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Feminist Media Studies
ISSN: 1468-0777 (Print) 1471-5902 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfms20
In/visibly different: Melania Trump and the
othering of Eastern European women in US culture
Katharina Wiedlack
To cite this article: Katharina Wiedlack (2018): In/visibly different: Melania Trump and the othering
of Eastern European women in US culture, Feminist Media Studies
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1546205
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa
UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
Group
Published online: 06 Dec 2018.
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In/visibly different: Melania Trump and the othering of
Eastern European women in US culture
Katharina Wiedlack
Department of English and American Studies, Europa-University Flensburg, Flensburg, Germany
ABSTRACT
This article offers a “feminist critical discourse analysis”of the Saturday
Night Live sketch “Melanianade.”It argues that the comical video
reinforces and essentializes negative stereotypes of Eastern European
women to depict Melania Trump, seeking to delegitimize white hege-
monic masculinity and female complicity. The fictitious Melania
Trump’s appearance needs to be understood in her co-construction
with her white hegemonic husband and otherwise racialized women in
the comedy sketch. These women are the African-American women of
Beyoncé’svideo“Sorry,”which “Melanianade”copies/satirizes. “Sorry”
represents Black female US-American experience, and was broadly
understood as Black feminist art/activism. Taking Beyoncé’splacein
the video, the fictitious Melania Trump is co-constructed to the absent
black feminist bodies as white non-feminist Eastern European Other.
Using Beyoncé’s video as a template, “Melanianade”re-affirms a dis-
course of Otherness that re-establishes the enlightened and emanci-
pated educated (white) feminist American non-immigrant woman as
norm, while it also whitewashes the Black American experience, which
“Sorry”stands for.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 10 August 2017
Revised 4 October 2018
Accepted 6 November 2018
KEYWORDS
US media; racialization;
post-socialist contexts;
critical whiteness studies;
feminist critique
Introduction
This article offers a feminist discourse analysis (Michelle M. Lazar 2007) of the Saturday
Night Live (SNL) sketch “Melanianade.”I argue that, as the mainstream feminist video
seeks to delegitimize white hegemonic masculinity and female complicity, it reinforces
and essentializes negative stereotypes about Eastern European
1
women to depict
Melania Trump (MT) in the process. Following post-socialist accounts on the Othering
and orientalizing of Eastern European women (Larry Wolff1994; Madina Tlostanova
2015) I argue that MT’s appearance as essentialized white Eastern European Other
needs to be understood in her co-construction with her hegemonic husband and
otherwise racialized women in the comedy sketch. These other racialized women, who
are not directly represented, are the African American women of Beyoncé’s video
“Sorry,”which “Melanianade”copies and satirizes. “Sorry”represents female Black US-
American experience, and was broadly understood as Black feminist art/activism (Jessica
Opatich 2016; Andrea Waguespack 2016). In “Melanianade,”which aired first on NBC’s
SNL on October 16 2016, the white American actress and comedian Cecily Strong
CONTACT Katharina Wiedlack kathiwiedlack@gmail.com
FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2018.1546205
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly
cited.
imitates MT, mimicking almost completely Beyoncé Knowles-Carter’s performance,
poses, and dances in her highly acclaimed music video “Sorry,”diverging only through
different lyrics and pronunciation from the original. Taking Beyoncé’s place, the fictitious
MT is co-constructed with the absent black feminist bodies as white non-feminist Other.
Using “Sorry”as a template, “Melanianade”affirms a discourse that muddles different
forms of Otherness into one, while confirming the enlightened, emancipated, educated
(white) feminist American non-immigrant woman as norm. Moreover, as the video uses
the well-known song and video to mark MT as Other, it whitewashes the Black American
experience, which “Sorry”communicates.
The black and white video “Melanianade”opens with MT’s narrative voice, in a heavily
accented English (emphasis on the R, pronounced with a rolling sound): “Here lies my
last nerve, Donald.”The video represents MT as “beautiful, dutiful,”mirroring media
representations, calling her strikingly “passive”(Guy Trebay 2016, D1), “in an embrace of
values from an era when a potential first lady might be less likely to have served as her
husband’s former law firm mentor (as Michelle Obama once was) than his carpet
ornament”(Trebay 2016, D1). The following scene shows the fictional Ivanka (Emily
Blunt) and Tiffany Trump (Vanessa Bayer), Kellyanne Conway (Kate McKinnon), and
Omarosa (Sasheer Zamata), without a last name, sitting lined up in a moving vehicle.
This scene introduces all the characters of the video—the silent wife; the daughters; the
spokesperson Conway; and the Director of Communications for the White House Office
of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs and former star of Trump’s Reality
TV-show The Apprentice, Omarosa Manigault.
2
Additionally, the scene makes a very
visible reference to the opening of Beyoncé’s video “Sorry.”
