Transcript
00:00:01
Hello, everyone. My name is Hillary aka Kai, and this is Kai’s cozy corner. So today we are going to be talking about afrofuturist media and fashion motifs, but before we get into that beverage of choice, I already had a tea today, so I’m now drinking some cranberry juice and lemonade.
00:00:28
It’s delicious and let’s get right into it. Okay, so well We’re talking about Afrofuturist media and fashion motifs. Let’s start by defining some terms, so you might be asking, what is Afrofuturism?
00:00:50
Afrofuturism is a term that was created by a man named Mark Dery, and he created this term in a paper in 1994, and he defines afrofuturism, as quote. 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 in a prosthetically enhanced future. So that was a lot of words and that sort of boils down to
00:01:27
African American literary writers, he’s mostly talking about literature, so African American literary creators, writing things about speculative fiction that centers around the African American experience and what African American culture would look like in the future since Mark Dery coined that term in 1994 A lot of people have come up with their own definitions for it, because, frankly, his definition is dated. And it’s not really applicable today, because we’re in the 21st century and it’s not going to be applicable in the future because centuries
00:02:11
just keep going. So for this discussion, I have also created my own definition. And I define Afrofuturism as media featuring science fiction, fantasy and futuristic concepts that imagine a world where Blackness and its history are central.
00:02:33
So I wanted to include the Black diaspora, which is why I just had Blackness in general and my definition is just saying, Hey. Black people create stuff talks about Black people’s history and how we can reimagine the future, or hope the future will look where our Blackness isn’t relegated to the sidelines. But is instead centralized and loved, it’s beautiful, it’s an incredibly hopeful genre one of the reasons why I love Afrofuturism as a genre.
00:03:13
Besides being a Black person and loving to see Black people rooting for everyone, Black, a genre that really explores what if racism and bigotry and hatred were not there. That’s not always a case in after futurism, in fact, some of the things that I’m going to talk about. Are going to be specifically about discrimination, there are aspects of the genre that say, what if we can move past it, which is real like that’s something that could happen.
00:03:50
It just it brings so much. Hope it gives me hope for a future where bigotry is gauche, and if you are a bigot, and if you are hateful, you are going to be in the minority and people are going to look down on you for that, because that’s ridiculous. And yeah, it’s beautiful.
00:04:14
It’s a lovely genre. I do talk about fashion motifs, right? What is a motif?
00:04:23
A motif is just a recurring detail, I first learned about this in a film class in undergraduate school, and it was a great film class, shout out to my professor and uh, motifs are just things that repeat, you see them a lot, you hear them a lot. When I was doing my research.
00:04:44
I saw, okay? I saw a lot of motifs, but in terms of fashion motifs, specifically I saw 6 that I wanted to discuss and those are metal leather PAN-African print celestial bodies technology and dandyism, and I will define and talk about the significance of all of them. Shortly.
00:05:14
This whole video is in connection with an essay and in that essay, I go into much more in detail about all of this, about the history of afrofuturism, about the significance of each of these fashion motifs and about the examples in media, so I will link to that in the description, so check that out. Okay, let’s talk about the fashion motifs. All right, metals have a been used as fashion accessories, but they they’re not just for fashion, so they also signify people’s wealth there status in society they can show whether or not you’re married in certain tribes in Africa and I can say this as a Black person living in America, and as a Black person who is a descendant of channel slavery, wearing things like grills and rings and hoops is a way to sort of show Hey, we might be oppressed, but we’re still going to look good, regardless, I think metals are some of the most fun motifs and they’re also incredibly prevalent, just because you’re going to see a lot of people wearing a lot of fun
00:06:40
jewelry and it’s lovely. It’s, it’s an amazing motif, and it it really showcases the connectedness across the diaspora and also the longevity of Black culture and Black traditions. Next, we are going to talk about leather.
00:07:03
Now I’m going to focus on one aspect of leather as a Black cultural statement, but there are others I’m gonna focus on the Black Panther Party. The Black Panther Party was/is an organization that advocated for the rights of Black people, not only in the US but also in other countries.
00:07:30
Um, and I mean, frankly, let me just take a second to talk about how amazing the Black Panther Party was they played a significant role in our healthcare system. And in the fact that children could get free meals at schools free breakfast. So please do research into the Black Panther Party, they’re amazing and another amazing aspect of them, they’re fashion, so they they had these uniforms that they would wear
00:08:06
And a semi-official aspect of the uniform were there leather jackets Now they were decked out head to toe gorgeous the beret on the on the afro leather jacket, black turtleneck, black pants. Sometimes they wore like military jackets or cargo pants, it was amazing, but their leather jackets were used to show sort of a militant, but also counterculture vibe.
