Dr. Daphne A. Brooks
Appearances
It's Been a Minute
Is your favorite pop star spreading propaganda?
I just have a problem with it. All art is political. The great cultural studies scholars, Stuart Hall, told us that many years ago in a landmark piece called What is this Black in Black Popular Culture? He told us that culture is not a zero-sum game. And so I just think propaganda feels like a flattening out of the ways in which we think about art and cultural performance in this day and age.
It's Been a Minute
Is your favorite pop star spreading propaganda?
I'm thinking about the fact that we live in 2025 on the edge of a new administration that's also an old administration in a world in which influencer is a lucrative and high profile line of occupation. And the heightened level of paranoia, anxiety, the extent to which publics are feeling manipulated, feeling vulnerable to the kinds of messages that are generated by
It's Been a Minute
Is your favorite pop star spreading propaganda?
in a variety of different institutions.
It's Been a Minute
Is your favorite pop star spreading propaganda?
I just was going to say, I do wonder if what people, at least some people, were wrestling with was a sort of presumptive, spectacular thing patriotism that was bound up in the performance, but that would really align the nuances of social critique that are bound up in the Cowboy Carter project.
It's Been a Minute
Is your favorite pop star spreading propaganda?
And even in a song like Yaya, which she performed at the show that has an infamous line, whole lot of red and that white and blue. It tells us, again, so much the reaction about this moment that we're in, you know, about these questions about how America as a multiracial democracy is changing. broken in many, many ways.
It's Been a Minute
Is your favorite pop star spreading propaganda?
But I think it all points to an enormous amount of angst that Beyonce's performance seemed to trigger.
It's Been a Minute
Is your favorite pop star spreading propaganda?
Have you ever had that moment? Whenever I see Lean Greenwood singing, proud to be an American.
It's Been a Minute
Is your favorite pop star spreading propaganda?
One of my favorite lines from Stuart Hall's piece that I referenced earlier is when he makes this argument that by definition, Black popular culture is a contradictory space. There are always positions to be won in popular culture, but no struggle can capture popular culture itself. for our side or theirs, quote unquote.
It's Been a Minute
Is your favorite pop star spreading propaganda?
So I guess I just, you know, I think keeping in mind that popular culture is a terrain of struggle and not a zero sum game as Paul puts it is really important. And that Beyonce really presents so many different opportunities to think through those contradictions as you just noted, Brittany. Well, okay.
It's Been a Minute
Is your favorite pop star spreading propaganda?
How about this to compliment what Nick says, you know, what is the story that's being told in this performance on this recording in this visual album? What are the aesthetics that are gripping you? What kind of spectacle is holding your attention? What is that narrative? And then what do you think of that narrative? You know,
It's Been a Minute
Is your favorite pop star spreading propaganda?
I mean, all art is telling some kind of a story and holding on to our own critical authority to be able to extrapolate meaning with regards to the story that we're interpreting is what makes us thinking and human. And that's exciting. And we need more of that in this day and age.