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Start Date
24-6-2022 12:00 AM
End Date
24-6-2022 12:00 AM
Abstract
Singer/actress Janelle Monáe’s first three concept albums—Metropolis (2008), The ArchAndroid (2010), and Electric Lady (2013)—and her most recent “emotion picture”, Dirty Computer (2018), speak cogently to the intersections of Black queer identity, gender performance, and femme aesthetics. What coalesces vividly in Monáe’s oeuvre is her insistence that a refusal to conform to expectations around Black femininity is at the heart of her political viability, powerfully asserted in songs like “Q.U.E.E.N.” (2013), “Pynk” (2018), and “Django Jane” (2018). As such, Monáe and her work foreground disobedience within and against the mainstream as a vital tool of freedom and progress.
The visual album Dirty Computer, the release of which coincided with Monáe officially coming out as queer, sheds the emphasis on the cyborg personae from her earlier albums and offers an intimate, non-linear narrative that questions the boundaries between human and machine, reality and fiction, and the present and the future. Via her character Jane—a pansexual, polyamorous, Black femme who navigates the dystopian world of the album—Monáe offers Dirty Computer as a musical reflection on memory, femininity, love, sex, race, difference, and power.
My proposed essay refracts femme theory, particularly theories of queer resistance and failure, through an Afrofuturist lens in order to interrogate the digital activism, intersectional representation, and aesthetics of Monáe’s Dirty Computer, alongside some of her earlier narrative music videos. I will also consider how articulations of Black femme identities in popular culture can and do speak to the #BlackLivesMatter movement, queer politics, and feminist activism.
“Pynk” Aesthetics, Black Femininity, and Queer Afrofuturism in Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer
Singer/actress Janelle Monáe’s first three concept albums—Metropolis (2008), The ArchAndroid (2010), and Electric Lady (2013)—and her most recent “emotion picture”, Dirty Computer (2018), speak cogently to the intersections of Black queer identity, gender performance, and femme aesthetics. What coalesces vividly in Monáe’s oeuvre is her insistence that a refusal to conform to expectations around Black femininity is at the heart of her political viability, powerfully asserted in songs like “Q.U.E.E.N.” (2013), “Pynk” (2018), and “Django Jane” (2018). As such, Monáe and her work foreground disobedience within and against the mainstream as a vital tool of freedom and progress.
The visual album Dirty Computer, the release of which coincided with Monáe officially coming out as queer, sheds the emphasis on the cyborg personae from her earlier albums and offers an intimate, non-linear narrative that questions the boundaries between human and machine, reality and fiction, and the present and the future. Via her character Jane—a pansexual, polyamorous, Black femme who navigates the dystopian world of the album—Monáe offers Dirty Computer as a musical reflection on memory, femininity, love, sex, race, difference, and power.
My proposed essay refracts femme theory, particularly theories of queer resistance and failure, through an Afrofuturist lens in order to interrogate the digital activism, intersectional representation, and aesthetics of Monáe’s Dirty Computer, alongside some of her earlier narrative music videos. I will also consider how articulations of Black femme identities in popular culture can and do speak to the #BlackLivesMatter movement, queer politics, and feminist activism.
Bio
Aviva Dove-Viebahn is an Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at Arizona State University and a Contributing Editor for the Scholar Writing Program at Ms. magazine, which frequently carries her essays and reviews in both its print and online editions. She has a PhD in Visual and Cultural Studies from the University of Rochester and an MA in Art History from the University of Virginia. She’s currently working on a book project exploring representations of feminine intuition, as a contested and ambivalent form of gendered power and knowledge, in contemporary television.
More information can be found at her website: http://avivadoveviebahn.com/