Song of the South

A group of us went to see Kara Walker's latest invention, "Song of the South," at The Red Cat in L.A. I have a one-word summation of what the installation was all about: complicity.

Set in a circle of drooping weeping willow silhouetted trees, a film looped every 15 minutes, showing what Walker calls the "birth of African-America." Being the cheeky creature that she is, Ms. Walker overlay the film with music from Disney's version of "Song of the South," as Black bodies were tossed overboard during the Middle Passage, bearing labels that said "Black," "Authentic," and "African." As the (silhouette puppet bodies) floated on the sea, a large, Black woman's head appears to swallow the male bodies and then shit them out in the "New World." What she shits out gives birth to a Black man, whose profile bears a striking resemblance to Lavar Burton (of Roots fame). With the introduction of "King Cotton," the Black slave then seduces the white slave-holder, fucks him, and gives birth to a cotton boll. The seduction narrative is cut with a Black slave woman cutting a silhouetted bust of her "massa," along with a little pick-a-ninny praying girl who is followed by a lascivious White man. What is interesting about this segment in particular was the voice-over: instead of praying to keep his hands off her, the little girl voice wonders if what he wants to do to her is the same as what happened to "Abby," her friend. Additionally, she wonders what it will feel like and if she will enjoy it. Gone is a lament about what is to happen. The combination of the White/Black male seduction narrative and this little girl's internal monologue bring together the razor-edged argument about complicity I've mentioned in a previous post. How responsible, Ms. Walker seems to ask, were Black men and women for the birth of the "king cotton" era? How responsible were, not Black slave women (as expected from conventional historical and autobiographical narratives), but were Black men for "seducing" White men into metaphorically copulating and forming the very system that sought to destroy both of them? How much, she seems to ask, did Black men and women enjoy being fucked by their White captors? There is finger-pointing here, but is is a reversal of conventional slave narratives. In fact, what Ms. Walker is doing echoes Linda Brendt's _Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl_, wherein Ms. Brendt discusses her own complicity to White male sexual advances. Though she provides a distinctly different narrative of choice (she refuses a cottage a White master has offered her, which would signal her position as a kept woman rather than a slave), the issue of choice and complicity resonates similarly: there was choice involved in these historical moments. However, it was the institution and the perpetuation of and tensions over power relations that kept up the "peculiar institution."

Additionally, Ms. Walker's use of images of consumption and expulsion highlight a tradition of Black women writers, from the 17th century to the present. Scientific, historical, and literary narratives sought and seek to juridically and biologically construct Black (Black women, especially) bodies, thereby denying agency and self-determination (since the narratives that would come out of these constructions were 1. used to politically silence Black men and women and 2. entirely developed by non-Black voices). Historical, juridical, and literary narratives, therefore, metaphorically consumed (and continue to consume) the bodies of Black men and women in the US. I think it's interesting that Ms. Walker chose to locate the "birth" of Black America as a sea woman shitting out a Black man. I'm not sure yet what to do with this, but I think it is a counterpoint to a history of consumption....

I also think it's cool that she inserted herself into the film. There are moments where it is clear she's the puppetmaster. Again, she is being cheeky: we walk into this installation thinking "wow! she's giving us a 'real' commentary on the birth of Black America--how it 'really' happened." Then, she reminds you that it's all performance--history, literature, music, narratives of all types are manipulated and fundamentally lack any sense of the real. I like that she makes a poignant statement but does not take herself too seriously.