The body can be used as a canvas— used to convey symbols, as a medium for art, to tell stories or to produce socialities. ‘Blackface’, a practise dating back to the 19th century was a form of theatrical make-up used predominantly by White performers to represent a caricature of a Black person. Jim Crow was the name of a popular minstrel show that was performed as ‘blackface’; Jim Crow was used later to refer to the racist laws and practices enforcing segregation, speaking to deep rooted institutionalised racism in America.  ‘Blackface’ is a prime example of the ways in which the body can be seen as a canvas, this sordid decoration of the body is representative of a sociality grounded in violence and speaks to processes of politicising bodies (Pitts-Taylor, 2003).

 In 2018 the BBC  released a short story titled ‘digital blackface’. The piece drew attention to the appropriation of exaggerated black bodies in social media in the form of Gifs and Emoji’s by non-black individuals. ‘Blackface’ has always been positioned as an infamous performance of the body. Its link to ‘dynamically embodied action’ (Farnell, 1999), makes it hard to relate to the idea of ‘blackface’ in a digital realm. The exaggerated movement in these popular Gifs have supported the opinion that they serve the purpose of mocking and stereotyping black bodies— enter the term ‘digital blackface’.

This idea was met with a lot of controversy, the majority of people seeing it as a far cry from racism and leading to the opposing view that ‘digital blackface’ may trivialise cases of racism that warrant public outcry. Digital re-contextualisation of the body through Emoji’s or Gifs is in its infancy so I will not attempt to fully deconstruct the idea of ‘digital blackface’ in support of  ‘Black Gifs’ for Black people alone. An analysis of race and digital representation deserves more attention than I can provide in this single post but I will explore this idea further within an anthropological framework. 

The negative response to the BBC story is pretty much exemplified through the damming like to dislike ratio of the video (see video below). This illicit response to the video highlights growing anxiety that there is an over problematization of life by SJW’s (Social Justice Warriors) or the ‘liberal left’. While in recent discussion the liberal left has been criticised for alienating those from the moderate end of the political spectrum, feminist commentator   Victoria Pitts-Taylor has also challenged the false sense of security that a lack of social critique breeds. Pitts-Taylor calls for a rejection of the assumption that postmodern bodies are freer to be transformed and are unlimited by, powerful categories like gender, class, and race. In actuality, the absence of attention to power relations like these promote the view that ‘identity construction as an option is within the reach of all subjects’ which is a complete fallacy (Pitts-Taylor, 2003).

People frequently learn and practice specialised techniques, navigating their bodies according to their age, ethnicity, class, family tradition, gender and sexual orientation to name a few (Farnell, 1999). While it may be difficult for many people to come to terms with the idea of ‘digital blackface’, Gifs are selected by an embodied individual who is a product of those specialised techniques of knowing and experiencing the world. It becomes easier to grapple with the idea of ‘digital blackface’ when you realise that the use of Gifs or an Emoji is still an embodied act— it is just mediated through digital technologies such as social media. Modifications to the body can reveal a lot about how we construct our idea of the ‘self’. Changes we make to our bodies readily reflect our anxieties about how we want others to perceive us which is heavily informed by societal pressures (Parkhurst, 2017). ‘Blackface’ takes this idea further as it is representative of how the individual views the ‘other’ as well as the self. The individuals that perform ‘blackface’ construct an identity of superiority through the mockery of Black bodies whilst simultaneously showcasing how they see the ‘other’ through their performance of them.

 American society has changed drastically since the 19th century but it is still a highly racially stratified country. The critical examination of the Gif  reflects  the anxieties of Black Americans and Black individuals globally who are still hyper-aware of how they are perceived through the ‘white gaze’. This idea of ‘double consciousness’ where Black people are both aware  of how they see themselves vs how other people see them is not new (McDonnell, 1986) but, little attention has been paid to the ways this translates into the digital sphere. Anxieties of stereotypical portrayals of Black people can definitely be seen in this debate of  ‘digital blackface’. It may not qualify as being framed as a racist or derogatory pursuit yet, there is still a need to question why certain portrayals of Black people are prevalent within social media as well as question who benefits from this narrative.

