When I Get Home: Defining the Black Past Imagining the Black Future
Introduction
When I Get Home in Solange Knowles’ own words is a Texan film. The visuals for her album come together into a 40-minute-long piece of visual performance art, with each of her 17 tracks and interludes having an accompanying visual. Motifs and homages to Texas culture are steady features throughout. The vision for the film was conceptualized in the wake of the devastation left behind by Hurricane Harvey, and it is fitting, as the idea of exploring ways to combat destruction is central to the piece. Beyond environmental destruction, this piece is attempting to combat the erasure of blackness.
It is a reality that in our society, the presence of blackness can render anything erasable. Whether it be its influence (given the cultural hijacking of the origins of every genre of American music), its bodies (taken by vigilante justice enacted by ropes and bullets), or most commonly its humanity (ignored under centuries of bondage). The Black past itself has been a primary target of this erasure. White scholars and anthropologists serving as gatekeepers of what was deemed culturally relevant perpetuated the narrative that Black people had no cultural history. This lack of a past is also coupled with the seeming impossibility of a Black future in popular culture. Speculative fiction and science fiction are two genres that deal with imagining other worlds and futures beyond our own, yet both are dominated by white men who tend to not include Black people or women in their futures in meaningful ways, effectively erasing the possibilities of a Black future.
When I Get Home is Solange’s response to this idea that blackness is expendable. This piece of work questions the values that many Americans are subtly and overtly led to believe. She uses the concepts of Afrosurrealism and Afrofuturism to create a world that is free from erasure. Through the visual and lyrical aspects of When I Get Home, Solange is able to portray how American culture is fundamentally rooted in blackness. Furthermore, she is able to break the temporal bounds of blackness and begin to think about what a Black future could look like.
Afrosurrealism and Afrofuturism
Before dissecting the formal aspects of the piece and its relation to the Black past and future, it is essential to define the concepts of Afrosurrealism and Afrofuturism as invoked and applied throughout this paper. Afrosurrealism is defined as a multidisciplinary aesthetic and framework that seeks to cultivate alternative ways of understanding Black people. The term was first coined by American Writer and revolutionary Amiri Baraka, as he used it to describe the work of American Born writer Henry Dumas. Baraka was particularly interested in how Dumas was able to create organic fictional worlds that were still connected to the contemporary world that he lived in (Baraka, 2). This idea of connectedness to the real world is not only a key aspect of Afrosurrealism, but it is what allows it to be a poignant tool in When I Get Home.
This leads me to the work of writer and artist D. Scot Miller whose use of the term Afrosurrealism in his article, “Afrosurreal Manifesto: Black is the New black — a 21st-Century Manifesto,” is one that I find the most useful in describing the way that the concept works within When I Get Home. Miller describes Afrosurrealism as a tool to interrogate the past and imagine the contemporary possibilities of Black life. Within his definition, Afrosurrealists see now as the “future-past”. Black people and other marginalized groups have experienced some of the worst atrocities in history, so instead of continually looking to the future to explore Black possibilities, Afrosurrealism explores the present for these answers using the past as guides to their discovery (Miller, 114). Furthermore, Afrosurrealism utilizes hybridization as a form of disobedience and rebellion from what is considered to be normal. In “When I Get Home,” Solange uses Afrosurrealism to represent the intimate intricacies of contemporary Black life. She uses dreamlike sequences throughout the piece displaying representative images of Black life as a Texan. However, she juxtaposes and merges these images with other motifs related to the Black past that are not usually shown in relation to contemporary blackness.
The primary function of Afrofuturism (unlike Afrosurrealism) is to imagine the Black future beyond the contemporary. The term first coined by author and cultural critic Mark Dery in his 1993 article, “Black to the Future: Interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose”. In this article, Afrofuturism is defined as:
Speculative fiction that treats African American themes and addresses African American concerns in the context of 20th-century technoculture — and, more generally, African-American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future (Dery, 180).
