The Young, the Damned, and the Restless: Youth in Contemporary Mexican Cinema

Abstract

Over past decade a growing field of research in United States has focused on film, and cultures. These studies have been driven by many factors, including increased awareness of young adults as an important niche market2 and debates over youthful (whether measured in terms of supposedly anti-social lyrics of rap, violence in schools, or nihilism of Gen-Xers). By analyzing filmic representation of young adults and their role as consumers, these studies explore ways in which cinematic portrayals confirm or resist dominant discourses and ways in which young people respond. Similar studies in Latin America have been scarce, despite recent proliferation of films about young adults. The New Argentine Cinema has produced many intimate tales about young in low-budget works like Pizza birra faso/Pizza, Beer, and Cigarettes (Adrian Caetano and Bruno Stagnaro, 1997) and Nadar solo/Swimming Alone (Ezequiel Acuna, 2002) as well as in more commercial films about middle-class like No sabe, no contesta/Doesn't Know, Doesn't Respond (Fernando Musa, 2002). Colombian director Victor Gaviria's films on marginalized (Rodrigo D: No futuro, 1990 and La vendedora de rosas/The Rose Seller, 1998) have won international acclaim. In Mexico growth in cinema can be traced to 1980s, when media conglomerate Televisa began to produce films with already contracted pop stars like Luis Miguel, Lucero, and Gloria Trevi.3 Since early 1990s, films like Pelo suelto/Loose Hair (Pedro Galindo, 1991), La primera noche/The First Night (Alejandro Gamboa, 1997), Amores perros/Love's a Bitch (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarruti, 2000), and Y tu mama tambien/And Your Mother, Too (Alfonso Cuaron, 2001)-all of them featuring young leads-have been top Mexican box-office domestic draws, occasionally and remarkably rivaling imported Hollywood blockbusters.4 The Mexican films share a number of thematic preoccupations and stylistic tendencies with their U.S. counterparts. As in Rebel without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955), Pretty in Pink (John Hughes, 1986), and Boyz in Hood (John Singleton, 1991), Mexican works tie youthful deviance to crisis of traditional family and feature sort of spatio-temporal disjunctions typical of U.S. music videos. Nonetheless, there are key differences. Mexican films more typically tie their lament over fall of patriarchal structures to a macro-political critique. As noted by numerous historians, from 1930s until late 1980s, Mexican state acted as benevolent guardian that successfully managed its citizenry through topdown policies and pro-nationalist rhetoric. By late 1980s privatization policies initiated under President Carlos Salinas de Gotari (hand-in-hand with ratification of North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA]) severely undercut state's ability to play benefactor to established interest groups and many cultural institutions. As argued by Alex Saragoza and Graciela Berkovich, starting in 1990s, Mexican films registered this shift through allegorical narratives that comment on decline of patriarchal state in narratives about private lives.5 At same time, films' disjunctive aesthetic highlights their protagonists' spatio-temporal isolation to register a decentered subjectivity typical of those living in industrializing countries whose place in a globalizing world is particularly uncertain. In analyzing such works, a cue should be taken from scholars like Rob Latham who look beyond practices and representations of young adults in both individual and larger socio-political realms to see how concept of youth functions as a mediating sociocultural mechanism during different stages of capitalist development.6 Thus, it is important to situate recent films alongside concurrent public discussions about the problem of today's youth, which vary regionally but frequently intersected in Latin American context with issues over legacies of past and significance of neo-liberal economic globalization. …