{"id":7539,"date":"2010-06-17T14:43:56","date_gmt":"2010-06-17T14:43:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=7539"},"modified":"2011-05-17T05:02:10","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T05:02:10","slug":"the-transformation-of-u-s-racial-and-ethnic-identities-in-global-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=7539","title":{"rendered":"The Transformation of U.S. Racial and Ethnic Identities in Global Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Transformation of U.S. Racial and Ethnic Identities in Global Media<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Contact Spaces of American Culture: LOCALIZING GLOBAL PHENOMENA
\n36th International Conference of the Austrian Association for American Studies (AAAS)
\n<\/a>Department of American Studies, University of Graz
\n2009-10-22 through 2009-10-25<\/p>\n

Shelleen Greene<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of Digital Studio Practice and Theory
\nUniversity of Wisconsin, Milwaukee<\/em><\/p>\n

Through an analysis of the DreamWorks SKG 2008 release Tropic Thunder<\/a><\/em>, this essay investigates how the rhetoric of race and ethnicity in U.S. films is influenced and transformed through their circulation within the global film market. Engaging Arjun Appardurai\u2019s<\/a> work on
\nglobal culture in the digital era, in particular his model of the mediascape, or the production and distribution of images through electronic media platforms that are used to create \u201cimagined worlds\u201d, \u201cnarratives of the other\u201d and \u201cprotonarratives of possible lives\u201d, I examine contemporary \u201cHollywood<\/a>\u201d films that speak not only to industrial shifts, such as film financing as well as film productions across national boundaries, but also to the ways these new circulations lead to a re-consideration of racial and ethnic identities that are no longer bound to the nation-state. Tropic Thunder<\/em> garnered media attention and controversy for its use of blackface performance. However, I argue that while the film\u2019s reception was mired in discussion of the historical legacy of racial stereotypes in American film, the broader implications of Tropic Thunder\u2019s<\/em> critique of Hollywood\u2019s hegemonic role within global cinema has remained unexamined. As a pastiche of the Vietnam War film and a satire of the Hollywood film industry, I suggest that Tropic Thunder\u2019s<\/em> use of blackface performance must be read in light of the film\u2019s ruminations on American cultural imperialism. The film\u2019s meditation on the role of Hollywood in the global film industry can be read through a comparison of the film\u2019s explicit blackface performance (Robert Downey Jr.<\/a>) and what can be considered its performance of racial drag in the character of Les Grossman (Tom Cruise<\/a>). Ultimately, films such as Tropic Thunder<\/em> index a shift in the reception and consumption of racial identities due to their dissemination within the global cinema, but also point to the continued use of racial performance and stereotype to sustain the Hollywood industry in a rapidly transforming and highly competitive global film economy.<\/p>\n

…Testified by his own tongue-and-cheek portrayal and response to the performance and film overall, it is evident that Downey Jr.\u2019s performance is markedly different from what was the norm of popular American culture some sixty years ago. Not only should we consider changing notions of race brought about by genetic science, proving that one\u2019s racial identity is arbitrarily related to one\u2019s skin color, but also a radical shift in the American political, social and cultural landscape that has seen the rise and fall of affirmative action, the first census to allow a \u201cmixed-race\u201d designation, and the acknowledgement of race as a construct.<\/strong> We find ourselves in the era of self-reflexive racial performance, as seen in the comedic work of Dave Chappelle<\/a>, or the emblematic and troubling figure of post-race, Michael Jackson<\/a>. \u201cRace\u201d is no longer taken as an inherent quality of the subject, but one that can be performed or produced through surgical procedure. That Robert Downey Jr.\u2019s performance speaks to these shifts in the popular conceptualization of race is not surprising…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

The Transformation of U.S. Racial and Ethnic Identities in Global Media Contact Spaces of American Culture: LOCALIZING GLOBAL PHENOMENA 36th International Conference of the Austrian Association for American Studies (AAAS) Department of American Studies, University of Graz 2009-10-22 through 2009-10-25 Shelleen Greene, Assistant Professor of Digital Studio Practice and Theory University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,14,20],"tags":[3146,3144,3852,3851,3147],"class_list":["post-7539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-media","category-papers","category-usa","tag-austrian-association-for-american-studies","tag-shelleen-greene","tag-shelleen-m-greene","tag-shelleen-maisha-greene","tag-tropic-thunder"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7539","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=7539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}