LET THAT BE YOUR LAST BATTLEFIELD: HEGEMONY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF BIRACIALITY IN SITUATION COMEDY, SOAP OPERA, AND SCIENCE FICTION TELEVISION By MICHELE SARAH FOSS A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2002 Copyright 2002 by Michele Sarah Foss To Delores Theresa Brown and David Virgil Foss, for having the strength in themselves and the faith in each other to enter into an interracial marriage, and for having the wisdom and love to inform their only child about her beautiful and unique multiethnic heritage. To my hero, Dr. Loubertha Hayes, for setting the standard. To Jessica. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Deborah M. Treise for being such an amazing chair and advisor. I could not have completed this dissertation without the help of this very special person. I would also like to thank Dr. Michael Leslie, Dr. Lisa Lee Duke, and Dr. Heman Vera for their interest in my project, their patience with my madness, and their belief in the quality of my thoughts. I would like to thank Anastasia Smith, Laura Stephenson, Courtney Myers, Dana Littlefield, and Stephynie Chapman for their encouragement and support as my colleagues and friends. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their constant confidence in me, and for their unending support and love. IV PREFACE As with most public school children in the United States, I remember my teachers handing me forms filled with blanks and circles, and on these forms, I was to fill in the appropriate circle corresponding to my race. I remember watching my classmates filling in their circles busily, while I stared blankly at mine, hearing my mother’s identity- affirming words in my head. “You are a combination of everything that I am and everything that your dad is,” she would say. “If someone asks you what race or nationality you are, you can tell them that you are black, Native American, and several different kinds of white, including German, Welsh, English, and French.” I experienced some trouble remembering the homelands of all of my ancestors, especially since I was only five or six years old at the time. Somehow, I managed to learn that whenever a curious classmate asked me what I was, I was to answer “black, Native American, and several different kinds of white, including German, Welsh, English, and French.” I took pride in the fact that I belonged to so many groups instead ofjust one. However, when confronted with those bubble sheets in class, and when I asked my teacher, year after year, if I could fill in all of the circles next to all of my races, teacher after teacher would instruct me to fill in the circle next to the words “Black, not Hispanic,” and only that circle. Every year, the circles haunted me. I thought I was lying by only filling in one circle, since I saw my heritage as flowing outside of the designated circles. I thought I was disgracing my family members who did not fall under the title “Black, not Hispanic” v by not acknowledging their contribution to my gene pool. I learned at home to be proud of my unique combination, but I learned at school that my uniqueness did not exist. Race mattered very much to me back then, as much as it matters to me now. I think about race every day. Sometimes, I am proud and joyful; sometimes, I experience pain and sadness. Perhaps more than any other factor, my ethnicity shapes the person that I am. It seems only natural that I would choose to consider the factor of race when committing myself to such a large and important project. As much as I would like to separate my personal inspirations from those I hold as a student and a researcher, I am thankful for my personal dedication to the subject, as I believe it will help me see this line of research into the future. I consider my research on this subject one of my main motivations in life. I do not believe it will cause me to become blinded to the truth, nor do I think my dedication to the topic will lead me to suggest conclusions unsupported by evidence. Rather, I think my passion will see me through the late nights, the revisions, the obstacles, and the hindrances. My unique viewpoint will help me see the answers (or the ways to find the answers) to the questions that have yet to be asked about multiraciality. If, by chance, I find that my motivations are failing me, and if I become discouraged, I have one more reason, one more source of strength from which I can pull. In those moments, I will only need to think of the millions of people who could potentially benefit or learn from my work. My research might affect people who are totally dedicated to Star Trek, or who think sitcoms do no wrong, or would rather die before they miss their soap opera. My work might affect mixed-race people who are searching for any knowledge about themselves within a society that sometimes tries to vi deny their existence. Overall, the love and the burden, the fire and the bum, the trial and the triumph that is this research might somehow make a difference to the world in which I live, and I cannot think of a better reason to do anything. 