When Ethnic Ambiguity Becomes a PrivilegePosted in Articles, Communications/Media Studies, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, United States on 2013-10-12 16:27Z by Steven |
When Ethnic Ambiguity Becomes a Privilege
SunDryed Affairs
2011-06-08
Taking a look at recent box office results, it is the ethnically ambiguous star and ambiguously ethnic films that appear to be making bank.
Ambiguity reaches around and hugs the color line while supporting the weight of overlapping identities. It’s not a question of black or white, but black and white, and Asian, and Latino, and Muslim, and gay ad infinitum.
Take Fast Five for example. The entire Fast and Furious franchise has been celebrated as a celebration of today’s multicultural pluralism. This iteration in particular with its romps in Brazilian favelas practically makes ethnic ambiguity a theme.
The two leading forces at odds in the film are Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson, two of the most ethnically ambiguous figures in Hollywood most can think of. Even though the ethnically ambiguous man on the run (Diesel) dukes it out with the ethnically ambiguous G-man (Johnson) in some incredible fight scenes, they eventually put their differences aside long enough to stick it to the unambiguously corrupt (kind of) white power structure in Brazil.
But to make it happen, they have to assemble, you guessed it, an ethnically ambigious team who “can fit in everywhere” as one sequence says showing a tanned Asian guy (Sung Kang) with long, California boy hair. There’s also the sexy former Mossad (Israeli intelligence) agent who he falls in love with while flying down the German Autobahn on the way to Tokyo. Then of course you have the two brothers (of both the blood and the black variety), but they are speaking Spanish! Throw in a few more race-bending Latinos and a couple of old-school American Negro types and you have quite the ethnically ambiguous party!…
Read the entire article here.