Outsourcing Postracialism: Voicing Neoliberal ... - Wiley Online Library

Communication Theory ISSN 1050-3293

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Outsourcing Postracialism: Voicing Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Outsourced David C. Oh,1 & Omotayo O. Banjo2 1 Department of Communication Studies, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA 2 Department of Communication, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

This study investigates the ideological construction of neoliberal multiculturalism in the National Broadcasting Company’s series Outsourced, starring a White male lead that manages a call center in India. We argue that the show advances global capitalism by co-opting multiculturalism to provide moral authority for Western neoliberal capitalism in the context of an inequitable global exchange. Neoliberalism benefits from postracialism by privatizing racism, thereby muting calls for antiracist structural reform. Relying on the ideological interests of neoliberal multiculturalism, Outsourced advances old racial logics by presenting unchallenged stereotypes of Indians and Indian culture and promotes a system of economic exchange that favors the global North while cloaking inequality with the veil of multiculturalism and the advancement of Whiteness as normative. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2885.2012.01414.x

Outsourced stands apart as a unique text in the U.S. televisual universe. Set in an Indian call center, Outsourced is the first show that features five South Asian regulars1 (‘‘Landing a big job’’, 2010), and it is among a small handful of shows in U.S. televised history that features life outside the United States (Werts, 2010). In fact, Outsourced may be the only show set outside the United States with a primarily non-White regular cast. Yet, more revealing than the cast and setting is how these work together through the genre of televised situation comedy to valorize transnational capitalism as a noble (Western) project and to mask global racism. As Goldberg (2009) writes, ‘‘Race and racisms are also and at least as importantly globally circulating, interacting, relational conditions as they are locally indexed, resonant, impacting’’ (p. 1274). For what several critics argue is a banal show rife with obvious and offensive stereotypes (Stuever, 2010; Werts, 2010), below the surface, Outsourced is a complex text that discursively situates U.S. and White-centric notions of neoliberalism, multiculturalism, and global capitalism. Outsourced, a workplace comedy aired on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), premiered on September 23, 2010, to 7.44 million viewers (TV ratings Thursday, 2010) but

Corresponding author: Omotayo O. Banjo; e-mail: [email protected] (O.O.B.) Communication Theory 22 (2012) 449–470 © 2012 International Communication Association

449

Outsourcing Postracialism

D. C. Oh & O. O. Banjo

ended with less than half that number when it was cancelled May 12, 2011 (Gorman, 2011). Although short-lived, it is an important text because it is only the second show in U.S. televisual history to feature a predominantly Asian cast – the first was the equally short-lived program All-American Girl (Ono & Pham, 2009) and because it is arguably the only situation comedy set in the context of global economics, situating the White U.S. as a benevolent force. Outsourced may be relegated to television trivia, but its representational practices in this unique text reveal the ideological constructions of neoliberalism and multiculturalism. On the basis of a 2006 independent film of the same name, the program features a White male lead, Todd (Ben Rappaport), who flies to India to run a call center for a kitschy novelties company based in Kansas City. In addition to Todd, the series also includes his assistant manager Rajiv (Rizwan Manji); his employees, Asha (Rebecca Hazlewood), Madhuri (Anisha Nagarajan), Manmeet (Sacha Dhawan), and Gupta (Parvesh Cheena); and White managers at other call centers, Charlie (Diedrich Bader) and Tonya (Pippa Black). Todd is foregrounded as the leader of underqualified and underachieving call center employees who rally behind his generous stewardship while the characters act as little more but to define Todd through contrast, desire, objectification, and emulation. Rajiv is presented as an authoritarian boss, who embodies Indian hierarchy, and Charlie is presented as the typical ‘‘ugly American,’’ viewing himself as better than his coworkers while demonstrating to the audience his boorishness and ignorance. In both cases, the characters act to demonstrate Todd’s meritocratic and postracial worldview. Tonya, Manmeet, and to a lesser extent Gupta are constructed to demonstrate Todd’s virility and desirability. Tonya aggressively desires Todd as a romantic and sexual partner while Manmeet fawns over Todd as a mentor to give direction to his oversized and overrepressed libido. While Gupta also looks up to Todd, both Gupta and Madhuri are represented as socially awkward objects through which Todd demonstrates his magnanimity and compassion while the rest of Indian society ignores them. Asha is likewise objectified but as an object of sexual desire, representing the postcolonial fantasy of a passive East ready for White domination (Kang, 2002). Outsourced fits the standard formula of a fish out of water comedy much like Green Acres and Perfect Strangers (Outsourced, 2010), a show with a ‘‘gang of misfits’’ (Lloyd, 2010), and a typical office comedy (Bianco, 2010), dealing with difference from a representationally safe distance (Mukherjee, 2006). What is unusual is that the show inverts the usual direction of migration with Todd leaving the United States to lead a racially different gang of Indian misfits. In the formulaic portrayal, the foreigner comes to the United States and is presented as lovable but exotic and unusual. In Outsourced, however, it is not the foreigner who is strange but the foreign place and the cast. Outsourced also is similar in that it reflects the current visibility of Indian American representation in prime-time television programs, including on shows such as 30 Rock, Big Bang Theory, The Office, Whitney, Parks and Recreation, and Rules of Engagement, but it is different because unlike the shows listed above, Outsourced does not represent its Indian characters as acculturated. The characters in 450

Communication Theory 22 (2012) 449–470 © 2012 International Communication Association



the shows are fully acculturated, marking a far departure from the Indian caricature of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the exoticized Kwik-E-Mart owner on The Simpsons, and much of the history of their East Asian American counterparts on television. In Parks and Rec, for example, the character Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari) reveals in season one that he changed his name from Darwish Sabir Ismael Gani to have greater political cachet in a small town in Indiana. Although their acculturated representations can be read as counterhegemonic, the Indian American characters in these shows are represented in isolation, similar to ways African Americans have been integrated into the popular media landscape (Artz & Murphy, 2000). Nevertheless, Outsourced is an extraordinary text to feature persons of color as the majority of primary characters, and while it clearly relies on base stereotypes, Outsourced also provides manifest critiques of the United States (Stanley, 2010) – critiques that we argue are subverted and minimized through the narrative of the show, the convention of situation comedy, and the identifications it creates. The purpose of this study is to examine representations in Outsourced to understand how it supports the project of global capitalism in a time of deep economic anxiety in the U.S. and increasing skepticism towards globalization (Cohen & Craighill, 2011). The text has to negotiate U.S. people’s frustrations with jobs being ‘‘outsourced’’ to the global South and the loss of jobs in the U.S. with prevailing neoliberal desires to increase the flow of capital, labor, and goods in ways that favor multinational corporations primarily located in the global North (Brown, 2006). The goals of neoliberalism bear upon U.S. workers and families in ways that generally do not advance the interests of middle- and working-class people, and NBC’s Outsourced as a product of a multinational media corporation itself works to suture anxieties of U.S. workers within neoliberal economic goals. The show does this by presenting U.S. businesses as performing global good in its promotion of personal liberty and of the United States as a racially meritocratic beacon, both of which are tied together with the prevailing racial logic of postracialism. Outsourced argues against racism by presenting it as individual bigotry while simultaneously racially caricaturing India/ns. To understand the representations in the program, we draw on Melamed’s (2006) theory of neoliberal multiculturalism. Although not directly about media texts, it provides a framework for understanding the intentional deployment of multiculturalism for the purposes of justifying neoliberal goals. This differs from other studies of neoliberalism and race in that instead of noting the ways neoliberal ideologies have shaped racial understanding and practices, it instead says that racial beliefs have been constructed intentionally as an instrument to support neoliberalism against charges of structural racism and Western economic domination. The disingenuous use of multiculturalism, which Melamed (2006) notes as different from antiracist progressive forms, also reifies the historical ‘‘racial order of things’’ to borrow a phrase from Mukherjee (2006). Although there are theoretical overlaps with various other studies of race and neoliberalism, we believe the use of neoliberal multiculturalism marks a subtle but important shift in better understanding the ways neoliberal logic co-opts multiculturalism to advantage the global North/West economically and Communication Theory 22 (2012) 449–470 © 2012 International Communication Association

