Week 10 Questions (Alvarez)

1.  In “The Global, the Local, and the Return of Ethnicity," Hall explores how globalization has strengthened, weakened, or hybridized national identities. I think that this piece is very useful for explaining how White Conservative American culture has been changing at this particular juncture. I would define White Conservative  American culture as becoming incoherent as they try to connect themselves to both religion and sexual and material hedonism. I want to ask if perhaps a particular national identity can fracture, as White Conservative American culture seems to begin to segregate itself across religious and class lines as a response to the level of incoherence.
2. In "De Margin and De Center" Julien and Mercer discuss how audiences react to representations of themselves in media. Julien and Mercer are specifically concerned about how Black audiences react to Black representation in media, as these representations are often stereotyped or attempt to speak for all Black Americans. The authors touch on this briefly, but I want to discuss how, in our modern world that is full of "representation" for various groups, we might think about how audiences react when a piece is supposed to be about/for/by them but it fails.