Azealia Banks, “Yung Rapunxel” and the Dark Other
This article was originally given as a paper at the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (AAANZ) annual conference in 2013, as part of a session co-chaired by the author and Kate Robertson, entitled “Consumption and Interdiction”. The theme of the 2013 conference was Inter discipline. Images shown in the accompanying presentation have been inserted throughout, however I have marked the timing of the different slides below.
This paper concerns the film clip for Azealia Banks’ track “Yung Rapunxel”, a joint production between the rapper and artist Jam Sutton, released on 16 April 2013. I will frame this clip as part of Banks’ post-hiphop feminist strategy to cast herself as the exotic femme fatale, an image which works both in concert with and opposition to mainstream cultural expectations for a young black woman rapper. My exploration of the clip will incorporate post-Foucauldean pop-cultural critique, wreck and hypersexuality as a feminist oppositional strategy, and an examination of Banks and Sutton’s deft use of contemporary countercultural memes, particularly their use of pan-occult symbolism. This paper will delve through the layers of Banks’ various musical, public and online identities, through critiques of contemporary virtual visual culture as shallow, codified and commoditised, and show how Banks and Sutton take the most negative characteristics of pop culture’s portrayal of women of colour, and weave them with traditional art historical tropes to recast Banks as a powerful, self-possessed and vocal individual.
This paper will reference a number of socio-cultural methodologies and discourses. Chief among these is the body of literature on hiphop feminism, a feminism which arose around the 1990s, equally out of the need for the unique concerns of women of colour to be addressed by the primarily white, middle-class Second Wave of feminism, and of the new music, rhythms and experiences of the hiphop generation of young African-Americans. As I will show, though Banks, who turned 22 this year, cannot entirely be called a hiphop feminist, her identity politics are informed by this era of Black feminism, much as her music is informed this era of hiphop. Growing up in Harlem, New York, Azealia was inured to the brash and aggressive vocal style of many female recording artists of the time, who employed what feminist scholars have identified as “percussive” feminism, and particularly in the context of hiphop feminists, “wreck” [Fig. 2].
Percussive feminism draws from the definition of percussion the idea of one body striking against another with force, and would seem particularly germane to the work of rapper as fast, rhythmic and aggressive as Banks. Furthermore, “wreck” refers specifically to the way hiphop feminists purposefully reclaim control of public perception of black women both in the public sphere and in popular music in particular, by working within and around contemporary pop-culture structures such as media and the commercial market. Leading hiphop feminist scholar Gwendolyn Pough has characterised the conscious use of both the term and the strategy itself as connoting both boasting and violence. Banks employs this strategy in her music, public persona and visual identity, as disseminated across various media. I will return to this concept throughout this paper, as Banks’ use of this strategy is one of her defining characteristics as both a musician and a public figure, and as we will see, wreck runs through both the song itself and the clip for Yung Rapunxel, representing a manifesto of sorts of a salient feature of Banks’ oeuvre and method.
Alongside my use of hiphop feminism as a structure by which we can understand Banks’ oppositional strategies, is the discourse — mainly art historical, but throughout Western culture itself periodically social in nature — on the occult, the pagan or the other, which intersects with Black feminism and Banks’ use of its tropes and tactics within the space of Yung Rapunxel [Fig. 3]. A primary methodological concern is defining my use of these terms — which I shall wilfully use almost interchangeably — in the very narrow context of contemporary counter-cultural sites of interaction and play. In classic sociological literature from the 50s, 60s and through to the 80s, the “occult”, though rarely defined as such, seems to be a term used specifically to refer to astrological profiles and forecasts, tarot readings, and occasionally, tangentially to the practice of witchcraft, now primarily referred to as Wicca. In contemporary popular culture, the “occult” is more of a banner term which encompasses a wide range of visual imagery, religious or faith-based practices, semiotic systems, a number of music genres, and a general attitude and tone of “otherness”.
