One need only contemplate the book’s cover to realize that the content of Global Tangos smartly escapes the “foundational clichés” of Argentine tango. Author Melissa A. Fitch takes her readers on a series of expeditions beyond tango’s cultural and geographic roots and, as her subtitle indicates, explores the “transnational imaginary” regarding Argentina’s national dance. Throughout her study, Fitch analyzes various unexpected and startling cultural narratives, and reveals not only the ways in which tango has become entangled in the global imaginary but also the very concrete manner in which dancers have established worldwide connections and created meaningful global communities. A remarkable range of information drawn from mass and social media, as well as from Fitch’s own personal experience as an academic researcher, world traveler, and tango dancer, fills the book’s five chapters, framed by an “Introduction: Arrival” and a “Conclusion: Departure.” Her overarching arguments grow by accretion as the reader journeys through the discrete topics and themes of each self-contained chapter.
After critically reexamining widely held perceptions and representations of tango, chapter 1 explores how modern mass media have affected more current reinterpretations and understanding of the dance. Fitch convincingly illustrates how unfamiliarity with Argentina and the disproportionately American-influenced commercials, television shows, and Hollywood blockbusters created and exported by the United States, have led both to global misrepresentations and recreations of tango. The conflation of diverse elements from Latin American and Spanish cultures, such as shouting “Olé!” or wearing large sombreros, in the depiction of tango single out only the tip of the iceberg. More ubiquitous, and insidious, is the hyper-sexualized, spicy Latin lover and the “Latin Other” stereotypes commonly linked to tango dance. Fitch further probes Eurocentric racial attributes imposed on tango and assesses other prevalent tropes that have contributed to the tango mythology that portrays Argentines and their dance as wild, sexual forces to be tamed.
Autobiographical writings by outsiders who travel to Argentina to learn and dance tango provide much of the primary data employed in chapter 2, which explores “Tango ‘Discovery’” and the “Neocolonial Gaze.” Fitch analyses the qualities and shortcomings of accounts that, through their “tourist gaze,” and their consciously or unconsciously generated assumptions and presuppositions, produce narratives whose neo-colonial perspectives essentialize, exoticise, and patronize tango culture. Foreign ideas of tango, Fitch argues, in turn shape the national tango industry in Argentina, commodifying tango through nostalgia fetish, and restructuring places as centers for tourist consumption.
Global Tango’s third chapter focuses on the “global queer tango movement.” Four factors are singled out as having contributed to this phenomenon: the burgeoning field of queer theory in U.S. academia, the international rise in popularity of tango tourism in Buenos Aires, the growth in mass and social media via the development of new technologies, and an increase in globalization and transnational communication. Fitch distinguishes between the not uncommon practice of same-sex tango pairings dating back to the early days of tango, versus the more recent explicit gestures to queer the dance form, and the unequivocal desire to make social and personal queer dance connections through tango. The book further argues that while queer tango has helped subvert and change performative gender roles in tango worldwide and has been used by some as an outlet for activism and healing for the LGBTQ community, the Argentine tourism industry has also calculatingly profited from queer tango venues and events by responding to the growing population of wealthy gay tourists.
Titled “Touch, Healing, and Zen,” chapter 4 moves away from exotic or sexual depictions of tango and examines the potential of tango dance as a cathartic, comforting, meditative, transformative, and therapeutic activity, whose beneficiaries have included Alzheimer’s patients, individuals affected by Parkinson’s, the blind, the elderly, and those seeking mental health or generally looking to improve their quality of life. Fitch offers a critique of various films, organizations, books, and other sources that focus on tango dancing as a method or mediator for wellbeing. While she underscores the importance of touch and communication in tango’s healing power, she also alerts us to potential tango-healing charlatans or money-hungry dance instructors.
Devoted to “Activism, Social Media, Crisis, and Community,” the fifth chapter argues that “transnationalism and technology have created a global tango community that is both virtual and real” (159). By investigating certain historical moments, films, social organizations, Jewish and Muslim (and other) communities, and the Internet and social media, the chapter focuses on tango as a way of promoting globalized ties, engagement, and solidarity, and explores the intersection of tango, activism, and protest. We learn how tango is received and used by Argentines living abroad, and ponder issues regarding memory, fantasy, and authenticity as Fitch documents the fluctuations and deviations of tango as it travels around the globe.
Readers looking to gain acumen in tango music, lyrics, or song won’t find much in Global Tangos. Nor is this publication a folkloristic or ethnographic study of tango. Audiences will be pleased, however, with the substantial insights on tango dance not readily found elsewhere, and the significant contribution the book makes to dance scholarship and the globalization of popular and expressive forms. Melissa A. Fitch’s well-written volume adds to and complements the work of various tango scholars (among them, Marta E. Savigliano, Robert Farris Thompson, and Carolyn Merritt, to name just three). Her personal stories drawn from more than two decades of tango dancing further enrich Fitch’s prose. Global Tangos: Travels in the Transnational Imaginary is an important book recommended to readers from a range of fields: dance studies, folklore and cultural anthropology, tourism studies, literary and cultural studies, gender, feminist and queer studies, politics and economics, cultural geography, and Latin American and global studies.
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[Review length: 941 words • Review posted on January 18, 2017]