This article explores two popular TikTok trends that use sound bites from the original cast recor... more This article explores two popular TikTok trends that use sound bites from the original cast recordings of "Heathers: The Musical" and "Six." The "Martha Dumptruck in the Flesh" challenge from "Heathers: The Musical" and the "Yeah That Didn't Work Out" challenge from "Six" were, by and large, completely detached from the musicals. TikTokers who engaged with these trends, therefore, likely did not even know that the sound bites came from musicals. These musicals became what I term "stealth musicals," or undercover musicals that proliferate on TikTok in ways that are completely removed from the show's dramaturgy. As stealth musicals, Heathers: The Musical and Six did not just go viral but stayed viral on TikTok. I argue, therefore, that these two musicals became canonical pieces of Gen Z culture. With viral canonization, Heathers: The Musical and Six demonstrate how cultural capital accrues in digital spaces and, as a result, sound bites such as "Martha Dumptruck in the flesh" enter into a public life that extends beyond the musicals themselves. Indeed, as I propose, quoting "Martha Dumptruck in the flesh" is as synonymous with Gen Z culture as it is with the musical "Heathers."
T r e v o r B o f f o n e is a lecturer in the Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program at the... more T r e v o r B o f f o n e is a lecturer in the Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program at the University of Houston and a teacher at Bellaire High School. He is the author of Renegades: Digital Dance Cultures from Dubsmash to TikTok. S a r a h J e r a s a is a PhD candidate at the University of Houston in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in literacy. Her current research focuses on teacher identities as writers, equitable literacy access, and digital literacies.
Renegades: Digital Dance Cultures from Dubsmash to TikTok interrogates the roles that Dubsmash, s... more Renegades: Digital Dance Cultures from Dubsmash to TikTok interrogates the roles that Dubsmash, social media, and hip hop music and dance play in youth identity formation in the United States. It explores why Generation Z—so-called Zoomers—use social media dance apps to connect, how they use them to build relationships, how race and other factors of identity play out through these apps, how social media dance shapes a wider cultural context, and how community is formed in the same way that it might be in a club. These Zoomer artists—namely D1 Nayah, Jalaiah Harmon, TisaKorean, Brooklyn Queen, Kayla Nicole Jones, and Dr. Boffone’s high school students—have become key agents in culture creation and dissemination in the age of social media dance and music. These Black artists are some of today’s most influential content creators, even if they lack widespread name recognition. Their artistic contributions have come to define a generation. And yet, up until this point, the majority of in...
This article focuses on questions of race, power and representation in regional productions of Li... more This article focuses on questions of race, power and representation in regional productions of Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes' 2008 Tony Award-winning musical "In the Heights." While issues of representation in "In the Heights" did not begin in 2016, this article uses the Porchlight Music Theatre production as a point of departure to analyse how the musical became a contentious performance text in the post-"Hamilton" era. This study focuses on how theatre companies that have not traditionally produced Latinx stories have used In the Heights as an entry-point into the Latinx community and as a way to capitalize from the unprecedented success of Miranda's "Hamilton."
This article explores two popular TikTok trends that use sound bites from the original cast recor... more This article explores two popular TikTok trends that use sound bites from the original cast recordings of "Heathers: The Musical" and "Six." The "Martha Dumptruck in the Flesh" challenge from "Heathers: The Musical" and the "Yeah That Didn't Work Out" challenge from "Six" were, by and large, completely detached from the musicals. TikTokers who engaged with these trends, therefore, likely did not even know that the sound bites came from musicals. These musicals became what I term "stealth musicals," or undercover musicals that proliferate on TikTok in ways that are completely removed from the show's dramaturgy. As stealth musicals, Heathers: The Musical and Six did not just go viral but stayed viral on TikTok. I argue, therefore, that these two musicals became canonical pieces of Gen Z culture. With viral canonization, Heathers: The Musical and Six demonstrate how cultural capital accrues in digital spaces and, as a result, sound bites such as "Martha Dumptruck in the flesh" enter into a public life that extends beyond the musicals themselves. Indeed, as I propose, quoting "Martha Dumptruck in the flesh" is as synonymous with Gen Z culture as it is with the musical "Heathers."
T r e v o r B o f f o n e is a lecturer in the Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program at the... more T r e v o r B o f f o n e is a lecturer in the Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program at the University of Houston and a teacher at Bellaire High School. He is the author of Renegades: Digital Dance Cultures from Dubsmash to TikTok. S a r a h J e r a s a is a PhD candidate at the University of Houston in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in literacy. Her current research focuses on teacher identities as writers, equitable literacy access, and digital literacies.