451



racially. In this article, we examine the ways Outsourced likewise promotes neoliberal ideologies through the co-optation of multiculturalism, perpetuating historical global and racial hierarchies. We will first provide an explanation of our framework and then discuss how Outsourced amplifies racial logics through the form of situation comedy. Following is our analysis of the series Outsourced. Neoliberalism, race, and the co-optation of multiculturalism

To understand the political economic context of Outsourced both as a text and as a narrative about global capitalism requires an understanding of neoliberalism and the strategic deployment of multiculturalism to justify inequalities created through global capitalism. Generally, scholars note that neoliberalism as an economic ideology argues for less government intervention in the affairs of capitalist institutions (Davidson & Schejter, 2011), aligning market logic as the primary way to protect individual liberties and the means to advance social equality (Melamed, 2006). Specifically, neoliberal advocates argue that the inefficiency and intervention of a powerful state constrains personal freedom (Jones & Mukherjee, 2010). Instead of a powerful state, neoliberalism argues for the privatization of the public and for the increasing reliance on the market to meet individual needs and wants (Jones & Mukherjee, 2010; Melamed, 2006), although as Wendy Brown (2006) argues, neoliberalism does not advocate for an unobtrusive state but rather a powerful one that intervenes on behalf of neoliberal capitalist values. This is consistent with neoconservativism’s interests in using a powerful state to mandate governmentally directed morality (Brown, 2006), leading to an intersection of these two worldviews that work synergistically in an uneasy and sometimes contradictory expression of ‘‘de-democratic’’ impulses in the modern U.S. conservative movement. Notably, her work demonstrates that the neoconservative state uses its authority to impose neoliberalism as normative U.S. values so that neoliberalism has not simply been a spillover into the social and the political but rather an imposition of ‘‘market rationalities.’’ Seepages from the nation’s political economy into the realm of the social are marked by an ideological turn towards personal responsibility and away from structural blame or solutions (Hasinoff, 2008; Kraszewski, 2010). Neoliberal multiculturalism as a means to a capitalist end

Because neoliberalism is interested in accessing global markets and labor, proponents of neoliberalism advocate for greater mobility of workers and resources to take advantage of global inequalities (Melamed, 2006). To do this, however, means undermining labor and the boundaries of national sovereignty (Jones & Mukherjee, 2010). This leads to a widening wealth gap between the global South and the global North and entrenches institutional racism at home with an impotent state no longer able or willing to legislate social justice. Historically, U.S. racial inequality was exploited by the former Soviet Union, which used propaganda to persuasively 452




argue that Western capitalism perpetuates racism and inequality (Melamed, 2006) and that the U.S. state was guilty of racial hypocrisy (Dudziak, 1994). U.S. racism was a weakness that threatened its moral authority, particularly for nations in the global South who made connections between the treatment of African Americans in U.S. domestic racist hierarchy (Dudziak, 1994). The fear was so powerful that the U.S. governmental agencies including the State Department, FBI, and Immigration and Naturalization Services restricted the movement of African Americans who articulated U.S. racism abroad (Dudziak, 1994). Western neoliberalism required symbolic moral authority to counter these challenges and embraced a co-opted form of multiculturalism; Melamed (2006) refers to this instrumental, co-opted form of multiculturalism for the purposes of advancing neoliberalism in the wake of Soviet critique ‘‘neoliberal multiculturalism.’’ To claim multiculturalism while at the same time exploiting racialized bodies for the purposes of (White) Western-centered global capitalism required a powerful cultural logic: one of personal fairness and responsibility rooted in neoliberalism’s privatization of the social (Melamed, 2006). The notion of ‘‘postracialism’’ and ‘‘colorblindness’’ was adopted because it appealed to the neoliberal shift towards privatized notions of racism as individual bigotry and toward personal rather than social responsibility, ignoring racism by ignoring race. Cultural notions of postracialism became particularly prevalent after the election of Barack Obama, assuming that there was a historical break from the racial history of the U.S. to a new era in which race no longer structures life outcomes (Cobb, 2011; Stiles & Kitch, 2011). As Ono (2010) writes, ‘‘Postracism is the perfect elixir to help society forget about the icky historical abomination known as racism’’ (p. 227). The process is not just historical amnesia but enforced silences (Herakova, Jelaca, Sibii, & Cooks, 2011) and a political project to deny various racial heritages in what amounts to an assimilative impulse – denials of race to promote White normativity (Temple, 2010). Yet, the silences and denials are only part of the picture in postracial United States. As Cobb (2011) notes in the election of Barack Obama, Blackness must become hypervisible in order to celebrate the end of race/racism; the problems of racial discrimination are ignored and unspoken while racial triumphs are loudly trumpeted. In celebrating the end of racism, postracialism enables the prevailing racial attitude of ‘‘colorblindness’’ by providing an excuse for witnessed racist discrimination. Postracialism’s denial means that manifestations of racism are born not from systemic injustice but from individual bigotry. Thus, social difference has been relegated to private choice, especially through consumption, with antiracist attention to race marked as unenlightened and as ‘‘pathological self-interest’’ (Jones & Mukherjee, 2010). Neoliberalism replaced antiracism with ‘‘antiracialism’’ such that ignoring racial difference and systemic disparities is normative and imbued with moral authority, placing antiracism at odds with ‘‘colorblindness’’ because of the former’s recognition of racial difference in order to address racial inequity (Enck-Wanzer, 2011). To promote colorblindness, the first strategy of neoliberal multiculturalism is to deny the existence of racism as situated in an unfortunate past that has no Communication Theory 22 (2012) 449–470 © 2012 International Communication Association

453



bearing in the present (Rockler, 2006; Watts, 2010). By drawing on appeals to fairness through universalism, it denies racial specificities and histories (Omi & Winant, 1994), severely handicapping the ability to fight racism when race cannot be named (Esposito, 2009; Omi & Winant, 1994). The consequences of this belief system mask and cultivate racism’s continued role in domestic and international life (Goldberg, 2009). Neoliberalism’s ubiquity assails progressive visions of multiculturalism that call for egalitarianism and open, respectful dialogue between cultures (Davidson & Schejter, 2011; Jones & Mukherjee, 2010). Neoliberal multiculturalism also seeks to reverse antiracist gains (Ono, 2010) as part of a larger conservative project to reduce the size of the state and its intervention in markets (Davidson & Schejter, 2011). By privatizing race into ‘‘colorblindness’’ and asserting that all people from the U.S. have equal opportunity to achieve the ‘‘American Dream,’’ neoliberal multiculturalism not only denies but attacks the need for antiracist policies (Esposito, 2009; Ono, 2010). In a powerful reversal, Whites blame persons of color for ‘‘reverse racism’’ in cases where there are institutional remedies to systemic racism (Bonilla-Silva, 2010; Esposito, 2009; Rockler, 2006). To suture the disconnect between notions of fairness and observable racial inequality, persons of color are blamed for their ‘‘failures’’ by pointing to cultural pathologies and cultural difference rather than traditionally racist notions of racial essentialism (Melamed, 2006), thus creating the discursive space to recirculate racist stereotypes (Ono, 2010; Watts, 2010). Internationally, the control of bodies of color by wealthy nations is rationalized as a necessary project of global capitalism and free markets, hiding the racialization of the control and arguing, instead, that global capitalism improves the condition of persons of color (Melamed, 2006). For example, Parameswaran (2008) notes, discourses about Indian call centers present Indian women as empowered through consumptive power, overstates women’s liberation, and largely ignores the disruption of Indian lives for the convenience of multinational corporations based in the West. Particularly in the context of Western discourses about Eastern oppression of one’s own people (Said, 1978), Western neocolonial domination is hidden through discourses of the West as benign, progressive, and liberating. In both the domestic and the global, neoliberal multiculturalism allows for unequal capitalist accumulation while hiding, even valorizing, gross inequalities. Media as a conduit for neoliberal multiculturalism

