It seems clear to me that these last three articles, under the heading “the end of popular culture?” are directly dealing with issues of the embodied experience. The way that the body can naturally be sexualized, ethnically classified, hierarchically organized and gendered exists in all these articles. Part of this embodiment paradigm is the idea of theater which is explained well in both the Gómez-Peña piece and the Beltrán piece as well. Clearly how one uses their body dictates to some degree how theatrical they are, or how they are aware of the public domain as theatrical. It seems apparent that both Subcomandante Marcos and Jennifer Lopez have learned to use the media to their advantage, at least principally.
I’m also beginning to wonder what role the media are playing in this pop culture arena. The Canclini article from last week posits them as part of the production of popular culture, but this weeks articles portray the media as a tool to be manipulated by those who are actually creating popular culture.
I’m actually really surprised that a whole academic article has been written on Jennifer Lopez’ butt….Seriously. It seems strange. But if the body is the site of struggle as the title suggests, it’s worthy of some analysis. I was thinking about the production of culture as well, and how in the Jennifer Lopez article it seems to be a process of both her and the media, or her agent anyway. No longer is this production in the hands of white, male elites. A latina woman can be popular culture and can have the power through her body to alter conceptions of the popular and the beautiful.
I was troubled to read that Román-Velazquez comments that salsa has become associated with a pan-Latin identity. I wonder how Latin people see that. I would argue that there are many things associated with this pan-identity, but that salsa is just that to some.