References

BBC, 2020. Is It OK To Use Black Emojis And Gifs?. [image] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cyq6fTYxztc&gt; [Accessed 12 March 2020].

Farnell, B., 1999. Moving Bodies, Acting Selves. Annual Review of Anthropology, 28(1), pp.341-373.

Giphy, 2020. [image] Available at: <https://giphy.com/&gt; [Accessed 15 March 2020].

McDonnell, R., 1986. The Papers Of W.E.B. Du Bois, 1803 (1877-1963) 1979. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International.

Parkhurst, A., 2017. Whitened anxiety: Bottled identity in the Emirates. The Material Culture of Failure : When Things Do Wrong.

Pitts-Taylor, V., 2003. In The Flesh. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

In the previous posts there has been a focus on avatars or digitally embodied modes of expression such as emojis that mimic the lived experience of the user’s body. This video post will explore how virtual spaces can be transformative as well as looking at the ways in which individuals can subvert or escape dominant and oppressive ideals surrounding the body and beauty through the digital arena.

Bibliography:

Borgerson, J. and Miller, D. (2016). Scalable sociality and “How the world changed social media”: conversation with Daniel Miller. Consumption Markets & Culture, 19(6), pp.520-533.

Jordan, B. (2009). Blurring Boundaries: The “Real” and the “Virtual” in Hybrid Spaces. Human Organization, 68(2), pp.181-193.

Nardi, B. (2009). My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft.

Nwosu, S. (2020). mp4 -blog. Available at: https://vimeo.com/395188377 [Accessed 3 Mar. 2020].

From the humble ‘msn’ emoticon back in the early 00’s to Apple’s ‘memoji’—a personalised emoticon meant to mimic the facial expressions and appearance of an individual, emoticons have been on an evolutionary journey so to speak. On the surface these cultural icons may be seen as a language or a trend. Yet, in a world where our bodies are always cultural sites of conversation tied up in the reproduction of gender, racial and social hierarchies 👨 👩 (Butler,2009), how we experience the body or choose to represent it online is linked to these societal structures. The journey of emoticons then can act as a window into embodied experience that is located and influenced by the politics of society (Bourdieu, 1977). ‘Emoji’s’ or the most recent ‘memoji’ are in a way a ‘rematerialisation’ of the body✋ (Bonilla & Rosa, 2015). If we treat the online as just as real as the offline we can see that collective representations of the body are just as crucial as the individual experience of the body.

Recent studies on the effect that emoji’s have on us have found that we use them to add meaning to our conversations and convey emotion yet, they also impose meaning on us. This can be seen in the ways they reproduce norms in society but also in the ways in which they challenge societal norms. For example, up until 2016 there were limited emoji representations of jobs for women who could either be receptionists or dancers 😬 . Yet, recent additions to the ‘emojiverse’ have sought to challenge normative gender roles for women by adding 88 new job roles for women 😁. Since 2016, new skin colour options for emoticons entered the market, highlighting the strive towards representation and the lived experience of embodied individuals in virtual spaces. Through emoji’s we learn about ourselves, the world and the visual art of communication. It may be hard to see an emoticon as a form of embodiment but if we accept Dourish’s line of reasoning: conversation, for example, is embodied not only through the speech patterns that are carried as physical disruptions in the air. It is embodied in the way that it happens in the world, ‘through the engaged participation of two equally embodied people’ 👫   (Dourish, 1999). In this way, emoji’s are embodied due to the people who use them, through the physical interaction between the individuals using them and the social web of meaning that is ascribed to them as a result of the user that selects them.

References
Bonilla and Rosa, J. (2015). #Ferguson: Digital protest, hashtag ethnography, and the racial politics of social media in the United States. American Ethnologist, 42(1), pp.4-17.

Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice.

Butler, J. (2009). Performativity, Precarity and Sexual Politics. AIBR. Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana, 04(03), p.I-XIII.

