Download or read book Drugs Thugs and Divas written by O. Hugo Benavides and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2009-03-16 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soap opera speaks a universal language, presenting characters and plots that resonate far beyond the culture that creates them. Latin American soap operas—telenovelas—have found enthusiastic audiences throughout the Americas and Europe, as well as in Egypt, Russia, and China, while Mexican narco-dramas have become highly popular among Latinos in the United States. In this first comprehensive analysis of telenovelas and narco-dramas, Hugo Benavides assesses the dynamic role of melodrama in creating meaningful cultural images to explain why these genres have become so successful while more elite cultural productions are declining in popularity. Benavides offers close readings of the Colombian telenovelas Betty la fea (along with its Mexican and U.S. reincarnations La fea más bella and Ugly Betty), Adrián está de visita, and Pasión de gavilanes; the Brazilian historical telenovela Xica; and a variety of Mexican narco-drama films. Situating these melodramas within concrete historical developments in Latin America, he shows how telenovelas and narco-dramas serve to unite peoples of various countries and provide a voice of rebellion against often-oppressive governmental systems. Indeed, Benavides concludes that as one of the most effective and lucrative industries in Latin America, telenovelas and narco-dramas play a key role in the ongoing reconfiguration of social identities and popular culture.
Download or read book Telenovelas in Pan Latino Context written by June Carolyn Erlick and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This concise book provides an accessible overview of the history of the telenovela in Latin America within a pan-Latino context, including the way the genre crosses borders between Latin America and the United States. Telenovelas, a distinct variety of soap operas originating in Latin America, take up key issues of race, class, sexual identity and violence, interweaving stories with melodramatic romance and quests for identity. June Carolyn Erlick examines the social implications of telenovela themes in the context of the evolution of television as an integral part of the modernization of Latin American countries.
Download or read book Narcomedia written by Jason Ruiz and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2023-10-10 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring representations of Latinx people from Scarface to Narcos, this book examines how pop culture has framed Latin America as the villain in America’s long and ineffectual War on Drugs. If there is an enemy in the War on Drugs, it is people of color. That is the lesson of forty years of cultural production in the United States. Popular culture, from Scarface and Miami Vice to Narcos and Better Call Saul, has continually positioned Latinos as an alien people who threaten the US body politic with drugs. Jason Ruiz explores the creation and endurance of this trope, its effects on Latin Americans and Latinx people, and its role in the cultural politics of the War on Drugs. Even as the focus of drug anxiety has shifted over the years from cocaine to crack and from methamphetamines to opioids, and even as significant strides have been made in representational politics in many areas of pop culture, Latinx people remain an unshakeable fixture in stories narrating the production, distribution, and sale of narcotics. Narcomedia argues that such representations of Latinx people, regardless of the intentions of their creators, are best understood as a cultural front in the War on Drugs. Latinos and Latin Americans are not actually America’s drug problem, yet many Americans think otherwise—and that is in no small part because popular culture has largely refused to imagine the drug trade any other way.
Download or read book Narco Cinema written by Ryan Rashotte and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-04-23 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides the first comprehensive study of narco cinema, a cross-border exploitation cinema that, for over forty years, has been instrumental in shaping narco-culture in Mexico and the US borderlands. Identifying classics in its mammoth catalogue and analyzing select films at length, Rashotte outlines the genre's history and aesthetic criteria. He approaches its history as an alternative to mainstream representation of the drug war and considers how its vernacular aesthetic speaks to the anxieties and desires of Latina/o audiences by celebrating regional cultures while exploring the dynamics of global transition. Despite recent federal prohibitions, narco cinema endures as a popular folk art because it reflects distinctively the experiences of those uprooted by the forces of globalization and critiques those forces in ways mainstream cinema has failed.
Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Latina o Popular Culture written by Frederick Luis Aldama and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-26 with total page 615 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latina/o popular culture has experienced major growth and change with the expanding demographic of Latina/os in mainstream media. In The Routledge Companion to Latina/o Pop Culture, contributors pay serious critical attention to all facets of Latina/o popular culture including TV, films, performance art, food, lowrider culture, theatre, photography, dance, pulp fiction, music, comic books, video games, news, web, and digital media, healing rituals, quinceñeras, and much more. Features include: consideration of differences between pop culture made by and about Latina/os; comprehensive and critical analyses of various pop cultural forms; concrete and detailed treatments of major primary works from children’s television to representations of dia de los muertos; new perspectives on the political, social, and historical dynamic of Latina/o pop culture; Chapters select, summarize, explain, contextualize and assess key critical interpretations, perspectives, developments and debates in Latina/o popular cultural studies. A vitally engaging and informative volume, this compliation of wide-ranging case studies in Latina/o pop culture phenomena encourages scholars and students to view Latina/o pop culture within the broader study of global popular culture. Contributors: Stacey Alex, Cecilia Aragon, Mary Beltrán, William A. Calvo-Quirós, Melissa Castillo-Garsow, Nicholas Centino, Ben Chappell, Fabio Chee, Osvaldo Cleger, David A. Colón, Marivel T. Danielson, Laura Fernández, Camilla Fojas, Kathryn M. Frank, Enrique García, Christopher González, Rachel González-Martin, Matthew David Goodwin, Ellie D. Hernandez, Jorge Iber, Guisela Latorre, Stephanie Lewthwaite, Richard Alexander Lou, Stacy I. Macías, Desirée Martin, Paloma Martínez-Cruz, Pancho McFarland, Cruz Medina, Isabel Millán, Amelia María de la Luz Montes, William Anthony Nericcio, William Orchard, Rocío Isabel Prado, Ryan Rashotte, Cristina Rivera, Gabriella Sanchez, Ilan Stavans Frederick Luis Aldama is Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of English and University Distinguished Scholar at the Ohio State University where he is also founder and director of LASER and the Humanities & Cognitive Sciences High School Summer Institute. He is author, co-author, and editor of over 24 books, including the Routledge Concise History of Latino/a Literature and Latino/a Literature in the Classroom.
Download or read book Contemporary Opera in Flux written by Yayoi U Everett and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2024-10-15 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In twelve essays, Contemporary Opera in Flux discusses a series of shifts that, taken together, have radically redefined the production and reception of opera. Focusing on productions involving late twentieth- and twenty-first century scores and libretti, the contributors draw on conversations with members of creative teams and studies of archival material, dipping into a historical record that remains in flux as composers, librettists, directors, and designers revisit existing work and create anew. The contributors to this volume push the boundaries of contemporary opera scholarship by examining works that disrupt operatic conventions; tackle sociopolitical issues such as drug trafficking, racial injustice, and cultural trauma; and advance underrepresented works by female, African-American, Asian, and avant-garde composers around the globe. Contemporary Opera in Flux bridges the gaps between expanding literature on opera, theater, new music, postmodern dramaturgy, and posthuman aesthetics, while also confronting larger questions of identity, representation, and narrative agency that are at the forefront of contemporary music scholarship. This collection of essays engages critically with the past out of a conviction that, amid general public perceptions of opera as anachronistic or elitist, contemporary opera has emerged as an artistic incubator for experimentation.
Download or read book American Literary Minimalism written by Robert C. Clark and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Many of the authors Robert Clark discusses have yet to be recognized for their individual contributions to the emergence and continuing vitality of the movement. School of Images is organized based on chronology and lines of influence. In the introduction, Clark offers a definition of the mode and then describes its early stages. He then explores six works that reflect the core characteristics of the mode: Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time, Raymond Carver's Cathedral, Susan Minot's Monkeys, Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City, Sandra Cisneros's Caramelo, and Cormac McCarthy's The Road. In the conclusion, he discusses contemporary authors and filmmakers whose work represents the ongoing evolution of the category"-- Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Mexican Screen Fiction written by Paul Julian Smith and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-01-27 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mexican cinema is booming today, a decade after the international successes of Amores perros and Y tu mamá también. Mexican films now display a wider range than any comparable country, from art films to popular genre movies, and boasting internationally renowned directors like Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu, and Guillermo del Toro. At the same time, television has broadened its output, moving beyond telenovelas to produce higher-value series and mini-series. Mexican TV now stakes a claim to being the most dynamic and pervasive national narrative. This new book by Paul Julian Smith is the first to examine the flourishing of audiovisual fiction in Mexico since 2000, considering cinema and TV together. It covers much material previously unexplored and engages with emerging themes, including violence, youth culture, and film festivals. The book includes reviews of ten films released between 2001 and 2012 by directors who are both established (Maryse Sistach, Carlos Reygadas) and new (Jorge Michel Grau, Michael Rowe, Paula Markovitch). There is also an appendix that includes interviews carried out by the author in 2012 with five audiovisual professionals: a feature director, a festival director, an exhibitor, a producer, and a TV screenwriter. Mexican Screen Fiction will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars and essential reading for anyone interested in one of the most vibrant audiovisual industries in the world today.
