That perception and others like it inform decisions among people of different classes and, from there, create barriers in communication, employment, and general understanding. Remember in the introduction that it might be easy to miss cultural representations if you’re not looking for them? Since this song is presented as entertainment, it might be easy to dismiss the opportunity to more deeply examine it and only take away the obvious violence. But to the new, largely middle- and working-class white audience, any message may be not be as clear. Within Tupac’s own community, there may be a deeper understanding of the representation in the song. It may be that no one is purposefully trying to keep class structures in place any time there is a class representation that does keep class structures in place, but “Keep Ya Head Up” may reinforce some stereotypes: that African-American men are violent, and that African-Americans in general are tolerate that behavior and live in poverty.
So how does this representation work to keep class structures in place? (Though, as we noted, a different group-the white middle and working classes-were becoming a large part of the audience. Second, the group represented in this example, as well as its creator and its audience, are largely the same. First, the groups overall are different from the Your World example, which included a news organization and the greater “poor” class of people. With these answers, we can see that this class representations differs from our first example of Neil Cavuto’s report on the poor owning refrigerators. While the lyrics make it obvious that the song is addressed to members of the African-American community in poverty, other audiences were also buying hip-hop/rap music including white people and people in the middle class. And though Tupac was certainly making money by the time of his third (it went platinum) he, like other performers, remained connected to his community. The presentation of this song, and the album overall, is about someone speaking to other members of his or her own group. Tupac is talking about it, and he identifies himself as an African-American man who was or came from from poverty. That there is hatred and violence toward women among African-American men in poverty and a need for better respect and treatment of women in this community. The song addresses the African-American community in poverty, and specifically relationships between men and women within it.
Who is being represented or talked about?.Let’s take this one apart with the same questions we used in the last example:
This is definitely a cultural representation, but it differs in certain ways from our last example. When you come around the block brothas clown a lotīut please don’t cry, dry your eyes, never let upįorgive but don’t forget, girl keep your head up Here is a selection of some of the lyrics from “Keep Ya Head Up”:Īnd uhh, I know they like to beat ya down a lot Let’s examine a class representation by 2pac in one of his songs, “Keep Ya Head Up” from Tupac’s 1993 album Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z.: In the earlier part of his work, he commented on social and political issues. While a culture worker could be an author a television producer, Tupac straddled a line between poet and music performer. He is also a culture worker, someone who helps create works about class and culture in the mass media. Tupac is interesting for several reasons, one of which is that he is an example of an organic intellectual who was able to comment on the conditions of the social and class groups that he belonged to in a way that made sense and held meaning with other members of those groups. Tupac Shakur, better known as 2pac, was an American rapper and actor active in the late 1980s and most of the 1990s until he was murdered in 1996.
Tupac Shakur, American rapper and actor, 1971-1996.
0 kommentar(er)