“Sorry’s”story evolves around Beyoncé’s betrayal through her husband. Additionally,
it tells about female Black American history, from slavery and coerced domestic servi-
tude, to contemporary systemic gendered oppression. It starts with Beyoncé, reciting a
spoken-word piece by Warsan Shire, the Somalian, UK-based poet, accompanied by the
slow jewelry box melody of a theme from Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake (Waguespack
2016; Opatich 2016). The poem’s line “So what are you gonna say at my funeral, now
that you’ve killed me?”speaks metaphorically of a husband’sinfidelity from the per-
spective of the betrayed wife; but it also comments on systemic gendered violence
against Black women. The scene is set in a public bus. Black women are sitting on bus
benches with ceremonious painted faces, called “Sacred Art of the Ori”(ABC News 2016),
“inspired by Yoruban rituals and designed by Nigerian-born, Brooklyn-based Laolu
Senbanjo”(Lisa Perrott, Holly Rogers, and Carol Vernallis 2016). They perform modern
dance movements collectively, which highlights their ceremonious face-paint and makes
them appear as one moving body, rather than individual dancers. Their identical black
shirts and trousers as well as the public bus are references to the Black Power movement
and the Civil Rights movement, and Rosa Parks’act of resistance. Little flashes of light
illuminate the metal roof of the bus, bringing to mind star showers as much as the metal
rods of prison cells, as the movement of the bus distorts the little light dots into stripes.
The women in “Melanianade,”in contrast, are all recognizable as individuals as they
sit in a limousine. The same little flashes of light circle the vehicle, but they illuminate
not raw metal, but a comfortable, richly decorated interior. The women wearing Manolo
Blahniks
3
and other classic fashion items such as black and white slim-fit dresses, and
pussy-bow blouses,
4
represent upper-class individuality. Their ritualistic body
2K. WIEDLACK
movements copy the performers’of “Sorry,”but their references, beyond being a
reminder of Beyoncé’s iconic piece, are empty.
Already the first scenes of “Melanianade”bring up the popular US-American discourses
about MT, which the scriptwriters of the SNL video arguably built on, affirming some of
their crucial ideas. I read the significations and meanings of MT in “Melanianade,”drawing
out the stereotypes along which her figure is modeled. Addressing the specificformsof
othering of MT within “Melanianade,”I aim to show how the US-gaze constructs Eastern
European women as mentally, ideologically, morally and ethically, but also bodily different
to US-American non-immigrant women. I build my arguments on the work of the Gender
Studies scholars Kimberly A. Williams (2012), Anca Parvulescu (2014), Valentina Glajar and
Domnica Radulescu (2004), and Agnieszka Tuszynska (2004), analyzing the cultural repre-
sentations of post-socialist women within Western media and culture. I push their argu-
ments further, by focusing the othering of female Eastern European bodies through
whiteness.
5
Building on Claudia Sadowski-Smith’s(2018)finding that US-American popular
culture imagines post-socialist immigrant women as homogeneously white, I understand
MT as white Other to the US-American white norm as well as to racialized American
immigrant and non-immigrant bodies. I follow Williams (2012), Parvulescu (2014), Glajar
and Radulescu (2004) as well as Tuszynska (2004) in locating the othering of Eastern
European female bodies on the intersection of sexualization and class-occupational con-
structions. They show that the signification of Eastern Europeanness muddles women of
varied heritage or descent into one category, by extinguishing the differences between
them, and heightening the difference/inferiority to the Western norm. Parvulescu exam-
ines in most detail how Eastern European women’s bodies emerge through their sex-
ualized class location. Although her analysis is useful to explain how MT emerges in
comparison to and relation with otherwise racialized US-American women and white
hegemonic US-American men, I diverge from Parvulescu in labeling her specific cultural
location as “not-quite-white”(2014, 14). On the contrary, I argue that MT’s whiteness is a
significant meaning; however, one that does not automatically allow her to join the US-
American white norm. Her whiteness is more than just a “passing”(Parvulescu 2014, 14).
Although recognized as white, much like white working-class people, MT is not recog-
nized as authentic part of the white American elite. Rather, she is a cheater or “trickster”
(Glajar and Radulescu 2004; Tuszynska 2004), who illegitimately holds a place of power,
due to her Eastern European heritage. While her whiteness and beauty bear the potential
to blend in, to pass as something that she is not, her sexualization signifies her Otherness
through style and language/pronunciation. Understanding her as victim of her husband’s
toxic masculinity further guarantees that she stays “arrested”in the position of Eastern
European under-classness.
Ireadthesefindings against the works on the geo-temporal and developmental
location of Eastern Europe within the heritage of Western colonial Orientalism and
discourses on ethnicity/race.
6
Cultural studies researchers such as Wolff(1994), Robert
Kulpa and Joanna Mizielińska (2011)orTlostanova(2015) have long established the
idea that the signification of Eastern Europe and especially its female population was
designed within the project of the European Enlightenment to legitimate and further
establish its Orientalism, to claim and essentialize superiority over racialized Eastern
and Southern people. This signification of people and bodies between the poles of
Western European civilization and Southern and Eastern barbarianism assigned
FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 3
Eastern Europeans to a geographical and temporal (developmental) gray area of the
in-between. Combining the feminist findings on essentialized stereotypes of Eastern
European women with the work on their geo-temporal location allows me to under-
stand their construction as in relation to the bodies they co-appear with on a material
and geo-temporal level. It allows me to understand their in-between position as
construction of a yet unreached potential in Eastern Europeans to become what
Western Europeans and white US-Americans have already become. They signify the
white raw material that needs to be formed according to Western standards.
