Interracial Attraction: Male Bodies on Television and in the Soccer Field

Abstract

Navarro-Ayala shows how Moroccan writer Rachid O.’s narratives Chocolat chaud (1998) and L’enfant ébloui (1995) present a teenager who turns to television in the process of subjectivity formation as an effect of transculturalism. French television becomes a source of homoerotic fantasy, which awakens desire in the local Moroccan youngster to search for a partner with ethnic and racial differences. Navarro-Ayala focuses on the internalization that turns a collective scene into an intimate space to explain how the teenager develops a sensual perception and affective register. Rachid’s fascination for the blond-haired, blue-eyed French boy he meets through transcultural information technology materializes into a real encounter in the soccer field. Here, the sense of touch solicits an interconnectedness of private desires and public behavior.