Tuesday, September 18, 2007

 

Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, con't.

Today in class English 201 8-9 we continued watching the film and then we discussed the director's purpose or why he made the film. We also looked at how he told the story, noticing his use of statistics, interviews with fans, producers, scholars like Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, performers and wannabee artists.

We discussed the presence of hidden arguments in a beverage names like Nelley's "Pimp Juice." What is the emotional meaning or connotation verses its dictionary meaning or denotation.

Other words used were incongruities versus consistency when one says "pimp" has a positive meaning when it's connotation is not. We didn't reach agreement, which was okay. One student gave the definition of "pimp" as a 21st century slave- master. Another student said no one expects to get $1000 when said person drinks "100 Racks." But one can't be so certain.

Look at advertisers. Their job is to create hunger in the public for their product. They appeal to our emotions not our intelligence to make the consumer feel that they have to have whatever it is they are selling, whether that is an idea or a product. Men buy the car because they want the woman; the same goes with alcohol. Women buy cosmetics often because subliminally they wish their skin or nails or hair looked like that advertised. I had a student once wrote an essay about a product she kept trying because on TV it was said the product would make her hair look like the model's hair.

She tried the shampoo three times before giving up. We call this kind of argument fallacious. It's an intentional lie. Advertisers like politicians, know how to manipulate their audiences. In an essay entitled: Propaganda Techniques, Barbara McCintock says, "Propaganda capitalizes on our prejudices and biases."

She says further that "clear thinking requires hard work: analysing claims, researching the facts, examining both sides of an issue, using logic to find the flaws in an argument. Most people would rather just hand over their brains and let the propagandists do their thinking for them." I hope this isn't you. The beauty of Hurt's film is the question Hurt raises which sprang from his questioning himself and the values he was about to coach or counsel the kids on.

He wanted to be clear about where he stood.

Students spoke of a new usages of the word "pimp." My two cents was that no matter the usage, the word could not be separated or disconnected from sexual exploitation. It is a loaded word, similar to the n-word.

When a kid drinks "Pimp Juice," he might think he could turn into a pimp, just the way I used to think spinach built strong muscle and carrots made you smart because Popeye and Bugs Bunny ate these vegetables. Unlike the implied lesson, vegetables make children strong, what is the message of pimp juice?

We spoke of audience as one's public. When you want a job who are you dressing for? When you have a hot date or when you come to school? There's always an audience, even an unstated one.

I thought it was funny that Terrence Howard is the host for Independent Lens and the film he introduces is Hip Hop Beyond Beats and Rhymes, when the film he starred in got the Oscar for best song, a song about how hard it is for pimps to do their jobs. What irony!

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