Crossing the line: contemporary mediated performances of hybridity

Within the U.S., particular anxieties surrounding racially and ethnically marked "others" reflect particular historical moments, and today ours are prompted by contemporized fears of immigration and terrorism. In this dissertation, I take up these issues, focusing on contemporary instantiations and negotiations of hybridity within U.S. culture. While hybridity has been examined at length, the ways in which hybridity is mobilized in distinctive ways through or by various bodies have been relatively overlooked. Thus, I examine the ways in which hybridity is rhetorically embodied and mobilized within contemporary mainstream media. I take up these issues with a focus on two questions: (a) How is hybridity mobilized in distinctive ways in, through, or by various bodies, particularly as reflective of historical context? (b) How does "the body"-in particular, specific deployments of the body-feature in contemporary articulations of hybridity? I answer these questions through a critical analysis of texts, drawing from both critical rhetoric and critical performance studies. I focus on two competition-style reality dance shows, So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD) and Dancing with the Stars (DWTS); the competition-style reality show America's Next Top Model (ANTM); and three Food Network cooking shows, Simply Delicioso with Ingrid Hoffmann, Aarti Party, and Everyday Italian. Analysis of these texts suggest that hybridity is mobilized in varied and distinctive ways by, through, and on variously marked bodies. Ultimately, this study refines extant theorizing on hybridity: While borders are inevitably critical to any conceptualizations of hybridity, this project reveals nuance and complexities of how borders are accomplished and navigated across these various embodied mobilizations and illuminate particularized contemporary anxieties regarding race/ethnicity. Hybridity in a current context appears to be articulated as-conflated with-individual uniqueness and authenticity, the expression of which is encouraged and celebrated, but only within very specific contexts or confines. Ultimately, then, via its location in and deployment by particular bodies, hybridity is articulated as a feature and expression of the unique, authentic self, as opposed to a politics of identity, in ways that justify discipline of race/ethnicity if and when hybridity "crosses the line."

CROSSING THE LINE: CONTEMPORARY MEDIATED PERFORMANCES OF HYBRIDITY by Stephanie Lynn Gomez A dissertation submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Communication The University of Utah August 2015Copyright © Stephanie Lynn Gomez 2015 All Rights ReservedThe University of Utah Graduate School STATEMENT OF DISSERTATION APPROVAL The dissertation of Stephanie Lynn Gomez has been approved by the following supervisory committee members: Helene A. Shugart , Chair 5/06/2015 Date Approved Marouf Hasian, Jr. , Member 5/06/2015 Date Approved Kent A. Ono , Member 5/06/2015 Date Approved Mary S. Strine , Member 5/06/2015 Date Approved R􀁒􅈀􀁅􄔀􀁈􄠀􀁕􅔀􀁗􅜠 S􀀑􁄠 Tatum , Member 5/06/2015 Date Approved and by Kent A. Ono , Chair/Dean of the Department/College/School of Communication and by David B. Kieda, Dean of The Graduate School. ABSTRACT Within the U.S., particular anxieties surrounding racially and ethnically marked "others" reflect particular historical moments, and today ours are prompted by contemporized fears of immigration and terrorism. In this dissertation, I take up these issues, focusing on contemporary instantiations and negotiations of hybridity within U.S. culture. While hybridity has been examined at length, the ways in which hybridity is mobilized in distinctive ways through or by various bodies have been relatively overlooked. Thus, I examine the ways in which hybridity is rhetorically embodied and mobilized within contemporary mainstream media. I take up these issues with a focus on two questions: (a) How is hybridity mobilized in distinctive ways in, through, or by various bodies, particularly as reflective of historical context? (b) How does "the body"-in particular, specific deployments of the body-feature in contemporary articulations of hybridity? I answer these questions through a critical analysis of texts, drawing from both critical rhetoric and critical performance studies. I focus on two competition-style reality dance shows, So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD) and Dancing with the Stars (DWTS); the competition-style reality show America's Next Top Model (ANTM); and three Food Network cooking shows, Simply Delicioso with Ingrid Hoffmann, Aarti Party, and Everyday Italian. Analysis of these texts suggest that hybridity is mobilized in varied and distinctive ways by, through, and on variously marked bodies. Ultimately, this studyiv refines extant theorizing on hybridity: While borders are inevitably critical to any conceptualizations of hybridity, this project reveals nuance and complexities of how borders are accomplished and navigated across these various embodied mobilizations and illuminate particularized contemporary anxieties regarding race/ethnicity. Hybridity in a current context appears to be articulated as-conflated with-individual uniqueness and authenticity, the expression of which is encouraged and celebrated, but only within very specific contexts or confines. Ultimately, then, via its location in and deployment by particular bodies, hybridity is articulated as a feature and expression of the unique, authentic self, as opposed to a politics of identity, in ways that justify discipline of race/ethnicity if and when hybridity "crosses the line." To my Nana and her generation-they all paved the way for me.TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................... viii Chapters I INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................ 1 Rationale ................................................................................................................. 3 Literature Review.................................................................................................... 5 Homeland Hybridity ............................................................................................. 29 Method .................................................................................................................. 32 Endnotes ................................................................................................................ 49 II CHOREOGRAPHING RACE: DANCE AND THE PERFORMANCE OF HYBRIDITY..................................................................................................................... 50 Dance and the Performance of Identities .............................................................. 54 Hybridity on the Television Screen ...................................................................... 62 Have Dance Will Travel: Managing Hybridity Through Dance .......................... 67 Choreographing Culture: Conclusions on Hybridity in Dance ............................. 92 III MODEL HYBRIDITY ................................................................................................ 95 Postrace, Colorblindness, and the Denial of Difference ....................................... 99 "Wanna Be on Top?": America's Next Top Model, Racial Hierarchy, and Hybridity ............................................................................................................. 105 Modeling Cultures: Hybridity as Distillation ..................................................... 108 Steeping Whiteness: Conclusions on Model Hybridity ...................................... 123 Endnotes .............................................................................................................. 126 IV SWEETENING THE POT: CULINARY ADVENTURES IN HYBRIDITY .......... 127 Ethnic (as) Cuisine .............................................................................................. 133 Tenderizing Tensions: Food Network and Hybridity ......................................... 139 Dishing Up Difference: Managing Anxieties Through Hybridity ...................... 143 Eating Otherness: Conclusions on Hybridity in Food ........................................ 164 Endnotes .............................................................................................................. 169vii V CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................... 170 Limitations .......................................................................................................... 189 Directions for Future Research ........................................................................... 190 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................... 192 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation has been the most rigorous, difficult, and rewarding academic project I have undertaken while at the University of Utah. The perception of most academic work is that it is a solitary process; however, this dissertation would not have been possible without the love, support, and encouragement of more people than I have space to acknowledge. First, I want to thank my dissertation committee, who have all been instrumental in the development and completion of this project. My deepest thanks to Dr. Helene Shugart, who has guided me though not only this dissertation, but also graduate school. I can never thank her enough for her endless patience with, and kindness towards, me and my work throughout this entire process. She has tirelessly read endless drafts and revisions of this dissertation, and has offered advice every step of the way. She has helped me to discover who I am as a scholar, and I will always be grateful for all of the encouragement and support she has given me when I was confused, anxious, or unsure about myself. I want to thank Dr. Marouf Hasian, Jr. for all of his encouragement throughout graduate school. When I was newly arrived at the University of Utah, and was seriously doubting myself and my ability to complete the doctoral program, he told me that he expected great things from me, and I have never forgotten that-not to mention that he has reminded me often. He has always been willing to provide invaluable advice aboutix my writing, my ideas, and my future, and I will always be grateful for it. Many thanks to Dr. Kent Ono, who has pushed me to develop my voice and identity as a television and media studies scholar. He has invested countless hours into helping me understand the current conversations occurring in my chosen areas of study, and I will always appreciate his detailed and sharp feedback, knowledge, and wit. I want to thank Dr. Mary Strine for her invaluable discussions and encouragement. I will never have the words to explain how very grateful I am for her many contributions to so much of my graduate work. Without her, I would not have an enduring love for Stuart Hall, nor would I understand the importance of bodies and performance within my own scholarship. Thanks to Dr. Stephen Tatum, who has been integral to my understanding of the politics of popular culture. I was not planning on studying popular culture when I started my graduate program, but his course helped me to uncover my interests in the popular and everyday. This entire journey would have been impossible without Dr. Heather Hundley, who served as my master's adviser, mentor, advocate, and friend. In addition to all of the work she did as my master's adviser, she has continued to be a source of advice, information, and support. I am so fortunate to have her as a mentor and friend, and I can only hope that I will one day be able to offer the same encouragement and support to young scholars. I want to thank my friends and colleagues who have made this process so much easier and more enjoyable. A huge thank you to all of my cohort, who have been the best colleagues and friends that anyone could ask for. They have pushed me to be a better scholar and writer, and I appreciate all of the hours we spent talking, sharing ideas, and, most importantly, laughing. All of the thanks to Stacey Overholt, who graciously let me x write most of my dissertation on her couch and inexplicably remained friends with me even after that. She has picked me up from and taken me to the airport many times, and has also made me a lot of frozen pizza, which cannot be underestimated. I could spend hours detailing what an awesome and inspiring person and scholar she is, but perhaps the greatest testament is that when I was, quite literally, deathly ill, Stacey drove me to Costco and lifted a large amount of Diet Coke for me because I could not lift it myself. Special thanks to Carlos Tarin, for his impeccable taste in suits, his recommendation of many movies and television shows, his patience in letting me use his Hulu+ account, and so much more. I will always appreciate his sense of humor and his ability to keep me from taking myself too seriously. Thanks also to Kristen Hernandez; the day we met, 11 years ago, we spent hours talking, and I am not sure we have stopped talking since. I am so thankful for her love and support. I must thank all of my family, both immediate and extended; they have made me the person I am today. This dissertation is dedicated to my Nana, who is the strongest woman I have ever been privileged enough to know. My Nana and all of her generation have paved the way for me, and I would not be here without them. She has taught me how to work hard at anything I choose to do, and has served as a model of strength, compassion, and love. She is a rock. Many thanks to my mom, who is the most compassionate and forgiving person I know. She has read all of my work and been a constant source of support for me throughout this process, and has taught me how to love wholeheartedly. I cannot count the number of times I have called her for advice and encouragement, and she never fails to know the perfect words to say to me every time. Thanks to my dad, who has an enviable work ethic and has taught me how to work hard xi for what I want. He also introduced me to the music of Phantom of the Opera and the band Guns N' Roses, which is still some of my favorite music. My parents have always told me that I can do whatever I want to do, and they love me unconditionally no matter what choices I make. I am thankful for my sister, Erica, who is my very best friend and is always willing to talk about makeup with me. She makes me want to be a better person. Thanks to my brother, Gregory, who is part of my earliest memories, used to swap shoes with me, and now has to call me "Dr. T-T." Thanks also to my brother, Dominic, for always checking in on me and spending hours talking about the New York Giants with me. My siblings' creativity, love, and compassion are inspiring. My whole family has made tremendous sacrifices for me and each other, and I will never have the right words to thank them for everything they have given me. Special thanks to my dogs, Padawan, Padme, and Princess Leia, who have loved me unconditionally as no human ever could. There are many people I love dearly, and I am so fortunate to have them in my life. I am a first-generation college student, which means that so many people have been instrumental in this journey, and I hope that one day I can give to others what has so generously been given to me.CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION When I was a child, my mother would often take me and my siblings out with her to run errands. Without fail, almost every time we were out together, a stranger would approach my mother and ask her if she was our nanny. Apparently, the thought that my (relatively dark-skinned) mother could be biologically related to four (relatively light-skinned) children was unfathomable. Although this surely bothered my mother, it never occurred to me that our respectively racially marked appearances categorized us as racially different, nor did it occur to me that other people