This past Sunday night, during the Emmys, Apple Music premiered the first of three advertisements directed by Ava DuVernay and starring Mary J. Blige, Taraji P. Henson, and Kerry Washington. It's a beautiful 60-second moment, shot in a documentary style that captures what happens when three grown, music-loving sisters get up for tea. There's much aspiration afoot: Mary's house is Pinterest-ready, as are the ladies' hair and outfits. The trio dance, giggle, and lip-sync. Its casting is as much about three accomplished black women who are living icons as it is about cashing in on the cultural capital of good feelings their characters and projections have represented over the years. We’re not just getting these stars—we’re getting My Life, and Olivia Pope and Cookie Lyon, avatars Queendom. It's beautiful, until it's not.
Halfway through the commercial, Livvy, wondering how Mary was able to whip out Slick Rick's "Children's Story" as an inaugural jam, marvels at the efficiency of Apple Music. "It's like you have a boyfriend that makes you mixtapes in your laptop," she says. While this is infinitely more appealing to women than having a struggle rapper boyfriend who records his mixtapes on your laptop, it begs the question: Why is the musical experience of these three accomplished women being centered around men? It's as if the commercial goes out of its way to fail the Bechdel Test. It's not just a momentary slip of dialogue, either. At the clip's conclusion, the service is billed as an "Instant Mixtape Boyfriend Experience." Here, women are still treated as ancillary, even when they're primary.
Playlists, the new mixtapes. Go ahead ladies! @maryjblige@kerrywashington@TherealTarajihttp://t.co/cctGZAhwuPhttps://t.co/VTnkmeEr4E
— Apple Music (@AppleMusic) September 21, 2015The notion that the best way to introduce a streaming music service to women is to present it as an emotional dildo is confounding. And the approach—using Ava and Mary and Livvy and Cookie—of enlisting three women who are currently some of the most accessible and relatable avatars of female independence is manipulative. (It's also a shrewd execution borne of necessity—Beyoncé, Nicki Minaj, and Rihanna have equity in Apple Music competitor Tidal, so all other streaming services going for the sister-girl market, are going to be regulated to those that follow in their billion dollar wake.) Any detractors are not coming at Apple, they're coming at some of the most beloved Black women in pop culture and risking Livvy stans going B613 on dat ass. By putting our heroes in the line of fire, Cupertino has initiated the best defense system in the world.
Unless you're some sort of racist misogynist who despises joy, it takes a lot of energy to hate on the moments of revelry in the clip. DuVernay's directing is sublime, coming off like a reality show that actually shows reality. The minute is warm and intimate and full of black sass and friendly mean-mugging and spirited hair whipping and, oh my, "It's All About the Benjamins". (If you've ever seen a black woman lip sync Lil' Kim's verse on "The Benjamins", you know that you keep your damned mouth shut and applaud until those eight bars are over, if you know what's good for you.) Watching these women—Black women—partake in this level of unbridled fandom is inspiring, giving you all the feels in 3-D sound. It's a fever dream of a tangible reality—Celebrities! They're just like us! But there’s a discordant echo of the male experience in a context where it's totally not needed.
Perhaps, even this critique rings as more of the same—with a male figure mansplaining to women that their happiness is poisoned fruit. Maybe the issue at hand is about women's representation of their own experiences, not the interpretations of a Y chromosome gaze. It's hard to tell, and harder to speak about as a man, without coming off as an asshat. A conspiracy theorist would assert that the lords of Infinite Loop knew what they were doing by playing to the emotional centers of an underserved audience. In a battle of cognitive dissonance, seeing rich and wealthy around-the-way girls doing an '80s wop to Busta Rhymes and Swizz Beatz is going to beat out any allegiances to feminist theory. It's 2015 and that's still a seditious sight. Or that could be it: It's 2015 and women are still defined in their relationships to men, so the most subversive and revolutionary thing that one can do is rock out with cocks out of the picture—even if the existence of men is implied. It's possible that acknowledging men but rendering them unseen and unheard is extremist and warranted payback.
There are two more DuVernay-helmed clips in the series to come later this week. Maybe, in the next one, the ladies will groove to Missy Elliott's "Work It" in between high-powered meetings where they reject lopsided deals to the tune of MC Lyte's "Paper Thin". Or maybe, they’ll pull over to a gas station in a drophead Rolls Royce Phantom and head nod to Lauryn Hill's "Lost Ones" while Apple Music hops out, pumps their gas and completes the transaction with Apple Pay. Because it's like having a boyfriend on your phone!