Following this idea, I put the emphasis of my reading on the relational construction of
MT in “Melanianade.”I argue that the readability of Eastern European Otherness depends
on the co-appearance of the poles between which it is signified. In opposition to racialized
African Americans, Eastern European immigrants to the US can appear as desired white
bodies. Yet, in the presence of white sophisticated American women, Eastern European
women appear as their “lesser cousins”(Kulpa and Mizielińska 2011,17).“Melanianade”
constructs MT visually and verbally as white Other to white modern American feminists as
well as Black feminists. Ironically, it does so by appropriating Black American feminism and
whitewashing or relieving it of its Black Power criticism in the process. Contrasting
“Melanianade”with its model—the Beyoncé’svideo“Sorry,”and its meanings—highlights
the satire’s dependence on the cultural leverage of this music video. In analyzing Black
female US-American experience as key aspects of “Sorry,”I show the interdependence
between Melania’ssignification as Eastern Europe Other in “Melanianade”and the sig-
nification of Beyoncé’s latest work as Black feminist art/activism.
Stereotypical notions of Otherness
SNL, as many critics have pointed out (Dean Obeidallah 2017;JoannaRobinson2017),
is not only fighting the “American Culture War”
7
(Stepehn Prothero 2016)ontheside
of the liberal democratic elite against right-wing conservatism, it is also satirically
reflecting the whole process. The othering of MT is part of the fight for cultural
hegemony. Ironically, SNL thereby reaffirms conservative ideas of a superior national
culture that depend on the sexualizing, gendering, and racializing of the Eastern
European Other. Like conservative political and cultural commentators, SNL portrays
MT as uncharismatic doll and “trophy wife”(Jelena Prtoric 2017), drawing on mis-
ogynist and anti-immigrant views, echoing neoliberal media, such as The New Yorker
(Lauren Collins 2016), which described her as “the perfect body on which to hang a
brand.”The New York Times reporter, Jacob Bernstein, even referred to MT publicly as
a“hooker”(Katie Yoder 2017).
8
Feminist discourses present MT as “a victim of her
husband [and] a submissive tool”(Prtoric 2017). Under the “#FreeMelania”hashtag
(Weaver 2017; Jill Filipovic 2017;LizzieCrocker2016) they speculated that MT might
be the victim of domestic abuse. “But if Melania is a victim,”as Filipovic (2017)rightly
pointed out, “a cheeky hashtag belittles her situation. And considering that we don’t
actually know she’s a victim at all, positioning her as a helpless pawn rather than an
adult woman is deeply condescending.”
These examples of sentiments against MT show how mainstream discourses see her
as the embodiment of an elite version of two very popular, not mutually exclusive
stereotypes of post-Soviet women, the slut and the victim. The media studies scholar
4K. WIEDLACK
Roumiana Deltcheva identified the post-1991 most common filmic depictions of Eastern
European women: “the scrupulous slut, the conniving trickster, and the helpless victim”
(2004, 164). Each of these stereotypes, which all go back to the virgin/whore dichotomy,
“carr[ies] distinct negative connotations that, in their totality, reinforce the idea of
Otherness as negation: negation of voice, negation of space, negation of experience”
(Deltcheva 2004, 181). Ignoring her multilingualism, and status as elite earner as super-
model, commentators make fun of her accent and suggest that she needed to sell
herself for money (i.e., as “hooker”or sex worker) (Eric Andersson 2016). Instead of
focusing on her as a businesswoman, reports present her as bound to domesticity, and
focus on her body modifications and modeling past, to construct her as mere trophy
wife (John Aravosis 2017). These discourses create the epistemological framework for
the script and materialization of “Melanianade,”and made it understandable in a liberal
progressive pro-feminist context. They draw on the long tradition of classifications of
Eastern European bodies as in-between the two poles that span a hierarchical system of
significations along the threads of race/ethnicity, class/occupation, gender, sexuality,
and age (Wolff1994; Williams 2012), as the site at which global East and West “confront
each other”(Tuszynska 2004, 204). They render Eastern European woman as “a com-
modity”(Tuszynska 2004, 204) and as similar, yet different Other, and their bodies as in
“limbo,”built to demarcate an US-American identity. The emphasis on motherhood and
sex work (Yoder 2017) are two ends of the same continuum (Parvulescu 2014). Both
labels signify Eastern European women through notions of reproductive labor, and sex
work/trafficking on a hierarchically lower position than white non-immigrant women
and mark their difference to the latter as racial Otherness. As such, the Eastern European
body of MT can be used on several occasions to mark or negotiate an opposition to the
superior enlightened US-subject. Discursively constructed as site and commodity of East/
conservative West/liberal value negotiations, she becomes used most frequently to
construct a positive notion of the US-national progressive, liberal, feminist “us”in
opposition to the misogynist and racist husband Donald Trump. Tuszynska identifies
the oppositionality between white heterosexual affluent (older) men, and the beautiful
younger white Eastern European women as one common dichotomous co-construc-
tions. Another one is the African American woman in opposition to the Eastern
European woman.
Before further analyzing the location of Eastern European women within the episte-
mology of ethnicity and racialization in the US on the example of “Melanianade,”Iwantto
briefly come back to the suggestion that MT is a victim of domestic abuse. The depiction
of Eastern European women as sexually exploited victims has a long tradition in the US.
The US Trafficking Victims Protection Act was strongly influenced by a public case of white
female Russian and Ukrainian trafficking victims in 1997 (Williams 2012,94).Asresultof
Western anti-trafficking activism that has built on “a melodramatic narrative”of female
Eastern European naïveté, economic disadvantage (backwardness), and victimization, the
US law became the template for international work and legislations (Williams 2012,94).It
crucially emphasized the US’s self-perceived role as leader of the free world and human
rights advocate. This self-fashioning of a positive progressive feminist US identity by
commodifying vulnerable white female Eastern European bodies (of victimized sex work-
ers) is another important aspect of the framework to understand the visual language of
“Melanianade.”
FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 5
“Melanianade”or the tenaciousness of stereotypes
“Melanianade,”staying true to its comedy format, brings forward a very blunt feminist
critique. Cecily Strong plays MT on the brink of feminist emancipation. “I can’t take it
anymore,”she utters with a saddened face in the opening sequence of the video, and
Ivanka,Kellyanne,Omarosa,andTiffany echo: “you’re breaking us, taking it for granted
that we’ll always be there.”They speak to President Trump’s misogyny, to his sexism and
racism. They criticize him by imitating a video that has been praised as Black feminist
empowerment video (Inna Arzumanova 2016,421–424). Arguably, the celebration of
Beyoncé’s video as Black feminist politics was the reason why the SNL writers Chris Kelly
and Sarah Schneider chose to use it as a template. (Beyoncé’s usage of the music box
version of Swan Lake, an Eastern European/Russian cultural product, might have been
another reason.) In any case, the widely disseminated cultural knowledge about the
feminism of the song and video “Sorry”and its album Lemonade heightens the feminist
critique on Trump’s misogyny in “Melanianade.”Additionally, and maybe unintentionally,
in using “Sorry,”a piece of art that signifies Black feminist politics, to mark white ethnicity
and gender politics, sexualization, and victimization, shows the reference from ethnicity to
race, and the damage it does. It highlights the signification of the real existing MT as
Other, through the strong reference to African American women and their experiences
and history. Through this process of referencing, “Melanianade”whitewashes the refer-
enced subjects and transforms the meaning of a specific Black female embodiment into a
more general Otherness. To put it differently, Beyoncé’s video illustrates the corporeal
violation but also resistance of African American women; in using the same imagery to
signify oppression against white women, the parody “Melanianade”highlights MT’sbody
in the video, as a somehow different and oppressed body, yet it silences the discussion of
color-based racism, which the original brought forward so forcefully.
MT is presented as embodied commodity, a docile wife to a man embodying white
toxic masculinity. She is the commodity of the white American man in opposition to the
American feminist subject, invoked as invisible norm. In reference to the Black feminist
Beyoncé, whose music video “Sorry”arguably most viewers see behind the satire, MT
appears as white, but non-American. The topic of Otherness, gendered, sexualized,
culturalized, racialized difference forms the filter or gaze, through which the (US-
American) audience watches the video. It presents MT as a “beautiful, dutiful”wife,
activating the stereotypes of the silent and devoted Eastern European woman (victim),
banned from the public sphere, oppressed by her dominant husband. “Coming from the
presumed ‘desolate setting’of post-communism . . ., eastern European women are
usually seen as particularly docile and submissive in the eyes of Western men. Besides
that, eastern European girls still have the reputation of going weak at their knees for
western men.”(Jelena Prtoric 2017). Yet, being the “beautiful, dutiful”wife, her embo-
died difference is neither a Black feminist, nor a white feminist.
Racializing MT’s whiteness
BecauseMTismarkedasdifferent to the rest of the “Trump women,”through her
accent and partly her outfits and accessories, the signification of Otherness sticks to
her body, arguably even more than to the Black, but upper-class American Omarosa.
6K. WIEDLACK
MT’s physique, her beautiful body and hair become pronounced through the techni-
que of the filming. The camera focus from slightly below draws attention to her
cleavage and long uncovered legs, her skin and hair appear smooth and without
blemish through the lightening in black and white tones. What additionally accent-
uates MT’sbodyin“Melanianade,”besides the obvious title, is the knowledge about
Beyoncé’svideo.
“Sorry”represents Black women. In the original, Beyoncé sits cross-legged on a stage,
wearing a hairstyle reminiscent of African art and the work of the model and singer
Grace Jones. Beyoncé’s references—the different hairstyles, clothes and costumes, sur-
roundings and stages—are densely conjured links “to black liberation and practices of
radical black resistance [and] legacies of black spirituality”(Arzumanova 2016, 421). The
facial paintings, wardrobe made of fabric with ethnicized patterns, references to African
and Caribbean culture, and the cross-legged Beyoncé are strong cues to the racialization
and cultural heritage as well as culturalization of African American women. In
“Melanianade’s”mirrored image, MT equally sits cross-legged in the middle of a stage,
wearing a big fur hat, also making a reference to ethnicity, reminding the viewer of a
Russian Ushanka. The line “I have an Eastern European mind set—I forgive but don’t
forget”further emphasizes the ethnicized hairdressing or, rather, ethnicity as such. While
Beyoncé’s self-depiction honors African culture or heritage, MT’s stereotypical Eastern
European hat simply marks her as Other.
