Transgressing the Controlling Images of African-American Women? Performing Black Womanhood in Contemporary American Television Series

Drawing from intersectionality theories and black feminist critiques of white, masculinist, and racist discourses still prevailing in the American popular culture of the twenty-first century, this article looks critically at contemporary images of African-American women in the selected television series. For at least four decades critics of American popular culture have been pointing to, on the one hand, the dominant stereotypes of African-American women (the so-called controlling images, to use the expression coined by Patricia Hill Collins) resulting from slavery, racial segregation, white racism and sexism as well as, on the other hand, to significant marginalization or invisibility of black women in mainstream film and television productions. In this context, the article analyzes two contemporary television shows casting African-American women as leading characters (e.g., Scandal, 2012-2018 and How To Get Away With Murder, 2014-2020) to see whether these narratives are novel in portraying black women’s experiences or, rather, they inscribe themselves in the assimilationist and post-racial ways of representation.

Muslim Stand-Up Comedy in the US and the UK: Incongruity, Everydayness, and Performativity

The objectives of this article are two-fold: to provide a review of the major figures and trends in Muslim American comedy and discuss certain techniques and approaches that have been used by stand-up comedians to counter predominant and discriminatory perceptions of the “Other”. To reiterate film critic Jack Shaheen’s argument in Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, the Western public is fed constructions of Islam as a “problem”; the terms “Arab” and “Muslim” are interchangeably used; Muslim men are depicted as “terrorists”; and Muslim women are depicted as “veiled and oppressed”. Much has been written on the generation and effect of stereotypes promoted by popular culture. However, stereotyped groups also use popular culture to speak for themselves. Popular culture also functions to resist, counter, push back against, and subvert stereotypes. In other words, the “Other” can speak for him or herself through popular culture as a means of contesting stereotypes that define Muslims and Arabs in terms of cultural and religious understandings that narrowly categorize individuals through attributes such as religiosity and femininity. This potential is being realized by second-generation Muslims familiar with the platforms created and provided by other marginalized groups in Anglo-American popular culture, and their work has come into its own especially in the aftermath of 9/11, a time that saw both the intensification of stereotypes and heightening of Muslim American consciousness. I concentrate on these specific stand-up comedians in the US and the UK, despite the fact that there are others in the diaspora who discuss Islamophobia, because these American and British comedians address all of the three most common stereotypes of Muslims: “Arab = Muslim”, the “terrorist”, and the “veiled and oppressed woman”.

Arab American Feminism: The Political and the Literary Strategies of Re-writing between Borders in Contemporary Post-9/11 Fiction by Women Writers

Undeniably, Arab American women occupy a debatable position in mainstream culture and politics. Because of their former invisibility, they started to claim their presence and to fight for their rights in post-9/11 America. They ardently become aware of their submission to both Arab patriarchy and sexism and the necessity to fight against this denigrating position. Likewise, they realise that they were silenced in discourses against Arab and Muslim discrimination in the United States. This paper focuses on the ways they have been challenging these discriminatory and invisibilizing discourses against Arab women through shedding light on their Transnational Feminist concerns in their writings, in which they have created a site to communicate anti-discrimination discourses, and to oppose the stereotypical monolithic portrayals of Arab men that are mainly due to the hypervisibility and the demonization of Arabs in post- 9/11 America. Additionally, it highlights how the Shehrazadian narrative strategy in contemporary Arab American women’s writing engulfs several features and illustrations of confrontation and resistance to the stereotypical representations of Arab women, mainly in the American popular culture. Indeed, Shehrazade and her narrative strategies become in this context a collective means for re-writing, reviving and redefining grandmother figures from the past. Shehrazed’s storytelling, as a life-serving strategy, becomes a metaphor for the urgency of exploring why and how figures like Shehrazade are translated across cultures and how Orientalism shapes such translation.

Jayne Mansfield

Jayne Mansfield (1933−1967) was driven not just to be an actress but to be a star. One of the most influential sex symbols of her time, she was known for her platinum blonde hair, hourglass figure, outrageously low necklines, and flamboyant lifestyle. Hardworking and ambitious, Mansfield proved early in her career that she was adept in both comic and dramatic roles, but her tenacious search for the spotlight and her risqué promotional stunts caused her to be increasingly snubbed in Hollywood. In the first definitive biography of Mansfield, Eve Golden offers a joyful account of the star Andy Warhol called "the poet of publicity," revealing the smart, determined woman behind the persona. While she always had her sights set on the silver screen, Mansfield got her start as Rita Marlowe in the Broadway show Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?. She made her film debut in the low-budget drama Female Jungle (1955) before landing the starring role in The Girl Can't Help It (1956). Mansfield followed this success with a dramatic role in The Wayward Bus (1957), winning a Golden Globe for New Star of the Year, and starred alongside Cary Grant in Kiss Them for Me (1957). Despite her popularity, her appearance as the first celebrity in Playboy and her nude scene in Promises! Promises! (1963) cemented her reputation as an outsider. By the 1960s, Mansfield's film career had declined, but she remained very popular with the public. She capitalized on that popularity through in-person and TV appearances, nightclub appearances, and stage productions. Her larger-than-life life ended sadly when she passed away at age thirty-four in a car accident. Golden looks beyond Mansfield's flashy public image and tragic death to fully explore her life and legacy. She discusses Mansfield's childhood, her many loves -- including her famous on-again, off-again relationship with Miklós "Mickey" Hargitay -- her struggles with alcohol, and her sometimes tumultuous family relationships. She also considers Mansfield's enduring contributions to American popular culture and celebrity culture. This funny, engaging biography offers a nuanced portrait of a fascinating woman who loved every minute of life and lived each one to the fullest.

All things keep getting better: Queer Eye and the makeover of American masculinity

Netflix’s Queer Eye (2018–present) is often criticized for reinforcing neo-liberal American fantasies of transformation of the self that distract from urgent transformations of economic, political and social worlds. Nonetheless, I use paratextual and textual analyses to argue that the verbal and physical intimacies between the Fab Five are rare in American popular culture, and offer us reworked embodiments of American manhood. It is through these intimacies that the Fab Five enable us to think through the following questions. What does it mean to be a man in contemporary American popular culture? What does it mean to be a man with other men? What does intimacy between men look like?