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In the first episode of Black Journal , before the opening credits, comedian Godfrey Cambridge appears dressed in overalls and a painter’s cap with a paint roller in hand and methodically paints the television frame. To the viewer, it appears that his or her television is being painted black from the inside—a potent visual symbol from the first national Black public affairs program. Initially, though, the symbol emphasizes a visual challenge to the absence of Black faces on television—a show that “looks” Black, because of the visibility of its Black hosts and reporters, but where whites still have significant

In this chapter, I would like to consider how interactive reality television contributes to the negotiation between national particulars and transnational media flows. Specifically, I want to look at the successful franchise So You Think You Can Dance , a dynamic global media flashpoint and a remarkably adaptable format that serves as a site of pleasurable and contradictory engagement with the sense of national culture and community that television manufactures. But what makes the show of particular interest to me is that it allows audiences, in an increasing number of television markets around the world, to collectively determine their ideal national performers through a competition that requires mastery of a virtual international smorgasbord of popular dance forms and styles, the vast majority of which originate elsewhere, or from within the national, racial, and ethnic cultures of others. Second, in choosing to examine dance shows, I join with a growing number of scholars who have, over the past 15 years, argued for increased attention to dance as a primary site of knowledge production concerning bodies, identities, and representation.

While expanding critiques of pinkwashing have drawn increasing attention to how queer issues in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories are perniciously mobilized by a network of lobby groups, Brand Israel initiatives, and international gay and lesbian organizations, these critiques often fail to consider how queer Palestinians mobilize and understand themselves. This article reports on an October 2011 panel and film screening at Yale University and the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University. “Queer/Palestinian: Critical Strategies in Palestinian Queer and Women's Filmmaking” uniquely focused on questions of queerness and Palestine through a program of eight new Palestinian visual productions. The program brought together Palestinian film scholars, filmmakers, visual artists, and curators for a discussion of queer and feminist artistic practice in relation to Palestinian strategies for resistance. Together, the “Queer/Palestinian” films suggest the urgency for Palestinian visual artists to persistently generate new means of expressing, embodying, and critiquing visions for Palestinian society. Films such as Victoria Moufawad-Paul's Nus Enssas/ صيصنصن (Canada, 2011) and Raafat Hattab's Hourieh (Palestine, 2011) explore issues ranging from queer diasporic solidarity politics and challenges to out/closeted binaries and to the creative reinscription of nakba narratives. Nadia Awad's Two Adaptations of the Same Novel (US, 2011), Suzy Salamy's 1982/2006 (US, 2006), and Moufawad-Paul's Rejoice, O My Heart / يبلق اي حرفا (Canada, 2011) suggest an irreverent queer strategy by undermining the narrative conventions and visual codes of mainstream news media and popular US and Egyptian cinema. Salamy's video, previously projected through mobile exhibition on city buildings, and Eli Rezik's online “web-movies” Living Alone without Me (Palestine, 2011) and Between Us Two (Palestine, 2011) compelled a panel discussion of alternative means of distribution and exhibition. Finally, Alaa AbuAsad's Masturbate bil beit (Palestine, 2011) rounded out the program with an explicitly erotic and unapologetically political version of the meeting of “queer” and “Palestinian.”

Why is it important that a Black woman created, wrote for, and co-produced¹ two highly-regarded television situation comedies that engaged a variety of Black women’s health issues while at the same time these issues were being reduced, simplified, or altogether ignored in mainstream American hip hop? Mara Brock Akil tacitly responded to this question when asked why four episodes of the third season of Girlfriends (2000–2008), the situation comedy she created and co-produced for UPN, addressed the HIV/AIDS crisis among Black women in America. “I have things I want to say,” explained Brock Akil, “about bridging television’s gap between

This article explores issues of racial essentialism and ethnicity in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft (WoW). The fantasy world of Azeroth mirrors elements of real-world race-based societies where culture is thought to be immutably linked to race. The notion of biological essentialism is reinforced throughout the gamescape. Race plays a primary role in the social and political organization of Azeroth. Among other things, race determines alliances, language, intellect, temperament, occupation, strength, and technological aptitude. The cultural representation of the respective racial groups in WoW draws upon stereotypical imagery from real-world ethnic groups (e.g., American Indian, Irish/Scottish, Asian, African, etc.).

