Today we discuss a complex and contentious issue, but we should be able to do so:
A fake or stolen online identity created or used for the purposes of beginning a deceptive relationship. (SilverishGoldNova 2017)
Odd origins: catfish keep cod fresh & agile during shipping, so they keep you on your toes
The Cambridge Dictionary definition implies:
Rachel Doleza’s Blackness; BMFA’s Kimono; Candice Reese’s mnemonic
What other questions arise? Can definitions be improved?
The integration of Black culture in contemporary capitalist frameworks has served to “domesticate” the stereotype of the dangerous African American, but only insofar as it can be consumed… Black culture is intentionally being made palatable to a White audience, with the goal of making a profit. (Cherid 2021, p. 360)
Much of cultural/media studies is based on Karl Marx.
He observed that in capitalism, “the fantastic form of a relation between things” obscures the “social relation between men themselves” (Marx 1867/2005).
That is, “commodity fetishism” is how the market obscures human/social relationships in favor of the transactional value of things.
gender and race are commodified in:
Appropriation + Commodification
white women who wish to capitalize off of impersonating racially ambiguous/Black women for monetary and social gain… white women wear Black women’s features like a costume.
the same features that, once derided by mainstream white culture, are now coveted … with Black women’s contributions being erased all the while. (Thompson 2018)
. . .
unlike Lil’ Kim who can only ever embody blackness, Christina Aguilera is able to take on both whiteness and non-whiteness
[Ariana Grande chooses] to commodify and domesticate blackness by curating it through her own body and self… as a White person she has the privilege to select which parts of the Black experience … the ones that can make her money (Cherid 2021, pp. 362-3)
the historical logic of appropriation: take the culture, the aesthetics, and erase the race. (Kim 2021)
as bell hooks wrote, this desire to “eat the Other” is intrinsically tied up with a desire to be transformed by an encounter with the Other. It is through this transformation that white Americans seek to validate themselves as individuals
The “I” is composed not just of a physical body, but the technology we rely on, all those instantiations that live online, all the filtered images that exist in cyberspace — an “extended” self. (Kim 2021)
. . .
Mainstream culture now celebrates artificially rendered influencers like Miquela, or figures like Poppy who fashion their personas as robo-entertainers… The uncanny becomes normalized, fetishized. (Kim 2021)
. . .
fetish: seeing or treating another as an object of satisfaction with little appreciation for their autonomy or entirety
Bodies that are mediated, composite, extended, but cannot function without a pulse; that are subject to violence digitally because of violence done to them physically, and vice versa; that deserve to be treated with dignity precisely because they are bodies, inhabited by real souls, living real lives. (Kim 2021)
Using our terms, what might we say of Deets?
. . .
She is commodifying femininity and youth? Is she appropriating youth? Can it be appropriated? (She died of suicide in 2023 Feb.)
Can race/gender be fluid/appropriated?
if you scroll far enough back on her Coconut Kitty Instagram, you can see the slow transformation of an unmistakable adult into a rather uncanny-looking teen, despite most of the content — boobs, butts, a cascade of red hair — remaining the same. (Jennings 2021)
Is Jennings right: influencer tuning is more dangerous than deepfakes?