ZENDAYA: LANGUAGE AND REPRESENTATIONS!

ZENDAYA: LANGUAGE AND REPRESENTATIONS:

Introduction and background reading 

Read this Vox article on what makes Zendaya a great celebrity. Answer the following questions:

What was the 2015 Oscar controversy involving Zendaya? 

That was when Zendaya, age 19, happened to appear on the red carpet in a white silk gown, with her hair in dreadlocks — and on E’s Fashion Police, Giuliana Rancic commented, “That hair is swallowing her. I feel like she smells like patchouli oil.” An offscreen (and never-identified) voice added, “Or weed.”

How did Zendaya control the narrative of that controversy?

“There is already harsh criticism of African American hair in society without the help of ignorant people who choose to judge others based on the curl of their hair,” she wrote in an Instagram post the next day. “My wearing my hair in locs on an Oscar red carpet was to showcase them in a positive light, to remind people of color that our hair is good enough. To me locs are a symbol of beauty and strength, almost like a lion’s mane.”

What examples are provided of Zendaya using her celebrity to raise issues of race and social justice?

Zendaya during the Oscars controversy was how careful and measured her response was: She explained exactly what made Rancic’s remark so offensive and how fraught the history of talking about black women’s hair is, and then ended on a note of uplift.

And since that episode, Zendaya has consistently continued to use her celebrity to talk thoughtfully about race and social justice. “I am inspired right now by people who use their platforms,” she told Glamour in 2017. “If people know your name, they should know it for a reason.

Zendaya insisted on a black family in Disney’s KC Undercover show. How can we link this to the ideas of Paul Gilroy? 

The idea of Paul Gilroy is double conciousness and black Atlantic which can link to the fact that she insisted on having a black family in her show, to show the diversity and to create a bond with the audience so the audience can see zendaya is a diverse celebrity. 

Who is Zendaya’s stylist and how did Zendaya use fashion and appearance to develop her celebrity persona? 

She’s been dressed by stylist Law Roach since she was 14 years old — including on that fateful Oscars night — and his playful, performative aesthetic and commitment to storytelling is definitely at work in Zendaya’s outfits.

How has Zendaya influenced the representation of characters she has played? 

That’s part of how she got the Disney Channel to make her onscreen K.C. Undercover family black: Despite Zendaya having just one major TV credit under her belt at the time, she insisted that the Disney Channel make her a producer when Disney offered her the starring role in K.C. Undercover. She was just 16 years old.

And the changes she made didn’t stop there. With her new power as producer, Zendaya got the show retitled from Super Awesome Katy to K.C. Undercover. She demanded that her character, K.C., be brainy rather than artsy (“There are other things that a girl can be” besides the Disney-standard singer or dancer, Zendaya explained to Vogue in 2017), and that she have martial arts training. She thought that when K.C. was at school, she should be a socially awkward teenager.

How did LL Cool J describe Zendaya? 

“She’s cool. You can manufacture fame. You can manufacture publicity. You can manufacture songs. You can’t manufacture cool.”

And that insistence on owning her cool and owning her power, on unapologetically taking control of it and then doing smart and interesting and beautiful things with it, is what makes Zendaya such an exciting celebrity to watch. What’s even more exciting is realizing that, at just age 22, she’s really just getting started.

Do you agree with his assessment? Is Zendaya authentically cool or just another manufactured celebrity? 

she is a manufactured celebrity.

Zendaya textual analysis

Work through the following tasks to complete your textual analysis of Zendaya's website and social media. 

Website analysis

Go to Zendaya's website and answer the following:

What website key conventions can you find on Zendaya's website?

• banner at the top
• a list of film and television credits 
• biographical information 
• menu: entirely about promotion 
• centre image 

Analyse the use of images on the website.

• Central image: designed like app icon
• appeal to Gen Z
• indirect mode of address 
• costume and makeup : 
• emphasis on fashion and makeup reinforce female stereotype in media: van zoonen: spectacle 

How does the website use colour and typography to communicate meanings to an audience?

The page is mobile-friendly with a responsive layout and simplified navigation that works well on smaller screens. Users can easily scroll down to find what they are looking for and click the external links for more detailed information.