would apprehend us as different. Growing up as a multiracial child was highly unremarkable for me; I was raised primarily by my mother's side of the family, identified variously as Mexican, Latina, and Chicano, and paid little attention to whether or not the color of my skin or my appearance matched the way I identified. As I grew older, I became more aware of the salience of race/ethnicity1 and my relation to it; however, a full awareness of the impact that multiraciality has had on my life and identity was put in sharp relief one day while teaching a class. After explaining the particulars of an upcoming exam, I asked the class if they had any questions. When one of my students raised his hand, I called on him, and, to my complete surprise, he asked, "So, what's up with your name? Did you marry a Mexican, or what's going on with that?" Shocked, I considered my possible range of responses, from asserting that I 2 did, indeed, identify as Latina, to explaining that not only was Gomez my actual last name, but that I shared it with my decidedly English/Irish father. I settled for explaining that it was my actual last name, given to me by my parents, and then changed the subject. This exchange made me stop to consider what it means to be multiracial, and to confound clear racial categorizations. It also prompted me to consider how notions of multiraciality and racial/ethnic hybridity are navigated within a U.S. culture that has always been and continues to be marked by tension and volatility around the matter of race and ethnicity. In this dissertation, I take up these issues, focusing on contemporary instantiations and negotiations of hybridity within U.S. culture. Hybridity occupies a curious place in terms of understanding of race and ethnicity, particularly in a contemporary moment that asserts a postrace ideology; at the same time, distinctions regarding race and ethnicity are extremely salient in practical, material ways in contemporary U.S. culture (Joseph, 2013). That is, within the U.S., race is purported to be completely meaningless; race and ethnicity no longer matter. However, this assertion is extremely contentious; as aforementioned, race does, in fact, have material impacts on people's lives. I am interested in exploring tensions between incommensurate ways in which race is erased/marked, meaningless/exotic, and more specifically, where and how hybridity is configured within those tensions. While representations of hybridity have been examined by a number of cultural studies scholars, especially against the backdrop of significant scholarship regarding mediated articulations of race/ethnicity as more specifically marked, hybridity remains understudied; moreover, contemporary instantiations and mobilizations of hybridity feature novel aspects that reflect exigent contextual tensions and anxieties around race 3 and ethnicity. Thus, in this dissertation, I seek to examine the ways in which hybridity is rhetorically instantiated and mobilized within contemporary mainstream media. More specifically, I want to take up these issues with a focus on two questions: (a) How is hybridity mobilized in distinctive ways in, through, or by various bodies, particularly as reflective of historical context? (b) How does "the body"-in particular, specific deployments of the body-feature in contemporary articulations of hybridity? Rationale With this study, my goal is twofold. While a number of scholars (Anzaldúa, 1999; Beltran, 2005; Beltran & Fojas, 2008; Bhabha, 1994d, 2013; Flores & Moon, 2002; Fojas, 2008; Joseph, 2013, 2009; Kraidy, 2002; Moon & Flores, 2000; Moraga, 2000; Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1983; Ono, 1998; Shugart, 2007) have discussed hybridity in terms of what Bhabha refers to as a "third space," I contend that hybridity as a theoretical concept can and ought to be refined, particularly in regard to the ways in which hybridity might rhetorically "play" differently on differently marked bodies. Thus, first, I want to focus on an area that has been comparatively ignored in current research: that of the relationship between hybridity and the body. While hybridity has been examined at length, as have issues related to the body and deployment of bodies on their own terms, the ways in which hybridity is mobilized in distinctive ways through or by various bodies have been relatively overlooked. Race/ethnicity is always already marked on the body; the racial/ethnic body is a visible one. While the hybrid body is also marked, also visible, it is marked and understood in different ways from the unambiguously raced/ethnic body. That is, the hybrid body is often a mystery; in many cases, the hybrid body is clearly an "other,"2 yet the exact racial/ethnic mixture is unclear. Nonetheless, hybridity is also 4 written on the body, and both engaged and mobilized by and through the body. Without an understanding of how hybridity is mobilized, it is practically impossible to fully understand hybridity as a concept, particularly in regard to the ways in which it functions. Second, as Kraidy (2002) astutely notes, hybridity is an important concept to understand, yet it has not been taken up to the degree that it arguably should by Communication, and especially rhetorical, scholars, who are furthermore ideally poised to examine hybridity. For Kraidy, hybridity is important in that "it is always in the process of occurring, unfolding, and undoing the fixity of binary oppositions" and is a "conceptual inevitability" (p. 332). That is, hybridity is unavoidable in a contemporary age of global capitalism and transnationalism, and is always occurring and present. The inevitability of hybridity, particularly within contemporary mainstream media, is echoed by Beltran (2005) and Beltran and Fojas (2008). Given that hybridity is, essentially, everywhere, Kraidy (2002) argues that it is important to not only understand what it is, but also how it might work. Furthermore, as Kraidy notes, hybridity, as an open, ambiguous concept, always has the "propensity for conceptual and political slippage" (p. 332). Hybridity can potentially be liberating, yet can also be appropriated for "antiprogressive" use (Kraidy, 2002, p. 332). Although Kraidy raises important points about hybridity, particularly regarding hybridity as a Communication concept, he does so in relatively generic and abstract terms. Thus, in this dissertation, I aim to contribute to the field of Communication in general and rhetorical studies in particular by refining hybridity as a concept and thus perhaps challenging extant cultural studies and rhetorical scholarship on mediated representations of race, through an examination of race/ethnicity as nuanced, ambiguous, and wholly embodied. In so doing, I aim to understand how 5 various contemporary incarnations of hybridity can shed light on broader concurrent cultural tensions, anxieties, and negotiations of race/ethnicity and identity. I want to examine various instantiations of hybridity with a particular eye towards the embodiments/deployments of hybridity in order to further contextualize, refine, and complicate the theoretical understanding, as well as practical implications, of hybridity. Literature Review The study of mediated representations of conventionally marked races and ethnicities, in cultural studies literature as well as Communication, has been very well established (see, e.g., Balthrope, 2004; Boylorn, 2008; Cooke-Jackson & Hansen, 2008; Drummond & Orbe, 3010; Dubrofsky, 2006; Dubrofsky & Hardy, 2008; Green, 1975; Guzmán & Valdivia, 2004; Hall, 2001, 2003; Joseph, 2009; Lichter & Amundson, 1997; Lindenfeld, 2007; Mastro & Behm-Morawitz, 2005; Nishime, 2005; Perks, 2010; Ramasubramanian, 2005; Ramirez-Berg, 2002; Rivadeneyra, Ward, & Gordon, 2007; Shome, 1996; Shugart, 2006; Solozano-Thompson, 2008; Tierney, 2006). However, as noted, racial hybridity has been comparatively less studied, particularly within Communication (Kraidy, 2002). Hybridity is, perhaps appropriately, an amorphous concept that overlaps with intersectionality and multiraciality. Intersectionality, on a basic level, assumes that no one identity with which people identify determines their social positions or creates the essence of their identities (see, e.g., Crenshaw, 1991). Rather, all facets of people's identities work together to create not only their sense of self, but also their social relationships with others. Race and ethnicity are axial components of intersectional research (e.g., Balaji, 2009; Berenstein, 1994; Dickinson, Ott, & Aoki, 2005; Enck-Wanzer, 2009; Gray, 2012; Griffin, 2012; Henry, 6 2002; Holland, 2009; Joseph, 2009; Lavelle, 2010; Lester & Goggin, 2005; Mandziuk, 2003; McGrath, 2007; Moriizumi, 2011; Patton, 2004a, 2004b; Pompper, 2007; Poniatowski & Whiteside, 2012; Richardson &Taylor, 2009; Scott, 2013; Thomas, 2013; Walters, 2011); in this sense, hybridity and intersectionality are related in that they both look at the ways in which race and ethnicity are mobilized and articulated. Whereas hybridity research has traditionally focused on race and ethnicity, intersectionality includes race and ethnicity as one component of identity. Intersectionality seeks to examine how various conventional identity markers configure and align with each other; to some extent, I will be doing the same, insofar as I will take into account such identity markers as gender, nation, and class in this project. However, in this project, I want to privilege race and ethnicity, which goes against the grain of intersectional studies to the extent that intersectional work explicitly refuses a privileging of any one identity marker, and typically construes race and ethnicity in conventional and rather static terms (i.e., as a single identity marker), whereas I want to examine specific instantiations in which race and ethnicity, in particular, are ambiguous, diverse, and complicated. Thus, while I acknowledge the usefulness of intersectionality for complicating identities, here I investigate the ways in which hybridity might complicate straightforward conceptualizations of race and ethnicity. Hybridity is sometimes understood as interchangeable with multiraciality, or the confluence in one body of two or more different races and/or ethnicities as conventionally construed (Anzaldúa, 1999; Beltran, 2005, 2008; Moraga, 2000). There is some overlap between multiraciality and hybridity, which is why many scholars use the terms interchangeably. However, the ways in which scholars talk about and use the 7 concept of multiraciality is slightly different from the ways in which hybridity is generally taken up in cultural studies and Communication research. More specifically, multiraciality typically refers to the confluence of two (rarely more) distinct and marked races/ethnicities, whereas hybridity is a more ambiguous concept in terms of both which and/or how many races and ethnicities are merged. Multiraciality is often implicated in hybridity, but hybridity typically does not rely on static and distinct conventional markers of race and/or ethnicity. Moreover, culture is more often a key factor in hybridity than it is in multiraciality-perhaps because conventionally defined races and ethnicities are less salient. For instance, hybrid individuals-actual or depicted-may identify with certain races and/or ethnicities, but feel connected to another culture entirely, or they may connect to a particular race and/or ethnicity via culture, rather than the other way around, given the ambiguity that characterizes their race and/or ethnicity (Moreman, 2009; Moreman & McIntosh, 2010; Nishime, 2012; Pineda, 2009; Young, 2009). In this project, I am interested in hybridity because I want to examine how racial and ethnic ambiguity is navigated, rather than how race and/or ethnicity per se are navigated. However, I recognize the overlap, both in the literature and theoretically, between hybridity and multiraciality, so for practical purposes, as I proceed, I will engage multiraciality under the broader rubric of hybridity as necessary and appropriate. Rather than a concept that has remained stable over time, hybridity has been a relatively fluid concept that can best be understood confluent with a variety of contextual considerations. Indeed, hybridity has been engaged in myriad ways reflective of various historical, political, and cultural imperatives. In the following sections, I assess hybridity as mobilized in particular historical moments, placing it in the context of salient political 8 and cultural tensions and anxieties of the time. Miscegenation The fear of miscegenation within the U.S. permeated the late 19th and early 20th centuries and materialized in the form of concrete practices and policies-namely, antimiscegenation laws that prevented people of different races from marrying. Moreover, the assumption that races were categorically distinct and rigidly marshaled was exemplified in other ways, as well; for instance, social mixing between races was proscribed and heavily policed. Although rules and laws governing miscegenation span different eras, contexts, and cultures, all antimiscegenation legislation is primarily driven by a fear of racial and ethnic "mixing" (i.e., hybridity). These fears of racial mixing primarily hinged upon slavery-era conceptualizations of race, including the perception of whiteness3 as equivalent with humanness, and people of color as dangerous, primitive savages. Of course, there is a double standard here, insofar as under slavery, perpetrated by White men on Black female slaves, miscegenation was acceptable and justified by warrants of ownership and property that contained the threat-generally, offspring became slaves themselves; absent slavery, however, miscegenation was far more threatening and dangerous. One example of the threat of miscegenation is the trope of the "tragic mulatto/a" (Beltran, 2005). First instantiated within the media in the film Birth of a Nation, the tragic mulatto/a figure represents the terrible consequences of multiraciality and the threat that mixed-race people posed. Positioned as the evil that follows from miscegenation, the tragic mulatto/a, as Beltran argues, was an early subject of interest for media studies scholars. Gaines (1987) also discusses the tragic mulatto/a trope within silent films, 9 explaining that early media portrayals of multiraciality depicted mixed-race people as partially fortunate and "good," based on their association with whiteness, but also tragic in their inevitable failure to live up to the promise of a pure, white ideal. The figure of the tragic mulatto/a underscores the tensions surrounding the threat of miscegenation in that it represents the supposed social and moral catastrophe that results from racial mixing and the ways in which miscegenation threatens whiteness. Different cultures have engaged this figure in different ways, but typically always in ways that reinforce white privilege. South Africa, for instance, had, and still has, a racial class of "colored" people-Black, White, and colored are the races noted there (McKaiser, 2012). Perhaps the most famous challenge to antimiscegenation laws was the landmark Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia (1967), during which Richard Loving, a White man, and Mildred Loving, a Black woman, fought to uphold the legality of their marriage, which was considered illegal in their home state of Virginia due to the state's Racial Integrity Act of 1924. In a scathing indictment against the Lovings' marriage and miscegenation more generally, Judge Leon M. Bazile claimed that "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay, and red, and he placed them on separate continents…The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix" (cited in Ibrahim, 2012, p. 46). Judge Bazile's opinion was hardly the minority, as many people feared the threat of miscegenation, which entailed a threat to the imagined order of racial purity more generally, but white supremacy more specifically (Ibrahim, 2012). Indeed, perhaps most telling about antimiscegenation legislation is which racial/ethnic groups were included; racial mixing was prohibited between White people and people of all other races, but legal between anyone of non-White descent. 