The LEGO Boys Club - Lego & Gender

The LEGO Boys Club - Lego & Gender Part 1

The LEGO Boys Club - Lego & Gender Part 2

Documentary: Marley, Directed by Kevin McDonald, 2012

Kevin McDonald’s recent Marley Documentary opens with footage taken at the Cape Coast Castle in Ghana, where many of sixty million Africans slaves departed for the New World– through the door of no return. The next scene cuts to a live performance of “Exodus (“movement of Jah people”).

The narrative of the film covers Bob Marley’s progression from his early years as a ska and mento artist, his early pioneering reggae recordings produced by Lee Perry and his relative short but intense rise to international fame that began with the release of Catch A Fire (1974) on island records and ended with his death at the age of 36 from cancer in 1981. The film is narrated in part by the music. Marley’s early life, shaped by his ambiguous position, neither white nor black, features in his first single, “Judge Not”, 1962. As the Wailers get together, and their sound is influenced by black American soul, the soundtrack shifts from the Wailers first single- “Simmer Down”, 1963 to “Put it on” (1965) and - “It’s aright” (1970). “Selassie is the Chapel” (1968) highlights a growing Rastafarian consciousness, under the tutorship of Mortimer Planno. The film then moves on to Marley’s historic reggae recordings of the early 1970s produced by Lee Perry ("Duppy Conqueror"), his move to London in 1973 the subsequent first LP on Island Records, the departure of Tosh and Bunny Wailer, the inclusion of the I-Threes, the recording of Natty Dread and the subsequent Natty Dread Tour (“Kinky Reggae”, 1975).

Thus begins Marley’s rise, not only to international pop stardom, but also as a postcolonial political voice characterised by a generosity as well as militancy, and an ability to bring people together (“one love”). These qualities seem to mark Marley out as distinct from other musical and political revolutionaries like James Brown, Fela Kuti and Malcolm X. The international period of Marley’s career was punctuated by three concerts. Smile Jamaica (1976), which took place only three days after an assassination attempt on Marley and his entire entourage, when Marley, Rita Marley and manager Don Taylor were all injured. The political pressure, fear and bravery of that performance is palpable. Marley appears as a Christ like figure as he stands on stage and opens his shirt to reveal his bullet wounds.Following The Smile Jamaica concert Marley retreated to London where he lived as an exile.

The next great concert took place in 1978. As Jamaica once more prepared to go to the polls, and as the nation was once more consumed by political violence, three of the countries notorious gunmen flew to London ask Marley to return to Kingston to help quell the violence. Marley agreed and the result was the “One Love Peace concert”. The scene features magnificent footage of Marley bringing the two opposing leaders, Michael Manly and Edward Seaga, to the stage.

The third significant concert in Marley’s international career took place in Zimbabwe following the declaration of independence on 17 April 1980. Marley’s song “Zimbabwe” was an anthem of the resistance movement. As the concert got underway, fifty thousand fighters who were locked out of the stadium decided to come in. The gates were flattened and security forces opened up with tear gas. Marley played on. These stories of heroism and politics are unmatched in the annals of popular music.

Underlying the stories behind these three concerts are Marley’s’ attempts to engage with an African American audience and wonderful interviews with many of Marley’s family and associates, including Cedella Booker Marley (mother), Bunny Wailer, Jimmy Cliff (artist), Clive Chin (producer- Randy’s Records), Chris Blackwell (producer- Island Records), Aston “Family Man” Barrett (bass player), Lee Perry, Bob Andy, Junior Marvin (guitarist), Allan “Skill" Cole (manager), and Danny Sims (Manager). Also present are the stories of Marley’s relationships with women. Rita Marley featured prominently in the film, as did Cindy Breakspeare (crowned Miss World in 1976). The daughter of the dictator of Libreville, with whom Marley had a brief relationship, was also interviewed. Marley’s eleven children were represented by Ziggy Marley and Cedella Marley, who expressed her frustration with her famous and in-demand father.

