It’s that time of year. As the networks promote their new fall series, artful publicity photos seem to be everywhere, constructed to maximize not only the attractiveness but also the rainbow of skin tones of the casts. Diversity clearly has cachet, lending a youthful and hip tone and cosmopolitan flavor to shows even before their premieres. The networks are simultaneously engaging in public relations efforts in sharing information with ethnic media outlets and advocacy groups that details the diversity of their new casts, such as when shows have hired Latina/o actors or when African American characters are included among the series regulars.1 Even for viewers who don’t follow such news, the networks’ promotional emphasis on the diversity of their casts may contribute to the belief that television is a now equal-opportunity playing field for actors and in series narratives.

The inclusion of actors and characters of color, and absence of images that are clearly denigrating, is not necessarily tantamount to equitable representation; however. Such emphasis on the corporeal and on “positive” representation overlooks the more central and ultimately powerful dynamic of focalization, as described by Ella Shohat and Robert Stam,2 regarding which characters we are meant to identify with, whose stories are being told, and which communities’ perspectives and ideological discourses are privileged. As Kristal Brent Zook aptly put it, “The stakes here are about more than entertainment. They’re about who we allow to dance inside our imaginations and why.”3 Such dynamics are thus important to keep central in analysis of the racial politics of contemporary television series.

Diverse ensemble cast series, while a boon for promotion to the increasingly non-white audience, offer considerable challenges to writers and producers, in part because it’s not easy to develop a large number of characters and keep their storylines manageable within the time constraints of a television episode or feature film. It also may feel risky to challenge Hollywood cinematic traditions of white heroism and centrism, even with the possibilities offered by an ensemble cast. With this in mind, the following questions, explored in the case examples of Glee (2009+), Friday Night Lights (2006+), Lost (2004-2010), and other series could aid media producers and scholars who wish to begin to interrogate the racial politics of diverse ensemble cast shows.

1. Are the characters of color fully realized individuals? This may seem simplistic, but it bears stating. Given how rare protagonists of color have been in Hollywood narratives, we may not always notice when characters of color are utilized primarily to lend a hip tone to a setting and in support of the white lead characters’ development. When in doubt, it can be useful to ask questions about the various characters. Whose families, home life, or inner worlds do we get to know? Whose motivations and development are we meant to follow? And if it’s a musical, who do we actually hear sing?

Glee, despite the United Colors of Benetton™ visual display of its high school show choir (as Sue Sylvester once groused), was problematic in this regard in its first season; it developed the white (or in the case of Rachel Berry, ambiguously white) characters much more than the characters of color and often reinforced this imbalance in its musical numbers. Viewers’ witnessing of the family lives of white male students Kurt and Finn also underscored their primacy in the narrative. Friday Night Lights, about a football-obsessed Texas town, similarly developed its white characters to a degree that it did not for its African American or its few Latino characters, even after African American actor Gaius Charles’s storylines were critically acclaimed. Lost, on the other hand, in its first seasons was particularly successful in developing its diverse characters in unique and often surprising ways through its narrative structure, which regularly included flashback sequences of characters’ home lives and childhoods.

2. Do the writers and producers appear knowledgeable about and interested in the worlds and perspectives of the non-white characters? Again, this might be assumed to be a given, but the history of underdeveloped characters of color makes evident that this continues to be an important question to explore. Considering again the example of Friday Night Lights, a series that I admire for its intimate and realistic portrayal of white Texans, I’ve wondered how the series might have been enriched by a Tejano or Tejana writer who could have revealed the Mexican American facets of the town of Dillon. (Strangely, when a few Latino characters were introduced, the writers went to pains to establish that they were not of Mexican heritage, adding to their unrealistic and “tacked on” feeling).

This is where I have to bring out that old saw, the need for more writers of color, given that they may have personal knowledge of potential characters and stories that white writers do not, and thus can make a unique contribution to vibrant, realistic, and compelling storytelling built around a diverse cast. Strangely, accounts point to writers of color having a harder, not easier time, finding work in television in the last few years as integrated ensemble casts are becoming the norm;4 statistics gathered by the Writers Guild of America West indicate that only 9 percent of employed television writers were non-white in 2007.5 Writers of all ethnic backgrounds, with in-depth experience or who have conducted in-depth research on a city or neighborhood also can construct true-to-life, empathetic, and narratively compelling characters that elevate a diverse ensemble cast series from one which engages in diversity window dressing to one which builds on its cast’s ethnic, class, and other diversity to entertain and educate its audience. David Simon’s experience with The Wire (2002-2008) serves an apt case in point. The creators of Lost also stand out as unique in this regard, for casting several actors of color, including Jorge Garcia and Yunjin Kim, because they found them talented and engaging, and creating roles for them that uniquely showcased their abilities.

