Reflection paper based on two questions due on Sunday (1.31.2021) 20:00pm Chicago time
Asher
Orvalle-FramingJenniferLopez.pdf
The Persistence of Whiteness
Race and contemporary Hollywood cinema
Edited by Daniel Bernardi
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First published 2008 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2008 Editorial selection and material, Daniel Bernardi; individual chapters, the contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or util ised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Brit ish Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The persistence of whiteness: race and contemporary Hollywood cinema / edited by Daniel Bernardi. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Minorities in motion pictures. 2. Race in motion pictures. 3. Motion pictures–United States. I . Bernardi, Daniel, 1964–
PN1995.9.M56P47 2007 791.43!6552–dc22 2007008736
ISBN10: 0–415–77412–8 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–415–77413–6 (pbk) ISBN10: 0–203–93974–3 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978–0–415–77412–3 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–77413–0 (pbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–93974–1 (ebk)
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
ISBN 0-203-93974-3 Master e-book ISBN
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Chapter 9
Framing Jennifer Lopez Mobilizing race from the wide shot to the close-up
Prisci l la Peña Ovalle
The [beauty] pageant illustrates that women’s natural “asset” continues to be primarily located in and through the body, whereas men’s natural assets include talent, intellect, and entrepreneurial ambition.
Sarah Banet-Weiser, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World1
Just when I get them to focus on your assets, they’re focusing on hers. They’re fantastic assets, don’t you think?
Scripted exchange between Stanley Tucci and Ralph Fiennes, regarding a newspaper image of Marisa Ventura (Jennifer Lopez), in Maid in Manhattan
At the intersection of race and gender, the Latina body challenges the tradi- tional binaries of racial representation, specifically the poles of whiteness and blackness. Recent scholarship has begun to theorize how Hollywood power structures reify whiteness by continuing to pose it as the central screen identity. Richard Dyer has illustrated how white subjects in film have historically been positioned as the default identity for protagonists. The illusion is that white bodies lack race: “At the level of racial representation . . . whites are not of a certain race, they’re just the human race.”2 Layered film practices – from narra- tive to shot composition, but also including financial, aesthetic, technical, etc. – reinforce the status quo of this centralized position. This hierarchy of racial representation is arbitrarily organized according to the poles of whiteness (One) and blackness (the Other). Representations of gender (and heterosexuality) likewise work according to this dominant power structure. Filmmakers have actively constructed the representational difference of female bodies since Edward Muybridge.3 As Linda Williams notes in her analysis of pornography, “Men’s naked bodies appear natural in action: they act and do; women’s must be explained and situated: they act and appear in mini-dramas that perpetually circle about the question of their femininity.”4 Through reiterated perfor- mance, the hierarchical systems of race and gender work to support and reify each other.5
Thus, whiteness may be endlessly nuanced through characterization while blackness/nonwhiteness is characterization. Whiteness remains a blank slate:
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the white actor can simply be the character. Instead, the nonwhite (particularly black) body is so marked by cultural signifiers that the performance becomes complicated; the nonwhite performer’s actions must be explained or under- stood as possible for someone of his/her race to perform. Hence, Hollywood has simplified complex categories of identity (race, gender, etc.) into polarized and formulaic narrative canvases for more convenient storytelling. Because two-dimensional representations of race continue to signify normalcy (white- ness) or difference (blackness), the white male remains the traditional lead protagonist while the nonwhite female is typically a supporting or, more commonly, a character actor.6 Hollywood has thus continued a legacy of colo- nialism that supports what Charles Ramírez Berg identifies as a “preferred power relation.”7 These types coincide with long-held myths regarding the disposition and sexuality of Others – and the hegemonic values of our society possible through acclimation and assimilation.8
Jennifer Lopez’s recent rise as a multimedia star is compelling given these traditional binaries and intersections of representation. Using Lopez’s career, this essay shows how the screen Latina has remained tenuously between types throughout Hollywood’s history, resulting in a malleable media and economic space ripe for Lopez to exploit at this specific multicultural moment in US history. In many ways, Lopez’s on-screen Latina identity is composed within the tension of sameness (One) and difference (Other). Therefore, this essay explores the evolution of Lopez’s appearance within the film frame by using the film language of the close-up and wide shot. I argue that the close-up encap- sulates the cosmetic changes Lopez has made to access mainstream Hollywood film while the wide shot reiterates her difference by reinstating the popularity of her butt and the nonwhiteness it represents. By using these terms – particu- larly the way each composition has traditionally framed the female face and body – I will illustrate the continual and complex process of racialized repre- sentation that has depicted one of the most famous Latina stars in Hollywood.9
“Between and betwixt”: the tempo(rary) of the dancing brown body
The screen depiction of Latinas has traditionally centered on the body, specifi- cally the dancing body. Hollywood’s best known Latina stars – Lupe Velez, Dolores Del Rio, Carmen Miranda, Rita Hayworth (Rita Cansino) and Rita Moreno – have each become famous by dancing onto the screen.10 Jennifer Lopez is no exception. As Jane C. Desmond has shown, the belief in the “natural rhythm” of nonwhite bodies effectively positions race and nationality on/through the body to construct and perpetuate a division between “moving and thinking, mind and body.”11 Dance has traditionally limited the Latina film performer to the realm of the body, serving as both costume and characteriza- tion; in this way, Hollywood has economically connoted racialized sexuality through one action. This performance is true for the extra and star alike – from
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Framing Jennifer Lopez 167
the “Cantina Dancer” (a Latina character frequently posed in the back of saloons as décor) of early cinema to Jennifer Lopez in Shall We Dance (2004).12 As a result, the conventions of dance have come to “represent a highly codified and highly mediated representation of social distinctions” – collapsing passion and lust into the stereotype of the Latina.13
In this essay, I am interested in how the Latina body must change to simul- taneously exhibit sameness and difference. Lopez is the first Latina whose celebrity has opened a Hollywood film at the box office since Rita Hayworth.14 While Hayworth’s mainstream success required an Anglicized revision of her name from the Spanish “Rita Cansino” in the 1930s, Lopez has remained “Jennifer Lopez.”15 Still, access to mainstream Hollywood film for both women has meant – to varying degrees – alterations in cosmetic appearance of the hair and face. While such physical negotiations are often considered necessary for both white and black actresses, Lopez conformed to idealized beauty standards yet retained an exoticized difference – a simultaneity that resulted in main- stream success in the late twentieth century. Yet, like Latina celebrities before her, dance has shaped the trajectory of Lopez’s career.
