Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hey Jamie.
Speaker 2: Here a quick note if you're listening to this episode.
Speaker 2: This is part two of the Dodson Siblings series on
Speaker 2: sixteenth Minute, So if you haven't listened already, please go
Speaker 2: back to episode one to hear the summary of the
Speaker 2: story and my interview with Kevin Ampon Dodson. Thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you, Hello, and welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the
Speaker 2: podcast where we take a closer look at Internet characters
Speaker 2: of the day and what that says about us and
Speaker 2: the Internet and us on the Internet. My name is
Speaker 2: Jamie Loftus, but if my mom had her way, it
Speaker 2: would have been Randy.
Speaker 3: With an I.
Speaker 2: Fortunately she saw porcelain doll on QVC named Jamie, and
Speaker 2: here we are. This is part two of sixteenth Minutes.
Speaker 2: First story about Kelly and Antoine Dotson, who first came
Speaker 2: to prominence in the summer of twenty ten after they
Speaker 2: appeared on the news in Huntsville, Alabama. The story focused
Speaker 2: on an attempted rape. Kelly Dotson and her family reported
Speaker 2: that a man broke into their home in the projects
Speaker 2: in the middle of the night while her brother and
Speaker 2: young daughter were home, and the rapist then escaped out
Speaker 2: A second floor window. When Antoine came to Kelly's aid
Speaker 2: quick refresher. Here's the original clip and mark the woman.
Speaker 4: The victim tells us that a man broke into her
Speaker 4: house and tried to rape her.
Speaker 5: Her brother went in and he tried to help around,
Speaker 5: but the man got away, leaving behind though evidence of
Speaker 5: his visit. Awaine Don said, heard his sister screamed and
Speaker 5: ran to help.
Speaker 4: Well, obviously we have a rapist in Lincoln Park.
Speaker 6: He's climbing in your windows.
Speaker 7: He's snatching your people up, trying to rape them.
Speaker 5: So y'all needs a had your kids, had your wife
Speaker 5: and Hadjehod because they raping everybody out here.
Speaker 2: And if you need more of a brush up than that,
Speaker 2: please go back to part one of this episode. This
Speaker 2: clip was famously remixed in a YouTube series called Auto
Speaker 2: Tune the News by the Gregory Brothers and became an
Speaker 2: international sensation, with Antoine Dotson making appearances in entertainment for
Speaker 2: the next decade and a half, including I Guess here
Speaker 2: You can hear my interview with Kevin in part one,
Speaker 2: where he reflects on his life prior to the news
Speaker 2: clip and what it looked like afterward and into today.
Speaker 2: But already we're talking a lot about Antoine, and that's
Speaker 2: what I want to discuss in part two of this series.
Speaker 2: The bead Intruder story was very quickly pivoted to Antoine Dotson,
Speaker 2: slowly edging Kelly Dotson out of the story altogether. In
Speaker 2: this episode, I'd like to examine that more closely. And
Speaker 2: just a note, in keeping with my interview with Kevin
Speaker 2: Antoine Dotson where he refers to Antoine as an alter ego,
Speaker 2: I'll be referring to him as Kevin for Part two.
Speaker 2: I can't, in good faith but grudge Kevin for wanting
Speaker 2: to leverage his online fame, even if, as he admits,
Speaker 2: it wasn't always completely honest, because it's not his fault
Speaker 2: that he was framed in the way he was, or
Speaker 2: that he was essentially chosen as the protagonist by the
Speaker 2: media and by the Internet. And what's more, he was
Speaker 2: the sibling that seemed more interested in capitalizing on this notoriety.
Speaker 2: While there's plenty of examples of the press being interested
Speaker 2: in Kelly, the feeling never appeared to be very mutual.
Speaker 2: I wasn't able to get in touch with Kelly Dotson,
Speaker 2: But if she ever chooses to speak on the internet
Speaker 2: cyclone that surrounded an assault on her in the future.
Speaker 2: That's her call. If she doesn't want to revisit that time.
Speaker 2: It makes total sense and people should respect that. But
Speaker 2: the fact remains from the very beginning, it was Kelly
Speaker 2: who was consistently getting lost in a story that was
Speaker 2: about her, a black woman who had reported a violent
Speaker 2: rape attempt while her daughter and brother were in the house.
Speaker 2: I mean, she says so herself in this clip from
Speaker 2: Judge Jerry Springer in twenty twenty one. And keep in mind,
Speaker 2: Kevin confirmed that most of this was put on in
Speaker 2: terms of there being any actual conflict between them, But
Speaker 2: Kelly is very adamant about her part in the story
Speaker 2: being erased, and to me it sounds very sincere.