00:08:41
It was used to evoke a certain feeling, not only of intimidation, but of strength, and I love it. It’s an amazing motif, next, we are going to talk about pan-African print. Africa is a huge continent right?
00:09:01
And there are people who live outside of Africa for reasons like the transatlantic slave trade. And of course immigration that exists. And because of that movement and travel, people have created their own imitations or facsimiles of African print, it’s important to note that like I said, Africa is a continent, so within each country, there are tribes and each tribe
00:09:36
has its own fashion style And frankly, if you really want to get into fashion? If you want to learn about fashion from different places, I would really recommend looking at African fashion and of course, don’t look at it from like a big picture, like what is going on in the African continent, look at it on a tribal level, which tribe has their own type of fabric dying style and cuts.
00:10:06
So that’s the way the garments fit on people and their own patterning. And it’s fascinating and it and it’s so vast, it’s amazing. I follow a woman on TikTok and I will, I’ll link her her TikTok page in the description.
00:10:26
But yeah, she’s amazing and she talks about the different patterns and cuts and all of that stuff from different tribes because she studies fashion, that’s amazing.
00:10:43
And so for people who are outside of the African continent and people who might be a little further removed from the they’re African ancestry, they have created sort of imitations or facsimiles of African clothing and it’s not quite applicable to any specific tribe. It’s sort of just a mishmash of a lot of stuff, and it’s a way to connect to a culture that you aren’t quite a part of but you still are a part of if that makes sense, it’s a little complicated, but it’s a huge part of Afrofuturism, I mean, Blackness is not defined by just one Fashion style and neither is pan-African print and so it’s amazing to see all the different variations within afrofuturist media.
00:11:40
Next, we have celestial bodies celestial bodies refers to anything that’s going on in space, okay, so whether it’s like astronaut clothing or stars or space, dust or planetary stuff, it is all celestial bodies. And that makes sense.
00:12:05
Because a big part of sci-Fi media is going to space. Now I would say, a big part of Western sci-Fi media is going to space and see it as a conquest, right? We go to a place and we’re trying to take it over and establish a colony, and you know, do the imperialist colonialist stuff, but something that I find very touching and sweet about Afrofuturism.
00:12:35
Is that space isn’t a place for in colonialism It’s a place for freedom It’s that frontier that hasn’t been explored and because of that, it means that it’s a place room we might not be discriminated against, and that really touches my heart It’s so sweet to see spaces like possibly a new home and a new place where you can be loved next, we have technology, any sort of technological accessory you can think of is in this category from the glasses that can do stuff to the rings that can do stuff.
00:13:23
Sometimes they have watches they can press and it pops up a hologram all kinds of stuff, it’s a big part of futuristic stuff to have fancy technology. I had to include it as a fashion motif because it’s there.
00:13:40
I mean, it’s there a lot and finally we have dandyism, which is something that I love talking about now, dandyism is very simply put dressing to the nines. It is when you dress so extravagantly, I mean, it’s just doing it up, big style, it’s meant to be grandiose and big and fun, a lot of Black dandies dress in really bright colors, it’s gorgeous, it’s fun, it’s beautiful. I love dandyism.
00:14:14
I think that it’s amazing and in the context of Blackness, it really is a an act of resistance to oftentimes be seen as the bottom of the barrel and then to dress and so you are maybe the most important person in the room. It’s confidence and it’s graceful, and it’s strong and powerful and I love it. It’s amazing, let’s get into some examples in media.
00:14:52
So we’re going to start off with metals and the first example in media I’m going to talk about is a music video, by Missy Elliott, and it is Supa Dupa Fly Supa Dupa Fly. It is to me set in a futuristic time and space Missy Elliott is in this chromatic hallway and she is famously wearing a trash bag but beyond that, she’s also wearing these gorgeous glasses and big earrings and and gold rings and she exudes such a confidence and fun energy in that and so I had to include it in this because 100% feels like Afrofuturism.
00:15:47
The next music video I want to talk about is called sad girls luv money by Amaarae Moliy and Kali Uchis, three amazing artists. And in this, it’s a bit more, I would say, cinematic, just because it feels more like a film we enter in and we’re in a futuristic city, there are flying cars. And then there’s this, it’s a huge building and we have the artist’s faces on there and they’re singing and they’re just decked out in jewelry it they’re gorgeous and we have one shot of Amaarae in the music video.
00:16:29
And she is wearing so much gold jewelry, I mean, just top to bottom gold jewelry and Just like with Missy Elliott, she is exuding confidence. All 3 of these women are exuding confidence and they are central to this city.
