Jeremy Lehnen - Dissertation - FINAL

Jl Rinaudo

Description

• dissertation - matière potentielle : submitted in
• dissertation
• dissertation - matière potentielle : director

• inter-social relations
• philosophy latin
• aestheticizing violence
• american studies
• contemporary mexican
• brazilian cidade de deus
• violences
• violence
• film
• films

Sujets

• dissertation
• dissertations

Informations

• Publié par: kevoh
• Nombre de lectures: 18
• Langue: English

Extrait

MARGINALITY, MAYHEM AND MIDDLE CLASS ANXIETIES:
IMAGINARIES OF VIOLENCE AND MASCULINITY IN
CONTEMPORARY MEXICAN AND BRAZILIAN FILM




BY



JEREMY L. LEHNEN

B.A., Spanish, Gonzaga University, 1996
M.A., Spanish, Vanderbilt University, 1998










DISSERTATION

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

Latin American Studies

The University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico


JULY, 2010


DEDICATION



A mi G.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my dissertation director
Margo Milleret for her insights and guidance as well
as the intellectual space and support that she offered
me throughout the research and writing of this
project.
I would also like to express my gratitude to the
other members of my committee: Diana Rebolledo, Rich
Wood and Emanuelle Oliveira. Your criticism and
encouragement was truly the backbone of this
dissertation.
Leila Lehnen, I would like to recognize your
stimulating ideas, critical gaze, professional
mentorship and unending support. They have inspired
and guided this dissertation, my research and my life.
Neither this work nor I would be the same without you.
I would like to thank Arno Carlos Lehnen for the
endless number of films and texts that he scoured the
streets of Porto Alegre to find and send to me. Your
dedication to research and teaching are inspirational.
I would to show my appreciation to the Latin
American and Iberian Institute as well as Amanda Wolfe
iv and Kathy McKnight for their support and for keeping
all the paperwork together when I didn’t.
I would like to thank my Mother and family, I may
be the first to do this, but without you all it never
would have been possible (even if my brothers still
don’t remember what I am researching).
Lastly, I would like to extend my heartfelt
gratitude to Maricarmen Zorrilla Medianero. The time
I spent with you and your beautiful family marked the
beginning of this life-long trajectory.
v











MARGINALITY, MAYHEM AND MIDDLE CLASS ANXIETIES:
IMAGINARIES OF VIOLENCE AND MASCULINITY IN
CONTEMPORARY MEXICAN AND BRAZILIAN FILM





BY



JEREMY L. LEHNEN












Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

Latin American Studies

The University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico

July, 2010

vi MARGINALITY, MAYHEM AND MIDDLE CLASS ANXIETIES: IMAGINARIES
OF VIOLENCE AND MASCULINITY IN CONTEMPORARY MEXICAN AND
BRAZILIAN FILM
by

JEREMY L. LEHNEN

B.A., SPANISH, GONZAGA UNIVERSITY, 1996
M.A., SPANISH, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, 1998
PH. D., LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO,
2010

ABSTRACT

Marginality, Mayhem and Middle Class Anxieties:
Imaginaries of Masculinity and Urban Violence in
Contemporary Mexican and Brazilian Film is a comparative
study that explores the confluence of cinematic discourse,
violence, masculinity and constructions (or denial) of
citizenship in present-day Latin America. My argument is
that the thematization of violence and masculinity in
contemporary Latin American film intercedes at a symbolic
level into social relations that are increasingly mediated
through images that depict what is socially permitted. This
dissertation considers how film (re)structures perceptions
of masculinity and its inter-linkages with cityscapes marked
vii
by social and material violence. Violence is at the same
time the producer and the product of prevailing mediatic
representations of social strife. As such, material and
symbolic violence generate a spectacle of otherness
(socioeconomic, ethnic, gendered) that purports to demarcate
the symbolic limits of so-called legitimate society, often
employing the peripheral male subject as the axis around
which difference is articulated. On the one hand, films such
as Amores perros (Mexico Iñárritu 2001) and Cidade de Deus
(Brazil, Meirelles, Lund 2002) utilize paradigms of socio-
economic and gender difference to naturalize the perception
of the divided city by formulating the body of the
peripheral male subject (and the metropolitan zones he
inhabits) as a dangerous terrain. On the other hand, other
productions, such as La Zona (Mexico, Spain, Plá 2007) and O
homem do ano (Brazil, Fonseca 2004), using similar
archetypes, call this vision into question by focusing on
how middle class and elite anxieties create practices of
violence as modes of social definition.
viii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter I: Introduction ………………………………………………………………………… 1
Mexico
Chapter II: The Men and the Boys: Social Anomie in Amores
perros …………………………………………………………………………………………………… 35
Chapter III: Disjunctive Urbanisms: Exclusion, Fear and
Rites of Passage in La Zona …………………………………………… 95
Brazil
Chapter IV: Narratives of Fear, Constructions of
Otherness: O homem do ano ………………………………………………… 137
Chapter V: Cidade de Deus: Spectacularizing Men,
Aestheticizing Violence, Effacing Reality ……… 193
Chapter VI: Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………… 249
References Cited ……………………………………………………………………………………………… 261

ix Chapter I
Introduction

In the final decades of the twentieth century and the
initial decade of the twenty-first century, narratives of
violence have proliferated within Latin American cinematic
production. Films such as the Mexican Amores perros
(Iñárritu 2000) and the Brazilian Cidade de Deus (Meirelles
2002) have become both national and international box
office blockbusters by projecting the spectacle of violence
upon the silver screen. These films are part of what
Christian León has denominated a "Cine de la Marginalidad."
This body of works thematizes urban violence and what many
directors claim to be the gritty reality of marginal
subjects within the continent's cityscapes. These
cinematic works appear to dialogue with newspaper and
television headlines that broadcast daily what at times
seems an ad nauseam recitation of accounts of metropolitan
violence.
Have these mediatic images become the governing medium
of social citizenship, replacing in part inter-social
relations? Within the visual spectacle of contemporary
media and film, what are the narratives that crime films
are constructing and how do they dialogue with social
1