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| 87 3 Becoming Frida Latinidad and the Production of Latina Authenticity Central to mainstream media representations of Latinidad is the production of ethnic authenticity, of an authentic ethnic or panethnic identity often grounded in familiar and marketable characteristics. Furthermore, media produced by U.S. ethnic and racial minorities equally depend on a mode of “strategic essentialism” to produce authenticity. In the next two chapters, I build on Juana María Rodríguez’s discussion of strategic essentialism as the reduction of “identity categories to the most readily decipherable marker around which to mobilize” to map out the discourse of Latinidad in global film and television shows produced by Latinas.1 While the notion of strategic essentialism was initially coined by Gayatri Spivak2 and has most readily been used by postcolonial scholars interested in studying how identity is used by activists to disrupt Western ethnic, racial, and gender hierarchies , I engage contemporary media to think through the uneasy deployment of strategic essentialism by Latina mainstream media producers, such as Mexican actor Salma Hayek, to manufacture ethnic authenticity as a representational intervention in to the mainstream. In the case of the movie Frida, I examine Hayek’s use of strategic essentialism to mobilize Mexican ethnic authenticity, which must then be negotiated by U.S. and Mexican media and audiences that foreground their identity discourses. That is to say, the movie itself, publicity about the movie, and Salma Hayek’s role as lead actor and producer were all invested in promoting a definition of Mexican authenticity that situated the movie and Hayek’s performance as unique and different from traditional Hollywood fare about Latinas and Latinidad. Nevertheless, analysis of English- and Spanish-language media coverage and Internet discussion boards about the movie illustrates a more complex reading of Latina identity and Mexican authenticity. The reduction of complexity embedded in the “myth of authenticity,” to borrow Gareth Griffiths’ words, is a problematic but integral signifying practice in the effective global commodification of Latinidad.3 Media stories 88 | chapter 3 grounded in authenticity inevitably rely on constructions of identity based on reductive assumptions that homogenize cultural practices and reify racial differences. Thus, media practices that define one Latina as more “real” or “legitimate” than another inevitably participate in symbolic colonization by reproducing dominant norms, values, and beliefs about Latinidad. Consequently , global media produced by Latinas based on mainstream signifying practices of ethnic authenticity are especially scrutinized by audiences. Because of an environment in which Latinas remain generally underrepresented in the media, there are perpetual conflicts over what iconic Latina figures may be represented, by which ethnic and racial groups, and under what cultural conditions.4 Such was the case for Frida. Mexican newspaper and online audience discussions about Hayek and Frida challenged the cinematic and publicity constructions of Mexican authenticity by circulating competing definitions of ethnic identity. Therefore, I begin the chapter with a discussion of how Frida Kahlo scholars imagine the artist’s identity to contextualize Hayek’s publicity campaign and the movie’s representation of ethnic authenticity. The complex public response to Hayek and Frida’s production of ethnic authenticity is explored in the last half of the chapter, which turns to an online discussion board and the U.S. Latina/o and Mexican media coverage about Hayek and the movie. The chapter analyzes interviews with Hayek and director Julie Taymor in the mainstream and U.S. Latina/o media. Specifically, I collected movie reviews, stories about the movie, and personality profiles through the Ethnic NewsWatch (ENW) database. Of the twenty-six Latina/o newspapers available on ENW, some are independently owned and geared to a specific ethnic audience, such as San Diego’s La Prensa, which is primarily aimed at U.S. Mexicans and is owned by a Mexican American family. Others are owned by English-language chains, such as Miami’s El Nuevo Herald, a former Knight Ridder (now McClatchy) property primarily aimed at U.S. Cubans. To further trouble the movie’s representation of authenticity, I also examined 2002 news and editorial coverage about the film from two Mexico City newspapers, Reforma and La Crónica de Hoy.5 Together these U.S. Latina/o and Mexico City news, reviews, and opinion stories are part of the pre- and postproduction machinery that influence a film’s domestic and global success or failure. Lastly, included in the analysis is one discussion thread from the Internet Movie Database Web site (www.IMDb.com). Of the eighty-eight discussion threads on the IMDb...

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