arianaaustinn

[arianaaustinn]

Blog Post 6

One of the strongest ways that I've engaged with Afrofuturism throughout this semester has been through music. Sound has long been a vehicle for culture, identity, and resistance and in Afrofuturism, it becomes a vehicle for envisioning new futures for Black people. The songs and albums we've been examining in class, such as "This is America," "Alright," "DNA," Beyoncé's "All Night," and Janelle Monáe's Dirty Computer, all employ sound not as something that is present for entertainment value only, but as a means of constructing and deconstructing reality. One of the most powerful examples was Janelle Monáe's Dirty Computer. This image, and the "emotion picture" that goes with it, is a vivid vision of an Afrofuturist world one in which Black queer identity, technology, surveillance, memory, and freedom intersect. Monáe's employment of sci-fi is not merely aesthetic; it's an invitation to envision a world where individuals such as herself could live openly and unapologetically. Her voice is hope and resistance, a means of insisting that marginalized individuals do have a place in the future. With Jane 57821, Monáe resists control and erasure systems, and she imagines an aural revolution. Similarly, Kendrick’s "DNA" and "Alright" explore how multifaceted Black identity is, and the fight we must endure to survive On "DNA," he raps about having beauty and pain in his DNA, highlighting the duality of the Black community.. On "Alright," the hook "we gon' be alright" was also used as a protest chant during the 2020 BLM movement, becoming a futuristic affirmation that, in spite of it all, Black people will survive. That belief in communal survival is an Afrofuturist theme at its core, envisioning joy and justice despite systems set up to annihilate them. "Then came Childish Gambino's "This is America." Through its grainy imagery and jarring shifts in tone, the song rails against America's obsessions with spectacle, violence, and distraction. It does not offer us a tidy future, but it confronts us with the present in all its honesty—a starting point for conceiving what the future might be." Even Beyoncé's "All Night," though more rooted in healing and love, is aligned with Afrofuturism in its honoring of Black femininity and legacy. There is something forward-thinking about opting for love as resistance, about demanding softness and vulnerability in a world that denies Black women those roles far too often. Music is a blueprint, mirror, and time machine simultaneously. And that, to me, is the essence of Afrofuturism.

[arianaaustinn]

Blog Post 5

The first time I watched Sinners, I was captivated by the music and actors casted in the film. Upon watching it a second time, I realized that the movie had a deeper meaning, one that went beyond my initial captivation of vampires and blues. Sinners portrays the effort of individuals to appropriate the culture and customs of the Black community, while simultaneously destroying black life. I also came to understand that the film used vampires to metaphorically portray systems and groups that in a sense take the vitality of the people they come across. In regards to Black culture, “culture vultures”, as they are commonly referred, act to appropriate the sacred components of African American culture, and in Sinners, this could be seen in the vampires’ seizure of Black music. This realization made me reflect more on how frequently Black creativity gets taken, but never praised or respected. The vampires in Sinners aren't merely representative of individuals, but a deeper wrongdoing that places Black people at the forefront of oppression. In the movie, they take the sound of the blues and make it something evil, with the hopes of using it to inflict pain. The movie is not hesitant to show how this cultural appropriation is not accidental but is rather very intentional and calculated in its erasure. One of the most powerful scenes in the movie is when you understand that the blues, in this case, isn't just music it's a memory, and a symbol of the history of Black life. Sinners uses vampires to demonstrate that this kind of theft isn't just inappropriate, but has a wickedness tied to it that cannot be ignored. It sucks the life out of a people and feigns admiration for their brilliance. What I observed even more through the second viewing was how familiar this dynamic is. In life, we see Black art being celebrated while Black lives are criminalized. We see cultural icons being co-opted by the mainstream industries and paid lip service while the artists who created them are marginalized. Sinners captures that irony so well, exemplifying the idea that one can enjoy what Black culture has to offer but not want to protect, defend, or prioritize Black lives. By illustrating this within the storyline of the film, Sinners forces us to understand cultural appropriation in what it really is: violence. Yet there is something deeply powerful in how the film places Black presence at the foreground, Black music at the foreground, and Black resistance at the foreground. Even in erasure, the characters carry legacy, memory, and agency. Seeing Sinners made it real that our stories are significant not because others borrow from them, but because of the truths, struggles, and lives they hold. In the end, I would argue that this film contains more than meets the eye, and should be admired for the messages it contains.

