May 14, 2024 • 40 mins
This week, it's Kelly and Antoine Dodson's sixteenth minute — Jamie interviews Professor Gabriel Peoples, author of 'The Forgotten Kelly Dodson: Viral Performance and the Interplay of Excess and Erasure' about what happens when someone is erased from their own story.
https://gender.indiana.edu/about/faculty/peoples-gabriel.html
Read "The Forgotten Kelly Dodson": The Forgotten Kelly Dodson
Follow Antoine Dodson here: https://www.tiktok.com/@antoinedodson34
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. Hey Jamie.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Here a quick note if you're listening to this episode.
This is part two of the Dodson Siblings series on
sixteenth Minute, So if you haven't listened already, please go
back to episode one to hear the summary of the
story and my interview with Kevin Ampon Dodson. Thank you,
(00:33):
thank you, Hello, and welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the
(01:10):
podcast where we take a closer look at Internet characters
of the day and what that says about us and
the Internet and us on the Internet. My name is
Jamie Loftus, but if my mom had her way, it
would have been Randy.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
With an I.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Fortunately she saw porcelain doll on QVC named Jamie, and
here we are. This is part two of sixteenth Minutes.
First story about Kelly and Antoine Dotson, who first came
to prominence in the summer of twenty ten after they
appeared on the news in Huntsville, Alabama. The story focused
on an attempted rape. Kelly Dotson and her family reported
(01:44):
that a man broke into their home in the projects
in the middle of the night while her brother and
young daughter were home, and the rapist then escaped out
A second floor window. When Antoine came to Kelly's aid
quick refresher. Here's the original clip and mark the woman.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
The victim tells us that a man broke into her
house and tried to rape her.
Speaker 5 (02:03):
Her brother went in and he tried to help around,
but the man got away, leaving behind though evidence of
his visit. Awaine Don said, heard his sister screamed and
ran to help.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Well, obviously we have a rapist in Lincoln Park.
Speaker 6 (02:20):
He's climbing in your windows.
Speaker 7 (02:22):
He's snatching your people up, trying to rape them.
Speaker 5 (02:24):
So y'all needs a had your kids, had your wife
and Hadjehod because they raping everybody out here.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
And if you need more of a brush up than that,
please go back to part one of this episode. This
clip was famously remixed in a YouTube series called Auto
Tune the News by the Gregory Brothers and became an
international sensation, with Antoine Dotson making appearances in entertainment for
the next decade and a half, including I Guess here
(02:50):
You can hear my interview with Kevin in part one,
where he reflects on his life prior to the news
clip and what it looked like afterward and into today.
But already we're talking a lot about Antoine, and that's
what I want to discuss in part two of this series.
The bead Intruder story was very quickly pivoted to Antoine Dotson,
slowly edging Kelly Dotson out of the story altogether. In
(03:14):
this episode, I'd like to examine that more closely. And
just a note, in keeping with my interview with Kevin
Antoine Dotson where he refers to Antoine as an alter ego,
I'll be referring to him as Kevin for Part two.
I can't, in good faith but grudge Kevin for wanting
to leverage his online fame, even if, as he admits,
it wasn't always completely honest, because it's not his fault
(03:37):
that he was framed in the way he was, or
that he was essentially chosen as the protagonist by the
media and by the Internet. And what's more, he was
the sibling that seemed more interested in capitalizing on this notoriety.
While there's plenty of examples of the press being interested
in Kelly, the feeling never appeared to be very mutual.
I wasn't able to get in touch with Kelly Dotson,
(03:59):
But if she ever chooses to speak on the internet
cyclone that surrounded an assault on her in the future.
That's her call. If she doesn't want to revisit that time.
It makes total sense and people should respect that. But
the fact remains from the very beginning, it was Kelly
who was consistently getting lost in a story that was
about her, a black woman who had reported a violent
(04:20):
rape attempt while her daughter and brother were in the house.
I mean, she says so herself in this clip from
Judge Jerry Springer in twenty twenty one. And keep in mind,
Kevin confirmed that most of this was put on in
terms of there being any actual conflict between them, But
Kelly is very adamant about her part in the story
being erased, and to me it sounds very sincere.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
I want him to like put on my shoe for once.
You know what I'm saying, Like you know what I've
been through these last eleven years since this attack. All
is business antwinas Antwina, even when I'm will we together,
we go out and pub but we can't even sit
down and enjoy our mires or not because why people
want to take picture's way Antoine, Antoine, It's all about
Antoine what about me. I'm the victim. Oh, yes, yes,
(05:06):
it is like that. I'm the victim because it's all
it's always about anton House, Antoine doing. He's fine, he's living,
He's not the victim.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
He didn't get it hurt.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
I don't think we should ignore it. Kelly's treatment from
moment one clocks is pretty straightforward massage noir and ingrained
prejudice and dismissal of black women. When this clip went
viral almost fifteen years ago, it was seamlessly accepted, including
by high school me, that it was okay to mock
a black woman quite literally going public with a rape
(05:36):
allegation and turning it into this joke. Very few people
asked if Kelly Dodson was okay at this time. I mean,
I wasn't even completely sure that the bed Intruder boxing
match was fake until I confirmed it with Kevin. And
so it's this combination of race, class, and gender discrimination
that leads to Kelly getting sidelined. And when it comes
(05:58):
to what Kevin refers to as the character of Antoine Dodson,
there's a lot of telling markers on how media from
a white lens use and commodifies blackness and in Antoine's case,
black queerness as well, because even as years past after
this story, Antoine was interrogated about his sexuality consistently, as
(06:19):
if it had to do with anything. There's way more
to dig into here. Unfortunately, someone way smarter than me
has already written brilliantly on this very topic, so let's
get him in here. Professor Gabriel Peoples is an assistant
professor in the Gender Studies Department at Indiana University Bloomington
and is the author of The Forgotten Kelly Dodson, Viral
(06:40):
Performance and the Interplay of Excess and Erasure, and he's
currently in the process of completing his book Go in
Viral Uncontrollable Black Performance. I really loved his piece and
I was lucky to get a chance to talk with him.
(07:02):
Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I grew up without a
bedroom door and it shows in my personality.
Speaker 8 (07:08):
Here's our talk.
Speaker 5 (07:09):
I'm Gabriel Allen Peebles. I am a assistant professor of
Gender Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Also a DJ,
and I've been djaying longer than I have been teaching.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
I did not know you're a DJ, and as a
comedian turned attempted thinker. I appreciate that narrative to you.
So I wanted to start by asking you what was
your memory of the Dodson's becoming viral stars at the
time in twenty ten.
Speaker 5 (07:48):
You know, the memory is different than the history of
the event, right, Yeah. I want to say that I
was living in Atlanta, Georgia at the time, and no,
actually I was there.
Speaker 6 (08:00):
That's all that.
Speaker 5 (08:01):
I was in Atlanta and this thing just started moving online.
Like I can't really explain what was going on. I
received it from a friend, like just the link, and
I looked, and I want to say, this was when
it was on YouTube, and it was just.
Speaker 6 (08:20):
The newscast, and I was curious.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
I was just like, and I think it was a summer,
you know, I'm thinking it must have.
Speaker 6 (08:27):
Been July or something like that.
Speaker 5 (08:29):
And I'm looking and I'm like, I didn't know if
this was a parody or if this was like a
real thing. And toward the end, I felt like, I
think this is a real thing. But I had to
watch it again because and I think that there was
something about that. If we can, you know, return to
(08:50):
the confusion I had around if this was real or not.
