The Gender of Latinidad. Angharad N. Valdivia
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(p. 100)
This neat summary of production leading to representations leading to audience reactions maps out the continuities. Yet, we also have some presence in the mainstream, which sometimes brings along ruptures. In the entertainment realm, we have the continuation of Jennifer Lopez as the reigning Latina mogul whose ethnic presence does not preclude her othering of other ethnics, such as a recent incident on The Voice with an Asian American contestant (Washington 2017a). As mentioned previously in this chapter, ethnicities between the white and black ends of the spectrum are positioned in uneasy relation to one another. In this particular case, Lopez deployed her agency and status as a successful mainstream Latina to pass judgment on Asian Americans striving for presence and success in the same mainstream. We have also witnessed the rise of Sofia Vergara, the breakout star from the ensemble‐cast mockumentary Modern Family. As the best‐paid television actress, Ms. Vergara represents the latest Latin bombshell to hit US airwaves. Former Disney and Barney girls Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato continue their music, acting, and branded‐products careers, with the ups and downs that follow young media celebrities. Gina Rodriguez became a breakout star through the aptly Latina‐entitled Jane the Virgin. While the title is cheeky, it does hook to the Roman Catholicism stereotypically attributed to Latina/o populations in the United States. Cameron Diaz, Christy Turlington, Salma Hayek, Eva Longoria, Eva Mendez, Michelle Rodriguez, Zoe Saldana, Sofia Carlson, and others all remain bankable mainstream figures. Notice that these spectacular Latinas represent the multiplicity within Latinidad. Cameron Diaz is a blonde and blue‐eyed Cuban American from San Diego whose Latinidad would go nearly unperceived were it not for her last name. Former supermodel Christy Turlington has used her Latinidad, as a Salvadorean American, almost as a way to stay in the limelight after aging out of her top‐model days. Salma Hayek will be more extensively discussed in Chapter 2, but suffice it to say that she is a first‐generation Mexican, of Hungarian and Spanish Jewish parents, who crossed over in the United States and now lives in France. Eva Longoria, Eva Mendez, and Sofia Carlson fit the bill as petite light‐brown Latinas. Michelle Rodriguez is Afro‐Latina, something she has said was a cause of conflict in her family, and has been typecast in a long career performing embodied and active Latina roles (Beltrán 2004). Zoe Saldana, also Afro‐Latina, has removed some of the Latinidad by taking the ñ out of her name (Molina‐Guzmán 2013b) and shortening it from Zoë Yadira Saldaña Nazario. She hit the big time through the Star Trek franchise, and has played a range of African American and ethnically ambiguous characters, gaining controversy through her casting as Nina Simone. All of these spectacular Latinas form part of the mainstream terrain. Yet, fully half do not fit the light‐brown ambiguous mold, and thus are seldom discussed as Latina. Nonetheless, when it suits the individual stars or when media companies find it useful to reach out to Latina/o or ethnic audiences, white Latinas will exhort their Latinidad. Every once in a while, Cameron Diaz will assert her Latinidad, such as when she and Jennifer Lopez shared the stage while presenting an award at the 2012 Oscars. That moment, when they posed with their backs to the cameras, simultaneously reiterated their common Latinidad and differentiated Diaz's whiteness from Lopez's more ethnic body. On the other hand, Longoria and Mendez are always already Latinas, regardless of the story or role in which they appear. Unambiguous white Latinas, such as Diaz and Turlington, have the luxury of passing as white and choosing to out their Latinidad when it suits them. Light‐brown Latinas play across the racial spectrum. In addition to Jennifer Lopez, Jessica Alba has proven so malleable that she has played characters from albino in the Fantastic Four (2009) to an African American in Honey (2003). The inescapably racialized Rodriguez and Saldana enjoy embodied careers, wherein they have to continuously prove their belonging within Latinidad and African American‐ness. Border crossings for these Afro‐hybrid Latinas are far more inspected than for the white and light‐brown ones. Clearly, Latina actors are useful to mainstream media industries for their malleability and the fact that they can displace other ethnicities.
