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Dialogues@RU is published
annually
by the
Writing Program at
Rutgers, The State
University of New Jersey
Volume 4
Fall 2005
By Melissa Connerly
Queen Latifah provides her audience with an example of how by just being a woman she is subjected to disrespectful behavior. She traces the experience and then ends it triumphantly. The gesture shows that she will not tolerate the demeaning behavior acted out by a man; she lets it be known that this type of behavior in fact has consequences. Fiske characterizes popular culture and the people of popular culture by what they do. This is essentially what makes this excerpt of Queen Latifah's song significant. What she does sets the example for other African American women; in fact, she has also been a pioneer for rap artists, such as Lil' Kim herself. She paved the way for Lil' Kim to be able to fully express herself through her own lyrics by being one of the first rappers to do so.
However, outside the hip-hop community in other aspects of her career, Queen Latifah takes on the role of the "Mammy." Marilyn Yarbrough and Crystal Bennett describe the "Mammy" as "everyone's favorite aunt or grandmother, sometimes referred to as 'Aunt Jemima,' is ready to soothe everyone's hurt, envelop them in her always ample bosom, and wipe away their tears" (1). The "Mammy" is an African American female who is always willing to help take care of someone besides herself and those in her family. At the time of slavery this person was her owner, and now as these roles have been given new life, in her movies Bringin' Down the House and Taxi , Queen Latifah takes care of two white men who are helpless and cannot take care of themselves. In both of these movies she plays the role of the typical black "Mammy." However, the stereotype goes even further. In Bringin' Down the House , she plays a women who, in exchange for legal assistance, helps a lawyer (played by Steve Martin) to get his life together, solving his problems with his children and his love life. In Taxi, she serves as a cab driver for Jimmy Fallon, who was not responsible enough to keep the driver's license necessary for his work as a detective. She nurtures both of these men and carries the weight of fixing their lives because they are unable to do so. Her roles in these movies show that she does not control her own image outside the hip-hop community. She has no power to change the image of the African American woman in the society she lives in, dominated as it is by the ideologies of a white patriarchal society. Hebdige can be used to describe how and why Queen Latifah is unable to obtain the power to change her image outside the hip-hop community.
Hegemony can only be maintained so long as the dominant classes "succeed in framing all the competing definitions within their range" (Hall 1977), so that the subordinate groups are, if not controlled, then at least contained within an ideological space which does not seem at all "ideological" which appears instead to be permanent and "'natural," to lie outside of history, to be beyond particular interests. (16)
Hebdige would argue that the reason that Queen Latifah is unable to control her image outside the hip-hop community is because the power exerted by society suggests that the roles she plays in these movies are not out of the ordinary. Society is able to make her operate under a set of principles they set, which she cannot see or fully understand, so that she does not realize there is anything wrong with playing the typical African American female in a movie where one would describe her as being "ghetto" and displaying the characteristics of the "Mammy." This is exactly why rap artists like Queen Latifah must rectify the gender problem within the hip-hop community. By doing so they will be able to change this set of principles and pave the way for African American women to do more than play the roles Queen Latifah has played in movies and be regarded as people who can achieve much more in life.
Queen Latifah's message in her music essentially discusses how the image of African American women needs to be changed. In her song "Ladies First" from her album, which is also entitled All Hale the Queen, she sings,