“Bye Felicia”: Fetishism, Black Media, and White Audiences

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between African American films and white audiences to discuss language and affect appropriation from a Lacanian lens. In order to do this, Blaxploitation films are first examined as a cultural symptom of a particular complaint during the 1960s that served as a means to offer up a complaint about the situation African Americans were experiencing. The article then suggests that the role of white audiences’ participation in the commodification of African American stereotypes portrayed in these films allows for a perverse relationship between white audiences and black performers. This can be further seen in the appropriation of turns of phrases from the African American community by white audiences and the use of memes representing exaggerated black affect.