Speaker 6 (08:54):
Yeah, but I just remember it being hot.
Speaker 5 (08:58):
And I'm trying to maintain my ac control the bills,
and I get this thing and I'm like, I'm like,
what is this. I look at it and I'm like, okay,
I'm going to remember this. Like I think I just
set it aside. But I was just like I was disturbed,
you know, because I at first I couldn't tell what
was real. And then when I kind of figured out
(09:20):
what was real, I started to look more into it.
So it was like the research started. I mean, I
wasn't even interested in research proper like that. I just
had to know, right.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
So this is like a ten years in the making piece.
I really appreciated your piece. You really carefully traced how
this story even got on YouTube in the first place,
because this was before any news stations were really uploading
their own broadcasts, Like you know, someone ripped it, posted
it to Reddit and then to YouTube. In the news clip,
(09:56):
you sort of break down a lot of what is
being done to already begin this marginalization process. Can you
talk me through that a little bit?
Speaker 5 (10:06):
Yeah, I mean, for me, it was the visual techniques
that they were using, which I thought were dangerous particularly
because the entire encounter was based upon the sexual assault
of Kelly Dotson, and one of the things that happens
(10:29):
in the news broadcast is that they zoom in to
the location of the assault in a way that I
guess is common on the news, but at the same
time rendered or occurred to me as being insensitive, insensitive
as to perhaps the insecurities that allowed this to happen
(10:51):
in the first place, and also not being aware of
how they are exposing this very location. So if somebody
wanted to maybe it was somebody different, if they wanted
to try something out, they knew exactly where to go
that you know, had the thin veil of security that
(11:13):
might allow them to get into somebody's home and violate, right.
And I felt like, you know, everything that I've seen,
it was like I've seen this before, or I understood
this about the people being represented already.
Speaker 6 (11:29):
Right.
Speaker 5 (11:30):
So these notions around kind of like public and private,
around even just property in and of itself, right, I
think has a legacy, particularly when we're thinking about black
people in the United States, who at one point were
being ensured as property. And so these kind of affordances
(11:51):
of public life private life already you know, there's a
there's a legacy that dictates it's not something that is
afforded to black people in the United States. And it
felt like a moment whereby it was a moment that
was proving the connections right to those kinds of moments.
Speaker 6 (12:12):
And even still, right after all of that, if you
were to.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
Add up the amount of time that Kelly Dotson spoke
and this is nothing against the family, this is all
about editing, this is all about while forty eight news.
If you added up the amount of time that Kelly
Dotson spoke as the person that experienced the violation, the violence,
(12:42):
and the amount of time that Antoine Dotson spoke, right,
it kind of begins this domino effect that I get
into further in the book, but that ultimately continues this
kind of erasure of Kelly Dotson, right, Yeah, and I
you know, but at the same time, right, as a
(13:05):
black performance theorist, I'm also very interested in agency, as
limited as it may be, and the possibilities that Kelly
Dotson is also very aware of what's going on, right
and perhaps pushing back against being kind of like centralized,
(13:26):
being made spectacular, particularly in her position as a black
woman in the United States.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Could you sort of walk me through how you define
viral performance.
Speaker 5 (13:36):
I would like to say that that is not my term.
So viral performance is, I would say, belongs to Miriam
Felton Danski, who is really locating it within intentional performances
that artists take that then spread uncontrollably, right, either in
terms of people hearing about a computer virus that got out,
(14:00):
that got out of control because artists invited people to
interact with this computer and then like spread a rumor.
You know, it could be like even on that level, right,
but it's about intentionality and then kind of like to
spread that results. And my thing was to as I'm
writing this, I'm trying to think about, okay, like what
(14:22):
continues in that vein right when I'm looking at this moment,
but also what's very different And for me that came
back to in a large way blackness, right, And so
we kind of tabled something earlier in the interview, which
is when I first see this newscast, I'm thinking, I
(14:45):
don't know, it just feels too familiar. And I think
that this was because as an African American in the
United States, myself having been inundated with news media. I
was familiar with these types of depictions of black people
in the news, almost to the extent that I thought
(15:09):
it was a parody. You know, you have to understand that,
like I'm encountering it like that. So then when I'm
thinking about black virality, I'm thinking about how that knowledge
right of this representation already existed for me. Right, This
sets it apart to me from the ways that I
(15:31):
might think about it as merely a viral performance, because
it's always it's almost like they're already viral before you
encounter them, right, we already for some reason, I already
know something about this, and then the thing happens. Then
it spreads as a result of this particular newscast, and
it goes viral in the ways that you and I
(15:54):
have come to understand, right, particularly around viral videos. So
I think that for me, black virality really distinguishes. Going
viral is an ongoing phenomenon, particularly when we're talking about
representations of black people or literal black people, And so
it's about it's the way that a rapid circulation of
(16:18):
black performance happens that spreads uncontrollably afterwards, right, And then
it becomes commonplace as a result of that spread. So
in some ways, it's very similar to viral performance. Right,
there's a rapid ubiquity that I think both of them share.
But for me, viral performance doesn't exactly capture the ways
(16:41):
that Black people and representations of Black people are already
marked before they ever go viral. That then marks them further. Also,
Black virality for me is capturing the black ways that
performances go viral, even this particular moment. Right, Eventually it
(17:05):
gets on to World Star hip Hop. It's doing some
different things on World Star hip Hop than it does
on YouTube, and so you know, it's thinking about that.
It's thinking about the ways that death and birth are simultaneous,
and Black cultures around the world, it's an African diasporic ethos.
(17:27):
There is no birth without death.
Speaker 6 (17:29):
Right.
Speaker 5 (17:29):
It's almost like the newscast died at the same time
the remix was birthed, you know what I mean, And
then the remix died, and then it keeps going. This
particular performance, it keeps going right again, right, black ways
that we're experiencing rapid ubiquity when it comes to performances, right,
(17:52):
And so that's kind of how I'm arriving to that right,
I'm like looking at this viral performance and I'm like, Okay,
there's some things happening here, and how do I account
for the differences.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
We'll be right back with more of my talk with
Professor Peoples. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. One time my
coworker at a haunted hay ride almost got struck by lightning.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
She was fine.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Dangerous job though, and we are talking about the phenomenon
that was the Dodson siblings saga with Professor Gabriel Peoples.
Here's the rest of our talk. You unpack all of
the ways in which already moment one, when this airs
on LAT forty eight, Kelly Dotson is already being edged
(18:44):
out of the story because, like you saying, I mean,
Antoine Dotson has no way of knowing how this is
going to be edited. Who's I mean? The editor could
have not you know, could have included one line from him.
They could have included nothing and just totally centered Kelly, Like,
there's so many different ways could have gone for you.
Why why does the NewsLens switch to Antoine and why
(19:06):
does that sort of, at least in my perspective, he
continued doubling down and down and down, because by the
time you get to the remix, Kelly is barely there,
like she it's just one sentence from her.
Speaker 5 (19:20):
Right, And even by the time we get to that
Reddit meme, you don't even see her. Right, there's a
I mean a lot of this is about legacy, right,
which again, like is another way that I'm or another
thing that I use.
Speaker 6 (19:36):
Right.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
So ghetto witness right is about how particular kinds of
people are found to give testimony to a trauma that
they've witnessed or experienced, right, And the news seeks folks
out right, And I think that there's a way that
(19:57):
me seeing that before, right, it helps me to it
helps me to think about legacy in this moment.
