Dirty Laundry (Literally) and Third Space in Contemporary Mexican Film

• In Event: Cracks in the Screen: Theorizing a Third Space in Mexican Cinema

Abstract

The English-language film Rachel Getting Married (dir. Jonathan Demme, 2008) rejects expectations for “larger than life” cinematic hyperbole when two male characters compete to load a dishwasher. One competitor follows the other and thus nullifies the rival’s work by loading the same dishwasher with the same dishes. The spectator pays the price of the movie ticket, therefore, to watch not one but two feats of domestic tedium. How does this tedium relate to the notion of third space? Do men characters who complete domestic chores “crack the screen”? In contemporary Mexican film, this potentially feminist, perhaps rebellious, and most certainly tedious scene of possible “third space” tends to focus on laundry. In Las horas muertas (dir. Aarón Fernández Lesur, 2013) a young man must tidy rooms for a hotel de paso. This new role means to supply narrative humor and tension, because the newly arrived young male helper resents the emerging predicament that no reliable female employee handles the task of laundry. In Los insólitos peces gato (dir. Claudia Sainte-Luce, 2013), a chaotic household governed by a dying single mother cuts between laundry and other domestic topics and visits to the hospital. The deceased mother’s voiceover to her son at the end of the film reminds him to separate lights and darks when washing the clothes. My paper contemplates these possible cinematic “cracks.” Why do twenty-first-century directors film these laundry routines? How does the movie-going experience change as we watch them?

Author

• Emily A Hind, University of Florida