Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Also on Jessica Alba...
I want to continue another person's discussion of Jessica Alba, mostly because I find her to be a really interesting star in Hollywood today. She is someone who has never had a hit movie that she has had a lead role in, and yet she is still followed around by paparazzi and seen at prestigious award shows like the Oscars. I think most of Alba's fame is attributed to her attractiveness, not her talent. I thought it was interesting what someone else said about Alba avoiding calling herself a "Latina" actress. She is, in fact, biracial (her dad is Mexican and her mother is French/Danish, according to IMDb). I think she represents a demographic that is growing in the US, but is not readily seen in Hollywood: those of multiracial decent. There are more and more interracial couples who are having children that do not belong to a particular ethnic group. I think there is a struggle to figure out what ethnic group a biracial person belongs to, for example, I don't like it when people just refer to me as Asian because my dad is white. People never see me as white because they see my Asian side as trumping the other part of me. This is probably similar to a struggle Alba faces, people want to refer to her as Latina and therefore rhythmic and "exotic" (as she has been portrayed in Honey, Sin City, and Out of the Blue), but that may not be what she identifies as. I think Alba represents a new generation that is struggling with ethnic identity. I find it interesting that people automatically tend to categorize someone who may be multiracial as their more "foreign" ethnicity. Have we come to a point where we desire the exotic over whiteness? Will the multiracial person eventually become the ideal because he or she embodies all that is white and exotic?
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2 comments:
Jessica Alba is interesting to me because, on one hand, she is featured on "hot" lists such as Maxim's Hot 100 and frequently plays roles which require her to wear as little as possible because she is "exotic" but, on the other hand, has said some fairly disparaging things about Hispanics and her Hispanic heritage. I actually happen to have the current issue of Latina magazine for which she is the cover model. Some of the negative comments attributed to her which are cited in the magazine are: "Mexicans spread all their seeds," "My grandfather tried to forget his Mexican roots" and "As a third-generation American, I feel as if I have finally cut loose."
To be honest, with comments such as those, I don't know why Latina magazine would even be interested in talking to her. In the magazine, however, she seems to have had a change of heart (or chat with her publicist)and says things like, "I wish to God that my dad spoke Spanish to me" and "I'm excited for my baby to be brown."
With all of this to consider, I wonder, is Jessica Alba popular because she's exotic or because she's a whitened version of exotic? The readings for this week discuss how Jennifer Lopez had to become more "white" before she became popular, and this seems to have happened with Jessica Alba as well. Alba doesn't seem to be particularly interested in her ties to her heritage, yet still looks the part. Is she having her cake and eating it too?
I forgot to add something else to my post...I think that the multiracial aspect of people like Alba is intriguing because it is like what Ovalle said Jennifer Lopez is, she is in between white and black. Similarly, multiracial people are literally in between races and can be interpreted as being of races to which they don't belong (like Lopez playing Italian characters).
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