The Story of O.J (Jay-Z & Mark Romanek, 2017)
JAY-Z - The Story of O.J.
In this blog post I will explore the ways in which Jay Z’s 2017 music video ‘The story of O.J’ (2017) evokes the problematic politics of representation in animation, and the damaging effects that these representations have historically had on understanding of American black identity and culture. The video, co-created with Mark Romanek, deliberately illustrates dated racial iconography and character designs familiar from early 1930s and 1940s Hollywood animation, essentially a kind of imagery that shows (largely white) animators’ stereotypes and interpretations of black culture in the early half of the 20th century. Karl F. Cohen (2004. 49) discusses how provocative racial imagery was employed by a multitude of animation companies that still exist today, including Warner Brothers, MGM, Paramount and Walt Disney. In this blog, I will focus on a short ten second sequence from the video to analyse the image of racial identity as it is constructed through stereotypes and caricature, the portrayal of black identity, and the reclaiming of the black experience. Through this analysis, I explore the ways in which the video denounces the highly racialised illustrations employed by earlier animated media by directly confronting them, thus reclaiming the narrative and depiction of black identity and culture. Animation has a shifting relationship to race through its ability as a medium to facilitate and perpetrate loaded racial images, and this allows the video to reflect on and understand the power of these historic illustrations.
Fig. 1 - Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat (1941) and Jaybo eating a watermelon.
The image of racial identity through stereotypes, caricature and ‘the spectacle of the other’.
Jay Z employs the recurring motif of his central character ‘Jaybo’ (see Fig.1), who is a play on early animation’s caricature depictions of black bodies, in particular ‘Little Black Sambo’ (Bannerman, 1935) who as Nicholas Sammond (2011, 203) notes depicted exaggerated stereotypes of black bodies in jungles and ghettos in order to illustrate a a pervasive theme of savagery. Sammond notes the way in which the birth of animation replaced vaudeville in the 1920s (Sammond 2011. 280), and animators soon realised that the medium allowed for an exaggeration of ridiculous stereotypes of the black body in ways that expanded on the traditional minstrel show. These racially charged stereotypes were ‘in grotesque fashion, they depicted black bodies with enormous lips and eyes, mouths big enough to engulf whole watermelons and bodies jointed so loosely that a single person could express a whole complex of syncopation.’ (Sammond 2011, 280). These stereotypes, both then and today, function to perpetuate damaging and negative attitudes towards black people and communities, and so through the depiction of ‘Jaybo’ the video becomes framed with this historical context to illustrate explicitly the depth of black oppression and history within America. With a direct confrontation of such an image as Jaybo in Fig. 1 the viewer is forced to examine the connotative interpretations of its symbolic representation of a culture that functioned to suppress black people through such grotesque caricature and stereotypes.
Racialised depictions of black Americans were used across a number of studios of the period, particularly by Lantz Cartoon studios who created the animation Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat (Walter Lantz, 1941) (see Fig. 1. The image of Jaybo eating a watermelon in The Story of O.J. is a direct parallel to this animated image. Here a stereotyped caricature of blackness is presented through the exaggerated facial features and archaic stereotypes of black people eating watermelons, which was popularised in the early 1900s as a symbol of black people’s ‘perceived uncleanliness, laziness, childishness and unwanted public presence’ (Black, 2014). Yet The Story of O.J. presents a parallel image, yet also a clearly differing one. The difference in expression between Jaybo and the character from ‘Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat’ is powerful and although the style and design of the animation is very similar, Jaybo’s expression is more one of contempt. With Jaybo’s eyebrows raised in a disdainful manner, the character’s expression awards the image far less power in its caricature, as Jaybo doesn’t represent the ‘childishness’ or the ‘savagery’ that early animators often presented. In this way, animation’s provocative history and involvement with racial imagery is revisited and used here to present its outdated racist ideologies in a modern context. Looking at animation as a medium of representation, it is important to examine the longstanding history of problematic representation, and ignoring or marginalising such representations only adds to the mystique surrounding the erasure of American racial history.
Black Identity
Fig. 2 - “I’m not black, I’m O.J”.
Fig. 3 - “Okay”.
Jay Z also presents the hypermasculine caricature of O.J Simpson coupled with the lyric “I’m not black, I’m O.J”, as he alludes to the notion of what it means to be successful in America in relation to race (see Fig. 2). Jaybo replies to O.J with a flippant “okay”, representing Jay Z’s disproval of O.J’s erasure of his black identity and, interestingly, does not show him again in the cartoon (even though the title of the song is ‘The Story of O.J’). Jay Z makes an important decision here by discarding Simpson after this lyric as he highlights how in the debate about race, one cannot remove themselves from their culture and identity. Jay Z discusses this in an interview entitled ‘Footnotes… the O.J Story” (2017) where he argued that successful black people such as O.J Simpson will get to a point where they believe that they’re above the culture and transcend their race as that results in a form of protection, and so they will erase their black identity believing they have assimilated into society. However, Jay Z argues that as soon as you make a mistake society swiftly rejects you, and your black identity will be forced back upon you. Here the imagery and lyrics of the video allow the viewer to evaluate such constructs of race, identity and black masculinity; not only within the context of sports, but within a wider American context of problematic black and white racial politics.