Underlying the story was the knowledge of Marley’s imminent death. Marley contracted melanoma on his big toe following a football accident in London in 1977. Although part of the toe was removed, Marley collapsed in New York in September 1980 following a show at Madison Square Gardens. Marley went on to perform his next show, an heroic feat, and never performed again. He received treatment fro the famed Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York, but there was nothing that could be done. He was discharged in October in October 1980. In November he flew to Bavaria to the clinic of Dr. Josef Issels. The scenes of Marley, in the freezing conditions, his dread locks having fallen out, small and frail, are heartbreaking. But Marley refused to give up. He flew from Bavaria to Miami on May 8, 1981 and died on May 11.

The image of Marley that emerges from the film emphasises his courage, his generosity, his deep religious commitments, his political convictions and his ability to bring people together. In many respects he was not unlike Barack Obama- half black, half white, able to move between different worlds and break down barriers. 

Kane Race, Pleasure Consuming Medicine: The Queer Politics of Drugs, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009.

 

The basis of Pleasure Consuming Medicine is a contemporary distinction between the institution of health and medicine and, on the other hand, commodified forms of health and medicine. These two entities or institutions, Race argues, were separated from one another during the course of the twentieth century via a process of institutionalisation, licensing and authorisation. The institution of health has been defined as objective, disinterested and focused solely on the promotion of good health. The commercial business of health consumerism, on the other hand, has been represented as self-interested, focused on consumption rather than health and as quackery.

Race argues that institutional health insists on defining its role in terms of a return of a “normal” state - as recuperative. This can be seen in the way that health promotion strategies focus on the negative implications of ostensibly unhealthy practices. Poor or negative health behaviours are defined as an aberration from a right, proper or better path. These behaviours therefore need to be corrected. This logic can be seen in almost all tobacco cessation interventions. This contrasts with a commercial approach to the promotion (or marketing) of health. At a basic level, you won’t see Diet Coke (for example) specifically invoking health concerns about obesity- even though these concerns might inform its corporate marketing strategies. Rather, these healthy products are marketed in terms of gendered and cultural norms about style, pleasure and performance.

Race argues that this distinction between institutional and commercial health is unsustainable. He is especially interested in politicising the “normal” or healthy body that underlies institutional health’s claim to distinction (its sense of objectivity or disinterestedness). His work places seemingly objective institutional forms of health and drug consumption next to commercial or self-interested forms of health and drug consumption.

More specifically, Race advocates an emphasis on pleasure as the basis of health and health promotion. The rationale for this is Foucault’s suggestion that pleasure is “less caught up in the whole apparatus that extracts a truth-value from embodied experience” It is capable of considering “different practices and conceptions of responsibility” and more open to “historical construction, practical variation and creative experimentation.” (pp. viii-xi).

Race’s book is principally concerned with the lessons that can be learned from the response to the AIDs epidemic. What is the nature of this response? Race talks about the importance of the kinds of “pleasures”, imagination and “fantasies” that animated the gay “community” in Sydney in the 1990s (p.22). These pleasures and fantasies can be defined, in part, through an analysis of the gay dance party, with its origins in the disco movement in New York in the 1970s.

What, in turn, are the implications of this emphasis for health and health promotion initiatives? In a consideration of an event entitled the Wheel of Misfortune, set up to provide “clear and accessible information around [AIDS] treatment side effects”, “part educative intervention, part peer support, and part good night out” (p. 128),  Race talks about the importance of style and, more specifically, camp (pp. 132-33). “This embodied style”, Race writes, “has been actively and usefully deployed to throw these matters up for public consideration, elaboration and concern” (135). This emphasis on style can be understood in terms of the work of Bourdieu and which has been applied to the “embodied character of cultural discrimination” which is apparent in popular music tastes (for example) (pp 150-1). The emphasis on style remains important whether or not that style is condoned by normative morals and norms.