[arianaaustinn]

Blog Post 4

When I watched District 9, I knew it was trying to say something deeper about injustice and discrimination, yet something didn't sit well with me. Everyone talks about how it's such a powerful apartheid metaphor, and I understand why they replace the aliens with oppressed groups of people, and the setting in South Africa in Johannesburg directly connects to the history there. Yet the more I watched, the more I felt that the film was not so much about centering Black lives as it was about speaking around them. I felt that the story used alien suffering as a means of avoiding having to deal with the human cost of what apartheid did to human beings. I liked that the film was not set in New York or some distant version of London. It was a change to see a sci-fi story based in Johannesburg, and I appreciated that. In spite of the African context, though, the actual African people featured in the film were largely invisible. Most of the focus was on Wikus, the white South African administrator. His transformation into an alien was powerful and, in a way, effective because it allowed him to feel what it's like to be at the other end of discrimination. However, at the same time, it seemed like his transformation process took up all the space. The more I reflected on it, the more I understood that the film was still about somebody who was privileged and in power, despite the fact that it was attempting to be critical of systems of oppression. The most disappointing thing to me was the fact that we did not get to hear from the aliens or the Black South Africans as much. Their voices were largely absent, and I feel like that's a huge missed opportunity. If this movie wanted to be truly Afrofuturist—something not only documenting Black existence but also imagining new futures it should have let those people be at the forefront of the story. Afrofuturism, to me, is not just using sci-fi to make a point; it is giving space for Black people to reimagine their own identities, their own futures, and their own power. District 9 kind of nods towards that, but it still has the sense of a story about marginalized people, instead of by or for them. Overall, District 9 made me think, and I'm grateful for that. However, I think that stories about oppression have to be careful to center the right voices otherwise, there's a risk of replicating the very silencing that they're trying to fight against.

[arianaaustinn]

Blog Post 3

Beyoncé's Lemonade is a work that integrates music, poetry, and visual narrative to explore images of pain, healing, Black womanhood, and ancestral memory. The most emotionally resonant and symbolically centered song of the album is the music video for “All Night” , which highlights the turmoil throughout many realms of dealing with heartbreak and reminiscing on memories that keep you tied to a person. Through the song and imagery this song contains, Beyoncé taps into Afrofuturism's key principles, showcasing a cultural connection that unites African diasporic culture with futuristic and imaginative imagery in order to rethink freedom, identity, and generational ties. On "All Night", Beyonce echoes sentiments of forgiveness, redemption, and enduring love after betrayal. The representation that accompanies the song does more than tell an individual story, it facilitates a collective one, speaking to an unfortunate reality that a lot of women face. The video includes imagery of Black families, Black joy, and intergenerational connections, all shot in Southern landscapes, which are ties to both Beyonce’s childhood and the history of African Americans in this country. The scenes within the music video carry many emotions and emblematic meaning, as they represent a future based on memory, land, and heritage. That positioning in the past and future is a close reflection of Afrofuturism's core ideas. Rather than imagining liberation in outer space or in dystopian technological futures, Beyoncé discovers Black futures in love ceremonies, survival tactics, and communal processes. Julie Dash’s film, Daughters of the Dust, is also deeply aligned to Lemonade, as both present Black women in flowing white robes, moving across green Southern landscapes and engaging in moments of familiarity and attachment. These visual references are intentional and serve to emphasize and show respect to this Afrofuturist classic that put a high premium on the power of memory, myth, and Black feminine agency. By re-presenting these images, Beyoncé places herself in a tradition of Black women artists who see freedom not as running away, but as recovery. This way, "All Night" is not merely a love song, it is a ritual of restoration. It shows us that Black survival and joy are not merely resistance but acts of futuristic imagination. In reclaiming the past and honoring ancestral memory, Beyoncé creates space for new Afrofuturistic imaginations of Black identity, womanhood, and healing that are at the center of Afrofuturism. Overall, Lemonade has held huge influences within the Black community, and continues to be a connector of women experiencing unfaithfulness, betrayal, and resilience.

