the Female Body GOVERNING

Disciplining the Ethnic Body 209
industry perceived and addressed U.S. Latina and Latino audiences
as ethnically undifferentiated, racially non-White, Spanish-dominant,
socioeconomically poor, and most often of Mexican origin (Rodriguez,
1999). Such a construction had very specifi c effects: Throughout the
1970s and 1980s, this market framework promoted the development of
Spanish-language narrow-casting via networks such as Telemundo and
Univisión and encouraged the exclusion of Latinas and Latinos from
mainstream English-language network programming.
However, beginning in the mid-1980s Latina and Latino industry
offi cials worked diligently to reframe dominant marketing discourses
about the U.S. Latino audience: by highlighting projected increases in
U.S. Latina and Latino population; the commercial profi ts from duallanguage
marketing; and, the existence of more than 1 million Latina
and Latino households with incomes of more than $50,000 living in the
United States, Latina and Latino industry offi cials effectively redefi ned
mainstream industry perceptions about the economic importance of the
Latina and Latino consumer audience while still using homogenizing
constructions of Latinas and Latinos to differentiate them as a market
(Dávila, 2001; Rodriguez, 1999; Sinclair, 1999). In the overall global
economic climate that includes the identity-making practice of “shopping
for ethnicities,” advertising trade magazines and marketing research
corporations increased spending levels on “Hispanic” marketing in the
late 1980s (Goodson & Shaver, 1994, p. 192; Halter 2000). If marketing
strategies function as a Foucauldian form of discourse, “as a set of practices
which support particular forms of knowledge or ways of knowing”
(Foucault quoted in Rabinow, 1984, p. 54), then the ruptures and
discontinuities within the marketing and global entertainment industry
texts point to potentially resistant moments of transformations.
Within this particular historical context, strong demand from Latin
American audiences for U.S. programming, as well from U.S. Latina
and Latino audiences for more inclusive programming have increased
the production of fi lm and television shows and marketable stars that
appeal to audiences across a matrix of race, ethnicity, gender, and
class throughout the late 1990s. Warner Brother’s 1997 Selena starring
Jennifer Lopez specifi cally targeted Latin American audiences, U.S.
Latina and Latino audiences, and young U.S. girls across all ethnic
categories (Hindes, 1997). Celebrities Shakira and Thalia both began
their cross-over attempts without English fl uency yet that did not stop
the marketing apparatus from widely promoting them in the United
States. Currently the commodifi cation of Latinidad relies primarily of
Latina bodies.