CfP: “Watching rap: Hip-hop music videos and visual cultures” (Journal Étude de communication n° 65) Deadline: 21.12.2024
Call for papers: Journal Étude de communication n° 65
Website: https://journals.openedition.org/edc/
Deadline: 21st of Dec 2024
“Watching rap: Hip-hop music videos and visual cultures”
Coordination:
Keivan Djavadzadeh and Lune Riboni
(Cemti - Université Paris 8)
For some observers of the music industry, "the clip itself has become little more than the sheathing in which a song is enclosed" (Straw, 2018, 187). How, then, can we explain the popularity of music video streaming? According to the latest report from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI, 2023), it accounts for almost as much as audio streaming when it comes to online music consumption (31% and 32% respectively). Does it mean that YouTube video consumers are losing interest in the visual presentation of music and that they are listening to music videos rather than watching them (Kaiser and Spanu, 2018)? It seems difficult to imagine that people listening to music videos are not at the same time engaging with visuals − especially when we consider the image centrality in rap music due to the genre specific “registers of authenticity and legitimacy” (Guillard and Sonnette, 2020). Since the beginnings of rap, music videos, but also album covers, photographs, magazine covers and promotional visuals have participated in the construction of an aesthetic and representations at the intersection of race, gender and class (Collins, 2004). Among other examples, Franck Freitas (2011) analyzes the way in which the music video for the song In Da Club by 50 Cent is part of a marketing narrative around racial authenticity. Emily Q. Shuman for her part shows how race is performed in the work of rapper Casey through a visual aesthetic (Shuman, 2021).
Visual representations contribute to shaping the persona (Dyer, 1979) of artists and participate in a singular way in the success of songs, establishing some of them as "classics". It is difficult indeed to think of the band PNL without considering their series of music videos which, from Jusqu'au dernier gramme, a 29 minutes short film, to Au DD, filmed at the top of the Eiffel Tower, made them "legendary". French rapper Fianso also built his image by making the music video an essential component of his creative project: he produced several music videos in the most famous low-income neighborhoods of France - from the Parisian suburbs to the northern neighborhoods of Marseille - for his album On est passés chez So. As for the rapper Shay, she made her comeback with two notable music videos questioning the spectator gaze, Jolie in 2018 and Da in 2022. In the United States, music videos have also long been invested by hip-hop artists, participating in the international diffusion of a visual culture, as with the popularization of Californian gangsta rap in the 1990s.
While music videos now seem central and are widely shared and commented online, their importance does not date back to the popularization of social networks and streaming services (Jullier and Péquignot, 2013). They have often served to support the social and spatial anchoring of artists, constitutive of the genre (Guillard, 2017). At the end of 1990s, Robin D. G. Kelley had already pointed out that "Hip-hop, like other contemporary popular music, has become a highly visual genre that depends on video representations to authenticate the performer's ghetto roots and rough exterior." (Kelley, 1997, 141). Music videos also serves to construct and feed a visual culture with multiple references. What would the song California Love by 2Pac and Dr. Dre (1995) be without its legendary music video inspired by the movie Mad Max? In fact, many rap music videos are explicitly inspired by cinema or TV shows, such as L’empire du côté obscur by IAM, derivated from the Star Wars saga, Phénomène by Kekra, whose post-apocalyptic universe evokes that of Blade Runner or Gomorra by SCH, filmed in the Italian neighborhood of Scampia, just like the TV show with the same name. Links between rap music and cinema or TV shows are not a one-way street, however. Rap music has also fed cinematographic and serial representations, particularly in the United States: Do the Right Thing by Spike Lee or The Wire by David Simon are full of hip hop visual references.
This issue of Études de communication aims at addressing some of the topics surrounding representations in rap music videos, especially in the tension between verbal and visual evocations. Three axes are thus considered:
1. Music videos, visual cultures and power relations
This topic invites a reading of the music videos and visual cultures of hip-hop music in terms of power relations. What form does the visibility of power relations take as rap is largely associated with the marginalized youth of the racialized working classes and, at the same time, artists claim a “mandate to speak for minorities” (Hammou, 2014, 242)? What influences and references are feeding the visual world of music videos? Is it still a question of reproducing the world of the “suburbs” or the “ghetto” or, on the contrary, of visually freeing oneself from it? In other words, do artists have the possibility of changing the visual “communication contract” (Charaudeau, 2011)? We also expect submissions questioning gender performances and the visual expressions of masculinity and femininity by rap artists. How can we understand, for example, contemporary debates around “protest masculinities” (Connel, 2014) or a so-called "hypersexualization" of some female rappers (Djavadzadeh, 2021)? Do rap music videos actually construct gender (Lepers and Sauvage, 2023)?
