The Language of Selling Ethnicity: Satirizing the Commodification of Culture, Theatre, and Identity in the Ali & Ali Plays

Abstract

If the exoticization of non-mainstream ethnic groups through the deployment of language and stereotypes is a pervasive, and successful, marketing strategy in today’s Western media, then critical, deconstructive play with such language and stereotypes can act as a powerful tool for critiquing contemporary North American discourses surrounding race and culture. This thesis examines how Marcus Youssef, Guillermo Verdecchia, and Camyar Chai use satire and irony to take up this project in their collaboratively-written play The Adventures of Ali & Ali and the aXes of Evil and its sequel Ali & Ali: The Deportation Hearings. The eponymous characters Ali and Ali attempt to sell their plays to their audiences by embracing and manipulating linguistic stereotypes associated with ethnic “others.” This thesis explores these plays as reflections on language as a tool for strategic self-exoticization, while also examining their implication of theatre, playwright, and audience member in the commodification of “otherness.”