10 That is, the threat of miscegenation was less about racial mixing in a general sense, but rather represented the threat toward whiteness. Also stemming from the context of miscegenation is the concept of "passing," a mobilization of hybridity that is drawn specifically against laws and policies policing miscegenation. Passing, essentially, is the act of concealing one's "true" identity, while simultaneously performing another, more socially acceptable identity (Blackmer, 1995). Typically, passing serves the function of allowing people to reap the benefits of a socially advantageous identity, while avoiding the stigma often associated with their socially ascribed identity. Historically, passing has been tied to race, racial stigma, and racial discrimination, particularly within the U.S. In a contemporary context, passing is most familiar as relevant to sexuality (Squires & Brouwer, 2002); in any scenario, however, passing relies upon the notion that one's physical appearance and performance can feasibly conform to the socially advantageous identity. Passing, similar to the trope of the tragic mulatto/a, is based on anxieties surrounding the notion of racial purity and white supremacy (Davis, 1991; Horton, 1994; Ramsey, 1976). As a type of hybridity, passing was, similar to miscegenation, prompted by the end of slavery: Attempting to draw clear lines around race/ethnicity once slavery no longer provided that function. The many occurrences of Black people passing as White have been well-documented, specifically during the beginning of the 20th century, when Black people were widely discriminated against, and miscegenation that was justified under the auspices of slavery-specifically, the rape of Black women by their White slaveholders-led to Black people who could not be easily identified based on the color of their skin (Davis, 1991; Gubar, 1997). 11 However, while passing often served to grant social privilege to those who would otherwise be relatively disadvantaged, it also provoked anxiety regarding racial categories. That is, passing confounds racial categorization; as Ginsberg (1996) notes, "When ‘race' is no longer visible, it is no longer intelligible: if ‘white' can be ‘black,' what is white? Race passing not only creates, to use Garber's term, a category crisis but also destabilizes the grounds of privilege founded on racial identity" (p. 8). Suddenly, people who could pass could not be identified based on their appearances; passing bodies are bodies marked with highly unstable and ambiguous racial signifiers. Thus, tensions surrounding passing often centered on trying to definitively "prove" the races of people suspected of passing. As such, passing as a practice and performance of hybridity was often tied to legal cases, wherein the "real" races of individuals were, quite literally, put on trial, with their material positions, social statuses, and identities at stake (Carlson, 1999; Haney Lopez, 1994; Hasian Jr., 2004; Hasian Jr. & Nakayama, 1998). Those who successfully passed as White were allowed to retain their relative privilege, while those who failed to pass often faced devastating consequences, including social stigma (Hasian Jr., 2004), divorce (Carlson, 1999), or even being sold into slavery (Haney Lopez, 1994). Although racial/ethnic passing, as a type of hybridity, may seem tied to a specific historical period, particularly the antebellum U.S., passing is a phenomenon that has persisted, albeit with less frequency. For instance, Squires and Brouwer (2002) analyze mainstream and vernacular media coverage of Susie Guillory Phipps, a Black woman who attempted to pass as White; the authors claim that while Phipps attempted to transgress racial norms, media coverage stubbornly identified her as Black or White, but never engaged the possibility that she could be anything in between. Liera-12 Schwichtenberg (2000), similarly, argues that Selena, the Latina pop singer, effectively passed as White when she crossed over into mainstream pop music. Liera-Schwichtenberg claims that Selena, rather than maintain her Latina identity, watered down her ethnic heritage in order to obtain fame and success. In a somewhat more positive view of passing, Watts (2005) explores the ways in which Eminem, a White rapper, passes as Black in his semiautobiographical film 8 Mile. Eminem's performance as a rapper, along with his working-class socioeconomic status, helped him to pass as an "authentic" (read: Black) rapper, which in turn bolstered his success within the arena of rap music. Edgar (2014), somewhat similarly, investigates Adele, a British blues singer, noting the ways in which she uses "Black voice" to transgress racial expectations. Edgar argues that the juxtaposition of Adele's light skin and "Black voice" fractures standard categories of race and opens up space for play within racial boundaries. These two examples speak to my earlier point that hybridity, especially as taken up in contemporary contexts, entails cultural identity and makes it incredibly salient; hybridity is not just about race and/or ethnicity as marked on the body, but also as it is performed. Hybridity as cultural identity also raises interesting questions about cultural appropriation; when White bodies take up "other" races/ethnicities/identities, the line between passing and appropriation is quite thin, and often arguably nonexistent. Elvis, for instance, as perhaps a precursor to the aforementioned Adele, has often been accused of having appropriated a "Black sound" for his own monetary gain. Perhaps a more positive instantiation of miscegenation is that of mestizaje, popularized by Anzaldúa (2012) and Moraga (2000; Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1983). Taking up Vasconcelos' (1997) argument about the inevitable racial mixing of the world, 13 Anzaldúa heralds the beginning of what she calls the "new mestizaje," or "Nepantla," a racially-mixed group that lives and performs within a borderland that refuses to identify with a single racial category. For Anzaldúa, identifying as mestizaje functions as a type of resistance to colonizers; rather than accept a marginalized identity, people who identify as mestizaje recognize their own autonomy in understanding and framing their identities, particularly as drawn against the infiltration of their geographical and physical locations from White colonizers. As a type of hybridity, a mestizo/a identity is, in many ways, superior to a single-raced identity, in that it combines the best elements of each race. Mestizo/a identities are thus able to disrupt racial purity and fixity. Douglas (1971) also notes that multiracial people evade categorization because they cannot be pinned down as any one race, and thus avoid an essentializing trap of classification. Similarly, Moreman (2009) sees the liberatory potential of multiracial subjects, claiming that fluid identities are necessarily opposed to a rigid concept of race as fixed or pure. However, despite the potential to disrupt classification, Anzaldúa (2012) encourages the remembrance that the mestizaje identity arises from pain, both physical and psychic. The borderlands, both materially and figuratively, are sites of contestation and anxiety about the corruption of racial purity. In This Bridge Called My Back (Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1983), women of color recount the pain and trauma inherent within the creation of interstitial identities, including the physical rape and conquest that has historically precipitated hybrid subjects. Moreover, Moraga (2000) contends that mestizaje identities are products of tensions surrounding racial mixing, similar to the threat of miscegenation. While this particular hybrid identity is relevant here because it is predicated on miscegenation, it is informed by a legacy of colonization, which I will 14 address in more detail below. Historically, the threat of miscegenation, manifested in a variety of forms, was one predominant way in which hybridity was configured. Tensions and anxieties surrounding the possibility of racial/ethnic mixing and the dilution of a pure White race configured hybridity as an imminent threat to a dominant frame of white supremacy, yet was also seen as resistance to colonization, in that hybridity functioned as a reminder that colonizers could not completely eradicate indigenous groups. Moreover, hybridity has not only been characterized as the threat of miscegenation. In the colonial and postcolonial era, hybridity was often articulated as racial/ethnic mimicry. Postcolonial Mimicry The blurring of clearly delineated racial/ethnic categories within a context of colonization, as suggested in my discussion of mestizaje, features particular tensions as well as attendant performances and practices as relevant to hybridity. For instance, during the colonial period, race was used to further the British Empire. That is, the colonized were configured as radically different from the colonizers via racial difference. By positioning "others" as primitive and uncivilized, colonizers argued that the people they colonized could not rule themselves, so required the benevolence of the British Empire to order and create a civilized society (Said, 1978). However, the extreme racial difference of the colonial era eventually shifted due to a number of factors, including racial mixing between the colonizers and the colonized and the desire for some of the colonized people to identify with the colonizers (Bhabha, 1994a, 1994b, 2013; Fanon, 2004). Indeed, Fanon notes that in the colonial period, many "othered" people wanted to substitute themselves in the position of their colonizers, thus identifying with, and attempting to 15 mimic, the often White colonizers. This desire for identification led to hybrid people who, to borrow Bhabha's (1994a) phrase, are "not white/not quite," people who are still marked as racially different, through skin color, but culturally similar to the colonizers, again, pointing up to the relevance of cultural identity to hybridity that, if contingent upon marked racial or ethnic identity, is not interchangeable with it. This type of hybridity, characterized by the mimicry of Western culture, can, and did, reaffirm the primacy of whiteness through the impulse to assimilate as a survival strategy (Bhabha, 1994a). In a more contemporary example of mimicry, Steeves (2008), in an analysis of representations of Africa on U.S. television programming, explains that these representations serve to place Americans on the programs in a space of "hybrid encounters" with Africa. These encounters, Steeves argues, reinforce Western dominance within a hybrid situation and reaffirm colonial narratives. Similarly, Jhally and Lewis (1992) discuss how The Cosby Show is assimilationist but tries to temper that with references to African culture (e.g., artwork and music). Thus, if not definitively or inevitably assimilative, hybridity can clearly feature an assimilationist impulse. Yet just as postcolonial instantiations of hybridity feature assimilation, Bhabha (1994b, 2013) also sees postcolonial hybridity as liberatory. One way in which this is taken up is through identification with mestizaje, as noted above, but that is predicated on race and ethnicity as marked and reclaimed in hybrid form. In this variation, hybridity is about ambiguity of race and ethnicity, inasmuch as through mimicking the colonizers, hybrid bodies become both/and, "other" and White/Western at the same time. In a postcolonial moment that hinges on racial difference, hybridity, Bhabha argues, undermines racial difference by pointing to similarities between the colonizers and 16 colonized. "Othered" people, situated as hybrid, are different through skin color alone. Similarly, Gershenson (2003) notes that as an unstable signifier, hybridity points to the instability of race as a whole, shedding light on the constructedness of racial categorization and belying the fiction of difference between colonizers and colonized people. For Bhabha (1994b, 2013) and Fanon (2004), hybrid people have a voice that completely "othered" people do not have; through the mimicking of White/Western characteristics, hybridity allows people to bridge the gap between colonizers and colonized. Postcolonial notions of hybridity, similar to the threat of miscegenation, thus engages anxieties attendant to notions of racial purity, white sovereignty, and civility (as opposed to primitiveness). Characterized by both mimicry and agency, postcolonial hybridity also allows for liberatory potential, in that it unhinges and destabilizes whiteness; however, hybridity simultaneously acknowledges and retains whiteness. Transnationalism While the nation-state has historically been considered both powerful and self-contained, globalization necessitates a decline of the power of the nation-state (Appadurai, 2011; Basch, Schiller, & Blanc, 2005; Hall, 1997; Hardt & Negri, 2004). That is, the material and symbolic borders surrounding nation-states have become highly permeable and ephemeral, and people, traditions, rituals, languages, etc. are able to move, or flow, across those borders. This notion of cultural flows, however, does not simply imply a one-way flow of information from dominant, hegemonic nation-states (Appadurai, 2005, 2011; Pieterse, 1994; Straubhaar, 2006). Rather than the common conception of the "Westernization" of other nations, deterritorialization of people and 17 cultures occur across the world, meaning that while so-called "dominant" countries, including the U.S., do influence other nations, they are also influenced by the people crossing their borders. Deterritorialization, according to Appadurai (2011), is motivated by imagination. Imagination, in contrast to fantasy, functions as an active, motivating agency that propels people to take action. In this modern age of globalization and transnationalism, Appadurai argues: More people than ever before seem to imagine routinely the possibility that they or their children will live and work in places other than where they were born: this is the wellspring of the increased rates of migration at every level of social, national, and global life. (p. 6) That is, the work of the imagination is generative of previously unthinkable opportunities; it allows people to believe in, and realize, lives different from the ones they have, and to imagine the possibility of leaving their nation of origin and traveling somewhere new. Essentially, the "American Dream" has become transnational; people are encouraged to migrate from their countries of origin, in the hope of a more prosperous life. This increased migration has inextricably led to a world characterized by weakened nation-states and diasporic cultures. Kraidy (2002) argues that hybridity is a way of understanding transnationalism and global communication; that is, it can help critics to understand neo-colonial relations between nations due to global and cultural flows. These cultural flows can be enabling and constraining, fostering diversity yet also stifling it. While U.S. culture has been enriched by an influx of diverse "other" cultures, it has also served to assimilate and tame cultural variety. Nation-states, including the U.S., often attempt to unite people in order to erase their differences, thus making singular people into an undifferentiated mass (Appadurai, 2011; Hardt & Negri, 2004). 