“Millennials as working class”: El Rey Network and the politics of race, class, and gender

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines how the El Rey Network departs distinctively from other competing Latinx television channels catered to the young bicultural and bilingual millennials. The cable network’s emphasis on working-class masculinity aims to appeal to the Latino millennials who increasingly identify themselves as the new working class. The deployment of a working-class perspective into its original programing, branding, and aesthetics aspires to offer a televisual space where Latinos can redefine the boundaries of their masculinity stemming from the feminization of labor and economic inequalities under the forces of capitalism. Despite El Rey’s desire to provide more visibility and presence of Latino male bodies on television, it adheres to narrow conceptions of machismo that do not speak to the intersectionality of race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality, and generational differences that shape the millennial Latinx identity formation. Therefore, the case study of El Rey illustrates how the Latinx television industry has not evolved much as it presents to be. The article also contributes to the ongoing discussion about Latinx television’s efforts to construct a cohesive discourse of Latinidad and the complex meanings of race, class, and gender informing the politics of Latino representation.