Celluloid Nationalism and Other Melodramas: From Post-Revolutionary Mexico to fin de siglo Mexamerica

by Susan Dever

Overview

Celluloid Nationalism and Other Melodramas looks at representation and rebellion in times of national uncertainty. Moving from mid-century Mexican cinema to recent films staged in Los Angeles and Mexico City, Susan Dever analyzes melodrama's double function as a genre and as a sensibility, revealing coincidences between movie morals and political pieties in the civic-minded films of Emilio Fernández, Matilde Landeta, Allison Anders, and Marcela Fernández Violante. These filmmakers' rationally and emotionally engaged cinema—offering representations of indigenous peoples and poor urban women who alternately endorsed "civilizing" projects and voiced resistance to such totalization—both interrupts and sustains fictions of national coherence in an increasingly transnational world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780791486658
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	02/01/2012
Series:	SUNY series in Feminist Criticism and Theory
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	273
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Susan Dever is Associate Professor and Chair of Media Arts at the University of New Mexico.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Prologue

INTRODUCTION
Of Melodrama and Other Inspirations

Part I : Post-Revolutionary Mexico

1. Re-Birth of a Nation: On Mexican Movies, Museums, and María Félix

2. Las de abajo: Matilde Landeta's Mexican Revolution

3. Pimps, Prostitutes, and Politicos: Matilde Landeta's Trotacalles and the Regime of Miguel Alemán

Part II: Fin de Siglo Mexamérica

4. Neomelodrama as Participatory Ethnography: Allison Anders's Mi vida loca

5. The Last Judgment: Marcela Fernández Violante's Requiem (for) Melodrama

EPILOGUE
Deeds that Inspire Confidence

Notes

Bibliography

Index