ABSTRACT
Mimesis (emulating someone else) is, as anthropologist D. Soyini Madison explains, “the mode where performance acts as a mirror or imitation of experience. When actor/dancer Channing Tatum competed on Lip Sync Battle, his performances surprisingly comprised two production numbers in drag, most notably as Beyoncé from her 2011 “Run the World (Girls)” music video, subjecting Tatum to a “test of masculinity.” Dance scholar Harmony Bench explains that in US culture, proving one’s masculinity is a constant test, often accomplished by renouncing anything “feminine.” This chapter theorizes how Tatum’s performance negotiated contemporary US gender expectations to maintain his finely crafted masculine image while still completing the mimetic task. In playing characters that read as a specific understanding of masculine (active, athletic, exhibitionistic), often in hyper-masculine settings (sports, military, male strip clubs), viewers likewise understand Tatum’s movements and dances to be masculine in quality and aesthetic, as seen in his Step Up performance.