Speaker 6 (20:03):
Right.
Speaker 5 (20:03):
So you have how black people, particularly how black gay
men have been used as comic relief. So that's happening,
So let's hold that in our minds.
Speaker 6 (20:18):
And then at the same.
Speaker 5 (20:19):
Time, you have this legacy of black women being inviolable subjects, right,
So folks who cannot be violated, right, which is also
tethered to these toxic ideas about their own sexuality and
(20:42):
the ways that they are imagined to be particularly licentious,
therefore a rape can't happen, and it's president in fiction
and nonfiction right in terms of the ways that black
women have been historically right noted or or recorded in
(21:05):
particular kinds of instances, the ways that they've been figuratively
imagined that are also linked to those real historical instances
of being in violable subject This is also tethered right
to the ways that black men are seen as particularly endowed.
Angela Davis really helps us to point to these connections,
(21:29):
and there's so you have all of these kind of
legacies happening, right. This is the knowledge, if you will,
that's being brought to this moment before it even goes viral.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
When it truly clicked for me was when you learn
that this first kind of took off on our slash funny,
where you know that so clearly demonstrates how seriously a
good portion of the internet audience at this time was
taking Kelly and taking the allegation was it went from
(22:01):
zero to funny because of it, And a lot of
that does seem to have to do with how the
broadcast was edited.
Speaker 5 (22:09):
Yeah, within this, you know what it's said to be
a community of communities, right, one of these communities is
the subreddit funny, and whoever saw this wild forty eight
newscast somehow digitized it and put it online in this subreddit,
(22:29):
right because they thought it was funny. I just had
all these moments of pause where I was like, Okay,
slow down, let's let's slow down and look at what
is happening. There's so much, right, So even even kind
of like in terms of what was unfolding that day,
I came to understand, I think, just minimally, right, Antoine
(22:54):
Dotson's sister Kelly Dotson being violated in the same home
that they were both in. It was enough for Antoine
to want to respond the way that he responded. But
then on top of that, there were things happening around
the scene of the interview that even further gave him
(23:18):
this kind of like righteous indignation that he has. And
it comes back to something that you mentioned, right, It's
just like people not being believed, right, particularly black women
not being believed when they experienced sexual violence.
Speaker 6 (23:37):
Right.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
So there was another woman, I'm assuming she lived in
the community, who was basically saying, this never.
Speaker 6 (23:44):
Happened in our community.
Speaker 5 (23:46):
Okay, does that negate the reality that I experienced. Right,
That's what I'm thinking. I'm imagining, right, these might.
Speaker 6 (23:56):
Be some thoughts going on.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
Yeah, so and then Moore, even the people in the complex,
in the housing complex, they didn't take it seriously either, right,
So they brought this to the attention of I mean,
it wasn't like a front desk, but it was like
the main adamin. I mean, they kind of they kind
(24:18):
of laughed in their faces. So by the time while
forty eight News, you know, is like okay, let's interview you,
they had spoken to the housing administration, they already filed
a police report. At some point this other lady pops up, Oh,
this is never this never happened in our community. I mean,
you didn't really need a lot more to make that
(24:40):
more of a you know, make it more of a
powder keg. And so anyway, I'm thinking about the viral
afterlife as connected to black virality, right, because again, like
I said, there's this kind of like cosmographic understanding of
life and various religious and spiritual practic throughout the world
(25:02):
where it's kind of like you die in the terrestrial
and your birth and the spiritual at the same exact time, right,
And I'm taking I'm taking this knowledge and I'm thinking about, like,
how is this playing out in this realm of of virality?
Speaker 6 (25:21):
Right?
Speaker 5 (25:22):
And so it's kind of like I pointed to that
fire fraud moment, because this is a point where, like
with the Viral Afterlife, you're talking about the ways that
something goes viral, perhaps reaches a peak or a climax,
and then it's like we almost don't hear about it again,
but then we do, and it might be in a
(25:43):
different form, right, And sometimes what we hear about after
the climax goes beyond the climax, and sometimes it doesn't.
And so Viral Afterlife is taking account of that. You
can say, I'm giving folks language to think about, you know,
how can we think about like this thing that's been
(26:06):
rapidly circulated that a lot of people knew about at
a particular moment in time, and then that thing kind
of like comes back up years later. And when that
thing is black, it just adds, it adds to the
layers we have to dissect to understand what is really
(26:27):
what is really happening in front of us, Right. So,
and I explore this a bit more at length in
the in the book, even in particular relationship to this
moment that we're talking about on the newscast, right, So,
the Gregory Brothers they continued in the same vein of
kind of like finding these folks who are giving testimony
(26:49):
in their own sincere kind of way auto tuning them,
and then you know, just putting it out broadcasting themselves.
Speaker 6 (26:57):
Right as YouTube encourages you to do.
Speaker 5 (27:00):
And so I was shocked to see that they were
on the credits for The Unbreakable Kimmy Smith. I know, yeah,
you know if this is not the exact same thing, right,
but in a completely fictional sense, not to mention the
girl that's found underground is in this cult in Indiana, right, oh, Indiana.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
It all connects.
Speaker 5 (27:26):
But you know it's like when she emerges, a black
man sees her, right, and then the news just goes
to find this black man and then his vocals turned
from I think they're immediately auto tuned.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yeah, I'm not mistaken, especially because I didn't realize until
I was researching this episode that that theme song was
literally made by the Gregory Brothers. So it couldn't be
clearer what's happening there.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
And you're pointing to another thing, right, which is the
Black ways of going viral. Right, But there's a certain
thing around vernacular. Not to necessarily tie it tie vernacular
in a very particular way to black people, because as
we know, that's of fiction anyway, right, Like, not only
can people style switch when they speak, but oftentimes this
(28:17):
stuff is cultural in terms of like how people sound.
Speaker 6 (28:20):
Right.
Speaker 5 (28:21):
But if he starts that thing off by saying what
had happened was there's a certain kind of like, I
mean way that we have to understand that as being
a black for a black vernacular phenomenon. I mean, there
is such a thing as ebonics, right, they teach I
don't know if they still teach it. But when I
went to the University of Michigan as an undergrad, they
(28:44):
were teaching in a bonics class and one of my
friends took it, and she basically told me that everybody
that didn't grow up around black cultures were failing that
class horribly, right. They couldn't understand the formula, the formulas
and the mathematics, the syntax. These Black ways of going
viral actually become less of a theory and more of
(29:08):
a reality when you start to get into the ways
people are commenting on these viral performances, which you will
often run into on comment walls. Something else I get
into in the book the article, though, I'm really trying
to just focus on before any of this travels, right,
(29:29):
because black virality is also about how black performance travels.
Speaker 6 (29:34):
What all is happening? You know?
Speaker 5 (29:36):
So yeah, how can we before we get there? If
we slow this moment down what all is happening? And
then once we do that, we kind of understand how
the rest of it can materialize. But you don't know
unless you slow down this moment in the beginning, right, right,
So slowing it down, it was like I've found some
(29:57):
stuff on Facebook right where Antoine Dotson was just like,
do y'all think this is a joke? And that gave
me pause, and it also it reinforced the feeling that
I was getting, like when then running across the auto
tuned video, I was just like, something felt very about
(30:20):
it actually to me. Yeah, and so it was reaffirming
to also notice that Antoine Dotson found something in that too.
Speaker 6 (30:31):
Right. But Antoine is a businessman.