This poorly-articulated position of opposition in fact goes to the heart of my discussion today — that the “occult” has become a sort of genericised, pan-counter-culture, whose adherents are much as clique-ish and trend-oriented as mainstream cultural participants, but who nevertheless define themselves in terms of “otherness”. Azealia Banks, who I will show has crossed and participated in a number of the iterations of this occultish cultural movement, rather cannily passes this stream of oppositional tropes and practices through the very old, and very effective, lens of the “dark other woman”, descendant of the exotic, femme fatale type, thus giving form to her own interpretation of a very broad set of cultural memes. She wears what we might think of as esoterica as easily as Kurt Cobain wore the contradictorily rebellious ennui of grunge [Fig. 4].
The major vehicle of this incarnation of the occult is, I would argue, the Internet — which hosts the many social media and image-sharing platforms inhabited by moody teens, the shopping sites they visit, and their music sources. The vehicle of the post-modern (that is to say, 60s, 70s and 80s occult movement) was perhaps the published word, or maybe the head-shop [Fig. 5] where one could buy crystals or books by obscure Eastern spiritualists, or have one’s palm read. These shops or books or long velvet dresses used to be a little more difficult to find. These days anyone with a disposable income and an internet connection can feel that they belong in this group of self-designated misfits and loners [Figs 6–8].
Banks, instinctively understanding the role of the internet in both cultural production, in a sociological sense, and product dissemination, in a marketing sense, deftly crosses multiple platforms, blasting her distinctive image and often abrasive message across Twitter [Fig. 9], Instagram [Fig. 10] and YouTube or Vevo, garnering write-ups on Hipster Runoff [Fig. 11], street-style sites and more mainstream press, and of course, though she does not control the endless system of notes which connects a web of Tumblr users from one soft-goth page to another [Fig. 12], she has a strong presence across this primarily visual, but occasionally aural, platform as well. The following clip, with the above-mentioned theoretical structures in place, is evidence of Banks’ deft use of hiphop feminist strategies, as I will prove, but more immediately, her innate understanding of the importance of rebloggability.
(Azealia Banks, „Atlantis”, 2012).
[Here the clip itself was shown in full within the conference session]
The Rapunxel clip focuses repeatedly on the rapper’s mouth, with one of the strands of the opening sequence showing Banks swallowing a pill-shaped object stamped with the logo of popular headphone and speaker label Beats, a company helmed by rap mogul Dr Dre [Fig. 13]. This image could signify a number of meanings to the viewer: that Banks has literally internalised music and its equipment, that the viewers should go and buy themselves some Beats-branded merchandise, in the highly unlikely scenario that they don’t already own any and, as this image appears at the beginning of the clip, that what comes next is a sort of visionary, psychedelic drug trip, fuelled by the music.
This is a sort of Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole moment, and relying as it does on the focus of the viewer on Banks’ mouth, rapidly followed by her eruption into the main flow of the song, the swallowing of the speaker-pill represents the threshold, the point of no return, after which the beat drops and the nature of the song changes completely, coming into its full, abrasive, violent form. Repetitions of mouth imagery abound in the clip, from this composite image [Fig. 14], to lingering shots of the rapper screaming or smiling, to images of Banks licking her lips suggestively [Fig. 15].
As a rapper, Banks’ primary skill is her “flow” — the speed and accuracy with which she spits out her rhymes. What is contained in those rhymes is, naturally, of importance too. Both literally and figuratively, Banks’ persona revolves around her mouth. Many of Banks’ other clips feature her mouth prominently — not just in the course of filming the artist singing or rapping, but as a central thematic element to the clips’ imagery. These include her clips for her break-out hit, the sexually-explicit “212’ [Figs 16–17] to her more recent tracks, 1991 [Figs 18–19] and Van Vogue [Figs 20–21].
