Live-Action Queens, Animated: The Gender Politics of Beauty Pageants in "Reinas"

• In Event: Emerging Forms of Latin American Documentaries

Abstract

This paper delves into the intriguing dialogue between animation and live-action filmmaking in the 2013 Panamanian documentary Reinas, directed by Ana Endara Mislov.The film is an intervention into the gender politics of popular culture in Panama, by focusing on one of this nation's favorite obsessions: beauty pageants.While this is something Panama shares with other Latin American countries, here the competitions occur in a compulsive plethora of spaces:Reinas follows pageants to crown queens for a private social club,apublic elementary school, a nursing home, even a chain of supermarkets! Structurally, Reinas begins with a fascinating prologue: an animation sequence--made to look like cut outs from magazines--that provides a smart and hilariousoverview of Panama, its history, its contradictions, its singularities, including the fact that thousands of "reinas" are crowned each year. But after this three-minute sequence, animation as a style disappears from the film to yield to a more traditional form of documentary, albeit one that beautifully balances a dismantling critique of femininity and nation with a fair portrayal of the social and psychological importance of these competitions. At first, the animation feels like an odd add-on to the film, but I would like to argue that the 'cut-outs' sequence, in fact, skillfully frames the rest of the documentary to critically locate the cultural practice of pageants in the larger scope of Panama's economic, cultural, and social paradoxes. This paper aims to look at the unique ways Reinasactually reconfigures the cinematic language of documentary.

Author

• Carmelo Esterrich, Columbia College Chicago