18 While globalization's permeable boundaries allow people to migrate to the U.S., creating diasporic cultures, this movement still does not guarantee the free expression of a multiplicity of cultures. Indeed, Appadurai (2011), as well as Gellner (2006), argue that nationalism is inevitably linked to homogeneity, not because nationalism causes homogeneity, but that "a homogeneity imposed by objective, inescapable imperative eventually appears on the surface in the form of nationalism" (Gellner, 2006, p. 38). While globalization creates opportunities for singularities to be expressed, it also creates situations in which singularities are reduced to sameness from without, through the taming and consumption of racialized and gendered bodies. This reduction can have serious consequences; as Hall (1997) warns, "when the era of nation-states in globalization begins to decline, one can see a regression to a very defensive and highly dangerous form of national identity which is driven by a very aggressive form of racism" (p. 26). Even with a greater array of diverse bodies crossing borders, and nation-states becoming more permeable, people are still at risk of encountering oppression and domination from the waning nation-state. This typically happens around raced and ethnic "otherness," suggesting the degree to which racial and ethnic continence are built into the integrity of the nation-state, in abstract as well as concrete terms. Moreover, transnationalism, globalization, and diaspora cultures, particularly within the U.S., often invoke anxieties surrounding the weakening of nationalism and the threat of infiltration from racially and ethnically marked "othered" bodies. For instance, immigration is, and has long been, part of the understanding of transnationalism. Indeed, given the increasing fluidity and permeability of people and 19 borders, and the dissolution of discrete nation-states, immigration remains salient, even if transnationalism and immigration are not interchangeable. In recent years, tensions surrounding the threat of immigration have mounted within the U.S., particularly in regard to the highly contested U.S./Mexico border. Additionally, the threat of terrorism, often imagined to be perpetuated only by racially/ethnically marked "others," and inextricably informed by and informative of said fears around immigration, has become a salient concern to many U.S. citizens, evident, for instance, in increased security measures in public places, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and the signing into law of the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act. Against this particular historic moment of transnationalism and globalization, and attendant fears of infiltration by "dangerous others," I argue that a novel form of hybridity and its attendant implications have emerged, on which this present dissertation focuses. Moreover, hybridity is not instantiated the same way in all contemporary contexts; rather, hybridity plays out differently on different bodies as relevant to informing races and/or ethnicities. Although thus far hybridity has perhaps appeared to be a progressive move towards understanding the complex messiness of racial identity, Kraidy (2002) also warns that there has been sustained criticism against hybridity within the discipline of Communication. Specifically, critics (e.g., Gomez-Pena, 1996; Werbner & Moddod, 1997) have noted that while hybridity is often heralded as a progressive resistance to dominant ideas about race, it is also pervasive; hybridity is everywhere without being clearly defined or understood. However, Kraidy is also quick to note that Communication scholars should work to theoretically ground the concept of hybridity so as to help define the contours and parameters of hybridity as a conceptual terrain. Moreover, Kraidy, as 20 well as Valdivia (2005), argue for a theory of hybridity that attends to power flows through and within hybrid identities and their attendant social relations, as well as a conception of hybridity as a communicative practice that is always already intertwined with notions of shifting power. In this dissertation, I aim to take up Kraidy's (2002) and Valdivia's (2005) call by examining hybridity in a contemporary context in concrete terms, as practiced and performed by specific hybrid bodies. Moreover, as noted earlier, research on hybridity has often curiously avoided mention of the body and the ways in which hybridity is deployed by and through bodies-critical to assess because it is through, on, and by the body that ambiguity is navigated and negotiated. Thus, to that end, I also seek to assess how hybridity is mobilized and negotiated by and through embodied performances of hybridity in various ways, in the hopes of further refining and complicating a Communication-based theory of hybridity. In this dissertation, hybridity is apprehended as idiosyncratic, inasmuch as it is articulated as the expression of the unique, authentic self, which is ostensibly celebrated, but only insofar as it conforms to specific regulations. Thus, whenever bodies "get out of line" and transgress those regulations, the discipline of race/ethnicity is justified via the guise of hybridity as inappropriate expression: a breach of aesthetic form or social etiquette. Body While scholarship regarding the body is vast and diverse, the theoretical foundations that inform this project as relevant to the body are furnished by cultural and performance studies. Specifically, for the purpose of this present study, the most salient aspects of research on the body is in regard to mediated representations of raced/ethnic 21 bodies and embodied performances, with a particular focus on the ways in which race, ethnicity, and culture are collectively accomplished and performed by and through bodies. Cultural studies: Mediated representations of raced/ethnic bodies. Although there is a large body of cultural studies and Communication literature that focuses on mediated representations of race and ethnicity (e.g., Boylorn, 2008; Cooke-Jackson & Hansen, 2008; Drummond & Orbe, 3010; Dubrofsky, 2006; Dubrofsky & Hardy, 2008; Guzmán & Valdivia, 2004; Joseph, 2009; Lichter & Amundson, 1997; Mastro & Behm-Morawitz, 2005; Nishime, 2005; Ramasubramanian, 2005; Ramirez-Berg, 2002; Shome, 1996; Shugart, 2007), I want to focus on raced and ethnic bodies more literally. The majority of this research has focused on the trope of the primitive raced and ethnic body, specifically regarding Black and Latina/o bodies. For instance, scholars have called attention to the representations of the exotic, hypersexualized Latina/o, as exemplified, particularly regarding Latinas, through the curvaceous (and thus sexualized) body (Guzmán & Valdivia, 2004; Mastro & Behm-Morawitz, 2005; Ramirez-Berg, 2002; Shugart, 2007; Valdivia, 2005). Similarly, the Latina body is commonly represented in the media as "tropical" and exotic; that is, Latina women are often depicted wearing large jewelry and bright, neon clothing (Guzmán & Valdivia, 2004; Ramirez-Berg, 2002; Shugart, 2007). Here, the body communicates excessiveness and the trope of the exotic Latina. Similarly, the Latino body is often constructed as virile and hypersexual, aligning with the "Latin lover" stereotype (Ramirez-Berg, 2002). However, as Ceisel (2011) claims, the Latino body is often highly gendered; rather than a generic hypersexuality, Latino (as opposed to Latina) bodies are portrayed as hypermasculine and heterosexual. 22 Gender seems to make a difference in respect to Latina/o bodies; they are depicted as aggressively (and traditionally) masculine, or obviously feminine. Mediated representations of the Black body are, in some ways, similar to the Latina/o body, in that the Black body is also typically depicted as hypersexual and exotic (hooks, 1992). Whereas the Latina/o body is tropicalized, the Black body is viewed as dark and mysterious, as hooks notes, similar to the trope of Africa as the "dark continent." Relative to representations of the Latina/o body, however, representations of the Black body often draw more explicitly on colonialist tropes (Hall, 2003; hooks, 1992). As hooks claims, the Black body is often apprehended, particularly in popular media, as primitive, backwards, and animalistic, specifically as juxtaposed with the sophistication of White bodies, hearkening to a colonial legacy of the primitive "othered" bodies in need of the White savior. Hall (2003), similarly, argues that the Black body is often aligned with the slave trope, which works to marginalize and dehumanize Black men and women. Just as the Latina/o body is gendered, so too is the Black body; for instance, Black women are often portrayed as excessive, loud, and unruly (Dubrofsky, 2006; Dubrofsky & Hardy, 2008; Joseph, 2009) and passive objects of the sexual desire of (White) men (hooks, 1992). Black men are typically shown as criminals (hooks, 1992), virile athletes (Li-Vollmer, 2002), or buffoons (Hall, 2003). Although gendered, the bodies of both Black men and women, similar to Latin men and women, are highly objectified and "othered." Hall (2003) argues that Asian people, similarly to Black people, are often configured along the lines of the docile slave trope: subservient, quiet, and unassuming. Mediated representations of the Asian body have, perhaps predictably, followed the 23 gendered tropes noted above. For instance, Asian women are typically portrayed as sexually submissive to (White) men, but simultaneously hypersexualized and fetishized in the media (Ciment & Radzilowski, 2015; Ono & Pham, 2009; Shimizu, 2007). Thus, their seductive threat is minimized, insofar as they are submissive. Asian men are typically portrayed as both dangerous and threatening, in line with tropes of the "dark Orient" (Nakayama, 1994; Said, 1978). However, while Asian women are often apprehended as hypersexual, Asian men are often constructed as asexual in many ways (Nakayama, 1994; Ono & Pham, 2009). Again, despite the gendered differences apparent in these representations, the bodies of Asian men and women are objectified and exoticized. While some studies have been conducted on racial and ethnic bodies other than Latina/o, Black, and Asian, there have not been many. Hall (2003) claims that Native American people are often depicted as the "noble savage" stereotype. Similarly, Ono and Buesher (2001) argue that the Native American woman, as exemplified in Disney's Pocahontas, is portrayed as a hypersexualized and commodified body; essentially, the Native American body functions as a cipher into which (White) men can project their colonial desires. Throughout the "othering" of the raced and ethnic body as portrayed in the media, the White body remains centered (Dubrofsky, 2006; Hall, 2003; hooks, 1992). That is, the "othered" body is drawn as exotic, enticing, or threatening against the "normal" White body, and the raced and/or ethnic body becomes desirable insofar as it deviates from the everydayness of whiteness (hooks, 1992). Simultaneously, though, the White body is invisible; it functions as the standard against which "otherness" is measured, 24 without announcing itself as the standard. As Shome (2000) notes, "whiteness, as an institutionalized and systemic problem, is maintained and produced not by overt rhetorics of whiteness, but rather, by its ‘everydayness,' by the everyday, unquestioned racialized social relations that have acquired a seeming normativity" (p. 366). Essentially, whiteness is configured as invisible (Nakayama & Krizek, 1995). The White body, accepted as normal, implicitly "others" raced and ethnic bodies. This dissertation adds to extant research on mediated portrayals of "othered" bodies in that it demonstrates the ways in which hybridity disciplines, shapes, and negotiates different bodies in various ways. In the cases I discuss, embodied hybridity appears to secure a perception of race/ethnicity as an expressed aspect of the authentic self rather than a politics of identity, effectively depoliticizing race/ethnicity and justifying discipline thereof on the grounds of "appropriate" expression. Bodies and performance. Performance is bound up with bodies and identity in that it is a strategic, embodied expression of one's identity and culture, and is "located at the creative, improvisatory edge of practice in the moment it is carried out" (Schieffelin, 1998, p. 199, emphasis in the original). Performance exists in the moment, and while it may draw inspiration from other performances, it is improvisation; performances can never be duplicated exactly. Although not always conscious, performance is not mere repetition or practice, but rather a means of (re)creating identity through and by the body (Butler, 2006). That is, identity only "exists" to the extent that it is performed and enacted by the body. However, although performance was traditionally thought of as acting or pretending (e.g., Goffman, 1959), an understanding of performance as fundamentally 25 fake or imitative is of little heuristic value in understanding cultural processes and the everyday actions, behaviors, and relations in which people engage. In an effort to better understand cultural processes, Turner (1979, 1982), an anthropologist, extended the notion of performance, conceptualizing performance as a real, constitutive process. That is, Turner famously argues that performance is "making, not faking." Rather than simply mimesis, or imitative, performance is poeisis-the making of the real of life, culture, and identity. This shift to a focus on performance as real, not fake, allows for a greater understanding of the ways in which performance is inextricably imbricated with culture and the creation of identities. When people perform their identities, they are not pretending to be something, but actively becoming, shaping identities through their words and actions. As such, performance is always already an embodied process; as a number of scholars (Conquergood, 1985, 1988, 1992, 2002a, 2002b; Foster, 1998; Holling & Calafell, 2007; Madison, 2010; Moreman & McIntosh, 2010; Pollock, 2006) note, performance is always of and in the body. Performance as embodied is a move away from post-positivistic, Enlightenment thinking that valorizes rationality and objectivity, resisting a strict Cartesian dualism that separates mind and body and privileges mind over body. Here, performance can be thought of as experiential, something that is done through and with the body. As Diamond (1996) astutely claims, performance can best be thought of as a verb, not a noun-it is something that one does. Performance is thus an experiential epistemology, or a way of knowing that is grounded in the body. Thus, the body is always already a performing body; to theorize about the body is to theorize about the way the body performs. 