{"id":142,"date":"2017-05-16T14:24:05","date_gmt":"2017-05-16T18:24:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl117s17\/?p=142"},"modified":"2017-05-16T14:24:05","modified_gmt":"2017-05-16T18:24:05","slug":"white-as-a-flipping-gh-gh-gh-gh-gh-ghost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl117s17\/uncategorized\/white-as-a-flipping-gh-gh-gh-gh-gh-ghost\/","title":{"rendered":"White as a Flipping Gh-gh-gh-gh-gh-gHOST!!!!!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Drew Cohen<\/span><\/p>\n

Due 5\/16\/17<\/span><\/p>\n

English 117 – Christian Thorne<\/span><\/p>\n

White as a Flipping Gh-gh-gh-gh-gh-gHOST!!!!!<\/b><\/p>\n

Perhaps you\u2019ve heard about this before, but apparently you can be taught to fear people of mixed race. \u00a0Now, obviously you\u2019re not going to call the police and run screaming if your half-Asian best friend turns the corner too quickly, but on a more subtle level, you can be tricked into thinking that mixed race people are untrustworthy and that they maybe even \u201cgive you the creeps.\u201d \u00a0You may believe that you\u2019re above such prejudice, but keep reading, and I can prove that racial purism can be made subconsciously appealing to you.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Being mixed-race and identifying more toward whiteness can seem like wearing a mask.<\/p><\/div>\n

Race, as you might imagine, is not only determined by skin tone: throughout history, racial scripts and the societal roles of people of different races have defined race as just as much a cultural phenomenon as a pigmentary one. \u00a0As such, being mixed race might allow you to not only experience multiple racial cultures in daily life, but to also have the freedom to choose which race you align with more. \u00a0Studies like one by Miri Song of <\/span>The Sociological Review<\/span><\/i> have shown that people of mixed race tend to \u201cchoose one race as their primary basis of identification\u201d (Song, 2010). \u00a0But at the same time, society tends to enforce a \u201cone drop rule,\u201d especially on African Americans, such that even \u201cpart-Black people are expected to see themselves as black\u201d (Song, 2010). \u00a0In cases of misalignment between socially-expected and self-conceptualized racial identity, choosing to identify with a race that is unexpected of you can be seen as something like wearing a mask: the you that the world sees is not the <\/span>real<\/span><\/i> you. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In this case, if you want to consider how masking true identity can play into anti-mixed-race stigma, simply look at a classic series that bases much of its own cultural identity on \u201cunmasking\u201d monsters: the <\/span>Scooby-Doo<\/span><\/i> franchise. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

From left to right: Fred Jones, Daphne Blake, Scooby-Doo, Shaggy Rogers, and Velma Dinkley. Above them is a spooky, spooky ghost.<\/p><\/div>\n

Scooby-Doo<\/span><\/i> is a kid-friendly mystery series all about uncovering the \u201cmasked madmen around the world\u201d as the lovable Great Dane, Scooby-Doo, and his four teenaged friends in Mystery Inc., Norville \u201cShaggy\u201d Rogers, Daphne Blake, Fred Jones, and Velma Dinkley, travel in their flower-power \u201cMystery Machine\u201d van to solve the world\u2019s spooky puzzles (Elzinga and Wolfswinkel, 2011). \u00a0And if you don\u2019t already know who Scooby-Doo is, that\u2019s \u201clike, totally uncool, man.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This guy’s pretty uncool.<\/p><\/div>\n

