ABSTRACT
Title of Dissertation:	 	 	 VIRAL BODIES: UNCONTROLLABLE 
	 	 	 	 	 BLACKNESS IN POPULAR CULTURE 
	 	 	 	 	 AND EVERYDAY LIFE
	 	 	 	 	 Gabriel Allen Peoples, Doctor of Philosophy, 2016
Dissertation Co-Directed By: 	 Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr., Professor of Women, 
	 	 	 	 	 Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Professor of the 
	 	 	 	 	 Performing Arts Department, 
	 	 	 	 	 Washington University
	 	 	 	 	 and
	 	 	 	 	 Jason Farman, Professor of American Studies and 
	 	 	 	 	 Digital Cultures & Creativity
Viral Bodies: Uncontrollable Blackness in Popular Culture and Everyday 
Life maps rapidly circulated performances of Blackness across visual 
media that collapse Black bodies into ubiquitous ?things.?  Throughout my 
dissertation, I use viral performance to describe the uncontrollable 
discursive circulation of bodies, their behaviors, and the ideas around 
them. In particular, viral performance is employed to describe the 
complicated ways that (mis)understandings of Black bodies spread and are 
often transformed into common-sense beliefs. As viral performances, 
Black bodies are often made more visible, while simultaneously becoming 
more opaque. This dissertation examines the recurrence of viral 
performances of Blackness in viral videos online, film, and photography/
images. I argue that viral performances make products that reinscribe 
stereotypical notions of Blackness while also generating paths of alterity
?which contradict the normalized clich?s and provide desirable 
possibilities for Black performance. Viral Bodies forges a new dialogue 
between visual and aural technologies, performance, and larger historic 
discourses that script Black bodies as visually (and sonically) deviant 
subjects. I am interested in how technologies complicate the re-
presentation of images, ideas, and ideologies?producing a necessity for 
new decipherings of performances of Blackness in popular culture and 
everyday life.
VIRAL BODIES: UNCONTROLLABLE BLACKNESS 
IN POPULAR CULTURE AND EVERYDAY LIFE
by
Gabriel Peoples
Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the
University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
2016
Advisory Committee:
Professor Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr., Co-Chair
Professor Jason Farman, Co-Chair
Professor Psyche Williams-Forson
Professor Faedra Carpenter, Dean?s Representative
Professor John L. Caughey
? Copyright by
Gabriel Peoples
2016
Dedication
!
! This dissertation is dedicated to those that are so visible, yet, despite their 
visibility, have never really been seen. Those in the interval, between the breaks, 
occupying Nepantla and within the ellipses. This dissertation is dedicated to those who 
are marginal because of where we have devoted the center. This dissertation is dedicated 
to the forgotten and ignored that remain in the wake of ?progress.?
ii
Acknowledgements
	 I would like to thank God, who, for me, is the most intimate part of my self, the 
only part that I cannot lie to, that knows every hair on my body, and every crease in my 
skin. When I have felt that I could not go any further, the God in me, the God in others, 
has been what pushed me to persevere, dig deeper, and continue this path to attaining my 
Ph.D. As much completing this process honors the God in me, I must pay homage to the 
God in others that have been crucial in inspiring me in this becoming: My late mother, 
Yvonne Allen Peoples who instilled in me the drive to be anything I wanted, finished 
graduate school, and gave a serious ear to my production and enjoyment of Hip-Hop 
music. My father, Rufus Peoples who inspires me to work hard, grind, and to not sacrifice 
my ambitions for anyone. My brother who, by spreading his wings, has opened new 
possibilities in my mind for where I can take my knowledge beyond the States. My 
advisor, Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr., a thought-provoking soul I am grateful to have 
encountered; a sobering breath of fresh air, never afraid to critique my weaknesses and 
through that critique reveal a deep listening that lets me know I am heard. Had it not been 
for Dr. McCune?s seeing of exceptional insights I produced, I may have given up on 
attaining this level of education some time ago. 
	 Importantly, much thanks goes to Psyche Williams-Forson for exposing me to 
Material Culture, John Caughey for exposing me to Life History, Faedra Carpenter for 
sparking deeper considerations of Performance Studies and its relationship to Theatre, 
Jason Farman for helping me to structure my metaphors around the viral and key areas of 
my dissertation defense and much gratitude to all of the latter professors for giving me 
very useful feedback for early and recent iterations of my dissertation chapters. Thanks 
must go to Damion Thomas for challenging me at the early iterations of my project to 
think deeper about how I would personally involve myself. I?m also very appreciative of 
the relationship between American Studies and Women?s Studies at the University of 
Maryland, College Park, which fostered my ability to see links between the two 
disciplines and clarified things about each that would have been more difficult to 
understand alone. Within Women?s Studies was certainly Patricia Hill Collins, Michele V. 
Rowley, Elsa Barkley-Brown, and Katie King whose approaches to pedagogy and 
reflection on the discipline of Women?s Studies and its intersections were certainly 
influential to me as a researcher and teacher. I also acknowledge the diligence of 
Cliffornia Pryor, Manwah Betsy Yuen, and Julia C. John who helped me navigate the 
woes of the bureaucracy of the University.
	 Michele, thanks for getting copies of my dissertation to my committee when I 
could not be in Maryland to do so! Emily, thanks for looking out for me when you didn?t 
know who I was besides a brotha in Nepantla in need of assistance. Renina, thanks for the 
BBQ and the infinite numbers of snacks we?ve had over our discussions of our research 
and livelihoods. Bettina, thanks for the serious conversations we?ve had in earlier 
iterations of my research, who knows, they may resurface on the next project. Luqman, 
thanks for being fam. for most of my grad career brotha, ups, downs, all arounds, 
studying, etc. much success to you Amina, and Ryan. CP, you know what it is family, 
you?ve always been supportive of my endeavors since undergrad and helped me secure a 
iii
spot in the DMV, thanks for roaming DC with me, sharing meals, bdays and all the 
etceteras. Ciara, thanks for all the real conversations through the years and taking 
moments to look at an entire chapter of mine that was giving me such a headache at the 
time. Nesha, thanks so much for the many ways that you have mentored me throughout 
the years in the significance of feminism as well as the importance of grounding myself 
in reality after being in some of its clouds. Shouts out to everyone in POA, I know I got 
the rep of giving everyone existential moments, blame it on Paulo Freire. Chanel and 
Derrick, thanks for setting aside time so we could all focus on getting some work done 
whilst in ATL. Mickey, I?ve always appreciated the myriad ways you came through for 
me in GA and our many convos about the South and Black politics, your curiosity is quite 
inspiring.
	 My entire cohort is deep, but special thanks go to: Double A, I appreciate all the 
various times we discussed our projects and simply making it in the PhD process amidst 
life, may we continue to blossom. Doug, hold it down in Colorado and wherever else life 
may take you, I always enjoyed our intense intellectual and lighthearted conversations. 
Tiffany, you were the first of us to get out there and inspired me to be confident and get 
done, I hope you take Georgia over and thanks for all those rides. I?m still waiting on that 
freestyle Andrew o_0 Thanks for encouraging me fairy god-sis. Leaders of the new 
Bimbola, Doug, Izetta, Paul, Jessica, A., Stephanie, Terrance, Kevin, Shane, I see you. 
Special shout to T?sey and Ilyas for holding down the ASA fort in D.C. as well as coming 
through to the dissertation defense (I got your painting in my office!), I appreciate you 
both. Also, Carla, you?ve seen me from 5th to technically 25th and it meant so much to 
have your presence at my defense, you?re awesome.
	 Christina, thanks for being there as a sister when I needed one and even for 
feedback I received from your parents about the regulation of the radio. Marlon, you gave 
me some of the best feedback I?ve ever received from a conference chair in some early 
iterations of my research that helped me in expanding my considerations of queer 
subjects, thank you brotha. Kayla, much appreciation goes to you for always checking in 
on me and asking about my project. Amanda, thank you for being there during low point-
high points of my professional career and personal life, in the words of Pac, you are 
appreciated. Andres, you already know what I been through and where I?m trying to go, 
thanks for being there for me, may we see many more years of success. Aunt Cookie, I 
always noticed that you checked to make sure I was alive and well, and I so appreciate 
that, so many will confess to graduate school as a lonely process, I?m lucky that mine was 
not. Aunt Henrietta, thanks for showing an interest in reading up on whatever I happen to 
write, whether it be a master?s thesis or dissertation. Same goes for Grand Johnny, I hope 
to be that intellectually curious when I?m an elder...p.s. your pound cake gave me life as a 
grad student, you may never understand, just know. Grandmother, thanks for the kind 
words and peppermint bark along my journey, you had that southern way of saying baby 
that always made me nostalgic for my Detroit childhood. Aunt Dorothy, thanks for the 
cards, I?m not much of a card person, but I always put them up. Shout out to all my Allen 
and Peoples family, thanks for always encouraging me to think ahead and to finish 
college and thanks for the support over the years.
iv
Table of Contents
List of Figures	.........................................................................................................vi
Chapter 1 Introduction, Viral Bodies: Uncontrollable Blackness in Popular 
Culture and Everyday Life	.......................................................................................1
Chapter 2, People Hear What They See: Rumor and Branding in 
(Re)presentations of Blackness	..............................................................................42
Chapter 3, I Can?t Live Without My Radio: Viral Performances of Black 
Masculinity in Film and Everyday Life	...............................................................102
Chapter 4, This Song Will Never Die: The Memeification and Amplification of 
Race, Sexuality, and Class through Viral Media	..................................................155
Chapter 5 Coda, Viral Bodies: #NoCureforStigma	..............................................226
Notes	....................................................................................................................237
	
	 Bibliography.........................................................................................................273
v
List of Figures
Figure 1.	 ?White Men Can?t Run?............................................................................	13
Figure 2.	 ?Broadside notice issued by the Plymouth Committee...?........................	50
Figure 2.1.	 Absolut Power...........................................................................................	53
Figure 2.2.	 Ode to the CMB: Am I Not a Man and a Brother......................................	58
Figure 2.3.	 The Anti-Slavery Record Vol. III, for 1837 ?The Runaway?.....................	64
Figure 2.4.	 Ode to the CMB: Folks Say, ?Take That Chain Off Boy Ya Blindin? Me?; 
	 Ode to the CMB: Am I Not a Man and a Brother; Ode to the CMB: Lucy 
	 is a Slave with Diamonds...........................................................................65
Figure 2.5.	 ?Ten dollars Reward?.................................................................................67
Figure 2.6.	 Branded Head............................................................................................71
Figure 2.7.	 Scarred Chest.............................................................................................76
Figure 2.8.	 Jordan and Johnny Walker in Timberland circa 1923 (Circa 1923).........86
Figure 3.	 ?Radio?....................................................................................................103
Figure 3.1.	 ?Weekend Update?...................................................................................119
Figure 3.2.	 ?Radio Raheem Bites Lower Lip?...........................................................126
Figure 3.3.	 ?Radio Raheem Turns Up The Volume?..................................................127
Figure 3.4.	 ?You Got It Bro?......................................................................................128
Figure 3.5.	 ?It?s A Devastating Right and Hate Is Hurt?............................................131
Figure 3.6.	 The Night Of The Hunter.........................................................................131
Figure 3.7.	 ?Fight The Power...Spit?..........................................................................133
Figure 3.8.	 ?You Nigger Motherfucker?....................................................................135
Figure 3.9.	 ?The Block Is Hot?..................................................................................140
Figure 3.10.	 The Boxer.................................................................................................143
vi
Figure 3.11.	 Black Wall 2 (for Radio Raheem)............................................................144
Figure 3.12.	 Radio Jordan............................................................................................147
Figure 4.	 ?ANTOINE DODSON. THIS IS JUST TOO FUNNY!?........................156
Figure 4.1.	 Annoying Orange - Kitchen Intruder (Bed Intruder Spoof) with AutoTune 
	 Remix!......................................................................................................176
Figure 4.2.	 ?World Star Hip Hop Freaks?..................................................................184
Figure 4.3.	 ?Tis the season to send a personal video greeting!?................................186
Figure 4.4.	 ?ANTOINE DODSON. THIS IS JUST TOO FUNNY!?........................202
Figure 4.5.	 Sweet Brown - Ain't Nobody Got Time for That (Autotune Remix).......214
Figure 4.6.	 Sweet Brown - Ain't Nobody Got Time for That (Autotune Remix).......215
Figure 4.7.	 Sweet Brown - Ain't Nobody Got Time for That (Autotune Remix).......215
Figure 4.8.	 ?The Justice League?...............................................................................217
vii
Chapter 1 Introduction, Viral Bodies: 
Uncontrollable Blackness in Popular Culture and Everyday Life
	 The evening of July 13th, 2013 I was a passenger on the DC metro bus as I 
arrived in Silver Spring, MD. I will never forget the look of hopelessness on the faces of 
others on the bus that night and my own feelings that Black folk were not valued or 
protected by the Department of Justice (quite the oxymoron, indeed). In my heart, I knew 
what happened even though I had not caught up on the news that day: George 
Zimmerman had been found not guilty for the second-degree murder of Trayvon Martin. 
Against the toxic feeling that no one, besides his own Blackness, was responsible for 
Trayvon Martin?s fatal shooting, that night I tweeted, ?We are not expendable, we are not 
disposable, we are valuable, we are loved.? 1 Today?s popular, controversial, yet complex 
#BlackLivesMatter hashtag?a highly visible symbol as well as index used in social 
media?was created on Twitter shortly after that verdict and later arranged as the political 
organization Black Lives Matter. The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter captured a certain 
resilience within that moment of despair, which I felt as well, and archived a move 
inclusive of, yet, beyond Trayvon Martin, and later, Michael Brown and Blacks in 
Ferguson, MO?tethering all such heinous civilian and police violences toward Black 
bodies, making visible a more general pattern of anti-Black violence.
	 #BlackLivesMatter remained relatively dormant, only being used 48 times a day 
across Twitter the month before the fatal shooting of an unarmed Michael Brown by 
Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, after which it increased in use to more than 
52,000 times that month.2 As folks began to make sense of the Michael Brown shooting, 
the moment of death and Brown?s positionality became central. His best friend and 
witness, Dorian Johnson, said that he last saw his friend Michael Brown with his hands 
1
up, a gesture of ?don?t shoot? and yelling, I don?t have a gun, stop shooting? before he 
was killed by police officer Darren Wilson.3 After Johnson?s testimony, Missouri civilians 
chanted and put their hands up in a gesture of opposition to police brutality and assertion 
of vulnerability, saying in chorus, ?hands up, don?t shoot!? Not only did the chant travel 
in the real, being transmogrified into t-shirts, magazine and newspaper covers, and word 
of mouth, but it traveled virtually as well being digitally archived?throughout Twitter, 
Facebook and other media. The communal response of solidarity and empathy with 
Michael Brown led to a hashtag, #handsupdontshoot, to index their activities, anti-Black 
acts of violence, or peaceful protests of police brutality related to them.
	 Of course, what began as a rallying cry of protesters during the aftermath of 
Michael Brown?s death was carried to many communities where the ongoing 
mistreatment of unarmed bodies by police officers were similar to that in Ferguson, MO. 
While the accounts of Michael Brown surrendering have been refuted,4 within them was 
a truth claim?a statement about the world taken as true when other evidence is scarce.5 
Thus, while some accounts became rumor, they ultimately made cultural sense against a 
contemporary backdrop where anti-Black acts of violence were more visible than ever. 
The virtual and real iterations of #handsupdontshoot had such wide circulation and 
meaning that they reverberated nationwide. The gesture and chant was used during a 
speech on the House floor titled, ?Black in America: What Ferguson Says About Where 
We Are and Where We Need to Go,? by four members of the Black Caucus, indeed, an 
audiovisual symbol of solidarity with protesters.6 The gesture was performed by members 
of the St. Louis Rams as they entered the field to face the Oakland Raiders, indeed, a 
visual symbol of solidarity with protesters and vulnerability as Black bodies.7 
2
	 For me this viral hashtag represents two primary things: First, it brings visibility 
to Michael Brown?s death and indexed how it unfolded in the streets of Ferguson, MO, 
serving as a precedent to testimonial and medical evidence in the court of law. Second, it 
functions as many activists? and protesters? symbol of a non-violent will, chronicling and 
bringing emphasis to the unarmed Black bodies who encounter armed police and civilians 
and are killed egregiously with only the ?fear of what Blackness can do? as evidence and 
defense.
	 Since its induction in the viral archive, #handsupdontshoot is still used in 
reference to Michael Brown and Black lives that have encountered excessive force from 
police, with a caveat. Indeed, the value and visibility that Michael Brown?s death brought 
to the hashtag is now being used to describe what Cecil the Lion should have done,8  
pranking someone with airsoft guns,9  or a hashtag slant rhyme response #pantsupdontloot
?which attributes a stylistic (sagging) and criminal act (looting) to Black bodies in 
moments of vulnerability and trauma.10 This use is a type of violence that undermines the 
necessity to make visible how Black lives are particularly vulnerable to excessive force 
from police.
	 Within the visibility of that violence is also visible critique. ?Cosby would say 
pants up don?t loot? brings attention to the moral contradictions of those who generalize 
about and morally police Black bodies.11 Its visibility was used to bring attention to 
fourteen year old George Junius Stinney, Jr., the youngest person in the 20th century U.S. 
to have been executed whose pants were up and who was innocent of killing two White 
teens, yet, was sentenced to death.12 Indeed, this user grapples with the respectability 
politics raised by the hashtag, which assumes that Michael Brown was sagging and 
3
suggests that if Michael Brown wore his pants on his waist, nothing would have 
happened to him and no one would need to protest anything. Another critic identified as 
White, ?I?m white,? reinforced his views on fairness, ?I support racial equality and 
justice,? and directly rejected the righteous premise of the hashtag, ?#PantsUpDontLoot 
IS NOT RIGHT.? 13
	 The decision not to indict Darren Wilson for the fatal shooting of Michael Brown 
led to #BlackLivesMatter being used on Twitter approximately 10,000 times that day and 
92,784 times the day following the verdict.14 I expose these examples to show the 
complexity of employing a hashtag, as it shifts in meaning, use, and significance, 
depending upon public use and utility. On some levels, each of these hashtags are specific 
and on another hand they also can be used generally and even some times as parody. The 
visibility of these indexing instruments, #handsupdontshoot and #Black LivesMatter, do 
important work in raising awareness of police and citizen performances, while also 
delivering a blow, so to speak, for activists demonstrations and circulating activists? 
discourses to broader communities. 
	 A hashtag is a highly visible symbol as well as index. It?s highly visible due to its 
incessant, uncontrollable, discursive circulation. Within the circulation of a hashtag are 
also the circulation of behaviors, ideas, and bodies. I theorize this type of incessant, 
uncontrollable, discursive circulation of bodies, their behaviors, and the ideas around 
them through what I call Viral Performance. Uncontrollability begins to describe who is 
out of control (in terms of bodies acting out or out loud), what is being controlled (in 
terms of managing visual and aural narratives and respectability), the multivalence of 
viral performances, as well as the erratic spread of a performance once it is published.
4
	 There are four things that viral performance does in my dissertation, Viral Bodies: 
Uncontrollable Blackness in Everyday Life and Popular Culture. My dissertation 
conveys how within American popular culture, pedagogy is created from a mass 
production of a thing that is accepted as a proxy for knowledge. This project clarifies how 
the rapid ubiquity of a thing is created through viral mechanisms that transfer knowledge 
(like rumor, word of mouth, mass-produced image and video). My dissertation insists that 
viral performance has long been with us by mapping the trajectory of it from rumor to 
viral video; understanding this, it becomes clear how narratives and representations that 
affect people?s? material lives are circulating faster now than they ever have. Lastly, this 
project illustrates how rapid ubiquity hides the complexity of a thing by making it so 
widely available that it becomes disposable; additionally, rapid ubiquity reveals the 
complexity of a thing by uncovering patterns and repeatedly bringing a thing to the 
vanguard of our conscience.
	 Through the theory of viral performance, my dissertation explores how visual and 
sonic fields mark Black bodies in ways that create both simplified personhood?the idea 
that a person or group can easily be known?and complex personhood15?which 
acknowledges that people and groups work together and contradict themselves in ways 
that make them difficult to be easily understood.16 Particularly, my project explores viral 
performances in photography/images (Hank Willis Thomas? B?anded series), film (Spike 
Lee?s Do The Right Thing), and viral video (The Gregory Brother?s ?BED INTRUDER 
SONG!!! (now on iTunes)?) that generate, circulate, and rework (mis)understandings of 
Black behaviors into commonsense beliefs. Indeed, viral performances create things that 
5
reinscribe generalized beliefs or ?scripts? about Blackness, while also generating paths of 
alterity where essentialized understandings of Blackness are challenged and transgressed. 
	 Viral Bodies? central argument is that new media and new technologies are 
deployed in ways that make everyday acts of Black life ?go viral,? 17 transforming them 
into problematic products for spectacular consumption. Viral performance turns Black 
?beings? into ?things??not only disposable objects, but things worth paying attention to, 
things to keep and not discard in a reality where so much is objectified. ?Things,? indeed, 
do not always need to be pejorative. To unveil this process of what Duriel E. Harris terms 
as, ?thingification,? ?[T]he annihilating objectifying force at the core of all 
oppressions,? 18 I follow robust and repetitious (re)presentations of Black bodies, what I 
call Black virality.
	 Black virality, a subset of viral performance, is indeed, informative, violent, and 
productive. It informs bodies through widely broadcasted performances that 
(mis)understand and communicate Blackness. Indeed, in the process of virality, where 
meanings are made through repeated and robust performances and representations that 
rapidly proliferate, Blackness becomes uniquely flattened and shaped as a ?thing? often 
to be discarded, but also peculiarly revered, beautifully attractive. This interweb of 
rapidly ubiquitous performances is relied upon to inform one?s subjectivity and how it 
intersects with other social, economic, and cultural structures; thus, viral performance 
rapidly and instantaneously transmits information about Black bodies and ideas about 
Black cultures across a matrix of real and virtual interfaces.
	 To grapple more directly with these real and virtual interfaces, I use 
netnography19?conducting the study of communities and cultures in computer-mediated 
6
virtual spaces?as the central approach to my chapter on the most viral video of 2010. 
Netnography differs from ethnography in that the archive from which primary sources are 
drawn tends to be a perpetual archive (even though sites and comments can disappear), 
allowing for more possibilities to continually return to the sites and the interactions 
within them. Using this approach led to my coining of a new archetype of Blackness 
through which to both understand and critique Blackness, the Ghetto Witness. Ghetto 
Witnesses are often, but not always, persons of African descent that use the street 
vernacular of their larger racial or ethnic group, irrespective of their audience, to describe 
a sensational event or theory from their deeply personal perspective, clarifying, verifying, 
and producing a larger narrative.20 I explore this concept at length in my fourth chapter.
	 Indeed, the analytic of viral performance, not only encourages new and 
interdisciplinary approaches to subjects and materials that clarify new ways of 
understanding and critiquing them, but it offers the fields of Performance Studies and 
African American Studies a lens through which to consider the material power of rapidly 
ubiquitous figurative representations and their critiques. It does this by evidencing the 
mechanisms through which a viral performance becomes a thing, how that thing 
circulates and mutates uncontrollably, and critically identifying the viral discourses that 
are unveiled through such a process. 
	 Viral performance offers a different way through which to understand the ?signal 
difference? that African American studies scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. identifies in The 
Signifying Monkey (1998), for example. Here, signal difference is used to specify the type 
of repetition that Signifyin(g) engages in that gives it more originality than a copy, an 
originality that also revises.21 Viral performances are revisions with signal differences 
7
rather than duplicates, yet, they include and exceed the literary texts that Gates uses to 
theorize Signifyin(g) through their additional concern with the Signifyin(g) that the 
material body and things outside of texts engage in. It is important to remember that what 
Signifies with signal difference is not a viral performance unless those signal differences 
become rapidly ubiquitous in worlds like everyday life and/or popular culture.
	 Within Performance Studies, viral performance operates under the umbrella of 
performance?an organizing concept to study human behavior and how it is socially 
constructed and reinforced, to study the performing arts, as an example and method of 
inquiry, and as a means of activist intervention into academic, cultural, and performance 
spaces.22 While every viral performance is a performance, every performance is not a 
viral one. Even though viral performances are behaviors and discourses, not all behaviors 
and discourses become rapidly ubiquitous, which is what viral performance centers. Viral 
performance holds both performance and performativity in a delicate balance; whereby, it 
is a simultaneous consideration of the present moment, indicated by performance, and 
how that present moment is historically constituted, indicated by performativity.23
	 An early adoption of the term ?viral performance? is made by Miriam Felton-
Dansky for whom it is a genre of art and performance that intentionally exploits today?s 
communications technologies to self-reflexively critique them, what she calls a ?new 
theatrical mode for a digital age.? 24 Two manuscripts were precursors to her conception 
of viral performance: Douglass Rushkoff?s Media Virus, which draws direct connections 
between how a virus functions biologically and in networks of media, and Richard 
Dawkins? The Selfish Gene, which describes memes as devices which communicate and 
replicate cultural information similar to genetic material. 
8
	 Rushkoff and Dawkins dangerously make an easy association between how media 
viruses and memes travel sociologically and how medical viruses and genetic material 
travel biologically. I argue that this move is obfuscating. For example, the ways in which 
viruses, particularly HIV, increasingly affect those who are economically and 
educationally marginalized and sexually stigmatized does not mesh well with how a 
media virus circulates within and across communities, in ways that are often not terminal 
or deadly. This move to metaphor also compromises the mechanics of viral material, as I 
use it. For instance, a media virus, unlike HIV, does not generally die once it is exposed 
to oxygen; it lives beyond the material transmission. Nonetheless, the likelihood of one?s 
livelihood being susceptible to a media virus are higher in economically and 
educationally disenfrachized and racially and sexually stigmatized groups since 
pejorative perceptions of them are indisputably already in wide circulation. To this point, 
I am willing to concede certain metaphorical moves?in lieu of how viruses work?to 
better translate the discursive operations of media in circulating narratives which are 
passed from site to site, person to person, and epoch to epoch.
	 Different from Felton-Dansky, for this project viral performance does not only 
begin in the realm of the representative, intentional, or theatrical but also exists in the 
domain of the real and the effortless, hence ?everyday life.? Additionally, viral 
performances exist outside of the norm of what we consider communications 
technologies, or, they expand our notion of communications technologies to include the 
body (gestures) and the voice (rumors). Viral performances are infinitely generative of 
Black bodies, summoning their past while simultaneously creating in their present.25 
Theorizing viral performance allows me to be conversant with the complex present 
9
moment where there is an unprecedented visibility of Black bodies being brutalized by 
police or civilians. In part, this viral violence?is created out of perceptions of the 
worth(lessness) of Black bodies, which have been influenced by things incessantly seen 
and heard about them. New technologies have also made this violence toward, and ill 
perceptions of, Black bodies, which has been ongoing for centuries, unprecedentedly 
accessible. Viral performance works to clarify how the virtual and the real are no longer, 
and perhaps have never been, mutually exclusive.
	 (Black) bodies, being essential to viral (Black) performances, are also viral in 
stigmatic ways. Thus, (Black) virality not only refers to the exponential ways that (Black) 
performances are transmitted to others, but also the (Black) body itself as a pathological 
contagion. Blackness, then, can sometimes be a sickness to be isolated, eradicated, and 
ridiculed (which is another form of isolation) in fear or expectation of its presence being 
multiplied elsewhere. There are, indeed, sicknesses that are passed on within viral (Black) 
performances, things that deteriorate the wellness (and/or the perception) of the bod(y/
ies) involved.
	 Sickness, however, is acknowledged within viral Black performances, not only for 
its pathological implications, but also for its sociocultural meanings, particularly within 
Hip-Hop cultures whose aesthetics are engrained in performances of Blackness in 
popular culture and everyday life. Indeed, Hip-Hop assists in my ability to read the viral 
and understand its function and relationship to Blackness?providing rich language with 
which to explore the discursive and everyday terrain of viral performance. The sickness 
of the viral is what makes it generative?both producing and spreading. Sickness is the 
state of being ill, signifying both disease, and of particular interest, what I call Illness?a 
10
Black street vernacular slogan for an expression or way of being that is undeniably 
appealing, communicable, and enduring.26 Thus, Black bodies redeploy Illness and a viral 
body can be Ill, not because it is sick, but because it is fresh, cool, popular. 
	 Dis-ease, a disorder of the structure and function of living things and what they 
construct, creates the disruption of norms that makes bodies susceptible to Illness. For 
example, if it were not for the poverty that created the socioeconomic conditions where 
one had to wear second-hand clothes, which would lead to them being too big or small, 
sagging may never have become as Ill as it had/has. Sagging jeans, potentially a result of 
incompatibly sized hand-me-downs in the latter example, are the fashion style 
popularized by 1990s Hip-Hop artists that alter a (perception of the) body.27 However, the 
body, through its resilience, fights back?indicative of purposefully wearing sagging 
jeans as a statement of style, despite its look being a sign of poverty. Sagging jeans 
become highly visible (spectacular even) through their ability to disrupt the original 
structure of the jean and the appropriation, duplication, and mass production of the 
disrupted structure that follows. The more that the visual of sagging jeans circulates, its 
visibility increases, which may lead to widespread adoption and/or critique, making the 
once-marginal the center. The sociocultural conditions and conflicts that created the style, 
which are crucial for understanding the complexity of the style, are often lost in the midst 
of its increased visibility, simplifying the style. The conditions that catalyzed the jean?s 
distortion are ignored for the sake of the jean?s spectacularity.28 In similar ways, the 
consumption and production of the deterioration, dissonance, and distortion of Black 
bodies contribute to the viral performances of Blackness in popular culture and everyday 
life.
11
	 Importantly, there are limitations to viral performances. One thing that makes a 
performance viral is an explosion of visibility and spread along its timeline of existence. 
Similar to a nuclear explosion, the closer one is (via time) to the point of burst, the more 
visible and viral the performance is. As time increases, the intensity of that visibility 
decreases almost as rapidly as it manifested; yet, the atmosphere and environment in 
proximity to the point of burst is affected for years to come, sustaining the viral afterlife 
of the performance. Therefore, a performance, or its referent, that travels at an alarming 
speed and scope at some point in its existence is a viral performance; whereas, outside of 
those factors, a performance is not viral.
12
	 The mid-2007 Intel ad29 in fig. 1 was my early recognition of a viral performance 
in media.30 Six carbon copied Black men dressed in track uniforms are readying 
Figure 1. Wily Feret, the Inquirer, ?White Men Can?t Run,? August 10, 
2011, http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1004060/intel-racist
13
themselves for a race, staring straight down. Track lanes are substituted for office desks 
and track turf for tiled floors. Examining the image further, all the athletic Black men are 
virtually bowing in the presence of a White man in a common IT uniform. He stands over 
them with his arms folded?smirking and looking directly at the viewer. The text of the 
ad further illustrates a visual hierarchy: ?MULTIPLY COMPUTING PERFORMANCE 
AND MAXIMIZE THE POWER OF YOUR EMPLOYEES.? Here, Black men are 
always already employees and White men employers or managers. More than computers 
or employees, this ad inadvertently explains one of the ways in which a viral performance 
of Black masculinity works: through visualizing rumor, requiring the use of the optic and 
aural senses.  
	 The White man is the employer and/or employee and the Black men are conflated 
into computer processors, able to work/run fast as expendable objects whose function is 
at the whim of the user. The historic Black stereotypes and rumors about the devoted 
servant and the superior athlete are restored in this performance.31 The office space also 
recalls moments where one can have ownership over bodies. The ad suggests that Black 
men are the forced labor behind the performance of businesses, while the White man can 
leisurely reap the benefits of this labor: folding his arms while others work as processors
?doing multitasks for the demands of the user. The way in which the White man stares 
directly at the camera while the Black men look toward the ground reinforces a hierarchy 
where Whiteness signifies pride, while Blackness is relegated to shame, abjection, and/or 
subservience. Moreover, the Black men?s identical appearances reinscribe anonymizing 
mythologies that suggest that all Black bodies look the same, while the White man 
remains unique and peculiar.  
14
	 Both bodies presented in this ad are branded in the sense that they are being used 
for an advertisement for Intel processors. The White male as nerd stereotype, unavailable 
to those not White or male, is used here.32 Black men?s bodies in North America, 
however, have a different relationship to branding than do White men?s bodies that comes 
back to how they were confined and regulated during North American slavery.33 Intel 
manipulates their bodies in a different way that the White man?s body escapes through his 
racial legacy. The particularities of Black men?s experiences are consolidated into one 
maximizing image, transforming them into things, things readying themselves for a race 
as much as the perception of a race.
Although this seems like a simple Intel ad, branding creates discursive scars. This 
advertisement marks Black men?s bodies as inherently and superiorly athletic and 
dutifully in servitude to the demands of others, particularly White men. This branding 
also works to erase other possibilities of Black maleness and masculinity: as each of these 
men may possess the skill to manage and maintain the Intel technology. Nonetheless, we 
lose these possibilities in the face of Intel?s commitment to a linear narrative, which calls 
forth and sustains historic tropes of Black-White male relations and hierarchies. This 
rendering is a signpost for the workings of viral performances of Blackness within our 
society?Black bodies repeatedly consumed as motionless while they attempt to move 
and break away from static notions about their personhood.
	 Upon initial publication, Intel pulled this ad from all publications except one 
unnamed media placement. Because of this censorship, the ad gained popularity and 
mass-production through other viral means, circulating through online news and personal 
blogs, which questioned its use of race. Viral performances of Black masculine tropes, 
15
indeed, produce political responses from their acts, whose critique would have otherwise 
gone unnoticed. As a virus attacks parts of the body, causes degrees of inflammation, and 
multiplies itself, antibodies are produced to counteract its effects; metaphorically, viral 
performances spread through their digital and analog environments, irritating their 
consumers into responses that not only multiply their acts, but also critique them. In other 
words, the exponential spread of a viral performance also increases the resistance to it.
	 Thus, we must also consider how a viral context may transform the meaning here, 
for while viral performances may generalize beliefs about Black bodies, they also 
challenge those very beliefs, transforming how Black bodies are understood.34 Even 
though the ad was redacted for its racist imagery, it may still be refashioned as subversive 
to racist imagery. In the ?small writing,? it also states, ?actual performance may vary.? 
This admission functions to suggest that while these Black men appear identical they all 
perform [race, gender, sexuality, _____] differently, anticipating some of the issues that I 
raised around anonymity and raced gender roles. Some people online saw the 
advertisement as comedic and unsuccessful because by facing each other, when the 
starter gun goes off, all the sprinters would run into each other, revealing how inefficient 
Intel processors are. The resulting accident would also be symbolic of a failure in the 
control and management of Black bodies, indicative of their uncontrollability. This is an 
example of how viral performances keep Blackness in motion while at the same time 
fixing it in place, working multivalently, ?symbolically in a number of directions at 
once.? 35
	 This Intel ad illuminates ideas and thoughts that will be important in the larger 
dissertation. It conveys how rumor is viral in nature (spreading uncontrollably and 
16
becoming rapidly ubiquitous in the popular imaginary), saturated in political motives, and 
functions in contemporary performances of Black bodies in popular culture. How viral 
ideas travel through Black bodies also becomes evident in this Intel ad (i.e., rendering an 
image, commodifying it, and distributing it). Nonetheless, as much as those Black men 
are trapped by those viralities, which point toward larger discourses of deviancy and 
inferiority, through those viralities, they also resist such discourses. Any portrayal/
performance is constructed with its own politics and agendas, which are both influenced 
by and perpetuate viral performances. Importantly, the Intel ad conveys how the currency 
of Blackness in popular culture?both the popularity and fiscal value of Blackness?
incentivizes its commodification, which in turn influences how Black bodies ?define, 
locate, and understand [them]selves via [(dis)]identification.? 36
Furthermore, there is a relationship between virality, branding, and erasure: The 
viral performances of Black bodies are used to advertise brands (alcohol, YouTube 
channels, shoes), stigmas, and markers of Blackness, making them highly visible while 
rendering other possibilities of their Blackness invisible, erasing them. We also see a 
dialectical relationship between virality, erasure, and branding: viral performances of 
Blackness, not only limit the possibilities of Blackness, but also multiply them, producing 
an array of meanings. While these possibilities can still erase the complexities of Black 
bodies and brand them, branding does not necessarily lead to erasure. Erasure and 
branding are distorting mechanisms, but they also create clarity around subjects, 
revealing the socio-political forces they are up against. Branding is also an act of self-
affirming agency, transforming how Black bodies are seen and providing possibilities for 
social, economic, and visual mobility.
17
Visual technologies with the potential for mass production, such as online viral 
videos, cinematic film, television, and photographs/images, have enhanced the virality of 
Black performance to unprecedented levels. The images that they portray of Blackness, 
however, are so pervasive and have such a quotidian nature, that the decoding of these 
images have a high tendency to take for granted the raced, gendered, and social 
assumptions and metaphors that are embedded within the portrayals. Viral Bodies will 
examine three viral performances, where Black masculine presence in popular culture 
and everyday life creates or informs a ?common sense ideology? about Black bodies. 
Select photographs/images from Hank Willis Thomas? B?anded series, Radio Raheem?s 
performances in Do The Right Thing, and the viral videos of Antoine Dodson?s 2010 
newscast, will illuminate the ways in which the ?viral? interplays with common 
understandings of Blackness. While I focus significantly on ?original? 37 viral 
performances, I also interrogate how other acts they inspire cause us to consider not only 
their rapid ubiquity, but their multivalence. 
	 Even though this project focuses attention toward Black men, interrogating forms 
of Blackness in popular culture requires engagement with performance by Black 
women?s bodies as well. Blackness is, indeed, constructed through its relationship to 
Black men?s, women?s, and everyone?s bodies between those extremes. A focus on race, 
class, gender, queerness, and disability is contingent on the context and the markers that 
emerge as salient in a case study. As such, in chapter one and, particularly, chapter three, 
there are moments and sections dedicated to thinking about Black women?s relationship 
to moments of viral performances of Blackness.
18
I have limited my examinations of viral performances of Blackness to online viral 
video, film, and photography/images. There are far more channels, notwithstanding, in 
which we find viral performances of Blackness such as standup comedy, sports, stage-
plays and everyday acts like ?what are those?!.? 38 An exemplar of the very thing that I am 
writing about?these popular cultures, spaces, and mediums where Blackness is being 
negotiated?is Hip-Hop. 
Even though I do not focus specifically on Hip-Hop, as the entire project reaches 
completion, I realize that its idioms and aesthetics are throughout each chapter, creating a 
type of Hip-Hop refrain. This is surely a result of how I have participated in Hip-Hop 
culture as a fan in the audience of concerts and as a DJ of parties that feature music from 
the African Diaspora. I do not want to minimize the subjects being discussed, however, in 
dwelling on my own biases. This Hip-Hop refrain also reflects the aural conditions within 
which I am writing that influence it as I contrapuntally sample39 discourse, images, and 
audio, interpret them, and convey a range of meanings and feelings. While Hip-Hop is 
intimately tied to my project, even in thinking about how people appropriate it as the 
quintessential meaning of Blackness, I do not want Hip-Hop to overpower the meaning or 
potential of my dissertation; indeed, for this project I have chosen to work within a 
specific field of vision and sound. 
To limit my research parameters (as viral performances can be found in numerous 
acts), I discard other forms of viral performances of Blackness and spaces where those 
acts are claimed and produced. The narrowness of this scope has allowed me to explore 
possibilities more in depth than a wide consideration could have afforded. As a result, I 
critically examine the performances, not only considering the discourses, but also the 
19
institutional and structural forces that viral performances of Blackness shape, and are 
shaped by. Forces such as the denial of decent housing, limiting economic opportunities, 
and racial and gender discrimination are exposed with a focus that would have been more 
difficult with a wider consideration of more performances and spaces.
	 While I am theorizing through viral performance and examining acts of virality 
within multiple sites, I employ ?lurking? as an overarching methodological approach, 
which emerges as a position from which I research and write concerning how Blackness 
relates to the viral. Robert V. Kozinets describes a lurker as ?the active observer who 
learns about a [web]site through initially watching and reading.? 40 Each chapter requires 
lurking?a deep hanging out in the scene of viral performance.
	 Specifically, in the chapter on Hank Willis Thomas? B?anded series I do a kind of 
lurking in the visual culture archive out of which I curate the viral to clarify how it is 
ingrained in Thomas? photos/images. By lurking in Radio Raheem?s film archive, Do The 
Right Thing, I move ?lurking? into the Hip-Hop past that links to and anticipates Eric 
Garner?s and Jordan Davis? fatal encounter decades later. I adopt lurking as a role in 
which to participate in and observe online interactions on video-sharing/aggregation sites 
where comments about BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes) are posted. 
	 Understanding the position of Black bodies as they exist in the shadows of social 
justice informs my stance with lurking as a performative mode of being. This mode of 
being is a form of hanging out with an ethical sensibility and attention to experiences of 
deep significance. D. Soyini Madison writes on this in her reflections on performance 
ethnography: ?...experience begins from our uneventful, everyday existence...But then 
something happens, and we move to moments of experience...We give feeling, reason, 
20
and language to what has been lifted from the inconsequential day-to-day.? 41 Reflecting 
on experience within the scope of performance is not to think about any experience, but 
particularly the experience which ruptures the ordinary. Lurking is another way to engage 
in performance ethnography in a virtual space. This lurking requires a repeated doing; 
indeed, to know how what I experience is remarkable requires a central element of viral 
performance: an incessant, and at times unwelcome, return, which distills what ?goes 
viral? from what gets lost in oblivion.
Black Performance Studies and African American Studies
	 This dissertation examines different mediums such as online viral video, film, and 
photography/images and illustrates how recordings of a performance event with new 
technologies can repeat, revise, and retain mythologies of Blackness. My focus on the 
viral performances of Black bodies makes this dissertation a Black Performance Studies 
(BPS) Project. Black performance is a central unit of analysis for my research, as it is 
integral to understanding the pleasures and challenges that Black bodies experience as 
they exist?this complex tension between deconstruction (what reveals Blackness as a 
performance) and what remains of Blackness when performances cease. The following 
research questions guide how I examine the performances throughout Viral Bodies: How 
do performances of Blackness become multiplied and widely circulated? What becomes 
of the meanings and narratives that their circulated performances signify? How does 
absence?the things which we know should be there but are not?magnify the racial and 
gender politics in viral performances of Blackness in popular culture and everyday life, 
telling us more about what is communicated than what we see or hear? How does the 
21
Black body perform as a thing, which can be collected, restoring, and re-membering 
dissident histories?
	 My research questions emerged as I engaged in various literature across multiple 
fields, particularly African American Studies (AAS) and BPS. While there is overlap 
between these fields, there are distinct things from each that make them useful for this 
project. AAS gives me the ability to understand viral performances of Blackness in a 
larger discourse about raced subjects. Their scholarship on Black masculinity deals with 
the racial and gender malpractice, loss of power, limited agency, privilege and behaviors 
of Black men.42 The different ways that scholars have considered how Black masculinity 
is created, presented, and made intelligible signal key mechanisms in the production of 
viral performances of Blackness in popular culture and everyday life.  
	 The way in which I examine viral performances of Blackness uses Ronald L. 
Jackson II?s notion of scripting, Maurice O. Wallace?s concept of enframing, and Nicole 
R. Fleetwood?s idea of rendering and, thereby, captures the processes of labeling, 
structuring, and creating viral performances of Blackness in popular culture and everyday 
life. All three scholars are particularly useful in thinking about the interrelationship of 
photography, as an image of a performance event that survived the event, and 
performance, as the visual staging of bodies and their behaviors. I depart by looking at 
how Black bodies are restaged, reframed, reperformed, and re-rendered through the 
performances enacted outside of the initial viral performance, the limited ways that Black 
bodies can refashion their behaviors, and how that refashioning creates room for 
subjugated subjectivities. Where I depart will give particular insight into the social 
production of meaning, media (il)literacy, and the collapse of the virtual and the material.
22
	 Performance Studies, on the other hand, emerged from marginalized perspectives 
in Theatre and Anthropology that sought to dis-integrate the ideas of ?performance,? 
?acts,? and ?play? from their exclusivity with the performing arts, thus, to reject the 
boundaries between art and life. Through this rejection Victor Turner and Richard 
Schecner intervened in the prejudices of theatre and anthropology, allowing scholars to 
examine how performance is engrained in the everyday actions, drama, sports, music, and 
theatre of people.43 Their intervention also became central to ideas in BPS, which 
acknowledge how representations and performances of Blackness are connected to 
?living Black,? but depart by emphasizing that those representations and performances 
are not to be conflated with ?living Black.? BPS? idea ties into how viral performances 
are consciously used in everyday life, yet, they are not always drawn upon to react in a 
particular way or enact a certain behavior.
	  Scholarly omissions within AAS and Performance Studies made BPS possible 
and necessary. AAS? historic omission of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered and 
feminine male or masculine female subjectivities continues to shape the way that gender 
and sexuality are critically dealt with.44 Performance Studies? historical exclusion and 
marginalization of Black-authored texts and the contributions of the Black oratorical 
tradition to its discourse continues to affect the depth in which race is dealt with in its 
contemporary scholarship.45 Due to these omissions and exclusions, BPS became 
necessary to ground performance theory in the praxis of race and to affect the praxis of 
race with performance theory.
	 As a subfield of Performance Studies, BPS investigates Black behavior, music, 
theatre, ritual, and dance, etc., situating its analysis in the resistance of oppressive 
23
systems?White supremacist, sexist, homophobic, and patriarchal?that affect and are 
affected by Black performance.46 It takes into account ranges of performances and how 
they are situated within, and exercise, structures of power that impact Black bodies as a 
group. BPS is concerned with what it means to live Black and how and where to resist 
systematic oppression when there is a different exercise of power against the group and 
the individual. The move toward an attention to race grounds performance theory in an 
experience that exceeds the social construction of human behavior. E. Patrick Johnson 
writes on how Blackness goes beyond being an acted out notion of selfhood: 
Blackness does not only reside in the theatrical fantasy of 
the White imaginary that is then projected onto Black 
bodies, nor is it always consciously acted out; rather, it is 
also the inexpressible yet undeniable racial experience of 
Black people?the ways in which the ?living of Blackness? 
becomes a material way of knowing.47
Johnson suggests that Blackness is not only imagined or memorized, but that it is 
embodied knowledge, which can be performed, but is not always a performance. Darieck 
Scott summarizes this idea, writing, ?Blackness is lived, but it is a representation.? 48 
Blackness is a way of being in the world as well as an historicized act that performs 
traditions, reiterates gestures and speech, and uses stylized expressions to articulate itself 
in everyday life and popular culture.
	 BPS deals with how ?Blackness is not only...a pawn and consequence of 
performance, but it is also an effacement of it.? 49 In other words, while understandings of 
Blackness rely upon performance, ?being Black? also exists in ways that make Blackness 
appear unnoticed, natural, and experienced. Blackness is both controlled and created 
through performance and, also, remains when a performance ceases. Here, race may 
create critical metaphors (?the world is not a stage for everyone?) that allow me to think 
24
about performance in such a way that I see its possibilities and its limitations, disallowing 
its narrow construction. Emanating from the tension between performing Blackness and 
living it, BPS asserts itself arguing that Blackness is a ?fragile fiction,? whose experience 
(both the seen and unseen) is manifested in and through performance.50 This does not 
mean that, ??the real? has disappeared, but it is to acknowledge that it is impossible to 
recognize ?the real? without a concept of performance in view.? 51 Accordingly, viral 
performance becomes a contemporary generative site at which to investigate Blackness,  
and the affect our social lives have on it and the impact of it on our social lives.
	 BPS provides me with a theoretical framework to deal explicitly with 
performance in Black life that does not disavow Black women, lesbians, gays, and 
transgendered people, and the Black middle class from Blackness.52 It provides me with a 
broader conception of Blackness upon which to investigate viral performance in popular 
culture. BPS is able to discuss the layered complexity of performances of race, which 
engage issues of gender and sexuality in ways that are useful for understanding both the 
subversive and hegemonic ways that Blackness and masculinity are virally performed in 
popular culture.    
	 A conversation between AAS and BPS is needed to address the complexities of 
the viral performance of Blackness in popular culture and everyday life. Both fields 
contain theories and language around race, gender, representation, and performance that 
enliven popular understandings of viral Black performances. In using viral performances 
of Blackness in popular culture and everyday life as the nexus that brings the two fields 
of African American and Performance Studies into a necessary dialogue, BPS, a 
combination of both disciplines and an emergent subfield by its own right, manifests as 
25
an important tool in the analysis of how Blackness and gender interplay in public and 
private acts. Viral Black performance calls for the use of BPS as it is an incessantly 
emerging performance grounded in the realities and fictions of Blackness. Viral acts of 
Blackness in popular culture and everyday life field questions for us that cannot be 
articulated by African American and Performance Studies alone, but through their 
synthesis which can be found in a BPS approach.
	 Different scholars of AAS and BPS have theorized seeing Blackness through the 
visual staging of bodies in everyday life, the stage, the ?still? image, and the cinema.  
Concepts such as epidermalization, scripting, enframing, common sense, clich?, 
rendering, and scriptive things are highly instructive to this project. Much of this project
?as I examine the construction, circulation, and politics of viral performances of 
Blackness in popular culture?employs language or lenses encountered within these 
fields of study.
	 In Black Skin, White Masks Frantz Fanon undertakes a psychological analysis of 
the Black problem?this implicates the alienation of Black men, the institutionalized 
racism tied to the economic discrimination of White men towards Black men that has led 
to both of their alienation, and the Black and White man?s alienation being a challenge to 
their humanity. It grasps at the complexities of Blackness, racism, colonialism, and class.  
Fanon is especially useful for his illustration and theorization of the moment of being 
seen as a Black man by a different race. His descriptions capture the transplant that 
perpetually takes place in the realm of online video-sharing, popular culture, and 
everyday life at large, grafting ideas onto another body based on culturally informed 
understandings of its gender and race.
26
	 Taking up Du Bois? sense expressed in double-consciousness of ?always looking 
at one?s self through the eyes of others,? Fanon deals with what one sees and imagines 
when stepping out of one?s self to define one?s self, seeing one?s identity through the eyes 
of the other, and, in particular, experiencing existence through the eyes of a White person. 
Out of his most popular lines in the book, Fanon writes on the unspoken stigma that was 
grafted into his skin after a White boy publicly gestured, ?Look, a Negro!? to him: 
My body was given back to me sprawled out, distorted, 
recolored, clad in mourning in that white winter day. The 
Negro is an animal, the Negro is bad, the Negro is mean, 
the Negro is ugly; look a nigger, it?s cold, the nigger is 
shivering...the little White boy throws himself into his 
mother?s arms: Mama, the nigger?s going to eat me up.53 
The violence of being marked as Black or what Fanon describes as being ?battered down 
by tom-toms, cannibalism, intellectual deficiency, fetichism, racial defects, slave-ships, 
and...above all: ?Sho? good eatin?? emerges here.54 Fanon highlights the moment of 
?seeing? Black and how that public sighting informs our notions of fear, threat, and 
contamination. The stereotypes of, and pathologies associated with, Blackness are, for 
Fanon, inextricable from being marked as such. His description relates to the ways in 
which Black performances of masculinity become rendered though visual and sonic 
technologies and given back to us as fragments, distorted Black bodies, and embedded 
with demeaning metaphors.
	 Fanon?s use of ?epidermalization? 55 allows us to think through this racial moment 
as it unveils the unwanted inscriptions of discursive and cultural assumptions onto the 
skin and the internalization of those inscriptions by Black men. Thinking about Blackness 
in popular culture and everyday life, each performance comes with its own 
27
epidermalization, or projection of what is to be represented racially, which exercises 
erasure and branding upon Black bodies.  
Fanon?s racial idea of epidermalization is implied in Ronald Jackson II?s Scripting 
the Black Masculine Body. However, Jackson consciously uses the notion of racial and 
gendered ?scripting? for understanding the process of assigning meaning onto Black 
masculine bodies. Using a critical historical analysis, Jackson examines the historicity of 
Black body politics during slavery and early minstrelsy and the scripting of the Black 
body for what it reveals about the contemporary mass-mediated stereotypes. Jackson?s 
malleable use of the ?Black masculine body? allows us to consider masculine bodies that 
are not a product of gender, but of experience and performance, giving us an expansive 
view of Black masculinity. Emphasizing the hierarchical power relationships between the 
scripted and scripter, Jackson asserts that the scripter is an ?institution or individual in a 
decision-making position who has the authority to develop and mass-distribute images.? 56 
This suggests that the scripted is who or what has an image or idea grafted upon her/him/
it to be mass-distributed.
	 With the idea that the scripter and scripted are involved in the process of scripting, 
Jackson states that complicity57 is necessary and that it centers ?on the idea that people 
tend to comply with the classifications and identities that are placed on them; they may 
[comply] even as they confront the traditionally accepted norms, labels, or action.? 58 In 
other words, people tend to perform their socially-assigned identities and roles, and the 
resistance to socially-assigned identities and roles, nevertheless, involves their embrace.  
As I explore ideas around appropriation and intent in viral performances of Blackness in 
popular culture and everyday life, the complicity of the performer becomes an important 
28
area to interrogate the limitations agency in viral Black performances. The (lack of) 
agency in viral performances brings attention to the politics of race, ?in defiance of public 
discourse that says that race doesn?t exist and doesn?t matter,? revealing the nexus 
between visual practices and political cultures.59
	 Importantly, Jackson introduces the idea of ?rescripting? to allow for agency and 
the possibility for liberation from scripts.60 While Jackson leaves no further explanation 
of rescripting, his outline of scripting as a process of assigning meaning and projecting it 
onto bodies gives us a way to define it. Rescripting allows for scripting to be performed 
without occupying a position of authority, thus, the scripted becomes the scripter, 
refashioning the purpose of their previously assigned identities and roles. This will be a 
timely concept to use, particularly in my analyses of performances that happen ?post-
production? 61 as reenactments and reengagments of an earlier virally circulated act.
	 Jackson?s attention to scripting and its dramaturgical roots views the body as 
textualized, something that is discursively and culturally written upon to assign meaning 
to and read to make meaning of. This creates an epistemological dilemma as he is looking 
at material artifacts, cinematic images, and popular media all of which include, but 
ultimately exceed the boundaries of the written, taking into account the visual, the 
performative, and the aural for instance. Not only is this an epistemological dilemma, but 
it represents the epistemic violence that the text has historically exerted towards other 
forms of knowledge, knowledge which may draw out the nuances that the text is unable 
to detect.62 Jackson?s use of the ?script? is too rigid, which limits the agency of 
improvisation that exists in the performance of a dramaturgical script. Scripting is, 
nonetheless, useful in thinking through the roles that have been historically prepared, 
29
which people (un)knowingly play in viral performances, and the possibility that they can 
create new roles that are only partially dependent on historically prepared referents.63
	 Maurice O. Wallace?s Constructing the Black Masculine analyzes the processes, 
image repertories, and stereotypes that have taught us how to see and understand Black 
men to explore the literal and figurative relationship between Black men and visuality.  
Throughout Wallace?s manuscript, ?enframing? is used to describe the fixity of racism out 
of which Black masculinity cannot escape. Wallace writes, ?the frame(-up) restricts, if 
not altogether dooms, a Black man?s potential for transcending the chasmed otherness of 
race by establishing boundaries (screens, image repertories, stereotypes), mental 
parerga...? 64  Parerga are the frames that are separate from the picture/body/thought they 
encapsulate and the environment or context they are in. Yet, as the limit of the picture/
body/thought, they bear much weight on the representational range of the picture/body/
thought.65 We cannot, thus, critically examine an image without also examining the 
physical and/or perceptual frame that limits the image?s range of meaning. To critically 
observe viral performances of Blackness, one must take into account the cultural 
referents, assumptions, and stereotypes that they are produced with and that the politics 
of spectatorship summon.