26 The performance of raced/ethnic bodies. As a means of (re)creating identities, performance is intertwined with notions of race/ethnicity, and, by extension, multiracial or ambiguously raced bodies. However, despite the importance of race/ethnicity as an identity category, the majority of performance scholarship on the body has focused on the creation of gendered bodies (e.g., Butler, 1988, 1993, 2006). According to Butler, gender is something that one does, rather than is; gender is a continuous embodied performance. I do not discount the importance of understanding the ways in which gender is performed and embodied, and I will attend to gendered performances in this dissertation to the extent that they inevitably inform particular instantiations and accomplishments of hybridity. Indeed, this dissertation stands to highlight the inherent instability of gendered performances as well as refine our understanding of the ways in which gender and race/ethnicity intersect on particular bodies in ways that variously prompt, permit, or deny specific practices relevant to the marshalling of race/ethnicity. However, more salient to my interest in hybridity is the performance of raced/ethnic bodies. In comparison to work on gender as performance, the notion of race/ethnicity as performance has been relatively overlooked. Dubrofsky and Hardy (2008), analyze the raced bodies that performed on the reality television shows Flavor of Love and The Bachelor, focusing on the ways in which Black women strategically performed race, particularly in Flavor of Love. According to Dubrofsky and Hardy, Black women were criticized for being "too Black" when they asserted their identities as Black women, and conversely critiqued for being inauthentic when they did not perform their identities based on stereotypical notions of Black women. In this sense, these women were stuck in a racial double-bind; their bodies simultaneously read as "not Black enough" and "too 27 Black." Also commenting on the bind of racial authenticity, Moreman (2009) details the complexities and difficulties of performing multiracial and hybrid identities. Through an analysis of three memoirs written by bi- and multiracial authors, Moreman examines the ways in which the performance of racial identity often hinges on authenticity, and the ability to perform one's identity "correctly." Focusing more explicitly on staged performances, Holling and Calafell (2007) investigate the ways that race becomes a key component of Latina/o performance art, detailing the emancipatory potential of performing one's racial identity. According to Holling and Calafell, the performance of race/ethnicity allows for the performers and the audience to work through tensions surrounding race/ethnicity, and also provides a space where colonial notions of race/ethnicity can be repudiated through the deployment of the body. In a similar vein, Moreman and McIntosh (2010) investigate the raced/ethnic dimensions of the performances of Latino drag queens; although they also attend to the importance of gender and sexuality in these performances, Moreman and McIntosh foreground the importance of understanding how race/ethnicity is performed through the bodies of Latin drag queens who often perform as races other than the one(s) they claim. Here, race becomes a complex configuration of the actual bodies of the performers and the race/ethnicity they are performing. While the authors take up the notion of hybridity insofar as they argue that Latina/o is a hybrid identity, they do not use hybridity as a lens through which to examine these performances. My project is motivated by similar questions, but I want to examine them specifically though a lens of hybridity. Scholarship on the performance of race/ethnicity has perhaps been taken up the most within the area of dance. For instance, Murphy (2011) interrogates choreographer 28 Santee Smith's Kaha:wi, an evening-length dance that tells the story of the Haudenosaunee people. Murphy argues that this dance mobilizes bodies to (re)present the Haudenosaunee culture and history. Similarly, Srinivasan (2011), in her analysis of the female Bharata Natyam dancing body, argues that this body does a particular type of labor, working through and negotiating tensions surrounding the Orientalized female body. Hammergren (2011), in a study of three choreographers/dancers connected to India, analyzes the ways in which these choreographers performed identity and politics in a Northern-European context; ultimately, Hammergren argues that these choreographers had to negotiate rigid boundaries of power and essentialized identity classifications, and often had to deal with challenges to the authenticity of their identities. Additionally, commonly known dances such as the hula, flamenco, salsa, samba, Bollywood, hip-hop, and so forth all have roots in specific racial/ethnic identities and locales, and serve as expressions of those identities. Overall, outside of research on dance, the relationships between performance, the body, and race/ethnicity have not been a focus in Communication scholarship. Furthermore, the body and embodied performances have been conspicuously absent within research about hybridity. I hope to fill this gap in the literature with this present study by focusing on the ways that the body is deployed in the performance of hybridity, particularly within mediated portrayals of the body. I aim to analyze the different ways that the body is taken up in various mobilizations of hybridity, as well as the ways in which hybridity is articulated through the body. More clearly understanding various embodied articulations of hybridity should illuminate latent and exigent contemporary tensions and anxieties surrounding race/ethnicity writ large, as well as the negotiation of 29 those tensions. At this juncture, it is important to note that while I employ performance studies perspectives in this dissertation, I situate myself as a media scholar rather than a performance scholar, per se. When I discuss embodiment and performance, I am referring to a mediated embodiment and performance-mediated by a specific set of relations between spectator and screen. Homeland Hybridity In this current moment, characterized by transnationalism, globalization, and permeable borders, how we understand race and ethnicity is inevitably different from earlier ways of apprehending race and ethnicity. More specifically, the rising threats of immigration and terrorism create new understandings and articulations of race and ethnicity, frequently mobilized as hybridity. As Appadurai (2011) notes, globalization and diaspora cultures entail a new sense of racial, ethnic, and cultural hybridity that rearticulates notions of nationalism, race, ethnicity, and culture. These contexts reconfigure, for example, postcolonial notions of hybridity; hybridity becomes articulated in new ways within new global and transnational contexts. One way that these new articulations of hybridity play is through concerns of infiltration by racially and ethnically "othered" bodies, motivated by globalization and transnationalism. This hinges on the notion, again, of white supremacy and its conflation with the integrity of the nation-state. At the same time, postidentity politics, as Joseph (2011, 2013) explains, have led to a proliferation of a "colorblind" ideal-race no longer appears to matter. As Joseph notes, postidentity politics presumes that in a post-Civil Rights movement society, people of all races and ethnicities have reached equality, thus negating the need for a politics focused on race. Indeed, mentioning race is often viewed as anathema in U.S. discourse; 30 not only is race unnecessary, but drawing attention to race, within a postrace ideology, serves to negatively highlight difference. However, a common critique of postidentity politics is that they ignore historical inequality and disavow the material reality of people who are still disadvantaged precisely because of their race and/or ethnicity. Thus, postidentity politics often function to foreclose critical engagement. Within a contemporary context of postidentity politics, race and ethnicity are configured much differently than they have been historically, in that there is a distinct gap between the understandings of race as incredibly salient and, simultaneously, not important or "real" at all. For instance, the late 2014 occurrence in Ferguson, Missouri, when Michael Brown, a Black man, was shot and killed by a White police officer, was understood as racially motivated by many people, yet was not framed as a race issue by authorial/institutional entities-that is, the police force particularly were careful to distance themselves from accusations of racism, and, in fact, framed Brown's murder as the necessary means of keeping citizens safe. Similarly, the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin in February 2012, along with a number of other murders of men and women of color at the hands of White police officers and citizens, have been understood in contradictory ways; nonetheless, postrace is advanced by some entities, and media coverage has and does present it as at least as salient as charges of racism, if not more legitimate due to the authorial/culturally sanctioned voices advocating it. The tension between virulent racism and the negation of the salience of race is apparent in all of those examples; in this dissertation, I am interested in examining hybridity within this gap. Beltran (2005) further discusses the changing terrain of multiraciality, particularly within media research. Beltran (Beltran & Fojas, 2008) contends that within the changing 31 demographic landscape of the U.S., in particular, multiraciality has become more visible. Arguing from Appadurai's (2005, 2011) position that national borders are (relatively) more permeable (although, arguably not equally permeable for all groups), Beltran claims that the contemporary U.S. cultural milieu of multiraciality and multiethnicity has led to an explosion of mixed-race protagonists and characters within U.S.-based media. Yet Beltran is also quick to note that these mixed-race portrayals are always ambiguously racial/ethnic, speaking to no particular racial/ethnic group, while appealing to many. Moreover, the increase and greater acceptance of multiracial characters in the media always includes whiteness; mixed-race characters are only acceptable if part of their racial mixture is White. Nevertheless, Beltran sees an increased need for media studies scholars to take up the issues of hybridity and multiraciality, as depictions of multiraciality have recently proliferated within the media. Even though Beltran's work is focused primarily on multiracial subjects, I would contend that the ways in which she discusses contemporary portrayals of multiraciality as fluid prompts theorizing about hybridity, rather than multiraciality per se. All of these contemporary influences, as I have argued, shape how we think about race and ethnicity, and in contemporary, mainstream media, these portrayals of hybridity are inevitably projections of tensions, anxieties, and aspirations about race and ethnicity. In this dissertation, I take up Beltran's call to focus on racial/ethnic ambiguity and hybridity within the media, specifically focusing on the ways in which bodies are salient foci of race, ethnicity, and hybridity. In this dissertation, via embodiment, hybridity is conflated with authentic selfhood and expression thereof, valorized as such, but also more readily available for discipline to the extent that it is thus depoliticized. 32 It is important to note here that when I discuss race and ethnicity, on their own terms or as hybrid identities, I am not subscribing to ideals of racial or ethnic authenticity. Like Jackson (2005), I understand racial and ethnic authenticity as "the restrictive script we use to authenticate some versions of blackness, whiteness, brownness, yellowness, and redness while simultaneously prohibiting others" (p. 13). The use of racial authenticity as a yardstick reduces racial identity to a unitary, stable category; it configures an ideal racial identity that people either do or do not attain. Authenticity "imagines racial subjects as always already trapped within an inanimate, unthinking, and thing like objecthood" (Jackson, 2005, p. 226). Instead, following Jackson, I claim that there are certain cultural practices that are marked historically, and I draw from Jackson's concept of racial sincerity. A focus on racial sincerity focuses on the messy, multiple identities that are associated with race, and the ways in which those multiple identities are continuously (re)negotiated, implicitly invoking hybridity. That is, "instead of creating some authenticating puppeteer who predetermines the movements of racialized marionettes, sincerity sees racial identity as a continual debate between culpable subjects" (Jackson, 2005, p 226). As Jackson argues, racial identity, as a fluid construct, is never finalized, never complete; racial identity is a process of making and becoming. Moreover, hybridity, in particular, is complex because by definition it refuses or at least confuses imaginaries of authenticity. Method For the present study, I have conducted a critical analysis of texts. Specifically, my approach draws from both critical rhetoric and critical performance studies. In taking this approach, I align myself with scholars such as Conquergood (1985, 1988, 1989, 33 1992, 2002b) and Pezzullo (2001, 2003a, 2003b, 2006) who advocate the merging of conventional techniques of rhetorical analysis and performance methodologies. As Conquergood (1992) claims, rhetoricians who use performance approaches and performance scholars who use rhetorical approaches "destabilize an essentialist worldview anchored in Being and replace it with a constructional view of reality in a process of Becoming" (p. 81). That is, performance methodologies can contribute to rhetoric by exposing the constructedness of reason, evidence, and argument, yet rhetoric can also contribute to performance through a focus on how performing bodies create meaning and negotiate power relationships. As Hauser (1999) notes, "moved to the level of performance, rhetoric opens invitational spaces: places where ideas, relationships, emotional bonds, and course of action can be experienced in novel, sometimes transformative, ways" (p. 33). Performance provides a new way of looking at rhetoric, just as rhetoric provides a different means of looking at performance. Much of Conquergood's (1985, 1988, 1989, 1992, 2002a, 2002b) and Pezzullo's (2001, 2003a, 2003b, 2006) work negotiates how politics and power are negotiated within, and through, public contexts and performances, as well as how rhetoric functions as part of these contexts. I do not investigate public performances in this dissertation; that is, all of my texts are mediated representations of bodies and performances, and I am not conducting in situ research by being in the same physical space as the performing bodies featured in all of my texts. Nonetheless, I do, as Pezzullo (2003a) suggests, "emphasize the usefulness of performance theory" for illuminating facets of discourses not readily apparent through a more conventional rhetorical method (p. 349). This is not to say that performance is not discourse, but rather that discourse is best captured and understood by 34 looking at it as both rhetoric and performance. Despite attempts to clearly delineate and define critical rhetoric, it resists clear, easy description. Critical rhetoric is not a method or, for that matter, a conventional theory, but is rather a perspective that influences the types of texts that critics take up, as well as the types of questions that they ask. As distinct from the tradition of rhetorical criticism, critical rhetoric focuses on flows and relations of power; that is, critical rhetoric attends to the ways in which power is rhetorically mobilized and instantiated (McKerrow, 1989). Moreover, as McKerrow notes, critical rhetoric serves a demystifying function to the extent that it attempts to demonstrate the relationships between rhetoric, power, and knowledge. I align myself here with Owen and Ehrenhaus (1993), who note that "the politics of representation is the central concern of the critical study of rhetoric" (p. 170). That is, critical rhetoric attempts to understand how and what texts mean, particularly in regard to identities, politics, and power. How identities are represented are thus a key focus of critical rhetoric and this present study. However, critical rhetoric goes beyond discovering meaning in a text; it also "takes up a text and re-circulates it, that is, ‘says' or ‘does' the text differently, and asks the listener or reader to re-understand and re-evaluate the text, to see and judge it in new ways suggested by the critic" (Nothstine, Blair, & Copeland, 2002, p. 3). That is, my goal in using critical rhetoric is not simply to report the surface meaning of race and ethnicity within the texts, but to also interpret that meaning alongside contextual and historical considerations. As an approach focused on demystifying representational politics, critical rhetoric diverges from more conventional approaches to rhetorical criticism, in that it assumes that texts are not whole or complete, but are rather a "dense web" of meanings, consisting 35 of seemingly disparate "scraps" of rhetoric that are constructed-and teased apart-by the critic (McKerrow, 1989, pp. 101-102). Similarly, McGee (1990) explains that rhetoric is not a coherent, seamless text, but rather fragments of text that the critic