last point of illustrating that Django is a product of the Post-Race lies in the supporting character of Steven. Played by Samuel L. Jackson, is a conflation of types: Uncle Tom, Boondocks-famous Uncle Ruckus, as well as a well-versed code-switcher. For me, Steven’s intraracial hatred in concert with being the smartest character of them all made him the most evil. A brilliant performance to be sure; however, I could not help but think that for many moviegoers in the film, the black-on-black violence diminished the impact of the fact that both men were enslaved psychologically and physically, instead placed the burden of evil on them hating each other with this subtle shift.

In conclusion, I would suggest that this racial moment produced Django. This is the moment where a horrible past is so far removed that it can be redeemed through a fantastical story that if set in modern day would scare its moviegoers. That is indeed the gift of a Post-Race era.

BBW epitomizes the contemporary struggle within popular culture and the burden of representation people of color daily negotiate. The failure to comply with the politics of respectability–the notion that demonstrating “good” socially acceptable behavior will make us more accepted in mainstream culture–is not new. But what is new are scholars trying to engage from in-between the positive and negative binaries and the space in-between blind love and total disavowal of these cultural products. Put simply, the space where one can love “foolywang” and simultaneously recognize that the product is, in fact, foolywang is what I want to address. And what better event to speak to that liminality than the 2012 BET Awards?

I love the BET Awards. Some call it minstrelsy* and a bootleg American Music Awards but that is precisely why, to borrow fangirl lingo, I have “so many feelings” about it. From its shoddy production values (which ironically get better each year) to its notorious failure of working props, e.g., the “door” that lifted for the presenters occasionally just stopped working without explanation–it is the disreputable character of the event that makes the BET Awards must-see TV.

The BET Awards’ disrepute, for me, makes it akin to a Black Family reunion. Pride and embarrassment undergird these very culturally specific events where family members who may not have seen each other all year get together and fellowship–often over food and alcohol–with one another. They remember those who have passed on, they celebrate those prodigals who have returned, they make us all pray, and they encourage the youth to display their skills in talent shows (seriously). The BET Awards incorporates all of these functions in its telecast. Let me offer a few examples.

BET’s tribute to Whitney Houston–including a moving rendition of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Houston’s mother Cissy–can ONLY happen on BET. If Cissy had broken down and been unable to sing, I guarantee a barrage of “it’s all right; take your time” responses would have emerged from the audience. When Whitney’s mentees Monica and Brandy sung a few of her songs and the camera cut to audience reactions, the specificity of seeing both Donnie Simpson and Soulja Boy crying in response is tragilicious yet makes sense.

Similarly, Chanté Moore’s tribute to Donna Summer can only happen at the BET Awards because, I mean, who else knows who Chanté Moore is but us?!

Not only that but when BET resurrects old talent who we love and gives them a platform to re-engage, it carries weight. Two years ago, El Debarge performed after an extended leave from the spotlight. From the moment he began singing, “All This Love” to the time he hit his high note on “I Like It” it was like no time had passed. Did we scream in excitement or what? This year, D’Angelo returned to the public eye after a twelve-year absence and the first bars of “Untitled (How Does It Feel)” had me sliding off my sofa in delight. I mean, y’all: it was D’Angelo. And he could still “sang.” For those of us who hoped for a comeback, what better place than the BET Awards for it to occur?

I would never expect a regular music awards show to bring tribute to an old-school R&B band. That’s BET’s job. So it was no surprise when the BET Awards gave a Lifetime Achievement Award to Maze and Frankie Beverly (for my white friends think of this touring band as the Black equivalent of Phish or the Grateful Dead). What’s more, watching Taraji P. Henson hold her purse and cellphone while dancing and singing to “Before I Let Go” or Beyoncé and Solange Knowles dancing to “Happy Feelings” just encouraged me to dance and sing as well. How can you NOT stand up and sing along to the songs many of our parents made us learn to love?

