Ruins and Riots: Transnational Currents in Mexican Cinema
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RUINS AND RIOTS: TRANSNATIONAL CURRENTS IN MEXICAN CINEMA by Kirsten Strayer B.A., Georgetown University, 1998 M.A., University of Pittsburgh, 2002 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2009 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH FACULTY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Kirsten Strayer It was defended on September 11, 2009 and approved by Dr. Lucy Fischer, Distinguished Professor, English Department Dr. Adam Lowenstein, Associate Professor, English Department Dr. John Beverley, Professor, Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Marcia Landy, Distinguished Professor, English Department ii Copyright © by Kirsten Strayer 2009 iii RUINS AND RIOTS: TRANSNATIONAL CURRENTS IN MEXICAN CINEMA Kirsten Strayer, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2009 The dissertation examines 1950s, 60s, and 70s Mexican émigré cinema through aesthetic and political strategies that critically reassess national cinematic self-representation. I discuss multiple factors, including film texts, modes of production, immigration policies, historical discourses and cinematic scholarship in order to understand particular shifts in the images of Mexican national identity. While Mexican cinema’s “Golden Age” (approx. 1935-55) is characterized by consistent and regularized images of Mexico’s nationhood, I argue that the mid-twentieth century texts undermine homogeneous images of its national body. I explore the works of several émigré filmmakers as case studies that demonstrate how intellectual projects and mobile aesthetic strategies are produced from positions of exile. These films give rise to alternative political and social filmmaking practices other than dominant nationalist visual universes. For instance, I show that the films’ grotesque and surrealist predilections emerge from different national traditions and act as palimpsests without homogenizing their differences. While these modes utilize divergent intellectual and artistic forms, they simultaneously bring to the forefront tensions and discontinuities among national traditions that cannot be readily reconciled. In so doing, they fragment earlier “Golden Age” figurations of the Mexican people, particularly dominant tropes of rural and urban identities. I illustrate how these national traditions are in dialogue with the transatlantic influences that inform and underlie the émigré films of the era. By exploring their affinities to such avant-garde theoretical traditions as the theater of the absurd and popular European forms such as the Italian western, I iv contend that these works attempt to redefine national spectacle by seeking to map international practices onto regional mythologies, topographies and institutions. These films undermine myths of the nation-state that saturate Mexican cinema and popular culture, including notions of post- revolutionary popular unity and official modes of historical narration. I argue that mid-twentieth century filmmaking aptly illustrates contradictory political, social, and aesthetic impulses at work in the twentieth-century. In examining this era of filmmaking, I show how it anticipates contemporary Mexican cinema’s reliance on exiled and dissident filmmakers (e.g. Guillermo del Toro and Arturo Ripstein) and their migratory artistic practices that participate in twenty-first century cultural and political thinking. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................................IX 1.0 INTRODUCTION: A TRADITION OF TRANSNATIONAL CINEMA IN MEXICO........................................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 THE QUESTION OF NATION IN CINEMA .................................................. 1 1.2 THE NATIONAL IN GOLDEN AGE CINEMA ............................................. 7 1.3 NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS ..................................... 12 1.4 POSSIBLE ROLE OF THE TRANSNATIONAL ......................................... 17 2.0 INTERNATIONAL MODERNITY AND “COSMOPOLITAN NATIONALISM”: THE PARADOX OF MEXICAN CINEMA IN ¡QUE VIVA MÉXICO! AND LA MUJER DEL PUERTO............................................................................................... 23 2.1 THE UNFINISHED PROJECT OF ¡QUE VIVA MÉXICO! ........................ 23 2.2 EISENSTEIN’S SERAPE: BINDING INDIGENOUS TO MESTIZO......... 31 2.3 MODERNITY AND MEXICAN FILM: THE ARCHITECTURE OF A NATIONAL CINEMA....................................................................................................... 43 2.4 COSMOPOLITAN NATIONALISM: EXCESS AND MODERNITY IN LA MUJER DEL PUERTO ...................................................................................................... 