Download or read book Screening Neoliberalism written by Ignacio Sanchez Prado and published by Vanderbilt University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-30 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cavernous, often cold, always dark, with the lingering smell of popcorn in the air: the experience of movie-going is universal. The cinematic experience in Mexico is no less profound, and has evolved in complex ways in recent years. Films like Y Tu Mama Tambien, El Mariachi, Amores Perros, and the work of icons like Guillermo del Toro and Salma Hayek represent much more than resurgent interest in the cinema of Mexico. In Screening Neoliberalism, Ignacio Sanchez Prado explores precisely what happened to Mexico's film industry in recent decades. Far from just a history of the period, Screening Neoliberalism explores four deep transformations in the Mexican film industry: the decline of nationalism, the new focus on middle-class audiences, the redefinition of political cinema, and the impact of globalization. This analysis considers the directors and films that have found international notoriety as well as those that have been instrumental in building a domestic market. Screening Neoliberalism exposes the consequences of a film industry forced to find new audiences in Mexico's middle-class in order to achieve economic and cultural viability.
Download or read book Other Americans written by Matthew Bush and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grounded in perspectives of affect theory, Other Americans examines the writings of Roberto Bolaño and Daniel Alarcón; films by Alfonso Cuarón, Claudia Llosa, Matt Piedmont, and Joel and Ethan Coen; as well as the Netflix serials Narcos and El marginal. These widely consumed works about Latin America—equally balanced between narratives produced in the United States and in the region itself—are laden with fear, anxiety, and shame, which has an impact that exceeds the experience of reception. The negative feelings encoded in visions of Latin America become common coinage for US audiences, shaping their ideological relationship with the region and performing an affective interpellation. By analyzing the underlying melodramatic structures of these works that would portray Latin America as an implicit other, Bush examines a process of affective comprehension that foments an us/them, or north/south binary in the reception of Latin America’s globalized art.
Download or read book Latinos and Narrative Media written by F. Aldama and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-11-07 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to explore the multitude of narrative media forms created by and that feature Latinos in the twenty-first century - a radically different cultural landscape to earlier epochs. The essays present a fresh take informed by the explosion of Latino demographics and its divergent cultural tastes.
Download or read book Global Trafficking Networks on Film and Television written by César Albarrán-Torres and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-03-07 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book draws on a multi-method study of film and television narratives of global criminal networks to explore the links between audiovisual media, criminal networks and global audiences in the age of digital content distribution. Mapping out media representations of the ongoing war on drugs in Mexico and the United States, the author delves into the social, cultural and geopolitical impacts of distribution and consumption of these media. With a particular emphasis on the globalized Mexican cartels, this book investigates three areas – gender and racial representation in film and television, the digital distribution of content through the internet and streaming services such as Hulu and Netflix, and depictions of extreme violence in film, television and online spaces – to identify whether there are fundamental similarities and differences in how Hollywood productions reproduce stereotypes about race, gender and extreme violence. Some of the movies and television series analysed are Breaking Bad, Ozark, Weeds, Rambo: Last Blood, No Country for Old Men, Sicario and the Netflix series Narcos, Narcos: Mexico and El Chapo. Taking a unique interdisciplinary approach to the study of cartels in the media, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of media studies, film, television, security studies, Latin American and cultural studies.
Download or read book Body Image and Identity in Contemporary Societies written by Ekaterina Sukhanova and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-24 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Popular interest in body image issues has grown dramatically in recent years, due to an emphasis on individual responsibility and self-determination in contemporary society as well as the seemingly limitless capacities of modern medicine; however body image as a separate field of academic inquiry is still relatively young. The contributors of Body Image and Identity in Contemporary Societies explore the complex social, political and aesthetic interconnections between body image and identity. It is an in-depth study that allows for new perspectives in the analysis of contemporary visual art and literature but also reflects on how these social constructs inform clinical treatment. Sukhanova and Thomashoff bring together contributions from psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychiatrists and scholars in the fields of the social sciences and the humanities to explore representations of the body in literature and the arts across different times and cultures. The chapters analyse the social construction of the 'ideal' body in terms of beauty, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class and disability, from a broadly psychoanalytic perspective, and traces the mechanisms which define the role of the physical appearance in the formation of identity and the assumption of social roles. Body Image and Identity in Contemporary Societies' unique interdisciplinary outlook aims to bridge the current gap between clinical observations and research in semiotic theory. It will be of interest to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, art therapists, art theorists, academics in the humanities and social sciences, and those interested in an interdisciplinary approach to the issues of body image and identity. Ekaterina Sukhanova is University Director of Academic Program Review at the City University of New York USA. She serves as Scientific Secretary of the Section for Art and Psychiatry and the Section of Art and Psychiatry of the World Psychiatric Association. She is also engaged in interdisciplinary research on cultural constructs of mental health and illness and curates exhibits of art brut as a vehicle for fighting stigma. Hans-Otto Thomashoff was born in Germany and lives in Vienna. He is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, art historian and author of fiction and non-fiction books. He has been curator of several art exhibitions highlighting the connection between the psyche and art as well as president of the section of Art and Psychiatry of the World Psychiatric Association and advisory committee member of the Sigmund Freud Foundation, Vienna.
