Janelle Monáe and The Direction to a New Future for Oppressed Minorities
Coined by Mark Dery in his essay “Black to the Future” (1994 [1993], p.180), “Afrofuturism” refers to works of speculative fiction that have African-American themes and address African-American concerns in the context of a futuristic society in response to the lack of racial diversity in science fiction. As Dery noted, Afrofuturism gives rise to a paradox: “can a community, whose past has been deliberately rubbed out…. imagine possible future?” With the longevity of the movement of over six decades (Veen, 2013, p.3), a more appropriate question seems to be “How?” Janelle Monáe provides an answer, using Afrofuturist ideas in her visual and musical style. However, she does not simply reiterate what her predecessors have done and instead offers a new direction to imagining a future. Questioning the intersectionality of her race, gender, and sexual identity, the singer contends that there are more issues to address than just racism and incorporates themes such as feminism and sexual liberation into her Afrofuturist work. Challenging the hegemonic forces that rubbed out subaltern voices of multiple minorities, she asserts that these communities can only imagine a future once they have reclaimed the past they lost.
Against racism
Before Monáe, a majority of Afrofuturist works voice the desire to create a new society where the black community is no longer oppressed, conveying a notion that to create a better future for black people, they must abandon their current society. This desire is most clearly illustrated by space-traveling elements prevalent in such works. Spaceships in Afrofuturist works symbolize that the struggle is over and the black community has won their freedom. In 1974, experimental jazz artist Sun Ra released Space Is the Place, one of the first science fiction movies where blackness is at the center of the plot (Kenny, 2018). At the end of the movie, Ra’s spaceship launches off, carrying black people into space as the world they leave behind crumbles (Figure 1 & 2). Similarly, the bridge of the Parliament’s “Mothership Connection (Star Child)” (1975) finds the lead singer George Clinton referencing the Negro spiritual “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” which was used by slaves as a coded communication in their struggle for freedom in the early to mid-nineteenth century (Harriet Tubman Historical Society, n.d.). Clinton is alluding that the titular Mothership is the new chariot to help the listener escape. Using the same imagery, many R&B and Hip-hop artists such as Outkast, Erykah Badu, and Missy Elliot paint a more cynical picture. While the plot in works of Ra and Clinton ends with space travel as a means to a better future, the works of these 1990s artists start with space travel. The 1997 music video for “Sock It 2 Me” takes place on a remote planet where Missy Elliott is seen being chased by robot monsters (Figure 3). Also set in a futuristic world, the 2001 music video for “Didn’t Cha Know” sees Erykah Badu wandering in an endless desert, searching for the better future that is nowhere to be found (Figure 4). When black people are not on their way to a new world, they are casting doubts on their future. In his verse in “ATLiens” (1996), André 3000 expresses hesitation to have sex for fear that his baby will suffer from the “nigga [sic] syndrome.” The only way to freedom seems to be getting out, but even then the future is still bleak and uncertain.
In response to this escapism, Janelle Monáe offers an alternative way to imagine a future: setting out to reclaim the past that was “deliberately rubbed out” so that a new future can be reborn. Instead of space-traveling, the artist opts for time-traveling to salvage her people, demonstrating a belief that oppression must be solved from within — that racism is a societal problem to be fixed rather than an omnipotent force to run away from. Monáe illustrates this viewpoint in the concept series titled Metropolis, releasing the similarly-titled first suite in 2007. The EP was followed by two studio albums The ArchAndroid (2010) and The Electric Lady (2013), each of which consisting of two parts of the saga. Metropolis is inspired by the 1927 film by Fritz Lang of the same title — the first feature length science fiction film (Connolly, 2010). Monáe takes up the alter-ego of Cindi Mayweather, a messianic android with a mission to free the citizens of Metropolis from The Great Divide, a secret society that uses time travel to suppress freedom and love (Lewis, 2010). The Mayweather persona was first introduced in the EP Metropolis (2007), set in the year 2719, as “Android №57821, an Alpha Platinum 9000,” whose “programming includes a rock-star proficiency package and a working soul.” In the liner notes of The ArchAndroid (2010), it was revealed that Janelle Monáe herself has been sent back to our time from the year 2719, where she was cloned into android form as Cindi Mayweather. By reimagining a product made by white people for white people, Janelle Monáe reclaims a previously whitewashed past where her race is erased out of existence.