	 This conception of enframing is useful, even as it is limiting, for my analysis of 
viral performances of Blackness in popular culture and everyday life. As performances of 
Black masculinity cannot escape the ?pre-existing images? of race, masculinity, and 
sexuality, enframing captures the essence of this process. In addition, ?enframing? offers 
a way to examine the photograph/image?an approach which nuances these Black 
performance phenomena to include movement. Understanding the photograph as moving 
30
allows me to go beyond examining it as an image that survived a performance event, to 
an actual performance event taking place. I believe that Wallace is invested in how 
reiterated acts happen within photographs and the way in which enframing, thus, exceeds 
its epistemological boundaries in art and photography and delves into the realm of 
performance. Wallace ultimately argues for a new way of seeing, producing knowledge, 
and having relationships to power that encompasses, ?...a multiplicity of perspectives, is 
heterocular...[and, in other words,] a new ontology of sight.? 66 This perspective 
exemplifies a different way of seeing the Black body that allows for, and produces, 
constantly shifting images of Blackness, a Blackness that moves.
	 In The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense Kara 
Keeling explains how the movement of the Black Femme in cinema catalyzes 
expressions of Black women?s sexuality that were never meant to be, disturbing the 
common sense around it. My project explores the work that the Black Femme does in 
theorizing cinematic viral performances of Black male masculinity. Particularly, I 
examine how the evocation of the Black Femme by Black men disrupts normative 
performances of Black masculinity and also thinking through how Black masculinity is 
deployed virally and disturbs the common sense around it.
	 While I refashion the use of the Black femme, Keeling deploys the Black Femme 
as an analytical tool for its ability to rupture normative constructions of race, sexuality, 
class, and gender. These normative constructions are what Keeling names as clich?s, 
which are destroyed by the Black Femme and, as a result, a new possibility is opened in 
the perception of the audience. Therefore, the Black Femme is a living image that can be 
used to investigate rupture by determining what the norm is that is disrupted by the Black 
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Femme?s presence. As an analytic, the category of the Black Femme allows Keeling to 
look into the ?radical elsewhere,? this place where alternative forms, such as the Black 
Femme, are possible in a way that they would not be outside of the cinematic.
	 Keeling also connects the cinematic to ?the real? by means of affect where the film 
interacts with the biology of the audience, which in turn influences the film?s relationship 
to capital and how it will do in the economy. When considering how performances of 
Blackness in viral video, film, and photography/images travel, this affectual process is 
how the viral is transferred from representation to embodiment. This affectual process 
causes the spectator to react to a pleasurable, or unpleasurable, friction (between the 
represented and the real) that they then pass on by viral means, such as reenactment and 
word of mouth, which has an impact on the currency, economic or otherwise, of the viral 
performance circulated.
	 Keeling suggests that there is affective labor that goes into processing televisual 
images and representations that are framed and circulated by cinematic machines; this is 
the same type of sensory-motor habituation and sensory perception required to live in and 
make sense of the world (crying, laughter, and anger for example). This labor, which is 
culturally informed, acts as a form of common sense. Keeling uses common sense to, 
?refer simultaneously to a shared set of motor contrivances that affect subjective 
perception and to a collective set of memory-images that includes experiences, 
knowledges, traditions and so on and that are available to memory during perception.? 67  
Keeling?s use of common sense bears weight on the faulty notion that we can understand 
Blackness through viral performances when, indeed, our perception, our common sense is 
culturally informed. Viral performances multiply signify and, as such, act as differing 
32
proxies to multiple spectators, conjuring their subjective labor involved in living in the 
world. 
	 Unlike Keeling?s deployment of the Black femme to disrupt normative 
constructions of race, gender, class, and sexuality, in Troubling Vision: Performance, 
Visuality, and Blackness, Nicole Fleetwood considers the ways in which Black bodies are 
?always already troubling the dominant visual field [in Western discourse].? 68 Rather than 
question why Black bodies trouble the visual field, as has been done when considering 
Black bodies and the politics of representation, Fleetwood examines Black visuality?s 
?productive possibilities? and how it uses its troubling vision in generative ways.  
	 One of Fleetwood?s central concerns is the troubling notion that one can 
understand ?Black lived experience and Black subjects as knowable through visual and 
performative codes.? 69 This notion assumes that the field of vision is neutral, something 
that does not script, enframe, or construct bodies. Judith Butler argues against this, 
writing, ?The visual field is not neutral to the question of race; it is itself a racial 
formation, an episteme, hegemonic and forceful.? 70 To capture the ?constructed nature of 
visuality,? which transmits data and knowledge that make Black subjects appear as 
knowable, Fleetwood deploys the terms ?rendering/rendered,? which connotes how Black 
subjectivity is produced through visual discourse. Fleetwood?s use of ?rendering? is the 
way in which the field of vision renders the racial marking of bodies.71 Thinking about 
visuality as constructed, Fleetwood shows ?how visualization works in the production of 
Blackness as that which is viewable and as discourse.? 72
	 Fleetwood suggests that through the combination of the visual and performance, 
Blackness, Black bodies, and responses to them are produced.73 Her constant attention to 
33
the field of vision as a structure of power is useful in considering how viral performances 
of Blackness are structured and rendered before they ever reach our eyes. As with any 
rendering, certain things are kept, while others discarded; thus, any notion about knowing 
the Black body through overdetermined visual codes is complicated as so much that was 
discarded or kept of the representation is unknowable. ?The primacy of the body as a 
viewable object in defining performance and more importantly in understanding 
subjectivity? is troubled when the visual already renders a body, and through that 
rendering, disappears or disembodies it.74 In response to this, Fleetwood suggests that 
considering the outline or shadow of the body that occupies the field of vision or affective 
framework can help decide more about the absent referent than the visible body itself.75  
Here ?outline? and ?shadow? function as metaphors for the things which exist (if at all) 
in the margins of the visible, the things which are not central to a performance?s frame.
	 When considering the constructedness of the Black body in the visual field, the 
idea of rendering is dynamic as ?Black subjectivity itself is constituted through visual 
discourse and performed through visual technologies.? 76 In other words, the same visual 
technology that renders Blackness is used by Black people to constitute notions of 
selfhood. Thus, we see the rich complexity of the visual field: how visual technologies, 
such as online video, advertisements, and film, instruct (Black) bodies exterior to them, 
the process of which perpetuates their viral performance.
	 Whereas Fleetwood examines how visual technologies prompt bodies outside of 
them, Robin Bernstein examines how ?things? instruct bodies exterior to them. A 
performance is contingent on others, central or marginal, who also occupy and perform in 
that space, this includes things. Bernstein studies the complex interaction between a racist 
34
wooden caricature and a Mexican woman in a photograph, how they flatten into one text 
and grey the binary between person and thing, and how this liminal dance constructs race 
in her essay, ?Dances with Things: Material Culture and the Performance of Race.? 
Drawing from Heidegger, but doing something different by incorporating a performance 
standpoint, Bernstein writes that, ?performance is what distinguishes an object from a 
thing.? 77 This is the distinction between Heidegger and Bernstein that I am adopting in 
my use of thing theory. Considering how things affect human behavior, Bernstein writes,
A chef?s knife, a laptop computer, and a wooden caricature 
all invite indeed, create occasions for?repetitions of acts, 
distinctive and meaningful motions of eyes, hands, 
shoulders, hips, feet. These things are citational in that they 
arrange and propel bodies in recognizable ways, through 
paths of evocative movement that have been traveled 
before.78
Paths of evocative movement, such as the way in which one dances (or does not dance) 
from being cut with a knife, tell us about the performativity, ?paths...traveled before,? 
that things instruct. The paths, which have been traveled before, are important because 
they allow us to historicize new viral performances of Blackness. Thus, ?things? function 
within viral performances of Blackness, which instruct reactions that have been ?traveled 
before;? viral performances of Blackness are also transformed into things, material 
artifacts, which can be buffered, downloaded and saved, fast-forwarded, rewound, 
cropped, and edited, which also instruct the responses of spectators.
	 Approaching the term script as a theatrical practitioner might, Bernstein employs 
a malleable idea of ?script? that differs from Jackson in Scripting the Black Masculine 
Body. She suggests that plays use a combination of ?elasticity and resilience? that 
maintains a recognizable referentiality to the script, yet, allow for enough unpredictability 
35
that a unique performance is created each night.79 This is the flexibility Bernstein uses 
when exercising the idea of ?scriptive things.? She writes, ?Things, but not objects, script 
actions.? 80 Bernstein suggests that performance is both instructed and constrained by 
things, yet, in limited ways, performance can also resist that constraint and instruction 
through improvisatory acts.  
	 My attention to scriptive things is apparent in chapter two where I use viral 
performance, specifically that of rumor, as a lens to examine the photographs and images 
of Hank Willis Thomas? B?anded series. Using critical discourse analysis and 
performance analysis, I explore how his use of viral materials?from reframing the 
infamous slave ship Brooks to dislocating Nike?s Jumpman symbol?enable a larger 
critique of white dominant narratives of Blackness, allowing for re-vision and 
improvisation of more transgressive readings of Black history and present. Thomas 
unveils how the practice of distributing artwork can be used to mobilize social justice and 
social change.
	 Chapter three examines the scenes of Radio Raheem in Spike Lee?s Do The Right 
Thing. Using performance, content, and a material culture analysis, I look closely at how 
filmic and photographic material can act in viral ways?both speaking to Black 
experiences and creating frameworks that potentially misunderstand them. Do The Right 
Thing features a radio-carrying cosmopolitan-like cross-city traveler named Radio 
Raheem who operates as a sort of embodiment of viral Blackness roaming in the New 
York city streets?destabilizing the status quo, constantly being misunderstood and 
?thingified? even as he evidences complex personhood. Radio Raheem (even after his 
death) exists as a synecdoche for young Black men and the viral performance of the use 
36
of excessive force to subdue Black bodies. I engage in my own performance and 
circulation of him in a photograph, both solidifying him as a cultural thing and prophetic 
force.
	 In the fourth and final chapter of my project, I move from a close visual cultural 
studies reading to netnography, gaining a richer understanding of spectatorial viewpoints 
as individuals encounter viral performances. Here, I closely examine the discourse, 
context, and production of viral videos and images. Particularly, I explore the now 
famous, BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes), which was based on a news 
broadcast about a sexual assault that was posted online. I elucidate how a serious issue 
such as Black female sexual assault and the emotional response to it can be transformed 
into a thing that is virally performed as comedic spectacle. I also look closely at how 
queer Black effeminacy is utilized as a viral product to detract from its own feminist 
intervention.
	 The coda, ?Viral Bodies: #NoCureforStigma,? will end my dissertation with the 
implications of my research and its future possibilities. Of these future directions is a 
focus on how viral performances create possibilities for social justice and public 
consensus. Also, I will ruminate on some of the historical precedents that make justice 
feasible in relationship to viral performances of Blackness in popular culture and 
everyday life.
	 Importantly, something has ?gone viral? when it becomes rapidly ubiquitous?
quickly being found some of everywhere. Viral performances of Blackness in popular 
culture and everyday life penetrate multiple worlds, touch things (i.e. mp3s, mundane 
conversations, cartoons) within those worlds, and through that touch, transforms them. 
37
There is an incessant nature to the latter ?touch? and an affect created from the 
consumption of viral performances best witnessed in visceral reactions to viral material, 
i.e. the need to say or post something in response, or reproduce the viral material in some 
form. Consequently, as a performance becomes viral, it is difficult to capture in numbers. 
I might begin to quantify a viral performance where epidemiology classifies an epidemic 
or the point at which an illness (or Illness) can invade a susceptible population. An 
epidemic exists where each infected person shares the infection with one more 
susceptible person, creating many secondary infections or the basic reproduction ratio 
being more than one.81
	 My critical analysis of the three case studies and production of images (and video 
only used in presentations) to make further inquiry into the cases and viral performance 
theory, function as co-productions of new media, gender, and race, further blurring 
divisions between performer, audience, and scholar in the Performance Studies tradition 
of Joni Jones, E. Patrick Johnson, and Marlon T. Riggs. The reasons behind choosing the 
case studies are due to how rapidly ubiquitous they, as acts, once were and in many ways 
still are, which speaks to their importance in the popular imaginary and the material and 
social effects of perceptions about Black bodies. Each case study alludes to significant 
sociocultural impacts, to name a few: the violence toward Black men through/over 
fashion, police brutality in relationship to popular perceptions of Black masculinity, and 
sexual violence experienced in Black communities. The implications of these 
performances increase the urgency of critically analyzing their reenactments in popular 
culture and everyday life as they not only reinforce, but also challenge and redefine the 
material obstacles that Black bodies face in everyday life.
38
	 With this being the first project to engage close examinations of viral 
performance, I travel across various instantiations of it (image, film, online viral video). I 
also use various approaches to viral performances, drawing from visual and material 
culture, critical discourse analysis, performance analysis, and netnography, which also 
puts them in conversation. While this project puts approaches to viral performance in 
conversation, it acknowledges that viral performances also function differently. Viral 
performance, while the throughline of the entire project, does not function the same way 
in each medium: photography/images, film, and viral video. 
	 For example, Hank Willis Thomas? work does not experience mass production in 
the same way Radio Raheem and Antoine Dodson do within film and viral video. While 
his conceptual photos and images are not viral performances, they do capture and 
manifest forms of it such as rumor and mass produced images that utilized Black men?s 
and women?s bodies to sell products and agendas. 
	 Radio Raheem, on the other hand, (re)presented the popular occurrence of Black 
men wielding boomboxes in the street, which was a viral performance that occurred in 
everyday life from the mid-70s to mid-80s. The medium of film functioned to reproduce 
Raheem on such a massive scale that he became the reference point of Black men 
wielding boomboxes into the twenty-first century. Referencing so many Black bodies that 
came before him and prophetically pointing towards those that would come after, 
Raheem also succumbed to the viral performance of the use of excessive force to subdue 
Black bodies. This is another way to think through viral performance as circulated acts 
that instruct certain bodies in how to excessively handle other bodies.
39
	 Through massive online exchanges on social networks that emphasize video-
sharing like YouTube82 and postings on video aggregation sites such as WorldstarHipHop 
(WSHH),83  Antoine Dodson became the reference for the trope I coin as Ghetto 
Witnesses.84 Indeed, through his Ghetto Witnessing, Antoine Dodson not only co-
produces but, importantly, troubles ideas around the gender roles, sexual behaviors, and 
the limits of Blackness; the proliferation of this viral video in popular culture and 
everyday life further circulated these acts of disruption and production.
Importantly, more people are entertaining themselves online and particularly 
through websites that use image/video-sharing and streaming, consuming moving images 
of Blackness. In addition, mobile applications and technologies such as Whatsapp, 
Snapchat, Instagram, tablets, cell phones, and laptops have enabled the circulation and 
sharing of images, sounds, and text to unprecedented international levels. All of these 
interfaces allow for performances similar to Hank Willis Thomas?, Radio Raheem?s, and 
Antoine Dodson?s to infiltrate and forge new spaces of entertainment and social 
engagement to reach fresh spectators. As a result, we will continue to see the influence of 
viral performances (the rapidly ubiquitous proliferation of rumors, mass-produced 
images, and video) in popular culture and everyday life as access to the Internet increases 
through the development of both mobile and stationary interface technologies and the 
new construction of broadband and fiber optic infrastructure. 
The referent that conjures the theory of viral performance for this entire project is 
the saturation of viral videos that have become a part of the American imaginary. 
Nonetheless, I follow a trajectory from the earliest viral performance (rumor) to more 
contemporary forms (viral video) to consider how viral performance is also a historical 
40
mechanism used to (re)script subjectivities with a legacy that persists in everyday life and 
popular culture. Thus, this particular analytic, viral performance, while inspired by the 
present, is useful across time. Viral performances are bourgeoning acts and analytics in 
which to interrogate the products and social impact of widely circulated discursive Black 
bodies.
41
Chapter 2, People Hear What They See: 
Rumor and Branding in (Re)presentations of Blackness
Conceptual photographer, Hank Willis Thomas, crafts a creative visual archive in 
his series uniquely titled, B?anded, a gesture toward how mass-produced images are 
used to give substantive meaning to (Black) bodies. In this way Thomas illuminates viral 
performance within the context of visual culture, showing viewers the craft of repetition 
and its role in creating and distorting Black life. Thomas links contemporary 
representations of Black bodies to the most popular iconic and mass-produced images 
from the archives of transatlantic slavery without subtracting from the foundation and 
context behind them.85 For instance, he makes the seal for the Society for Effecting the 
Abolition of the Slave Trade into a gold chain. The seal still stands for improving and 
abolishing the immoral and inhuman conditions that enslaved Africans had to endure, but 
it also suggests the less popular fact that the seal was made into a fashion symbol and 
sold as a commodity to make money. In referencing popular signs of Blackness, Thomas 
builds upon the foundations and contexts of images from the archives of transatlantic 
slavery, illustrating and challenging their legacy in today?s terms. In three sections I 
explore the images from Thomas? B?anded series that link the present fate of Blacks 
with those of the past through rumor that he visualizes. 
The B?anded series featured in his book, Pitch Blackness, emerged out of the 
sense of loss that he experienced for his cousin Songha Willis, who was murdered over a 
gold chain during a robbery outside of a club in Philadelphia. Songha?s murder, in many 
ways, suggested that his life as a Black man was valued less than the things that someone 
could possess. One of the implications of reducing beings to things, is repeatedly 
lessening the value of human life and inflating the value of things. Thomas places 
42
Songha?s death in the frames of animations and photographs, moving this moment of loss 
to illustrations of the viral performance that is Black-on-Black murder and how such 
violences have become numbing in the similar inundating ways that viral performances 
can operate.
Rather than making his cousin appear as merely a numbing statistic, Thomas 
presents his cousin?s life and accomplishments through digitally scanned photographs.  
The following chapter in Pitch Blackness, ?Winter in America,? is a collaboration with 
Kambui Olujimi featuring stills from their stop-motion animation project that used G.I. 
Joe action figures to interpret the details of his cousin?s last five minutes of life. By using 
action figures, Thomas and Olujimi think through the ways in which children, boys in 
particular, are socialized to enact violent scenarios at early ages and ?how the everyday 
violence of black life has been literally reduced to child?s play.? 86 The chapter fades to an 
ending with a photo of Songha from the morgue. We then see visuals of the family that 
Songha left behind, bringing us into the next chapter: ?Bearing Witness: Murder?s Wake.?  
?Bearing Witness: Murder?s Wake? gives us a glimpse into the many lives that his 
cousin affected beyond his immediate family. As the chapter progresses, more faces are 
shown and the presence of thumb-sized black squares increase. These black spaces 
illustrate the futile nature in attempting to find every individual whose life is touched by 
Songha, standing in for those people that Songha touched, and vise versa, who will never 
know about his death. In many ways the previous chapters function as a memorial to 
Songha. Once the B?anded chapter begins, the affective labor of the previous chapters 
has laid the groundwork to begin thinking about the relationship of Black maleness to 
43
gun violence, alcohol, loss, and how Black life functions as a thing less important than 
the commodities which it wears, produces, or is representative of.
The commodity, a gold chain, involved in his cousin?s death also summons how 
Black maleness is pitched, convincing consumers of things that constitute its authenticity 
and cultural value. Furthermore, the excess of imagery around authenticity and culture 
creates a pitch B/blackness, a B/blackness out of which there is no light or way out, a B/
blackness that is centric to one?s experience, so dark and taken for granted that one 
cannot see it. Yet, the B/blackness is also so excessive that one begins to question its 
presence, it is so overwhelming and varies to such a degree, that one would rather pitch 
the idea of B/blackness altogether. 
Through the last half of 2014 and into the first half of 2015 we have had massive 
protests around Black lives mattering, particularly catalyzed by the death of Trayvon 
Martin, Michael Brown, and the climate of police brutality in Ferguson, MO that rang 
true throughout the country. Black men?s performances, in life and in death, have been 
central to the iconography and motivation of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, a 
movement that does not place one form of Blackness as more important than another, 
seeking to affirm all of their value.87 So much of what is seen and absorbed daily about 
Black bodies feeds into how stories about them unfold because what is ingrained in a 
mind about characterizations of groups and individuals affects how that mind will treat 
them in everyday life. We need to be able to critically decipher the work of sounds, 
images, and rumors that label (Black) bodies, as opposed to easily accepting them as true, 
for if we do not, we will remain unable to understand the value of (Black) bodies. 
#BlackLivesMatter.
44
In this chapter, I will examine the ways that race, gender, and commerce interplay 
in Hank Willis Thomas? B?anded series, revealing myriad ways in which advertisements 
transform Black bodies into things used to sell more than the objects in question. I argue 
that by visualizing rumors Thomas rescripts the viral performances?the incessant, 
uncontrollable, discursive circulation of bodies, their behaviors, and the ideas around 
them?which have historically deformed Black bodies and Black history. Through 
rescripting the rumor, Thomas re-members88 the stereotypical narratives to suggest 
alternative truths, which better speak to the complexity of Black experiences. Gary Alan 
Fine and Patricia Turner identify three types of rumor, one of which best fits the set of 
images I analyze in this chapter, formula rumor?the efficacy of which ?depends on the 
knowing and skilled use of stereotypes.? 89 This attention to rumor and this 
reconfiguration of Black ?truths,? is a methodological approach that is used within 
Thomas? branding works. Here, I will interrogate the rumors, which I read as viral 
performances of ?other truth,? that reverberate from select images of the Black body in 
Thomas? B?anded series.
 The synesthetic90title of this chapter, ?People Hear What They See? suggests that 
at the nexus of senses is where we begin to (mis)understand bodies. The underpinning 
idea is that the optic is always already steeped in the aural.91 In my analysis of Thomas? 
images, rumors influence how Black bodies are seen; therefore, when Black people are 
placed in view they often do not simply support rumors about themselves, but also 
critique them, creating ?other truths? which may become remembered, rumored and/or 
repeated. Likewise, in the images that follow, as much as the Black men and women 
within them are actors of socially assigned identities?consenting to socially designated 
45
scripts92 such as superior strength, anonymity, and insatiable sexual appetites?Thomas 
renders them as rescriptors?those subjects that do not occupy positions of authority, yet, 
create new roles, critiques, and possibilities. 
I am interested in how rumor, a viral discourse which often derives from the 
experience of the optic thing (directly or indirectly), scripts and functions as the semantic 
foundation of that which we see. My use of ?discourse? is influenced by the broad and 
performative ways in which Michael Issacharoff thinks about it in Discourse as 
Performance: ?[V]erbal utterances to nonverbal uses comprising the visual elements, 
including gesture, facial expression, movement, costume, players? bodies, properties, and 
d?cor."93 Discourse, in this formulation, is a set of performances. Rumor is a part of the 
discursive register, which makes meaning through the verbal as much as the visual. 
Indeed, Issacharoff?s broad idea of discourse goes beyond traditional conceptions related 
to written text and speech, but can and must be extended to understand the content of 
rumor, how rumor repeats itself, and the many forms that these repetitions take form in. 
Thus, through my interrogations of rumor in images, I am connecting the visual image to 
performance, discourse, and scripting. Rumors carry content with robustness and great 
speed, generating major discourses. However, outside of the ideological and figurative, 
rumors remain a secret, which is central to their power?the inability to prove or disprove 
them. The meanings, implications, and circulation of images in Hank Willis Thomas? 
B?anded series hinge on the suggestive power of rumor.
As one of the artists of the 30 Americans exhibit, which ?showcases works by 
many of the most important African American artists of the last three decades,? Hank 
Willis Thomas, indeed, has revered status within both academic and artistic worlds.94  As 
46
a photo conceptualist, Hank Willis Thomas, has visually chronicled the lives of Blacks 
and African Americans for over a decade. He captures the fate of many Blacks by 
referencing popular signs of Blackness and Black masculinity through the medium of the 
?still image? and the vernacular language of advertising?an instrument that marketers 
utilize that employs popular discourse to communicate information about their products.  
Increasingly, his images, and the brands and Black bodies that they portray, have 
appeared in public spaces: gracing billboards and public signs, displayed in museums, 
portrayed inside of exhibits, and unveiled on outdoor walls. Thus, he is exemplary of an 
artist that is considering the discourses around Black men?s bodies that are expressed 
through brands and branding.95 His unique position as an African American also makes 
him both narrator of, and actor in, the images that he creates, allowing both a critique and 
perpetuation of the rumors that he materializes through conceptual photos. In Thomas? 
B?anded series, I am particularly struck by his invocation and production of rumor, a 
viral performance taking place outside of, and within, the frames of his images.  
Thomas? B?anded series, which can be found in his book Pitch Blackness, is an 
ideal location from which to begin theorizing viral performance for several reasons.  
B?anded deliberately summons historical and contemporary representations of 
Blackness such as the inherently athletic, superhumanly strong, or anonymous Black 
body and creates conceptual art ready for mass-consumption. By using popular images 
and ideas of Blackness, which are pervasive within American culture, Thomas deploys 
those that have already gone viral and performs an artistic-cultural critique that 
challenges the discourses they summon. Thomas? work is also useful for me in three 
specific ways: 1) it uses historically mass-produced images of Black male masculinity, 
47
revealing an early form of viral performance; 2) in materializing rumors into visual 
forms, it reveals an even earlier form of virality?word of mouth, which also participates 
in the act of incessant circulation; and 3) it relays the dialogical and historic relationship 
between the viral performance and branding?the deliberate and unintentional marketing 
of ideas through the marking of bodies as things.
B?anded does the cultural work of bringing our attention to, questioning, and 
imagining the rumors and stereotypes that everyday marketing appends to Black bodies.   
The series demands close analysis for the way in which attention is brought to larger 
ideas concerning the politics of marking, enframing, and scripting Black bodies. For 
example, instead of Hank Willis Thomas using the letter ?r,? he uses ?. By overtly using 
the trademark logo for its alphabetical value, Thomas? subtle change begins to connect 
branding to trademarking, bringing to mind the things, marks, words, or bodies that 
represent a certain product, business, or commodity, expanding our understanding of 
branding. He also frames images, cutting them off at certain points or enclosing them in 
new containers, expanding the meanings and rumors concerning the subjects of the 
image, both agreeing with and challenging Maurice O. Wallace?s notion that a frame 
limits an image?s range of meaning.96 Lastly, he, as an African American artist, critiques 
the troping of the Black body through reproducing, with ?signal difference,? those very 
tropes, disidentifying with designated roles for Blackness by deepening those roles and 
making them more obvious, even grotesque, in the present day.97 Indeed, while he is 
responding to the historic illegibility?how Blackness is not easily deciphered?of the 
Black body itself, Thomas makes the legibility of the marketing of Black bodies highly 
visible.
48
 In Camera Lucida?a foundational academic book on the criticism and 
theorization of photography?Roland Barthes considers the photographed subject as the 
motionless actor.98 In contrast to Barthes, more in alignment with Fred Moten?s challenge 
to the stillness of an image, I see the subject in an image as moving and making sound, as 
in motion as the discourses around its being.99 Indeed, Barthes? idea of this ?motionless 
made-up face beneath which we see the dead,? does not begin to describe the motion of a 
dead body changing form or the photograph?the object that the image visually manifests 
through?as constantly changing its form, becoming parts of other beings as it becomes 
re-membered and circulated (through memory and the recounting of its narrative and 
bacteria causing its fermentation).100 Actually, Songha lives on, literally, affectively, and 
figuratively through deterioration, people?s emotional connection to him and the 
circumstances that ended his life, and how he is a representation of Black men 
respectively. The image and photograph are, thus, these things that travel and perform 
with spectators and consumers. Throughout this chapter, bodies in images are considered 
as performing, functioning as acts of performance events that survived them, and as the 
visual and sonic staging of bodies and their behaviors. With this in mind, I consider how 
Black men framed by Thomas, and the larger politics around Blackness and masculinity 
that go beyond their enframing, enact viral performance. Considering viral performance 
in B?anded, therefore, emphasizes the mutations in the mass-reenactment of 
performance events, expressing how meanings and material change as acts travel.  
Particularly, how it is that Willis intertextually distills viral performances and uses them 
to teach us something about the production of Blackness and Black masculinity in a 
postmodern moment.
49
From Broadsides to Bottles and Chains
	 The December 1788 broadside of the lower deck of a slave ship engraved by T. 
Deeble for the Plymouth Chapter of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, seen 
in fig. 2 and widely known as slave ship Brooks, represents an early form of mass-
Figure 2. Plymouth Abolitionists, Bristol City Council Record Office, ?Broadside notice 
issued by the Plymouth Committee, not opposing slavery but campaigning against the 
conditions of the slave trade and slaver ships; headed by plan of a slave-ship, lower deck 
packed with negroes, engraved by T. Deeble, Bristol,? 1788.
produced representations of Black bodies. Not only is it a slave ship icon, but it is iconic 
of the egregious experiences central to transatlantic slavery: forced migration, 
humiliation, traumatic separation, dehumanizing living conditions, lack of control over 
one?s body and home, and limited access to food and water. Nicole Fleetwood?s definition 
of iconicity speaks to the ?iconic? nature of the broadside: ?[T]he ways in which singular 
images or signs come to represent a whole host of historical occurrences and 
processes.? 101 This image containing 292 bodies representing enslaved Africans 
compartmentalized by gender and age was seen around the world and, consequently, 
supported and influenced notions about how the men, women, and children in the image 
were perceived. The broadside was a widely distributed notice that was part of a larger 
campaign that initially did not oppose slavery, but fought against the deplorable 
50
conditions that enslaved Africans endured through the slave trade.102 As such, the 
broadside of lower deck of slave ship Brooks was distributed alongside other antislavery 
prints, posters, books, and lectures, which points towards a whole different set of bodies 
and politics absent from the broadside.  
	 Here, I argue that ?outline? and ?shadow? function as metaphors for the things 
which exist (if at all) in the margins of the visible, the things which are not central to a 
performance?s frame, but may, indeed, construct the limits of the performance.103 Hank 
Willis Thomas echoed this idea in an interview saying, ?Photographs [and drawings and 
paintings] lie. What?s going on outside of the frame of any camera?even this camera 
right now?can say so much about what?s really going on, perhaps even more about the 
truth than what you see inside the box [or frame].? 104 Likewise, the absence of European 
bodies in the broadside of slave ship Brooks reveals a symptom of White supremacy, 
which makes Whiteness so normalized that it is invisible and taken for granted.105 This, 
as a result, also censors the systemic involvement of bodies that are not White, but 
ultimately support White supremacy, and the guilt of abolitionists who do not desire their 
identities to be associated with slavery. 
	 The illustrators of the lower deck of the slave ship Brooks were British.  
Nonetheless, the British bodies that structured the image and its referents are absent from 
the sketch. The absence of British bodies is important and art historian Cheryl Finley 
writes on what else it means: 
The absence of slavers in the plan is a significant omission.  
What remains completely invisible as well, perhaps too 
great to be seen at all, are the individual investors in the 
slave trade, the governments that supported the industry, 
the African traders who supplied the slaves, and the church 
that condoned the trade.106  
51
The presence of individuals and institutions, which we cannot see, offer insight into the 
subjectivity of images. The illustrators of the slave ship Brooks broadside saw enslaved 
African bodies in particular kinds of ways, which were framed by their distance from the 
cultures and their proximity to the struggles of enslaved Africans.  From a distance, the 
repetition of bodies, and almost identical appearances, are stereotypical of what Black 
bodies should look like: black, muscular, captive, and anonymous across time and 
distance, stereotypes of Black bodies that could be found across both proslavery and 
antislavery campaigns in Europe and North America.
	 Hank Willis Thomas uses the image of slave ship Brooks in combination with 
Absolut Vodka?s campaign slogan, which normally places ?Absolut? in the front of a 
word.107 The aesthetics of this campaign that are expected to trigger the consumption of 
the alcohol are used, instead, to critique alcohol consumption and to imagine how we 
consume the bodies of African men and women and their descendants. 
52
	 As seen in fig. 2.1, entitled, 
Absolute Power, (the arrow emphasis 
is mine) the word Thomas chooses in 
the place of ?Vodka? is ?Power? and 
instead of simply placing the vodka 
bottle above the phrase, he designates 
the 1788 broadside image of slave 
ship Brooks created by the Society 
for Effecting the Abolition of the 
Slave Trade at Plymouth as the bottle. 
Thomas manipulates the broadside to 
fit inside the frame of a vodka bottle 
and adds a room to the slave ship in 
the neck of the bottle, adding 
approximately eleven enslaved 
Africans, totaling 305 bodies. 
Looking closer at the image, Thomas 
imposes White bodies too (see 
Figure 2.1. Hank Willis Thomas, Absolut Power arrow). The bodies are lodged just 
(2003). Inkjet on canvas, variable size. 
From Hank Willis Thomas, Fred Wilson, and before the bottle?s neck, a nexus 
Christopher Cozier, Representations 113, No. 1 
(Winter 2011), 74. Arrow emphasis mine. between freedom from containment 
and the slavery of being bottled up. 
Yet the drink, like slavery itself, is sold as a Black problem. Nonetheless, Thomas, 
53
through the imposition of White bodies in a historical context of enslaved Africans, also 
marks accountability and how by enslaving another, one enslaves themselves in 
substantially different ways. He begins to draw connections for us between the 
containment, consumption, and commerce of Black bodies.
Bottles
	 People drink alcohol for many reasons, some of which have been popularly and 
recently outlined by rap artist Kendrick Lamar in a song from his critically acclaimed 
album, good kid, m.A.A.d. city, who posits: 
	 	 Some people like the way it feels / 
	 	 Some people want to kill their sorrow / 
	 	 Some people want to fit in with the popular / 
	 	 That was my problem.? 108 
Lamar?s problem came from the peer pressure of feeling like he needed to drink to fit in 
with people who were popular. That peer pressure is also a result of alcohol marketing, 
associating the drinking of it with what is fashionable. What I would like to focus on 
regarding this image, however, is Lamar?s line about killing sorrow. The desire to forget, 
or kill, one?s sorrow or whatever ails them takes particular salience when we consider 
Thomas? image.  
	 The design of the image visually manifests central elements concerning the 
diverse techniques and technologies used to subjugate and manage bodies since the 
classical period, bio-power. Since bio-power is dependent on life, there is an effort to 
enhance life without making it more difficult to exert power over. Therefore, ?...it was the 
taking charge of life, more than the threat of death, that gave power its access even to the 
54
body.? 109 Indeed, the design of the container, and those who fabricated it, takes charge of 
the lives of those within it by disallowing their escape into death, which is a type of 
absolute power. The container does not only contain the enslaved Africans in fig. 2.1, but 
the heads, hands, arms, legs and feet of other enslaved Africans contain them as well. The 
containment and incarceration of life leads to the fermentation of it, which we refer to as 
dying or what happens after death, leaving a poisonous foul stench in its wake. The 
power to contain and keep Black bodies in check is a poisonous move, reaping the poison 
that it sows. The proximity of the word ?Power? to the poison it creates is a 
deconstructive move that Thomas? image suggests. Thus, in the case of the drink, 
?Absolut Power,? even in one?s desire to forget about other worries, as Lamar suggests, 
one is merely consuming or swallowing pain and suffering. It is to drink to forget and to 
drink to remember. The actual poison from the drink can kill the memories of sorrow, but 
not without replacing it with more sorrow from the same poison, which in this image is 
produced from the containment of the bodies of enslaved African men, women, and 
children.  
	 From Thomas? imagery, one can only imagine the blood, urine, fecal matter, 
sweat, semen, and tears that are being swallowed from the slave ship galley of this drink.  
People outside of the bottle are, indeed, more free and not contained in the ways that 
those inside the bottle are, yet, it is the legacy of those inside the bottle that is connected 
to bodies in the present, whether as victims or benefactors of the slave trade.  Multiple 
bodies represent a swallow of alcohol. The substance is poisonous and can kill, which is 
another one of Thomas? implicit messages: people are dying or being killed (in)directly 
from consuming this drink, which takes power and control out of their hands, placing it 
55
absolutely in another?s. With the increased chances of Black men that consume alcohol 
resulting in deathly consequences,110 one can realize the urgency of Thomas? messages 
through his visual language: there is a power being exerted over White, and to a greater 
extent, Black people?s lives through the advertising and consumption of alcohol.
	 The image is symbolic of the drink in Fredrick Douglass? Narrative when he 
discusses the strategic use of alcohol during holidays on the plantation to exert power 
over and control of enslaved Africans and writes, ??when the slave asks for virtuous 
freedom, the cunning slaveholder, knowing his ignorance, cheats him with a dose of 
vicious dissipation, artfully labeled with the name of liberty.? 111 Douglass then describes 
how enslaved Blacks would feel worse after holidays because of the consumption of 
alcohol, duped by the ?gift? of alcohol from the slaveholder. The name of the substance is 
addictive and misleading, advertised by the slaveholder to be liberating, celebratory, and 
empowering??Absolut Power??camouflaging its poisonous, and ultimately 
disempowering, content, suggestive of the slaveholder retaining the power over the 
enslaved. The drinkers of ?Absolut Power? are marketed to, not by highlighting the 
power that said drink has over them, but by the ability to obtain this power by consuming 
it.
	 I share Absolute Power as an example of how Thomas reappropriates mass-
produced historical artifacts to recall the memory of slavery and think about its legacy in 
the present.  Thomas brings our attention to the shadows of the notice that become erased 
through its iconicity.  As Nicole Fleetwood concurs, ?Black iconicity serves as a site for 
black audiences and the nation to gather around the seeing of blackness.  However, in the 
focus on the singularity of the image, the complexity of black lived experience and 
56
discourses of race are effaced.? 112 An example of effacing through a focus on singularity 
exists within this image. While a magnified look at slave ship Brooks reveals detailed 
bodies in a diversity of positions and appearances?with some bodies actually appearing 
to be White?to the naked eye, the bodies appear the same. This sameness further 
circulates the notion of the anonymity of Black bodies?this inaccurate assumption that 
they can be accurately contained within, determined, and identified by a singular mass-
produced image. So even though we see Blackness, we see its simplicity, rather than its 
complexity.  Indeed, the insertion of White bodies brings our attention not only to their 
erasure from?and likely involvement in?the advertisement, but the uncritical ease with 
which we see Blackness. One may posit that White bodies do not belong in a 
(re)presentation about slave ship Brooks, but who, indeed, belongs on any slave ship?
	 Thomas forces us to imagine the complexity of the lived experience upon the 
slave ship: the sands of ocean floor that the bodies were transported over, the body of 
liquid upon which this ship was inserted, the poisonous fluids awash on the ship, the 
drowning of Black bodies, the sealing away of Black bodies, the governing bodies that 
sealed them away, and the ways in which the bodies central to the image were consumed 
as though they were expendable (like drinking vodka from a vessel). The country of 
origin of the brand referenced, ?Absolut Vodka,? also summons Sweden?s relationship to 
Britain during the slave trade. Sweden, indeed, was a significant supplier of the iron used 
to outfit ships meant to confine enslaved Africans.113 Importantly, Absolut Power shows 
how the consumption and commerce of Black bodies are actions that we are all complicit 
in. Even if we do not drink, our taxes pay for the government to seal the bottles of 
alcohol, which also signals the wide-reaching involvement of the world in the 
57
transatlantic slave trade?a gesture toward complicity that is absent in the original 
broadside and the seal found beneath it for the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the 
Slave Trade.
Chains
	 The seal for the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, another 
iconic image of Black masculinity that Thomas adapts in fig. 2.2, accompanies the 
bottom-middle of the broadside of the slave ship Brooks. Thomas (re)presents historical 
artifacts from 
transatlantic slavery 
and, thereby, adopts 
viral performance as a 
mode through which 
Blackness can be 
distilled, elaborated, 
and complicated. 
Thomas ensures that 
viewers never forget 
the actual 
commoditizing of the 
Black man?s body and 
the discourses around Figure 2.2. Hank Willis Thomas, Ode to the CMB: Am I Not a 
Man and a Brother (2004), 24K gold and cubic zirconia, 5 ? 3 
it that happened in. In Hank Willis Thomas: Pitch Blackness (New York: 
Aperture, 2008), 70.
through popularizing 
58
the political agenda of the abolitionists. To accomplish this, in his picture of a gold 
medallion, Ode to the CMB: Am I Not A Man And A Brother, we see that Thomas 
transformed the seal for the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade?
which historically appeared as a jasper medallion the broadside only later to be made into 
accessories and Jasperware?into a product that could be readily sold as jewelry today: a 
gold medallion featuring a cubic zirconia. Essentially, the historic seal that was on the 
broadside of slave ship Brooks in fig. 2 was adapted from an image to a modern fashion 
accessory. This accessory, coating the enslaved African in gold, immortalizes an image of 
him supplicating and in chains, fingers intertwined, prayerfully pleading and surrounded 
by the words, ?AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER,? except in this image, he is 
holding a cubic zirconia.
	 Thinking about the cubic zirconia in relationship to the diamond, with all of its 
cultural symbolism?a diamond is forever?the cubic zirconia reminds us that just 
because it looks like a diamond, does not mean that it is a diamond. Yet to the naked and 
untrained eye, a cubic zirconia may be sufficient to imitate a diamond. The cubic zirconia 
added to the medallion points toward the?to use the concept of W.T. Lhamon Jr??Optic 
blackness? of this image. Lhamon describes Optic blackness as ?a function of cultural 
optics that do not render experiential reality for blacks or any ethnic group but give, 
instead, a convenient, pliable mediation of the real?a fiction that seems sufficiently real 
for cultural symbolism.? 114 In other words, just because it looks Black, does not mean 
that it is Black. Yet to the naked eye or ear, the optic thing may be sufficient to pass for 
Black. Juxtaposing the cubic zirconia with this enslaved African implies that the 
medallion is an illusion of Blackness, sufficient to imitate Blackness itself.
59
	 Created into a medallion by English abolitionist and potter Josiah Wedgwood in 
1787, the seal was used within the campaign to abolish slavery that used the free labor of 
non-criminals.115 Wedgwood, known for the industrialization of pottery, historically 
mass-produced the image from the seal into medallions, leading to their wide circulation 
among abolitionists. Meant to call attention to the unethical and cruel conditions that 
enslaved Africans had to endure, the medallion also signified. In other words, the 
medallion spoke with two tongues: in one tongue it tried to upgrade the living conditions 
of enslaved Africans as well as abolish slavery, and in the other tongue it perpetuated 
notions around the inferiority of Black men. 
	  For Black people, the fight for emancipation, which the abolitionists 
simultaneously mobilized around, and the fight for the ?recognition of black humanity 
and citizenship,? which in many ways the abolitionists failed at given the racist attitudes 
and laws aimed at Blacks post-emancipation, was inextricable from the recognition of 
Black manhood.116  Later struggles for racial equality, couched in the rhetoric of Black 
manhood, would ?call for an acknowledgment of the human rights of both black men and 
women.? 117 This Black manhood, nonetheless, would dominate the discourse around 
which the social and political struggle for civil rights took, marginalizing the issues of 
Black women?s unique obstacles. The framework of ?Am I Not a Man and a Brother? 
repositions Black men early on as the embodiment of the perils of slavery, with servitude, 
muscularity, and infantility as the trademark of the largest organization aimed at 
emancipation. Thus, the crisis of Black submission, or incarceration, is chained to a 
history of being always already Black and male, dangerously so.
60
	 The seal underscored the dilemma that would later be articulated by Black 
feminists in response to their involvement in Black nationalism, the Civil Rights 
Movement, and the Black Power movement, most of which sexism was an 
unacknowledged issue, ?...all the Blacks are men.? 118 The caveat from the seal can be 
read: all enslaved Africans are men. This idea would have historic virality?in that, the 
framing of the oppressed (enslaved) Black male subject drew attention away from the 
significant treatment, traumas, and triumphs of Black women in ways that continue to 
resurface in everyday life. To make matters worse, the Wedgwood medallion of the seal 
became one of the most recognizable images of the Black figure.119 The races and 
behaviors of enslaved Africans were represented by one supplicating Black man, which, 
along with placating the presence of Black women in slavery,120  flattened the varying 
ethnicities and personalities that enslaved Africans possessed across the African Diaspora 
into one appearance and behavior.
	 While the medallion argues (or perhaps begs) for human equality in its rhetorical 
question, challenging narratives around who was considered human, it also contradicts its 
purpose by circulating a familiar image of a submissive (yet physically strong), 
dependent, and enslaved African man. It was a symbol of simplicity. This image served to 
support the rumors and myths in circulation around the unparalleled strength of the body, 
powerlessness, and infantility of the minds of Africans, which ultimately, directly or 
indirectly, served as evidence to justify their perpetual enslavement.121 In the midst of 
rebellion from maroon communities and general resistance to slavery by enslaved 
Africans in British colonies, the medallion?s suggestion of inferiority, docility, and 
powerlessness was an obvious overstatement. Yet true to the two tongues of viral 
61
performance?both advancing potential for illness and wellness?the medallion did help 
in the mobilization of support for the abolishment of slavery for non-criminals.
	 As Eugene D. Genovese states in his critique of Stanley Elkins? Sambo thesis?a 
popular thesis that essentialized the behavior of enslaved Africans as docile (one could 
argue that the medallion accomplished the same)??Neither slavery nor slaves can be 
treated as pure categories, free of the contradictions, tensions, and potentialities that 
characterize all human experience.? 122 In other words, the complex personhoods of the 
enslaved must be considered, upon which the spectra of their lived experience will begin 
to be realized. The seal for the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade 
simplifies the personhood enslaved Africans, reducing it to Black and male, strong and 
subservient, formally spoken and polite. Indeed, the symbol embodies a racism that is 
found in liberal corners today, with people who offer aid to fight against the oppression of 
Black bodies unable to appreciate Black bodies as philanthropic, able to give aid as well 
as receive it, further infantalizing them as a group.
	 The acronyms, CMB, in Hank Willis Thomas? adaptation of the seal for the 
Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, Ode to the CMB: Am I Not A Man 
And A Brother suggests a reference to Cash Money Brothers from the 1991 film New 
Jack City. Thomas? title juxtaposes this medallion, an iconic moment in American 
popular culture of the late-18th century, with scenes from an iconic moment in late-20th 
century Black popular culture. A significant link between the two disparate figures is the 
gold chain as signifier of wealth and fashion.  
	 The Cash Money Brothers were a narcotics consortium that sold drugs in a 
fictional New York City out of a building named, ?The Carter.? After their initial success 
62
in the drug dealing business, there is a scene where the leader of CMB, Nino Brown?
played by Wesley Snipes?repeatedly chants, ?Am I my brother?s keeper?!? Later in the 
movie when he finds out that his brother Gee Money?played by Allen Payne?has been 
using the drugs they are selling, Brown holds a gun to his brother?s head.  Gee Money 
kneels down, as pitiful and powerless as the enslaved African on the seal, and pleads, 
?Am I my brother?s keeper?!? Replying with a grim, ?Yes,? Nino Brown shoots Gee 
Money. The tragedy of the scene is that one cannot absolutely expect that another?s sense 
of morals will align with theirs, particularly when their life is on the line. Thomas? 
representation also suggests that the seal was created, and even made into a commodity, 
to appeal to the morals and fashion-sense of other ?free? people, inspiring them to 
mobilize on behalf of enslaved Africans while investing in slavery abolition. Yet Ode to 
the CMB: Am I Not A Man And A Brother suggests a certain disillusionment with White 
racism: that the lives of Blacks should not be left in the hands (or better yet around the 
necks) of the morals of those which benefit most from their disenfranchisement. This 
performance of an American brand of brother/manhood also highlights a way in which 
the devalued lives of Black men?as a concept?gets passed on virally: visually 
(re)presenting profits, power, and entitlement as products of violence, which trump Black 
lives.
	 In an attempt to appeal to the morals and sympathy of liberal Western Europeans 
and European North Americans, the abolitionist images of enslaved Africans, such as the 
seal for the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, depicted them as 
motionless, absolutely oppressed, and dreading the next moment, supporting ideas that 
liberal Western Europeans and European North Americans already held of captive 
63
Blacks.123 In contrast, wanted posters of escaped Blacks in North America, which were 
visually disruptive to the popular narratives about their laziness, comfort, and happiness 
in confinement,124 depicted escaped Black men and women as carefreee, in-motion, and 
looking forward to the future, which also meant that they were out of control. Through 
juxtaposition, Thomas conveys that the tensions between the two types of mass-produced 
images?the seal for the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade and 
wanted posters of escaped Black men and 
women?which were all ideas that anti-
slavery and proslavery Western Europeans 
and European North Americans popularly 
held of captive and free Blacks respectively.  
	 Unlike antislavery campaigns, 
proslavery propaganda, as seen in fig. 2.3, 
which was a manufactured stereotyped cut 
?...used on handbills offering rewards for 
runaway slaves,? 125 created alarm around the 
numerous possibilities of Africans and their 
descendants who escaped slavery. The motion 
of their bodies, free from captivity, signaled 
impending danger?like the fall of slave 
Figure 2.3. The American Anti-Slavery 
societies. In fact, Thomas bases different Society, The Anti-Slavery Record Vol. III, 
for 1837 (New York: The American Anti-
medallions off of the infamous etching of a Slavery Society, 1838), 73. https://
archive.org/details/
Black North American with a knapsack over antislaveryrecvol3no01amer.
64
his shoulder.  Thus, one of the, if not the, most popular wanted posters used for enslaved 
Africans seeking freedom was merely a mass-produced image of the same exact etching 
with different names, unique descriptions of who ran away, and monetary rewards 
attached to each, visually supporting popular notions of the Black body as anonymous, 
carefree, solitary, criminalized and on foot.126 American historian, William L. Van 
Deburg, reveals that between 1830 and 1860, for example, novelists, with the choice 
between ambiguous, more complex, illustrations about enslaved African characters or 
fictional simplified types?which we find in visual anti/proslavery campaigns?they 
would choose the latter, adding to the discourses about the sameness of Black bodies.127 
This type of informal consensus created a common sense understanding of Black 
freedom, which was always predicated upon a singular archetype. Thomas? handling of 
this image critiques the way in which our access to this image as archive produces a 
means of knowing how enslaved Africans performed escapes, when, in fact, such escapes 
varied not only in style, but in strategy, and in expression.
	 The titles of the 
medallions to the left and right 
of Thomas? imitation Wedgwood 
medallion in fig. 2.4, Ode to the 
Figure 2.4. Hank Willis Thomas (Left to Right), Ode CMB: Folks Say, ?Take That 
to the CMB: Folks Say, ?Take That Chain Off Boy Ya 
Blindin? Me? (2006/7); Ode to the CMB: Am I Not a Chain Off Boy Ya Blindin? Me? 
Man and a Brother? (2004); Ode to the CMB: Lucy is 
a Slave with Diamonds (2006/7). 24K gold and cubic and Ode to the CMB: Lucy is a 
zirconia, 5?3 in. From Hank Willis Thomas, Fred 
Wilson, and Christopher Cozier, Representations 113, Slave with Diamonds, illustrate 
No. 1 (Winter 2011): 74.
the sentiment that others, 
65
particularly proslavery White North Americans, expressed when they saw someone else, 
particularly Africans and/or their descendants, free and even prosperous. The phrases 
used beyond the colon, ?Take That Chain Off You Blinding Me? and ?Lucy is a Slave 
with Diamonds,? affirm the riches within and among free Africans and their descendants, 
while at the same time speaking to the attitudes of slaveowners and slave proponents and 
their inability to see freedom as being owned by Blacks. The medallions of wanted 
posters summon the raids in Cass County, Michigan, for example, in which White 
slaveowners from Northern Kentucky?attracted to the fortune of the largest rural Black 
county in early Michigan?attempted to recapture them.128  
	 Importantly, by incorporating women in his exploration of marketed Black 
masculinity, Thomas expands the limits of performances of Black masculinity that 
historically centered men. Thomas references The Beatles? ?Lucy in the Sky with 
Diamonds??a song about a woman on the move?from their 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper?s 
Lonely Hearts Club Band, whose interplay with wanted posters speaks to the Black 
woman?s fixity as much as it does her movement. In the song, The Beatles describe a 
woman who, as soon as she appears, disappears. 
	 The specter of her identity speaks to the simplified personhood of the wanted 
image that recedes when considering the diverse and contradictory information that 
existed in its descriptions of her, as seen in fig. 2.5. The detailed description from the 
Louisiana Courier?a daily (except Mondays) newspaper for New Orleans from May 23, 
1852-1859?unsettles the generalizations of the stereotyped cut that Thomas renames as 
66
Figure 2.5. J.A Bonneval, ?Ten dollars Reward,? Le Courrier de la Louisiane, June 30, 
1837, Louisiana State Museum, accessed May 31, 2014, http://
cdm16313.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/APC/id/74/rec/1.
Lucy; it reads, ?Runaway from the subscriber the day before yesterday, the negress 
Melitte, aged about 24 years, very tall and thin walks very fast; has lost her front teeth; 
speaks French and English, and is well known in the city.? Thomas, thus, moves beyond 
reinforcing a masculinist representation and uses the complexities of gender portrayals in 
popular culture to nuance perceptions of Black masculinity. Lucy does as much work as 
the supplicating man from the seal to think through how performances of Black 
femininity are an important part of the discourses about Black masculinity, both of which 
trouble simplified Black personhood. Indeed, we see how using the essentialism (both 
67
unplanned and strategic)129 of Black masculinity and femininity provides evidence of the 
injustice and hope that Blacks respectively face and strive for as a group, allowing for the 
mobilization around issues of social justice for Blacks, even if it means that the evidence 
that is mobilized around becomes iconic and/or a commodity.
	 One such commodity, the abolitionists? seal, virtually became a brand that was 
found decorating bracelets, ceramics and hairpins, to name a few, which in today?s terms 
?went viral.? A seal became an object, an everyday symbol for slavery, and a fashion 
symbol that could be found on people?s necks, in people?s hair and on people?s dishes, a 
viral performance of Black masculinity in popular culture. These commodities first 
circulated as things to be consumed while trying to reveal the inhumane conditions of the 
slave ships and the slave trade; however, their meaning evolved alongside the 
abolitionists? political agenda to abolish slavery that used the free labor of non-criminals.  
The images printed on the broadside of slave ship Brooks and impressed on other 
commodities were so iconic that they came to represent the institution of slavery to the 
world.130
	 Indeed, Thomas? work makes clearer how discourses travel through viral 
performances such as rumor and mass-produced images while also showing how 
discourses can be shifted through the manipulation of what is viral, or branded. Through 
his work, we see how the mass-produced images of Black men and women?s bodies 
throughout North America and Western Europe were popularly used to advertise the 
political agendas of abolitionists and to convey how cruel of an institution that slavery 
was. However, what is more apparent in B?anded is how the personhood of Black men 
and women were simplified and commoditized, consumed, and used to advertise the 
68
political agendas of abolitionists and proslavery advocates. In this process we see a form 
of erasure, where more than exchanging abolitionist and proslavery agendas, the 
representations exchanged pejorative notions that were already held of Black men and 
women as superhumanly strong, dependent, and in need of taming. We also see how the 
abolitionists? politics involved agendas that both sought to better the conditions of the 
slave trade and ships and wanted to abolish slavery altogether. Through viral 
performance, abolitionists accomplished popularizing the abolition of the slavery that 
used the free labor of non-criminals by using rumors of Black men and women?s bodies 
in visual and material representations like broadsides, medallions, banners, coins, hair 
pins and crockery. Thomas shows us that this type of signification continues to this day, 
the advertising of brands and ideas on one end, and the incessant selling of 
(mis)understandings of Black bodies, and for the intents of this project, Black men, on 
the other. 
Unfolding Whips
...I didn?t mind working free as a walking billboard / but 
now I want my money back / as the ice spilled and poured /
Onto the floor I did see a distorted reflection of my Nike 
hat /
No I don't know how others might react /
For me it was an unsightly act that helped me get my 
psyche back
I stood 5 feet back, afraid that it might strike me like 
Shaclack clack! /
You think I'm kidding? Think it's no big thing
What I seen made my heart hurt, stomach turn, throat burn, 
teeth cringe spine tingle, and ribs sting
I noticed that the swoosh symbol was nothing but a whip in 
mid-swing...
-Sage Francis131
69
In 2002, a spoken word artist and emcee named Sage Francis created a song 
called ?Narcissist? from the The Known UnSoldier ?Sick of Waging War? album. The 
song was critiquing the importance that is placed on appearances and the shock of 
critically thinking about the brands we consume and unknowingly advertise. He couches 
his narrative in the denial of being a narcissist (he only likes to watch himself exist) and 
coming to a point of conflict when considering the exploitation and price markup that go 
into creating and selling the clothes that he bought in the past. In the song, the final shock 
that Francis experiences is seeing the Nike symbol on a hat as a ?whip in mid-swing.? 
