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.By ingesting the beverage, consumersdo not directly incorporate the  juice that they long for, but they rather participatein the source of what provides the celebrity with his body and his energy.The beverage Crunk, launched by the southern rapper Lil Jon in February 2004,adds a new layer to this discussion.At the same time the artist issued an album bythe same title, whose opening song was precisely  Crunk Juice, an invite to sitback, smoke joints, and listen to music.Urbandictionary.com defines the expression  crunk juice as  a combination ofan energy drink, and hard liquor (it is said to have unusual results when consumed);a popular one is Hennessy and Red Bull.Reportedly created by Conan O Brien in the 1995 season of Late Night withConan O Brien as a replacement of all the curse words that could not be aired onTV, the word  crunk (also spelled krunk) had assumed different meanings overthe years.Used by Outkast in their infamous 1998 song  Rosa Parks, it is now amainstay of Southern hip hop, meaning  1) crowded 2) hyped 3) exciting 4) fun(Westbrook 2002: 32).Urbandictionary.com explains it as  a mixture of the wordscrazy and drunk. Lil Jon himself defines it as  a state of heightened excitement.It also indicates a specific style of rap, based in the Southern part of the country.Theofficial website for the drink, crunkenergydrink.com, states:Letting loose, feeling free, and expressing yourself is crunk.Crunk is a bi-product ofHip-Hop and southern pride and resilience.The significance of family, be it biological orcommunity and uninhibited pride for your city or  hood is central to the appeal of crunkon a youthful southern generation.With its global influence, the Hip-Hop community isnot only defined by its music, but also by its fashion, culture, and language.Crunk juice tastes like pomegranate, a tart substance that is becoming more andmore popular among health-conscious consumers.Among other ingredients, we findguaranà, horny goat weed (sic), and ginseng, which are often used to enhance energyand sexual potency.What is ingested with the drink is not only male sensuality,sexual potency, party energy, but the whole Southern mystique that plays such animportant role, for instance, in the cultural construction of soul food.This connection between the male body and some power that can be ingested andconsumed is apparently not limited to American pop culture.Similar expressionscan be found in British urban slang.We can point to the lyrics of a famous song bythe Rolling Stones,  Some Girls :  Black Girls just wanna get fucked all night/I justdon t have that much jam (Poulson-Bryant 2005: 80).Mick Jagger seems to usethe term  jam as a black girl would use it to tell her partner he hasn t got enoughJam, Juice, and Strange Fruits " 119potency and skill.Urbandictionary.com indicates various meanings to the word jam that are not used in American English:Jam: to relax.Used by black people in London, to have sex with a girl.Jam strangler:jam is another name for seman [sic] and strangler comes from the action that the mandoes whilst mastubating [sic] like he is strangling someone hence jam strangler! Jamrag: a garment of clothing or a hand towel used to wipe up one s wank juice after a five-knuckle shuffle.Once again, in a different Anglo-Saxon environment, we find a food metaphor toindicate black male potency.Is this a new phenomenon, or does it tap into under-currents that have haunted U.S.pop culture since its beginnings?A History of Edible BodiesIn the past decades, black masculinities have played an important role in the worldof international entertainment, especially when it comes to sports, dance, and music.It is almost to state the obvious to point out that black male stars are the objects ofambivalence: they embody natural skills, raw power, elegance, and flamboyance,qualities that are considered almost genetically inherent in their bodies.Author ScottPoulson-Bryant affirms:  It could be argued that almost everything the world knowsabout black men it has learned by watching black men in these most presentationalof modes: dribbling, defending, or spiking a ball; strutting, shooting, or grinningacross cinema screens: crooning, toasting or rhyming into microphones (Poulson-Bryant 2005: 105).The old stereotype of the black man who s got game around the hoop, and who sgot rhythm in his blood are too expansive to be discussed in this chapter (Eversley2001; Harper 1996; Mailer 1994).On the other hand, black males are also oftenperceived as powder kegs ready to go off, unleashing unspeakable violence.Withoutgetting into the merit of the judicial cases, the way the media dealt with the O.J.Simpson, Mike Tyson, and Kobe Bryant scandals is indicative (Williams 2002).Since the beginning of American pop culture, when it came to black malesexuality, the stakes were always high when white male domination was perceived tobe at risk.Historian David Roediger claims that by asserting their whiteness, poorerworkers could find an outlet for the frustrations born of exploitative class relation-ships (Roediger 1991: 13).The black male, made into a hypersexualized monster,had to be kept under control and emasculated, symbolically and, often, physically.At the same time this threat could not be made public and freely discussed, as in thecase of black women: the supposed black male s sexual potency was something mencould comment on among themselves, but no self-respecting lady could even referto it in a social setting.The black male body became something to fear for its power,120 " Bite Meenergy, and fully expressed sexuality; for the same reason, it was something to desire(Kimmel 1996: 50; Mercer 1994).Literary critic Robert Reid-Pharr, in his book Once You Go Black, notices that inthe American context we find the idea of a universal, eternal blackness that wouldstay the same though time and space, from slavery to the contemporary urbanexperience.Blackness itself, that telltale color, is always a sort of sexual crime regardless of how itis articulated.The presence of the black in any location represents precisely the failure ofAmerican and European eugenicist projects, a failure that has occurred precisely becausethe black is not only threatening but appealing, not only the monster that the policemanmust beat into submission, but also the beauty without whom he cannot seem to live.Once you go black, you never go back.The myth of our potent sexuality has, I wouldargue, not only been a great burden but one of the most powerful means by which wehave resisted  or at least adapted  racist and racialist oppression.(Reid-Pharr 2007:31 2)Already in the nineteenth century, the black body became a controversial elementin American culture, and its visible presence as a worker, and in particular as a foodproducer, exerted a long-lasting influence on white culture, at that time very busy indefining itself after the separation from England and very determined to distinguishitself from other strong ethnic realities on American territory, particularly blacksand natives [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]