To reinforce the belief that racism needs to be challenged to create a new future, Monáe/Mayweather seeks to empower her fellow oppressed to stand up for themselves, rather than wait for external assistance. English and Kim (2013, p.219) noted the similarities between Monáe/Mayweather and Clinton/P-Funk (the name for the combined Parliament and Funkadelic groups), most notably the role of funk in their narratives. In Afrofuturistic work, dancing is portrayed as a source of power, typically in the form of funk music and the dance associated with the genre. In Clinton’s 1975 album Mothership Connection, funk is synonymous with freedom. During the 1970s, the record industry made greater efforts to promote sub-genres considered to have broader appeal (e.g. soul, disco), relegating funk to local urban radio (Morant, 2010, p.74). This inspired Clinton to invent his own station W-E-F-U-N-K on the track “P. Funked (Wants to Get Funked Up)” (Clinton, Collins, & Worrell, 1975b). Here, funk is freedom of expression. It evolves into freedom of race later in the album on the track “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker),” where the act of demanding the funk symbolizes the fight for freedom (Clinton, Collins, & Brailey, 1975). In Monáe’s work, however, people do not demand to be given the funk; they create the funk themselves; thus the notion of self-empowerment emerges. In her world, dancing has magical properties: the title card for the “Tightrope” music video reads: “Dancing has long been forbidden for its subversive effects on the residents and its tendency to lead to illegal magical practices” (Figure 5). In the music video, dancing grants Monáe the power to walk through walls (Figure 6), hence the ability to escape from the asylum where she is held captive. However, she has not escaped the asylum by the end of the video. The liner notes for The Electric Lady (2013) reveals that she only left the asylum after having finished the Electric Lady recordings, i.e. after making sure that her fellows have the same magical abilities as her to stand up against racism.
This theme of empowerment is demonstrated most clearly in the 2018 track “Django Jane,” where Monáe refers to her achievements as an inspiration to the black community. In the first verse, the artist summarizes her humble family background, before claiming that her oppressed past is over: “Kept us in the back of the store/ We ain’t [sic] hidden no more, moonlit nigga [sic].” This line references the two Oscar-nominated films Monáe starred in in 2016: Hidden Figures and Moonlight, the former of which was the first film with an all-black cast and the first LGBT-themed film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Monáe mentions this honor in the first line of the next verse, before revealing her ambition of becoming an EGOT, a winner of the four most prestigious awards in entertainment: an Emmy (for television), a Grammy (for music), an Oscar (for film), and a Tony (for theatre). She confides that she would dedicate the awards to black people: “Already got an Oscar for the casa/Runnin’ down Grammys with the family/Prolly [sic] give a Tony to the homies/Prolly [sic] get an Emmy dedicated to the/Highly melanated, ArchAndroid orchestrated” (Robinson, Irvin, & Tuffuor, 2018a). Even when she is at the top, Monáe still aspires to empower the people who share her roots.
This aspiration connects to another identity she claims. “Jane Bond, never Jane Doe,” the singer raps later in the song. “Jane Bond” is an allusion to James Bond, the English secret agent and the male protagonist of the homonymous book and film series. On the other hand, “Jane Doe” is the female counterpart to “John Doe,” referring to an unidentified person. The next line, Monáe references another hero character, Django, who was portrayed by several white actors over the years until Jamie Foxx played the character in the 2012 film Django Unchained. Why are there two heroes mentioned in the lyrics, but only one in the title? It is not only because James Bond has always been portrayed by a white male, but also because Monáe contrasts Django with Sambo on the same line (Robinson et al., 2018a). In the novel Invisible Man (Ellison, 2014 [1952]), the Sambo doll is the embodiment of racism. A caricature of a black man and a product of mid-century bigotry, it symbolizes the way black people have been manipulated for white people’s entertainment. These references, together with the title of the song itself, show that the singer refuses to be an unknown entity, claiming to be a heroine fighting against racism instead. This sentiment in the song mirrors the subplot portrayed in the two different album covers of The Electric Lady (2013), one of which shows the alter ego Cindi Mayweather before becoming famous and the other shows Mayweather as a free android bearing the symbol of Drogon — a robotic dragon — on her breastplate as a sign of “liberation, justice, droid pride and mystic evidence that light will one day prevail over darkness” (The Electric Lady, n.d.; Figure 7). Here, the past serves as a counterpoint against the future and also a leverage for the black community to fight for such a future where they are free.
