{"id":7556,"date":"2010-06-18T21:34:56","date_gmt":"2010-06-18T21:34:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=7556"},"modified":"2021-11-23T02:32:52","modified_gmt":"2021-11-23T02:32:52","slug":"multiculturalism-and-morphing-in-im-not-there-haynes-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=7556","title":{"rendered":"Multiculturalism and Morphing in \u201cI\u2019m Not There\u201d (Haynes, 2007)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Multiculturalism and Morphing in \u201cI\u2019m Not There\u201d (Haynes, 2007)<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Wide Screen<\/a>
\nVolume 2, Number 1<\/a>, June 2010
\n15 pages
\nISSN: 1757-3920
\nPublished by Subaltern Media<\/p>\n

Z\u00e9lie Asava<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018<\/strong>Passing<\/strong><\/a>\u2019 narratives question fixed social categorisations and prove the possibility of self-determination, which is why they are such a popular literary and cinematic trope. This article explores \u2018passing\u2019 as a performance of identity, following <\/strong>Judith Butler\u2019s<\/strong><\/a> (1993) idea of all identity as a performance language. <\/strong>The performance of multiple roles in I\u2019m Not There<\/a><\/em> (Haynes, 2007) draws our attention not only to \u2018passing\u2019, \u2018morphing\u2019 and cultural hybridity<\/a>, but also to the nature of acting as inhabiting multiple identities.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m Not There<\/em> is a biopic of the musician Bob Dylan<\/a>.\u00a0 It is a fictional account of a real man who, through his ability to plausibly \u2018pass\u2019 for a range of personae, has achieved legendary status.\u00a0 It uses four actors, an actress and a black child actor to perform this enigma.<\/p>\n

The performance of multiple identities in this film explores the \u2018moral heteroglossia\u2019, that is, the variety and \u2018many-languagedness\u2019 (as Mikhael Bakhtin<\/a> put it) of identity, through its use of multiply raced and gendered actors.\u00a0 But the film\u2019s use of representational strategies is problematic. Ella Shohat<\/a> and Robert Stam<\/a> (1994) note that mixed-race and black representations are often distorted by a Eurocentric perspective. And, as Aisha D. Bastiaans<\/a> notes, representation is a process which operates \u2018in the absence or displaced presence, of racial and gendered subjects\u2019 (2008: 232). This article argues that I\u2019m Not There<\/em>, like Michael Jackson\u2019s<\/a> Black or White<\/a><\/em> (1991) video, exploits racial and gendered difference through \u2018passing\u2019 and \u2018morphing\u2019 narratives, to reinforce the white-centrism of American visual culture.<\/p>\n

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

Multiculturalism and Morphing in \u201cI\u2019m Not There\u201d (Haynes, 2007) Wide Screen Volume 2, Number 1, June 2010 15 pages ISSN: 1757-3920 Published by Subaltern Media Z\u00e9lie Asava \u2018Passing\u2019 narratives question fixed social categorisations and prove the possibility of self-determination, which is why they are such a popular literary and cinematic trope. This article explores \u2018passing\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1196,8,6462],"tags":[3150,245],"class_list":["post-7556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-passing-2","tag-wide-screen","tag-zelie-asava"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7556","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=7556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62362,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7556\/revisions\/62362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}