{"product_id":"straight-white-men-cant-dance-american-masculinity-in-film-and-popular-culture","title":"Straight White Men Can't Dance: American Masculinity in Film and Popular Culture","description":"\u003cdiv data-a-expander-name=\"book_description_expander\" data-a-expander-collapsed-height=\"280\" class=\"a-expander-collapsed-height a-row a-expander-container a-spacing-base a-expander-partial-collapse-container\" style=\"max-height: none; height: 280px;\"\u003e \u003cdiv data-expanded=\"false\" class=\"a-expander-content a-expander-partial-collapse-content\" style=\"padding-bottom: 20px;\"\u003e \u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold a-text-italic\"\u003eStraight White Men Can't Dance: American Masculinity in Film and Popular Culture \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-bold\"\u003einvestigates a trope proliferating throughout popular American media over the last half-century: that straight white men can't dance.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAddie Tsai traces this reiterative moving image of vaudevillian buffoonery in film, television, and video from the mid-1980s to present-day. During the height of homophobic hysteria in response to the AIDS epidemic, dance began to be used as a marker to scrutinize white men's position within homosexuality and masculinity. Therefore, white men could misperform \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003egood \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003edancing to more securely sit within hegemonic masculinity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTsai establishes how ethnic mimicry within American popular media, even that of white masculinity, is produced and reiterated from the 19th-century theatrical practice of blackface minstrelsy. This history resurfaces in one of the exceptions to the trope: when white men use the \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003ehip \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003ecurrency of blackness to affirm their (dancing) masculinity through theft and positionality.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy revealing how dance in American popular media reifies and problematizes gendered and racialized economies, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan class=\"a-text-italic\"\u003eStraight White Men Can't Dance \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003edemonstrates how the image of the buffoonish white male dancer operates as a smokescreen for the more violent manipulative forces of the reigning figure of white supremacy.\u003c\/span\u003e  \u003c\/div\u003e \u003cdiv class=\"a-expander-header a-expander-partial-collapse-header\" style=\"opacity: 1; display: block;\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"a-expander-content-fade\"\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003ca href=\"javascript:void(0)\" role=\"button\" data-action=\"a-expander-toggle\" class=\"a-declarative\" data-a-expandev\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Bloomsbury Academic","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50340265230621,"sku":"9781350443563","price":154.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0901\/5692\/5213\/files\/9781350443563.jpg?v=1757517369","url":"https:\/\/bookdelico.com\/products\/straight-white-men-cant-dance-american-masculinity-in-film-and-popular-culture","provider":"Book Delico ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}