Figure 7. The album cover for the standard version (a) and the Target exclusive version (b) of Janelle Monáe’s The Electric Lady (Spratt, 2013)
The musical elements in the song also contribute to this defiance against the problematic social construct. “Django Jane” opens sparingly with a singing voice substituting for a guitar riff, a synthesizer bass line reverb, and some subtle guitar add-ons. The moment Monáe starts her verse, most of these elements are dropped. Only the bass line remains, but the reverb effect is also gone and there are new bass kicks superimposed on the existing bass line. The beat also sets in at this point and maintains throughout the song until the end of all the rap verses, creating a musical counterpart to Monáe’s hard-hitting rap bars. This minimal arrangement allows the rapping to take the limelight and the listener to contemplate the lyrics. The beat and the heavy drum kicks drive the instrumental, and as the sonic embodiment of Monáe, they prove that she has enough power to carry the whole song on her own. These musical elements together with the lyrics portray Monáe as a defiant and powerful directress who will lead her race in the fight against racism toward a brighter future.
The notion that the future is born from the reclamation of the past is also evident in the way the two notions of time seemingly coexist in the imaginary world of Metropolis. In this world, the past resembles the future: even though the video for “Tightrope” is set in the past of the Metropolis world, it is decidedly futuristic by our standards. Apart from the magic powers, there are black-cloaked, faceless anti-dance figures with whom Monáe and her band contend, resembling the likes of Darth Vader from the Star Wars franchise or the dementors in the fantasy world of Harry Potter (Figure 8). Another example is the beginning of the video for “Electric Lady” (2014), where Monáe is seen using Samsung gadgets before putting on an 8-track tape in her vintage car (Figure 9 & 10). Conversely, the future is also reminiscent of the past. On the album cover of The Electric Lady (2013), Cindi Mayweather is shown with her five sisters, who all have Digital Auction Codes on their wrists (Figure 7a). As explained on the Tumblr page created for the character, the painting pays homage to the distinguished work of the photographer William Klein, and in particular, “the graphic sensibility of his 1966 film Qui êtes-vous, Polly Maggoo? (Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?)”(The Electric Lady, n.d., Figure 11). This nostalgia not only further bridges the gap between the past and the future, but is also another reimagination of white culture in which the future of the black community is engendered from the past.
However, the black community is not the only minority facing discrimination. Examining the intersectionality of her identity, Janelle Monáe affirms that even if black people are free, so long as social construct exists, there will be discrimination. To illustrate this idea, Monáe creates her own world paralleling the world we are living in where there is a general Other encompassing all the minorities, or the “have-nots,” of our world represented by androids — a class entirely separated from humans. In the video for “Many Moons” (2008), Monáe’s first music video, she gives us a glimpse into this world. The video takes place at the Metropolis Annual Android Auction, where Monáe’s alter-ego Cindi Mayweather performs for the crowd, while the other androids walk down the catwalk, while the wealthiest members of Metropolis auction them off (Figure 12). While this allusion to slave trade in the West is another act of reclaiming the past, it is also a commentary on the contemporary power structures. Even though all androids are black (as they are multiple alter-egos of Monáe), black people are present in all social classes shown (Figure 13 & 14). Moreover, while physically similar, the androids bear names indicative of different genders and various ethnicities (Figure 12 & 15), conveying that the problem in this imagined world is not one of race or gender, but of a generalized tension between the oppressor and the oppressed. Hence, to create a better future, it is necessary to fight against any problematic social constructed categories, may it be race, gender, or sexual identity. That is why beside racism, Monáe’s works also address gender roles and heteronormativity, which we will discuss in the next section.
Against misogyny
Expanding the Afrofuturist ideas beyond its position as a racial commentary, Janelle Monáe also explores her identities as both a woman and an African American. In the original Metropolis by Fritz Lang (1927), the prophet Maria is from the working class, while the “mediator” Freder, who brings the working and ruling classes together, is the son of the master of Metropolis. By merging the two characters into one in her saga, Monáe makes a statement that not only can the “have-nots” fight for their rights but it is also a female figure who will lead them to victory. In his 2017 paper, Valnes addressed this reversal of gender roles, proposing a framework named “Afro-Sonic Feminist Funk” to demonstrate how female musicians use funk to complicate the gendered politics and discourses surrounding funk music. Decomposing “Tightrope” (2010) and “Q.U.E.E.N.” (2013), he examines how Monáe’s voice engages with the underlying funk elements to create a powerful gendered critique of the genre, as well as the use of funk to address issues important to black women and other marginalized groups that are often neglected in male-dominated genre of funk.
