Despite All Adversities by Lema-Hincapié Andrés;Castillo Debra A.;

Author:Lema-Hincapié, Andrés;Castillo, Debra A.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2015-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Notes

1. This is the most recent version of Paul Julian Smith’s essay. See Smith, Paul Julian. Mexican Screen Fiction: Between Cinema and Television. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity, 2014.

2. This group includes figures like Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, and Alejandro González Iñárritu.

3. As a paradigmatic example of homophobia in Mexican cinema, it is sufficient to mention Modisto de señoras (Tailor for Ladies, 1969) by Eduardo Jiménez Pons.

4. The title of Hernández’s film makes reference to lines from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s book, Poesia in forma di rosa (1964): “Ah vergogna e splendore, vergogna e splendore! / Mille nubi di pace accerchiano il cielo, amore, / Mai non finirai di essere amore.”

5. Male frontal nudity has largely been systematically avoided in Mexican cinema. Beyond pointing to this avoidance on the big screen, it also reveals the tremendous erotic panic buried in that culture, which has yet to propose a more open and comprehensive political-erotic understanding of the human body. The significant absence of male nudity in general, nonetheless, has been defied not only by Hernández, but also other directors like Carlos Reygadas (e.g., Japón 2002, Batalla en el cielo 2005).

6. See “Hernández y la prisión del deseo,” by Luis Bernardo Jaime Vázquez.

7. Inspired by the work of Uruguayan author José Enrique Rodó (1871–1917), the Ariel Awards are the equivalent of the Oscars in the USA and the Prix César in France. The Ariels were first awarded in 1947 with the goal of recognizing high quality Mexican cinema.

8. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, identity politics “has come to signify a wide range of political activity and theorizing founded in the shared experiences of injustice of members of certain social groups. Rather than organizing solely around belief systems, programmatic manifestos, or party affiliation, identity political formations typically aim to secure the political freedom of a specific constituency marginalized within its larger context. Members of that constituency assert or reclaim ways of understanding their distinctiveness that challenge dominant oppressive characterizations, with the goal of greater self-determination.”

9. Andy Warhol’s camera shoots a close-up of a client’s face, with a fixed camera, that lasts more or less twenty-five minutes. Hernández would have paid homage to this thematic daring of his predecesor by repeating the same framing with a focus on the client’s face for an eleven-second take. However, this is not an isolated incident and includes editing. Like Warhol, the fellatio is off-screen, offering more opportunities for imagination.

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