pieces together. Thus, as at least partial creator of rhetoric, the critic should be self-reflexive in recognizing her/his own positionality within the fragmented text that she/he creates (Madison, 2010; McGee, 1990; McKerrow, 1989; Said, 1983). A critical performance perspective is confluent with a critical rhetorical approach more broadly in that they both focus on power relations and have political imperatives. As Conquergood (1992) notes, attending to performance within texts can bring a depth and richness of analysis to research. To the extent that performances exist within sites of struggle and are imbricated with notions of power relations, a performance perspective encourages the critic to attend to issues of identity negotiation and articulation (Alexander, 2011; Conquergood, 1989, 2002b; Holling & Calafell, 2007). The inherent risks of performance, along with the possibilities of identity creation, are where Butler (1988, 1997, 2006) sees a space for politics. That is, Butler conceives of performance as a political process with, as aforementioned, real consequences. Politically, performance can be seen as one way of (re)negotiating relations of power, in that performances can be resistive. Thus, a performance perspective takes into account the ways in which performances can both reinscribe dominant ideologies and function as resistance to those ideologies. An important aspect of a critical performance perspective is the recognition that performances are always in and of the body. As such, performance is always already an embodied process; as a number of scholars (Conquergood, 1985, 1988, 1992, 2002a, 36 2002b; Foster, 1998; Holling & Calafell, 2007; Madison, 2010; Moreman & McIntosh, 2010; Pollock, 2006) note. Methodologically, the blending of critical rhetoric and performance criticism is in many ways similar to rhetorical field methods (Middleton, Senda-Cook, & Endres, 2011), in that my aim here is to "identify a critical practice aimed at how texts and embodied, lived experiences interanimate each other" (p. 393). Although I am not doing field methods, in that I am not analyzing what Middleton, et al. (2011) refer to as "live rhetorics," I do embrace the call to investigate how bodies might complicate a straightforward understanding of texts. An approach that pairs critical rhetoric and critical performance is suited to this project because I am apprehending hybridity as a cultural, political phenomenon, and I examine its deployment via various bodies across contemporary mediated texts. As noted earlier, hybridity should be more closely interrogated to understand the role that flows of power play in the articulation of race/ethnicity in particular historical moments and contexts. Since hybridity can be both positive and negative, the ways in which power is imbricated with hybridity are salient. Moreover, the inclusion of the body is, as I argue, necessary for this project, as race/ethnicity are always accomplished by bodies-identity is always lived and embodied. Hybridity, too, is always expressed by, through, and in bodies; it is impossible to apprehend hybridity other than by focusing on how it is embodied and performed. The mobilizations of bodies stand to draw particular relations between self and identity, which I want to explore here: more specifically, self that is conflated with personal uniqueness and "authenticity," as drawn against identity, which speaks to external, cultural notions of "authenticity"; the embodied performances of hybridity in the contexts I examine seem to force a bifurcation of the two. 37 More specifically, however, a critical rhetorical approach is helpful in that in this study, I attempt to not only uncover meanings about representations and identities embedded in the texts, but also to apprehend and interpret what these meanings communicate about contemporary cultural notions of race, ethnicity, and hybridity, particularly vis-à-vis historical contextual considerations. Moreover, as Conquergood (1991) explains: The performance paradigm privileges particular, participatory, dynamic, intimate, precarious, embodied experience grounded in historical process, contingency, and ideology. Another way of saying it is that performance-centered research takes as both its subject matter and method the experience body situated in time, place, and history. (p. 187) Conquergood calls critics to apprehend the body not as an ahistorical text out of context, but rather as a contingent body situated within, and articulated to, cultural imperatives and contexts. Methodologically, this means that rather than attending to embodied performances as complete, whole texts, critics should look for the ways in which these performances draw from both historical and cultural imperatives. Practically, rather than analyze, for example, a television program as an isolated event, a performance perspective urges critics to also examine the contemporary political and social contexts that surround and are part of the television program. Similarly, in this dissertation I attend to the ways in which performances of race/ethnicity and hybridity reflect current anxieties and tensions surrounding race/ethnicity within the U.S. Contemporary hybridity, at least within the forthcoming analysis, is related to the expression of the "authentic self," which elides notions of identity politics, per se, and instead suggests that hybridity should be celebrated and valorized insofar as it conforms to very specific definitions and borders. 38 In this project, my own actions as a critic are informed by two key precepts of both critical rhetoric and critical performance approaches: an understanding of the necessity and value of a critical stance and an awareness of, and responsiveness to, its contingent nature. I have attempted to remain aware of the fluctuations and structures of power that undergird the discourses and texts that I examine, while understanding that power is not absolute; that is, I do not subscribe to the concepts of complete domination or complete oppression, but rather have tried to be aware of the ways in which power relations are constantly in flux. I also recognize that I am engaged in piecing together texts, and, to that end, my goal is to remain cognizant of my own positionality within the text that I create. For instance, as a multiracial woman, my identity is, in some ways, impossible to separate from the particular foci of this project, in that my own experiences will inevitably affect the ways in which I read these texts. Thus, it is imperative for me to attempt to be aware of the ways in which my own racial/ethnic and gender identities impact my experiences and understandings of the texts. Texts In this dissertation, I examine the ways in which hybridity is mobilized in distinctive ways in, through, and/or by various bodies, as well as how specific deployments of the body feature in articulations of hybridity. In order to do so, I focus on mainstream contemporary television, in particular. While mediated representations may not be immediately apprehended as performances in the same way as, for instance, Conquergood (1988, 1992, 2002b) approached performances, the media still provide a site for the dissemination and exploration of performances. That is, while mediated performances are not "live," in the same way as protests or performance art, they function 39 as what Taylor (2003) refers to as an "archive," or a repository of performances that compliments the study of the "repertoire," or live events. As such, mediated performances, including those on television, can still be understood from a performance perspective; here, my focus on performative aspects of contemporary mainstream television are complemented with a critical rhetorical approach, both of which are suited for examining texts. I examine mainstream television for two key reasons. First, as Hall (1981) argues, the popular, which includes mainstream television, is a site of struggle, a terrain on which battles-plural-for meanings and identities occur. Simply put, one should study popular culture because of the political implications that it has. Popular culture both produces and reflects ideologies about gender and race, so is an important arena where negotiations about identities take place (Dow, 1996, 2003; Nakayama, 1994; Ono & Buesher, 2001). Thus, popular culture contains political implications that are imbricated with flows of power, as a site where discourses surrounding identities are communicated. More specifically, as Gitlin (1979) explains, ideology is often relayed through mainstream television programming, via structure or format, genre, characters, topics, and proposed solutions. Fiske (2011) also claims, "television-as-culture is a crucial part of the social dynamics by which the social structure maintains itself in a constant process of production and reproduction: meanings, popular pleasures, and their circulation are therefore part and parcel of this social structure" (p. 1). Similarly, Dow (1996) argues that television texts are "rhetorical entities that can be interpreted as performing particular functions at particular times. These are persuasive functions that work to make some ideas, positions, and alternatives more attractive, accessible, and powerful to audiences 40 than others" (p. 7, emphasis in the original). That is, television not only creates meanings about race, ethnicity, and gender, but it also reflects culturally understood meanings about race, ethnicity, and gender; it both produces and reproduces notions of identity. Contemporary mainstream television is an important site to consider when attempting to understand the ways that race and ethnicity in general, and hybridity in particular, are both depicted and understood culturally. However, it is important to note here that I am not concerned with intent; as Dow (1996) explains, television criticism does not require critics to know or understand intent because television programs can have effects and meanings beyond, and even contradictory to, the creator's original intention. The second reason for analyzing television texts is that while television may be thought of as an archaic medium, it is still powerfully influential and remains a primary index of popular culture (Dow, 1996; Dubrofsky, 2006; Hill, 2005; Spigel & Olsson, 2004). Spigel (2004) argues that television has transitioned over the years in order to remain contemporary and popular, and still remains highly available and accessible for consumption. As Spigel aptly notes, virtually every household includes a television, making access to television widespread. Moreover, the increase in crossover between Internet and television means that even households that do not have a television but do have Internet have access to traditional television programming via computers, smartphones, and tablets. That is, television is accomplished differently than it once was; instead of being watched solely on television sets, it is now accessible in a variety of formats and media, and it is disingenuous to neatly partition media formats or venues as in the past. Televised fare is highly accessible online, and even then in different formats: YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, and 41 Amazon are all popular sites for watching television content. In fact, I viewed the majority of my texts on websites that host television content, including the aforementioned YouTube, Netflix, and Hulu, as well as the Food Network website. However, because the texts I am examining were all originally televised broadcasts, shown on traditional cable television before being available online, I am characterizing them as televised texts. Additionally, it is disingenuous to assume that the growth of Internet popularity necessarily means that people are not engaging in televised content. For instance, Jenkins (2003) claims that "all evidence suggests that computers don't cancel out other media; instead computer owners consume on average significantly more television, movies, CDs, and related media than the general population" (para. 4). According to the 2010 United States Census Bureau (n.d.), multimedia audiences accessed television more than any other medium, followed by prime time television viewing, cable television viewing, radio listening, Internet, and, finally, newspaper reading.4 Thus, even with changing technologies and the rising popularity of alternative media, such as computers, television remains culturally relevant. Indeed, this arguably makes television fare, or at least some of it, even more culturally resonant and significant, because particular programming can be replayed and redistributed by various agents, ad infinitum-certain content that once quickly disappeared can and does become iconic in ways it never could before. More specifically, I analyze reality television (RTV) programming, for two important reasons. First, as Hill (2005) argues, reality television in particular has mass appeal; Hill further notes that reality television typically captures at least 50% of the market share in the U.S. Grego (2009) explains that in the 18-49-year-old demographic, 42 RTV accounted for six of the top 25 shows in 2009, leading networks to include more RTV programming in subsequent seasons. Aside from the mass appeal of RTV, it is also easily available and accessible; due to the low production costs-particularly compared with network programming that features professional actors-RTV programming is found on every major network and has saturated television programming in general (Raphael, 2009). Moreover, with the rise in popularity of RTV and, as aforementioned, the multiplatform (traditional television sets, laptops, tablets, smart phones, and so forth) access to television programming that is currently available, audience participation has been encouraged across the majority of RTV programs (García-Avilés, 2012). That is, audiences are encouraged to engage with television texts in ways not previously thought of, including, but not limited to, voting for their favorite contestants via text message and social media; "tweeting" their opinions about the show on Twitter; and posting comments about television programming on YouTube. Second, to the extent that contemporary mainstream RTV produces and purports to reflect "the real" of cultural identities, it does so in a way that Debord (1983) calls spectacular. That is, television functions as the image or simulation of the real; Baudrillard (1994), like Debord (1983), refers to television as the hyperreal, the intense spectacle of identities writ large on the television screen. For noted RTV scholar Andrejevic (2004), along with others (Andrejevic & Colby, 2006; Hearn, 2006; Kilborn, 2003), RTV is so popular because even though audiences, on some level, recognize that RTV is not necessarily real, they still search for authenticity. As a consequence, RTV becomes increasingly extreme and detached from reality, which, Andrejevic (2004) claims, makes audiences believe that RTV is more real. Thus, RTV purports to showcase 43 reality, while presenting a heightened spectacle of such. In regard to identities, and, in particular, race and ethnicity, RTV becomes a staging of the spectacle of race and ethnicity. Hybrid bodies, displayed on this stage of RTV, are thus mediated in ways that are powerful, in that they reach a significant amount of people, purport to represent authentic identities, and are reflective of contemporary notions regarding racial and ethnic hybridity. In this dissertation, I hope to contribute to extant television studies literature, specifically in regard to RTV, in two key ways. First, I aim to complicate more straightforward analyses of mediated representations of race/ethnicity through a focus on hybridity and racial/ethnic ambiguity. While Beltran (2005), for instance, calls for more scholarly attention to racial/ethnic ambiguity within the media, hybridity scholars have rarely focused on the media. Second, and more importantly, I include the salient component