Common
An American rapper and actor. He has won many awards such as grammys for best R&B song, best rap album at the grammys, and many more. He launched ‘Think Common Entertainment, a record label in 2011. He has acted / voice acted in films/tv shows: Date night, suicide squad, small foot, now you see me, never have I ever and many more.
13th amendment
Abolished Slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. There is a loophole in the 13th amendment- which allowed slavery to continue and provided more discrimination that still happens in today’s society.
Documentary:
Released in 2016. Film director and maker, Ava DuVernay, speaks about the history of racial inequality in the USA. Showing us that America’s prisons are filled with many more African-Americans than white Caucasians. It points out how much harm can be caused by slavery.
Cultural Hegemony
Key Concepts:
● Cultural resistance
● Cultural hegemony
● Subcultural theory
The Idea of Resistance and Political Protest
Key idea: the political, personal and cultural are always intertwined
Culture is what influences people’s hearts, minds and opinions. This is the site of popular change.
Antonio Gramsci
Hegemonic: dominant, ruling-class, power-holders
Hegemonic culture: the dominant culture
Cultural hegemony: power, rule, or domination maintained by ideological and cultural means.
Ideology: worldview – beliefs, assumptions and values
Functions by framing the ideologies of the dominant social group as the only legitimate
ideology.
(slide 3) The dominant social groups are shown through its economic, political, moral and social institutions.
Subculture
Working-class youth culture
Unified by shared tastes in style, music and ideology
A solution to collectively experienced problems
A form of resistance to cultural hegemony
Song lyrics
“We ain’t seen as human beings with feelings” I chose this lyric because it points out how people of colour are constantly being dehumanised.
“They stop, search and arrest our souls” I chose this lyric because people of colour don’t get the freedom deserve.
Post Colonialism
Looking at identity and representation through the lens of Empire and Colonialism.
Shadow of Slavery
Edward Said
Orientalism- the link between culture, imperial power and colonialism.
The arguments around postcolonial critical thought ‘constituted a fundamentally important political act’ (MacLeod, 200: 16)
The power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming or emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism– Edward Said Culture and Imperialism, 1993: xiii
‘In this view, the outlying regions of the world have no life, history or culture to speak of, no independence or integrity worth representing without the West.‘ (Said, 1993: xxi).
Jacque Lacan “The other”
Search for identity by looking at the mirror or other things. You are only self conscious and aware when you see yourself in the mirror.