Speaker 4: I want him to like put on my shoe for once.
Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying, Like you know what I've
Speaker 4: been through these last eleven years since this attack. All
Speaker 4: is business antwinas Antwina, even when I'm will we together,
Speaker 4: we go out and pub but we can't even sit
Speaker 4: down and enjoy our mires or not because why people
Speaker 4: want to take picture's way Antoine, Antoine, It's all about
Speaker 4: Antoine what about me. I'm the victim. Oh, yes, yes,
Speaker 4: it is like that. I'm the victim because it's all
Speaker 4: it's always about anton House, Antoine doing. He's fine, he's living,
Speaker 4: He's not the victim.
Speaker 1: He didn't get it hurt.
Speaker 2: I don't think we should ignore it. Kelly's treatment from
Speaker 2: moment one clocks is pretty straightforward massage noir and ingrained
Speaker 2: prejudice and dismissal of black women. When this clip went
Speaker 2: viral almost fifteen years ago, it was seamlessly accepted, including
Speaker 2: by high school me, that it was okay to mock
Speaker 2: a black woman quite literally going public with a rape
Speaker 2: allegation and turning it into this joke. Very few people
Speaker 2: asked if Kelly Dodson was okay at this time. I mean,
Speaker 2: I wasn't even completely sure that the bed Intruder boxing
Speaker 2: match was fake until I confirmed it with Kevin. And
Speaker 2: so it's this combination of race, class, and gender discrimination
Speaker 2: that leads to Kelly getting sidelined. And when it comes
Speaker 2: to what Kevin refers to as the character of Antoine Dodson,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of telling markers on how media from
Speaker 2: a white lens use and commodifies blackness and in Antoine's case,
Speaker 2: black queerness as well, because even as years past after
Speaker 2: this story, Antoine was interrogated about his sexuality consistently, as
Speaker 2: if it had to do with anything. There's way more
Speaker 2: to dig into here. Unfortunately, someone way smarter than me
Speaker 2: has already written brilliantly on this very topic, so let's
Speaker 2: get him in here. Professor Gabriel Peoples is an assistant
Speaker 2: professor in the Gender Studies Department at Indiana University Bloomington
Speaker 2: and is the author of The Forgotten Kelly Dodson, Viral
Speaker 2: Performance and the Interplay of Excess and Erasure, and he's
Speaker 2: currently in the process of completing his book Go in
Speaker 2: Viral Uncontrollable Black Performance. I really loved his piece and
Speaker 2: I was lucky to get a chance to talk with him.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I grew up without a
Speaker 2: bedroom door and it shows in my personality.
Speaker 8: Here's our talk.
Speaker 5: I'm Gabriel Allen Peebles. I am a assistant professor of
Speaker 5: Gender Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Also a DJ,
Speaker 5: and I've been djaying longer than I have been teaching.
Speaker 2: I did not know you're a DJ, and as a
Speaker 2: comedian turned attempted thinker. I appreciate that narrative to you.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to start by asking you what was
Speaker 2: your memory of the Dodson's becoming viral stars at the
Speaker 2: time in twenty ten.
Speaker 5: You know, the memory is different than the history of
Speaker 5: the event, right, Yeah. I want to say that I
Speaker 5: was living in Atlanta, Georgia at the time, and no,
Speaker 5: actually I was there.
Speaker 6: That's all that.
Speaker 5: I was in Atlanta and this thing just started moving online.
Speaker 5: Like I can't really explain what was going on. I
Speaker 5: received it from a friend, like just the link, and
Speaker 5: I looked, and I want to say, this was when
Speaker 5: it was on YouTube, and it was just.
Speaker 6: The newscast, and I was curious.
Speaker 5: I was just like, and I think it was a summer,
Speaker 5: you know, I'm thinking it must have.
Speaker 6: Been July or something like that.
Speaker 5: And I'm looking and I'm like, I didn't know if
Speaker 5: this was a parody or if this was like a
Speaker 5: real thing. And toward the end, I felt like, I
Speaker 5: think this is a real thing. But I had to
Speaker 5: watch it again because and I think that there was
Speaker 5: something about that. If we can, you know, return to
Speaker 5: the confusion I had around if this was real or not.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but I just remember it being hot.
Speaker 5: And I'm trying to maintain my ac control the bills,
Speaker 5: and I get this thing and I'm like, I'm like,
Speaker 5: what is this. I look at it and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 5: I'm going to remember this. Like I think I just
Speaker 5: set it aside. But I was just like I was disturbed,
Speaker 5: you know, because I at first I couldn't tell what
Speaker 5: was real. And then when I kind of figured out
Speaker 5: what was real, I started to look more into it.