of the body, a component that is missing from much scholarship on mediated representations of race/ethnicity and hybridity. That is, I aim to analyze the ways in which the body features in mediated representations of racial/ethnic hybridity, particularly within RTV. Ultimately, this dissertation suggests that embodied hybridity, specifically within the rubric of RTV, is often apprehended as free, unique self-expression, as a function of the "authentic self." This reflects contemporary anxieties around race/ethnicity to the extent that it captures liberal sentiments that valorize individual worth and expression, including around race/ethnicity, but it makes race/ethnicity far more available for discipline in line with more conservative sensibilities, especially around containing and confining race. As such, hybridity, here, is articulated as opposed to a politics of identity, thus justifying the disciplining of 44 race/ethnicity if and when bodies attempt to cross the rigidly drawn borders of "appropriate" expression. This encouragement to express oneself and simultaneous critique of any expression that is out of line is further accomplished precisely because so much of RTV programming does ostensibly encourage freedom of expression, particularly when bodies are engaged in a variety of creative practices that align with liberal sensibilities of self-actualization and personal growth. Thus, in this project, I use a variety of televised texts that feature hybrid bodies deployed in dancing, modeling, and cooking. Specifically, I first analyze two popular reality television series centered on dance. So You Think You Can Dance is a competition-style reality television show that features amateur (but typically highly trained) dancers who are paired up to compete in a variety of dance styles from week to week. Dancers are eliminated each week, leading up to a finale where "America's Favorite Dancer," a title garnered by fan votes, is crowned. Dancing with the Stars is, similarly, a competition-style reality television show featuring couples dancing together each week; however, as opposed to So You Think You Can Dance, Dancing with the Stars has an added twist: celebrities are paired with professional ballroom dancers throughout the course of the season. Each week, a couple is eliminated, and the season ends with the celebrity with the most audience votes receiving the coveted "mirror ball trophy" and the title of champion. Second, I investigate the long-running reality television series America's Next Top Model. Produced and orchestrated by legendary supermodel Tyra Banks, America's Next Top Model focuses on a group of aspiring models who must compete in a new photo shoot challenge each week, followed by the elimination of the weakest model of the challenge. In the finale, the final two contestants compete in a 45 fashion show, after which the panel of judges (including Banks) chooses the winner. Third, I analyze three cooking shows on The Food Network: Simply Delicioso with Ingrid Hoffmann, which features Latin cuisine; Aarti Party with Aarti Sequiera, which focuses on traditional Indian food with a contemporary twist; and Everyday Italian with Giada de Laurentiis, which includes Italian-American fare. I chose each of these texts as representative of various instantiations of hybridity. Each practice-dance, modeling, and cooking-is engaged in and navigates very specific tensions relevant to hybridity; moreover, various bodies within each of those practices negotiate the relevant tensions in distinctive ways. Thus, this selection of texts collectively furnishes various mobilizations of hybridity across a host of embodiments and embodied practices. Moreover, these respective mobilizations of hybridity reveal distinctive anxieties and tensions. Assessing them can illuminate what and how hybridity means in this historical moment, as well as extend and refine theoretical understanding of hybridity more broadly. Procedures In order to conduct my analysis, I watched the most recent three seasons of So You Think You Can Dance (seasons 9, 10, and 11) and Dancing with the Stars (seasons 17, 18, and 19). I have chosen the most recent three seasons of these shows as it is a sufficient time frame to understand contemporary manifestations of hybridity in the media. Similarly, I have analyzed the most recent three "cycles" of America's Next Top Model (cycles 19, 20, and 21); the most recent two include male models alongside female models. I watched all of these seasons/cycles during their original broadcast, but revisited them, as needed, online when conducting my analysis. Additionally, I watched clips of 46 the Food Network shows online, at www.foodnetwork.com, where these specific shows are readily available. Food Network shows are often only produced for one or two seasons, and then syndicated for many years afterwards. Thus, while the shows I am focusing on in this study air repeatedly on the Food Network, I had the best and most extended access to the selected texts online. As stated above, I analyze these texts through the perspectives of critical rhetoric and critical performance by focusing on the ways in which the various bodies featured in the texts perform hybridity. This approach is similar to a textual analysis in that I am "reading" the texts for meaning, but differs in that I am going to "read" the performing bodies in the texts for meanings surrounding racial and/or ethnic hybridity, as well as, to some extent, gender. My analytical process began with repeated viewings of all of my texts, during which I took extensive notes. As I viewed these texts, I focused on performances of racial and/or ethnic hybridity, including more implicit instances where the body is marked as racially/ethnically hybrid as well as more explicit, discursive engagement with hybrid identities and/or performances. More specifically, I looked for instances where racially and/or ethnically marked bodies inhabit and perform "other" racially and/or ethnically marked identities; for instance, I attended to moments when White bodies perform hip-hop, a dance historically associated with working-class, urban youth of color, and moments when bodies of color perform dances historically marked as "white," including but not limited to waltz, foxtrot, and quickstep. Additionally, I focused on instances where one or more racially and/or ethnically marked identities are merged on or in one body, and the subsequent creation of the ethnically ambiguous body is valorized and encouraged, such as that which occurs within the arena of modeling, where 47 vaguely exotic-but still ambiguous enough to "pass" as White-models often meet more success than both their "lacking" (Probyn, 2001), White counterparts and "overly" ethnic peers. Finally, I looked for instances in which an "other" race and/or ethnicity is consumed by or permeates a body, such as occurs during the preparation and consumption of racially and ethnically marked food. These various mobilizations of hybridity each draw upon different historical and cultural imperatives and contexts; although they are all contemporary, the peculiar configuration of specific races and/or ethnicities in each case, as well as the distinctive bodily deployments of the same, make sense in light of particular anxieties and tensions relevant to particular hybridities, which I argue is inseparable from the texts themselves. Aligned with McGee's (1990) concept of textual fragmentation, this present study attempts to piece together myriad instantiations of hybridity, alongside their historical-cultural contexts, in order to draw out the discourses of racial and/or ethnic hybridity represented within the texts. Confluent with a critical rhetorical approach, this dissertation focuses on the politics of representation within a text-how racially and/or ethnically hybrid bodies are depicted, and what this means in contemporary culture, given both contemporary and historical understandings of race and ethnicity within the U.S. Moreover, aligned with a critical performance approach, I apprehend hybridity as something that bodies do, through their habits of production and consumption, movements, discourse, and visual markings. After repeated viewings of my texts, I read through my notes, looking for events and processes regarding the ways in which racial and/or ethnic hybridity is visually and discursively displayed. While my focus was on the aforementioned types, or 48 instantiations, of hybridity, I also attended to other possible mobilizations of hybridity that I had not initially foreseen, in an effort to avoid beginning my analysis with a priori categories that I then applied to the texts. Once I coded my notes, and grouped the various articulations of hybridity into specific events or processes, I located the relevant historical and cultural contexts of each mobilization of hybridity. It is important to note that I do not attribute intent to the producers, writers, or "performers" featured in my texts, and it is also beyond the scope of this study to examine or assess reception, or even characterize the audience; rather, I am interested in evaluating articulations of otherness and whiteness as evidenced by consistent patterns apparent in the shows, respectively and collectively. Accordingly, audience demographics are not directly relevant; moreover, I do not want to assume that demographics are indices of cultural identity-first, as I have noted, I do not wish to reinforce notions of authenticity, in general, and especially as relevant to race and ethnicity, and second, whiteness and otherness are both cultural constructs that are not interchangeable with White bodies and raced or ethnic bodies. 49 Endnotes 1. Although I recognize that race and ethnicity are two separate constructs, they are often conflated in work about hybridity. Beltran, for instance, argues that in many ways, the notions of being multiethnic and multiracial are interchangeable. For instance, there has been much debate about whether or not Latina/o is a racial or ethnic category. Beltran argues that while Latina/os are more properly considered an ethnic, rather than racial, group, Latina/o people in the U.S. have become a "racialized ethnic group," and Latina/o is often treated as a race (Beltran, 2005). 2. I in no way subscribe to the idea that there is an objective "other," but am invoking this term in the same theoretical vein as hooks (1992) and Said (1978), to describe people who are not included within the rubric of whiteness and are treated, by dominant groups, as minority populations who are different from, and less than, the dominant groups. That is, those who are "othered" are marked as different from those who are dominant; they are positioned, discursively, rhetorically, and ideologically, as outside of an established (although, I must reiterate, not objectively existing) norm. 3. In capitalizing "White" and "Black," I follow Wachal (2000), who argues that when referring to people and race, both "White" and "Black" are not color terms, but rather proper nouns. However, in line with Nakayama and Krizek (1995), I do not capitalize terms such as "whiteness," "white supremacy," or "white superiority," nor do I capitalize "white" when not referring to people (e.g., "white dances" and "white spaces") because in these cases, white refers not to race or people per se, but rather to sociocultural constructs. 4. According to Census data, the total percentages of media consumption are as follows: (a) 92.91% of people watched television; (b) 83.06% of people watched prime time television; (c) 82.61% of people watched cable television; (d) 82.14% of people listened to the radio; (e) 77.31% of people accessed the Internet; and (f) 67.19% of people read the newspaper. In general, there was little variation with respect to age, with the exception of 18-24-year-olds, who accessed the Internet slightly more (92.7%) than television (89.61%). Even taking into account factors such as gender, race, and ethnicity, television viewing remained consistently more predominant than other forms of media access. Even amongst the lowest income group surveyed (those making less than $10,000 a year), 89.85% watched some form of television, suggesting the wide availability and relative affordability of television access.CHAPTER II CHOREOGRAPHING RACE: DANCE AND THE PERFORMANCE OF HYBRIDITY An ostensible belief in cultural acceptance and inclusivity has long been a salient part of the U.S. ethos, a country that prides itself on being, variously, a "melting pot," "salad bowl," and "mosaic" comprised of rich racial and ethnic diversity. Indeed, the U.S. "is a nation composed of immigrants, so the oft-repeated narrative goes, and its promise as a land of opportunity for hard-working, law-abiding citizens continues to be exalted as among its preeminent gifts" (DeChaine, 2009, p. 44). To be sure, there is a continued insistence that the U.S. values and encourages difference and equality. However, despite these lofty aims, division and difference persist within U.S. borders. As Anzaldúa (2012) reminds us, borders can be thought of as both literal, as in the actual physical borders surrounding nation-states (e.g., the fence that demarcates the U.S.-Mexico border), and symbolic, as in the psychical borders separating cultures. As "bounding, ordering apparatuses, whose primary function is to designate, produce, and/or regulate the space of difference," borders function to differentiate "the self from others, one culture from another, desirable elements from undesirable ones, and, often enough, ‘us' from ‘them'" (DeChaine, 2009, p. 44). Whether literal or symbolic, borders function to separate the centers from the margins in an attempt to neatly order and categorize people and cultures.51 Here, I focus on the symbolic nature of borders within the U.S., specifically focusing on those borders that are established precisely-ironically-via a guise of fusion and hybridity. The establishment of symbolic borders within actual ones is often predicated on the decline of stable nation-states and the development of permeable literal borders, both characteristics of current political, geographical, economical, and sociocultural conditions (Appadurai, 2005, 2011). As DeChaine (2009) astutely notes: As economic borders loosen, sociocultural borders tighten; as the U.S. economy becomes ever more subject to the disjunctive flows of a global cultural economy, its majoritarian reaction is to ally its anxieties by maintaining control where it can on cultural terrain. In a post-9/11 climate stoked by an omnipresent affect of terror-the threat of a cellular enemy who is both outside and potentially inside our national borders-it is perhaps unsurprising that the population's fears and uncertainties, as well as its search for enemies, turn inward. (p. 50) That is, current tensions surrounding the implosion and disintegration of the nation-state prompted in part by fears of terrorist activity on U.S. soil have been projected within the U.S., such that the feared "other" no longer only lurks mysteriously outside the borders, threatening to permeate closely defined boundaries, but is also inside the parameters of the U.S. This is illustrated, for instance, by not only contemporary efforts directed to keeping "others" out (i.e., border control to staunch the flow of immigrants), but identifying, exposing, and ejecting those who have already infiltrated. Of course, the concept of domestic terrorism certainly is not new; many U.S. citizens remember the so-called Unabomber, the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, and the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in 1996. However, domestic terrorism has become a salient and pressing issue post-9/11; for instance, a 2014 CNN poll indicated that U.S. citizens are increasingly concerned about domestic 52 terrorism, particularly in light of the currently prevalent belief that ISIS "has operatives within the U.S. able to commit an act of terrorism at any time" ("CNN poll," 