If dance indicates a popularly recognized difference, the mainstream success Jennifer Lopez and Rita Hayworth achieved through it can be, at least partially, attributed to cultural citizenship. Here, I define this citizenship as a sense of belonging and investment in socioeconomic ascension – exemplified by an association with the work ethic and the American Dream. Velez, Del Rio, Miranda and Moreno were born, if not raised, abroad or outside of the conti- nental USA; the perceived foreignness of their origins may explain how their personas, though successful, remained marginalized by mainstream roles.16 Lopez and Hayworth were born in the continental United States – New York, to be specific. As such, Hayworth and Lopez ostensibly better support and sustain the nationalized narrative of the American Dream.
In Lopez’s version of this Dream come true, her mother and father were born in Puerto Rico; both parents came to New York, making Jennifer – though technically already a US citizen – a first-generation mainlander and full cultural citizen of the United States. Both of Lopez’s parents worked and expected their daughter to attend college; against their wishes, Lopez left college to pursue a career in dance. Despite early professional struggles, she eventually won a spot on the television program In Living Color as one of the Fly Girls. Gradually, Lopez earned television and film roles, capturing the public’s attention when, after a national search, she was cast in the title role of Selena (1997). The breadth of the film’s publicity and casting call as well as the tragic narrative of Selena’s emerging crossover success proved an ideal spring- board for Lopez’s career.17
Because Jennifer’s upbringing seems to straddle the working class and middle class, this biography is not exactly one of rags-to-riches. The fact that the Lopez family was able to purchase a home and expected Jennifer to attend college indicates intentions of upward mobility. Perhaps because of her fan base
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168 Priscil la Peña Ovalle
and persona, Lopez categorizes her own background rather vaguely; in one interview, Lopez identifies it as “lower to middle class, working class.”18 This vagueness is culturally crucial. First, it is in line with a general Americanness that imagines itself as middle class despite the economic truth. But secondly, in the case of Lopez’s success, this back-story seemingly proves that with hard work anyone – even Latinos/as – can prosper in the United States. Despite Lopez’s background, she corroborated the working-class status that was effec- tively collapsed into her persona by publicity to fulfill the bootstrap mythology and reinstate popular national narratives that largely cast Latinas as domestic, garment, farm or other low-wage workers (in the real and reel worlds).19 Because of Lopez’s fiscal accomplishments – particularly her triumph as the first Latina to earn over $1 million per picture – her persona ultimately bears the symbolic weight of a country invested in perpetuating itself as the land of opportunity.
Since the rise of her star in Selena, Lopez’s body – particularly her derrière – has remained a site of public fascination.20 Despite the public obsession with Lopez’s physical assets, her career has continually maneuvered beyond the limi- tations that such attention might foster/forge. Instead, Lopez’s image has capi- talized on Hollywood’s depictions of Latina-ness, which have historically straddled the prescribed codes of whiteness and nonwhiteness. In other words, as a Latina performer Lopez presents the most marketable components of both polarized representations to reap the greatest rewards during a period of multi- culturalism and a shift in popular culture practices.
In the past century, the Latina has been cast into the media spotlight at specific and intermittently historical moments while the ebb and flow of white- ness has governed national identity within the United States. Whiteness has defined and rearticulated itself against blackness, using all Others as intermedi- aries in this process of defining cultural citizenship. As an intermediary, the Latina has flexed and bridged the boundaries of whiteness and blackness, despite – or perhaps because of – the double bind of a marginalized race and gender. It is precisely this “in between-ness” that makes brown female bodies desirable (and disposable) nation-builders.21 In the colonization of the New World and American West, the Latina has served as a temporary woman, helping to populate conquered lands in the absence of Spanish or English female bodies. The impermanence of this flux echoes the malleable borders that have historically constructed and categorized whiteness according to national, political or colonial shifts.22 As a colonized body, the Latina serves to reify these shifting ideals and thus explains the routine waves of attention that Latina (specifically) bodies foster in the United States. This temporal and racial oscillation between the supposed normalcy of whiteness and purported exoti- cism of blackness is the foundation of Lopez’s ability to mobilize race. In other words, the codes of race in visual culture have been manipulated by, on and through the Latina body to effectively articulate difference and sameness in a nationalized body.23
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Framing Jennifer Lopez 169
As in the case of Del Rio and Miranda, Latinas previously depicted an inter- national Otherness; today, however, the national project of the United States is to articulate itself against an intra-national Other – nonwhite but assimilable persons operating within hegemonic US culture.24 This project serves to reify the racial and structural status quo while offering the illusion of diversity and inclusion. Ideally, this intra-national Other works within (but never fully achieves) the dominant codes of whiteness, so as to be distinguished from so- called illegal or less assimilable immigrants. In this way, fetishized assets like the butt or actions like dance reiterate the necessary difference of the Other (even as it is being re-presented as diverse) while other bodily markers (hair, fashion, etc.) perpetuate the ideals to which beauty must strive. Lopez has utilized her in-between-ness to cultivate and manipulate a persona that simultaneously presents both as needed. By mobilizing race across various forms of media, Jennifer Lopez has cultivated celebrity by exploiting this transitional position to its fullest.
The prototypical Latina body – not too light or too dark by Hollywood standards – efficiently illustrates diversity and economizes representation: it diversifies both white and black venues. As a dancer, Lopez seemed conscious of this unique position.25 A 1998 Mirabella interview finds Lopez musing on her early success in the Fly Girl world. Beyond her dance training, Lopez offered something different during a specific (multi)cultural moment:
[Lopez] studied jazz and ballet, and aspired to dance on Broadway, but then, she says, “Hammer came out with ‘U Can’t Touch This,’ and all the auditions started becoming hip-hop auditions. I was good at it, and they were like, ‘Ooh, a light skinned girl who can do that. Great, let’s hire her!’”26
Though classically trained, Lopez’s skin seemed her most marketable feature in the competitive hip-hop dance world. While Lopez’s complexion is arguably light, this statement suggests that Latinas with the right skin and hair remain privileged in the media – and assimilation – process. The lightening of skin and straightening of hair has long been a means of accessing the artificial hierarchy of whiteness, an attempt to assimilate through aesthetic and/or social identity. The history of African Americans in the United States illustrates the impact of Anglicized ideals on the perception of skin tone and hair texture as codes for the hierarchical arrangement of mainstream culture.
This ascent is not solely cultural or national, but also economical. The 1998 Coca-Cola commercial featuring Jennifer Lopez exemplifies the pervasive American Dream as hegemonic and economic access. The advertisement pres- ents Lopez’s life as a then-and-now narrative: images of her glamorous Hollywood present are juxtaposed with sepia-hued footage of her re-enacted past. The commercial begins as an elegantly dressed Lopez runs into frame, rapidly exiting a mansion and forcefully climbing into a red Lamborghini. The
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170 Priscil la Peña Ovalle
car speeds away and the action sequence’s intensity is heightened by the frenetic editing style and the sound effect of barking dogs. In voiceover, Lopez says: “Wow, things have really changed since my dad used to walk me to school.” The past appears in faux home movie footage, showing a man and little girl standing before an urban stoop. The man’s hands are full: one holds his daughter’s hand while the other holds a Coke. The commercial cuts to the artificial present, with the getaway scene mid-action. Lopez then exits the Lamborghini and hugs the director of a film crew; the opening scene is revealed to be a (staged) film shoot.