Miles White in his text ‘Race, Rap and Masculinity’ (2011, 4) discusses the reinforcement of stereotypes through animation, and how they have manifested into the Hip Hop industry. He argues that since the success of NWA in the 1980s, the stereotyped and racially charged images of Minstrel’s ‘Black Brute’ (White 2011, 4) have been adopted into rap cultures and their ideas of black male subjectivity and masculinity. In this way, early animation that used minstrel stereotypes of exaggerated bodies of black people have migrated into other aspects of American culture. These historical and long-lasting cultural ties further highlight the idea Jay Z presents here that early media stereotypes and racialised imagery of black people, which early animation promoted, have become so pervasive that black identity cannot be separated from the deeply racialised black history; and even those who try, will fail – like O.J Simpson. Stuart Hall notes that popular culture is important to dissect as the racialised illustration of black and non-white bodies has become so normalised that it is invisible, allowing dangerous patterns of discrimination to foster. In this way, the idea of a post-racial society is impermissible, and Jay Z suggests this throughout his video with the repetitive lyric “Still (N Word)”.
Reclaiming the Black Experience
Fig. 4 - Jaybo on a segregated bus.
Finally, the last image of the video I want to analyse is Jaybo sitting on a Jim Crow era segregated bus (Fig. 4). Given the stereotyping and caricaturing of black bodies as ‘other’, this image is an important one as Jay Z juxtaposes the highly racialised caricature of Jaybo with an honest black experience. to The image immediately calls to mind the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Rosa Park’s refusal to give up her seat in the ‘white only’ section of the bus led to a series of sit-ins giving African Americans momentum in their fight for equality. Early animation and minstrel shows used stereotypes as a point of problematic racialised humour and mockery in order to dehumanise black bodies and black culture as innately savage (Sammond 2011, 203). However, the Story of O.J. music video instead alludes to the era of the 1960s and its fight for equality. Through this stark juxtaposition, the viewer is faced with a confrontation of the trajectory of historic racism throughout the 20th century. The segregated bus coupled with the exaggerated caricature of Jaybo (who wears a confrontational look) is powerfully charged, as both aspects of the image connote racial politics and systemic structures of oppression from two different periods of time, further proving the overarching idea of the inability to escape black identity and history. Jay Z’s repeated lyric once again ‘Still (N Word)’ effectively exemplifies these complexities.
By using and reworking animation’s racialised past in The Story of O.J., Jay Z can reclaim such images to highlight the true black experience and culture which more stereotyped animations failed to do. Using these racially provocative images is highly important for the culture to acknowledge this history, so that issues of representation and racism can begin to be deconstructed within modern media. Hall emphasises the importance of popular culture and the ways in which media as a mass cultural practise has great impact on the perception of black identity, he asks the question ‘What is the secret fascination of ‘otherness’ and why is popular representation so frequently drawn to it?’ (Hall, 1997. 225). It is a highly important question to dissect as the historical obsession with black bodies and culture needs to be addressed. Hall gives the example of a ‘Freudian fetish: it is the aggressive refusal to acknowledge an object of fear and desire’ (Hall, 1997. 225). Jay Z nonetheless focuses on reclaiming the imagery and narrative of race in animation altogether in order to portray his idea of the true black experience.
The provocative Story of O.J. music video powerfully presents racialised imagery from early animation to challenge the medium’s problematic notions of representation, stereotyping, and construction of black identity. Jay Z illustrates differing ideas surrounding black culture, the three images discussed present three different periods of time whereby black bodies and identities have been misrepresented and racially portrayed. By presenting these problematic images, Jay Z is able to confront them and their connotations and history, thus presenting the viewer with the reality of how the black identity has come to exist, but also to what extent it is an authentic and appropriate representation. Whilst animation’s relationship with race and representation has clearly been highly vexed, it is with these same images that animation must dissect its past in order to ensure its future representation of black bodies and culture is accurate and truthful.
**Article published: April 29, 2022**
References
Bannerman Helen. (1862-1946). ‘The Story of Little Black Sambo’ Brooklyn, NY. Handprint Books
Cohen, Karl F. (2004) ‘Racism and Resistance: Stereotypes in Animation’ in Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted Animators in America. McFarland & Company.
Hall, S (1997) The spectacle of the ‘Other’. In: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices London: The Open University,
Sammond, Nicholas. (2011) ‘A Space Apart: Animation and the Spatial Politics of Conversion’, Film History, 23, no. 3. Indiana University press.
William R. Black. (December 8 2014) ‘How Watermelon Became a Racist Trope’ the Atlantic [Online] Available from: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/12/how-watermelons-became-a-racist-trope/383529/
White, Miles (2011) . ‘From Jim Crow to Jay-Z: Race, Rap, and the Performance of Masculinity’. University of Illinois Press.
Biography
Meghna Johal is currently completing her BA Liberal Arts (with a Major in Film Studies) at King’s College London. She is hoping to study a postgraduate Law qualification in the new academic year, whilst carrying on her studies at the Identity School of acting.