2014, para. 3). Uncertainty about the location of the inevitable threat to security and, in many ways, cultural purity and fixedness, is a catalyst for what Appadurai (2006) refers to as the "anxiety of incompleteness," which is "always latent in the project of complete national purity" and often leads to "the sense of social uncertainty about the large-scale ethnoracial categories" (pp. 7-9). These anxieties and tensions, as Appadurai suggests, are often manifested as distrust of racially and ethnically marked "others," leading to the desire to create clearly demarcated boundaries and barriers. Here, the threat is not so much external-although, to be sure, the threat of "infiltration" of "others" into the U.S. remains a salient tension-as it is internal. In this chapter, I interrogate the ways that globalization, permeable borders, and the twin threats of immigration and terrorism from outside of the U.S. become internalized and managed as threats from within the U.S. Hybridity is particularly implicated here because of its ambiguity and inherent resistance to clear classification and, thus, marshalling of differences and symbolic borders within the U.S. Hybridity, and the hybrid body, are obvious disruptions to a desire for clearly marked boundaries. Despite what Appadurai (2006) claims is a desire to "de-melt the melting pot," so to speak, hybrid bodies refuse clear stratification; they insist on staying melted across and between borders. In this current climate, hybrid bodies present a threat to "real" America and Americans, with "real" standing in for a signifier for racial purity, specifically whiteness. Exacerbating present tensions about immigration and terrorism within and between borders and nation-states is the recognition that the hybrid body 53 remains largely unmarked and fluid, able to transcend boundaries within nation-states with apparent ease. Salient to this chapter is the ways in which this "melting pot" ethos, and its attendant anxieties surrounding the "other," are managed rhetorically by and through particular bodies, and how hybridity becomes one way of managing these tensions surrounding the disruptive "othered" body. With the increased permeability of borders, particularly those physically and psychically demarcating the nation-state, comes an increased need to categorize race and ethnicity within the U.S. Diversity within the U.S., while often celebrated, still remains a contentious issue, and an understanding of how this diversity is conceptualized and managed, symbolically and rhetorically, on, by, and through bodies, can illuminate tensions regarding race, ethnicity, and diversity as they are accomplished throughout the contemporary U.S. In this chapter, I focus specifically on hybridity apprehended and/or accomplished as ostensible traveling through and across "otherness." There are two particular instantiations of this that speak to distinctive mobilizations of anxieties around hybridity: first, the occupation of an "other" body as a means of hybridizing the self and affirming the primacy and privilege of whiteness; and second, the denial of the possibility of hybridity, and attendant exoticization of the "other," as a means of heightening difference and clearly delimiting borders. To further explore the ways that hybridity and fears thereof are rhetorically mobilized relative to occupation in order to manage anxieties surrounding racial and ethnic "others," I conduct an analysis of two competition-based reality dance shows, So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD) and Dancing with the Stars (DWTS). As a medium of performance inextricably tied to historical and sociocultural imperatives, dance is 54 frequently if not inevitably imbued with race and/or ethnicity, thus it is appropriate to investigate the ways in which particular dance performances, performed by particular bodies, accomplish race and/or ethnicity. In this chapter, I discuss the performers/performances featured on SYTYCD and DWTS and focus on the ways in which hybridity is mobilized as traveling, in various ways, to manage and negotiate the threat and anxieties posed by "otherness." In the following section, I will explicate the ways in which dance is connected to historical and sociocultural imperatives, followed by a description and analysis of my artifacts. Dance and the Performance of Identities Dance has served myriad functions throughout the years. From the celebratory or cultural dances endemic to specific regions, to the social dances popular in 14th- to 16th- century England, all the way to the current iterations of dance seen on television shows such as SYTYCD and DWTS, dance has played a prominent role in society. Dance often serves a number of functions, some of which are seemingly in tension with each other. Most saliently, dance can-and often does-express meaning, in general, and of identity or subjectivity, in particular. Dance as Expression of Identity Dance is further complicated in that it can, in some instances, work as a type of performance that is capable of transmitting meaning via dancers' bodies. As Foster (2010) notes, choreographers were the first to recognize the communicative potential of dance, claiming that "dance makers saw the body itself as meaning-filled, and they believed that the pragmatic execution of movement offered a glimpse into the self of the 55 performer that felt more real and revealing than any performances in which the dancer enacted a character" (p. 64). Foster further illustrates that "conceptions of the kinesthetic imbued dance with a unique capacity for communication" and that this kinesthetic movement works to "…awaken and enliven feelings" (p. 118). For example, modern dancer and choreographer Martha Graham was well known for her ability to move audiences and evoke their emotions; actor Gregory Peck, who worked with Graham, once noted that Graham believed that "body language expresses inner feelings and the emotions of the moment. The words are libretto, the emotions the music and the body the instrument" (cited in Anderson, 1991, para. 5). Similarly, Agnes De Mille was known for choreographing pieces that deeply affected audiences; her pieces were often praised for the feelings that they evoked. Through dance, the body becomes a transmitter of meaning that can communicate to audiences through performance and movement. Moreover, another dimension of dance as a performance is that it is not only able to convey emotions, but also identities and subject positions. For instance, hip-hop has historically, and contemporarily, been mobilized as an urban dance style that embodies resistance against dominant groups, including upper-class, wealthy White people. As such, performing this dance is an instance of performing resistance to domination and traditional norms. Although dance began as a general study and representation of movement, in the late 20th century it became "…an interest in all movement as varieties of signifying cultural and individual identity" (Foster, 2010, p. 66). Foster additionally notes, "each moment of watching a dance can be read as the product of choices, inherited, invented, or selected, about what kinds of bodies and subjects are being constructed and what kinds of arguments about these bodies and subjects are being put forth" (p. 4). That 56 is, dance, like other types of performances, works to construct identities (e.g., race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and so forth) through performance. Indeed, as Hamera (2011) reminds us, the power of dance to (re)create identities should not be underestimated, since Every day, urban communities are danced into being. This is more than a metaphor. It is a testament to the power of performance as a social force, as cultural poesis, as communication infrastructure that makes identity, solidarity, and memory shareable. (p. 1) Dance as a performance calls into being positionalities and identities through its wholly embodied enactment. As such, dance can be conceptualized as always already political, as relevant to bespeaking cultural location, as well as a process of (re)shaping subjectivities. This crafting of subjectivities is particularly important in light of my interest in assessing the mobilizations and implications of hybridity. For example, DeFrantz (2006) claims that dance has the capability of transmitting notions of race and class, as well as an "unusual nodule of everyday American politics" (p. xvi). In the bringing together of multiple bodies, Martin (1998) asserts, dance can mobilize the enactment of politics and bring about new political subjectivities. Similarly, Franko (2002) recognizes the power of choreographed dance to (re)order "the physical potentials and limitations of the human body's movement," and through this ability, Franko argues, dance has the power to represent social and political spheres of human action (pp. 1-2). Novak (1990) argues that dance, specifically improvisational dance, has the ability to produce and reflect identities, including gender, race, and class. Hamera (2011) also emphasizes the political potential of dance, stating: Vernacular landscapes made through dance are deeply and thoroughly political. 57 These landscapes are shot through with contestatory notions of appropriate gender performances and gender resistances, culture- and class-inflected expectations of the relationship between art and life, and issues of discipline and authority (p. 61). More specifically, scholars have argued for the capabilities of dance to shape gender and race/ethnicity, both salient features in my discussion of hybridity. Foster (2010) contends, "not only do dancers perform specific constructions of gender, and various bodily practices cultivate specifically gendered identities, but the very notion of choreography itself has been variously gendered over time" (p. 13). That is, women and men typically have very different types of dance choreography that are acceptable to perform, and are placed into socially approved gendered roles through the type of choreography that they enact. For instance, in ballet as well as more contemporary forms of dance, such as jazz, fouetté turns are typically only performed by women, whereas men typically perform the similar á la seconde turns. Additionally, men are expected to complete more rotations in their pirouette turns than women, jump higher than women, and lift women in the air; whereas women are expected to perform more sustained leg extensions, dance en pointe, and be lifted by men. Moreover, the way in which one dances is highly gendered; men are often expected to be strong, aggressive, and grounded, while women are often expected to be elegant, graceful, and ethereal. As such, bodily movement becomes one way of engraining gender roles not only into the comportment of bodies, but their very materiality. Dance also has the potential to communicate messages about race/ethnicity. For instance, Murphy (2011) interrogates choreographer Santee Smith's Kaha:wi, an evening-length dance that tells the story of the Haudenosaunee people. Murphy argues that this dance mobilizes bodies to (re)present the Haudenosaunee culture and history. 58 Similarly, Srinivasan (2011), in her analysis of the female Bharata Natyam dancing body, argues that this body negotiates tensions surrounding the Orientalized female body. Franken (1996) analyzes the popular reception of Egyptian dances, claiming that the film and television depictions of a particular dancer, Farida Fahmy, communicates notions of Egyptian dance as modest and respectable throughout the Middle East. Dance as Cultural Fusion Dance can, and has, been addressed as bringing communities of different cultures and histories together, and dance has also been traced as migrating and evolving across cultures and histories. While dance does, in many ways, distinguish and create sociocultural identities, it can also serve to construct cultural structures of feeling and communitas-to borrow a phrase from Victor Turner (1982)-that enmesh and imbricate dancing bodies in a web of textured sociality, and can suture people and cultures together (Hamera, 2011). As Martin (1998) argues, when people see dance, they are interpellated to literally dance along. That is, viewers of dance are called to experience the emotions that the dancers are portraying, participating in the dance through a sort of communion with the performers on stage. Further, Delgado and Munoz (1997) state that dance "…bring[s] people together in rhythmic affinity where identification takes the form of histories written on the body through gesture" and that through the enactment of dance, "a shifting sense of community is configured and reconfigured-day after day and night after night" (p. 9). Dance has the ability to (re)create communities and cultures through movement, and has the capability to "[organize] relationships across culture and class to form affective environments, geographies of the heart" (Hamera, 2011, p. 60). Thus, dance has the unique capacity to move past differences of race, class, gender, age, 59 socioeconomic status, and so on, to form communities of emotionality. Of course, this is not to say that dance always accomplishes this; however, dance can function to bring people together. Dance as Performance of Culture Like hybridity, dance can and has been seen as both a response to, and reflection of, the historical contexts in which it is found. As Foster (2010) states, both choreography and performance "…derive their meaning from a specific historical and cultural moment" (p. 5). That is, dance in many ways is temporally and historically bound, drawing meanings from cultural contexts and responding to those contexts through movement. Implicated in this expression are the dancing bodies that perform history and meanings; indeed, "the dancer's performance draws upon and engages with prevailing senses of the body and of subjectivity in a given historical moment" (Foster, 2010, p. 2). For instance, Argentine tango originated in the brothels of Argentina, with the original dance created as an expression of the relationship between the brothel workers and the gauchos, or cowboys, who visited the sex workers. However, once the dance became popular in Europe, and Paris particularly, it became associated with high society and socioeconomic privilege. Later, Argentine tango moved into Hollywood, with noted "Latin lover" Rudolph Valentino ushering in its popularity. Dance, then, is an important facet of culture and is inextricably intertwined with the contexts in which it is found. As a type of performance that occurs, and is transmitted, worldwide, dance additionally has the potential to communicate hybridity. For example, Wulff (2005) notes that the Irish dancing body, through globalized media and movement, has been seen throughout the world, particularly through the televised and live phenomenon of 60 Riverdance. Ness (1997) investigates Ingorot, a transnational style of ballet based in the Philippines, arguing that mediated representations of this dance style in the Western world has led to cultural hybridity and the fusion of Eastern and Western dance styles, an argument that dovetails with the communal potential of dance described above. On a less positive note, Savigliana (1995) claims that through global transmission, the Argentine tango has become a commodity and product of imperial consumption. Additionally, commonly known dances such as the hula, flamenco, salsa, samba, Bollywood, hip-hop, and so forth all have roots in specific racial/ethnic identities and locales, but have migrated geographically; they can be understood as hybrid forms of dance. For instance, samba music originated in Africa, but the dance itself (combined with the music) was created and made popular in Brazil, where it is traditionally danced during Carnival. That is, samba in itself is a hybrid dance, with ties to specific cultures. Similarly, Bollywood dance can also be considered hybrid; movies filmed and produced in India, referred to as