2. (Counter-)Audiences, reception and controversies
How are music videos received in the media and by different audiences, sometimes fueling controversies on issues of sexism and (anti)racism? Rap often finds itself, figuratively but also literally, “put on trial” because of its aesthetics and its "literalization" (Nielson and Dennis, 2019). Music videos are criticized for their sexism, their glorification of illegality (through the exhibition of firearms for example), or an alleged "anti-white racism". While the realism of most rap music videos can be considered an aesthetic resource, it also offers a way to support artistic delegitimization in public debate and in court (Carinos Vasquez, 2022). The issue of sexism or hypersexualization that rap music videos allegedly promote can be used for the purposes of artistic differentiation and hierarchization in the media (Dalibert, 2018). Submissions will also examine the way in which different (counter-)publics and interpretative communities reject, appropriate or divert aesthetics and music videos.
3. Producing the imaginary: professional figures and conditions of production in the digital age
This topic aims to question the professional figures behind the visual production of rap music, as well as the effects of digital transformations on hip hop visual culture. How do we make clips today, and who is this “we”? To what extent does rap music produce its own professionals, such as "music video artists" or artistic directors, specialized in the genre? Is there a specific market for rap music videos, like the American phenomenon of "video vixens" (Keyes, 2016)? Journalistic surveys, such as that of Anissa Rami (2022), seem to suggest similarity in France’s music sector. Furthermore, does the economy of rap music videos differ from that of other musical genres? How does the independence claimed by rap artists (Garcia, 2021) produce − or not − a singular aesthetic and has consequences on the circulations of rap’s visual cultures?
It is to these questions, and others, that the various submissions will attempt to provide some answers.
Scientific committee (to be confirmed)
Anouk Bélanger (CRICIS, Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada)
Maxime Boidy (LISAA, Université Gustave Eiffel)
Maxime Cervulle (Cemti, Université Paris 8)
Franck Freitas-Ekué (GERiiCO, Université de Lille)
Karim Hammou (Cresppa-CSU, CNRS)
Antoine Gaudin (IRCAV, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle)
Sarah Lécossais (Labsic, Université Paris 13)
Emmanuel Parent (APP, Université Rennes 2)
Julien Péquignot (LERASS-CERIC, Université Paul Valéry Montpellier 3)
Nelly Quemener (GRIPIC, CELSA − Sorbonne Université)
Sarah Sepulchre (GIRCAM, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgique)
Emily Shuman (RICH, Université Radboud de Nimègue, Pays-Bas)
Marie Sonnette-Manouguian (Cerlis, Université d’Angers)
Will Straw (Université McGill, Canada)
Selection procedure for proposals
The selection of the contribution proposals will be done in two steps:
submission of a 1500–2000-word abstract which should include a presentation of objectives and principle arguments, explain the originality of the paper and provide key bibliographical references;for selected abstracts, a second evaluation will be carried on completed articles.
Instructions for authors, which must be strictly followed, are available on the journal’s website: https://journals.openedition.org/edc/668
The evaluation will be carried out anonymously by at least two readers of the committee.
Abstracts should be sent by 21 December 2024 at the latest, in .doc/.docx or .odt format, to the following two addresses:
kdjavadzadeh[at]univ-paris8[dot]fr
ulriboni[at]visualpolitics[dot]fr
Proposals for papers and final papers of up to 35,000 characters (including spaces, footnotes and bibliography) may be submitted in French or English. The final articles are published in French for the paper version of the journal, and in French (and, if applicable, English) for the electronic version. No commitment to publication can be made until the full text has been read.
Timetable
21 December 2024: Submission of summaries for evaluation
15 February 2025: Notification of acceptance or rejection
15 May 2025: Submission of full papers
15 June 2025: Second evaluation notification
15 July 2025: Receipt of final versions of articles
December 2025: Publication of the dossier in issue 65 of Études de communication
Call for articles for the Varias section
Études de communication is launching a permanent call for articles for its Varias section.
All proposals in the various fields of Communication and Media Studies, Cultural Studies, Library and Information Studies are welcome. Editorial guidelines are available on the journal's website: https://journals.openedition.org/edc/668.