Unlike Jeff Johnson, Nike?s first employee, who says he named the logo after the Greek 
goddess of victory,132 the Nike swoosh, in this poet?s thinking represents an unfolding 
action of a whip. Indeed, one does not have to be Black to be haunted by the specter of an 
instrument of violence used in settings of slavery, punishment, and control to dominate, 
intimidate, and terrorize both humans and animals.  While Jeff Johnson?s narrative may 
be his truth, the multiple truths that the Nike symbol evokes is as, if not more, important. 
I choose not to totally credit Francis with starting this rumor, however, as I also 
heard a similar rumor between 2001 and 2002.  In fact, I had not considered the meaning 
of the Nike symbol before a Black classmate assuredly told me that it was a slave 
master?s whip. I did my part in participating in the rumor, planting the idea in people?s 
minds during casual conversation, often as a question: ?You heard about what the Nike 
symbol means?? Via a central mechanism of viral performance?word of mouth?this 
idea traveled, working its way into the popular imaginary. In ?Unfolding Whips,? I am 
suggesting that this rumor circulated enough to have made its way into Hank Willis 
Thomas? photography, giving him an opportunity to illuminate its function. Through 
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photographic manipulation and using the techniques of advertising and propaganda to 
explore contemporary issues around race, gender, and commerce, Thomas materializes 
and corroborates in re-creating (or re-producing) Nike?s rumor in visual form.  
Branded Head
Thomas? photo in fig. 2.6, Branded Head, evokes the rumor that Nike?s logo is the 
unfolding action of a (slave master?s) whip.  This does not mean that Branded Head is a 
visual representation of 
the rumor, just that the 
rumor is in dialogue with 
the discourse that 
enframes the image. It 
specifically brings our 
attention to the scarring 
that happens against 
someone?s will, as in 
when enslaved people 
were branded?as 
punishment for running 
away?with the names of 
the plantation or 
slaveholder they belonged 
to,133  or with someone?s 
Figure 2.6. Hank Willis Thomas, Branded Head (2003). 
Lightjet Print. In Hank Willis Thomas: Pitch Blackness will, as in when Black 
(New York: Aperture, 2008), 67.
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people participate in their own scarring through tattooing or fraternity branding. Brands 
are inscribed meanings and marks of style and value. Thus, brands become one with 
Black bodies in both stigmatic and pleasurable ways. There is also an inability to 
distinguish or separate brands from Black bodies and the pasts that come with those 
bodies. Black bodies frequently trouble the visual field regardless of the intents of the 
author?carrying with them branded memories, rumors, and images that Black people 
themselves cannot control. Still, Hank Willis Thomas? work is an exemplar of ?troubling 
vision,?134 mounting a critique of public/private media?s use of Black men?s 
performances in the selling of products to the point that Black men also become the 
product.135  
The move to graft any logo onto one?s head is very untypical as branding is 
usually done in the mid to lower-body, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.136 The 
keloid?s location on a Black man?s head, thus, gestures toward being created against his 
will, a traumatic event.137 Thomas, therefore, makes the move to brand a head to bring 
attention to, and spark dialogue around, the pain, dehumanization, and the punishment of 
branding as well as the branding of consciousness?invoking this idea that the way in 
which we think and, dare I say, dream about ourselves is subsumed by the desire for and 
fear of brands.
There is also a noticeable emphasis of the Nike sign?s centrality in Branded Head. 
The Black man?s entire face is not included, yet the entire Nike sign is, marginalizing his 
existence while indicating what we should value as consumers. The simplification of a 
Black man to a ?head? also brings attention to how advertising can dissect humans, 
leaving them with no names, only body parts: a decapitation upon which to deliver and 
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sell a product?s message. The only body part that is emphasized in its totality is the Black 
man?s ear. Thomas? attention to rumor and the sonic is marked through this emphasis. 
Besides the ear, the Nike symbol is predominant.
The Nike symbol?s positioning as more central than the Black man?s body 
gestures toward the ways in which commercial ideas and goods have garnered higher 
value than the bodies that they use experience. In Kate Linker?s article ?Went Looking 
for Africa: Carrie Mae Weems,? she investigates the silences about race in Carrie Mae 
Weems? ?Family Pictures and Stories? and ?Sea Islands? photosets. She suggests the 
significance collective memory plays in public media and writes,
Weems has alluded in writing to the ?little packages of 
consumer racism? that are the stock-in-trade of our 
collective psyche. Weems? reference is obvious?ideology 
is constructed and reproduced through consumption?but it 
also encompasses the more subtle racism of black 
Americans who unconsciously internalize white-
supremacist norms.  This complicity of black people in 
their own victimization (a similar role to that of many 
women) is perpetuated by the uninterrupted sway of racist 
representations in the media.138
Thomas magnifies this consumer racism that Weems has alluded to, making the little 
packages of the racism into large ones. His production of discourses by using the rumor 
performance of the Nike swoosh interrupts the sway of racist images in the media by 
making the media?s concealed racism, which ?does not exist,? obvious. His images 
confirm the notion that, as we consume products from the Nike Corporation, we also 
consume their ideas of the bodies that they use to market products. Particular etchings of 
commercial capitalism can instigate Black men?s tensions in communities; which occur 
and are often seen, particularly by neo-liberalists, as Black men?s ?problems? rather than 
as a products of a more systemic forces. This comes to bear particular importance when 
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violence over shoes, like the Nike Air Jordan, occurs within Black communities?moving 
Nike?s performance beyond commercial and into viral violence.
The balding Black man in fig. 2.6 is representatively disembodied, offset for a 
more central focus on the Nike symbol. As a result, he is eyeless, noseless, mouthless, 
and, with the exception of his head, bodyless. The only other thing that is made present in 
Thomas? photographic adaptation, embodied in its wholeness, is the keloid in the form of 
a Nike swoosh. The swoosh is, indeed, an onomatopoeia?a phonetic imitation of the 
source of the sound it recounts?which begs the question: when a Nike symbol is seen 
branded on a Black man?s head, what does the ?swoosh? sound like (could it be the sound 
that accompanies the swing of a whip, the sizzle of hot iron to warm skin, and/or 
someone swiftly passing you by)?  The swoosh possesses many meanings, particularly 
when juxtaposed with Black body parts, that utilize the currency of Blackness (signaled 
by Black people?s success in sports), yet inevitably recall moments of racism whose 
legacy thrives.
The use of the swoosh and the keloid gestures toward the sonic, while also 
signaling trauma. This attention to the pain, in the suggested sound of an object causing 
enough friction (by hitting, cutting or burning) to form a keloid on the skin, is Thomas? 
way of re-membering, suturing the Black body. Thomas uses the sonic swoosh to remind 
us that though this is a fragmented image, there was something that happened to the 
entire body. In essence, he ?render[s] the body whole again and, in so doing, offers a 
perspective? into the event that dismembered it139?the central event here being Nike?s 
branding of this Black man?s body. It is questionable, however, whether we can have a 
?whole? Black subject to dis-member in the first place, particularly when any wholeness 
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that we know of Blackness is already impure and (re)mixed.140 In other words, if we 
understand Black bodies as always already in parts, not cohesive and easily 
understandable, Diasporic, and encompassing complex personhood, we cannot re-
assemble them as we never had their cohesive assembled bodies to begin with.141 Just as 
Blackness is mixed, interpretations of the Black body must be as well.  
The title of the photograph, Branded Head, does not allow audiences to easily 
refuse the connection between branding and the Black man?s body in the picture. In a real 
way, the Nike symbol could not exist without the skin on the head of the Black man in 
the photo. The swoosh emerges after the contact of its form with a body, rising from the 
skin as both a part and extension of it, evidenced as a trauma inflicted to the skin. These 
are not just scars, they are raised scars whose significance is foregrounded for a reason. In 
many ways, Thomas is raising the scars of Black life and Black history to pose the pain, 
loss of autonomy, and commodification of Black bodies as a problem and as absurd. 
	 Despite all of this, like with any viral performance of Blackness in popular culture 
and everyday life, there are risks and rewards. The risks for the photographed and the 
Black men he could represent, as I have already outlined, consist of, but are not limited 
to, dehumanization, disembodiment, and ownership by corporations. However, the 
rewards complicate the risks. When one considers the autonomy that Black men have in 
branding themselves, the way that the image must be understood changes, and the 
concept of rebranding emerges?allowing for Thomas? and others? agency in choosing, 
speaking back to, and forming some liberation from, brands. After all, the title, Branded 
Head, does not reveal who the brander is.
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Scarred Chest
	 Branding?the scarring of flesh with a sign?can also be voluntary. Thomas 
makes use of this (limited) autonomy in his adapted photographic image, Scarred Chest, 
seen in fig. 2.7. Here, Thomas more directly addresses the work of scarring and voluntary 
branding. When the most common location for brands are the upper arm and chest, fig. 
Figure 2.7. Hank Willis Thomas, Scarred Chest (2004). 
Lightjet Print.  In Hank Willis Thomas: Pitch Blackness, 
(New York: Aperture, 2008), 69.
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2.7 turns the critical lens on self-inflicted or relatively voluntary scars?the 
kind where keloids can sometimes be an individual marker of belonging, homosocial142 
participation, or self-importance.143 It has been found that Black bodies, particularly 
African American bodies, keloid 7.1 times more than that of White Europeans and their 
descendants when their skin heals from burning or cutting.144 This factor allows African 
Americans to brand themselves in expectation of the aesthetic keloid effect that burning 
or cutting their flesh creates, a practice popularly held in Black fraternities. Indeed, Nike 
corporation?s intended symbolism of the swoosh as the Greek goddess of victory 
interplayed with everyday peoples? use of self-marking/branding/tattooing blurs the 
meaning of this image, suggesting not only external branding, but a branding from 
within.
	 Thomas repeated use of Nike swooshes in Scarred Chest suggests that branding 
does not only function as an external mark of difference, but also as a means of dialogue 
between the intrinsic and external. It is through repeated external branding that bodies are 
given a meaning that, over time, becomes intrinsic. This viral process can also work for 
the purposes of rebranding?repeatedly repurposing the meaning of a symbol inscribed 
into or intrinsic to the flesh. Even though Black bodies are haunted by the stigma, and 
faced with the racism and sexism that can be associated with branding, the repeated 
dialogue between their intended meaning and the external scripts that they challenge 
produce a rebranding. Along rebranding?s path of alterity, other worlds can be 
experienced and imagined. Indeed, a rebranded mark can signal liberation, voluntary 
belonging, and whichever meaning that the individual who possesses it desires. 
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	 In Black Greek fraternities, for example, branding is sought after to symbolize 
achievements, belonging, and personal style, however, there is no single interpretation of 
meaning for fraternal brands.145 From a connection with the heart to being a member of 
the ?chest club??a reference to being grouped with others that have obtained a chest 
brand?they have been used to symbolize a wide range of things. Michael Jordan, a 
Black man who has used and been used by the Nike brand so much that he has become 
symbolic of Nike itself, has an Omega Psi Phi brand burned onto his chest. Branding as 
the permanent or temporary public or hidden visual broadcasting of masculinity, 
belonging, and brotherhood cannot be denied here, a way of asserting, ?I am a man and a 
brother? in a nation that has seen, and sees, Black men as infantile and outsiders. Further 
studying the scars and the margins of Scarred Chest also reveals ideas about the sexual 
energy within the image.
	 Certainly, the sensual nature of this image also brings the erotic associations of 
branding to the forefront. The way that the image cuts off just above the pubic hair and 
the location of the raised scars on the face of chiseled pectoral muscles has the potential 
to both invite and repulse the viewer by their bluntness. The censorship of what the eye 
expects to see after lower abdominal muscles does not hide the phallus, it centers it. In 
the wise words of rap artist Beanie Siegel, he discusses how, even in its erasure, the 
censored thing remains: ?Now see if I care if this verse get aired / Even if you mute it / 
The curse is there.? 146 Indeed, this reminds me of FM radio?s policing of ?obscenities? 
and taboos that share the same end rhyme as the line that preceded them. Because of 
rhyme and reason, we all know what the ?obscenity? is, defeating (or perhaps enhancing) 
the purpose of censorship, bringing our attention to (or away from) the taboo. For 
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example, ?You ?bout to get wet / Ya head?s bobbin? and I ain?t said ____ yet.? 147  After 
censorship, there are only so many options for the possibilities of what were erased, 
encouraging the imagination and mind to fill in the blank. Even censorship, whether 
chosen by the photographed subject or not, is limited. If the adage ?sex sells? rings true at 
all in the B?anded series, it is in Thomas? use of the body in fig. 2.7. What lies outside 
the frame of the image, outside of the censorship, is perhaps the most important thing 
used to sell and encourage the consumption of the product.
	 Sandra Mizumoto Posey points to a scene in Spike Lee?s 1988 film, School Daze, 
as bringing attention to the ?sexual mystique? of brands. Jane Touissant (played by Tisha 
Campbell-Martin) licks Julian ?Dean Big Brother Almighty? Eaves (played by Giancarlo 
Esposito) on his chest and back, making sure that the point of her tongue runs across his 
raised skin, treating it as an ?erogenous zone.? 148 The erotic associations with branded 
skin make brands something desirable for both men and women. In Yoruba culture, Posey 
adds, ?[S]cars resulting from cutting the skin are perceived as sensual due to their tactile 
nature.? 149 In fig. 2.7, Thomas is using scarring for its sensual value and masculine 
appeal, exposing how companies inundate consumers with overly sexualized bodies to 
sell products?branding this body with the Nike symbol nine times, as though once was 
not enough to communicate it was an ad for Nike.  
	 Something would be amiss to ignore the referent to Robert Mapplethorpe?s 1980 
photo of Charles Bowman entitled Torso when referring to Thomas? Scarred Chest.  In 
Torso, we see the pronounced chest and abs from a Black man, posing with biceps raised 
outside of the margins of the photograph for maximum muscular effect, and an image 
shot or cropped before the collar bone and after plethora pubic hairs.  Mapplethorpe is 
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recorded to have left the image of his lover?s face out of another controversial 
photograph, ?Man in a Polyester Suit,? where a Black man?s uncircumcised penis loosely 
hangs out of an opened zipper of a three piece polyester suit only showing half of his 
slacks and the top button of his vest, hands hanging to his sides. Sarah Boxer, 
photography critic of the New York Times, writes, ?Mapplethorpe got so much permission 
for so many things that he made us forget, at least occasionally, what he was getting away 
with.? 150 While the possibility of consent adds to our conversation about (limited) 
autonomy and how branded subjects can have a choice in what is and is not seen of their 
bodies, Boxer?s subtext here is that consent and agency do not easily dismiss the 
pornographic ways Black men?s bodies have been portrayed and consumed in North 
America.
	 Like Mapplethorpe, Nike?s use of Black men has become pornographic and 
complicated by Black men?s desire to be branded to increase their mobility as well as for 
the fiscal and social capital involved in doing so. This exchange of the erotic for 
increased mobility and sustaining public interest makes Thomas?s image even more 
relevant and insightful. Here, Thomas reveals the complicated position of the athlete-porn 
subject?someone that is incessantly ?overly aestheticized? in a focus on their body, 
strength, and athletic ability, a strange triangle, which performs a certain violence in its 
linking?reminiscent of linking Black subjects to primitive beings, emphasizing brawn 
over brains. Porn functions virally, repeatedly flooding our senses with images and 
sounds insofar as they become intrinsic to our understanding of said body, food, or thing.  
Indeed, as much as a photographed subject can transcend gender norms and challenge 
conventional racist knowledge through his choices in erasure and insertion, he also acts to 
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preserve the notions he confronts. By using conceptual photography to question the 
myths of Black men?s bodies in advertisements as sexual(ized) objects, innately strong, 
and commodities, Thomas frames the potential ramifications of Black portrayals: even if 
voluntary, the critique of stereotypes, or assertion of the individual self, can be 
communicated in such a way that it disguises that very critique and resistance to being 
representative of a group.
	 Thinking through the potential autonomy of the photographed subject in fig. 2.7 
summons the way in which branding was a visible marker that the branded subject was a 
runaway?someone who had already, and, thus, was at risk again for, divesting from his 
slaveholder?s system of labor, which positively correlated with his social, economic, and 
physical peril?indicating an overriding struggle for freedom.151 The Black man?s torso is 
an illustration of someone who is a repeat offender of trying to attain freedom from Nike, 
only to become that which he tried upwards of nine times to escape, another 
pornographic expression of Blackness. This illustration also suggests that Nike is a 
corporation, which uses slaveholder-like violence to maintain control of their 
?employees?? autonomy, reminding all that this particular Black body belongs to them. 
Adding to the irony of this suggestion is Thomas? use of nine Nike swooshes, a 
numerological move to mark the nine lives either lived by Nike as a repeated viral 
offender of Black bodies, or the way in which Black men are re-creating themselves 
perpetually when branded. Either way, this marking provides a significant commentary 
on the workings of viral performance in both Black lives and of the Nike brand. Thomas 
employs the viral for his uses and by employing it, he shows us that he is aware of it, a 
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type of formulaic rumor, further illustrating how the Black masculine is conversant with 
viral performance. 
Branded Icons
And born in New Orleans get killed for Jordans152
-Lil Wayne
Broken promises, steal yo? watch and tell you what time it 
is / Take yo Js and tell you to kick it where a Foot Locker 
is153
-Jay Rock
 Death over dishonor / They killin Niggas for Js / That?s 
death over designer154
-J. Cole
It?s best that you stay awake than snooze / They taking lives 
or they taking shoes155
-Elzhi
Drug dealer buy Jordan / Crackhead buy crack / And the 
White man get paid off of all of that156
-Kanye West
Never thought project life was promised nothing but to die 
twice / For steppin? on the next man?s nikes157 
-Nas
Leave you lyin? in red...Now who will be the next to get they 
fuckin? shoes took off158 
-Mia X
	
	 The epigraphs above convey a frightening phenomenon, the loss of life or assault 
because of the type of shoes one wears and how the money spent on marked up shoes 
ultimately ends up paying White men?a vicious cycle of the consumption of fashion, the 
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consumption of life for fashion, and the systematic way that White men benefit from that 
very socioeconomic complex. I begin with words from Jay Rock (Watts, Los Angeles, 
CA), J. Cole (Fayetville, NC), Elzhi (Detroit, MI), Kanye West (Chicago, IL), Nas 
(Queensbridge, Queens, NY), Mia X (New Orleans, LA) to briefly convey how 
widespread it is that people, particularly Blacks, are being assaulted or killed for marked 
up shoes. I am also conveying the awareness of Black American artists about the pain, 
fright, and misfortune present when stealing Nike Air Jordans (Js), having them stolen, or 
losing one?s life and having them stolen. They perform reflections or wisdom that is also 
a form of critical rumor: the viral performance of ?other truth? that ties structures of 
power to their effects in everyday life. Their meditations on the same subject, death over 
shoes (particularly Nikes and Js), are illustrating something systematic enough to affect 
people similarly in different geographies across the U.S. 
	 I can relate to this viral trend having grown up in a 1990s Detroit where, even 
though Nike?s Air Jordan design was superb and attractive, they were avoided along with 
brands like Triple Fat Goose (a then popular goose-down bubble jacket), because both my 
parents and I knew that people were getting those stolen from them or were being killed 
for them?and they simply cost too much for gym shoes. While I always admired the 
design of Js, I would wear anything instead: Nike Air Force Ones, Gary Payton Nikes, 
and even Joe Dumars? Adidas?I had both a desire for and fear of Nike?s Air Jordan.  
They were a brand that held higher value than the people that wore them as clothing.  
These recollections align with the work that Hank Willis Thomas is doing, calling 
attention to the viral performance of Black-on-Black crime, the work that fashion 
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advertising does to instigate these crimes, and how the branding of certain products has 
given those products intrinsic social value. 
	 Clothes, often identified by brands in North America, carry associations with 
certain cash values, style, and, important for this chapter, bodies. Clothes can be as raced 
as skin and, much like the bodies that wear them, how they are perceived changes as they 
travel between different contexts. The rumor concerning clothing that Hank Willis 
Thomas captures in this next section is found within an e-rumor in the form of a poem 
titled, ?Clothes.? 
	 The poem, ?Clothes,? was circulated via email by an anonymous author posing as 
the late Maya Angelou. ?Clothes? was so pervasive in North American cyberculture that 
Heather Newman, a writer for the Detroit Free Press, wrote an article concerning how 
anonymity, made possible through posting under fake or no identity online, was making it 
difficult to screen art for legitimacy after it spread online.159 The Internet, in other words, 
was diminishing the ability to link authors to their original work, thereby, enabling 
original content to be linked to anonymous authors. Or, more pointedly, anonymity 
allows for authors to be linked to work that was not their original content, the latter being 
the result of ?Clothes??often found as an anonymous post on a website or forwarded 
email. Maya Angelou, penned as the author of ?Clothes,? was needed because of her 
respected status in the world, and particularly among African American communities, as a 
truth-teller. In this way, even though she did not write it, Angelou functioned as a device 
to authenticate the information in the poem as evidence of anti-Black racism. The 
combination of the ?evidence??subsumed by rumors about anti-Black conspiracy in the 
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fashion industry?and Angelou?s position as truth-teller gave the poem enough currency 
to be circulated as an e-rumor.  It reads as follows:
This is a poem by Maya Angelou to blacks and a message 
for us to think about. Please read carefully and try to 
interpret as best you as you can.
Clothes??
You are in love with Tommy, Because his last name is 
Hilfiger, But behind closed doors, Tommy, Is calling you a 
nigger, But you could care less, Because you have been 
taught to dress to impress, If I ask you about your true 
history, You would have to look on the back of your jeans 
and Guess, You come up in the club wearing versace, 
Clothes made by a homosexual male, So even when you 
say you are straight, It is very hard to tell, And for 
footwear, you wear Timberlands, Even under the sun, That 
some tree that the symbol for them, Could have been the 
same one your ancestors were hung from, I cannot forget 
Nautica, When was the last memory you have of ships, 
Coming to North America in shackles, Being beaten over 
the back with whips, And to my beautiful black queens, 
Whose creative womb has become barren, I am confused 
because your face says Nefertiti, But your sweater reads 
Donna Karen, When was the last time you saw Liz 
Claiborne, Conversing with black women, But as soon as 
her name is printed on a purse, To Macy's you quickly go, 
running,??
Ralph Lauren doesn't even look at black men, Unless they 
are driving him around town, But as soon as that slave 
master appears on the back of a horse, You put whatever 
you have picked up down,?
My people, reclaim your status in this world and in your 
life, Fubu in case you didn't know, stand for (For Us By 
Us), Buying black will someday suffice, Do you know who 
owns Timberland fashion? Well, Timberland is owned by 
the president of the KKK, Surprised? Don't be. Read more 
books black people, Always hope for the best and prepare 
for the worst, You may not get what you pay for, But you'll 
surely pay for what you get.
Maya Angelou160
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In this poem, which for all we know was a viral marketing ploy by competitive brands, 
everything, except for Versace being gay (which, contrary to the poem?s suggestion, 
determines nothing about the sexuality of someone who wears his clothing), has been 
proven false. Nonetheless, this speaks to the power of viral performance. Though Maya 
Angelou did not write the poem and none of the brands listed have proven to be racist, 
such rumors circulated online, playing on the fears of same sex desire and those familiar 
with North America?s concealment of racism and its legacy. People passed ?Clothes? on 
via email forwards and online blog posts, increasing its presence, currency, and 
solidifying it as rumor.  
	 In the ?Clothes? poem, there is one reference that Thomas takes up: 
Timeberland?s logo as a representation of a lynching ?oak? tree.161 Figure 2.8, Hank 
Figure 2.8. Hank Willis Thomas, Jordan and Johnny Walker in 
Timberland circa 1923 (Circa 1923) (2004). Inkjet on Canvas. In 
Hank Willis Thomas: Pitch Blackness (New York: Aperture, 2008), 
62.
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Willis Thomas? image from his B?anded series, Jordan and Johnny Walker in 
Timberland circa 1923 (Circa 1923), interrogates on the one hand how rumor is captured 
in visual form, and on the other, illuminates the relationship between icons used for 
brands and Black masculinity. Thomas? image actually corroborates and troubles this 
viral narrative and offers a visual recap and revision to the larger cultural myth.
Paul Lawrence Dunbar, named ?Poet Laureate of the Negro Race? by Booker T. 
Washington, illustrates some of the racially-motivated mythos around the oak tree in his 
1900 poem, ?The Haunted Oak.? His poem is based on a story from an elderly, formerly 
enslaved, man living on Howard University?s grounds whose nephew was accused of 
rape and hung on an oak tree.162 The man?s story of accusation and rumor is one that can 
be added to a long list of stories with parallel thoughts and reactions: a lynching steeped 
in the fear of racial mixture, the notion of the lascivious and/or criminal Black male, and 
the need to preserve the inherent racial purity of Whites and protect defenseless White 
women. Nonetheless, while the poem itself performs a necessary critique of lynching, it 
may have inadvertently created a rumor of the type of tree used as a standard in the 
violent process.
While trees are popularly referenced as the site of lynchings, history has shown us 
that anything will suffice, from trees to lampposts, basically anything sturdy enough to 
hold a body by the neck from.163 In addition, lynching is not limited to hanging someone 
by the neck, but it is an extralegal means of killing someone through a mob, which often 
involved mutilation. Even though lynching was used in North America during the 
antebellum period of slavery, it dramatically increased post-Civil War. In Living With 
Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890-1930, 
87
Koritha Mitchell writes on the ill logics that sparked the signal increase in lynching, 
?After the Civil War, when blacks were no longer property, there was no financial reason 
not to kill them...[t]his is...when lynching became ritualized murder.? 164 I would add that 
free Blacks also represented the Confederacy?s defeat and the fear that the same violence 
would be performed on Whites that Blacks experienced. What followed was ?ninety-five 
years of what has been called the ?Second Slavery,? namely disenfranchisement, debt 
peonage, Jim Crow, and legally sanctioned official and private terrorism.? 165 Indeed, it 
was the combination of the latter sentiments and laws that increased White desire to 
reinforce social and economic dominance over Blacks throughout North America. 
	 Folklorist, Patricia Turner, analyzes the anti-Black conspiracy present in the e-
rumor concerning Timberland through a different rumor. She shares a rumor from an 
informant about the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) controlling an athletic wear company with 
intent to exploit his African American generation. This rumor hinges on the reality of 
Black people?s exclusion from and marginalization within the fashion industry.166 Turner 
gives insight into the use of KKK as a narrativist device that signals the abuse of Black 
bodies. Turner discusses how conceivable the rumor is today when one considers the 
punishments that the KKK eluded for atrocities they committed against Black churches 
and civil rights workers in the 1950s and 1960s.167 The e-rumor around Timberland 
focuses on lynching as one of these atrocities. Similarly, Hank Willis Thomas makes use 
of this rumor and created an image, as seen in fig. 2.8, which remarks upon the 
relationship between the commoditization of the Black male athlete, figurative icons and 
social bodies, and the lynching ?oak? tree.
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Timberland, Johnny Walker, and Jordan
	 I first witnessed fig. 2.8 accidentally. I was attending a showing of Thomas? 
animated short in the 30 Americans feature at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, 
DC in 2012. Deep into the exhibition, I entered a room where an exhibit of varying 
reproduced images of an identical Black man being lynched were to my left and 
basketball players dunking basketballs in nooses were on a digital flatscreen behind me. 
There was a display in front of me with a black and white animation; I put on the 
display?s headphones. The animation began with the Jumpman approaching the Morton 
Salt girl. Johnny Walker appeared in the background while empty quote bubbles appeared 
above the Jumpman and the Morton Salt girl. Both the Jumpman and the Morton Salt girl 
wobbled off in opposite directions. The camera zoomed in to Johnny Walker and froze for 
a moment, emphasizing his disbelief and surprise in what he witnessed: a Black man 
speaking to a White girl. He then approached a large group of Johnny Walkers and a 
quote bubble appeared above his head with the image of the Jumpman and the Morton 
Salt girl inside of it, conveying what he saw. Many empty quote bubbles appeared above 
the other Johnny Walkers? heads, what seemed like expressions of outrage. The other 
Johnny Walkers moved in a sweeping motion to the left of the screen. The Jumpman was 
shown in the next frame wobbling along to the right. When the Jumpman saw the mob of 
Johnny Walkers coming his way, fearful for his life, he quickly wobbled off-screen to the 
left. However, he was too late and the Johnny Walker mob carried the Jumpman toward 
the right of the screen. The Jumpman was brought to an oak tree, represented by a 
Timberland logo, which already had a noose hanging from it, and was tossed into the 
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noose. The animation is how we arrive at the image in fig. 2.8, Jordan and Johnny Walker 
in Timberland circa 1923 (Circa 1923).
	 Illustrating one of the atrocities that is synonymous with White mobs in ante/post-
bellum North America, in fig. 2.8 Thomas creates an ad that illustrates how brands are 
conflated with social identities, and the idea that, ?black success attracts the mob.? 168 
Through the fabrication of a lynching, Thomas illustrates the power of figurative rumor to 
have evidentiary affects on material lives and challenges the dangerous way in which we 
associate business brands with real social bodies. He fabricates this violence through a 
short animation clip in which fig. 2.8 represents the final scene.
	 Fig. 2.8 displays three objects we know as brands: a silhouetted Michael Jordan 
(The Jumpman) jumping with legs outstretched and holding a basketball with one hand, 
which represents the brand Nike Air Jordan, a basketball shoe. It also displays a White 
man in mid-stride donning a top hat, two-tailed suit jacket, white breeches, black boots, 
and holding a walking cane, which represents the brand Johnnie Walker, a Scottish 
whiskey. There is also a silhouette of a huge tree, resembling an oak, which represents the 
brand Timberland, a clothing company. The Jumpman is hanging from a noose attached 
to a branch from the Timberland sign, while Johnny Walker is walking away from the 
scene of the crime. Objects, however inanimate, have politics that move and move them 
beyond their objecthood.
	 More than symbols of clothing and alcohol alone, in fig. 2.8 the three brands are 
proxies: The Jumpman for Black American men, Johnny Walker for White American 
men, and Timberland for the racist landscape that allows a lynching, between the 
aforementioned racial groups, to take place. Brands are raced in ways that not only 
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simplify the personhood of Black and White bodies, but have also made them, and the 
landscape that they occupy, into things. Not only does race and/or landscape become a 
commodity for sell, but it also becomes a ?referent for other things, a doubled quality that 
centers it at the symbolic surround of consumer culture...[making] it possible to recall in 
half-consciously nostalgic tones the older image of the black body as desirable 
merchandise [and the White one as the purchaser or owner of said merchandise].? 169  The 
merchandising of bodies is a flattening process, one that is portrayed in fig. 2.8 and 
further revealed in the roots of the silhouette.
	 The silhouetting of Michael Jordan literally and figuratively united his 
masculinity with a business brand, making it a highly desirable commodity. Silhouetting, 
however, is an inherently reductive act rooted in the practices of European geneticists to 
make race more accurately identifiable. Guterl discusses some of the history of the 
silhouette, almost the epitome of simplified personhood:  
The general and historic point of the silhouette, literally, 
was to focus on the trace outline of the face or the body, 
and to force the eye to attend to the edge. And through that 
concentrated focus to reveal, with an authority derived 
from our confidence in sight, the objectively revealed inner 
character of the subject, stripped of emotion and 
adornment...racial sight turns to the silhouette to reveal the 
desired truth to help establish clear identifications where 
confusion would otherwise reign... Just as that trio of 
craniometricians had desired, the silhouette is understood to 
be a reliable, honest piece of evidence, easily read and 
understood. In a set of bumps and ridges, peaks and swells, 
it reveals the outline of whiteness, or blackness, or 
brownness, and of race more generally.170
The silhouette historically functioned as a way to simplify perceptions of race, thereby, 
referencing the outline of race avoiding the intricacy and nuance that lied within. While, 
in popular culture, the color of Jumpman silhouette of Nike?s Air Jordan IIIs is so 
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inhumanly red that it appears nonracial, its physique is still easily recognizable as Black 
because of Michael Jordan?s global popularity and popular associations of Blackness with 
superior strength and athleticism. As much as silhouetting erases one background, it 
reveals another.
	 Not only does Thomas support the rumor that Timberland uses iconography from 
North American slavery traumas, not only do we see how European geneticists were 
foundational to the creation of the silhouette, but we witness an illustration of how rumor 
can materially affect Black bodies. The material affects on Black bodies include how they 
are perceived and how they are treated by others as a result of their perceptions. The 
animation from 30 Americans cannot be seen as separate from fig. 2.8 as we reach its 
frame via what transpires in the animation. 
	 For instance, in the short animation I was able to see how the interaction that 
Johnny Walker witnessed between the Jumpman and the Morton Salt girl was perceived 
as an assault on the girl and Whiteness itself, which is made possible through a combined 
belief in the myths of the Black brute, White women?s inability to consent to any contact 
with Black men, and the purity of the White race and the contamination of the Black race. 
Johnny Walker heard something about Black men, which framed what he saw in the 
Jumpman-Salt girl interaction. Importantly, we see an illustration of how one 
performance of Black masculinity, the Black brute, gets virally (re)presented and 
(re)produced: one Johnny Walker tells the other Johnny Walkers about what he ?saw.?  
The word-of-mouth transmittal of a reductive image of Black masculinity incited Johnny 
Walkers, who did not even witness the Jumpman?s interaction, to unanimously react with 
violence against something as pedestrian as greeting someone, asking for directions, or 
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flirting. This type of racism combined with the defense of White womanhood is what 
spurred the Rosewood massacre of 1923,171  which Thomas summons by dating the image 
?(Circa 1923).? Using the brands? campaign slogans, ?Just Do It? and ?Keep Walking,? is 
a reminder of how words were used as mnemonic devices on postcards of lynchings to 
advertise and document the violence. The words are also a reminder of the neglect that 
was necessary by civilians, State, and local authorities to allow crimes such as lynching 
to go unpunished. The public display 
	 Koritha Mitchell?s Living With Lynching uses lynching plays as archives to 
explore the identity-sustaining ways that African Americans read or acted out scripts 
about lynching that challenged popular conceptions about Black men as brutes. These 
plays also functioned to memorialize the dead, possibilities which popular lynching 
photographs had all but rendered invisible. Mitchell rightly posits that lynching 
photographs were taken from positions of privilege and safety during the egregious 
acts.172 This changes how we must look at the photo as an objective piece of evidence, 
and instead we must see the performance, which was captured, through a subjective (read 
White) perspective. Not to rule it out of the realm of possibility/punishment/humiliation, 
but certainly, they did not solicit an African American volunteer to take photos of the 
lynching of another Black body. Had they done so, the photographs may have resembled 
J.P. Ball?s, a Black photographer who empathetically photographed lynch victims, 
memorializing, rather than dehumanizing and objectifying them.173
	 Through the narrative that brings us to fig. 2.8, Thomas calls attention to what 
else is being sold that is inseparable from the everyday brands that we consume. We are 
being sold the idea of the superiorly athletic Black male who, even when hanging from a 
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noose, can still hold a basketball (recalling the owned slave as a Black man). In proximity 
to this idea is the fear of the Black male brute, such an abnormally strong criminal that 
even by speaking to White women he has essentially raped them (recalling the leased 
convict as a Black man). We are reminded of White men who believed in the latter myths 
so deeply that they would rather kill such a man than allow him the possibility to 
transgress racial segregation or see him as a full citizen entitled with all of the 
constitutional rights and responsibilities, including presumption of innocence, pleading 
the 5th, right to a fair trial, the right to sue due to libel and slander, right to self-defense, 
etc. Lynched Black bodies were left in the public as disrespect and reminder that if 
anyone else followed a similarly rumored path the same would happen to them, a type of 
collective punishment.
 Thus, before Black men?s bodies are ever used in ads, they have already been 
branded, weighted with meaning and scripts that existed before their bodies arrived on 
the scene. As Matthew Pratt Guterl describes in Seeing Race in Modern America, the 
incessant focus on the unparalleled strength and athleticism of Black men has 
connections to the entertainment of larger non-Black audiences during slavery. As Nike 
replays the ?slaveholding emphasis? on the intrinsic superior strength of Black athletes, 
they also resurrect its linking to the Black brute ?whose strength was matched by his 
rapacious appetites.? 174 Nike ads for Air Jordans rely on the racial (il)logic that attributes 
Blackness to strength and athleticism, two things that are attractive to people who are 
shaping their Black masculinity, notions that can be communicated through a gym shoe 
with a beginning in controversy.
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	 Michael Jordan unveiled the Nike Air Jordan I on November 17, 1984 during a 
game against the Philadelphia 76ers, where they became available to the public shortly 
after. Once purchased, the shoes featured a hang tag from a photo-shoot of Michael 
Jordan slamming a basketball mid-flight on a Chicago street court with the city?s skyline 
in the backdrop?his body in this photo was later silhouetted, becoming the ?Jumpman? 
logo. The red and black Air Jordan I was worn by Michael Jordan against NBA 
Commissioner Michael Stern?s wishes?saying they defied the Chicago Bulls? color 
scheme in their absence of white. As a result, he fined the Chicago Bulls $5,000 every 
time that Michael Jordan wore them, with Nike paying for the fine. The suggestion of the 
performance here was that the shoes provided a competitive advantage that was well 
worth the fine, an appealing message to consumers that arguably sparked ?sneakerhead? 
culture beyond Chuck Taylors.  
	 On October 18, 1985, David Stern officially banned the shoes. Nike spun this 
controversial dilemma on its head in a commercial called ?Banned.? The camera panned 
from Michael Jordan?s head to his Air Jordan 1s, which were blacked-out of the 
commercial, and the narrator said, ?[F]ortunately the NBA cannot stop you from wearing 
them.? 175 In ?Banned,? Nike suggests that by wearing Air Jordan, one could also manifest 
themselves as an outlaw?something that a rebellious person could relate to, and like 
Jordan, could be superior to other players who followed the rules.  
	 Already, Michael Jordan was troubling the vision of the NBA?considered an 
outlaw and uniquely athletic?things that were no stranger to popular notions of Black 
masculinity. In fact, his photo-shoot that was later used for the Jumpman logo took place 
in Chicago where he was literally rising to fame from an inner-city basketball court. This 
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location further associated an unfounded natural synergy between the inner-city, Black 
masculinity, and basketball, contributing to reductive ideas around Black authenticity. 
The Nike Air Jordan III was the first gym shoe to feature the Jumpman logo: a red 
silhouetted image of Michael Jordan performing a dunk. The Jumpman logo replaced the 
previous wings logo of the Air Jordan I and II and symbolized a merger of Black 
masculinity with a business brand, manifesting what Todd Boyd called, ?[T]he 
individual-as-brand concept.? 176
	 The popularity of 1988?s Nike Air Jordan III benefitted from Nike?s general ?Just 
Do It? campaign and the specific ?Mars and Mike? campaign, both of which took Nike to 
new heights financially, garnering exponentially higher amounts than $1,203,440 plus in 
revenue ever since.177 The IIIs are the shoe that Spike Lee, in collaboration with Nike and 
Michael Jordan, first advertised. Lee appeared as the immature, diarrhea-of-the-mouth, 
Mars Blackmon from his 1986 feature-length film debut She?s Gotta Have It. In the film, 
he was a short and skinny bicycle courier and New York Knicks fan who donned a 
Brooklyn cycling hat, big black-framed glasses, a Hoyas shirt, shorts, folded white crew 
socks, a ?MARS? chain and belt, and last, but not least, the Jordan Is. In the black and 
white commercial for the Jordan IV shoes, Blackmon, aka Jordan?s hype-man, asks him, 
?[W]hat makes you the best player in the universe?? After a barrage of guesses he says, 
?Money, it?s gotta be the shoes,? a memorialized statement that shifted a trope rumored to 
be intrinsic to Black bodies?superior athleticism?to shoes. Mars? statement aligns the 
consumption of the Jordan iconography with a desire to wield the ?natural? strength and 
prowess of Michael Jordan, the Jumpman, a proxy for Black men. This ?natural? 
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strength, however, no longer came from Michael Jordan, but the shoes he wore, 
emphasizing the Js, not Jordan, as the embodiment of his undeniable talent.
	 Between the global advertising of Michael Jordan as an outlaw, an innately skilled 
athlete, and a legacy of sartorially-related shootings that plagued Black communities 
starting in the mid to late 1980s?coinciding with the release of his highly anticipated 
and overpriced shoes?the discourses surrounding Jordan and the violence over his shoes 
were made odd bedfellows. It reached a national tipping point and Sports Illustrated (SI), 
while neglecting their involvement in the proliferation of sports fashion ads directed at 
Black youth, felt that they had to publish a piece concerning the trend. The title of their 
May 14, 1990 issue was, ?Your Sneakers or Your Life.? Their cover featured a Black 
hand holding half of a pair of Air Jordan V in one hand and a black revolver in the other. 
The news media also played their part, portraying these violent crimes and socializing the 
public to understand them as Black problems, ignoring structural and systematic issues 
around classism, racism and gender that also informed the acts.178 Like viral bodies, 
Black youth were portrayed as a contagion to be quarantined.  
	 The beginning of Rick Telander?s SI article from ?Your Sneakers or Your Life? 
captures a story about Micahel Eugene Thomas, who was killed for Air Jordan shoes on 
May 15, 1989. His murder was indicative of the material dangers of merging corporate 
brands with social identities. Telander writes,
Thomas loved Michael Jordan, as well as the shoes Jordan 
endorses, and he cleaned his own pair each evening. He 
kept the cardboard shoe box with Jordan's silhouette on it 
in a place of honor in his room. Inside the box was the sales 
ticket for the shoes. It showed he paid $115.50, the price of 
a product touched by deity. ?We told him not to wear the 
shoes to school,? said Michael's grandmother, Birdie 
Thomas. ?We said somebody might like them,? and he said, 
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?Granny, before I let anyone take those shoes, they'll have 
to kill me.?179
While the price tag was important, to Michael Eugene Thomas, Jordans had meaning 
beyond it; they contained an evolving goal, something almost unattainable, yet worked 
toward and protected with his life. Catherine A. Coleman discusses the violence over, and 
consumption of, Js and how social meaning is inextricably tied to it: ?The brand-name 
goods were the trappings of inclusion. These symbols represent something meaningful 
for those wearing them, whether it is status through the ability to buy or status through 
inclusion.? 180 Through the inseparable linking of the Nike Air Jordan brand with a 
globally recognized Black masculinity, a high markup and resale value, and limited 
production, Js have become synonymous with an authentic and youthful Blackness that 
symbolizes superior physical ability and durability, a unique and limited style, and class 
ascendance?factors and qualities that many young Black men would be reluctant to give 
up as well as desperate to attain.  
	 Importantly, we can begin to understand the slippery ways that viral discourses 
and performances construct the ways in which we understand bodies. Thomas takes the 
individual-as-brand concept181 and, using the Jumpman logo, illustrates how the 
individual?read as brand?becomes a synecdoche for the group and, thus, a means to 
merchandise and index Blackness. Leigh Reiford uses the term ?hypericonizing? to think 
about how Angela Davis? image from the 60s and 70s, which appeared on posters, flyers 
and buttons, urging for the charges of murder and conspiracy against her to be dropped, 
was solidified into a thing that was mobile, sellable, and fetishized, divorced from its 
structures of feeling and historicity, and circulated among public culture.182 These 
?communities of resistance? were succeeded by ?communities of consumption.? 183 
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Indeed, the public (re)presentation and merchandising of Black bodies can be the essence 
of racial and gender malpractice where codes of Black bodies are over/underdetermined 
for the sake of selling product.
The first section of this chapter, critically examined slave ship Brooks, how its 
image became viral and iconic of slavery itself, and how both aural and visual 
performances of rumor and bodies? positions affect the meanings of the bodies in the 
picture and vise versa. An examination of Willis?s image, Absolute Power, which altered 
the image of slave ship Brooks, also considered how unfolding issues like alcoholism, 
which go beyond just stereotypes, became rumors that attached themselves to Black 
bodies as symbols of masculinity, femininity and mechanisms of coping with the 
everyday. This section uses Thomas? image to think through the many people involved in 
the commerce and consumption of Black bodies. Lastly, I used this section to think 
through the relationship between commodities and the transformation of Black bodies 
into things, or ?thingification.? Through Thomas? photo of a gold chain titled, Ode to the 
CMB: Am I Not A Man And A Brother I examine the seal on the bottom of the image of 
slave ship Brooks and what it means when race, gender, and commerce are in the 
foreground. In many ways, ?thingification? is the first step in marketing products, the 
branding of ideas. Whomever does the thingifying significantly determines the subject?s 
scope of meaning. For example, the meanings of the subjects within the mass-produced 
image of slave ship Brooks expand, with Thomas as the architect of the image, adding to 
their complex personhood and the ?things? worth paying attention to, revealing that 
?thingification? is not absolutely pejorative.184 We also see how the modification of viral 
material actually gives it longer shelf-life, so to speak.
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The second section of this chapter explored branding and its residue, what is left 
after the pain or the pleasure of grafting a mark into the body: the keloid, the scarring of 
actual and figurative tissue. Using the (once) popular rumor of the Nike symbol as the 
unfolding action of a slave whip as a lens to understand Thomas? images, I consider the 
raced and gendered implications of his photos, Branded Head and Scarred Chest. Here, I 
also challenged the history associated with the branding of Black bodies in the United 
States by thinking through what it means to choose to brand oneself, using the rituals of 
Black fraternities discussed by Sandra Mizumoto Posey in her essay, ?The Body Art Of 
Brotherhood,? where she interviews select branded, never-branded, and branders of the 
Omega Psi Phi African American fraternity. 
Considering literal and figurative branding, the final section reflected on the 
relationship and conflation between fabricated icons used to sell products by businesses 
and the real bodies that are both present, absent, and criminalized in those images. I 
explored how the icons of certain brands such as Johnnie Walker?s man with a cane 
(referred to by Thomas as ?Johnny Walker?), Morton Salt?s umbrella girl, and Nike?s 
?Jumpman? in particular, come to represent and be associated with raced and gendered 
bodies. The bodies represented by logos carry historical narratives that continue to haunt 
them as bodies in the present, with the Jumpman unable to escape the history of the 
silhouette, which is steeped in early constructions of race.
	 Hank Willis Thomas illustrates the productive and reductive ways in which we 
can carve meaning into visual things, to illuminate and unveil, as well as to create larger, 
systemic issues and concerns. By using traces of the reductive ways that Black bodies 
were seen, he reconstructs, if not their wholeness, their complexity. Importantly, some of 
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those reductive ways of seeing still remain and haunt us in the present. Thomas? 
conceptual photography is, indeed, a haunting?this contact with the painful, difficult, 
and unsettling to overcome.185
	 Our participation as producers, performers, and spectators is what makes an 
average performance a viral one?an act, a behavior, which ceaselessly surfaces to the 
vanguard of our popular consciousness. The outcome of viral performances of Blackness 
in popular culture then, is that their frequency places them in the vanguard of people?s 
consciousness, but the personhood of human (Black) beings, as a result of this frequency, 
is repeatedly simplified. Indeed, this flattening happens in multiple genres and cultural 
contexts. Surely, the ideas of the Black body also have a worldwide recognizability in 
history, literature, art, film, and cultural and political discourse as a significant referent. 
However, the ways in which the Black body is used as a conduit for criminality, the 
locust of deep-seated fears, and as noise?which we will witness unfold in the following 
chapter?cannot be underwritten.
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Chapter 3, I Can?t Live Without My Radio: 
Viral Performances of Black Masculinity in Film and Everyday Life
	 After the photograph/image, yet, before the television and the Internet, the radio 
was used to communicate messages of pleasure, emergency, and politics to a wide 
audience. This communication happened broadly, very quickly, over a short time?
elements crucial to viral performance. In this chapter, close attention is paid to the viral 
performances of and around Black masculinity in relationship to the radio boombox 
within the viral mechanism of mass-distributed film. Looking specifically at Radio 
Raheem?s performances in Spike Lee?s Do The Right Thing allows me to examine a 
virtual moment that reflected the material ways Black men performed and were conflated 
with a conduit for sound, namely, the boombox; as well as a point in history that helped 
to carry Black sound, and thereby a Black imagining, across the country. 
	 Radio Raheem?s story, in many ways, reverberates when reflecting on two highly 
visible moments in the recent past when (young) Black men?s lives?i.e. Eric Garner 
(2014) and Jordan Davis (2012)?were taken by police or civilians. There are indeed, 
semblances between how Radio Raheem is killed, via police chokehold, and the 
circumstances under which his death happens, playing music loudly, and the latter Black 
lives. Viral performances (playing music loudly or using excessive force to subdue Black 
bodies) occur around the viral mechanisms of distributing Do The Right Thing through 
cinemas, VHS, and later DVDs. All of these factors carve out rich acts through which to 
continue my theorization of viral performance, particularly in relationship to Black 
masculinity.
	 The title, I can?t live without my radio, is a gesture towards LL Cool J?s (Ladies 
Love Cool James) 1985 hit ?I Can?t Live Without My Radio? from his debut album 
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Radio, which featured a massive portable tape deck radio?known as the boombox?on 
its cover: the JVC RC-M90 as seen in fig. 3. The title begins to explain the pleasures and 
dangers in the inextricability between mobile conduits of boisterous sound and Black 
male bodies, particularly in the mid-1970s to mid-1980s.
 	 DJ/Radio host, Stretch Armstrong noted that the cover of the record was ?the 
pinnacle of the boombox.? 186 The album established Def Jam as a record label and the 
boombox generally helped to popularize Hip-Hop music, which radio hosts generally did 
not to play in the 1980s. Both the boombox and LL Cool J?s debut album, thus, are 
foundational when one considers the commercial success of Hip-Hop music. LL Cool J?s 
song helps us understand the function of the boombox in this chapter as a weapon and 
Figure 3. LL Cool J, Radio (New York: Def Jam Recordings, 1985).
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instrument of social interaction, autonomy, and entertainment?in some senses it was 
Blackness: easily dismissed as visually/sonically noisy, so loud it leaves you with no 
choice but to feel it, a visual and sonic attachment to and embodiment of the self that was 
both a blessing and a curse.   
	 In ?I Can?t Live Without My Radio,? Cool J articulates how inextricable his radio 
is from his daily personal and cultural life as well as how dangerous it is to wield in 1985 
as a broadcasting vessel. He raps, ?Walking down the street / To the hardcore beat / While 
my JVC vibrates the concrete...Press play everyday / Even on the subway / I would have 
got a summons / But I ran away...See people can?t stop me / Neither can the police / I?m a 
musical maniac to say the least.? 187  Through his lyrics, one can imagine the feeling that 
comes from playing a boombox out loud in public spaces?JVC vibrating the concrete. 
One also hears the ways in which it is a part of everyday life?pressing play everyday. 
Importantly, one will realize how the pedestrian uses of the boombox had been 
criminalized by 1985?would have got a summons but he ran away. The performance of 
playing a boombox in public was seen as extremely important and pleasurable as Cool J 
obviously would risk police encounters to do so. The criminalizing environment around 
playing music loudly from a boombox in the mid-1980s made those who did so seem 
maniacal, ?musical maniac[s] to say the least.? 188
	 Music producer and sound track supervisor George Drakoulias recalled a moment 
that touched on the pleasures of playing a boombox in public. Drakoulias was working 
with Def Jam and picked up a case of product for the Radio album. Seeing two kids 
carrying a radio half of their size, Drakoulias stopped them and insisted that they take a 
cassette of Radio, they cautiously took the tape, put it in their radio, and the first track 
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they played was ?Rock The Bells.? Then, one kid took the entire radio that they had 
carried between them and, with all of his strength, hoisted it onto his shoulder and walked 
away no longer acknowledging George, smiling. From that moment, George knew that 
the album would be great.189 Indeed, many others such as Lisa Lisa, Rosie Perez, and DJ 
Eclipse would express a similar pleasure in being able to blast a song that they liked 
whether it be in a small park, on the block, or in the apartment/house and it did not have 
to be Hip-Hop. This was the high point of the boombox as a mode of being.
	 However, as with any pinnacle, a nadir is soon to follow. Despite the pleasure that 
the boombox generated, the criminalization of playing a boombox in public spaces 
virtually disappeared it from public practice, and thus production, by the late 1980s. The 
reduction in the pedestrian use and availability of the boombox is a reality that one would 
not realize upon viewing Spike Lee?s film, Do The Right Thing, where the figure of Radio 
Raheem was important to Lee?s fictional Bed-Stuy (short for Bedford Stuyvesant, 
Brooklyn) neighborhood.
	 Radio Raheem becomes an exemplary case study for exploring another nuance of 
viral performances of Blackness in popular culture and everyday life: the mutation of life 
into art and art into life. Raheem was not the first, or the last, Black man to carry a 
boombox on his side or shoulder, yet, due to the mass filmic production and news buzz 
around Do The Right Thing, he became the exemplary referent for that performance?
even more so than LL Cool J. Also, throughout Do The Right Thing, Radio Raheem?s 
sonic and visual dissonance in White spaces are so inseparable that his boombox acts as a 
device that brings our attention to the loudness of Black masculinity. Raheem represents 
the disruption of the sounds and looks of normalized Whiteness. He possesses a volume, 
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timber, and vividness of color whose recognition leads to the increased surveillance and 
subduing of his, and other Black men?s, unmuted presence. Radio Raheem points to 
Black men who have played their radios loudly for pleasure, emergency, and political 
reasons; additionally, he conjures Black men perceived as so powerful, that their decibels, 
inseparable from their race, are a threat to the peace of Whiteness and the livelihood of 
White bodies.
	 This chapter will critically examine the socio-cultural role of Radio Raheem 
within Do The Right Thing from the function of his boombox to his interactions with 
different (groups of) characters throughout the film and how he is continually 
(re)presented in everyday life and popular culture. In this analysis, close attention is 
given to the racial associations between Radio Raheem and his music, the film?s 
fascination with him as a sized (large) figure, and how virtual associations and 
perceptions materially affect his body. I also consider how his cosmopolitan Black 
masculinity challenges the perceptions of his body and how his Blackness sounds.
	 The first section of this chapter will trace the early material uses of the radio in the 
U.S., how the radio became the boombox, and the interplay between Black and Brown 
uses of the technology and its production. This analysis assists in understanding the 
political tensions that spawned the use of regulated radio, how deregulated radio 
contributed to the performance of playing music from boomboxes loudly outdoors by 
Black and Brown communities, and how pedestrian use of the boombox reflected 
conceptions of private/public space and eventually led to its demise. 
	 Behind the scenes, Radio Raheem uses his boombox?s rewind, play, and stop 
buttons continually throughout the film, sonically and conceptually forming a seemingly 
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undying performance of Black masculinity that continues to loop long after he leaves the 
scene. Using the buttons featured on the boombox as tags, ?rewind, play, stop, and fast-
forward,? the second section uses the said buttons to organize the varying performances 
of Radio Raheem in everyday life, film, and popular culture. This second section uses 
content and performance analysis to examine four different facets of Radio Raheem?s 
viral performances of Black masculinity in Do The Right Thing: 1) his performativity; 2) 
how his character and the assertion of his space comes into being through repetition and 
amplification; 3) the viral use of excessive force to subdue Black bodies; 4) how Radio 
Raheem is repeatedly resurrected, even after his figurative death, in popular culture and 
everyday life. By performance, I am considering the body itself?its gestures, speech, 
and stylized expressions, the social means in which ideas are created around Black men?s 
bodies, the sociocultural context in which the performance is taking place as well as 
being interpreted from, and how the bodies of different audiences (do not) react to 
viewing the performances I examine.
	 ?Rewind? will discuss Radio Raheem?s referents (such as Joe Radio and Raheem 
Abdul Muhammad) as people and characters that emerged before the Radio Raheem that 
we come to know through researching him in Do The Right Thing. Representing the paths 
that Radio Raheem has traveled before, they are useful in imagining how his predecessors 
handled everyday life and racial politics as well as their belonging in Black communities 
and imaginaries.
