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PORTSIDE CULTURE
HOW THE BLACK MEME TURNS A TROPE INTO A TRAP
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Eileen Isagon Skyers
May 15, 2024
Hyperallergic
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_ Legacy Russell’s Black Meme argues that owning, replicating, and
remediating Black material is a theft rooted in historical frameworks
of subordination. _
,
_Black Meme
A History of The Images That Make Us_
Legacy Russell
Verso
ISBN 9781839762802
In the months preceding its release, Legacy Russell
[[link removed]]’s _Black Meme: A
History of the Images that Make Us_
[[link removed]]_ _(2024) generated a
considerable amount of literary notoriety. The curator and writer’s
second publication details the story of memetic Blackness — the
migration and circulation of Blackness as material — deftly
stitching together analyses of accounts from across the last century.
Its endnotes read like a stark index of events that have shaped our
racialized cultural consciousness: Emmett Till
[[link removed]]’s murder and trial in
1955; the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965; the 1968 Olympics Black
Power Salute; the video of Los Angeles police beating Rodney King in
1991; and the murders of Philando Castile and Breonna Taylor
[[link removed]] at the hands of police
in 2016 and 2020, respectively.
The book begins with a kiss: an act of Black love captured at the end
of the 1913 silent film _Lime Kiln Field Day — _the oldest surviving
film featuring Black actors._ _Although not unusual for this period,
Russell notes that the lauded Bahamian-born actor Bert Williams dons
blackface in this scene (as if his identity needed to be caricatured
to be legible). She continues to breach and bend the lines of
transmission from this particular piece of media, tracing its 1980s
MoMA restoration, its inclusion in Garrett Bradley
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_America_, and its applause from film curator Ron Magliozzi, who —
in a puzzling attempt to offer cultural reparation — invited Black
artists to sample and remix the material, noting, “I would like it
to go viral.”
Indeed, virality itself is crucial to the role of the Black meme, here
defined as “_the mediation, copying, and carrying of Blackness
itself as a viral agent_… buoyed forth by modern media.” Russell
continues to cover a broad spectrum of cultural examinations, set
against the backdrop of our hyper-connected late capitalist society.
Of the Black reaction GIF
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she writes: “[it] performs and circulates without permission of or
payment to those depicted within them,” and “this digital
material… makes the Blackness within it a caricature, a cartoon.”
The subject of the Black meme is held captive in time, as if trapped
in a game of charades it will never win. This, Russell theorizes,
turns a trope into a trap, creating a set of relations that dehumanize
and alienate the Black body, turning it into a symbol or token that
can be endlessly exchanged as capital. Citing civil liberties scholar
Cheryl I. Harris, Russell makes the compelling case that because
notions of property are dependent on transferability, the possibility
of owning, replicating, and remediating Black material — from
Michael Jackson’s_ “_Thriller” (1982) to Jalaiah Harmon’s
viral #RenegadeDance — constitutes a theft rooted in historical
frameworks of subordination.
Mapping contemporary and archival media alike, Russell exposes the
double-edged blade of engaging with Blackness as symbol. Whether
derogatory or honorific, the image of Black identity is often
instrumentalized for profit, while the validity or value of that same
identity is systemically invalidated or rejected. There is often a
desire to participate in the cultural caché of Blackness without the
burden that Black identity carries in such a prejudiced society.
Russell quotes writer Doreen St. Felix, who summarizes: _“Everyone
want to be a black woman but nobody want to be a black woman._”
In her outro, she concludes, “Let us demand that Blackness — and
its transmission — be recognized as something more than an aesthetic
event.” She warns that “the internet is now the largest
institution of visual culture on earth,” and argues that we must
restructure authorship in relation to the digital if we are to address
these economies of injustice and unpaid labor online.
While offering little in the way of programmatic resolution,
Russell’s logic enters these unmentionable territories so that we
might listen, read, and respond — because how might we approach new
tactics if we have not yet admitted that these events, sensations, and
memories are, in fact, real violence? Ignoring them, she suggests, is
an even deeper violence. If we fail to recognize — and therefore,
remain complicit in the stifling patterns of silences, surveillance,
and glamorized trauma —_ _how do we begin to change the cultural
narrative? Russell calls for a shift in the theorization of the Black
meme, reorienting our attention so that we might disrupt the
present-day subjugation that drives our constant misrecognition of
Black cultural expression.
Eileen Isagon Skyers is an artist, writer, and curator whose practice
and criticism are focused on digital art and culture. Born in Manila,
Philippines, she is currently based in New York City. She has worked
with contemporary art and nonprofit arts organizations including the
Whitney Museum, David Zwirner, Frame Contemporary Art Finland, and
PICA. Her first book, _Vanishing Acts_, was published by LINK
Editions.
* art
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* images
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* memes
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* black representation
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