In 1994, feminist writer bell hooks wrote an article about gangster rap. She both condemns the misogyny and violence of gangster rap and the hypocrisy of its white critics, who treat that misogyny and violence as unique to young black men. Gangster rap, she says, is not an aberration or subversion but a reflection of mainstream culture’s values. I don’t really agree with a lot of her points – the part where she describes the cover of Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle as pornographic seems over the top, and she makes no room for genuinely subversive racial politics in gangster rap – but I get where she’s coming from. To make her point, she wants to draw contrast with another popular piece of art, made by a white woman, that also reflects the mainstream valorisation of misogyny and male violence but hasn’t received the same backlash. She picks a terrible example.
bell hooks is wrong about The Piano.
The Sundae 