Alyssa Wallingford
November 20, 2022
English 206
Professor Catherine Frank
How Can Ideas Surrounding Race Be Seen Through Apeshit
When thinking about topics such as critical race theory and even race studies in general, the first form of media that people would jump to analyze wouldn’t usually be a music video. But that is exactly the premise of a paper by Jenny Gunn titled Close-Up: Jay Z The Outside Meets the Institution: The Carters’ “Apeshit” Video. In this paper, although not everything could be covered, Gunn chooses to analyze this music video by focusing on the music video’s effort on thinking through blackness, and specifically three major aspects of this: ontology, speculation, and aesthetics (Gunn 386). In choosing three major topics, Gunn can use specific examples from the music video to illustrate how Beyonce and Jay Z exemplify the success of black people, appearing in ways and places which break barriers around ideas surrounding race put forth by our society. Additionally, Gunn brings in some analyses by other authors to further establish the complexity of this music video. In analyzing a piece of media as popular as music, the author shows that truly any medium can illustrate theories important to the furthering of our understanding of how race interacts with all other aspects of modern society. Gunn also brings in aspects of feminism, in discussing the highlighting of Beyonce’s success, being shown in the music video as being on equal terms with Jay Z.
When discussing this music video, Gunn puts forth one of the major ideas of this video. The idea is by offsetting the background of the video of the Louvre with the actual contents of the music video itself, it “stages and suspends a tension between the living presence of blackness and the official history of the West as it is preserved in a state archive such as the Louvre”(Gunn 389). This “official history” shows a stark contrast in how the past and present are perceived by the modern person with the way events truly happened. These histories ultimately led to a creation of a societal structure in which race truly affects not only how people live, but also people’s perceptions of how different races interact with different spaces in society. This leads to stereotypes regarding what kind of person we think of when we think about different spaces, whether that is simply use of public spaces or larger ideas of societal structures like career or wealth class. For example, the Louvre features art such as The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger. In opening with a recreation of this piece by Beyonce and Jay Z, Gunn argues it is “a statement to the wealth, and erudition of its sitters, The Ambassadors is equally famous for its presentation of an anamorphic skull, a hovering memento mori, or reminder of death, in a scene that otherwise celebrates worldly accomplishment”(Gunn 386). In having the music video take place in the Louvre, with all of this art that is thought of as a collection of predominantly white/European pieces, it directly challenges the ideas of what art is displayed, as well as the people who occupy that space of thought of as successful. This brings in concepts such as critical race theory and feminism because it is in part due to the intersection of gender and race which adds to the overall shock or otherwise challenge of what these categories of people should usually be doing or the spaces they occupy. All of these ideas bring together arguments for another one of Gunn’s points; that the video was not simply created to be enjoyed, or for “swagger”, but rather it was made with the purpose of spreading a deeper message. The “labor” that went into this video requires the watcher to look deeper in order to truly appreciate the video itself, and lends itself to that idea that everything is made with a purpose.
In conclusion, Gunn begins to scratch the surface of the complexities that lie within the Apeshit music video, and brings up important points regarding race and how race and other aspects of a person have interactions which ultimately affect how someone experiences the world. The music video itself is a powerful blend of art, and underlying messaging, enabling it to be successfully spread and even partially understood, regardless if the viewer actually knows the history behind each individual painting. It allows people to truly reflect upon the larger societal systems that are at work in our modern world, and how those systems affect people differently than others. Through Gunn’s work and others, we can begin to recognize and work on challenging those systems to allow for more equitable access to not only wealth, but also simply being allowed to occupy certain spaces and social classes without being deemed “abnormal” to what is usually expected of those spaces. It is in questioning everything that we can begin to work on making the world a more accepting and equitable place.
Works Cited
Gunn, Jenny. “The Outside Meets the Institution: The Carters’ ‘Apeshit’ Video.” Black Camera, vol. 11, no. 1, 2019, pp. 385–98. Project Muse, https://doi.org/10.2979/blackcamera.11.1.21 .
Parker, Robert Dale. How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies. 4th ed., New York, Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 297–350.
