This Is the Remix

Abstract

Chapter 2 provides an analysis of how poet, performer, and activist Regie Cabico’s Filipino Shuffle challenges the very definition of hip-hop theater by pushing the artistic medium to include works, subjectivities, and communities that do not overtly fall under the parameters of what constitutes hip-hop. Cabico uses humor, in the form of parody and camp, alongside the hip-hop practices of sampling and remixing to articulate a nuyorican aesthetic that enables his resistance to stereotypical constructions of ethnic and racial identity. This chapter argues that Cabico’s queer Filipino reimagining of the mini-series The Thorn Birds (1983) and the films Hollywood Shuffle (MGM, 1987) and Monster’s Ball (Lionsgate, 2002) in Filipino Shuffle broadens the scope of hip-hop theater as a performance genre, and helps to foster other critical interventions that serve as necessary tools for queer survival.