Afrofuturism is concerned with more than just the future of Black people. The Black past and the active efforts to erase it are viewed as driving forces for Afrofuturism. Filmmaker, theorist, and Afrofuturist Kodwo Eshun notes in his article, entitled “Further Considerations of Afrofuturism,” that the history of imperial racism and the exclusion of Black people from the creation of a collective future has led to a need to develop counter memories that contest the colonial archive (Eshun, 288). However, these counter-memories are not meant to skew or leave out the dark aspects of the Black past, but rather to give Black creators agency over the stories they can tell. Solange defiantly enacts Afrofuturism through her depictions of Black people and technology.
As Black people, the current context of our lives is one that is filled with oppression and the possibility of premature death. This reality makes it difficult for us to imagine a future where we are present. Even so, it is these same conditions that drive us to imagine a future where our possibilities aren’t chained to systematic oppression. It is a future that is born out of a desire to escape from our current status. Afrofuturism is a tool that Solange is able to use to imagine what this Black future can look like beyond our current state of oppression. In this sense, I will be using Dr. Susana Morris’ definition of Afrofuturism to explain its application in When I Get Home. She defines Afrofuturism as “a way of knowing, understanding, and creating in the world that transgresses the bounds of Western notions of progress, identity, and futurity” (Morris, 34). Solange’s use of Black people and technology has a purpose larger than aesthetics. Their juxtaposition in the piece allows Solange to speak on new possibilities for blackness.
The Black Past
From the first moments of the piece, When I Get Home begins to do the work of attempting to define the Black past. The first visual for the piece opens with a shot of a bright spotlight surrounded by darkness. The camera then pans down to a wide shot of a figure whose head and face are completely covered by a shawl of diamonds. Then begins a slow zoom from the wide shot to a close up to the figure’s head as the diamonds shimmer until it abruptly cuts to another shot of the figure from behind. However, now the figure is completely covered in a diamond shawl and is spreading its arms wide while looking down at Solange as she raises her hands to the sky resembling an act of praise. The figure itself is highly reminiscent of the Egungun tradition of West Africa also known as masquerading.
This practice uses elaborate costumes and masks to represent ancestors, as well as, other important spirits. There is profound purpose in the use of the Egungun figure in the opening scenes of the piece and especially given the image of Solange, a Black American woman, basking and dancing in the presence of this figure that could act as a representation of her ancestors.
Throughout this sequence, Solange repeatedly sings, “I saw things I imagined.” These lyrics speak directly to Afrosurrealist concepts. As a result of colonialism, slavery, and countless other factors the Black past has become disjointed and not easily accessible for Black Americans. Solange in many ways is reimagining the Masquerade and making it something tangible for contemporary audiences. In this simple depiction, she already begins to create a link from now to our past in ways we are not usually afforded as Black people. In D. Miller’s Afrosurreal Manifesto he notes, “Afrosurrealist restore the cult of the past […] they revisit old ways with new eyes (Miller, 116). This scene helps to establish the Egungun figure as a motif to represent the Black past and its spiritual practices.
As the song and scene progress, the camera revolves around the two as Solange dances in the figure’s presence until the camera pans over into blackness. There is then a cut hidden in the darkness to reveal a Black man riding a horse and wearing a caged masked on a secluded dark paved street. The shot is not well lit and is slightly saturated. You can tell that there is nothing unordinary about the street, horse, or the man riding it.
Yet this shot feels as if it belongs to another world. Solange no longer is singing, but now we hear synth-like sounds similar to what you would imagine a spaceship to sound like further removing the scene from this world. It is here that Solange first establishes the motif of the Black cowboy. Despite Solange no longer singing during the section of the video where this Black cowboy appears, this sequence still occurs during the opening song, “Things I Imagined,” and again the lyrics of the song are pertinent to themes that are present within these images.
The concept of the Black Cowboy is a prime example of the erasure of Black culture. Cowboys themselves are one of the staple historic figures of American culture. They are often portrayed as handsome white men who tame wild lands and wild people. If Black Cowboys are even mentioned, they are often portrayed as an overlooked relic of the past that don’t necessarily exist now. Solange uses the Black Cowboy throughout When I Get Home to reestablish their very real historic presence while still affirming their contemporary impact.
