Lizzo's Rumors: The Art of Body Positivity

Shanny talks with Kimiko Matsumura, an art historian, and Chad Seales, a scholar of religion and culture, about Lizzo and the video for "Rumors."   Why was the video set in an ancient Greek and Roman visual world?   How does the song and video reflect Lizzo's message of body positivity?  And did Cardi B have her baby yet?!  All this and more is covered on today's episode.

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Our intro music was written by UWSP music student Derek Carden and our logo is by artist and graphic designer Ryan Dreimiller.

Transcript

Chad Seales: 0:00

I feel like I'm much more knowledgeable at the end of this podcast than it was at the beginning.

Shanny Luft: 0:10

Thank you for listening to no cure for curiosity, a podcast for curious people. In today's episode, we are curious about Lizzo and Cardi B's summer song Rumors. If you don't know the song, and especially if you haven't seen the video, do yourself a favor and watch the video now and then come back for this conversation. This episode was suggested by Kimiko Matsumura, an art historian at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point, she was struck by the videos portrayal of Lizzo and Cardi B as Greek goddesses, and especially the choice to put these women into classical art, particularly ancient Greek vase paintings. So Kimiko and I got together with Chad Seales, a professor of religion at the University of Texas at Austin, and we talked about Lizzo this song, and especially the video for rumors, I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did.

Lizzo Clip: 0:58

No, I do. They say I should watch the stuff I post, come on man. Say I'm turning big girls into pros. Come on, man.

Shanny Luft: 1:10

I guess I'll start with that. Well, let me let's do introductions first. Can you start with you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Kimiko Matsumura: 1:16

Sure. So I am Kimiko Matsumura. I am an Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point. And I am really interested in modern and contemporary art, and also the places where those things intersect with popular culture and visual culture. So I am always thrilled when I come across things like Liz's music video that are making these references to a field that I am teaching to students actively when these materials become available.

Shanny Luft: 1:46

And the other person we've invited into the conversation, it's Chad Seales, how you doing Chad?

Chad Seales: 1:50

Doing well, Shanny, for inviting me. I'm Chad Seales. I'm an associate professor of Religious Studies at University of Texas at Austin. And my research focuses on American religious history really interested in how religion and pop culture Connect. I study mainly the American South, but looking for connections in religion and music, and overlaps with histories of race, and pop culture with religion and film as well.

Shanny Luft: 2:15

So first, can we talk about Lizzo for a second what we know about her and in preparation for talking about this song,

Kimiko Matsumura: 2:22

I first encountered this song through Spotify through their their charting list, and I love her. I haven't been a fan for as long as she's been around. But I've been on board pretty much since Truth Hurts, which became incredibly viral very quickly, and kind of skyrocketed her to this realm of pop culture icon for her interest in body positivity for her messages of self love, and her just unapologetic desire to be herself in a space that is often cultivated and marketed in very limiting ways.

Shanny Luft: 3:01

Chad, did you know anything about Lizzo? Did you listen to her music or know anything about her career before this?

Chad Seales: 3:05

Now, I'm definitely the least qualified on this particular podcast. My area of research in particular is not obviously connected to Lizzo. But it's really interested in why evangelicalism and its musicality. It's sort of I'm interested in Bono and U2, and how they are basically appropriate images of Africa and blackness and a lot of their work. So hopefully we have a conversation, maybe that sort of maybe contextualizes was those performance in reception and relationship to some of those other students in pop culture as well?

Kimiko Matsumura: 3:36

Absolutely. I think one of the most interesting things about her as an artist is that she is kind of built up of cultural contradictions as we might frame them. I mean, she is a classically trained flutist, and features in her music. But she marries that to rap and r&b in a way that very few contemporary artists have done. And so I think, for me, that kind of dovetails with the classicism that is inherent to the visuality of this music, video, and the kinds of narratives that we as a society have about antiquity and classical training, and the arts as spaces of Westernness, spaces of whiteness, that are being occupied and flipped and reconsidered through the lens of blackness.

Shanny Luft: 4:23

The only other thing I know about Lizzo's career is that movie Hustlers that she was in in 2019. Right? So she's like, not only has she become like a super big pop star, but she's now like that I think that movie came out a year or two ago. So now she has this burgeoning acting career. And the other thing that stands out to me about her is like you said, Kimiko, her she advocates for body positivity. But in when you see her in interviews, she also has this like infectious joy. Like she's, she seems so happy and like surprised to be where she is. She's so comfortable with herself. And so like delighted to be be around other people and kind of wants to lift people up. So as we said, this song Rumors just came out August 13. So, Kimiko, what did you first notice when you started watching Lizzo's Rumors video?

