5/27/2023 0 Comments Empty town tumbleweed gifBut I’m also troubled by certain assumptions people often make when explaining why. I agree with Jackson, and others, that digital blackface is troubling. This act, Lauren Jackson argues, is only the latest of an undeniable historical tradition of blackface, where this refers not only to the literal donning of shoeshine but the various ways in which “black” performance – “black” ways of speaking, looking, or doing – is seized by nonblack performers. A prime example is memeing: white and nonblack people fervently making and sharing memes of black people. Digital blackface is, in short, “ the act of inhabiting a black persona” in virtual digital space. The Winfrey memeing has reignited a debate around the concept of digital blackface. Was this uneven distribution a mere accident, or a side effect of Winfrey’s megacelebrity? Perhaps but there’s a more sinister possibility. More and more memes emerged focusing solely on her dramatic facial expressions, like: Days later, the images of Harry and Markle had lessened in circulation, but Winfrey’s were just picking up steam. Immediately after, screengrabs of Harry, Markle, and Winfrey exploded across social media as (frankly, really good) memes. Recently, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle sat down for an interview with Oprah Winfrey, where the three discussed the racism Markle experienced from the U.K. At root, this phenomenon could be positive, but we must read the real messages behind these many faces, writes Nicholas Whittaker as part of a series with Aesthetics for Birds. There is something troubling about this trend but the usual theories of ‘digital blackface’- based on cultural appropriation or the consumption of black bodies - are based on bad philosophy. Used to convey a reaction or an emotion, black facial expressions, hand movements and ways of moving or resting, have become a way for people of all races to express themselves a worldwide emotional currency. In the dynamic culture of internet memes and group Whatsapp threads there are a conspicuous number of black faces.
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