As a critical analysis of contemporary public health policies, Races book is a tour de force. Given the wide range of analytical tools it brings to bear on its subject, the book should be high on the reading list of all in critical public health (or “counterpublic health”). The broad scope of Race’s focus can be confusing. In the first few pages of the book he defines the object of his critique as “medical subjectivity”, “medical rationality”, “medical authority”, “the medical sphere”, “the scene of health and medicine”, “the current biomedical context”, the “sociomedical” and “drug regimes”. The use of these inter-related terms is very difficult to follow. Nevertheless, it does not detract from (and may even contribute to) the suggestive power of the book.

Ultimately, Race’s book is a challenge and provocation. It highlights the fact that health is a contested term. Different entities - ranging from the institution of health to the pharmaceutical industry, to entrepreneurs working in the market for health, and beyond - invoke health in differing ways. The book suggests that institutional health, despite its claims to moral authority, might not always have the best or only answers. It suggests the need for these different and at-times opposing parties to sit around the same table and to share ideas. Finally, The book has practical and important implications for health promotion through its focus on the “situated nature of serious harms”, “particular embodied styles”, “collective subjectivities” and, specifically, the “articulation of pleasure” (p. 154-60).

Food, politics and popular culture

Issues relating obesity, including access to healthy food, the cost of healthy food and access to opportunities for physical recreation are political- shaped by race, class and even gender. In the case of obesity for example, men are consistently more vulnerable than women across Canada, the United States and Australia. One of the great exceptions to this rule occurs amongst African American women. Rates of obesity amongst African American women have not only been higher than amongst African American men or white men, in 2009 African American women were 60% more likely to be obese than Non-Hispanic White women. Framing health as a cultural phenomenon mitigates against the (neoliberal) emphasis on individual choice, skill and responsibility promoted by reality television shows such as The Biggest Loser and Masterchef.
Framing health (in this case obesity) as a cultural phenomenon provides an important backdrop to debates about access ton resources, about food prices, food justice and access to green spaces. 
It also raises significant questions about the political engagement with food and health in popular culture. Thus, for example:
George McKay talks about gardening (for example) as "attacks rather than retreats". Rastafarianism, accompanying a radical racial politics and militant popular music, promotes a rigid food philosophy. Leonard E. Barrett (in The Rastafarians, 1988, 1997) writes:
"One of the prime staples of the Rastas is fish, but only of the small variety, not more tan twelve inches long... All larger fish are predators and represent the establishment - Babylon - where men eat men. But the food of the greatest worth to the cultists is vegetables of almost every kind. Like ganja, the earth brings forth all god things (pp. 141-142).
Similarly, in music, a critique of food and food practices has often accompanied a radical politics. This is especially true in hop hop. While hip hop has often been associated with unhealthy versions of masculinity, with artists such as the Fat Boys, Big Pun (who died of a massive heart attack age 28 in 2000), the movement has also featured a strong emphasis on what Byron Hurt describes as a "culture of wellness". In the 1980s and '90s, while KRS-One, in "another public service announcement", was rapping about the chemical byproducts in beef, 5 percent rappers and Nation of Islam rappers were reading Elija Muhammed's Eat to Live and A Tribe called Quest was rapping: "I don't eat no ham n' eggs, cuz they're high in cholesterol" on their first album, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (1990). The relationship between hip hop and health has increased as many rappers have started to age into their thirties and forties. Fat Joe, for example, whose first album, Represent (1993), featured the song "Livin' Fat", lost 88 pounds in mid-2011 afetr losing seven friends in a year to heart atack, all in their thirties.

Funk Music and Superheroic Black Masculinities

Nickolas Ashford

Nickolas Ashford, the primary lyricist of the legendary singer-songwriter duo Ashford and Simpson recently died at age 70. of throat cancer.

