Tuesday, November 24, 2009

How does Shakira "have it all?"

From her pies descalzos (bare feet) to those hips that don’t lie, Shakira has undoubtedly become a global phenomenon. A bit of pride emerges knowing that she hails from my mother’s home town of Barranquilla, Colombia. I learned all of her songs by heart back in 1996 when anyone and everyone in Colombia (and even Latin America) wondered where there love/heart was… ¿dónde estás corázon? … only to let out a sigh of relief knowing that he/she would eventually reply, ‘estoy aqui.’



When she began to dance more confidently in her performances and videos I was intrigued. Had her transition from pop-rockera in Latin America to ‘sexy Latina’ in the US commissioned her hips to begin moving and enticing? She quickly affirmed her body’s technical and aesthetic prowess by claiming that her hips didn’t lie. But it wasn’t until I saw her dancing bullerengue (a Colombian folkloric dance about female fertility) surrounded by representations of Barranquilla's carnivalesque revelry and dressed in white, skirts raised, hips pulsing side to side, that I knew I was in love (it's about 2:30 minutes into the Hips Don't Lie video)




Her hips continued to enthrall me when they were paired with Beyoncé’s. Here was a pairing of skin and sinew, of hips and hair that was almost too hot to handle. But, Shakira’s hips were never always this lithe or limber. In her early career and videos, her jet-black hair lay perfectly straightened down her back while her hips usually hid behind a guitar, a guitar that she has ceased to play as she became more mainstream, thereby replacing the curves of the guitar with her own. I wonder about the power of foreign, othered, and sinewy hips in the global marketplace. How did her hips break free and harness her inner she-wolf? She has admitted to studying Middle Eastern dance and somewhere there exist lonely dance studio spaces with steamed mirrors, longing for her undulating body to be reflected back onto them.



A newly techniqued body, disciplined in the art of hip-notism with hip vocabularies coming from Colombian cumbia and bullerengue, Middle Eastern "belly dance", and Brazilian samba accompanied her wavy blond hair and the hippie-rocker image which emerged as Shakira “crossed-over.” The juxtaposition between ripped jeans and harem-style hips drove the MTV crowd crazy. That’s right, Shakira, show them what hips can do!!




Many hip-circles, figure eights, samba hip shimmies, and undulations initiated from the pelvis later, Shakira winds up sharing recording studio space with Lil Wayne and Timbaland to create the track “Give It Up To Me.” Here is where I shall pause, catch my breath and stretch for a moment.




The video articulates a global citizenship for Shakira, a sonic and kinetic environment where access to the world is “given up to her.” Here, she metaphorically moves from the “third world” (her native Colombia) through the “first” (US hip hop culture) and back to the “third” (Asia), hips swinging in time to the infectious Timbaland beats that are visualized by the pounding woofers in the background. Lil Wayne is almost an accessory (or assistant) to her desire to have it all, his presence in the video merely to appreciate how “her hips swing like nunchuks.” Even his gaze shifts to her hips sways and at one point she waves him away coyly, dismissing his compliments, but even more so, dismissing her need for his presence. What I find troubling about this video is how the black bodies, Lil Wayne’s and then the dancing black girl chorus, literally labor in order to render Shakira’s global citizenship. Yes, she can have it all (records, money, fame, dancing ability, trademarked hip moves, money for her charity back home in Colombia) as long as there are other bodies around that will do the signifying and racializing labor for her. For example, a dancing black girl chorus (because I am reading Jayna Brown’s amazing book, Babylon Girls, this is the term that is in my mind at the moment) first appear in shadow; they are strong, muscular bodies frozen in poses, looking ready to pounce. She-wolves indeed. Initially, they are de-racialized because we cannot completely identify skin color but, at the same time the sonic environment along with the dance vocabularies used immediately racializes them. They are finally perceived as “black” when the lights turn on, and even more so by Shakira’s body. Her pale, blond appearance next to these deep cocoa brown women only intensifies Shakira’s incursion into “whiteness.” An exotic “whiteness” to be sure, her body capable of moving those hips, legs, torso and arms in ways not immediately associated with a white dancing body aesthetic. She is strategically placed in the center further highlighting her own highlighted body as it enacts black expressive gestures stemming from juba, step-dancing, and hip hop with militaristic precision.