3. Does the diversity of the cast appear natural? Given that cities and neighborhoods still are racially divided in the U.S. more often than not, giving every white lead a best friend of color without realistic explanation typically comes across as unrealistic and gimmicky. On the other hand, the right setting can offer worlds of story possibilities and interesting, believable characters of various ethnic backgrounds. (Whether these settings will appeal to advertisers is a different matter, however). The Wire and Friday Night Lights, set in Baltimore and the fictional town of Dillon, respectively, are two series that come to mind as presenting unique and engaging stories of Americans who normally are not shown in prime-time television and their interactions across race and class lines (although as mentioned above, FNL neglected its opportunity to include Mexican American characters).

Of course, school settings and work places have long been deployed by writers as sites where individuals from diverse backgrounds might naturally interact. Community (2009+), set at a Colorado community college, has a promising premise in this regard. And Lost provides perhaps the best-case example, with its premise of a jet on an international flight that crashed on a mysterious island, forcing an international and multi-ethnic group of survivors to learn to work together and form a community.

4. Finally, do the series or film producers exploit the natural diversity of a story’s setting or subject matter? This could take the form of populating the cast in accordance with the diversity of the region or of the career the characters engage in, for example. I’m always surprised when realism-enhancing character and story possibilities – and possibilities of reaching a new audience demographic – are overlooked by producers, whether because of lack of adequate research or lack of interest. Friday Night Lights, for instance, had a prime opportunity to include Tejano (Texan Mexican American) characters of varying types among the team and townspeople, yet has largely failed to do so. Roswell (1999-2002), a science fiction drama about teen aliens in Roswell, New Mexico, went so far as to change the Latina, non-alien female lead from the novels it was based on to a white character, perhaps in the belief that this would be more appealing to white teen audiences. Again, this is a facet of media storytelling that will be enhanced by a diverse group of men and women around the writers’ table, all of whom can offer differing glimpses of the characters and stories waiting to be brought to life.

Image Credits:
1. Glee cast
2. Friday Night Lights cast
3. Lost cast

Please feel free to comment.

1. Such news can be read in the on-line industry trade journal Latin Heat, http://www.latinheat.com/, or in African American-oriented newspapers such as the Los Angeles Watts-Times, http://www.lawattstimes.com/life-and-style-mainmenu-31/arts-a-culture/1166-blacks-featured-on-new-fall-tv-shows.html, just to mention two examples.
2. Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (London: Routledge, 1994).
3. Kristal Brent Zook, Color By Fox: The Fox Network and the Revolution in Black Television (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 64.
4. Jennifer Armstrong and Margeaux Watson, “Diversity in Entertainment: Why is TV so White?” Entertainment Weekly (June 12, 2008). http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20206185,00.html.
5. 2009 Hollywood Writers Report: Rewriting an All-Too-Familiar Story? (Los Angeles: Writers Guild of America, West, 2009).

As a “Gleek”, a fan of the Fox musical comedy Glee, I have many favorite moments from the first season of the series. None, however, rival a musical number from the episode “Dream On,” in which Artie, the New Directions member who is in a wheelchair, daydreams about being able not only to walk, but dance with finesse. (It goes without saying that the representational politics of the number are problematic, as is often the case for Glee). The number, Glee’s version of Men Without Hats’ “Safety Dance,” is set in a busy indoor shopping mall, and the dancers that back up Artie, including some of the series regulars, spontaneously pop out of the mall crowd to join him. The virtual fourth walls between the series and its fans and between the show’s stars and its extras drop away as shoppers are suddenly dancers and others in the crowd enjoy the show, taking pictures and shooting video of the dance on their phones, with the scene in fact edited with that video footage included so that the fans’ POV is momentarily made central.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The performance is dynamic, surprising, seemingly spontaneous, and fun. Then after the last words of the lyrics are uttered, it ends, just as abruptly as it began. The dancers slip back into the moving throng of shoppers, Artie is back in his wheelchair, and it’s as if it never happened. In other words, the number is a brilliant flash mob dance and nod to the show’s fans, a truly gleeful surprise.

