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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 - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - DOES THE PUBLIC'S EMBRACE OF JENNIFER LOPEZ'S ABUNDANT BUTT SIGNAL A CULTURAL REVOLUTION -- OR SIMPLY THE TRIUMPH OF WATERED-DOWN MULTICULTURALISM? BY ERIN J. AUBRY | If I had any doubts about the ascendancy of Jennifer Lopez's butt, they were put to rest during a recent stroll through a New York City airport. After arming myself with magazines to while away the three hours until flight time, I sat down and began with Vanity Fair. There, in the middle of a long narrative about the Reagans, dropped as coyly as a handkerchief, was a photo spread of Lopez. Its point of impact -- detonation, to be more exact -- was a shot of her from behind in which she peeked over one shoulder, clad in nothing but mules and a pair of old-fashioned briefs that rode strategically up over a high, rounded butt. Being a black woman with a similar (all right, bigger) endowment, I felt an odd mixture of pride and panic. Was this a passing Hollywood fancy or a giant step for butt-kind? A racially steeped fetish wrapped in the glitter of celebritude, one of the chief bibles of which is Vanity Fair? Would my own butt, which I have alternately embraced and lamented and written about extensively as a metaphor for tortuously unrealized black assimilation in America, finally get its aesthetic props? Would James Brown be called out of retirement to record a '90s version of his signature new-social-order anthem titled "Say It Loud, I Got Back and I'm Proud"? The short answer is it's far too early to tell. While the reviews of Lopez in her latest film have been wildly enthusiastic -- the L.A. Weekly rhapsodized bluntly about her "spectacular ass," the more restrained New Yorker dubbed her a bona fide "voluptuary" -- I reserve suspicions that folks are merely effusing over the appearance of a young actress in a romantic lead who isn't blond and/or appears to live entirely on Slim-Fast. But from where I sit -- and from what I sit on -- Lopez's butt, while certainly one to be admired, is of entirely modest proportions. I went to see "Out of Sight" with a woman friend who turned to me as the final credits were running and said, looking rather bewildered, "Where was the butt here? What in the world are you going to write about?" It was a good question. The movie was clever enough, but the heralded butt of its co-star, the current buzz of the industry and the alleged bellwether for better sexpot trends to come, was itself notably out of sight. Oh, it was evident in flashes -- a couple of side-view shots that threw it into startling relief and prompted a woman in the predominantly black audience to exclaim, with more confused alarm than admiration, "Sto-oo-oo-op!" No need for concern; Lopez in this movie is more worrywart than bombshell, ultimately another do-good woman who spends most of her time fretting about how to save an imperiled love interest. For all the butt brouhaha, Lopez is tightly reined in, and her shrink-wrap outfits are less sexualizing than symbolic of how limited her movement is before the camera. Hollywood may acknowledge the butt this time out, but it is still mightily uncertain about the crossover appeal of its owner. Of course, Lopez's butt is more acceptable than most because, like Halle Berry and many other women who date back to Lena Horne and long before, she appears racially ambiguous and therefore is more palatable to white audiences, a safe vehicle with which to indulge a café au lait fantasy. A pale face with a black butt is intriguing, titillating, as any reflection of a racial mélange has always been in this country; a black face with a black butt has always been worse than ordinary. N E X T__P A G E .|. A black butt in a white world ILLUSTRATION BY TIM BOWER