Expanding the Popular Culture Debates: Puertorriqueñas, Hollywood, and Cultural Identity

Studies in Latin American Popular Culture

Volumn 15, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 154-173

  Géliga Vargas, Jocelyn A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0347878141     PISSN: 07309139     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (35)

1. Lana Rakow, "Feminist Approaches to Popular Culture: Giving Patriarchy Its Due," Communication 9 (1986): 19-41.
2. The case of Gigi Fernández, a Puerto Rico-born and raised professional tennis player, is worth noting here. When she is introduced in tennis tournaments both in the United States and abroad, Gigi is most often referred to as an "American" player from Colorado, thereby foreclosing the possibility for her to be seen as a puertorriqueña.
3. Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (London: New Left Books, 1971).
4. Ana López, "Are all Latins from Manhattan? Hollywood, Ethnography, and Cultural Colonialism," in Unspeakable Images, ed. Lester Friedman (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 404.
5. Margarita Ostolaza Bey, Política sexual en Puerto Rico (Río Piedras, PR: Ediciones Huracán, 1989).
6. Seamus Deane, Introduction to Nationalism, Colonialism and Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 3-19.
7. Ibid., 18.
8. The films are: Cry Tough (1959), West Side Story, (1961), Harbor Lights (1963), Popi (1969), Aaron Loves Angela, (1975), The Buddy Holly Story (1978), Fame (1980), Salsa (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), A Show of Force (1990), White Men Can't Jump (1992).
9. Edward Said, The World, the Text, and the Critic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).
10. Ella Shohat, "Ethnicities-in-Relation:Toward a Multicultural Reading of American Cinema," in Unspeakable Images, ed. Lester Friedman (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 215-250.
11. Ibid., 217.
12. I do not intend to construct a dualism between Latin Americans and Puerto Ricans; indeed, I regard Puerto Ricans as Latin Americans. However, I nominally distinguish between these constituencies here to illustrate the extent to which this separation has been useful to United States power holders (Hollywood included) and to the Latin American Right in their efforts to preclude possibilities for solidarity in unified anti-establishment struggle.
13. Allen Woll, The Latin Image in American Film (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1980), 54.
14. Ana López.
15. Throughout this paper I use the word "American" in quotations in order to underscore the imperialist construction of this term. The notion of "America" as a country rather than two continents is a blatant example of the ethno-centric, universalist abstractions informing United States imperialism. America extends all the way from Argentina to Alaska, and Americans are all the peoples and cultures that occupy and transform this multi-ethnic landscape.
16. Fernando Picó, Historia general de Puerto Rico (Río Piedras, PR: Huracán-Academia, 1986).
17. Indeed, since 1917 it has been compulsory for Puerto Rican males to register for the military service, and during World War II they were drafted by the ten-thousands.
18. Mary Oshana, Women of Color: A Filmography of Minority and Third World Women (New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1985).
19. Fredric Jameson, "Modernism and Imperialism," in Nationalism, Colonialism and Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 43-66.
20. "Sweetness & Blight: West Side Story," Time, October 20, 1961, 94.
21. cf. Fredric Jameson.
22. Michelle Mattelart, Women, Media and Crisis: Femininity and Disorder (London: Comedia Publishing Group, 1986).
23. Margarita Ostolaza Bey.
24. Oscar Lewis, La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty-San Juan and New York (New York: Random House, 1966); Edward Christensen, "The Puerto Rican Woman: A Profile," in The Puerto Rican Woman, ed. Edna Acosta Belén (New York: Praeger, 1979), 51-63.
25. Oscar Lewis, La Vida: A Puerto Rican Family in the Culture of Poverty-San Juan and New York (New York: Random House, 1966); Edward Christensen, "The Puerto Rican Woman: A Profile," in The Puerto Rican Woman, ed. Edna Acosta Belén (New York: Praeger, 1979), 51-63.
26. History Task Force, Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, Labor Migration under Capitalism: The Puerto Rican Experience (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979).
27. Vicky's ethnic/racial background is not made explicit in the film. The fact that the actress who plays her is Argentinean suggests (in the context of Hollywood casting practices) that Vicky is Latina, but her specific nationality is unclear. Because of this ambiguity, I do not include her, or the night club's owner, in my discussion of puertorriqueñas.
28. López.
29. Margarita Ostolaza Bey.
30. bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics (Boston: South End Press, 1990).
31. bell hooks.
32. Justin Lewis, The Ideological Octopus: An Exploration of Television and its Audience (New York & London: Routledge, 1991).
33. Jesús Martín-Barbero, "Communication from Culture: The Crisis of the National and the Emergence of the Popular," Media, Culture & Society 4 (1988): 447-465.
34. Ien Ang, "Culture and Communication: Towards an Ethnographic Critique of Media Consumption in the Transnational Media System," European Journal of Communication 5 (1990): 239-260.
35. Janice Radway, "Identifying Ideological Seams: Mass Culture, Analytical Method and Political Practice," Communication 9 (1986): 93-123.