In comparison to Beyoncé’sblackfeminism,MT’swhiteness“sticks out,”becomes high-
lighted. Public knowledge about Beyoncé’snickname“Queen B”and the interpretation of
her strong feminine agency and power, as being carried out with the attitude of a female
ruler or monarch, additionally influence the reading of MT. MT is depicted, much as Beyoncé
in “Sorry,”as queen. In her case, however, this does not signify rebellion and agency, but
etiquette and superficiality. Since the video connects MT, a white Eastern European woman,
and Beyoncé, a Black African American woman, the category of race lingers behind the
feminist critique it proposes. Yet, through the non-verbalization of the racialization of
Eastern European women or Donald Trump’sracism,itrendersthediscussionofracism
impossible and arguably whitewashes Beyoncé’s Black feminism at the same time. The weak
attempt to highlight the intersection between President Trump’smisogyny and racism, by
presenting Omarosa as a woman without a last name, addressing the linguistic hegemony
and the unwillingness to “learn”non-normative names, does not sufficiently irritate the
process of making Black oppression invisible. Thus, the positioning of MT as queen high-
lights her Eastern Europeanness,bringingupabroadercultural reference from immigration
to a long-gone European monarchy. Williams (2012)andSadowski-Smith(2018) point to the
cultural knowledge that imagines Eastern European women as descendants of long-gone
but glorious and mysterious royal families. Deriving from mythologized places, Eastern
European immigrant Others are imagined as white, but their discursive attachment to the
Eastern European (royal) past prohibits them from becoming fully modern progressive US
citizens.
Most importantly, the focus on MT’s body as replacement of Beyoncé’s and in itself
shows her construction as white racialized Eastern European Other. The critical tools
available within feminist or critical race studies to account for the racialization of white
Eastern European women are limited. I follow Stuart Hall, who conceptualizes race as a
discursive construct, “principal of classification,”and “a sliding signifier”(Stuart Hall
FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 7
1997). Using race and racialization to describe and analyze representations of Eastern
European bodies equally makes the processes at play visible as it produces these bodies
as racially specific. Although the signifier race is unstable and in flux, its meaning is not
arbitrary or random. At the heart of the concept of the “Slavic race”rests the already
frequently mentioned orientalist design of Eastern Europe “as a world ‘over there,’an
alien world of differences that is light years away not only from the economic prosperity
but also from the social conventions and values of the West”(Deltcheva 2004, 162). The
most common criticism of racism within the US focuses on the construction of color. Yet,
racism “targets East Europeans on the basis of markers that are not limited to color”
(Parvulescu 2014, 15). The “stratification insignia”(Hall quoted in Parvulescu 2014, 15)
that “stick”to Eastern European women are “racialized physical characteristics like hair,
teeth, body type, and clothing styles as well as education, religion, and values”(Hall
quoted in Parvulescu 2014, 15). Moreover, I argue that the racialization of Eastern
European women is best framed as materialization of the in-between of two poles,
the differentiation between nature and culture, between the raw flesh of the barbarian
Other and the sophisticated intellect of the civilized individual. The racialized focus on
MT’s embodiment appears clearly in the caricaturist impressions of MT, by model Gigi
Hadid “ducking her lips and mocking Melania’s eastern European accent”(Prtoric 2017),
but also in the video “Melanianade,”where the male gaze of the camera accentuates
MT’s body parts—her long hair, long legs, spotless white skin, always slightly puckered
lips, emphasized cheek bones etc.—forcing the audience to pay attention to them. This
male gaze is partly ironic, partly a maybe unintentional result from copying the aesthetic
of Beyoncé’s video. It is meant to criticize that MT seems to be “just ‘an object’to her
husband”(Will Worley 2017), that “[t]hese queens in the House of Trump—. . . models,
arm candy, reality-show stars, humiliated sidekicks and shopping channel mavens—are
vestal virgins in the temple of acquisition”(Nina Burleigh 2017). Yet, while pointing out
President Trump’s sexism, the media uses severely derogatory language to describe the
women themselves, and simultaneously reduces them to victims. Especially in the case
of MT, the press furthermore legitimizes a medial gaze on her body and character that
reminds readers of scientific practices using magnifying glasses, scales, and other
surveying instruments to highlight her physical characteristics, and her Eastern
European heritage.
Although the usage of the term “racialization”seems appropriate to signify the embo-
died significations of female Eastern Europeanness, it needs to be emphasized again that
such a denomination must not be confused with the signification of skin color. Eastern
European women are often signified explicitly as white. Their whiteness is central to their
racialization. The whiteness of European, “Slavic”women makes them “afavoriteand
convenient site for the accumulation of stereotypical images feeding Western lust for the
exotic and fear of the ‘barbaric’”(Glajar and Radulescu 2004,162):
[They] are not drastically Other and thus are endowed with an aura of familiarity, or
Europeanness, and yet they are not fully familiar or European either, as they come from
the more remote regions of Europe, perceived as almost Oriental, as almost exotic, yet not
fully so. (Glajar and Radulescu 2004, 162)
MT’s physical appearance, according to news media as well as the video “Melanianade,”
complies with American beauty standards. Yet, her embodiment of the American norm is
8K. WIEDLACK
viewed as artificial, exaggerated, as “trying too hard.”She wants to trick the viewer into
believing she is what she is not. Her Eastern European mind-set differentiates her from the
“better, more tolerant nation”of the US that was formed by “the women’s movement”
(Burleigh 2017). She is viewed as backward, domestic and superficial, a “young and
beautiful piece of ass”(Burleigh 2017), and, most importantly, as belonging to the class
of the “newly rich immigrant.”She is the “ultimate reality-show [star,] impressing Donald
Trump, his fellow oligarchs and captains of supranational corporations with [her] looks
and poise”(Burleigh 2017). Her life is further called “surviving”and a loss of dignity is
suggested. We can identify the signification of MT as a hierarchically “lesser”white woman
with Bridget Anderson (2000) and Parvulescu (2014) as essentialized class-occupational
stratification. The focus on her body in connection with her prior occupation as model
presents both aspects as natural or belonging to her heritage as Eastern European. Her
class-occupation as (former) working-class model (suspected sex-worker) in connection to
her body appears as ethnic/racial markers, without being identified as non-white skin
color.
