{"product_id":"straight-white-men-cant-dance-addie-tsai-9781350443570","title":"Straight White Men Can't Dance: American Masculinity in Film and Popular Culture","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eStraight White Men Can't Dance: American Masculinity in Film and Popular Culture \u003c\/i\u003einvestigates a trope proliferating throughout popular American media over the last half-century: that straight white men can't dance.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAddie Tsai traces this reiterative moving image of vaudevillian buffoonery in film, television, and video from the mid-1980s to present-day. During the height of homophobic hysteria in response to the AIDS epidemic, dance began to be used as a marker to scrutinize white men's position within homosexuality and masculinity. Therefore, white men could misperform \u003ci\u003egood \u003c\/i\u003edancing to more securely sit within hegemonic masculinity. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eTsai establishes how ethnic mimicry within American popular media, even that of white masculinity, is produced and reiterated from the 19th-century theatrical practice of blackface minstrelsy. This history resurfaces in one of the exceptions to the trope: when white men use the \u003ci\u003ehip \u003c\/i\u003ecurrency of blackness to affirm their (dancing) masculinity through theft and positionality. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBy revealing how dance in American popular media reifies and problematizes gendered and racialized economies, \u003ci\u003eStraight White Men Can't Dance \u003c\/i\u003edemonstrates how the image of the buffoonish white male dancer operates as a smokescreen for the more violent manipulative forces of the reigning figure of white supremacy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Addie Tsai\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1350443573\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781350443570\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Bloomsbury Academic\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 09\/17\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 216\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.00lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.21h x 6.14w x 1.00d","brand":"Addie Tsai","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":48443177402623,"sku":"9781350443570","price":39.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_98271f62-d9ab-4d52-8a6c-1ac90348c12a.jpg?v=1777202362","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/straight-white-men-cant-dance-addie-tsai-9781350443570","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}