Speaker 5 (30:34):
Yeah, So I mean he's literally in community college taking
a mazuring in business. I want to say so It's
like I think he was wrestling with multiple things. It
was like recognizing the kind of moment that this could be,
which he wouldn't be the first. Even in that reference
that I gave you about leper count and Mobile, I
(30:56):
think it was Mobile, Alabama, where there's these newscasters that
go into this neighborhood, interviewing so many people in the neighborhood,
and this guy is like, this is the agency, right
that I'm that I'm wrestling with. Particularly when we're thinking
about black virality, It's like black people they know the game, right, Like,
(31:16):
you know, if they're living in subsidized housing at this
moment in their life, there might be a point of recognizing, hey,
this might be a moment where we can leverage it
to get out of here, right right, right, too much
chagrin of you know a lot of other folks that
get mentioned, and you know, as this thing unfolds, right,
(31:39):
the random black folks like me who are encountering this,
and they're like, for whatever reason, they're feeling embarrassed, right,
And so I'm inquiring about that, why are you? Like,
why are you feeling embarrassed? Like I'm thinking, I'm trying
to think about this, right, But it's like, when you've
seen this particular scenario over and over and over again,
there's a point where you tire of it.
Speaker 6 (32:00):
There's a point where.
Speaker 5 (32:01):
You recognize what it is that is attempting to be
done and capitalized on. It's also appropriatet of right, because
it's kind of like this recognition of the currency of blackness,
but almost at the expense of the ways that we
the rich ways that we can understand black people. And
(32:22):
so it's hard to wrestle with because on an individual level,
it's like, hey, I can use this to get out
of here. On a collective level, there's also that recognition that,
like they're taking this to be a joke, aren't they right?
You know, But there's always kind of like that cleverness,
right of like okay, well, how can I use this
to my advantage? This is this is the black objecthood
(32:44):
of this moment.
Speaker 6 (32:45):
Right.
Speaker 5 (32:46):
The ways that people go viral are going to constantly increase, Right,
the ways that black virality is experienced is going to
constantly increase or change. Right, the mechanisms there's always a
new mechanism being created to allow this. Yet until we
kind of grapple with the very things that are you
(33:07):
could say, variables if you will, in that virality in
our regular, everyday irl. Right, it's not going to really shift.
Some might say that it's gotten worse.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Is there anything I didn't ask or touch on about
Kelly Dodson and this story in particular that you would
like to touch on?
Speaker 5 (33:31):
I mean, for me, I find it intriguing that, just
as far as everything you've come across as well, to
a large extent, Kelly Dotson tries to remain out of
the spotlight, just because that's what I was picking up
on myself, right, and I was, you know, I just
wanted to emphasize that this too is feminism, is black feminism, right,
(33:57):
the recognition of the of the camera, if you will,
but also the recognition of everything that's happening outside of it,
and the strength of that right and perhaps remaining outside
of the camera in order to avoid some of the
pitfalls of being made spectacular, right, of which there's so
(34:23):
many examples of. I think there was a moment right
where it was important to voice what happened. It was
confronting something, right, it was I mean, the ways that
sexual violence oftentimes is silenced and subjugated in order for
the collective, in terms of a particular Black community, a
(34:46):
particular Black family, in order for that collective to not
kind of fall into these already pre existing stereotypes whereby
people are already thinking they're hyper sexual in their criminal right.
And this is a moment where that family stood up
to that very tension. And I think that's important, you know,
(35:10):
because a lot of things happen as a.
Speaker 6 (35:13):
Result, and people saw that.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
Okay, this is a phenomenon in our community right now.
It tethered previous violences that were happening in Huntsville, Alabama,
in that particular subsidized housing complex, and it kind of
like gestured toward the other folks that exist out there
who are actually being like experiencing rape right or sexual
(35:39):
assault and can't or won't for various reasons, express that
violence that they encounter. And it's kind of like an
example of like what happens when you do right.
Speaker 6 (35:52):
You might be able to.
Speaker 5 (35:52):
Get extricate yourself from that moment of violence or from
that scene of violence, that environment that enabled the violence.
You might also be able to, in staying out of
the spotlight, suggest something about your awareness of what the
spotlight can do to black bodies right what it has done.
Speaker 6 (36:16):
My book is called Going.
Speaker 5 (36:17):
Viral Uncontrollable Black Performance, and it's going to be published
by the University of Illinois Press in their New Black
Studies series, and it essentially covers black people or representations
of black people that have gone viral between the eighteenth
century to the present, and it thinks about what they
(36:39):
do when reaching those peak levels of visibility with that visibility, right,
and so how they can actually leverage it for liberation
in different kinds of ways, on individual levels and on
collective levels. And I go from the conceptual photography and
images and and even jewelry making of Hank Willis Thomas,
(37:05):
the presence in the performance of Radio Raheem and do
the right thing.
Speaker 6 (37:11):
Everything we just talked about, but a lot more.
Speaker 5 (37:15):
In reference to the newscast in twenty ten that went viral,
the remix video attested to that, and then kind of
like the viral afterlife of all of that moment.
Speaker 6 (37:26):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Putting this episode together has been really fun and really challenging,
and I'm just so glad to have your voice in it.
Thank you so much to Professor Peoples for speaking with me,
and I cannot wait for when his book go in
viral Uncontrollable Black Performance releases in spring twenty twenty five.
I wanted to start with the Dodson story because it
(37:49):
marked a moment that's pretty rare on the Internet these days,
a genuine monocultural moment. It took these normal people and
thrust them into the spotlight. That happens is always telling
about the time and place you're in, and not just
how the public reacts, but how the subjects themselves react,
because this level of sudden notoriety is just not something
(38:11):
humans were made to be able to process. And even
though the stories can feel a little dated, they bring
out what Professor Peoples was talking about, these age old
prejudices and dismissals. Kelly's erasure from the story is not
something unique through the twenty first century. It's built on
centuries of dismissal of black women. Antoine's elevation is not
(38:32):
something unique to the twenty first century. The way black
queermen have been treated by the public has always been pointed,
and seeing him have the reins on his own narrative
after all these years makes a special kind of person,
and so long may the Dodson siblings reign, even if
that means different things for each of them. Dodson's your
sixteenth minute ends.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Now Le's done. Okay.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
So at the end of every single episode of this show,
I just want to take a moment for whatever I want,
whatever feels good, whatever feels right. And so for our
inaugural moment of whatever I want, here are my parents
trying to explain what they think this show is about.
Enjoy see you next week.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
What if I asked you to describe what you think
the show is about? Can you do that?
Speaker 8 (39:30):
I believe the sixteenth minute refers to the widely known
concept of fifteen minutes of fame. But when that light
begins to douse, what are they doing thereafter?
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Great? Great answer? Are you prepared to give an answer? Okay?
So in your mind, what is sixteenth minute the show about?
Speaker 6 (39:55):
Again?
Speaker 7 (39:55):
That whole fifteen minutes? Everyone's famous fifteen minutes, or so
said Andy war We think, but sometimes it lasts more.
Maybe it goes into a sixteenth minute or seventeenth Maybe
that's the show.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Well, seventeenth would be kind of someone else's business, But
I'm trying to sixteenth feels that's the one I'm in
charge of.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
All Right, great answers, Everybody, great answers. Okay, see you
next week.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Sixteenth Minute is a production of fool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
It is written, posted, and produced by.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Me Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtterman and Robert Evans. The
amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Our theme song is by Sad thirteen and Pet. Shout
outs to our dog producer Anderson, my Kat's Flee and
Casper and my pet rock Bird who will outlive us
all Bye.