Media operate as a site for the production and transformation of racial ideologies that advance dominant group interests (Hall, 2003). Perhaps more than other medium, televisual media helps to amplify neoliberal ideologies because of its repetition and familiarity. Ouellette and Hay (2008) note the use of television in decentralizing the role of government and in advocating the privatization of actions. Specifically, the authors critique how makeover reality programs (i.e., programs that feature common people) erase the need for social welfare programs from public discourse, replacing 454




it with an ethos of ‘‘self-help.’’ Viewers are encouraged to bear sole responsibility for their life through consumptive choices. In addition to a privatizing impulse, neoliberal ideologies are also manifest in reality television shows that argue for the replacement of state social welfare with private corporations. McMurria (2008) writes that Extreme Makeover: Home Edition hides the disastrous consequences of neoliberal economic policies on housing for the poor and associates reform with corporate benevolence and volunteer citizens (McMurria, 2008). In the case of neoliberal multiculturalism, it advances both a capitalist purpose and a racist one to recenter Whiteness while promoting the supposed progressive qualities of capitalism and a ‘‘colorblind’’ view of the world. While multinational media companies routinely commodify global culture in ways that reassert ‘‘traditional White patriarchal frames of Orientalism’’ (Kim & Chung, 2005, p. 79), Outsourced is striking because as a text, it commodifies India through a postcolonial lens while at the same time within the text, it presents the transnational sale of U.S. commodities. To understand the show, then, requires an understanding of the postcolonial construction of the Asian Indian object in the context of neoliberal multiculturalism and the postidentity politics of representation. As Gray (1995) notes, television hides racism and its consequences by privatizing the challenges faced by persons of color as individual-level concerns. When racism is shown, it is presented as atypical and solved easily within the conventions of narrative television. Thus, television normalizes postidentity discourses where purportedly pass´e notions of identity politics no longer matter (Drew, 2011; Rockler, 2006) and a moment in which persons of color are represented as morally correct when rejecting racial ‘‘advantages,’’ highlighting ‘‘reverse racism’’ while turning attention away from White privilege (Esposito, 2009). On the other hand, claiming systemic racism is constructed as villainous. In an analysis of Isaiah Washington’s homophobic comments to a fellow cast member on the show Grey’s Anatomy, Bailey (2011) writes that Washington was further ostracized for claiming to be a victim of systemic racism, whereas T. R. Knight, the target of the homophobic slur, was lionized for denying systemic homophobia, resolving the conflict through self-help and self-growth strategies, thus positioning himself as an ideal neoliberal citizen. Further, West (2004) writes that the inclusion of African American characters on television demonstrates Whites’ ‘‘colonizing imagination’’ by presenting a false universalism or a homogenizing impulse that easily shifts into a monolithizing explanation. Pham (2004) refers to as this as the ‘‘mask of multiculturalism,’’ arguing that multiracial representations create the space to justify blatant racist tropes because of the guise of progressive racial casting. Likewise, Drew (2011) demonstrates that when race is made explicit on reality television, overt colorblind discourses are used to devalue the significance of race in shaping social relations while simultaneously relying on familiar racist tropes to make sense of persons of color. The purpose of multiracial representations, then, is to center Whiteness referentially through depictions of the other (Hall, 1997; Shome, 1996). In addition to centering Whiteness, multicultural representations are used to reinscribe notions Communication Theory 22 (2012) 449–470 © 2012 International Communication Association

455



of an authentic U.S. identity as White (Hasinoff, 2008; Omi & Winant, 1994) with White middle-class United States presented as the most desirable identity position (Yin, 2005). Through the manifestly inclusive representations, multicultural shows allow for the evasion of Whiteness and the recentering of the White subject (Gray, 1995). In its recentering, Whites are not represented as agents of institutional racism but as sympathetic advocates for the elimination of prejudice (Gray, 1995). Not only does the medium of television help to shape a postracial narrative by including multiracial characters, but the form of situation comedy also helps to mask the undertones of systemic inequalities that are embodied in these representations. Unlike dramatic films and television, situation comedy rests on metacommunication, which are cues that signal comic intent—the preferred reading—to the audience (Schechner, 2002). As a result, situation comedy makes polysemy less available because of its rigid conventions and because audiences know clearly with whom they are to identify (Mills, 2004). Situation comedy also naturalizes group identities because of its overuse of stereotypes as cultural shorthand (Mills, 2004). Relying on difference, comedy tends to make otherness explicit (Lowe, 1986; Weaver, 2010), and similar to the mask of multiculturalism, the inclusion of interethnic friendship is used as ideological cover to employ traditionally racist tropes repackaged for modern consumption (Weaver, 2010). Because humor is not intended to be taken seriously, comedy works to minimize serious or critical readings (Mills, 2004). Although ethnic humor has opportunities for subversive messages (Boskin, 1997; Weaver, 2010), the commercial nature of U.S. sitcoms minimizes opportunities to call into question hegemonic structures (Mills, 2004) and co-opts jokes designed for ethnic audiences, transforming them for mainstream consumption (Nilsen & Nilsen, 2006). Orientalist images

Said (1978) noted decades ago that the West has constructed an ahistorical, essentialized notion of the Orient primarily for the sake of sustaining the myth of (White) Western superiority. Because of the need for recognizable characters and situations, Western media have actively contributed to constructions of the West as rational, developed, and humane and the Orient as unusual, mystical, barbaric, and underdeveloped (Said, 1978). When presenting the world of the Oriental other, postcolonial discourses center the White perspective as adventurer in a strange land (Gabriel, 1998; Pleterse, 1992). Despite their outsider role, Westerners are presented as knowing what is best and as having the right to comment (Said, 1978). Encounters with the other are, therefore, presented in ways that empower the Western traveler over the host culture (Steeves, 2008). In the minds of colonizers, the Oriental other was imagined to be passive and sexually available, and possession of the ‘‘native’’ woman became a projection of colonial desire to control native lands (Kang, 2002). Romance and the representations of Asian men and women and White men were used to define and justify White male supremacy (Espiritu, 2004). In this construction, White men are shown as finding 456




their identities abroad and as saving and transforming their lovers in the process (Marchetti, 1993). Closer to home, Dubrofsky (2006) argues that the Bachelor features a harem trope that centers White men’s sexual desires for exotic and sexually available women of color. Balaji and Worawongs (2010) also assert that White men are still represented as icons of social mobility and modernity. To further advance White male desirability, the Oriental other is feminized with the emasculation of men and the hyperfemininity of women (Espiritu, 2004; Hamamoto, 1994; Shim, 1998). Asian men are represented as yielding to the virility and masculinity of White men (Espiritu, 2004) and are never paired with White women lest it upset racial taboos and White patriarchal authority (Espiritu, 2004). Instead, emotionally satisfying relationships are presented as only available through the union of White men and Asian women (Yin, 2005), despite being portrayed as having limited subjectivity (Hagedorn, 2000). To further advance ideologies of Western male superiority, Asian women are often varlorized in film for rejecting their ethnic communities (Marchetti, 1993; Yin, 2005). Despite the manifestly progressive appeal of interracial relationships, the coupling is problematic because the union is only legitimated when White men possess Asian women as exotic, submissive objects of White male desire (Espiritu, 2004; Kang, 2002). Outsourcing postracialism

