{"id":9800,"date":"2010-10-28T00:57:41","date_gmt":"2010-10-28T00:57:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=9800"},"modified":"2012-02-04T20:22:51","modified_gmt":"2012-02-04T20:22:51","slug":"9800","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=9800","title":{"rendered":"Star-Light, Star-Bright, Star Damn Near White: Mixed-Race Superstars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1111\/j.1540-5931.2007.00376.x\" target=\"_blank\">Star-Light, Star-Bright, Star Damn Near White: Mixed-Race Superstars<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/journal\/10.1111\/(ISSN)1540-5931\" target=\"_blank\">The Journal of Popular Culture<br \/>\nVolume 40, Issue 2<\/a> (April 2007)<br \/>\npages 217\u2013237<br \/>\nDOI: <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1111\/j.1540-5931.2007.00376.x\" target=\"_blank\">10.1111\/j.1540-5931.2007.00376.x<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fau.edu\/english\/facultypages_dagbovie.php\" target=\"_blank\">Sika Alaine Dagbovie<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of English<br \/>\n<em>Florida Atlantic University<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In an episode of the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Chris_Rock_Show\" target=\"_blank\">Chris Rock Show<\/a>,&#8221; comedian <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Chris_Rock\" target=\"_blank\">Chris Rock<\/a> searches the streets of Harlem to find out what people think of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tiger_Woods\" target=\"_blank\">Tiger Woods<\/a>. When he asks three Asian storekeepers if they consider Woods Asian, one replies, &#8220;&#8216;Not even this much,&#8221; pressing two of his fingers together\u00a0to show no space. This comic scene and the jokes chat surround Wood&#8217;s self-proclaimed identity reveal a cultural contradiction that\u00a0I explore in this essay, namely the simultaneous acceptance and rejection of blackness within a biracial discourse in American popular culture. Though Wood&#8217;s self-identification may not fit neatly into the black\/white mixed-race identity explored in this project, he still falls into a black\/white dichotomy prevalent in the United States. The Asian storekeepers agree with Rock&#8217;s tongue-in-cheek suggestion that Tiger Woods is as black as <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/James_Brown\" target=\"_blank\">James Brown<\/a>, opposing sentiments like &#8220;The dude&#8217;s more Asian than he is anything else&#8221; on an Asian-American college Internet magazine (&#8220;Wang and Woods&#8221;). Woods cannot escape blackness (a stereotypical fried-chicken-and-collard-green-eating blackness according to Fuzzy Zoeller), and yet he also represents a multicultural posterboy, one whose blackness pales next to his much-celebrated multi-otherness.<\/p>\n<p>Through advertising, interviews, and publicity, biracial celebrities encode a distinct connection to blackness despite their projected (and sometimes preferred) self-identification. Drawing from <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Richard_Dyer\" target=\"_blank\">Richard Dyer&#8217;s<\/a> <em>Stars<\/em> I read biracial celebrities <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Halle_berry\" target=\"_blank\">Halle Berry<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Vin_Diesel\" target=\"_blank\">Vin Diesel<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mariah_Carey\" target=\"_blank\">Mariah Carey<\/a> by analyzing autobiographical representations, celebrity statuses, public reception, and the publicity surrounding each of the&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read or purchase the\u00a0article <a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/j.1540-5931.2007.00376.x\/pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Star-Light, Star-Bright, Star Damn Near White: Mixed-Race Superstars The Journal of Popular Culture Volume 40, Issue 2 (April 2007) pages 217\u2013237 DOI: 10.1111\/j.1540-5931.2007.00376.x Sika Alaine Dagbovie, Professor of English Florida Atlantic University In an episode of the &#8220;Chris Rock Show,&#8221; comedian Chris Rock searches the streets of Harlem to find out what people think of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,125,1196,8,394],"tags":[1704,113,4265,3352,4264,4266,105,1703],"class_list":["post-9800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-identitydevelopment","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-socialscience","tag-halle-berry","tag-mariah-carey","tag-sika-a-dagbovie","tag-sika-alaine-dagbovie","tag-sika-dagbovie","tag-the-journal-of-popular-culture","tag-tiger-woods","tag-vin-diesel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9800","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=9800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}