Just as Get Out made its central focus the very real notion that white people covet certain aspects of Blackness, so, too, does the latest “snafu” in pop culture indicate this being a persistently problematic reality. Billie Eilish, who has always been liberal in her grafting of hip hop traditions (just like her idol and new best friend, Justin Bieber), has recently been caught on camera (“vintage” footage, mind you) being racist in several ways.
The first major instance called out was a resurfaced video of Eilish when she was around fourteen saying “chink” (while mouthing the words to a Tyler, the Creator song). A word she claimed in her freshly-issued public apology that she had no idea what it meant “at the time.” Okay girl, homeschooled or not, you live in L.A., you live on the internet—surely there must have been a moment when you encountered what that slur meant. Particularly in California, where anti-Asian sentiment can so often rear its ugly head.
It’s unclear why Tyler, the Creator got a pass in the first place for the lyrics that “made” Billie record herself mouthing “chink,” but that’s what “Fish” apparently did as Tyler sings, “Slip it in her drink/And in the blink of an eye I can make a white girl look chink.” But maybe he manages to “eke by” as a result of having to constantly contend with his own form of racism, purely on the basis of blancas like Billie incessantly taking liberties with “Black emulation.” As she’s called out for by her own brother, Finneas, in an old Instagram live stream during which her “blaccent” is particularly potent.
In another clip of Eilish “just being random” and “speaking gibberish,” said gibberish sounds a lot like an offensive interpretation of an Asian accent—like, we’re talking Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany’s shit. To this Eilish defended herself with, “It is absolute gibberish and just me goofing around, and is in NO way an imitation of anyone or any language, accent or culture in the SLIGHTEST. Anyone who knows me has seen me goofing around with voices my whole life.” All right… but anyone who knows what mocking an Asian accent sounds like also knows that not all “gibberish” or “goofing around” is created equal. Yet one supposes Eilish needed a new culture to “experiment with” before returning more fully to her daily Black person’s appropriation.
While simultaneously stealing from the aspects of Black culture she wants, Eilish also condemns it when the arbitrary whim strikes her. As VOX ATL writer Zariah Taylor noted in a 2020 article, “I find it very ironic that Billie, an artist clearly inspired by rap culture, can so easily criticize rap music for ‘lying’ when she herself brags about seducing other people’s dads and killing her friends. When she, a white woman, does it it’s called ‘writing a story,’ yet when rap, a predominantly Black genre, does it, it’s called ‘lying.’” This being in response to a Vogue interview from ’20 wherein she stated, “There’s a lot of that in rap right now, from people that I know who rap. It’s like, ‘I got my AK-47, and I’m fuckin…’ and I’m like, what? You don’t have a gun. ‘And all my bitches…’ I’m like, which bitches? That’s posturing, and that’s not what I’m doing.” What she’s “doing,” evidently, is continuing on her journey of icky appropriation by coming for queer community clout as well, recently throwing a pussy party in her “Lost Cause” video to adhere to the lyrics of an “I’m so sick of men” single. But when she’s not the sick of them (as she clearly isn’t at the moment, based on her fellow racist [but also homophobic and fatphobic] boyfriend, Matthew Tyler Vorce), what of the queerbaiting then?
It all seems a diseased aspect of “marketing genius” overload. Trying to appeal to anyone and everyone from the “woke” arena has led to some kind of short circuit in Eilish’s synapses. By the same token, anyone from Gen Z trying so hard to say and “be” the right thing, only to end up as fodder for the pyre regardless, is bound to have a nervous breakdown. Which is perhaps why they shouldn’t be so quick to police others’ comportment in the first place, lest it comes back to them thrice (The Craft-style). Most ironic of all, of course, is that Eilish prides herself on a brand of “weirdness” when, in fact, as her recent incarnation has revealed, the obsession with being an accepted normie has proven to travel across generations. Even if “weird is the new normal” (while now looking just full-stop mid-twentieth century normal thanks to Eilish’s adoption of the corset aesthetic).
