{"id":33457,"date":"2013-09-05T18:07:48","date_gmt":"2013-09-05T18:07:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=33457"},"modified":"2013-09-05T18:07:48","modified_gmt":"2013-09-05T18:07:48","slug":"the-new-new-thing-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=33457","title":{"rendered":"The New New Thing, Again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/mpg734.blogspot.com\/2013\/02\/the-new-new-thing-again.html\" target=\"_blank\">The New New Thing, Again<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mpg734.blogspot.com\" target=\"_blank\">MPG: unofficial thoughts, whimsical critiques, and occasional cultural commentary<\/a><br \/>\n2013-02-08<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/brown.edu\/Departments\/Africana_Studies\/people\/matthew_guterl.html\" target=\"_blank\">Matthew Pratt Guterl<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of Africana studies and American studies<br \/>\n<em>Brown University<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Someone referred to mixed race children as particularly &#8220;beautiful&#8221; the other day, and it made me think of this:<\/p>\n<p>In 1993, the cover of <em>Time<\/em> magazine featured a fresh-faced young woman, designated the \u201cNew Face of America.\u201d For twenty years, this image has circulated as a referent for the new, new thing, for the mixed-race future gestating in a womb somewhere in the U.S.\u00a0 Often, it is embraced enthusiastically, and &#8220;she&#8221; is offered up as an icon for a pretty and happy future.\u00a0 Sometimes, the image is described as a way-too-seductive advertisement for race-suicide. (That last link is NSFW and, really, not safe for any decent human being).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTake a good look at this woman,\u201d the scrawl read, encouraging a close reading of her face.\u00a0 \u201cShe was created by a computer.\u201d\u00a0 In truth, though, she wasn\u2019t.\u00a0 With brown eyes and light brown skin, she was imagined by renowned graphic artist <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Milton_Glaser\" target=\"_blank\">Milton Glaser<\/a>, conceived through software created by engineer Kim Wah Lam, a composite of hundreds of photographs taken by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tedthaiphotos.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Ted Thai<\/a>. A chorus line of willing employees in the Time Life building provided the visual DNA. The design team selected a handful of idealized &#8220;types,&#8221; borrowed features from them, and assembled the image by cutting the features out and stitching them together. The near future in digital flesh, &#8220;she&#8221; stood without clothes, with a slight smile and a direct gaze, and looked right into the eyes of the present tense.<\/p>\n<p>Tellingly, every student sees &#8220;her&#8221; as &#8220;Mexican,&#8221; as if that national category were itself a precise synonym for mixture&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/mpg734.blogspot.com\/2013\/02\/the-new-new-thing-again.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New New Thing, Again MPG: unofficial thoughts, whimsical critiques, and occasional cultural commentary 2013-02-08 Matthew Pratt Guterl, Professor of Africana studies and American studies Brown University Someone referred to mixed race children as particularly &#8220;beautiful&#8221; the other day, and it made me think of this: In 1993, the cover of Time magazine featured a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,8,394,20],"tags":[14074,14073,14072,15644],"class_list":["post-33457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","category-usa","tag-matthew-guterl","tag-matthew-p-guterl","tag-matthew-pratt-guterl","tag-mpg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33457","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=33457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}