	 ?Play? will explore Radio Raheem?s interactions with other characters in Do The 
Right Thing.  Through this exploration I think through how Radio Raheem?s Black 
masculinity not only belongs to the block, but also goes beyond it as an expression of 
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cosmopolitan Blackness. I use Radio Raheem?s cosmopolitan Blackness to interpret how 
he sounds, not only as an expression of leisure and enjoyment alone, but as a counter to 
the forces of anti-Black racism and White entitlement that surrounds him and his Black 
and Brown neighbors. Indeed, these forces perform their loudness in a different, 
systematic, and more veiled way that requires one to turn their volumes up to be heard in 
a small way.
	 ?Stop? uses Radio Raheem?s final social and physical interaction with Sal to begin 
indexing the viral use of excessive force to subdue Black bodies. Different from the 
forms of viral performance that I have explored so far, the viral use of excessive force to 
subdue Black bodies has to do with how Black bodies act as visual and sonic things that 
instruct other bodies in how to deal with them. This instruction, however, is based on 
rumor and mass-produced video and images that distort the complex personhood and 
human fragility of Black bodies, distortions that lead to excessive surveillance and 
overestimations of strength and danger. The use of ?Stop? is also my own appeal to cease 
the viral performance of excessive force for the wellness of (Black) bodies everywhere.
	 The final section, ?Fast-Forward,? surveys the mutations of Radio Raheem in 
popular culture and everyday life. Using examples such as Huey Freeman on The 
Boondocks and a Nelson Mandela poster design competition, I examine Radio Raheem?s 
outdoor mobile use of the boombox on the shoulder and in the hand as a viral 
performance of Black masculinity, carrying and transforming meaning as the contexts he 
travels to change. I also use Eric Garner?s and Jordan Russell Davis? stories as real life 
anecdotes to examine the viral use of excessive force to subdue Black men?s bodies in 
relationship to how they sound, which is inseparable in many ways from how they look. 
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	 Radio Raheem is an exemplary popular culture case study through which we can 
understand the racial and gendered politics of playing music, particularly through a 
portable sound system such as the boombox, in public spaces. Indeed, he became the 
most recognizable figure that represented Black men?s innovative uses of the boombox. 
What becomes a product of this viral performance is a stock character in the Black and 
public imaginary: the Black male boombox-wielder in the streets. The repetition of this 
figure in everyday life and popular culture made him legible. Raheem?s cosmopolitanism 
in the film, however, articulates a certain extracultural understanding that travels beyond 
the block inasmuch as it communicates an intracultural understanding that fixes him to 
the block where his Black masculinity is grounded. The tension between the extra/
intracultural make him illegible in many ways. Mark Anthony Neal discusses Black 
masculinity and cosmopolitanism in relationship to the character Stringer Bell from 
HBO?s The Wire and how his cosmopolitanism?how he is seen as a citizen of the world
?was largely illegible in the context of the masculinities articulated on the block. 
Similarly, I argue that Radio Raheem, and many other Black men that allude to him, 
(in)voluntarily perform cosmopolitanism broadcasting a sort of performance that disrupts 
the norms of their perceived masculinities. The radio, as ancestor to, and component of, 
the boombox, is also crucial to perceiving Raheem?s articulation of Black masculinity 
throughout Do The Right Thing.
The Radio
	 Radio programming has changed significantly since the second and third decades 
of the twentieth century from a more locally-focused source of news and entertainment to 
a more syndicated and nationally-focused source. I am particularly concerned with the 
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trend that destroyed the connections between radio stations and the local communities 
that had access to and control of them, which Charles Fairchild has referred to as 
?deterritorializing the radio.?  The deterritorialization of the radio is a useful device in 
determining how the radio?s use by everyday people has changed between the radio boom 
and the late-80s, understanding the market forces of broadcasting (de)regulation, and how 
this affected Black men?s ability to express themselves through the medium of radio.
	 April 10th, 1912, Carpathia responded to the distress calls of the Titanic.  The 
monumental disaster of the Titanic colliding with an iceberg and losing over three 
quarters of its population spawned a number of regulations, wireless communications 
being one of them.190 In an effort to prevent such a disaster from occurring again, from 
the Radio Act of 1912 until the Radio Act of 1927, radio stations were mandated to obtain 
a federal license to broadcast, which was controlled by the U.S. Department of 
Commerce. Among many of the guidelines for possessing a license was that if a distress 
signal was received, it would be prioritized before any business, news, or entertainment 
for the public good.  This was the beginning of the radio?s widespread use: forewarning 
people of impending danger so that appropriate measures could be taken to make sure 
that everyone involved was safe.  
	 The only caveat to the government ?regulation? of broadcasting was that, then 
Secretary, Herbert Hoover could not deny broadcasting licenses to any person or 
corporation.  He could only choose the wave length that would result in the least 
interference and penalize violators of federal regulations, in other words, his hands were 
tied.191  Unlimited licenses over limited frequencies created too many competing stations 
for the same signals.  Radio congestion ensued.
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	 In response to the dissatisfaction of audiences and broadcasters alike, the Radio 
Act of 1927 was established, which limited the amount of licenses that could be issued 
and that it was responsible for.  The Radio act of 1927, which, after it was abolished, 
established the Federal Communications Commission, restricted the amount of stations 
one corporate or individual entity could own.
	 In the late 1920s both the home radio and the fireplace were central social areas 
for entertainment and competed for families? attention throughout North America. People 
spent as much time fiddling with the radio as they did with the fireplace logs. They did 
this to achieve the most relaxation and audiovisual entertainment.192 The downsizing of 
radio helped it to become a common console in the American home; it became more 
ergonomic, disguised as desks, lamp stands, and small tables, blending technology with 
multipurpose use.193  The combination of the radio with standard furniture veiled ?the 
machine,? then considered as an intrusion of the home.194 ?...[When] radios began to 
appear in American homes, music no longer was confined to one or two rooms.  Victorian 
attempts at room specialization were gradually overridden by efforts to draw the family 
together and to simplify room arrangements and decor.? 195 The radio played an important 
part in the collapse of private-use and public-use rooms within the American home, 
which were separated according to Victorian notions of the home as a sacred space.196  
The collapse in public and private space was an early glimpse into how the function of 
the radio evolved as it became more mobile.
	 For many Black Americans, public and private were already collapsed because 
homes had either historically been unable to be owned or afforded due to racial bias in 
home lending197 or were vulnerable to egregious intrusions, such as raids, due to legacies 
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of racism forged in slavery and the Second Slavery experienced in post-emancipation.198 
Victorian notions of the home as a sacred space had to be rethought by Black Americans, 
creating sacred spaces in locations that were both public and private, sometimes carved 
out by music, prayer, and ritual. The distinguishing factors between public-use and 
private-use rooms, thus, decreased in Black households.
	 In 1920s Chicago, the early uses of the radio were predominantly by the working 
class.199  Retailers and radio journalists were aware that workers would construct their 
own radios or antennas as a hobby.200  Workers would strive to get the maximum signal 
distance out of their homemade devices.  Listening to the radio was an active communal 
event whereby in eighty-five percent of the homes families listened together.201  The 
?basement clubs,? ?social clubs,? or ?athletic clubs? were spaces that second-generation 
young people would frequent to escape parental supervision and socialize to a blaring 
radio in the backdrop.202  Thus, in contrast to bringing the family together, sometimes the 
radio separated it by generation.  
	 Ethnic groups in Chicago understood the radio as a means to keep their people in 
touch with native culture.  Until the arrival of broadcast deregulation, the radio continued 
to have a longstanding relationship with local communities.  Since the passage of the 
Communications Act of 1934, the enforced regulations of early broadcasting insured that 
small, local, noncommercial radio stations dominated the airwaves because no more than 
one person or entity could own a station providing the same service in the same 
community with a limit of five stations per owner?the 5/5/5 rule.  
	 The deterritorialization of the radio turned regulated broadcasting into free market 
broadcasting.  Free market broadcasting is a type of laissez-faire approach to 
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broadcasting that involves less government regulation of corporate ownership of 
broadcasting stations and prioritizes more emphasis on the economic power the 
broadcasting industry.  Public preference is assumed to be measurable by audience 
listenership or viewership without considering how an audience?s preferences are 
informed by that which is broadcasted to them.203 As a result, there was a gradual 
increase in the corporate ownership of AM, FM, and TV stations over twenty years, from 
1953 to 1974, from 5/5/5 rule to 7/7/7 rule. Then, within ten years, in 1985 it almost 
doubled to allow a 12/12/12 rule. Approximately seven years after that, in 1992, it more 
than doubled to allow a 30/30/30 rule. Four years later, by 1996, all limits were virtually 
eliminated via the Telecommunications Act.204 Companies, particularly Clear Channel, 
would go from ?owning forty stations in 1996 to 1,240 in 2003.? 205
	 Coinciding with the rise of the radio?s deregulation from 1975-1996 was the 
creation and wide distribution of the boombox, which tapered off in the mid-?80s. Just as 
the radio played an important role in collapsing public and private space within the home, 
the boom box, or what Radio Raheem calls his ?box,? would play an important role in 
collapsing public and private space outside of the home due to its portable nature.  
Whereas the radio was fiddled with as much as fireplace logs (in the home), the boombox 
became what Andre Torres?the editor of Wax Poetics?called ?the sonic campfire,? an 
outdoor creation of a space to congregate and exchange stories and feeling through the 
body and sound.206 
	 Unlike the transistor radio, which was portable, had smaller speakers, and was 
only able to receive AM/FM frequencies, the boombox was able to do this and it also 
featured a tape deck?allowing its users to choose the audio that they broadcasted, with a 
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superior sound quality, and amplification ability. In the midst of increasing singular 
corporate ownership and control of radio stations and what they could broadcast, was a 
device that allowed anyone to broadcast?while not as far-reaching as the radio?
anything they wanted as loudly as their speakers would permit. Indeed, it was this 
inability to have a semblance of control in the music that one listened to that was part of 
the intrigue of the boombox, which featured a tape deck that allowed one to broadcast 
whichever tape e207 had. In the mid-to-late ?70s, Hip-Hop music gained popularity 
through people playing in their boomboxes what radio DJs and personalities refused to 
broadcast on commercial radio.208
	 The production of boomboxes began in Japan. Here, living space was smaller in 
relationship to most North American cities and, when it came to home stereos, there was 
less room for the larger component systems that appeared in North American homes.209  
Initially used as a device to assist the next generation that were living in smaller urban 
dwellings, the unexpected popularity boombox delivered a new frontier of audio 
technology.210 While boomboxes were created in Japan out of the need for a large stereo 
sound in smaller living quarters, when they appeared in the U.S. in the mid-1970s, they 
became popular with African American and Hispanic youths in a different way?often 
hoisting them onto their shoulders or holding them by their handles as they walked down 
the street blasting music.211 The transportability of the boombox and its advanced tape 
deck made it easy to share and create music in ways that had not been performed as 
loudly and as pedestrian as before. The stop and rewind button were crucial controls, 
allowing users to repeatedly listen to and broadcast their tapes anywhere and anytime that 
they wanted, untethering the stronghold of radio programming, and contributing to their 
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viral use?sharing tape recordings and loudly playing music/speeches outdoors. Between 
the mid-70s and mid-80s the production of heavier, bigger, and louder boomboxes 
increased alongside advancements in audio creativity and consumer demand.212
	 Indeed, the mass-production of thousands of models of boomboxes is connected 
to their viral stylized use by Black and Brown youths. Mechanical production interplays 
with socio-cultural production, the two informing each other of how to exist in ways that 
neither of them could do on their own. The need for bigger and louder boomboxes was, 
indeed, influenced by shoulder/hand-carrying youths who blasted music from the box into 
the streets. Similar to the wide availability of the radio early on, which produced a 
crowding of the airwaves, Rosie Perez described situations where the widespread use of 
the boombox was a nuisance and, when played in areas that were too tight, would cause 
?conflicting music,? with too many people playing different music at once.213
	 The increased pedestrian use of the boombox also led to its demise. As a result of 
complaints from residents across various northeastern states ranging from Massachusetts 
to New Jersey, in the mid-80s more city officials began to create and enforce punishments 
for people that played excessively loud music in public. These punishments would range 
from $50-$1000 fines, impounded radios, and/or imprisonment. One can also imagine 
how these punishments disproportionately affected youths of substantial color, who 
began using the boombox in a way that, ?wasn?t meant for you to walk down the street 
with...? 214 Many also link the phasing out of the boombox to advancements in mobile 
technology such as the Sony Walkman and Discman, the plastic and quieter boombox, 
and Apple?s Ipod?all devices that maintain music?s mobility, yet, privatize its sound. 
Without assuming that privatized sound is an improvement over public sound, one artist, 
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Tyler Gibney, credited the recent mobile music technology, which contributed to the 
boombox?s demise, with creating listeners who ?advertis[e] their unavailability for social 
interaction.? 215 Other ways of broadcasting music, messages, and news had to be sought 
by Black and Brown people that affirmed and asserted our, what Anita Gonzales refers to 
as, ?Black sensibilities,??stylized ways of being in relation to each other and our 
environments.? 216
	 Before arriving at what some of these other ways are, I will continue exploring 
the fiction of Radio Raheem that brings the meaning of the boombox to life in a way that 
the form and function of the object itself cannot. As Paul Mullins states in Race and 
Affluence: An Archaeology of African America and Consumer Culture, ?The physical 
attributes of an object, systemic function, and intended use loosely circumscribe the 
symbolic possibilities of that object, but for the most part form and function do not 
impose particularly profound limitation on meaning.? 217 The fiction of Radio Raheem 
gives us a lens into the meaning of his respective instrument, not only to him, but also his 
respective community. The character of Radio Raheem brings the tensions between Black 
men and the radio/boombox as an essential medium of being, communication, and 
expression to an apex in popular culture. In many ways, his boombox served the function 
of early regulated radio: forewarning people of impending danger so that appropriate 
measures could be taken to make sure that everyone involved was safe. His anthem, 
?Fight The Power,? was an emergency broadcast not typically considered a priority in 
normal states of emergency.
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Rewind: History of Radio Raheem in Everyday Life and Popular Culture
	 Rewinding is a mechanism that gives one the ability to reverse something that 
was on a forward path. After an analog tape ends, in the absence of an auto-reverse 
mechanism, rewind is the button that, once pushed, allows its user to begin at an earlier 
point. It is a means to travel back in a moment in time, often to recover something to 
enjoy or better understand in the present.
	 Radio Raheem, contrary to popular belief, was not a creation of Spike Lee. In 
fact, he began as a real person from Spike Lee?s childhood?this guy that everyone in the 
Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn called Joe Radio.  In the mid-sixties, Lee 
discusses how Joe Radio would stand on the corner with a small transistor radio, virtually 
attached to his shoulder.  Joe Radio would be playing WMCA Good Guys or WABC 
featuring Cousin Brucie 24/7.218 Importantly, understanding Spike Lee?s recollection of 
Joe Radio, and the way in which he was never without his transistor radio, we begin to 
see the seeds of how inextricable the radio was to expressions of Black masculinity and 
identity within Black communities?with everyone calling him Joe Radio, his transistor 
radio was him.  Lee?s memory of Joe Radio emerged decades later as the character Radio 
Raheem in Do The Right Thing.
	 The first time that a Raheem with a radio appears in popular culture is not in Do 
The Right Thing, but almost a decade earlier on Saturday Night Live (SNL) at the end of 
1980.  I found this out while perusing my twitter feed in 2011 and seeing one of Chuck 
D?s (@MrChuckD)?part of the Hip-Hop group Public Enemy?tweets.  On September 
22, 2011 he wrote, ?Eddie Murphy broke through on a skit on SNL in 1980 as a character 
named Raheim (sic) & ended the skit with a giant BOX player that jarred the cast.? 219  
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	 Chuck D is referring to when Murphy played a Black basketball player named 
Raheem Abdul Muhammad who was invited to an interview on an SNL comedy sketch 
named ?Weekend Update.? He was being interviewed for weekend sports by Joe Piscopo 
about a fictional scenario in which a judge in Cleveland ruled that all Cleveland 
basketball teams must have a minimum of two White players. The scenario is a sarcastic 
blow to the notion that basketball is a Black sport, so Black (and Black supremacist) that 
their is systemic discrimination against White players. A racial quota is proposed as a 
resolution to the racial bias.  Raheem, the interviewee, wore an afro and donned a black 
and yellow varsity jacket. Piscopo asks him, ?What?s the story Raheem??  Poking fun at 
the stereotype of a dumb Black athlete, Raheem begins, ?I been a junior at Cleveland 
high going on seven years now.? He continues on a rant about racial appropriation: 
We ain?t got much, I say at least let us have basketball. Is 
nothing sacred? Anytime we get something going good, 
y?all got to move in on it. In the sixties we wore platform 
shoes, then y?all had to wear platform shoes. In the early 
seventies we braided our hair, then in the late seventies 
y?all had to braid yo? hair. Now it?s 1980, we on welfare 
and by the end of the next year, y?all gon? be on welfare 
too. [Camera does a closeup on his face in the midst of 
rampant audience applause]. I don?t see a judge saying that 
every two bathroom attendants got to be White. All I?m 
sayin? is that y?all stay on the hockey courts and the polo 
fields and let us stay on the basketball courts. ?Cause if God 
wanted Whites to be equal to Blacks, everybody?d have one 
of these [he pulls a huge boombox from underneath the 
table and places it in front of him, as seen in fig. 3.1, as he 
glares with lips pursed unintimidated by the camera in front 
of him or the news anchor to his right].220
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Figure 3.1. Saturday Night Live, ?Weekend Update,? Season 6, Episode 3, Produced by 
Jean Doumanian (New York: Time Life Video, 1980), Photograph, June 10, 2013.
The SNL satire amplifies issues around intellectual property and cultural appropriation as 
much as it questions the possibilities of those notions. Everything that Raheem names as 
something going good that Whites move in on can be traced to Eastern European (i.e. 
platform shoes and welfare), or Eastern Asian (i.e. the boombox) origins, with braids as 
the only exception; the subtext being: no performance is original enough for anyone to 
claim ownership to.  
	 Raheem Abdul Muhammad?s satire also exposes the flaws in current notions 
around affirmative action and colorblind approaches to solving systemic racism. When 
Murphy suggests that no one is trying to create racial minimums for service jobs?one of 
the few sectors that affirmative action benefitted on behalf of Blacks?it stands as a 
critique to anyone who espouses ?reverse racism? within opportunities that create 
significant increases in class and social mobility, but would not raise equal concern for 
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positions that offer less significant class and social mobility. Important for this project, 
and indicative in Murphy?s statement about the myth of racial equality, is the notion that 
the boombox is an essential part of the material lives of Black people, Black men, and 
Black masculinity in particular.
	 ?Weekend Update? exemplifies how comedic performance can make sense of 
how technology produces a way of understanding concepts, ideas, and even individuals 
and their cultural background. What Murphy does by saying, ?if God would have wanted 
Whites to be equal to Blacks, everyone would have one of these (boomboxes),? brings 
our attention to how signature this musical instrument was to Black life. The common 
occurrence of, or association with, Black men in everyday life using boomboxes in the 
mid to late-1970s and 1980s to play music outdoors cannot be understated. Discussing 
this interplay of technology with identity, Tara Rodgers explains that varying forms of 
embodiment became constituted in forms of audio technology as well as what they were 
called.221 Indeed, these boomboxes came to be known as ?ghettoblasters,? dangerously 
associating Blackness and Brownness with a given ghettoness (or loudness/noisiness/
ability to disturb) and the specific ways in which Black and Brown people, particularly 
Black American men, used boomboxes that differed from White norms. The boombox, 
called the ?blaster? here, becomes interlaced with homogeneous neighborhoods 
possessing severe barriers to exit, what is known as the ghetto.222 ?Weekend Update? was 
an exemplar of this connection in comedic performance.
	 The SNL episode represents the indexing of Raheem in popular culture and 
everyday life as a disruptor of White norms as he puts America?s racial perceptions on 
blast and takes over the news interview. Importantly, it sets the stage for his rapid 
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ubiquity in popular culture henceforth as Radio Raheem, troubling, or pleasuring, visual 
and aural fields with Blackness and the boombox. Using his speech for political critique, 
his boombox as a part of his identity and as a device to amplify affect would be 
represented in Do The Right Thing?s Radio Raheem, forever the reference to Black men 
carrying their boomboxes in the streets. Thus, while Radio Raheem was not the first 
Black man to carry a boombox, he would become the most recognizable Black man 
carrying a boombox, a result of the viral mechanism of distributing film?mass-
producing moving images able to be viewed nation/worldwide.
	 Aurally, the name Raheem evokes African American and/or Arab maleness. In the 
U.S., it is a commonly used name for Black men. Choosing the name ?Raheem,? Murphy 
is purposefully aligning himself with Black maleness and masculinity in the U.S. He 
uses, ?why did He give us this,? (emphasis mine) in an attempt to identify with/as a 
collective. While his position as the talking head for Black folk is problematic, Murphy is 
tapping into a performance that was so widespread in the mid-70s and 80s that it could be 
called viral. With the advent of the boombox in the mid-70s, Black folk were not the only 
ones blaring audio loudly outdoors, but they potentially coined, and certainly 
popularized, the carrying of the boombox on the shoulders and in public; thus, making it 
fashionable and functional.
It is the point at which the radio223 becomes portable in the form of a boombox?
this potentially clamorous conduit of sound, controllable in terms of the user?s agency to 
choose the song he or she plays (i.e the cassette tape)?and also audible to the extent of 
its ability to carve out a loud and mobile aural sphere224 that the boombox as a weapon 
and an instrument is possible, which will be further explored through Radio Raheem?s 
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interaction with characters throughout Do The Right Thing, the destruction of his 
boombox, and the varying forms of Black masculinity that refer back to Radio Raheem 
long after the film is over. 	
Play (Loudly): Radio Raheem in Do The Right Thing
Play is a button on a boombox that can be pressed to listen to its corresponding 
audio material. It is a verb that denotes performance through the participation in an 
activity either repeatedly or ephemerally. To play is to compete against, or counter 
another player?s actions. To play is to represent something theatrically or on film. 
Importantly, to play, is to engage in leisure activity. By pressing play on a boombox and 
loudly broadcasting the sounds, Radio Raheem activates the latter, repeatedly producing 
opportunities for social interaction, critical thought, and enjoyment.
Spike Lee?s Do The Right Thing takes place in a fictional 1989 Bed-Stuy on 
Stuyvesant Ave. between Quincy Ave. and Lexington Ave., it?s 100 degrees outside, and 
considering the steady deregulation of radio from 1975-1996?culminating in the 
Telecommunications Act,225  as well as the crack epidemic of the 1980s, this Bed-Stuy 
community seems more fictional than real (i.e. no visible signs of crack users/houses,226 a 
Black radio personality playing Black artists of his choosing, and impeccably clean 
streets). Thus, the previous examples of how the radio was used in different locales and 
times adds insight, as opposed to anachronism, to the already disorienting nature of this 
fictional work of art. However, the racial tensions that the movie conveys are no less real 
than they are today, especially with the history of redlining and gentrification in urban 
areas occupied by Blacks.227
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	 The neighborhood is largely Black, containing not only African American 
residents, but residents from elsewhere in the African Diaspora. It is also noticeably 
multi-ethnic with American descendants from southeastern Asia, Italy, and Latin 
America. There is much tension between, on one hand, the younger and older generations 
of Black people who recognize that there are no Black-owned businesses, and on the 
other hand, the business owners,228the Italian and southeast Asian descendants of Bed-
Stuy. Racism, space, and entitlement to space are important issues at the crux of many of 
the conflicts in the film.
	 Following a scene where ML, Coconut Sid, and Sweet Dick Willie were being 
surveilled by police slowly driving their police car past where they all were sitting, ML 
disappointingly and angrily goes on to ?break it down? to the two other Black men as 
they sit on chairs outside: ?A mothafucking year off the mothafucking boat and...[the 
Koreans] already got a business229 in our neighborhood, a good business, occupying a 
building that has been boarded up for longer than I care to remember.? ML recognizes the 
neighborhood as a Black neighborhood, albeit one with increased police surveillance and 
without Black businesses?which begs the question why this is so. 
	 Coconut Sid replies, ?It?s got to be because we are Black.230 Ain?t no other 
explanation.? Coconut Sid garners a cultural explanation that points toward structural 
issues of systemic racial discrimination as central factors in Black disenfranchisement. It 
is as George Lipsitz sarcstically asserts in The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, ??We 
[financial institutions] can?t give you a loan today because we?ve discriminated against 
your race so effectively in the past that you have not been able to accumulate any equity 
from housing and pass it down through the generations.?? 231
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	 ML responds, ?I will be one happy fool when we open our own business right 
here in our neighborhood. I swear to God I will be the first in line to spend what little 
money I got.? Then Sweet Dick Willie says mockingly, ?You know you mothafuckas 
always talkin that Keith Sweat shit I?m gon...you ain?t gon do a goddamn thang, you hear 
me, but sit ya?ll monkey ass on this corner. But I?ll tell you what I?m gon do, you hear 
me. I?m gon go over dere and give them Koreans some more of my money. The fuck out 
my goddamn way it?s Miller time.? From the tensions raised here, we can already see 
issues concerning redlining, gentrification, and marginalization that are haunting and 
disillusioning Black residents whose issues are not heard. Indeed, these are racial 
emergencies that are not considered priorities, which lead to disasters of titanic 
proportions.
	 In this fictional microcosm of the world we live in whose anti-Black racism is so 
loud, yet cloaked in silence, Do The Right Thing uses Radio Raheem to elucidate a way 
of asserting one?s self in the world by being heard loudly. Radio Raheem, then, not only 
captures Lee?s fantasies for Black cosmopolitanism amongst Black men, but also the way 
in which Black men carrying boomboxes was already a viral performance. He executes 
the viral performance of masculinity that was ?Play (loudly), Stop, Rewind, Play 
(loudly)??this repeated act of playing his favorite song through his boombox, this act 
that makes it so that every time you see him, you hear him as though his song never 
stopped, as though the performance was seamless. It was a performance that Raheem 
returned to so many times, he became known as Radio Raheem. Throughout Do The 
Right Thing he is never without his black and red Tecsonic Promax J-1 Super Jumbo 
Audio box with kente cloth rapped around the handle for added cushion, leather red, 
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green, yellow and black Africa medallion over his ?Bed-Stuy Do Or Die? t-shirt, LOVE 
and HATE gold knuckle duster rings, camo shorts, and Nike Air Revolutions.
	 A couple of scenes were telling about the relationship between the Black and 
Brown youth in Do The Right Thing and Radio Raheem and all of their relationships to 
boomboxes.  In the midst of a different kind of viral performance of Black city-youth, we 
are brought into a scene where the teenagers from the neighborhood scrape cans on the 
sidewalk to remove the lids. As the camera pans out, there is water gushing out onto the 
street and girls standing and playing in it with their shoes. One of the older Black teens?
Ahmad?excitedly opens the fire hydrant and another teen?Punchy?uses the lidless 
cylinders to control the current of water as it gushes out of the fire hydrant to soak 
everyone. We hear ?Fight the Power? at the same time that we see Radio Raheem. Cee 
taps Punchy on the shoulder, ?It?s Radio. Radio, man.?  Punchy and Cee respond, 
?What?s up Radio!? Raheem readies himself to walk past the teenagers who immediately 
recognize him from the block, reading him as familiar, even as he stands out, almost 
estranged from the rest of the adrenalized teens. 
125
He does not need to say anything, but expresses, in his demeanor seen in fig. 3.2, that 
they need to relax and 
allow him to pass without 
getting wet. As a sign of 
respect to Radio Raheem, 
Cee and Punchy sit on the 
hydrant to repress the 
water. Figure 3.2. Spike Lee, ?Radio Raheem Bites Lower Lip,? 
	 The same respect is Do The Right Thing, directed by Spike Lee, (1989; Universal City: Universal Studios Home Entertainment, 
not given to the proceeding 2009), Photograph, August 2, 2014.
Italian passerby, Charlie, as a child on the block yells out, ?You ain?t got no business in 
this neighborhood anyway!? Punchy blasts Charlie with water despite his insistence that, 
?there's going to be a lot of fuckin' trouble if you get this car wet.? The police arrive and 
officer Long turns the water off, disrupting an act that took the youth beyond the 
smothering heat of the block. The water, like sound, is something that penetrates the 
illusion of indoors and outdoors, an assertion that the block did not belong privately to 
anyone. After the man and his convertible are soaked, the implication is that as much as 
one tries to create this notion of private space, everything is always already outdoors and 
public.232
	 Through the behavior of the Puerto Ricans, and particularly the Blacks, in Do The 
Right Thing, one can see that both groups compete for dominance in the aural sphere 
through their music. In one scene, Mookie, dedicates a Salsa song titled, ?Tu y Yo,? by 
Ruben Blad?s, to his Latina girlfriend, Tina. The Puerto Rican men sitting on a stoop 
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enjoy the broadcasted song and are playing it on top of a car out of their small boombox. 
Radio Raheem stumbles upon their music session. Instead of asking them to turn their 
music down, which recalls moments where expressions of Black and Brown bodies are 
attempted to be muted, Radio Raheem turns the volume up on his box. All the men on the 
stoop are enraged by the aural encroachment and one of them yell, ?I want to listen to my 
Salsa music!? While holding the rest of them back, Steve yells to the group, ?Chill!? He 
then shouts to Radio Raheem, ?You think you got it like that bro?? In support, his friends 
yell, ?blow it away!? Steve proceeds to increase the volume of the Salsa music. As seen 
in fig. 3.3, Radio Raheem confidently increases the volume of ?Fight The Power.? Unable 
to compete, Steve, as seen in fig. 3.4, turns his volume down and disappointingly 
concedes, ?you got it bro.?
Figure 3.3. Spike Lee, ?Radio Raheem Turns Up The Volume,? Do The Right Thing, 
directed by Spike Lee, (1989; Universal City: Universal Studios Home Entertainment, 
2009), Photograph, August 2, 2014.
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	 The competition that Raheem engages in with the Puerto Rican men playing Salsa 
Figure 3.4. Spike Lee, ?You Got It Bro,? Do The Right Thing, directed by Spike Lee, 
(1989; Universal City: Universal Studios Home Entertainment, 2009), Photograph, 
August 2, 2014.
music is a nod to the material uses of the boombox in Black and Brown communities. 
Not only is playing it as loud as possible a performance of masculinity, and a general 
form of entertainment, but when Raheem wins, he experiences a sudden victory over the 
racial tensions in the community. This victory was signaled not only by the peaceful 
exchange, in which the loudest sound system got to play, or him throwing his fist into the 
air, but by the little Black boy that runs up to him and gives him a five. While the material 
use of the boombox?using it for competition and playing music loudly?harmonizes 
him with the block, possessing the loudest sound system is a source of enjoyment that 
takes Raheem beyond the block, connecting him to a larger aural ethics unlimited by the 
confines of racial discrimination, gentrification, and radio deregulation. The respect 
displayed between him, after turning his music up louder, and Steve who turns his 
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boombox down and concedes, ?you got it bro,? speaks to the type of cosmopolitanism of 
which Radio Raheem is a part of, one that revolves around an aural ethics where sound 
systems and belief systems interplay. The loudness with which he plays "Fight The 
Power" is just as, if not more, important as the lyrical content it contains. The loudness, 
as well as the content, is an assertion of a Black public sphere.
	 Expanding on the idea of J?rgen Habermas? public sphere233 the Black public 
sphere is defined by the Black Public Sphere Collective first as a critical social 
imaginary.234 This imaginary ?draws energy from the vernacular practices of street talk 
and new musics, radio shows and church voices, entrepreneurship and circulation.? 235  
They continue, ?It marks a wider sphere of critical practice and visionary politics, in 
which intellectuals can join with the energies of the street, the school, the church, and the 
city to constitute a challenge to the exclusionary violence of much public space in the 
United States.? 236 Radio Raheem?s cosmopolitan Blackness represents this merger where 
the energies of the street and the intellectual can converge into an explosion of sound, an 
articulation of the Black public sphere. Radio Raheem?s blasting of ?Fight The Power? as 
an assertion of a Black public sphere will, in and of its boisterous self, fill in a silence that 
Habermas? bourgeois public sphere generated: the possibility of a public sphere that is 
created by those who are or have historically been propertyless or considered as property.
	 Not only did Radio Raheem create, or add to the notion of, a Black public sphere, 
but he also deconstructed the notion of private and public. If we use the earlier example 
of the Victorian-influenced Americans using their radios within the home?which 
Habermas considers as inextricable from the private?we can begin to understand the 
way in which Radio Raheem, and perhaps the Black public sphere, deconstructs the 
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private. By taking the radio, the boombox in this instance, out of the home and onto the 
streets, Radio Raheem converges the private with the public sphere, thus, revealing the 
interdependence/changeability of each sphere. I read Radio Raheem?s music as creating a 
counterspace to the exclusionary violence of restrictive public/private spaces. As critical 
theorist Nancy Fraser reminds us, ?Virtually from the beginning, counterpublics 
contested the exclusionary norms of the bourgeois public, elaborating alternative styles of 
political behavior and alternate norms of public speech.? 237 His sound system was, 
indeed, his belief system, which emphasized a broad vision of social interaction and 
dialogue aimed at fighting oppressive authority through song, or as Chuck D so 
eloquently raps in ?Fight The Power,? ?swingin? while I?m singin?.? 238
	 In the beginning of the movie, Sal?s eldest son, Vito, plays music so loudly in his 
headphones that he cannot hear his older brother, Pino, give him directions. Nonetheless, 
no one except for Vito could hear the music. This scene represented a different kind of 
aural sphere for the ways in which it privatized what could be heard, affecting no one but 
the individual, closing Vito off from social interaction with his family or the block. Yet, 
Sal did not try to subdue Vito?s sound or ask him to turn his music off. This contrasts 
greatly with the type of aural sphere that Radio Raheem conveyed when he blasted his 
music, which encouraged social interaction (or conflict) instead of disallowing it, affected 
more than Radio Raheem, and interacted with and enlivened the block.
	 Following a scene where Public Enemy?s ?Fight The Power? is blasting in the 
background, Radio Raheem turns his volume down to greet Mookie and conveys a 
metaphorical boxing match between love, which was engraved in his right knuckle duster 
ring, and hate, which was engraved on his left knuckle duster ring. As seen in fig. 3.5, 
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love wins after hate 
is ?on the ropes." 
Radio Raheem, 
relaxing his face and 
smiling, told 
Mookie, ?I love you 
bro.? It resembled a 
Figure 3.5. Spike Lee, ?It?s A Devastating Right and Hate Is 
Hurt,? Do The Right Thing, directed by Spike Lee (1989; scene from the 
Universal City: Universal Studios Home Entertainment, 2009), 
Photograph, August 4, 2014. movie Night of the 
Hunter where Reverend Harry Powell, a serial killer that marries women and murders 
them, discusses the story of right hand left hand, the story of good and evil, illustrating it 
with the tattoos of the letters g-o-o-d and e-v-i-l on his fingers engaging in a hand-wrestle 
where love wins, as seen in fig. 
3.6. He explicitly revealed, 
perhaps for the first time in the 
film, his knowledge beyond the 
block. His (re)presentation of a 
scene from a 1955 black and 
white film aligns him with a Figure 3.6. Charles Laughton, The Night of the 
Hunter, directed by Charles Laughton (1955; New 
cosmopolitan Black masculinity York: Criterion Collection, 2010), Photograph, July 
20, 2014.
that stands out from popular 
conceptions of Black men in the streets. Raheem?s monologue is very much a disruption 
of the performance of the boombox-blasting intimidating troublemaker that he may have 
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established thus far. Exposing this deeper side of his personhood is the only time that he 
voluntarily turns his volume down.	
	 The notion of the interplay between sound systems and belief systems clashes 
both times that Raheem encounters Sal. Interactions between Raheem and Sal are points 
in the film where the disagreements between White and Black performances of aural 
space reach the apex of their conflict. Radio Raheem?s music is sonically revolting?both 
in the resistance it incites and celebrates as well as for the dis-ease it creates in Sal?s aural 
sphere.
	 Raheem walks directly into the next scene, he turns his volume up, hardens his 
face, expressing a stoicism, and the camera pans out as he opens the door to Sal?s 
pizzeria. He calmly says, ?Two slices.? Sal loudly asserts, ?No service ?til you turn that 
shit off!? He continues, ?Turn the shit off...you are disturbin? me, you are disturbin? my 
customers [even though the customers, who would mostly be Black, show no signs of 
being disturbed]!? When Radio Raheem stops his boom-box, Sal continues, ?You come 
into Sal?s, there?s no music, no rap, no music, no music, no music.  Capisce?  You 
understand?? Raheem?s first interaction with Sal involves a concession of his music for a 
slice of pizza. We see how Sal?s interpretation of Raheem?s aural sphere is framed as a 
disturbance. Sal further defines his own aural sphere in a relaxed tone to Raheem, ?you 
come into Sal?s, there?s no music, no rap, no music, no music, no music. Capice? 
Understand?? Sal establishes that the parameters of his aural sphere are framed by an 
absence of music, insulated from the consonance and dissonance of the blocks that 
surround him, benefitting from the currency of Blackness without being affected by its 
currents.
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	 In the last scene of the film, Radio Raheem and Buggin? Out partner together and 
visit Sal?s famous pizzeria together. It?s night time. In classic L-cut fashion, we hear 
Public Enemy?s ?Fight the Power? and see the expressions of distraction and disbelief on 
the faces of the Black customers and Sal?s sons before we ever see Radio Raheem or 
Buggin? Out. Radio Raheem?s music blares out of his box, ?Fight the Power!? as Buggin? 
Out Spits on Sal?s floor as seen in fig. 3.7.
	 Ignoring the display of disrespect from Buggin? Out, Sal angrily asks, ?What?d I 
tell you about that noise?? Sal?s question reveals how he sincerely feels about Raheem?s 
music, beyond disturbing him or his customers, it?s noise. Buggin? Out says, ?We want 
some Black people on that mothafuckin wall of fame NOW.? The wall of fame featured 
Figure 3.7. Spike Lee, ?Fight The Power...Spit,? Do The Right Thing, directed by Spike 
Lee (1989; Universal City: Universal Studios Home Entertainment, 2009), Photograph, 
August 7, 2014.
famous Italian-Americans such as Frank Sinatra, Al Pacino, and Joe DiMaggio. Instead 
of focusing on representation in the form of Black businesses as ML from the older 
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generation had earlier, Buggin? Out focused on visual recognition on Sal?s wall of fame.  
In the midst of so many signs of Blackness?Buggin? Out?s outfit of Jordan IVs, leather 
red, black, and green Africa medallion and wristband, and kente shorts and shirts, Smiley 
selling photos of Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and a Mike Tyson mural?
Buggin? Out desires tokenism, aka the wall of fame, instead of robust economic 
involvement.
	 Sal angrily responds to Radio Raheem, ?Turn that jungle music off we ain?t in 
Africa!? For him, this music has a racial tone, timber, and cadence suggesting that there 
is race in wavelength, a seeing and a being that happens and comes forth in sound. Sal 
evokes widely circulated notions about Black bodies, as well as the continent of Africa, 
as primitive, wild, and uncivilized and attaches those bigoted notions to the music that 
Raheem plays. Sal also, inadvertently, reveals how he conceptualizes his aural sphere, 
and indeed Whiteness, as civilized and tame. I read this scene as Sal emphasizing the 
inseparability of ?cultures of visualization? from the ?construction of sonic meanings.? 239
	 Buggin? Out attempts to refocus the argument to issues of Black representation, 
?Why it gotta be about jungle music? Why it gotta be about Africa? It?s about them 
fucking pictures!? Sal disagrees, ?It?s about turning that shit off and getting the fuck outta 
my place!? For Sal it is about regaining control of his aural sphere, which has been 
infiltrated by Radio Raheem?s sound system. Radio Raheem barely opens his mouth this 
whole time and yet he dominates the point of the argument like his sound does the aural 
space, which belongs to no one. Sal?s son, Vito, yelled, ?Radio Raheem!? to which Radio 
Raheem replied, ?fuck you!? Sal inserted, ?and fuck you too!? Radio Raheem continues 
and screams at Sal, ?this is music, this is my music!? Here, Radio Raheem challenges the 
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ease with which Sal is dismissive of his music; he also claims ownership of it in the midst 
of so many things in his neighborhood that were not owned by Blacks. In response, Sal 
yells, ?fuck your music!? Radio Raheem then hoists his boombox on Sal?s counter and 
challenges, ?well turn it off then.? Buggin Out adds fuel to the fire and screams, ?We 
closin? you guinea bastards for good...until you get some Black people on that 
motherfuckin? wall of fame!? Deeply offended by the threat to close him and the racial 
slur, Sal grabs his bat and responds, ?You fuckin? close me? You Black cock sucker. I?ll 
tear your fuckin? nigger ass! You Black cock sucker! You nigger motherfucker!? and then, 
as seen in fig. 3.8, proceeds to smash Radio Raheem?s box with a wooden baseball bat. 
Figure 3.8. Spike Lee, ?You Nigger Motherfucker,? Do The Right Thing, directed by 
Spike Lee (1989; Universal City: Universal Studios Home Entertainment, 2009), 
Photograph, August 10, 2014.
Amidst everyone silently standing in disbelief, Sal confirms, ?I just killed your fuckin 
radio.?
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Stop: Radio Raheem and the Viral Performance of Subduing Black Bodies
	 One presses the stop button to cease all leisure, competitive, and representative 
activity that ensues when one is allowing something to play. After stopping, one may 
never play again, refusing to engage further with what they already experienced by 
playing. To stop means to have had enough. To stop limits the possibilities of what lies 
ahead. It is also a moment where everything that preceded is reflected upon and taken in, 
a sort of praxis in preparation for what will follow when one resumes activity.
	 Sal?s confirmation is not just aimed at Radio Raheem, but also at the young Black 
patrons from the community who, in addition to Radio Raheem, took ownership of the 
boombox because the music was for everyone who could hear it and affirmatively feel it.  
None of the insults made Radio Raheem get physical, but seeing his boombox destroyed 
coupled with Sal?s confirmation of its destruction prompted him to choke Sal both inside 
and outside the pizzeria, saying, ?You don?t fuck with my box!? By destroying Raheem?s 
box, Sal destroyed (an important part of) his belief system, he destroyed a counterspace 
to the exclusionary violence that residents in his neighborhood experienced including 
disproportionate police surveillance, which excluded them from belonging in their own 
neighborhood, to redlining, which excluded them from getting loans to buy property in 
their neighborhood. 
	 The entire neighborhood gathered around for the fight between Radio Raheem 
and Sal on the sidewalk in front of the pizzeria. Amidst the Mayor (nickname, not 
occupation) yelling, ?Break it up!? and Pino yelling, ?You?re gonna kill him,? Raheem 
kept his hands wrapped around Sal?s neck?his life literally between the LOVE and 
HATE knuckle duster rings on Raheem?s right and left hands. 
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	 Eventually the police arrive and perform the subduing of Raheem. Officer Long 
?the same police officer that turned off the water earlier?chokes Raheem with his 
police baton, an act that, since 1993, has been banned (even though barely enforced) by 
the NYPD.240 The point at which Raheem stops resisting, officer Long continues to choke 
him as though he was no longer choking another human, but his fear, to death. The 
camera zooms in to Raheem?s feet, which were kicking as though he was being hung by 
his neck and gasping for air. This recalls scenes of mob violence to Black bodies, yet, 
instead of a voluntary White audience, an involuntary Black and Brown audience mainly 
witness this lynching. 	
	 Recognizing fragility where the police officers only see brute strength, Coconut 
Sid yells, ?God damn it! You?re killing him. Let him go!? even though ?Radio 
Raheem??as the Black man whose boombox was an extension of his being?had 
already been killed by Sal when he destroyed his boombox, unable (or perhaps 
uninspired) to live without his radio. Raheem?s lifeless body is dropped onto the 
sidewalk, his right hand with the knuckle duster ring that reads ?LOVE? sits just as 
lifeless in front of his face. Instead of calling for an emergency medical technician, a 
Latino policeman?officer Ponte?kicks Raheem?s side, screaming, ?Quit fakin? it!? as if 
to suggest that Raheem?s brute strength and goliath-like appearance was too great to be 
subdued by a baton chokehold?an unfortunate perception of Raheem?s Black body that 
(to them) justified their use of excessive force. To conclude the performance of subduing 
Radio Raheem, the officers all act as though Raheem is still alive as one of the officers 
almost whispers, ?Get him to the car,? to hide their indiscretion from the rest of the 
community. The police then leave with Raheem?s body in the backseat of their car while 
137
the neighborhood?including the male Korean storeowner?trail the car on foot as long 
as they can in a sort of concern for what the police did to him.
	 Enraged Black and Brown people, at this point, surround Sal?s place. Punchy yells 
out, ?He died because he had a radio!? Cee bursts out, ?Damn man! It ain?t safe in our 
own fuckin? neighborhood.? Coconut Sid replied, ?Never was. Never will be.? Sid?s 
revelation signals his experiences of residential insecurity as an older Black person and 
how he is disillusioned about the possibility of attaining a secure neighborhood as a 
result. Ahmad angrily asks, ?You see how they had him in a choke hold man? I know that 
choke hold. It kills people, man.? I read Ahmad?s knowledge of the choke hold as a 
repeated murderous act that he has seen more than once, an enactment of the viral 
performance of subduing Black bodies. This aggressive practice cannot be divorced from 
viral performances of Black masculinity in popular culture. Indeed, some of the very 
things that incite a police officer?s aggression toward Black bodies (and the bodies of 
their allies) are views of Blacks as inherently well endowed, superhumanly strong, and 
possessing rapacious appetites for sex, violence, and criminality that emerged from 
rumors and mass-produced images of them. This reality around representation drives 
home Buggin? Out?s earlier insistence of being represented on the wall of fame.
	 Mookie throws a garbage can through Sal?s window and the neighborhood breaks 
out in a looting of Sal?s famous pizzeria. Their actions may seem extreme if Radio 
Raheem?s death was isolated, however, to index it in the subduing of so many other Black 
bodies helps us to read this scene as a tipping point in the community, the proverbial 
straw that broke the camel?s back. The camera shows the top of the outdoor windows of 
Sal?s Famous Pizzeria. They are embroidered with the words, ?Pizza Heroes Calzones 
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Sausage,? suggestive here not only of the food that will be lost to Bed-Stuy, but its heroes 
as well.
Fast-Forward: The Mutation of Radio Raheem in Popular Culture and Everyday Life
	 Fast-Forward brings one to the most present performance of a recorded act. Fast-
Forward allows one to skim through things quickly so as to survey them as opposed to 
capturing every element. One can also hear how, even through the distorted pitch of the 
original act, winding almost out of control, the performance remains in the loop. Every 
fast-forward on one side of the tape rewinds the other side, producing a concurrent going 
back and forth in time.
	 Radio Raheem?just as the Black boombox-wielders that he referenced?proves 
to be an undying performance of Black masculinity. The way in which Radio Raheem 
survives and is revived in the popular imagination and Black popular culture signals his 
meaning in African American communities as a folk hero of sorts.241 Radio Raheem?s 
character, indeed, continues to be performed and retold in Black popular culture. It is as 
though people refuse to accept his death, or maybe identify with what he represented: the 
insistence to hear and be heard; also, how he was perceived?as a disturbance, unarmed, 
yet, dangerous?continues to coexist.
	 For instance, the adult cartoon The Boondocks, which is based on the comic strip 
of the same name and follows the unfolding drama/life of the Freemans?a Black family 
that moved from Chicago?s South Side and settled in the fictional White suburb of 
Woodcrest, MD?(re)presents Radio Raheem?s narrative on an episode titled, ?The Block 
is Hot.? 242 During an unusual winter heatwave, ?hotter than the barrel in Dick Cheney?s 
Gun,? Huey Freeman (a fictional version of Huey Newton as a child), walks out of his 
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aluminum-sided house dressed in a P-coat and scarf, while he plays Public Enemy?s 
?Fight the Power? from his boombox, which looks like his suitcase. 
	 Fig. 3.9 briefly illustrates the beginning of this scene. As the music blasts, White 
people are exercising (running and walking) and walking their dogs?acts that have 
become rapidly ubiquitous with White privilege, entitlement, and leisure. Riley (Huey?s 
brother) re-animating Punchy?s character from Do The Right Thing, opens up the fire 
hydrant, attaches a can to its opening, and aims it across the street to his White 
neighbors? dismay, yelling, ?C?mon everybody, what you waitin? for!? Huey highlights 
the differences in race, class, and dense cities versus sparse suburbs inherent in Riley?s 
performance, reminding Riley, ?White people have pools!? Amidst all of this, Uncle 
Figure 3.9. "The Block Is Hot," The Boondocks, directed by Kalvin Lee (Culver City, 
CA: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2006), Photograph, 25 July 2014.
Ruckus (a Black White nationalist) tells Riley, ?You quit playin? with the White man?s 
water boy,? and the tells Huey to ?Turn off that goddamn Black-African-Congo-jungle 
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noise!,? emulating both officer Long?to a lesser extent?and Sal?to a greater extent?
as an African American. Uncle Ruckus then calls the police on Riley only to ironically be 
mistaken as the threatening Black male he, in fact, identified on the scene. After he pulls 
out his wallet to show identification, an officer yells, ?Gun!? and everyone shoots at 
Uncle Ruckus who responds, by disidentifying with Blackness, ?Wait, not me, I got 
Indian in my family.? The policeman?s reaction signifies on the notion of Blackness as 
arming, a visual embodiment that alerts one of the presence, or potential, of a threatening 
weapon. As a viral performance of Radio Raheem, The Boondocks not only repeats his 
narrative with signal difference, but it expands and reduces its meaning, giving us a short 
satirical glimpse into what could unfold by taking Radio Raheem into the modern 
suburbs.
	 In Hip-Hop music, Radio Raheem is often mentioned in the first verse. He is often 
revered for the way in which he stood up against the polarizing forces of anti-Black 
racism, White entitlement, and asserted an unapologetic loud expression of himself that 
was not concerned with outward gazes. For example, the first verse of the song, ?Pump 
up the Volume,? by The Cool Kids begins with, 
?Feel like summer '89 in Do The right Thing 
Got a big ass radio walking down the street 
With the Spike Lee Nikes on Buggin?' Out the streets 
Hand full of gold rings like Radio Raheem...? 243
This group?consisting of Chuck Inglish and Mikey Rocks?born in the 1980s, is 
interested in bringing the eighties back and evoke Radio Raheem?s memory to do so. 
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Here, Radio Raheem is not only an index of the Black men who blasted radios in the 
streets that came before him, but the decade of the 1980s itself.  
	 Radio Raheem is referred to again in the first verse of the song, ?Good Morning? 
from Kanye West?s third album, Graduation, which is part of a three-album series that 
uses school?dropping out, registering, and graduating?as a theme. He raps, ?I mean did 
you ever see the test / You got Ds mother fucker Ds!? 244 In his verse, West recalls the 
situation where Radio Raheem?s boombox stopped due to low batteries and he 
communicated his need for D batteries, expressing, ?Ds mothafucka...Ds!? to the Korean 
store owners who did not understand him. Kanye West, however, evokes this scene to 
explain a school report card, referencing Radio Raheem after he debuted fifteen years 
earlier.
	 J-Dilla?s posthumously completed album The Shinning featured a reference to 
Radio Raheem on the song titled, ?E=MC?.? In the second verse, Common raps, ?Since 
the early 80s / I rocked the planet daily / Radio Rasheed / This is how I do when I write 
things / The party for your right to fight scenes.? 245 Here, Common merges his and Radio 
Raheem?s identity into one, ?Radio Rasheed,? identifying with him as someone who 
travels the earth executing great parties and concerts, which are loud by nature. Playing 
on the title, Do The Right Thing, Common uses the homonym ?write? to explain how he 
writes things as a Hip-Hop artist that resemble his latter lines. His line, ?The party for 
your right to fight scenes? blurs the lines between leisure activity and political resistance, 
recalling the idea of singin? while swingin? from Public Enemy?s ?Fight The Power.?
	 In Hassan Mackey and Apollo Brown?s Daily Bread album, Mackey raps on a 
song titled ?Tell Me,? ?They say the music is too loud but / Radio Raheem?s thing / Is 
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keeping Hassan attached to his dreams.? 246 I read his lyrics to suggest that the loudness at 
which he plays his music, which he associates with Radio Raheem?indicative of 
audacity, boldness, and courage?resounds with Hassan more than those who would 
desire him to reduce his volume. It is this freedom of expression that inspires him to 
pursue his goals in life.
	 In the realm of visual art, a South African and Zimbabwean self-taught artist, 
graphic designer, activist and contemporary illustrator, Sindiso Nyoni (aka R!OT), 
submitted a cut-out design called The Boxer, as seen in fig. 3.10, for the Mandela Poster 
Figure 3.10. Sindis Nyoni, ?The 
Boxer,? 2013. From: ?Sindiso Nyoni 
on Behance,? Behance, accessed July 
18, 2013, http://www.behance.net/
gallery/The-Boxer-(Mandela-poster-
project)/9346799.
Project. The project was intended to honor Nelson Mandela?s lifelong contributions to 
humanity. In the image, which merges Nelson Mandela?s features with signature elements 
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from Radio Raheem, Nyoni gives Mandela a high-top fade, a boombox on his shoulder, 
illustrates the words ?Fight The Power? in the corner and creates a gold knuckle duster 
ring on Mandela?s fist that reads ?Uthando,? which means love. It gestures toward the 
way in which love defeats hate, part of both Radio Raheem?s and Nelson Mandela?s 
ethos. His design made it into the final 95 out of 700 submissions.  Here we witness 
Radio Raheem?s cosmopolitan Black masculinity being communicated transnationally by 
an artist who sees a similar strength, courage, and love in the late international figure in 
the fight for humanity?Nelson Mandela.
	 More recently, in 2014, Chicago?s D.S. Wentworth Elementary featured an 
installation dedicated to Radio Raheem. Figure 3.11 is a photograph of said installation 
Figure 3.11. Avery R Young, ?Black Wall 2 (for Radio Raheem),? 2014. From: D.S. 
Wentworth (Philips Rm), Facebook, accessed June 14, 2014, https://www.facebook.com/
photo.php?fbid=10204149982254402&set=a.
1245464901356.2037791.1371394407&type=1&relevant_count=1  
titled, ?Black Wall 2.? Students led by teaching, visual, and performance artist Avery R. 
Young, used images and texts to examine Hip-Hop context, culture, and audience. 
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Children born over a decade after the popularity of Do The Right Thing are not paying 
homage to Mookie who indecisively threw the garbage can through Sal?s window, or the 
elders like Mother Sister who watched over the neighborhood or The Mayor who drank 
beers and protected the neighborhood in his own way, but Radio Raheem, who lived to 
loudly express himself and resist placation; who died because of how he was popularly 
perceived?a superhumanly strong, Black, and dangerous disturbance to the peace.
	 In a more haunting representation of Radio Raheem?s legacy, July 18, 2014, Spike 
Lee posted an unlisted YouTube video titled, ?NYPD Puts Deadly Chokehold On Staten 
Island Man,? visually and sonically drawing parallels between Eric Garner?s and Radio 
Raheem?s deaths.247 I did not include a still from the video because Spike Lee did not 
publicly list the link, meaning that one had to actively click the link to see it rather than 
passively or unintentionally have it play through a Facebook feed and trigger unnecessary 
psychic trauma. Lee mainly used a cutaway filmic technique that sharply goes back and 
forth between the scenes leading up to and including Eric Garner?s and Radio Raheem?s 
deaths to bring attention to their similarities. Both of the Black men had the air choked 
out of them at the nexus where their Black and Brown neighbors saw surrender and the 
sense of emergency dissipated and White police saw a loud, sized, and superhumanly 
strong Black man, characteristics that they considered as life-threatening. A difference is 
that, unlike Raheem, Garner was not physically threatening anyone; yet, his resistance to 
being touched by police officers who did not announce that they were arresting him and, 
harder to prove, his Black masculinity, provoked a similar deadly response to subdue his 
body?a response where even the fight for breath is considered as resisting arrest.
