In/visibly Different

Autor(en)
Maria Katharina Wiedlack
Abstrakt

This article offers a “feminist critical discourse analysis” of the Saturday Night Live sketch “Melanianade.” It argues that the comical video reinforces and essentializes negative stereotypes of Eastern European women to depict Melania Trump, seeking to delegitimize white hegemonic masculinity and female complicity. The fictitious Melania Trump’s appearance needs to be understood in her co-construction with her white hegemonic husband and otherwise racialized women in the comedy sketch. These women are the African-American women of Beyoncé’s video “Sorry,” which “Melanianade” copies/satirizes. “Sorry” represents Black female US-American experience, and was broadly understood as Black feminist art/activism. Taking Beyoncé’s place in the video, the fictitious Melania Trump is co-constructed to the absent black feminist bodies as white non-feminist Eastern European Other. Using Beyoncé’s video as a template, “Melanianade” re-affirms a discourse of Otherness that re-establishes the enlightened and emancipated educated (white) feminist American non-immigrant woman as norm, while it also whitewashes the Black American experience, which “Sorry” stands for.

Organisation(en)
Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Referat Genderforschung
Journal
Feminist Media Studies
Band
19
Seiten
1063-1078
Anzahl der Seiten
16
ISSN
1468-0777
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1546205
Publikationsdatum
2019
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
605004 Kulturwissenschaft
Schlagwörter
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Communication, Gender studies, Visual Arts and Performing Arts
Link zum Portal
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/b39eb005-6f8c-4b0b-bdeb-5de6f986470d