To investigate the television series, two researchers independently watched and coded all episodes of the first season of Outsourced broadcast in 2010 (10 total) and engaged in ideological analysis that situates the text in its cultural and political economic context (Croteau & Hoynes, 2003; Kellner, 1995). We textually analyzed the series because textual analysis is a particularly strong method for revealing mediated discourses that shape the cultural terrain (Hall, 2003; Hasinoff, 2009). Although we acknowledge the polysemic potential of Outsourced, the analysis focused on the text’s construction of the dominant reading. We focused on the major patterns in the televised text, not to ignore subversive openings but to understand the major themes and their ideological function. Through this analysis, we argue that Outsourced imagines the benevolence of global capitalism made possible through neoliberalism multiculturalism and the goodness of White U.S. as ‘‘progressively’’ embodied in the White male lead, working to erase the harms of global capitalism and the legacy of White racism in the global South. Reifying the private over the social

Neoliberal multiculturalism has a stake in advancing private choice against the specter of a repressive society because privatization as an ideology secures the lack of societal or state interference by valorizing the private consumer (Jones & Mukherjee, 2010). This is most visible in Outsourced through its critiques of Indian dating practices and arranged marriages, practices that have been presented as anachronistic and unusual in media about the South Asian diaspora (Rings, 2011). In an analysis of Bend It Like Communication Theory 22 (2012) 449–470 © 2012 International Communication Association

457



Beckham, Rings (2011) points out that diasporic youth are represented as sympathetic characters who reject of anachronistic and unusual traditions in their ‘‘ . . . quest for Western-style transculturality’’ (p. 122). This works to naturalize assimilative notions of integration and the superiority of the Western host culture. Although Outsourced is set in India, the theme of rejecting Indian traditions is central and more problematic because it is arguable in texts like Bend It Like Beckham that part of the message might be a pluralistic message of integration. In Outsourced, the migrant, Todd, then, should be expected to change to fit his host culture but instead Indians are expected to change around him. The central narrative of the first 10 episodes is Todd’s pursuit of Asha, who is committed to an arranged marriage in order to fulfill familial obligations. Although the series begins with her strong and well-reasoned explanations for arranged marriage, her choice is consistently represented as undesirable. In the first three episodes, Manmeet, Todd’s sidekick on the show, is fascinated with ‘‘Americanstyle dating’’ because of the freedoms and pleasures it offers and because of the hope of escaping Indian courtship, which is represented as conditioned upon one’s socioeconomic class and caste rather than love or pleasure. In episode three, Gupta, the lovable ‘‘loser,’’ argues in favor of arranged marriage by pointing to his parents’ marriage, stating that love grows with time. The counterideological potential is undermined with the punch line, however, when Gupta states that his parents sleep in separate beds. Most powerful, perhaps, is Asha’s admission in episode nine that she feels constrained by her familial obligations and is romantically interested in Todd, thus positioning societal and familial responsibilities as an undesirable impediment to individual freedom and choice. In contrast, the U.S. is presented as sexually liberated and free of social strictures and hierarchy. U.S. freedom is represented as preferable and as a precondition for the conspicuous consumption necessary to buy the kitschy, non functional novelties the company sells. Although excessive consumption is sometimes lampooned, it is represented as a necessary byproduct of U.S. liberties and the ability to define oneself through consumption. In episode one, for example, when Manmeet and Asha both ask about the purpose of nonfunctional items, Todd replies, ‘‘In America, you can do whatever you want.’’ Therefore, privatizing ideologies work to set up a racialized distinction between (White) Americans and (Brown) Indians, favoring U.S. cultural practices that emphasize individual choice, freedom, and consumption (Jones & Mukherjee, 2010). The television series also works to construct ‘‘postracialism’’ by privatizing racism (Gray, 1995; Melamed, 2006). Yet what is fascinating about Outsourced is that there is not a denial of racial difference but, quite the opposite, there are crude jokes about Indian food, names, clothing, and religious practices. However, even blatantly offensive comments are excused as not racist. In colorblind discourse, systemic racism is thought to no longer disadvantage individuals and groups, excusing racist discrimination (Jones & Mukherjee, 2010). Offensiveness is argued to not be rooted in systems of disadvantages but as simply individual moral problems to correct. Therefore, despite Todd’s overtly racist comments, which sometimes mildly upset 458




his staff, he does not lose their support or friendship. The show represents ignorance and bigotry as not a sufficient condition for being racist. Rather, racism is privatized to personal dislike for the racial other, making irrelevant critiques of institutional racism and even ethnocentrism that does not have overt bigoted intentions. As Ono (2010) points out in a brief analysis of postracialism in Mad Men, affinities and relationships with persons of color deflects attention from White men’s position of privilege and authority. In episode nine, which corresponded with the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving, Todd’s mother asks the Indian staff whether there were people in India before the Indians ‘‘got there.’’ Like Todd, his mother is culturally unaware, but his mother’s comment is represented as problematic and unresolved within the narrative of the show because, unlike Todd, she is not redeemed through Indian friendships and sexual attraction. Denying racism

To deploy neoliberal multiculturalism requires the denial of racism to strengthen the moral authority of the state employing it while also denying the need for the state to correct racist wrongs (Melamed, 2006). In addition to privatizing racism, Outsourced works actively to deny racism both through dismissals of claims of historical and structural racism (Cobb, 2011; Stiles & Kitch, 2011), indirect presentations of global capitalism as a progressive force (Parameswaran, 2008), and through universalizing discourses (Omi & Winant, 1994). One function Rajiv plays in the narrative is to act as an anti-imperialist voice that sometimes assails White Western ignorance and domination. In episode four, Rajiv is annoyed that Todd refers to Indian women’s bindi – the red dot on the forehead – as a ‘‘symbolic cork,’’ and he questions Todd asking, ‘‘What would you know about our culture, this country is just a cash register to you?’’ In episode eight, Todd is alarmed when the staff is hanging what he believes is a swastika. Rajiv explains that Nazis appropriated the symbol and sarcastically asks Todd if there is anything else he would like removed from ‘‘their ancient culture’’ that makes Todd uncomfortable. Turning his critique to the United States, Rajiv explains in episode nine that the pilgrims’ relationship with American Indians was about White male subjugation. On its face, these are powerful counterideological critiques that will retain their oppositional meaning for many viewers; however, it should be remembered that claiming systemic racism is often constructed as the villainous act in the logic of postracialism (Bailey, 2011). Further, the series largely neutralizes the potential for an oppositional reading as the characters and their motivations are presented in ways that favor the neocolonizing West. As described earlier, situation comedy reduces the polysemic potential of the text because of its generic conventions and because of the ways humor is used to position identifications. Similar to Ouellette’s (2002) critique that parody has been used to amplify postfeminist perspectives by muting the male antifeminist critique, we argue that Rajiv’s colonial critique is subverted through parody, weakening its oppositional potential. Because Rajiv is represented Communication Theory 22 (2012) 449–470 © 2012 International Communication Association

