ARC affiliate faculty member and associate professor for the Berkeley Center for New Media, Abigail De Kosnik, has been featured on several news outlets on how British pop star Charlie XCX's new album "Brat" has become wrapped up with Kamala Harris' presidential campaign and meme culture, specifically "kamala IS brat."
"Charli XCX did Harris a tremendous favor of by making the meme of the summer and the fall the same night that Harris was essentially promoted to the presidential nominee," de Kosnik said in her interview on CBS, noting that the essence of the Brat album speaks to Harris's suddenly nomination. A "brat," de Kosnik says, is "not all the way put together."
The meme creates space for women to be messy, imperfect, but most importantly, "fearless," "honest," and "[owning] all the parts of herself, including all her flaws."
de Kosnik sees how Kamala's "unexpected winner spirit" aligns with Charli XCX's message in "Brat."
Watch more of de Kosnik's interviews on CBS, CBC, NBC, and Berkeley News as well as at our original Instagram post.
Abigail De Kosnik is an Associate Professor in the Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM) and the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies (TDPS), and an affiliated faculty member of Gender & Women’s Studies, Film & Media, and Folklore. She researches histories and theories of new media, film and television, social media, fan studies, piracy studies, cultural memory, and archive studies. She is particularly interested in how issues of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and transnationalism intersect with new media studies and performance studies.