• Text, typography: bold, sans serif, modern 
• colour modern but inoffensive 
• minimalist design to a website

Social media analysis

Visit Zendaya's Twitter feed. Analyse her use of tweets - are they promoting her film/TV work, linked to fashion or sponsorship work or more socially or politically oriented?

• Banner image: "classic film star" feel 
• profile picture: Expression, hand gesture glasses all construct different representation of Zendaya to her website 
• promoting latest release on bio, not a cause 
• 20.8 million followers
• paid promotions: high end fashion 

They are promoting her fashion and sponsorship more than political and social issues.

 

Look at Zendaya's Instagram account. She has said this is the one account that is always 100% created by her - can you find any evidence of that in the way posts or images are constructed? 

Zendaya's Instagram suggests that it is managed by her agent to some extent, this is because Instagram accounts are usually meant to be your own "blog posts" where people would post their everyday updates about where they have been etc.. her Instagram always seems to have a sense of professionalism meaning her Instagram account is a form of business account that is managed by her agent.

Watch Zendaya's 73 questions Vogue interview. How is this constructed to create a particular representation of Zendaya? 

This shows that Zendaya is also a typical individual just like us that has similar interests and likes for example when she talks about the dog, it can be argued that Zendaya seems to be told to show herself in that way this is because she answers those questions as if they have been revised beforehand, the fact that the opening of the interview was her extracting lemons from the tree makes it seems all planned this includes the location, the way she is already dressed for the day. the audience will think that like Zendaya we should also be looking a certain way at a certain time of the day. 

Research Zendaya across any other social media accounts - e.g. Facebook. Do you notice any differences in how she represents herself on different platforms? Comment on text, images or tone/content.  

• Some social media platforms, such as Twitter, offer premium subscription services that provide additional features or benefits to users for a fee. A blue tick will now help increase the visibility of your tweets.

• Re-posts on twitter by zendaya 

• Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube all want more active users so they can collect even more revenue from advertisers. They also want someone like Zendaya on their platforms to encourage yet another generation of users to log in and start scrolling.

Representations

Go to our Media Magazine archive and read the article on Zendaya, social media, feminism and celebrity (MM81 - page 12). Answer the following questions:

What the concerns around social media discussed at the start of the article?

social media can negatively affect one’s mental health and cause anxiety are more widespread and being taken more seriously. Younger and more impressionable users can’t help but compare themselves to one another whether consciously or unconsciously. Using platforms such as Instagram sometimes means that people equate their sense of self- worth with arbitrary values such as the number of likes or comments a post receives. This, combined with the added pressure of teen life, when young adults are working out their identity and ways to express that identity, is a recipe for a mental health crisis.

What example is provided of Zendaya’s authenticity – or possible lack of authenticity?

Zendaya is a great example of a celebrity who is now, seemingly, in control of their relationship with social media, but that wasn’t always the case. In 2017 a video was posted to her YouTube channel titled ‘Watch Me React To My First YouTube Vids’ in which she and a friend watched back the YouTube videos she first posted onto her channel as a child star. 

Zendaya video from 2017, where she criticises her previous inauthenticity, might not have been as genuine as it seems. If we read the video description it is quite clear from the way it is written in the third person, that Zendaya did not upload this video herself.

What is the one social media app that Zendaya manages entirely herself?

Instagram

What are the issues highlighted by Billie Eilish regarding self-representation and feminism? 

Eilish, have spoken out about their issues growing up in the online world too. 

Eilish claimed that she no longer reads the comments on her social media platforms ‘because otherwise I will spiral out, and shit’s mean as fuck’.

Every girl wants to feel desirable...But then there’s a whole world of men who argue that women say, ‘Oh, I don’t want men to sexualise me’ but then wear shirts that show their boobs and sing songs about having sex.’ I’m like, do you not get the idea that we want to wear what we feel good in but we don’t want you to jump in? It’s very dumb. Eilish here is highlighting the lack of nuance in understanding self-representation and feminism which accompanies the mainstream online.

How authentic do YOU feel Zendaya’s media representation is? Is it the real Zendaya or a media construction designed to look authentic? 

No, i believe that zendayas social media is a way to market with peoples mind, mind marketing so it is not as authentic as people think.This is because in order to post something it must be approved by their agent manager that controls what the public can see. Therefore zendayas media representation lacks the sense of reality.