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	 The routine nature of the deadly responses to both Garner and Raheem is difficult 
to separate from the racial fantasies and indifference toward Black life of the NYPD 
officers. Both men, due to systemic stereotypes about their Black masculinity, were 
already criminalized before the police officers arrived on the scene, instructing the 
officers in how their bodies were to be handled. Almost like agents from the criminal 
justice agency ?Precrime??an agency from Philip K. Dick?s science fiction novel, 
Minority Report, that punishes people for crimes before they are committed?police 
officers apprehended both of these Black men in deadly ways that their actions did not 
call for.248 Blackness, then, becomes the false, yet believable, evidence of crimes that will 
be committed by Black bodies who, ??If allowed to remain free [or alive], will at some 
future time commit felonies [or misdemeanors].?? 249
	 As many other people and concepts throughout the film, Radio Raheem existed 
long before he arrived on the scene and, as such, persists long after the scene ends.250  
Whether it was as Joe Radio, Raheem Abdul Muhammad, or the keeper of the drum?
using the beat for every aspect of existence: creation (life, harvest, and celebration) and 
destruction (war and death),251 Radio Raheem was a synecdoche for them. His death was 
also the consequence of the viral performance of excessive force to subdue Black bodies. 
	 Indeed, in the final scenes of Do The Right Thing, Steve, who conceded to Radio 
Raheem earlier in the film, shouts out, ?It?s murder. They did it again, just like Michael 
Stewart.? 252  His assertion, ?They did it again,? is crucial to an understanding of viral 
violence?this incessant doing again that, through repetition, becomes the natural and 
inhumane way of subduing Black bodies. The repeated (lack of) consequences that 
police253 (and civilians) face for using excessive force to subdue Black bodies instruct 
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?them? as much as the viral violence toward Black bodies that they witness. A Black man 
then shouts out, ?Murder. Eleanor Bumpurs. Murder!? 254 What begins to emerge are 
citations that reference the unnecessary and egregious killing of Black life in order to 
subdue Black bodies. If characters from the fictional neighborhood continued, they would 
inevitably arrive at our present moment, yelling out names like Latasha Harlins, Renisha 
McBride, and Ayana Stanley-Jones, Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin, and, of particular 
relationship to Radio Raheem?s death, Jordan Russell Davis.
	 Fig. 3.12 titled, ?Radio Jordan,? is an image that manifests certain feelings that I 
had both when I first heard about Jordan Davis, the mistrial, and during the ?loud music 
trial? of Michael Dunn. Already doing work on Radio Raheem, Jordan Davis? encounter 
haunted me as a frightening instance of life imitating art. It was specifically the mistrial, 
however, that ultimately inspired the production of ?Radio Jordan.? Ta-Nehisi Coates? 
Figure 3.12. Radio Jordan, (Photograph by Gabriel Peoples), February 26, 2014.
reflection on the mistrial after his interview with Jordan Davis? mother captures the 
unwritten rules that were implied in the court that day. Coates writes, ?...the killer was 
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convicted not of the boy?s murder but of firing repeatedly as the boy?s friends tried to 
retreat. Destroying the black body was permissible?but it would be better to do it 
efficiently.? 255 My feelings centered on the interrelationship of viral performances of 
Black masculinity and the viral performances of excessive force to subdue Black bodies. 
	 Similar to the way in which Radio Raheem?s music was deemed as more 
disturbing than Sal?s racial slurs, more violent than Sal killing his radio, or how Raheem?s 
perceived brute strength and criminality outweighed officer Long?s judgement to not 
choke the life out of him, I witnessed how Jordan Davis? music was deemed as more 
threatening and louder, his visible identity as a young Black teen more troubling, than the 
ten shots fired by a White Michael Dunn at a Dodge Durango filled with four unarmed 
Black male teens. In many ways, Michael Dunn, like Sal, was unable to separate the 
(Chicago Drill) music that he heard from the young teenager that he saw. Davis? 
Blackness, even though cosmopolitan, visually reinforced the incessant expressions of 
street thugs that Dunn associated with the thumping bass that he heard to the point where 
he imagined a shotgun being present. Playing loud music, something that gave Davis and 
his friends so much enjoyment, was used, in the end, to inaccurately profile them as 
dangerous current or pre-criminals.
	 During the ?loud music trial,? Dunn?s fiance, Ms. Rouer, testifies that, during the 
evening of his confrontation with Jordan Davis, Dunn said, ?Oh, I hate that thug 
music.? 256 What Michael Dunn said substantiates my earlier claim about the 
inseparability of cultures of visualization from the construction of sonic meanings, seeing 
what one hears. Dunn saw a criminal Black masculinity based on what he associated, not 
even with the lyrics, but, in his own words, with ?just bass.? 257 Similarly, without 
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distinguishing the diversity of lyrics and issues addressed in ?Fight The Power,? Sal 
understood Hip-Hop music as jungle music, which escalated to Sal calling Radio Raheem 
a ?nigger motherfucker.? In both cases, sound was negligently assessed and displaced 
onto a visual Blackness.
	 The ?thug music? that Dunn heard was Davis and his friends playing Chicago 
Drill258 music whose themes (similar to Trap music) are not only a reflection on street 
life, but a premeditation of scenarios (i.e. selling drugs, murdering a specific person or 
group, having sex or being in a relationship with a person, and making something of 
one?s self), which makes it both a representation of life and real life. The word ?Drill? 
began with Pacman, a late Chicago rapper, and it was meant to retaliate on your enemy.  
Chicago rap duo L.E.P. Bogus Boyz describe ?drill? as slang with a wide range of 
meaning from women beautifying themselves to street wars.259 The music itself varies 
from Trap and Twerk-oriented rhythms to Ghettotech/Juke rhythms popular in places like 
Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, and New Jersey, unique for the ways in which it integrates 
all of them. Repeated sonic features of Drill songs are heavy bass, gun shots, and the 
haunting ring of tolling bells?a slow ringing of a bell, often associated with death. It?s 
name, ?Drill,? also recalls the repeated exercise and inundating nature of its lyrical and 
sonic content. The specific drill song that was played and led to an altercation between 
Davis, his friends, and Dunn was titled, ?Beef (feat. Fredo Santana & Lil Durk),? by rap 
artist Lil Reese.
	 In ?Radio Jordan,? Jordan Davis? body is merged with Radio Raheem?s body, 
suggestive of how people in Jacksonville, FL, particularly Michael Dunn, saw him as a 
larger than life young Black male, which was unfortunately arming even though Davis 
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was unarmed. Similarly, even though Radio Raheem was physically sized, his music 
made him more goliath-like, increasing his volume in many ways. Nonetheless, no matter 
how goliath-like or thug-like music makes a certain person in another?s imaginary, it will 
never justify treating them as actual goliaths or thugs with imagined superhuman strength 
and deadly projectile weapons, which happened to both Radio Raheem and Jordan Davis 
respectively.
	 Davis wears an Obey hat in fig. 3.12, which is explained by Shepard Fairey?the 
creator of Obey fashion?as ?an experiment in phenomenology.? He continues, 
?Phenomenology attempts to enable people to see clearly something that is right before 
their eyes but obscured; things that are so taken for granted that they are muted by 
abstract observation.? 260 Considering this definition, the Obey hat that Davis wears comes 
to signify much more than just a fashion symbol. What is clear, but at the same time 
obscured, is that figurative perceptions have dire material affects on Black men?s 
livelihoods, White entitlement is made possible through subduing Black bodies, and 
obedience to maintaining the peace will not change how Black bodies are seen. ?OBEY,? 
in this juxtaposition with Black men?s bodies that were materially affected by how they 
were figuratively seen and physically heard, acts as an oxymoron, encouraging 
disobedience in the face of anyone or system requiring you to turn your volume down.
	 I made the photograph black and white to suggest that this type of loud 
expression, as well as violence toward Black bodies, is old; yet, its legacy is extended 
into 2012 and beyond from 1989 and before. Twice, while watching the scene of Radio 
Raheem being killed, an eavesdropping passerby was shocked. Two different people 
asked me, which I will paraphrase, ?again?? Indeed, there is a repetitiveness to this type 
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of violence toward Black bodies that makes 1989 indistinguishable from the present as 
much as it signals that this type of violence is not new. Black and white also signifies on 
the racial bodies involved in both encounters with Jordan Davis (being Black) and 
Michael Dunn (being White) and Radio Raheem (being Black) and Sal (being White).
	 While some similarities between Radio Raheem?s and Jordan Davis? stories 
prompted me to render the image, their lives are very different. For one, Radio Raheem is 
fictional and merely representative of real Black men?s bodies, whereas, Jordan Davis 
was, and dare I say is, real and representative of Black men?s bodies. In Do The Right 
Thing, for example, we never get to know who Raheem?s parents or guardians are or 
what his goals and ambitions are beyond playing ?Fight the Power? all day. Whereas, 
Davis? mother described him as someone who was, indeed, cosmopolitan. Davis had 
Mexicans, Panamanians, and White people in his family, he lived in a nice three-story 
home in the suburbs, and he was aware of the level of consciousness in Jacksonville, FL
?likely the same consciousness that rendered him illegible as the young Black man that 
he was.261 
	 Radio Raheem and Jordan Davis, however, are similar in telling ways. Davis? 
mother, due to how he was raised, imagines that he was defending his friends. In 
response to being asked to turn his music down by Dunn, he likely critically asserted, 
??We?re not bothering you. We don?t know you. You don?t know us. Why can?t we play 
our music as loud as we want??? 262 What began as a form of Black sensibility, playing 
music loud with friends, became a counter to Dunn?s entitlement of the gas station that 
they both occupied. Even a song such as ?Beef? could be understood in this scenario and 
through the lens of Davis? cosmopolitan Blackness as resistance to, camaraderie against, 
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and proclamation of the figurative murder of White entitlement.263 In many ways, he was 
in line with an underlying intent of Drill music: to retaliate on one?s enemy?an enemy 
that, including Dunn, had loudly assaulted his space, his expressions, and existence as a 
Black man in North America long before he arrived on the scene. Retaliation to Dunn?s 
assault took the form of unapologetically turning music up loudly in the face of his false 
politeness and White entitlement. Both Raheem and Davis were playing music loudly, not 
just for themselves, but for their blocks, their friends, and in the line of Black men before 
them who asserted themselves through the aural sphere for everyone to hear. There was a 
way in which, despite both of their knowledge of racism in the worlds they lived in, 
Radio Raheem and Jordan Davis did not allow another?s hatred or entitlement to render 
their agency submissive and turn down their volumes. 
	 Jordan Davis? and Radio Raheem?s lives, indeed, inspire us to turn our volumes 
up. For example, during day one of the ?loud music trial? @swhiteAKA3 wrote on 
Twitter, ?I will be playing my radio very loudly on purpose today #NeverForget 
#JordanDavis.? 264 It is not only the fact that Jordan Davis was a bright young man with a 
promising future that we will #NeverForget him, but the online sharing of his photos, the 
indexing of him with other Black men that have suffered similar Precrime fates, and the 
idea that he would not placate himself to satiate White entitlement. Despite the real 
danger that exists from being Black and playing one?s music as loud as one desires, the 
audacity to do so is an exercise of freedom, which I define as an absence of fear with an 
awareness of danger?an act that both Davis and Raheem performed in their lives that we 
have come to know. They each had the chutzpah to refuse turning their volumes down to 
make others comfortable.265
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	 ?Radio Jordan? not only imagines Raheem?s legacy in the very things that affect 
Black livelihood, but also how his boombox travels, transforms, and mutates. Indeed, 
using speakers in cars and trucks are also things that are used in performances of Black 
masculinity related to playing music loudly outdoors. Since the boombox was 
criminalized, another logical place, which was always there, was the car?s or truck?s 
sound system. The cultural act of playing these mobile sound systems loudly in public, 
indeed, counters the deafening loudness of White entitlement, White privilege, and anti-
Black racism that masks itself in silence. These assaults to Black wellness become 
amplified every time Black and Brown people are targets of Precrime and their bodies 
and expressions are violently excluded from spaces possessively invested in Whiteness. 
Turning our volume up to disrupt the silence around the Precrime of Black and Brown 
bodies, disproportionate surveillance of Black and Brown Bodies, and White privilege, 
White entitlement, and White nationalism is what we must do in order to be heard.
	 ?Radio Jordan? is the unlisted upload that I never uploaded, the comment that I 
never posted, and the rumor that I never circulated. By framing ?Radio Jordan? with my 
thoughts, I disengaged with the type of circulation that can easily lead to amnesia around 
the circumstances that birth performances before they become uncontrollable. In other 
words, by centering the burden, I intentionally try to anticipate circumstances where 
everything but the burden is engaged with. In this way, while I engage in the viral 
performance of Black male boombox wielders, I am also raising the visibility of their 
vulnerability, their seeking of pleasure, and how they challenge power through the power 
of their sound. Indeed, the act of making the image is also a mode of critique, of remix, of 
repetition with signal differences. Here, remixing functions as a critical technique of 
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thinking, revealing, and exploring ideologies. It is a reminder that we need to keep on 
fighting, not only the power, but the powers that be with the power of our sound systems, 
which include not only our boomboxes and car stereos, but our tongues and our art, 
electronic posts and retweets, vessels that can be used to broadcast wellness and 
dialogical social interaction. Broadcasting vessels, indeed, continue to be crucial to 
struggles against racism and discrimination of all sorts and even though Radio Raheem?s 
boombox was destroyed, the Internet may hold much hope for amplifying his message: 
fight the power!
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Chapter 4, This Song Will Never Die: The Memeification and Amplification 
of Race, Sexuality, and Class through Viral Media  
	 July 28th, 2010, 3:10AM in Huntsville, Alabama?s Lincoln Park public housing, 
Kelly Dodson woke up to a stranger in her bed attempting to rape her.266 She screamed 
and her brother Antoine Dodson, hearing this, ran upstairs to help. Seeing his hands 
wrapped around her neck, he pulled the stranger off of Kelly. While Dodson was 
attending to Kelly, the man escaped their home.267 The Dodsons called friends and family 
first, alerting them that someone had broken in. The Dodsons then called the police and 
upon their arrival went to stay at a relative?s home. 8AM the same day, Kelly and Antoine 
Dodson went back to their home and reported what happened to housing management 
who ?thought it was a joke...was making fun of it and was actually laughing in [their] 
face[s].? 268 Later that morning the local Huntsville, Alabama NBC affiliate, WAFF-48 
news, came to cover the story of the home invasion. The news crew was welcomed and 
approached the Dodsons who, at this point, were eager to tell their story.269  
	 The following day, July 29th, 2010, WAFF-48 published a live news story online 
titled, ?Woman wakes up to find intruder in her bed,? which chronicled the events above. 
Within r/funny?a Reddit community for funny things within Reddit.com?Reddit 
interactor,270  ?panhead,? posted a link that connected to WAFF-48?s online video of the 
story, which has since disappeared on WAFF-48. Panhead?s link was titled, ?This actually 
aired on my local news today. ?Obviously we have a rapist here... so hide yo kids, hide yo 
wife, and hide yo husband ?cause dey rapin? e?rybody out here.?? 271 The post shows that 
93% of the Reddit interactors who voted upvoted. Similar to Facebook ?likes? and 
Twitter ?retweets? and ?favorites,? upvoting increases the visibility and popularity of 
Reddit posts, in this case, WAFF-48?s interview. Shortly after panhead?s post, YouTube 
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interactor Z01D1111 posted WAFF-48?s online video of the interview to YouTube.272 
From WAFF-48 News to Reddit to YouTube, the live interview spread uncontrollably. 
Ultimately, it went viral.
	 In the live WAFF-48 interview, Kelly Dodson told Elizabeth Gentle?the White 
news reporter?that her daughter was with her while being sexually assaulted. However, 
from the edited soundbite heard in the live broadcast, Kelly only proclaims, ?I was 
attacked by some idiot out here in the projects.? Then, rolling her neck, Kelly Dodson 
asserts, ?he tried to rape me, he tried to pull my clothes off.? 273 Despite the seriousness of 
her home invasion and the sexual assault attempt, most of WAFF-48?s story focused on 
her brother, Antoine Dodson. In response to the crime, when Antoine Dodson, seen in fig. 
4, was interviewed, he emphasized that the intruder did, in fact, exist and was not a 
figment of his sister?s imagination: ?Well, OBVIOUSLY we have a RAPIST in Lincoln 
Figure 4, ?ANTOINE DODSON. THIS IS JUST 
TOO FUNNY!,? YouTube Video, 2:03, originally 
from an interview by WAFF-48 News, posted by 
?WSHH,? August, 3, 2010, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXPgjsB0Xm0. 
Photograph, October 18, 2014.
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Park!? He then cautioned others about the rapist: ?He?s climbin? in yo? windows, 
snatchin? yo people up so y?all need to hide ya kids, hide ya wives, and hide ya husbands 
?cause they rapin? er?body out here!? Then, he offered a passionate, odd, and threatening 
warning to the perpetrator involved: ?We got yo? t-shirt, you done left fingerprints and all, 
you are so dumb, you are really dumb, for real.? He continued, ?you don?t have to come 
and confess that you did it, we lookin? for you, we gon? find you. I?m lettin? you know na 
(now),? and reinforced that warning with the confrontational, ?so you can run ?n? tell 
that.? Rolling his eyes to his left, he continued, ?homeboy.? 274
	 What followed was a cascade of viral online coverage of the news story, the most 
popular being the auto-tuned YouTube music video of the news story, which has garnered 
124,153,482 + views to date. The excess attention from popular media resulted in 
everything from friends dressing up as Antoine for Halloween (wearing a red bandana 
and black a-shirt), to a painting by Dave MacDowell titled, ?Hide Your Husbands!? of 
Antoine in a dress holding a lit cigarette in his right hand and Colt 45 in his left,275  to a 
metaphor for claiming tributes for the Hunger Games.276 The ubiquitous references to this 
performance in popular culture and everyday life signal it as an undying representation, 
?this song will [literally] never die,? as one YouTube interactor, AwesomeAostin, 
remarked.277 Antoine Dodson is the first Ghetto Witness278 to have such an explosive 
affect on popular culture and everyday life, which is also illustrative of how viral 
performance works on an embodied, mechanistic, and representational level. For a 
moment, in a sea of viral performances, Antoine Dodson?s body becomes the point of 
consensus around which queer Black masculinity is understood.
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	 In this chapter I address viral performance?s relationship to the ?thingification? of 
Blackness in the (re)presentations of Kelly and Antoine Dodson in popular culture in 
three major ways. First, I explore the trivialization of rape and its relationship to the 
marginalization of Black women; in addition, I evaluate how a centeredness on Black 
men in representations of Blackness further estranges Black women. Second, I consider 
how queer Black masculinity is (un)framed through viral mechanisms that are crucial to 
how Antoine Dodson becomes (mis)understood, as an embodiment of quintessential 
queerness. Third, I examine how Antoine Dodson has become the referent for the Ghetto 
Witness archetype; unpacking how viral performance interplays with language through a 
mass production of Black street vernacular for spectacular consumption. Through 
performance analysis, critical discourse analysis, and netnography, this chapter will 
elucidate how a serious issue such as Black female sexual assault and the emotional 
response to it can be transformed into a thing that is virally performed as comedic 
spectacle. Viral mechanisms, which amplify the simplicities and complexities of 
performances, are not a means alone, but one of many lenses through which to ?...call 
attention to the complexities inherent in the production of cultural artifacts, particularly 
those surrounding Black people.? 279 My investigation reveals the chaos and order of viral 
performances?not knowing when or how the next person will interpret, remix or spread 
an act further.
	 To explore the case study of the Dodsons, the meaning of their viral performance 
and the cultural mechanisms through which it was disseminated, I will examine the 
textual and (audio)visual details of a select group of viral sources. My examination will 
unveil how textual and (audio)visual material adapts to, and adopts, the Dodson?s story of 
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domestic and discursive violence. Using performance and critical discourse analysis, I 
give attention to (Part I) the original newscast; using netnography?which employs 
participant-observation in situated websites online to gather data about cultural or 
communal ways of knowing that are computer-mediated?I examine (Part II) the most-
viewed remix video of the original newscast in the context of YouTube and 
WorldStarHipHop (WSHH); and (Part III) the memeification?or the ?extensive creative 
user engagement in the form of parody, pastiche, mash-ups, and other derivative 
[memetic] work? 280?of the original newscast is examined across two different websites, 
namely Reddit and Bossip,281  to survey interactions in the form of a response video,282  
comments,283  images,284  and web content categories285 that have replied directly to, or 
mimetically adapted something from the original WAFF-48 newscast. Together, these 
texts  illuminate how the Dodsons are scripted, how they script themselves, and what the 
tensions between scripted and scripter reveal in an atmosphere where their discursive 
bodies are incessantly circulated. The critical discourse analysis, performance analysis, 
and netnography reveal how the Dodsons, and in a larger way, Black masculinities, come 
into being in popular culture and everyday life through their transformation into mass-
produced things?including objectified things as well as things that matter, things 
inspired by what is unlivable to go towards new possibilities for livability. 
	 Critical discourse theorist, Norman Fairclough, explains that discourse consists of 
?three dimensions?: analysis of texts, how texts are produced and consumed, and the 
sociocultural context of the text.286 Fairclough uses ?text? linguistically (which consists 
of the written, oral, and visually spoken) and semiotically (which consists of 
photographic images, visual layout of images and their settings, and their sonic 
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accompaniments).287 His critical attention to sociocultural context of the text as its 
circumstantial context, the structural practices the text is situated in, or the larger society 
and culture the text is a part of, provide a model for my engagement here.288 In one 
example of critical discourse analysis, Fairclough examines excerpts of text from select 
TV shows289 focusing on the relationships and tensions between informing and 
entertaining, institutional distance from and proximity to on-air personalities, and the 
construction of presenter and audience identities.290 Most important for my 
considerations in this chapter, Fairclough?s analysis suggests that newer practices of 
media are shifting toward relaxing the borders between entertainment and public affairs 
by using colloquial language, such as ?the direct discourse of others, including an attempt 
to simulate the voice of the (real or imaginary) original.? 291 Overall, critical discourse 
analysis supplies a means of examining intersectional forms of knowledge and theory, as 
well as social identity and social interactions exhibited in linguistic and semiotic texts. 
	 The democratization of technology and the increasingly interactive ways through 
which media is (co)produced online?i.e., personal blogs, YouTube?s slogan and practice 
of ?Broadcast[ing] Yourself,? and (un)solicited responses to broadcasting online?has 
loosened the boundaries between presenter/expert and audience, necessitating new ways 
of interrogating the discourses therein. In the second half of this chapter I am interested in 
capturing what the people said, what rumors were being (re)created, and what discourses 
were being (re)generated in select spaces online concerning what transpired in 
WAFF-48?s initial coverage of the Dodsons. This can be most effectively done through 
what Robert V. Kozinets calls netnography.292
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	 Netnography?conducting the study of communities and cultures over the World 
Wide Web293?was initially used in marketing research as a way to explore consumption 
and cultural activities online. By combining netnography with the conventions and 
methods of cultural anthropology, namely ethnography, and the concerns of cultural 
studies, it has evolved as a way to understand sociocultural life as it is distilled through 
the everyday outlook of interactors who communicate in situated settings online. As such, 
netnography is instructive in my research, examining how people interact with and 
produce things in situated spaces online that affect and are affected by everyday life 
outside of those situated spaces.294
	 I take on the role of a lurker. Importantly, a lurker can later become a more 
involved member in online communities, taking on the role of a newbie, maker, 
interactor, or networker.295 Often degrees of each role are present in communities online 
and netnographers have to choose which of these they will participate in to gather data. 
The interactions that I observe on YouTube and WSHH are situated in what Kozinets 
calls ?cruising communities???online gatherings that are known for their weaker social 
relationships and the low centrality of any particular kind of consumption activity.? 296 As 
such, interactors tend to comment directly on something that a maker posts or another 
interactor has commented on and then they move on to interact with something 
completely different or disappear. The cruising communities? interactions are, thus, 
sustained over shorter periods of time. The ephemeral nature of the discussions and de-
localized framework of the websites make more sense of my relationship to the cruising 
communities as a lurker, but unlike cruisers and similar to viral performance, I repeatedly 
return.
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	 The interactions that I observe in this chapter unfold in spaces online where, 
besides their politics, people?s identities are disguised or revealed through usernames and 
avatars?or the digital representation via image(s) or name(s) of people?s selves in real 
life (?IRL? as it is said online). As such, along with their usernames, I often refer to 
interactors gender-neutrally as ?e? instead of ?he? and ?she.? Representation by avatar or 
username requires that I directly analyze the discourses that are being exchanged between 
interactors online. As a result, besides that which is shared at the interactor?s discretion, I 
will not be able to engage in particular kinds of naming or ethnographic descriptions 
(such as, while he laughed, the dark-brown-haired sixteen year-old boy with caramel 
skin, wrinkled royal-blue jeans, and a white V-neck T-shirt posted...). This does not mean 
that race, gender, age, and other supposedly visual and cultural cues do not influence 
interactors or are not unearthed in how they make sense of what they produce and/or 
respond to. Indeed, interactors? discourses construct and maintain relationships to race, 
sexuality, and class in salient ways that are as enriching as visible or sonic cues.  
	 For my purposes, I propose that Netnography allows me to more seriously 
examine people?s relationships to online content, which can unveil larger cultural 
phenomena. The remix video, BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes), was made 
popular through remixing, in a palatable form, an already in-demand newscast and given 
longer shelf-life, at least in part, from interactors? comments and their subsequent sharing 
and sampling?all necessary elements for performance?s virality. Indeed, a performance?s 
virality is ?produced in and by the relationship between audiences and performers and not 
aroused in listeners[and/or watchers] by the performer alone.? 297 Therefore, netnography 
will allow me to gain insight into the relationship between interactors and this 
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performance on the sites where this video, and its related content, have gone viral. Being 
attentive to the ways in which news reports, music videos, memes, and interactors 
dialogue with one another and interplay with larger ideas around sexuality, race, class, 
and gender, I can convey the inter-referential texts of Antoine Dodson?s ?seamlessly 
produced performance.? 298 To understand the unraveling of this complex performance 
and its performatives in the realm of mass media (WAFF-48 news) and popular social 
media (YouTube, WSHH, Reddit, and Bossip), indeed, requires a close examination of 
tropes and trends within these spaces, which produce an understanding of, not only this 
performance, but also a larger cultural comprehension of race, sexuality, gender, and class 
in a repeated and robust way. 
Part I 
?Woman wakes up to find intruder in her bed?: Trivializing Sexual Assault, 
Marginalizing Respectability and (Re)scripting Sexuality
	 The title of this newscast, which precedes the colon of this section?s frame, is how 
WAFF-48 named the newscast that chronicled the home invasion and sexual assault of 
Kelly Dodson, the woman who woke up to find an intruder in her bed(room). What was 
mainly featured in the newscast was not the ?woman,? however, but the woman?s brother, 
Antoine Dodson, which set in motion an entire stream of uncontrollable events. Using 
critical discourse analysis, I investigate three important things in this section: 1) the 
visual language and sonic vocabulary of WAFF-48?s news coverage of the Dodson 
incident and what it does to trivialize Kelly Dodson?s sexual assault; 2) how Kelly 
Dodson is erased through what is included/excluded and foregrounded in the story of her 
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sexual assault; and 3) I examine how the foregrounding of her brother, Antoine Dodson, 
plays a critical  role in marginalizing Black respectability politics and (re)scripting his 
sexuality.
	 The WAFF-48?s newscast begins with a White male anchor, dressed in a suit and 
tie, who outlines Kelly Dodson?s story as a ?terrifying moment for a woman who woke 
up to a strange man in bed with her.? The use of ?strange man? brings attention to the 
features of the criminal rather than the crime. His emphasis on the strangeness of the man 
begins the work of deemphasizing and lessening the strangeness and horror of home 
invasion and sexual assault for Kelly Dodson. Normalizing the home invasion, the anchor 
scene is followed by the visual enlarging of a google satellite map, which penetrates into 
the scene of the crime from a macro view of Alabama to a micro view of a street where 
Lincoln Park public housing is located. The efforts by WAFF-48 to give a picture to the 
scene of violence, when coupled with the casual nature of this display, normalizes the 
intrusion of private space, marking public housing as always already public and, thus, 
unwarranting of the security of private housing. Not to mention that poor Black bodies 
are always already outside the realms of privacy and vulnerable to surveilance and 
penetration (be it by a camera, a penis or a bullet). 
	 WAFF-48 reporter Elizabeth Gentle is at the scene of the crime and looking 
directly into the camera with investigative authority. Overiewing the story, Gentle 
recounts Kelly and Antoine Dodson?s struggle with the intruder, yet, remarks that the 
intruder left behind evidence of his ?visit.? Indeed,  calling the intrusion a ?visit? brings a 
nonchalance to what was certainly a violent felony. Her casual remark, combined with 
the satellite image, illustrate and narrate the Dodson?s residence as a place which is not 
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intrudable. Gentle?s vocabulary suggests that their residence is as a private space that is 
always already public, already accessible. Following this logic, one can arrive at a 
scenario in which it is impossible for Kelly Dodson to be intruded upon; where the 
interest of the state, and the general public, trumps privacy. 
	 Discussing the collapse of African American public and private space, historian 
Elsa Barkley-Brown uses the examples of bullpen confinement and raids on Black homes 
in Richmond, VA at the turn of the nineteenth century, to discuss the way in which, as 
time progressed, all space was made public and ?subject to the interest of the state.? 299 
Indeed, what Brown points toward is a specific view of Black bodies, and the spaces they 
occupy, as always already in the interest of a larger public, which undergirded the 
political struggles of Richmonders in the nineteenth-century. The legacy of this view of 
Black bodies and their geographies has persisted in different forms from the Tuskeege 
experiment in Macon County, AL to the stop and frisk policies of the NYPD, and most 
recently, the targeting of Black bodies for minor offences (like Manner of Walking 
violations) in Ferguson, MO where geography was integral to conceptions of race and the 
indiscriminate ways in which Black bodies were treated. As tenants of public housing, the 
state literally owns the Dodson family?s residence, which is always subject to its interests, 
and serves to amplify the systematic collapse between public and private space that 
already exists in African American spheres. WAFF-48?s vocabulary and visual frame 
sustain the narratives that suggest the spaces and places Black bodies are situated in do 
not deserve care/privacy. Thus, this terrain is ripe for the type of dimsissal the Dodsons 
experience.
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	 Speaking in place of Kelly Dodson, Elizabeth Gentle narrates the struggle 
between her and the intruder as the camera pans her bedroom revealing broken items on 
her bed and floor. Gentle then begins to describe Antoine Dodson?s intervention in the 
scuffle, but allows him to speak. Using ?vox pop? Gentle is unseen, yet, her microphone 
is present in front of Antoine Dodson?s face. He ?disses/threatens? the sexual assaulter. 
What follows is a twist of his neck, hand gestures, which act as an extension of his 
speech, and a roll of his eyes to the left. In one way, we bear witness to Antoine Dodson?s 
execution of an eloquent queer performance of Black masculinity in the defense of his 
sister, Kelly Dodson, while she disappears into the background of the video and story all 
together.  On the other hand, we witness a representation of Black queer stereotype, 
which for some represents a perfect storm of distraction from a daunting reality. 
	 The more that Kelly Dodson is relegated to the background of her own story, the 
more that Antoine Dodson is foregrounded and respectability becomes marginalized, 
even challenged. The simultaneity of Antoine?s performances?gestures, Black street 
vernacular, and racial timbre?pronounce and unwillingness to be preoccupied with the 
White normative gaze, unconcerned with how he is perceived by a largely White 
audience. I argue that this type of indifference to gaze happens to be a key characteristic 
of Ghetto Witnesses. 
	 Indeed, Ghetto Witnesses tend to be situated in racially homogenous spaces with 
high barriers to exit wherein the trauma, or thing that they witnessed or participated in, 
happened. It is their precise situatedness that fosters a feeling of home where racial 
sensibilities need not be censored and street vernacular is used narrativistically. This 
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street vernacular is fetishized in a way that increases its value, giving recorders incentive 
to seek out Ghetto Witnesses for the reward of high ratings, views, and likes. 
	 Surely, there are other viral Ghetto Witnesses that anticipate Antoine Dodson.300 
Some antecedents were persons?long before hashtags, YouTube, and the Internet?to 
whom people would turn to gain expert knowledge about niche happenings in the ghetto. 
While these Ghetto Witnesses had the privilege of speaking, and being believed, their 
words were interpreted in viral ways?circulating through rumor and broadcasts?that 
narrowed their personhood and the perceptions of those in their communities. The danger 
lies not only in viral interpretations, but the fact that virality enframed the Ghetto 
Witnesses as experts, which has a legacy in today?s performances of the same 
archetype.301 This unwarranted expertise gives them an authority, not only over their 
particular story, but over the meaning of the ghetto, which ultimately undermines the 
complexity while it increases the visibility of ghettoness and the bodies that embody it.
	 In an NPR interview following this story, Antoine Dodson revealed that people 
were contacting him saying that he, ?was making their city look bad...was making their 
community look bad.? 302 In an interview on Judge Alex! he also revealed that Black 
communities were saying, ?Oh, he?s slow, he?s dumb...he?s ghetto, he shouldn?t represent 
the community in this way.? 303 It is important to note that the critical reactions to 
Antoine?s Black street vernacular performance come out of the general embarrassment 
from the ways in which public performances of Blackness become reified and 
representative of Black communities as a monolith, which popular media outlets support. 
Thus, on one hand we may understand how public reaction to Dodson is never just about 
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his performance, but the multiple performances which have gone viral and framed black 
communities in similar ways.
	 Nonetheless, Elizabeth Gentle responded to these respectability accusations in a 
clever fashion, which separated WAFF-48?s staging of the events: ?some have contacted 
our newsroom saying that interviews with people like Antoine reflects poorly on the 
community. To that I say, censoring people like Antoine is far worse.? 304 Gentle, as the 
reporter who assists in staging this moment, divorces WAFF-48?s responsibility from the 
concerns of respectability that follow by advocating for freedom of speech. In turn, 
Gentle aims the respectability concerns at the survivors and witnesses who gave their 
testimony. To avoid complete misdirection, one has to realize, as political scientist 
Stephanie Greco Larson has asserted, that, ?...racial minorities continue to appear in 
certain types of stories more than others? and to question who determines that.305 Without 
more complex and in-depth coverage of events such as these, media outlets maintain 
these reified perceptions of Black life that threaten the wellness of Black bodies.306 Kelly 
Dodson, knowing the racial, sexual, and class climate, anticipated that the media attention 
would ?make him [Antoine] look like a fool.? 307  Indeed, in this moment Kelly Dodson 
recognizes the power that the media has in derisively positioning her brother?s 
appropriately amplified performance. 
	 Still, the future of this emotional performance in the media would be subject to 
large scrutiny and embarrassment, enacting a sort of crucifixion of what I am calling the 
Ghetto Witness. This archetype, and more particularly this Bed Intruder brand, makes 
Antoine Dodson visible, even though, in many ways, he remains illegible. I use illegible 
here as Mark Anthony Neal discusses it in Looking for Leroy to describe ?those Black 
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male bodies we can?t believe are real.? 308 The tension between the high visibility and 
illegibility of Antoine Dodson?s body is what connects the two. Similar to the bling 
aesthetic of diamonds, Antoine Dodson?s spectacularity, ?literally blinds audiences (and 
critical readers) to the complexities that ?lay in the cut.?? 309 In the cut lie possibilities that 
trouble the historical imaginary the U.S. has of Black bodies.
	 The reactions to Antoine as Ghetto Witness, charged with ?making the city and 
community look bad,? are the same ones that often maintain the silences around the 
sexual acts of violence that Antoine suggests are ?swept under the rug.? 310 In Kimberlee 
Crenshaw?s ?Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence 
Against Women of Color,? she grapples with this issue around silencing violence within 
Black communities. In writing about intervention strategies with battered women of 
color, Crenshaw discusses the narratives around Black and Brown communities that 
frame them as inherently violent, which are linked to older ideas around barbarism and 
savagery, that, in turn, silenced women?s political priorities. Thus, to combat the larger 
narrative of the violent and savage Black community, Black and Brown women took the 
burden of silence around the violence, sexual and otherwise, performed on them by Black 
and Brown men.311 In the case of Kelly Dodson, media corroborates in such silencing and 
actually diminish the potential for Antoine Dodson?s advocacy for Black women 
(arguably a Black feminist-like move) to not only challenge the perpetrator of sexual 
assault and the violence therein, but to defend his Black sister as a woman with honor.
	 Preceding and fanning the flames of Antoine Dodson?s inflammatory outburst, 
what lied outside of the purview of the news broadcast was a girl on the ?sidelines? that 
was never interviewed. In this unidentified girl?s attempt to look respectable, according to 
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Antoine Dodson, she responded to the reporter, ?oh, well this had never happened to us in 
this neighborhood, nuh uh, this had only happened to y?all.? 312 Her unrecorded response, 
recovered through Antoine?s retelling, suggests that it was the fault of Antoine?s family 
that enabled Kelly?s attempted rape. In this classic blame-the-victim move where 
responsibility is stripped from the perpetrator and anything systematic, the relationships 
in Black communities are sanitized as innocent and peaceful, making this crime appear as 
anomalous. Indeed, it was not only Black people who later saw the broadcast, but another 
person on the scene of the crime who was concerned with how she and her environment 
were being portrayed by the news media. If nothing else was responsible for the way in 
which Antoine Dodson reacted, her response obviously sent him into a frenzy.
	  Even so, Antoine Dodson?s refusal to remain silent provides a popular venue, 
namely online, to talk or at least think about sexual violence beyond, and specific to, 
gender in Black communities, its social links to masculinity and patriarchy, and its 
structural ties to (a lack of) security and the inaction of the state in spaces like public 
housing.313 His statement is layered with the cadences of southern African American 
speech, stylized gestures, and uncommon perspectives on sexual violence, situating him 
within a queer performance of Black masculinity. Antoine Dodson?s caution toward his 
neighbors and warning to the perpetrator tests and transgresses the bounds of African 
American norms around masculinity and silence around inter-community sexual 
violence; yet he also supports the patriarchal performance of protection and, albeit 
unknowingly, subordinating feminine women?s voices that are reinforced through Black 
masculine norms.
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	 Despite bringing sexual violence in Black communities into the forefront of 
popular culture and mass media, challenging the parameters of Black masculinity, and 
resisting the White normative gaze, Antoine?s excessive visibility renders his sister 
invisible. Furthering this notion, a couple of days after the interview, Elizabeth Gentle 
emphasizes that Antoine and Kelly Dodson are both victims and ?like any victim, they 
have the right to speak out,? even though it was Antoine who mainly got the chance to 
speak out.314 Without specifying what the Dodsons are victims of, Gentle also 
insensitively compiles their victimization as identical, suggesting that enduring a sexual 
assault is tantamount to experiencing home invasion and engaging in self-defense. 
WAFF-48, not Antoine, largely erases Kelly?s narrative through their framing of the 
scenario and what they chose to include and exclude. Their choices give a glimpse into 
how gender roles, condoned by WAFF-48, structure Black women as marginal. 
WAFF-48?s structural actions (or linguistic and visual choices) wrote out Kelly?s ability 
to prominently speak as the one who had to endure the sexual assault, and wrote in 
Antoine?s performance, enabling the ability to speak of the one who ultimately thwarted 
the sexual assault. By emphasizing THEIR ?right to speak out,? WAFF-48 news engages 
in a neoliberal315 gesture that divorces structural responsibility from personal 
responsibility; thus, they removed themselves from the performance and gave the illusion 
of choice and autonomy with the way in which Kelly Dodson?s story was depicted, which 
focused more on Antoine Dodson?s rage than her distress.
	 Antoine?s rage, nonetheless, is a tipping point that is couched between a long 
history of the repression of sexual violence in Black communities as well as his sister?s, 
his, and his community?s encounters with sexual violence. His rage also disrupts any 
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notion of respectability politics, and rightly so as there is little to be silent about 
concerning sexual violence. The fact that Kelly Dodson?s assaulter is a stranger who 
broke in through the window eliminates the ability to create the usual questions that 
marginalize her experience, ?what were you wearing, do you have sex with multiple 
partners, and were you flirting with him? that dismiss the legitimacy of her claims of 
sexual violation as a Black woman and remove responsibility from the violator. The 
inability to ignore the gravity of the situation was bypassed by exaggerating the focus on 
Antoine Dodson?s rage rather than his sister?s feelings on being sexually violated. In the 
break between the formality of WAFF-48 News and Antoine Dodson?s informal rage, 
Black street vernacular, and stylized gestures, lies comedy. WAFF-48 deliberately 
highlighted this space, exaggerating Antoine Dodson?s take on the story resulting in a 
grotesque effect, changing the misfortune into a comedic spectacle.
(Re)scripting Sexuality, Ignoring the Call to Act
 As Jos? Esteban Mu?oz warns us, ?Comedy does not exist independently of 
rage...rage is sustained and it is pitched as a call to activism, a bid to take space in the 
social that has been colonized by the logics of White [or Black] normativity and 
heteronormativity.?316 The dis-ease of comedy, is made when the abnormal is placed in a 
completely normal situation, tickling onlookers and listeners into laughter. Indeed, there 
is a repetitive ease to norms whose patterns are disrupted when challenged, which creates 
an uneasiness. What decides what is and is not normal is always subjective. However, the 
unfortunate norms here are Black bodies as victims of violence in the always already 
overly-violent, poor, and Black occupied public housing, the Black male gay body as 
promiscuous and feminine, and the formality of an interview from an authoritative news 
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source; having said that, Antoine Dodson becomes the abnormal thing as an openly then-
gay317 effeminate Black man who is also the strong Black male protector?performing 
that protection without reserve for the formality of the interview. The rage of Antoine?s 
performance, despite how it silences his sister and makes a spectacle of him by 
WAFF-48, is also the creation of spectacle by Antoine himself. His spectacle acts with the 
purpose of no longer ?sweeping? acts of sexual violence ?under the rug? in Black 
communities, at the very least in Lincoln Park public housing.318 Indeed, his performance 
is a call to activism.
	 In his NPR interview, Antoine states ?It?s been a lot of complaints, even before 
my sister attack; it?s been a lot of people complaining about how people was getting 
raped in the projects and people just sweeping it under the rug and not talking about 
it.? 319 After pointing out this preexisting viral violence, he asks the important question, 
?what do we need to do as people to keep our community safe?? 320 By ?community,? 
Antoine Dodson suggests that men and women are vulnerable to sexual violence. 
Supporting this notion, in a CBS interview with Shira Lazar, Antoine Dodson revealed 
that he was a ?rape victim.? 321 Considering this fact, when Antoine warns everyone that 
their husbands could get raped too in the original news broadcast, it points towards his 
direct or indirect experiences with male-to-male sexual violence. Antoine Dodson retains 
perspectives around sexual violence that fall outside of heterosexual presumptions and 
activate a broader rape activism than that conventionally portrayed in dominant media.
	 Inasmuch as WAFF-48 news enforced patriarchy and normative notions of 
masculinity through letting the man speak for the woman, Antoine is also challenging that 
regime by responding to and publicly raising awareness around sexual violence against 
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bodies in public housing, particularly Lincoln Park. He also supports his sister?s assertion 
that the perpetrator was an idiot, ?we got your fingerprints...you are really dumb, for 
real.? The defense of his sister?s honor operated against wrongheaded notions of Black 
women?s inability to be sexually assaulted or raped due to their inherent promiscuity,322  
which is, in total, Black queer feminist work.323 The queerness of the performance?
twisting his neck and the high inflection in his voice?also (re)scripts his sexuality, 
challenging masculinized norms around what it means to be a protector and a Black man, 
a role popularly occupied by a different kind of body, a White masculine man?s body.324 
As a result, Antoine Dodson performs a disidentification with Black queerness, both 
embracing a fierce325 effeminacy and pushing back against the idea that his fierceness and 
intimidatingly protecting his sister cannot co-exist. This idea of a strong (enough to 
protect his sister) effeminacy combats wrongheaded notions of homosexuality as woman-
like, and thus, inherently weak and heterosexuality as man-like, and thus, inherently 
strong.
	 Performance Studies scholar E. Patrick Johnson writes that, ?unlike the 
motivations of Black heterosexual men, Black gay men?s performance of heterosexuality 
has less to do with the need or desire to repudiate the Other as much as it does with an 
attempt to expand the discourse of the heterosexual Other to include a Black gay 
subjectivity.? 326 I would add, as Marlon Bailey has described as ?Realness? in a Michigan 
Public Radio interview, that in everyday life, quintessential heterosexual behavior is also 
a means of survival.327 Deriving Realness as a category from ballroom culture in Detroit, 
Bailey suggests that LGBTQI Blacks suffer violence simply based on how they are seen. 
As a result, behaving as though they are not gay, through attire and corporeal signifiers, 
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ensures that they can get home safely and ?avoid homophobic and transphobic 
discrimination and violence.? 328 As Antoine Dodson said in a Tosh.0 interview in 
response to being gay and living in public housing, ?when you?re Antoine Dodson and 
you have a lot of mouth, it?s not too many people that?s gon? challenge you.? 329 By 
Antoine Dodson articulating himself as he does in the WAFF-48 interview, he creates a 
mantle of toughness. His attitude, thus, is a means of survival that challenges and 
reinforces prescribed gender roles within the context of the insecurity and vulnerability of 
Lincoln Park public housing,330  a place which had not been modernized since it opened in 
1961,331  and sits on the flood plain of Pinhook Creek?meaning it is flood-prone.332
Antoine Dodson Goes Viral: Performance, Netnography, and Circulation of a Black 
Queer Icon
 Even though the originating story and geographical setting matter, for the political 
reasons that they do, Antoine Dodson provides a powerful case study for how a singular 
performance can morph into representative texts of a violent offense and for entire 
communities. He is the primary witness for his sister?s attempted assault, but is also 
witnessed by many to be what a Black queer subject looks and performs like, this is co-
performative witnessing. In this next section, using netnography, I am interested in how 
Antoine Dodson, as a Ghetto Witness, is interpreted across online spaces which travel 
popular news and provide commentary for world events which pertain to blackness and 
Black people. (here you frame what moves us from interpretation of the scene of action to 
its viral parts)
Netnography?a way of tracing performances, ideas, and ideograms through 
cultures online?allows me to trace how Dodson?s body and performance moves in 
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repetition, with signal difference, across virtual online communities. This becomes 
important as the BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes), the Gregory Brothers?333 
remix video of the Dodson newscast, gained the most currency across social media. 
Importantly, as the latter song gained its traction, it was thought to be a rip-off of another 
viral media product that followed it: Annoying Orange?Kitchen Intruder. As of October 
21, 2014, this re-make of the re-make, which was read as an original (antecedent to the 
original broadcast and the Gregory Brothers? remix), has garnered 12,962,665 views by 
interactors on YouTube. Mentions of the Annoying Orange video on the comment feed of 
the BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes) video reveal that interactors were not 
only led to the Gregory Brothers? remix, but believed it was mimicking Annoying 
Orange334?pictured in fig. 4.1. Their queries raise an important discussion about origins 
and adaptations, key considerations 
when considering the many ways in 
which a viral performance travels. 
Virality can, indeed, reorder knowledge, 
making what came first look like an 
unsatisfactory simulacra of itself. In Figure 4.1. Annoying Orange - Kitchen 
Intruder (Bed Intruder Spoof) with AutoTune 
other words, the Kitchen Intruder remix Remix!, YouTube video, 2:14, uploaded by 
?Annoying Orange,? November 23, 2010, 
of the Dodson?s broadcast is made to https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=pezdRcVe04c. Photograph, October 20, 
appear as the original; framing the 2014.
Dodsons as a mere imitation of a thing, 
an orange. 
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	 Even though YouTube was the first site to host BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now 
on iTunes), its viral circulation raised many questions about what is original, what is 
remixed, and how we distinguish between the two when everything that we know of to be 
?original? is made up of elements that already existed. In the essay ?Imitation and Gender 
Insubordination,? gender theorist Judith Butler examines the idea or assumption of an 
original gender that drag performance imitates. She writes, ?...there is no original or 
primary gender that drag imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no 
original...[gender] produces the very notion of the original as an effect and consequence 
of the imitation itself.? 335 Butler posits that more than being an act of putting on the 
clothes popularly associated with other genders, drag performers constitute how all 
genders are reenactments. Here, viral performance becomes a technology of gender and 
race, complicating our notion of an origin from which a performance emerges. Indeed, 
even YouTube interactors expressed confusion over where the video came from that 
continued well into 2014. Their confusion points to the nonlinearity of viral performances
?the way in which viral performances have a contrapuntal temporality, or (in)dependent 
points of origin.336
	 Expressing this type of confusion and confidence over origin, YouTube interactor 
blezard2011 remarked, ?This is the song from the annoying orange :@.? 337 The annoying 
orange song that blezard2011 is referencing is named, Annoying Orange - Kitchen 
Intruder (Bed Intruder Spoof) with AutoTune Remix!338 The song is a remix of the 
WAFF-48 news story on the Dodsons and BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes). It 
is a news story narrated by a red bell pepper anchor and eggplant newscaster about an 
attempted slicing. A fruit named Nancy Nectarine was sleeping on her counter when 
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someone came into the kitchen with a butcher knife and tried to ?slice her peel off.? Her 
friend (not brother), annoying orange, tried to save her by spitting seeds, but not before 
the knife-wielder sliced through a kiwi and three limes. Annoying orange, dressed in a 
red bandana, finally responds, ?well obviously we have a knife in the kitchen.? He 
cautions people to hide their kids, wives, and husbands because he?s ?slicing everybody 
out there.? He then threatens the knife-wielder, calling him an apple. After the news 
version of the story, the auto-tune remix of it came on, which featured a sped up version 
of the same trap music from BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes):
	 	 (Chorus) Run and tell that
He's climbing in your Run and tell that
windows Knife, Knife Knife Knife 
Choppin? your people up Knife
Choppin? Choppin? (News reporter interrupts)
So you better I guess that's just one 
Hide your kids more good reason why you 
Hide your wife should lock your doors at 
Hide your kids night
Hide your wife Ah, Ah, Ah, Aaaah
Hide your kids (Eggplant newscaster line)
Hide your wife The knife got away leaving 
And hide your husbands behind evidence
?Cause he's slicing (Nancy Nectarine line)
everybody out there I was attacked by some 
(Bridge) idiot in the Kitchen
You don't have to come (Annoying Orange verse)
and confess You're an apple
We're looking for you You're an apple
We're gonna find you You're an apple
We're gonna find you Knife
So you can run and tell that (Chorus repeats once)339
	 Having seen Annoying Orange first, blezard2011 mistakingly thought that the 
parody of BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes) by an anthropomorphic orange 
was the source and that BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes) was the outcome. An 
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interactor named jackred5 was driven to respond to blezard2011 saying, ?@blezard2011 
it's the original ? one; annoyingorange took it.? 340 Indeed, disguising points of origin is one 
of the effects of virality, concealing necessary narratives and complicating the rumors that 
are often what public attachment is built on. 
	 The stakes for Antoine and Kelly Dodson, and the larger project, here are that we 
have proxies?an orange and a nectarine?for their bodies that have lost all signifiers to 
the race, sexuality, gender, class and geography crucial to their production that becomes 
parodied. Indeed, their Black bodies lie in the shadow of this performance. The presence 
of Black bodies allows for productive discussions or comments that bring up, reinforce, 
and question how structures of power affect those bodies and the social groups that they 
intersect with. By turning Antoine Dodson into an Annoying Orange and Kelly Dodson 
into a Nancy Nectarine, we witness cues taken from WAFF-48?s coverage of the 
Dodsons? story to make light of a serious situation through caricature and soundbite. The 
Dodsons are transformed into things again?from an online news video, to an online Hip-
Hop video, to fruits?in many ways simplifying or all together erasing their personhoods. 
Indeed, this type of thingification apoliticizes a performance produced from the 
intersections of race, gender, sexuality and class and geography. Viral performance not 
only distorts the Dodsons? story and bodies, but delocalizes them, removing them from 
the setting, a necessary catalyst in the performance, further concealing an origin. Yet, as 
discussed in the first chapter, sometimes what lies outside of the frame of a performance 
can tell us other things that what lie within the frame cannot.
	 YouTube interactor Zceed receives thirteen likes when writing, ?Thumbs up if 
Annoying Orange bring?d (sic) you here [to the BED INTRUDER song (now on 
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iTunes)].? 341 The consensus given by the likes that Zceed?s comment receives indicates 
how that which is an adaptation can bring one closer to a source. Besides the use of 
?spoof? in the title, which could have spurred curiosity in what was being spoofed, BED 
INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes) appeared in the list of suggested videos in the 
column to the right of the main video, providing an entryway into what was being cited. 
Thus, the formatting of YouTube creates its own inter-referential mechanism, which 
keeps viral performances alive, while also instigating the disordering of these 
performances.
	 Hip-Hop music has certainly led me along this path of contrapuntal temporality 
through the way in which it samples music. By using copies of older sounds, music 
producers make new music. Even though I may be unfamiliar with the sampled music, I 
have, nonetheless, discovered entire recordings, of which, a Hip-Hop song may have 
sampled seconds of and have gone on to enjoy them just as much as the remix. Had it not 
been for sampling, or copying, I may have never discovered that which was copied. Thus, 
while viral performances may be contrapuntal in their origins, their inter-referencing can 
serve as a connection that links them, increasing each of their visibility and currency. 
Here, virality can be understood as analogous to the copying with significant difference 
that occurs within the sampling culture of Hip-Hop music and an uncontrollable 
consumption of that sampling (through listening to, viewing and sharing it). While Hip-
Hop music is not alone in its use of sampling in the recording industry, sampling?s central 
role as a catalyst for Hip-Hop as a musical art-form make its cultural spaces ripe for viral 
performances.
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Part II
Viral Performance and its (Un)framing of Sexual Proclivity and Vernacular Queer 
Black Masculinity on WSHH and YouTube
	 Seeing the synergy between virality and Hip-Hop sampling, it is no coincidence 
that one of the spaces I ?lurk? is World Star Hip Hop (WSHH), a space inflected with 
Hip-Hop tonalities. While BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes) traveled into many 
webspaces as a result of it being sampled, here I wish to focus on interactors? marginal 
and popular responses to the song on YouTube and WSHH websites and their relationship 
to considerations of race, class, and sexuality. I specifically examine BED INTRUDER 
SONG!!! (now on iTunes) on YouTube and its reposted version of the same video retitled, 
Antoine Dodson - They Rape'n Everybody Out Here [Auto Tune Edition],342 which 
received 400,000+ views on WSHH. These two spaces are significant sites where the 
narratives of Kelly and Antoine Dodson gained much traction. They also map how 
varying interactors interpreted the viral performance. I am particularly concerned with 
how interactors? commentaries amplify the attention toward Kelly Dodson?s sexual 
inclinations as a straight Black woman and Antoine Dodson?s vernacular queer Black 
masculinity. Indeed, the practice of sampling?using pre-existing music, style, and bodily 
gestures to constitute something original?in Hip-Hop cultural spaces makes something 
new out of something old as much as it summons the past into the present. By using Hip-
Hop to remix the WAFF-48 newscast, the Gregory Brothers tap into this tradition whose 
very composition unsettles origin stories as much as it creates them. The (un)framing of 
Kelly and Antoine Dodson performs differently within YouTube and WSHH because 
each website is designed differently.
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	 Within the WSHH and YouTube websites that feature the Gregory Brothers? 
remix, discussion is encouraged and video-sharing and aggregation are central, yet, 
interactions carry a different tone and ideological framework within each site. A principal 
reason why interactions vary on each site is because both have a different architexture?
the physical (structure of the space) and idealogical frame (encompassing the texture of 
the space)?in 2010.343 Indeed, design is never neutral. An interactor?s comment can 
reflect as much on the ideology of a site itself and what it (dis)allows as it does on the 
interactor. This section will briefly explore the physical and idealogical design of WSHH 
and YouTube in preparation for the netnography that follows.
