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ABSTRACT
This article explores Disney’s production and circulation of specific and ambiguous Latinidad by focusing on the Disney Channel television series Stuck in the Middle (2016–2018). Bringing together discourses of girlhoods and Latinidad, and elaborating on post-feminism through ambiguity, the article employs three overlapping units of analysis: the family, the main character, Harley Diaz, and four purposefully selected episodes, to investigate how mainstream cultural producers attempt to represent and reach out to a newly acknowledged diverse audience. Disney, as a major player among mainstream U.S. media industries, functions in relation to demographic shifts as these impinge upon markets and circulation of products. This article makes an intervention into the conundrum between a mainstream producer claiming they are representing Latinidad, and the ethnic audience’s demands for visibility which results in a tension between identifiable presence and stereotypical depictions.
Acknowledgments
We thank the Institute of Communications Research for providing the intellectual environment wherein this research could be carried out. We also thank Nathania Djuhar and Tiegan Hartley, for their research assistance with this project.
Disclosure statement
There are no conflicts of interest to declare in this publication.
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1. We acknowledge that these social media posts were probably written by her publicist and even by a Disney publicist, but nonetheless these appear transparently on social media as if she composed them herself.
2. We cannot know if Disney distributed this news content. We can suspect it strongly, but we can only hypothesize.
3. Selena Gomez’s character, Alex, in Wizards of Waverly Place, is half wizard, half ambiguous Latina/o.
4. The word for grandmother in Spanish.
5. This trope is also present through the character of Isabel in Disney Junior’s Elena of Avalor. Isabel is Elena’s younger sister – a princess and an inventor, but her inventions often go wrong and cause more harm than good. Isabel is voiced by Jenna Ortega, who plays Harley in SITM.
6. “The notion of a “last minute quinceañera” is an oxymoron, as they take much planning.
7. The word for Christmas in Spanish. In many series and/or films it is used without translation.
8. We now know that these plans included a starring role in the second season of Netflix’s You, where she played Ellie Alves, yet another instance of ambiguously ethnic naming practices.
9. We draw on Kennedy’s (Citation2018) work to define authenticity in this piece. Kennedy argues that tweenhood is a site onto which cultural investments of authenticity are projected. We argue that this is both a post-feminist authenticity and cultural authenticity that Disney tries to create via Harley’s tween girl character.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Diana Leon-Boys
Diana Leon-Boys is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of South Florida (USA). Her research is situated at the intersection of Media Studies, Latina/o Studies, and Girlhood Studies. Her work appears in Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Feministas Unidas, Latina/o/x Communication Studies: Theories, Methods, and Practice, and Black Mirror and Critical Media Theory.
Angharad N. Valdivia
Angharad N. Valdivia is Research Professor of the Institute of Communications Research and Department of Media and Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois (USA). Author of The Gender of Latinidad: Uses and Abuses of Hybridity, A Latina in the Land of Hollywood, Feminism, Multiculturalism and the Media, A Companion to Media Studies, Latina/o Communication Studies Today, Mapping Latina/o Studies, and Latina/os and the Media, she edited Communication Theory and the International Encyclopedia of Media Studies.