RACIALIZED AFFECTS

Subject(ed) to Recognition Response

For my blog post this week I wanted to create a post that would help me development my final project. I wanted to incorporate elements of my final and relate it to the readings.

In Subject(ed) to Recognition the media section discusses the struggle for different disenfranchised groups to get appropriate recognition and representation on different media platforms. So I started my blog post with the quote, “The media remain the crucial site where different sectors of disenfranchised populations and communities continue to seek (and in some cases have achieved) recognition and greater visibility as a measure of cultural justice and social equality” overlaid on Rachel Lindsay, the first African American Bachelorette, and her season of contestants. I then used a rewind sound to start from the beginning of the series and to see how long it took for Black women to finally be represented by the series. I used a timeline of all the women before her to show how long it took for a Bachelorette who was not white, 12 seasons. I overlaid the timeline with a voiceover of a different quote from the reading speaking, “The capacity of American broadcast, cable, and digital media to reach precise demographic targets based on marketable “differences” and to tailor content based on those differences articulates well to cultural discourses of market choice, public policies of privatization, and postracial social practices of diversity and multiculturalism.” I wanted to use these two quotes to show the importance of gaining representation and the struggle it has been. And the new problem that has arisen, in which “differences” like being a Black bachelorette instead of white, are capitalized on and used to market certain media. This is highlighted further by the audio clip playing ver the picture of Rachel from “Entertainment Tonight” announcing the historic move by ABC and then again in the video clip of her interview with Michael Strahan on “Good Morning America.” This issue of representation relates to our keyword affect as Rentschler explains how affect is studied through different media platforms, audible, visible ones like television. It also discusses how affect can be communicable these forms and lead to lack of representation or misrepresentation.

To create my blog post I first started with a quote from the text Subject(ed) to Recognition superimposed by using Preview onto a picture of Rachel Lindsay’s season of “The Bachelorette.” I used some quiet music in the background and then inserted a rewind sound effect into the post and played a montage of all the Bachelorette’s in the history of the TV show. This timeline was narrated by a voiceover that read a different quote from the text. I used a voiceover website to read the quote and downloaded the recording to use in my blog. After the voiceover I used a different audio clip from an “Entertainment Tonight” YouTube news clip titled “WATCH: Rachel Lindsay Named as First Black Bachelorette in ‘Bachelor’ Franchise History.” Then I downloaded  and used a video clip of Rachel being interviewed by Michael Strahan on Good Morning America.