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Mexican Transnational Cinema and Literature

by Maricruz Castro Ricalde (Volume editor) Mauricio Díaz Calderón (Volume editor) James Ramey (Volume editor)
Edited Collection 334 Pages

Summary

"It was a great night for Mexico, as usual." Donald Trump's words about Alejandro González Iñárritu on Oscars’ night 2014 were a preview of his now-notorious attitude toward Mexicans: "He's walking away with all the gold? Was it that good? I don´t hear that. It was certainly a big night for them." Although the future president’s comments were offensive, for scholars interested in transnational film and literature, his words were themselves pure gold. For they raise questions about "nation" as a category of representation. When we invoke "Mexican cinema," for example, we imply that some kind of "national cinema" exists – but what is a national cinema? Is the cinema made in the US a national cinema in the same way as that of Mexico’s? And is a film made by a foreigner in Mexico part of Mexican cinema? What does it mean for a film or a literary work to cross a border? And are borders to be defined in geographical terms only, or can they also be cast in terms of gender, sexual orientation, race, or language itself? This book, in short, reflects on the implications of the term "transnational" in relation to film and literature conceived – in any way, shape, or form – as "Mexican."

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Contents / Índice
  • List of Figures / Lista de figuras
  • Acknowledgements / Agradecimientos
  • Introduction: An Opening Note / Introducción: Primeras palabras (Maricruz Castro Ricalde / Mauricio Calderón Díaz / James Ramey)
  • Part I: Transnationalism and Postmodernism / Lo transnacional y lo posmoderno
  • 1. Transnational Cinema and Posthumanism (James Ramey)
  • 2. Imaginario alegórico y campo afectivo transnacional en El fin de la locura de Jorge Volpi y Arrecife de Juan Villoro (Alejandra Bernal)
  • 3. Plural Perspectivism: From Flag to Bodies in Batalla en el cielo (Eunha Choi)
  • 4. Trascendencia y fugacidad en Post Tenebras Lux (Silvia Álvarez-Olarra)
  • 5. Esther Seligson, más allá de las raíces (Lourdes Parra Lazcano)
  • Part II: Textual Movements and Displacements / Tránsitos y desplazamientos textuales
  • 6. Préstamos e intercambios: el cine de la Época de Oro en la gráfica popular mexicana (Maricruz Castro Ricalde)
  • 7. La escenificación de lo mexicano y la interpelación de un público nacional: la Noche Mexicana de 1921 (Manuel R. Cuellar)
  • 8. El cine mexicano en el conflicto de formar estereotipos nacionales (Carlos Belmonte Grey)
  • 9. Los afanes de un literato en la industria cinematográfica de la Época de Oro: Mariano Azuela y el cine (Álvaro Vázquez Mantecón)
  • 10. Similitudes genéricas y diferencias ideológicas en el cine hollywoodense y el cine mexicano clásico (Lauro Zavala)
  • 11. Horizontes transnacionales: hacia un cosmopolitismo estético entre el melo y el noir (Álvaro A. Fernández)
  • Part III: Migration and Borders / Migración y fronteras
  • 12. El norte norteado: dos películas sobre migrantes en la frontera–Estados Unidos (Danna Levin Rojo / Michelle Aguilar Vera)
  • 13. La significación en el documental Eco de la montaña de Nicolás Echevarría: un discurso de lo real histórico (Diego Augusto Salgado Bautista)
  • 14. Imágenes de migrantes y sueños americanos en Rosa Blanca y La Jaula de Oro (Roberto Domínguez Cáceres)
  • 15. La misma luna: arte e inmigración, una atractiva combinación sociocultural (Itzá Zavala-Garrett)
  • 16. El cuerpo femenino como metáfora del territorio-nación en Backyard: El traspatio de Carlos Carrera (Alicia Vargas Amésquita)
  • 17. Espiral: mutaciones sociales y permanencias (Mauricio Díaz Calderón)
  • Notes on Contributors / Nota sobre los colaboradores
  • Index of Proper Names / Índice onomástico
  • Index of Primary Works / Índice de obras primarias
  • Series index

← x | xi →

Figures / Figuras

Maricruz Castro Ricalde – Préstamos e intercambios: el cine de la Época de Oro en la gráfica popular mexicana

6.1.Vicente Morales, Adiós Nicanor (Colección Galas de México). Imagen cortesía de: Museo Soumaya, México.
6.2.Alfredo González, Adiós mi chaparrita, 1956 (Colección Galas de México). Imagen cortesía de: Museo Soumaya, México.
6.3.Luis Améndola, Serenata nocturna, mediados del siglo XX (Colección Galas de México). Imagen cortesía de: Museo Soumaya, México.

Manuel R. Cuellar – La escenificación de lo mexicano y la interpelación de un público nacional: la Noche Mexicana de 1921

7.1.‘La Noche Mexicana en el Bosque de Chapultepec’, El Universal Ilustrado (29 de septiembre de 1921). Imagen cortesía de: Biblioteca Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, México.
7.2.‘Ecos del Centenario’, El Universal Ilustrado (13 de octubre de 1921). Imagen cortesía de: Biblioteca Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público, México.

