This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Rivero, Y. M. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Channeling blackness, challenging racism: a theatrical response

Indiana University, USA

This article calls attention to the pressing need to explore commercial television’s racial, ethnic, cultural, and gendered representations across the Latin American and Spanish Caribbean region as well as documenting the ways in which non-white citizens are (and have been) coping with their social and televisual marginalization. The performance piece You Don’t Look Like provides a unique opportunity to examine how those who have been excluded from and reconfigured in the local televisual frame have negotiated their invisibility and their constructed Otherness. By reenacting some of Puerto Rico’s scenarios of blackness, You Don’t Look Like questions and denounces the positionality of black citizens in the island’s society, culture, and on television. The article argues that both directly and indirectly, Puerto Rico’s scenarios of blackness not only imply specific geographical sites within the island but also the racialized bodies and cultures that flow back and forth across the Caribbean Sea.

Key Words: blackness • Caribbean • Puerto Rico • racism • representation • theater

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?