There are many who have still come to Eilish’s defense for her cringeworthy videos, insisting she’s too young to be held accountable for things she said and did at around fourteen. Yet one must ask: were you bandying the word “chink” at that age? Or filming yourself saying it knowing full well your family was grooming you to become famous and this shit could definitely come back to bite you in the ass? Yes, it’s a sad reality that the youth of today has to think in these terms (as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie immortalized in a June essay called “It Is Obscene”), but it’s an even sadder reality that it takes “getting caught” in order to realize the extent of one’s racism (or any other “ism,” for that matter). However “innocuous” or “unintentional.” Taylor also points out Eilish’s longstanding issues with appropriation in the same aforementioned article by noting, “In addition to her clothing, one of the things that has helped Billie establish herself is her personality. Billie’s mannerisms and slang can be seen as derived from Black culture. Billie not only uses African American Vernacular English (AAVE), but she also has a very clear blaccent, something that her brother, who was raised in the same household, does not have.”
Incidentally, it was Finneas who, like, invented his sister. He was the one who seemed more determined even than Eilish to fashion her into the world’s biggest pop star (well, the twenty-first century version of one). Now here she is, with only Olivia Rodrigo as mild competition in her demographic at the moment (with Griff slowly coming up the rear). Rodrigo, who has Filipino heritage (so yes, she could technically be offended by Eilish’s “gibberish”), at least prefers to adopt the “rocker chick” persona over a mid-90s Aaliyah meets TLC one.
Yet just because Rodrigo hasn’t “borrowed” from hip hop doesn’t mean others besides Billie haven’t (and won’t continue to). Taylor also remarked of the tendency of white musicians to completely rip off Black ones, “Billie isn’t the first artist to take aspects from Black culture only to disrespect it in the same breath. It’s very clear that Black culture sells. Rap is the number one genre right now. AAVE is littered throughout social media… Because the industry sees that Black culture is so marketable, they often put it in a package that is easily digestible for white audiences; insert here a random white artist, i.e. Post Malone or 2013 Miley Cyrus. Both are artists that take part of Black culture (rapping, twerking, AAVE), but put it in a little bit less ‘ghetto’ package that is easier for white people to digest.” So, once again, it must be said: capitalism causes a divide in “forcing” white people to compete for relevancy and continued dominance against the Black musicians they steal from in order to make that cash.
Like an ouroboros endlessly feeding on a toxic cycle, Eilish came to believe that in order to be “relevant,” she needed to co-opt a particular brand—one infused with the trappings of rap and hip hop, both musically, aesthetically and vocally. By herself perpetuating the music industry’s capitalistic thirst, she continues to feed the appropriation beast. Because that’s what’s trending—Taylor Swift’s unapologetic white girlness being a rare exception to the rule.
In another piece from 2020 called “When White Kids Grow Up on the Black Internet,” Rob Dozier of Paper Magazine wrote, “The internet has provided, for white youth who’ve spent a large part of their adolescence on it, a front seat to the creation and distribution of Black cultural products—Black music, slang and dances. But as those cultural products move across the internet, they get farther and farther away from their original context and meaning and often become collapsed under the simplistic label of ‘youth culture.’ This isn’t as democratizing as it seems. Apps like TikTok and its spiritual predecessor Vine not only encourage the performance of Black culture by non-Black teens, but incentivize it with real money to be made. It used to just be financially viable for pop stars to perform Blackness. Now, it presents an opportunity to non-Black teens everywhere.”
And because the Warholian-style objective of becoming famous as opposed to doing anything else (never mind whether that fame even leads to seeing any money as opposed to mere “virality”) has ramped up to such a mutant level in the twenty-first century, white kids like Eilish are all too ready to pimp themselves out by prostituting a culture that doesn’t belong to them. Especially if they’re laughing all the way to the bank about it anyway. Eilish can cry “I’m so sorry” and “so ashamed” all she wants, and even if it lands on unforgiving ears, it doesn’t really matter at this point. The money has already been made, the clout already achieved.
Still, during these rare moments of being “publicly shamed” (as though one didn’t have to lose all sense of dignity in order to become famous in the first place), Eilish plays into the ouroboros phenomenon by becoming a victim of pop culture influencing her tastes and decisions as she herself transcends into an even more unstoppable pop culture influence that dictates the behavior of those who will succeed her (not to mention the legion of fans that will also imitate “her” style and vernacular, seemingly forgetting that it’s not hers at all).