Speaker 5: So it was like the research started. I mean, I
Speaker 5: wasn't even interested in research proper like that. I just
Speaker 5: had to know, right.
Speaker 2: So this is like a ten years in the making piece.
Speaker 2: I really appreciated your piece. You really carefully traced how
Speaker 2: this story even got on YouTube in the first place,
Speaker 2: because this was before any news stations were really uploading
Speaker 2: their own broadcasts, Like you know, someone ripped it, posted
Speaker 2: it to Reddit and then to YouTube. In the news clip,
Speaker 2: you sort of break down a lot of what is
Speaker 2: being done to already begin this marginalization process. Can you
Speaker 2: talk me through that a little bit?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, for me, it was the visual techniques
Speaker 5: that they were using, which I thought were dangerous particularly
Speaker 5: because the entire encounter was based upon the sexual assault
Speaker 5: of Kelly Dotson, and one of the things that happens
Speaker 5: in the news broadcast is that they zoom in to
Speaker 5: the location of the assault in a way that I
Speaker 5: guess is common on the news, but at the same
Speaker 5: time rendered or occurred to me as being insensitive, insensitive
Speaker 5: as to perhaps the insecurities that allowed this to happen
Speaker 5: in the first place, and also not being aware of
Speaker 5: how they are exposing this very location. So if somebody
Speaker 5: wanted to maybe it was somebody different, if they wanted
Speaker 5: to try something out, they knew exactly where to go
Speaker 5: that you know, had the thin veil of security that
Speaker 5: might allow them to get into somebody's home and violate, right.
Speaker 5: And I felt like, you know, everything that I've seen,
Speaker 5: it was like I've seen this before, or I understood
Speaker 5: this about the people being represented already.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: So these notions around kind of like public and private,
Speaker 5: around even just property in and of itself, right, I
Speaker 5: think has a legacy, particularly when we're thinking about black
Speaker 5: people in the United States, who at one point were
Speaker 5: being ensured as property. And so these kind of affordances
Speaker 5: of public life private life already you know, there's a
Speaker 5: there's a legacy that dictates it's not something that is
Speaker 5: afforded to black people in the United States. And it
Speaker 5: felt like a moment whereby it was a moment that
Speaker 5: was proving the connections right to those kinds of moments.
Speaker 6: And even still, right after all of that, if you
Speaker 6: were to.
Speaker 5: Add up the amount of time that Kelly Dotson spoke
Speaker 5: and this is nothing against the family, this is all
Speaker 5: about editing, this is all about while forty eight news.
Speaker 5: If you added up the amount of time that Kelly
Speaker 5: Dotson spoke as the person that experienced the violation, the violence,
Speaker 5: and the amount of time that Antoine Dotson spoke, right,
Speaker 5: it kind of begins this domino effect that I get
Speaker 5: into further in the book, but that ultimately continues this
Speaker 5: kind of erasure of Kelly Dotson, right, Yeah, and I
Speaker 5: you know, but at the same time, right, as a
Speaker 5: black performance theorist, I'm also very interested in agency, as
Speaker 5: limited as it may be, and the possibilities that Kelly
Speaker 5: Dotson is also very aware of what's going on, right
Speaker 5: and perhaps pushing back against being kind of like centralized,
Speaker 5: being made spectacular, particularly in her position as a black
Speaker 5: woman in the United States.
Speaker 2: Could you sort of walk me through how you define
Speaker 2: viral performance.
Speaker 5: I would like to say that that is not my term.
Speaker 5: So viral performance is, I would say, belongs to Miriam
Speaker 5: Felton Danski, who is really locating it within intentional performances
Speaker 5: that artists take that then spread uncontrollably, right, either in
Speaker 5: terms of people hearing about a computer virus that got out,
Speaker 5: that got out of control because artists invited people to
Speaker 5: interact with this computer and then like spread a rumor.