We can extend this framework to examine how Monáe makes a similar gendered critique of hip hop, another genre dominated by black males (Belle, 2014, p.288), with the hip hop track “Django Jane.” Throughout the song, she makes allusions to other successful black female figures to evoke pride and empowerment in the listeners who share the same identity. In particular, the line “I got away with murder, no scandal” references two television drama series: How to Get Away with Murder and Scandal, both of which feature a strong black female lead. The next line (“cue the violins and violas”) employs a word play on the first name of Viola Davis, who stars in the former series and the only black person to date to win an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony for acting (Robinson, Irvin, & Tuffuor, 2018a). Near the end of the song, “If she [sic] the G.O.A.T. now, would anybody doubt it?” is a reference to Serena Williams, whose name frequently comes up the debate of who deserves the title of the G.O.A.T., or the Greatest of All Time, in female tennis (Hodgkinson, 2015). The lyrics interact with the dominant bass line, traditionally used to highlight conceptions of masculinity in funk music (Valnes, 2017, p.7), to assert that females can be strong and powerful like the way males are portrayed in the traditional discourse. However, the bass line drops out when the violins and violas are cued. The word play on “violas” and the instruments’ higher pitch compared to the bass create a feminine counterpart to the masculine bass line. However, there is a difference in the timbre between the two string instruments. The viola has a stately and dark timbre that contrasts sharply with that of the violin. This contrast, together with how the instruments replace the bass kicks, contests the association of femininity to tenderness and masculinity to strength. The lyrics corresponding to this part suggest that females hold an even more important position in the world than males: “We gave you life, we gave you birth/ We gave you God, we gave you Earth,” ultimately claiming that it is females who create the future “We fem the future, don’t make it worse.” This line implies that the future is born from the past, and specifically the women of the past. Therefore, to create a better future, we need to empower the women of our generation and break down the socially constructed gender roles.
Janelle Monáe challenges these gender roles by complicating the female identity in her work, most notably through her costumes. The singer’s signature outfit comprised of black-and-white tuxedo and wingtips (Figure 16) creates an androgynous persona that harkens back to the looks of David Bowie and Grace Jones. Bradley and Page (2017, p.589) noted how Bowie’s persona Ziggy Stardust challenged the normative regulation of gender in the 1970s and transgressed the shared values of what constituted a man and masculinity. It began with the release of his 1971 album, The Man Who Sold the World, whose British LP cover art depicts Bowie posed in a dress, provocatively suggesting that individuals could choose how to express their gender identity, regardless of their biological sex (Figure 17). Building on this, Bowie introduced the persona Ziggy Stardust two albums later, in the 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Specifically, Bradley and Page (p.589) noticed how the presentation of his alien and androgynous appearance on Tops of the Pops, a mainstream and family-friendly show, exposed an audience of 15 million to a spectacle of deconstructed masculine hegemony and ambiguous gender.
Similarly, Kershaw (1997, p.21) argued that the performance arts of Grace Jones reconceptualized Afrocentric culture and identity. She observed the contradictions in Jones’ look during the performance of “Warm Leatherette” in the touring piece A One Man Show:
Her crew cut makes reference to male-dominated military discipline while highlighting the geometry of her face. Her makeup and stiletto heels suggest a fetishization associated with female dress, while her trim gray suit offsets a bare chest of hard, flat muscle.