Later in the video, the skyline of Hong Kong signifies Shakira’s global travels as she moves from the US (where I situate hip-hop in this analysis) to South and East Asia. Computerized Ganesh arms appear behind hers while her fingertips adorned with Thai gold and gesturing in an amalgam of bharata natyam and Thai arm movements seem to conjure the global capitalist marketplace that has indeed embraced her as a commodity worth consuming in the first world, or the third, or any other that exists in between.


Allusions to Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” video and choreography appear, yet the choreography in “Give it up to me” seems relatively easier to pick up and master for those willing to practice, learn and embody the moves. While the chorus repeats “you can have it all, anything you want, you can make it yours, anything you want in the world” like a self help daily affirmation, I think about how Shakira has utilized her celebrity status and the cultural and economic capital that comes with that, to start an educational children’s charity in Colombia called Pies Descalzos Foundation. Rather than make a value statement or judgment on this kind of philanthropic endeavor, I want to consider how the rendering of a third world woman’s body into a first world commodity (through Shakira’s own self-exoticization and fetishization) enables “charitable” circulations of capital. What is at stake in terms of the processes through which such capital is gained? What types of bodies are used, valued or created in order for such processes to occur and what does that say about how consumerism and capitalism operate? To conclude with not really a conclusion in this instance, I just want to state that the trademarking of truthful, ample, yet nimble hips by Shakira has allowed her to assume some power over the world with an army of poised black women hands on swinging hips, ready to attack.

2 comments:

Doctoradancer said...

I have a lot to sya in response, in no particular order, so I'll just start with my disgust at the type of world music Shakira is being used to pimp. Her conflation of distinct forms based on bpms rather than the actual ethos inside of them is putrid. That she is able to extract capable from such an endeqvor should come as no surprise because it is tried and true colonialism. That video of her dancing to "samba" is a great example of this: 1) it is not samba but samba reggae, a black power tool from Bahia, 2)she is belly dancing to it without one attempt at samba or any of the ijexá moves sometimes employed, 3) the drumming on stage appears to just be dancing, the sound is pre-recorded (or the synch is way off later int he video);4)she goes on to sing in English, not even a yell to the musicians in Spanish or Portuguese or Lebanese for that matter, thus effacing the inherent metrics of the musics and dances employed.

It is also not unusual that she would then place the money into philanthropic endeavors. Ford, Rhodes, Rockefeller all made these moves after manifesting capital from 'natural resources' and/or foreign and local labor. The odd moment here, is that Shakira is self-colonizing/mining; her labor perhaps is a meta-extraction and the black women who circulate around her markers for future exploration. Though she is hipnotic, I am not so sure about her awareness of her hipgnosis. Those hips of hers act simultaneously as drill bits and oil veins...

Unknown said...

Just read it! That was the CAPITAL bOmB!! Funny thing is friends and I have been talking about Shakira's transition into whiteness for a minute now, so I can appreciate Melissa's break-down! It seems the black and brown body must perform OVER-self-exotification in order to be a successful commodity. I remember when Eve was a fully dressed ruff ryder, who emphasized her lyricism . . . now her hair is blonde & she wears blouses that are low enough to show off her chest-tattoos. *Sigh* As I'm doing research on rolling hips, I encounter so many women trying to liberate the dancing hips from the male gaze by keeping close to its contexts . . . but then the MACHINE takes over & the rolling hips get unplugged from it's uber COMPLICATED context & re-presented in the objectified/male-based consumerism of the capital machine . . . are we in a loosing battle?? Like Melissa says, "What is at stake ... What types of bodies are used, valued or created in order for such processes to occur and what does that say about how consumerism and capitalism operate?"