Speaker 5: You know, it could be like even on that level, right,
Speaker 5: but it's about intentionality and then kind of like to
Speaker 5: spread that results. And my thing was to as I'm
Speaker 5: writing this, I'm trying to think about, okay, like what
Speaker 5: continues in that vein right when I'm looking at this moment,
Speaker 5: but also what's very different And for me that came
Speaker 5: back to in a large way blackness, right, And so
Speaker 5: we kind of tabled something earlier in the interview, which
Speaker 5: is when I first see this newscast, I'm thinking, I
Speaker 5: don't know, it just feels too familiar. And I think
Speaker 5: that this was because as an African American in the
Speaker 5: United States, myself having been inundated with news media. I
Speaker 5: was familiar with these types of depictions of black people
Speaker 5: in the news, almost to the extent that I thought
Speaker 5: it was a parody. You know, you have to understand that,
Speaker 5: like I'm encountering it like that. So then when I'm
Speaker 5: thinking about black virality, I'm thinking about how that knowledge
Speaker 5: right of this representation already existed for me. Right, This
Speaker 5: sets it apart to me from the ways that I
Speaker 5: might think about it as merely a viral performance, because
Speaker 5: it's always it's almost like they're already viral before you
Speaker 5: encounter them, right, we already for some reason, I already
Speaker 5: know something about this, and then the thing happens. Then
Speaker 5: it spreads as a result of this particular newscast, and
Speaker 5: it goes viral in the ways that you and I
Speaker 5: have come to understand, right, particularly around viral videos. So
Speaker 5: I think that for me, black virality really distinguishes. Going
Speaker 5: viral is an ongoing phenomenon, particularly when we're talking about
Speaker 5: representations of black people or literal black people, And so
Speaker 5: it's about it's the way that a rapid circulation of
Speaker 5: black performance happens that spreads uncontrollably afterwards, right, And then
Speaker 5: it becomes commonplace as a result of that spread. So
Speaker 5: in some ways, it's very similar to viral performance. Right,
Speaker 5: there's a rapid ubiquity that I think both of them share.
Speaker 5: But for me, viral performance doesn't exactly capture the ways
Speaker 5: that Black people and representations of Black people are already
Speaker 5: marked before they ever go viral. That then marks them further. Also,
Speaker 5: Black virality for me is capturing the black ways that
Speaker 5: performances go viral, even this particular moment. Right, Eventually it
Speaker 5: gets on to World Star hip Hop. It's doing some
Speaker 5: different things on World Star hip Hop than it does
Speaker 5: on YouTube, and so you know, it's thinking about that.
Speaker 5: It's thinking about the ways that death and birth are simultaneous,
Speaker 5: and Black cultures around the world, it's an African diasporic ethos.
Speaker 5: There is no birth without death.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: It's almost like the newscast died at the same time
Speaker 5: the remix was birthed, you know what I mean, And
Speaker 5: then the remix died, and then it keeps going. This
Speaker 5: particular performance, it keeps going right again, right, black ways
Speaker 5: that we're experiencing rapid ubiquity when it comes to performances, right,
Speaker 5: And so that's kind of how I'm arriving to that right,
Speaker 5: I'm like looking at this viral performance and I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 5: there's some things happening here, and how do I account
Speaker 5: for the differences.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back with more of my talk with
Speaker 2: Professor Peoples. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. One time my
Speaker 2: coworker at a haunted hay ride almost got struck by lightning.
Speaker 3: She was fine.
Speaker 2: Dangerous job though, and we are talking about the phenomenon
Speaker 2: that was the Dodson siblings saga with Professor Gabriel Peoples.
Speaker 2: Here's the rest of our talk. You unpack all of
Speaker 2: the ways in which already moment one, when this airs
Speaker 2: on LAT forty eight, Kelly Dotson is already being edged
Speaker 2: out of the story because, like you saying, I mean,
Speaker 2: Antoine Dotson has no way of knowing how this is
Speaker 2: going to be edited. Who's I mean? The editor could
Speaker 2: have not you know, could have included one line from him.
Speaker 2: They could have included nothing and just totally centered Kelly, Like,
Speaker 2: there's so many different ways could have gone for you.
Speaker 2: Why why does the NewsLens switch to Antoine and why
Speaker 2: does that sort of, at least in my perspective, he
Speaker 2: continued doubling down and down and down, because by the
Speaker 2: time you get to the remix, Kelly is barely there,
Speaker 2: like she it's just one sentence from her.
Speaker 5: Right, And even by the time we get to that
Speaker 5: Reddit meme, you don't even see her. Right, there's a
Speaker 5: I mean a lot of this is about legacy, right,
Speaker 5: which again, like is another way that I'm or another
Speaker 5: thing that I use.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: So ghetto witness right is about how particular kinds of
Speaker 5: people are found to give testimony to a trauma that
Speaker 5: they've witnessed or experienced, right, And the news seeks folks
Speaker 5: out right, And I think that there's a way that
Speaker 5: me seeing that before, right, it helps me to it
Speaker 5: helps me to think about legacy in this moment.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: So you have how black people, particularly how black gay
Speaker 5: men have been used as comic relief. So that's happening,
Speaker 5: So let's hold that in our minds.
Speaker 6: And then at the same.