Then Lopez states, “It wasn’t easy to find an open door . . .” as the commer- cial cuts to the past and a young, brown-haired child actor playing Lopez extin- guishes the candles of a birthday cake. With a Coke bottle prominently displayed in the foreground, Lopez continues that it wasn’t easy “. . . to make my dreams come true.” At the party, the girl/Lopez embraces an actress playing her mother. The real/present-day Lopez addresses the camera: “But here I am . . . working hard yesterday, working hard today.” To illustrate the hard work of yesteryear, a pre-teen actress playing Lopez is shown completing a jazz dance turn. A wider shot reveals that she is dancing onstage and being evalu- ated by an anonymous gentleman. As he waves his hand in judgment, the expression of disappointment on the pre-teen’s face indicates the judge’s nega- tive decision. But the success of Lopez’s hard work “today” is clear when the commercial cuts to a chef serving the real Lopez food as she enjoys the Coca- Cola in her hand and laughs with others. Closing the commercial, Lopez reminds us that “what’s important will never change” as she sits with her real (biological) mother. A separate shot shows her actual father with an obscured, yet unmistakable, Coke bottle in the foreground. After a glamorous sip from her Coke, Lopez directly addresses the audience in close-up to complete her thought: “Family, Friends” remain important to her. Lopez hugs her mother. A close-up then shows Lopez laughing and looking screen left; the reverse shot reveals that Lopez is addressing a little girl with dark and tight curls giggling at her. In the final shot, Lopez takes us in confidence, placing hand over heart as she says: “They’ll always be here.” And so will Coke, suggests the logo branding the top right of the screen.
The ad’s insistent juxtaposition of Lopez’s past and present marks it as an American Dream; this commercial narrative seems especially intended for Latinos/as, as the hard-work-and-family formula remains unique to national advertising aimed at marginalized communities, particularly the working class and/or nonwhite/immigrants.27 The commercial is clearly negotiating a repre- sentational tension between the marginal past and mainstream present, a tension played out through ethnicity and cosmetic appearance. For example, a classic all-American birthday scene depicts Lopez’s youth, but it is sonically marked as different by a musical bridge: the birthday-past is scored with the sounds of a folkloric guitar, beginning faintly then swelling as the young actress/mother embraces the child actress/Lopez. This musical moment cues the difference we
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Framing Jennifer Lopez 171
are witnessing as Latino/a but seemingly subsides for the remainder of the commercial. Similarly, familial moments like the birthday hug signal Lopez’s difference as a Latino/a in America: the overwhelmingly strong familial commitment keeps her family in heart and is the true secret of her success.
Further, Lopez’s transition to success is marked in her clothing and hair. Lopez’s costumes – both present and past – are primarily “Coca-Cola” red: a red gown in the present and a red leotard in the past. In this subtle way, Lopez is both branded and equated with the product itself. We can also see a transi- tion in hair, from the first shot of Lopez as a wavy haired girl to the increasingly straightened and lightened hairstyle of the present. Such assimilation, the commercial suggests, is possible for every little Latina with a dream. The shot/ reverse shot of Lopez looking at a girl with ethnically dark curls offers us this promise. Finally, the use of dance to link the past and present is of particular interest. Lopez’s hard work of the past is depicted as dance auditions and rejec- tion. The present-day Lopez, however, works in the similarly physical realm of an action film, as suggested by the commercial’s recreation of a film shoot. Both present and past center on the body; the body is clothed in the color of the product, but all endorsements are composed in close-up.
The timing of Jennifer Lopez’s presence and success might be considered temporal and transitional, a smoothing over of some of the historically constructed, racialized lines in mainstream media. Cornell West’s assertion that we are experiencing a recent cultural shift towards the “African American- ization of American popular culture” sets the stage for Lopez’s rise.28 Beyond the skin tone that Lopez brought to hip-hop, the dance (and music) form’s impact on Lopez’s success is striking, as it signals the increasing importance of this music and dance form in mainstream representation. Despite the increased attention to black aesthetic practices like hip-hop or the current attention to diversity, a tension remains around the bodies that perform in line with black- ness. The rise of a brown screen identity like Lopez from the world of hip-hop may be the result of black popular culture’s emergence within the confines of hegemonic whiteness in the United States. Lopez’s in-between-ness has helped soothe the anxiety of whiteness as representation has inched closer towards blackness.
The variety of visual media formats – including film, print, interactive, music videos and television appearances – offers multiple spaces through which Jennifer Lopez has mobilized her racial representation. Each medium encodes its message differently, creating multiple planes through which Lopez’s image plays with bodily codes and narratives. Regardless of talent, the few types that women – particularly Latinas – can play in Hollywood film limit their careers. The Lopez interview in Mirabella illustrates Lopez’s consciousness of her Hollywood identity – and the need to aim beyond her limited type.
But all along, Lopez has been determined not to market herself as just a Latina actress. “My managers and agents and I realized that I’m not white,”
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she says with a laugh, “so I’ve always wanted to show that I could play any kind of character. Not only a range of emotions, but also race-wise.” [emphasis mine]29
The importance of moving beyond Latina-type roles underscores the complexity of race and gender in Hollywood representation. In the case of Lopez, the compromises necessary for standardization have primarily occurred through hair and cosmetic style, echoing the conventions of lightness and whiteness in Hollywood film even as the films themselves reiterate her differ- ence in ways beyond character name.30
Race, up-close
The close-up directs the audience’s full attention to the subject of the frame’s composition, reinforcing the cultivation of the Latina type by typically excluding her from its gaze. The close-up presents the audience with the most valuable or informative detail within a scene; the importance of a gesture, object or other visual cue is indicated by the way it is fully magnified within the frame. However, the shot’s cultural value primarily resides in its use to capture the film star’s face: within this frame, the star may use this space to emote, react, glow or simply be. Cinematography is organized around the proper exposure of the face and historically this face has been white. Dyer has identified the many ways that, technically but no less culturally, traditional cinematic lighting and framing techniques have reinstated whiteness by operating according to mechanical requirements standardized for white complexions – even when recording black bodies. On a symbolic level, the tradition of backlighting (creating a specific glow or halo around the star to signal importance) comes from a mythical representation of white virtuousness. This technique has most commonly been used with white female stars: brightness cues the framed subject’s “idealized representation” by cultivating the illusion of a “glow.”31 The artificial glow effectively and economically collapses lightness, beauty and subject/narrative positioning in a single shot. While Dyer states that the moral and sexual superiority associated with such imagery is not as prevalent, “the language [and power] of this image remains powerful.”32 Thus, the fiery Latina type – relegated to character actor or supporting role – has typically been neglected by the full cultural weight of the close-up.