The issue of identity formation when playing an avatar in a video game has recently become perceived as both increasingly complex and contentious. Game critics argue both for and against the apparent seamlessness in the identity formation in video games. However, while the case against seamlessness builds up with respect to other gaming genres, first-person shooters (FPS) are often still singled out as best representing this first-person identification whereby players were supposed to be totally immersed in their avatars while they played the game. In the light of recent research, this chapter builds on earlier research to reveal further problems in assuming a seamless merging of identity even in the FPS. It argues that the very conception of subjectivity has always been problematized through the FPS, and that the genre itself self-consciously keeps pointing this out. As an example of the latter, the chapter focuses on the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. video games to show how FPS games prompt players to question their in-game identity(ies) because the playing subject, instead of being a fixed entity, is hard-wired into the process of exploration that constitutes gameplay.

During the last decade, popular television formats have been replicated across the globe for local or regional consumption as program imports, adaptations, clones or imitations, raising questions on the possible ramifications of such cultural inflows. For Africa the international program flow and the influence of Western media content has been a contentious issue for decades, underlying the cultural imperialism thesis of the 1970s and 1980s, and the centre– periphery paradigms which conceptualized the series of dependency relationships. In African media research concepts like cultural colonialism, media imperialism, neocolonialism, Americanization, homogenization, have been used to denote the unequal flow and influence of Western media products in Africa. Within the framework of media globalization some scholars have even propounded a scenario of the emergency of a global culture mediated by the dominant Western media. The central issues in African media discussions have mainly revolved around the flow of finished media programs and their perceived detriment to local cultures and identities. What is missing in the African research literature is the attention to television formats, a phenomenon described by Keane et al. (2002) as a vehicle for localization, since what is imported is not the content itself, but a recipe for creating a local version. Global reality format shows thus create a new picture.

I was about 10 or 11 years old when I, together with my parents, religiously tuned in weekly to the situation comedy ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? While I do not recall the specific year the show aired in Puerto Rico, I do remember that it was broadcast on WIPR-Channel 6, the island’s public television station. Watching one of my favorite sitcoms on what I then considered the boring channel was rather odd. However, I never thought it strange that the Peñas, ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? ’s working-class three-generation Cuban/Cuban-American family, resided in Miami or that some of the characters communicated bilingually in English and Spanish. For me, ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? was a show that resembled other locally produced situation comedies broadcast on commercial television, with the difference that the Peña family were Cuban immigrants who, instead of residing in Puerto Rico (like some of my childhood friends), lived in Miami (like many of my friends’ relatives). Probably as a result of the principal characters’ cultural references and their accents in Spanish, I decoded ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? as a Cuban sitcom. Fast-forward to 2004. I was invited to write a 500-word encyclopedia entry on ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? Without having any information on the show at hand, I immediately accepted. This was an opportunity to revisit a program I loved. After conducting the research I realized the uniqueness of ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? Sponsored by the U.S. Office of Education Emergency School Assistance Act– Television Program (ESAA-TV), ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.? —considered the first bilingual situation comedy broadcast on U.S. television— addressed the culturalgenerational misunderstandings and the socio-cultural adjustments endured by the Peñas, a 1960 Cuban exile family.