This signature look of Jones is both seductive and dominating, challenging the “African female as exotic” paradigm. In the same manner, Janelle Monáe’s “uniform” defies the socially constructed gender identity. Miller (2015) pointed out the significance of Monáe’s tuxedo: “When tuxedoed, the poor can pass for rich, women for men; class, gender, and racial hierarchies can be confused, unintentionally or deliberately transgressed.” Note how the author writes that women can pass for men and not the other way around: a tuxedo denotes masculinity. While the singer wears multiple reinterpretations of the black-and-white tuxedo in her music videos, the most fascinating example is the different colorful tuxedos she wears in the music video for “Django Jane.” Unlike the black-and-white tuxedo that became her signature look, these tuxedos in “Django Jane” have vibrant, attention-grabbing colors (Figure 18). Monáe is not shying away from attention; she demands it and actively challenges the gaze, looking straight into the camera throughout the video (Figure 19). On top of that, the kufi hats she wears with the tuxedos have golden embroideries resembling crowns (Figure 20), denoting Monáe’s superior social status. Kufi caps are traditionally worn by men throughout the African diaspora, especially to symbolize their status as wise elders, or family patriarchs (Ahmadu, 2005). In the video, Monáe makes her identity as a woman more perceptible by letting her hair down and braiding it, even pulling it to one side to be more visible throughout the video (Figure 20). Moreover, she wears bright-colored lipstick in this video, contrasting with the skin-tone-matching lipstick prominent in her earlier videos (Figure 18 & 21). In those videos, her lipstick matches her skin tone as a means to appears inhuman, like an android whose appearance lacks color variety because her exterior is made from the same material. The visible lipstick and long hair here conform to the normative female identity, thus creating a dissonance between her identity performance and the masculinity of her outfit. Monáe declares that a woman can be whoever she wants, regardless of whether it conforms to or breaks away from the traditional female image.
To further redefine the female identity, Monáe ends “Django Jane” by letting her vagina have a monologue, which is a reference to Eve Ensler’s 1996 play The Vagina Monologues. The play consists of interviews Ensler conducted with women, which delves into taboo topics such as consensual and non-consensual sexual experiences, body image, genital mutilation, direct and indirect encounters with reproduction, and sex work. Both the song and the play uses the vagina as a synecdoche for women as a whole to advocate for the subaltern voice of women. The visuals for this verse include a particularly striking scene which finds Monáe sitting nude with a mirror covering her genitals reflecting her face (Figure 23). This is identical to a pivotal shot in the Oscar-nominated Chilean film A Fantastic Woman (Figure 22), which illuminates the movie’s central theme of a woman in tune with her identity and a world at odds with it (Kohn, 2018). It is notable that the protagonist in the 2017 film is a transgender woman, and by including a shot inspired by the film Monáe encourages that the voice of this extreme minority be heard as well. With the sexual nature of these references, Monáe asserts that women find their voice through exploring their sexuality, and thus to empower women and include them in the fight against problematic social constructs, we must allow them to freely express not only their gender identity, but also their sexuality.
Against heteronormativity
The heroine in the fight for a better future, Monáe acknowledges that to empower the people of the oppressed minorities to find their voices through their sexuality, she must lead the way and explore her own sexual identity. The theme of sexual liberation in Monáe’s work is most prominent in “Make Me Feel,” a slick and seductive blend of funk and R&B which finds Monáe courting with a lover (Robinson, Michaels, Larsson, Fredriksson, & Tranter, 2018a). The lyrics of the song can be seen as a double entendre addressing her sexuality, where she puts questions about her sexual orientation to rest within the first verse:
Yeah, baby, don’t make me spell it out for you
You keep on asking me the same questions
And second-guessing all my intentions
Should know by the way I use my compression
That you’ve got the answers to my confessions
While the “confessions” may refer to admission of attraction for a lover, they may also refer to admission of queerness. This is further illuminated in the pre-chorus, where Monáe alludes to her lover as “an emotional, sexual bender,” who “messes her up” but she cannot help but fall for the person. This echoes the sentiment in the track “Masseduction” (2017) by St. Vincent, who has discussed openly about her sexual fluidity (Weiner, 2014) and previously had high profile same-sex relationships (Lamont, 2017). The 2017 track centers around the symploce “I can’t turn off what turns me on.[…] I don’t turn off what turns me on.” St. Vincent confesses to her sexual fluidity, that she cannot change it, and more importantly, that she chooses to embrace it. In “Make Me Feel,” Monáe employs a similar symploce: “That’s just the way you make me feel […] That’s just the way that I feel.” The change in subject from you to I puts the singer in the active position, accepting that this is her feeling, not something from an external force. This also shows a development throughout the song: while she admits her feeling in the first verse, she refuses to say it until the bridge where she exclaims that it is indeed her feeling.
