Mexico Unmanned : The Cultural Politics of Masculinity in Mexican Cinema

Iconic images of machismo in Mexico's classic cinema affirm the national film industry's historical alignment with the patriarchal ideology intrinsic to the post-revolutionary state's political culture. Filmmakers gradually turned away from the cultural nationalism of mexicanidad, but has the underlying gender paradigm been similarly abandoned? Films made in the past two decades clearly reflect transformations instituted by a neoliberal regime of cultural politics, yet significant elements of macho mythology continue to be rearticulated. Mexico Unmanned examines these structural continuities in recent commercial and auteur films directed by Alfonso Cuarón, Carlos Cuarón, Carlos Reygadas, Amat Escalante, and Julio Hernández Cordón, among others. Informed by cinema's role in Mexico's modern/colonial gender system, Samanta Ordóñez draws out recurrent patterns of signification that reproduce racialized categories of masculinity and bolster a larger network of social hierarchies. In so doing, Ordóñez dialogues with current intersectional gender theory, fresh scholarship on violence in the neoliberal state, and the latest research on Mexican cinema.ISBN : 9781438486291 Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Preface Introduction I. Rethinking Mexican Cinema, the Crisis of Masculinity, and the Patriarchal Contract II. Neoliberal Cultural Politics III. Formations of Machismo IV. From Mestizaje to Malformation V. Overview Chapter One Old Macho Mythologies in New Mexican Cinema— Y tu mamá también and Rudo y Cursi I. Bridging National and Neoliberal Masculinities II. The Meanings of Malformed Machismo III. The Postnational Evolutionary Narrative of Y tu mamá también IV. The Impossibility of Masculine Transformation in Rudo y Cursi Chapter Two Demystifying Machismo in Batalla en el cielo and Post tenebras lux I. Carlos Reygadas: A Realism of Mexican Unreality II. Unseeing Machismo III. Masculine Malformation in Batalla en el cielo IV. The Ordering Gaze of Mexican Patriarchy in Post tenebras lux Chapter Three Manufacturing Malformed Masculinities in Heli I. Barbarous Geographies in Mexican Cinema II. Amat Escalante’s Mediating Aesthetic III. The Absent Referent of Narco Violence IV. Futile Forms of Masculine Empowerment Chapter Four Neoliberal Masculinities between Romance and Realism in Te prometo anarquía I. Loving/Killing Each Other: Images of Mexican Men in Neoliberal Culture II. Networks of Empathy in Queer Cinema III. Material Relations and Masculine Malformation under Neoliberalism IV. Reasserting Masculine Hierarchies Afterword Notes Works Cited Index "Demonstrates how transhistorical myths of masculinity are both perpetuated and challenged in recent Mexican cinema"-- Provided by publisher