Quite seriously, a study by neuroscientists at CU-Boulder found most college students to have adept semantic memory of the Scooby-Doo theme song, finding that these students could remember and fill in a missing word at any point in the song (Overstreet et al., 2015). \u00a0<\/span>Scooby-Doo<\/span><\/i> is a genuine household name in any of its many iterations, from the original <\/span>Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?<\/span><\/i> cartoons to the reboot series <\/span>What\u2019s New, Scooby-Doo? <\/span><\/i>and beyond. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Notorious among this notoriety is the 2002 live-action movie, <\/span>Scooby-Doo<\/span><\/i>. \u00a0Andrew O\u2019Hehir of <\/span>Salon.com<\/span><\/i> notes that the movie is \u201clowbrow\u201d and \u201c<\/span>tries to walk that same well-worn line of simultaneously spoofing a classic TV series and remaining true to its spirit\u201d by reuniting a disbanded Mystery Inc. and crudely making fun of the clich\u00e9s of the original series and its characters (O\u2019Hehir, 2002). \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Mystery Inc. in 3-D.<\/p><\/div>\n

And with language that includes the words \u201cbi-otch,\u201d and lines like \u201cI would have gotten away with it too if it weren\u2019t for you meddling sons of-\u201d and \u201cyou don\u2019t have the scrote for this job,\u201d you can clearly see that this is a movie for nostalgic teens and adults that, alongside wanting to see Daphne with actual, human breasts and Freddie Prinze Jr. with bleached hair, feel the urge to relive their nostalgia of the classic <\/span>Scooby-Doo<\/span><\/i> experience outside of the second dimension.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet more significant than this slightly more adult interpretation of the series is the way that the movie honors the clich\u00e9s of the original cartoons by flipping them on their heads, the classic \u201cunmasking\u201d a notable example. \u00a0Freddie Prinze Jr.\u2019s Fred insists at one point in the movie that Mystery Inc.\u2019s \u201carea of expertise is nut jobs in Halloween masks,\u201d and claims that ghosts and monsters aren\u2019t real. \u00a0Or, at least he does until they <\/span>are <\/span><\/i>real. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And Velma said, “Let there be sunlight!”<\/p><\/div>\n

Rather than playing up the man in the mask like the cartoons do, the movie utilizes man <\/span>as <\/span><\/i>the mask: the movie\u2019s monsters can\u2019t survive in sunlight and need to use the human body, as Velma says, \u201clike a human suit, SPF 1,000,000,\u201d after removing the human\u2019s spirit from his or her body. \u00a0Along the same lines, the true villain of the movie is the obnoxious Scrappy-Doo, a pint-sized pup with a glandular problem who disguises himself in, you guessed it, a human suit: the \u201cMr. Mondavarious\u201d that invites Mystery Inc. to his amusement park is really Scrappy-Doo in costume.<\/span><\/p>\n

Does this immediately instill fears of multiracial people in you? \u00a0To understand why it might, you need to first understand Richard Dyer\u2019s arguments on the embodiment of whiteness. \u00a0Dyer argues that \u201cto represent people is to represent bodies,\u201d but for white people \u201cwhiteness involv[es] something that is in but not of the body\u201d as \u201cwhite people have a peculiar relationship to race, of not being quite contained by their racial categorization\u201d (Dyer 14,18). \u00a0In this way, white people can \u201ctranscend\u201d their bodies, since their racial identity does not limit them to judgment based on their physical appearance (Dyer 17). \u00a0The white identity is thus unique because it is more spiritual than physical – Dyer even mentions Christianity as an embodiment of whiteness. \u00a0It makes sense then that essentially all of the possession victims in the movie are white, including Fred, Velma, and Shaggy\u2019s new love interest, Mary Jane. \u00a0In order to be possessed in this movie, you need to be able to allow your spiritual identity to transcend and be separated from your physical one and have your spirit removed from your body. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Voodoo Maestro.<\/p><\/div>\n

This might also explain why a certain black side character, the Voodoo Maestro (yes, that is the only name they give him), can resist possession. \u00a0Of course, you can see in the movie that part of the Voodoo Man\u2019s protection comes from his voodoo rituals, but the underlying ideology is crucial here: the one visible, semi-important black character in the movie has protection from possession. \u00a0The movie hungrily consumes Dyer\u2019s argument like Shaggy and Scooby eat Scooby Snacks.<\/span><\/p>\n

To this effect, the possessed humans in the movie are reminiscent of classic movie zombies. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n