Multiracial Stars and Stripes; An examination of post-race discourse through biracial/multiracial celebrity texts

Abstract

This thesis examines the media discourses surrounding, and producing, mixed-raced celebrities Halle Berry and Rashida Jones. Drawing on methods from Celebrity Studies, this thesis considers how media depictions of Berry and Jones (particularly feature-length articles and interviews) elucidate aspects of a post-Obama era of American cultural politics. I argue that Berry and Jones, as celebrity texts, both use, and can be understood through, neoliberal discourses that evoke post-race rhetoric through strategies of assimilation and tropes of colourlessness. I posit that applying a neoliberal lens to their mediated personas allows for a better understanding of how their biracial status is created. I further argue that Berry and Jones affect neoliberal subject positions that produce post-race discourses. Thus, an analysis of their mediated mixed-raced bodies reveals the assimilationist promise that Blackness can be accommodated in normative American society - if it is willing to ‘fall in line’ with neoliberal requirements or disassociate with Blackness and transcend it altogether. By engaging with this idea, this thesis builds interdisciplinary links between the fields of race studies, neoliberalism, and celebrity studies.