ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on shifts from characters' distanced encounters with Other cultures through engagement with recorded music, to a more immersive experience of the culture of the Other. It considers how critical cultural borrowing and musical agency interact in Save the Last Dance, a film in which a white protagonist participates more directly with black music and dance. This film tells the story of Sara (Julia Stiles), a white teenage girl who must move in with her father in a working-class, predominantly African-American neighbourhood in Chicago after the death of her mother. Sara's comment about moving to Bosnia thus reveals not only a shift in cultural perspective but also a naïve ignorance of the harsh realities that some young people face living in US cities. Save the Last Dance is a film about a girl coming to terms with the death of her mother. It is also a film about an interracial relationship.