As visual real estate, the spatial value of the close-up is exemplified by the April 1997 cover of Vanity Fair. While the outer magazine cover features blondes Cameron Diaz and Claire Danes (with a red-haired Kate Winslet), the inside-cover highlights emerging actresses Jennifer Lopez, Charlize Theron and Fairuza Balk.33 Captioned “Not Quite Ready For Their Close-Ups,” these three actresses close out a ten-person spread, following other performers like Renee Zellweger, Minnie Driver, Alison Elliot and Jada Pinket (pre-Smith). Lopez’s position in this Hollywood lineup indicates the newness of her celeb-
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Framing Jennifer Lopez 173
rity but may also illustrate the unmet potential of her non-conformed image.34 Like the front cover, the image of Lopez, Theron and Balk seems to privilege blondeness. Both brunettes, Lopez and Balk, are seated. Each flanks Theron’s left and right sides. Theron stands front and center in the picture; the nude color of her dress, blonde hair and central placement in the light make her the image’s focal point. While such composition may be a coincidence, Theron is given additional significance: on the same page is another inset, captioned image of Charlize sitting with her boyfriend. No additional images of Lopez or Balk appear on the page. Theron may not have her close-up, but she clearly deserved more screen/page time.
Much has changed since Vanity Fair first identified Lopez as an up and comer in the Hollywood Issue. In the early period of Lopez’s career, she primarily appeared as a Latina actress in films like Money Train (1995), Anaconda (1997) and Selena (1997). In these films, Lopez’s characters are identified by Spanish surnames such as Santiago (Grace), Flores (Terri) and Quintanilla (Selena) respectively. Over time, overtly Latina characters/names have disap- peared from Lopez’s films. In some cases, Lopez’s Latina-ness was replaced by Italianness. The transition to Italian characters, besides providing some excuse for Lopez’s ethnic body, signals a symbolic upward mobility: Italianness provided an intermediary station towards whiteness. This process mirrors the relational assimilation of new immigrants in the early 1900s, as noted by David Roediger’s recent work on the whitening (incorporation into the collective definition of whiteness) of Italian, Jewish and Polish people in the United States.35 The malleability of Lopez’s visual representation, particularly her hair styling, has served to mobilize her climb in Hollywood film towards less ethni- cally defined roles. Though Hollywood was content to typecast Lopez as the love interest, her aspirations and consciousness caused her to instead select the B-film Anaconda. “‘I was offered another movie at the same time. It was like, Am I going to be the woman between two men again, or am I gonna be a strong woman character who’s a hero of an action movie, which is what I wanted to do.’”36 We can conclude that such calculated decisions increasingly propelled Lopez into the mainstream roles that she desired. Similarly, she has decreasingly been (overtly) defined by ethnicity as her career matured; however, as we will see with the wide shot, marks of Lopez’s difference have manifested themselves in other ways across her more recent performances.
One could argue that the Latin and Italian surnames have no impact on the narrative and that we should instead celebrate the appearance of a Latina char- acter without overanalyzing these roles. Such an approach idealizes mainstream representation and overlooks the casting strategies of certain films. In Money Train, the Latina-ness of Lopez’s character mediates the sexual and racial tensions between an unlikely pair of brothers, played by Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson. In one interview, Lopez remarks: “‘They wanted a Latina. . . . They wanted somebody who could be with Wesley and with Woody.’” This comment prompted the Buzz magazine writer to (quite rightly) note,
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“Apparently, in Hollywood, brown is some kind of mediating color between black and white.”37 In a film that challenges the racial taboos of biracial families, Lopez’s in-between-ness served as a convenient bridge, a detail utilized by the film’s publicity: one Money Train advertisement literally places the body of Lopez between and against close-ups of Snipes and Harrelson.
The process of becoming visually American in both Hollywood and the United States has played out through the politics of hair. While Americanness has primarily been determined by class, it has been normalized through beauty ideals. Access to the American Dream is a rite of passage requiring the marks of assimilation: a strong work ethic and/or acceptance of hegemonic beauty stan- dards. Ayana D. Bird and Lori L. Tharps have noted that – as some members of the black community chose to resolve the process of assimilation – passing from one racial category to another was negotiated through “skin tone and hair texture.”38 The lightening of skin and straightening of hair became a currency to access the artificial hierarchy of whiteness, enabling a sort of cultural citizen- ship in the United States. Lopez’s appearance has similarly required tailoring to conform to idealized notions of screen beauty, effectively moving her career beyond “just a Latina actress.”39 Since the beginning of Lopez’s career, audi- ences have witnessed the transformation from her true hair in films like Money Train towards lightened and straightened hair in films like Angel Eyes (2001) or Monster-in-Law (2005).40 Lopez’s transformation has opened many doors, making her marketable beyond the ghetto of marginalized audiences. Curi- ously, as Lopez’s hair moved from curly to straight, her star power in main- stream film increased.
Evidence of this transition to the mainstream exists in Lopez’s leading men: each leading man in Lopez’s films (and real life in the case of Sean Combs and Ben Affleck) has helped usher her racial mobility. Since Anaconda, Lopez’s romantic leads have consistently been white (or white ethnic) males: George Clooney (Out of Sight), an animated Woody Allen (Antz), Matthew McConaughey (The Wedding Planner), Ralph Fiennes (Maid in Manhattan) and Richard Gere (Shall We Dance).41 In this sense, Anaconda is the transitional film from Latina performer to mainstream star, theoretically pairing a curly haired Lopez with Eric Stoltz. This relationship is literally dormant over the course of the film; the narrative incapacitates Stoltz with a coma, effectively appointing Lopez heroine with Ice Cube as her sidekick. Yet, as Mary C. Beltrán has noted in her work on Lopez as a crossover star, it was Lopez’s pairing with Clooney in Out of Sight that announced her status as a “rising global star prop- erty,” particularly as she followed the film with her music career.42
The cultural desire for lightness has been routinely reified through cinematic practice of Lopez’s image.43 Cultural ideals become cultural norms when glori- fied and emulated through mass media’s technical practice. Though Lopez has rarely gone completely blonde for a film role (with the near exception of Angel Eyes or Monster-in-Law), she routinely wears dramatic hair highlights. The coloring effect lightens and brightens Lopez’s image, as the publicity stills for
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Angel Eyes and The Wedding Planner illustrate. In The Wedding Planner publicity, Lopez’s hair and complexion nearly match that of Matthew McConaughey while in Angel Eyes, Lopez’s face becomes a blown-out ghost of whiteness.