At the time I was already aware of Glee flash mobs popping up around the globe, but my appreciation for “Safety Dance” brought me back to explore the phenomenon. As readers may already know, flash mobs are described as such because they appear spontaneous, involve large numbers of people, and are “anonymous and playful performative interventions”1 that pop up suddenly in public locales, then disappear just as quickly. While they have historical roots in performance art and community-based ritual, the origins of the modern-day flash mob are often traced to Manhattan in 2003, when an underground group known as the Mob Project, using cell phones and other social media, organized a number of seemingly spontaneous, often absurd performative moments in public locations (hundreds of participants breaking into seemingly random applause, making bird sounds, or pretending to be frightened of an animatronic dinosaur in a toy store, for instance).2

As news reports and videos posted on YouTube publicized the trend and web sites and Facebook have been utilized to solicit and organize participants, larger and more elaborate flash mobs have emerged. While some still focus merely on surprising moments, as in the case of a light saber-fighting flash mob and “freezes” (in which participants act as if they’re frozen in time, a stunt originated in Grand Central Station and later recreated by thousands of participants in Sydney and later Paris),3 in recent years they have at times involved participants engaging in song and dance, such as in the case of flash-mob performances of songs from The Sound of Music and of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” a clear flash mob favorite.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In this regard, Glee’s feel-good music and premise of underdogs forming a community of performers make it appear tailor-made for inspiring flash mob dances and theatrics, and in fact videos on YouTube and elsewhere document Glee flash mobs performing in such disparate and far-reaching cities as Seattle, Columbus (Ohio), Dublin, Madrid, Rome, Tel Aviv, and Kuala Lumpur since the series debut in the U.S. in 2009.

Click here to view the embedded video.

What’s the flash mob craze all about? For one, flash mobs seem to appeal to the individuals who participate in and witness them, as noted by dance arts writer Doug Fox, because of “the compelling nature of spontaneous collective action”.4 I wish James Carey were still here to talk about his take on the rise of communal performance in this regard and the sense of community, if fleeting, forged among flash mob participants. While journalists and scholars often critique the lack of focus of flash mobs (as in Selina Schepers’ description of flash mobs’ “power of many, in the pursuit of nothing”)5; others have countered that while not directly political in focus, flash mobs illustrate that citizen resistance can quickly be organized and model one type of communal organizing.6 I also believe that flash mobs can reaffirm a sense of connection to one’s community and of the nurturing power of communal performance for performance’s sake, such as Carey (and the writers of Glee) might argue.

Admittedly such utopic notions don’t completely capture the nature of flash mobs today, however. Lost spontaneity aside as flash mobs increasingly involve rehearsal and pre-production planning, what about when flash mobs have been spearheaded by networks or companies with something to sell? It turns out that many of the Glee flash mobs that have taken place outside the U.S., including those that took place in Spain, Italy, and Malaysia this spring, were in fact organized by the FOX network affiliates in those cities to publicize and promote the series debut in those countries.7 How does that change the meaning of these performances, for participants or for observers?

Click here to view the embedded video.

And in other instances networks and film studios have now used flash mobs or at least borrowed some of their strategies for promotional purposes. FOX, for instance, organized a publicity stunt that they called a “stache mob” in early June to promote their series The Good Guys: actors in fake mustaches to resemble Guys star Bradley Whitford’s mustachio’d Dan Stark appeared at a busy Los Angeles intersection and in Penn Station in New York City, giving out coffee and doughnuts in the spirit of imagined notions of police officers, while flash-mob dancers performed in Times Square to promote the release of the film Bollywood Hero last year. Fans of the NBC spy comedy Chuck could perhaps be viewed as closer to an actual flash mob when they surprised crowds in several U.S. cities in April dressed as Nerd Herders to promote the renewal of the series. But it was arguably already the beginning of the end of the flash mob when the organizers behind a flash-mob performance of “Single Ladies” in London’s Picadilly Square in April 2009 were revealed to in fact be Beyonce Knowles and Trident, and when Suave staged a flash mob-esque, “hairography”-heavy dance performance in Times Square in March to promote their hair products.

