Mixed Race Hollywood

Mary C. Beltran; Camilla Fojas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0814799892 ISBN 13: 9780814799895

Publisher: NYU Press, 2008

A Kansas City Star 2008 Notable Book

Since the early days of Hollywood film, portrayals of interracial romance and of individuals of mixed racial and ethnic heritage have served to highlight and challenge fault lines within Hollywood and the nation’s racial categories and borders. Mixed Race Hollywood is a pioneering compilation of essays on mixed-race romance, individuals, families, and stars in U.S. film and media culture.

Situated at the cutting-edge juncture of ethnic studies and media studies, this collection addresses early mixed-race film characters, Blaxploitation, mixed race in children’s television programming, and the "outing" of mixed-race stars on the Internet, among other issues and contemporary trends in mixed-race representation. The contributors explore this history and current trends from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives in order to better understand the evolving conception of race and ethnicity in contemporary culture.

Review:

"An accomplished, well-researched view of race identity in cinema."
-M/C Reviews

“An interrogation of pop culture’s representations of multi-racial characters and interracial relationships.”
-Colorlines

"An immensely readable interrogation of contemporary representations of multi-racial characters and inter-racial relationships in film, television, and popular culture."
-ColorLines

"A significant step forward in the study of race and media. There are very few academic collections that match this one in timeliness, depth and readability. Mixed Race Hollywood reflects both a theoretical turn in critical race studies and the new representational habits of a culture in which celebrities wear their multiracial status as a badge of pride and sign of demographic pull."
-Diane Negra,University of East Anglia

"Each essay stands as an exciting contribution to an open-ended discussion."
-Choice

"Mixed Race Hollywood does to race what queer has done to sexuality―it challenges binary thinking and the normative categories it creates. This book opens up productive new areas for scholarship on Hollywood representation and the intersections of race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and nation."
-Chon A. Noriega,University of California, Los Angeles

Synopsis:

Since the early days of Hollywood film, portrayals of interracial romance and of individuals of mixed racial and ethnic heritage have served to highlight and challenge fault lines within Hollywood and the nation's racial categories and borders. "Mixed Race Hollywood" is a pioneering compilation of essays on mixed-race romance, individuals, families, and stars in U.S. film and media culture.Situated at the cutting-edge juncture of ethnic studies and media studies, this collection addresses early mixed-race film characters, Blaxploitation, mixed race in children's television programming, and the "outing" of mixed-race stars on the Internet, among other issues and contemporary trends in mixed-race representation. The contributors explore this history and current trends from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives in order to better understand the evolving conception of race and ethnicity in contemporary culture.