Cool Zone Media. Hey Jamie.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Here a quick note if you're listening to this episode.
This is part two of the Dodson Siblings series on
sixteenth Minute, So if you haven't listened already, please go
back to episode one to hear the summary of the
story and my interview with Kevin Ampon Dodson. Thank you,
(00:33):
thank you, Hello, and welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the
(01:10):
podcast where we take a closer look at Internet characters
of the day and what that says about us and
the Internet and us on the Internet. My name is
Jamie Loftus, but if my mom had her way, it
would have been Randy.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
With an I.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Fortunately she saw porcelain doll on QVC named Jamie, and
here we are. This is part two of sixteenth Minutes.
First story about Kelly and Antoine Dotson, who first came
to prominence in the summer of twenty ten after they
appeared on the news in Huntsville, Alabama. The story focused
on an attempted rape. Kelly Dotson and her family reported
(01:44):
that a man broke into their home in the projects
in the middle of the night while her brother and
young daughter were home, and the rapist then escaped out
A second floor window. When Antoine came to Kelly's aid
quick refresher. Here's the original clip and mark the woman.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
The victim tells us that a man broke into her
house and tried to rape her.
Speaker 5 (02:03):
Her brother went in and he tried to help around,
but the man got away, leaving behind though evidence of
his visit. Awaine Don said, heard his sister screamed and
ran to help.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Well, obviously we have a rapist in Lincoln Park.
Speaker 6 (02:20):
He's climbing in your windows.
Speaker 7 (02:22):
He's snatching your people up, trying to rape them.
Speaker 5 (02:24):
So y'all needs a had your kids, had your wife
and Hadjehod because they raping everybody out here.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
And if you need more of a brush up than that,
please go back to part one of this episode. This
clip was famously remixed in a YouTube series called Auto
Tune the News by the Gregory Brothers and became an
international sensation, with Antoine Dotson making appearances in entertainment for
the next decade and a half, including I Guess here
(02:50):
You can hear my interview with Kevin in part one,
where he reflects on his life prior to the news
clip and what it looked like afterward and into today.
But already we're talking a lot about Antoine, and that's
what I want to discuss in part two of this series.
The bead Intruder story was very quickly pivoted to Antoine Dotson,
slowly edging Kelly Dotson out of the story altogether. In
(03:14):
this episode, I'd like to examine that more closely. And
just a note, in keeping with my interview with Kevin
Antoine Dotson where he refers to Antoine as an alter ego,
I'll be referring to him as Kevin for Part two.
I can't, in good faith but grudge Kevin for wanting
to leverage his online fame, even if, as he admits,
it wasn't always completely honest, because it's not his fault
(03:37):
that he was framed in the way he was, or
that he was essentially chosen as the protagonist by the
media and by the Internet. And what's more, he was
the sibling that seemed more interested in capitalizing on this notoriety.
While there's plenty of examples of the press being interested
in Kelly, the feeling never appeared to be very mutual.
I wasn't able to get in touch with Kelly Dotson,
(03:59):
But if she ever chooses to speak on the internet
cyclone that surrounded an assault on her in the future.
That's her call. If she doesn't want to revisit that time.
It makes total sense and people should respect that. But
the fact remains from the very beginning, it was Kelly
who was consistently getting lost in a story that was
about her, a black woman who had reported a violent
(04:20):
rape attempt while her daughter and brother were in the house.
I mean, she says so herself in this clip from
Judge Jerry Springer in twenty twenty one. And keep in mind,
Kevin confirmed that most of this was put on in
terms of there being any actual conflict between them, But
Kelly is very adamant about her part in the story
being erased, and to me it sounds very sincere.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
I want him to like put on my shoe for once.
You know what I'm saying, Like you know what I've
been through these last eleven years since this attack. All
is business antwinas Antwina, even when I'm will we together,
we go out and pub but we can't even sit
down and enjoy our mires or not because why people
want to take picture's way Antoine, Antoine, It's all about
Antoine what about me. I'm the victim. Oh, yes, yes,
(05:06):
it is like that. I'm the victim because it's all
it's always about anton House, Antoine doing. He's fine, he's living,
He's not the victim.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
He didn't get it hurt.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
I don't think we should ignore it. Kelly's treatment from
moment one clocks is pretty straightforward massage noir and ingrained
prejudice and dismissal of black women. When this clip went
viral almost fifteen years ago, it was seamlessly accepted, including
by high school me, that it was okay to mock
a black woman quite literally going public with a rape
(05:36):
allegation and turning it into this joke. Very few people
asked if Kelly Dodson was okay at this time. I mean,
I wasn't even completely sure that the bed Intruder boxing
match was fake until I confirmed it with Kevin. And
so it's this combination of race, class, and gender discrimination
that leads to Kelly getting sidelined. And when it comes
(05:58):
to what Kevin refers to as the character of Antoine Dodson,
there's a lot of telling markers on how media from
a white lens use and commodifies blackness and in Antoine's case,
black queerness as well, because even as years past after
this story, Antoine was interrogated about his sexuality consistently, as
(06:19):
if it had to do with anything. There's way more
to dig into here. Unfortunately, someone way smarter than me
has already written brilliantly on this very topic, so let's
get him in here. Professor Gabriel Peoples is an assistant
professor in the Gender Studies Department at Indiana University Bloomington
and is the author of The Forgotten Kelly Dodson, Viral
(06:40):
Performance and the Interplay of Excess and Erasure, and he's
currently in the process of completing his book Go in
Viral Uncontrollable Black Performance. I really loved his piece and
I was lucky to get a chance to talk with him.
(07:02):
Welcome back to sixteenth minute. I grew up without a
bedroom door and it shows in my personality.
Speaker 8 (07:08):
Here's our talk.
Speaker 5 (07:09):
I'm Gabriel Allen Peebles. I am a assistant professor of
Gender Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. Also a DJ,
and I've been djaying longer than I have been teaching.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
I did not know you're a DJ, and as a
comedian turned attempted thinker. I appreciate that narrative to you.
So I wanted to start by asking you what was
your memory of the Dodson's becoming viral stars at the
time in twenty ten.
Speaker 5 (07:48):
You know, the memory is different than the history of
the event, right, Yeah. I want to say that I
was living in Atlanta, Georgia at the time, and no,
actually I was there.
Speaker 6 (08:00):
That's all that.
Speaker 5 (08:01):
I was in Atlanta and this thing just started moving online.
Like I can't really explain what was going on. I
received it from a friend, like just the link, and
I looked, and I want to say, this was when
it was on YouTube, and it was just.
Speaker 6 (08:20):
The newscast, and I was curious.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
I was just like, and I think it was a summer,
you know, I'm thinking it must have.
Speaker 6 (08:27):
Been July or something like that.
Speaker 5 (08:29):
And I'm looking and I'm like, I didn't know if
this was a parody or if this was like a
real thing. And toward the end, I felt like, I
think this is a real thing. But I had to
watch it again because and I think that there was
something about that. If we can, you know, return to
(08:50):
the confusion I had around if this was real or not.
Speaker 6 (08:54):
Yeah, but I just remember it being hot.