Renegades: Digital Dance Cultures from Dubsmash to TikTok interrogates the roles that Dubsmash, s... more Renegades: Digital Dance Cultures from Dubsmash to TikTok interrogates the roles that Dubsmash, social media, and hip hop music and dance play in youth identity formation in the United States. It explores why Generation Z—so-called Zoomers—use social media dance apps to connect, how they use them to build relationships, how race and other factors of identity play out through these apps, how social media dance shapes a wider cultural context, and how community is formed in the same way that it might be in a club. These Zoomer artists—namely D1 Nayah, Jalaiah Harmon, TisaKorean, Brooklyn Queen, Kayla Nicole Jones, and Dr. Boffone’s high school students—have become key agents in culture creation and dissemination in the age of social media dance and music. These Black artists are some of today’s most influential content creators, even if they lack widespread name recognition. Their artistic contributions have come to define a generation. And yet, up until this point, the majority of in...
This article focuses on questions of race, power and representation in regional productions of Li... more This article focuses on questions of race, power and representation in regional productions of Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes' 2008 Tony Award-winning musical "In the Heights." While issues of representation in "In the Heights" did not begin in 2016, this article uses the Porchlight Music Theatre production as a point of departure to analyse how the musical became a contentious performance text in the post-"Hamilton" era. This study focuses on how theatre companies that have not traditionally produced Latinx stories have used In the Heights as an entry-point into the Latinx community and as a way to capitalize from the unprecedented success of Miranda's "Hamilton."
What can Latinx youth contribute to critical conversations on culture, politics, identity, and re... more What can Latinx youth contribute to critical conversations on culture, politics, identity, and representation? "Latinx Teens" answers this question and more by offering an energetic, in-depth look at how Latinx teenagers influence twenty-first-century U.S. popular culture.
This book explores the diverse ways that contemporary mainstream film, television, theater, and young adult literature invokes, constructs, and interprets adolescent Latinidad. "Latinx Teens" shows how coming-of-age Latinx representation is performed in mainstream media, and how U.S. audiences consume Latinx characters and stories. Despite the challenges that the Latinx community face in both real and fictional settings, Latinx teens in pop culture forge spaces that institutionalize Latinidad. Teen characters make Latinx adolescence mainstream and situate teen characters as both in and outside their Latinx communities and U.S. mainstream culture, conveying the complexities of “fitting in,” and refusing to fit in all at the same time.
Fictional teens such as Spider-Man’s Miles Morales, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter’s Julia Reyes, Party of Five’s Acosta siblings, and In the Heights’s Nina Rosario comprise a growing body of pop culture media that portray young Latinxs as three-dimensional individuals who have agency, authenticity, and serious charisma. Teenagers and young adults have always had the power to manifest social change, and this book acknowledges, celebrates, and investigates how Latinx teens in popular culture take on important current issues.
"TikTok Cultures in the United States" examines the role of TikTok in US popular culture, paying ... more "TikTok Cultures in the United States" examines the role of TikTok in US popular culture, paying close attention to the app’s growing body of subcultures.
Featuring an array of scholars from varied disciplines and backgrounds, this book uses TikTok (sub)cultures as a point of departure from which to explore TikTok’s role in US popular culture today. Engaging with the extensive and growing scholarship on TikTok from international scholars, chapters in this book create frameworks and blueprints from which to analyze TikTok within a distinctly US context, examining topics such as gender and sexuality, feminism, race and ethnicity and wellness.
Shaping TikTok as an interdisciplinary field in and of itself, this insightful and timely volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of new and digital media, social media, popular culture, communication studies, sociology of media, dance, gender studies, and performance studies.
"Shakespeare and Latinidad" is a collection of scholarly and practitioner essays in the field of ... more "Shakespeare and Latinidad" is a collection of scholarly and practitioner essays in the field of Latinx theatre that specifically focuses on Latinx productions and appropriations of Shakespeare’s plays. It is the first truly comprehensive treatment of this style of adaptation, bringing together the diverse voices working in this field today including leading academics, playwrights and theatre practitioners. This blend of essays and interviews reflects the transdisciplinary synthesis of scholarship, dramaturgy and pedagogy that shapes Latinx engagement with Shakespeare.
"Renegades: Digital Dance Cultures from Dubsmash to TikTok" explores how hip hop culture--princip... more "Renegades: Digital Dance Cultures from Dubsmash to TikTok" explores how hip hop culture--principally music and dance--is used to construct and perform identity and maintain a growing urban youth subculture. This community finds its home on Dubsmash, a social media app that lets users record short dance challenge videos before cross-sharing them on different social media apps such as Instagram and Snapchat.
