“Styling Blackness: White Uses of African American English in Hollywood Film” is an R-rated lecture, speaker Mary Bucholtz warned.

“The language used in it may be offensive,” she told the attendees.

But when the crowd replied with a laugh and no one darted for the door, Bucholtz, a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, began her lecture.

The latest in the lectures in Language & Linguistics series put on at Cal State Bakersfield by Sigma Tau Delta, the International Honors Society, “Styling Blackness” took place on Jan. 21 at 7 p.m. in the CSUB Dezember Reading Room in the Walter Stiern Library.

In it, Bucholtz spoke about films featuring white characters speaking in “African American Vernacular English, or AAVE,” as Bucholtz called it. These characters she referred to as “wiggers.”

“The word ‘wigger’ is really problematic, but it is widely known,” she said. “These films show white youth entering into alignment with black culture. In most films, the wigger is almost always male. Gender is key to how the wigger figure is understood.”

Although she said gender plays a role in understanding these types of characters, in this lecture she focused primarily on films featuring white male characters. In these films, the “wigger” characters practice one of two ideologies: “fronting” or “keeping it real,” according to Bucholtz.

“With fronting, the character is seen as inauthentic and compensating for gender failure,” she said. “With keeping it real, the white male character gets in touch with his true self.”

In both of these ideologies, the characters change the way they speak and adopt AAVE. Some of the characteristics of white Hollywood AAVE, Bucholtz said, include the deletion of the letter ‘r’ after vowels, pronunciation of “the” as “da,” pronunciation of “-ing” as “-in,” and the use of double or multiple negatives.

She stated several times throughout the lecture that white Hollywood AAVE is not the same as AAVE.

“Actors often draw from other actors’ AAVE portrayals. They’re simplistic and stereotypical,” she said. “The strategy of the producers is for the actors to sound black, but not too black.”

Bucholtz said that the most common term in white Hollywood AAVE is “yo.” Another common term in white Hollywood AAVE has proved more difficult.

“‘Nigga’ is the most problematic term,” Bucholtz said. “The lack of ‘r’ in theory makes it less problematic, but there’s a lot of debate on that.”

She explained how although the word is taboo, it is often used to prove “how real” a character is, that he can use it even in the presence of African Americans.

Bucholtz showed clips from movies to showcase both of the ideologies. For examples of “fronting,” she showed clips of “Can’t Hardly Wait,” “Waiting,” “Drive-Thru,” “Havoc” and “Malibu’s Most Wanted.” The “wigger” characters in these films are seen as “objects of ridicule or comic relief,” she said.

“Nobody wants to embrace this term wigger. They know it’s negative,” Bucholtz said of the “wigger” characters. “They are willfully blind not only to their own race but to others’ too.”

The examples she showed of “keeping it real” included clips from “Bringing Down the House” and “Bulworth.” In these films, Bucholtz said, the white character is an older man “gaining cultural cool” and finding himself by submerging himself into black culture.

“White Hollywood AAVE oversimplifies the complex structure of AAVE and perpetuates racial and gender stereotypes,” said Bucholtz. “In these films, the black males are seen as cool, tough and authentic, and the baby boomers self-actualize by ‘keeping it real.”

After her lecture, Bucholtz opened the floor to questions and comments. She was asked about the fashion of the “wigger” characters and said their clothes are reminiscent of “early 90s to mid-2000s” and are “really exaggerated.”

“These films mark a historic moment,” Bucholtz said. “I think now Hollywood has moved onto the bromance films.”

Bucholtz also touched on “real life wigger figures.”

“Vanilla Ice is the epitome of inauthenticity. He lied about his background and was kind of a teeny bopper rapper,” she said. “But Eminem is the iconic figure of a white male being accepted into a black culture.”