Speaker 5: Time, you have this legacy of black women being inviolable subjects, right,
Speaker 5: So folks who cannot be violated, right, which is also
Speaker 5: tethered to these toxic ideas about their own sexuality and
Speaker 5: the ways that they are imagined to be particularly licentious,
Speaker 5: therefore a rape can't happen, and it's president in fiction
Speaker 5: and nonfiction right in terms of the ways that black
Speaker 5: women have been historically right noted or or recorded in
Speaker 5: particular kinds of instances, the ways that they've been figuratively
Speaker 5: imagined that are also linked to those real historical instances
Speaker 5: of being in violable subject This is also tethered right
Speaker 5: to the ways that black men are seen as particularly endowed.
Speaker 5: Angela Davis really helps us to point to these connections,
Speaker 5: and there's so you have all of these kind of
Speaker 5: legacies happening, right. This is the knowledge, if you will,
Speaker 5: that's being brought to this moment before it even goes viral.
Speaker 2: When it truly clicked for me was when you learn
Speaker 2: that this first kind of took off on our slash funny,
Speaker 2: where you know that so clearly demonstrates how seriously a
Speaker 2: good portion of the internet audience at this time was
Speaker 2: taking Kelly and taking the allegation was it went from
Speaker 2: zero to funny because of it, And a lot of
Speaker 2: that does seem to have to do with how the
Speaker 2: broadcast was edited.
Speaker 5: Yeah, within this, you know what it's said to be
Speaker 5: a community of communities, right, one of these communities is
Speaker 5: the subreddit funny, and whoever saw this wild forty eight
Speaker 5: newscast somehow digitized it and put it online in this subreddit,
Speaker 5: right because they thought it was funny. I just had
Speaker 5: all these moments of pause where I was like, Okay,
Speaker 5: slow down, let's let's slow down and look at what
Speaker 5: is happening. There's so much, right, So even even kind
Speaker 5: of like in terms of what was unfolding that day,
Speaker 5: I came to understand, I think, just minimally, right, Antoine
Speaker 5: Dotson's sister Kelly Dotson being violated in the same home
Speaker 5: that they were both in. It was enough for Antoine
Speaker 5: to want to respond the way that he responded. But
Speaker 5: then on top of that, there were things happening around
Speaker 5: the scene of the interview that even further gave him
Speaker 5: this kind of like righteous indignation that he has. And
Speaker 5: it comes back to something that you mentioned, right, It's
Speaker 5: just like people not being believed, right, particularly black women
Speaker 5: not being believed when they experienced sexual violence.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: So there was another woman, I'm assuming she lived in
Speaker 5: the community, who was basically saying, this never.
Speaker 6: Happened in our community.
Speaker 5: Okay, does that negate the reality that I experienced. Right,
Speaker 5: That's what I'm thinking. I'm imagining, right, these might.
Speaker 6: Be some thoughts going on.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so and then Moore, even the people in the complex,
Speaker 5: in the housing complex, they didn't take it seriously either, right,
Speaker 5: So they brought this to the attention of I mean,
Speaker 5: it wasn't like a front desk, but it was like
Speaker 5: the main adamin. I mean, they kind of they kind
Speaker 5: of laughed in their faces. So by the time while
Speaker 5: forty eight News, you know, is like okay, let's interview you,
Speaker 5: they had spoken to the housing administration, they already filed
Speaker 5: a police report. At some point this other lady pops up, Oh,
Speaker 5: this is never this never happened in our community. I mean,
Speaker 5: you didn't really need a lot more to make that
Speaker 5: more of a you know, make it more of a
Speaker 5: powder keg. And so anyway, I'm thinking about the viral
Speaker 5: afterlife as connected to black virality, right, because again, like
Speaker 5: I said, there's this kind of like cosmographic understanding of
Speaker 5: life and various religious and spiritual practic throughout the world
Speaker 5: where it's kind of like you die in the terrestrial
Speaker 5: and your birth and the spiritual at the same exact time, right,
Speaker 5: And I'm taking I'm taking this knowledge and I'm thinking about, like,
Speaker 5: how is this playing out in this realm of of virality?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 5: And so it's kind of like I pointed to that
Speaker 5: fire fraud moment, because this is a point where, like
Speaker 5: with the Viral Afterlife, you're talking about the ways that
Speaker 5: something goes viral, perhaps reaches a peak or a climax,
Speaker 5: and then it's like we almost don't hear about it again,
Speaker 5: but then we do, and it might be in a
Speaker 5: different form, right, And sometimes what we hear about after
Speaker 5: the climax goes beyond the climax, and sometimes it doesn't.