Appropriating Black music or a failed emancipation
In many ways the political comedy show SNL is a pedagogical project, showing through
satire the wrongs of the American society and political elite. Following this idea, the
show lets the fictitious MT in “Melanianade”“speak up”in an attempt to emancipate
herself. Twisting Beyoncé’s provocative question to her cheating husband, and the US
mainstream that discriminates African American women, “Are you sorry,”into “I’m not
sorry,”the fictitious MT throws a “Donald, No!”at her husband. Her emancipation is not
only signified by her speech, but also by the usage of Beyoncé’s music. “Sorry”is an
electro-Rhythm and Blues (R&B) song, with a particularly thumping beat created by
synthesizers, drums, and bells. Beyoncé’s self-presentation, her clothes, and the dance
performances correspond with the genre of R&B, which is generally consider a Black
music genre, but also opens it up for other Black artistic expressions and conventions, as
already described. Especially powerful is Beyoncé’s feminist usage of the dress and style
conventions of R&B, which is usually considered to be a rather misogynistic genre that
objectifies women (C. M. Frisby and J. S. Aubrey 2012). Beyoncé reclaims the sexualized
conventions of the genre through her strong powerful feminist attitude. MT’s presenta-
tion in “Melanianade”tries to mirror her move, by equally appropriating sexually con-
noted tight clothes. Copying Beyoncé’s bold poses is meant to signify more of her
emancipation, her becoming a (Western-style) feminist.
We can understand the feminist pedagogical project of “Melanianade”with Kulpa as
“leveraged pedagogy”(Robert Kulpa 2014, 432). Kulpa developed his concept to explain
Western strategies of sanctioning or disciplining Eastern European misogyny and homo-
phobia as “didactical and cultural hegemonic relation of power,”where the East “figures
as an object of Western pedagogy”(Kulpa 2014, 432). MT’s complicity in her husband’s
misogyny and xenophobia are the content of the comical lecture of “Melanianade.”Her
Eastern Europeanness signifies simultaneously her nature, a state of being not-yet-
emancipated, since the East only oppresses women, producing “beautiful, dutiful”
females, and “docile wives,”as well as her excuse for participating in her husband’s
wrongs. The “leveraged pedagogy”of “Melanianade”sanctions her misbehavior with
FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 9
mockery and ridicule that is meant to “teach”Melania emancipation. She should free
herself, by standing up for herself, mimicking Beyoncé’s act of showing her unfaithful
partner the middle finger in a powerful collective dance performance. Replicating the
pedagogical doctrine, supposed to transform MT into a modern emancipated woman,
“Melanianade”’s lyrics also use leveraged pedagogy towards the fictitious Donald Trump.
MT’s emancipatory performance threatens her husband with leaving him, if he does not
stop misbehaving, reminding him that without her and her female co-performers he
would not be in the presidential seat.
Yet, the emancipation of MT, in contrast to Beyoncé’s rebellious act of rejecting
misogyny and sexism in “Sorry,”does not succeed. “Melanianade”is not a funny
taking-up of a feminist emancipatory project, because copying Beyoncé’s powerful
appropriation of R&B cannot work from the position of a white woman. It only cleanses
the musical piece of its original anti-sexist, emancipatory gesture, thereby even killing its
own punchline: the appearance of Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump at the end of the
video, commanding “his women”into docile obedience, is not funny, since you cannot
stop a feminist riot that has never started. Rather than signifying agency, the video’s
mimicking of R&B music and style re-establishes the sexualization of its female prota-
gonists and recreates the narrative of MT as typical Eastern European femme fatale.
Eastern European women have often been portrayed as cunning femmes fatales (trick-
sters) instrumentalizing their “deceptive sexuality”(Williams 2012, 36) or “slutiness”
(Deltcheva 2004, 181) to lure Northwestern men into their web, to steal their money
or power. In other words, MT’s awakening can easily be read not so much as feminist
emancipation, but as showing her true (Eastern European bitchy/trickster) side, luring
the viewer into her artificial world.
