How Fox Packaged Homophobia as Entertainment

On the May 21st episode of Fox’s reality dance competition show So You Think You Can Dance, viewers were treated to the unusual sight of an interracial couple dancing the Samba during the Denver auditions.

As the segment opened, the camera focused on a Caucasian man waiting for his partner to come out of the ladies room. The voice of the show’s host Cat Deeley narrates the scene saying, “It’s three o’clock in the afternoon in the Mile High City and the auditions have hit their groove. But so far, it’s been all about the white people. In the lobby, ballroom dancer Mark Jackson waits for his partner … Hisako.”

And as Hisako, an Asian woman, exits the ladies room, a gong is struck and the camera zooms in on a Chinese restaurant in the background.

The two then walk in slow motion as the song “Turning Japanese” by The Vapors plays in the background. After Mark and Hisako introduce themselves to the camera, we cut to shots of the couple twirling about with a seemingly special emphasis shown on how intimate the Samba can be.

During the actual audition itself, the judges – Nigel Lythgoe, Mary Murphy and Sonya Tayeh – exchange puzzled looks and at one point, Lythgoe covers his eyes as if he can’t believe what he’s seeing.

The dancers do well until an unfortunate fall, eliciting laughter from Lythgoe. Nonetheless, he has relatively positive things to say about the dancers including that their styles were good and they were both good and strong – as long as he ignores the fact it was a white man dancing with an Asian woman.

Lythgoe then explains that he fears the couple would alienate many of their viewers and that while they’ve had white people dance with Asian people before, it was never actually in each other’s arms.

Though both also have some nice things to say about the pair, judges Murphy and Tayeh also each express their confusion about the two dancing together.

Lythgoe ends by suggesting that he’d like to see the white man dance with a white woman and the Asian woman dance with an Asian man. He even jokes that they might like it. The two advance to the choreography round where we see them briefly dance with their new partners. The scene then cuts to each being told they won’t be advancing any further.