Illustrating the equation of the American Dream with lightness is the hair coloring in Maid in Manhattan. Here, Lopez (Marisa Ventura) plays a maid employed at the elite Beresford hotel. Because the narrative centers on a domestic worker and because this role is occupied by Lopez, her hair remains true to the character type: Lopez is a dark-hued brunette in this film. In fact, hair coloring significantly and subtly connotes cultural capital in the film. Marisa’s fellow maids each have dark hair: two of her friends are dark-haired black women while her confidante is a crass (Italian?) woman from Brooklyn with black hair. Beyond the maids, two female figures are significant in Maid: the housekeeping manager and a character residing at the hotel, nicknamed “The Goddess.” The housekeeping manager is an auburn-haired white woman and the Goddess is a blonde socialite.44 Significantly, both characters represent what Marisa – either directly or indirectly – aspires to be. Though Lopez is clearly the female lead, she remains subdued through hair coloring to remain consistent with her characterization. As a sort of compromise, Lopez’s hair is never curly or even unruly; instead, it remains neatly slicked into a low pony- tail or bun with the exception of a few key scenes, where hair is mobilized in performance. For example, Lopez’s hair is used to show a transition at the beauty salon – from maid to princess – as called for by the narrative’s love story.
The film negotiates an unlikely love story as a journey towards the American Dream, depicted here as a managerial position. Lopez’s character is mistaken for a hotel patron and attracts a Republican New York Assemblyman named Chris Marshall (Ralph Fiennes). As a maid, Marisa is instructed by the Beres- ford managerial staff to strive towards invisibility and she is quite successful. When Marisa anonymously meets Fiennes’ character while servicing his bath- room, the narrative asks us to believe that he does not recognize her upon their second meeting because her long brown bangs – for the only time in the film – obscured it the first time. It is not until Lopez illicitly tries on the Goddess’s glowingly white Dolce & Gabbana suit that Chris (Fiennes) begins to woo her relentlessly.
The film’s narrative, hinged on a case of mistaken identity facilitated by the white suit, creates a modernized passing narrative in a multicultural era. The brilliance of the suit – so white that several characters ponder how to keep it clean (“Scotch Guard”) – works as a surrogate for whiteness (or whiteface?) in the film. Though this passing could simply be identified in terms of class, two moments suggest otherwise. First, Fiennes’s character describes Lopez as “kind of Mediterranean,” phrasing often used to soften Otherness by Europeanizing it.45 Later, when Marisa Ventura’s full name is revealed to Fiennes’ character and his aide (Stanley Tucci), the aide’s response is a quizzical “Ventura? Spanish?” Once Marisa’s character is outed as an Other, she confirms her
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lineage by listing her childhood residence: “I grew up there [the projects]. I lived in a four block radius my whole life.”
In the Lopez/Fiennes romance, each fills a lack for the other. Marisa legiti- mizes Chris’ connection to nonwhite or poor people by offering her thoughts on public housing and poverty; in exchange, Chris fills the paternal gap left by Marisa’s predictably unreliable ex-husband. This substitution of Fiennes for the missing father figure of Lopez’s son signals a significant absence in Hollywood film: the Latino male. Unlike the Latina, Latinos rarely possess a vertical racial mobility; for example, leading Latino actors are rarely paired with white actresses. Their racial mobility (when possible) occurs laterally where their sexuality can be contained – as in the case of Anthony Quinn’s ability to play other brown men such as Arabs, Greeks or (in a move towards white ethnicity) Italians. Perhaps this absence (or lack of mobility) explains why only two of Lopez’s films since Mi Familia (1995) feature Latino love interests. Such a double standard suggests that Latinas – as near-white females – still serve as a “meta- phor for the raising up of what were deemed primitive societies to a more civilized rung on the ladder of societies.”46 With a few highlights and a spot- light, we Latinas clean up real nice. However, such mobility is only possible so long as Lopez’s difference is continually reinscribed upon the image – in cultural or media frames like publicity or films and music videos.
The asset shot
One year after Vanity Fair determined Lopez too new for a close-up, the maga- zine decided that she was ready for her wide shot: the infamous photo of a nearly naked Lopez (from the rear), wearing nothing more than lace-up satin bloomers and matching mules.47 This image represents the general framing for media depictions of Lopez. In portraits like this one or through lingering shots of her butt on the film screen, Jennifer Lopez’s difference is reiterated by the framing of her body. Her body performs – even when she does not – in the pages of magazine or tabloid articles, exposés, news clips and music video screens. If Jennifer Lopez were never to dance another step, exotic sexuality – like her ethnicity – would always already be inscribed on her body. The atten- tion paid to Lopez’s rear in every medium echoes past discourses around Saartje/Sarah Baartman, most commonly known as “The Hottentot Venus”; Saartje supposedly carried an excess of sexuality in her large derrière and was commissioned to simply exhibit herself as an example of difference in Europe.48 As Beltrán states:
[D]espite the generally positive discussion of Lopez’s acting abilities in her publicity in late 1998, it was pretty hard to focus on her acting when most of what we saw of her was her backside. From this perspective, Lopez can be considered a modern-day Hottentot Venus with respect to this
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publicity, kin to other nonwhite film actresses who have been similarly constructed before her.49
Like her predecessor Carmen Miranda, Lopez signifies excess. While the excess of Miranda was worn as a costume, Lopez’s body is her excess.
A good example of this fascination with and overt fetishization of Lopez appears on the cover of the Sunday Times (London) “Style” section. Lopez fills the left side of the cover’s frame, standing in profile with her face tilted down- ward and to the left. Her body is shown from the top of her head to her upper thighs. The cover’s text settles on the right side of the frame, with the Sunday Times “Style” banner at the top. The magazine feature’s title sits low right and reads: “Hot Bot: Why Jennifer Lopez is Hollywood’s Biggest Star.” The brightness/lightness of the lettering contrasts the dark background and dress that clings to Lopez’s body. The words “Hot Bot,” emboldened in a sans serif font, are level with the curve of Lopez’s butt. The absence of text and image between the masthead and “Hot Bot” pulls the weight of the cover’s composi- tion, focusing the eye on Lopez’s butt and the phrase “Hot Bot,” a British English abbreviated allusion to the desirability of Lopez’s bottom (buttocks). Because the article ran early in Lopez’s career, her title as “Hollywood’s biggest star” does not seem to be career-centric. Such a constant fixation on the butt orients discussion of Lopez’s body in terms of excess and sexuality; its display is intended and linguistically affirmed as an example of difference – her bigness. While countless examples of such images reiterate that Lopez’s difference is ample, her performance as a dancer has simultaneously functioned in line with and against these dominant cultural narratives.