The Architexture of WSHH (fig. 4.2) and YouTube (fig. 4.3)
	 WSHH, dubbed by its president Lee O?Denat as the ?CNN of the Ghetto,? is a 
video aggregation site that allows its interactors to communicate with its videos and each 
other through sharing their thoughts about said videos and each other in comment boxes 
provided for them.344 O?Denat was inspired by the success of YouTube signing with 
Google and had a great respect for the ?DVDs in the hood,? which turned into WSHH.345 
Indeed, this frames WSHH as ideologically concerned with the interests and everyday 
joys and perils of life from socially and economically marginalized communities. Just as 
one should not expect all joy or all peril from CNN coverage, yet, peril seems to be the 
most sensationalized, WSHH follows a similar path. The huge difference between WSHH 
and CNN, however, is that WSHH does not feature an anchor guiding their audience 
through its sensationalized perils. With their own original and exclusive content like Hip-
Hop music videos, and now documentaries, and soon to come comedy shows, WSHH is 
viewed as one of the best aggregate sites for visual Hip-Hop content online. Its position 
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makes it particularly fitting to examine varying perspectives on the bed intruder song 
from people who traffic in that type of music online. 
	 On WSHH videos are created or copied by interactors who sample everyday life 
by using recording devices, such as cameras and phones, to record and archive audio-
visual moments. After sharing these moments with the WSHH moderators, if chosen, 
they are featured in video boxes on the site. Similar to the man selling DVDs in a 
barbershop, some recordings tend to be amateur. Nonetheless, there are also less 
pedestrian and more professional recordings that are featured like musical performance 
videos. To share, one uploads their video to a file storage site (such as sendspace or 
wetransfer) or video-sharing site (such as YouTube) and sends their video link and 
description to a WSHH email address. The WSHH administrators and moderators 
subjectively determine whose upload gets selected and posted to WSHH. Once the video 
is posted, interactors may discuss it and respond to one another in the comment box 
provided. 
	 In 2010, interactions could only be made as a guest, immediately anonymizing an 
interactor?s visible identity as ?guest? as opposed to something more unique. The likely 
effect of this was an increase in unfiltered opinions from interactors, which changed the 
bluntness and care with which ideologies about WSHH?s content were shared. Indeed, it 
was this setting that created a certain amount of unfiltered responses that have become 
expected within WSHH?s comment section since the website began in 2005.
	 WSHH?s overall color-scheme emphasized shades of black with contrasts of 
white and red, as seen in fig. 4.2. It featured a space-grey background with a gradient into 
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Figure 4.2. ?World Star Hip Hop Freaks,? sbmotorparts.com, August 10, 2010, http://
3.bp.blogspot.com/_6bw5m6fZShI/Swn9AXiSxqI/AAAAAAAACqs/fpyKDbfQvCs/
s1600/worldstarhiphop.png
black from its top to its bottom. To the left of its center, the background gradient was 
overlayed by a video box in a thin black frame. The top border of the video box contained 
its title in a white Impact-style font over a dark-grey backdrop. Branding the lower-right 
of each video featured on the site was a WSHH logo: a five-point star with a glowing red 
and white center followed by the letters WSHH in an Impact-styled font. Both the star 
and letters were filled with a light-gray gradient that sparkled with red animations 
followed by a smoking bullet-hole (or ash-burn). WSHH?s logo, like much of the content 
it is famed for, summons violence.346 
	 Beneath the video box were buttons to share the video via twitter and myspace, 
and ?Like? via Facebook, all means for the interactor to be a tastemaker as well as social 
marketing tactics to bring people to said video. Beneath the buttons was an area stating, 
?Leave a comment,? with a white comment box beneath it, under which one could see 
every previous comment. The position of the comment box at the nexus of the video and 
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previous comments encouraged interaction not only with the video, but with other 
interactors. To the right of the video box was a similarly designed detail box containing 
the video?s description, when the video was added, and the total views of the video and 
an advertisement. Under the description in the detail box was a similarly designed layout 
containing a list of recommended videos.
	 The users of WSHH in the first quarter of 2012, in comparison to all Internet 
users, were ?disproportionately African-American.? 347 The users also ?tend[ed] to be 
childless, moderately educated men in the age range of 18-24 who browse from school 
and home.? 348 A recent study by the Opportunity Agenda, ?Media Market: Media 
Consumption Trends among Black Men,? was made to provide insight into the 
consumption of media by African American men. The study revealed that, besides 
reflecting the habits of the general adult population (visiting YouTube, ESPN.com, and 
Yahoo! for example), WSHH was among four music sites of the top ten mass-media 
Black oriented content sites that were the most popular among African American men.349 
	 Today, WSHH?s visible design, though largely the same, is more like YouTube?s, 
seen in with its black gradient background is now anti-flash white. To interact, you must 
have an avatar name through Disqus, which is a website that allows one to interact and 
comment within thousands of other online platforms through a common interface and 
unique avatar. Even though one can still create an online identity separate from their 
actual one, the fact you must now have an avatar lowers the ease of anonymity that 
existed when Antoine Dodson - They Rape'n Everybody Out Here [Auto Tune Edition] 
was published on WSHH.
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	 YouTube?s slogan, and ideology, has always been ?Broadcast Yourself.? From its 
inception in 2005 to 2009, that slogan was a part of the logo until 2010 as you can see in 
fig. 4.3. YouTube?s emphasis on allowing individuals to broadcast themselves 
democratized audiovisual broadcasts where one could create their own online channel 
that featured specified content for an audience. While the TV encouraged passivity, where 
one?s programming was at the will of said TV channel, YouTube encouraged interactivity, 
where one could create and find e?s own programming at whatever pace e desires. Indeed, 
the Gregory Brothers had their own channel, ?schmoyoho,? where they featured their 
Auto-Tune the News show and broadcasted the Dodson?s incident while integrating 
themselves within the video.
	 YouTube features a background of anti-flash white. To the right of YouTube?s 
logo is a search bar and next to it are links to browse or upload, encouraging visitors to 
Figure 4.3. ??Tis the season to send a personal video greeting!,? December 15, 2010. 
http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2010_12_01_archive.html
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find or share their own content in that order. If one is signed in, E?s user name is on the 
upper right with an option to sign out. Interactor avatars are custom with whatever image 
the interactor chooses including the default light blue square with a basic silhouette of a 
human body (almost like the upper-half of a men?s bathroom silhouette). By allowing 
users to interact through accounts that they setup through gmail, YouTube oriented itself 
toward being more of a social network for video sharing and subscription than simply a 
space for video aggregation.
	 The final central white box is for ?ALL COMMENTS.? It provides a grey-
outlined box that reads, ?respond to this video.? Again, the locale for all comments is at 
the nexus of the video and the previous comments, encouraging an engagement with 
both. After interactors comment, anyone who owns a YouTube account can like or dislike 
the comment, moving the comment to the top or bottom of the comment feed for that day, 
increasing or decreasing its visibility, which encourages interactors to make comments 
that will be ?liked? or risk obscurity. To the right of the central boxes, as seen in fig. 4.3, 
is a column of recommended videos where one can see a snapshot of related videos, their 
length, their uploader, and how many views they have received.
	 YouTube reaches more U.S. adults age 18-34 than any cable network and 80% of 
traffic comes from outside the U.S.350 YouTube?s personalities, who possess channels 
with subscribers to their videos, have been said to be disproportionately minorities when 
compared to mainstream television, where the stars are largely White.351 In 2012 Haley 
Tsukayama, reporter for the Washington Post, wrote, ?Among the 20 most-subscribed-to 
channels on YouTube, eight feature minorities. Most are Asian American. Many more 
Black and Latino shows populate the top 50.? 352 Indeed, performances by non-White 
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YouTube users and features have a significantly high currency353 for their consumption 
by online interactors and spectators. These statistics are particularly telling when six out 
of ten of the videos on the Gregory Brothers? YouTube channel, schmoyoho, feature 
Black Americans or their voices in their top video uploads (as of August 2014). If 
schmoyoho did not take advantage of the capitalist gains from commodifying Black 
performances and turning them into things, their channel would not be as virally 
successful as it is today.
	 Unlike WSHH where videos have to be approved before they are uploaded to the 
site, on YouTube, interactors handle a significant burden of the broadcasting; thus, before 
their video could be viewed by anyone, the Gregory Brothers, like any other interactor, 
only needed to log in to their YouTube account and upload it. Three days after the 
WAFF-48 news report on the Dodson family aired, the Gregory Brothers turned the 
already sensationalized framing of WAFF-48?s news story on Kelly Dodson?s attempted 
rape into an episode, ?12b,? of their Auto-Tune the News series354 without anyone?s 
permission. Here enters, Auto-Tune The News: BED INTRUDER SONG!!! Since, it has 
been changed to BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes), signaling the choice to 
brand the song and sell it. Both the newscast and the autotuned version were turned into a 
m?lange of fan-edit videos, none reaching the popularity of the Gregory Brothers? 
rendition.355 The Gregory Brothers further narrowed WAFF-48?s focus on Antoine?s rage 
by making more of a spectacle of it, and deepening the silencing of Kelly Dodson. 
Indeed, this further lessened the seriousness of what happened to her, transforming her 
story into an ?...almost forgotten strand in the narrative.? 356
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	 The Gregory Brothers eventually contacted Antoine Dodson (it is not clear if they 
spoke with Kelly Dodson) and asked if he wanted to receive half of the profits from the 
song on iTunes. Initially, Antoine Dodson hesitated in making a decision. Antoine 
Dodson?s hesitation is important as it conveys his awareness of the stakes between 
making money from, making fun of, and creating awareness from his family?s pain, rage, 
and courage.
	 A little less than a year after everyone, including Antoine Dodson, made a fair 
sum of money, someone in a press conference with him and the Gregory Brothers asked 
what his first reaction to the song was. Anticipating Antoine Dodson?s response and 
announcing his awareness of staging Antoine?s impassioned performance in the queue of 
their comical news (re)presentations, one of the Gregory Brothers insisted to him, ?It?s 
okay if you say we were jerks.? Letting the pain and seriousness of his news interview be 
known, Antoine Dodson described his first reaction to the music video as, ?Is somebody 
trying to be funny? Is they taking this to be a joke?? 357 
	 The latter rhetorical question echoes the sentiments in Antoine Dodson?s first (and 
earlier) Facebook fanpage post that he created two weeks after the publication of BED 
INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes). In his Facebook post he stated, ?HEY GUYS!  
Today I just want to say for the people who think that they can make me look crazy or 
hurt my image. THINK AGAIN I don?t care how much you offer. You are not going to 
make me or my family look stupid so runandtelldat homeboy.? 358 His comment received 
644 likes since February 2014. These two pivotal comments speak to the vulnerability 
and cultural currency of the Dodsons as Ghetto Witnesses. The Dodsons are people 
whose sincere testimony also stands to be widely sampled as comedic and as Aisha Harris
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?a Slate culture blogger for Brow Beat?phrased it, ?derisively memeified,? due their 
sonic and optic dissonance in the normalized field of vision and sound. Indeed, the Ghetto 
Witness has emerged as a new archetype out of the technologic ability to visualize and 
sonically project people?s vernacular recounting of events, traumatic or otherwise, in 
documentary formats that appear live, informal, and unadulterated. Antoine Dodson?s 
comments appear to be well aware of this trend.
	 Despite the vulnerability that Antoine Dodson?s performance presents to his 
family, he agrees to receive half of all profits between him and the Gregory Brothers. 
Here, the Gregory Brothers used their class, racial privilege, and musical expertise in the 
memeification and use of the Dodson family?s pain, rage and courage, and the way in 
which it was articulated through a Black street vernacular performance. The transaction 
highlights a larger historical trend. E. Patrick Johnson writes:
Black bodies in pain for public consumption have been an 
American spectacle for centuries. The history moves from 
public rapes, beatings, and lynchings to the gladiatorial 
arenas of basketball and boxing... White men have been the 
stagers and consumers of the historical spectacles I have 
mentioned, but in one way or another, Black people have 
been looking, too, forging a traumatized collective 
historical memory which is reinvoked, I believe, at 
contemporary sites.359
Indeed, YouTube is a contemporary site where spectacles of pain (and pleasure) are 
performed and consumed by all people in differing ways and White men still possess a 
large stake in their staging and consumption. Some of the ways in which Kelly and 
Antoine Dodson?s performance are (un)framed, as a result, were not only raced, classed, 
and sexed, but also traumatic to people who viewed it?haunting spectators with yet 
another tale of sexual assault and Blacks, effeminate Black men in particular, as comic 
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relief. Even though WAFF-48 news staged the event, the Gregory Brothers became 
collusive in that staging and distributed it, with signal differences, to a wider audience, 
monetizing its value.
	 Their rendition of the newscast, BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes), 
would go on to sell 300, 000+ copies on iTunes,360 be performed by Antoine and the 
Gregory Brothers at the 2010 BET Hip Hop Awards, be the most viewed YouTube video 
of 2010 with the original television interview as the People?s Choice ?Video of the 
Year.? 361 The contract between the Dodsons and the Gregory Brothers complicates an 
understanding of the song as sending, what Antoine Dodson called, ?a positive 
message...like an alert,? by further using it as a product that sells far more than awareness 
about sexual assault.362 The profits resulting from Antoine Dodson?s business investments 
such as songs, t-shirts, and a sex offender application helped him to move his family out 
of public housing showing how, in Antoine Dodson?s words, ?a blessing came out of a 
bad situation.? 363 
	 Many of the YouTube interactors sarcastically comment on the remix video, 
labeling those who disliked the video as rapists, drawing consensus on disliking the video 
after 1:15, or simply repeating verbatim what was said in the video. Many of the WSHH 
interactors mention their desire to get the song as a ringtone, how hilarious it is, and also 
repeat the words verbatim from the video. However, one must vigilantly question the 
politics of race, class, sexuality and memeification that arise in some of the marginal 
comments that interactors make about the performance, which gain large consensus, go 
unopposed, and are at times challenged. The issues of derisive representations of 
Blackness in popular culture and everyday life and challenging the absoluteness of these 
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very notions come to a head in these viral acts. These two tensions lead me to consider 
not only how technologies amplify the pejorative, but also breed and carry ideas situated 
in livability and complexity.
	 The (il)legibility embodied by the Dodson is exemplified by their presence in the 
Gregory Brother?s Trap song, BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes). My attention 
is drawn to how the Gregory Brothers choose to audio-visually represent the Dodsons as 
Ghetto Witnesses on YouTube and how that shapes their (il)legiblity to interactors. The 
Dodson?s visual representation in the WAFF-48 newscast acts as a cue for what is 
associated with the sound of Trap music: Black bodies, thugs, drugs, excessive poverty, 
violence, and a desire to overcome the struggles that arise with them. I move here to 
investigate the sampling of the WAFF-48 newscast for a Trap music video and how it 
does work to make Kelly and Antoine Dodson highly visible and (il)legible.
	 The BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes) remix video, which sampled the 
incidents from WAFF-48?s newscast, was the first way in which I was led to the incident 
that WAFF-48 covered. Just as annoying orange led some interactors to BED INTRUDER 
SONG!!! (now on iTunes), the same song led me to the WAFF-48 newscast. The Gregory 
Brothers? remix video memeified the television interview described at length in the 
beginning of this chapter, a different take on ?Rap as CNN for Black culture.? A glaring 
difference between the interview and the remix is that the remix begins and ends with 
snippets of Antoine?s interview while Kelly?s is briefly sandwiched in between (literally 
one line). Recalling that the initial newscast featured Kelly first, already she is being 
written out of the video, revealing that while viral performance amplifies the visibility of 
its actors, it also distorts them, almost effacing them from the narrative. 
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	 Antoine Dodson opens the music video, telling the interviewer: 
?Well...OBVIOUSLY we have a RAPIST in Lincoln PARK!? Shortly after, the catchy 
Trap music comes in on a 4/4 rhythm, mid-70 beats per minute, buzzing electronic bass 
and staccato piano keys at the forefront, sparse kickdrums and sprinkled snares in the 
backdrop, and hand-claps, and then the choral auto-tuned motif (integrated with the 
Gregory Brothers? voices) begins: 
(Antoine Dodson Chorus) Run ?n? tell that homeboy / 
He?s climbin? in yo Home, home, homeboy  
windows / he?s snatchin? yo (Antoine Dodson Verse)
people up / We got your t-shirts and 
tryin? to rape ?em / you left fingerprints and 
so you need to / all / You are so dumb / 
hide ya kids / hide ya wife / You are really dumb / 
hide ya kids / hide ya wife / For real 
hide ya kids / hide ya wife / (Elizabeth Gentle)
and hide ya husbands / The man got away leaving 
cause they rapin? er?body behind evidence 
out here / You don?t have (Kelly Dodson)
to come and confess / I was attacked by some 
We lookin? for you / idiot in the projects
We gon? find you / (Antoine Dodson)
We gon? find you / So you So Dumb / So Dumb / So 
can run ?n? tell that / Run Dumb / So!
?n? tell that / (Chorus Repeats Once).364
Throughout the song, gestures that were used to express the no-nonsense attitude and 
queerness that Antoine Dodson was putting forth in the newscast?the way in which he 
uses the ?neck roll? with his afro blown out, for instance?become transformed. After 
video editing, Antoine Dodson?s face almost functions as a bouncing ball assisting 
spectators as they follow the unwritten lyrics. BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on 
iTunes) breaks down into a bridge at the close of the second chorus and, through its 
repetition, musically emphasizes a performance laced with Black street vernacular.
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	 This Black street vernacular is where Dodson performs his threat to the sexual 
predator, ?You don?t have to come and confess / We lookin? for you / We gon? find you / 
We gon? find you / So you can run and tell that / Run and tell that / Run and tell that 
homeboy / Home, home, homeboy.? It is not just the slang that is street, vernacular or 
Black, and not even the threat, but the telling him, ?Now you can run ?n? tell that 
homeboy,? after encroaching the camera space and rolling his eyes and neck to his left. 
His neck/eye gesture in combination with ?Run ?n? tell that? are the stance and fighting 
words that precede a Black street vernacular fighting ritual. More than being a reference 
to Denise Lasalle?s 1972 song ?Now Run And Tell That? or a song in the 2007 musical 
Hairspray, here, we see how ?stancetaking and styling can operate as both verbal and 
embodied tools in the production of a form of covert denigration.? 365 In this particular 
case, Antoine tells the sexual predator to go and inform his family about how he was 
threatened and to bring them so that they can get their ?asses beat? too. This stance 
recalls, and even amplifies, moments where not only the individual involved, but the 
individual?s entire family, is provoked to fight.
	 E. Patrick Johnson discusses the attraction to, and currency of, Blackness, which 
is useful in considering incentives to memeify this Black performance. He writes, ?For 
their part, Whites construct linguistic representations of Blacks that are grounded in racist 
stereotypes to maintain the status quo only to then re-appropriate these stereotypes to 
affect a fetishistic ?escape? into the Other to transcend the rigidity of their own whiteness, 
as well as to feed the capitalist gains of commodified Blackness.? 366 By repeatedly 
highlighting certain sections of the newscast, the Gregory Brothers linguistically and 
gesturally represent Blackness, amplify that representation by making its soundtrack Trap 
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music, and by harmonizing with that representation?clapping while singing: ?you can 
run ?n? tell that??forever attach themselves as part of the Other?s (read the Dodson?s) 
entourage. 
	 Trap music, coined in 2003 by rap artist, T.I., as ?Trap Muzik? is a Southern 
United States (Texas, Georgia, and Tennessee) style of Hip-Hop music inspired by the 
struggles of making/dealing drugs that has been an unofficial genre of music since the 
early 1990s. The rap lyrics of Trap music often range from the paranoid to 
megalomaniacal, reflective of the states of mind that can emerge from a lifestyle of 
dealing drugs. The Atlanta, Georgia word ?Trap,? before it was officially a genre of 
music, represented the (often blighted) location where drugs were made and dealt and the 
lifestyle that comes with that job. ?Trap? also functioned as a critique of the dead-end 
nature of that business?as Big Boi from the Atlanta rap group Outkast reflected, ?So 
now you?re back in the trap / Just that, trapped / Go on and marinate on that for a 
minute.? 367 Musically, Trap is often denoted by ?booming 808-style sub-bass kick drums?  
and ?sixty-fourth-note hi-hats? created on drum machines, deep synths, and ?cinematic 
strings.? 368 
	 Trap music, thus, is derived from situated (often blighted) places and the psychic, 
spiritual, and physical struggles to survive of certain (Black) bodies within those places; 
as such, Trap music functions as a witness to particular kinds life in the African diaspora 
and how that seeing/imagining sounds. Since the linguistic is imbricated in performance, 
the visual summons the aural?what Fred Moten describes as, ?a seeing that redoubles 
itself as sound? or ?visible music.? 369 Here, the use of Trap music by the Gregory 
Brothers further ties race to both corporeal and aural signifiers.
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	 Browsing through the Gregory Brothers? other Auto-Tune the News videos, there 
is not always a correlation between the music chosen and the identities of the 
performer(s). However, the fact that Trap music was created as the perfect music to 
(re)present Antoine?s warning should not be easily dismissed. Considering the Ghetto 
Witness trope that Antoine indexes, one also has to question why the Gregory Brothers 
chose Trap music instead of other musical forms. In an interview, the Gregory Brothers 
later revealed that they were particularly attracted to the musicality of Antoine?s 
warning.370 The Gregory Brothers? attention to the cadence of Antoine Dodson?s speech 
and their familiarity with Trap music signaled to them how Antoine and Kelly could both 
fit within a Trap music themed video, which, as a genre, already has mass appeal. 
Interactors recognized how well the interview was integrated with Trap music and their 
magnetism to Antoine?s rhythm, directness, and vivid particularity was echoed and 
promoted. Indeed, the use of Trap music, itself a particularly viral musical sub-genre, 
increased the virality of the performance. In essence, viral material (Dodson?s performance) met a 
viral music genre and created a robust viral product, which would translate into both money and 
fame.
	 A YouTube interactor called MaNgAnlmE stated, ?this is why i love black guys. 
They can rap ? even when they dont (sic) realize it.? 371 After posting this comment, 
MaNgAnlmE received seventeen likes, making it one of the top comments for BED 
INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes) on the afternoon of January 26, 2011. These other 
unnamed YouTube interactors in their ?likes? agree with the assumption that there is 
some natural quality to the way that Black men deliver their speech that makes them 
genetically predisposed to being able to rap. MaNgAnlmE?s notion about Black people?s 
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predisposition to rap is steeped in inaccurate ideas about Black bodies as proxies for 
entertainment. More than the notion of the natural ability of Black people to be musical 
or rappers, what ties MaNgAnlmE?s comment to the Gregory Brothers? is that a unique 
musicality?a particular rhythm, melody, or tonality to Antoine?s speech?was deemed as 
remarkable and attractive. Reminding others of the musicality of the WAFF-48 newscast, 
YouTube interactor airstrike141, received three likes after commenting, ?the original 
video actually sound (sic) like hes (sic) trying to rap already.? 372 One can, indeed, get lost 
in the rhythm as Antoine Dodson moves his head from side to side?as if to accent his 
syllables?and achieves varying pitches, a way of expressing his affect regarding his 
sister?s violation and his disdain for the respectability politics of the lady on the 
?sidelines.?
The Gregory Brothers? decision to use Trap music as background music for this 
remix video, however, inadvertently caricatures the Dodson?s location, class, and race. 
Antoine and Kelly Dodson are transformed into unintentional singing rap artists behind 
an African American genre of music inspired by the income-driven necessity to sell drugs 
in the Southern United States. In an interview, Michael?of the Gregory Brothers?
reveals a little known fact about the Auto-Tune the News series, ?Sometimes in our 
videos, we include a lot of singers, and when we do, we might arbitrarily use a beat that 
we?re going to shape them all to. But Antoine, you know, he kind of owned the song?
this was going to be all him?so I wanted [the beat] to be specific to that.? 373 In essence, 
Michael immediately saw a song in the Dodson?s interview that highlighted Antoine (not 
Kelly) Dodson and instead of arbitrarily choosing a beat, he intentionally chose a Trap 
motif to remain authentic to Antoine?s performance. Here, the struggle of a young, Black, 
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working-class, Alabaman family is dangerously correlated with the sound of Trap music. 
	 Trap music signifies poverty, Blackness, and blighted locales, virally representing 
these classes, identities, and geographies through its widely circulated lyrics and imagery, 
which takes advantage of viral mechanisms, such as video-sharing web sites and 
television broadcasts. This viral genre does unspoken work for the Gregory Brothers in 
making Antoine Dodson legible. Nonetheless, they also make him illegible in a 
significant way as the bodies associated with Trap music do not normally exhibit 
performances of Black queer masculinity. Through this ?miscasting,? 374 the Gregory 
Brothers not only create comedy, but widen the spectrum of bodies that can effectively 
perform (or fail at performing) Trap music; who, indeed, regulates the authenticity of 
Trap performances? Admittedly, we begin to see how this trauma transforms into an 
interview, which is now inseparable from Hip-Hop music as Antoine Dodson?s address to 
an unnamed intruder becomes the lyrics to the latest Trap song.
Many other interactors on WSHH and YouTube only responded to the video of the 
Trap song BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes), and not each other, praising the 
song for its brilliance and coolness, asking others if they stopped watching the video at 
1:15, and whether the intruder had been found. While these remarks outnumbered the 
responses I will interrogate here, and speak to the Gregory Brothers? talent at making the 
gravely serious comedically palatable, the interactions that lie in their shadow tell how 
this viral performance is outstanding and trendy in ways that impact the wellness of 
Black bodies. A closer look at comments marginal to the many that were written reveal 
haunting assumptions about Kelly Dodson?s sexual desires. Here, I explore how 
interactor responses challenge and support prevailing racist, sexist, and heteronormative 
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discourses surrounding Kelly Dodson?s Black womanhood on WSHH; producing a 
netnography of YouTube that distills similar discourse from the first year?s comments, I 
will also explore the ways in which conceptions of the sexual desires of Black women are 
intimately tied to conceptions of the sexual desires of Black men.
	 Soon after the Antoine Dodson - They Rape'n Everybody Out Here [Auto Tune 
Edition] was published on WSHH, a comment concerned with the dynamics of rape in 
relationship to Kelly Dodson emerged. One interactor posted, ?his sis doesnt (sic) look 
like a rape victim..she probably wanted it.? 375 The WSHH comment about Kelly desiring 
her assault evoked the stereotype of the licentious Black woman who, even when 
sexually assaulted, such an act could never be against her will. The notion of Kelly as 
Antoine?s sister, again, places her only in relationship to him, which allows us to witness 
an effect of what WAFF-48 news set in motion: emphasizing Antoine and deemphasizing 
Kelly. Also, commenting that Kelly does not look like a rape victim is symptomatic of the 
popular assurance of what a rape victim looks like and the larger ways in which women?s 
bodies, and Black women?s bodies in particular, are not given the chance to be perceived 
as vulnerable to sexual violence. The significance of the above WSHH comment is that it 
was questioned by another WSHH interactor, forming a dialogue that broke up the other 
monologues on the comment wall.
	 While the sexual and racial ideology used to justify the attempted rape was 
haunting, one interactor faced it and challenged the notion that Kelly Dodson desired her 
own sexual assault. In response to Kelly not looking like a rape victim, another WSHH 
interactor commented, ?What Kinda cr*p is that? Seriously? Who WANTS to be 
raped?...JERK!!!!? 376  By not limiting rape to particular genders, e377 does some critical 
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work in thinking about rape beyond its heteronormative discourse and who fits the 
description of rape victim. E also takes the previous person to task about treating the acts 
of force and violence like consensual sex. It is clear that Kelly Dodson?s scenario?where 
her home is invaded and her body assaulted by an uninvited stranger?eliminates the 
possibility of rape fantasy. The assertion behind e?s question, that no one wants to be 
raped demonstrates how viral performances do not simply amplify issues pertaining to 
the denigration of race, gender, and class, but through circulation the acts create 
conditions whereby one can learn of and challenge those very denigrations.
	 I contend that comment areas on websites such as WSHH and YouTube enable the 
possibility that the original interactor who mistreated the claim of sexual assault by Kelly 
Dodson could see alternative perspectives. This possibility is where perspective-altering 
potential that affirms Black life lies in the realm of memeified viral performance. In 
Modern Dance, Negro Dance: Race in Motion Susan Manning explores race, gender, 
sexuality, and of particular interest here, spectatorship and reception, in mid-twentieth 
century American theatre dance. Manning describes a process she terms as ?cross-
viewing,? which elaborates how spectators of a performance can see other subjectivities
?from different social locations than their own?observing the same performance in 
dissimilar ways, in turn, influencing cross-viewers to interpret the bodies in motion, or 
how to watch them, differently. In other words, cross-viewing is the watching of other 
people watching.378 This cross-viewing, she writes, ?has the potential to alter how publics 
read bodies in motion and thus to effect social and artistic change.? 379 Comment areas on 
video-sharing sites allow interactors to participate in an act of cross-viewing, whereby, 
they witness another?s comment or use of abusive power, with the possibility of 
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reinforcing, challenging, or transgressing what they cross-viewed. Despite my optimistic 
contention, I would suggest that the frequent sexist/racist/classist comments in this 
video?s comment areas on WSHH and YouTube constitute a challenge to critical anti-
racist discourses, which are less frequent as many interactors? responses to the video are 
not in conversation with another interactor, engaged by someone else or, as it is with 
YouTube, merely liked.
	 Within my fieldnotes, I kept noting that there was a particular concept that 
received many ?likes? and only emerged from YouTube commenters, which alarmed me: 
that a little Black baby boy in the background of the WAFF-48 coverage of Kelly 
Dodson?s story was the rapist. For example, there are a number of top comments that 
refer to the 41st-43rd seconds of the video, alerting others that they can see the rapist 
during those seconds of the video, and then other users liking those comments. Indeed, 
the way in which the original newscast was rendered centered a Black baby boy in a grey 
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and yellow striped shirt at the precise 
moment when Kelly was saying, with 
one hand on her hip, ?I was attacked 
by some idiot in the projects? (as seen 
in fig. 4.4). The little boy was literally 
opening the door to the cadence of 
Kelly saying, ?projects.? Playing off 
Figure 4.4. ?ANTOINE DODSON. THIS IS 
JUST TOO FUNNY!,? YouTube Video, 2:03, of the ?hide ya wife, hide ya kids, and 
originally from an interview by WAFF-48 
News, posted by interactor ?WSHH,? August, hide ya husbands? phrase that Antoine 
3, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=VXPgjsB0Xm0. Photograph, January 19, said, and the Gregory Brothers 
2015.
transformed into a mantra, YouTube 
interactor Laplap9370 received 68 likes for asking, ?did any body notice that little boy 
from 0:41 to 0:43 he is the rapist!!! he is trying to rape the others..........so,ya (sic) need to 
hide you (sic) kid....just your kid...home boy!? 380 Describing what the Black baby is 
doing, Irockgame1 received 24 likes remarking, ?at 0:42 there is a rapist entering the 
house. lol.? 381 Linking the title of the video to the little boy, baradona10 received 59 likes 
saying, ?0:41 the little kid is the bed intruder!!!!!? 382   
	 The consensus around these remarks, posing the baby Black boy as the rapist, link 
the comments from YouTube to the pejorative comment from WSHH for the ways in 
which they are all tied to Kelly Dodson desiring her own sexual assault. Discussing the 
link between Black women?s perceived promiscuity and Black men?s perceived 
compulsive sexual urges, Patricia Hill Collins suggests that the stereotype of Black men 
as rapists reinforces the Black woman as whore archetype.383 This semblance enumerates 
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how Black baby boys are disallowed their childhoods, needing to grow up and be 
accountable adults far too soon, and criminalized (and sexualized) before they can tell the 
difference between right and wrong or express sexual desire.384 These comments, as a 
result, function to reinforce the mythical Black rapist and the mythical Black whore 
archetypes. Even though the Black bodies in this moment are absolutely survivors of 
trespassing, both of their home, their neighbor?s home, and their bodies, interactors 
attempt to criminalize them, making them the agent of their own trauma. From these 
examples, we see how the (re)framing of Kelly Dodson as a sexual predator also allows 
for her vulnerability as sexual prey.
	 Here I will continue a netnography of the dangerous comments that interactors on 
WSHH and YouTube shared, but will shift attention to those concerning Antoine 
Dodson?s sexuality, which both compound and trouble popular notions around Black gay 
bodies. In my analysis of WSHH comments, I am particularly cautious about the 
neoliberal impulse to label Black cultural spaces as overly-homophobic or homonegative, 
which make Black groups absolutely responsible for a structural homophobia or 
homonegativity of which they are a part and not the absolute whole of. Nonetheless, from 
my survey of the first year of top rated comments from YouTube and WSHH, ?gay? and 
?fag? were used respectively in largely denigrating ways. Indeed, there are a spectrum of 
interactions that repeat themselves with marked difference, signaling to me an idealogical 
consistency that I cannot ignore. Matthew W. Hughey and Jessie Daniels posit, ?Given 
that racist [and homonegative] language has (1) changed form to become more subtle and 
(2) moved backstage to private areas, one might view the intersection of racist [and 
homonegative] discourse and the internet as a third space betwixt and between the public 
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and private spheres.? 385 The following comments are exemplars of this denigrating 
tendency as well as how interactors, through their use of discourses from bodies IRL on 
YouTube and WSHH, betray the anonymity that online identity provides.
	 On Novermber 3, 2010 YouTube interactor jcords40oz received two likes for 
sarcastically commenting on Antoine?s sexuality: ?He?s not gay at all... Lmfao.? 386 The 
user?s attention to Antoine?s sexuality was denigrating for the way in which ?he?s not gay 
at all? takes on a sarcasm followed by the comedic ?Lmfao.? If we take comedy to 
emerge from the placement of the abnormal in a normal scene, and since we do not 
traditionally see Black effeminate men as being able to protect anyone, let alone 
themselves, we might begin to understand why jcords40oz could ?laugh his fucking ass 
off.? 
	 The latter remark as comedic also has to do with the ease through which 
normalized sexuality is understood. While there is no correlation between effeminacy and 
a particular sexuality, for jcords40oz Antoine Dodson?s effeminacy immediately betrays 
his sexuality. The obviousness of, and attention to, Antoine Dodson as gay suggests the 
inability to understand race as always constitutive of gender, class, and sexuality. Indeed, 
the ways in which gayness is disaggregated from Blackness compounds the racial 
discourse where the authentic Black subject is male and heterosexual.387
	 Jcords40oz?s remark also views Black gay men in the trope of ?Negro Faggotry? 
that filmmaker, activist, and poet Marlon T. Riggs describes as caricature, ?entertaining 
us in the castles of our homes?like court jesters, like eunuchs?with their double 
entendres, their dead-end lusts, and, above all, their relentless hilarity in the face of 
relentless despair. Negro Faggotry is all the rage!? 388 Indeed, considering Blackness and 
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homosexuality together, through the lens of cinematic and televisual representations, a 
trope begins to emerge that views Black gay men as comic relief: Negro Faggotry. In a 
scene of despair, with the assaulter still unaccounted for, Antoine Dodson?s sexual desires 
become most visible and laughable to his audience. Antoine entertains, transforming a 
serious situation into one of amusement due onlookers? inability to reconcile that which 
has never been estranged to begin with: Black effeminacy?read as gay.
	 Differently from disaggregating Blackness from sexuality, circa 2010 a WSHH 
interactor considered Blackness and sexuality as inseparable, albeit as an insult, and 
commented, ?WHY DO THIEY (sic) SHOW THESE IGNORENT (sic) BLACK f*gS 
ON TV MAKI (sic) BLACK PPL (sic) OOK (sic) BAD!!!!!!? 389 As this interactor shares 
his embarrassment about, or observation of, Antoine Dodson, he echoes sentiments 
aligned with respectability politics. E?s rhetorical question also interplays class, naming 
Antoine Dodson ignorant, and race, naming Antoine Dodson Black, with an insult toward 
his perceived sexuality, naming Antoine Dodson a fag.
	 Through the interactor?s use of fag, e also dangerously situates effeminacy within 
a derogatory understanding of a queer sexuality. E. Patrick Johnson describes what is 
behind the (in)congruity of behavior with sexuality: ?Because femininity is always 
already devalued in patriarchal societies, those associated with the feminine are also 
viewed as inferior. Given the ways in which effeminacy in men is read as a sign of 
homosexuality, particularly in the United States, it follows that homosexual men are 
devalued.? 390 Antoine?s behavior?(mis)read as effeminate and then as homosexual?is 
devalued in a way that cannot be disconnected from his Blackness. Specifically here, his 
gender performance (also read as having classed inflections), makes Black people ?look 
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bad.? This notion of ?looking bad? speaks to a processing of potential embarrassment, a 
threat to both raced and masculine pride; neither of which Antoine Dodson?s performance 
is concerned with.391 The Black feminist intervention that Antoine Dodson?s performance 
made is obscured by the immense attention to his sexuality, and importantly, his race.
	 While aspects of Antoine?s performance summoned politics around respectability 
and raced and masculine pride, one WSHH interactor offered an alternative view. In 
response to the interactor above who referred to Antoine (and possibly Kelly) Dodson as 
ignorant, e says, ?I don?t think the individuals were ignorant. He came correct.? This 
interactor expresses a Ghettocentric ideology that, as Robin Kelley suggests in Race 
Rebels, re-contextualizes perspectives from ?a collective identity shaped by class 
consciousness, the character of inner-city space, police repression, poverty, and the 
constant threat of interracial violence.? 392 Kelley goes on to suggest that through 
Ghettocentric constructions negative stereotypes of Black men become contextualized, 
criminal acts are reconstituted as resistance to work, and fearlessness is used to quantify 
masculinity.393 The interactor?s comment is situated within a Ghettocentric view of the 
viral performance. E?s positionality offers a lens through which Antoine Dodson properly 
approaches this situation with respect not only for his sister, but for racial, class, and gay 
pride as well.
	 While respectability politics clash with Ghettocentricity, they also function to 
resist an American scientific racism of the mid-nineteenth century, which suggests that 
racial differences within the human race are hierarchically speciated. Nineteenth century 
ethnologists John C. Nott and George Gliddon394 remark on an illustration from their 
sweeping ethnological survey titled, Types of Mankind, that contains an ?Algerian Negro?  
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and ?Saharan Negro? on its top row and a ?Gorilla? on its bottom row. They write, ?The 
palpable analogies and dissimilitudes between an inferior type of mankind and a superior 
type of monkey require no comment.? 395 Nott and Gliddon?s juxtaposition of images 
suggested that Negros (and their descendants) were unequivocally related to gorillas in 
ways that other races of mankind, due to their superiority to Negros, were not. Even 
though their racist notions have long since been debunked, the way in which they 
influenced how North Americans saw race in the mid-nineteenth century still linger, only 
confident enough to emerge in the most anonymous of settings, like WSHH?s comment 
walls.
	 Praising the aesthetic value of the video Antoine Dodson - They Rape'n Everybody 
Out Here [Auto Tune Edition], circa 2010 a WSHH interactor writes, ?THIS SONBG 
[sic] IS A CERTIFIED BANGER!? The same interactor then takes an insulting yet, given 
the praise of the beginning of e?s comment, unexpected turn writing, ?YOU NAPPY 
HEADED JIGGABOOS [sic] ALWAYS GIVE ME A LAUGH ON THIS MONKIE [sic] 
SITE! -JOHN BOY.? 396 John boy deploys ?jiggaboos??an early twentieth century 
derogatory characterization of a Black person possessing clich??d Black attributes, such 
as wooly hair, dark skin, and big lips?to derisively label the people who are popularly 
featured in the videos on WSHH and Antoine Dodson - They Rape'n Everybody Out Here 
[Auto Tune Edition] in particular.397 The website WSHH is described by said interactor as 
a ?monkie site,? a remark that proposes the website?s low-tech content/design and its 
interactors are untamed and uncultivated in comparison to other sites online. Indeed, the 
construction of WSHH and the remix video as a low-tech and unsophisticated space and 
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production evokes characterizations of the World Wide Web as cultivated, tamed, and 
high-tech that tend to relegate Black bodies to its margins.398
	 By evoking nineteenth-century American scientific anti-Black racism and 
twentieth-century anti-Black derogations, John Boy confirms the idea that digital spaces, 
as raceless and genderless as their interactors can represent themselves to be through 
anonymous/disguised profiles, still ?have ethnocentric inflections when [the World Wide 
Web is] uncritically presumed to be a kind of universal reality.? 399 Online virtual worlds, 
have been discussed as locations where one can discard issues around their bodily 
subjectivity (including prejudice) by becoming whomever E wants, even if E is simply 
known as guest.400 Virtual interactions, however, no matter how disembodied, chart 
discourses that emerge from bodies IRL that experience privileges and inequalities that 
drive choices concerning if they can interact and how they interact in virtual life.401 
Evidently, ?The Internet and other computer-based technologies are complex 
topographies of power and privilege, made up of walled communities, new (plat)forms of 
economic and technological exclusion, and both new and old styles of race as code, 
interaction, and image.? 402 In this case, John boy is communicating a White supremacist 
discourse that emerged out of the experience of White bodies in contact with Black 
bodies IRL in the nineteenth and twentieth-century, in turn, potentially betraying e?s 
racial and social positionality. John Boy?s unopposed comment also reveals much about 
the xenophobic, or at the very least, the anti-dialogical architexture between interactors 
present within WSHH.
	 The latter bigoted comments may come off as purely figurative with little to no 
impact on the real bodies they reference. However, considering a sweeping study by the 
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Opportunity Agenda, ?Social Science Literature Review: Media Representations and 
Impact on the Lives of Black Men and Boys,? it becomes clear that the media?s ?distorted 
pattern of portrayal? of Blacks generally, and Black men particularly, has causal affects 
on public attitudes toward them.403 Indeed, ?The caricature of black masculinity has long 
been both the thing that excuses white oppression and stimulates the fear that motivates 
it? of which Blacks themselves are not immune.404 If John Boy is an employer, a judge, 
or a police officer, his attitudes would, more directly, affect the hiring or promotion, the 
sentencing or dismissal, or the degree of arrest of a Black person. Certainly, the recent 
federal investigation of the Ferguson police department conveys how less fragrant public 
attitudes, such as African Americans in Ferguson, MO lacking ?personal responsibility,? 
cause African Americans to ?experience disproportionate harm under Ferguson?s 
approach to law enforcement.? 405 The investigation reveals the way in which discursive 
bias and stereotyping influences behavior, which adversely affects African Americans in 
Ferguson, MO. These adverse affects in Ferguson, MO range from multiple citations in a 
single incident, lower chances of case dismissal by Municipal Judges, and force used at 
disproportionately high rates.406 It is, indeed, dangerous to believe that because lawful 
racial discrimination ended we can be complacent about racism?s discursive existence 
and causal relationship to behavior, whether it be spoken, emailed, or posted to a 
comment wall. 
	 Interactions on comment walls convey how what happens outside of the frame of 
any performance will reveal its reality as fervently as, if not more than, the enframed 
bodies will. The discourses used by the interactors depict a different picture of the 
pressures and issues that the bodies within the camera?s lens face than the bodies reveal 
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on their own. Hank Willis Thomas? Frames series is a contemporary exemplar of this 
idea.407 In the images, someone holds a frame in front of people or objects and Thomas 
takes a picture that includes the frame and what is outside the frame. By doing this, 
Thomas shows us how what is centered by the camera, or frame, is very limiting and an 
incomplete picture, leaving out other factors involved in scripting the enframed 
performance. For example, in one image from the Million Woman March, named Three 
[fig. 3], three women smile directly at the camera while they center themselves within a 
wooden frame, outside of which everyone else?s attention is elsewhere.408 Stopping at the 
frame, one might imagine that the three women had a crucial position in the Million 
Woman March, yet, an interpretation beyond the frame shows how inconsequential they 
might have been.
	 Here, Antoine Dodson?s performance functions as the three women smiling 
directly at the camera, while the interactors? attention is both there and elsewhere. 
Interactors, indeed, bring attention to minor and major details within and outside of the 
remix video that were not necessarily centered by WAFF-48 or the Gregory Brothers, yet, 
hold tremendous significance and affect how Kelly and Antoine Dodson are discursively 
perceived. The repeated ways in which Antoine Dodson?s performance travels beyond the 
frames of the camera (or video box) are also significant to the remix video?s success as a 
viral performance. Antoine Dodson?s performance intersects with diverse discourses and 
affects, emphasizing how other things script what is occurring within the camera. As 
much as racial and sexual aspects of Kelly and Antoine Dodson are framed and limited 
by certain perceptions and mechanisms, they are also unframed by the same technologies.
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Part III
The Genealogy of the Ghetto Witness: 
Memeification of BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes)
	 Memes function as shadows. They are both happening outside the frame and 
derivative of the performance within the frame, thereby making new frames through 
which to understand the so called original performance. Memeifying?the creative 
derivation of a performance with slight variation?Antoine Dodson amplifies the 
visibility and hearability of new bodies he is in proximity to and, for my purposes, sets up 
a genealogical conversation for the Ghetto Witness. Indeed, tracing the circulation of 
derivations of Antoine Dodson?s performance exposes a pattern where certain behaviors 
become seemingly primed for media consumption?viral material. Here, I will examine 
the ways in which Antoine Dodson has been memeified both visually and vernacularly. I 
engage a brief netnographic survey of the first year of comments that concern Antoine 
Dodson in a different YouTube remix video named, ?Sweet Brown - Ain't Nobody Got 
Time for That (Autotune Remix);? next, I do a performance analysis of an image that was 
a curation of the most popular Ghetto Witnesses from 2010-2013; lastly, I end with a 
brief discourse analysis of a vernacular derivation of the saying ?hide ya wife, hide ya 
kids, and hide ya husbands.? As performatives are produced in relationship to Antoine 
Dodson?s performance from WAFF-48, it becomes important to decipher them since the 
apparatuses of digital media (re)present (un)livable things about race, class, gender, and 
sexuality that pervade everyday cultural experiences online and IRL.
	 Kimberly ?Sweet Brown? Wilkins, a Black woman from Oklahoma City, OK, was 
interviewed by NBC news affiliate KFOR-4 because five units in an apartment complex 
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caught on fire, of which she was a resident in, and survivor from, one of them. Smiling 
every so often, she recounts the following in the interview: ?I woke up to get me a cold 
pop. And then I thought somebody was barbecuing. I said oh lord Jesus it?s a fire!? At this 
point in her brief interview, her son walks in the background, covers his entire face then 
removes his hands, shaking his head no. As her gold tooth glimmers in the camera, she 
continues, ?Then I ran out, I didn?t grab no shoes or nothing Jesus.? Shaking her head 
and gesturing her pointer finger down toward her feet she continued, ?I ran for my life!? 
Her son is walking back now, and he looks directly in the camera, cheeks raised, and not 
laughing. Clutching her chest she continued, ?And then the smoke got me. I got 
bronchitis.? She shakes her head rapidly saying, ?Ain?t nobody got time for that!? Once 
she finishes her testimony, she bursts into laughter as she looks right, which is where her 
son is. 
	 What is subversive, or does not go down easily, about the video is the way in 
which Sweet Brown?s son roams in the background as she amusingly, even smirking 
throughout her testimony, tells the news reporter her side of the story. The entire time that 
her son was pacing, he expresses the kind of helpless shame that children feel when their 
parents humiliate them in public. He also represents the embarrassment that Black 
communities feel toward the iconicity of these kinds of performances that, even though 
they may be real on that individual?s level, come to authenticate them as an entire racial 
group. Essentially, we have the presence of the humiliated group and the body 
performing what that group is ashamed of in the same performance, which rarely, if ever, 
happens in the index of Ghetto Witnesses that I reference in this chapter.
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	 Kimberly Wilkins? nickname summons a consumable and addictive Brown and 
places her in a more direct relationship with what Kyla Tompkins calls the ?trope of black 
edibility? and the associations of Blackness with sweetness.409 Black edibility deals with 
the image of the Black body when ?metaphorized as food.? 410 However, ?Sweet Brown? 
is what Kimberly Wilkins goes by, not what a YouTube or WSHH interactor named her. 
Thus, Kimberly Wilkins? self-application of her nickname, at the most critical, hints at an 
awareness of the historical consumption of Black bodies in popular culture (which her 
son visually performs), or, at the most pedestrian, hints at her personality as a kind Black 
woman.
	 After the initial newscast went viral, The Parody Factory?a YouTube channel 
specializing in parodies?made a gospel-themed music video mashup. Their use of 
gospel music was a nod, not only to Sweet Brown?s Blackness, but also her references to 
Jesus throughout her interview. Gospel music was a ?by-product of the late nineteenth- 
and early twentieth-century black ?folk church.?? 411 The declarations of Ghetto Witnesses 
fit within the gospel tradition considering that, ?The official doctrine of the folk church 
encourages spontaneous expressions through improvised song, testimonies, prayers, and 
praises from individuals.? 412 Similar to Trap music being used to set the scene for the 
remix of the Dodson?s testimony, gospel music is used here as a Black genre of music 
that prepares listeners for a particular kind of embodied verbal testimony, one of triumph 
over obstacles. Indeed, gospel music often precedes, and occurs during, a testimony in 
church and The Parody Factory, with their use of hand-clapping, foot-stomping, and a 
choir during Sweet Brown?s testimony, tap into this tradition in their remix video of the 
KFOR-4 news interview. Gospel music acts as a sonic and visual witness to testimonies 
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of people who struggle against obstacles to living righteously, and in this particular case, 
just living.
	 Nonetheless, the video also featured clips from dozens of movies and obscure 
videos filled with people clapping their hands, people and monkeys dancing, and most 
importantly for my current analysis, Antoine Dodson barbecuing with Don King as seen 
in Figs. 4.5, 4.6, and 4.7.413 While this video contains plethora material to interrogate, 
particularly the use of dancing monkeys, keeping on the topic of the memeification of the 
BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes), the fact that Antoine Dodson appeared in the 
middle of ?Sweet Brown - Ain't Nobody Got Time for That (Autotune Remix)? 
barbecuing with Don King struck me. The memeification of Antoine Dodson in the 
?Sweet Brown - Ain't Nobody Got Time for That (Autotune Remix)? begins to center him 
in what I am calling the archetype of the Ghetto Witness. Not only are these memes viral 
Figure 4.5. ?Sweet Brown - Ain't Nobody Got Time for That 
(Autotune Remix),? photograph captured from a YouTube video, 
1:56, posted by theparodyfactory1, April 13, 2012, accessed May 
10, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFEoMO0pc7k. 
Photograph, June 11, 2014.
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Figure 4.6. ?Sweet Brown - Ain't Nobody Figure 4.7. ?Sweet Brown - Ain't Nobody 
Got Time for That (Autotune Remix),? Got Time for That (Autotune Remix),? 
photograph captured from a YouTube photograph captured from a YouTube 
video, 1:56, posted by theparodyfactory1, video, 1:56, posted by theparodyfactory1, 
April 13, 2012, accessed May 10, 2013, April 13, 2012, accessed May 10, 2013, 
https://www.youtube.com/watch? https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=bFEoMO0pc7k. Photograph, June 11, v=bFEoMO0pc7k. Photograph, June 11, 
2014. 2014.
performances of Antoine Dodson?s tirade, but with each (re)production, they reinforce his 
body as the primary referent for the Ghetto Witness.
	 The image of Antoine Dodson emerges as a thought bubble from Sweet Brown as 
she is saying, ?I thought somebody was barbecuing.? Don King and Antoine Dodson 
stare at the spectator, heads clearly photoshopped onto other Black men?s bodies, as if to 
suggest Black male bodies are interchangeable. This photoshopping move, indeed, recalls 
the duplication mechanisms of the Intel ad discussed in the introduction, a move that 
frames Black male bodies as anonymous. Both King and Dodson represent two Black 
men from the ?hood, whose masculinities, not to mention blown out hair, stand out in 
queer ways. There is also the subtle hint of Antoine Dodson as a fighter and Don King as 
his promoter, conspiring to make a deal for a boxing match against the man that assaulted 
his sister. Here, the viral is intertextual. The cultural capital of Dodson?s visual imagery is 
deployed to enhance the viral energy around Sweet Brown. Indeed, these two images?
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exemplar of the Ghetto Witness?operate in the public sphere largely as fodder for the 
public consumption of comedy and the candor of Black street vernacular.
	 Antoine is rendered into this scene of the Sweet Brown remix like a Black 
collectible. It becomes clear how ?culture as commodity carries its past into its present in 
ways that insist that we reckon with the logics of blackness...? 414 This rendering 
demonstrates how digital mechanisms allow images to perform anachronistically, a 
temporality that, according to Kara Keeling indicates Black subjectivity, disrupting the 
linear chronologies that European cultures lay claim to.415 The thought bubble emerging 
from Sweet Brown citationally connects her to Antoine Dodson. This reference situates 
Dodson?s past in Wilkins? present moment, urging us to reckon with how his body is 
performing in popular culture and everyday life two years later. YouTube interactors on 
The Parody Factory?s page also indicate how Antoine Dodson?s body is being used to 
enframe Sweet Brown in particular ways.
	 After the first month of the remix, interactor MadXMaverick said, ?she?s the new 
bed intruder guy.? 416 By referring to Wilkins as the ?bed intruder guy,? MadXMaverick?s 
statement, points toward the Dodsons? remix video, and the Sweet Brown video as the 
reincarnation of it. MadXMaverick?s framing prioritizes Wilkins? race and street 
vernacular as things that tie her to Antoine Dodson. Another user, mynameissparkle1, 
later posted, ?The new Antoine Dodson.? 417 The latter comments convey ?BED 
INTRUDER SONG (now on iTunes)? and Antoine Dodson as proxies for the archetype 
of the Ghetto Witness. Even though Antoine Dodson is only a point along an extensive 
line of Ghetto Witnesses, the way in which the newscast, ?woman wakes up to find bed 
intruder in bed,? and auto-tuned remix, BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes), were 
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archived through uploading and sharing, commenting and (re)presenting, and critiquing 
and historicizing, made it widely accessible and archived, something that could be cued 
up, re-watched like it was new, and studied, enabling it to become more referential than 
prior Ghetto Witnesses to the extent that the new Ghetto Witness is always already the 
new Antoine Dodson. Further cementing my assertion that Antoine Dodson has become 
the exemplar Ghetto Witness, one interactor curated the most viral Ghetto Witnesses 
between 2010 and 2013 together in one image.
	 The image, ?The Justice League,? in fig. 4.8 was created when Reddit user, 
suparboysean, uploaded it to Imgur?an online image hosting service?and shared it on 
Reddit.com on May 11, 2013.418 ?The Justice League? features Antoine Dodson, 
Figure 4.8. Suparboysean, ?The Justice League? Reddit, May 
11, 2013, http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1e4zjf/
the_justice_league/.
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Kimberly ?Sweet Brown? Wilkins, and Charles Ramsey419 alongside each other, all 
frozen in moments of viral public testimony. Antoine?s facial expression appears like he 
is in the middle of saying, ?you are really dumb,? Brown appears to be saying, ?I got 
bronchitis,? and Ramsey seems to be saying, ?dead giveaway!? Superboysean?s post does 
the work of indexing the trope of the Ghetto Witness through another rendered viral 
performance of them in popular culture: the creation, sharing, and upvoting of the image, 
?The Justice League,? on Reddit.
	 While ?The Justice League? evokes notions of the Ghetto Witness as American 
superheroes and superheroines, its indexing also contains a mockery and challenging of 
those notions. If anything, here ?The Justice League? represents America?s antiheroes and 
antiheroines?the forgotten, the perceived criminals, the welfare recipients on the grind
?people who do not occupy the role of protector or savior in the popular imagination. In 
many ways, they become the joke because?by way of their race, class, and sexualities?
they cannot be the heroes and heroines they reference, barely able to save their families, 
let alone their dignity, from harm. We do not get the hero, we get a Black queen?an 
effeminate gay male?that services our (mis)understanding of what we know Black queer 
men to be. We do not get the heroine, we get a headscarf-wearing mammy/aunt figure 
that reinforces our (mis)understanding of what we know a heterosexual/asexual mature 
Black woman to be. We do not get the hero, we get the self-described, ??scary looking 
black dude,?? strengthening our (mis)understanding of what we know a mature Black 
heterosexual man to be.420 In essence, these figures are antiheroic because they visually 
and sonically trouble popular power fantasies of a White-heterosexual-male-protagonist-
saving-grace.
