ceeroosa

[ceeroosa]

A Crash Course to Kendrick's Super Bowl Performance, from a Black Woman

Note: this does NOT go in depth into all of the song's lyrics. I don't have time to recount two decades of his discography. This is just a summary of the performance itself.

Let's start with the first visual we get:

UNCLE SAM - most notably recognized from WWII American wartime propaganda, Uncle Sam is the personification of American patriotism and freedom. The term "uncle" is also evocative of Uncle Tom from Uncle Tom's Cabin, an abolitionist book that aided in inciting the Civil War. Uncle is also a very common term (both endearment and derogatory) towards Black men (eg. "unc"). Samuel L Jackson was fantastic.

Uncle Sam also resembles a circus ringleader, notable for my next point:

THE GREAT AMERICAN GAME - no, not Super Bowl. The GAG is us the people being pitted against each other: through late-stage capitalism, through the culture war, through class warfare, through being built of the backs of slaves. We are all players in the GAG because none of us on this site were the oligarchs seated at the inauguration.

This is also seen as Kendrick's stage was a Play Station controller. Not only did it remind of circus rings visually, but it was a game battle stage. The Great American Game is a battle royale of the commoners for the amusement of the rich whites.

Remember the foods / Them color was tin and brown / But now they 100 and blue - For this I'll just say, look what the last election said about lowering the price of eggs... and look at the prices now.

The revolution about to be televised / You picked the right time / But the wrong guy - Election 2024 once more.

THE FLAG DANCERS - yes, the dancers formed the US flag... off of the backs of Black people. Not a single white person in sight, and that's true of the cotton pickers in the fields. Plantations are part of how the US came to economic prominence after being a "backwater" colony. Remember tobacco? Cotton? Our bloodlines do.

The red and blue dancers are also notable for representing the Crips and Bloods, two infamous street gangs. The dance in Not Like Us is the Crip Walk. I recommend researching more on your own time about them, but just know they are a large part of the stereotype of Black people being "ghetto."

TOO LOUD, TOO RECKLESS, TOO GHETTO. Do you really know how to play the game? - This is exactly what Black people, especially Black men, get told all the time. It's why we change our names on resumes if they sound "too Black." It's why we codeswitch in non-Black company. This is especially rich considering how non-Black people love our culture and love to make money off of us, as the latter part of the quote points to. And it's even more profound during the Super Bowl-- the NFL is majority Black players.

STREET LIGHT A CAPELLA -- "thug" stereotype dancers to counteract the a capella connotations, with Uncle Sam then saying that Kendrick figured out "bringing other street guys around being a culture cheat code." Yes, this is a direct hit at Drake (listen to "Not Like Us") but also politically. Look up "model minority". Notably I would point to Candace Owens, or the Miami Venezuelan political group that's been in the news recently, especially as this directly led to Kendrick being surrounded by...

DANCERS IN WHITE -- it's white America. That's... that's the allegory.

NOT LIKE US TEASER -- Kendrick says "Not Like Us" is "their favorite song." -> he means white people specifically here. It comes after he's surrounded by all white dancers, the women around him who are his call and response are also in white (my opinion, they represent the industry). He's saying "Not Like Us" is the favorite of yts because it is about BLACK MEN FIGHTING. This again is reflected in the video game stage and ringleader Uncle Sam.

SZA -- instead of giving what they want, we see SZA. She's one of Drake's exes and Kendrick has always supported her.

ALL THE STARS -- This was in the first Black Panther movie, which I recommend you watch. Rest in Power Chadwick. Notably, this movie was incredibly mainstream as a major Marvel movie, and then we have Uncle Sam say...

"THAT'S WHAT AMERICA WANTS: NICE AND CALM. DON'T MESS THIS UP" -- translation: Marvel (the industry, America, etc.) wanted a safe, semi-pop song because white American likes safe pop songs, not Kendrick's usual heavy rap style about his life as a Black man! Don't mess up what you've got going mainstream for having this "Black rap feud" with Drake, who is an R&B model minority to white people because he's safe.

So what does Kendrick say?

IT'S A CULTURAL DIVIDE / IMMA GET IT ON THE FLOOR -- He was warned not to be political or apologetically Black for this Super Bowl performance, but he is using this big stage opportunity to speak out.