So what separates an actual flash mob from its ideologically hollowed out, though perhaps equally spectacular facsimile? Of course spontaneity, but even more it would seem that a true flash mob is necessarily driven by individual, rather than corporate drives and goals (whether that individual goal is to get a thousand people sneezing at once or to surprise and entertain in a more substantial way, of course, might widely differ, however). In the case of Glee flash mobs that have posted video clips online, it was initially difficult to accept that many had not sprung up naturally, so to speak, because of fan enthusiasm for the performances and ethos of the series – which after all, is about the joy of performing and coming together as a community to do so. But can we blame networks and corporations for wanting to harness the joyful potential of the flash mob? What better way to inspire individuals to believe, like Artie, that what we see in our dreams might at times actually become reality – if only for a performative moment.

Image Credits:

1. Glee’s Safety Dance

Please feel free to comment.

1. Johanne Ejbye-Ernst, “Contemporary Urban Performance-Intervention: An Aesthetic Perspective.” Limits of Aesthetics (May-June 2007). http://aestetik.au.dk/fileadmin/www.aestetik.au.dk/__stetikkens_gr__nser/the_limits_of_aesthetics/papers/papers_survey/johanne_ejbye_ernst.pdf
2. CNN, for instance, appears to have reported on flash mobs for the first time in August 2003. See Sandra Shmueli, “’Flash Mob Craze Spreads,” CNN.com. (Aug. 8, 2003). Available online: http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/08/04/flash.mob.
3. Mashable, “15 Fab Flash Mob Videos on YouTube.” Mashable/Video column, Mashable.com (June 20, 2010). http://mashable.com/2010/06/20/flash-mob-videos/.
4. Doug Fox, “Crossing Flash Mobs and Site-Specific Performances,” Great Dance.com. (April 24, 2006). http://greatdance.com/danceblog/archives/mashups/00536.php.
5. Selina Schepers, “The Power of Many, In Pursuit of Nothing: Flash Mob Communities on YouTube and Beyond.” Cultures of Arts, Science, and Technology, 1:1 (May 30, 2008). Eds., Janneke Brouwers, et al. Maastricht, CAST at Faculty of Arts and Sciences. http://74.125.155.132/scholar?q=cache:Iqobc_BNCxYJ:scholar.google.com/+Selina+Schepers&hl=en&as_sdt=400000000000001
6. See for instance Thomas Marchbank, “Intense Flows: Flashmobbing, Rush Capital, and the Swarming of Space.” Philament: An Online Journal of the Arts and Culture, Issue 4 (2004).
7. Rob, “Glee flashmob in Spain.” Gleefan.com (March 13, 2010). http://www.gleefan.com/glee-flashmob-in-spain/.

Tracy Morgan, comedic actor best known for his role as comedic performer Tracy Jordan on the NBC series 30 Rock (2006+), trumpeted America’s supposed post-racial identity at the Golden Globe Awards in January 2009. When 30 Rock was awarded Best Musical or Comedy Television Series, he gleefully snatched the statuette from Tina Fey, creator and star of the series, quipping, “Tina Fey and I had an agreement that if Barack Obama won, I would speak for the show from now on.” He continued, “Welcome to post-racial America! I am the face of post-racial America. Deal with it, Cate Blanchett! We’d like to thank the Hollywood Foreign Press … especially me, ’cause a black man can’t get no love at the Emmys. I love you, Europe! That’s what’s up!”

At the time I took note of Morgan’s speech as an example of the increasing rhetoric of a “post-racial” turn in entertainment media, which has accompanied the entrance of the term into the American lexicon. The election of mixed race President Barack Obama in 2008 in particular spurred countless news commentaries on the rise of post-racial and “Obama-era” America, while more recently pundits and scholars are weighing in on how those predictions have held up. In the realm of media studies, scholars such as Ralina L. Joseph, LeiLani Nishime, and this author have taken up the term in critical study of how contemporary media texts and practices are at times being held up as uniquely eliding or transforming former racial paradigms in American media culture.1 To what end, however; what’s actually at stake in looking for and studying so-called “post-racial” media culture? What practices and trends are illuminated through scholarly deployment of the concept? Would scholars agree that Tracy Morgan is a “face of post-racial America,” and what does it mean if he is?