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	 As antiheroes and antiheroines, Dodson, Wilkins, and Ramsey stand to critique 
America, expose it as an unsafe place where one needs to hide themselves from sex 
offenders, run for their lives from fires, or know that something is terribly wrong when a 
White person shows unsolicited affection or need. They come to us as they are, without 
masks or uniforms, and they reflect, as plainly as possible, on climactic moments in their 
lives. They alert us that no hero will be there to save anyone?the ambulance, the police, 
and the fire truck will not respond in time because of who they are responding to, where 
we they are located, or where they live?and one will perish if one does not save or fend 
for themselves. 
	 These are not the American, Amazonian, and Atlantean heroes and heroines 
representative of the Justice League, these are the American casualties from Huntsville, 
AL, Oklahoma City, OK, and Cleveland, OH that are representative of the detrimental 
ways that pedestrian Blackness is perceived in popular culture; if anything, they are X-
Men. Even still, considering how White, male, heteronormative, and integrationist the 
main cast has been and continues to be,421  Dodson, Wilkins, and Ramsey are the 
Morlocks of the X-Men?mutant (illegible) bodies, the marginalized of the marginalized, 
standing as Others as well as Other to Black people; Others that trouble the popular 
visual and aural fields of perception, challenge and raise critical questions of society, 
while their disenfranchisement that makes them so spectacular creates problems for them 
as individuals and groups. Dodson?s, Wilkins?, and Ramsey?s socioeconomic and 
sociocultural conditions are marginalized through the very mechanisms of viral 
performance that amplify their optic and aural dissonance.
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	 Importantly, (anti)heros/heroines are situated, highly concerned with matters that 
are closest to home. Additionally, the high barriers to exit, which make the ghetto such a 
trap, intensify the situatedness of Ghetto Witnesses. Indeed, Antoine Dodson, Kimberly 
Wilkins, and Charles Ramsey each have such an intertwined relationship with, and 
vulnerability in, their communities that what happens to the neighborhood, whether it be 
sexual assault, a fire, or a kidnapping, directly affects them. Surely the news reporters are 
witnesses as well, editing the facts and audio to convey their larger story. However, 
Elizabeth Gentle, or other reporters, who often go unnamed, are able to exit and go on to 
the next story. The Ghetto witness must live with, and be thingified by, the narrative they 
have become known for.
	 Part of what Ghetto Witnesses become known for are the vernacular phrases that 
they (re)produce. Kimberly ?Sweet Brown? Wilkins popularized ?Ain?t nobody got time 
for that!? Charles Ramsey popularized ?Dead Giveaway!? Antoine Dodson coined and 
popularized the phrase, ?hide ya kids, hide ya wife, and hide ya husbands.? True to the 
chaos of viral performance, Antoine Dodson?s phrase was memeified, this time into 
Bossip categories?tags primarily used to index news items on Bossip.com. Bossip, an 
online magazine whose name merges gossip with Blackness, mainly reports on things 
concerning, or that might have currency among, Black people in the U.S. The result is the 
extension of this viral performance through the reporting of gossip and rumor. Bossip?s 
use of the ?hide ya? phrase reveals the ways in which Dodson?s body is understood 
through his Black queer vernacular and beyond the enframing of his performance on 
WAFF-48 news.
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	 While the ?hide ya kids? and ?hide ya wife? tags feature plethora news articles all 
the way up to the present, ?hide ya husbands? tags are nonexistent. ?Hide ya kids? 
featured news with titles such as, ?Funny Or Foul? A Gallery Of ARMED Fathers Posing 
With Daughter?s Prom Date,? ?Another Day, Another Female High School Teacher 
Popped For Being A Freak,? and ?#BringBackOurGirls: Michelle Obama Joins Social 
Media Movement To Return Kidnapped Nigerian School Girls Via Twitter.? ?Hide ya 
wife? featured news with titles like, ?For Discussion: If You Caught Your Friend?s 
Husband Kissing Another Man... Would You Tell Her?,? ?Smooches Hooches: WNBA 
Baller Diana Taurasi Plants A Juicy Kiss On Opposing Player During Game! [Video],? 
and ?What The Hell?? Racist And Drugged Up Dad Axe Murdered His Family With 
Brown Eyes, But Spared Youngest ?Pure Aryan? Daughter!? Even though, ?Hide ya 
husbands? was not a featured tag used to index news on the site, there were two titles that 
mentioned it: ?Hide Ya Kids And Hide Ya Husbands!: Sisqo (The Dragon) Is Back!!! 
[Video]? and ?Ho Sit Down: Kirk?s Alleged Jacuzzi Jumpoff Claps Back After Being Put 
On Blast For Creepin? With A Married Man- ?Just Hide Your Husbands?? both titles 
predicated on the assumed deviant sexuality of Sisqo and controlling the infidelity of 
Kirk Frost from Hip Hop Atlanta, both Black men. Importantly, the amount of news 
under each category (children, women, and men) decreased as adulthood and maleness 
increased, with seventy-eight pages of news tagged under ?hide ya kids,? twenty-one 
pages of news tagged under ?hide ya wife,? and none tagged under ?hide ya husbands? as 
of June 3, 2014.
	 The limited amount of news that Bossip chose to feature, or could evidence, 
speaks to the ways in which there remains an egregious stigma around violence that men 
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experience, particularly sexual and physical violence, that lessens their likelihood of 
admitting to being survivors.422 The dearth of news under a ?hide ya husbands? category 
signals that accounts around sexual violence involving mature male adults is not 
popularly reported enough to index. This likely comes from an unwillingness to disclose 
sexual and physical trauma due to the types of ways that it mars popular conceptions of 
masculinity as invulnerable to, and primary catalyst of, those types of traumas. 
	 In a haunting way, the tags, in combination with the titles of the stories mentioned 
above, point back to notions held around Antoine Dodson as the rapist of his own sister?
the idea that while Antoine was instructing his community to protect their entire families, 
he, because he was gay and embodied a deviant sexuality, is the one that they needed 
protection from.423 Indeed, the subtext of each of the news stories under the tag ?hide ya 
kids? and ?hide ya wife? follows the latter sickening logic. Certainly, the types of news 
that were tagged under Antoine?s ?hide ya? phrase are telling reminders about how 
deviant desires, sexualities, and races are used as scapegoats, or proxies, for the world?s 
ills and how new media technologies make those proxies readily available in simplified 
ways. While the phrase was a verbal and embodied tool used by Antoine Dodson as a 
form of covert denigration toward Kelly Dodson?s perpetrator and naysayers, Bossip 
shows how that covert denigration can be produced as a tool to disparage Antoine 
Dodson?s embodiment and street vernacular, turning stancetaking and styling on its head.
	 A serious story about an attempted rape, which summoned discourses around 
sexual violence in Black communities, (d)evolved into viral performances concerning the 
sexuality of Antoine Dodson, the threat and fear of homosexuality, queer acts of Black 
masculinity as comic relief and entertainment, and racial memeification. Once circulated 
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through viral performance, the phrase ?Hide Ya Kids, Hide Ya Wife,? and one could 
argue the entirety of Antoine?s warning/defense, became reworked and deployed as a 
category for serial rapists, child molesters, LGBTQI drama, and infidelity (all things that 
are misguidedly associated with Black gay men in particular), remixes to imitate and/or 
deride his performance, a sex offender tracker application, an iTunes song, T-shirts, 
Halloween costumes, and a cameo in Tyler Perry?s A Madea Christmas (where he played 
the same Ghetto Witness). This song, and indeed this scenario, never dies and the number 
of (re)presentations that I have just named would have been worth a thorough 
examination that I, unfortunately, cannot address in this project. 
	 These (re)presentations, in many ways, would never signal the attempted rape of a 
Black woman in public housing, and thus, begin to show us the way in which viral 
performance acts to erase and brand Black men and Black women in stereotypical and 
generative ways. We also see the ways in which viral performances of Blackness in 
popular culture and everyday life keep acts in perpetuity. Every time someone 
commented, shared, or used a performance out of context, they ensured that Antoine 
Dodson?s performance would never die, in many ways keeping him, and one would hope 
the traumas that Kelly and Antoine Dodson faced and overcame, at the forefront of 
popular imaginations. 
	 The visibility of this viral performance also amplified things that affirmed Black 
life by challenging norms and expectations around Black womanhood, Black masculinity, 
and Blackness generally. For instance, in Part one I demonstrated the ways in which 
Kelly Dodson?s honor was affirmed through Antoine Dodson?s testimony and warning, 
issues around sexual violence in the Lincoln Park community were exposed, and 
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normalized conceptions of gender roles were challenged. Part two expounds on the many 
ways in which interactors? affective labor drives them to respond through anti-racist, anti-
sexist, and anti-classist discourse to other interactors? denigrations of Blackness, 
sexuality, and class; the spaces where these interactions are made, as a result, function as 
locales where cross-viewing can take place and perspectives can be altered. Part Three 
explores how the very mechanisms that increase the rapid ubiquity of viral bodies, such 
as memeing, sampling, and citation also allow an indexing of them whereby new ways of 
critically understanding Black bodies as parts of larger phenomena, such as the trope of 
the Ghetto Witness, emerge. Indeed, turning Black bodies into things, like the Ghetto 
Witness, has been integral to processes of commodification as well as the production of 
Blackness, affecting how Black bodies (dis)identify.424
	 Through creating mobile applications, making celebrity appearances, and 
generating enough capital from his viral performance to move his family out of public 
housing and into a house and beyond, Antoine Dodson makes a career out of the rage 
inspired by his sister?s sexual assault. Another Black male Ghetto Witness, Walter 
Bankston, from the Netflix original series The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt explains the 
flip side to the resulting notoriety and flows of capital, ?After my viral video, I got a taste 
of fame...but there?s a darker side to fame... The other shoe is gonna drop.? 425 Indeed, by 
capitalizing on the currency of the Ghetto Witness, Antoine Dodson also becomes a 
minstrel of himself, what Amber Johnson calls the Homo Coon?a sexualized form of the 
zip coon that frames Black homosexual masculinity negatively, and memeifies a 
stereotype that denies it authenticity by reducing it to coonery?forever recalling his own 
sincere performance as this queer character that he can never escape.426 His minstrelsy, 
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however, also cues us in on his awareness and recycling of ?the nervous joke making, a 
laughing to keep from talking?or to hide otherwise awkward silences? that so many 
interactors revealed through their lols, lmfaos, and silence.427
	 Importantly, with each instance of the (re)presentation of Antoine Dodson?s 
performance, his sister?s voice gets lost in the narrative and the audience risks loosing 
sight of the seriousness and importance of the event. Nonetheless, as much as the news 
and social media coverage of Antoine Dodson does work to reify notions of a Black 
people as a monolith, create comedy out of poverty and Black queer sexuality, and 
reinforce sexual and patriarchal normalcy, Antoine ?...still remembers what?s 
important...and [keeps his notoriety and coverage] grounded in the reality of what started 
it in the first place.? 428
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Chapter 5 Coda, Viral Bodies: #NoCureforStigma
	 In the introduction of Viral Bodies I thought through what the viral constitutes as 
a phenomenon in relationship to Black bodies. Surveying various scholarship, theories, 
and methods to approaching visual and Black performances, the chapter introduced 
readers to the subjects, terminology, and lenses that are centered throughout the 
dissertation, outlined the central research questions, and conveyed my use of the tools 
that scholars of Black Performance Studies and African American Studies have used to 
approach similar work. Beginning with a racially intense image from an Intel 
advertisement, I explored the ways that viral mechanisms continued to be used to 
propagate and critique pre-existing stereotypes of Blackness in the contemporary 
imaginary. I also examined the dialogical and dialectical ways that the viral, erasure, and 
branding are related to each other when we consider performances of Blackness in 
popular culture and everyday life.
	 ?People See What They Hear: Rumor and Branding in (Re)presentations of Black 
Men? (Chapter 1) analyzed the use of the Black male body in advertising in select 
photographs from the B?anded series by Hank Willis Thomas, revealing historic 
representations of Black men and women in visual culture that haunt the present. I 
examined photographs from the series that deal with issues surrounding literal and 
figurative branding, viral rumor, and stereotypes of Blackness, all of which are used in 
fashion both historically and today. By bringing the reader?s attention to the viral at play 
in these photographs, I conveyed how rumor sustains and critiques the violence toward 
Black bodies. 
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	  Similar to how viral rumor functions as a broadcasting system whose messages 
become a part of how we understand institutional forces mounted against Black bodies, 
the radio, as an extension of a Black man?s body, also functions as a viral act and a device 
that allows such a viral performance as rumor to be spread. In (Chapter 2) ?I Can?t Live 
Without My Radio: Performances of Viral Black Masculinity in Film and Everyday Life?  
I used a material culture analysis of Radio Raheem?s boom box from Do The Right Thing 
to examine its uses and comment on the larger cultural and material implications of them, 
such as the association of boom boxes with Blackness and masculinity, the creation of an 
imaginary and tangible Black public sphere, and production of a counter space through 
such a device. Finally, I demonstrated the viral ways in which the folklore of the African 
Diaspora is still used and being re-created to spread the myth of Radio Raheem within 
Black popular culture, which consequently pervades and influences commonsense 
ideologies around Blackness and masculinity.
	 While the previous chapter ended on the possibilities that the Internet held for 
myriad expressions of Blackness and masculinity, (Chapter 3) ?This Song Will Never 
Die: The Appropriation and Amplification of Race, Sexuality, and Class through Viral 
Media? dealt with both the possibilities and limitations of the World Wide Web for those 
expressions. Examining a newscast of a 2010 sexual assault on Kelly Dodson, I 
considered, through a Black feminist lens, how the focus on the presence of her brother, 
Antoine Dodson, functioned to erase her from the narrative. Using netnography, I 
surveyed provocative comments, images, and videos from YouTube, WSHH, and Reddit 
that were created in response to, or in conversation with, the remix video of the newscast 
(which became the most viral video of 2010), BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on 
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iTunes). This survey gauged how spectators, through their online dialogue and production 
in relationship to the remix video, engaged with and developed the sociocultural 
discourses around it. I argued that as much the remix made songs, made performances, 
and elicited responses that reinscribed stereotypical notions of Black femininity and 
masculinity, it also developed variants, which contradicted the normalized stereotypes 
and provided desirable possibilities for expectations, and products, of performances of 
Blackness. I ended the chapter with an exploration of how elements and people from the 
remix video have uncontrollably traveled in popular culture since its creation.
	 Now I would like to shift the discussion around viral performance toward a 
meditation on it as leverage for social justice. Indeed, this possibility ruminates 
throughout the earlier chapters: calling onlookers to question historical images and 
rumors of Black bodies, using mass-distributed fiction to critique police brutality and 
racial inequality, and increasing the visibility of sexual violence. Yet, now I will think 
through the possibilities of viral performance and social justice more broadly in the 
current moment and what else ?viral bodies? could mean. 
	 It is not only Black Performance Studies, which provides me with a theoretical 
framework to deal explicitly with performance in Black life that does not disavow Black 
women, lesbians, gays, and transgendered people, and the Black middle class from 
Blackness, but the movement largely known by the hashtag, ?#BlackLivesMatter.? While 
BlackLivesMatter has been likened to spawning a new civil rights movement, it 
differentiates itself by explicitly upholding the lives within the full spectrum of Blackness 
inclusive of marginalized sexualities, sexes, genders, and classes, which also reflects in 
its decentralized leadership.429 This is the precise danger in its name: that ?Black? has 
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historically excluded other(ed) voices and been used and understood as male, a dangerous 
homogenization of Blackness. Nonetheless, the mass-produced images and broadcasts of 
the civil rights movements (past and present) not only capture the dynamics of contagion 
regarding Black viral performances, but also how viral performances create leverage for 
social justice. While the photos and videos display how Blacks are contained and, in a 
sense, quarantined in the U.S., they also appeal to people?s ethics who empathize with the 
plight of Blacks on a global scale.
	 Even though BlackLivesMatter is quite young in comparison to the Civil Rights 
Movement, emerging after George Zimmerman?s verdict of innocence on July 13, 2013, 
their hashtag has been used to index countless violent crimes against a spectrum of Black 
bodies. The countlessness of these crimes against Black bodies is chaotic in its frequency. 
Hashtags, however, bring an order to the chaos of so many stories by publicly indexing 
them, increasing public access and searchability. I can find out about recent phenomenon 
by following hashtags or create my own archive of phenomenon through hashtags. The 
hashtag targets political agendas and awareness that everyday, and extraordinary, people 
have categorized. Through these public indices, national patterns begin to emerge, and 
the ways in which anti-Black violence is viral in the United States becomes glaringly 
apparent.
	 Hashtags used on Twitter and Facebook (i.e. #Icantbreathe, 
#IfIDieInPoliceCustody, and #BlackLivesMatter) and video aggregation/sharing sites (i.e. 
YouTube, WorldStarHipHop, and Facebook) have been used to index, crowdsource, and 
document stories that center Black bodies, bringing an unprecedented visibility to the 
egregious material affects of popular immaterial perceptions about Black bodies. 
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Principally, these (un)conscious biases have hinged on assumptions about the criminality 
of Black bodies based on things like the music they play (Jordan Davis), clothes they 
wear (Trayvon Martin), or their inability to be subjects in crisis as perpetrators of it 
(Renisha McBride) and have led to their material deaths. So for anyone that says racism 
does not exist in this so called ?post-racial? present or that what someone thinks in their 
minds has nothing to do with how they affect others in everyday life she or he should 
follow the discourse being widely shared within these virtual archives.
	 Indeed, the visibility that hashtags bring to particular stories is due to their viral 
performance and the incessant ways in which they are used by interactors, almost as 
periods, to punctuate posts about issues the greater public may or may not be concerned 
with. For instance, in reaction to Sandra Bland?s death where a routine traffic stop ended 
in her death under police custody (claimed to be suicide by hanging)?which echoes, 
with signal difference, the deaths of many other Black bodies in police custody (Michael 
Stewart, Latandra Ellington, Kimberlee King, Dejuan Brison)?Black interactors on 
Twitter, or at least interactors with their avatar featuring a Black body, created the hashtag 
?#IfIDieInPoliceCustody.? The hashtag calls for participation in it and reveals 
individuals? skepticism and fear of police arrests concerning Black bodies. 
	 April Reign, a popular Twitter interactor and managing editor of Broadway Black 
had one of the most retweets, tweeting, ?#IfIDieInPoliceCustody know that they killed 
me. I would do everything in my power to get home to my family. So never stop 
questioning.? 430 This and many other tweets reveal a deep distrust of police and 
correctional officers, ?know that they killed me,? and a premeditated willingness to live 
in spite of confinement, ?I would do everything in my power to get home to my family.? 
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It is also a call to action and investigation, ?never stop questioning,? around the 
circumstances of Sandra Bland?s arrest and July 13, 2015 death. Beyond individual 
skepticisms, the collection of these stories in one ongoing virtual archive creates a 
irrefutable consensus around the types of obstacles that Black bodies face as a group.
	 The consensus produced in aggregating visual material and indexing stories 
creates a material pressure whereby viral performances can be used leverage for social 
justice. The viral performance of Derrion Albert?s death, suggested by Eric Holder as a 
wake-up call for the country, is a significant example of this. Near Christian Fenger 
Academy High School on the far South Side of Chicago a huge fight happens between 
two neighborhoods, Altgeld Gardens and The Ville, of which Derrion Albert is innocently 
caught between.431 Derrion Albert is a sixteen year-old sophomore on the honor-roll who 
was killed by several of his peers on September 24, 2009.
	  A video titled, ?Tragic: Teens Give A Chicago Student From A Rivarly High 
School A Deadly Beating With Huge Wooden Boards! *Warning* (Very Graphic) (R.I.P 
Derrion Albert) (This Has To Stop)? surfaces on WSHH September 27th, 2009. I happen 
across it as I browse WSHH. It begins with a notice, ?WARNING: The following footage 
is graphic and violent. If you can identify allegedly involved in the death of Derrion 
Albert, please call the Chicago Police Dept. at 312-747-8272.? Following the notice, the 
video begins inside of a car where a young woman documenting the fight exits to gain a 
closer view. 
	 A brawl materializes involving a collection of twenty plus high schoolers in 
brown khakis and black golf shirts walking or jogging around and brutally punching each 
other in the street. As a vehicle honks its horn, people holler and scream indecipherably. 
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A young man equips himself with wooden planks larger than he is as he pummels another 
young man with them. A woman yells, ?zoom in.? At this point another young man grabs 
a different wooden plank, a second young man (who was being assaulted in front of a car 
by a small group) speedily runs away. Derrion Albert is walking amid the chaos and the 
young man, who is still running away, brushes his body and destabilizes him, turning him 
around. While his head is turned, the other young man, still holding the wooden plank, 
swings it down on his head. Someone yells, ?DAMN!? All audio drops for a couple of 
seconds as Derrion Albert tries to stand. The audio returns as a young man punches him 
to the ground. Then another young man kicks Derrion Albert. As the camera turns and 
focuses on other fights happening in the street, someone screams, ?Yeah, put that nigga to 
sleep!? In the corner of the camera?s view, Derrion Albert is seen trying to sit up. 
Someone blurts out, ?Oh my God, get closer.? Anticipating the impact of another blow 
from a wooden plank, Derrion Albert puts his hand out as another young man stands 
above him holding a long wooden plank. Mercifully, he does not follow through and 
walks away. Young men begin surrounding and punching Derrion Albert while another 
young man runs to him with a wooden plank and swings it twice at his body. After this, 
there are gut-wrenching screams. The entire scene is frantic with young men running 
away while a woman runs toward Derrion Albert?s body and nervously utters, ?they 
killing him look.? As a small group carries his body into a building entrance, a girl 
pleads, ?get up Derrion, please!? The camera turns away and a man says, ?We got a kid 
down in here, we got a kid down. They beat him to death.? Meanwhile the guy holding 
the camera mentions, ?Damn, look they still down there goin? at it.? 432
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	 Something that haunts me about viral performance, which is evoked by this video, 
is how the currency of the act trumps the lives featured in it. It was not until Derrion 
Albert appeared lifeless that anyone reacted gravely to his situation, nervously uttering, 
?they killing him look.? It is possible that the people recording may not have felt safe, 
yet, it is equally possible that their investment in the moment of violence was for the 
resulting views, likes, or retweets that it might receive. There is a high value placed on 
raw emotion, liveness, and spontaneity that eclipses the concern for another?s, or one?s 
own, life in archives that posses viral performances like WSHH, YouTube, and the News. 
From recorded brawls to police chases and severe weather, there is a supply and demand 
for danger that is rewarded with ratings, raises, and retweets that fattens the pockets and 
increases the visibility of the photographer, recorder, or reporter. This phenomenon 
provokes me to rhetorically ask, would you risk another?s life or health, including your 
own, to be seen, to increase your visibility.
	  What I hope does not happen with videos like these is that they are used to justify 
excessive force against Black bodies. I also do not want my use of performance to 
conflate Derrion Albert?s behaviors in the video to something ?staged.? My use of viral 
performance here deals with the ways in which the video was incessantly shared, re-
watched, commented on, and through that circulation, Derrion Albert?s memory becomes 
meaningful to countless lives. 
	 While violence and racist sentiments circulated online through diverse means 
including news articles, the video footage, and comments, the life of this young Black 
man was made valuable through the same circulation. As a result of the cell phone 
footage being shared, public evidence of Derrion Albert?s murder existed, and pressure 
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increased around finding his killer(s), disallowing the moment of violence to be 
overlooked. By framing the video through a notice, WSHH functioned as a kind of 21st 
century wanted poster, soliciting information about the perpetrators of murder it 
portrayed. Witnesses were able to identify those who murdered Derrion Albert from the 
video, those young men would later be convicted for first degree murder, and President 
Barack Obama sent members of his cabinet to Chicago to speak with the Mayor about 
violence there.
	 Even in these highly visible moments of excessive violence toward Black bodies 
by Black bodies, there is a swelling of people who through their memeing, retweeting, 
and sharing of the moment, refuse to have the incidents forgotten. Contrary to opinions 
that uncritically use Black on Black violence to detract attention from movements against 
police brutality, a site that traffics in Blackness is actively uncovering this instance of 
Black on Black crime without the need to counter any momentum against police brutality. 
There is, indeed, a refusal to be silenced and to have experiences where civil rights are 
violated, even by other Black people, go unpunished and the processes by which the 
violations occur go unaddressed. Online social media has become the great broadcaster 
that the radio once was, providing a spectrum of perspectives on many situations 
concerning the greater public and leaving it to the audience to decide what knowledge to 
take away and act upon. 
	 While there is a catchiness and undeniable coolness to Black bodies that I seek to 
emphasize in the idea of viral bodies, what alarmingly catches on and becomes cool 
about Black bodies often resembles the projection of disease (things compromising 
wellness and wholeness) upon them. There are viral thoughts, such as stigmas around 
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Black bodies, that if considered as diseases would be worthy of intervention from the 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The social nature of the disease 
would require the CDC to socially, economically, and racially intervene with lawmakers, 
employers, and everyday citizens of the U.S. Indeed, it would not merely be about 
addressing those who are currently infected by anti-Black racism, but training people in 
how to protect themselves from contracting it. This multi-pronged intervention would 
have to address other aspects of identity that are stigmatized and intersect with race too, 
such as, sexuality, gender, class, and ability. However, the precedent for epidemics and 
disasters have not been social problems, particularly those faced by Black people in the 
U.S. 
	 There are people that might consider themselves stigma negative, carrying anti-
Black racism without knowing it. This unconscious bias has been theorized quite 
successfully as color-blind racism, which Eduardo Bonilla-Silva describes as otherizing 
softly, a covert kind of racism without the racists or racial epithets.433 Nonetheless, ?after 
race?or class or gender??is created, it produces real effects on the actors racialized as 
?black? or ?white.?? 434 Indeed, perceptions of anti-Blackness still work their way into 
social policies (institutionally) and everyday micro/macro-aggressions (interpersonally) 
that materially affect Black lives. As the saying goes, you are either infected or affected 
[or both].
	 It is never that these viral bodies are producing what we already know?Black 
people are being violated or caricatured in disproportional ways?it is that they centralize 
this knowledge in ways that evidences it as a pattern. The Ghetto Witness, for example, 
has long been a viral performance. However, now we can decipher it as a viral presence 
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for the ways in which it is indexed online. Processes, such as video-sharing, memeing 
online, and hashtags expose a pattern: a tradition whereby media gathers information 
from people within ghetto communities who perform subjectivity in ways that trouble 
expectations?to the point where the expectation is trouble. So viral performances of 
Blackness are very much a CNN, broadcasting information that is both informative and 
misleading about Blackness, the world, and the challenges and pleasures that intersect 
with them. Yet, differently from CNN, viral performances of Blackness are now indexed 
in ways that can be used as empirical evidence to leverage justice on behalf of viral 
bodies, for which there seems to be no cure for what pathologizes them.
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Notes
1 Gabriel Peoples, ?We Are Not Expendable,? Twitter Post, Twitter, (July 13, 2013), 
https://twitter.com/Gofthepeoples/status/356242125328891904.
2 Gene Demby, ?Combing Through 41 Million Tweets To Show How #BlackLivesMatter 
Exploded,? NPR.org, March 2, 2016, http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/
2016/03/02/468704888/combing-through-41-million-tweets-to-show-how-
blacklivesmatter-explodednews.bbc.co.uk.
3 Trymaine Lee, ?Eyewitness to Michael Brown shooting recounts his friend?s death,? 
MSNBC, August 12, 2014, http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/eyewitness-michael-brown-
fatal-shooting-missouri.
4 Michelle Ye Hee Lee, ??Hands Up, Don?t Shoot? Did Not Happen in Ferguson,? The 
Washington Post, March 19, 2015, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/
wp/2015/03/19/hands-up-dont-shoot-did-not-happen-in-ferguson/.
5 Gary Alan Fine and Patricia Turner, Whispers on the Color Line: Rumor and Race in 
America, (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), 18.
6 Francesca Chambers, ?Dem representatives make 'hands up, don't shoot' motion on 
House floor as they discuss what it's like to be ?black in America,?? Daily Mail Online, 
December 2, 2014, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2857549/Dem-
Congressman-makes-hands-don-t-shoot-motion-House-floor-African-American-
lawmakers-discuss-s-like-black-America.html.
7 Jeremy Gordon, ?The St. Louis Rams? ?Hands Up, Don?t Shoot? Protest,? December 1, 
2014, http://blogs.wsj.com/dailyfix/2014/12/01/rams-protest/.
8 Populo Iratus, ?#CecilTheLion,? Twitter Post, Twitter, (July 30, 2015), https://
twitter.com/cmahar3/status/626753864612638720?lang=en.
9 ?Mike is coming over for a meeting. Doesn?t know Russ and Manny are waiting in 
bushes with airsoft guns. #TheDetroitCast #handsupdontshoot.? Jay Detroitcast, ?Mike Is 
Coming over for a Meeting,? Twitter Post, Twitter, (July 30, 2015), https://twitter.com/
JayDetroitcast/status/626762336888471552?lang=en.
237
10 ?A narrative crumbles...#PantsUpDontLoot #IStandWithDarrenWilson #NoBill.? 
Conservative Pelican, ?A Narrative Crumbles....,? Twitter Post, Twitter, (November 15, 
2014), https://twitter.com/TheHappyPelican/status/533747484745797634; 
?@kendricklamar puts #Ferguson protesters on the cover of his new cd. NICE! 
#pantsUpDontLoot @mikerotondo86.? [Previously known as Paper or Plastic] Trader for 
Trump, ?@kendricklamar Puts #Ferguson Protesters on the Cover of His New Cd,? 
Twitter Post, Twitter, (March 15, 2015), https://twitter.com/eshropshire1/status/
577272106062389248; Jeff, ?#pantsupdontloot,? Twitter Post, Twitter, (June 17, 2015), 
https://twitter.com/12voltman60/status/611306079503425536.
11 Velotron, ?#cosby Would Say #pantsupdontloot,? Twitter Post, Twitter, (December 30, 
2014), https://twitter.com/308husker/status/549804263774240768.
12 ?White cops coerced Stinney?s confession. He was executed at 14. He was exonerated 
70 years later #PantsUpDontLoot.? Rugged Amethyst, ?White Cops Coerced Stinney?s 
Confession,? Twitter Post, Twitter, (December 17, 2014), https://twitter.com/GrooveSDC/
status/545301898798981120?lang=en.
13 Chuck, ?#PantsUpDontLoot IS NOT RIGHT,? Twitter Post, Twitter, (December 13, 
2014), https://twitter.com/ChuckSleep/status/543872099371061248?lang=en.
14 Gene Demby, ?Combing Through 41 Million Tweets To Show How 
#BlackLivesMatter Exploded,? http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/
2016/03/02/468704888/combing-through-41-million-tweets-to-show-how-
blacklivesmatter-explodednews.bbc.co.uk.
15 Complex personhood is a term coined by Avery F. Gordon. See Ghostly Matters: 
Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: University of 
Minnesota Press, 2008), 4-5.
16 The viral performances of Black masculinity in popular culture that I am analyzing are 
constructed and made knowable through visual technologies and, as such, there will 
always be something unknowable about their acts, something outside of the frame 
allowed. This unknowability reveals that, ??we?whether in our various disciplines, or 
languages, or geographic locations throughout the Americas?do not simply or 
unproblematically understand each other [or ourselves].? Diana Taylor, The Archive and 
the RePuertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham: Duke UP, 
2003), 15.
17 In Going Viral by Karine Nahon and Jeff Hemsley, the concept of going viral is 
explained as a particularly new possibility made feasible by the sharing of particular 
information across digital social networks with an alarming speed and reach not before 
attainable, which stands out in a ?sea of content.? While this suffices as a definition of 
?going viral,? it does not tell us how (a modicum of) this virality is sustained over longer 
periods of time?which can explain how past viral performances continue to resurface, 
albeit at smaller slower levels of virality. (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2013), 35. e-book, 
Introduction.
238
18 Duriel E. Harris, Thingification: A One-Woman Show, Thingification.org, accessed 
September 2, 2014, http://www.thingification.org/.
19  Netnography is ?the textual output of Internet related fieldwork...a written account of 
online cyberculture, informed by methods of cultural anthropology.? Cyberculture refers 
to the culture mediated by computer networks for multiple purposes, such as 
entertainment, communication, and business. Robert V. Kozinets, ?I Want To Believe?: A 
Netnography of The X-Philes? Subculture of Consumption? Advances in Consumer 
Research 27, (1997): 470 (emphasis original).
20 Aisha Harris also picked up on this viral trend I call the Ghetto Witness, referring to it 
as the Hilarious Black neighbor, as she discusses how ?derisive memeification? and 
desire to see Black people perform trumps the heroism and courage of Charles Ramsey, 
Antoine Dodson, Kimberly Wilkins, and Michelle Clark. See Aisha Harris, ?The 
Troubling Viral Trend of the ?Hilarious? Black Neighbor,? Slate, May 7, 2013, accessed 
October 8, 2013, http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/05/07/
charles_ramsey_amanda_berry_rescuer_becomes_internet_meme_video.html
21 Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey ?: A Theory of African-American Literary 
Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), xxiv.
22 See Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York: 
Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982); Richard Shecner, Between Theatre and 
Anthropology (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985); Judith Butler, 
?Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist 
Theory? (Theatre Journal 40(4), 1988); Elin Diamond, ?Introduction,? in Performance & 
Cultural Politics (New York: Routledge, 1996); Joni Jones, ?Sista Docta: Performance as 
Critique of the Academy? The Drama Review 41, no. 2 (1997): 51-67; Jos? Esteban 
Mu?oz, Disidentifications; Dwight Conquergood, ?Performance Studies: Interventions 
and Radical Research? The Drama Review 46, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 145-156; E. Patrick 
Johnson, ?Strangefruit: A Performance about Identity Politics? The Drama Review 47, no. 
2 (June 1, 2003): 88-116; D. Soyini Madison, ?Staging Fieldwork/Performing Human 
Rights? The Sage Handbook of Performance Studies, Ed. D. Soyini Madison and Judith 
Hamera (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 2006); Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr., 
??Out? in the Club: The Down Low, Hip-Hop, and the Architexture of Black Masculinity?  
Text and Performance Quarterly 28 (July 2008): 298-314; Marlon M. Bailey, Butch 
Queens Up In Pumps: Gender Performance and Ballroom Culture in Detroit (Ann Arbor: 
University of Michigan, 2013).
23 Performativity is the process by which we invest a body with meaning. It is how a body 
is brought into being. Performance is what the body does once it is constituted. See E. 
Patrick Johnson, ??Quare? Studies, or (almost) Everything I Know about Queer Studies I 
Learned from My Grandmother,? Text and Performance Quarterly 21, no. 1 (January 1, 
2001): 10.
239
24 Through a theatre lens, Felton-Dansky examines conceptual artists, Eva and Franco 
Mattase (photographing fake death scenes, creating computer viruses, and erecting fake 
Nike monuments), and the multimedia performance collective, Critical Art Ensemble 
(recreating germ warfare experiments and fake radioactive bombs), to explore the viral 
possibilities of media and performance. Miriam Felton-Dansky, ?Viral Performance: 
Contagious Hoaxes in the Digital Public Sphere? Theater 42, no. 2 (2012): 120.
25 Dareick Scott?s articulation of Blackness is useful for how I am thinking about it here.  
He writes, ?Like all language, then, blackness is a code. And as with all language this 
encoding can by its proliferating processes of abstraction and association virally replicate 
itself; it generates more encoded language?and thus more knowledge, more of a 
something which it codes?otherwise unavailable. See Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, 
Power, and Sexuality in the African American Literary Imagination (New York: NYU 
Press, 2010), 95.
26 A great articulation of this was made by Lil Wayne on his song ?A Milli? where he 
boastingly announces, ?Mothafucka I?m ill!? See Tha Carter III, Audio CD (New 
Orleans: Cash Money, 2008). For other examples see Nas, Illmatic, Audio CD 
(Columbia: New York, 1994); Foxy Brown, Ill Nana, Audio CD (New York: Def Jam, 
1996); Red Cafe, ?I?m Ill,? Red October, Audio MP3 (New York: Howie McDuffie 
Music Group, 2010).
27 Niko Koppel, ?Are Your Jeans Sagging? Go Directly to Jail,? New York Times, August 
30, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/30/fashion/30baggy.html?_r=0.
28 Using case studies in Asian and Asian American fashion, Dorinne Kondo analyzes 
Asian and Asian American identity. Importantly, she discusses the amnesia of the fashion 
industry in relationship to consumption, which is insightful when thinking through the 
ways in which visible signs of poverty, such as sagging jeans, could be nationally 
transformed into something fashionable, hiding its classed origins. She writes, ?The 
fashion industry has a tendency to reduce historical and political difference to 
consumable elements of style.? See About Face: Performing Race and Fashion in 
Theater (New York: Routledge, 1997), 169.
29 The small words in the bottom portion of the Intel ad say the following: Multiply 
computing performance and maximize the power of your employees. Intel? Core? 2 
Duo Processor. 40% more performance for business. Boasting 40% more performance 
with improved energy efficiency,* 64-bit capable Intel Core 2 Duo desktop processor 
delivers unparalleled multi-tasking capability. Now you can boost productivity and 
efficiency by running multiple computing-intensive applications at once. Learn more 
about why great business computing starts with Intel Inside. Visit intel.com/dulacore
*Performance measured Intel? Core? 2 Duo desktop processors compared to Intel? 
Pentium? D Processor 805 on SPEC_intbase2000 and SPEC_int_rate_base2000 (2 
copies). Actual performance may vary. Visit intel.com/performance ?2007 Intel 
Corporation. Intel, the Intel logo, Intel. Leap ahead, Intel.  Leap ahead. Logo, Intel Core 
and Core Inside are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States and other 
countries. 
240
30 Wily Ferret, ?Intel under Fire for ?Racist? Ad: White Men Can?t Run,? The Inquirer, 
August 10, 2011, http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1004060/intel-racist.
31 For a list about stereotypes of Black people in film and stage performance see Edward 
Mapp, Blacks in American Films: Today and Yesterday (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow 
Press, 1972), 30-31.
32 Through a discourse analysis of Geek Squad?s website and nerdcore music, Lori 
Kendall conveys the ?difficulty in expanding the nerd identity to include people who are 
not white or not male? when attempts at challenging the normalized nerd role require 
access to science and tech still ?guarded by the unmarked signifiers of whiteness and 
male gender.? See ??White and Nerdy?: Computers, Race, and the Nerd Stereotype,? The 
Journal of Popular Culture 44, no. 3 (June 1, 2011): 505 & 510.
33 See M. Eugene Sirmans, ?The Legal Status of the Slave in South Carolina, 1670-1740?  
The Journal of Southern History 28, no. 4 (November 1962): 465.
34 As Dwight Conquergood writes, ?It is no longer easy to sort out the local from the 
global: transnational circulations of images get reworked on the ground and redeployed 
for local tactical struggles [and purposes].? ?Performance Studies: Interventions and 
Radical Research? The Drama Review 46, no. 2 (June 1, 2002): 145.
35 Herman Gray, ?Black Masculinity and Visual Culture? Callaloo 18, no. 2 (Spring 
1995): 401-405.
36 Kara Keeling, ?Passing for Human: Bamboozled and Digital Humanism? (Women and 
Performance: A Journal of Feminist History 15, no. 1 (2005): 248; I use disidentification 
here to touch on how we can disagree with stereotypes yet simultaneously use them in 
our critique and nuance of them. See Jos? Esteban Mu?oz, Disidentifications: Queers of 
Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 
1999), 12.
37 I am trying to use the essence of original to suggest a starting point, a performance that 
spawned many others or recalls those types of acts. This is complicated, however, by the 
notion that as much performances create something new, they are always embedded with 
acts that preceded them, which nullifies the notion of an original.
38 What are those? is a question that was originated by comedian Young Busco used to 
call attention to ugly shoes. He became known for the phrase as he was documenting a 
Bay Area police arrest on his cell phone. Young Busco says to the police officer, ?Officer 
I got one question for you,? then his cell phone aims at the sky and pummels down to the 
officer?s shoes as he screams, ?What are those?!!!? Everyday people as well as artists like 
Soulja Boy Tell ?Em and Ludacris have made reference to his act. After being posted for 
5 weeks, it has 4,473 likes on Instagram as of July 21, 2015. See youngbusco, Instagram 
post, Instagram, 2015, https://instagram.com/p/36y_adBPK3/.
241
39 Phonte, a rapper from the groups Little Brother and Foreign Exchange, defines the 
sample succinctly saying, ?[Samples]...are a way to re-contextualize something and put it 
in a way that is more palatable to an audience that may not have gotten the first thing.? 
See Phonte Coleman, interview by Shawn Setaro, The Cipher, podcast audio, March 14, 
2016 ?146: Phonte,? on The Cipher (podcast).
40 Robert V. Kozinets, Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online (Thousand 
Oaks: Sage Publications Ltd., 2010), 34.
41 D. Soyini Madison, ?Performance Ethnography,? in Critical Ethnography: Method, 
Ethics, and Performance (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc., 2005), 151.
42 See Haki R. Madhubuti, Black Men, Obsolete, Single, Dangerous?: The Afrikan 
American Family in Transition, 1st ed. (Chicago: Third World Press, 1991); Richard 
Majors and Janet Mancini Billson, Cool pose: the dilemmas of black manhood in 
America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993); Darlene Clark Hine and Earnestine L. 
Jenkins, A Question of Manhood: A Reader in U.S. Black Men?s History and Masculinity, 
Vol. 2: The 19th Century: From Emancipation to Jim Crow (Blacks in the Diaspora) 
(Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2001); Maurice O. Wallace, Constructing the Black 
Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African American Men?s Literature and Culture 
1775-1995 (Durham: Duke UP, 2002); R. W. Connell, Masculinities, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: 
University of California Press, 2005); Mark Anthony Neal, New Black Man, New edition 
(New York: Routledge, 2006); Ronald L. Jackson II, Scripting the Black Masculine Body: 
Identity Culture and Racial Politics in Popular Media (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2006); 
Mark Anthony Neal, Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities (New York: NYU 
Press, 2013).
43 Shannon Jackson, Professing Performance: Theatre in the Academy from Philology to 
Performativity (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004), 8.
44 Itibari M. Zulu & Karanja Keita Carroll. ?Transdisciplinary African American Studies 
Approaches and Implications: A Collective Interview with James Stewart? (The Journal 
of Pan African Studies 2, no. 2 (March 2008): 85-95.
45 E. Patrick Johnson, ?Black Performance Studies: Genealogies, Politics, Futures? (D. 
Soyini Madison & Judith Hamera 446-464), 447.
46 Ibid., 446-447.
47 E. Patrick Johnson, Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of 
Authenticity (Durham: Duke UP, 2003), 8.
48 Darieck Scott, Extravagant Abjection, 95.
49 E. Patrick Johnson, ?Black Performance Studies,? 446.
50 Ibid., 460.
242
51 Peggy Phelan, ?Performance, Live Culture, and Things of the Heart? Journal of Visual 
Culture 2, no. 3 (2003): 292.
52 Dwight McBride, ?Straight Black Studies: On African American Studies, James 
Baldwin, and Black Queer Studies? in Black Queer Studies: A Critical Anthology, eds. E. 
Patrick Johnson and Mae G. Henderson (Durham: Duke UP, 2005), 72.
53 Frantz Fanon and Charles Lam Markmann, Black Skin, White Masks (London: Pluto 
Press, 1986), 113.
54 Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 112.
55 Fanon?s use of epidermalization is also limiting due to its sole reference to Black men 
when the act occurs across the spectrum of Blackness.
56 Ronald L. Jackson II, Scripting the Black Masculine Body, 74.
57 Here complicity bears resemblance to Antonio Gramsci?s notion of ?spontaneous? 
consent in that it is rooted in symbolic and physical violence, which establishes the 
boundaries that anyone can safely resist within and gives the illusion of consent or 
complicity while masking coercion that creates the collusion.  See TJ. Jackson Lears, 
?The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities? (American Historical 
Review, 90, June 1985), 568.
58 Ronald L. Jackson II, Scripting the Black Masculine Body, 98.
59 Lisa Nakamura, Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet (Minneapolis: 
University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 209.
60 Ronald L. Jackson II, Scripting the Black Masculine Body, 74.
61 I am emphasizing post-production here to bring attention to the fragility of labeling 
anything as such when all of what I examine throughout this dissertation is already after 
the fact of production.
62 Dwight Conquergood, ?Performance Studies,? 146. 
63 Discussing the drift that happens between presence and absence in performances, Elin 
Diamond writes, ?Performance is always a doing and a thing done...while a performance 
embeds traces of other performances, it also produces experiences whose interpretation 
only partially depends on previous experience.? Elin Diamond, ?Introduction,? 2.
64 Maurice O. Wallace, Constructing the Black Masculine, 8.
65 For more on the parergon see Robin Marriner, ?Derrida and the Parergon? in A 
Companion to Art Theory, eds. Paul Smith and Carolyn Wilde (Oxford: Blackwell 
Publishing, 2002), 349-359.
66 Maurice O. Wallace, Constructing the Black Masculine, 177.
243
67 Kara Keeling, The Witch?s Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of 
Common Sense (Durham: Duke UP, 2007), 14.
68 Nicole R. Fleetwood, Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness 
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 6.
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid., as qtd. in 7.
71 Ibid.
72 Nicole R. Fleetwood, Troubling Vision, 8.
73 Ibid., 30-31.
74 Ibid, 19.
75 Ibid.
76 Ibid., 12.
77 Robin Bernstein, ?Dances with Things: Material Culture and the Performance of 
Race,? Social Text 101 27, no. 4 (Winter 2009): 70.
78 Ibid.
79 Ibid, 69.
80 Ibid.
81 O. Diekmann, J. A. Heesterbeek, and J. A. Metz, ?On the Definition and the 
Computation of the Basic Reproduction Ratio R0 in Models for Infectious Diseases in 
Heterogeneous Populations,? Journal of Mathematical Biology 28, no. 4 (1990): 365-366. 
82 YouTube is an online social network centered on video-sharing.
83 WorldStarHipHop is a content aggregating video blog. It is considered to be one of the 
best aggregate sites for Hip-Hop content online.
84 Aisha Harris also picked up on this viral trend I call the Ghetto Witness, referring to it 
as the Hilarious Black neighbor, as she discusses how ?derisive memeification? and 
desire to see Black people perform trumps the heroism and courage of Charles Ramsey, 
Antoine Dodson, Kimberly Wilkins, and Michelle Clark. See Aisha Harris, ?The 
Troubling Viral Trend of the ?Hilarious? Black Neighbor,? Slate, May 7, 2013, accessed 
October 8, 2013, http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/05/07/
charles_ramsey_amanda_berry_rescuer_becomes_internet_meme_video.html
85 Robin D. G. Kelley, ?Burning Symbols,? 103.
86 Mark Anthony Neal, Looking for Leroy, 7.
244
87 The #BlackLivesMatter movement was begun by three Black women activists Alicia 
Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi seeking to use ?Black? to affirm the many 
(queer, disabled, undocumented...) lives within the Black spectrum of existence.
88 Here, I use re-member to connote the process of piecing together disconnected parts 
and stories, a striving to both achieve and challenge wholeness.
89 Gary Alan Fine and Patricia A. Turner, Whispers on the Color Line, 21-23.
90 My use of ?synesthetic? here derives from the idea that the stimulus in one sense can 
be experienced in a different sense, such as smelling sounds, hearing a mute image, or 
tasting a color. See Steven Connor, ?Edison?s Teeth: Touching Hearing,? in Hearing 
Cultures: Essays on Sound, Listening and Modernity, ed. Veit Erlmann (Oxford, New 
York: Berg, 2004), 172.
91 Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (New York: Taylor & Francis e-
Library, 2005), 2.
92 Scripts assign bodies with roles, and these roles also instruct bodies in how to exist; 
Ronald L. Jackson II uses the notion of racial and gendered ?scripting? for understanding 
the process of assigning meaning onto Black masculine bodies. Scripting the Black 
Masculine Body: Identity Culture and Racial Politics in Popular Media (Albany, NY: 
SUNY Press, 2006), 98; Bernstein uses script as a verb, which instructs the way in which 
bodies operate socially.  Robin Bernstein, ?Dances with Things,? 70.
93 Michael Issacharoff, Discourse as Performance (Redwood City, CA: Stanford 
University Press, 1989), 3.
94 ?30 Americans,? Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art + Design, accessed 
August 10, 2013, http://www2.corcoran.org/30americans/explore.
95 The act of labeling one?s self with or being labeled by a specific logo, which is used by 
individuals to symbolize ownership/belonging to organizations or used by organizations 
to symbolize the ownership of a product.
96 Maurice O. Wallace, Constructing, 8.
97 See Henry Louis Gates Jr., The Signifying Monkey, xxiv.
98 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (New York: Hill And 
Wang, 1982), 32.
99 Fred Moten, In The Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (Minnesota: 
University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 172.  Here Moten uses the salient sensual elements 
from an essay by Lee Edelman, titled, ?The Part for the (W)hole,? to explore how the 
aural emerges in its fullest possibility by the visual, hearing a character most clearly by 
seeing a character, and how the visual emerges in its fullest possibility by the aural, 
seeing a character most clearly by hearing a character.
100 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, 32.
245
101 Nicole R. Fleetwood, Troubling Vision, 2.
102 Bristol Record Office Online Catalogue: Record View,17562/1, accessed November 8, 
2012, http://archives.bristol.gov.uk/Record.aspx?
src=CalmView.Catalog&id=17562%2f1&pos=1.
103 Fleetwood observes that considering the outline or shadow of bodies that occupy the 
field of vision or affective framework can help in gathering information about the absent 
referent more than the visible bodies themselves. See Nicole R. Fleetwood, Troubling 
Vision, 19.
104 Meet Hank Willis Thomas (NowThis News), accessed July 16, 2013, http://
www.nowthisnews.com/news/meet-hank-willis-thomas/?autoplay=true
105 George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness (Philadelphia: Temple 
University of Press, 1998), 1. 
106 Cheryl Finley, ?Committed To Memory: The Slave-Ship Icon in the Black-Atlantic 
Imagination,? Chicago Art Journal 9 (Spring 1999): 12.
107 For plethora examples see ?Singles,? 2009, http://www.absolutad.com/
absolut_gallery/singles/.
108 Kendrick Lamar, Swimming Pools, MP3 (Aftermath/Interscope Records, 2013).
109 Michel Foucault, The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 265.
110 ??Black men, especially those under the age of 30, are more likely to be victims of 
alcohol-related homicides than were either white men or women or Black women in that 
age group.? Lawrence E. Gray, ?Drinking, Homicide, and the Black Male,? Journal of 
Black Studies 17, no. 1 (Sept. 1986): 15-31.
111 Fredrick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass (New York: Penguin 
1986), 116.
112 Nicole R. Fleetwood, Troubling Vision, 10.
113 Chris Evans and G?ran Ryd?n, Baltic Iron in the Atlantic World in the Eighteenth 
Century (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 172.
114 W.T. Lhamon, Jr., ?Optic Black: Naturalizing the Refusal to Fit,? in Black Cultural 
Traffic: Crossroads in Global Performance and Popular Culture, eds. Harry J. Elam & 
Kennell Jackson (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 112.
115 Eradication of the slavery of non-criminals is a point that must be emphasized as 
slavery is permitted if one is convicted of a crime.  See section 1 of the Thirteenth 
Amendment to the United States Constitution.
116 Steve Estes, I Am A Man: Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel 
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 2.
246
117 Steve Estes, I Am A Man, 2.
118 The full reference is from the title of the 1982 book by Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell Scott 
and Barbara Smith, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are 
Brave: Black Women's Studies.
119 Leslie Primo, ?Visual Arts 1: Representations of Blacks,? in The Oxford Companion to 
Black British History (Oxford University Press, 2007).
120 It should be noted that as early as the1830s a campaign banner was used with a strong 
supplicating enslaved African female, her wrists in chains and her fingers intertwined 
with a pleading expression across her face and a slogan beneath her reading, ?Am I Not 
A Woman And A Sister.?  This image would be used interchangeably with the image the 
supplicating enslaved African male, yet, the same issues with essentialization remain.  
See ?Am I Not a Woman and a Sister,? nationalarchives.gov.uk, accessed August 1,  
2013, ?Am I Not a Woman and a Sister,? August 1836, http://
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/blackhistory/rights/docs/am_woman.htm.
121 References were made by Hugh McCall, a past major of the US infantry, concerning 
the unique physiology of Africans, which ?seemed? to make them uniquely fit to endure 
the labors of slavery. He writes, ?Agriculture was the prime object, and the culture of 
rice, which held up the most promising source of wealth, could not be carried on 
successfully without the assistance of Africans, whose constitutions seem formed by 
nature to bear the heat and exposure of a climate, most favorable for its production.? See 
Hugh McCall, The History of Georgia: Containing Brief Sketches of the Most 
Remarkable Events, Up to the Present Day (Seymour & Williams, 1811), 5; Also, Blacks 
were treated so cruelly by Whites that they eventually [almost as a way to cope] 
?accepted their master?s claims about the rightness, the power and the sanctity of 
Whiteness and the degradation, the powerlessness, and the shame of Blackness.? See 
John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South 
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 303.
122 Eugene D. Genovese, ?Rebelliousness and Docility in the Negro Slave: A Critique of 
the Elkins Thesis? Civil War History 13, no. 4 (December 1967): 312.
123 Jasmine Nichole Cobb, Picture Freedom ?: Remaking Black Visuality in the Early 
Nineteenth Century (New York: NYU Press, 2015).
124 Part of the idea that enslaved Africans were happy in confinement has to do with what 
Saidiya V. Hartman calls ?an interested misreading of the interdependence of labor and 
song common among the enslaved.? Scenes of Subjection (Oxford: Oxford University 
Press, 1997), 22.
125 The American Anti-Slavery Society, The Anti-Slavery Record Vol. III, for 1837 (New 
York: The American Anti-Slavery Society, 1838), 73.
247
126 Cheryl Janifer LaRoche calls these types of images biased and suggests that they are 
not representative of the collective involved in assisting escapees from North American 
slavery inclusive of free Black communities, Black churches and fraternal societies like 
Freemasonry. See the Introduction to The Geography of Resistance: Free Black 
Communities and the Underground Railroad (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 
1.
127 William L. Van Deburg, Slavery & Race in American Popular Culture (Madison: 
University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), 17.
128 Carol McGinnis, Michigan Genealogy: Sources & Resources (Baltimore: 
Genealogical Pub Co, 2005), 200-201.
129 Strategic essentialism uses the group as the foundation for struggle while ?debating 
the issues related to group identity within the group.? See Kristina Wolff, ?Strategic 
Essentialism,? in Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, ed. George Ritzer, (2007).
130 Robin D. G. Kelley, ?Burning Symbols: The Work of Art in the Age of Tyrannical 
(Re)production? in Hank Willis Thomas: Pitch Blackness (New York: Aperture, 2008), 
103.
131 Sage Francis, Narcissist, Audio CD, The Known UnSoldier ?Sick of Waging 
War? (Providence, Rhode Island: Strange Famous Records, 2001). The mixtape is the 
fourth in his ?Sick of? mixtape series.
132 Allan Brettman, ?Creator of Nike?s Famed Swoosh Remembers Its Conception 40 
Years Later,? June 15, 2011, http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2011/06/
nikes_swoosh_brand_logo_hits_4.html.
133 In American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses branding is recalled 
as one of many punishments for enslaved Africans? attempt to escape slavery. It was a 
way to cause them pain as punishment for running away and to label them so that others 
knew who they belonged to in case they tried to run away again. In one instance, similar 
to others of the same caliber, a slaveholder named J.P. Ashford of the Adams County Mill 
made an advertisement in the ?Natchez Courier? on August 24, 1838, it read: ?Ranaway a 
negro girl called Mary, has a small scar over her eye, a good many teeth missing, the 
letter A. is branded on her cheek and forehead.? This woman likely ran away multiple 
times, indicative of her missing teeth and multiple brands. See Theodore Dwight Weld, 
American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses., 1st ed. (New York: The 
American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839), 78, quoted in Documenting the American South 
(University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2000), http://
docsouth.unc.edu/neh/weld/weld.html#p108.
