“Big Luther” discourse
Cultural longing and the signification of Luther Vandross in African American popular culture
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 18948017 |
|---|---|
| Authors | M R Moore (0000-0002-8129-8544, University of Miami, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 401-418 |
| Publication date | 2023-05-04 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Fat Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2160-486X • E-ISSN: 2160-4851 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/21604851.2022.2152593 |
| OpenAlex | W4310613384 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 31 |
With a catalog that stretches from the 1960s into the early 2000s, Luther Vandross is highly esteemed internationally and across multiple generations of music fans. For many, he is essential to the soundtrack of their emotional lives. His stylings are such a large part of the Black cultural imaginary in the United States that, since the 1980s, Vandross has been figured in literature, film, Hip Hop lyrics, and television shows to convey romantic sentiments or a seductive mood in heterosexual and queer contexts. But in some cases, he is admonished and fat shamed, and held up as a symbol of the ways in which “good health” eludes the African American community statistically. I want to linger in that ambivalence and highlight the various shades of meaning that have been attached to Vandross’ fat (and sometimes slim) body in narratives produced for mass culture and smaller targeted audiences. To that end, I take up “Big Luther” discourse as an analytical framework to examine artistic and communal articulations that weaponize “care” and “concern” for Vandross, including the 1996 film The Nutty Professor, a 2006 episode of the animated sitcom The Boondocks, and Divabetic, a diabetes awareness organization that his mother was involved in establishing after Vandross died in 2005
Aesthetics · Ambivalence · Art · Literature · Lyrics · Media studies · Narrative · Popular culture · Psychoanalysis · Romance · Sociology · Gender Studies · Humor Studies and Applications · Music History and Culture · Obesity and Health Practices · Philosophy · Psychology
Africanisms in the Gullah dialect
Distributed Blackness
Characteristics of Negro Expression (1934)
Sissy Insurgencies
“I’m Supposed To Be Thick”
‘I like the way you move’
Health(ism) at every size
“If I’m shinin’, everybody gonna shine”
The War on Obesity as a Moral Project
Slave Culture
Memes in a Digital World
Going with the Gut
Situating fat suits
A House Is Not a Home
Any Love
Racial Disparities in Health Status and Access to Healthcare
The African Heritage of American English
Who named slaves and their children? Names and naming practices among enslaved Africans brought to the Americas and their descendants with focus on Brazil
| Highly cited | No |
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