It's interesting how stars encorporate their nationalities into their texts ...

The Negron-Muntaner and Aubry articles both take issue with (or, at the very least, note) how Jennifer Lopez's "ambiguous ethnicity" makes her more pallatable to white audiences. Aubry's article, in fact, goes so far as to say that Out Of Sight does not live up to its promise of a really racialized leading lady.

The Roberts article addresses Carmen Miranda and her legacy, and the Latina identity in American film more generally. Though the first two articles, about Jennifer, seem more to be critiquing the system within which she is working -- the Hollywood studio one -- there is also an implicit disapproval of her allowing this watering down of ethnicity to occur.

However, I think that stars can (and have) deal with the issue of nationality in one or two ways. The first, I would associate with Jennifer Lopez (and Bill Cosby), the second, with Don Cheadle (who's particularly interesting to consider given that that he and Lopez were both [obviously] in Out Of Sight.

I don't believe that Lopez has done anything to hide her ethnicity. At the same time, though, I don't think she's gone out of the way to emphasize it. It was an inherent part of her role in Selena, admittedly (Negron-Muntaner's whole article is based around this film). However, since she gained stardom -- and assumedly, then, more say in her roles -- she has played it safe, working largely as a romantic comedy leading woman, not in social problem films, for instance.

This is not a critique of her. In fact, almost the opposite. Lopez's approach reminds me of that of the Cosby's during The Cosby Show (not his more recent behavior and comments). He too seemed to ignore the race issue, but not in a way that denied it -- in a way, rather, that deemed it too unimportant to even address. It was the "yeah, so?" approach, that had a racialized body focused on reversing stereotypes by acting against them (being a upper middle class father with Leave It To Beaver-inspired values) rather than complaining about them.

Contrast that to the Don Cheadle approach (again, this is not a critique of his trajectory either). As I said in a previous post, he appears to have taken the stereotyped roles (as in Out Of Sight) as a stepping ladder to roles that he's more interested in. Whereas Lopez did the same thing with Selena, the roles that she's been interested in since have not been social problem ones, as Cheadles have (again, Rowanda, Traitor).

Although Cheadle's roles are not didactic (they would not succeed if they were), they obviously make more of the race issue than do Lopez's, and take a different approach than Cosby's lack of address of ethnicity.

Both approaches are effective -- though Lopez is a bigger star than Cheadle, both their names are known -- but Lopez's lack of direct address and more MLK-style passive resistance may contribute to the criticism that the Negron-Muntaner and Aubry articles speak to. But then again, perhaps she is the most misunderstood modern actress, following in the footsteps of Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby in fighting stereotypes by acting against them quietly rather than loudly.

Questions:
1) Is Lopez uninterested in enacting social change, or is she doing so subtly?
2) Do all racialized actors need to play to stereotype at first to act in Hollywood?
3) Which do you find more effective in changing your preconceptions about people: someone hilighting prejudice and pointing out how it's wrong, or someone ignoring prejudice and acting against stereotype?