40 ACRES AND A MULE / THIS IS BIGGER THAN THE MUSIC -- 40 acres and a mule are what the freed slaves were promised. Instead, this land went to white sharecroppers. Research Jim Crow laws.

THEY TRIED TO RIG THE GAME / BUT YOU CAN'T FAKE INFLUENCE -- rig the election, rig the industry like with model minority Drake, rig the Great American Game with culture war to distract from active class warfare.

NOT LIKE US -- the only thing I'll mention because it made me holler is Serena Williams crip walking on Drake's metaphorical grave. She's another one of his exes.

TURN THE TV OFF -- exactly like he said! The TV is a distraction, the Super Bowl is a distraction, the mainstream news is often a distraction. Turn it off and get with your people!

GAME OVER — could not see this on my stream but at the end of the performance, the lights in the stadium spelled this out. The world is watching, America…

In conclusion, Kendrick Lamar is a visionary and thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[ceeroosa]

studying ancient history will have you thinking stuff like The 18th century was basically yesterday

[ceeroosa]

do you think costco sells those teeny tiny fridges (meant for ur insulin and stuff) in a two pack?

[ceeroosa]

I see this a lot in fics and I feel like I’m slowly going insane so

[ceeroosa]

source

[ceeroosa]

Age play actually does turn adults into children, just like pet play turns people into actual dogs. Sorry about that. It turns out that sex and kink actually do have magic powers.

[ceeroosa]

It's always, "ew, you smoke? You should quit. Have you tried patches and gum?" and never "oh, you smoke? Do you need help organizing the working class against capitalism and the American healthcare system, so that you can eventually have access to proper mental and physical healthcare instead of being forced to rely on nicotine and weed to sand the edges off your disabled brain and get some relief for your chronic pain? In the meantime, here's a light. Sorry you have to self-medicate in our fucked-up society."

Anyway, join a union.

[ceeroosa]

Speaker Mask

James Kwaksistala

[ceeroosa]

[ceeroosa]

Firstly, I just want to say I love the space you create and hold for the complicated, messy, sometimes-ugly relationships people have to their queerness and/or transness and/or sexuality. There are so many commonly accepted opinions and narratives of The Right Way To Do And Think About Things that exclude so many of us, and ever since I started following you, I have so appreciated the space you make for things outside of that.

The idea of 'choice' around queerness is deeply unpopular, but the fact is… choice is an element for some of us. I'm open to fucking and falling in love with anyone, and that doesn't feel like a choice, but I made a choice long ago to make that important to me. I could honestly exist in a perfectly happy relationship with a cis man (I'm a woman -- kinda. More about that in a sec.). I'd be happy, I'd be fine. I've been dating my partner, who's a cis man, for a long time now and it's a relationship I'm very happy in. But my world would be so so much smaller if I just decided, "I'm straight and monogamous now." It makes my world bigger and brighter and happier to know I'm queer and to make that important to me through non-monogamy and the relationships I build and the elements of my life that I foster.

I think the "Queerness is AGONY! It's so hard! Who would ever choose such a life??" argument that I saw a lot in my teens, when I was first encountering my queerness, left me feeling very isolated, because, like. Me. I'm choosing it. I felt for a very long time that this made me not a proper queer, and it's still something I don't talk about very often.

My gender's another thing that fits along those lines. I've felt cis most of my life (I'm in my 30s). In the last three years or so, I've gone, "Oh, I think I want to be a boy sometimes, actually. That sounds nice and fun and sexy." I would have been fine to just keep living as a woman -- but once again, that's a smaller world than the one I want to create for myself. I am choosing to make my world bigger and more interesting and more fun.

And I recognise this comes from extreme amounts of privilege. I live in a very liberal part of the world, and being able to choose these things without being scared for myself or my safety or security is a huge privilege. I'm also white and femme and non-threatening, and that makes these choices much easier.

And there's an element of "what's a choice, what's innate to who I am", and I don't know the answers to that, but I'm making choices about what to do with the information I have about myself, and that sometimes feels like a very lonely place to be, a place that we're not meant to talk about because it hurts The Cause. If we can make a choice to be """""normal"""", why would anyone give us rights? (Because it's not enough that those rights make our worlds bigger and brighter and happier.)

Anyway. Thank you so much for the space you've created here.

and thank you for choosing to be less normal!