Although the cartoon series Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (CBS, 1972–1984) averaged only nine new episodes a year during its twelve-year run (compared to a more standard production cycle of twenty-five to sixty new episodes a year for other cartoons), the show remained a highly popular option for young viewers on late Saturday mornings. By the time of the series’ network premiere in 1972, the cartoon’s animated African American stars—Weird Harold, Dumb Donald, Fat Albert, Rudy, Mushmouth, Bucky, Russell, and Bill—were familiar and recognizable to American audiences as originating from Bill Cosby’s boyhood community of North

El retrato ha sido, a lo largo de la historia de la fotografía, un ritual cuya gramática visual está siempre condicionada por una mirada determinada. Retratamos para recordar, para fijar un instante en el tiempo. Cuando recordamos lo fotografiado convocamos de nuevo ese instante, pero, además, convocamos una realidad, un orden social específico construido por determinados actores sociales. La fotografía ha representado y legitimado en muchos momentos un patrón de poder colonial que, a través de sus estructuras de dominación, ha elaborado rígidas jerarquías sociales y raciales que han circunscrito a indios, afros, mujeres y clases populares a lo que Frantz Fanon llama la zona del No-ser. ¿Es posible recordar, entonces, a partir de la fotografía, de manera crítica y sin reproducir en tal ejercicio la matriz colonial que hizo posible la toma de la imagen?

The worldwide success of the Idol format may not require any explanation. We live under the ubiquitous sign of globalization; and hence it should come as no surprise that mass media— which together constitute an ecumenical vehicle of culture with an insatiable appetite for profit— would generate forms (or formats) of art that travel with ease and are translatable into every context. The reception of these formats is, at one level, as unproblematic as its dissemination. To be global (and who isn’t?) is to be eagerly accepting of certain languages, technologies, discourses and styles. The craze surrounding competitive singing can then be explained as one more instance of borders proving permeable to the formulas of international popular culture. It is my argument that in order to understand the unique valence and significance of global formats, we need to go beyond issues of production, distribution and reception, and focus instead on the phenomena that arise from their instantiation . This is so because implementing a format in a specific context has consequences that are neither written into the “program” nor purely derivable from local conditions. Let me provide an illustration. The call-in talk show has recently become a staple on Indian television. The format and content of these shows would be familiar to most Western viewers— a regular host, one or more “experts” discussing politics and culture, and a final segment devoted to phone calls from the public.

The demand for minority representation in video games often focuses on proving that members of marginalized groups are gamers. In turn, it is asserted that the gaming industry should focus on appealing to these players via targeted content. Being targeted as a gamer, however, does not a gamer make. Identity as a gamer intersects with other identities like gender, race, and sexuality. Negative connotations about gaming lead people to not identify as gamers, and even to not play video games. This article concludes, based on interview data, that those invested in diversity in video games must focus their attention on the construction of the medium, and not the construction of the audience as such. This shift in academic attention is necessary to develop arguments for representation in games that do not rely on marking groups as specific kinds of gaming markets via identifiers like gender, race, and sexuality.

This project has been engaging my thoughts for nearly a decade. I was forced to actually address it while sitting in our temporary home in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, watching world satellite TV with virtually no Blacks on it. In Nigeria, I became acquainted with Paris-based Fashion TV, U.S.-based Style Network, and the Australian production McLeod’s Daughters. Outside of M-Net’s Africa Magic, a network dedicated to showing Nollywood productions primarily, television was anything but Black. This whitening of the televisual frame, even in Black Africa, made me begin to consider the dearth of knowledge circulating about Black television programming, even when abundance

In a recent debate over the problematic characterization of Bonnie Bennett, the only Black female recurring character on the CW network series The Vampire Diaries (CW 2009), my challenger insisted that with all of the qualifiers I insisted she have, “maybe this is another hidden reason there are no minorities on television: everything becomes an issue and you just can’t win.” Indeed, the main qualifier I suggested that the series allow the character to possess—an innate sense of cultural difference—is difficult to grasp and maintain. However, I do not accept that just because race is difficult, it is

Aaron McGruder’s “The Return of the King” (2006) is one of many of the artist’s controversial episodes, yet it stands out because of the criticism it received among mainstream media outlets and civil rights leaders. It was the ninth episode to air from his series The Boondocks, which is an anime show that airs on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim cable channel. McGruder presents the following scenario in “The Return of the King”: What if Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) did not die after his April 4, 1968, shooting and instead awoke after being in a coma for thirty-two years?