Although the criticism of this world—the bombastic capitalism of the Trump dynasty
—needs to be acknowledged, the strategy with which “Melanianade”brings forward
such critique is highly problematic. Sketch writers Kelly and Schneider exchange
Beyoncé’s setting—the places of historical and contemporary oppression, the public
bus, the Southern mansion and plantation—with a stretch limousine and the Trump
Tower. Showing an Eastern European ex-model in an over-decorated gold palace is not
nearly as subversive as showing a Black female hip hopper taking control of an ante-
bellum mansion (as “Sorry”does). There is nothing provoking or subversively irritating in
showing MT in an environment that signifies wealth and European heritage, sitting in a
rococo chair surrounded by marble and chandeliers. On the contrary, it is confirming
what journalists and commentators suggest between the lines, when they emphasize
the large age difference between the spouses, for example (ETN 2013; Worley 2017;
Burleigh 2017); namely that MT married Trump out of expediency and for his money,
again conforming that she is not only a slut, but also a trickster. The signification and
exotization of MT as Eastern European is further shown in another scene copied from
Beyoncé’s video “Sorry.”Connected to the choice to locate “Melanianade”in the New
York City Trump Tower to critique the newly rich pomp, extravagance, and wastefulness
is the choice of attire. “Melanianade”exchanges Beyoncé’s strong sassy Black feminist’s
body-positivity for a mix of the conventional style of upper-class white American
conservatives and the exuberant in-your-face splendor we know from popular figures
such as the Kardashians or Paris Hilton. The decoration of MT with diamonds, fur, and
sexy designer dresses and accessories (“Gucci”) conforms to the stereotypical depiction
10 K. WIEDLACK
of Eastern European women as sexy “bitches”or sluts once again. The references to
European labels and style are intended to mock Donald Trump’s public announcements
to boost the American economy and American products, while his wife continues to buy
European fashion (Kate Dwyer 2017; Vanessa Friedman 2017). This form of mockery
furthers the already strong depreciation of women in general and Eastern European
women in particular as superficial, and indeed artificial, attention-hungry Barbie dolls.
Essentializing the “in-between”
Before closing this article I come back to my argument that Eastern European othering
needs to be understood as a form of racialization in a relational geo-temporal context.
MT’s body and persona, as already established, appear in “Melanianade”as distinctly
different to the African American bodies of its model “Sorry”. Since Beyoncé is not just
an African American R&B singer, but also a very popular Black feminist, MT’sOtherness
needs to be understood as doubled: she is the Other to African American bodies, as well as
to the highly progressive (developed) US-American feminist intellectual. This Otherness can
be analyzed by Kulpa and Mizielińska (2011) as signifying her stereotypical Eastern
European “lateness”or “unoriginality.”As an Eastern European woman, she can only be
seen as a copy of the developed and liberal. A significant clue to Melania’s construction as
“latecomer”to modernity and progress is her last sentence in “Melanianade,”shortly
before she and the other women obediently and quietly follow Alec Balwin, as Donald
Trump, out of the room: “Iwrotethatallbymyself.”This sentence addresses the real MT’s
first public speech at the Republican National Convention during Trump’s campaign for
president. The speech was in large parts plagiarized from Michelle Obama’s Democratic
National Convention speech in Denver in 2008 (Gregory Krieg, Eric Bradner, and Eugene
Scott 2016; David A. Graham 2016). While many of the comments following the speech
were sexist and derogatory, the Washington Post stood out by running an article that
explained Melania’s plagiarism with “the culture of cheating in eastern European schools”
(Monika Nalepa 2016). According to the journalist Monika Nalepa, MT’spenchantfor
plagiarism is a result of the communist-era educational system that emphasized memor-
izing rather than individual thinking. In an open letter to the Washington Post published in
the Balkanist, the North American scholars Irina Ceric, Ana Grujic, Jasmina Tumbas, and
Bojana Videkanic (2016)werethefirst to strongly reject and uncover the culturalist
sentiment behind such a claim. Feminist voices from within Eastern Europe equally
criticized this stereotypical claim (Agata Pyzik 2016;P
rtoric2017), understanding MT’s
defamation as product of the uncreative post-communist East as the peak of more general
derogatory discourses that project stereotypical characteristics onto the current First Lady.
The view on Eastern European people as unable to produce original thinking, and
accordingly stealing from their Western peers, does not only confirm their questionable
morals and character, it also confirms the superiority of Western (here US) thinking,
culture, and being. This sentiment is just another version of the previously identified
trickster stereotype. Mirroring this essentialized character trait of Eastern Europeanness at
the level of sound, music, and visual art, “Melanianade”copies Beyoncé’ssong“Sorry.”
Involuntarily, it exploits the cultural signification of Beyoncé’salbumandsongasa
comment of racialization and racialized oppression to enhance the visibility of MT’s
ethnicity, as a comic relief. At the same time, the piece does not explicitly talk about or
FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 11
criticize the common exoticizing and racialization of MT, thereby rather reiterating the
oppressive mechanisms and at the same time whitewashing the Black critique of
Beyoncé’s art. The fact that the video is intentionally feminist and carries the connotation
of feminist critique supports the interpretation of its political correctness, hence the
ignorance towards the video's racism.
Conclusion
Reading the SNL clip “Melanianade”as a satirical version of more general media
representations of MT, I analyzed the specific forms of othering and racialization as
white Eastern European women in this article. In the short comedy video we can see
clearly how political discourse engages with stereotypical narratives around Eastern
European women to delegitimize not only or primarily MT, but rather the powerful
white men she becomes co-constructed with. The parody is a rich example of multiple
different aspects of othering Eastern European women: it others MT through her
accented speech, hairstyle, attitude, the look in her eyes, and the way she curls her
lips. Her clothing style, sexualized body performance, and accented language are
imbued with racial meanings through their connection to specific occupational positions
(sex work), immigration discourses, and discussions on dishonesty or fraud (trickster
identity and plagiarism). As representations of difference, these aspects of physical or
bodily differences can be understood as racialized. The processes of racialization, how-
ever, become understandable only in a reflection of the videos mimicking Beyoncé’s
video “Sorry.”The song and video “Sorry”are interpreted as thematizing Black American
history, and feminist African American culture, as part of Beyoncé’s“coming out”as
Black activist. Closely analyzing the comedy video “Melanianade”in comparison and
relation to “Sorry,”I have shown that the meanings of “Sorry”are as significant for the
understanding of “Melanianade”as the latter’s content, sound, and visuals. In focusing
on the representation of the fictitious MT in contrast and relation to Beyoncé in her
video “Sorry,”I have argued that the racialization of Eastern European women can best
be accounted for as “in-betwenness”by understanding their locatedness in connection
to hegemonic white men and women of color on the intersection of gender, class, age,
origin, language, and sexuality. I have further shown that contemporary racializations of
MT as Eastern European woman go back to ideas of development and civilization.
