Payton Ewalt - Core Post #5

Although it wasn’t the main argument of the piece, the way Beltran discussed nonwhite bodies and the construction of non-white representations and stare images had me thinking about stars who were mixed race. Speaking as someone who is specifically Asian/white mixed, the categorization of “half” white non-whiteness has always interested me. Beltran writes that these star images can voice cultural confusion of the blurring of identities and ethnicities in American culture and that deactivation or neutralization echoes “cultural stereotypes and nullify potentially transgressive elements of difference in the construction of non-white representations.”

Can the images and careers that disrupt whiteness last? Reading about the media coverage of Jennifer Lopez at the time of the beginning of her career, it seems like people, both white and nonwhite, struggled to accept her. She had to go to lengths to prove that she could literally embody her role, that she could speak Spanish (“Todo es mio” in response to the question of if her butt was padded or “hers” (which is such an interesting way to frame the question of bodily ownership and autonomy)). They still struggle to accept her now. There are memes like her “Mi gente latino” moment that get circulated and laughed at. She’ll never be white, but she’ll never really be accepted for her nonwhite ethnicity either.

But if the nonwhite is still white, how much confusion and blurring of identity is there? If these media representations disrupt whiteness, they also disrupt nonwhiteness. I remember seeing a popular tweet of Henry Golding and Charles Melton hugging each other with a caption to the effect of one “wasian king” replacing the other like a passing of the torch. It was an interesting framing of the situation considering that despite existing outside a purely white or nonwhite identity, they could only fulfill one identity (wasian) and only one could exist to represent the whole in the industry. Is there a struggle to accept them? Is their recognition as “wasian” already a form of acceptance or will they be memed someday for how they construct or prove their image?

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