The Screens of Bitch Bad

In Burke’s Terministic Screens he discusses how our words and terms affect how we view things or what we view exactly. Basically, the words that we us to describe something are what call our attention to one thing and not to another. With this in mind I cannot stop thinking about our case study Bitch Bad. Throughout its entirety Lupe Fiasco focuses on different problems in a society that listens to rap music. He uses different screens to avert our attention to different subjects that he deems necessary. For instances, he uses the example of the mom and the little boy in the beginning to focus on how the term bitch is used in a derogatory way but the mom embraces it because she thinks it is empowering. However, in this terministic screen it focuses on the mother child relationship and how children learn from their elders what is appropriate and what isn’t in our society.

Next the terministic screen switches over to focus on how young children learn things from the media and how it limits their perception of reality and how women should be treated and not exploited by others. It shows how children are learning more from the internet than from their own parents. However, throughout the whole video you see African American men and women painting their selves in black face so as to perform. Here the screen that Lupe Fiasco is creating seems to be drawing attention to the rap music industry and how one culture is almost making fun of itself and catering to the whim of others and not representing how they truly are but merely mirroring the stereotype that has been established for them. However, the video in itself is a landmark because it is shedding light on all of these stereotypical problems that people face and how they came about.