What images/scenes/lyrics/dialogue/characters support the Afrofuturism?
Afrofuturism has been reflected in Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer. It depicts black artists in the claim of the sci-fi fantasies genres, which are generally owned by white characters and artists (Gray, Par 15-17. It raises a challenge on how a community lost in search of its history imagines a possible future. In her work, Janelle addresses the past- civil rights struggle and the quest to realize African- American life.
In all of her releases, she highlights problems of the African American community, personal relations, individual identity, and with the aid of a robotic machine, she plays the role of a person living a high-end life in a world of fantasy (Vernallis, 254).
In the film, Janelle assumes the role of Jane, who has been playing the hero in Janelle’s previous albums. Jane frees herself from the android in an Afrofuturism concept. From the initial reference to Metropolis, Janelle refers to a city that is cold, dystopian, droid powered, and it looms over all her albums. She builds up a discography via tropes of science fiction, which was coded by male writers of white origin. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
As time progressed, she mapped them into her identity, which she claimed for androids. She justified the android identity with the fact that it represents her other form of newness. These sentiments were not well accepted and interpreted, but it reached a peak in the emotion Dirty Computer video. In the emotion video, she moves the metaphor of android a step further to allow her to express herself explicitly. It enables her to present as a pansexual black woman who is immersed in her world. This transformation gains much power that allows and transforms the video into a vibrant Afrofuturism vision of what the initial metropolis town ought to be.
Monae has been building the concept for 15 years, and it turned out to be one of the gripping scenes in modern science fiction, which depicts creativity, self-expression. She draws her ideas from the social dynamics that exist in Metropolis (Vernallis, 255).
Notions Of “The Black Superhero, The Black Superstar, Black Aritfacts” As Used In The Afrofuturistic “Emotion” Picture.
Janelle Monae’s emotional picture depicts a renewed vision of the urge to reclaim power. In the video, there is the use of laid out code that stirs the audience to envision tools that reprogram and deprogram. She uses The Black Superhero, The Black Superstar and Black Artifacts. The new vision gets rid of the traditional pussy hats, labia-lined trousers, wing-tipped bikinis. In the emotion picture, Monae focuses on neon bikini boots likened to silver space and lace pants (Vernallis, 255).
In the video, the dancers wear fluffy couture pants, which represent two labias. At some point, one of the dancers wings a pink baseball between their legs a sign of a nod to embracing gender-variant people and a celebration of marginalized people. In the film, there is the use of icy exposition, which is an artifact explaining the rules of the darkly futuristic world.
Besides the use of Black Superstar and Black Artifacts, Jane acts as the black superhero who is taken up for cleaning because of her bad behavior. Another black superstar is Pynk, who boldly sports a set of panties with texts that smacks unfair policies. (Van Soldt, Par. 5).
Liberation movements of android power, queer pride, black power, freedom to engage in the artistic expression are brought to light. The awakening came after a long period when they remained preserved only through musical artefacts surfaced as objects.
In the film, androids are seized in a cycle of black mirror, and they continually struggle to free themselves from the system, which requires conformity. They grasp their real identities and are inevitably returned to the roles of being black-faced as the Metropolis’ machines.
For instance, in once case of tight rope, one of the clones breaks loose and protests against the rules which restrict dancing. The clone jubilates, but shortly returned inside in prison, escorted by soldiers (Vernallis, 255).
The metropolis android finds it hard to run away from the enslaved society and, therefore, decides to find a way back to her past. Monae displays this as he strives to establish a relationship with the damaged cultural history. She borrows from Butler a particular focus on this aspect of reclaiming and restoring the past. She finds it as an ideal path of finding lost identity.
According to her, tracing back history is a crucial aspect of building up resistance and empowering oneself. In the film, Both Jane and Cindy eventually coalesce into a whole new being of a black woman who is endowed and convinced of power. Throughout her work, she yearns for freedom, and this is seen in the programming. In the 2003 song, she goes ahead and announces that Robot’s love is queer (Barber et al., 140).
Monae’s Dirty Computer culminates her entire journey and shows a great achievement for science fiction. Slowly by slowly, she evolves her android conception before using it as a transformative story. (Van Soldt, Par. 5). By revealing her real identity, she realizes that human and android are the same things. It sets the pace for celebration of the default programming inside everybody (Aghoro, 332-334).
The shift in her iconic character can be compared to her previous roles, where she assumed lesser characters. However, in the film, she gets to decide the type of liberator she wants as he strives to conquer the world (Gray, Pars. 13-15). The film created a narrative and acted as a beacon of hope for the disenfranchised people outside of Africa.
The Afrofuturism concept reflects how the android filled societies are more advanced than the rest of the world, and Janelle is an embodiment of creativity as she is the one behind most of the country’s high tech innovations (Gray, Par. 14).