Whitewashing race: Blanquita and the transgenerational replication of blackness in mass media, from television to YouTube

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51306/ioasarance.049.01

Keywords:

blackness, race , mass media, advertising, woke washing

Abstract

Interstitial analysis is a cross-disciplinary perspective that focuses on exploring identity on the basis of flexibility and complexity, living with the contradictions, intricacies, and folds generated by the overlap of discourse and experiences lived within bodies (Dotson, 2014; Zurcir, 2020). From there, we will try to show how advertising appropriates the discourse of resistance movements to bring about transgenerational “whitewashing” in mass media that solidifies the systemic division of labor roles on the basis of race and gender. This whitewashing is based on the reaffirmation of white superiority, using whiteness as a role model and ideal (Echeverría, 2010) standard in juxtaposition to which stereotypes of blackness can be built. By blackness, we mean a social identity generated through “promotional strategies that depend on people and other symbolic and material representations that have been socially and historically considered black (ways of speech of pronunciations, folklore, style, fashion, music, body usage or physical form)” (Crockett, 2008, 246). 

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Author Biographies

  • Áger Pérez Casanova, Laboratorio de pensamiento Fronterizo, (Zurcir Lab)

    Master in Philosophy from UCL (2018) and Graduate in Philosophy from UAB (2017), with a mention in applied and fundamental philosophy. She is currently the Educational Program and Accessibility Manager at the Museu Tàrrega Urgell, and a PhD candidate in the Citizenship and Human Rights Program at UB. Her research focuses on the intersections between critical disability studies, pragmatism, and contemporary art practices through the lens of Carmen Papalia's notion of open access. With Papalia, she has facilitated staff accessibility workshops at the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver).

  • Diego Rodríguez Estrada, Instituto Otavaleño de Antropología (Otavalo, Ecuador)

    D. in Art History and Musicology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Master in Research in Musicology, Music Education and Performance of Early Music from the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona; B.A. in Music Production and Sound and B.M. in Contemporary Music from the College of Music (Berklee College of Music International Network) of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito. He holds a B.A. in Psychology from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador. He has a major in Psychoanalysis and Anthropology at PUCE (Quito, Ecuador), major in Audio Recording and Post-production for film, video and television at TECSON (Argentina), and music and sound studies at EMU Educación Musical (La Plata, Argentina) .

    In 2017 he received for the only time to an Ecuadorian researcher the Latin American Music Research Grant from the Latin Grammy® Cultural Foundation.

    He is currently Director of Research at the Instituto Otavaleño de Antropología (Otavalo-Ecuador). He is a member of the MUSC research group (Musics in Contemporary Societies); of the MRT working group (Technological Reproduction Musics), at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Member of ZURCIR: laboratory of border thinking, which aims to create dynamics of generation and transfer of knowledge from the border inside-outside the academy from a transatlantic axis, currently the line of research is: Complex identities and race from interstitial thinking.

    Researcher, he has worked in several projects of cataloging, preservation and digitization of sound documents for various institutions. Guest lecturer at various universities in Ecuador and is also a guest professor since 2017 in the Degree of Musicology and the Ethnomusicology Module of the Master of Research in Musicology, Music Education and Performance of Early Music, at the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

  • Marc Mariner Cortés, Laboratorio de pensamiento Fronterizo, (Zurcir Lab)

    Master in contemporary thought and classical tradition from the University of Barcelona and a graduate in musicology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, with a minor in philosophy. He is a member of the working group on musical technological reproduction, an initiative that is part of the MUSC research group (UAB). She has worked on musical listening from an aesthetic and political point of view, trying to see how this inhabits our daily lives. His current research is on the implications that come from rethinking the philosophical tradition from the auditory and sound.

  • Laura Meneses Pineda, Laboratorio de pensamiento Fronterizo, (Zurcir Lab)

    Master in Philosophy and Aesthetics at the University of Antioquia (2021), and graduated in Philosophy from the same university (UdeA, 2016). Native Spanish speaker with fluency in French and English. Laura is dedicated to philosophy and after two years of teaching at the University of Antioquia (Philosophy) and EaFit University (English for children and adolescents), she developed a participatory approach framework with emphasis on art, popular culture and questions that arouse the curiosity of students. She has independently curated several exhibitions. Her recent research focuses on critical theory and aesthetics, and the culture industry. Within Zurcir, she researches the decolonial gender perspective.

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Published

2022-12-12

Issue

No. 49 (2022): "Delusions of Race and Everydayness. Memory, Reconciliation, Bodies and Violence in Daily Life"

Section

Articles

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Copyright (c) 2022 Diego Rodríguez Estrada, Laura Meneses Pineda, Marc Mariner Cortés, Áger Pérez Casanova

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How to Cite

Pérez Casanova, Áger, Rodríguez Estrada, D. ., Mariner Cortés, M., & Meneses Pineda, L. (2022). Whitewashing race: Blanquita and the transgenerational replication of blackness in mass media, from television to YouTube . Revista Sarance, 49, 5-22. https://doi.org/10.51306/ioasarance.049.01

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