In this opening song, Solange establishes the Egungun figure and the Black Cowboy as motifs for her to use throughout the piece. They both are rooted in the historical past, yet they play a large role in helping Solange define the present state of blackness. Additionally, they serve as the basis for her Afrosurrealist approach of depicting blackness in the film. In his manifesto, D Scott Miller describes Afrosurreal aesthetics as one that addresses lost legacies. From the times of slavery through emancipation and beyond, Black people in Texas acted as cowhands. After the civil war, a fourth of the ranch workers in the state were Black. Generations of this work have engrained cowboy culture into Black families across the city of Houston. If you quickly searched Black cowboys online, however, you would find numerous articles about how they’re stories have disappeared and their lack of presence in popular culture.
While the audience is reintroduced to the motif of the Black Cowboy multiple times throughout When I Get Home, one of the most powerful depictions of the Black cowboy happens during the song “My Skin My Logo.” The opening shot of this portion of the video is a group of Black men riding horses on a dirt road. Unlike the other Black Cowboys depicted in the piece, these men are wearing regular contemporary clothing. The cowboy hats and riding jackets are replaced with T-shirts and ball caps. One of the riders even has his young daughter riding on the saddle with him. As this shot progresses, we hear prominent Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane exclaim “my skin my logo!” This statement makes it clear that their blackness (i.e. skin) is a central theme of their depiction.
This shot is followed by quick cuts of Black people of different ages and genders all riding horses and participating in a typical Texas trail ride. The trail ride should be viewed as the cultural node where blackness and what has been perceived as traditional Texas culture collide. This uniqueness makes a trail ride the perfect moment for Solange to engage in hybridization and further subvert perceived notions of cowboy culture.
There is a moment during the song where Solange sings, “Comin’ down hard comin’ down clean, coming down main,” as a voice in the background repeats, “got the swingers on.” These are both terms related to contemporary Houston hip hop and car culture. With swingers referring to old school wire-spoke wheels that well known to almost all Black Houstonians. As she sings this, there is a shot of three men riding in a small carriage pulled a horse, but the wheels of their carriage are adorned with swingers. It is this moment that Black Cowboy arrives at what D. Scot Miller describes as the “future-past.” By this point, the audience has seen the Black Cowboy as a symbol that represents the Black legacy within this culture, but in this sequence, they finally see Black Cowboys as they exist now. Moreover, the sees how Black Cowboys are continuing to infuse blackness into the culture.
The use of the Black Cowboy in this piece comes full circle during the interlude titled “Exit Scott.” Here, Solange revisits the same masked Black Cowboy introduced in the first song. This time, however, the fame is cut closer. Additionally, the shot is darker and tinted red continuing to give it another-worldly feel. As the shot moves into darkness, small archival videos of Black cowboys participating in rodeos appear within the frame, and the horseman becomes illuminated by light. He begins to walk down a dark paved street, mimicking the initial scene in which he was first introduced. No longer shrouded in fantastical or unreal elements, the Black Cowboy emerges anew; the archival footage grounds his image in reality and the now.
Afrosurrealism allows Solange to use the Black Cowboy as a representation of the staying power of Black Legacies, even when they are believed to be lost. Her work begins in a world unseen, as the early depictions of these figures were dream-like and hallucinatory. These images began to draw more power as they began to be tied to real moments in our Black past and present. In these moments where the unreal is connected to reality is where Solange can make her statements about blackness and its past. Within When I Get Home, the Black Cowboy is able to transcend its own perceived temporal bounds. Solange not only confirms and defines their existence in the past, but she shows how they continue to exist in the present.