Kimiko Matsumura: 5:11

From the second the video opened, I was just blasted with art historical references that I got super excited about. Because you know, when you do a PhD for any number of years, especially in the humanities field, that people don't necessarily feel like it's relevant to their lives. It's always exciting when you come across these real world cultural examples where there is a real discussion happening with the kinds of historical narratives that I spent my life studying,

Shanny Luft: 5:41

right in that video. I mean, it is like ancient Greek, top to bottom right is it's not like a moment or two, it's, they are dancing in urns, and on top of columns, and in their costumes. There's nothing particular about the song that connects it to that visual, but they they lean in heavily on like this kind of ancient Greek world, or at least this kind of like popular version of an ancient Greek world.

Kimiko Matsumura: 6:10

Yeah, so it's very much like a post modern reinterpretation of ancient Greek references. And so for example, within seconds of the video opening, you have a reference to the Apollo Belvedere era, which is this very famous sculpture that was unearthed during the Renaissance, a Roman copy of a Greek original, and the Farnese a Hercules, another one of these examples of a copy of a Greek original, made during the Roman period, and nursed again in the Renaissance by these powerful Renaissance families. Those two sculptures in particular were massively influential for Renaissance artists as they were conceiving of the ideal form. So AI from the get go was sold.

Shanny Luft: 6:55

So why do you think the, the the video starts off with those two famous pieces? Is there? How does it connect to the song or to Lyza herself or her career? Like what do you think? Why do you think that was a choice?

Kimiko Matsumura: 7:09

Well, I would say immediately, so the sculptures themselves are not just copied, they are presented to us as plus as individuals, so they are not within the heroic classicism that was promulgated by images like that, to make these sculptures have different body proportions, and to be more representative of maybe contemporary culture, I think is definitely a gesture toward body positivity, and the uplifting and celebration of bodies that go beyond these Greek ideals, because our culture is of course different. And the kinds of narratives we have about selfhood, and engaging with the world around us are different than the things that the Greeks believed, even as they informed our social and cultural lives now,

Chad Seales: 7:59

yeah, I mentioned it here about like the cultural contradictions as well how telling these positive stories of up ending to the white supremacy of Greek the sort of representations of, of Greek culture, I'm really fascinated with how that works really, in southern religion, with like the stories and Birth of a Nation it ends in this really weird toga party, in which they blast Greek culture onto the holy land. And then it ends with a marriage of a white man and a white woman. So it's this like reinforcement of this white supremacist ideals of Greek culture. And these keep coming up just in our everyday life around the university with these ideas of the great books and who's going to teach the great works. And it's very conservative textual approach that lends itself to a very conservative politics so that I'm really fascinated with this up ending of that, and then how other artists like Beyonce have done similar things. I was just interested to hear more from Camilla to about how much of how much of positive body image is in tension with an over sexualized subject.

Kimiko Matsumura: 9:05

In terms of the sexualization of the the content. It's really interesting, because on the one hand, Greek vase painting, which comes in two flavors, there's the black figure bought vase painting and the red figure vase painting, the the vases were used, often in things like the Greek Symposium, which was itself, you know, this fraternal masculinized drinking culture. So the vessels that they would be using for these parties would would be the the Greek vases, and the content would often be sexual. You have these highly sexualized scenes that are I mean, if you walk through the British Museum, some of them have very lewd scenes on them. So on the one hand, the sexualization in the video, I think is well within the the context of Greek art. But on the other hand, you know, there's A much larger, more complicated social narrative about blackness and sexuality.

Chad Seales: 10:06

Well, I read a Salon article about the video and it says in a positive way that it basically celebrates rear ends. So it's like, not the but it's all the way through and and it made me think like when I was in seminary Well, I went through some areas. I wasn't I don't claim to be a seminarian, but I was there for two years. But the there I remember a colleague in grad school, who was really interested in Sir Mix A Lot song. I like big butts. And she was saying this is a positive thing, because it's showing a different type of body image and popular culture. And so she viewed it as a positive. And I remember, several of the seminarian faculty were like, we're not so sure about that. Were they these were, you know, feminist scholars who, they they weren't quite ready to go in that direction.

Shanny Luft: 10:52

So there's a question about whether or not that is, that is a move in the right direction?

Chad Seales: 10:56

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, so Exactly. So is Lizzo's video, in some ways, an extent? Like is it carrying forth? This sort of cultural turn? And Sir Mix A Lot? Is it because a woman is saying is it no longer being objectified? Is it how is it? Is it resisting those things? To me?

Shanny Luft: 11:16

It is a substantial difference between Sir Mix A Lot saying I like big butts and Lizzo saying, I like my big, but it is a substantial difference in terms of one's relationship with one's body, can we get what we're gonna? What do you what are your thoughts?