Speaker 5 (08:58):
And I'm trying to maintain my ac control the bills,
and I get this thing and I'm like, I'm like,
what is this. I look at it and I'm like, okay,
I'm going to remember this. Like I think I just
set it aside. But I was just like I was disturbed,
you know, because I at first I couldn't tell what
was real. And then when I kind of figured out
(09:20):
what was real, I started to look more into it.
So it was like the research started. I mean, I
wasn't even interested in research proper like that. I just
had to know, right.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
So this is like a ten years in the making piece.
I really appreciated your piece. You really carefully traced how
this story even got on YouTube in the first place,
because this was before any news stations were really uploading
their own broadcasts, Like you know, someone ripped it, posted
it to Reddit and then to YouTube. In the news clip,
(09:56):
you sort of break down a lot of what is
being done to already begin this marginalization process. Can you
talk me through that a little bit?
Speaker 5 (10:06):
Yeah, I mean, for me, it was the visual techniques
that they were using, which I thought were dangerous particularly
because the entire encounter was based upon the sexual assault
of Kelly Dotson, and one of the things that happens
(10:29):
in the news broadcast is that they zoom in to
the location of the assault in a way that I
guess is common on the news, but at the same
time rendered or occurred to me as being insensitive, insensitive
as to perhaps the insecurities that allowed this to happen
(10:51):
in the first place, and also not being aware of
how they are exposing this very location. So if somebody
wanted to maybe it was somebody different, if they wanted
to try something out, they knew exactly where to go
that you know, had the thin veil of security that
(11:13):
might allow them to get into somebody's home and violate, right.
And I felt like, you know, everything that I've seen,
it was like I've seen this before, or I understood
this about the people being represented already.
Speaker 6 (11:29):
Right.
Speaker 5 (11:30):
So these notions around kind of like public and private,
around even just property in and of itself, right, I
think has a legacy, particularly when we're thinking about black
people in the United States, who at one point were
being ensured as property. And so these kind of affordances
(11:51):
of public life private life already you know, there's a
there's a legacy that dictates it's not something that is
afforded to black people in the United States. And it
felt like a moment whereby it was a moment that
was proving the connections right to those kinds of moments.
Speaker 6 (12:12):
And even still, right after all of that, if you
were to.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
Add up the amount of time that Kelly Dotson spoke
and this is nothing against the family, this is all
about editing, this is all about while forty eight news.
If you added up the amount of time that Kelly
Dotson spoke as the person that experienced the violation, the violence,
(12:42):
and the amount of time that Antoine Dotson spoke, right,
it kind of begins this domino effect that I get
into further in the book, but that ultimately continues this
kind of erasure of Kelly Dotson, right, Yeah, and I
you know, but at the same time, right, as a
(13:05):
black performance theorist, I'm also very interested in agency, as
limited as it may be, and the possibilities that Kelly
Dotson is also very aware of what's going on, right
and perhaps pushing back against being kind of like centralized,
(13:26):
being made spectacular, particularly in her position as a black
woman in the United States.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Could you sort of walk me through how you define
viral performance.
Speaker 5 (13:36):
I would like to say that that is not my term.
So viral performance is, I would say, belongs to Miriam
Felton Danski, who is really locating it within intentional performances
that artists take that then spread uncontrollably, right, either in
terms of people hearing about a computer virus that got out,
(14:00):
that got out of control because artists invited people to
interact with this computer and then like spread a rumor.
You know, it could be like even on that level, right,
but it's about intentionality and then kind of like to
spread that results. And my thing was to as I'm
writing this, I'm trying to think about, okay, like what
(14:22):
continues in that vein right when I'm looking at this moment,
but also what's very different And for me that came
back to in a large way blackness, right, And so
we kind of tabled something earlier in the interview, which
is when I first see this newscast, I'm thinking, I
(14:45):
don't know, it just feels too familiar. And I think
that this was because as an African American in the
United States, myself having been inundated with news media. I
was familiar with these types of depictions of black people
in the news, almost to the extent that I thought
(15:09):
it was a parody. You know, you have to understand that,
like I'm encountering it like that. So then when I'm
thinking about black virality, I'm thinking about how that knowledge
right of this representation already existed for me. Right, This
sets it apart to me from the ways that I
(15:31):
might think about it as merely a viral performance, because
it's always it's almost like they're already viral before you
encounter them, right, we already for some reason, I already
know something about this, and then the thing happens. Then
it spreads as a result of this particular newscast, and
it goes viral in the ways that you and I
(15:54):
have come to understand, right, particularly around viral videos. So
I think that for me, black virality really distinguishes. Going
viral is an ongoing phenomenon, particularly when we're talking about
representations of black people or literal black people, And so
it's about it's the way that a rapid circulation of
(16:18):
black performance happens that spreads uncontrollably afterwards, right, And then
it becomes commonplace as a result of that spread. So
in some ways, it's very similar to viral performance. Right,
there's a rapid ubiquity that I think both of them share.
But for me, viral performance doesn't exactly capture the ways
(16:41):
that Black people and representations of Black people are already
marked before they ever go viral. That then marks them further. Also,
Black virality for me is capturing the black ways that
performances go viral, even this particular moment. Right, Eventually it
(17:05):
gets on to World Star hip Hop. It's doing some
different things on World Star hip Hop than it does
on YouTube, and so you know, it's thinking about that.
It's thinking about the ways that death and birth are simultaneous,
and Black cultures around the world, it's an African diasporic ethos.
(17:27):
There is no birth without death.
Speaker 6 (17:29):
Right.
Speaker 5 (17:29):
It's almost like the newscast died at the same time
the remix was birthed, you know what I mean, And
then the remix died, and then it keeps going. This
particular performance, it keeps going right again, right, black ways
that we're experiencing rapid ubiquity when it comes to performances, right,
(17:52):
And so that's kind of how I'm arriving to that right,
I'm like looking at this viral performance and I'm like, Okay,
there's some things happening here, and how do I account
for the differences.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
We'll be right back with more of my talk with
Professor Peoples. Welcome back to sixteenth minute. One time my
coworker at a haunted hay ride almost got struck by lightning.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
She was fine.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Dangerous job though, and we are talking about the phenomenon
that was the Dodson siblings saga with Professor Gabriel Peoples.
Here's the rest of our talk. You unpack all of
the ways in which already moment one, when this airs
on LAT forty eight, Kelly Dotson is already being edged
(18:44):
out of the story because, like you saying, I mean,
Antoine Dotson has no way of knowing how this is
going to be edited. Who's I mean? The editor could
have not you know, could have included one line from him.
They could have included nothing and just totally centered Kelly, Like,
there's so many different ways could have gone for you.
Why why does the NewsLens switch to Antoine and why
(19:06):
does that sort of, at least in my perspective, he
continued doubling down and down and down, because by the
time you get to the remix, Kelly is barely there,
like she it's just one sentence from her.
Speaker 5 (19:20):
Right, And even by the time we get to that
Reddit meme, you don't even see her. Right, there's a
I mean a lot of this is about legacy, right,
which again, like is another way that I'm or another
thing that I use.
Speaker 6 (19:36):
Right.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
So ghetto witness right is about how particular kinds of
people are found to give testimony to a trauma that
they've witnessed or experienced, right, And the news seeks folks
out right, And I think that there's a way that
(19:57):
me seeing that before, right, it helps me to it
helps me to think about legacy in this moment.
Speaker 6 (20:03):
Right.
Speaker 5 (20:03):
So you have how black people, particularly how black gay
men have been used as comic relief. So that's happening,
So let's hold that in our minds.
