THE TRAGIC HERO AS A GUIDING FIGURE IN THE CULTURAL DISCOURSE OF THE BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT: NEW REPRESENTATIONS OF BLACK MALE IDENTITY IN 12 YEARS A SLAVE, SELMA, THE BIRTH OF A NATION, AND KENDRICK LAMAR'S ALBUM TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY

摘要

The Black Lives Matter movement (BLM) started with a hashtag: in 2012 Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi created the slogan “Black Lives Matter” after a case of police brutality that led to the death of seventeen-year old Trayvon Martin. From the guiding principles of BLM it becomes obvious, that the original idea behind the movement mainly focused on the inclusion of minority groups within Black communities, rather than only on racialized police violence. The movement gained great popularity not only with hashtag-users and participants in protests, but it was also immediately picked up by the media and in public debates, while numerous variations of the slogan emerged to either mock or hijack the movement. The media attention can bedivided into three different kinds: reports about the movement in connection to the police shootings, reports about protests and current incidents, and a wider field in which BLM was connected to the cultural scene in the US from 2012 to the present: the cultural discourse. Part of this cultural discourse are Steve McQueen's movie 12 Years A Slave (2013), Ava DuVernay's movie Selma (2014) and Nate Parker's movie The Birth of a Nation (2016), all three historical dramas, as well as Kendrick Lamar's album To Pimp A Butterfly (2015). All four cultural productions were directly connected to BLM by the media. They were brought up in discussions about and within the movement, and, even though BLM was initially created in response to racially motivated police brutality, the three movies also triggered debates about other cultural and societalissues, such as the acknowledgment and representation of Black directors and actors in US cinema. The protagonists of all three films are black heterosexual men. Although Lamar's album provided the anthem of the movement, “Alright”, and addresses police brutality in the other songs as well, it also uses a number of common rap themes, treating women, for instance, from a male-centered and at first glance misogynist perspective. Especially when we look at other Hip Hop artists connected to BLM as well, it becomes clear that the pop-cultural narrative that is associated with BLM is actually about black heterosexual men. Considering that the three founders of BLM are, in their own words, “queer Black women,” this contextualization of the movement is surprising. This thesis investigates the incongruity between the original principles of BLM and its public appearance in (pop)cultural contexts that put a black male heterosexual narrative inthe foreground.