There is not a need or call to spell it Amerikah, just because you’re supposed to get a permit to film your commercial videos in the streets of Dallas. The streets are not the private recording studios of entertainers … who are still allowed to use such public places, but just let us know beforehand; you will be provided with the time & space to do pretty much as you please. And the public will be fore-warned and can come rubber-neck or stay away, as they so choose.

Honestly, I think the straightest call on Erikah Badu’s decisions & actions, is “poorly thought-out”.

She’s not getting a big send-up as “avant-guard”. Her performance is not even original – it’s a fairly close copy of what a couple other singers did in New York City, a short time ago.

The symbolism she is trying to invoked is indistinct, disjointed, and confusing. She got tangled up in an overly-complex attempt.

She treads treacherous turf, invoking JFK. The topic remains generally quite sensitive, and the particular reactions that different members of the public bring to the JFK assassination are literally all over the emotional & psychological map.

When picking & using symbols, it helps a great deal in formulating & delivery some/any message, if the symbols have agreed-upon meaning among the audience.

Erikah made a mistake, thinking she was going to invoke JFK, and produce a given pattern of reaction that would then illustrate & communicate her message. No: JFK & history on this topic mean too many different things, for anything useful to end up coming of it.

Next time, Erikah, keep it a lot simpler & clearer. And I don’t think it would hurt to keep your clothes on. Stripping just ain’t that compelling a symbol … not of the kind you want your message to be tied to.

@Kenni: It is so true, as you say, that Kennedy and the assassination location mean a lot. The problem, for message-purposes … is as you illustrate for us.

You say that President Kennedy “died partly for the things he stood for”.

Well, Sir … I was sitting in 6th grade class when the school intercom broke into the teacher’s lessons, announcing briefly that the President had been shot. Classes were thrown into chaos. Later in the day, the intercom announced that John F. Kennedy was dead.

Across the ensuing decades, I & everyone else has heard an endless parade of speculation about the assassination – especially concerning the reasons & motivations behind the killing.

Although you may feel confident in holding the view that Kennedy died (partly) on account of what he stood for, others – in huge numbers – have no such confidence. Or, they ascribe entirely different reasons & motivation to the killing.

The point & the importance is, that in reality, Kennedy and the Dallas assassination most assuredly do not represent any one uniform symbol to Americans (or the world). Trying to use Kennedy & Dealey Plaza as a symbol, as Erikah Bady did, is to simply open the proverbial can of worms, Pandora’s box.

Your view of Kennedy and his death is far from universal. And so is your’s, and your’s, and your’s. And mine, too. All an artist will get out of using Kennedy as a symbol, is tangled up in currents & forces pulling & swirling every which-way. This is no way to deliver a message: the message gets lost in the confusion.

There is no doubt that you are correct, that Badu has secured a large amount of publicity & recognition by publishing this video. It is a publicity-coup, no doubt. However, that does mean that she has succeeded in delivering any particular message; nor does getting tons of publicity make the performance “art”. Publicity, in & of itself, can be obtained by all sorts of dubious means. That she got publicity does not – by itself – tell us that she did something artistic.

I’m not saying Badu ain’t cool, ain’t provocative, ain’t an artist – what I am saying is the Window Seat video is too complicated, uses symbols that mean too many different things to too many different people, and that whatever message may have been intended has been lost in the confusion. She should have thought-through better, what she wanted observers to get of her performance, and avoided having it end up too much simply “controversial”.

You can’t just throw a bunch of important symbols into a pile – or a 5 minute video – and have it amount to an intelligible message.

Groupthink?

@Ted Clayton: Can’t ART and someone who wants to stand up for their beliefs just do that? It’s only controversial if you feed into it.

I dnt think Erykah should have been walkin around butt naked like that n front of children but I dnt think she should b charge bc nobody file a complaint, who she was naked around.