Over a 40 year career Ashford wrote and produced for 

Ray Charles, who had a comeback of sorts in 1966 with the decidedly secular, yet sanctified, “Let’s Go Get Stoned”; 

Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell recordings of the late 1960s, including “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing” and "Ain't No Mountain High Enough";

Diana Ross, whose finest early '70s sides as a solo artist - see Diana Ross (1970) and The Boss (1979) - where arguably written by Ashford and Simpson; 

The first two Dynamic Superior recordings, their eponymous 1974 debut and Pure Pleasure (1975) - (Motown's willingness to even visually suggest lead singer Washington’s queerness is striking).

Chaka Khan, whose signature tune “I’m Every Women” (1978) is an Ashford and Simpson classic; 

Teddy Pendergrass who recorded “Is It Still Good To Ya”; 

Cheryl Lynn, who matches the duo’s own performance of “Believe in Me”; 

Beginning with I Wanna Be Selfish (1974) , Ashford and Simpson released seven studio albums under their own names for Warner Brothers including the brilliant So So Satisfied (1977), produced by Harvey Fuqua, founding member of the doo-wop group the Moonglows and one-time Motown record executive, which featured the proto-Disco classic “Over and Over” . “Over and Over” was covered the same year by Sylvester on his solo debut. (See also Sylvester's  influential gay classic Step II in 1978).

In 1972 Ashford and Simpson appeared on Soul!, a televised variety-show format which provided a stage for a breathtaking array of black cultural and political luminaries, including many performers who had never before appeared on TV. http://www.thirteen.org/soul/2009/02/04/oct-11-1972/

Perhaps the best evidence of the value of Ashford and Simpson’s music was their securing of “Pullman Bonds” in 1998, where financier David Pullman guaranteed the duo eight figures drawn from future royalties on their 250-song catalogue. 

In "Nickolas Ashford and the Cult of Black Manhood", Marc Anthony Neal writes:

Ashford also pushed boundaries with regards to notions of Black masculinity.  With his long, straightened mane, falsetto singing voice (balanced by Simpson’s vocal heft), measured mannerisms, and clear comfort in his body, Nick Ashford, became the model for a cosmopolitan, metro-sexual Black masculinity. While Ashford had many falsetto peers during the era, like Earth Wind & Fire’s Phillip Bailey, Blue Magic lead-singer Ted Mills, Stylistics’ lead singer Russell Thompkins, Jr. and the oft-forgotten Ronnie Dyson, few functioned with the sartorial sass that Ashford did, save the aforementioned Sylvester.  Years later, Eddie Murphy’s character in Vampire in Brooklyn was a l nod to Ashford’s singular style. Ashford’s radical performance of Black masculinity in the 1970s and 1980s, was largely muted because he was romantically linked to Simpson as the couple served as a model for the possibilities of a Black love.

Masculinity, Consumption and Health

I have recently finished an article on representations of men's health in the promotion of filtered cigarettes and beer (Millers Lite). The paper draws on the history of men's consumption, especially the literature on men's magazines, as well as the literature on men's consumption of health - there are a few articles on Men's Health Magazine, for example.In trying to think how to develop this line of inquiry into masculinity, consumption and health I have been thinking about the role of popular music. Mention of masculinity and men's health in the context of popular music brings to mind images of drinking and excess. But what are the kinds of message being invoked by the image of now much older male artists aging gracefully-think about the contribution of the Rolling Stones to the reinventions of the aging process, think of a reformed Jimmy Barnes- who was known to drink two bottles of Vodka a day and claimed he had only performed about three shows in his life sober - and who stopped drinking in 2002 and now appears as an exemplar  good health.



For a related study - of representations of disability in popular music - see:

George McKay, "Crippled with nerves: Popular Music and Polio", Popular Music, 28:3 (October 2009), 341-365.

George McKay, Shakin' All Over: Popular Music and Disability, University of Michigan Press, Forthcoming.

For another innovative approach to the question of men, masculinity and health see:

Alondro Nelson, Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination, University of Minnesota Press, 2011.