Speaker 5: And so Viral Afterlife is taking account of that. You
Speaker 5: can say, I'm giving folks language to think about, you know,
Speaker 5: how can we think about like this thing that's been
Speaker 5: rapidly circulated that a lot of people knew about at
Speaker 5: a particular moment in time, and then that thing kind
Speaker 5: of like comes back up years later. And when that
Speaker 5: thing is black, it just adds, it adds to the
Speaker 5: layers we have to dissect to understand what is really
Speaker 5: what is really happening in front of us, Right. So,
Speaker 5: and I explore this a bit more at length in
Speaker 5: the in the book, even in particular relationship to this
Speaker 5: moment that we're talking about on the newscast, right, So,
Speaker 5: the Gregory Brothers they continued in the same vein of
Speaker 5: kind of like finding these folks who are giving testimony
Speaker 5: in their own sincere kind of way auto tuning them,
Speaker 5: and then you know, just putting it out broadcasting themselves.
Speaker 6: Right as YouTube encourages you to do.
Speaker 5: And so I was shocked to see that they were
Speaker 5: on the credits for The Unbreakable Kimmy Smith. I know, yeah,
Speaker 5: you know if this is not the exact same thing, right,
Speaker 5: but in a completely fictional sense, not to mention the
Speaker 5: girl that's found underground is in this cult in Indiana, right, oh, Indiana.
Speaker 2: It all connects.
Speaker 5: But you know it's like when she emerges, a black
Speaker 5: man sees her, right, and then the news just goes
Speaker 5: to find this black man and then his vocals turned
Speaker 5: from I think they're immediately auto tuned.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not mistaken, especially because I didn't realize until
Speaker 2: I was researching this episode that that theme song was
Speaker 2: literally made by the Gregory Brothers. So it couldn't be
Speaker 2: clearer what's happening there.
Speaker 5: And you're pointing to another thing, right, which is the
Speaker 5: Black ways of going viral. Right, But there's a certain
Speaker 5: thing around vernacular. Not to necessarily tie it tie vernacular
Speaker 5: in a very particular way to black people, because as
Speaker 5: we know, that's of fiction anyway, right, Like, not only
Speaker 5: can people style switch when they speak, but oftentimes this
Speaker 5: stuff is cultural in terms of like how people sound.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: But if he starts that thing off by saying what
Speaker 5: had happened was there's a certain kind of like, I
Speaker 5: mean way that we have to understand that as being
Speaker 5: a black for a black vernacular phenomenon. I mean, there
Speaker 5: is such a thing as ebonics, right, they teach I
Speaker 5: don't know if they still teach it. But when I
Speaker 5: went to the University of Michigan as an undergrad, they
Speaker 5: were teaching in a bonics class and one of my
Speaker 5: friends took it, and she basically told me that everybody
Speaker 5: that didn't grow up around black cultures were failing that
Speaker 5: class horribly, right. They couldn't understand the formula, the formulas
Speaker 5: and the mathematics, the syntax. These Black ways of going
Speaker 5: viral actually become less of a theory and more of
Speaker 5: a reality when you start to get into the ways
Speaker 5: people are commenting on these viral performances, which you will
Speaker 5: often run into on comment walls. Something else I get
Speaker 5: into in the book the article, though, I'm really trying
Speaker 5: to just focus on before any of this travels, right,
Speaker 5: because black virality is also about how black performance travels.
Speaker 6: What all is happening? You know?
Speaker 5: So yeah, how can we before we get there? If
Speaker 5: we slow this moment down what all is happening? And
Speaker 5: then once we do that, we kind of understand how
Speaker 5: the rest of it can materialize. But you don't know
Speaker 5: unless you slow down this moment in the beginning, right, right,
Speaker 5: So slowing it down, it was like I've found some
Speaker 5: stuff on Facebook right where Antoine Dotson was just like,
Speaker 5: do y'all think this is a joke? And that gave
Speaker 5: me pause, and it also it reinforced the feeling that
Speaker 5: I was getting, like when then running across the auto
Speaker 5: tuned video, I was just like, something felt very about
Speaker 5: it actually to me. Yeah, and so it was reaffirming
Speaker 5: to also notice that Antoine Dotson found something in that too.