Finally, a constant at Black Family reunions is the “Jesus angle.” Everybody loves Jesus–or pretends to–for at least a day complete with attending a Sunday church service. This is no different at the BET Awards. For every Maybach Music Group song where a strangely bejeweled woman exits in a, well, Maybach, there’s a church song where inevitably Donnie McClurkin, Kirk Franklin, and/or Yolanda Adams will sing. And you KNOW that Bobby Jones will always attend. Explaining the complexity and contradictions of the Jesus angle would take another column but suffice it to say it is allowed because the awards are disreputable but also because it reaffirms respectability.

Here’s the thing: rarely do Black folks get opportunities to celebrate like this publicly. Rarely do we get the opportunity to “support the culture” as Jay-Z stated in regards to what the ceremony represented. Yes, the BET Awards are ultimately meaningless in terms of cultural cache–I doubt Beyoncé would reject trading her award for an Oscar if given half a chance. Yet, in terms of the Black community, it is the yearly reunion where Rick James and Tina Marie can reunite, running through the audience singing “Fire and Desire” and it is the place where Mo’Nique can do a better Beyoncé than Beyoncé with her “Crazy in Love” show opening. Its disreputability is the protective shield that allows it to be so damn fantastic.

*If Spike Lee calls it minstrelsy he’d be a damned hypocrite this year as he helped Samuel L. Jackson open the show with an old Black man’s version of Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “N*s in Paris.”

I began to put together my thoughts on this issue in 2008 during Mad Men’s second season. Set in 1962, I had great hope for what this program could become. Two years later, this essay wrestles with those thoughts and the issues I incorrectly predicted.

First, let me be clear: this is not a generalizable defense of all shows that exclude blacks. Mad Men is an exceptional case because of its very rigid time period and object of study: advertising agencies in 1960s America. In season two, several important events had yet to occur that would make my argument differ: JFK’s death and the election of Lyndon B. Johnson which eventually beget the Civil Rights Act of 1964. African-Americans in particular had yet to gain equality in the workplace. Thus, it made little sense to “see” blacks outside of the positions they dominated at this time. The black elevator operator, the black lunch lady, the black janitor, and the black maid represented the various types of minority presence on the show. Initially off-put by the exclusion, I reconsidered once I realized the show’s desire to recreate that America in all of its ugliness.

Unlike other recreations of this era — I am thinking particularly of Hairspray (2008) — Mad Men does not carry the same kind of “hindsight smugness”; that is, a show’s ability to re-interpret an era’s ideology through a contemporarily superior lens. For example, Hairspray‘s seemingly easy integration of blacks and whites overwhelmingly contains hindsight smugness. That film’s thesis posits that people can just get together regardless of racial backgrounds and dance but that is a 21st century belief and not a 1950s one. Conversely, Mad Men‘s strategic exclusion of blacks in key character roles works because integration had not occurred in the way it would in the late 1960s and 70s. To place a black man in the offices of Sterling Cooper would be more to comfort ourselves as contemporary audience members than to give a more accurate depiction of that overtly racist era.

The future of race politics in American culture leads to my final point concerning the possible ways we can understand Mad Men‘s exclusion of blacks as central characters. Two years ago, I believed that as the show continued there would be African-American characters in key positions based on the steady increase of their presence in season two. And I was partially correct: season two found Paul Kinsey dating Sheila, the black grocery store clerk. While she only had two lines of dialogue, her presence was necessary to illustrate Kinsey’s superficial attempt at non-comformity and potentially brought Mad Men one step closer to negotiating racial conflict. As it is now, the show strategically places blacks and issues of blackness in the periphery—always present, always watching, always knowing the white characters think of them as invisible. However, is that enough? Is it enough to view the characters watching television’s coverage of Civil Rights? Is it enough that Betty dreams of Medgar Evers? At this point, blackness should not consist of a random black couple passing Don, as in last night’s episode. But maybe the answer speaks to a larger issue that queries if the show is imitating life or if life is imitating the show: what happens when a white showrunner and a staff of white writers review history through the eyes of characters who are wholly invested in white privilege? What does that suggest about the writers’ own privilege?

In closing, I still have hope that this strategic exclusion will pay off. But I have grave concerns that we will be satisfied with the nudges and winks at Don Draper’s world being turned upside down at the expense of a story about those who are doing the turning.
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