Mexico on Main Street: Transnational Film Culture in Los Angeles before World War II (Latinidad: Transnational Cultures in the United States)

In the early decades of the twentieth-century, Main Street was the heart of Los Angeles’s Mexican immigrant community. It was also the hub for an extensive, largely forgotten film culture that thrived in L.A. during the early days of Hollywood. Drawing from rare archives, including the city’s Spanish-language newspapers, Colin Gunckel vividly demonstrates how this immigrant community pioneered a practice of transnational media convergence, consuming films from Hollywood and Mexico, while also producing fan publications, fiction, criticism, music, and live theatrical events. __Mexico on Main Street__ locates this film culture at the center of a series of key debates concerning national identity, ethnicity, class, and the role of Mexicans within Hollywood before World War II. As Gunckel shows, the immigrant community’s cultural elite tried to rally the working-class population toward the cause of Mexican nationalism, while Hollywood sought to position them as part of a lucrative transnational Latin American market. Yet ironically, both Hollywood studios and Mexican American cultural elites used the media to present negative depictions of working-class Mexicans, portraying their behaviors as a threat to middle-class respectability. Rather than simply depicting working-class immigrants as pawns of these power players, however, Gunckel reveals their active participation in the era’s film culture. Gunckel’s innovative approach combines media studies, urban history, and ethnic studies to reconstruct a distinctive, richly layered immigrant film culture. __Mexico on Main Street__ demonstrates how a site-specific study of cultural and ethnic issues challenges our existing conceptions of U.S. film history, Mexican cinema, and the history of Los Angeles. Constructing Mexican Los Angeles: Competing Images Of An Immigrant Population -- Spectacles Of High Morality And Culture: Theatrical Culture And Aspirations -- Of Mexican Community In The 1920s -- The Audible And The Invisible: The Transition To Sound And De-mexicanization Of Hollywood -- Fashionable Charros And Chinas Poblanas: Mexican Cinema And The Dilemma Of The Comedia Ranchera -- Now We Have Mexican Cinema?: Navigating Transnational Mexicanidad In A Moment Of Crisis -- Conclusion: Hola México/hello Mexico. Colin Gunckel. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 223-234) And Index. Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Constructing Mexican Los Angeles: Competing Visions of an Immigrant Population 2 Spectacles of High Morality and Culture: Theatrical Culture and Constructions of the Mexican Community in the 1920s 3 The Audible and the Invisible: The Transition to Sound and the De-Mexicanization of Hollywood 4 Fashionable Charros and Chinas Poblanas: Mexican Cinema and the Dilemma of the Comedia Ranchera 5 Now We Have Mexican Cinema? Navigating Transnational Mexicanidad in a Moment of Crisis Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index