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They are on billboards, they are center of attention, and it is gorgeous, it’s an amazing fun sort of sexy music video and I love it. It’s honestly one of my favorite songs and I listen to It a lot. Finally, for medals, we are going to talk about a movie from 2023 called They Cloned Tyrone.
00:17:16
Now this film is about a man named Tyrone, who is you guessed it he’s cloned, he is a clone, and this film is sort of set in the 70s stylistically, but it is futuristic because I’ll say this I don’t think they was, they was out there cloning people in the 70s I don’t know, correct me if I’m wrong, if you are familiar with 70s style it was a lot of gold people had grills gorgeous grills.
00:17:52
They had chains. It’s a gorgeously styled movie and there was a lot of gold jewelry and it was very gaudy but not in AA bad way it was just it big bullet out there in her face. Next, we learn to talk about leather, and we are going to talk about one of the most iconic pieces of Afrofuturist media that features leather, okay.
00:18:24
Blade, the Blade film trilogy and the Blade comic series Blade is about a Black man who is a vampire hunter and he is also part vampire. He has such an iconic style. He has a, it’s the type of taper fade, real crop cut dark black sunglasses and he wears a long black, a leather coat it it sort of flies in the wind whenever he jumps down and punches people in the face.
00:19:02
It’s gorgeous sometimes he wears leather pants and as someone who has worn pleather before I don’t know how he does it, okay? Leather gets a little warm and with a leather jacket, but he rocks, it usually in media people I feel like people love to reference Blade and it There are really 2 key things.
00:19:25
It’s that long, black leather jacket, and this those dark black, they’re sort of tiny shades that’s a reference to Blade. It’s an iconic look and yeah, I just I had to mention that it’s because Blade is another widely known Afrofuturist piece of media, even though some people don’t I don’t know what afrofuturism is. If you know Blade, you know, at least one piece of Afrofuturist media so there you go onto pan-African print, there are frankly, a lot of the the pieces of media that feature pan-African print.
00:20:10
So I really had to narrow it down to 3 and the first one is another film that is very, very, very well-known and that is Black Panther. So the Black Panther film franchise and also the Black Panther comic series, if you don’t know about it, it is a story that takes place in a fictional African country, Wakanda, and there is a prince who is the Black Panther and he fights crime and the first Black Panther film that was created by Marvel, ugh, okay.
00:20:51
Anyways. And the first Black Panther film, the costume designer Ruth E Carter was very meticulous when she decided on look, what pieces of clothing she was going to take from different, very real African tribes in order to make Wakanda feel like it could actually be set on the continent of Africa. And so when you watch the movie, there are different aspects of Wakandan dress and their accessories that are from very real tribes.
00:21:27
The next thing that I want to talk about is New Masters by Shobo and Shof Coker and this is a comic series about outcasts who are trying to live under the oppressive thumb of alien colonizers. Now, the authors of the comic series are Nigerian and so it’s the fashion styles of the the books are an homage to the fashions in Nigeria so that was beautiful.
00:22:03
It’s also specifically in Lagos, but they do also take some inspiration from other West African countries. The final thing that I wanted to talk about in terms of pan-African print is Sun Ra’s Space is the Place now Sun Ra himself his music and his films are considered, it’s sort of a staple in afrofuturist media and studies.
00:22:26
He’s huge and Space is the Place was a 1974 film that is about a man play by Sun Ra who goes down to earth and tells Black people on earth, Hey, you can go to space and there’s no discrimination there. And a lot of the way Sun Ra’s dressing is inspired by ancient Egypt, and you know there’s beautiful golden headdresses, and he has a staff that sort of looks like an ankh, and there’s just a lot going on with his look and it is gorgeous and it’s fun.
00:23:11
It’s just, it’s a really fun movie. Um, it’s a avante-guard and I love it. I love stuff that’s a little weird.
00:23:20
So next we are going to talk about celestial bodies now, afrofuturism doesn’t always feature space, but sometimes it does and what it does. It’s really fun. I want to talk about Parliament-Funkadelic their clothing and even some of their songs were very spacey to me, jazz funk, as a genre is just so space themed it to me, it just feels like this is what
00:23:57
music on Venus or Jupiter, it would sound like it is so otherworldly, also, their outfits were groovy baby, very, very space theme. Now there’s a 2014 short film called Afronauts, which is about a group of Zambian people who we are trying to beat the US in the space race, and they’re going to send off this girl to space so that she can beat the Americans and it’s beautiful, okay, it’s entirely in black and white.