Banks’s awareness of what comes out of her mouth, and how much trouble she can cause with it, is at the forefront of her lyrical and social media production. For example, Banks has made a strong argument for the reappropriation of the word “cunt” in her work [Fig. 22], as one of the last remaining linguistic taboos in the Western world, and one of the most strongly gendered of all insults or swear words. As extensive as her use of this word is, and many other obscenities besides, Wikipedia’s list of the rapper’s feuds with singers, reporters and other pop cultural figures is yet more extensive [Fig. 23], including Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Iggy Azalea, Kreayshawn, ASAP Rocky, Rita Ora, Lil’ Kim, Nicki Minaj, Lily Allen, Pharrell, and several past managers, to name just a few. Many observers, including fans of the rapper, lament that publicity of Banks’ feuds tends to detract from the quality of her work.
However, I believe this antagonistic behaviour to be part and parcel of Banks’ method, and see it as dovetailing neatly with the artist’s refusal to be acquiescent with the patriarchy, conventional ideas about femininity, and the way the mainstream pop music machine dictates that female talent should behave. Of course, the fact that most fans see Banks’ loud mouth as proof of her “realness”, probably doesn’t hurt either. However, as we have seen repeatedly already today, fear of a dangerous woman is directly related to the femme fatale’s mouth — what might come out of it — temptation, forbidden knowledge, or a man’s or his country’s secrets — and fear of what might go into it: both the carnal parts of a man’s body, or even his very soul itself.
The figure of the femme fatale, as we saw in the first session of today’s panel, is an art historical trope with a long and storied history. My intention in the present paper is not to dissect the femme fatale figure in general, but to note here how the figure is reiterated in modern forms, and how Banks has reinterpreted the origins and place of this figure for her own purposes. I see two primary threads in Banks and Suttons understanding and use of the femme fatale as a visual presence: first, the femme fatale as the darker and more dangerous side of the Madonna/whore dichotomy, and second, as a representative of the unknown and the uncanny. Banks and Sutton recognise that both of these primary elements of the femme fatale’s assigned personality traits can be — and frequently are — applied to women of colour, both historically and in present day visual and popular culture [Fig. 24].
Shown here for example are some stills from the clip for Major Lazer’s 2013 collaboration with Bruno Mars, 2 Chainz, Tyga and Mystic “Bubble Butt” [Fig. 25], which was produced by Eric Wareheim of Tim and Eric fame. This clip is particularly salient here, as it employs and parodies several internet phenomena, much as Banks employs and subverts others — here Wareheim takes digs at both seapunk [Fig. 26] and twerking. As an aside, though the name “Major Lazer” [Fig. 27] refers to a fictional Jamaican ex-mercenary who fought in the zombie wars, behind the popular dance act is Diplo, originally accompanied by collaborator Switch [Figs 28–29].
In a detailed and revealing study from 2007 of the effect of sexual images of African American women in hiphop culture on the body image and sexuality of young Black girls and boys, authors Dionne Stephens and April Few identified eight stereotypical genre types of black womanhood as represented in music videos. These built on the older typological images of the Jezebel, Mammy, Welfare Mother, and Matriarch, becoming in the 00s the more sexually motivated or explicit Diva, Gold Digger, Freak, Dyke, Gangster Bitch, Sister Savior, Earth Mother and Baby Mama. The types which Banks most deliberately and, apparently consciously, plays into and against in Yung Rapunxel are those of the Diva, Freak and Dyke, which could in turn be grouped together under the larger category of the femme fatale. The figure of the femme fatale, an essentially ill-defined and unknowable figure, has nevertheless been read as symptomatic of fin-de-siecle nineteenth century male anxiety over colonialism, and increasing class and gender mobility.
There are several references in Yung Rapunxel to the typological figure of the femme fatale. For example, an image which appears frequently throughout the clip is that of the owl [Fig. 30], surrounding Banks, emerging from her forehead or flying around her in the un-placed site of the clip [Fig. 31]. The use of the owl here shows awareness of one of the prototypes of the femme fatale, particularly in Judaeo-Christian imagery — that is, of Adam’s first wife, Lilith. The mother of all demons, the first woman on top, and the bane of midwives and those in childbirth, Lilith is linked in Judaic texts and Apocrypha to owls, and the presence of an owl whilst a woman is in labour is an exceedingly bad omen. Owls have also long been linked to witches in general, as the presumed familiars of those occult figures.