459



as self-serving and greedy and Todd as protective and giving, the audience is encouraged to identify with the colonizer, and it is not only the audience who might disidentify with Rajiv, his Indian subordinates are represented as doing the same. In episode nine, when Todd is being uncharacteristically tough, Asha tells him he is ‘‘acting like a Rajiv.’’ Through identification with Todd, Rajiv’s structural and historical critique is neutralized while Todd’s postracial and neocolonial perspective is validated. Racism is also denied by erasing specific historical experience with systemic racism, using the familiar strategy of appealing to false universalism (Omi & Winant, 1994; West, 2004). Universalism is most often represented in moments when Todd and his Indian employees misunderstand each other’s culture, normalizing the view that the racial other is as ignorant of U.S. culture as (White) Americans are of the other’s culture. This is a false equivalency that hides power because it asserts that racial misunderstanding is universal rather than constructed through systems of power and historical practices. This false equivalency is a superficially thin veil, however, because the jokes ‘‘work’’ by ridiculing Indians’ comical misunderstanding of U.S. culture or by ridiculing the strangeness of Indian culture and not vice versa. In episode six, Manmeet says that Halloween is offensive and also says the tooth fairy is offensive because it is a ‘‘homosexual fairy that steals teeth,’’ working by pointing to Manmeet’s misinterpretation of the cultural practice as unusual and for violating liberal expectations of political correctness because his statement links sexual identity to criminal degeneracy. Manmeet shows his politically incorrect cultural ignorance again during episode nine when he assumes Black Friday refers to Martin Luther King Day. It should be noted that in each of the cases, humor is employed to contain the possibilities of resistive readings because to derive pleasure from the text requires appreciating the joke (Mills, 2004; Schechner, 2002). Similarly, cultural learning is represented as universally shared but while simultaneously privileging (White) U.S. holidays and practices. Although Indian holidays are occasionally featured, most prominently Diwali Day, White characters do not participate in them and often ridicule them. When discussing Diwali Day with Manmeet, Todd jokingly points to absurdities like laughing cows and flying monkeys. Despite Todd’s intentional ridiculousness, Manmeet confirms the flying monkeys but says he is unhappy that the guess came from a ‘‘bad place.’’ Although Todd is presented poorly at first, the joke absolves him for his ignorance because of his accurate guess, furthering exoticizing Indian culture as unusual. Later, when his staff explains that Diwali Day is about good over evil, the beginning of the new year, the end of the harvest, and Rama’s return, Todd understands the holiday through an U.S.-centric lens saying that it is a ‘‘combination of Christmas, the Fourth of July, New Year, and Star Wars.’’ On the other hand, U.S. cultural practices are not only understood through Todd’s perspective, Indians participate, learning about Thanksgiving, dressing up for a Halloween party, and helping Todd with his homesickness by throwing a tailgate party. However, their participation is ridiculed as they are unable to fully appreciate norms of the cultural practices. For example, there are 460




jokes about them bringing ‘‘baby crap ribs’’ and ‘‘veggie ribs’’ to the tailgate party and humor derived from their inability to replicate Todd’s cheering. In episode 10, Todd is able to overcome his homesickness because of the willingness of his Indian friends to participate in White cultural life for his sake. This again suggests that while there is a universalizing message of cultural sharing, the direction of the participation and cultural appreciation is not reciprocal. Far from representing Todd as the alien in India, representations of the other are meant to privilege and center the White West (Hall, 1997; Nakayama & Krizek, 1995; Said, 1978; Shome, 1996). Finally, Outsourced symbolically erases the harms of global capitalism by presenting it as a means to bring individual freedom and fulfillment and economic wealth from the (White) West to third-world persons. Presenting global capitalism as a benign, generous system overlooks the history of colonial exploitation (Melamed, 2006). Specifically, working in call centers has been found to be ambivalent labor, presenting some opportunities for women’s economic independence and sources of employment but also carrying noticeable harms. Researchers have argued that call center work requires the worker to learn the colonizer’s language (Parameswaran, 2008), disciplines Indian bodies into ‘‘authentic’’ Americanness through accent training and mimicry (Shome, 2006), minimizes transnational capitalist exploitation by hiding the psychic harm of call centers: Identity confusion and erasure (Pal & Buzzanell, 2008; Shome, 2006), creates physical and ‘‘temporal duality’’ where night becomes day and the Indian call center becomes the United States (Shome, 2006), stigmatizes women working at night and disrupts social lives for all workers (Parameswaran, 2008), creates fears of cultural erosion (Pal & Buzzanell, 2008), and maintains a system of racial hierarchy that devalues Indian identity in favor of Euro-American ones (Parameswaran, 2008). The film from which the show is loosely based demonstrates the embarrassment and confusion of having to learn to speak English properly, the one-way flow of cultural learning to accommodate the job, and the overnight work that satisfy U.S. schedules, so it is telling that the television series has erased these, pointing to intentional choices by NBC Universal to represent call center life as not disruptive but rather beneficial to the lives of Indian employees. Not only does it hide difficulties of transnational labor, when the staff faces difficulties, it is Todd who protects them. Far from being a neocolonial ruler, Todd is constructed as the hero to the racial other against the tyrannical control of Rajiv and their uncaring boss in the United States, Jerry. The trope of the White savior is a familiar one both in representations of the domestic other (Giroux, 1997; Nakayama, 1994; Ono & Buescher 2001) and has been particularly salient in representations of White involvement in the East, saving Asians, particularly women, from their own culture (Marchetti, 1993; Tierney, 2006). In episode one, Rajiv says he hired Madhuri, a silent, passive, and doe-eyed employee, for the sole purpose of firing her and earning the fear of his staff. Todd protects her by encouraging her to be more confident and to make her first sale, thereby saving her job. In episode two, Jerry orders Todd to fire an employee because the sales figures do not justify the size of the staff, but Todd is able to save his staff’s jobs by increasing Communication Theory 22 (2012) 449–470 © 2012 International Communication Association

461



sales. From the beginning of the series and throughout its first season, the show works to secure the audience’s understanding that Todd is a dual figure of global capitalism and the humanizing face of Whiteness as the guardian of the racial other and the deliverer of progressive opportunities for self-growth and economic opportunities. His heroic role confounds the critique of his imperialistic purpose voiced by Rajiv. Centering Whiteness & constructing a positive self

The point, thus far, was to demonstrate that neoliberal ideologies that favor privatizing the social and denying structural racism happen through the co-optation of multiculturalism. This section is to make the point that the ideologies do not only favor Whiteness and the global North by maintaining the political economic status quo but that multiculturalism itself is distorted in ways that strengthen Whiteness (Hall, 1997; Shome, 1996). That is, multiculturalism becomes a mechanism to not only support neoliberalism but to support Whiteness/Americanness (Hasinoff, 2008; Omi & Winant, 1994). The notion of constructing a positive self in relief against the negative other was a key insight of Said’s (1978) work on Orientalism. Later research on Whiteness demonstrates that it is a strategic rhetoric that positions itself as normal while relegating non-White cultures to the cultural margins (Nakayama & Krizek, 1995). In Outsourced, where Indian characters comprise a majority of the cast, Whiteness pervades the text and is centered as desirable and coveted, constructing the positive self. This positive self is constructed as a U.S. self in which personal freedom and happiness are manifest through freer social structures and through its definition of personal freedom through conspicuous consumption. In the show, both United States and Indian cultures are mocked, but the humor is unequal. Jokes about Indian culture emphasize the West’s superiority whereas jokes about the United States are muted or inverted. As mentioned earlier, jokes about Indian culture and life are crude tropes about its lack of cleanliness, unusual foods, strange holidays, and inscrutable cultural practices. The most common jokes about the United States, on the other hand, are about its liberal attitudes toward sexuality and conspicuous consumption. The jokes function less to mock the United States but to define India in opposition as sexually conservative, socially strict, and lacking personal freedom that is manifest through consumer consumption. But because of the superficially equal treatment of both India and the United States and because of their humorous presentation, the jokes hide ethnocentric and neoliberal ideologies. To further construct the positive self, the series employs Todd as an exemplar of White masculinity, a masculinity that is marked by its sexual desirability and strength over the Eastern other (Espiritu, 2004; Kang, 2002). This is made clear through multiple references to Todd as being from the American Midwest, the ‘‘heartland,’’ a signifier of bucolic White United States. As Hasinoff (2008) argues, constructions of Americanness are tied to notions of Whiteness. In multiple episodes, he describes 462