Following these ideas, Eastern European women are dignified with exotic (old-fash-
ioned) femininity, and constructed as desiring (and confirming) the domination of
Northwestern men. The appeal in their exoticism lies particularly in their similarity
(including whiteness) to those who create and direct their invisible/visible Otherness.
Sexualizing MT, signifying her Otherness through style and language/pronunciation and
understanding her as cheater/trickster, slut, and victim of her husband’s toxic masculi-
nity, makes sure that she stays “arrested”in the in-between of Eastern Europeanness. In
other words, as white woman, marked through a difference not only to other racialized
women, but also white American-born women, MT is assigned to the class of the almost-
but-not-quite-yet accomplished progressive and modern working women. The gesture
behind “Melanianade”is clearly a feminist one, trying to use and show leveraged
pedagogy, to lovingly bully the real MT into her own emancipation and make her
want to change her husband. Unfortunately, by appropriating the video “Sorry,”and
12 K. WIEDLACK
building on its signification as a stronghold of Black feminism, the video whitewashes
the same Black feminism, by leaving out a critique of racialization and race-based
violence, and essentializes the racialization of MT as Eastern European Other.
Notes
1. The terminology of “Eastern European”is used to make the construction of bodily and
character differences visible. It participates in the construction of difference and othering, as
much as it deconstructs it. It muddles white citizens from East of Slovenia’s border with Italy
to West of Russia’s shore at the Benign Sea into an undistinguishable exoticized mass of
people that allegedly share some very specific, often contradictory physical and mental
characteristics. Using such a messy and imprecise label, I aim to highlight the violence of
simplifications and categorization, intending to fight its oppressive forces, and not increase
them. Hopefully, I open a critical discussion of the violence involved in the racialized and
sexualized cultural construction of Eastern European women.
2. By the time this article is published, Kellyanne Conway has been fired as spokesperson and
Omarosa Manigault is no longer Director of Communications.
3. Expensive, tall high heels designed by the Spanish designer Manolo Blahnik that arguably
have become some kind of an upper-class status symbol much like other designer labels
such as Chanel or Dior.
4. Especially, the pussy-bow blouse signifies American high-end fashion. Its emergence is
connected to prestigious designers such Coco Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent (Stella
Bruzzi 2012, 49).
5. “Whiteness”is not an essence, natural, or even a color, or fact that can be proven, seen or
identified. Rather, it is a construct and signification that is attributed to certain bodies in
certain context at certain moments in time.
6. I use ethnicity and race here interchangeably, not to argue that they are the same, but to
highlight how US-American discourses use ethnicity to delegitimize debates about white
privilege and racism. These discourses do indeed use ethnicity in exchange for race. In the
wake of Black Pride, white American minorities claimed their ethnicity to mark their position
to reject their involvement in white hegemony and, by labeling African Americanness as
ethnicity as well, delegitimizing claims of racism against people of color and Black
Americans (Matthew Jacobson 2006,20–22).
7. The historian Prothero (2016)describes the public fight for gaining national cultural
hegemony between US-American conservatives and liberals from Jefferson to Gay Marriage.
8. Conservatives on the far right early on derided Melania with sexist and exoticizing, cultur-
alizing, and sometimes racializing comments during the presidential campaign. Even the
Trump-endorsing New York Post reprinted nude photographs of Melania from 1996 and
2001 (The Mirror 2016), that were then repeated or at least commented on by every major
newspaper, mostly in derogatory language (Trebay 2016). In March 2016 a “conservative
anti-Trump SuperPAC Make America Awesome,”ran “a series of extraordinarily low-budget,
meme-like ads telling Mormons on Facebook and Instagram to vote for Ted Cruz”(Christina
Cauterucci 2016). One of the ads used an image from a British GQ profile of Melania, then
Donald Trump’s girlfriend, from 2000, where she lies naked on a fur rug, warning that she
could be the next first lady. The liberal press is not much more prone to sympathize with
the Slovenian-American First Lady and instead activates the most derogatory stereotypes
about Eastern European women.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 13
Funding
This work was supported by the Austrian Science Fund [T767-G28]
Notes on contributor
Katharina Wiedlack is currently post-doctoral research fellow in American studies at the Europa-
Universität Flensburg, Germany. Previously she was post-doctoral fellow at the Department of
English and American Studies, University of Vienna, and visiting professor at the Centre for
Advanced Media Studies, Johns Hopkins University. Her research fields are queer and feminist
theory, popular culture, post-socialist and post-Soviet studies, and decolonial and disability
studies. Currently, she is working on a research project focused on the construction of Russia’s
most vulnerable citizens within Western media. E-mail: kathiwiedlack@gmail.com
ORCID
Katharina Wiedlack http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9236-8819
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