Speaker 6 (20:18):
And then at the same.
Speaker 5 (20:19):
Time, you have this legacy of black women being inviolable subjects, right,
So folks who cannot be violated, right, which is also
tethered to these toxic ideas about their own sexuality and
(20:42):
the ways that they are imagined to be particularly licentious,
therefore a rape can't happen, and it's president in fiction
and nonfiction right in terms of the ways that black
women have been historically right noted or or recorded in
(21:05):
particular kinds of instances, the ways that they've been figuratively
imagined that are also linked to those real historical instances
of being in violable subject This is also tethered right
to the ways that black men are seen as particularly endowed.
Angela Davis really helps us to point to these connections,
(21:29):
and there's so you have all of these kind of
legacies happening, right. This is the knowledge, if you will,
that's being brought to this moment before it even goes viral.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
When it truly clicked for me was when you learn
that this first kind of took off on our slash funny,
where you know that so clearly demonstrates how seriously a
good portion of the internet audience at this time was
taking Kelly and taking the allegation was it went from
(22:01):
zero to funny because of it, And a lot of
that does seem to have to do with how the
broadcast was edited.
Speaker 5 (22:09):
Yeah, within this, you know what it's said to be
a community of communities, right, one of these communities is
the subreddit funny, and whoever saw this wild forty eight
newscast somehow digitized it and put it online in this subreddit,
(22:29):
right because they thought it was funny. I just had
all these moments of pause where I was like, Okay,
slow down, let's let's slow down and look at what
is happening. There's so much, right, So even even kind
of like in terms of what was unfolding that day,
I came to understand, I think, just minimally, right, Antoine
(22:54):
Dotson's sister Kelly Dotson being violated in the same home
that they were both in. It was enough for Antoine
to want to respond the way that he responded. But
then on top of that, there were things happening around
the scene of the interview that even further gave him
(23:18):
this kind of like righteous indignation that he has. And
it comes back to something that you mentioned, right, It's
just like people not being believed, right, particularly black women
not being believed when they experienced sexual violence.
Speaker 6 (23:37):
Right.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
So there was another woman, I'm assuming she lived in
the community, who was basically saying, this never.
Speaker 6 (23:44):
Happened in our community.
Speaker 5 (23:46):
Okay, does that negate the reality that I experienced. Right,
That's what I'm thinking. I'm imagining, right, these might.
Speaker 6 (23:56):
Be some thoughts going on.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
Yeah, so and then Moore, even the people in the complex,
in the housing complex, they didn't take it seriously either, right,
So they brought this to the attention of I mean,
it wasn't like a front desk, but it was like
the main adamin. I mean, they kind of they kind
(24:18):
of laughed in their faces. So by the time while
forty eight News, you know, is like okay, let's interview you,
they had spoken to the housing administration, they already filed
a police report. At some point this other lady pops up, Oh,
this is never this never happened in our community. I mean,
you didn't really need a lot more to make that
(24:40):
more of a you know, make it more of a
powder keg. And so anyway, I'm thinking about the viral
afterlife as connected to black virality, right, because again, like
I said, there's this kind of like cosmographic understanding of
life and various religious and spiritual practic throughout the world
(25:02):
where it's kind of like you die in the terrestrial
and your birth and the spiritual at the same exact time, right,
And I'm taking I'm taking this knowledge and I'm thinking about, like,
how is this playing out in this realm of of virality?
Speaker 6 (25:21):
Right?
Speaker 5 (25:22):
And so it's kind of like I pointed to that
fire fraud moment, because this is a point where, like
with the Viral Afterlife, you're talking about the ways that
something goes viral, perhaps reaches a peak or a climax,
and then it's like we almost don't hear about it again,
but then we do, and it might be in a
(25:43):
different form, right, And sometimes what we hear about after
the climax goes beyond the climax, and sometimes it doesn't.
And so Viral Afterlife is taking account of that. You
can say, I'm giving folks language to think about, you know,
how can we think about like this thing that's been
(26:06):
rapidly circulated that a lot of people knew about at
a particular moment in time, and then that thing kind
of like comes back up years later. And when that
thing is black, it just adds, it adds to the
layers we have to dissect to understand what is really
(26:27):
what is really happening in front of us, Right. So,
and I explore this a bit more at length in
the in the book, even in particular relationship to this
moment that we're talking about on the newscast, right, So,
the Gregory Brothers they continued in the same vein of
kind of like finding these folks who are giving testimony
(26:49):
in their own sincere kind of way auto tuning them,
and then you know, just putting it out broadcasting themselves.
Speaker 6 (26:57):
Right as YouTube encourages you to do.
Speaker 5 (27:00):
And so I was shocked to see that they were
on the credits for The Unbreakable Kimmy Smith. I know, yeah,
you know if this is not the exact same thing, right,
but in a completely fictional sense, not to mention the
girl that's found underground is in this cult in Indiana, right, oh, Indiana.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
It all connects.
Speaker 5 (27:26):
But you know it's like when she emerges, a black
man sees her, right, and then the news just goes
to find this black man and then his vocals turned
from I think they're immediately auto tuned.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yeah, I'm not mistaken, especially because I didn't realize until
I was researching this episode that that theme song was
literally made by the Gregory Brothers. So it couldn't be
clearer what's happening there.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
And you're pointing to another thing, right, which is the
Black ways of going viral. Right, But there's a certain
thing around vernacular. Not to necessarily tie it tie vernacular
in a very particular way to black people, because as
we know, that's of fiction anyway, right, Like, not only
can people style switch when they speak, but oftentimes this
(28:17):
stuff is cultural in terms of like how people sound.
Speaker 6 (28:20):
Right.
Speaker 5 (28:21):
But if he starts that thing off by saying what
had happened was there's a certain kind of like, I
mean way that we have to understand that as being
a black for a black vernacular phenomenon. I mean, there
is such a thing as ebonics, right, they teach I
don't know if they still teach it. But when I
went to the University of Michigan as an undergrad, they
(28:44):
were teaching in a bonics class and one of my
friends took it, and she basically told me that everybody
that didn't grow up around black cultures were failing that
class horribly, right. They couldn't understand the formula, the formulas
and the mathematics, the syntax. These Black ways of going
viral actually become less of a theory and more of
(29:08):
a reality when you start to get into the ways
people are commenting on these viral performances, which you will
often run into on comment walls. Something else I get
into in the book the article, though, I'm really trying
to just focus on before any of this travels, right,
(29:29):
because black virality is also about how black performance travels.
Speaker 6 (29:34):
What all is happening? You know?
Speaker 5 (29:36):
So yeah, how can we before we get there? If
we slow this moment down what all is happening? And
then once we do that, we kind of understand how
the rest of it can materialize. But you don't know
unless you slow down this moment in the beginning, right, right,
So slowing it down, it was like I've found some
(29:57):
stuff on Facebook right where Antoine Dotson was just like,
do y'all think this is a joke? And that gave
me pause, and it also it reinforced the feeling that
I was getting, like when then running across the auto
tuned video, I was just like, something felt very about
(30:20):
it actually to me. Yeah, and so it was reaffirming
to also notice that Antoine Dotson found something in that too.
Speaker 6 (30:31):
Right. But Antoine is a businessman.
