star-vessel

[star-vessel]

My gif-making skills are rusty, but I MADE A THING 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[star-vessel]

happy valentine’s day from two snesbians 💗

based on this image:

[star-vessel]

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. *Edit to add, the first part of this lyric is in reference to the Black Liberation Song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" by Gil Scott-Heron. Thanks to everyone who mentioned that.

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. *Edit to add: they also all piled out of a clown car. The US flag in a clown car? Brilliant.

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.

[star-vessel]

Cecil J Williams

Ever Defiant✊🏼✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿

[star-vessel]

Doechii Best Rap Album acceptance speech at the 67th Annual GRAMMY Awards | February 2, 2025

[star-vessel]

the david zwirner gallery and the felix gonzalez torres foundation in the smithsonian removed the descriptive plaque for portrait of ross in la by felix gonzalez-torres. the old plaque explained portrait for ross' origins as the artist's partner's aids related death, and replaced it with a plaque with absolutely no information about the piece itself, who ross was, or who gonzalez-torres was either. portrait of ross was also reeranged to lay on the floor long ways instead of in a pile as it typically is situated, and the plaque outside the exhibition FOR GONZALEZ-TORRES omits his sexuality, as well as his aids related death. i'm in utter disbelief

[star-vessel]

happy black history month y’all!

[star-vessel]

he is literally so fucking funny

[star-vessel]

im literally not exaggerating when i tell you guys this video saved my life

[star-vessel]

- Avery Brooks

[star-vessel]

CASTLEVANIA: NOCTURNE (2023-) I 1.06 "Guilty Men to Be Judged"

[star-vessel]

Lets give it to Annette first to secure the bag and hit all the romance check points with a white male hero. I don't think I've seen a black female character get all that, get the guy and still be alive by the end of the show lol

[star-vessel]

do you ever think about dead versions of yourself that are fossilized in someone else's mind

[star-vessel]

[star-vessel]

this is how some of y’all look and it’s so transparent…..

[star-vessel]

snoopy of the day

[star-vessel]

people really just walk into horror movies and expect them not to deal with uncomfortable things despite the genre being dedicated to discomfort.

i saw so many people complain that lisa frankenstein, a movie where one of the leads is famously a rotting corpse, was too gross for them. when i walked out of nosferatu, i heard people say that the nudity was uncalled for... in a vampire film. nudity? in MY gothic horror?! unheard of!

a LOT of people really need to accept that maybe some genres just aren't to their taste, idk. not every movie needs to be cookie-cutter clean. sexuality is a staple of gothic horror, if not the wider genre horror in General. you don't need to enjoy it, but it doesn't make these things uncalled for.