The Black Future
A pervasive and important theme throughout When I Get Home is how blackness within the context of a Black future intersects with other identities such as gender and sexuality. As a Black Woman, defining the future of Black womanhood is an essential mission for Solange. When thinking about Afrofuturism and how it works within this piece, it is useful to consider the analysis that Dr. Susana M. Morris offers in her article, “More Than Human.” Morris notes that our present context as Black people is plagued by white supremacy and imperialism Therefore, the envisioning of Black people as the center of the future and as agents of their trajectory is a revolutionary act. However, she also understands that Black women exist at an intersection of multiple oppressive regimes, often rendering their imagining of the future as ignored or diminished (Morris, 33). This is evident as Black people and Black women especially, don’t normally appear in science or speculative fiction, the location where futurist depictions are typically constructed. These worlds that are typically created by white men don’t usually encompass the logic or sensibilities of Black Women in their work. Morris goes on to focus on Afrofuturism and its role in the construction of the Black interior, which is defined as the inner space that Black artist uses to explore beyond the limited expectations of blackness (Morris, 35). When I Get Home is able to place Black womanhood at the center of the imagined future and explore beyond its current context using these tools.
The first scene to introduce the audience to a futurist depiction happens during the “Can I Hold the Mic” interlude and the song “Stay Flo.” This section of the piece opens with found footage of two women sitting in what looks to be an SUV fighting over a large microphone. The video (which is a smaller resolution) sits slightly off-center within the black of the video. The two women pictured in the video are Atlanta rappers Diamond and Princess of “Knuck If You Buck” fame. The women struggle over the mic as they laugh with each other. Through gritted teeth and laughter, Princess asks, “Please can I hold the mic?” as she yanks the mic towards her. Princess begins to speak, but still laughing, Diamond yanks the mic back interrupting her. This is when Princess’s demeanor changes. She yanks the mic back, looks at the camera seriously, and begins to speak to the audience. She begins, “I would like to say that….” The struggle that is portrayed in this shot creates rich context as for the upcoming futurist depictions because these Black women living in our contemporary world are shown struggling to get the opportunity to share their truths. As the piece continues, Solange is able to use Afrofuturism to create spaces where Black women can speak openly to their experiences.
Before Princess finishes her statement, the piece cuts to an extreme close-up shot of a Black woman’s eyes. We are not able to see much of the woman’s surroundings, but the scene feels futurist, as the woman is wearing clear glasses that resemble goggles and numerous colorful lights resembling the buttons of a control panel reflect off her face. The camera slowly zooms out from the close up as the buttons and lights flash across her face as her eyes remain closed as if in deep contemplation. Immediately after the audio of Princess cuts out, a voice-over of Solange starts as if to continue. In the voice-over, Solange says, “I can’t be a singular expression of myself/ There’s too many parts, too many spaces/ Too many manifestations, too many lines/ Too many curves, too many troubles/ Too many journeys, too many mountains/Too many rivers, so many.” This moment of audio not only acts as a continuation of Princess’s statement, but it also allows Solange to speak for the futuristic Black women infusing these logics into this futurist world that she is crafting before our eyes. From here the video cuts to a medium shot of the woman and her surroundings. She looks to be surrounded by circuitry and wires with only her head exposed. Then there is a cut to her from behind where we see her in front of a large control panel that could be a part of the set of any sci-fi movie. Both she and the panel are surrounded by darkness. There are multiple shots of her interacting with this panel, seemingly working on some unknown task (perhaps navigation). She keeps working until eventually, literal sparks begin to fly from the machine as she confidently continues to work on the machine. “In Black to the Future,” one of Mark Dery’s interviewees, American Sociologist Dr. Tricia Rose, notes that the evidence of African American mastery of technology typically engenders a degree of awe given our current limited access to technology (Dery, 212). This feeling of awe is heightened within When I Get Home as we see a Black woman as the Master of Technology in this sequence. Given the fact that Black women are rarely portrayed as technical savants in a mainstream context.
As the scene progresses, our awe is further compounded as begin to see more of the woman’s surroundings. We are now able to see more of the woman’s body and she is wearing a metallic silver two-piece and thigh-high strapped heels. Under logics constructed in the present, she would most likely become an object of over-sexualization and objectification. Her ability and technical savvy would not be the primary characteristics that were highlighted. However, as Solange stated during the voice over, this woman is more than just a singular expression. In this future, women can be the embodiment of sexuality while simultaneously exerting mastery over futurist technology. When speaking on the coupling of Afrofuturism and feminism Susana Morris had this to say: “It expands [feminism’s] capacity to transgress normative boundaries of not only race, but of gender, sexuality, ability, and other subject positions (Morris, 34).” This scene could have easily been set in the present, but the connotations surrounding the woman would be altered greatly. It is the infusion of Afrofuturism that allows this Black woman to transcend beyond the present-day expectations and characteristics that would be ascribed to her under current logic.