Álvaro A. Fernández – Horizontes transnacionales: hacia un cosmopolitismo estético entre el melo y el noir

11.1.El hombre sin rostro (Juan Bustillo Oro, 1950), ejemplo de ‘melo noir’ mexicano. Cortesía de: Centro de Investigación y Estudios Cinematográficos, Universidad de Guadalajara (ahora Fondo Emilio García Riera, Biblioteca Pública del Estado de Jalisco ‘Juan José Arreola’). ← xi | xii →
11.2.El suavecito (Fernando Méndez, 1950), reminiscencias del noir. Cortesía de: Centro de Investigación y Estudios Cinematográficos, Universidad de Guadalajara (ahora Fondo Emilio García Riera, Biblioteca Pública del Estado de Jalisco ‘Juan José Arreola’).

Diego Augusto Salgado Bautista – La significación en el documental Eco de la montaña de Nicolás Echevarría: un discurso de lo real histórico

13.1.Santos de la Torre en Zacatecas. Cortesía de: Cuadro Negro, S. de R. L. de C. V.
13.2.Cartel promocional institucional del mural de Santos en Paris. Cortesía de: Cuadro Negro, S. de R. L. de C. V.
13.3 Escenas cotidianas de la vida de Santos y su familia (1). Cortesía de: Cuadro Negro, S. de R. L. de C. V.
13.4.Escenas cotidianas de la vida de Santos y su familia (2). Cortesía de: Cuadro Negro, S. de R. L. de C. V.
13.5.Ejemplo de mirada wixárrica hacia el espectador. Cortesía de: Cuadro Negro, S. de R. L. de C. V.

Itzá Zavala-Garrett – La misma luna: arte e inmigración, una atractiva combinación sociocultural

← xii | xiii →

Acknowledgements / Agradecimientos

The chapters in this collection were presented in preliminary form as papers at the annual convention of the American Comparative Literature Association, held at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from 17 March to 20 March 2016. They were part of a special double seminar entitled ‘Mexican (Trans)national Cinema, Visual Culture, and Literature’, organized by the editors of this volume under the auspices of the Film Studies Network of Mexico (Red CACINE), with research presented by twenty-four scholars working in Mexico, the United States, Canada, and England. This was the first seminar of its size conducted entirely in Spanish in the history of the ACLA convention, and it led to our first contact with Peter Lang Publishing, and thereby to the initiation of the book series ‘Transamerican Film and Literature’, of which Mexican Transnational Cinema and Literature is the first volume.

We wish to thank the organizers of the ACLA convention for accepting our double-seminar proposal in what we know was a crowded year. We also express our most sincere gratitude to Peter Lang Publishing – in particular, our extraordinary editor, Emma Clarke – for helping us launch this adventure and for giving us invaluable feedback all along the way. This project has already broken new ground by bringing together scholars from many parts of the world who focus on Mexican film, literature, and other forms of cultural expression from a transnational order of observation. We would therefore like to thank all of the contributors to this volume for their chapters, which strongly testify to the value of transnational, interdisciplinary research. We would also like to express our deep gratitude to the two anonymous peer-reviewers whose generous, erudite, and inspiring feedback on each and every chapter enriched this volume enormously. We also thank the School of Humanities and Education of the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (Tec de Monterrey), as well as the Research Group ‘Communication and Cultural Studies’. Finally, we are indebted to the Humanities Department and the ← xiii | xiv → Research Group ‘Expression and Representation’ of the Metropolitan Autonomous University, Cuajimalpa Campus (UAM-C), for providing support for various scholars to attend the ACLA convention at Harvard, with funding from the Film Studies Network of Mexico (Red CACINE) via Mexico’s federal Education Secretariat (DSA-SEP).

*

Los capítulos en este volumen fueron presentados en forma preliminar como ponencias en la convención anual de la Asociación Americana de Literatura Comparada (ACLA, por sus siglas en inglés), realizada en la Universidad de Harvard en Cambridge, Massachusetts, del 17 al 20 de marzo de 2016. Éstas formaron parte del doble seminario titulado ‘Mexican (Trans)national Cinema, Visual Culture, and Literature’, organizado por los editores del presente volumen bajo el auspicio de la Red de Cuerpos Académicos que investigan sobre Cine (Red CACINE), en el cual participaron veinticuatro estudiosos provenientes de México, los Estados Unidos, Canadá e Inglaterra. Este fue el primer seminario de ese tamaño en la historia de las convenciones de la ACLA que fue llevado a cabo completamente en español. Allí se estableció contacto con la Editorial Peter Lang, y así, se dio inicio a la serie de libros ‘Transamerican Film and Literature’, de la cual Mexican Transnational Cinema and Literature es el primer volumen.

