BY LAUREN RAMANATHAN

In print | Published February 5, 2009 — Updated February 19, 2009 00:02

Irony has been a formidable marker of the “in-crowd” for years. Ever since Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, irony has constantly set apart the upper echelons of cultural production. Nothing in the present day and age combines the intellect of the high brow with the good old irreverence of popular culture like irony.

Which is why I want to talk a bit about misogyny. Nothing in today’s pop culture climate is consumed “ironically” more than hip-hop and R&B, specifically misogynistic, musically inept hip-hop. But is it really all that hard to understand? I mean, it’s fun to listen to, for both men and women of all races, of all sexualities, religions, etc. With music piracy on the up, it’s not as if upstanding, progressive young people (the usual demographic that listen to such songs “ironically”) have to worry about spending money that will later be used by these same artists as they make even more god-awful misogynistic albums about “freakin’ honeys up in da club” and “pimpin’ on dem streets.”

Now, I will freely admit to loving R. Kelly and getting down to the Ying Yang Twins every once in a while. And, surprisingly enough, it is not as if I’ve been spending the last five years of my “ironic hip-hop phase” in a constant state of conflict and guilt. In fact, I’m quite unapologetic about my impetus to have a little fun once in a while and listen to music that is not so serious. And isn’t it precisely because these albums are so problematic that I love them so much? I mean, isn’t it fun, innocently parsing each and every song, actually searching for the ways in which they’re problematic, and then patting myself on the back, chuckling to myself about how smart I am and how dumb R. Kelly/T.I./Lil’ Wayne/Soulja Boy/Rich Boy/generic hip-hop artist is? After all, they don’t actually know what women want.

However, a part of me has always wondered whether consumer consciousness should extend to modes of cultural production as well. This problem is made ten times more pressing by the fact that most popular music often has a referent in real life for the artist (or at least purports to). Furthermore, what am I to make of the fact that for every misogynistic rapper or artist there exist a thousand more “ordinary” men who regularly engage in problematic relationships with women, demean the female sex without reservation and in general hold inaccurate, self-effacing views about the present state of gender politics?

Matters simply become complicated by the racialization of hip-hop and hip-hop culture, specifically by white feminists who would like us to believe that black people are the source of all sexism and that the elimination of rap will save us all.

Now seemingly, this is a trivial battle to even consider fighting. It’s not as if altering the way in which one listens to hip-hop is going to save the world. But, when we live in a world in which even cultural production favors men, it is important to think about resistance even on the most minute levels. It might even be the case that there is subversive potential in the ironic co-optation of misogynistic popular music.

One thing is for sure: cultural production, especially popular music and film and media, banks its existence on knowing what the people want. Which is why for the past century we’ve seen a lot of Eurocentric chick flicks, movies about crazy British people runnin’ around acting a fool during World War I, music by women who can’t sing, and rap tracks that were made using software programs named after cereal brands ¹. Within industries that depend so heavily on audience input lays a great revolutionary potential, for it is our input that in the end makes the trends. It’s time that we think about pop culture in ways that go beyond “what we enjoy.” Not so much that we should police ourselves or become puritanical in our habits, but to understand that even something as innocuous as an R. Kelly single cannot escape the maladies of our society. I believe that this understanding can lead to the birth of a new “personal politics.”

Lauren is a sophomore. She can be reached at lramana1@swarthmore.edu.

¹ It is common knowledge that Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em made his hit “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” using the program “Fruity Loops.”

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