his love for Kansas City barbeque and the Chiefs, a professional football team based in Kansas City. This representational move to the Midwest is particularly striking when compared to the film, which situates the novelties company in Seattle. To make sure audiences do not miss the construction of Todd as an embodied symbol of White Americanness, Gupta calls Todd ‘‘Mr. All-American’’ in episode two when he believes he has been fired and is expressing his displeasure with his coworkers. Notably, Gupta is exacerbated because he cannot think of a complaint for Todd such that being ‘‘all-American’’ is constructed as flawless in contrast to the clear faults of being Indian. In contrast is Rajiv, the assistant manager, who is presented as Todd’s opposite. His narrative role within an Orientalist discourse of the tyrannical East is to referentially construct Todd and by extension White U.S. masculinity as benevolent. Most important in the contrast is Rajiv’s ethnocentric perspective and his investment in social hierarchy. His socially unequal worldview works to secure neoliberal multiculturalism and ‘‘colorblindness’’ as normative precisely because Rajiv does not conform to these ideals. As Mills (2004) wrote, sitcoms present clearly identifiable characters through its narrative conventions, and audiences are meant to disidentify with Rajiv because of his usually despotic tendencies. He is also presented as the antithesis of the colorblind ideal in neoliberal multiculturalism because for him, race matters. As mentioned earlier, he makes repeated anti-imperialist claims and challenges to Whiteness, which presents him as anachronistic and trapped in an outdated critique. Further, he is invested in social hierarchy (although somewhat ambivalently), which as argued earlier, runs counter to the neoliberal ideal of personal freedom. In episode three, for example, Rajiv boasts to Gupta and Manmeet that he is going to the comfort of his father’s air-conditioned home and that he is unconcerned with how they feel because they are ‘‘not my equals.’’ His support of caste and hierarchy further represent him as anachronistic and weakens the potential of his anti-Western criticism. To further center Todd’s Whiteness as preferable, Manmeet is depicted as Todd’s sidekick, who wants to learn U.S. ways from Todd, particularly as a sexual subject. As Nakayama (1994) writes in his analysis of Showdown in Little Tokyo, the Asian human is presented asexually and desirous of the White protagonist’s sexual and physical power. Just as Rajiv is positioned to define Todd’s embodiment of postracial colorblindness, Manmeet is positioned to define White virility. Although Manmeet expresses strong sexual desire, it is juvenile and sexually unfulfilled. In episode six, Manmeet flees from a White flight attendant who expresses sexual interest and can only engage in phone sex, which suggests that even the most sexually interested Indian is still sexually repressed and awkward. In contrast, Todd is a sexualized subject, who is pursued by Tanya, a sexually aggressive White Australian call-center manager, and who pursues Asha, trying to convince her to abandon arranged marriage and to date him. His postcolonial desire and Manmeet’s emasculation work ideologically to center White masculinity and to symbolically discipline White women to renew commitments to traditional femininity (Marchetti, 1993). Communication Theory 22 (2012) 449–470 © 2012 International Communication Association

463



Another major difference is the positioning of India as socially rigid evidenced in earlier descriptions of joyless, conditional dating and loveless arranged marriages, and the United States, as socially and sexually liberated, even if it is manifest crudely. This dialectical tension between freedom and excess represented in the series is particularly interesting and demands ideological suturing. In episode four, Todd says, ‘‘I’ve been teaching them about American culture: tramp stamps, jager bombs, and how to spell ‘boobs’ on a calculator,’’ clearly constructing the US as unserious and juvenile. There are numerous instances of the White characters’ sexual freedom, including Todd dressing as Hugh Hefner in the Halloween episode and Todd’s stories of casual sexual encounters. The premise of the company as a kitschy novelties company that sells items with no functional or aesthetic value and that are often crudely sexual like the mistletoe belt in episode one clearly points to conspicuous and sexualized consumption in the United States. Despite the availability of this reading of U.S. excess, it happens in parallel with a reading of India as being overly rigid in its social strictures. Read referentially, excess can be interpreted as a byproduct of U.S. freedoms that allow people from the United States to live as one pleases even if it is not socially desirable, thus advancing a neoliberal preference for individual freedom – freedom that is in part defined through consumption. Whiteness is also centered through Todd’s ability to bring his embodied normativity with him even as he travels abroad. Although Todd is the foreigner, India and Indians are portrayed as exotic and unusual. The establishing shots used frequently in the show visually establish India as an exotic place. Hamamoto (1994) similarly described Korea as an exotic backdrop in M*A*S*H for White character development with little interaction with the natives except to show the progressiveness of the United States vis-`a-vis its comparison with Korea (Hamamoto, 1994). Unlike M*A*S*H, however, interactions with Indians are frequent but are shown similarly to portray Todd as progressive and Indian cultural practices as strange. In episode 10, for example, Todd suffers from digestional problems after eating street food. In an attempt to comfort his boss and friend, Manmeet says, ‘‘You’re not in Kansas anymore.’’ Manmeet’s allusion to The Wizard of Oz is popularly understood through defining Kansas as normal or in other words, ‘‘American.’’ Not being in Kansas is being somewhere unusual and far away. The representation of Todd as normal and the Indian native as foreign ideologically bolsters White normativity and justifies the lack of cultural participation by Whites in India. In episode three, Todd and Charlie, a White American friend, learn that the practice of men dancing together is not unusual in Indian culture. In his sole act of cultural participation, Todd talks disparagingly about dancing with ‘‘a bunch of dudes,’’ and although Todd could be read as homophobic, the humor is rooted in a U.S.-centric understanding of heteronormative gender roles and a mocking ridicule of Indian social structures that limit young Indians’ opportunities for gender interaction and sex pointing again to privatizing ideologies that construct Indian societal norms as a repressive constraint in the lives of individuals. 464




In turn, Indian characters’ participation and openness to U.S. culture positions U.S. culture as desirable. Although the Indian characters find U.S. cultural practices confusing, it is not positioned unfavorably, and the norms and beliefs that define the practices are not ridiculed except in episode one when Asha questions people from the United States’ raunchy sexualization of ‘‘the birth of your God’’ as epitomized by the ‘‘mistletoe belt.’’ With the exception of this single critique, the Indian characters are open to learn and participate, pointing to a one-way flow of cultural exchange in which the Western traveler is left unchanged despite his experiences with the other (Steeves, 2008). In contrast to Todd and Charlie’s reactions to Indian holidays like Diwali, the Indian characters respond excitedly to a Halloween costume party. Although shown as unfamiliar, U.S. holidays are represented as fun, enviable, and self-satisfying, whereas Indian culture is presented as exotic, not worthy of emulation or participation, and binding. As Melamed (2006) notes, neoliberal multiculturalism paradoxically promotes colorblindness while at the same time securing White perspectives and privilege.

