#BlackLivesDontMatter – The Post-apocalypse and Politics in Vince Staples’ “Señorita”

Abstract

The article aims to analyze the vision of post-apocalypse in the music video for Vince Staples’ Señorita directed by Ian Pons Jewell. The music video utilizes the post-apocalyptic aesthetics to reflect upon tense racial relations in the contemporary United States. In Señorita the apocalypse has already happened – social, political, economic, and ecological – but the world after the catastrophe does not look much different from the one known in the first decades of the 21st century. In this paper I will focus on the visual side of the music video as well as its ending, which emphasizes the pessimistic overtone of the video. It turns out that the life in the futuristic ghetto is watched in a quasi-museum by an upper-class White American family. The ending stresses the attitude of the richest towards the people who are less educated or in a worse economic situation. Depending on the interpretation of the music video, Whites will either exterminate those regarded as less valuable and now watch their life in a minimalistic museum or will consider watching their life in real time as a reality TV type of entertainment. The vision of the future, according to the director and Vince Staples, is very post-apocalyptic in nature not only thanks to the specific type of aesthetics but also due to the Señorita’s pessimistic ending. Owing to the use of post-apocalyptic iconography portraying the life in the ghetto, the viewers may draw a conclusion that those from less privileged social groups have their “post-apocalypse” now.