Is the Tween World Ready for the Subaltern? A.N.T. Farm and the Politics of Blackness

Isthe Tween World Ready for the Subaltern?  A.N.T. Farm and the Politics ofBlackness byDavid J. Leonard | NewBlackMan
Havingalready graduated Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, and Demi Lovato to various formsof stardom, it should be of little surprise that Disney has sought to infuseyounger talent as a way to maintain its stranglehold on tween audiences.  In recent years this has increasingly provendifficult given the success of Nickelodeon with the emergence of MirandaCosgrove and Victoria Justice. 
Realizingthe increasingly fickle marketplace, Disney has sought to change-up the formulain some regards in building a show around a young African-American girl,Chyna.  A.N.T Farm chronicles the story of three genius middle-schoolerswho because of their talents and skills attend high school as part of itsadvanced program.  Whileparticipating in the Advanced Natural Talent Program (A.N.T), they facenumerous dilemmas resulting from their special gifts, tensions with their olderschoolmates, and simply because they are kids growing up in a complexworld. 
AlthoughA.N.T. Farm explores this issuesamongst the three main characters, Chyna (the musical prodigy), Olive (the girlwith a photographic memory), and Fletcher (the artist), the show is truly ashow about Chyna.   From theinclusion of her family to the endless opportunities for her to showcase hermusical talents, whether it be playing the violin, jamming on the guitar, orsinging a familiar pop song, the show is really one that is selling China AnneMcClain (Tyler Perry's House of Payne),who stars as Chyna.
According to one review ofthe show, A.N.T. Farm representsa continuation, albeit modified, of the proven formula of Disney's groomingstars of significant marketing potential: "Disney has turned the concept intoits latest situation comedy—and a star-grooming vehicle for the very talentedChina Anne McClain. China, who plays Chyna, is one of the Mouse House's latestsinging, dancing mini-Mileys, sure to soon grace lunchboxes and toothbrusheseverywhere."  While certainly true,with a CD and the back-to-school Chyna accessory package just around thecorner, the significance of this A.N.T.Farm transcends the commercial practices of Disney.
Creating abreakout tween superstar takes years of careful grooming that hark back toHollywood's studio system days. Disney, scouring audition tapes and the Web,looks for various elements: presence, a genuine interest in show business andraw talent in acting, singing or dancing. Good looks are a must, but so is acertain blandness. Tween viewers gravitate toward actresses who they think havebest-friend potential; the slightest mean-girl whiff can prevent astar-in-the-making from reaching the stratosphere.   
Giventhe history of race and racism, the persistent demonization of African Americanwomen as loud, mean, and aggressive, and given the systematic erasure of youngblack girls from television culture, it is easy to see the ways in which thearrival of A.N.T. Farm can be seen astransformative and ground-breaking. 
Evidenceby blog commentaries, the prospect of a Disney show starring a young AfricanAmerican girl led to praise and celebration.  For example, KimberlySeals Allers laments the lack of diversity available for youth of color,praising Disney for the creation of A.N.TFarm because of its potential positive impact on African Americangirls:  "As a mother, trying toraise a young black girl with positive self-esteem and self-love for her hair,her body and her mind, it's frustrating that my daughter doesn't see manyimages of herself on her own favorite channel. I knew things were bad when shebegged me to buy her a Hannah wig (it wasn't Halloween) and complained a lotabout her own thick hair," writes Allers on a parenting blog. "So I was reallyhappy to see the new Disney show starring the very sweet and lovely, China AnneMcClain.... And the character has a two-parent home! Whoo hoo! When she says shewants her hair to be straighter and longer and her skin lighter, it breaks myheart.  I'm working super hard todo my part to counteract that. But I'm hoping a vivacious, and talented youngbrown girl on the TV screen every week will help a little too."   
Searlesreiterated this same theme on her own blog, MochaManuel, focusing on the show's potential message to young African Americangirls: "Anyway, I know it's up to us parents to instill in our little browngirls the self-love that the media could never do and to fill the hole ofpositive images with our own research and resourcefulness, but I'm hoping anA.N.T. Farm and this talented, beautiful, young black girl can help a littletoo. Are you hoping the same? Why are we still struggling to see positive youngblack girls on kids TV?"   Similarly,MeghanHarvey, who praised the show for a variety of girls, seemed to highlightthe shows efforts to challenge stereotypes, especially as it relates to girlsand African Americans
Smart isCool – The girls on these shows are all smart girls whomake good grades and school a priority, yet they are all cool. In fact the showAnt Farm, centers on the "ANT" program for gifted youngsters who have skipped afew grades including our lead character. And with A.N.T. Farm it's also great to see a super smart African American girl back on the Disney channel! It's about time.
The concerns andhopes here are obviously real, reflecting on the damaging impact of popularculture and society at large on African American identity (See Kari Davis).  It does represent an importantintervention in a cultural world that normalizes whiteness as the standard ofmeasurement all while demeaning and devaluing those who come to embody theOTHER within the dominant white imagination.  According to Anne Ducille, in writing about her experienceswith toys and dolls, children's culture is one of hegemonic whiteness:
Whitewashed by the images with which I was daily bombarded,for most of my childhood I little noticed that the dolls I played with, theheroes I worshipped, and the alter egos I invented did not look like me. Themake-believe world to which I surrendered my disbelief was profoundly white.That is to say, the "me" I invented, the self I day-dreamed in technicolorfantasies, was no more black like me than the dolls I played with" (duCille,1996, pp. 11-12, in Guerrero p. 187)
Assuch, the introduction of a show centering around a young-African American girlrepresents a counter narrative to the cultural jamming of whiteness, albeitlimited because of broader racial realities and its emphasis on a middle-classsensibility, its elevation of a politics of respectability, and of course thedifficult path of countering hegemonic stereotypes.  Celebrations, notwithstanding, the show replicates what S.Craig Watkins describes as a commitment "to the notion of promoting respectable– or in other words, bourgeois – images of blackness."