00:24:34
It’s lovely and I watched it. And I cried she lives on the moon, and that’s that’s all, I will say, that’s all I said now the final piece of media that I want to talk about for celestial bodies is Brother from Another Planet, which is about an alien who crash lands on earth and he visually looks like a Black man and he’s trying to navigate through Earth and unfortunately navigate bigotry as some white men are trying to hunt him down. Now you might have thought, oh my gosh, you haven’t really been talking about the fashion all that much.
00:25:22
It’s because most of the fashion in these 3 are a little bit more conceptual, and it’s sometimes it’s hard to really pin down celestial, but there are space themed pieces like people wearing stars in the case of Afronauts and Brother from Another Planet, they are space dwellers, so they going to space, they have their spacesuits and stuff like that, all 3 talk about how space is another avenue for exploration and hopefulness. And I love that it’s fun.
00:26:07
Now we are going to talk about technology technology’s everywhere in practically every single thing, so again had to narrow it down, so these are the these are the 3 we are going to be talking a lot about Star Trek adaptations. All right, starting off strong Star Trek Deep Space Nine. Whole lot of tech there.
00:26:30
I mean, we’re on a freaking spaceship. And then the subsequent Star Trek adaptation Star Trek Discovery, both of these feature Black people as super high level important roles in comparison to a lot of sci-Fi media Star Trek is incredibly progressive, and I did want to talk about some of its subsequent adaptations, because they’ve really said, okay, well, what if Black people were in charge? What if Black people held important roles in in The Star Fleet?
00:27:09
And I appreciate that I love it. Now I’m going to get into Far Sector which is a comic series written by NK Jemison, you might know her from some of her other books I haven’t read those books but I’ve heard they’re really good. Far Sector is continuation of The Green Lantern series.
00:27:34
But this time, a Black lady Green Lantern and frankly, she looks a lot like Janelle Monet and I love that and Green Lantern. I mean, they they wear, it’s a space suit and she has an AI who talks and wears clothes so I would consider that tech and also almost everyone on this planet is sort of Black and I appreciate that, because shout out to all Black people. And it was just, it was so fun to see because I went into it, knowing, okay, this is a comic and it’s about a Black lady who is a super-powered person with super-powered technology.
00:28:23
And then to see that a whole bunch of people were Black, there are a whole bunch of Black beings here on this planet. I thought, omg, whoa, it’s just a Black party. I’m excited, it was fun, it’s a, it’s a great comic.
00:28:40
It’s fun, I love it finally, Iwájú, which is a TV series from 2024. And it is a British Nigerian kid show that is all about kids, and they they they live in a futuristic world. And they have cute little backpacks that are techy, and they have little wristwatches.
00:29:09
And one guy even has a necklace, it glowed, it was a glowing necklace, so I’m pretty sure it did other stuff. But if you’ve watch the whole show, you can correct me if I’m wrong but yeah, all of these examples are just really fun, mostly adorable pieces of afrofuturist media. So if you just want to have a good time, I would really recommend starting with the technology section because yeah, they’re just they’re so cute, they’re very cute and it’s a bunch of people.
00:29:50
pressing stuff that should be an accessory, and then it pulls up a hologram. Now we have dandyism, and to talk about dandyism, I’m going to talk to you about Janelle Monet and Janelle Monet visually is dandyism, okay? Dressing in suits dressing in tall shoes with the big pompadour.
00:30:15
Poof hair, gorgeous fun. That’s dandyism, baby Janelle Monet had an emotion picture in 2018. It was called Dirty Computer, and it’s based off of the album Dirty Computer and it is so fun.
00:30:34
Gorgeous, it’s beautiful and fun, they’re in their suits just looking absolutely incredibly powerful. I also want to talk to you about a comic book series called Bitter Root. By some talented Black people, it is about a family that goes and kills off evil violent creatures while also having to deal with the systemic racism at the time, because we’re in 1920s, Harlem bad time, but they were very nice, beautifully tailored clothes.
00:31:14
They look amazing and although it’s not set in the future, it’s set in an alternative universe. Which it’s fantastical. It imagines well, what if Black people were central?
00:31:30
So it doesn’t break away from my definition both of these are it’s so fun. Both of them aren’t necessarily the happiest portrayals of Blackness, they do get pretty sad.
00:31:44
But you have to take the good with the bad. So I just want to say thank you so much for watching this. It’s incredible.
00:31:54
I hope you learned something. And if you want to learn more about this like I said, I will attach my essay that goes along with this and yeah, hope to see you again. Bye.
Kai's Cozy Corner 
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