[arianaaustinn]

Blog Post 2

Real-life issues: Two real-life issues that make it necessary for me to create my Earthseed community are racial injustice and crises in public health. Inadequate health care as a result of systemic oppression and socioeconomic disparities have left many communities suffering with illness and death across a range of health issues. My community will rely on each other’s care, versus the false promises of capitalism, to ensure survival. Earthseed verses: One Earthseed verse we will live by is “All that you touch you change”, which will serve as a testament to my community’s ability to heal one another and practice compassion as it relates to care. The second verse we will stand by is “God is change”, because we will stand by the belief that He has the power to relieve individuals of their sickness and disease, as well as remind us that we must live a life of love, treating each other the same despite our different backgrounds. Location: To survive on natural medicine, we would live in the Amazon Rainforest because it has the greatest variety of medicinal plants in the world. I would be able to benefit from the traditional knowledge of the Native people and have year-round access to clean water and natural medicine. Living there would ideally allow us to rely virtually completely on nature. Membership: All who lead with empathy and kindness would be allowed to join our community. We would welcome individuals searching for equality and justice, acknowledging that disparities in all capacities should not determine how people are treated. Leadership: The leadership of our community would be made up of elected individuals ranging in age from eighteen to the eldest member, to ensure that all voices and perspectives are represented. They will be rotated after a prospective amount of time to underscore fairness. We will vote on things as a community and not allow our differences in opinion to divide us. Future Technology: A technology I would create would resemble a thermometer, but would be able to detect the early stages of a disease/illness that the body was working to fight in order to begin treating it early. There would be frequent screenings to avoid any discrepancies asymptomatic cases might lead to. With this technology, my community would be able to focus on preventative measures of care. Survival:

Our community will survive on self-efficiency; growing our own food without harmful pesticides, using nature to provide needed resources, and giving back to the land we are borrowing from. We will learn survival skills that would allow us to protect our longevity as a community. Two Steps: We would grow a large community garden with plants of all kinds, teaching children at a young age the importance of herbal healing and utilizing your own resources. We would also have regular events where individuals from varying communities come together to share their own practices of substantiation and exchange other important information.

[arianaaustinn]

Blog Post 1

During my first year, I was a Community Development Intern for the Afrikan Diaspora Living Learning Community on the Hill. As we were attempting to decide the theme for the annual Black Extravaganza we hosted, one of my RAs suggested Afrofuturism because of her experience taking this class. We went with it, and through the preparation for the event, I learned a lot of amazing things about this movement, mostly centered around music and art. I was very intrigued, and decided to enroll in this course to gain a better understanding of how Black people are reshaping the future to include empowerment and celebration, overcoming oppression and injustice. In the last three weeks of taking this course, I realized that my view of Afrofuturism was very narrow, and this movement encapsulates more than just music and art, but is deeply rooted in literature, media, history, and science, which was beyond the scope of my initial comprehension. I find it very interesting how much the intersections of technology, freedom, and advocacy truly play in reinventing the world we see possible, and how they can combine to give us hope of a reality we have been striving to create, as a community, for many generations. I was mostly surprised, however, by the way in which history and our lived experiences hold a key role in defining the way in which we can envision our future. From our conversations in class about the impact of colonialism to past presidents like Clinton and his role in this movement, I learned that Afrofuturism is not a newfound concept that has been gaining traction within the 21st century, but has been showing up within different mediums for decades. I strongly believe that it is imperative to understand and recognize our past to unfold the contents of the future, and I think this holds true for the study and conceptualization of Afrofuturism. I was also extremely compelled by the impact the film, Black Panther, has had in regards to spreading unconscious awareness about Afrofuturism. As a Marvel fan, throughout the numerous times I watched this movie, I never analyzed beyond the scope of its importance within the Marvel Universe. However, through our discussions, I have come to realize that there were a lot of underlying messages being relayed that are important to emphasize. The most significant being the idea that Black people do not always have to live in a state of marginalization and subjugation, but collectively can strive for a future of resilience and power.