Discussion

Situating the analysis of Outsourced in a broader cultural and political context, it is hard to ignore the Tea Party; the global financial crisis; the recent labor protests in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio; and challenges to ‘‘American exceptionalism.’’ As Oh (2010) argued, the global financial crisis was a crisis not only of market capitalism as an economic system but as an ideological system. In an attempt to rehabilitate neoliberal ideologies, conservative leaders pushed back by asserting a paradoxical mix of neoliberal multiculturalism and White backlash. Funded by well-heeled conservative businessmen, the Tea Party gained momentum through its racialized call to return to a traditional, more homogeneous U.S. and to minimize the role of government (Enck-Wanzer, 2011). Political and business leaders argued that answers were to be found in market solutions, reifying market logic in the face of a market crisis, and neoliberal conservatives, in particular, blamed the economic collapse on governmental interference, thus advancing neoliberal ideologies despite the prevailing explanation that the global markets collapsed as a result of ineffective government regulation of multinational financial institutions (Suarez & Kolodny, 2011). It is in this context that Outsourced is produced and consumed by U.S. audiences. The television series works ideologically to secure supportive ideologies of neoliberalism by employing multiculturalism to point to the global ‘‘good’’ of capitalism and to the benevolent leadership of the White Western world. Through the conventions of situation comedy, Outsourced simultaneously reinforces static notions of the East that favors the West and masks the harm of global capitalism. Through the show’s multiracial cast and setting in India, the show advances neoliberal multiculturalism, privatizing racism as personal bigotry and dislike, denying racism, and centering Whiteness. It valorizes personal choice and Communication Theory 22 (2012) 449–470 © 2012 International Communication Association

465



freedom, and it minimizes anti-imperialistic discourses through narrative conventions that have audiences identify with the colonizer rather than the colonized. The show even goes so far as to excuse personally held ethnocentric beliefs so long as it is not accompanied by interpersonal dislike. This is possible because it denies racism through its appeals to false universalism and through the representation of global capitalism as unproblematically benefiting Indians who are subject to it. Finally, Outsourced centers Whiteness by presenting U.S. culture as normative while paradoxically appealing to postracialism. Although both U.S. and Indian culture are ridiculed, the metacommunication of the situation comedy form works to mask social differences and privatize racism, thereby advancing a postracial narrative and muting an anti-imperialist critique. In addition, White characters’ rejection and judgment of Indian culture as strange and socially rigid and Indian characters’ openness and participation in U.S. culture position the West as enviable and preferred because of the representation of U.S. culture as personal and sexually liberating. On the surface, Outsourced appears to be a typical fish-out-of-water situation comedy, but close analysis reveal neoliberal undertones that work to mask the realities of systemic racism and social inequality as well as to distract audiences from the harms of global capitalism. Note 1 The term ‘‘regular’’ is an industry term to refer to recurring cast members.

References Artz, L., & Murphy, B. O. (2000). Cultural hegemony in the United States. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Bailey, C. W. (2011). Coming out as homophobic: Isaiah Washington and the Grey’s Anatomy scandal. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 8(1), 1–21. doi: 10.1080/14791420.2010.541926. Balaji, M., & Worawongs, T. (2010). The new Suzie Wong: Normative assumptions of White male and Asian female relationships. Communication, Culture, & Critique, 3(2), 224–241. doi: 10.1111/j.1753-9137.2010.01068.x. Bianco, R. (2010, September 23). Is job flight overseas funny? It’s your call; ‘Outsourced’ offers gentle humor. USA Today, 9B. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2010). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and racial inequality in contemporary America. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Boskin, J. (1997). African American humor: Resistance and retaliation. In J. Boskin (Ed.), The humor prism in twentieth-century America (pp. 145–158). Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. Brown, W. (2006). American nightmare: Neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and de-democratization. Political Theory, 34(6), 690–714. doi: 10.1177/0090591706293016. Cobb, J. N. (2011). No we can’t!: Postracialism and the popular appearance of a rhetorical fiction. Communication Studies, 62(4), 406–421. doi: 10.1080/10510974.2011.588075. Cohen, J., & Craighill, P. M. (2011, January 29). More in U.S. grow wary of globalization. The Washington Post, A16. 466




Croteau, D., & Hoynes, W. (2003). Media society: Industries, images, and audiences (3 ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Davidson, R., & Schejter, A. M. (2011). ‘‘Their deeds are the deeds of Zimri; but they expect a reward like Phineas’’: Neoliberal and multicultural discourses in the deveopment of Israeli DTT policy. Communication, Culture & Critique, 4(1), 1–22. doi: 10.111/j.1753-9137.2010.01089.x. Drew, E. M. (2011). Pretending to be ‘‘postracial’’: The spectacularization of race in reality TV’s survivor. Television & New Media, 12(4), 326–346. doi: 10.1177/1527476410385474. Dubrofsky, R. E. (2006). The Bachelor: Whiteness in the harem. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 23(1), 39–56. doi: 10.1080/07393180600570733. Dudziak, M. L. (1994). Josephine Baker, racist protest, and the Cold War. The Journal of American History, 81(2), 543–570. Enck-Wanzer, D. (2011). Barack Obama, the tea party, and the threat of race: On racial neoliberalism and born again racism. Communication, Culture & Critique, 4(1), 23–30. doi: 10.1111/j.1753-9137.2010.01090.x. Espiritu, Y. L. (2004). Ideological racism and cultural resistance: Constructing our own images. In M. L. Andersen, & P. Hill Collins (Eds.), Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology (5 ed., pp. 175–184). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Esposito, J. (2009). What does race have to do with Ugly Betty?: An analysis of privilege and postracial(?) representations on a television sitcom. Television & New Media, 10(6), 521–535. doi: 10.117/1527476409340906. Gabriel, J. (1998). Whitewash: Racialized politics and the media. New York, NY: Routledge. Giroux, H. A. (1997). Race, pedagogy, and whiteness in Dangerous Minds. Cineaste, 22(4), 46–49. Goldberg, D. T. (2009). Racial comparisons, relational racisms: Some thoughts on method. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 32(7), 1271–1282. doi: 10.1080/01419870902999233. Gorman, B. (2011, May 13). Thursday final ratings: ‘American Idol,’ ‘Big Bang,’ ‘Community,’ ‘Rules,’ ‘Mentalist,’ ‘Office,’ ‘Vampire Diaries,’ adjusted up; ‘Bones’ adjusted down. Retrieved January 8, 2012, from http://tvbythenumbers. zap2it.com/2011/05/13/thursday-final-ratings-american-idol-big-bang-communityrules-mentalist-office-vampire-diariesadjusted-up-bones-adjusted-down/92465/ Gray, H. (1995). Watching race: Television and the struggle for ‘‘Blackness’’. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Hagedorn, J. (2000). Asian women in film: No joy, no luck. In S. Maasik, & J. Solomon (Eds.), Signs of life in the U.S.A.: Readings on popular culture for writers (pp. 349–357). New York, NY: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Hall, S. (1997). The spectacle of the ‘other’. In R. E. Hall (Ed.), Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices (pp. 235–279). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Hall, S. (2003). The whites of their eyes: Racist ideologies and the media. In G. Dines, & J. M. Humez (Eds.), Gender, race, and class in media: A text-reader (2 ed., pp. 89–93). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Hamamoto, D. Y. (1994). Monitored peril: Asian Americans and the politics of representation. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Hasinoff, A. A. (2008). Fashioning race for the free market on America’s Next Top Model. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 25(3), 323–343. doi: 10.1080/ 15295030802192012. Communication Theory 22 (2012) 449–470 © 2012 International Communication Association

