This has been a great year for new voices in pop culture. TV shows and pop music stretched consumers’ minds with new stories, and new ways of telling those stories. There were even a few blessed moments where pop culture lifted traditionally silenced voices to the highest levels. In 2015, these new voices just kept coming.
Here’s to this year and to a new one that’s even better:
5. Cel U Lar Device
Drake’s single, Hotline Bling, was a hit upon release. The accompanying music video was a hit but for entirely different reasons. The video showcased Drake unleashing some humorous dance moves in a turtleneck sweater. The Internet laughed and more than a few excellent parodies were created in response (my fave is here).
Shortly after that, Erykah Badu released a remix of Hotline Bling on Soundcloud. Her and her son’s remix, Cel U Lar Device, took a fun song and made it even more- a song story infused with pathos and humor. The song also appears on her new-and-I-can’t-stop-listening-to-it album, But You Caint Use My Phone. Have a listen to the remix and then go get the album.
4. Caitlyn Jenner’s Debut
Last year, Laverne Cox appeared on the cover of Time Magazine. She stars on Netflix’s Orange is the New Black and was the first openly trans woman to be featured on Time’s cover. And then this May Bruce Jenner, a former Olympic champion, publicly announced that he would be transitioning and that his new name was Caitlyn. This marked another landmark moment for trans visibility.
Caitlyn appeared on the July cover of Vanity Fair and became magazine’s first feature of an openly transgender woman. Jenner appeared in an interview with Diane Sawyer and also addressed her transition on a special episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Jenner’s debut has been controversial even inside the trans community but for many Americans, it was their first experience coming to grips with the transition of someone they had known from the past and recognized.
3. Flesh Without Blood by Grimes
The music video for Flesh Without Blood is performance art, whisked out of a museum show and placed with a flourish upon our digital screens. It threw me back to those heady days when Chicago’s Modern Contemporary Art Museum would throw open its doors for lavish Summer Solstice Celebrations. Attendees walked through the museum while art scampered at our heels and crowded the halls. DJs competed while outlandish outfits sailed by on a huge catwalk in a massive room at the end of the hall.
Grimes creates the glory of MCA’s Summer Solstices all on her own. Her songs’ pop beat hooks rock but are balanced by discord and countermelodies. She mocks while she keeps the music moving. But it’s her music videos that truly drew me in. She stars in all of them but instead of granting the viewer her performed sensuality, Grimes dances in pure expression of her musical self. Her dancing is remindful of Kate Bush’s style and Lianne La Havas’. Instead of focusing on sexual desirability, these musicians become the songs they’re singing and as they dance, their songs take human form and dance among us.
2. Jessica Jones and PTSD
Jessica Jones is Netflix’s new hit series and centers on the title character, a fictional superhero from the Marvel Comic world. Her powers are that she’s impossibly strong and can leap long distances. She’s able to walk through the world unafraid of male violence; she’s a woman who can take care of herself in every sense of the word. But she also suffers from PTSD. She may carry herself and interact with the world in ways many women dream of doing, but she’s also undergone much personal tragedy and abuse.This show has its problems like any other but what it makes it unusual is that it gives a faithful portrayal of what it’s like living with PTSD and how difficult the disorder is for the sufferer and for those around her. Jessica struggles with not feeling like a victim or becoming a victim ever again and through my own experience of living with PTSD, this is one of the major issues that fuels the disorder if no resolution to the struggle can be found. Added to her own problems, she fights to keep others from becoming victims too.
Jessica Jones illuminates the rarely shown struggle of life with an anxiety disorder. With PTSD, some days are good, some are bad but the pressure of anxiety is ever present. Within the show, Jones’ anxieties and fears never let up. But through it all, she does help a few people and work to save others and that is what truly makes her a superhero, physical talents aside.
1. Viola Davis’ Emmy Award Acceptance Speech
Viola Davis, the star of How to Get Away with Murder, won the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series during this year’s ceremony. She is the first woman of color to do so. Her acceptance speech was beautiful, poignant, and made succinctly clear why women of color have not won this award before.
“In my mind, I see a line. And over that line, I see green fields and lovely flowers and beautiful white women with their arms stretched out to me over that line. But I can’t seem to get there no how. I can’t seem to get over that line.” That was Harriet Tubman in the 1800s. And let me tell you something: The only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity. You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there. So, here’s to all the writers, the awesome people that are Ben Sherwood, Paul Lee, Peter Nowalk, Shonda Rhimes. People who have redefined what it means to be beautiful, to be sexy, to be a leading woman, to be black. And to the Taraji P. Hensons and Kerry Washingtons, the Halle Berrys, the Nicole Beharies, the Meagan Goodes, to Gabrielle Union. Thank you for taking us over that line. Thank you for the Television Academy. Thank you.
Davis quotes Harriet Tubman, a woman who escaped slavery in 1849. Tubman organized safe houses for escaping slaves and eventually returned to help hundreds more slaves escape. Viola Davis and her husband are currently working for an HBO production of Harriet Tubman’s life.
Catherine Eaton is a contributor to The Stake. Catherine is a writer living in a western suburb of Chicago. She blogs over at sparrowpost.com and enjoys foraging around the neighborhood in her spare time.
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