Download or read book God s Laboratory written by Elizabeth F. S. Roberts and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012-05-25 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Assisted reproduction, with its test tubes, injections, and gamete donors, often raises important concerns regarding matters of life and kinship. Yet these concerns do not take the same form everywhere around the world. In this innovative ethnography of in vitro fertilization in Ecuador, Elizabeth Roberts shows how having children through biotechnological intervention is not only tolerated, it is embraced by the population, despite widespread poverty and official condemnation by the Catholic Church. Roberts takes us into clinics, laboratories, and homes, providing a textured picture of the int.
Download or read book Transnational Media written by Suman Mishra and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-03-15 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A broad and accessible introduction to national and transnational media Transnational Media: Concepts and Cases provides a clear and engaging overview of media communication from a global and a region-based perspective. Rather than focusing on just complex theories and industry-specific analyses, this unique book offers an inclusive, comparative approach to both journalism and entertainment media—introducing readers to the essential concepts, systems, transnational influences, and power dynamics that shape global media flow. Broad coverage of different media forms from Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Oceania offers country-based and transnational perspectives while highlighting examples of media trends in television, radio, film, journalism, social media, music, and others. Promoting a balanced, multipolar exploration of transnational media, this innovative book discusses topics such as media concentration, the cultural, political, and economic impact of media, and the primary centers of new and traditional media activities. Chapters organized by geographic region offer instructive pedagogical features—including case studies and essays, and illustrations, maps and charts—that strengthen understanding of distinctive and emerging practices in the production, distribution, and consumption of media products. Explores a wide range of global media topics, infrastructures, cultures, and political-economic climates Written in an engaging, relatable, and easy to understand style Covers major aspects of journalism and various forms of entertainment media Organized by regions of the world to reflect a global perspective Includes newly-written case studies by international scholars from each region Designed for undergraduate and graduate courses in comparative media analysis, international media and communication, and related areas of study, Transnational Media: Concepts and Cases is an indispensable resource for colleges and universities that are internationalizing their curriculum to meet the needs of an increasing globalized world.
Download or read book The Colorblind Screen written by Sarah Nilsen and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2014-04-04 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In The Colorblind Screen, the contributors examine television's role as the major discursive medium in the articulation and contestation of racialized identities in the United States. While the dominant mode of televisual racialization has shifted to a "colorblind" ideology that foregrounds racial differences in order to celebrate multicultural assimilation, the volume investigates how this practice denies the significant social, economic, and political realities and inequalities that continue to define race relations today. Focusing on such iconic figures as President Obama, LeBron James, and Oprah Winfrey, many chapters examine the ways in which race is read by television audiences and fans. Other essays focus on how visual constructions of race in dramas like 24, Sleeper Cell, and The Wanted continue to conflate Arab and Muslim identities in post-9/11 television. The volume offers an important intervention in the study of the televisual representation of race, engaging with multiple aspects of the mythologies developing around notions of a "post-racial" America and the duplicitous discursive rationale offered by the ideology of colorblindness." -- Publisher's website.
Download or read book Telenovelas written by Ilan Stavans and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-02-09 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drama! Excess! Men in bee suits! Often erroneously compared to soap operas of the United States, outside of the necessary and sometimes fantastical dramatic story arc, however, the telenovela differs greatly from U.S. soap operas and have regional and cultural distinctions throughout Latin America. In Telenovelas, Ilan Stavans has gathered over two-dozen essays covering the telenovela for readers to better understand the phenomenon and its myriad layers. Branching off from radionovelas, the telenovela was exported from pre-Castro Cuba during the 1950s. The essays found in Telenovelas covers a broad view of the genre, television's impact in Latino culture, as well as more in-depth discussions of specific telenovelas throughout the Spanish-speaking television audience in the North America. Also explored is how telenovelas depict stereotypes, respond to gender and class roles, and examines the differences in topic and thematic choices as well as production values unique to each country.