Banks and Sutton make another reference to Lilith, in the form of the song’s title — Yung Rapunxel — and the focus of the clip on the artist’s long hair [Fig. 33]. In Goethe’s Faust, Mephistopheles warns the protagonist:
Lilith, the first wife of Adam,
Beware of her fair hair,
For she excels
All women in the magic of her locks;
And, when she winds them round a young man’s neck,
She will not ever set him free again.
Banks’ long hair — in fact fake, and known colloquially as a “weave” — is one of her defining physical characteristics, and one which the singer plays up in many clips and photographs [Fig. 34].
The length of the hair and at times its colour, have been related to the previous iteration of her pop-culture persona, that of devotee of the relatively short-lived internet subculture known as “seapunk” [Figs 35–37]. However, though Banks’ overall persona and look has evolved into a darker, witchier aesthetic, the hair has remained, as she realises the potency of it as a symbol. Another early prototype of the long-haired femme fatale was, of course, Mary Magdalene, who ruined the sexy vampishness of her story by repenting and using her beautiful long hair to wash abs dry the feet of Christ. However, the Magdalene retains a modicum of her original transgressive, darker side, as even through her repentance in the desert she never gets rid of her shining hair.
Banks’ decidedly, deliberately artificial hair simultaneously plays into and against type for women of colour and white interpretations of black beauty and womanhood, another set of expectations that the artist enjoys playing with. On the one hand, Banks’ refusal to wear her hair “natural”, or curly, shows an adherence to the adopted ideals of white feminine beauty, against which so many hiphop feminists, amongst others, have protested. By contrast, in other ways Banks deliberately and provocatively conforms with expectations of Black womanhood. For example, in the bridge section of the track, after literally enacting the related concepts of “wreck” and “riot grrrl” by smashing a bottle over a riot policeman’s helmet, Banks prostrates herself in a posture of obeisance in the centre of a group of faceless men [Fig. 38], echoing the set-up of many a pornographic or stereotypical gang bang scenario, setting herself up as the hypersexual woman of colour.
And then again, in several of the visual threads of Yung Rapunxel, Banks’ skin appears to have been quite deliberately darkened [Fig. 39], simultaneously imbuing her with what black popular culture sees as more authenticity or “realness”, and signalling her conscious rejection of white notions of beauty as being related specifically to paleness, and thus purity. In this sense, Banks and Sutton quite purposefully reinforce the dichotomous relationships of white/black and good/bad, but in doing so through the channel of Banks’ own agency and self-representational strategy, subvert the pejorative connotations of these limiting binaries, and reassign the moral conditions of these pronouncing. The triumph of Banks’ strategy is evident in the crowning sequence of images in this clip, which appear after the bridge of the song [Fig. 40]. Banks is revealed in a heroic, symbolic mode as the dark woman who has conquered the ultimate mythological symbol of masculine power over women — the artist rides a bull, perhaps a depiction of Zeus in one of his many seducers’ guises. The jubilance of Banks, and the angle of the camera in these scenes, make it clear who is riding whom — this is no rape of Europa, but rather the triumphant conquering of the mighty bull.
As if any further mythological allusions were needed, Banks is crowned with a crescent moon [Fig. 41] — which appeared earlier in the clip as a signifier of pan-occultist cool — but here, taken with the bull the singer rides, could be read as reference to Artemis/Diana. Though not necessarily a femme fatale as such, the moon goddess is certainly redolent of power, mystery, a refusal to be tamed by masculine authority, and taken with the tripartite goddess identity Hecate, darkness. Banks, a proudly defiant, dark woman herself, deliberately reappropriates delimiting, negative stereotypical representations of black femininity, to fashion her own visual identity which dovetails easily with both her music, and popular means of contemporary cultural and counter-cultural dissemination.