Quisiéramos agradecer a los organizadores de la convención de la ACLA por aceptar nuestro doble seminario, a pesar de haber sido un año marcadamente concurrido. Igualmente, queremos expresar nuestra gratitud a la Editorial Peter Lang – particularmente, a nuestra extraordinaria editora, Emma Clarke – por ayudarnos a lanzar esta aventura y por ofrecernos su invaluable asesoramiento durante todo el proceso. El proyecto ya ha abierto nuevas posibilidades en nuestro campo académico, al reunir estudiosos provenientes de diversas partes del mundo quienes se enfocan en la cinematografía y literatura mexicanas, así como en otras formas de expresión cultural, siempre conceptualizadas desde la óptica de lo transnacional. Es por ello que nos gustaría agradecer a todos los participantes de este volumen por sus capítulos, los cuales dan testimonio de la relevancia actual de los estudios transnacionales y de la investigación interdisciplinaria. ← xiv | xv → De igual manera, nuestro profundo reconocimiento a nuestros dos pares revisores, quienes con su generosidad, erudición e inspiradores comentarios hacia cada uno de los capítulos, enriquecieron inmensamente este volumen. Asimismo, agradecemos a la Escuela de Humanidades y Educación del Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, y al Grupo de Investigación ‘Comunicación y Estudios Culturales’. Finalmente, estamos en deuda con el Departamento de Humanidades y el Cuerpo Académico ‘Expresión y Representación’ de la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Unidad Cuajimalpa (UAM-C), por el apoyo otorgado a varios de los participantes a la convención de la ACLA, en Harvard, con financiamiento de la Red de Cuerpos Académicos que investigan sobre Cine (Red CACINE), vía la Secretaría de Educación Pública (DSA-SEP). ← xv | xvi →

← xvi | 1 →

MARICRUZ CASTRO RICALDE, MAURICIO CALDERÓN DÍAZ AND JAMES RAMEY

Introduction: An Opening Note

‘It was a great night for Mexico, as usual’. Although it would be several months before Donald Trump announced his presidential campaign by referring to Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals, and by promising to force Mexico to build an immense wall along its 2000-mile northern border, his words about Alejandro González Iñárritu on Oscars’ night 2014 constituted the first distinct sign of his attitude toward Mexicans: ‘The whole thing is ridiculous. This guy kept getting up and up and up. What’s he doing? He’s walking away with all the gold? Was it that good? I don’t hear that. It was certainly a big night for them’.1

Although the future US president’s comments were certainly offensive, for scholars interested in the study of nationalism and transnationalism in cinema and literature, his words were themselves pure gold, for they raise questions about ‘nation’ as a category of representation. At the same time, his comments foreshadowed conceptual coordinates recently on the rise in the most conservative discourses of industrialized nations, in their stark delineations between ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’, between ‘here’ and ‘there’. At stake is a revisionist erasure of recent history, which denies the transnational codependencies that originally forged the wealth and privilege of those very nations. Boundaries return, movements are restricted, and the national is reconceived as material identity.

The present volume seeks to stimulate reflection along three axes: the transnational; the nation and the national; and representations of the local ← 1 | 2 → and the global. The first section (‘Transnationalism and Postmodernism’) focuses on the theorization and textual formation of contemporary trends in Mexican and transnational film and literature. The second section (‘Textual Movements and Displacements’) examines influences, dialogues, and interchanges between disciplines and genres, so as to offer a self-reflexive panorama of the construction of ‘the Mexican’. Finally, the third section (‘Migration and Borders’) explores filmic texts that, on the one hand, register self-defining spaces (local, regional, and international), and, on the other hand, spaces viewed as an inescapable necessity: in particular, the United States as a totalizing aspiration.

The questions, clearly, are manifold. When we invoke ‘Mexican cinema’, for example, we imply that some kind of ‘national cinema’ exists – but what is a national cinema? Is the cinema made in the US, with its legion of foreigners working in Hollywood, a national cinema in the same way as that of Mexico’s? Is a film made by a foreigner in Mexico, like Michael Rowe’s 2010 Año Bisiesto, part of Mexican cinema in the same way that Alejandro González Iñárritú’s Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015), or Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity (2013), are now (much to Trump’s chagrin) Oscar-consecrated works of US cinema history? But also, do those Hollywood productions somehow redound to the honor of Mexican national cinema? How does the reception of such transnational films differ for viewers in different countries? What does it say about the Mexican film industry that so many of its directors and technicians decide to pursue their careers abroad, and, indeed, earn their recognition there? Also, what does it mean for a film to cross a border? Are cinematic borders to be defined in geographical terms only, or can they also be cast in terms of gender, sexual orientation, race, or even film language itself? Furthermore, how do models of nation-representation and border crossing relate to Mexico’s indigenous ‘first nations’, whose concepts of nation and borders tend to differ radically from Euroamerican-imposed paradigms? Finally, might these questions about cinema, with all the specificity due to that particular art form, apply just as well to literature? Is there a difference between the national or transnational dynamics of cinema and, say, that of poetry, short fiction, or novels, to name just a few genres? Or does each art form establish its own unique relationship with the economies of national representation and identity? ← 2 | 3 →

Details

Pages
ISBN (PDF)
9781787074996
ISBN (ePUB)
9781787075009
ISBN (MOBI)
9781787075016
DOI
10.3726/b13146
Language
English
Publication date
2017 (October)
Published
Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien, 2016.

Biographical notes

Maricruz Castro Ricalde (Volume editor) Mauricio Díaz Calderón (Volume editor) James Ramey (Volume editor)

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