Dourish, Paul. (1999). Embodied interaction: Exploring the foundations of a new approach to HCI.

Justine, I. (2019). New Memoji in iOS 13!. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-PTeqoTGAU&t=140s [Accessed 26 Feb. 2020].

As I sit here cupping my unusually bloated tummy and wondering why I still have a craving for ‘Kinder Buenos’ after demolishing two bars, it finally occurs to me that it’s about the right time for my monthly menstruation to begin. While I consider myself to be quite in tune with my body, often noticing small and subtle changes such as my ‘pre-period bloat’, it got me thinking of the alternative methods of tracking my menstrual cycle such as fertility apps which are the inspiration for today’s post. For those who aren’t familiar, menstrual or fertility apps are phone applications which can generate an estimated day of ovulation, a five-to-six-day fertile window and the date of your next period. Self-care digital technologies which monitor various health concerns are at the forefront of current tech as well as academic and medical discussions. These technologies in a very Foucauldian framework become a way to self-diagnose or ‘discipline’ the body (Foucault, 1977). These technologies at their core alter how we consume, communicate and internalise information about the ’healthy’ body.

Typically, when we think about digital spaces we see them as being essentially disembodied landscapes. However, this perspective doesn’t engage with the ways in which digital technologies or ‘mhealth’ apps create new avenues to experience the body or the fact that digital technologies mediate and are mediated by embodied experience. ‘Mhealth’ (mobile health) apps have been described as ‘technologies which produce a digital cyborg body…they are able to act not only as prostheses, but also as interpreters of the body’ (Lupton, 2012). ‘Mhealth’ apps such as fertility apps are placing our body within the digital sphere in a very embodied sense, they alter how we construct notions of our body and our health both when we use the app as well as when we are not. These new technologies have also been praised for empowering individuals by providing them with more control over their biological bodies. In a way, they represent a revolution against the biomedical establishment. For some, ‘mhealth’ apps take up arms against the process of medicalisation, whereby human conditions or problems are enveloped into the medical realm and seen to be firmly in the domain of medical practitioners (Bendelow, 2002). Instead, ‘mhealth’ apps challenge the unsettling imagery of us as lifeless zombies waddling into our nearest GP’s office… Perhaps a slight exaggeration but the point is that these technologies have been hailed for providing users with a greater sense of autonomy.

If we look at many of the ‘mhealth’ apps that have been developed they’re all about placing the body within a digital context, think fitness apps, fertility apps, and apps about sexual performance, all of them positioning the body within a digital sphere allowing us to construct new approaches to healthcare. While this idea of the ‘digital body’ has been welcomed by many, it is not without its critics. Marissa J. Doshi positions these technologies within feminist discourse to reveal some of the more problematic aspects of ‘mhealth.’ Doshi highlights that the mobile applications designed to accommodate the health concerns of women focus primarily on women’s reproductive bodies (Doshi, 2018). But, there’s also a new wave of digital health and it’s called digital therapeutics, a subset of digital health, which leverages evidence based behavioural interventions such as CBT to combat the psychosomatic nature of many health concerns of both men and women. In this way, they offer an integrative approach to health, breaking down the Cartesian mind –body dualism that has long existed in healthcare (Goldberg, 2002). While ‘mhealth’ apps are a fairly recent phenomenon they carry vast implications for the ways in which we approach healthcare as well as shape the trajectory of human experience which is increasingly venturing into the realm of virtual spaces.

References

Bendelow, G. (2002). The Lived Body.

Doshi, M. (2018). Barbies, Goddesses, and Entrepreneurs: Discourses of Gendered Digital Embodiment in Women’s Health Apps. Women’s Studies in Communication, 41(2), pp.183-203.

Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984. Discipline And Punish : the Birth of the Prison. New York :Pantheon Books, 1977.

Goldberg, L. (2002). Rethinking the birthing body: Cartesian dualism and perinatal nursing. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 37(5), pp.446-451.

Lupton, D. (2012). M-health and health promotion: The digital cyborg and surveillance society. Social Theory & Health, 10(3), pp.229-244.