While the suggestive movements of Latinas dancing on screen were built upon negative cultural beliefs about nonwhite women, these movements also challenge traditional inactive female roles and bodies in film. Lopez’s paradox- ical manipulation of bodily codes thereby offers us another way to read the wide shot: as a transgressive space. With the exception of Busby Berkeley, and particularly after Fred Astaire revolutionized the form, dance in film has primarily been exhibited through the wide shot. This framing illustrates a sense of authenticity in the movement, particularly how, where and when the body moves. Because the wide shot exposes the full body within a single frame’s composition, attention is paid to the whole figure’s movement. For the Latina, the wide shot further depicts her difference by the cues present – often little more than setting and costuming. As an in-between identity, however, repre- sentations of the Latina may transgress the ideals of both image and culture. The hybridity of the Latina’s racial representation enabled her to perform dance styles that were not yet deemed appropriate for transfer between the lower to upper classes, as in the mainstreaming of hip-hop in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Dance has challenged the passivity of mainstream female representation by providing the screen Latina with a niche opportunity and narrative agency (however tenuous) typically reserved for men.
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Yet the re-articulation of dance in film since the 1980s exposes another facet in the success of Lopez’s dancing body: the slippage between dance and race in media representation, exemplified by the more recent phenomenon of 1980s dance films and MTV (Music Television). Though hip-hop emerged in New York during the 1970s, it did not permeate Hollywood until the 1980s. The slew of films which rode the first mainstream hip hop wave – including Flashdance (1983), Beat Street (1984), Breakin’ (1984) and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984) – centered on the lives of inner-city youth. In this way, the terms “urban” or “youth” were/are used to describe (the process of commodi- fying) dance, music and fashion and have served as a code for race. With the exception of Beat Street, the dance films cited – easily the more popular urban dance films of the 1980s – featured female protagonists, specifically ambigu- ously raced women, none of whom were stars.50
The nonwhite female has become the most family-friendly means of depicting difference to a mainstream audience. For example, Flashdance’s lead character (Alex) is played by the biracial actress named Jennifer Beals.51 The film is about a girl with a dream. But Alex is not just any girl – she is a welder by day and an erotic dancer by night. The working-classness of both jobs rein- forces Alex’s upwardly mobile dream of becoming a ballet dancer. Unfortu- nately for Beals, her emerging career was derailed by an inability to dance in the real world: Paramount studios misrepresented her talent by employing dance doubles throughout the film. The scandal that resulted from this (contractually silenced) revelation shows the significance of dance in the film career of a brown-skinned woman. While the dance film genre has faded with a few exceptions of late, its benefactor and successor MTV has continued to escalate the exposure and importance of hip-hop music and dance.
Lopez’s dance ability, however, is bona fide, simultaneously authenticating her difference through one medium (her own music videos) to naturalize that difference in another (her film features). It should come as no surprise that Lopez would eventually “remake” Flashdance in the form of a music video for her song “I’m Glad.” The videos for “I’m Glad” and “Get Right” provide interesting examples of the wide shot representation of Lopez’s body. As promotional pieces for the records, Lopez’s music videos always showcase her trendsetting abilities in fashion and style. The “I’m Glad” video, however, places Lopez in the “girl with a dream” narrative popularized by Flashdance, while she wears costumes inspired by (or actually from) the movie.52 Beyond recreating the film, Lopez’s dancing is the central component of the video; she commissioned David LaChapelle to specifically direct a dance video (“I’m Glad”), focusing on her solo performance.
Flashdance mirrors Lopez’s own mythology – working-class girl works hard, lives dancing dream and makes millions – to fulfill what Angela McRobbie describes as a “narrative of desired social mobility.”53 But this mobility is not without compromise. While Beals’s performance was criticized for its lack of dance, Lopez’s bodily performance faced scrutiny for its excess. The combination of vigorous choreography and skimpy costuming reveal the
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“wiggle and jiggle” of Lopez’s body in the video “I’m Glad.”54 The obvious athleticism of Lopez’s body was overruled and the excess of her fleshy move- ment was edited:
I really worked out and did the diet thing . . . and then after the video . . . there’s always that one guy who’s like, “We should retouch this.” I was like, “You’re going to leave everything the way it is. That’s how it wiggles and jiggles in real life, that’s how they’re going to see it in the video.” And I noticed – [the editors] sent [the video] to me and they had shaved off a little bit of my hips and – I was like, “That ain’t me – those are not my hips. Just leave them the way they are. Do me a favor – don’t touch my hips. Don’t try to make me look skinnier. It’s fine, it’s fine the way it is.” And that’s what they did.55
Despite the training and physical intensity of the dance, Lopez’s body did not represent the ideal performance of femininity. This desire to police Lopez’s flesh illustrates the ingrained equation of unfirm flesh with a lack of physical and/or moral discipline.56 In other words, Jennifer’s body, like her Hollywood hair, seemingly required taming to conform to mainstream ideals. The attempt to slim Lopez is curious, however, when one compares the natural movement of her body with the thickness and jiggle currently in vogue for backup dancer bodies in (primarily) male-performed rap/hip-hop videos. As Lopez has moved from backup dancer to music video star, has her body become a more malleable commodity? In this case, however, Lopez’s will to “keep it real” illustrates her significant creative control and representational agency. Lopez’s authority over her music video image and ability to transform herself from close-up to wide shot are dependent upon the fact that she – body and all – remains a high- demand commodity. Lopez knows this fact and utilizes it.
For all the transgression and racial mobility, successful mainstream represen- tations of Latinas still lean towards whiteness. For example, Lopez’s 2004 video “Get Right” spans a spectrum of hair colors and character types. In the video, Lopez plays multiple characters, each congregating at a club where her song is spinning. We enter the narrative of the club through a female disc jockey (DJ) who is accompanied by her younger, brown-haired sister. As the DJ settles in her booth, places her sister under the counter and begins her musical set, we are introduced to several other Lopez characters: a cocktail waitress, go-go dancer and chola. Other characters – the diva and mousey girl – appear over the course of the video. Beyond showing the multiple sides of Lopez – in this way, the video serves as a microcosm of Latina-ness and Lopez-ness in Hollywood – the video also intercuts footage of Lopez, singing and dancing in a studio performance of the song.
Despite the many types of Lopez present in the video, the DJ is the most curious character. While all the other Lopez characters receive establishing close-ups, the DJ is only ever seen from behind, the outline of her afro providing a convenient distinction as she enters the crowded club. For the
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course of the five-minute song, the DJ remains anonymous to the audience, though we recognize the character as Lopez by her voice in the video’s prologue. The DJ–Lopez face is not revealed until the final shot of the video. While the go-go dancer and studio dance sequences presumably appear in wide shots to best present the body and its movement, it is curious that the DJ remains in a wide shot until a final reveal in the very last frame of the video. It is possible that the DJ’s difference of framing is a coincidence or that this delayed reveal marks it as somehow more important than the other representa- tions, but it is equally possible that the frontal close-up of Lopez in an afro swung too closely towards blackness and was better left as a cameo from behind.
