Justin Timberlake

I’ll be the first to admit that Saturday Night Live is a totally hit or miss show these days. There are definitely some skits that cause me to cramp up from laughing so hard, while others leave me bored. I get it - it takes a lot to put on a live, hour-and-a-half variety show every week, and not every joke will be a zinger. And while I don’t expect every second to make me laugh, I also don’t expect there to be parts of the show that will make me cringe and rage.

This past Saturday night started off promising. Then it turned transphobic. 

Last post I looked at those for whom playing with racialized imagery in kink is too close to the bone. Today I'm turning my attention to the the black artists and performers who refused to be silenced in their desire to push boundaries.

As with the issue of female sexual submission, racial imagery in a BDSM context is an issue apt to cause heated debates, so I want to include both sides of the argument. Today, I’ll examine the objections to the use of racialized imagery in kink, and in my next post I’ll look at the responses by those who defend it.

Because of Kanye West (about whom Sady has said most everything that need be said) there is some current bizarre preoccupation with the “lack of decency” in America today. As if in response, the FCC announced this week that it intended to reopen the investigation into the famous Timberlake/Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” at the 2004 Super Bowl. Adrift in the sea of flat-out crazy and disgusting that is American public discourse lately, there was barely an eyelash aflutter at this news. We have more pressing things to worry about, one supposes. Fair enough.

But how shameful is it, how absolutely insane is it, that the major discussion about “standards” for broadcast television today always takes place in the context of “indecency” – and in particular, that women’s bodies are “indecent”? I mean, I don’t know about you, but the only think I found shocking about Janet Jackson’s breast-exposure on live television was that metal thing she had on her nipple. Christ, wouldn’t that hurt?

My point is that I don’t think the half-second or so of nipplage has done nearly as much damage to “the children” (always so undefined) as the notion that crazy people who think Barack Obama is a secret Muslim are deserving of more than two seconds of derisive airtime on cable and network news.