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS 2§ge ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv PREFACE v ABSTRACT x CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 1 Social Construction of Race 16 Mixed Race and Entertainment Media 24 Hegemony, Polysemy, Species-as-Race, and the Non-Racial 32 Situation Comedy, Soap Opera, and Science Fiction Television 39 3 METHODOLOGY 63 Cultural Studies and Critical Theory 63 Texts, Textual Analysis, and the Textual Analyst 69 Forms of Analysis 77 Data Collection 79 4 THE JEFFERSONS: MIXED RACE AND SITUATION COMEDY 83 The Jeffersons and Racialized Humor 83 Allan and Jenny 90 Discussion 1 14 5 PASSIONS: MIXED RACE AND SOAP OPERA 126 Theresa Lopez-Fitzgerald: Harmony’s Favorite Non-Racial 131 Chad Harris: The Mulatto with a “Tragic” Secret 135 Discussion 148 viii 6 DEEP SPACE NINE: MIXED RACE AND SCIENCE FICTION 162 Tora Ziyal: The Sacrifice of an Angel 169 Discussion 194 7 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH 206 Limitations 212 Future Research 214 APPENDIX A THE JEFFERSONS: EPISODE TITLES 219 B PASSIONS: EPISODE DATES AND DESIGNATIONS 220 C DEEP SPACE NINE: EPISODE TITLES 221 REFERENCES 222 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 231 IX Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy LET THAT BE YOUR LAST BATTLEFIELD: HEGEMONY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF BIRACIALITY IN SITUATION COMEDY, SOAP OPERA, AND SCIENCE FICTION TELEVISION By Michele Sarah Foss May 2002 Chair: Deborah M. Treise Major Department: Mass Communications This dissertation uses textual analysis (narrative and rhetoric analysis, specifically) to discover the ways in which the construction of a mixed race rhetoric in situation comedy, soap opera, and science fiction assists the process of hegemony through the existence of polysemy. The programs selected for analysis (one in each genre) each featured at least one mixed-race main character (in science fiction, the characters follow the concept of species-as-race—species is used as a metaphor for race), and the researcher analyzed the narratives and rhetoric involving those characters. This dissertation argues that the existence of polysemy in these texts assists the process of hegemony by allowing the socially conscious readers/viewers to believe they are participating in a resistant text, lulled by the existence of a dialogue on mixed race. In reality, the images and discussions of biraciality in the three selected programs resemble the most abhorred biracial stereotypes (especially the most infamous, the tragic x mulatto type, an unfortunate contemporary favorite). As a result, situation comedy, soap opera, and science fiction use different methods and techniques to construct mixed race within their texts, but they each take blame for communicating advocacy for the continued marginalization of mixed-race people in television, an entirely hegemonic consequence. xi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION My old man 's a white old man, and my old mother ’s black. IfI ever cursed my white old man, I take my curses back. IfI ever cursed my old black mother, and wished she were in hell I’m sorryfor that evil wish, and now I wish her well. My old man died in a fine big house. My ma died in a shack. I wonder where I’m gonna die, being neither white nor black? -“Cross, ” 1926 Curiosity about race and multiraciality is as old as race itself. The selection above, composed by the famed African-American poet Langston Hughes, expresses a frequent sentiment in literature and other texts concerning the mixing of races, especially in the United States. Individuals who walk the line between two “separate” worlds inspire concern, consternation, and confusion, sometimes (as shown above by Hughes) within the multiracial individual herself. As with most topics that create such curiosity, one would assume that the different dimensions of mixed race would be the subjects of many social scientific research projects. For the most part, this is true. It would be inaccurate to claim that no research regarding the idea of interracial relationships exists. In fact, a considerable amount of literature exists concerning mixed-race couples (Adams, 1973; Barnett, 1963; Blau, Blum, & Schwartz, 1982; Char, 1977; Cottrell, 1978; Crester & Leon, 1982; Day, 1932; Gay, 1987; Gordon, 1964; Monahan, 1976).