Kimiko Matsumura: 11:30

So I think it can be both. On the one hand, I think that sexualization is the point, the idea that bodies that are outside of mainstream culture, and I mean, at this point, her body is mainstream culture. But if we think about precedents and traditions, the idea that bodies that are outside of these precedents and traditions, that they can be attractive, that they can be sexual, and have sexual lives is something that not there hasn't been a lot of space for in the public sphere. And so the idea that, that she can be sexual and be sexual on terms that appeal to her is, is, you know, well within the feminist reclamation of the body for your own pleasure and own purposes. I mean, it's complicated, because there are those resonances of inappropriate sexuality that were pinned on black bodies like lizards. But I think the reclamation is is really the point until wield it like a weapon, I think is the thing that makes the critique especially especially pointed,

Chad Seales: 12:34

I guess another way to frame the question is can Lizzo ever walk off stage? And if and by that, I mean, can you ever leave this performance of herself in the video? Can't you because you mentioned, which is a fascinating point, right along this contradiction. She's trained as a classically classically trained flutist. So could she walk off this particular stage of this video that's popular onto another stage and join an orchestra and make a similar critique from a different stage? So it or is the is the popularity of this video? Is it? Can she ever leave that particular stage? I guess that's what I'm asking.

Kimiko Matsumura: 13:15

Yeah, I mean, I think that the fact that she is both this, this twerking goddess in this video, and a classically trained flutist are also just inherently part of the complexities of well, making more complex identities, that you are never just one thing and that I think she tries to remind people that she contains multitudes. And then that way, is is part of a narrative that is looking to break down those reductionist ideas of what constitutes black identity and female black identity by looking at these these cultural sources that are not traditionally occupied by black women, either. I mean, I think slightly related to this idea. I think she's conscious of that. When she performs when she performed at the Grammys, she had an all black female orchestra behind her. So I think she recognizes the ways that these kinds of classical Heritage's have been exclusionary and is actively trying to broaden our ideas of what constitutes culture, but also to remind us that we are able to be more than sexuality to be more than artistic training.

Chad Seales: 14:31

Yeah, that's absolutely fascinating. I didn't know that about the all black orchestra that she performed with. So that juxtaposition of what seems to be opposed of classical and hip hop, putting those together with an all black orchestra behind it. That sounds absolutely fascinating and making a visual effort to combine all that in one place. I'm always fascinated with how like YouTube's Bano con-- and how they constantly engaged with what they saw is black musicality. but always from a distance, so they would have the Harlem Gospel Choir behind them. Or they have the psuedo gospel singers behind them. And there's a kind of caricature of an emotional blues tradition. One of the things that Bono says that is absolutely crazy is like he says this story about how when he went to LA in the 80s, and hip hop was just breaking that he could hear and those sounds African music, and so he, he talks about Africans as genetically musical. And but his musicality there that he imagines is one that leads to hip hop and leads to Jay Z, and leads to the consumption of a particular black musicality. That's very, yeah, it's very highly commodified, and rounded at the edges. It doesn't bring into the conversation like the Fisk Jubilee Singers, or it doesn't bring into these traditions that are like classical training, like you're talking about. So I just find that a very compelling image to think of a black orchestra behind Lizzo. putting that all together and not not seeing those things as separate and apart. But as part of one bigger tradition, that's multiple, a lot of stuff going on.

Kimiko Matsumura: 16:14

Yeah, I mean, I think too the fact that she plays the flute, I mean, like, I played the flute for a hot minute, I don't know, like six months when I was 12 years old, because it was the thing that, you know, pricy young ladies played, and that was what I was attracted to, when I had to pick an instrument, the image of who a flutist is, is very particular. I mean, there are if you talk to band students, you know, they have their, their stereotypes of the kinds of people who play each type of instrument and, and the idea of this very refined proceed competitive flute player is something that persists and I think is an immediate contradiction on the surface of who she is as if we want to phrase it just like a character chat. I don't think you're necessarily wrong. I mean, success for is a two way street. It's not just what you're putting out there. It's the way that the audience is responding to you. And it's, it's definitely she is in a moment right now in which these kinds of narratives of Reclamation and self making are at the forefront of what we as a culture are trying to do that and that makes her more palatable and more acceptable.

Shanny Luft: 17:22

So Cardi B is also in the video. She's like, featured in it. And she's pregnant in the video, right? That's not my imagination. She is pregnant, like right now.

Kimiko Matsumura: 17:31

Well, not anymore. She just had her son a few days ago.

Shanny Luft: 17:34

Hot-breaking news podcast. Her son was just born

Cardi B Clip: 17:41

Yeah. Yeah. Made a millionaire school.

Shanny Luft: 17:45

And and her outfit Cardi B's outfit? Like it's, it's clearly intending to kind of celebrate her body.