Dissecting the song, we can see that this internal conflict is also expressed in the music. Each stanza lasts eight measures, divided into four lines. The first, second, and fourth line repeat the same melody, played with a dominant seventh chord (F#7) that evokes suspension. This suspended feeling is further accented by the group of three E notes at the beginning of first measure of the line, as they form a diminished seventh with the tonal F#. On top of that, this melody line has an anacrusis that helps to further stress the first downbeat, on which the first diminished seventh note falls. The third line tries to break out of the suspension from the first two lines, starting with a perfect eighth note on the first downbeat instead to resolve the tension. However, this variation of the main melody forms a suspended fourth chord (Bsus4) instead. While this chord contains all perfect notes that resolve the tension relative to the root, a new dissonance emerges between the fourth and fifth notes. Moreover, the main melody returns in the last line, returning to the full tension. This melodic motif mirrors the evasion in the lyrics where Monáe tries to divert from her feelings (“don’t make me spell it out for you”) but ends up having to admit them (“you’ve got the answers to my confessions”). The dissonance in the music is also prevalent in choruses which use the same chord progression. However, although the chorus repeats the same melody line, the diminished seventh chord is played when she sings “That’s just the way you make me feel,” while the suspended chord is played on the line “So good, so good, so fuckin’ real.” The diminished seventh in this case still conveys the unresolved tension between Monáe and her sexuality, but the suspended chord conveys the sexual tension between Monáe and her lover.
This tension in the music disappears every time Monáe faces her sexuality. The chord progression of pre-chorus is comprised of all power chords (to be precise, C#5-B5-D#5-C#5), which consist of the root note, a perfect fifth, and a perfect eight. The three notes result in a stark and powerful sound, which is further accentuated by the thundering electric bass newly introduced to the instrumental. This is congruous with the lyrics: “It’s like I’m powerful with a little bit of tender.” The theme of power in “Django Jane” makes a brief return here, again challenging social binary norms. Her lover is not just a sexual bender, but an emotional bender as well. Hence, in this relationship, she is empowered but still affectionate, showing characteristics of both polars of the gender binary. The bridge of the song combines the two chord progressions. Transitioning seamlessly from the second chorus, the bridge starts with a suspended fourth (Bsus4), but immediately slides into a minor with an augmented fifth (a power chord, D#m#5) and an inverted dominant seventh (F#7/E). This thumping guitar riff is placed at the end of each line in the bridge, conveying the internal conflict as the music swiftly switches in and out of the suspension. The climax of the song comes with the line “That’s just the way that I feel,” where the first words modulate between a minor third (A) and a perfect fourth (B) before skipping to a perfect eighth (F#). This disjunct motion is the first time in the whole song that Monáe sings a note in the fifth octave with her chest voice, resulting in a powerful perfect octave that finally cuts through the tension prevailing the song as she takes charge of her emotion. These musical elements illustrate the empowering nature of sexual liberation. Even though Monáe has portrayed herself as a strong and powerful female figure throughout her works, she can only utilize her full power once she has come to terms with her sexual identity.
The explicitly sexual lyrics and musical elements of “Make Me Feel” bare resemblance to the work of Prince (Moore, 2018; Pile, 2018), who also nullified hierarchical relationship between the two sides of the socially constructed dualism (Holland, 2017, p.328). In particular, the instrumentation in “Make Me Feel” shares many common elements with that in Prince’s 1986 single “Kiss,” of which most noticeably is a pronounced sensual synth line at the center of the song. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was revealed that Prince contributed the synth groove to “Make Me Feel” (Kaye, 2018), making it literal that the past creates the future. Another element that the songs share is the guitar riff, which is heard at the end of the chorus on “Kiss” and is used throughout the bridge on “Make Me Feel.” On both songs, the riff is played by fretting a suspended fourth in a strumming pattern consisting of sixteenth notes and is placed at the climax of the song to convey an intimate act: the titular action in “Kiss” and the sexual tension reaching to a peak in “Make Me Feel.” Still, just like in Prince’s work (White, 2016), the sexual nature of “Make Me Feel” is most discernible in its video. This sexual liberation is portrayed throughout the video for “Make Me Feel,” with a close-up of the Monáe’s backside with the singer clapping her derriere being a prime example (Figure 24). This shot is particularly sexually charged as Monáe is wearing a skin-tight pants made of a material so thin that the audience can see her skin through the cloth. Elsewhere in the video, we can find the singer playing a guitar while wearing a brassiere made up of strings of gemstones (Figure 25), or crawling behind dancers in a bright neon bodysuit (Figure 26). The dance moves are equally provocative, most prominently featuring pelvic thrusts. At the climax of the song, Monáe runs back and forth between the two she has been flirting with as if she cannot decide which one she wants, before the trio comes together for a dance as an act of embracing their sexuality (Figure 27).