[ceeroosa]

When are we going to talk about how utterly over the top and ridiculous neurotypical advice for ADHD and sleep is?? It’s straight up fucking bonkers. 

Someone with ADHD: I really really struggle to fall asleep at “regualr times”, no matter how tired I am I just can’t seem to fall asleep at 10 pm!!! But I almost instantly fall asleep any time after 2 am. What should I do?

NT sleep advice: You, someone who cannot conceptualize time in any way whatsoever, need to identify TWO HOURS in advance when you want to sleep and, with your executive dysfunction that makes making decisions at will almost straight up impossible, make the decision to stop whatever you’re involuntarily hyperfixating on. Then, you, with a focus disorder that makes it so that you have to be doing something at all times, sit and do nothing for 2 hours. You cannot read. You cannot be on your phone. Do not move. Do not talk to people. Just sit and do nothing. If you can’t fall asleep it’s because you Did Something and it’s your fault. Bluelight 24 hours before you want to sleep is the reason. Never look at a TV, Phone, computer, OR let one of these objects be within a 24,000 mile radius of you. Never ever go NEAR your bed unless you’re already asleep. If you are AWAKE in your bedroom ever you will not be able to sleep. 

ADHD Sleep Advice: Get a job that starts at 2 pm or later and go to sleep at 4 am and wake up at noon. 

[ceeroosa]

Since we're talking about ndns (especially Cherokee) getting the "can I call myself Native" anons again, I'll say that if you're mixed White & your appearance leans more towards looking White and you're a reconnecting Native, there's a point where you also have to come to terms with White fragility & hurt feelings about people saying you aren't Native and don't look Native.

At some point you are going to have to get over it and not care about their opinions. Because there's also a point where you have to stand firm in your identity if you want to be Native while also acknowledging the privilege that comes from being/looking White. You can't both be 100% sure of your identity and decolonizing against Blood Quantum but then also question yourself & feeling hurt everytime random fuckface #235 said you "don't look Native" in your reconnecting process (or evdn afterward!) and you apparently care about their opinion. You're gunna be fighting against yourself your whole life otherwise. I know it hurts to have your identity questioned, but if you truly want to be Native, you have to stand firm in your belief in yourself.

Your answer/s to being told these things will be "Well, that is simply not true, I AM Native", "there is no one way to 'look' Native" and "it's true that I have White privilege, but I am also Native"

[ceeroosa]

Do you know much about how antipsych applies to autism?

autism is one of very few psych diagnoses that has a semi organised tradition of actual self advocacy and a communal tendency to reject and criticise the proffered treatments (ABA, various other forms of abuse). autistic advocates have also played huge roles in developing and articulating the neurodivergency paradigm—arguing that autism is not a 'disease' in need of a cure, but simply a way that some people are, as a result of value-neutral variation that all human minds display.

i don't actually love the neurodivergency paradigm because i don't think the 'neurotypical' exists or is a useful benchmark against which to compare oneself; also, many proponents of this framework are explicitly hostile to deconstructing their very monolithic understanding of each psych diagnosis, and they tend to continue viewing these diagnoses as 'real' biological conditions that simply need to be destigmatised. i don't think this destigmatisation is truly possible as long as we still believe that autism or anything else truly is a distinct, identifiable 'brain difference', even if we're construing it as a neutral variation instead of a pathology. these categories are made up; what unites two people with autism is not necessarily anything to do with their brains, it's a function of (and disgnosed by) external behaviours and the failure to perform social normality. every single person varies biologically (again, there is no 'neurotypical') and varies as much within psychiatrically delineated categories as much as across them.

but anyway i digress: autism is probably the psych diagnosis with the single most organised critique of psychiatry right now. there are of course self advocacy groups for other diagnoses but i haven't really seen any break through with their critique the way that like ASAN have for example. historically i think one thing that has made autism friendly ground for this is that it's the rare psych dx that isn't legal gatekeeping for a drug (compare autistic self advocacy to adhd 'self' 'advocacy' for example) and another huge factor is that autism in its present form is historically differentiated from achizophrenia by being the less stigmatised, more benign 'version' with schizophrenia explicitly reserved for more vulnerable and marginalised populations (eg in the US, black political radicals). so it's not terribly surprising that some of those diagnosed autistic then push this logic even further and say, hey, there's nothing actually Wrong with us though—and it's especially not surprising that the institutional and public response to this has been, while hardly universally positive, generally much more amenable than to people with 'scarier' and racialised diagnoses who say the same thing about themselves. non-radicality of mainstream autistic advocacy aside, even.