467



Hasinoff, A. A. (2009). It’s sociobiology, hon!: Genetic gender determinism in Cosmopolitan magazine. Feminist Media Studies, 9(3), 267–283. doi: 10.1080/14680770903068233. Herakova, L. L., Jelaca, D., Sibii, R., & Cooks, L. (2011). Voicing silence and imagining citizenship: Dialogues about race and whiteness in a ‘‘postracial’’ era. Communication Studies, 62(4), 372–388. doi: 10.1080/10510974.2011.588072. Jones, B., & Mukherjee, R. (2010). From California to Michigan: Race, rationality, and neoliberal governmentality. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 7(4), 401–422. doi: 10.1080/14791420.2010.523431. Kang, L. H.-Y. (2002). The desiring of Asian female bodies: Interracial romance and cinematic subjection. In P. X. Feng (Ed.), Screening Asian Americans (pp. 71–98). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kellner, D. (1995). Media culture: Cultural studies, identity, and politics between the modern and the postmodern. New York, NY: Routledge. Kim, M., & Chung, A. Y. (2005). Consuming Orientalism: Images of Asian/American women in multicultural advertising. Qualitative Sociology, 28(1), 67–91. doi: 10.1007/s11133-005-2631-1. Kraszewski, J. (2010). Multiracialism on The Real World and the reconfiguration of politics in MTV’s brand during the 2000s. Popular Communication, 8(2), 132–146. doi: 10.1080/ 1540570100367610. Landing a big job on Outsourced: The new show is the latest in a trend that reflects the growing global reach of the South Asian community (2010, November 27). The Toronto Star, SW4. Lloyd, R. (2010, September 23). The fall TV season: Reviews; Television Critic; A smart move, a dim one; ‘Outsourced’ works, but ‘S#*! my dad says’ should have stayed on Twitter. Los Angeles Times, D11. Lowe, J. (1986). Theories of ethnic humor: How to enter, laughing. American Quarterly, 38, 439–460. Marchetti, G. (1993). Romance and the ‘‘yellow peril’’: Race, sex, and discursive strategies in Hollywood fiction. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. McMurria, J. (2008). Desperate ctizens and good Samaritans: Neoliberalism and makeover reality TV. Television & New Media, 9(4), 305–332. doi: 10.1177/1527476408315115. Melamed, J. (2006). The spirit of neoliberalism: From racial liberalism to neoliberal multiculturalism. Social Text, 24(4), 1–24. doi: 10.1215/01642472-2006-009. Mills, B. (2004). Comedy verite: Contemporary sitcom form. Screen, 45(1), 63–78. doi: 10.1093/screen/45.1.63. Mukherjee, R. (2006). The racial order of things: Cultural imaginaries of the post-soul era. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Nakayama, T. K. (1994). Show/down time: ‘‘Race,’’ gender, and sexuality, and popular culture. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 11, 162–179. Nakayama, T. K., & Krizek, R. L. (1995). Whiteness: A strategic rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 81, 291–309. doi: 10.1080/00335639509384117. Nilsen, A.P., & Nilsen, D.L.F. (2006). Just how ethnic is ethnic humour? Canadian Ethnic Studies, 38(1), 131–139. Retrieved from http://umanitoba.ca/publications/ces/ Oh, D. C. (2010). Complementary objectivity and ideology: Reifying White capitalist hierarchies in Time magazine’s construction of Michelle Rhee. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 34(2), 151–167. doi: 10.1177/0196859909357936. 468




Omi, M., & Winant, H. (1994). Racial formations in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (2 ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Ono, K. A. (2010). Postracism: A theory of the ‘‘post’’-as political strategy. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 34(3), 227–233. doi: 10.1177/0196859910371375. Ono, K. A., & Buescher, D. T. (2001). Deciphering Pocahontas: Unpackaging the commodification of a Native American woman. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 18(1), 23–43. doi: 10.1080/15295030109367122. Ono, K. A., & Pham, V. N. (2009). Asian Americans and the media. Malden, MA: Polity. Ouellette, L. (2002). Victims no more: postfeminism, television, and Ally McBeal. The Communication Review, 5, 315–335. doi: 10.1080/10714420214689. Ouellette, L., & Hay, J. (2008). Makeover television, governmentality and the good citizen. Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 22(4), 471–484. doi: 10.1080/10304310801982930. Outsourced. (2010, September 23). Daily Variety, 7. Pal, M., & Buzzanell, P. (2008). The Indian call center experience: A case study in changing discourses of identity, identification, and career in a global context. Journal of Business Communication, 45(1), 31–60. doi: 10.1177/0021943607309348. Parameswaran, R. (2008). The other sides of globalization: Communication, culture, and postcolonial critique. Communication, Culture, and Critique, 1(1), 116–125. doi: 10.1111/ j.1753-9137.2007.00012.x. Pham, M.-H. T. (2004). The Asian invasion (of multiculturalism) in Hollywood. Journal of Popular Film and Television, 32(3), 121–131. Retrieved from http://www.tandf.co.uk/ journals/titles/01956051.asp Pieterse, J. N. (1992). White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western popular culture (Trans. J. N. Pieterse). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Rings, G. (2011). Questions of identity: Cultural encounters in Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham. Journal of Popular Film & Television, 39(3), 114–123. doi: 10.1080/ 01956051.2010.541954. Rockler, N. R. (2006). Friends, Judaism, and the holiday armadillo: Mapping a rhetoric of postidentity politics. Communication Theory, 16(4), 453–473. doi: 10.1111/ j.1468-2885.2006.00278.x. Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. New York, NY: Vintage Books. Schechner, R. (2002). Performance studies: An introduction. New York, NY: Routledge. Shim, D. (1998). From yellow peril through model minority to renewed yellow peril. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 22(4), 385–409. doi: 10.1177/0196859998022004004. Shome, R. (1996). Race and popular cinema: The rhetorical strategies of whiteness in City of Joy. Communication Quarterly, 44(4), 502–518. doi: 10.1080/10646170500207899. Shome, R. (2006). Thinking through the diaspora: Call centers, India, and a new politics of hybridity. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 9(1), 105–124. doi: 10.1177/1367877906061167. Stanley, A. (2010, September 23). At call center, cultural clash in reverse. The New York Times, C1. Steeves, H. L. (2008). Commodifying Africa on U.S. network reality television. Communication, Culture, and Critique, 1(4), 416–446. doi: 10.1111/j.1753-9137. 2008.00033.x. Stiles, S., & Kitch, C. (2011). ”Redemption for our anguished racial history”: Race and the national narrative in commemorative journalism about Barack Obama. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 35(2), 115–133. doi: 10.1177/0196859911404604. Communication Theory 22 (2012) 449–470 © 2012 International Communication Association

469



Stuever, H. (2010, September 19). An unfunny step back toward the Kwik-E-Mart: Its premise had promise, but sitcom wallows in stereotypes. The Washington Post, E4. Suarez, S., & Kolodny, R. (2011). Paving the road to ‘‘too big to fail’’: Business interests and the politics of financial deregulation in the United States. Politics & Society, 39(1), 74–102. doi: 10.1177/0032329210394999. Temple, C. N. (2010). Communicating race and culture in the twenty-first century: Discourse and the post-racial/post-cultural challenge. Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 5(1), 45–63. doi: 10.1080/17447141003602288. Tierney, S. M. (2006). Themes of Whiteness in Bulletproof Monk, Kill Bill, and The Last Samurai. Journal of Communication, 56, 607–624. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2006. 00303.x. TV ratings Thursday: ‘Big Bang Theory’ scores at 8 pm; ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ tops night with young adults; ‘My Generation’ premiere stalls. (2010, September 24). Retrieved January 8, 2012, from http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2010/09/24/tv-ratings-thursday-thebig-bang-theory-scores-at-8pm-greys-anatomy-tops-night-with-young-adults-mygeneration-premiere-stalls/64978/ Watts, E. K. (2010). The (nearly) apocalyptic politics of ‘‘postracial’’ America: Or ‘‘this is now the United States of Zombieland’’. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 34(3), 210–253. doi: 10.1177/0196859910371375. Weaver, S. (2010). The ‘Other’ laughs back: Humor and resistance in anti-racist comedy. Sociology, 44(1), 31–48. doi: 0.1177/0038038509351624. Werts, D. (2010, September 23). Sadly, in ‘Outsourced,’ the accent’s on mockery. Newsday, B6. West, C. (2004). The new cultural politics of difference. In S. During (Ed.), The cultural studies reader (2 ed., pp. 257–267). New York, NY: Routledge. Yin, J. (2005). Constructing the other: A critical reading of The Joy Luck Club. The Howard Journal of Communications, 16, 149–175. doi: 10.1080/10646170500207899.

470