Kimiko Matsumura: 17:51

Yeah, I mean, I guess I thought about this too. I love cardio is rapid this. It's so fun. And I guess, you know, part of her whole trajectory, too, has to do with her highly sexualized narrative and what her career was before she was a rapper, she's very publicly was a stripper before she she broke out on the scene. And she's never shied away from that. I guess, for me, the thing that is really interesting about her pregnancy, is that in the context of the video, it's another facet of women's lives, lives and the dimensions that you can hold while also, you know, having a sex life and being a part of these larger cultural sort of Reclamations of behavior. I agree with you the costume is very it accentuates the bump

Chad Seales: 18:45

I guess what's cool in some ways about you know, pop culture and these there's, like you're saying there's so many cultural contradictions, as soon as the powerful messages like gaining agency or control over the presentation.

Kimiko Matsumura: 18:55

Yeah, Chad. I think that out of all the elements of the video, her pregnancy is actually the hardest thing to quantify, which is what's kind of makes its prominent display the thing that's really kind of fascinating about it.

Shanny Luft: 19:07

So I don't want this conversation to to end without talking about Disney. Part of the reason it caught my attention is because I teach New Testament early Christianity class here. When I talk to students about and ask them what Hades is, or what they know about it. 100% of the time, they talk about that Hercules movie, like every day, that's what they know that like when you say Hades the thing a picture is that character from that Hercules movie, but I know it's voices coming out of the screen. But like that movie had a big impression on my students in terms of least that character. So I was intrigued by how what you saw between the connection of that film and the rumors video.

Kimiko Matsumura: 19:47

Sure. So the narrative is being told. Basically, the narrator's of the story are seven black women who refer to themselves as the media uses, and they are in the style of Greek vase painting. And they are all voiced by black women and in skin tone and presentation. So I think and this is sort of the thing that all the the pop culture press has caught on to is that it seems like the idea was to depict Lizzo. And her dancers, who are also a team of all black women are varying body types, to a template that is maybe coming from something like Disney's Hercules, as the narrator's of the story, who sing their way through and are the fabulous and sometimes lascivious background characters who pursue the story. So I think that affinity for vase painting and then also for the portraying the Muses, as black women is probably where this kernel of an idea came from, and then sort of mutated outward from there.

Shanny Luft: 20:59

You know, it's interesting to be connecting what you just said, and what Chad talked about earlier in Hercules, the muses are kind of background characters, right? They show up for certain songs, but their existence is to push the plot of the main characters forward. That's the other thing about the rumors video is it takes the Muses and puts them in the foreground. Right, the reason chat I'm connecting to you is because you talked earlier about Banos music videos or performances in which there's a recognition of black performers, but they have to stand behind them like, like the meat, like the classical music is do and sort of help him reach the heights of whatever he wants to reach. In this case, it's just the rumors. Video is just a story about the muse. It's like they get to be the main characters, and they get to be the only characters and men don't have anything to say or do or comment on, or there's no men interacting with them in the video.

Chad Seales: 21:50

I think this is where I'm convinced by Kimiko I mean, that's the it seems like that's the power of the video and the power of Lizzo. And I mean to push to inverse background and foreground, and then everything you said, Tony, about, like the presentation and the visuals at work in that way. Yeah,

Kimiko Matsumura: 22:05

I mean, I think the it's very much about the centering of the feminine and anytime a masculine body appears in the video, it's it's an image, it's not a person. And the only implication of someone who have the presence of men is really in Cardi B is pregnancy because all the all the characters, the dancers are women, Cardi and Lizzo, are women it's only in the statues and in the wall frescoes and in the phalluses that are perpetually in the background that you see any hint at the male. It feels very much like an inversion of male gaze sort of situation where this is their made of women, this is this their for their for each other and their own purposes. I mean, it simultaneously embraces and pushes away the idea that they are there for a male consumption.

Shanny Luft: 22:59

Kimiko, I want to thank you so much. You're an assistant professor of art history at UWSP. And Chad Seales is a professor of religious studies at UT-Austin. Thank you both for this conversation. I really appreciate it. Enjoy talking to you.

Kimiko Matsumura: 23:10

It's so fun to talk about this stuff anytime. Let me know.

Chad Seales: 23:14

Well, thanks, Shanny. You're great. It's nice to meet you. Kimiko.

Kimiko Matsumura: 23:17

Nice to meet you too Chad. Thanks for having me and indulging in my last minute whim.

Chad Seales: 23:22

I felt like I'm much more knowledgeable at the end of this podcast than I was at the beginning.

Shanny Luft: 23:28

I'm so grateful to Chad Seales and Kimiko Matsumura for chatting with me about this is rumors. If you enjoy no cure for curiosity, the best way to support the podcast is to let other people know about it. I'll see you in two weeks.

Gretel Stock: 23:43

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