The first challenge to these questions, which I can only begin to explore here, is pinning down the term. In truth, I’m still sorting through the diverging visions that various journalists, politicians, and scholars have in mind when they make reference to the post-racial. As deployed by some conservative commentators, it has implied an end to racial disparities and practices and achievement of the privileges of whiteness by all Americans. Other definitions, in contrast, offer no such reassurance to white America or claims that an ideal has been achieved. As defined by Paul Gilroy, post-racial, similar to David Hollinger’s notion of post-ethnicity, 2 refers to a future in which racial notions, racialized hierarchies, and the hegemony of whiteness are in fact upended. Such a definition has far more subversive implications for equality and social power, making post-racial ideals potentially useful as a theoretical construct in study of how media representation matters beyond the imagery of specific groups, for instance in my own scholarship in interrogation of the production, narrative, and promotional strategies deployed by media producers to appeal to an increasingly diverse audience and their actual impact.

Unsurprisingly, when used in description of media trends, post-racial has taken on differing meanings both for scholars and media professionals. For one, it’s been used as shorthand to describe purported progress in ethnic/racial inclusion in employment and casting, as appears to be at least part of what Morgan had in mind in his claim that he is the face of post-racial America. In fact, a fair number of television series and films now integrate a few characters of color into their casts (notably, this was described recently by the Hollywood Reporter as perhaps due in part to an “Obama effect”)3, and we’ve witnessed a growing number of non-white and mixed race stars. Important to note and study, a major catalyst of these shifts is a turn away from niche productions targeting African American or Latina/o audiences to media texts that aim instead to appeal to a broad, multicultural audience. Arguably this does not make these texts post-racial (Dale Hudson’s concept of “multicultural whiteness”4 comes closer to describing this trend in relation to the continuing centrism of whiteness), but does raise the need for new methodological tools and theoretical frameworks for studying ethnic and racial representation in this supposed post-racial era. Also important to take into consideration is the continuing and sometimes growing underrepresentation of creative professionals of color behind the screen in tandem with “post-racial” shifts.

There is a need in such study to also take note of the casting and portrayal of mixed-race actors and individuals in Hollywood media productions. I’ve noted in my own work that the rhetoric of post-race has followed in the wake of the rising vogue for mixed-race and racially ambiguous actors and models since the 1990s. The “raceless” or “ethnically ambiguous” aesthetic (as I and journalist Ruth La Ferla described this trend, respectively5 ), particularly noticeable in contemporary tween programming and stardom, is an important strand of contemporary media formations that at times falls into descriptions of post-racial trends. Given that mixed-race representation does offer the potential to highlight the constructed nature of race and fissures in racial boundaries, as Camilla Fojas and I discuss in the introduction to Mixed Race Hollywood6, this will be an important site of study in relation to the implications of contemporary trends in ethnic and racial representation.

Importantly, “post-racial” also has been used to refer to shifts in the racial politics of film and television storylines, although again there is little agreement as to what this label implies. For example, in the case of 30 Rock and Tracy Morgan’s character on the series, it can refer to new standards of humor, including the expectation that audiences have become comfortable laughing at at least some presentations of racial misunderstanding and skewered (or at times, self-consciously reinforced) racial stereotypes. Other examples of the trend for what I term post-racial satire include the television series South Park and The Office, the comedy of Sarah Silverman, and films such as Tropic Thunder. The 2010 Golden Globe winner for Best Musical or Comedy Television series, the FOX musical comedy Glee, in fact provides ample evidence of the popularity of this style of satire, which both skewers and at times appears nostalgic for ethnic and racial stereotypes. Whether such “post-/racialized mash-up,” as I recently described it7, is progressive with respect to racial notions is under ongoing and intense debate by critics, scholars, and fans of the series, as witnessed in weekly discussions on the media and cultural studies blog Antenna and elsewhere.

