Are you tired of being white? A "gringo?" Are you tired of boring music, country western line-dancing, and the missionary position? Well, according to my television, then what you need is new Dentine Fire(TM). Yes folks, one pack of Dentine and you'll be transformed from just another gabacho into a sultry, sexy Latino/a, a member of America's most commodifiable new ethnic minority. Always envied the Ricky Martin lifestyle? Wished you could identify more with farmworker claps and Gloria Anzaldua? Well then clearly, you need new Dentine fire
I would wager that what Kinetz describes as the "mollifying effect R&B has had on some hip hop" has done more to sexualize hip hop dancing than vice versa. Somehow i can't see people grinding to KRS or De La (or Wu Tang, or Tribe...)
John Rowland will finally resign tonight. It's about fucking time.
Yeah, the Latino community might be the most commodifiable ETHNIC minority, but we gays have been suffering the painful transition from sexuality to brand for a long, long time now. Maybe I can chew some Dentine while shopping at Abercrombie and Fitch--I'll be just like Jai Rodriguez!
ReplyDelete--j.s.f.
Jason Farrago's comments are duly noted. The most recent, post-will and grace/queer eye formation of commodifiable queerness is no less visible or fucked up than the hyper-heterosexual constructions of purchaseable Latinidad which i identify in the Dentine ad and was attemnpting to critique with my post. But i feel like i'm being too normative, and i wonder what new spaces people are forging in the context of these capitalist (re)constructions of sexuality and ethnicity.
ReplyDeletedentyne fire decided to announce the commodification of mexicanidad to ... country line-dancers?? That seems pretty pointless because any country linedancer knows that the Best linedancers all reside in Texas, and if you live in Texas you know that ethnic definitions of "cool" depend way, way more heavily on other things besides the gum one chews. Here, I refer to the 1am rodeo my friends and I found ourselves at the other weekend, where the thirteen-year-old kid throwing roping gear into the back of his gigantic Ford F-350 supercharged pickup was simultaneously chewing out his mother and chewing on a huge twist of wacky tabbacky -- chewing tobacco, shudder. Chew on that. (oh, wait, that's the tag line for Trident.)
ReplyDeleteAnd, as an aside... Ricky Martin doesn't fit in with any of the rest of the ethnically Chicano/a cultura you were talking about. He's way too commercialized to be stomached by any of my tejana/o friends.
on a personal note, wrigley's winterfresh gum (the one in the blue pack) has always been my pack of choice...
Yes, but the sexualized image in the dentine commercial was very much in the vein of la vida loca which Martin sold to millions of american households in the late 90s, right down to the "vibrant" colors of the film and the salsa-inflected dance music blaring in the background
ReplyDelete