Conclusion
The rise of a Latina star like Lopez confirmed that – during a time of revoking affirmative action and other propositions against Latinos in the United States – minority members of the nation could prosper with a little hard work. Lopez symbolized the work ethic necessary to achieve the American Dream and was rewarded with a successful screen, music and fashion career. But despite the access it provides, the complications of in-between-ness are vast. Lopez’s figure (as an actor and body) has presented contradictory messages throughout its career. In many ways, her emergence paralleled the ambivalence of her debut program.
As a Fly Girl for the 1990s variety show In Living Color, Lopez gained main- stream media representation – as did black sketch comedy. Like Lopez, the prime-time network program navigated through a complex and often contra- dictory agenda. For In Living Color, the show aimed to simultaneously present comedy sketches primarily organized around contemporary black issues while addressing a wider mainstream market/audience. This compromised position prompted Herman Gray to critique In Living Color as ambivalent in its “repre- sentations of blackness.”57 The commodification of culture has its casualties, but the brunt of this labor often falls on the doubly marked body of the nonwhite female. In this light, it is striking that the multicultural Fly Girls were used to transition In Living Color from commercial breaks to the program itself through dance. In effect, the Fly Girls were also represented in-between.
Jennifer Lopez’s eventual negotiation of these polarized and racialized spheres, though problematic, offers a unique case study in the cultivation and necessity of a hybrid persona for contemporary nonwhite success. The “multi- cultural self” that Lopez embodies has worked particularly well after the US visual culture crisis between whiteness and blackness.58 Ultimately, Jennifer Lopez cultivates a paradox of whiteness and nonwhiteness by mobilizing race for the sake of a mainstream career. Despite the access that dance has afforded Lopez and the Latinas before her, it has simultaneously marked their difference. The moving Latina body has clearly been visually and culturally coded as overtly sexual and in the process perpetuated and reified licentious myths about
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nonwhite women. Yet, Lopez actively wielded dance in exchange for an incredibly ambitious and successful career; she is now a performer, corporate entity and pioneer on many fiscal fronts.59 The negotiations of her Hollywood success – minority representation in mainstream media, active female roles and autonomous (sexual) identity in exchange for a sexualized and narrowly defined characterization – mirror the complexities of nationality and sexuality that Latinas experience in everyday life (granted, with significantly less financial return).60
Despite this success, the threat of illegitimacy lingers beneath the surface. The 2005 Sony BMG (Lopez’s music company) payola scandal thrust the legit- imacy of Lopez’s musical success into the spotlight; somehow, the scandal seemed less damaging to the credibility of Britney Spears or Beyonce Knowles, also represented by Sony BMG. Still, Lopez continues to push at the bound- aries of mainstream culture from within, now that she is in it. The September 2005 issue of Elle features a glamorous and curly haired Lopez on the cover. Within, Lopez fills out the usual article/profile and fashion shoot. Of the six- page poses, four feature at least one article of clothing from Sweetface, Lopez’s newly launched line in collaboration with the Hilfiger family: three outfits are fully Sweetface while the other two featured designers are Dior and Oscar de la Renta. The representation of Lopez’s business and performance personas offers, at very least, a more complex depiction of the American Latina in 2005.
Fashion, cosmetics and hair coloring have long played a role in cultural and national transformations; breast and (more recently) butt implants now allow the body itself to be fully manipulated by everyone – white and nonwhite women inside and outside of Hollywood – to achieve a redefined/re-raced/re- packaged physical ideal. Such trends will only last, I contend, so long as the market will bear it. How, then, will the next Latina performer shake her assets into the national/media spotlight?61
Notes 1 Sarah Banet-Weiser, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and
National Identity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), p. 65. 2 Richard Dyer, White (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 3. 3 Elizabeth Coffman, “Women in Motion: Loie Fuller and the ‘Interpenetration’ of
Art and Science,” Camera Obscura, 49, 17:1 (2002), p. 82. Also see Linda Williams, Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1989).
4 Williams, Hard Core, p. 43. 5 For the reiterative nature of performance, see Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On
the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York: Routledge, 1993). 6 Examples of this permeate all areas of film, including the male authoritarian
voiceover in movie trailers. Still, white female performers remain less prevalent than male performers in film.
7 Charles Ramírez Berg, Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, and Resistance (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2002), p. 21.
8 While exceptions to this rule do exist – particularly as black audiences gain box
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office power – Hollywood narratives are still determined according to longstanding expectations about types and taste.
9 I use these formal expressions to indicate a more general discussion of how the body is traditionally framed in mainstream film and how Lopez’s career might be understood as navigating between the physical expectations of both. While I do analyze specific shots, my examination of Lopez’s representation through the “close-up” and “wide shot” should be read metaphorically. For example, not all close-ups strictly focus on the face; I am certain that Lopez’s derrière has commanded more than its share of these specific shots. For these reasons, this essay uses the terms “close-up” and “wide shot” more openly.
10 This list does not attempt to account for all of the Latinas who have been featured in Hollywood film. Rather, I compose a snapshot of Latina “leading women” in film – either in terms of mainstream popularity, box office records or other means of mainstream success in Hollywood. For this reason, actresses such as Rosie Perez, Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz are not included as primary figures. Though I do not include Rosie in my overall analysis, it is striking that her career follows my central argument: she began as a dancer and served as a dancer/choreographer for In Living Color.
11 Jane C. Desmond, “Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies,” in Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), p. 33. Dancing “lump[s] together ‘race,’ ‘national origin’ and [a] supposed genetic propensity for rhythmic movement [to rest] on an implicit divi- sion between moving and thinking, mind and body.” Also, “the ascription of sexu- ality (or dangerous, potentially overwhelming sexuality) to subordinate classes and ‘races’ or to groups of specific national origin (blacks, ‘Latins,’ and other such lumped together terms to denote non-Anglo-European ancestry) yields such descriptions [and depictions] as ‘fiery,’ ‘hot,’ ‘sultry,’ ‘passionate’” (pp. 40–1).
12 Gary D. Keller, A Biographical Handbook of Hispanics and United States Film (Tempe, AZ: Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe, 1997), p. 91. Caption appears under the heading “Dancing Señoritas.”
13 Berg, Latino Images in Film, pp. 70–1. 14 Yxta Maya Murray, “Jennifer Lopez,” Buzz (April 1997), p. 70. Murray notes,
“But with the possible exception of Hayworth, none rose to high-roller, leading lady status.”
15 Because Hayworth’s father was Spanish and her mother Irish, Rita took her moth- er’s maiden name as her screen name – reportedly re-Anglicizing the less refined “Haworth” into “Hayworth.” Lopez’s only change has been in the temporary moniker/clothing line entitled “J.Lo.”
16 Velez, Del Rio, Miranda and Moreno indeed experienced significant fame and fortune, but their personas remained fully Latina or Other, a difference that may have prevented a full mainstreaming of their careers in the vein of Hayworth and Lopez. Such Othering is complicated by Moreno’s birth in Puerto Rico, a commonwealth of the United States.
