How do representations of women of color serve to “brand” TV networks and film studios? In May, 2018 Professors Aymar Jean Christian and Miriam Petty screened clips of recent critically acclaimed shows like Insecure and Queen Sugar and discussed how they fit into strategies of major media brands. The conversation was presented by the Block Museum of Art in partnership with the 2018 Evanston Literary Festival and in conjunction with the exhibition Hank Willis Thomas: Unbranded which takes a critical eye to the ways in which advertising and media can instrumentalize identity.
“For me branding is a practice really dominated by corporations. We are all supposed to ‘brand’ right now,” said Christian within his introduction. “In television brands are networks. NBC, HBO, Netflix Hulu, those are all brands and they think about what they release as part of their brands. Mostly they don’t think about folks who are intersectionally identified at all…. unless there is something they can throw on their schedules to make them ‘hot.’
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