134 Nicole R. Fleetwood, Troubling Vision, 6.
135 Matthew Pratt Guterl, Seeing Race in Modern America (Chapel Hill: University of 
North Carolina Press, 2013), 69.
248
136 This article describes keloids generally occurring on the ?chest, shoulders, earlobes 
(following ear piercing), upper arms and cheeks.? ?African Americans 7 Times More 
Likely to Have Keloid Scarring of the Head, Neck,? Henry Ford Health System, March 6, 
2012, http://www.henryford.com/body.cfm?id=46335&action=detail&ref=1554.  
137 The article only discusses keloids forming on the head and neck following a traumatic 
event, specifically surgery. Ibid.
138 Kate Linker, ?Went Looking for Africa: Carrie Mae Weems,? Artforum International 
31, no. 6 (February 1993): 81.
139 Harvey Young, ?The Black Body as Souvenir in American Lynching,? Theater 
Journal 57, no. 4 (2005): 657.
140 Naomi Pabst, ?Blackness/Mixedness: Contestations over Crossing Signs,? Cultural 
Critique 54 (Spring, 2003): 180.
141 This is not to suggest that there is no consensus among Black bodies or that power 
structures do not exert power on Black people in ways that affect them as a group, just 
that Blackness is always impure, mixed.
142 Social interactions between members of the same sex.
143 Sarah Mizumoto Posey, ?The Body Art of Brotherhood,? In African American 
Fraternities and Sororities: The Legacy and the Vision, eds. Tamara L. Brown, Gregory 
S. Parks and Clarenda M. Phillips, (The University Press of Kentucky, 2005), 274.
144 ?African Americans 7 Times More Likely to Have Keloid of the Head, Neck,? http://
www.henryford.com/body.cfm?id=46335&action=detail&ref=1554.
145 Sarah Mizumoto Posey, ?The Body Art,? 273-274.
146 Jay-Z, Ignorant Sh*t, Audio MP3 (New York: Roc-A-Fella Records, LLC, 2011).
147 The Roots, The Next Movement, Audio CD, Things Fall Apart (MCA, 1999).
148 Sarah Mizumoto Posey, ?The Body Art,? 275.
149 Ibid., as qtd. in 275.
150 Sarah Boxer, ?IN SHORT: NONFICTION; Consenting Adults,? The New York Times, 
March 7, 1993, sec. Books, http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/07/books/in-short-
nonfiction-consenting-adults.html.
151 In alignment with Cheryl Janifer Laroche?s assertion that the term ?runaway? 
dehumanizes and criminalizes the body involved in a way that frames it from the 
?enslavers? legal vantage point,? I will only refer to the term as such. See the Preface to 
The Geography of Resistance, xiii.
249
152 Nicki Minaj, Truffle Butter (feat. Drake and Lil Wayne), Audio MP3 (Cash Money 
Records/Motown Records, 2015).
153 Kendrick Lamar, Money Trees (feat. Jay Rock), Audio MP3, Good Kid, m.A.A.d City 
(Aftermath/Interscope Records, 2013).
154 J. Cole, Nobody (feat. Missy Elliott), Audio MP3, Cole World: The Sideline Story 
(New York: RocNation, 2011).
155 Elzhi, Detroit State Of Mind, Audio MP3, Elmatic (XXL, 2011).
156 Kanye West, All Falls Down, Audio CD, College Dropout (New York: Roc-A-Fella 
Records, 2004).
157 Nas, Nothing Lasts Forever, Audio MP3, The Lost Tapes (New York: Columbia, 
2002).
158 Master P, Bout It, Bout It II, Audio MP3, Ice Cream Man (Priority Records, 1996).
159 Heather Newman, ?Web Postings Turn Writers into Anonymous,? Detroit Free Press, 
July 3, 2001.
160 ?Poet Maya Angelou Highlights Corporate Racism-Fiction!? Truthorfiction, December 
16, 2011, http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/m/mayaangelou.htm#.VM7SLmTF_JI.
161 The oak tree is known for its density, as a symbol strength, and they only appear in the 
Northern Hemisphere?where North America contains the most oak species in the world.
162 Anne P. Rice, Witnessing Lynching: American Writers Respond (Brunswick, NJ: 
Rutgers University Press, 2003), 89.
163 Michael Fedo, Lynchings In Duluth (St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society 
Press, 2000), xxii.
164 Koritha Mitchell, Living With Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, 
Performance, and Citizenship, 1890-1930 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 
2011), 24.
165 Clyde Woods, Development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation Power in the 
Mississippi Delta (New York: Verso, 1998), 6.
166 See Eric Wilson, ?Fashion?s Blind Spot? Nytimes, August 7, 2013, http://
www.nytimes.com/2013/08/08/fashion/fashions-blind-spot.html
167 Patricia A. Turner, I Heard It Through The Grapevine: Rumor in African-American 
Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), xv-xvi.
168 Koritha Mitchell, Living With Lynching, 3.
169 Matthew Pratt Guterl, Seeing Race, 64.
250
170 Matthew Pratt Guterl, Seeing Race, 47-49.
171 The Rosewood massacre took place during the first week of January 1923 in rural 
Levy County, FL.  It began when a group of White men from towns nearby lynched a 
Rosewood resident, Sam Carter, over unsupported accusations from a White woman in 
Sumner, FL that a Black man robbed and raped her.  When other Rosewood residents 
defended their lives against a White mob, they began to act without restraint, hunting 
Black people and burning every structure in Rosewood.  Even though they were aware of 
the violence, State and local authorities made no arrests.  See Maxine Jones, A 
Documented History of the Incident which Occurred at Rosewood, Florida, in January 
1923, Florida Board of Regents, December 22, 1993, accessed April 20, 2014, http://
www.displaysforschools.com/rosewoodrp.html.
172 Koritha Mitchell, Living With Lynching, 4.
173 Ibid., 8. 
174 Ibid., 69.
175 Myles Brown, ?The 25 Best Air Jordan Commercials of All Time? Complex, accessed 
March, 21 2012, http://www.complex.com/sneakers/2012/03/the-25-best-air-jordan-
commercials-of-all-time/5-banned.
176 Todd Boyd, ?The Holy Grail of Basketball Shoes,? ESPN.com, January 25, 2008, 
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=boyd/080125.
177 See Nike annual reports from 1987-2012.
178 This us (White suburban Americans) and them (Black Americans) trend in news 
stories around sneaker violence also occurred within and alongside news stories that 
disproportionately featured images of the Black drug criminal, which led to an 
inseparability between sneaker murderers, drug criminals, and Black bodies. See 
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of 
Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2010), 360-365. e-book, ch. 3. 
179 Rick Telander, ?Senseless? Sports Illustrated Vault, May 14, 1990, p. 1, accessed 
December 15, 2011, http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/
MAG1136895/1/index.htm.
180 Catherine A. Coleman, ?Classic Campaigns - ?It's Gotta Be the Shoes?: Nike, Mike 
and Mars and the ?Sneaker Killings?? Advertising & Society Review 14, no. 2 (2013), 
under ?The Development of ?Sneaker Killing? Reports in the 1990s.?
181 We can see that the individual-as-brand notion has a strong presence in earlier 
propoganda such as the seal for the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade.
251
182 Leigh Raiford, ?Restaging Revolution: Black Power, Vibe Magazine, and 
Photographic Memory? in The Civil Rights Movement in American Memory, eds. Ren?e 
Christine Romano & Leigh Raiford (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006), 
220-222. 
183 bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 
33.
184 ?Things? are analyzed by Robin Bernstein, such as a racist coloring book, that limit 
them to pejorative connotations of Blackness, which are important to analyze, yet, can 
miss the aspects of the ?things? that may be generative of meanings that are critical of the 
pejorative. Robin Bernstein, ?Dances with Things,? 67-94.
185 Avery Gordon conveys that acknowledging the ghost is the way to move beyond the 
ghost, the way to no longer be haunted by it, even if for only that moment of recognition/
reconciliation.  Her analysis of the ghost in the motion picture Beloved (1998) as a 
haunting is useful in many ways, especially thinking of the way in which fiction can fill 
in the blanks of slave narratives?thinking here how Hank Willis Thomas? concepts fill in 
voids in the history of enslaved Africans both here and abroad.  See Avery F. Gordon, 
Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (Minneapolis: The 
University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 23.
186 Lyle Owerko, The Boombox Project: The Machines, The Music, and the Urban 
Underground (New York: Abrams Image, 2010), 89.
187 LL Cool J, I Can?t Live Without My Radio, Audio CD, Radio (New York: Def Jam, 
1995).
188 Mayor Ed. Koch, for example, created ?radio free zones? in certain beaches and city 
parks in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island.  See ?N.Y. beaches ban 
boomboxes,? Star News, July 26, 1985, accessed May 20, 2013, http://news.google.com/
newspapers?
nid=1454&dat=19850726&id=KuBOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=zBMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4605,7
604220. Another article discusses how the signs designed to limit noise levels in Jersey 
City convey that boomboxes, instead, are illegal and subject to fines of up to $1000 and/
or imprisonment. It also reveals how the laws targeted youths who sold crack and used 
the radio at early hours in the morning to announce that crack was for sale. See Albert J. 
Parisi, ?4,2>Noise Ban Angers Ice Cream Vendors,? The New York Times, September 4, 
1988, sec. N.Y. / Region, http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/04/nyregion/42-noise-ban-
angers-ice-cream-vendors.html.
189 Lyle Owerko, The Boombox Project, 90.
190 Patrick S. Ryan, ?The ITU and the Internet?s Titanic Moment,? Stanford Technology 
Law Review 8 (2012), 3, http://stlr.stanford.edu/pdf/ryan-
theituandtheinternetstitanicmoment.pdf.
252
191 See HOOVER, Secretary of Commerce, v. INTERCITY RADIO CO., Inc. (Court of 
Appeals of District of Columbia 1923).
192 Jessica H. Foy, ?The Home Set to Music,? in The Arts and the American Home, 
1890-1930, Jessica H. Foy and Karal Ann Marling, eds. (Knoxville: The University of 
Tennessee Press, 1994), 58.
193 Ibid., 59.
194 Ibid.
195 Ibid., 77.
196 Ibid., 66.
197 George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, 13.
198 Elsa Barkley Brown, ?Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African 
American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom,? Public Culture 7, no. 
1 (Fall 1994): 119.
199 Lizabeth Cohen, ?Encountering Mass Culture at the Grassroots: The Experience of 
Chicago Workers in the 1920s,? in Consumer Society in American History: A Reader, ed. 
Lawrence B. Glickman, 1 edition (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1999), 155-158.
200 Lizabeth Cohen, ?Encountering Mass Culture at the Grassroots,? 155.
201 Ibid.
202 Ibid., 155-156.
203 Andrew Graham, ?Broadcasting Policy in the Digital Age,? The Aspen Institute, 
accessed June 20, 2014, http://www.aspeninstitute.org/policy-work/communications-
society/programs-topic/digital-broadcasting-public-interest/broadcasting-.
204 Charles Fairchild, ?Deterritorializing radio: deregulation and the continuing triumph 
of the corporatist perspective in the USA? (Media, Culture, and Society, 21: 549-561), 
553.
205 Jeff Chang, Can?t Stop, Won?t Stop, 442.
206 Lyle Owerko, The Boombox Project, 153.
207 I?m using e as a gender-neutral pronoun.  This allows me to not limit the gender 
possibilities of the person I am using to describe the given subject.
208 Lyle Owerko, The Boombox Project, 47.
209 Ray B. Browne and Pat Browne, The Guide to United States Popular Culture 
(Madison, WI: The Popular Press, 2001), 110.
253
210 Lyle Owerko, The Boombox Project, 24.
211 Ray B. Browne and Pat Browne, The Guide, 110.
212 Lyle Owerko, The Boombox Project, 24.
213 Ibid. 153.
214 Ibid.
215 Ibid., 96.
216 Thomas F. DeFrantz and Anita Gonzalez, Introduction to Black Performance Theory, 
eds. Thomas F. DeFrantz and Anita Gonzalez (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 8.
217 Paul R. Mullins, Race & Affluence: An Archaeology of African America and 
Consumer Culture (New York: Springer, 1999), 29.
218 Lyle Owerko, The Boombox Project, 5.
219 Chuck D, ?Eddie Murphy,? Twitter Post, Twitter, (September 22, 2011), https://
twitter.com/MrChuckD/status/116749836535074816?lang=en.
220 ?Weekend Update,? Videocassette (VHS), Saturday Night Live (New York: Time Life 
Video, 1980).
221 Tara Rodgers, ??What, for me, constitutes life in a sound??: Electronic Sounds as 
Lively and Differentiated Individuals,? American Quarterly 63, no. 3 (September 2011): 
510.
222 Richard Rothstein discusses a similar definition of ghetto. See Historian Says Don?t 
?Sanitize? How Our Government Created Ghettos, interview by Terry Gross, accessed 
May 14, 2015, http://www.npr.org/2015/05/14/406699264/historian-says-dont-sanitize-
how-our-government-created-the-ghettos.
223 ?Bringing music as well as other programs into the home, the radio also diminished 
the individuality of the music heard.  People were bound by the programming available at 
a given time.?  This is precisely why the radio?s evolution into the boom box is so 
important, because with the boom box the owner can control what she listens or desires 
other people to listen to, without dependence on a pre-scheduled program.  Jessica H. 
Foy, ?The Home Set to Music,? The Arts and the American Home, 1890-1930.  Jessica H. 
Foy and Karal Ann Marling, eds. (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1994), 
76. 
224 My working definition of an aural sphere is a space that is created or evoked through 
music, sound, or speech.
225 For a brief history of radio deregulation in the U.S. see Charles Fairchild, 
?Deterritorializing Radio,? 553.
254
226 An interesting note here is that in Spike Lee?s journal of Do The Right Thing, on the 
actual set there was a meeting between homeowners on the block and the location 
manager?Brent Owens. They discussed plans for improvements on several homes, but 
what pleased homeowners the most was shutting down a crack house described as being 
littered with vials, used condoms, dead animals, and feces. The actual block had to be 
cleaned up to be shot as the pristine place that it was on film. See Spike Lee and Lisa 
Jones, Do The Right Thing: A Spike Lee Joint (New York: Fireside, 1989), 83.
227 Richard Rothstein discusses how ?ghettos? were created through governmentally 
segregated housing. See Historian Says Don?t ?Sanitize? How Our Government Created 
Ghettos, interview by Terry Gross, accessed May 14, 2015, http://www.npr.org/
2015/05/14/406699264/historian-says-dont-sanitize-how-our-government-created-the-
ghettos
228 ?Historically, non-African American merchants have dominated the economy of 
African American communities? Kwang Chung Kim, Koreans In The Hood: Conflict 
With African Americans (Baltimore: JHU Press, 1999), 44.
229 ?Because the majority of Korean immigrants held professional or managerial positions 
in Korea, operating a small business in the United States represents underemployment 
and a loss of status.? Ibid., as qtd. in 43.
230 ?...many African American economic developments and business ventures have failed 
due to lack of capital or skills, redlining, institutional discrimination, and racism.? Kwang 
Chung Kim., Koreans In The Hood, 44.
231 George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, 14.
232 Indeed, Black and Brown people in the U.S. have a long history of existing through 
the very lens that understands that they are always outside. This lens is made possible due 
to their disproportionate surveillance and, thus, increased chances of being harassed/
infiltrated by the state. As a result, Black and Brown people experience a legacy of 
limited control over the safety of their bodies/families. 
233 For more on this see J?rgen Habermas. The Structural Transformation of the Public 
Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989).
234 The Black Public Sphere Collective, ed., The Black Public Sphere, 1st ed. (Chicago: 
University of Chicago Press, 1995), 2.
235 Ibid., 3.
236 Ibid.
237 Nancy Fraser, ?Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of 
Actually Existing Democracy,? in The Phantom Public Sphere (Studies in Classical 
Philology), ed. Bruce Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 8.
238 Public Enemy, Fight the Power, CD, Do the Right Thing (Def Jam, 1989).
255
239 Tara Rodgers, ?What, for me,? 517.
240 Thomas Tracy, ?Cops Involved in Fatal Confrontation with Eric Garner Were Asked to 
Crack down on Illegal Cigarette Sales: Bill Bratton,? NY Daily News, August 13, 2014, 
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/cops-involved-eric-garner-
confrontation-asked-target-illegal-cigarette-sales-bratton-article-1.1901612.
241 Folk heroes are defined as the figures who, at critical moments in time, have certain 
qualities or behaviors that would enhance culture-building (or the ability to protect group 
identity and values in the face of a threat to them), and are therefore embraced as heroes 
by that group. John W. Roberts, From Trickster to Badman: The Black Folk Hero in 
Slavery and Freedom (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 5-6.
242 Kalvin Lee, ?The Block Is Hot,? DVD, The Boondocks (Culver City, CA: Sony 
Pictures Home Entertainment, 2006).
243 The Cool Kids, Pump Up The Volume, MP3, Totally Flossed Out EP (C.A.K.E., 2007).
244 Kanye West, Good Morning, MP3 Graduation (Roc-A-Fella Records, 2007).
245 J Dilla, E=MC2 (feat. Common), MP3, The Shinning (London, England: BBE 
Records, 2007).
246 Hassan Mackey & Apollo Brown, ?Tell Me,? Daily Bread, Mello Music Group, 2011.
247 Spike Lee, NYPD Puts Deadly Chokehold On Staten Island Man, 2014, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS_rm3ai9Og&feature=youtube_gdata_player.
248 ?Precrime? comes from Philip K. Dick?s 1956 science fiction short story Minority 
Report. In it, Precrime is a criminal justice agency that uses precog mutants who are able 
to see up to two weeks into the future. These mutants produce cards that are interpreted 
by Precrime to stop future criminals before they ever commit a crime.
249 Philip K. Dick, Minority Report, e-book (New York: Pantheon Books, 2009), Chapter 
9, page 98 or 196.
250 For example, Mother Sister was the old Black lady that watches everything on the 
block, The Mayor was the wino, the White guy (self-proclaimed Brooklynite) was the 
Yuppie who moved in to escape the high rent in Manhattan.
251 Adisa Banjoko, in The Boombox Project: The Machines, The Music, and the Urban 
Underground, 61. 
256
252 Michael Stewart was a 25-year-old Black graffiti artist and from Brooklyn who was 
arrested on September 15, 1983, at which point he was in transit to police custody, for 
spray-painting graffiti in a Manhattan subway. He was bruised, hogtied, and comatose 
when he was admitted to Bellevue Hospital and died thirteen days later. All six White 
male transit officers involved with his arrest, and accused of permitting Michael to be 
beaten while he was in their custody, were acquitted. Besides the sentencing of these 
police officers, this incident echoes the murder of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, MD. See 
Isabel Wilkerson, ?JURY ACQUITS ALL TRANSIT OFFICERS IN 1983 DEATH OF 
MICHAEL STEWART,? The New York Times, November 25, 1985, sec. N.Y. / Region, 
http://www.nytimes.com/1985/11/25/nyregion/jury-acquits-all-transit-officers-in-1983-
death-of-michael-stewart.html.
253 Kimberly Kindy and Kimbriell Kelly, ?Thousands Dead, Few Prosecuted,? 
Washington Post, April 11, 2015, http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/
2015/04/11/thousands-dead-few-prosecuted/.
254 Eleanor Bumpurs was a 66-year-old African American woman living in the Sedgewick 
Houses of the Bronx who was shot twice with a shotgun by New York City Police who 
enforced a city ordered eviction. Eleanor was waving a knife at the officers and one of 
them shot her hand, shattering the knife and her hand in the process, yet, she was shot in 
her chest as the officer claimed to continue to be threatened. The judge dismissed the 
indictment of manslaughter. See Selwyn Raab, ?STATE JUDGE DISMISSES 
INDICTMENT OF OFFICER IN THE BUMPURS KILLING,? The New York Times, 
April 13, 1985, sec. N.Y. / Region, http://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/13/nyregion/state-
judge-dismisses-indictment-of-officer-in-the-bumpurs-killing.html.
255 Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me, e-book (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 
2015), Chapter 2, page 221 or 242.
256 CNN Newsroom, ??Loud Music? Shooter Testifying,? CNN, February 11, 2014, http://
transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1402/11/cnr.04.html.
257 Ibid.
258 A South Side, Chicago style of music that emerged in early 2010 during what was 
called a ?homicide crisis? whose content celebrates camaraderie, money, love and lust, 
reflects on and premeditates violence, and discusses selling drugs to survive as well as 
thrive. The sound of Drill has been described by Lucy Stehlik of The Guardian as the 
sonic cousin to footwork, southern Hip-Hop, and the 808 drum style of trap music. See 
Lucy Stehlik, ?Chief Keef Takes Chicago?s Drill Sound Overground? The Guardian, 
November 16, 2012, sec. Music, http://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/nov/16/chief-
keef-chicago-drill-rap#start-of-comments.
259 Paul Meara, ?It?s A Drill!: The Sound That Has Music Labels Flocking To The Windy 
City,? AllHipHop, August 23, 2012, http://allhiphop.com/2012/08/23/its-a-drill-the-
sound-that-has-music-labels-flocking-to-the-windy-city/.
257
260 Shepard Fairey, ?MANIFESTO? Obey Giant, April 18, 1990, http://
www.obeygiant.com/articles/manifesto.
261 Ta-Nehesi Coates, ??I Am Still Called by the God I Serve to Walk This Out?? The 
Atlantic, February 25, 2014, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/i-am-
still-called-by-the-god-i-serve-to-walk-this-out/284064/.
262 Ibid.
263 In the scenario where Michael Dunn asks Davis and his friends to turn down their 
music and they do so only to turn it up again ?Beef (feat. Fredo Santana & Lil Durk)? 
must be read differently. For example, ?Ain?t playin? fair so we keep them things? alludes 
to the way in which odds have been stacked up against Davis and his friends as Black 
men, requiring them to metaphorically even up the odds with figurative weapons. ?Fuck 
nigga you don?t want no Beef? is suggestive of how White men who tout their White 
entitlement are immediately demoted to someone that is unlikeable and warned that they 
do not want to conflict with Davis and his friends. ??Run up on ?em you better think 
again? builds on the previous idea that White men had better think twice before 
conflicting with Davis and his friends and flashing their entitlement in their face. ?Free all 
of my niggas? points to a sense that not only are there Black men locked up for crimes 
that they did not commit, but that there are Black men suffering from the same White 
entitlement and privilege that is smothering Davis and his friends in their confrontation 
with Michael Dunn. See Lil? Reese, Beef (feat. Fredo Santana & Lil Durk), Don?t Like: 
A Gangsta Grillz Exclusive, 2012.
264 SwhiteAKA3, ?I will be playing my radio very loudly,? Twitter Post, Twitter, 
(February 3, 2014), http://www.twitter.com/swhiteAKA3.
265 Vershawn Ashanti Young discusses how Black men are feared and the way in which 
our knowledge of this level of legibility inspires varying performances of quieting down 
or ?testing out just how equal our society is by speaking out freely instead of shape 
shifting.? See Your Average Nigga: Peforming Race Literacy and Masculinity (Detroit: 
Wayne State University Press, 2007), 144.
266 Antoine Dodson NPR Interview, YouTube Video, 8:19, from an interview by NPR 
staff, posted by ?downtownphotographer,? September 4, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=4r2poH7oYPA.
267 Elizabeth Gentle, ?Woman wakes up to find intruder in her bed,? WAFF 48 News, July 
28, 2010, http://www.waff.com/Global/story.asp?S=12883477.
268 Antoine Dodson NPR Interview, YouTube Video, 8:19, from an interview by NPR 
staff, posted by ?downtownphotographer,? September 4, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=4r2poH7oYPA.
269 Elizabeth Gentle, ?Overnight Internet sensation reacts to new-found 
fame,? WAFF 48 News, July 30, 2010, http://www.waff.com/Global/story.asp?
S=12901080.
258
270 I use ?interactors? throughout this chapter to connote the ways in which people 
participate within their situated websites. People interact with each other, with discourses, 
and content such as videos, images, and texts. They execute these interactions by means 
of (re)producing, uploading, or posting said content and commenting on other people?s 
posts and comments.
271 ?This actually aired on my local news today. ?Obviously we have a rapist here... so 
hide yo kids, hide yo wife, and hide yo husband ?cause dey rapin? e?rybody out here,?? 
Reddit submission, posted by ?panhead,? July 29, 2010, http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/
comments/cuvn3/this_actually_aired_on_my_local_news_today/.
272 Chris Watson, ?Antoine Dodson / Bed Intruder,? Part of a series on Viral Videos, 
Know Your Meme, (August 6, 2010), http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/antoine-dodson-
bed-intruder. The oldest video footage of the original newscast can be found here: 
?Woman wakes up to find intruder in her bed,? YouTube Video, 2:02, originally from an 
interview by WAFF-48 News, posted by ?iKING,? July, 29, 2010, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzKtPezPsqE.
273 ?Woman wakes up to find intruder in her bed,? YouTube Video, 2:02, originally from 
an interview by WAFF-48 News, posted by ?iKING,? July, 29, 2010, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzKtPezPsqE.
274 Ibid.
275 Dave McDowell, ?Hide Your Husbands!,? Photo, Flickr, (2010), https://
www.flickr.com/photos/sacamoto2003/5531927565/.
276 ?They?re climbing your districts They?re snatchin your tributes up, tryna reap em so 
y?all need to hid your kids, hide your wife and hide your husband cuz they?re reapin 
errbody out there...,? in reply to Schmoyoho, Auto-Tune The News: BED INTRUDER 
SONG!!! (now on iTunes), YouTube video, 2:07, comment by ?RobotKristen14,? 
February 18, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw.
277 Ibid., comment by ?AwesomeAostin,? April 28, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw.
278 A recurrent media motif often, but not always, of people of African descent that use 
the intimate street vernacular of their larger racial group, irrespective of their audience, to 
describe a sensational event or theory from their deeply personal perspective, clarifying, 
verifying, and producing a larger narrative.
279 Psyche A. Williams-Forson, Building Houses out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, 
Food, and Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2006), 166.
280 Limor Shifman, ?An Anatomy of a YouTube Meme,? New Media & Society 14, no. 2 
(October 3, 2011): 190.
281 Bossip is an online magazine specializing in entertainment and gossip largely 
concerned with Black people in the U.S.
259
282 Videos, which are created by interactors on their respective websites that are made in 
response to an earlier video.
283 Comments are a public format through which interactors on the video-sharing and 
video-aggregating websites and news blogs I investigate communicate with one another. 
Often, comments take the form of chronological posts that are submitted independently, 
in response to (audio)visual media, or in response to another interactor.
284 Images refer to the visual representations of people or things obtained by cameras and 
displayed through interfaces.
285 Web content categories are how certain subjects, discussions, or areas of a website are 
digitally indexed, tagged, or catalogued so that interactors on said websites can find and 
trace them in an organized way.
286 Norman Fairclough, Media Discourse (London: Edward Arnold, 1995), 57.
287 Ibid., 57-58.
288 Ibid., 63.
289 The TV shows that he examines are Medicine Now, Today, High Resolution, and The 
Oprah Winfrey Show.
290 Norman Fairclough, Media Discourse, 125-149.
291 Ibid., 144.
292 The term ?Netnography? was an anonymous reviewer?s suggestion for this qualitative 
method informed by consumer research, the conventions and approaches of cultural 
anthropology, and cultural studies. ?I Want To Believe?: A Netnography of The X-Philes? 
Subculture of Consumption,? 470.
293 The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed through 
the Internet, not to be confused with the Internet, which is an infrastructure of 
interconnected networks.
294 For more details on netnography, see Robert V. Kozinets, ?I Want To Believe?: A 
Netnography of The X-Philes? Subculture of Consumption;? ?On Netnography: Initial 
Reflections on Consumer Research Investigations of Cyberculture? Advances in 
Consumer Research 25, no. 1 (1998); and Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research 
Online (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications Ltd., 2010).
260
295 A newbie is a new member attempting to learn about an online community and reach 
out to establish social relationships; a maker is involved in constructing the online spaces 
that communities are situated in; an interactor is defined more narrowly than my use of 
the term, however, it encompasses hybrid involvement by someone who is between 
online and in-person whereby their interactions online are in relationship to their 
consumption and involvement in an in-person space; a networker gets involved in 
communities for the explicit purpose of creating social ties and interactions with online 
community members.  Ibid.
296 Ibid., 35
297 Here I borrow language from Jonathan H. Shannon?s description of Tarab?the 
process of reaching that special state of emotional rapture or enchantment, sadness or joy 
experienced while listening to and performing good Arab music; ?that feeling you get 
when you listen to music, and it just makes you want to say aah!? to describe the 
affectual labor that is a necessary aspect of a performance going viral. See ?Emotion, 
Performance, and Temporality in Arab Music: Reflections on Tarab,? Cultural 
Anthropology 8, no. 1 (February 2003): 72 & 74.
298 Elin Diamond, ?Introduction,? 3.
299 Elsa Barkley-Brown, ?Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African 
American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom? Public Culture 7 
(1994): 119. 
300 On January 13, 2003, Lynell Griffin, aka Bubb Rubb, and his associate, ?Lil Sis,? 
explained a modification to exhaust pipes that were the latest craze in Oakland. Bubb 
Rubb replied to the KRON-TV Channel 4 news reporter who asked, ?can you tell me 
about the whistles?? He responded, ?The whistles go WOO...You wanna go WOO 
WOO!? The reporter replied, ?some neighbors are saying it?s too loud.? Bubb Rubb 
remarked, ?That?s only in the morning. He?s supposed to be up cooking breakfast or 
something, ?so it?s like an alarm clock. WOO WOO!? See Steve Lambert, ?Bubb 
Rubb,? Know Your Meme, 2010, http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bubb-rubb. Also see 
LILOUTLAW209, The Whistles Go.... Whoo Whoo!, YouTube Video, 2006, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnzw_i4YmKk&feature=youtube_gdata_player.
301 There is an entire neighborhood of people performing the Ghetto Witness in the 
Crichton area of Mobile, Alabama. They are featured in the newscast-turned-YouTube-
video that seeks to uncover the mystery of a Leprechaun in a neighborhood teaming with 
Black experts on the phenomenon. After an amateur sketch of the Leprechaun is shown, 
residents are interviewed and present a spectrum of theories ranging from the Leprechaun 
being a crackhead in a tree to simply being a Leprechaun. One man performs a call and 
response, ?Who all see the Leprechaun say yeah!? The crowd replies, ?Yeaaah!? For the 
full story see ?Leprechaun in Mobile, Alabama,? YouTube Video, 2:03, from an interview 
by NBC affiliated news station WPMI, posted by botmib, March 17, 2006, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nda_OSWeyn8.
261
302 Antoine Dodson NPR Interview, YouTube Video, 8:19, from an interview by NPR 
staff, posted by ?downtownphotographer,? September 4, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=4r2poH7oYPA.
303 Antoine Dodson on Judge Alex!, WorldStarHipHop Video, 11:12, uploaded February 
20, 2011, http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?
v=wshhdhppJv6uZH1kfvl7.
304 Andy Carvin, ?The YouTube ?Bed Intruder? Meme: A Perfect Storm of Race, Music, 
Comedy And Celebrity,? NPR, August 5, 2010, http://www.npr.org/sections/
alltechconsidered/2010/08/05/129005122/youtube-bed-intruder-meme.
305 Stephanie Greco Larson, Media & Minorities: The Politics of Race in News and 
Entertainment (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2006), 82.
306 Ibid., 83.
307 NPR Staff, ?Antoine Dodson: Riding YouTube Out Of The ?Hood,?? NPR, August 23, 
2010, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129381037.
308 See Mark Anthony Neal, Looking for Leroy, 8.
309 Ibid., 62.
310 Antoine Dodson NPR Interview, YouTube Video, 8:19, from an interview by NPR 
staff, posted by ?downtownphotographer,? https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=4r2poH7oYPA.
311 Kimberlee Crenshaw, ?Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and 
Violence against Women of Color? Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1253.
312 MJTheKingOfDance4, The Gregory Brothers (Creators Of Antoine Dodson Bed 
Intruder) Interview On Monique, YouTube video, March 25, 2011, http://thurly.net/1652.
313 Responding to interviewer Shira Lazar about how to make a difference from a 
YouTube video, Antoine Dodson revealed that the majority of his fans were ?victims of 
rape or molestation? that reached out to him that he would console and comfort. Shira 
Lazar, ?Bed Intruder Song? Exclusive Interview, YouTube video, (CBS, 2010), http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=og5znBpNEh8&feature=youtube_gdata_player.
314 Elizabeth Gentle, ?Overnight Internet sensation reacts to new-found 
fame,? WAFF 48 News, July 30, 2010, http://www.waff.com/story/12901080/overnight-
Internet-sensation-reacts-to-new-found-fame.
315 Neoliberalists, for instance, assign inequalities to ?private? life, label them as 
?natural,? and, as a result of the concept of private (civil society, family etc.) vs. the 
public (state, economy, etc.), those inequalities have nothing to do with the life of the 
state or economy and everything to do with personal responsibility. See Lisa Duggan, The 
Twilight of Equality?: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy 
(Boston: Beacon Press, 2003), 5.
262
316 Jos? Esteban Mu?oz, introduction to Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the 
Performance of Politics (Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), xi-
xii.
317 Antoine Dodson recently denounced his sexuality and claimed his identity as a 
heterosexual Black Hebrew Israelite.
318 ?Antoine Dodson NPR Interview,? YouTube Video, 8:19, from an interview by NPR 
staff, posted by ?downtownphotographer,? September 4, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=4r2poH7oYPA.
319 Ibid.
320 Ibid.
321 Shira Lazar, ?Bed Intruder Song? Exclusive Interview, http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=og5znBpNEh8&feature=youtube_gdata_player.
322 ?White men have said over and over??and we have believed it because it was repeated 
so often??that not only was there no such thing as a chaste Negro woman??but that a 
Negro woman could not be assaulted, that it was never against her will. ??Jessie Daniel 
Ames (1936).? See Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, ??The Mind That Burns In Each Body?: 
Women, Rape, and Racial Violence,? in Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality, Eds. 
Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson (New York: Monthly Review 
Press, 1983), as qtd. in 331. 
323 Antoine Dodson?s act of protection fills a historical void that occupies a portion of the 
plea to Colored Girls of the South by American author, educator, and speaker 
foundational to feminist thought, Anna Julia Cooper, who wrote that these girls were 
?often without a stronger brother to espouse their cause and defend their honor with his 
life?s blood.?  See Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice From the South (The Aldine Printing 
House, 1892), Electronic Edition, http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/cooper/cooper.html.
324 Communication Studies scholar Amber Johnson?s intersectional examination of this 
incident concerned with how Antoine Dodson began to use the unique defense of his 
sister for monetary gain and how social media users perceived that as ?coonery? also 
discusses the ways in which his behavior challenged normative gender roles. See 
?Antoine Dodson and the (Mis)Appropriation of the Homo Coon: An Intersectional 
Approach to the Performative Possibilities of Social Media,? Critical Studies in Media 
Communication 30, no. 2 (June 1, 2013): 161.
325 ?When used positively, [fierce] is said of a characteristic that is exceptionally good or
of behavior that is well done; when used ironically, it expresses a negative judgment.? I 
use the exceptional quality encompassed by ?fierce? positively here. Marlon M. Bailey, 
Butch Queens Up In Pumps, 253.
326 E. Patrick Johnson, Appropriating Blackness, 77.
263
327 Stateside Staff, ?Exploring ?Ballroom Culture? in Detroit,? Michigan Radio, online 
audio stream, 6:57, from an interview by Stateside Staff, December 19, 2013, http://
michiganradio.org/post/exploring-ballroom-culture-detroit.
328 Ibid.
329 Web Redemption - Antoine Dodson - Uncensored, Tosh.0 video, 5:10, from an 
interview with Daniel Tosh of Tosh.0, January 11, 2011, http://tosh.cc.com/video-clips/
dind4m/antoine-dodson.
330 Resisting painting Black communities as overly-homophobic, in the same interview, 
Antoine revealed that being gay in Lincoln Park was quite accepted. Ibid.
331 Steve Doyle, ?Huntsville Housing Authority?s Lincoln Park Public Housing Site in 
Line for Facelift,? Blog, AL.com, January 23, 2012, http://blog.al.com/breaking/2012/01/
huntsville_housing_authoritys_2.html.
332 Steve Doyle, ?Huntsville Housing Authority Pushes Redevelopment of Sparkman 
Homes, Lincoln Park Public Housing Sites to Back Burner,? Blog, AL.com, (July 1, 
2013), http://blog.al.com/breaking/2013/07/huntsville_housing_authority_p.html.
333 A White ?Country and Soul, Folk and Roll? band. The Gregory Brothers, ?The 
Gregory Brothers? Facebook, January 7, 2010, http://www.facebook.com/
gregorybrothers?v=info.
334 Annoying Orange is a North American comedy series on YouTube featuring an 
anthropomorphic orange?able to speak like a human with human teeth and eyes?that 
annoys other fruits and vegetables in varying scenarios.
335 Judith Butler, ?Imitation?and?Gender?Insubordination,? in The Judith Butler Reader, 
eds. Sara Salih and Judith Butler (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 127.
336 John L. Jackson, Jr., Thin Description: Ethnography and the African Hebrew Israelites 
of Jerusalem (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2013), 178.
337 Schmoyoho, Auto-Tune The News: BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes), 
YouTube video, 2:07, comment by ?blezard2011,? November 3, 2010, accessed 
December 10, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw.
338 Annoying Orange, Annoying Orange - Kitchen Intruder (Bed Intruder Spoof) with 
AutoTune remix! YouTube video, 2:14, November 23, 2010, accessed on January 20, 
2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pezdRcVe04c&feature=kp.
339 Ibid.
340 schmoyoho, Auto-Tune The News: BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes), 
YouTube video, 2:07, comment by ?jackred5,? December 5, 2010, accessed December 
10, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw.
264
341 schmoyoho, Auto-Tune The News, comment by ?zceed,? December 5, 2010, accessed 
December 10, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw.
342 The title change from BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes) to Antoine Dodson 
- They Rape'n Everybody Out Here [Auto Tune Edition] shifts attention, once again, to 
Antoine, erasing the sexual assault attempted on Kelly and the home invasion that 
sparked the conflict in the first place.
343 See Jeffrey Q. McCune, Jr., ??Out? in the Club,? 311.
344 Peter V. Milo, ??CNN Of The Ghetto?: WorldStarHipHop Becoming YouTube For 
Urban Violence,? CBS Atlanta, March 29, 2012, http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2012/03/29/
worldstarhiphop-website-becoming-youtube-for-urban-violence/.
345 Q WorldStar Interview at The Breakfast Club Power 105.1, YouTube video, 15:51, 
from an interview with the Breakfast Club, posted by ?105.1BreakfastClub,? August 8, 
2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuqTO6FHAfk.
346 See Mark Jacobson, ?WorldStar, Baby!,? NYMag, Feburary 5, 2012, http://
nymag.com/news/features/worldstar-2012-2/.
347 David Zurawick, ?Worldstarhiphop.com makes a name for itself with violent viral 
videos,? The Baltimore Sun, March 23, 2012, http://articles.baltimoresun.com/
2012-03-23/entertainment/bs-ae-zontv-worldstar-20120323_1_shock-video-ski-mask-
third-video.
348 David Zurawick, ?Worldstarhiphop.com makes a name for itself,? http://
articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-03-23/entertainment/bs-ae-zontv-
worldstar-20120323_1_shock-video-ski-mask-third-video.
349 Marc Kerschhagel, ?Media Market: Media Consumption Trends among Black 
Men,? (New York: Opportunity Agenda, 2011), 109. 
350 ?Statistics? YouTube, accessed June 4, 2014, http://www.youtube.com/yt/press/
statistics.html.
351 Haley Tsukayama, ?In online video, minorities find and audience,? The Washington 
Post, April 20, 2012, http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/in-online-video-
minorities-find-an-audience/2012/04/20/gIQAdhliWT_story.html.
352 Ibid.
353 ?Currency? refers to popularity as much as it nods toward fiscal capital?with users 
able to generate income based on channel subscriptions and views.
354 The series is now referred to as ?Songify the News.?
355 Chris Watson, ?Antoine Dodson / Bed Intruder,? http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/
antoine-dodson-bed-intruder.
265
356 Nigel D, ?The Fruits of Antoine Dodson?s Labor,? December 12, 2010, http://
smokingsection.uproxx.com/TSS/2010/09/the-fruits-of-antoine-dodsons-labor.
357 Antoine and the Gregory Brothers meet the press, YouTube video, posted by 
?antoinedodson24,? March, 24 2011, http://thurly.net/1675.
358 Antoine Dodson, ?Antoine Dodson,? Facebook Page, Facebook, (August 14, 2010), 
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Antoine-Dodson/102461723145137.
359 E. Patrick Johnson, Appropriating Blackness, as qtd. 44.
360 The sales of the songs are according to Antoine Dodson?s web redemption episode on 
Tosh.0. See Daniel Tosh, Web Redemption - Antoine Dodson - Uncensored, http://
tosh.cc.com/video-clips/dind4m/antoine-dodson.
361 ?Antoine Dodson,? Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, January 3, 2011, http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Dodson.
362 Daniel Tosh, Web Redemption - Antoine Dodson - Uncensored, http://tosh.cc.com/
video-clips/dind4m/antoine-dodson.
363 Shira Lazar, ?Bed Intruder Song? Exclusive Interview, http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=og5znBpNEh8&feature=youtube_gdata_player.
364 Schmoyoho, Auto-Tune The News: BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes), 
YouTube video, 2:07, comment by ?schmoyoho,? July 31, 2010, accessed August 5, 
2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw.
365 Marjorie Harness Goodwin and H. Samy Alim, ??Whatever (Neck Roll, Eye Roll, 
Teeth Suck)?: The Situated Coproduction of Social Categories and Identities through 
Stancetaking and Transmodal Stylization,? Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 20, no. 1 
(June 1, 2010): 190.
366 E. Patrick Johnson, Appropriating Blackness, 5.
367 Outkast, SpottieOttieDopaliscious (featuring Sleepy Brown), CD, Aquemini (LaFace 
Records, 1998).
368 For more about Trap Music as well as its differentiation from Trap in Electronic 
Dance Music see Miles Raymer, ?Who Owns Trap?: Does music born of Dirty South 
drug wars have any place in squeaky-clean dance clubs?? Chicagoreader, November 20, 
2012, http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/trap-rap-edm-flosstradamus-uz-jeffrees-lex-
luger/Content?oid=7975249.
369 This description also takes place within Fred Moten?s chapter titled ?Visible Music.? 
In The Break, 200.
370 MJTheKingOfDance4, The Gregory Brothers (Creators Of Antoine Dodson Bed 
Intruder) Interview On Monique, http://thurly.net/1652.
266
371 Schmoyoho, Auto-Tune The News: BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes), 
YouTube video, 2:07, comment by ?MaNgAnlmE,? January 26, 2011, accessed February 
4, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw.
372 Ibid., comment by ?Airstrike141,? February 27, 2011, accessed March 2, 2011, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw.
373 Eliot Van Buskirk, ?Gregory Brothers of ?Bed Intruder? Fame Discuss TV Pilot, 
Antoine Dodson? WIRED, August 13, 2010, accessed April 13, 2011 http://
www.wired.com/2010/08/gregory-brothers-bed-intruder-antoine-dodson-autotune/.
374 I borrow ?miscasting? from Joseph Roach who, in Cities of the dead: Circum-Atlantic 
Performance, studies the ways in which cultures of the past or the voices of the dead are 
(re)imagined, (re)presented, and embodied by the performance of their descendants in the 
present. These revisions put forth new identities and performances that evoke theatrical 
expressions ?such as casting and miscasting, script and improvisation, memory and 
imagination.? See Cities of the dead: Circum-Atlantic Performance, (New York: 
Columbia University Press, 1996), 1
375 Louisdaprince, ?Antoine Dodson - They Rape?n Everybody Out Here [Auto Tune 
Edition],? Video Post, WorldStarHipHop, (August 1, 2010), http://
www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshhYiib0xKG1Tu8tpG1.
376 Ibid.
377 I?m using e as a gender-neutral pronoun.  This allows me to not limit the gender 
possibilities of the users whose online identities lack the visual signifiers of gender that 
people use (or bend) in everyday analog life, which are often just as illegible as online 
avatars or usernames.
378 Susan Manning, Modern Dance, Negro Dance: Race in Motion (Minneapolis: 
University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 10.
379 Ibid., xvi.
380 Schmoyoho, Auto-Tune The News: BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes), 
YouTube video, 2:07, comment by ?Laplap9370,? January 5, 2011, accessed January 8, 
2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw.
381 Ibid., comment by ?Irockgame1,? January 23, 2011, accessed February 6, 2011, 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw.
382 Ibid., comment by baradona10, May 8, 2011, accessed June 3, 2011, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw.
383 Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2000), 
147.
267
384 A case that reflects this criminalization of Black boys involved a facebook post of a 
baby Black boy that was being abusively cursed at by an adult and responding by cursing 
back at that adult. Omaha police found the video and reposted it on their union?s website 
saying below the post, ?the thug cycle continues,? suggesting a direct correlation between 
an abusive social moment in this Black boy?s childhood and thug behavior in his 
adulthood. See Tell Me More, ?Toddler Removed From Home After Viral Swearing 
Video,? NPR, January 14, 2014, http://www.npr.org/2014/01/14/262404302/toddler-
removed-from-home-after-viral-swearing-video.
385 Matthew W. Hughey and Jessie Daniels, ?Racist Comments at Online News Sites: A 
Methodological Dilemma for Discourse Analysis,? Media, Culture, and Society 35, no. 3 
(April 2013): 336.
386 Schmoyoho, Auto-Tune The News: BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes), 
YouTube video, 2:07, comment by jcords40oz, November 3, 2010, accessed December 6, 
2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw.
387 Dwight McBride, ?Can the Queen Speak? Racial Essentialism, Sexuality and the 
Problem of Authority,? Callaloo 21, no. 2 (1998): 371.
388 Ibid, 390.
389 Louisdaprince, Antoine Dodson - They Rape'n Everybody Out Here [Auto Tune 
Edition], http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?
v=wshhYiib0xKG1Tu8tpG1.
390 E. Patrick Johnson, Appropriating Blackness 69.
391 Shira Lazar of CBS News asked Antoine Dodson if he ?realize[d] how people would 
react to [his] reaction and the way [he was] answering the questions.? He told Shira Lazar 
of CBS News that he ?really didn?t care? because he was ?so angry? and ?didn?t want 
[what happened] to get swept under the rug? so he just ?put it out there like it was.? Shira 
Lazar, ?Bed Intruder Song? Exclusive Interview, http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=og5znBpNEh8&feature=youtube_gdata_player.
392 Robin Kelley uses the ways that ?nigga? is employed on the West Coast to understand 
Ghettocentricity. See Race Rebels (New York: The Free Press, 1996), 210-213.
393 Ibid., 213.
394 Building from the craniometric studies of Samuel George Morton that were 
foundational to scientific racism, The Mobile, Alabama physician Josiah C. Nott and 
former U.S. consul in Cairo, George Gliddon, published a sweeping ethnological survey 
titled Types of Mankind (1854).
395 Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 
1996), as qtd. in 67.
268
396 Louisdaprince, Antoine Dodson - They Rape'n Everybody Out Here [Auto Tune 
Edition], http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?
v=wshhYiib0xKG1Tu8tpG1.
397 Jonathan Green, ?Jigaboo,? Green?s Dictionary of Slang, New Oxford American 
Dictionary, (2011), accessed January 17, 2015, http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/
10.1093/acref/9780199829941.001.0001/acref-9780199829941-e-25614?
rskey=TNunH3&result=2.
398 Anna Everett, ?The Revolution Will Be Digitized: Afrocentricity and the Digital 
Public Sphere? Social Text 71, vol. 20, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 133.
399 John L. Jackson, Jr., Thin Description, 177.
400 Karen A. Franck, ?When I Enter Virtual Reality, What Body Will I Leave Behind?? In 
Cyber_Reader: Critical Writings for the Digital Era, ed. Neil Spiller (London: Phaidon, 
2002) 238-245.
401 See Donna Harraway, ?A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-
Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,? in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The 
Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 149-181; Alondra Nelson, 
?Introduction: Future Texts,? Social Text 71, vol. 20, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 1-15, Lisa 
Nakamura and Peter Chow-White, eds., ?Introduction?Race and Digital Technology: 
Code, The Color Line, and the Information Society,? in Race After the Internet (New 
York: Routledge, 2012), 1-2.
402 Lisa Nakamura and Peter Chow-White, ?Introduction,? 17.
403 Topos Partnership, ?Literature Review: Media Representations and Impact on the 
Lives of Black Men and Boys? (New York: Opportunity Agenda, 2011), 13-14.
404 Ibid., 43.
405 United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, ?Investigation of the 
Ferguson Police Department? (The United States Department of Justice, March 4, 2015), 
http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/
ferguson_police_department_report.pdf.
406 Ibid., 62.
407 Hank Willis Thomas, ?Frames,? Qui Parle 13, no. 2 (2003): 119-135.
408 Ibid., 122.
409 See Kyla Wazana Tompkins, Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century 
(New York University Press, 2012), 90-91.
410 Ibid., 91.
269
411 Portia K. Maultsby, ?Africanisms in African-American Music,? in Africanisms in 
American Culture, ed. Joseph E. Holloway (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 
1990), 201.
412 Ibid.
413 Photo stills taken from Sweet Brown - Ain't Nobody Got Time for That (Autotune 
Remix), YouTube video, 1:56, posted by theparodyfactory1, April 13, 2012, accessed 
May 10, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFEoMO0pc7k.
414 Kara Keeling, ?Passing for Human,? 248.
415 Ibid., 242.
416 Sweet Brown - Ain't Nobody Got Time for That (Autotune Remix), YouTube video, 
1:56, comment by MadXMaverick, May 24, 2012, accessed November, 16 2013, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFEoMO0pc7k.
417 Ibid., comment by mynameissparkle1, August 4, 2012, accessed December 5, 2013, 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFEoMO0pc7k.
418 suparboysean, ?The Justice League,? Reddit post, Reddit, (May 11, 2013), https://
www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1e4zjf/the_justice_league/.
270
419 Charles Ramsey is the Cleveland man responsible for the rescue of three kidnapped 
girls in 2013, Amanda Berry, Georgina ?Gina? DeJesus, and Michelle Knight, who had 
gone missing more than a decade before. In a WEWS News Channel 5 interview, Ramsey 
was asked, ?What was the reaction on the girls faces?? Dismissing the reaction on their 
faces and analyzing the fact that Amanda Berry ran into his arms, he remarked, ?Bro, I 
knew som?n was wrong when a little pretty White girl ran into a Black man?s arms.  
Something is wrooooong here...[someone starts laughing in the background]...dead 
giveaway.? The newscaster, attempting to end the interview at that point says, ?Charles.? 
Ramsey continues, ?deead giveaway.? Trying again to end the interview, the newscaster 
replies, ?Charles thank you very much.? Ramsey insists, ?deeeeeeeeaaaaad giveaway!?  
The newscaster continues, ?Thank you very much for your time.? Ramsey concludes, 
?Either she homeless or she got problems, that?s the only reason why she run to a Black 
man.? Smiling, the newscaster replies, ?Charles thank,? then he pats Ramsey once on the 
chest, ?thank you for being there man.? Charles Ramsey would go on to be memeified 
and further popularized by The Gregory Brothers before appearing in ?The Justice 
League.? He was also referenced on Antoine Dodson?s ?BED INTRUDER SONG now 
on iTunes.? For example, YouTube interactor MoizAudio commented ?CHARLES 
RAMSEY!!!? and received 56 likes. YouTube interactor billytan888 commented, ?I was 
watching Charles Ramsey...now I am here.? See WEWS NewsChannel5, Charles Ramsey 
Interview, Rescuer of Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight in Cleveland, 
YouTube Video, 2:54, May 6, 2013, accessed May 7, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=axCn04iXkBg; schmoyoho, Dead Giveaway!, YouTube Video, 1:51, May 7, 
2013, accessed May 7 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZcRU0Op5P4; 
Schmoyoho, Auto-Tune The News: BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes) YouTube 
video, 2:07, comment by MoizAudio, May 7, 2013, accessed May 7, 2013, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw; Schmoyoho, Auto-Tune The News: BED 
INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes), YouTube video, 2:07, comment by billytan888, 
May 7, 2013, accessed May 7, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw.
420 RealCharlesRamsey, ?I Am Charles Ramsey, the Scary-Looking Black Dude Who 
Helped Rescue Three Kidnapped Women from That Freak Ariel Castro in Cleveland One 
Year Ago . . . AMA,? Reddit post, Reddit, (May 14, 2014), https://www.reddit.com/r/
IAmA/comments/25ghyz/i_am_charles_ramsey_the_scarylooking_black_dude/.
421 Gene Demby, ?Who Gets To Be A Superhero? Race And Identity In Comics,? NPR, 
January 11, 2014, http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/01/11/261449394/who-gets-
to-be-a-superhero-race-and-identity-in-comics.
422 Kevin M. Ralston, ?An Intersectional Approach to Understanding Stigma Associated 
with Male Sexual Assault Victimization,? Sociology Compass 6, no. 4 (April 2012): 285. 
423 For example, interactor Ipwnatcardgamesinc commented, ?THE RAPIST HAS BEEN 
FOUNDED! (sic) ITS (sic) THIS GUY!? Having received forty-one likes in the morning 
of December 24, 2010, Ipwnatcardgamesinc was not the only one who suspected this. 
Schmoyoho, Auto-Tune The News: BED INTRUDER SONG!!! (now on iTunes), YouTube 
video, 2:07, comment by ipwnatcardgamesinc, December 24, 2010, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMtZfW2z9dw.
271
424 Kara Keeling, ?Passing for Human,? 246-247.
425 It is important to note that the Gregory Brothers also auto-tuned this fictional Ghetto 
Witness, Walter Bankston, for the theme song of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. I quote 
from a later episode in the season where Walter is giving a protagonist, Titus 
Andromedon, advice on his seeking of the spotlight. I read this as a critique of the 
currency that Walter received from capitalizing on the trope of the Ghetto Witness. Tina 
Fey and Robert Carlock, ?Kimmy Goes to Court!,? Netflix Video, Unbreakable Kimmy 
Schmidt (Netflix, March 6, 2015), http://www.netflix.com/watch/80028223?
trackId=13752289&tctx=0,11,1205b148-9856-43bf-aecd-cc392b564865-43315763.
426 Amber Johnson, ?Antoine Dodson and the (Mis)Appropriation of the Homo Coon,? 
158.
427 John?L. Jackson Jr., ?On Ethnographic Sincerity,? Current Anthropology 51, no. S2 
(2010): S285.
428 Andy Carvin, ??Bed Intruder? Meme: A Perfect Storm of Race, Music, Comedy and 
Celebrity? NPR, August 5, 2010, http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/
2010/08/05/129005122/YouTube-bed-intruder-meme?print=1.
429 Elizabeth Day, ?#BlackLivesMatter: The Birth of a New Civil Rights Movement,? The 
Guardian, July 19, 2015, sec. World news, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/
19/blacklivesmatter-birth-civil-rights-movement.
430 ReignofApril, Twitter Post, Twitter, (July 17, 2015), https://twitter.com/ReignOfApril/
status/621996332631355392?lang=en.
431 Karen Hawkins, ?Holder, Duncan plan to fight Chicago teen violence,? The Seattle 
Times, October 7, 2009, http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/holder-duncan-plan-
to-fight-chicago-teen-violence/.
432 WorldStarHipHop, Tragic: Teens Give A Chicago Student From A Rivarly High 
School A Deadly Beating With Huge Wooden Boards! *Warning* (Very Graphic) (R.I.P 
Derrion Albert) (This Has To Stop) - World Star Uncut, Digital Video, 2009, http://
www.worldstaruncut.com/uncut/18861.
433 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the 
Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and 
Littlefield Publishers, 2006), 2, 29, & 54.
434 Ibid. 9.
272
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