❉cogent-arts & humanitiesSmit, Cogent Arts & Humanities (2015), 2: 1064246
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2015.1064246
the various cultures living in South Africa. Anton Krueger notes that: "Perhaps, instead of providing a reflection of society, the rainbow nation trope may be an indication of the aspiration for something which sounds like a paradox: a multi-cultural homogeneity" (2010, p. 209).
By claiming that he is "all these different people, fucked into one person", he challenges but also reveals the cracks in the desire for unity within diversity. In fact, it is these claims to diversity that many of Die Antwoord's detractors criticise. Die Antwoord are often condemned for appropriating cultural codes and dialects from both poor White and coloured ethnicities. Adam Haupt regards this appropriation as a form of blackface and reminds his readers how ironic it is that Ninja is not coloured nor is he Afrikaans (2012b, p. 41). "Fatty Boom Boom", released in October 2012, centres on insulting Lady Gaga and international perceptions of South African life. It is also in this music video that Die Antwoord quite literally use black body paint to erase their Whiteness and represent the "diversity" of South African culture.
4. "Fatty Boom Boom"
Like most of Die Antwoord's music videos, the design of "Fatty Boom Boom" (2012) is tightly conceptualised around an unfolding narrative. The product placement of South African brands in the music video, such as Sunlight Washing powder, the Lucky Star canned fishbrand on Ninja's pants and Visser's yellow Lion Matches dress, parodies big industry product placement. The music video starts in a minibus taxi in which the driver takes Lady Gaga (wearing the well-known meat dress) on a tour through the urban jungle of South Africa. The sign on the minibus reads "Big Five tours" and the video includes wild animals on the street, hyenas eating rubbish, a lion and a panther. The "Big Five" (the most popular wild animals: lions, elephants, rhinos, leopard and wildebeest) is one of the attractions for tourists on holiday in South Africa. These wild animals playing as pets to street vendors is a subversion of stereotypes related to Africa as a place where wild animals walk in the streets and children go to school on the backs of elephants. This trip can also be related to the popularity of "township tours", where foreigners get the "authentic experience" of township life. On their trip though the "urban jungle", the tour guide shows Lady Gaga a band of street performers (Die Antwoord), and she remarks that she would like to have them as an opening act. The minibus is hijacked and the Lady Gaga impersonator flees the scene in fear which eventually leads her to the office of a dentist/gynaecologist. The doctor removes a parktown prawn (a King Cricket) from her vagina and on leaving the clinic, she is mauled to death by a lion.
"Fatty Boom Boom" comments on the discourses of the tourist industry with its "highly selective representations of various countries … constructed for the western viewer's specular consumption" (Gilbert & Tompkins, 1996, p. 287). Consider the Emoya Private Game Reserve outside Bloemfontein in the Freestate which sports its own Shanty Town complete with a "long drop toilet effect" and is described as "the only shanty town in the world equipped with under-floor heating and wireless internet access" (Emoya, accessed on 5 December 2013, from www.emoya.co.za). This simulated township increases the opportunities for privileged travellers to "develop a commodified relation to the non-western other" (Gilbert & Tompkins, 1996, p. 287). Although the tourist industry is a lucrative business bringing capital and foreign investment into the country, the effort put into maintaining a steady inflow of tourists is questionable. By this I mean specifically the effort that is put into maintaining stereotypes and certain versions of South African cultures. The commodification of the township life seen in tours and holidays resorts, such as Emoya, creates another form of exotification and can be argued as a unique form of blackface. Helen Gilbert argues that the tourist economy "typically repeats many of the same power games and struggles of initial imperial endeavours" (1996, p. 287).
In "Fatty Boom Boom", Visser is covered in black paint which alludes to the images of blackface performance which developed in America in the nineteenth century. Haupt points out that blackface is more revealing of White racist perceptions about Black people than Black people themselves (2012b, p. 418).[1] The practice of blackface minstrelsy aided in justifying and perpetuating racial inequality in the USA; Eric Lott observes: "Black figures were there to be looked at, shaped to the demands of desire; they were screens on which audience fantasy could rest, securing White
- ↑ Although it was popular for White performers to adopt blackface, often the only way for African performers to make a living in the USA was to perform the stereotyped beliefs of White audiences. Josephine Baker’s statement on this is notable: “the white imagination sure is something when it comes to Blacks” (Sowinska, 2005).
