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The Sociolinguistics of Hip-hop as Critical Conscience pp 131–161Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

“Who’s Afraid of the Dark?”: The Ironic Self-Stereotype of the Ethnic Other in Finnish Rap Music

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Abstract

Drawing on recent sociolinguistic work on globalization and superdiversity, this chapter explores the multisemiotic and ironic construction of the self-stereotype of the ethnic Other in a Finnish rap music video. Because Finland and Finnish hip-hop are still ethnically relatively homogeneous, people of migrant background, such as rap artist Musta Barbaari (Black Barbarian), need to negotiate their belonging in various ways. In the video, he deliberately constructs himself as the ethnicized and sexualized Other to highlight prejudice, discrimination and racism. In doing this, he voices societal critique and dissatisfaction, and speaks for multiculturalism and tolerance in (super)diversifying and polarizing Finland.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Immigration in smaller numbers occurred during the periods of Swedish (until 1809) and Russian rule (from 1809 until 1917), when many Swedish, Russian, Jewish and Tatar officials, traders and soldiers moved to Finland, along with smaller numbers of English, French, German and Nordic people (e.g. Häkkinen & Tervonen, 2005).

  2. 2.

    ‘Talking back’ refers to action and communication in which people positioned in the margins challenge the surrounding discourses and majority ways of categorizing and defining them. They turn from objects into subjects in their own right—and gain a ‘liberated voice’ (Hooks, 1989, p. 9; in Finland see e.g. Rastas & Päivärinta, 2010).

  3. 3.

    Born in Finland, has a Japanese father and a Finnish mother.

  4. 4.

    Permission from the artist has been obtained for both the video and lyrics material.

  5. 5.

    Readers can access the original, Finnish lyrics to “Kuka pelkää pimeet” online if desired.

  6. 6.

    Exactly why Congo is mentioned here, as a place reference, remains vague. It may have to do with it being the neighboring country of Tanzania, to its location in the sub-Saharan area, which is stereotypically populated by very dark inhabitants, to its general ‘recognizability’ as an African country or to the rhyming.

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  1. University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Elina Westinen

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  1. Centre for Teaching and Learning, Southern Cross University, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia

    Andrew S. Ross

  2. Centre for Meta-Learning, Faculty of Systems Information Science Future University Hakodate, Hakodate, Hokkaido, Japan

    Damian J. Rivers

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Westinen, E. (2018). “Who’s Afraid of the Dark?”: The Ironic Self-Stereotype of the Ethnic Other in Finnish Rap Music. In: Ross, A., Rivers, D. (eds) The Sociolinguistics of Hip-hop as Critical Conscience. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59244-2_6

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