51 2.5 CONCLUSION .................................................................................................. 66 vi 3.0 LUIS BUÑUEL’S SPANISH TINGE: ALLEGORY AND CRUELTY IN TRANSNATIONAL CINEMA.................................................................................................. 68 3.1 EXILE IN MEXICO.......................................................................................... 68 3.2 EUROPEAN AVANT-GARDE AND MEXICAN GENRE FILM: BUÑUEL’S HETEROGENEOUS OEUVRE .................................................................. 73 3.3 LOS OLVIDADOS: BUÑUEL’S EXILIC FILMMAKING ........................... 77 3.4 NAZARÍN: NATURALISM AND ALLEGORY ............................................ 85 3.5 SIMÓN DEL DESIERTO: THE ANTIDELUVIAN IN THE CONTEMPORARY......................................................................................................... 110 3.6 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 120 4.0 MEXICAN CINEMA AND THE ANARCHY OF TIME.................................... 122 4.1 CRISIS, NATION-BUILDING, AND NATIONAL CINEMA.................... 122 4.2 ALCORIZA’S THEATRICAL CINEMA..................................................... 129 4.3 THE GROTESQUE IN EL ESQUELETO DE LA SEÑORA MORALES .. 133 4.4 TLAYUCAN: MIRACLE AND CRISIS......................................................... 143 4.5 TARAHUMARA AND THE ANARCHY OF TIME..................................... 158 4.6 CONCLUSION: MECÁNICA NACIONAL AND THE MEGALOPOLIS. 170 5.0 THE SPAGHETTI AND ITS DOUBLE: ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY’S THEATRICAL CINEMA........................................................................................................ 176 5.1 “YOU HAD TO BE THERE”—NEW YORK’S CULT CINEMA CRAZE AND MEXICO CITY’S EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA................................................ 176 5.2 NATIONAL THEATER/LOCAL CINEMA ................................................ 185 vii 5.3 THE DOUBLE OF THE DOUBLE: THE WESTERN RE-EMERGES AS THE CHILI WESTERN.................................................................................................. 192 5.4 ARTAUD’S THEATER IN EL TOPO........................................................... 208 5.5 CONCLUSION: “THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO”.................................. 214 6.0 THE EXILE’S PROGENY: INSECTS, INDUSTRIALISTS, MOTHERS AND MADMEN IN THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY ........................................................ 221 6.1 REVIVIFICATION WITH NAFTA.............................................................. 221 6.2 PROFANE ILLUMINATION........................................................................ 227 6.3 THE CONTINENTAL GROTESQUE.......................................................... 238 BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................................................................... 249 viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project would not have been possible without the support of many wonderful faculty members, colleagues and friends. I am particularly indebted to the English Department at the University of Pittsburgh for supporting me throughout my years of study and the Cultural Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh for awarding me its pre-doctoral fellowship. I would like to thank all the faculty and graduate students I’ve met at the University for their intellectual seriousness, stimulating discussions and support, particularly Amanda Klein, Kara Anderson, Brenda Glascott, Amy Borden, Henry Veggian, Anja Ulanowicz, Vladimir Padunov, Valerie Krips, Richard Purcell, Nancy Condee, Joshua Lund, Jane Feuer, Mark Anderson, Daniel Morgan, Dana Och, Stanley Shoshtak, John Trenz, Daniel Wollenberg, Melissa Lenos and Carleton Grotz. I would particularly like to thank Manisha and Anustup Basu for their longtime friendship, inexhaustible patience, and estimable thoughtfulness. They embody for me the best ways that we can be serious and conscientious peers with each other. Ignacio López Vicuña helped me develop a more sophisticated understanding of Latin American media and urban studies, and was more importantly the world’s best apartment-mate. I would also like to thank my dissertation committee, Lucy Fischer, Adam Lowenstein, and John Beverley, for their continued and serious contributions to my work. The discussions I’ve enjoyed with them have helped me to become a better scholar, writer and teacher, and their questions and comments consistently challenged my thinking. I must also particularly thank ix Marcia Landy, who contributions to my thinking and writing exceed my ability to thank her in such a short space. Her generous commitment