17 For more on this, see Mary C. Beltrán, “The Hollywood Latina Body as Site of Social Struggle: Media Constructions of Stardom and Jennifer Lopez’s ‘Cross-over Butt,’” The Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 19.1 (January 2002).
18 “J.Lo” Revealed with Jules Asner, 1:00 (2002), talk show. 19 Angharad N. Valdivia, A Latina in the Land of Hollywood (Tucson, AZ: University of
Arizona Press, 2000), p. 97. This collapse is also noted in Valdivia’s work on Rosie Perez. Valdivia finds: “[Perez] is at once Latina because she is working class and working class because she is Latina. One codetermines the other in a classic case of piggybacking undervalued positions of dominant binary explanatory frameworks.”
20 Frances Negrón-Muntaner’s article does an excellent job of outlining the discourse
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Framing Jennifer Lopez 183
around Lopez’s “assets” during Selena’s press junkets. Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Boricua Pop: Puerto Ricans and the Latinization of American Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2004).
21 By “brown female bodies” here, I mean Latinas – but a similar argument could certainly be made for other exoticized female bodies colonized by the United States, such as Pacific Islanders and some Asian communities.
22 Dyer, White, p. 57. 23 This mobilization of race comes from a term I call “mobile whiteness,” a concept I
explore in other work. Mobile whiteness synthesizes Richard Dyer’s work on whiteness with that of Judith Butler’s performativity. Intersecting these concepts, I imagine how the Latina body performs and maneuvers amidst and across the regu- lated and ordained poles of race and gender in popular culture (white/black/male/ female). Here, whiteness is mobilized because it serves as the default form, its illu- sion of “normalcy” serving as the crux of its underlying representational power. By “mobilizing” whiteness, I destabilize the notion that whiteness is a fixed identity lacking a performance and limit of its own. Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex” (New York: Routledge, 1993) and Richard Dyer, White.
24 A good example of this is the importation of Carmen Miranda during the Good Neighbor period. Miranda’s presence signaled a symbolic cooperation between the United States and South America during WWII.
25 Lopez’s complexion can certainly be problematized in this process: she is not exactly light complected, yet routinely elaborates her “brown-ness” with bronzer or her “lightness” with hair color.
26 Mirabella (July 1998), p. 84. 27 Arlene Davila, Latinos Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 2001), pp. 216–17. 28 Herman Gray citing Cornell West. Herman Gray, Watching Race: Television and the
Struggle for Blackness (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), p. 148.
29 Mirabella, p. 82. 30 This de-ethnicizing can and does, of course, happen in wide shots. The incredibly
light ad campaign for Glow by J.Lo perfume functions in both a wide and close-up. While the silhouette of her body is hidden behind a translucent sheet, her face becomes the focus of the advertisement, as it is revealed from behind the sheet (effectively re-framing it) and is easily the brightest element. The ability of Latinas to play other types of (specifically) nonwhite roles is also evident in classical Holly- wood film, a subject I take up in my work on Lupe Velez and Dolores Del Rio.
31 Dyer, White, pp. 127, 132. 32 Dyer, White, p. 131. 33 Vanity Fair (April 1997), p. 88. 34 This conformity is supported by the fact that – as yet – Fairuza Balk has not
achieved the same level of media representation as Lopez and Theron. Of the three, Theron’s persona is the only full “blonde.” Though Lopez’s media exposure is arguably more vast than the other two, Theron is the only star of the trio to be recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
35 David R. Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs (New York: Basic Books, 2005).
36 Entertainment Today (c.1997), page unknown. Margaret Herrick Research Archive, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
37 Buzz, p. 72. 38 Ayana Byrd and Lori Tharps, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001), pp. 26, 27, 30.
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184 Priscil la Peña Ovalle
39 Mirabella, p. 82. Emphasis mine. 40 Jennifer Lopez: The Reel Me (Sony Studios, 155 minutes, 2003), DVD. In the
commentary for her video “I’m Glad,” Lopez remarks that her hair is naturally curly like the style in this video.
41 Though Lopez and Harrelson exhibit romantic tension in Money Train, their rela- tionship is tempered and mediated by her dance and eventual sex scene with Wesley Snipes.
42 Beltrán, “The Hollywood Latina Body,” p. 76. 43 Diane Simon, Hair: Public, Political, Extremely Personal (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 2000), p. 61. 44 Even the jewelry and department store clerks (in higher end service jobs) sport
sandy/blonde hair. 45 Leland Saito’s analysis of Atlantic Square shows how an architectural style can be
“whitened” through a strategic use of adjectives. He shows how one shopping center can evolve from “Mexican” to “Spanish” to “Mediterranean” – without any modification to design. Leland Saito, Race and Politics: Asian Americans, Latinos, and Whites in a Los Angeles Suburb (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1998), p. 47.
46 Jane C. Desmond, Staging Tourism: Bodies on Display from Waikiki to Sea World (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 50 (citing Womacks), 110.
47 Vanity Fair (July 1998), page unknown. 48 Coco Fusco, English Is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas (New
York: New Press, 1995), p. 47. 49 Beltrán, “The Hollywood Latina Body,” p. 83. 50 Jennifer Beals’ race is never mentioned in the film and her family is never shown.
Likewise, Kelly in Breakin’ can be easily read a variety of ways, as one 1984 review noted.
51 Alex is a working-class erotic dancer striving for a “better life,” indicated by her desire to become a ballerina. She does not have a visible family, simply a mysterious Russian “aunt,” and her leading man is the ambiguously raced boss of the steel factory at which she works (Michael Nouri, of Lebanese descent).
52 The same red teddy worn by Jennifer Beals in the famous “water-bucket” dance number is worn by Lopez in the video Jennifer Lopez: The Reel Me, “I’m Glad” video commentary.
53 Angela McRobbie, “Dance Narratives and Fantasies of Achievement,” in Jane Desmond, ed., Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), p. 228.
54 Jennifer Lopez: The Reel Me, “I’m Glad” video commentary. 55 Jennifer Lopez: The Reel Me, “I’m Glad” video commentary. 56 Banet-Weiser, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World, p. 68. 57 Gray, Watching Race, p. 145. 58 I borrow the term “multicultural self” from Sarah Banet-Weiser’s critique of beauty
pageant’s “nonthreatening” approaches to race. Banet-Weiser, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World, p. 105.
59 Not only is Lopez the highest-paid Latina in Hollywood (and the first to break $1 million per picture), but she was also the first performer to open at #1 in the box office and music charts with The Wedding Planner and the single “Love Don’t Cost a Thing.”
60 Dance challenges the passivity of female representation, granting the screen Latina with narrative agency (however tenuous) typically reserved for men in film, partic- ularly in the musical genre.
61 This essay emerges from my dissertation entitled “Shake Your Assets: Dance and Latina Sexuality in Hollywood Film.”
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