Videogames’ ability to depict cultural iconographies and characters have occasionally led to accusations of insensitivity. This article examines gamers’ reactions to a developer’s use of Africans as enemies in a survival horror videogame, Resident Evil 5. Their reactions offer insight into how videogames represent Whiteness and White privilege within the social structure of ‘‘play.’’ Omi and Winant’s (1994) racial formation theory notes that race is formed through cultural representations of human bodies organized in social structures. Accordingly, depictions of race in electronic spaces rely upon media imagery and social interactions. Videogames construct exotic fantasy worlds and peoples as places for White male protagonists to conquer, explore, exploit, and solve. Like their precursors in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, videogame narratives, activities, and players often draw from Western values of White masculinity, White privilege as bounded by conceptions of ‘‘other,’’ and relationships organized by coercion and domination.

Over a twenty-year period, renowned artists such as Edward Poitras, Robert Houle, Jim Logan, Kent Monkman, among others, appropriate renowned colonial landscape paintings and art historical canonical works, and then alter them to include First Nations narratives, as methods of critiquing the exclusionary nature of grand colonial narratives and their associated historical, art historical and, by extension, anthropological discourses. Using counter-appropriation as an artistic strategy, they critique: the West's disregard for First Nations histories in North America; Art History's past failures to classify their art objects as Fine Art; and contemporary cultural constructions of "Indianness" originating from colonial history and ideologies about the "Vanishing Race." With their works, the artists offer their viewers insight into First Nations histories and stories, thereby enriching the multiple narratives and pluralist discourses existent in North America.

Darkest Africa, the imagining of colonial fantasy, in many ways still lives on. Popular cultural representations of Africa often draw from the rich imagery of the un-charted, un-knowable ‘other’ that Africa represents, fraught with post-colonial tensions. When Capcom made the decision to set the latest instalment of its Resident Evil series in an imagined African country, it was merely looking for a new, unexplored setting, and they were therefore surprised at the controversy that surrounded its release. The 2009 game Resident Evil 5 was accused of racially stereotyping the black zombies and the white protagonist. These allegations have largely been put to rest, as this was never the intention of Capcom in developing the game or selecting the setting. However, the underlying questions remain: How is Africa represented in the game? How does the figure of the zombie resonate within that representation? And why does this matter?

Marlon Rachquel Moore interviews emerging independent filmmaker Tina Mabry about her southern upbringing, racial and sexual consciousness, and the joys and turbulence of bringing her first feature-length film, Mississippi Damned, to the silver screen. Mississippi Damned is based on Mabry's family and set in her hometown of Tupelo, Mississippi.

Thérèse Lamartine est bien connue des milieux féministes. Détentrice d’une maîtrise en études cinématographiques, elle a publié Elles, cinéastes... ad lib, en 1985, aux Éditions Remue-ménage, dans lequel elle présentait des réalisatrices de diverses origines, actives entre 1895 et 1981. En 2009, elle publiait Soudoyer Dieu, un roman scrutant la longue et inconsolable douleur d’un groupe de femmes après la tuerie de Polytechnique. Avec Le Féminin au cinéma, une petite plaquette consacrée aux films «de femmes» ou, comme elle le précise, aux films qui «sculptent un art du mieux-vivre la mixité dans nos sociétés ou [qui] débrident les stéréotypes et nous dérident à la fois», Lamartine ouvre les portes d’un monde cinématographique souvent méconnu et rend hommage à des femmes de cinéma, autant derrière que devant la caméra. En sortant ces femmes de l’ombre, elle met au jour un cinéma riche et original, mais méconnu.