[ceeroosa]

MY gripe with reylo is that people act like their age difference is a whole thing, and tag fic accordingly, when in reality they're what, less than 10 years apart? And it doesn't really influence their dynamic at all. C'mon, people. 🙄

Strong contender for least interesting major ship with the most hand-wringing wank attached.

--

[ceeroosa]

I mean, I do feel like if someone was traumatized by their religious upbringing, helping them to recognize that as a bad thing and helping them to be free of it is arguably the right move? Yeah just telling them “god isn’t real, get over it” is most likely insensitive but arguably freeing them of their self hating beliefs is the ideal outcome?

--

Man... I was raised to despise religion, but a steady diet of nerdy youtube and really weirdly anti-intellectual takes on tumblr has forced me into repeatedly defending religion. I did not ask for this, but here we are.

Personally, I find most religion kind of dumb, but it is a key part of a great portion of humanity's search for meaning. It's the backbone of so many cultures in so many places and times. Knowing about it is useful for everything from being more politically informed to making up better fantasy world building in fiction.

When a person has religious trauma because they were told that their religion, in this context probably Christianity, hates them, telling them to ditch religion is like telling them they're not allowed to ever have a birthday party again because their abusive parents did something awful at their past ones. Ah yes, cut yourself off from major celebrations and cultural experiences, not to mention community. That's sure to fix things!

It would be far more effective at 1. making them feel better and 2. making them stop adhering to a shitty religion if we introduced them to better religion.

The history of Christianity is one of the most studied subjects on the fucking planet. There are a multitude of progressive scholars who have explored things like how the early church very possibly had major female figures that later asswipes tried to downplay and cover up. I think Religion for Breakfast has some interesting videos that at least touch on this.

There's a whole complex conversation to be had both about how the early church actually handled same-sex relationships and about why a given prescription is even in there from an anthropological perspective. Take the pork thing: it's probably about taxes. Some of the others are about differentiation from nearby groups at the time. Understanding the historical cultural context helps dismantle the idea that this or that specific prescription is a vital core part of the religion that must remain unchanging thousands of years later.

"A true Christian wouldn't have abused their gay kid" is a far better message than "Give up everything you know", and it has plenty of support from scholars who are deeply religious but not dumbass textual literalists who can't grasp that even if a holy text were the word of god, English language edition such-and-such is subject to human interference in the form of All Your Base-level translators.

If Christianity or whatever religion is the issue is a no go due to the traumatized person's past experiences, plenty of people would still be happier finding a different religion than going without.

I really, really cannot emphasize this enough: Religion is a key part of many people's lives the same way, say, sex is.

A lot of people around here seem to fundamentally not get this in the same way that you see people who haven't realized how ace they are going "But whyyyyy?" over the central role that horny plays in somebody else's life. You don't gotta get it, my dudes. Doesn't mean it's going away.

Even just understanding the parameters of what counts as religion and all the different flavors that exist out there will help put the trauma into context for many people. Your asshole parents are in a cult not because all religion is lies but because this Christianity has been perverted into a vehicle for abuse. Other religious people like the scientific method, research, logic, and evidence. It's just your church that's atrocious.

Shitty religion leads to self hate.

You can pick another religion.

[ceeroosa]

Might I share these books that I’ve used for kids’ sex ed?

Tell Me About Sex, Grandma by Anastasia Higginbotham

A collage picture book recommended for ages 4-12 explaining pleasure and consent. Acknowledges how nervous it can make both caregivers and kids to talk about it.

Buy on Bookshop.org

Watch a reading of it on YouTube

Sex is a Funny Word by Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth

A comprehensive comic recommended for ages 8-10. Has some good sections on transness and disability.

Buy on Bookshop.org

Watch the author read selections on YouTube

You Know, Sex by Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth

Another comprehensive comic by the dynamic duo, this time recommended for puberty/middle schoolers and up. Includes sections on porn, masturbation, harassment, autonomy, etc.

Buy on Bookshop.org

thanks for the recs!