Abstract
The past two decades have witnessed a proliferation of films from a variety of Latin American countries about disaffected youth, among them Víctor Gaviria’s Rodrigo D: No futuro (Colombia, 1990) and La vendedora de rosas / The Rose Seller (Colombia, 1998), Johnny Cien Pesos (Chile/Mexico/United States, Gustavo Graef Marino, 1993), Madagascar (Cuba, Fernando Pérez, 1994), Buenos Aires viceversa (Argentina, Alejandro Agresti, 1996), Como Nascem os Anjos / How Angels Are Born (Brazil, Murilo Salles, 1996), Pizza birra faso / Pizza Beer Cigarettes (Argentina, Bruno Stagnaro/Adrián Caetano, 1997), Amor vertical (Cuba, Arturo Sotto, 1997), Amores perros (Mexico, Alejandro González Iñárruti, 2000), 25 Watts (Uruguay, Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll, 2001), Vagón fumador / Smokers Only (Argentina, Verónica Chen, 2001), De la calle / Streeters (Gerardo Tort, 2001), Perfume de violetas, nadie te oye / Violet Perfume, Nobody Hears You (Mexico, Marysa Sistach, 2001), Nadar solo (Argentina, Ezequiel Acuña, 2002), Mil nubes de paz … / A Thousand Clouds of Peace… (Mexico, Julián Hernán dez, 2002), Hoy y mañana / Today and Tomorrow (Argentina, Alejandro Chomski, 2003), Como un avión estrellado / Like a Plane Crash (Argentina, Ezequiel Acuña, 2005), and Cielo dividido / Broken Sky (Mexico, Julián Hernández, 2006).1 Although tales of youthful alienation have been a cinematic staple in many countries since the 1960s, many of these recent Latin American films depart from the older models by privileging the perspective of working-class and lower-middle-class subjects and, in so doing, harshly indict societies riddled by mundane acts of violence, exploitation, and emotional brutality.
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Notes
Héctor Babenco’s Pixote, A Lei do Mais Fraco / Pixote, The Law of the Weakest (Brazil, 1981) is a clear antecedent, as is, of course,
Luis Buñuel’s Los olvidados / The Young and the Damned (Mexico, 1950). See
João Luiz Vieira, “The Transnational Other: Street Kids in Contemporary Brazilian Cinema,” in World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives, eds. Nataša Ďurovičová, et al. (New York: Routledge, 2010) for an ana lysis of Rio 40, Graus and Pixote in relation to other “street urchin films” from Brazil and elsewhere.
Henry Giroux, Fugitive Cultures: Race, Violence and Youth (New York: Routledge, 1996), 10.
There are few critical essays that examine Sapir’s film in any depth, although several note the significance of its aesthetic experimentalism. See, for example, Martín Morán, “La ciénaga,” in The Cinema of Latin America, eds. Alberto Elena, et al. (London: Wallflower, 2003), 237; and Aguilar, Other Worlds, 210. For a more substantive discussion of Sapir’s work, see
Wolf, et. al., “Esteban Sapir,” in 60/90 Generaciones: cine argentino independiente, ed. Fernando Martín Peña (Buenos Aires: MALBA, 2003) and chapter 2 of Raquel Pina’s “El sujeto en escena: Huellas de la globalización en el cine argentino contemporáneo,” PhD diss., The Ohio State University, 2010, 56–75.
Pablo Vila, “El rock nacional: género musical y construcción de la identidad juvenil en Argentina,” in Cultura y pospolítica: El debate sobre la modernidad en América Latina, ed. Néstor García Canclini (México, DF: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1991), 255.
Vila, “El rock nacional,” 258–59. For an example of the vision of youth promoted by the repressive military government, see the illustration reproduced in Diana Taylor, Disappearing Acts: Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina’s Dirty War (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 195.
See Marcela Jabbaz and Claudia Lozano, “Memorias de la dictadura y transmisión generacional: representaciones y controversias,” in Memorias en presente: identidad y transmisión en la Argentina posgenocidio, ed. Sergio J. Guelerman (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editorial Norma, 2001), 99 for a summary of such comments and Trigo, “Rockeros y grafiteros: la construcción al sesgo de una antimemoria,” in Memoria colectiva y políticas del olvido: Argentina y Uruguay (1970–1990), eds. Adriana J. Bergero, et al. (Rosario, Argentina: Beatriz Viterbo, 1997), 309–10 for an overview of similar critiques of contemporary Uruguayan youth articulated by both those on the right and the left.
See, for example, Jabbaz and Lozano, “Memorias de la dictadura y trans-misión generacional,” and Sergio Guelerman, “Escuela, juventud y geno-cidio: una interpretación posible,” in Memorias en presente: identidad y transmisión en la Argentina posgenocidio (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editorial Norma, 2001).
Elvira Martorell, “Recuerdos del presente: memoria e identidad. Una reflexión en torno a HIJOS,” in Memorias en presente: Identidad y transmisión en la Argentina posgenocidio, ed. Sergio Guelerman (Buenos Aires: Grupo Editorial Norma, 2001), 137–38. Beatriz Sarlo provocatively shifts the terms to argue that youth functions as an allegory for today’s marketplace, characterized by “ rapid circulationand … accelerated obsolescence ” (Escenas de la vida posmoderna, 43).
Monteagudo, “Lucretia Martel: susurrus a la hora de la siesta,” in Nuevo cine argentino: Temas, autores, estilos de una renovación, eds. Horacio Bernades, et al. (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Tatanka/FIPRESCI, 2002), 74; translation from original, bilingual volume.
Peña, Felix-Didier, Luka, “Lucretia Martel,” in 60/90 Generaciones: cine argentino independiente, ed. Fernando Martín Peña (Buenos Aires: MALBA, 2003), 121.
Martha Oneida Pérez, Armando Perryman, Nilza González, Leydi González, Mayra Abréu, “Identidad nacional, organizaciones culturales, y tiempo libre,” in Cuba: Jóvenes en los 90 (Havana: Editorial Abril, 1999), 264–65.
María I sabel Domínguez, “La juventud cubana en una época de crisis y reestruc-turación,” in Cuba, período especial, ed. José A. Moreno (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1998), 226–27.
Luis Gómez, “La política cubana de juventud en los 90,” in Cuba: Jóvenes en los 90 (Havana: Editorial Abril, 1999), 120; Oneida Pérez et al., “Identidad nacional …,” 258, 262, 264–65;
Edgar Romero, et al., “Juventud y valores en los umbrales del siglo XXI,” in Cuba: Jóvenes en los 90. Havana: Editorial Abril, 1999), 359–60.
Ryan Moore, “‘ … And Tomorrow Is Just Another Crazy Scam’: Postmodernity, Youth, and the Downward Mobility of the Middle Class,” in Generations of Youth: Youth Culture and History in Twentieth-Century America, ed. Joe Austin (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 253.
Lawrence Grossberg, “The Political Status of Youth and Youth Culture,” in Adolescents and Their Music: If It’s Too Loud, You’re Too Old, ed. Jonathon S. Epstein (New York: Garland, 1994), 35, 40, 43; also cited in Moore, “ ‘ … And Tomorrow Is Just Another Crazy Scam’,” 265.
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© 2011 Laura Podalsky
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Podalsky, L. (2011). Alien/Nation: Contemporary Youth in Film. In: The Politics of Affect and Emotion in Contemporary Latin American Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230120112_5
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