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ALSO TODAY Blue Glow "Cabin Boy" reunion on "Letterman"; PBS's underwater paradise Sharps & Flats Reviews of new music by the Beastie Boys, Br5-49, Primus, Baaba Maal, Shirley Horn and Ernest Ranglin RECENTLY IN ENTERTAINMENT Home Movies By Charles Taylor Matador: Almodóvar's paean to sex, violence, passion and death (07/14/98) American Squirm By Sarah Vowell Jennifer Lopez isn't the only one who thinks cruising criminals is fun (07/13/98) Small Soldiers Reviewed by Scott Rosenberg How much mayhem can a bunch of foot-high action figures incite? Plenty (07/10/98) Madeline Reviewed by Fiona Morgan The kid's got spunk (07/09/98) The son also rises By Dawn Eden After a lifetime of disappointments, Julian Lennon is finally doing it his way (07/08/98) BROWSE THE ENTERTAINMENT ARCHIVES FEATURES TELEVISION MOVIES MUSIC

BACK IS BEAUTIFUL | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - It's ironic that Lopez is obliged to walk a tightrope here. In her breakout role as Tex-Mex singer Selena Quintanilla in the biopic "Selena," the actress was not only thoroughly Latina, she was cast in part because her Puerto Rican heritage afforded her an ample butt -- one of the late Selena's defining physical characteristics (although Lopez still had to be padded to round out the picture). Her butt was shown to great effect in "Selena," but unfortunately the teenage abandon of that film is replaced in "Out of Sight" by a noir dourness that serves the butt not at all. Watching Lopez as Karen Sisko, sitting in a hotel bar, dressed in a turtleneck and hunched grimly over a drink, I found myself wishing she would leap up and break into "Bidi Bidi Bom Bom." Not that I think that all Latin types should keep a set of maracas handy in case of an ethnic emergency, but I swear it felt like Lopez was doing the old passe blanc. If her butt was out of the closet, she wasn't -- she moved in an entirely white world (dad, boyfriend, would-be lover). It's a familiar enough situation to many folks of color, but that doesn't mean we forsake our cultural selves or completely ignore the tension inherent in living a split-screen existence. I may be asking Steven Soderbergh ("Sex, Lies and Videotape") for too much here, but what is he if not a director of story and nuance? And once again, the most vicious criminals were black or otherwise colored (Don Cheadle, Luis Guzmán) while the most virtuous outlaws were white (George Clooney, Stephen Zahn, Albert Brooks). In the old black/white, good/evil dichotomy, Lopez really had no choice. I don't want all of this to sound too much like a complaint, or sour grapes. It's gratifying to know that the moviegoing public may be more enamored at this point of Jennifer Lopez's natural fleshiness than of Demi Moore's surgically enhanced breasts. At the very least, the prominence of Lopez's butt is a crucial bit of redress for Hollywood's long history of mangling ethnic sexuality or ignoring it outright. Movies have passed over many a sho-nuff butt, and when it does let one out for the day, it tends to do so clownishly, pornographically -- think witless "urban" comedies like "Booty Call," "B.A.P.S.," "How to be a Player" (or the white version, "Bulworth"). The paltry few black leading ladies who have managed to avoid such poor script choices are consigned to the opposite extreme, to a kind of ennobled frigidity that Whoopi Goldberg and Angela Bassett have perfected over the years. Too bad, because Bassett, to say nothing of her butt, deserves better. I don't ascribe to many conspiracy theories, but this industry practice of presenting black women as either pieces of ass or completely asexual -- thereby denying them an essential part of Hollywood allure -- is too concerted to chalk up to coincidence. But, thanks to Elmore Leonard, the pattern may be breaking; we actually had a taste of butt liberation last Christmas with "Jackie Brown." Pam Grier is much more kick-butt than Lopez in her turn as a Leonard heroine. Grier is an unapologetically black woman who bristles with a languid intelligence, while her butt (and bust) is eagerly showcased by Grier admirer Quentin Tarantino. Lopez's sexuality, in contrast, is cautious and done-up in "Out of Sight." While you can practically see the hovering shadow of a stylist in all of her shots, ensuring that a tendril of auburn-tinted hair falls at just the right angle across her manicured brow, you get the sense that Grier picked all her clothes, blue collars and all, bought her own cigarettes by the carton, did her hair daily over a bathroom sink. Grier's relaxed presence is far more visceral: The opening shot of "Jackie Brown," which simply follows the actress as she wends her way through an airport in stewardess garb, is much more sensual than the shot of Lopez leaning over a car trunk in a tight skirt, butt literally in our faces, straining to ask us, "Ain't I something?" The comparison might seem a little unfair: Grier is older than Lopez by a generation and has had ample experience in the zowie action flicks in which she learned, if nothing else, to put her tongue in cheek and let the devil take hindmost. Hollywood made little of Grier's reappearance, partly because of her age but mostly because the industry has always considered black sexuality -- real sexuality, not the rap-video variety that is rooted, ironically, in the '70s blaxploitation films with which Grier is identified -- a conundrum. Grier, as far as the business is concerned, despite all evidence to the contrary, had no butt. Steeliness, cool, pecuniary troubles, other hallmarks of put-upon black women, yes; sexiness, longing, a prediliction for romance, no (a shame, as Grier had all these qualities in abundance). And don't even talk to me about romance-novel pabulum like "Waiting to Exhale." The problem with "Out of Sight" is that Lopez is granted a butt, but it is undone by the fact that her character is so ethnically neutral. The industry is so busy congratulating itself for mainstreaming a possibly African-descended Latina, for putting a body type up front that is not a Gwyneth Paltrow slat, that it fails to allow Lopez anything else of interest. Many people will argue that this movie is at least a triumph of multiculturalism -- a term that denotes little more than a fuzzy, New Age racism parading around in the sheep's clothing of progress. Divorced from its native attitude, this butt lacks bite. SALON | July 15, 1998 Erin J. Aubry is a staff writer at L.A. Weekly.