Addie Tsai’s Straight White Men Can’t Dance: American Masculinity in Film and Popular Culture is a vigorous indictment of cultural representations that make light of and thereby reinforce a “particularly American notion that cishet white men are unable to dance well” (1). According to Tsai, when straight white men comically fail at dancing in movies, television shows, and music videos, they are strategically disassociating themselves from other men whose identities threaten their precarious masculinity. Tsai traces the origins of the bumbling male dancer trope to the AIDS crisis of the mid-1980s and understands its development as an expression of straight men’s fear of the feminizing, potentially virulent influence of male homosexuality. They dance with enhanced ineptitude to signal that their heterosexual masculinity prevents them from succeeding at feminized, queer pursuits like dancing. At the same time, straight white men wish to be “cool,” and skillful dancing is linked to hip virility via its association with Black masculinity. Thus, straight white men are at times shown as adept dancers—think John Travolta, Patrick Swayze, Channing Tatum—but Tsai reads such performances as “theft of, fascination with, and fear of” Black culture (4). The specter of blackface minstrelsy looms over all forms of white male dancing, whether it is self-effacing or self-aggrandizing. In either case, white perpetrators are using Black traditions to consolidate and elevate their own social power, just as 19th century white actors in blackface both emulated and mocked Black dance styles in their minstrel shows.Tsai does not shy away from bold, totalizing claims. She declares that mainstream America has been “purposefully” manipulated into consuming a “wholly inaccurate” and “altogether dangerous” image of the straight white male as a “non-threatening, clueless fool” (7). She wants to remind readers to never lose sight of the malignant enemy in their midst, even when he is goofily struggling to execute a serviceable moonwalk. Some readers may blanche at the essentialist, illiberal foundations of Tsai’s thesis. Straight white men are represented throughout as a monolithic entity, with no distinctions made between men of different socioeconomic classes or political affiliations. Tsai’s book is not attentive to such nuances; it is an unapologetic call to arms addressed to readers who share her intolerance for hegemonic masculinity and the men who are in its thrall.Cultural texts that promote racial harmony through dance are one of her main targets. She critiques an NFL commercial in which white quarterback Peyton Manning and Black wide receiver Odell Beckham humorously reenact the iconic dance sequence in Dirty Dancing (1987) for its “forcing” of a “narrative of cross-racial harmony” and for its placing Manning in the “masculine role” and Beckham in the “feminine role” (17). One may quibble that their respective roles reflect the on-field dynamic between quarterbacks and wide receivers in football, but that would miss the point Tsai wishes to make, which is that during times of racial strife, white audiences should not be treated to optimistic visions of easy racial reconciliation. Likewise, Tsai takes Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) to task for, among other things, depicting Black people happily dancing alongside white people to Ferris’s rendition of the Beatles’ cover of “Twist and Shout.” Tsai finds it problematic that an “entitled white teenager” is positioned as a “ringleader” performing a song and dance that were originally created by Black people (103). She also condemns Napoleon Dynamite (2004) for its “white savior narrative,” which, she argues, is likely attributable to the director’s Mormonism, as “benevolent racism” is “inherent in Mormon theology” (121). Young Mormon men often travel abroad as missionaries, which reinforces their white savior ideology (123). While the titular character has a Mexican best friend and his brother is in a loving relationship with a Black woman, Tsai argues that these characters merely support the white Dynamite boys. In the film’s rousing climax, the heretofore awkwardly insular Napoleon triumphantly mirrors Black dance moves in a dance competition, while “largely leaving living Black lives reduced to remaining in the background” (128). In so doing, she suggests he is not unlike two other, arguably less awkward white artists, Justin Bieber and Justin Timberlake, whom she accuses of engaging in modern-day minstrelsy and of using Black back-up dancers to lend themselves cross-racial credibility while consigning them to roles of limited visibility (90). Tsai finds traces of blackface in places readers may find surprising, such as Duckie from Pretty in Pink (1986). Tsai argues that his “exaggerated lips,” “vigorous foot tapping,” lower class socioeconomic status, and lack of a parent or guardian is meant to evoke Black masculinity, as is his lip-synced rendition of an Otis Redding song (106, 108).While these white men are pretty good singers and dancers, other characters dance poorly for comic effect and yet solidify their power in the process. For instance, Tsai claims that The Office’s politically incorrect boss Michael Scott is emblematic of the ways in which white masculinity is “humanized” in pop culture, so that “the implicit harm these white men perpetrate on marginalized characters is glossed over in favor of uplifting and sympathizing with whiteness and white superiority” (53). Scott’s frenzied dance on a company booze cruise reflects the extent to which white men feel entitled to take up space and disregard the harm they’re causing those around them, especially to people of color who lack the power to hold them accountable for their inappropriate behavior. In some cases, “dancing poorly” means failing to dance in a manner befitting a straight man in search of a female mate. The critical scorn heaped upon a 1984 Billy Squier video that featured the swaggering rocker dancing in a style that was widely perceived as uncharacteristically homoerotic is, for Tsai, an indication of straight males’ homophobic anxiety, a theme she explores further in her critique of Chandler Bing’s ambiguous sexuality in Friends, which the show expresses through his effete dancing.There are faint bright spots on the media landscape. Tsai praises The Lonely Island’s digital shorts such as “Dick in a Box” (2009) and “Boombox” (2010) and films like Hot Rod (2007) and Popstar (2016) as effective satires of hegemonic masculine ideals. Spike Jonze’s Her (2013) contains what Tsai calls “a rare moment in American pop culture when a white man contemplatively watches a Black dancer in awe and enjoyment, rather than threat, fear, or fetishization” (154). This is, for Tsai, the appropriate position for white men in relation to dance: not mimicry or dismissal but rather still and silent appreciation. While Tsai allows that Jonze did something right in this brief scene, she goes on to complain that the AI-generated, disembodied voice with whom the male protagonist falls in love is not given sufficient autonomy in the film, “mirroring a patriarchal heterosexual structure,” and that the Black dancer’s work “fundamentally contributes” to the white director’s “own brand identity” (154).Tsai ultimately hopes for a future in which white, hegemonic masculine ideals are decentered by “racialized, queer, genderfluid, and trans masculinities” that take center stage on digital platforms. Curiously, Tsai tacitly suggests that those who hold non-normative masculinities will be less inclined to engage in the “theft, violence, and parody” she associates with straight white masculinity (170). Some readers may be skeptical given that much queer pop culture shamelessly borrows from aesthetic styles developed by other identity groups, expresses at times violent antipathy toward people and belief systems it deems objectionable, and gleefully mocks cultural conventions. Like all good artists, queer innovators poke at cultural pieties—including their own—in order to disrupt dogmatic thinking.Tsai’s book illuminates cultural tropes that may otherwise be overlooked or dismissed as relatively harmless; whether readers find her arguments persuasive will largely depend on the ideological commitments they bring to the encounter. Scholars of humor who believe laughter is a social currency that should be distributed or withheld as a means of rewarding or punishing particular groups based on their traditional relation to power may find Tsai’s arguments invigorating. Those who maintain that joyful recognition of our shared fallibility is vital to cross-cultural communication and social cohesion will likely find her unforgiving stance dispiriting and divisive.
Brett Ingram (Wed,) studied this question.