Claudia Rankine: Situations and Perceptions of “You” and “I”

On Claudia Rankin’e website, she has several “video essays” that, to me, work under the same unrestricted guidelines as her poetry.  The videos act as an audible version of her lyric poetry that combine with cinematography in order to tantalize as many of your senses as possible, and completely engulf you into her poetry and the story behind it.  The specific situation that appealed to me the most was Situation 7.  A seemingly interactive world is created for the viewer that skews perceptions of the first person voices of “You” and “I”.  Several recordings of innocent black male bodies being criminalized, victimized, and murdered allow for the viewers to merge themselves with these black bodies in uncomfortable, yet very intimate way.  The you is not necessarily the viewer in this case, and the I is almost never Rankine because the videos stem from a myriad of personal video libraries.  In class we discussed how the content of the book was relatable, but how does this visual poetry distance the relationship between the reader associating with the “You” in the video that is the criminalized black body, especially if the viewer is not a black man?  Does the poetry still carry the same weight or pack the same punch if it is not coming directly from the mouth of the highly esteemed Claudia Rankine, but from the mouthes of every day, ordinary, black people?  I recommend that you watch this situation and compare its voices to those used in Citizen.

Rankine, Claudia. “Situations.” Claudia Rankine. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2017. <http://claudiarankine.com/>.