"Identity Politics of Cultural Production and Representation"

In recent decades, theories cultivated by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies have armed scholars with powerful tools to critique dominant ideologies and to examine the ways that marginalized populations develop channels of resistance and oppositional strategies through popular culture. ¹ Rosa Linda Fregoso combines these paradigms with theories from various fields, including feminist literature, Third World studies, and borderlands studies, to produce a groundbreaking work on the multivocal struggles associated with identity politics and cultural representation in the production of commercialized entertainment.

The Bronze Screen traces the relationships among art, gender, and politics, focusing on how the nationalism of the Chicano Power Movement of the 1960s influenced the development and evolution of the Chicano cinema. When these early representations neglected to take into account the experiences of women, however, Chicanas began making films that registered their experiences at the intersection of race, gender, and class. These issues associated with representation, either by Chicanas/os themselves or by mainstream Hollywood studios, are at the heart of the book, and Fregoso skillfully evaluates the role of commercialized entertainment in constituting rather than merely reflecting social identities.

In The Bronze Screen, Fregoso analyzes the roles that films “by, for, and about” Chicanas and Chicanos have played in the creation of viable countermemories among members of the community. She argues that these movies function not only as entertainment, but also as political and social critiques of injustices in both the dominant culture and the Chicano community. For example, she analyzes how Cheech Marin’s Born in East L.A. uses humor to subvert stereotypes of Chicanos as drug runners. In the film, an elderly Anglo couple returning from a vacation in Mexico appears to be typically innocent American tourists, but they turn out to be drug smugglers. Similarly, Fregoso notes that the Latinas in Nina Serrano and Lourdes Portillo’s Después del Terremoto suffer not only from racism and class oppression by the dominant culture, but also from the patriarchy and male privilege permeating Latino and dominant cultures alike.

Central to Fregoso’s approach in examining cultural production is the intertextuality of Chicana/o films because of the lived experiences and multiple legacies of Chicanos and Chicanas. Filmmakers blend traditional storytelling techniques, oral histories, music, and performance with modern cinematic approaches to weave rich celluloid tapestries. They build, effect, and encourage agency by infusing contemporary Chicana/o realities with references to collective cultural memory. For example, in I Am Joaquin, director Luis Valdez juxtaposes murals by Mexican artists, including Diego Rivera, and corrido music with images of contemporary urban poverty and deplorable working conditions in agribusiness to dramatize and link a Chicano past and present.

To explore the subjects of, and oppositional strategies within, Chicana/o films, Fregoso divides the book into five chapters, with a concluding chapter on the most recent movie (at press time), Edward James Olmos’s American Me. However, aside from the general rubric of Chicana/o cinema, the book as a whole lacks a unifying theme, which would have anchored the myriad interpretations and given the author an opportunity to reflect on what she sees as significant continuities and changes in the development of an ethnic film culture. Readers unfamiliar with cultural theory and literary criticism may be perplexed at times by Fregoso’s terminology, which seems addressed more to specialists than to general readers.

The first two chapters set the stage for the beginnings of Chicana/o film culture. Fregoso identifies its origins in the identity politics and cultural nationalism of the Chicano Power Movement in the turbulent 1960s. She argues that the evolution of Chicano cinema reflects the struggles over such issues as authority, authenticity, and representation, which arose within the Chicano community. She explores the selective memories, competing agendas, and gendered biases associated with formulating a collective Chicano identity, a journey she proposes began with male-centered narratives in films like I Am Joaquin.Luis Valdez had adapted...