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117 8 Representations of Latina/o Sexuality in Popular Culture DEBOR AH R. VARGAS This chapter provides an overview of the ways in which various loci of popular culture constitute and stage representations of Latina/o sexuality in the U.S. context. Research on such representations proves significant knowledge to the construction of public policy because cultural production reinforces structural systems of inequality as much as it forms possibilities for contesting systems of structural oppression. Drawing from Latina/o and Chicana/o studies, among other disciplines and interdisciplinary fields, I provide a critical overview of literature addressing popular cultural forms with specific attention to the production of Latina/o subjectivities and representations of sexualities. As a state-of-knowledge assessment, this review brings to bear information addressing the production, consumption, and reception of Latina/o sexuality and popular culture. I contend that the attention paid to representations of Latina/o sexuality in popular culture to date solidifies traditional heterosexual femininity and masculinity by paying less heed to both nonheteronormative subjectivities and queer readings of sexuality in popular culture. Moreover, within a U.S. context, there remains less critical attention to color and the ways race is central to the production of hegemonic masculinity and femininity among Latina/o representations.1 In this review of the literature—ranging from cinema, media, Latina/o and Chicana/o music to communications, sociology, and cultural studies—Latina/o sexuality is critically engaged by devoting particular attention to language, racialization, colonization, commodification, and class as constituted in the overdetermination of too often assumed heterosexuality. Analysis and debates on cinema, music, and television, most notably by Frances Aparicio, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Rosa Linda Fregoso, Raquel Z. Rivera, Maria Herrera-Sobek, Michelle Habell-Pallan, and Chon Noriega, have critically considered the relationship between the representations of racialized subjects and power ranging from structural systems of oppression to individual agency. This type of analysis 118 DEBORAH R. VARGAS has contributed to understanding how popular depictions of Latina/o sexuality have produced, for the most part, a systematic discursive violence through extreme polarizations of either visible or invisible representations. As my critical recommendations for policy implications will address, representations of an assumed heteronormativity commonly produce overly simplistic assessments of the politics of consumption, audience reception, and production.2 My review of the literature charts a discursive shift from sexuality to sexualities and from an unproblematized heteronormative gender toward multiple masculinities and femininities. In so doing, this review is organized around two key areas that have emerged in the literature: “stereotypes of (hetero)sexuality” and “color matters” (in the politics of Latina/o representations of sexuality); the literature review closes with examples of future directions for research, exemplified by key scholarship with attention to queer subjectivities and queer analysis. With these areas in mind, I address implications for future policy. Historically, popular culture has provided both a space for the staging of politics and an arena for the reproduction of oppressive representations of Latina/os. Stuart Hall’s often-noted call to analyze popular culture as a site of power makes political sense in terms of representations of Latina/o sexuality. It is fitting to recall Gloria Anzaldúa’s claim that representations of Latina/o sexualities are inscribed by social structures, “carved and tattooed with the sharp needles of experience.”3 Popular culture proffers a “site where this struggle for and against a culture of the powerful is engaged: it is also the stake to be won or lost in that struggle. It is the arena of consent and resistance.” The literature I focus on denotes scholarship that has centered the politics of representation pertaining to Latina/o sexuality and studies of popular culture. Scores of books and articles as well as anthologies pertaining to Latina/os’ production of and engagement with popular culture attests to both a burgeoning Latino public as well as an increase of disciplinary and interdisciplinary methodologies that form the field of Latina/o popular culture. There are multiple ways one may define Latina/o popular culture and, therefore, a range of possibilities of literature from which to draw from. This literature review examines a body of critical scholarship into how representations of Latina/o sexuality have been (re)produced, contested, re-imagined, and commodified, with specific attention to the popular culture venues of cinema, television, and music, with some attention to performance and public art. Critical Analysis of the Issues: Representation as Stereotypes As...

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