Recent production of predominantly Latina/o shows in the post‐network era provides expanded employment opportunities and roles for Latina/os, with possible ruptures in addition to inevitable continuities. The transmediated East Los High (2013–17), for example, provided a welcome Latina/o presence in the digital television landscape, via Hulu (Molina‐Guzmán 2016). The reboot of One Day at a Time (2017–2019) does the same through Netflix. At an organizational level of analysis, these shows function as sites of symbolic annihilation. Were it not for them, Hulu and Netflix would have nearly zero Latina/o presence (Negrón‐Muntaner et al. 2014). Latina/os are found in predictable locations, in working‐class communities, yet the narratives within which they appear present novel ways of treating family structures, fluid sexuality, and productive agency. The salience of these two shows belies the overall ongoing underrepresentation of Latina/os in general in mainstream popular culture. The many critiques applied to them speak to the burden of underrepresentation – so much is expected from these shows in the absence of many others.
A mainstream that underrepresents Latina/os and maintains damaging tropes has consequences in terms of politics, education, and resource distribution. As the Latino Media Gap Report (Negrón‐Muntaner et al. 2014) asserts:
The consequences of this gap are far‐reaching. The current data suggests persistent and unchecked job discrimination in a major US industry. The relegation of Latinos similarly deprives media consumers of innovative perspectives at a moment of rapid industry and demographic change. Equally important, as entertainment and news reports often carry more weight than do other forms of communication, the limited and stereotypical nature of existing stories about Latinos skews the public's perception of US society, sanctioning hostility toward the country's largest minority, which has already become the majority in many cities, including the media capitals of Miami and Los Angeles.
(pp. 1–2)
I write this book 23 years after my Feminism, Multiculturalism, and the Media: Global Diversities (Sage, 1995), 18 years after A Latina in the Land of Hollywood (University of Arizona Press, 2000), and 8 years after Latina/os and the Media (Polity, 2010). The first, an edited collection, was groundbreaking in that it foregrounded media and gender through an intersectional range of vectors of difference and ethnicities, including Latinas, Native Americans/First Nations, Asian Americans, African Americans, Jews, and lesbians. Up to that point, most diversity gender and media studies had focused solely on African Americans. The second book came out as Latina/o Media Studies was beginning to explode as an area of research. In addition to posing questions about audience and interpretation, which were at that time woefully understudied, it covered a broad terrain of mediated culture and analyzed issues of class as well as gender and ethnicity. The third book cohered the intersection between Latina/o Studies and Media Studies, attempting to account for the vast amount of research that was then being conducted and pointing toward future work in an area of study that continues to be dynamic and multifaceted. Mini case studies at the end of each chapter took up two separate issues to illustrate how mediation of Latinidad could be understood through the body of Jennifer Lopez, a major celebrity, and the coverage of Latino death in the Los Angeles Times' “Homicide Report.” These two examples illustrated a continuum of production, representation, audience, and effects borne out by mediatized Latina/os and, in turn, contributing to the circulation of information about Latina/os. The Jennifer Lopez study focused on a spectacular Latina, while the “Homicide Report” analysis explored the implications of reporting the death of unnamed and unacknowledged young Latinos in the greater Los Angeles area. Overexposure of Jennifer and her butt and underexposure of Latino death coexist in the mainstream media.
In all previous and contemporary work, my focus is on the mainstream media. Never underestimating the presence, creativity, and importance of alternative media and Spanish‐language media, I also acknowledge that these are very large areas of research and activity, which are beyond the scope of this book (Albarrán 2009; Chavez 2015; Báez and Avilés‐Santiago 2016). My decision to keep researching what happens in the mainstream is rooted in the firm belief that Latina/os are part of mainstream US popular culture and deserve to be part of the mainstream media – as owners, producers, subjects, and interpreters. By focusing on presence in