Who Says White Men Canât Dance? Deconstructing Racial Stereotypes in Windowlicker

Ruth Adams

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Who Says White Men Canât Dance? Deconstructing Racial Stereotypes in Windowlicker

In: Unsettling Whiteness

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Ruth Adams

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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 263â273

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9781848882829_024

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This chapter offers a critical textual and socio-cultural analysis of the music video for Windowlicker, a track dating from 1999 by the avant-garde UK electronic music producer Aphex Twin (real name Richard James). Conceived and directed by Jamesâ long-time collaborator Chris Cunningham, the film is a dark parody of Hip-hop music video clichÃ©s. Infinitely more subtle and complex than a mere spoof, the video inverts and deconstructs racial stereotypes, and in doing so makes them visible, no longer implicit. The video arguably challenges Richard Dyerâs notion that whiteness is âan unmarked normâ and illustrates Frankenbergâs contention that âwhiteness is in a continual state of being dressed and undressed, of marking and cloaking.â The dissonance between the visual registers of the film and the distinctly âwhiteâ Techno soundtrack is echoed and amplified by the symbolic content of the video. The filmâs white protagonist is endowed with all the positive, enviable (and therefore fearsome) attributes of black masculinity. He is sexually potent, can dance like Michael Jackson and displays âghetto-fabulousâ conspicuous consumption. He signifies blackness and âsignifiesâ like a black man, with subversive flash trickery. The ârealâ black men in the video, in contrast, are rendered âwhite;â wannabe nerds with no style who canât dance and canât get laid. There is much pleasure to be had in unpicking the complex, layered semiotics of the film, but what can we learn from doing so, and what can we deduce of Jamesâ and Cunninghamâs intent in its creation? Does the deconstruction of racial categories allow for a more progressive and nuanced reconstruction of models of culture and ethnicity, or is it a reactionary work, which ridicules black popular culture and grants the putative (white, male) viewer a symbolic vengeance? Does it pose a challenge to racist conventions, or is it itself racist?

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Unsettling Whiteness

E-Book ISBN:: 9781848882829

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 01 Jan 2014

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Who Says White Men Canât Dance? Deconstructing Racial Stereotypes in Windowlicker

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Unsettling Whiteness

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Who Says White Men Canât Dance? Deconstructing Racial Stereotypes in Windowlicker