As this summary makes evident, the meaning and implications of post-racial media are nebulous, given the complicated dynamics of racial representation in the present day and the various meanings individuals take from them and attach to the term itself. However, I think it is important for media scholars and other researchers to dig in the muck of these conversations to explore the actual trends of media representation and practice and their impact. As a scholar my interest in fact is in the tensions that exist among the various notions, dynamics, and texts that might be labeled post-racial, as these tensions illuminate a great deal about contemporary racial politics and ideals, both in the entertainment media and in the broader mash-up that is the American imagination.

Image Credits:

1. Morgan at 2009 Golden Globes

2. Obama on Election Night 2008

3. Cast of 30 Rock

4. GleeCast

Please feel free to comment.

1. Ralina L. Joseph, “Tyra Banks Is Fat: Reading (Post-) Racism and (Post-) Feminism in the New Millennium.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, Vol. 26 No. 3 (August 2009): 237-254; LeiLani Nishime, “Racing Down the Fab Lane: Kimora Lee Simmons and the Performance of Race.” Conference presentation, Console-ing Passions 2010; Mary Beltrán, “The Racial Politics of Spectacular Post-Racial Satire: Ugly Betty and Glee.” Conference presentation, Console-ing Passions 2010.
2. Paul Gilroy, Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002; David Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism. New York: Basic Books, 2006.
3. Nellie Andreeva, “Drama Pilots Getting More Diverse.” Hollywood Reporter (16 February 2010). http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/television/news/ e3ic7a9d080cc25d102b90168a2fed94922
4. Dale Hudson, “Vampires of Color and the Performance of Multicultural Whiteness.” In The Persistence of Whiteness: Race and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, ed. Daniel Bernardi. New York: Routledge, 2007. 127-156.
5. Mary Beltrán, “The New Hollywood Racelessness: When Only the Fast, Furious (and Multi-racial) Will Survive.” Cinema Journal Vol. 44, No. 2 (Winter 2005): 50-67. Ruth La Ferla, “Generation E.A.: Ethnically Ambigous.” New York Times (28 December 2003) http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/28/style/generation-ea-ethnically-ambiguous.html?pagewanted=1?pagewanted=1
6. Mary C. Beltrán and Camilla Fojas, eds, Mixed Race Hollywood. New York: NYU Press, 2008.
7. Mary Beltrán, “The Racial Politics of Spectacular Post-Racial Satire: Ugly Betty and Glee.” Conference presentation, Console-ing Passions 2010 conference, April 2010.

Entertainment Weekly cover

A recent illustration can be seen in the massive popularity of ex-American Idol contestant Sanjaya Malakar. Even while he was in equal parts adored and maligned by viewers and the Idol judges, he achieved a level of fame and attention in the entertainment news media unsurpassed by any other non-winner to date. On a recent perusal of a newstand I noted that Malakar was featured in several major U.S. entertainment and news magazines—even People, which featured Malakar on its cover in a small photo insert captioned “Sanjaya Tells All!” This is not to argue that the 17-year-old performer has become popular merely because of his dual Bengali Indian and Italian American heritage. Clearly Malakar’s personality, charisma, and potential as a performer are largely to credit for the stardom that he garnered during his stint on Idol. But I would argue that the singer’s mixed background and ethnic, but not too ethnic look, also played a role in his capturing the hearts of many viewers.

Sanjaya Malakar singing

People’s “tell all,” among other things, answers the puzzle of Malakar and his sister Shyamali’s mixed heritage, given that viewers already had seen his sister and his mother, Jillian Blyth, cheering him on each week. We learn from People that Malakar has an Indian father, Vesuveda Malakar, a musician, and that his parents divorced when Malakar was 3 years old. Notably, pictures of Sanjaya and his Italian American mother and of Sanjaya and Shayamali as young children are included among the illustrations that document Sanjaya’s life as a mixed-race youth for curious readers. His story is one that I would argue is increasingly coded as American in star promotion efforts. While it isn’t why he became popular, it has helped that Malakar not only has the right look at the right time, but also a life story that is timely and compelling to the U.S. viewing audience.

