Best of BattyMamzelle: Top 3 Essays of 2016
I didn't publish to this blog a lot last year. Between grad school and my fellowship I just didn't have the time for everything, and this was the thing that gave. But even with all that on my plate, I did still manage to produce a few things I'm proud of in 2016, and I figured that after doing best of posts in 2015, 2014 and 2013, I didn't want to break tradition, even if it is two months late. Considering I only published a grand total of NINE pieces in 2016, the pickings were pretty slim, but here are the three posts I'm most proud of producing last year.
3. Supergirl's Flimsy Feminism: On The Erasure of Women of Colour in Feminist Narratives
"Platitudes have their place. They serve to break things down in a way that's easy to understand and usher us into to larger, more complex ideas. If this show serves as a primer for feminists in the making, that would be an amazing thing. But its glaring omission of women of colour characters risks telling young women that the movement is only for the white girls and reinforcing the racial divide in feminism for a new generation. When we erase girls of colour even from these simple stories, we tell them that they do not have a place in narratives of empowerment, and that can have a devastating cumulative effect on a generation."
2. Meditation, Anointing And Anger in Beyonce's Lemonade
"Lemonade explores the blatant lies and half-truths that black women are forced to swallow and the pathology we are cursed to bear. But most importantly it justifies the delicious destruction born of righteous and justified anger. It allows our anger, ever stymied, always dismissed, to bubble over, froth and foment, and acknowledges it as a valid reaction to repeated abuse."
1. ANTI Is Rihanna's Declaration of Agency
"This is the album Rihanna wanted to make rather than the one that we expected from her, but that too shows growth. Her declarations of sexual freedom serve as metaphor for very real freedom: from commercial constraints or a continued need to prove her staying power. She's established herself as a powerhouse and her legacy is set. Now she seeks out experimentation and nuance."
While I may not have written a lot over here, I did produce a lot of work last year that I'm incredibly proud of. Hopefully in 2017, without the pressure of a dissertation and fellowship I'll be able to make time to write more consistently, review more movies, and engage even more with pop culture.