Author Trevor Boffone interrogates the roles that Dubsmash, social media, and hip hop music and dance play in youth identity formation in the United States. These so-called Dubsmashers privilege their cultural and individual identities through the use of performance strategies that reinforce notions of community and social media interconnectedness in the digital age. These young people create a sense of identity and community that informs and is informed by hip hop culture. As such, the book argues that Dubsmash serves as a fundamental space to fashion contemporary youth identity. To do this, the book re-appropriates the term "Renegade" to explain the nuanced ways that Dubsmashers take up visual and sonic space on social media apps to self-fashion identity, form supportive digital communities, and exert agency to take up space that is often denied to them in other facets of their lives.
In 2018, TikTok emerged into the U.S. cultural zeitgeist, quickly becoming the app of choice for ... more In 2018, TikTok emerged into the U.S. cultural zeitgeist, quickly becoming the app of choice for Generation Z. While TikTok features nearly every type of digital video content, the app is home to a growing community of adept, young social media users who use the platform to engage with musical theatre fandom. This TikTok subculture—TikTok Broadway—serves as a digital theatre community that makes musical theatre popular and mainstream and a part of Gen Z culture. This talk will offer an introduction to TikTok Broadway as well as an in-depth overview of two case studies: "Six" and "Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical."
This chapter examines the power of TikTok’s top tier of influencers. This chapter uses the “D’Ame... more This chapter examines the power of TikTok’s top tier of influencers. This chapter uses the “D’Amelio Effect” to encompass the way that the cultural production of white teenage stars such as Charli D’Amelio influences the cultural actions of millions of US teens. D’Amelio has an unparalleled level of influence and, as a result, dictates the culture of the app, including trending challenges, songs, and dances. The “D’Amelio Effect” reinforces whiteness on the app, obfuscates the work of BIPOC creators, bolsters systems of racism and white supremacy that exist offline, and intersects problematically with issues of gender, as D’Amelio and other young, white female content creators are subjected to misogynous attacks even as they appropriate the work of Black women and create a culture of digital misogynoir that has become synonymous with TikTok.
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This book explores the diverse ways that contemporary mainstream film, television, theater, and young adult literature invokes, constructs, and interprets adolescent Latinidad. "Latinx Teens" shows how coming-of-age Latinx representation is performed in mainstream media, and how U.S. audiences consume Latinx characters and stories. Despite the challenges that the Latinx community face in both real and fictional settings, Latinx teens in pop culture forge spaces that institutionalize Latinidad. Teen characters make Latinx adolescence mainstream and situate teen characters as both in and outside their Latinx communities and U.S. mainstream culture, conveying the complexities of “fitting in,” and refusing to fit in all at the same time.
Fictional teens such as Spider-Man’s Miles Morales, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter’s Julia Reyes, Party of Five’s Acosta siblings, and In the Heights’s Nina Rosario comprise a growing body of pop culture media that portray young Latinxs as three-dimensional individuals who have agency, authenticity, and serious charisma. Teenagers and young adults have always had the power to manifest social change, and this book acknowledges, celebrates, and investigates how Latinx teens in popular culture take on important current issues.
Featuring an array of scholars from varied disciplines and backgrounds, this book uses TikTok (sub)cultures as a point of departure from which to explore TikTok’s role in US popular culture today. Engaging with the extensive and growing scholarship on TikTok from international scholars, chapters in this book create frameworks and blueprints from which to analyze TikTok within a distinctly US context, examining topics such as gender and sexuality, feminism, race and ethnicity and wellness.
Shaping TikTok as an interdisciplinary field in and of itself, this insightful and timely volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of new and digital media, social media, popular culture, communication studies, sociology of media, dance, gender studies, and performance studies.
Author Trevor Boffone interrogates the roles that Dubsmash, social media, and hip hop music and dance play in youth identity formation in the United States. These so-called Dubsmashers privilege their cultural and individual identities through the use of performance strategies that reinforce notions of community and social media interconnectedness in the digital age. These young people create a sense of identity and community that informs and is informed by hip hop culture. As such, the book argues that Dubsmash serves as a fundamental space to fashion contemporary youth identity. To do this, the book re-appropriates the term "Renegade" to explain the nuanced ways that Dubsmashers take up visual and sonic space on social media apps to self-fashion identity, form supportive digital communities, and exert agency to take up space that is often denied to them in other facets of their lives.