The scene progresses and we cut to a new location. We now see a medium-sized, slightly lower, angle shot of the woman dragging the large panel across what looks to be the desert. The woman’s stature is emphasized through this shot. Despite the obviously large size of the panel, the woman is just as tall. She is portrayed as walking with authority and purpose as she pulls the machine along an empty road. She doesn’t have to deal with contemporary issues of catcalling, people questioning what she is wearing, or even people being intimidated or afraid by her presence. This is a key example of the Black interior being enacted. Afrofuturism doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it is always a response to our present and even past condition. When feminism is incorporated, Afrofuturism becomes a response to the current conditions of women. Under Morris’ use of the concept, Afrofuturist feminism can respond to both the fear of blackness and misogynoir through the use of unapologetic Black womanhood (Morris, 37). As the song “Stay Flo” progresses, the audience sees the embodiment of his meaning in action. One of the most poignant moments in this section of the video happens when we see our main woman sitting in front of the panel surrounded by seven Black women who are all wearing black. She looks powerful and is clearly in a position of leadership. As she poses in front of the large piece of machinery, she exudes a level of charisma and swagger that is not often used to portray Black women in most forms of media. Although she is portrayed as powerful, it does not come at the expense of the other women in the frame. Each of the women is portrayed powerfully as she struts across the screen into the darkness of the shot. These women are not simply present in this future; they exert a level of ownership and control of this future.
This depiction of Black women in a futuristic context subverts the current normative and systematic boundaries placed on Black womanhood. There isn’t a quota that needs to be met, as these women are not depicted to check a box for diversity. These women are not portrayed as desexed or oversexualized. In this future that Solange constructed, unwavering and powerful Black Womanhood is the status quo; it is more than unapologetic, it is confident and assumed. Afrofuturism within When I Get Home, allows Solange to create a world in which the status quo for blackness exudes and amplifies the uniqueness of Black womanhood. Her characters are living as if, for the first time, they live within a construction free of the sensibilities of white men, who have historically exerted the control of their depictions in the future.
Conclusion
In her portrayals of the past, present and the future, Solange centers blackness, drawing on forgotten history, unrealized frustration, and normalized intersectionality. She is digging up the presence of blackness, extracting from where it has been hidden. In a world where blackness is always being erased, Solange holds it as a pillar of the world in When I Get Home. Both Afrosurrealism and Afrofuturism are rooted in reimagining and explaining the possibilities of blackness in contemporary and future context respectively. Solange wants the viewers to understand that Black people have, are, and will always be present no matter how much society tries to bury them. Moreover, she wants viewers that, just as blackness has driven society in the past, intersectional blackness can be a driver of society in the future rather than a neatly tucked facet of a white man’s world. Afrofuturism and Afrosurrealism have become very important tools for Black scholars and creators in their efforts to piece together a reality where we as Black people have agency over the depictions of our past, present, and future. When I Get Home thrives in its application of these concepts, capturing the nuance of our existence in its imagery and sound to create a masterpiece of Afrofuturist and Afrosurrealist conception.
Works Cited
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Dery, Mark. Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture /. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994. Print.
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Eshun, Kodwo. “Further Considerations on Afrofuturism.” CR: The New Centennial Review, vol. 3, no. 2, 2003, pp. 287–302.
Morris, Susana M. “More than Human: Black Feminisms of the Future in Jewelle Gomez’s the Gilda Stories.” The Black Scholar: On the Future of Black Feminism, Part 2, vol. 46, no. 2, 2016, pp. 33–45.
Miller, D. Scot. “[Document] Afrosurreal Manifesto: Black Is the New Black — a 21st-Century Manifesto.” Black Camera, vol. 5, no. 1, 2013, pp. 113–117. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/blackcamera.5.1.113. Accessed 8 May 2020.