Sanjaya Malakar

Sanjaya’s charm notwithstanding, why are we so enamored of ethnically ambiguous, mixed heritage individuals? In part because of the ongoing evolution of ethnic demographics and identity our country. Americans, and particularly the youth generation, have never been so racially and ethnically diverse as in recent years. In addition, the numbers of mixed-race families and youth have boomed since the 1970s and are projected to continue to grow. A broad perspective on ethnic differences therefore could be expected to come naturally for many of the Millennial Generation, the first generation large enough to displace the Baby Boomers in dictating the direction of popular culture. Advertising and other studies have shown that youth and younger adults today are more culturally curious than their older counterparts, demonstrated in an interest in television shows, films, and other pop culture forms featuring individuals perceived as non-white. As the rise in mixed-race actors and performers attests, however, we can’t necessarily shake the standards of beauty that have been drilled into us by a century of white-centric media culture. Actors, models, and others in the public eye who can embody the “ethnicity lite” that enables us to have it both ways—for example, Jessica Alba, Keanu Reeves, Vanessa Williams, and Sanjaya Malakar—are seen as especially attractive today, and are increasingly successful. While only time will tell if Sanjaya’s fame will extend beyond the shelf life of this most recent season of American Idol, this trend in popular culture arguably is only beginning to be felt.

Image Credits:
1. Entertainment Weekly cover
2. Sanjaya Malakar singing
3. Sanjaya Malakar

Please feel free to comment.

As the instructor of a course on racial and ethnic representation in U.S. film and television, I face many challenges to raising the consciousness of my students, the latest springing from our age difference. I'm struggling with how to teach my current class, the majority of whom were weaned on the television programming of the 1990s, that they were not in fact introduced to ethnic and racial diversity through series that they remember fondly from their youth such as The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Family Matters (of Jaleel White's Steve Urkel fame), and Saved By the Bell. Without intimate knowledge of the evolution of ethnic representations on television and in film over the decades nor of the histories of various racialized groups, often it is too easy to see some variety in skin color combined with markers of upper-middle class status and to ascribe to these narratives the blanket interpretation of “positive” representation. If the non-white characters aren't criminals it must be good, right?

On its surface my argument against these so-called egalitarian representations of non-white characters in 1990s television narratives is solid. In this regard I build on the scholarship of Herman Gray, my graduate school mentor John Downing, and others who cogently critiqued The Cosby Show for providing a misleading representation of an upper-middle-class African American family that obfuscated how many African Americans were actually living in poverty and facing decreased opportunities in the U.S. Similarly, the storylines of the Fresh Prince's Banks family in their Bel-Air mansion arguably whitewashed the struggles of many African American families in the mid-1990s.

The dilemma, however, is that taking this stance can fall into the trap of also essentializing race and representation. What's the suggested alternative, that African Americans, or to follow that reasoning, Latino/as or other non-whites, not be represented as wealthy and/or professional? That is certainly not what I want to advocate, especially with the knowledge that children are strongly influenced by the presence of role models, or lack thereof, in the media. I also would not want to ignore the fact that representations of non-whites as “problem people” struggling with issues associated with poverty have historically reinforced negative associations ascribed to non-white groups.

So why shouldn't I see Steve Urkel and Lisa Turtle (played by Lark Voorhis on Saved By the Bell) as progressive steps in the representation of African Americans on television? Much of my contentious stance has to do with a lack of contextual framework within the narratives themselves, which leaves these images mere positive caricatures, fantasies within fantasy storylines.

Let's take for example The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, executive produced by Quincy Jones and Winifred Hervey, and starring then-rapper and now film star Will Smith. The members of the Banks family, if anything, were ascribed stereotypes that have historically been the domain of wealthy white characters: Stuffy, materialistic, ditzy, and the like. Their cousin Will, from more diverse West Philadelphia, in contrast was upbeat, confident, and playful–qualities that made him a favorite of many of my male students, of all ethnic backgrounds. Despite his central role in the narrative, Will's point of view and backstory of growing up in a working-class, predominantly black neighborhood, which he has escaped by coming to live with the Bankses, is almost never treated in a realistic or sustained fashion, however. I find myself wanting to argue that “blackness,” if there is such a thing, as a result is left out. But then again, who is to say what form and meaning blackness has on an individual or family-by-family basis? And why can it not exist in Bel-Air? I see the flaws in my own argument, and have to admit that the representation of racialized groups is a topic that will continue to confound us in various ways.

