55 pages • 1 hour read
Anna Deavere SmithFires In The Mirror
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaAct V: “Rhythm”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Act V, Scene 1 Summary: Monique “Big Mo” Matthews, “Rhythm and Poetry”
This interview was conducted in 1989, while Mo was Smith’s student at UCLA, and took place at Smith’s office. For the play, Smith changed the performance to be more theatrical, as she had witnessed Mo’s acting to be. Mo speaks about how many female rappers sell their body to become famous. However, there are exceptions: Queen Latifah, who is intelligent or “Lyte who’s just hard and people are scared by her / hardness, / her strength of words” (35-36). Mo views these women as her role models because she wants the image of a strong black woman. She doesn’t like Big Daddy Kane’s rap because he just talks the whole song, especially when he uses Puerto Rican and white girls to justify his attractiveness. Mo asks why black girls aren’t good enough for him.
Some of Mo’s friends say they can’t listen to her work because she bashes men, but Mo says “’It ain’t men bashin’, it’s female assertin’’” (37). She doesn’t like how her friends accept that they are perceived as hoes, which is reinforced by some song lyrics. But most of these songs she does not consider rap because rap must have rhythm and poetry, which she defines as expression and intelligence. Without complex rhyme, no one cares what you’re saying.
Act V Analysis
This act consists of a single scene from the point of view of one of Smith’s previous students. It is interesting that this interview takes place years before the Crown Heights incidents. While the other single scene acts seem to relate to the content at hand—namely, through their discussions of mirrors and race—it is more difficult to understand how this discussion of rap fits in within the context of this work. However, a distinct link is drawn between the importance Matthews places upon words within rap and the importance of words within the context of this collection of interviews. Matthews has a particular problem with the words used by many rappers to objectify women, discussing the problems associated with being a female rapper with the necessity for women to overcome this objectification that seems to be a default setting for rap. Matthews associates rap that contains a lack of rhythm and poetry with female objectification and misogyny. It would follow, therefore, that the poetic use of words can be equated with female empowerment. In this way, words take on a gendered meaning, as they can both be used to assert the importance of female equality and intelligence and to denigrate women. They therefore have a larger social context than merely existing within the songs themselves.
