[Black] plastic feelings; feeling [Black]

ABSTRACT

One way to ensure a future for the disciplines housed in the pages of CC/CS is to embrace the realization that researchers do not have to disinvite ourselves from the work we do. Through an exploration of my personal connection to Meghan Markle and Stacey Abrams, I illustrate how when Black audiences attempt to quench their desire for sensory connection through on-screen visually matching bodies, it simplifies the actual power of representation we experience when we demand cultural specificity.

KEYWORDS:

• Film and media studies
• critical autoethnography
• autotheory
• race and representation
• cultural specificity
• plastic representation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Stuart Hall, “What Is This ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?” Social Justice 20, nos. 1–2 (1993): 1–11.

2 Kristen Warner, “In the Time of Plastic Representation,” Film Quarterly 71, no. 2 (2017): 32–37.

3 Robin M. Boylorn and Mark P. Orbe, eds., Critical Autoethnography: Intersecting Cultural Identities in Everyday Life (Routledge, 2020).

4 Lauren Fournier, Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism (MIT Press, 2021).

5 Amy Villarejo, Ethereal Queer: Television, Historicity, Desire (Duke University Press, 2014).

6 Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society (Routledge, 2013).

7 Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, trans. Richard Howard (London, UK: Vintage Classics, 2013).

8 https://wyvarchive.com/yeet-the-monarchy/

9 According to gossip blogs and news sites, the long-time close relationship between former friends Meghan Markle and Jessica Mulroney, the daughter of a Canadian former prime minister, has long been argued as assisting in Markle’s trajectory to gaining access to connecting her to Prince Harry.

10 Tyler Perry invited the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to stay at his home near Santa Barbara when they set about plans to move to California, https://www.today.com/popculture/popculture/tyler-perry-home-meghan-markle-prince-harry-rcna48812

11 Kristen Warner, The Cultural Politics of Colorblind TV Casting (Routledge, 2015).

12 Harry and Meghan, Directed by Liz Garbus and Erica Sashin. Hollywood, CA: Netflix Studios, 2022.

13 Harry and Meghan, Episode 1.

14 Saturday Night Live, season 43, episode 17 “Chadwick Boseman,” directed by Don Roy King, Paul Briganti, and Dave McCary. Aired April 7, 2018.

15 “Karen” as a viral slur that describes aggrieved white woman post 2020 George Floyd protests. See Raven Maragh-Lloyd, “From Permit Patty to Karen: Black Online Humor as Play and Resistance,” American Journal of Play 13, nos. 2–3 (2021): 253–77.

16 Kristen Warner, “ABC's Scandal and Black Women’s Fandom.” In Cupcakes, Pinterest, and Ladyporn: Feminized Popular Culture in the Early Twenty-first Century, edited by Elana Levine, 32–50. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015.

17 Kristen Warner, “The Iris West Defense Squad Strikes Back,” in The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom, eds. Suzanne Scott and Melissa Click (New York: Routledge, October 2017).

18 Alexis Okeowo, “Can Stacey Abrams Save American Democracy?” Vogue, August 12, 2019, https://www.vogue.com/article/stacey-abrams-american-democracy-vogue-september-2019-issue.