Marginality, Mayhem and Middle Class Anxieties: Imaginaries of Masculinity and Urban Violence in Contemporary Mexican and Brazilian Film Jeremy Lehnen
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University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository Latin American Studies ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations 7-1-2010 Marginality, Mayhem and Middle Class Anxieties: Imaginaries of Masculinity and Urban Violence in Contemporary Mexican and Brazilian Film Jeremy Lehnen Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/ltam_etds Recommended Citation Lehnen, Jeremy. "Marginality, Mayhem and Middle Class Anxieties: Imaginaries of Masculinity and Urban Violence in Contemporary Mexican and Brazilian Film." (2010). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/ltam_etds/2 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Latin American Studies ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. MARGINALITY, MAYHEM AND MIDDLE CLASS ANXIETIES: IMAGINARIES OF VIOLENCE AND MASCULINITY IN CONTEMPORARY MEXICAN AND BRAZILIAN FILM BY JEREMY L. LEHNEN B.A., Spanish, Gonzaga University, 1996 M.A., Spanish, Vanderbilt University, 1998 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Latin American Studies The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico JULY, 2010 DEDICATION A mi G. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my dissertation director Margo Milleret for her insights and guidance as well as the intellectual space and support that she offered me throughout the research and writing of this project. I would also like to express my gratitude to the other members of my committee: Diana Rebolledo, Rich Wood and Emanuelle Oliveira. Your criticism and encouragement was truly the backbone of this dissertation. Leila Lehnen, I would like to recognize your stimulating ideas, critical gaze, professional mentorship and unending support. They have inspired and guided this dissertation, my research and my life. Neither this work nor I would be the same without you. I would like to thank Arno Carlos Lehnen for the endless number of films and texts that he scoured the streets of Porto Alegre to find and send to me. Your dedication to research and teaching are inspirational. I would to show my appreciation to the Latin American and Iberian Institute as well as Amanda Wolfe iv and Kathy McKnight for their support and for keeping all the paperwork together when I didn’t. I would like to thank my Mother and family, I may be the first to do this, but without you all it never would have been possible (even if my brothers still don’t remember what I am researching). Lastly, I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to Maricarmen Zorrilla Medianero. The time I spent with you and your beautiful family marked the beginning of this life-long trajectory. v MARGINALITY, MAYHEM AND MIDDLE CLASS ANXIETIES: IMAGINARIES OF VIOLENCE AND MASCULINITY IN CONTEMPORARY MEXICAN AND BRAZILIAN FILM BY JEREMY L. LEHNEN Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Latin American Studies The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico July, 2010 vi MARGINALITY, MAYHEM AND MIDDLE CLASS ANXIETIES: IMAGINARIES OF VIOLENCE AND MASCULINITY IN CONTEMPORARY MEXICAN AND BRAZILIAN FILM by JEREMY L. LEHNEN B.A., SPANISH, GONZAGA UNIVERSITY, 1996 M.A., SPANISH, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, 1998 PH. D., LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO, 2010 ABSTRACT Marginality, Mayhem and Middle Class Anxieties: Imaginaries of Masculinity and Urban Violence in Contemporary Mexican and Brazilian Film is a comparative study that explores the confluence of cinematic discourse, violence, masculinity and constructions (or denial) of citizenship in present-day Latin America. My argument is that the thematization of violence and masculinity in contemporary Latin American film intercedes at a symbolic level into social relations that are increasingly mediated through images that depict what is socially permitted. This dissertation considers how film (re)structures perceptions of masculinity and its inter-linkages with cityscapes marked vii by social and material violence. Violence is at the same time the producer and the product of prevailing mediatic representations of social strife. As such, material and symbolic violence generate a spectacle of otherness (socioeconomic, ethnic, gendered) that purports to demarcate the symbolic limits of so-called legitimate society, often employing the peripheral male subject as the axis around which difference is articulated. On the one hand, films such as Amores perros (Mexico Iñárritu 2001) and Cidade de Deus (Brazil, Meirelles, Lund 2002) utilize paradigms of socio- economic and gender difference to naturalize the perception of the divided city by formulating the body of the peripheral male subject (and the metropolitan zones he inhabits) as a dangerous terrain. On the other hand, other productions, such as La Zona (Mexico, Spain, Plá 2007) and O homem do ano (Brazil, Fonseca 2004), using similar archetypes, call this vision into question by focusing on how middle class and elite anxieties create practices of violence as modes of social definition. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter I: Introduction ………………………………………………………………………… 1 Mexico Chapter II: The Men and the Boys: Social Anomie in Amores perros …………………………………………………………………………………………………… 35 Chapter III: Disjunctive Urbanisms: Exclusion, Fear and Rites of Passage in La Zona …………………………………………… 95 Brazil Chapter IV: Narratives of Fear, Constructions of Otherness: O homem do ano ………………………………………………… 137 Chapter V: Cidade de Deus: Spectacularizing Men, Aestheticizing Violence, Effacing Reality ……… 193 Chapter VI: Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………… 249 References Cited ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 261 ix Chapter I Introduction In the final decades of the twentieth century and the initial decade of the twenty-first century, narratives of violence have proliferated within Latin American cinematic production. Films such as the Mexican Amores perros (Iñárritu 2000) and the Brazilian Cidade de Deus (Meirelles 2002) have become both national and international box office blockbusters by projecting the spectacle of violence upon the silver screen. These films are part of what Christian León has denominated a "Cine de la Marginalidad." This body of works thematizes urban violence and what many directors claim to be the gritty reality of marginal subjects within the continent's cityscapes. These cinematic works appear to dialogue with newspaper and television headlines that broadcast daily what at times seems an ad nauseam recitation of accounts of metropolitan violence. Have these mediatic images become the governing medium of social citizenship, replacing in part inter-social relations? Within the visual spectacle of contemporary media and film, what are the narratives that crime films are constructing and how do they dialogue with social 1 perceptions of violence and dominant society's Other? This dissertation interrogates the confluence between cinema, violence and masculinity within Latin American society, more specifically Brazil and Mexico, attempting to better comprehend the role film plays in a social sphere that is mired in decreased sociability, fragmented cityscapes and an ever widening socio-economic gap between social sectors. At the contemporary moment, the growth of social (ethnic, cultural, sexual) and economic disparities between citizens has become exacerbated to the point that at times it appears that individuals are no longer able to subscribe to the idea of a shared civic arena or cultural discourse / identity. As the possibility of unity within the national sphere is increasingly questioned, James Holston and Arjun Appadurai have called for the development of "a framework of investigation that considers cities challenging, diverging from, and even replacing nations as the important space of citizenship…" (3). According to these critics, it is within the urban space that citizenship is being renegotiated and rearticulated. Paradoxically, what we find in the films that I contemplate in this dissertation is that these metropolitan centers also function as privileged arenas for the negation of citizenship through social and economic exclusion. 2 Within this frame of reference, José Luis Machinea contends that the population of the metropolises of Latin America has grown by 240% over the last three decades.1 Mass migrations to metropolitan hubs within Latin America have resulted in a human geography in which three quarters of the continent's population resides in urban spaces (Pedrazzini 40). With the massive influx of people to the cities, modern planning ideals to eliminate disorder and congestion that once served as guideposts of urban development are breaking down. Since the later half of the twentieth century, the rapid pace of urbanization coupled with the implementation of neoliberal policies that promote the privatization of water, energy, telecommunications, road and other infrastructural networks are creating parallel cities, what Steve Graham has referred to as "splintering urbanisms" (Graham 2001). This has resulted in cityscapes that increasingly embody a hubristic conurbation, one populated by those that are connected and have access to material goods and services, and the other by those cast aside and denied access to said benefits. Accordingly, division now governs the geo-social organization of many Latin American cities. Within 1 José Luis Machinea is the Executive Secretary