Aside from my wish to educate my students regarding non-white perspectives that I feel were not typically expressed in Fresh Prince and other 1990s programming–and more often than not are still not represented today–this discussion illustrates a larger challenge: There's virtually no agreement on what it would mean to “represent diversity” accurately or fairly on television and in other mediated representations. Would this entail greater visibility of various racial and ethnic groups, increased realism and accuracy, or the inclusion of images that promote more egalitarian social relations? Even if “diversity” in this regard could be accomplished, would it even be supported by television advertisers and watched by enough viewers to survive?

Scholars, ethnic media advocates, advertisers, and media producers clearly disagree on these questions and will continue to do so, given the complexity of the matrix of production, representation, and consumption of media narratives and how race, ethnicity, and class are imbricated in that matrix and in U.S. social relations more generally. The 1990s programming that today's college students grew up on proves a complicated case in point. How to raise consciousness regarding patterns of representation that include the common invisibility and denigration of ethnic minorities, as well as the whitewashing of non-white histories and perspectives even while casting non-whites in more professional and “positive” roles? The challenge continues.

Image Credits:
1. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
2. The Cosby Show
3. Lisa Turtle

Please feel free to comment.

So here's the question: What to make of a television series that finally has a Latina lead character who is smart, sensitive, and interesting enough to compel me to watch each week to see how she is faring – but on the other hand who is, well, ugly? Or rather, clueless (particularly given that America Fererra, who portrays Betty, is far from ugly), with respect to being unable to dress appropriately for her high-powered job at Mode, a Vogue-like fashion magazine. I've waited a long time to be able to turn on network television and find a lead character like Betty Suarez. And yet I can't help but wonder if the premise of the series, based on the phenomenally popular Spanish-language telenovela Yo Soy Betty La Fea (literally, I Am Betty the Ugly), along with Betty's bushy eyebrows and lack of sophisticated fashion sense (does she not even flip through Mode?), perhaps have distorted meanings when set within the context of U.S. race relations. While it is true that we have witnessed a growth in Latina representation in the last decade, I'm not sure these images have grown in number and variety to the extent that the story of a Mexican American woman who will never fit into the world of fashion and beauty can yet be understood as an allegory for how “Betty is beautiful on the inside.” There are moments on the show, particularly when Betty's coworkers have a laugh at her expense, when it seems primarily focused on how a working-class Mexican American girl is rightly marginalized.

There is much more to the series than that, however, which is why I continue to tune in and likely why it continues to be popular with other viewers as well. Betty is a fairly complex character who is beginning to demand that she be able to be herself and be accepted in settings in which being thin, white, rich, and disengenuous typically have been prerequisites. And her family, while at first glance composed of Latin types that we all have seen before, is developing more shades of gray in recent storylines, despite the series' reliance on melodramatic story turns such as the revelation of Betty's father's manslaughtering past. As I noted in my position paper for the Flow conference, I see Ugly Betty as a positive step in network efforts to reach out to their growing Latino audience. There in fact appear to be many Latino viewers watching the show and rooting for its survival. I recently happened across an on-line discussion by fans over Betty's ugliness. Several fans pointed out the Latin American roots of the storyline and made it clear that, given this knowledge and their fond memories of the original, they didn't find Betty's appearance an issue in this new, U.S. version. What one viewer smartly pointed out, however, is that in the original series, which in novela style lasted only a few months, Betty undergoes a makeover at the culmination of the story, which brings her outer self into alignment with her inner beauty. Because U.S. series typically last much longer, however, we can count on seeing far more of Betty's “ugliness.” Not to imply that Betty needs a makeover in order to be a positive role model for other Latinas, but it seems that an ugly-duckling series premise that makes the duckling a Latina threatens to equate beauty and worthiness with whiteness.

I should stress, too: I'm still rooting for Betty. The series might provide a more empowering representation over time, particularly given America Fererra's ability to imbue Betty Suarez with an unmistakable intelligence and wit even in the face of the onslaught of overpriced designer clothes and cruelty that she faces. Already she maintains a level of grace and integrity that shines through, behind the glasses, brows and braces. But do other viewers, particularly non-Latino viewers, see it? It may depend on their perceptions before they tune in, what the implications of this Betty ultimately will be.

Image Credits:
1. ABC’s Ugly Betty
2. America Fererra, Betty
3. The cast of Ugly Betty

Please feel free to comment.