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starsentdrifter

כּוׄכָב•αστέρι

Ultra fashionable mania is a hell of an aesthetic.

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starsentdrifter · 2 years

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starsentdrifter · 2 years

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[ID: sad little man holding dagger. His hair is up in a silly 90′s updo with his hair held with a swirly T- shaped Colchian hairpin. ] Just wanted to doodle a little Nerium.. Light of my life.

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starsentdrifter · 2 years

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starsentdrifter · 2 years

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Janelle Monáe, Cindi Mayweather, and the Other

I said at the beginning one of the biggest things to come from the whole Metropolis saga is that “In placing herself and her alter ego Cindi Mayweather as the ArchAndroid, Monáe is creating an Archetype. She’s created a pure form standing for resistance to tyranny in all its forms. She’s standing in for and up for all types of people and androids.”

But, does Monáe see herself that way? Does she see herself and the protagonist of Metropolis as heroic figures, as standing in and standing up for the Other?

“Cindi is an android and I love speaking about the android because they are the new ‘other.’ People are afraid of the other and I believe we’re going to live in a world with androids because of technology and the way it advances. The first album she was running because she had fallen in love with a human and she was being disassembled for that.” - Janelle Monáe

“I speak about androids because I think the android represents the new ‘Other’. You can compare it to being a lesbian or being a gay man or being a black woman… what I want is for people who feel oppressed or feel like the 'Other’ to connect with the music and to feel like, 'She represents who I am.’” - Janelle Monáe

Elle Magazine: One of the musical interludes, “Our Favorite Fugitive,” features a radio caller phoning in and declaring “Robot love is queer!” Insofar as queerness is about defying labels and breaking down boundaries; is that a theme in the saga?

Janelle Monáe: Yes. When you think about the android you think about the other, and sometimes the other is discriminated against. In this particular instance you have an android, Cindi Mayweather, who has fallen in love with a human, and the love that they have between each other is considered to be queer.

There are so many parallels that can be drawn from that, like Muslim families who don’t want their loved ones marrying Christians and Christian families who don’t want their loved ones marrying Muslims because of their religious beliefs. I’m an advocate for love, because I think love has no religious beliefs. It has no sexual orientation. It should be celebrated no matter who you are. You should be able to embrace who you are, whoever you are.

In Queerness in Pop Music: Aesthetics, Gender Norms, and Temporality, the author talks about the queerness in Monáe’s work, and specifically the music video for Tightrope (which I’m really excited to talk about later this week). The section ends with:

“For [Cindi and Monae], queerness is as much a survival strategy as a mechanism for dislodging normality through resistance. As with her dance moves, her music is always shifting. It is in this way that Monae signals hope for transformation and connection.”

Ultimately, Monáe signals herself and Cindi as beacons of hope.

“This time around we’re talking about The Arch Android the chosen one, the [Neo] of the matrix or the Archangel from the Bible. She (Cindy) finds out that she is indeed the one and is the mediator between the haves and have not. She’s the one who can get rid of all the discrimination within the android community. It deals with self realisation as she realises that she is that.” - Janelle Monáe

Burn bright, Monáe. Burn bright, Cindi.

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starsentdrifter · 2 years

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