{"id":22039,"date":"2012-03-29T03:00:37","date_gmt":"2012-03-29T03:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=22039"},"modified":"2017-06-02T18:57:58","modified_gmt":"2017-06-02T18:57:58","slug":"a-taste-for-honey-choreographing-the-mulatta-in-the-hollywood-dance-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=22039","title":{"rendered":"A Taste for Honey: Choreographing the Mulatta in the Hollywood Dance Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Taste for Honey: Choreographing the Mulatta in the Hollywood Dance Film<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

International Journal of Performing Arts and Digital Media<\/a>
\nVolume 5, Numbers 2 and 3<\/a> (December 2009)
\npages 141-153<\/p>\n

Melissa Blanco Borelli<\/a><\/strong>, Lecturer of Dance Studies
\nUniversity of Surrey<\/em><\/p>\n

This article examines the filmic representations of the mulatta<\/a> body in the films Sparkle<\/em> (1976), Flashdance<\/em> (1983) and Honey<\/em> (2003). More specifically, this article seeks to unravel how the Hollywood filmic apparatus engages with signifiers of raced sexuality and hierarchies of dance styles to enforce and reify mythic narratives about dance, dancing raced bodies and dance-making. By establishing a genealogy of the mulatta body in a US context through dance and\/or performance films, these juxtapositions illustrate how the mulatta subject develops from a tragic figure (in Sparkle<\/em>) to an independent and self-reliant one (in Honey<\/em>). Critical dance studies provide the analytical framework by allowing a focus on particular choreographed and improvised dance sequences performed by each film’s respective mulatta protagonist.<\/p>\n

The figure of the mulatta colours many cultural imaginaries with her specific narratives. One such narrative, the trope of the \u2018tragic mulatta\u2019 appears prominently, often obfuscating any other type of representation possible. As Hazel Carby<\/a> writes, \u2018the figure of the mulatt[a] should be understood and analysed as a narrative device of mediation\u2019(1987:88), mediating between the white and black worlds said figure straddles. Couched in Enlightenment ideologies of race, the mulatta emerges as a tragic figure in that her genesis occurs from a violent union between two races \u2014 a \u2018dominant white\u2019 one, and a \u2018subservient black\u2019 one. Werner Sollors explains the etymology of the word mulatto:<\/p>\n

of sixteenth century Spanish origin, documented in English since 1595, and designating a child of a black and a white parent, was long considered etymologically derived from \u2018mule\u2019; yet it may also come from the Arabic word muwallad (meaning \u201cMestizo\u201d or mixed) (1999:128).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even with skin that approximates \u2018whiteness,\u2019 the proverbial \u2018taint\u2019 or \u2018drop\u2019 of impure African blood condemns her and her value to be less than human, despite the fascination with her representation of ambiguity and varying skin colour gradations. The undervalued \u2018figment of [the concept of] pigment\u2019(1998:16) as DeVere Brody calls it, conversely added to her value as a popular sexual commodity for heterosexual male desire. As a filmic presence, the mulatta first appeared in D.W. Griffith\u2019s Birth of a Nation<\/em> (1915). Lydia, the mulatta mistress of the white abolitionist carpetbagger, appears independent, powerful, threatening, yet desirable. Film historian Donald Bogle<\/a> attributes this connection between \u2018the light-skinned Negress\u2019 (2001:15) and desirability to a closer proximity to a white aesthetic ideal which gave \u2018cinnamon-colored gals\u2019 (2001:15) a chance at lead parts. Other films such as Imitation of Life<\/em> (1934; 1959), Pinky<\/em> (1949), Shadows<\/em> (1959), and Devil in a Blue Dress<\/em> (1995) utilize the trope of the mulatta and render her full of regret, emotionally unfulfilled, or sad and alone due to each film\u2019s respective circumstances. As Charles Scruggs states, \u2018the mulatta is a visible expression of the broken taboo, a figure bearing witness to the interconnection of the races, and the \u201csite of the hybridity of histories\u201d\u2019 (2004:327). Fraught between desire, melancholy, and despair, the mulatta usually encounters a tragic fate, unable to escape these pre-scripted choreographies of her race. These characterizations prevent more complex representations of this racialised and gendered body primarily by constricting the notion of mulatta into narratives based on textual discursive practices. As a result, the mulatta figure suffers from rather limited representations unable to acknowledge her potentiality as something other than tragic.<\/p>\n

In this article, I seek to vivify and corpo-realize mulatta representations by particularly focusing on films where mulattas use their bodies, specifically their hips in active mobilizations as performers, dancers, or choreographers.<\/strong> As I have argued elsewhere, my theory of hip(g)nosis exposes the contours of the hip as a site of cultural production, produced and deployed by historically racialized mulatta bodies in their negotiation of \u2018blackness,\u2019 \u2018whiteness,\u2019 the political economy of pleasure, and becoming. As a result, the excesses of the hip\u2019s choreography, its existence as a product that can dazzle, dodge, divert and, of course, hip-notize locates it as\/in a space where the enacting mulatta body achieves some agency through the different values imposed on it.<\/p>\n

Thinking through and moving with the mulatta\u2019s hip, I will examine the filmic representations of the mulatta body in the Hollywood film Honey<\/em> (2003) starring Jessica Alba. More specifically, this article aims to unravel how the Hollywood filmic apparatus engages with signifiers of raced sexuality and hierarchies of dance styles to enforce and reify mythic narratives about dance, dancing raced bodies, and dance-making. In order to frame the discussion of how the mulatta body operates through the visual economy, I will establish a genealogy of this body in a U.S. context through two other dance\/performance films: Sparkle<\/em> (1976) and Flashdance<\/em> (1983). These juxtapositions illustrate how the mulatta subject develops from a tragic figure (in Sparkle<\/em>) to independent and self-reliant (in Honey<\/em>) with dance acting as the analytical framework by focusing on particular choreographed and \u2018improvised\u2019 dance sequences performed by each film\u2019s respective mulatta protagonist…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article examines the filmic representations of the mulatta body in the films “Sparkle” (1976), “Flashdance” (1983) and “Honey” (2003). More specifically, this article seeks to unravel how the Hollywood filmic apparatus engages with signifiers of raced sexuality and hierarchies of dance styles to enforce and reify mythic narratives about dance, dancing raced bodies and dance-making.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8,25],"tags":[6725,10240,10237,10236,10238],"class_list":["post-22039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-women","tag-dance","tag-international-journal-of-performing-arts-and-digital-media","tag-melissa-b-borelli","tag-melissa-blanco-borelli","tag-melissa-borelli"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22039"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54080,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22039\/revisions\/54080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}