Singing Rage: Shakira and Rocío (A Video Essay By Barbara Zecchi)
- 22 March, 2023
- Posted by: remuvic.eu
- Category: Transferencia 2022 EN
In Singing Rage: Shakira and Rocío, I build on my previous videographic feminist interventions on improbable dialogisms (2022, 2023), and I take inspiration from Catherine Fowler’s work on feminist diptychs (2021) to explore the topic of women’s rage through an anachronistic lens. Specifically, I bring together Shakira and Rocio Jurado, two singers whose songs are separated by 40 years, to create a statement on “seeing the impossible” (Kaplan, 2005; Butler, 2010). However, what makes this dialogism improbable is not the anachronism, but rather the fact that, even today, women are not allowed to express their rage with the same intensity and volume as men. Women have historically been expected to articulate their repressed feelings through silent or soft-voiced subaltern forms of communication, such as gossip, giggling, or weeping (Rowbotham, 1983; Rasy, 1978). In my video essay, Shakira and Jurado’s songs dismantle this hegemonic framework and represent the change to the inherited narrative that stigmatize women and subaltern groups’ rage, as per the quote by Gámez and Núñez (2022). Through their performance, the two singers support and empower each other, defying patriarchal norms and subverting the accusation of Shakira’s lack of solidarity towards other women (as already articulated by means of her latest song with Karol G). The use of superimpositions adds depth and complexity to the surface (Bruno, 2014), while the flickering and blinking effects create a visceral and intense experience for the viewer, mirroring the blinding tactility of rage itself. Indeed, as the Spanish expression “no ver por la rabia” suggests, rage is a tactile emotion.
WORKS CITED
-Giuliana Bruno (2014): Surface: Matters of Aesthetics, Materiality, and Media. Chicago UP
-Judith Butler (2010): “Performative Agency”, Journal of Cultural Economy, 3(2), pp.147-161.
-Catherine Fowler (2021): “Expanding the field of practice-based-research: the videographic (feminist) diptych” Media Practice and Education 22. 1, 49–60
-Ann Kaplan (2005): Trauma Culture. The Politics of Terror and Loss in Media and Literature. Rutgers UP.
-Rebeca Maseda García, María José Gámez Fuentes, and Gómez Nicolau, E. (2022). “White anger, Black anger: The politics of female rage in Little Fires Everywhere (HULU, 2020)”. IC: Revista Científica de Información y Comunicación, 19, 295-320.
-Sonia Núñez Puente and María José Gámez Fuentes: “Mediatization of Women’s Rage: Intelligibility Frameworks and Communication Strategies of Politicizing Transformation” PID2020 113054GB-100
-Sheila Rowbotham (1983): Dreams and Dilemma. London: Virago.
-Elisabetta Rasy (1978): La lingua della nutrice. Roma: Edizione delle donne.
-Barbara Zecchi (2022): “Improbable Dialogism and the Art of Flying” http://www.16-9.dk/2022/12/169-seconds-thelma-louise/
-Barbara Zecchi (2023): “Improbable Dialogism or Dancing as an Act of Defiance” http://www.16-9.dk/2023/01/169-seconds-dancing/