The visual aesthetics of “Make Me Feel” complement the musical elements heavily influenced by the work of Prince to create a nostalgic atmosphere, reiterating the notion that the future is engendered from the past. In the video, Monáe and actress Tessa Thompson arrive at a nightclub, where Monáe is found flirting with both Thompson and a man. There is prominent neon lighting with high emphasis on pinks, purples, and blues (Figure 25, 26, & 28), which has been dubbed “bisexual lighting” by the media (David, 2018; Jackman, 2018). More details in the background also suggest an influence from the 1980s (Figure 29), complementing the 1980s elements in the music. Still, perhaps the most distinct features of the 1980s are in the costume design, namely the brightly-colored pattern prints (Neilan, 2017). Again, looking at the suit Monáe wears in the video, we can see that they are much more stylized compared to her previous looks. In one scene, she is seen wearing a pair of mismatching ankle boots with a suit whose pattern consists of numerous squares (Figure 30). The brightly-colored and geometric prints are also found in the clothes of other characters throughout the video (Figure 31 & 32). These features of the video harken back to the Black Mirror episode, “San Junipero” (Figure 33), which is inspired by nostalgia therapy, a treatment for anxiety and dementia using happy memories and recreations of the past to alleviate current suffering (O’Hara, 2017). Similarly, the 1980s aesthetics of “Make Me Feel” act as an inspiration for the oppressed minorities to strive for a better future. But why the 1980s? The sexual revolution culminated in the 1960s and 1970s, which saw profound shifts in the mores and attitudes towards women’s sexuality, homosexuality, and freedom of sexual expression (Escoffier, 2004). The 1980s rode off this height, as people of minorities proudly embrace their identity. As Rotello (1998) noted, the black would become beautiful; the overtly sexual gay man would wear his sexuality as a gay badge of honor, no longer just a denigrated stereotype. The better future Monáe is striving for is one where every individual is liberated to express their identity, which is in itself an act of defiance against the problematic social constructs obstructing their way to that future. By portraying the freedom and the power she gains through facing her identity, she declares that to reclaim the past they lost and imagine a future, minorities must first embrace their identity.
Throughout her catalogue, Janelle Monáe takes inspiration from the intersectionality of her race, gender, and sexual orientation, asserting a need to fix current issues rather than escaping to another world like her predecessors once did. Coincidentally, the years after the release of her last studio album The Electric Lady (2013) saw a turbulent socio political scene in the US concerning these problems: the Black Lives Matter movement was born as a hashtag in 2013 (Rickford, 2015, p.35); the internet has started the fourth feminism wave from a “call-out” culture, in which sexism or misogyny are confronted and challenged (Munro, 2013, p.23). Even more complicated is the LGBT social movement: on June 26, 2015, same-sex marriage and adoption of children by same-sex married couples were legalized nationwide as a result of the ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States in the landmark civil rights case of Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), but this progress was set back a rise in hate crime (FBI, 2017; NCAVP, 2018), along with the reversal on transgender bathroom directive (Karimi & Grinberg, 2017) and efforts from the new government to ban transgender individuals from serving in the military (Phillip, 2017). Notably, the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting was the deadliest act of violence targeting LGBT people in United States history, as well as the deadliest shooting by a single shooter in United States history (Alvarez & Pérez-Peña, 2016). The claim Monáe makes is true: even though Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin, the problematic social construct still exists, and discrimination is still prevalent in the US. As social movements make waves, artists respond. Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” and its five-syllable refrain is a “future-tense assertion of delivery to a better, more peaceful place” (Schnipper, 2015). Beyoncé defined feminism at the VMAs (Bennett, 2014) and empowered the black community by reminding them of their heritage on “Formation” (Chu-Le, 2017). Perfume Genius jabbed at the right-wing view on homosexual culture with his sashay on “Queen” (Hadreas, 2014). Similar to these artists, Janelle Monáe tackles rigid and binary social constructs head-on, empowering minority communities to reclaim the past that is rightfully theirs so that they can imagine a future for themselves. She declares so eloquently in the song “Q.U.E.E.N.” (2013): “Even if it makes others uncomfortable, I will love who I am.”