Speaker 6: Right. But Antoine is a businessman.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I mean he's literally in community college taking
Speaker 5: a mazuring in business. I want to say so It's
Speaker 5: like I think he was wrestling with multiple things. It
Speaker 5: was like recognizing the kind of moment that this could be,
Speaker 5: which he wouldn't be the first. Even in that reference
Speaker 5: that I gave you about leper count and Mobile, I
Speaker 5: think it was Mobile, Alabama, where there's these newscasters that
Speaker 5: go into this neighborhood, interviewing so many people in the neighborhood,
Speaker 5: and this guy is like, this is the agency, right
Speaker 5: that I'm that I'm wrestling with. Particularly when we're thinking
Speaker 5: about black virality, It's like black people they know the game, right, Like,
Speaker 5: you know, if they're living in subsidized housing at this
Speaker 5: moment in their life, there might be a point of recognizing, hey,
Speaker 5: this might be a moment where we can leverage it
Speaker 5: to get out of here, right right, right, too much
Speaker 5: chagrin of you know a lot of other folks that
Speaker 5: get mentioned, and you know, as this thing unfolds, right,
Speaker 5: the random black folks like me who are encountering this,
Speaker 5: and they're like, for whatever reason, they're feeling embarrassed, right,
Speaker 5: And so I'm inquiring about that, why are you? Like,
Speaker 5: why are you feeling embarrassed? Like I'm thinking, I'm trying
Speaker 5: to think about this, right, But it's like, when you've
Speaker 5: seen this particular scenario over and over and over again,
Speaker 5: there's a point where you tire of it.
Speaker 6: There's a point where.
Speaker 5: You recognize what it is that is attempting to be
Speaker 5: done and capitalized on. It's also appropriatet of right, because
Speaker 5: it's kind of like this recognition of the currency of blackness,
Speaker 5: but almost at the expense of the ways that we
Speaker 5: the rich ways that we can understand black people. And
Speaker 5: so it's hard to wrestle with because on an individual level,
Speaker 5: it's like, hey, I can use this to get out
Speaker 5: of here. On a collective level, there's also that recognition that,
Speaker 5: like they're taking this to be a joke, aren't they right?
Speaker 5: You know, But there's always kind of like that cleverness,
Speaker 5: right of like okay, well, how can I use this
Speaker 5: to my advantage? This is this is the black objecthood
Speaker 5: of this moment.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: The ways that people go viral are going to constantly increase, Right,
Speaker 5: the ways that black virality is experienced is going to
Speaker 5: constantly increase or change. Right, the mechanisms there's always a
Speaker 5: new mechanism being created to allow this. Yet until we
Speaker 5: kind of grapple with the very things that are you
Speaker 5: could say, variables if you will, in that virality in
Speaker 5: our regular, everyday irl. Right, it's not going to really shift.
Speaker 5: Some might say that it's gotten worse.
Speaker 2: Is there anything I didn't ask or touch on about
Speaker 2: Kelly Dodson and this story in particular that you would
Speaker 2: like to touch on?
Speaker 5: I mean, for me, I find it intriguing that, just
Speaker 5: as far as everything you've come across as well, to
Speaker 5: a large extent, Kelly Dotson tries to remain out of
Speaker 5: the spotlight, just because that's what I was picking up
Speaker 5: on myself, right, and I was, you know, I just
Speaker 5: wanted to emphasize that this too is feminism, is black feminism, right,
Speaker 5: the recognition of the of the camera, if you will,
Speaker 5: but also the recognition of everything that's happening outside of it,
Speaker 5: and the strength of that right and perhaps remaining outside
Speaker 5: of the camera in order to avoid some of the
Speaker 5: pitfalls of being made spectacular, right, of which there's so
Speaker 5: many examples of. I think there was a moment right
Speaker 5: where it was important to voice what happened. It was
Speaker 5: confronting something, right, it was I mean, the ways that
Speaker 5: sexual violence oftentimes is silenced and subjugated in order for
Speaker 5: the collective, in terms of a particular Black community, a
Speaker 5: particular Black family, in order for that collective to not
Speaker 5: kind of fall into these already pre existing stereotypes whereby
Speaker 5: people are already thinking they're hyper sexual in their criminal right.
Speaker 5: And this is a moment where that family stood up
Speaker 5: to that very tension. And I think that's important, you know,
Speaker 5: because a lot of things happen as a.
Speaker 6: Result, and people saw that.
Speaker 5: Okay, this is a phenomenon in our community right now.
Speaker 5: It tethered previous violences that were happening in Huntsville, Alabama,
Speaker 5: in that particular subsidized housing complex, and it kind of
Speaker 5: like gestured toward the other folks that exist out there
Speaker 5: who are actually being like experiencing rape right or sexual
Speaker 5: assault and can't or won't for various reasons, express that
Speaker 5: violence that they encounter. And it's kind of like an
Speaker 5: example of like what happens when you do right.
Speaker 6: You might be able to.
