Cracks in the Screen: Theorizing a Third Space in Mexican Cinema

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This panel offers theoretical frameworks to understand film’s social function in light of recent trends in the industry that have altered the longstanding practice of state control and socio-political agendas therein. Accordingly, extending Bhabha’s concept of a “third space,” we examine Mexican film in its capacity as a site of contradictory, ambivalent or interstitial spaces, ones that critique previously monolithic identities: national, sexual, religious, geopolitical, etc. In the broad sense, we aim to theorize a third-space as a place of intersectionality, that both reflects and constitutes a new social reality, depicting a Mexico that is at once local and global.

Sub Track

• Film Studies

Session Organizer

• Ilana S Luna, Arizona State University

Chair

• Ilana S Luna, Arizona State University

Individual Presentations

• Dirty Laundry (Literally) and Third Space in Contemporary Mexican Film - Emily A Hind, University of Florida

• As Seen on TV: Central American Migrants and Third Spaces in Mexican Film - Carlos A Vargas, University of California/Irvine

• The Stain of the Third Space in Mexican Cinema - John V Waldron, University of Vermont

• Including Excess: Camp Aesthetics and the Creation of a Third Space in the Films of Teresa Suárez - Ilana S Luna, Arizona State University

Discussant

• Laura G Gutiérrez-Escarpita, University of Texas at Austin