Speaker 5 (30:34):
Yeah, So I mean he's literally in community college taking
a mazuring in business. I want to say so It's
like I think he was wrestling with multiple things. It
was like recognizing the kind of moment that this could be,
which he wouldn't be the first. Even in that reference
that I gave you about leper count and Mobile, I
(30:56):
think it was Mobile, Alabama, where there's these newscasters that
go into this neighborhood, interviewing so many people in the neighborhood,
and this guy is like, this is the agency, right
that I'm that I'm wrestling with. Particularly when we're thinking
about black virality, It's like black people they know the game, right, Like,
(31:16):
you know, if they're living in subsidized housing at this
moment in their life, there might be a point of recognizing, hey,
this might be a moment where we can leverage it
to get out of here, right right, right, too much
chagrin of you know a lot of other folks that
get mentioned, and you know, as this thing unfolds, right,
(31:39):
the random black folks like me who are encountering this,
and they're like, for whatever reason, they're feeling embarrassed, right,
And so I'm inquiring about that, why are you? Like,
why are you feeling embarrassed? Like I'm thinking, I'm trying
to think about this, right, But it's like, when you've
seen this particular scenario over and over and over again,
there's a point where you tire of it.
Speaker 6 (32:00):
There's a point where.
Speaker 5 (32:01):
You recognize what it is that is attempting to be
done and capitalized on. It's also appropriatet of right, because
it's kind of like this recognition of the currency of blackness,
but almost at the expense of the ways that we
the rich ways that we can understand black people. And
(32:22):
so it's hard to wrestle with because on an individual level,
it's like, hey, I can use this to get out
of here. On a collective level, there's also that recognition that,
like they're taking this to be a joke, aren't they right?
You know, But there's always kind of like that cleverness,
right of like okay, well, how can I use this
to my advantage? This is this is the black objecthood
(32:44):
of this moment.
Speaker 6 (32:45):
Right.
Speaker 5 (32:46):
The ways that people go viral are going to constantly increase, Right,
the ways that black virality is experienced is going to
constantly increase or change. Right, the mechanisms there's always a
new mechanism being created to allow this. Yet until we
kind of grapple with the very things that are you
(33:07):
could say, variables if you will, in that virality in
our regular, everyday irl. Right, it's not going to really shift.
Some might say that it's gotten worse.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Is there anything I didn't ask or touch on about
Kelly Dodson and this story in particular that you would
like to touch on?
Speaker 5 (33:31):
I mean, for me, I find it intriguing that, just
as far as everything you've come across as well, to
a large extent, Kelly Dotson tries to remain out of
the spotlight, just because that's what I was picking up
on myself, right, and I was, you know, I just
wanted to emphasize that this too is feminism, is black feminism, right,
(33:57):
the recognition of the of the camera, if you will,
but also the recognition of everything that's happening outside of it,
and the strength of that right and perhaps remaining outside
of the camera in order to avoid some of the
pitfalls of being made spectacular, right, of which there's so
(34:23):
many examples of. I think there was a moment right
where it was important to voice what happened. It was
confronting something, right, it was I mean, the ways that
sexual violence oftentimes is silenced and subjugated in order for
the collective, in terms of a particular Black community, a
(34:46):
particular Black family, in order for that collective to not
kind of fall into these already pre existing stereotypes whereby
people are already thinking they're hyper sexual in their criminal right.
And this is a moment where that family stood up
to that very tension. And I think that's important, you know,
(35:10):
because a lot of things happen as a.
Speaker 6 (35:13):
Result, and people saw that.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
Okay, this is a phenomenon in our community right now.
It tethered previous violences that were happening in Huntsville, Alabama,
in that particular subsidized housing complex, and it kind of
like gestured toward the other folks that exist out there
who are actually being like experiencing rape right or sexual
(35:39):
assault and can't or won't for various reasons, express that
violence that they encounter. And it's kind of like an
example of like what happens when you do right.
Speaker 6 (35:52):
You might be able to.
Speaker 5 (35:52):
Get extricate yourself from that moment of violence or from
that scene of violence, that environment that enabled the violence.
You might also be able to, in staying out of
the spotlight, suggest something about your awareness of what the
spotlight can do to black bodies right what it has done.
Speaker 6 (36:16):
My book is called Going.
Speaker 5 (36:17):
Viral Uncontrollable Black Performance, and it's going to be published
by the University of Illinois Press in their New Black
Studies series, and it essentially covers black people or representations
of black people that have gone viral between the eighteenth
century to the present, and it thinks about what they
(36:39):
do when reaching those peak levels of visibility with that visibility, right,
and so how they can actually leverage it for liberation
in different kinds of ways, on individual levels and on
collective levels. And I go from the conceptual photography and
images and and even jewelry making of Hank Willis Thomas,
(37:05):
the presence in the performance of Radio Raheem and do
the right thing.
Speaker 6 (37:11):
Everything we just talked about, but a lot more.
Speaker 5 (37:15):
In reference to the newscast in twenty ten that went viral,
the remix video attested to that, and then kind of
like the viral afterlife of all of that moment.
Speaker 6 (37:26):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Putting this episode together has been really fun and really challenging,
and I'm just so glad to have your voice in it.
Thank you so much to Professor Peoples for speaking with me,
and I cannot wait for when his book go in
viral Uncontrollable Black Performance releases in spring twenty twenty five.
I wanted to start with the Dodson story because it
(37:49):
marked a moment that's pretty rare on the Internet these days,
a genuine monocultural moment. It took these normal people and
thrust them into the spotlight. That happens is always telling
about the time and place you're in, and not just
how the public reacts, but how the subjects themselves react,
because this level of sudden notoriety is just not something
(38:11):
humans were made to be able to process. And even
though the stories can feel a little dated, they bring
out what Professor Peoples was talking about, these age old
prejudices and dismissals. Kelly's erasure from the story is not
something unique through the twenty first century. It's built on
centuries of dismissal of black women. Antoine's elevation is not
(38:32):
something unique to the twenty first century. The way black
queermen have been treated by the public has always been pointed,
and seeing him have the reins on his own narrative
after all these years makes a special kind of person,
and so long may the Dodson siblings reign, even if
that means different things for each of them. Dodson's your
sixteenth minute ends.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Now Le's done. Okay.
Speaker 3 (38:58):
So at the end of every single episode of this show,
I just want to take a moment for whatever I want,
whatever feels good, whatever feels right. And so for our
inaugural moment of whatever I want, here are my parents
trying to explain what they think this show is about.
Enjoy see you next week.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
What if I asked you to describe what you think
the show is about? Can you do that?
Speaker 8 (39:30):
I believe the sixteenth minute refers to the widely known
concept of fifteen minutes of fame. But when that light
begins to douse, what are they doing thereafter?
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Great? Great answer? Are you prepared to give an answer? Okay?
So in your mind, what is sixteenth minute the show about?
Speaker 6 (39:55):
Again?
Speaker 7 (39:55):
That whole fifteen minutes? Everyone's famous fifteen minutes, or so
said Andy war We think, but sometimes it lasts more.
Maybe it goes into a sixteenth minute or seventeenth Maybe
that's the show.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Well, seventeenth would be kind of someone else's business, But
I'm trying to sixteenth feels that's the one I'm in
charge of.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
All Right, great answers, Everybody, great answers. Okay, see you
next week.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
Sixteenth Minute is a production of fool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
It is written, posted, and produced by.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
Me Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 2 (40:32):
Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtterman and Robert Evans. The
amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Our theme song is by Sad thirteen and Pet. Shout
outs to our dog producer Anderson, my Kat's Flee and
Casper and my pet rock Bird who will outlive us
all Bye.
Host
Jamie Loftus
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