Speaker 5: Get extricate yourself from that moment of violence or from
Speaker 5: that scene of violence, that environment that enabled the violence.
Speaker 5: You might also be able to, in staying out of
Speaker 5: the spotlight, suggest something about your awareness of what the
Speaker 5: spotlight can do to black bodies right what it has done.
Speaker 6: My book is called Going.
Speaker 5: Viral Uncontrollable Black Performance, and it's going to be published
Speaker 5: by the University of Illinois Press in their New Black
Speaker 5: Studies series, and it essentially covers black people or representations
Speaker 5: of black people that have gone viral between the eighteenth
Speaker 5: century to the present, and it thinks about what they
Speaker 5: do when reaching those peak levels of visibility with that visibility, right,
Speaker 5: and so how they can actually leverage it for liberation
Speaker 5: in different kinds of ways, on individual levels and on
Speaker 5: collective levels. And I go from the conceptual photography and
Speaker 5: images and and even jewelry making of Hank Willis Thomas,
Speaker 5: the presence in the performance of Radio Raheem and do
Speaker 5: the right thing.
Speaker 6: Everything we just talked about, but a lot more.
Speaker 5: In reference to the newscast in twenty ten that went viral,
Speaker 5: the remix video attested to that, and then kind of
Speaker 5: like the viral afterlife of all of that moment.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Putting this episode together has been really fun and really challenging,
Speaker 2: and I'm just so glad to have your voice in it.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much to Professor Peoples for speaking with me,
Speaker 2: and I cannot wait for when his book go in
Speaker 2: viral Uncontrollable Black Performance releases in spring twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: I wanted to start with the Dodson story because it
Speaker 2: marked a moment that's pretty rare on the Internet these days,
Speaker 2: a genuine monocultural moment. It took these normal people and
Speaker 2: thrust them into the spotlight. That happens is always telling
Speaker 2: about the time and place you're in, and not just
Speaker 2: how the public reacts, but how the subjects themselves react,
Speaker 2: because this level of sudden notoriety is just not something
Speaker 2: humans were made to be able to process. And even
Speaker 2: though the stories can feel a little dated, they bring
Speaker 2: out what Professor Peoples was talking about, these age old
Speaker 2: prejudices and dismissals. Kelly's erasure from the story is not
Speaker 2: something unique through the twenty first century. It's built on
Speaker 2: centuries of dismissal of black women. Antoine's elevation is not
Speaker 2: something unique to the twenty first century. The way black
Speaker 2: queermen have been treated by the public has always been pointed,
Speaker 2: and seeing him have the reins on his own narrative
Speaker 2: after all these years makes a special kind of person,
Speaker 2: and so long may the Dodson siblings reign, even if
Speaker 2: that means different things for each of them. Dodson's your
Speaker 2: sixteenth minute ends.
Speaker 1: Now Le's done. Okay.
Speaker 3: So at the end of every single episode of this show,
Speaker 3: I just want to take a moment for whatever I want,
Speaker 3: whatever feels good, whatever feels right. And so for our
Speaker 3: inaugural moment of whatever I want, here are my parents
Speaker 3: trying to explain what they think this show is about.
Speaker 3: Enjoy see you next week.
Speaker 1: What if I asked you to describe what you think
Speaker 1: the show is about? Can you do that?
Speaker 8: I believe the sixteenth minute refers to the widely known
Speaker 8: concept of fifteen minutes of fame. But when that light
Speaker 8: begins to douse, what are they doing thereafter?
Speaker 1: Great? Great answer? Are you prepared to give an answer? Okay?
Speaker 1: So in your mind, what is sixteenth minute the show about?
Speaker 6: Again?
Speaker 7: That whole fifteen minutes? Everyone's famous fifteen minutes, or so
Speaker 7: said Andy war We think, but sometimes it lasts more.
Speaker 7: Maybe it goes into a sixteenth minute or seventeenth Maybe
Speaker 7: that's the show.
Speaker 2: Well, seventeenth would be kind of someone else's business, But
Speaker 2: I'm trying to sixteenth feels that's the one I'm in
Speaker 2: charge of.
Speaker 1: All Right, great answers, Everybody, great answers. Okay, see you
Speaker 1: next week.
Speaker 2: Sixteenth Minute is a production of fool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: It is written, posted, and produced by.
Speaker 3: Me Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtterman and Robert Evans. The
Speaker 2: amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Speaker 2: Our theme song is by Sad thirteen and Pet. Shout
Speaker 2: outs to our dog producer Anderson, my Kat's Flee and
Speaker 2: Casper and my pet rock Bird who will outlive us
Speaker 2: all Bye.