Thecreation of A.N.T Farm, however,should not simply be thought of in terms of Disney's efforts to challengepersistent racist images within American culture or even its efforts to provideblack youth with "role models" and "positive representations."  It is clearly a marketing strategy thatseeks to capitalize on a market share that has ostensibly been ignored bytelevision networks: African American families.  Describing it as "shrewd marketing" "at a time when children'schannels are working harder to find minority stars." Brooks Barnes highlightsthe economic calculations here. It is
Signaling to parents that diversity is a priority.But Nickelodeon and Disney also want to hold a mirror to a diversifying viewerbase. "We have taught children to look for themselves," Mr. Marsh said.
Other actresses vying for tween superstardom areZendaya, a biracial 14-year-old who co-stars in Disney Channel's budding dancehit, "Shake It Up." Coco Jones, 12, is an African-American singer. (CombineJennifer Hudson with Rihanna and give the results a middle school gloss.) Ms.Jones has become a darling of Radio Disney. Nickelodeon is developing a seriesaround Cymphonique Miller, a 14-year-old African-American singer and actress,called "How to Rock Braces and Glasses."
Whilewriting about Nickelodeon in her fantastic book Kid's Rule: Nickelodeon and Consumer Citizenship, Sarah Banet-Weiser'sobservations are applicable to Disney and in this case A.N.T Farm, a show that imagines a world where "race is simplysomething that 'happens' in a kid's world" (p. 170).  Thus far, it has gone to great lengths to avoid racialconflict and tension, all while imagining blackness and whiteness as insignificantin the daily lives of American kids. In this regard, it operates through the commodification of blacknessthat ultimately reifies the hegemonic practice of reducing race to little morethan a cultural or aesthetic marker.  
EmbodyingAnne DuCille's idea of "mass produced difference" A.N.T Farm, highlights the broader approach to race within children'stelevision culture (and popular culture as a whole). "Any time representation ofrace is produced it reflects a stereotype or a narrativizing of a cultural mythabout race – even if ostensibly 'positive,'" writes Banet-Weiser.   Or as Lisa Guerrero notes,  "race merely serves as another kind of 'accessory'that signifies 'hipness,' without incurring the actual costs and consequencesof real world racial signification." As such, Disney "employs several different strategies of representingrace: race either is represented as hip or cool, as a kind of aesthetic styleor it is represented through the lens of authenticity, with 'real' tropesstructure the narrative of the program. The inclusion of explicitly racial images . . . coincides with theexclusion of a specifically racial agenda, so that inclusion functions as akind of exclusion" (Banet-Weiser, p. 171). 
A.N.T Farm bridges these two themes together, using race as anunspoken backdrop for viewing Chyna all while constructing her as a "real"breath of fresh air that challenges the less desirable and less positive (yetno less supposedly real) representations of blackness within popularculture.  Most importantly, itfollows suit with other programs through its erasure of an explicit "racialagenda."  It lacks even the merehint of the ways in which the race, class, sexuality, and gender are lived byAmerican teenagers.
Inher essay about race, gender, and the Bratz dolls, Lisa Guerrero highlights thecomplex relationship between children (particularly children of color) and dolls/toys/popularculture.  She notes that, at onelevel, visibility, inclusion, and the ability to see oneself within spaces ofplay and consumption are important. At another level, given commercial demands and the practice of denyingand erasing the real-life realities of race, gender, and class, theserepresentations can be at best limiting, and at worst problematic, all whilenormalizing whiteness. Guerrero notes in "Can the Subaltern Shop: TheCommodification of Difference in the Bratz Dolls:"
As much as the dolls rely on images of difference, thatdifference relies on naturalized notions of whiteness. The dolls may besucceeding in presenting a new, and much needed idea of difference as beautifuland coveted, but that idea still exists in opposition to the "normal," Whitebeauty that Barbie, and the ideals reflected in her and her world, present.Ultimately, though, it is a start.
However small the impact of a doll may seem, and despitesome of the paradoxes of the Bratz's representationof difference, there remains an important oppositional potential about thecollection. They have presented a challenge to the Anglocentric version ofwomanhood found in the arena of toys that has been dominant since the 1959introduction of Barbie. They have given face to difference and provided imagesthrough which young girls of color might find themselves reflected. And theyhave begun the work toward opening up a space in the popular imaginary for thenormalization of multiracial identities. 
A.N.T. Farm, despite its shortcomings, much of which reflectsthe broader cultural/political landscape and the dubious motives and marketingplans of Disney, illustrate this same important instance of change.  The tween world is embodies the hyperemphasis on materialism and consumption, yet given the hegemony of whitenessthe entry of China Anne McClain it is hard not to think about this change astransformative a frustrating intervention at that. 
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David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of CriticalCulture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He isthe author of Screens Fade to Black:Contemporary African American Cinema and the forthcoming After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop(SUNY Press). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan and blogs @ No Tsuris.