Contested Spaces -- Peachez vs. Oil

As I mentioned in class, about a year and a half ago I was in production on a documentary about a rapper named Ms. Peachez when the Jena 6 incident occurred. As a result of that injustice the hip hop community around the world spoke up. I wanted to post a few interesting, nearly simultaneous situations.

The Shreveport, LA rapper Ms. Peachez reaches the height of her popularity in the local hip hop community. Peachez was fascinating to me because she in and of herself represented a tangle of contested spaces. Despite Shreveport's/the South's tendency for homophobia, she always performs in drag. At the time I was on an assignment to make a documentary, so I was wildly interested in the GLBT issues that this persona brought up. Also, Ms. Peachez had a unique way of playing on/reifying southern black stereotypes. This infuriated some people, but others seemingly faced the reality that many of these stereotypes were often found/confirmed within our region due to poverty, policies of inequality and general racism. Personally, I viewed the stereotype exploitation as a desperate attempt to make brevity of a bad situation, to celebrate a continuing cultural phenomena, which in many instances was born in oppression. When I interviewed Peachez' producer several things made the picture even more interesting. My first question of real value to him was, "What impact do you think Ms. Peachez is having on the view of the local GLBT community?" Of course, I was somewhat naive, expecting some great answer about uniting oppressed individuals in their own struggles. I had actually insulted the producer, who had never intended to even bring up such questions. Peachez then moved into a ground of spectacle for good or bad. I had mixed feelings for the rest of the documentary and eventually lost touch with the contacts. The other thing I found interesting about interviewing this producer was the grass roots authorship, which he employed. These same ideas of cheaper/lower learning curve/faster technologies allows a large hip hop community to flourish, even in a small town in North West Louisiana. This in turn empowers a community, which would otherwise get very little positive media attention.

Here is one of Ms. Peachez most popular videos (sorry embedding has been disabled):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGrqW3nx5HM

If you have a chance check out the comments. They are really interesting.

At the same time Staten Island rapper NY Oil picks up on Peachez and her following. He releases the video "Ya'll Should All Get Lynched". The song explicitly targets Peachez in several points (including the chorus line at one point) saying she should be lynched. Once again, his message of hate is produced by the sam grass roots authorship in a different region entirely. He was obviously made angry by the persona and the stereotypes. Check this out (make sure you watch the Peachez vid. first):



Not long after, in the majority white town of Jena, Louisiana some two to three hours south of Shreveport, several race based instances of violence/hate occurred. White students hung nooses on trees in the lunch yard of Jena Highschool. The violence that ensued lead to the arresting of six black students, and zero white. In the weeks that would come a time of tremendous hope and fear, as well as new personal experiences would come to pass. By social web/grassroots means, the Free the Jena Six Rally was arranged. Between fifteen and twenty thousand people descended on the town of fourteen thousand. The media swarmed on the event.

I couldn't find any of the original organizational sites (perhaps the temporal nature of Tactical Media), but here is one of the remanence:

http://colorofchange.org/jena/

Finally, at the same time NY Oil releases his song "Jena 6". I think that this is an interesting instance of tactical media, because of its reactive nature and usage of noose imagery, yet again. Also, it's important to note that this song is created with the same web 2.0 era production tools and relied on the internet for distribution. For me his cry to, "...make the Jena 6 a Genesis" was somewhat tainted after his previous messages of hate. Here is a link to the song (it's the last one in the myspace player):

http://www.myspace.com/nyoil

I don't claim that any of these instances are truly related in any deep way, but I did (and still do) find the coincidence of their occurrence pretty interesting. All are moments that employ alternative media to mobilize and empower but also generate hate. In light of our recent class discussions, I'm trying to figure out which instances are truly tactical and which are simply alternatives linked to a specific time and place. Sorry, if this is not entirely coherent I think I'm getting sick and I'm a little loopy. I just felt I had to get this out of my system.